tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62575186143563162542024-03-13T01:29:19.835-07:00Reviews by Hubie GoodeHubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.comBlogger248125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-29791411262373687702018-09-29T11:35:00.000-07:002018-09-29T11:35:31.201-07:00The New Scammers<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br /></b>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">The internet is an amazing place.</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> It wasn’t all that long ago that scammers came from Nigera in the form of “Princes” who wanted to bequeath some unsuspecting “sucker” a huge sum of money. Things have gotten more complex these days, and the scams come from all sorts of places one might not expect. Those places can range from India to Turkey and include a special NEW kind of scammer, namely, “The Good Samaritan Helper”. Internet connections have allowed these scammers a free hand at getting to your information, even from an advertising standpoint, so that they can have not only your phone number and address, but information on just what might “hook” you based upon your internet use. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Recently I did an info gathering exercise with a scammer company who amazed me at the lengths they went to to get some money that really was a drop in the bucket of what they have the potential for, in my humble opinion. I’ve seen the YouTube videos of people mocking these scammers in real time, but I wanted to walk the path to see just how far things would go, and then I would have something to write about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My recent scam came from a company that said they were located in New York, but really it could have been anywhere considering I used to have my phone number on my Facebook account. They said they were from the National Grant council and I was to be awarded 950,000 dollars in grant money, um, because I’m such a good bill payer. Hehe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">They had multiple phone numbers, of course, listing their calls from multiple states when I did hear from them. I spoke not only to the usual “foreigner” sounding representative, but also some people who said they were lawyers working with the World Bank. Knowing full well that Grants aren’t just GIVEN out for no reason, I bit anyway and received a number for confirmation of my account money in the World Bank. This number, along with my “contact” number, changed often and was “out of order” on more than one occasion. Eventually, after several weeks, I could find no one who could tell me how to retrieve my money. Interestingly enough, the money was referred to by World Bank employees more than once as “Publisher’s Clearing House” winnings. Scammers! They have a problem keeping the story straight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So it all came to nothing for several weeks, and then the next step happened. The “Good Samaritan”. I was contacted by someone from India, I believe, who said their name was ODO... yes, ODO. They were concerned that I had not been able to retrieve my Grant Money because the time was running out on its viability. In order to open the account to me I would need to send a service fee for legal work which would be reimbursed once my money had been transferred. This amount over a two week time period went from $26,000 dollars to $1,500 dollars to $350.00 dollars. It would, of course, have to be sent to Costa Rica, by Money Gram or Western Union to some guy who would pick it up at a Walmart. Very governmental, eh? We’ve gone from $950,000 dollars and the World Bank to 350.00 dollars and some unknown person at Walmart in Costa Rica. Funny stuff.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, Money Gram already has protections set up against these scam money sends, despite your telling them that you know the person, the system will cancel the transaction. You’ll have to get a refund anyway. Western Union is very specific about giving back refunds, and they may not give you one at all. But usually you have to go back to the very place you sent money from in order to get the refund. Scammers are a little “brain dead” in demanding that the system work this way. I send money across the globe all the time by way of PayPal and never have these problems. When I suggested this, I was ignored. Their loss.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Despite their insistence that Money Gram’s claim that they were scammers was false, the phones quickly went dead and contact could not be re-established. That is, until two weeks later when the same voice of ODO called me again as an IRS agent telling me my tax returns had been “mis-calculated” and I would need to set up payment or face violations. His name was now Steve Foster, with and Indian accent. The problem is, I file every year and they have my address current for all filings. The address they had was five years old and they could not explain to me why they still had an old address. Go on YouTube and see the funny scammer calls for IRS agents that people have done as they screw with the scammers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I do have to caution you though, I once butt dialed a number on my phone which had come from a scammer and I didn’t realize it had happened at first. I heard a voice in my pants and didn’t know who it was, when I picked up the phone to listen, my life was being threatened. I was told that if I ever called the number again I would be hunted down and my wife would be raped. They’re nuts, okay, so don’t screw with them too much. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I also receive mail from Turkey these days. Psychics who have never met me are canceling important meetings with Illuminati members just to send me a commercially produced mailing about how they want to give me 19 million dollars and a special magic “occular” that will turn this money into BILLIONS. Of, course, the “Occular” needs 20 dollars for shipping from the Middle East. This occular is a magnifying glass that might cost $2.00 dollars at the 99 cent store. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The next step was the “Good Samaritan”. I then received a mailing from another psychic wanting to defend me. They knew I was scammed by a psychic and never received any money I was promised, and for 40 dollars, they would reverse the bad magic the psychic had sent me and I would then receive my millions. That’s the new scam folks, the Samaritan who wants to help you out. It’s just part TWO of the whole scam.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’m also a DRUID now. Druids want to send me a secret key for a sacred book that only I will be able to open, and I’ll be given 11 million to keep this key, for only 30 dollars. I’m still waiting for ANYTHING to show up on this one, whether key or next step in the scam. Nothing has happened yet after a hand full of months. Funny thing is, the Turkey address for the Psychic and this druid thing.... are the same. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are a few others as well, different versions of the same thing, but hell, if I sent out 5 million mailings that cost me .50 cents to produce and only 10 per cent responded with 40 bucks a piece (cost: $2,500,000 income: $20,000,000), that’s a scam that could go on forever.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, that’s it folks, for now. Don’t be greedy, bad people love to feed your greed and take you for your money.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hubie</span></div>
</span></span>Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-74505397571590134822016-01-05T08:20:00.000-08:002016-01-05T08:20:12.970-08:00Staring Down the Barrell<div class="copy-paste-block" id="mc_embed_signup">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Top Bible Prophecy Stories of 2015</span></h2>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Things are not falling apart</span> -- they are falling into place. If Jesus chastised the Pharisees for not knowing the signs of His first coming, why would we not be expected to be aware of today's apocalyptic signs? Here are some of the top prophetic developments of 2015.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">1) Israel's worsening isolation. (Zechariah 12:3) The Left in America under Barack Obama abandoned her some years ago. With the defeat of Canada's Stephen Harper, Israel was left only with some evangelical Christians spread around the world. She has no superpower backing.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">2) The "days of Noah" are back. (Matthew 24:37) Everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes. (Judges 17:6) Lawlessness is the order of the day. Evil is glorified. The White House was adorned with the colors of the homosexual rainbow and Hillary Clinton has a campaign ad with homosexuals engaged in debauchery as she celebrates their actions. </span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">3) The disillusionment with today's politician is setting the stage for a "man with a plan" who will not be a politician but who will have the answer to all the world's problems. We don't know his name. We know his title is Antichrist. He may be the only one who can stabilize the ISIS crisis being planned for a naive Western world.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">4) The rise of strong delusion. (II Thessalonians 2:10-12). Simply put, God sends a strong delusion to those who choose not to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who take delight in mocking and rejecting Him, He will condemn, confuse their thinking, and cause them to believe fables. And they do! Islam is good and peaceful; guns are evil; climate change is more dangerous than jihadists; Israel is the bad guy and the Palestinians are the new heroes in the church today; ISIS isn't Islam; Muslim refugees are peaceful and will help the Western world. This is an "Alice-in-Wonderland" world. Christians don't fit. The Mad Hatter rules.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">5) The further decline of America. She is not in the Bible in the end-times. Russia and Iran are the primary players in the Mideast now. America's influence for good is vanishing under Barack Obama. America will blend into global government. </span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">6) America is being given over to paganism. A few months ago the Hindu goddess Kali appeared on the Empire State Building in New York City. Twenty years ago this was unthinkable. It is now cool. </span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">7) Israel is being prepared for the Antichrist. She is surrounded by enemies. She has Hezbollah, ISIS, Russia and Syria to the north and East and Hamas to the south in Gaza. Iran boasts daily that she will dump nukes on Israel. At some point she will cave to these threats and call on the Antichrist to make a peace treaty -- particularly in light of the loss of American support.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">8) Gog is now on the move. If Gog is Russia, Vladimir Putin has re-built her from the days when Ronald Reagan reined her in. Russia is advancing in many places. All the Gog-Magog nations are aligning and are in the news: Iran, Russia, Turkey, Libya, and more. Prominent Bible-players are moving around as though they were on a chess board.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">See Ezekiel 38-39.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">9) Israel has been bombing the suburbs of Damascus taking out concealed weapons. The Bible foretells a time when Damascus will become a ruinous heap. (Isaiah 35:1)</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">10) Christians are mocked as never before and Jews are fleeing to Israel at a pace not seen since post WW2. (Matthew 10:22) Only Islam is glorified, honored, and protected. In the Iraq/Syria region, a Christian is slaughtered every 5 minutes, yet few show any concern. Christianity is being erased from the region of its birth. All of this intensified in 2015. </span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">11) The technology giants want to suppress the truth and marginalize Christians. From YouTube, to Google, to Facebook, to Twitter, and more, the gospel message is censored and evil is glorified. They are preparing the way for "Mark of the Beast" technology. This was on overdrive in 2015. Stories reveal that Windows 10 actually spies on emails, credit cards, and more.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">12) There was a cry for a global religion from Pope Francis to the Parliament of World Religions in Utah in late 2015. If the world is ever to be one, religions also must be united. Pope Francis revealed himself to be an apocalyptic figure in 2015. We cannot "pin the tail of the False Prophet" on him quite yet, but even conservative Catholics are troubled by this Jesuit Pope. In fact, this Pope represents Marxism, environmentalism, the new world order, global government, sustainable development, the Jesuit agenda, unity of faiths, a global constitution, a global court, and a departure from Catholic traditions. He is surely a harbinger of a global religion.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">13) Globalism went on overdrive thanks to Barack Obama, the United Nations, Pope Francis, and a consortium of worldwide Leftists. John Lennon, who "imagined" all of this decades ago, would be proud!</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">14) The push to make cash illegal intensified in 2015. The move to a cashless society won't happen overnight. Instead, it is being implemented very slowly and systematically in a series of incremental steps. All over the planet, governments are starting to place restrictions on the use of cash for security reasons. </span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">15) Israel's Temple Mount has been a focal point for turmoil this year. With stage-setting for fulfillment of Bible prophecy during this Church Age winding up, it should be of no surprise that there has been tension on Mount Moriah. That may be the most contested 35 acres on the planet.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">16) This was the year Bible prophecy was mocked and attacked more than ever! Believers in our "blessed hope" were called "End-time Eddies and Esthers." While this has always existed, now more and more prominent teachers are telling us not to waste our time on doom and gloom. </span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">17) Liberal, Godless Europe imploded. Leaders like Germany's Angela Merkel lost their minds, put their people at huge risk as terrorists took advantage of the "refugee" situation, and have made Europe a time bomb. The Antichrist will take advantage of this as well.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">18) This was the year evangelicals began accepting the gay agenda and some asserted that Allah and Jehovah are the same. The voices from the religious Left encouraged this. The great end-time falling away has much of the church going over a cliff with results that cannot be rectified. Finding a solid church became a believer's biggest challenge in 2015.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">......but, still... y'know..... Have a Happy New Year</span></strong></div>
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</section>Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-53882205594309058582015-07-15T17:30:00.000-07:002017-02-15T11:45:23.210-08:00Before You Go Into Trucking as a Career.....<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>People often go into the trucking career, driving big rigs both locally and across the country, for various reasons of their own. You may be one of those people looking into the opportunity, but firstly, ask yourself a question: How much do I really know about the process and what it involves before I go committing myself? Or you could ask: What are they, the schools and trucking companies involved, NOT telling me?</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>What I would like to do right here is inform you from the inside before you go making a major commitment of your life. You’ll thank me - believe it. Let me just give you a taste of what you are told about trucking versus what the truth is that you will find. I have nothing to sell you, so don’t take a sideways glance at this information. I’m going to be straight with you as we lift the cover of advertising and by-pass the “I’m sorry that’s our policy” philosophies of trucking employees.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>As an example, one of the things you are told about trucking, driving for a company, is that you will be paid per mile, and they quote all sorts of prices like “25 cents a mile” and upward. Which sounds nice until you discover that the pay is actually between zip codes. So let’s say for instance, you drive 2000 miles at .25 cents a mile, that would give you around $500 bucks for one trip. Do this twice a week and you have $1,000 a week. However, the miles themselves are only counted from zip code to zip code. What this means is that you might drive a few miles into the local area code to make a delivery, and you won’t receive a penny for those miles. The industry knows it’s a rip off, but they all do it, and they are not going to change. That is the sort of thing I’ll talk about here, so if you are interested, have a look further, and I’ll talk more about those things you aren’t paid for while you are working.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>So, let’s say you want to go to a school to pick up training for a new career in trucking. Going on Youtube can be helpful as there are many schools that post classes about what you will learn in such schools. Just keep in mind that schools are often NOT like a college campus or the inside of a college classroom as you might see in those videos. They can be nothing more than a group of small, linked together trailers, like those you would see in a trailer park, where almost 50 students are crammed into one area with only tables and chairs. For some reason, despite the large number of students who go through trucking schools, the schools themselves can be rather “thread bare”. </b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>This may make no difference to you as your own life situation has you on the skids, or you are over 50 yrs old and finding it hard to get work, but if you are used to a bit more physical comfort when attending school, then you might find yourself a bit put off. Are they just too upside down on their own costs of operating? Hard to say, but just remember that when they promise you a free breakfast and lunch while attending school, the breakfast can be a donut and coffee. The lunch is a small cold sandwich and a bag of chips with water. It’s difficult for me to say just why this situation exists, but you need to know it before you go into school thinking you will be taken care of while you are there.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The hotels offered during your stay can leave much to be desired. They aren’t the Marriott, they are more like the no-tell motel. They will offer a free breakfast that can be a tasteless buffet which is often cold. I do suppose that this is better than a donut and coffee - oh and by the way, that is a small 8 oz coffee which they only offer once, and with that box of donuts they order you can only have one donut to get your 6am or earlier start on a new day of trucking training.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Bring money. You simply can’t go to a trucking school with 20 bucks in your pocket. This is true even if you are being offered accommodations in the trucking terminal or a local hotel. You will be spending money over the long haul and if you run out too soon it could bring major problems. For instance, let’s say you are going out of state to a trucking school that takes two or three weeks of daily classes. You may have to stop taking your classes for several reasons and this will put you in school for much longer. In fact, with complications, school can go from two weeks to six weeks over night.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Do you have a class C license in your home state? You’ll have to stop school and go and get a class C in the school’s home state before you can ever get a class A in that state. Familiar with the DMV? You will live there. This could add many weeks onto your stay at the hotel or the terminal. Got enough money for that? Remember, you’ll have to quit your job to attend school.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Do you have a medical problem? Some folks go through the whole routine only to be turned away for diabetes, poor hearing, or even unpaid parking tickets. You’ll have to stop school, go back home, and pay those tickets. Got bus fare? You might need it for multiple trips. </b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>There are many other reasons. If you are overweight, you’ll have to submit to sleep apnea testing in some cases, and the results will send you home - penniless and jobless. Trucking companies know how difficult this all is and they will want to put you under contract. (The contract does eventually end within a year, but you are committed until then) You’ll have to pay them for room and board and any school time you spend with them if you just up and quit after signing up.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Surprisingly, there are MANY very heavy people who go into trucking. Some of them are 300 to 400 pounds and it is surprising how they even manage to pass a physical. However, a lot of them do, but sadly, once a trucker is on the road, there are fewer and fewer of over weight people to run into on the road. The life is a hard one, and being overweight can make it just too much for most to handle. Personally, I would not suggest that an overweight person go into this career and drop their whole lives just to discover that their body will not allow them to perform correctly. It can be very physically demanding - don’t take that statement lightly.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Hey, here’s something you might not consider: beer. You like beer? Whiskey? Trucking companies have a no tolerance policy for drinking. They can call you at any time to go and take a DOT (Department of transportation) exam and if you have alcohol in your blood stream, you are fired. You can’t drink at all, unless you are on home time. Marijuana stays with you for weeks. Consider that. Mary Jane? You’re fired. No more school for you either, and the medical tests happen in the first three days. Need a second medical test done? That’s 100 bucks or more out of your own pocket.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Speaking of being fired, if you are driving your own car and get a ticket, ANY ticket. You can be fired. You’re not even driving the truck. Recruiters are there to bring you into the company, not to help turn you away, and those contracts that they get you involved with ensure the back side of the recruitment job, at least for a time. They won’t tell you everything. They lie like rugs. Remember that.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>When you’re in the school you’ll have to learn several new cache’s of information. There are repeated tests on subjects like parts of the truck engine, parts of the truck and trailer and the resulting caution you must take to ensure that everything is as it is supposed to be. When it comes to certain DOT (Department of Transportation) requirements, these items can get you shut down and not earning any money if you are stopped while driving and are proven to have violations. Too many of those DOT violations and you’ll be called in on the carpet. Dealing with the DOT is serious business, they don’t play games.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>You’ll also need to know how brakes work and the six individual brake tests you must perform for the teachers, and possibly for the DMV. This depends a lot of who is doing the testing, the school or the DMV. DMV testing can be ridiculously tedious, so it is better to have teachers in the school perform this test, however, you may have no choice. </b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Another note on the DMV, and medical issues. DMV may require a separate doctor to sign a certain part of your medical test in addition to your school’s medical exam. This means your doctor may be out of state in your home town, or maybe you don’t have medical insurance anymore because you quit your job to go to school. Well, you might feel good about Obama-care being available to you, but what you don’t know is that those appointments can set you back six weeks. Got money to wait six weeks? Got bills to pay? </b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>That’s the government for you. Can you get your own doctor’s appointment, if you have insurance, for over night? Probably not, probably only within two to three weeks. So much for your two weeks of school. Hope you have enough money to live on. And a local mail box, because the government likes to send you a letter in the mail telling you when your appointment will be. Are you back home to receive it? There goes more money for renting a local mail box.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The school I am familiar with had students learning to drive in the second week. Maybe you have driven a gear shift before, in a car or similar vehicle. The ten gear and eight gear 18 wheeler can be a mighty challenge. It can be like learning to drive all over again. Some people adapt quickly, but most do not. Trucks you drive at the school have been around for forty years and they have the untrained student scars to prove it. Keep in mind that if you have trouble driving a manual transmission, that you’ll be doing it for about 9 or 10 or 11 hours a day if you make it all the way to being hired.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>That’s right, truckers who drive alone must drive about 10 to 11 hours a day, and then they have to sit and rest somewhere for ten hours before they can drive again. Team drivers can be driving for 9, 10 or 11 hours on one shift. If you have a night time shift, you’ll have to deal with fighting driving fatigue and sleep. When driving a truck, all you’ll do in life is drive, sleep, drive, sleep. There is no such thing as driving two hours and then letting the co-driver drive for two hours. So on and so on. When he’s driving, you need to be sleeping, and visa versa.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Have a nice night sleeping in the middle of the day while your co-driver drops and locks trailers, stops and starts the brakes, has his own lunch and parks in noisy areas. When the load is not a long one, you’ll cat nap for most of the trip because there is always something to assist with in the middle of the night (your day) when putting the truck into a tight spot or pre-tripping for continued travel. The person in the sleeper always loses sleep time, and yet you need to be up and alert when you are driving so that you don’t kill someone.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Manual transmissions take a lot of purposeful concentration for a time before the movements become second nature. This can wear you out fast, especially when you consider how you could easily kill another human being simply because you had a brain fade moment at the wheel due to your having to hold total concentration in order to shift over and over as you drive. And it has happened. (You could also fall asleep.)</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>So you’ll probably need chemicals. Do you like chemicals? Like having to get your body to be in a certain condition everyday for the job at hand? (not necessarily true for everyone) Some 5 hour energy caffeine shots work very well, and then to get to sleep you’ll need something un-habit forming (schools don’t recommend this, but you’ll need it), especially if you are having to drive teams and you’re trying to sleep in a sleeper compartment while a truck is moving. If you have never felt a full bladder in your lower gut responding to the vibrations caused by a truck as it is in motion, especially when you are trying to sleep, well you haven’t lived. Just imagine a bag of water on your car hood while you rev the engine. (And I have yet to mention the task of brushing your teeth on the highway at dawn) Something called a “piss bottle” will become common place.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Because of the way the business works, it can be difficult to get any exercise. Despite how rigorous the work can be, and it gets quite physical at times. Some people manage a little workout time with small dumbbells in the cab, or maybe you can go for a walk. But exercise is hard to come by and to keep a regimen with when schedules can change overnight. Health suffers, but you have to keep yourself awake and thinking because you are driving a death machine at 65 miles an hour for long stretches of time. </b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Schools and companies are often on the same page when it comes to drivers who owe child support. Much of the time, not always, but most times, a company will set up your monetary payments with mandatory payments toward child support being extracted even before you have seen penny one. This can be tough on you financially because you may already have debts to pay for, or maybe rents are too high where you live. Whatever the case, you will pay out those payments even if you have nothing left after wards, no matter how much income you produce. There is no getting around this. You’ll live in a truck while your kids and or your ex get all of your income.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Many times you’ll be on the road for four weeks with only four days off for personal time. Some schedules are 20 days out with 10 days off. There are also dedicated routes which run the same way over and over each week and you might get a day and a half break between runs. But, the bottom line is that if there are friends and family that you are used to seeing regularly, you will no longer will be able to, plain and simple. You will now be gone from their lives. Got a concert or a movie you want to see? It can be almost impossible to work the schedule for it.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>If given a team situation, you’ll be expected to roll that truck 24/7 whether you are in shape to do so or not. Getting sleep and keeping it in the “bank” will be tantamount, and often you will feel that you do nothing but sleep and drive. Which can be tough since, you may have no chance to get up out of bed, have some coffee, maybe a little breakfast and even take a shower. Nope. You get up, you start driving most of the time. You end your shift, you might as well get some sleep. Over and over again.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Life on the road is filled with truck stops, which are set up to be helpful. They often have showers, with towels and soap, and toilets, of course. They’ll have redeem points for building up purchasing power for other items (loyalty points) and after a time one can buy expensive electronics at the truck stop with only the acquired points. Showers can be earned as well by points, and stops like Love’s, TA and Petro are open and available all times of the day for such personal hygiene. There can be problems with this system, however.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Much as I hate to say it, truckers are known for living like slobs. Not only can the tractor cab quickly turn into a garbage can on wheels, but your co-driver can become quite the Neanderthal with a lack of personal hygiene. Truckers sometimes go for more than a week without a bath or shower. (I know one who went for a month with only two showers) They live and sleep in their own filth. If you are their co-driver then you will live in it as well.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The human body stinks, plain and simple. When not washed continually, the odor can build up to stomach turning levels. How do you force a man to wash? You can’t. This is more common than not, so be prepared to smell your co-driver in ways you never considered before, all in a small 8X12 truck cabin.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>When dealing with a co-driver, you are dealing with the general public most times. If you have ever worked a job at all, you know that many times you are forced by employment to work with other people with whom you have nothing in common, in fact you may never have ever been friends or even acquaintances with the other person in your entire life. You are at the mercy of a coin flip in the choice of co-driver and this can make the 24 hour a day “marriage” with a complete stranger a true adventure in human sociology.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Ever live with an obsessive compulsive neat freak or slob? They don’t change just for you. How about one who has a sexual addiction? Would you like to have to spend time outside of the cab at a truck stop or restaurant on a regular basis while he has sexual relations in the sleeper? It can happen. It doesn’t have to be that drastic, the person could have bad allergies..... or be incompetent.... or have any number of personal ticks and quirks which can drive you up a wall. But you live with them at three feet away day after day. You might get lucky and have a great driver combo come your way, but you have to consider who and why people become truckers.</b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Speaking of sex. You'd be surprised how many times truckers are approached by women who want to join you in the cab. They want to "keep you company". They show up almost anywhere, too. They can come knocking on your door in the middle of the night out on the highway while you are parked on an off ramp. You could also be in a dark parking lot awaiting a shipment, and they will be there. Whether you take them up on the offer or not, is up to you, but there will always be a request for money. Be prepared for that.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Companies will hire people who have just served time in jail, among other personal histories and traits. Once in that cab, you’re married.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>So how’s the money? </b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Keeping in mind that you drive an 18 wheeler, you drop trailers, you hook up trailers, you get trailers and tractors repaired, you fill out email reports on your activities, you constantly file the information on each bill of lading, you get stuck with other people’s repairs and incompetence in operating the business, you check the engine and trailer and tires constantly, you have to plan trips, you have to make arrangements with other drivers on exchanges and such, you have to swap out trailers in tight spots. What do you get paid for?</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Driving. Driving with a load is all you get paid for no matter how else your spend time. Hours of arranging trailers and drop and lock will steal your time for no pay. You need to be driving between area codes or you get no money. Squat! </b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>(Not everyone does this, some give you less pay for non-loads)</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b> </b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>In the beginning you might get two to three loads a week, and the average money might be 600 dollars. Maybe. A year later you might be making about .38 cents a mile, but then all this driving takes time as well, so maybe you get two loads a week. That’s maybe a $1,000 dollars a week. Dedicated runs (same trip each week) are available, and they promise $4500 a week. You’ll be more under the gun and you only get a day and a half off each week, but it is more money than you will be paid while driving all over the country and having to deal with new situations each day.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Hazmat qualifications are also offered but the increase in pay is all hype. $4500 more a year just for Hazmat certification is hardly worth the day to day hassle and scrutiny you will be under if you have Hammad. The rules and routes are tight and police love to inspect you if you have the placards. It’s my own opinion, but when they say 4500 dollars a year is a massive increase for having Hazmat, they are hoping you fall for that. $20,000 a year is a massive pay increase. Trucking companies are guilty of much “car sales” techniques. If you don't get your hazmat certification before the first anniversary of your CDL, then you'll have to take ALL the tests over again to obtain it.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Eating well is a constant problem on the road. Healthy eating is hard to come by, and paying for food everyday gets expensive. A microwave is a good idea, but needs to be installed by the truck company. This can cost about $200-$300 dollars and takes a special power inverter which can cost about $300 bucks. A small 12V stove can be bought to keep in the truck, but you’ll have to eat lots of canned foods. Walmart and the 99 cents store will be your best buddies. Companies offer discounts through Walmart and they are a big part of the trucking system, as much as any truck stop which makes money in the millions due to 24 hours traffic.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>You might think you’ll be seeing a lot of the country, but you’ll see mostly the highways. There really isn’t all that much that is special about America’s highways, even route 66 was closed down back in the 1970‘s. Interstates like the 94, 80 and 40 will become familiar territory as you truck across the country, and they are actually the better part of the whole driving experience. It’s the little US highways that cross through small town America with multiple stop lights and signs and speed traps that get to you the most. And small intersections can reek havoc on your driving nerves as you attempt to pull this long snake-like vehicle through a tight curve or roundabout.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Schools prefer that you NOT use GPS guides for the driving from destination to destination and they have good reason for this. GPS can often be wrong and lead you into a bad area, mostly due to changing conditions and a slow up-grade of information. The east cost can be riddled with low bridges that will wreck your trailer at 13‘6“ and this will put you out of work for a while. Another reason is that schools want no liability from telling you to use a GPS which will at times take your eyes off of the road. (Truck companies are full of crap, GPS is your best buddy on the road if you don't just blindly follow it)</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The Rand McNally GPS for trucking is exceptional, however, and once gotten used to can be invaluable. It can plan an entire trip and then prompt you throughout the trip about what turns to take and where to go next. Now and then you’ll find yourself in a tight spot, but it happens infrequently. Rand McNally GPS can cost about $400.00 for a nice one. It’s very worth it. </b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Schools want you to use the hard copy physical maps and write down all your exits and routes and such. This can be done well enough, but is a lot more tedious and time consuming. Even large maps can also be hard to read without a magnifying glass, and it’s a lot of unnecessary work. The Trucker GPS is a great primary, with the back up being the hard book. Especially if you want to take the loops around major cities. This is important since city traffic can kill your work day and steal money from you. Most big cities have a loop but the GPS will not take you there.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Every now and then the company will require you to do city work. This is where you pick up trailers and move them from point A to point B within a city. They will pay you $15.00 dollars for this. Yes, 15 dollars. Small truck yards can be a major hassle to get in and out of and you’ll spend all your time parking and dropping and locking and re-setting just for 15 dollars.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Companies like Conway and Amazon are very tough and strict in their requirements and can be hard to deal with when working on their lots. Amazon will kick you off of the property if you are there too long, even if you are doing the paper work for their job. Conway (XPO) makes you legally commit to all sorts of aspects of the job by forcing their own “macro” or email on the Qualcomm system.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Qualcomm is an electronic records system that computerizes the truckers schedule and activities. Without it, you’ll have to keep log books the old fashioned way by drawing lots of lines and adding all sorts of hours and miles and so on. But, remember, you only get paid for driving.</b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Different companies offer different opportunities and pay but you have to be careful that it isn't all smoke and mirrors. A company may promise a $7,500 sign on bonus, but it only comes in parts and is contingent on you completing this or that requirement in order to get that bonus. Other companies tell you they start at 41 cents a mile but that is only for trips under 500 miles. This may be on a graduating scale as well, but the up shot of it is that the smaller the trip the higher the pay, which may or may not work out the way you would hope.</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>At this time, I think I will stop for now. I will continue to add things to this post as they come up, but for now I wanted to get this out there just in case some people who are thinking about this move would like more inside information. Good luck, and remember one has to stay with this kind of work to see it pay off in the long run.</b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Update: 11/12/2016</b></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Now that my association with trucking has come to an end, I have several things to add and comment on. For one thing, there is very little money to be made in trucking unless you have certain conditions present or you are a driver who has been around for 30 years. In your first year you may make around 15K and then the next year maybe about 7K more than that. I spoke to many truckers over my tenure who told me they were proud of making .42 cents a mile after 15 years or so of duty. That is NOTHING! For all the risk you endure and the time away from home, you might as well go work for Macy's department store, or McDonalds for that amount of money. Only the old guys, who run cross country and haul for about 25-30 years are really making any money. There are, of course, exceptions everywhere, but you HAVE to be one of them to make any money here.</b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The company I dealt with is known as CRST Expedited, and while they changed their policy about not paying anything for driving without a load, the rest of it is pretty bad. Other companies dread CRST, they have little respect for them and consider this company a laughing stock. Even DOT officers will tell you that they are the top of the heap for violation points and whenever there is an accident with one of their trucks it is mandatory that they appear to do an inspection. This is not so for all trucking companies. </b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>From what I saw, they will hire anyone, even 350 pound men and women who can't possibly pass a medical exam, but still manage to be out on the road as a driving heart attack just waiting to happen. Considering that this is one of the most unhealthy jobs I have ever been acquainted with, showers only once or twice a week, no exercise except when performing the usual tasks, you just might become physically ill just doing your job. </b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>It's an unhealthy and filthy way to live, not to mention that driving across the country for weeks at a time keeps you away from your loved ones, and forces you to live up close and personal with a person (co-driver) which you have never met before and probably would never even be friends with.</b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Good luck to you if you want to go into this business. I hope you don't accidentally kill someone on the road. The problem is, I saw so much bad driving over a year and a half, that you'd be super lucky not to have some nutjob driver run into YOU. And then it's over for both of you, even if you walk away. I am sincerely glad that this nightmare is finally over, and I wish all people stuck</b></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>in unprofitable trucking good luck with going into some other field. </b></span></span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-10477897396666681182014-11-25T15:56:00.000-08:002014-11-25T15:56:27.200-08:00Driving for Uber with a Lease Agreement<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Driving for Uber with a Lease Agreement</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Having known a few persons who drive for private taxi service Uber</b>, I was interested to know just what was some of the inside information on becoming an Uber driver with a lease agreement. I had, of course, seen all the YouTube videos by those who DO drive for Uber, and I had also heard the horror stories of surprise surge rates charged to unwitting passengers who happened to be calling for an Uber ride at the worst possible times, so I was intrigued to check this “opportunity” out for myself. Not being in a position to use my own car, and seriously, who wants to run up tons of milage on their own car while bringing down the net worth or re-sale value of the vehicle, just to provide a place for the inebriated to toss their cookies, I decided I would venture forward and discover what becoming an Uber driver with a lease agreement involved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Uber chooses certain car dealerships to join in agreement over terms and such, as far as what they will and won’t allow in the agreements for drivers. They begin with a meeting they offer at the chosen dealership where they have a rather short display of what the offer is all about for those interested. It’s important to understand that not all dealerships are on the list of Uber dealers and if you call a dealership that has nothing to do with Uber, all on your own, they will ignore what you have to say in favor of making their own point to sell you something. So, about thirty to forty people were at the meeting I was involved in, and no one was allowed to ask questions until after the presentation, a wily move on Uber’s part, for you never know if you have some wise guy like me who is really a spy writing internet reviews.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The group is briefly told certain statistics such as, it’s possible to make about $1200.00 a week driving for Uber after all the costs are deducted. The lease will probably be around $118.00 A WEEK. ($472.00 a month) Gas may cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $180.00 a month and Uber only takes about 20% of each paycheck. There is also a phone ($40.00/month) which is provided for receiving calls for Uber service from those who set up the app on phone or computer. Milage on the car is estimated at around 40,000 a year, and this is an important statistic, especially for leases. It’s important because it is NOT ONLY an estimate of milage, it is also an un-crossable margin. More on this in a bit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Given the nature of this business one would indeed expect a requirement of insurance coverage. Uber has it’s own coverage, which is a million dollar policy. It’s important to understand how this policy works. It only works as long as the app is turned on, once turned off, the insurance no longer covers the car. As a result, insurance must be gotten from a provider who carries comprehensive and collision. The companies I checked out offered this type of coverage for about $200-$300 a month, even in the case of commercial insurance. But this subject is a major sticking point. More on this in a bit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I live about 15 miles from the chosen dealership where the meetings are held and I called for an Uber ride to get a first hand account. My ride out to the dealership cost me $75.00 dollars and my ride home cost me $50.00, simply because of the different times of day. This may seem rather equitable compared to a Taxi, but I could have done the whole thing for much, much less. I have a real problem with paying $125.00 dollars for a ride anywhere. The ride was nice, the cars were nice, and the Uber drivers where very knowledgeable about the company, but they both related that a person only makes about $500 dollars a week free and clear and for the trouble you go through it’s really only side line change, nothing you could make a living from. They both owned their own cars, so I didn’t mention the fact that they actually lost money on the value of their cars with every Uber driving day. That didn’t seem the right thing to say at the time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Uber and the dealership require $1,000.00 down (security deposit but refundable if contract is rejected) to put together a contract for the leasing which they will show you AFTERWARDS. Not all cars that are offered will be available, and you may have to either wait a month or so for the one you want or take what they have then and there. Considering the milage on something like a Toyota Prius hybrid, which I am told gets about 400 miles to a tank of gas, then it would seem that gas costs will be totally handle-able, and the testimony of the Uber drivers I spoke with corroborate that idea. Of course, some kind of gas discount card always helps with these sorts of things. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So let’s take a look at the agreement for leases, which is probably much more problematic than the one for car owners. Remember how I said earlier that the lease would probably be about $118.00 dollars a week ($472.00/month)? The lease I was shown was for a Toyota Prius which MSRP’ed at $23,000. The amount was $234.68/week ($938.72/month). That’s a 52 month lease which comes out to somewhere around $49,000.00 dollars on a car which will have over 160,000 miles on it, not to mention wear and tear, tires, constant oil changes and a requirement to keep the car in spick and span shape for operation on both the inside and outside. You’ll be washing her weekly, if not more. Keep in mind, you have now put up $1,000.00 dollars to find this and up coming information which will force a struggle within you to accept or reject.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you sign your lease, and for a myriad of reasons find yourself in default, it will cost you $600.00 dollars in penalties, all under contract. So let’s say you have an accident and you are injured and the car can’t run. The contract is suddenly voided, and you owe $600.00 to the lessor. Or how about this scenario: You have driven the car for ten months of the first year, you have gone over 40,000 miles, you now are in violation of the contract and your agreement is voided. $600.00 from you, all under contract. Or let’s say you have only driven 39,999 miles. You must stop for two months and can make no more money on the Uber driving business because if you do, then you void the contract. At this point you must pay for all the contractual costs of the lease some other way. Oh, yes, you will pay pay pay!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For federal Income tax purposes, you, the driver, cannot be considered the owner of the vehicle. The vehicle can only be used for Uber business, and any other use may constitute violation of the contract. So if you drove 39,999 miles in 10 months, then she must sit for two months. You the lessee have full control of the vehicle, but none of the rights to the vehicle. Rights of the vehicle belong to the lessor. The weekly payments may also include a contract management fee, which was waived on my own agreement. Who knows what that could be for someone else? There is also an early termination fee if you pay off the lease agreement ahead of time, which begins at $1,000 dollars for the first year and then drops $250.00 for each subsequent year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let’s go back to the aforementioned point of getting into an accident. Only the Lessor, the people you are paying for use of the car, can choose where and how the car will be repaired, YOU must pay for all repairs not covered by insurance, and if the app is not working when the accident happens, then you are not covered by Uber. Insurance is really the big problem here. The contract requires that you carry the comprehensive and collision insurance in conjunction with the Uber insurance. It also requires you to have the insurance company state that they understand that the vehicle will be used for livery service. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The problem here is that NO ONE will insure Uber cars. At least not where I live they won’t. Some states DO have this coverage, but they are few and far between. If you are an Uber driver in a state where insurance companies will not cover Uber drivers, then you are in violation of the contract even if you have insurance because part of the contract is this notification of livery use. MANY of the drivers you may come across have NOT told their insurance company what the car is used for and therefore, they not only have NO insurance (which they are paying for anyway), but no contract as well. They also pay higher rates for the higher milage use of the car. Get into an accident and you will have no income, no way to pay for repairs, no contract which now hits you up for early termination fees and one big, big headache. Let’s not even talk about being sued if someone gets killed or severely injured. Sign a lease contract under this arrangement and buddy, you are living on borrowed time. (How about this one: if Uber’s insurance suddenly becomes invalid, then your insurance is also invalid.) And by the way, the agreement names the lease company as sole loss payee. Which means you get NOTHING.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the event of a total loss of the car, and if the leasing company provides insurance in lieu of you matching the Uber insurance with your own, then at that point you owe them for everything for the remaining term of the lease minus the insurance coverage payments. Therefore, if their insurance, which they have provided for you won’t cover the cost of total loss AND the agreement: you pay for that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a lessee you waive all rights to: 1) Cancel the lease, yes, that’s right, once you sign the lease you can’t cancel for any reason. 2) Reject the vehicle you have received. The car they give you, is the car you’ll have to live with. 3) Revoke your acceptance of the car. This seems logical, but I suppose there are indeed some tricky people out there who have to be prepared for if you are writing up a lease agreement. 4) Recover any damages from the lease company if they don’t keep their part of the agreement. They can change their minds, but you can’t and it’s all under contract which protects them and gives you nothing. 5) Grant a security interest in the vehicle to a third party. Some Uber people who own their cars do this, and they take their own 20% out of your check along with the Uber 20%, but if they are leasing, they have voided the contract. 6) Deduction of lease payments from the damages incurred if “screwed” by the leasing company.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Are you still reading?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Okay then. No one else can drive the car when driving on a lease for Uber. Contract violation. In fact, unauthorized use can be reported to the police by the leasing company. (This includes non-Uber use by the lessee. Of course, this is standard even for rental cars.) You can’t transport any kind of controlled substance, which means you may have to leave the medicine at home or: contract violation. If someone else drives your car, and the leasing company finds out, they can repo the vehicle and you pay the costs of re-posession, plus termination fees and so on. You waive the right to any hearing you may have a right cause for, surrender is non-conditional. (Milage charges at this point, or any point may apply). All costs of license and registration are on you and must be taken care of immediately or: contract violation. You don’t own the car, but you must pay for everything as though you do. Do you really want to pay almost $50,000 dollars for a $23,000 dollar car with about 200,000 miles on it after four and a half years? But wait!!!! Uber will let you buy the car for a dollar! How nice of them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now let’s talk taxes. Let’s say the government approaches the leasing company about paying for taxes on the car they own but YOU operate. The lease agreement requires YOU to re-imburse the leasing company for anything they may be charged with. This includes: levies, imposts, duties, charges, assessments, fees, withholdings or PENALTIES (yes, if the government penalizes them for something they messed up on..... YOU pay for that.) Titling, registration, documentation, leasing fees and taxes, sales tax, use tax, personal property tax, valorem tax, state, county, municipal, excise taxes and any and all other kinds of taxes and or penalties levied by the government to the leasing company. YOU pay for that. Sign up now!!! They don’t have any responsibilities to set the legal record straight as far as making sure all requirements are covered, even though they own the car you drive. If you don’t take care of their business properly: contract violation. The definition of whether or not you have sufficiently met all requirements belongs to them. You pay for that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They also have the right to take money directly from your paycheck to pay for anything they deem necessary because the lease gives them full power of attorney to decide when and what you will pay for in the course of driving for Uber with their property. That sounds kind of logical, but it is also completely at their soul discretion to manipulate at any time your income. Literally, you can’t plan on any consistent level of pay as it may change regularly due to their legal influence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You also agree to hold them harmless as a result of any problems they cause you by incompetence or under directive of satisfying their own position. You can’t sue them if they make you go broke by charging you for anything and everything. They can make you pay for more than the original estimation of costs, and if you can’t drive the car, say because you reached your yearly milage limit, and can’t make any more money until the next contractual year, it doesn’t matter. Pay up or go into default. You have no legal recourse. Even bankruptcy will not relieve you of paying for the default costs, in fact if you do file for bankruptcy, that constitutes a default.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There’s NOOoooooooo EEEsssccaaaaaaappppeeeeeee!!!!!!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The indemnity clause continues to cement the undeniable intractability of the agreement. Not only is the lessor held harmless and “un-sueable” for any and all costs of a breech in the contract, but the obligation survives the termination of the lease. When a contract shifts liability to the lessee for any and all problems arising from direct or indirect involvement of the lessee and away from the lessor, this could include ANYTHING that arises. When one is driving around in traffic on a daily basis, the list of possibilities is endless. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let’s take a look at what we have so far. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What we were told by UBER: What actually happens:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">$1,200.00 a week. ($4800.00) $500.00 a week ($2,000)/mo</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">$180.00 a week for gas. ($720.00) $180.00 a week ($720.00)/mo</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">$118.00 a week for the lease ($472.00) $235.00 a week ($940.00)/mo</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">$10.00 a week for phone ($40.00) $10.00 a week ($40.00)/mo</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">$129.00 a month for insurance $129.00 a month for insurance </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Profit</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">$3439.00 w/o other costs $171.00 w/o other costs</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Figures for the second column come from my interviews with actual Uber drivers. Those figures are estimates, not actual proofs. But realistically, the amount of money to be made is much less than what is promoted and whatever your actual figures, you may find that the amount of liability you sign your life away for is simply not worth the cost. When I look at the lease agreement I can only consider that the people who wrote it up are so painfully aware of the extreme high risk of the situation that they structured the agreement like a predator loan. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Who would sign this? People in the high income brackets who have an established income? Nope. People who are just looking to learn the city and meet new people? Nope. Only those in need of extra income, and perhaps living on the financial edge would even consider this kind of agreement. Think about it. Not even the insurance companies want to join their own coverage to UBER. Only someone not in their right mind would go for this deal knowing all this information. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which is one of the reasons I felt compelled to write the column today. Driving for Uber with a Lease Agreement is a high wire act with no net below it. You want to do it, you’ll need your own car to run up mileage and use on the automobile, or else go for this insane lease agreement. But, if you do, just remember: slavery was abolished a long time ago. </span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-42413747961367254002014-10-07T17:08:00.000-07:002014-10-07T17:08:40.300-07:00American Radio Network<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>American Radio Network</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>About ten years ago</b>, I moved to Los Angeles from another state in the south for an offer of employment. Almost instantly, and rather coincidentally, America went to war with Iraq. Suddenly, after moving my entire life across the country, I found myself without the job I had been promised because the person who had hired me had been called out of his reserve position to serve in the conflict. I don’t know much more about what happened on that side of it, so I can’t elucidate on the specifics. Los Angeles being the town that it is, it took me almost seven months to find something, anything to start bringing in some money.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the meantime, I saw an ad in a newspaper here for </span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">American Radio Network</span></b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> (this was before I realized what a rag this news source was) which was listed in the employment section. Keep that in mind, the fact that it was listed in the employment section is a key point to this whole event. This ad basically advertises that it is looking for radio DJ’s to host its syndicated talk shows. Anyone in the L.A. area is quite familiar with the make-up of this ad and has seen it in numerous locations. I thought, since I had an interest in radio when I was young, that I would look into the opportunity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I went to a place on Sunset Boulevard that was on the corner and provided scarce parking, no surprise to Angelenos. The place was OLD looking, the couches and rugs and interior all looked to be over 20 years old and perhaps had just about as much use and layers of dirt as twenty plus years will provide. I did what anyone else will tell you who has gone through this, and there are plenty of places all over the net to check out the public experience with this company. You SHOULD check that out if you have any real sense of the bull stink that is handed out to the public.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The main room in the interior was full of people who were all “forced” to watch a film on the history of radio and especially one painful story about a man who was royally screwed by the system even though he is considered the father of the medium. This was very uncomfortable to sit through and I remember wanting to bolt during every minute of it. But, to be brief, I was made to sit through a Saturday three hour meeting presided over by one Tony Lewis, (who is a bit of a used car salesman but that’s not too important right now) that went on and on about what could be done in the radio business and then everyone was told to come back the next day, on Sunday, to finish the presentation. While there on Saturday, we were given the chance to “record” our voice for a possible radio commercial to see if we would qualify for the program. Needless to say, despite my lack of voice over training at the time, I was accepted. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sunday I had to sit through more sales pitch and then halfway through we were told that: “No one here receives a pay check.” They then went on to explain how there would be contracts, fees for studio use and possibly, I am not sure of this, we would be given the right to have a press pass - for a fee. Naturally, I was very disappointed that this was indeed NOT an employment opportunity despite what their ad placement implied, but this was in fact a school. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At the end of the meeting everyone was given a contract to fill out and then told to come up to the front of the room to turn in their contracts and then leave through the back door. I was the only one who turned the other way and went out of the back door as everyone else lined up. Once in the hallway, the blonde lady who works the desk (who must be related in some way to Mr. Lewis) asked me to go back inside. I told her I wasn’t interested and she threatened that I would not be refunded my $40.00 I paid for attending the meetings if I did not return. I told her no and she abruptly disregarded me. It was quite rude, and it would only be the first time she’d do this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Over the years, I would use my experience there as an example to people in conversation about the kind of lunacy one runs into in the Los Angeles area. For I have seen this business format over and over again: you pay us and we give you work. Over the past ten years, I have gone on in life and this was also way before Hubie Goode and this blog, so I had never had the chance to include this in the kind of reviews I do here. So, I decided I would now investigate the situation once again for this blog, some ten years later. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I saw the ad on Craigslist and then I contacted them, but only received an email responder that went something like this:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Here is the information you requested.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We are the producers of a radio magazine since 1968 and carry radio programs such as National Lampoon True Facts among other nationally syndicated radio programs. We started in New York and now have offices in the west coast. We currently need radio Announcers/DJs to host/produce music, talk, interview radio shows for our radio stations. Many openings are now available. Fantastic benefits. No experience is necessary and these shows can be done in your spare time. Work is available part time or full time. You can work as an independent producer and earn up to $200 or more per show or as an employee at $15.00/hour. For audition information call (323)468-0082 in LA or (714)991-1966 in Irvine Ca.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply. All applicants will be considered.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We are an equal opportunity employer</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Walking in to the building once again was like traveling into a time tunnel. The lobby was still dark and had the exact same couches and outlay that were there ten years ago. (!) In fact, the blonde lady I mentioned above was still there behind the desk, now a died red head. The processes were exactly the same except for the meeting days being split up from a full weekend to Wednesday and Saturday. The interior room was still the same, the movie playing on the TV (which was one of those old style big screen TV’s with the large blue-green-red projectors from like 1985) was also the same. This time, however, the room was NOT full as it had been ten years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There were a few people, about 15 I would say, and several of them got up and left during the meeting presentation. Tony Lewis, still brunette, was also still there. The presentation was still pretty much the same, but I did not have to put up $40.00 for the first half of the meeting. We did, however, all get to go and record our voices for the commercial, a Paradise Wine spot, and amazingly, it was with the same out of date equipment. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The fact that nothing had been updated really amazed me. Not only were there no pop filters on the mic, but one got the impression that cassette tapes were still the main tool of operation in the company. Cassette tapes??? Others have said in their reviews that they did not believe anything was being recorded in the booths, and from what I saw, I became convinced of this. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So I performed a little experiment, I skipped the Paradise Wine commercial and used a made up mess of crap I came up with on the spot for the recording. (I knew about the contracts, and I would not be signing up for ANY contracts that require me to make commission money to pay for a fee. That’s just crazy.) And guess what? My audition was accepted. There were no complaints about my not following the script. Heh.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Well, when I called them for the results of my audition, I was told about the now $98 dollars that had to be paid up front and the contracts that would be necessary. The first meeting had said nothing of this, but I was told on the phone that it had been mentioned. Not so. Needless to say, I did not go any further with this. The now red headed lady, who is now working by herself as apposed to the time ten years ago when she had employees, was just as rude and snippy as she had always been, and I smiled as I wondered how anyone can do this sort of job for ten years, or more. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Anyhow, let me just say that both of my experiences with </span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">American Radio Network</span></b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> and also with the written reviews of other people have led me to several conclusions about what this business really is. This is really “Tony Lewis” radio. It looks to me to be an independent business which is actually a school. All they talk about is giving one 8 weeks or so of training (hopefully with someone qualified) and then the “student” has to either be a teacher, an announcer or an independent contractor (one with a contract that legally requires you to pay the studio even if you make no money from commission radio advertising. And trust me, commission sales is an up and down roller coaster).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It seems to me if you do what a school does, then you are a school. However, if you claim not to be a school, then you have no regulatory requirements. No requirements means teachers don’t have to be qualified, they can be anyone. You are told in the meetings, that the training consists of learning 12 buttons on the radio equipment and it’s real easy. They need teachers and two months for this training. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The classes for button learning have a fee, as does the future 15 minute radio show you will do with your own music, playing sometime in the early morning hours (so you can make all of your mistakes). You’ll make up part of this money from advertising for your 15 minute show which is also rated in such a way that it eats up any money you might make and you might end up with about $9.00 dollars for all your trouble. This is all contractually obligated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Once you become an independent contractor, I can only see things getting worse as you are required to make money from people who are independent businesses that might or might not want to advertise on your radio show. You have to be able to sell it, because not everyone will be able to afford the rates, and if you look around town, you’ll notice how many companies are NOT on radio advertising. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It’s just like the grocery store. Next time you go shopping, notice how many products DON’T have a TV commercial, and yet they are still selling. Is it any wonder radio is overrun with car ads? I have dealt with Mom and Pop stores as far as attempting to solicit their cooperation with a much needed service, and in another blog one day I will be reviewing that business as well. I have to tell you, business has such a small window for advertising that it can’t even afford to properly service monetary transactions for their customers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Good luck getting locked into a contract that requires you to pay a fee out of commission advertising when Tony Lewis radio is really just a one man operation which makes its lion share of revenue off of a schooling system which denies it is a school.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Other people have much more to say about the veracity of making a “rookie go” in radio inside of a major market and whether or not </span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">American Radio Network</span></b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> is a scam or not. Look around the net, you’ll see their comments EVERYWHERE. But is it a scam? No, I don’t think that it would have lasted this long if it was one. It’s basically a business model. They play fast and loose with the definitions of school and opportunity as do many here in this town. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The promise is for employment, but as I have said before with advertising: What could happen and what does happen can be two different things. Unfortunately, for those who get involved with </span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">American Radio Network's</span></b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Tony Lewis Radio, your money is not as ethereal. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They would never take payment in a form that may or may not be real money, but that is what they expect YOU to accept, namely: Pay for an opportunity that may or may not happen. (I already have enough trouble with my own student loans.) Considering the anachronistic nature of how the business is run, you would be wise to give them a pass in favor of an actual broadcasting school (because </span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">American Radio Network</span></b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> really is an unregulated school). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sure, what they promise can happen, and has happened to someone, somewhere.... but you will "BUY" the future..... under contract.</span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-7420982435830672132014-09-08T18:35:00.000-07:002014-09-08T18:36:49.633-07:00Writing for Guardian Liberty Voice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG5phjoE7bE2qFirJTad56zoPLQJt6j3gusldhcdCJeQACmBnua0kQbVPCVgJf3_5i0-5tJCO2InefWXgAVcg8VIMHikEPAzr2rZQGRRCdXKMvxtwM8zTc8xL07DY5l6A04csc4pC6_B28/s1600/181df7f.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG5phjoE7bE2qFirJTad56zoPLQJt6j3gusldhcdCJeQACmBnua0kQbVPCVgJf3_5i0-5tJCO2InefWXgAVcg8VIMHikEPAzr2rZQGRRCdXKMvxtwM8zTc8xL07DY5l6A04csc4pC6_B28/s1600/181df7f.png" height="117" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>There is an online magazine called Guardian Liberty Voice</b> which aspires to become a major player in the online blogger/magazine universe. Indeed, their efforts have produced a modicum of success as they are listed in the higher end of the online “newspapers” now dappling the internet. They, like many of their ilk, are an online zine composed by others who write in a freelance fashion for the website in an attempt to gather more readers, and also to take advantage of whatever revenue can be attained by attaching Guardian Liberty Voice to Google Adsense and possibly, Google Adwords.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I decided that I would take the paper up on its offer to join them as a writer and see just what the inner workings of this company would entail for the aspiring writer. The operation is run by an entrepreneur who has a high ranking degree and even introduces himself to his audience in a live video presentation over the internet. He spells out his company’s history and current position quite well and is impressive in his personal presentation. Obviously a person of high accomplishment and also individual drive, he is looking for like minded persons whom “just love to write” and would consider writing for his magazine online and perhaps even getting some form of renumeration in the process. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At first, I liked the whole idea, being a long time blogger myself, and I got involved in the next phase which was a week long “boot camp” for training in the process of writing for the internet magazine. According to them, the key was to follow a code provided on Google which pointed the writer toward the trends of the day, which would provide subject matter for writing. They also would accept those who wished to report on local sports and entertainment events as a correspondent. The boot camp was to last a week, and the volume needed to be produced was at least seven articles of over 500 words which had to be ACCEPTED for publication. Without this litmus being passed, one would not be accepted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I immediately ran into problems on two fronts. Firstly, when asked what kind of commitment level I would like to join at, I chose the possibility of writing one or two articles a week, which is really all I have time for completing. Considering what it takes to not only write the articles I already produce and then editing them and correcting the myriad of mistakes that happen while “stream of consciousness” writing, there is quite a bit of time taken up in simply making sure that the final product does not confuse or even bore the reader. There is much to consider for each post, and this takes more time than one would at first imagine. The prospect of churning out seven articles in the span of a week, while spending time in boot camp classes each day, which ran for maybe three hours each, was a tall order if one has other responsibilities. I had informed them that I was only able to do one or two articles a week, so the boot camp strategy of “finding out what you can handle” failed on this point for myself. (If you are not available during the day, you must pay for the classes that happen at night.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My second problem was that I was unable to find an internet or Wifi connection which didn’t make the three hours plus of class time a major effort to keep up with. The connection was horrendous, and I had to drive here and there to see if I could find a place to be involved with these classes where I didn’t have to suffer through connection break-ups on a ten minute a piece basis. This was arduous to say the least. I never did solve this problem. I attended all of the classes despite these troubles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The process teaches the aspiring blogger to follow a pattern for writing articles which was created within a text generator program which the writer would pull up online and either type directly into or else paste into from another text generation program. Once inside of the program the writer was guided and trained to follow the set up presentation as per the prescription set forward by the program for gaining the best benefit as per what Google “robots” or “spiders” are looking for in an article. This process was not too difficult to learn and I have kept a lot of what I have learned for my own blog with some results, but not great results.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Google news has a list of items which are trending on the net, and according to Guardian Liberty Voice, these are the things you must concentrate on when writing. This includes things such as World news, United States news, sports, entertainment and several others which fit into the “code word” for what is going to bring in the readers to the site. According to these folks, one must write on what is trending, for there is no money in writing customized posts. I have to agree with this, as one who has blogged for over five years now. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have personally taken two individual turns with utilizing Google Adsense and also Google Adwords, and I cannot recommend either one. They simply have never shown me that they work, even when I have attached them to my Youtube account and produced videos. Of course, the young teen who makes funny faces and has a million hits in one week, who just bought her first car with Adsense profits will tell you different, but that is not my testimony. And after trying Guardian Liberty Voice, it still isn’t. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I wrote five articles for Guardian Liberty Voice before I was unceremoniously cautioned to do no more writing. “Please,” they told me. “”Don’t turn in another article. Obviously you have not attended the classes we hold to prepare you for this.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Is that so? Well, you must know something about the week I spent straining to keep connected to your website boot camp, while churning out five articles with no time left in my day that I am just not aware of.” I told them. This did not receive a response.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You, the reader, can see these articles here on my site from the month of April beginning with my movie review of the latest Captain America film from Disney/Marvel and counting the next five articles. All formatted from the squirrley program provided from boot camp, they are mostly as required for optimal Google response, with a few hitches here and there, due to the rush I was forced into by time and tide. These articles should have provided a big jump in response from Google robots due to their formatting, but in actuality, they only provided a minimal bump for the time that they were trending on Google news. Being squeezed for time as it was, I was forced to go into my back log of posts to see if I could cannibalize some information in order to make their deadline, and unfortunately, I write in the first person for you, the reader, and not in the third person. This was a brick wall to run into on a tight deadline and derailed the entire process as it was difficult to re-write an entire article in the third person with no time left for production and editing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Interestingly enough, the articles which were accepted have not done as well as the one which was not accepted. The article about Fort Hood and Bill Clinton and Blood Moons and Buffalo, is the top performer among those articles and it was the one rejected by the editors of Guardian Liberty Voice. I love theory as much as the next person, but either something actually does work, doesn’t work, or it only sometimes works, and trying to hire people to write for you under auspices that you have a system figured out and ready to “cash cow” as it were, is just selling. Selling is about as real and valuable as Monopoly money.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As far as responses go, I expected much more from a program that claims it knows what will bring in the Adsense cash for articles. It didn’t work, and one of the reasons Guardian Liberty Voice always needs writers is because they need to multiply a small response from Google by the thousands in order for them to make any headway on profit with Google Adsense. This is my educated guess, I didn’t look into their coffers personally, but I go with experience. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It can be a real struggle to find something on a weekly basis, much more on a daily basis to write about which fits into the format of only those things trending. I write here about things few others are willing to write on, and consequently I make nothing from it, but I do consider it a public service. It’s alarming to find that if I suddenly went populist, I might make about twenty cents more with Google Adsense. I found the process of subject matter writing as per the parochial requirements set forth to be stultifying and just plain annoying. This holds true especially in light of the fact that I made NOTHING from the articles they did post on their site, and only a small bump in attention on my own Google charts here on this site. I like to write, but I like to write for my own motives and pleasures, and hopefully, people out there will benefit. I’ll make money somewhere else.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One other thing that did crop up over and over during the boot camp classes was the objections of those who were involved. There are quite a few people who are against using photos from the internet to place them on an article in the hopes of bringing in more readership. Photographers should indeed be duly umbraged as there is no payment forth coming for their work which is used in this commercial way. Recently, Gene Simmons of Kiss, complained about the death of Rock music due to file sharing on the internet and the destruction of the financial base for the music industry. He is correct, and this also applies for many other industries involved in the creative process. This ranges from plagiarism, to copyright infringement and beyond. Billions of dollars have been lost on the internet simply because of the loss of access controls in many, many industries. But that is another post, for another time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I would suppose that if you are a person who loves to take assignment writing on the current trends, and you don’t mind small amounts of money in return, and maybe you don’t have a lot to do all day, then Guardian Liberty Voice would be a good place to spend time writing and working. I can’t suggest that you do so based upon my own experiences there, for it seems that the magazine will benefit to a greater degree than any individual writer ever will using their system. Try it if you must, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I would always recommend to anyone that they do a Google search on any business' reputation before you ever put yourself out there. Just keep in mind that commission sales are all about promises, not reality. What CAN happen doesn’t necessarily translate into what DOES happen. </span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-79952816584659530572014-08-06T15:18:00.000-07:002014-08-06T15:18:06.248-07:00Are You Thinking About Platinum?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Back in the year 1751, a Swedish chemist coined the phrase “white gold” in relation to platinum.</b> There is so little of it that has been mined throughout history that the total amount might fill something the size of your two car garage. If you know anything about platinum, then you know that in the very, very near future it will be one of the most sought after metals of all those mined today. But, you may ask, why is platinum becoming more of a valued metal today than it has been since its heyday back in the 1700's? The answer here is multi-faceted in its connection to today’s market.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For one thing, there is a production shortage in South Africa, the main source of most of platinum production, and conversely, automobile manufacturing has become wholly dependent on platinum for many aspects of car production. Total platinum extraction is also one of the smallest quantities of any metal on the planet. Extractions per year are about .07% of total gold and .01% of the total amount of silver. It takes about ten tons of raw material to produce an ounce of platinum. South Africa has about 90% of the platinum reserves, and the mining conditions remind one of a subterranean entrance to Hell itself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Last January the workers in the mines there went on strike and cost the mining companies about 18 billion in the local exchange (1.7 billion for USD). This strike created a loss of about 1.2 million per ounce. No one comes out a winner in this sort of stand off between workers and management. Things have gotten underway in the interim, but the financial conditions of the mining companies could not be more imperiled.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At a cost of $1600 for production of a single ounce, platinum is priced below the cost of production. Eventually, platinum prices will have to rise. This makes no difference to you if you can’t afford the current price of $1500 per ounce, but if you could squeeze something out in order to get in on the wave before it hits, you may find it to be worth it in the long run.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the nation of India today, there is a “craze” happening in the world of platinum fine jewelry. The climb has come so fast and hard that demand is forecasted to be at around a 65% increase by the years end. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Catalytic converters for the automobile are wholly dependent upon platinum in their production. 25% of all platinum use on a world wide scale is due to the need of converters for the world’s increasing dependence upon mechanical mobility. It’s a $7 billion dollar market. Anti-pollution standards are making the market move in pre-determined ways that are bankable. The demand is two fold in its make up on both the consumer side and also the ecological side.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One is well aware of the conditions in China considering bicycle riding. We’ve all seen the photos of huge sections of the population all riding in one direction on a cavalcade of two and three wheelers. China itself, however, is experiencing an expansion of the middle class, even as America “povert-izes” its own citizenry. By the year 2022, China will have about 300 million “well off” Chinese citizens, according to estimates by those who prepare these kinds of things. Odds are, they will all be giving their bikes to their kids and acquiring some higher end transportation in the form of automobiles and other means of transport.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The United States has about one car per every person in the country, in 2012 China’s ratio was at about 1 to 85. During the coming years, as China becomes more affluent, the growth rate for auto usage looks something like over 9,000%. Government requirements demand a converter on every new car purchased in China. Last May, the sales for cars in China surpassed 1.5 million units in one month. That’s a surge that’s got legs to it. 300 million nouveau riche Chinese will need converters for their new cars and those converters will require MORE platinum. It will take 203 million ounces of platinum to meet that demand. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Platinum could easily appreciate to around $6,000 an ounce from its current $1500/ounce. If you own even a small amount, you could have a “little monster” in less than ten years. We could see a 17% jump in the price by the end of the year giving a price mark at about $1700/ounce. So far, the rise in price for platinum has been due to the supply constraints and the unrest in mining facilities, but with an additional placement of demand, the spike could be enormous. To regain its cost of capitol, the mining companies will need the price to rise to about $3,000/ounce by the middle of 2015, so taking a wait and see attitude may only be a small window of afford-ability.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you are thinking about platinum, just keep in mind the rising tide of Chinese affluence and the demands of emissions control combining to effect the overall price. Of course, if you could buy a platinum mine all for yourself, that would be ideal. </span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-36032844537376583872014-07-28T13:41:00.000-07:002014-11-25T16:00:41.105-08:00Resident Manager Class with The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles</b> has a class that they hold on a revolving basis which claims to inform students who attend of all they need for becoming a resident manager for apartment buildings, multiple family living situations and other forms of rental living which stay within certain recognized norms. The class runs for a few days each week for the length of about six weeks. For anyone interested in the workings of this industry, the class is very informative.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As I have stated in the past posts, I have been looking into so called business opportunities for those attempting to survive this falling American economy and also those who are looking to create multiple streams of income or perhaps adjust their living situation to match the hardship that most of the country is now experiencing. I have seen quite a few of these so called opportunities over the years, and most.... well, all of them seem constructed to make money for those who sell the program, not for those who work the program, whatever that program may be. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The AAGLA holds this class in a straight forward and forthright manner, seemingly free of any guile or want for harm to the finances of their participants, and therefore, I wanted to investigate this path direction for those who may be interested. I found NO information ahead of time about complaints of “rip off” type filings by others who have come and gone through this system, so I went ahead and tried it myself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Last October, I signed up for the six week class to become a resident manager and I had to take time off from work and miss some pay in order to make this thing happen. The class cost $400.00 dollars and the AAGLA requires payment up front. The class is held in a “meeting” type room in a building not too far from the downtown area of Greater Los Angeles and I have to tell you, the area is less than desirable. Repeatedly, we students were admonished to lock the doors on the bottom level in the parking lot when we had all entered the building. Otherwise, we were told, we might all get shot from some intruder who might happen along one night. The parking lot is fenced in and seemed protected from the street, but the instructor was not convinced of our safety despite this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In a rather large meeting room of tables and chairs, the class consisted of about 25 students, all from different parts of the city and all having different ages. Some of the students had already been involved in the industry and knew a thing or two about the subjects discussed. On this one six week stretch the AAGLA made $10,000 dollars plus an additional potential $2,500 (which I’ll discuss in a moment) from the proceedings. That’s a pretty good take for the process and this class is repeated more than a few times each year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The class begins with a very kindly, and genial gentleman instructor who holds all but a few of the classes through the entire course. He’s quite the engaging speaker and story teller. And, OH! what a story teller. There were many times I felt as if I were in the presence of “Grandpa” as we all sat and listened to stories from his past, mostly from the business of managing apartments, but unfortunately not ALL from this work, which he had done for quite some time since early in his twenties. He certainly knew a lot about the process, and I had no doubts about his experience and abilities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Subjects covered, when we weren’t being regaled with “when I was your age” type personal stories, were: How to work with owners, competing for good tenants (Yes, YOU must compete for the good ones, since there are many nightmares), choosing tenants, screening and collecting, creating a community in the complex, record keeping and evictions. We also covered the fair housing laws, the forms used and also the correct way to go about tenant relations. Also, safety and security, changing rental agreements, security deposits and their deadlines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Common tasks and functions such as complex safety, cleaning, rent collections, dealing with vendors, showing and marketing the apartments, maintenance (a word about this in a moment), and tenant screening were all covered in one way or another over the course of the first few weeks, but not without the “entertaining” side of story telling of our host. If you have no patience for this sort of presentation, you may want to enroll somewhere else for this training where they will simply lay it all out for you and stick more closely to the relevant points of the class for which you have paid $400 dollars and for which you are also spending six weeks in an evening class attending. Those classes may also be shorter, and also less expensive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We were also referred to books such as “Landlord Lingo” (tenant law) and “California Evictions”. It was during this period of the class that I became aware of the rather insane practice of the California court system to protect those who have less legal rights than the persons who are actually working within the system correctly. Let me just give you a brief idea of what I mean by that. Many people here in Los Angeles have rotten credit for various reasons, and many building owners will not rent to them because of this credit. Which makes sense since bad credit usually means someone cannot pay their bills for whatever reason. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Therefore, many of those folks will go looking for a roommate situation in which they can share an apartment based upon an agreement between persons living in the unit. They can’t be put on the lease, but they can stay and pay as a “guest” of the master tenant. NEVER DO THIS. Never let someone be a roomie off of the lease, because they LEGALLY can stop paying the rent, and YOU can’t make them continue. The courts will back them up and not you. If you get a roomie who is paying YOU and not the landlord, then YOU are his/her landlord. You must take care of them as though you were the legal landlord, but just for them. You will not win in court if you are taken advantage of by someone who is really a “freeloader” and you will have to pay for whatever costs they incur from non payment or damage to the apartment - all backed by the court. In fact, if you leave and they are still there, they have legal right to stay as the tenant, even though they never signed on to the lease. Only the sheriff can come and drag them away, but only after all legal recourse has been taken to solve the situation. NIGHTMARE!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We also leaned about something called “premises liability lawyers”. These are lawyers whose sole purpose is to sue apartment owners for anything that might constitute possible litigable events. Due to this, attorneys have a hard time finding apartments. Managers are tough on them even if they have never sued a complex. Many of the suits placed are about death incidents, injuries or even rapes. Whatever the case, there are professional wolves out there looking to make a manager’s job the worst he has ever had.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In this industry, pets are a major problem. Insurance companies may cancel on a complex for allowing pets. Tenants can actually get bitten by a flea, be allergic, and then sue the complex owner for their trouble. Usually, if a complex has ONE dog, it has all animals sooner or later. People who don’t like pets will move out and cause your occupancy to be less that 100%, not the desired position for any manager. We were warned against having any pets at all simply due to the increased risk of being sued.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Other troubles with apartments included: People stealing your water if it is not locked off. This refers to folks from the surrounding area who come and hook up to your faucets to wash their cars and run up your water bill. Building codes which include subjects such as fire codes, magnet doors, extinguishers and escapes. Smoke detectors and where they should be placed. The trouble with double key dead bolt locks (double cylinder), which usually keep small kids inside of the unit, but these are illegal. Safety glass which must be able to shatter into small pieces if broken, these being used in shower doors and large plate glass windows. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Swimming pools are also another major concern as no one wants to see a kid meet his untimely end in one of them. There are a dozen stipulations that must also be adhered to as well concerning pools, and at this point you should just know that you would be better off without them. The instructor suggests teaching the tenant’s kids how to swim if you have a pool. You should have heard this story of how a teacher once threw kids screaming and kicking into the deep end in order to give them a swimming lesson. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mental trauma aside and abuse lawsuits from parents not withstanding, "Grandpa" didn’t seem to mind this method of teaching. I don’t mean to be negative where this instructor is concerned, but there were several times where his ideas on dealing with kids in the complex raised a few eyebrows among us students. Not just throwing them in the deep end of the pool, but also keeping them in your place until parents come home from work in order to help them avoid the government taking the children away, and also having the kids clean up the complex by making a game for them to see who gets the most trash. He’s a great guy, an fine teacher, but I take issue with this kind of “loose cannon” type instruction when it comes to dealing with other people’s children.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There was a lot of time also spent on deciding what the agreements between yourself and the owner would be. Most folks who look into this type of work are looking to find a way to get free rent for their living place in exchange for the work they will be doing. Free rent isn’t always the best deal. Many of these owners will insist that you work for them with free rent, and then you’ll also have to go and get a second job to make any kind of cash money. When there is money involved, many times the minimum wage laws are violated and you will be taken advantage of.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a manager you’ll often have weekend obligations and or be “on call” for the job at any time. When one is living on the property, it’s very difficult to get away from the constant call of 16 plus units who may have a rotating list of problems. Not to mention that there are few perfect tenants. Usually, there is always someone on the verge of being evicted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Owners who interview you will want to know why you are looking for employment as a manager and you simply cannot tell them the wrong answer. They will ask if you drink or smoke, if you have family or if you are taking care of parents, and if you are bondable. Being bondable is a special position. You can’t have any criminal background, you have to show a competent credit record and your entire life will be reviewed by the bonding board. They will call up your second grade teacher, your old girlfriends from high school, your grandmother and they will look at all of your purchases recorded on your debit card for the last five years. Yes, they can do this. I haven’t even mentioned the part about drug testing. Well, I just did. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You also have to know how to market your property. This means researching the surrounding competition and advertising for your own. You’ll take photos, place ads, tweet, YouTube and whatever else it requires to get vacancies filled, all the while dealing with the merry go round of people and mechanical problems at home. Vacancies are rarely tolerated by owners because they represent loss of cash flow. You’ll be a rental marketer as well as a manager, and if you are getting free rent but only minimum wage, you have to decide if this is really a thing you want to do. Of course, the instructor will tell you what a great idea it is because you will be protecting yourself against the cost of high rent, but there is so much more to consider.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We did also have another</span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles </b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">instructor for a brief time, a very informative lady, who interestingly enough told us that when she was a resident manager, it was the worst job she had ever had. This was due mainly to the round robin of incredibly bad tenants she had to deal with, and she also told us a few stories. They are not for the faint of heart. The bottom line of her classes seems to be that one would be better off interning in a complex before ever committing to the full time job of resident manager so as to see just what the realities of the work entail. I agree fully.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Tenants love you as long as things go their way, she told us. Then they hate you when something bad happens. Discrimination was a big part of her class. Accordingly, this ugly monster still exists today with owners and managers refusing to rent to persons based upon ANYTHING other than the person or persons ability to pay the rent. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">She covered the ideas behind rent control before and after 1978, and the legal problems that come from a manager’s being fired for refusing to break the laws concerning rent control. I understood that there is a common practice of avoiding the rent control status if owners find that they can get away with this. Are you shaking your head wearily yet? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Belive it or not, there are laws concerning square footage and the number of people who can live in a unit. If a family ends up having too many children over time, a manager is required to notify them that they are now in violation of the occupation standards. They could well lose their home just because they have too many babies. By the way, when speaking about tenant’s kids, a manger can never use the words “children” or “minor”, they must always be referred to as “person, occupant or resident”. This is due to their classification under tenant law. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Are you ready to be a resident manager yet? Are ya????</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When dealing with the handicapped, March 13, 1991 is the cut off date for receiving assistance from the government in order to get handicapped compliance. Any building built after this date must pay for their own compliance, and if modifications are made, then they become a part of the property even after the handicapped person leaves. If you have a handicapped person who requests accommodation, it is a violation of privacy laws to call their medical provider to ask for confirmation of handicapped need. You must trust the handicapped person’s judgment in relation to the accommodation that you must pay for. Nice, huh?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Okay, so I have said a lot about what is covered in the </span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles resident manager </b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">class, and yet I have been only brief on the subjects covered. But, you might say, what happens now? Well, now you must buy a list they have provided for the purpose of finding those apartments you wish to find employment with. You aren’t required to do so, but they suggest it strongly. This list is a compiled listing from five different zip codes in the areas where you would like to work and comprises about 300 items. This list costs $100 dollars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now, you would be wrong to assume that this list is a list of available apartment manager job openings. You would be very wrong. I spent the better part of maybe two months making phone calls to these listings only to find that the “list” you are given is about 12 years old. Many of the companies I called were management companies themselves, which are listed for free all over the net, or they were numbers that had gone out of order, were the numbers of long standing managers who were shocked to hear from someone who had some kind of list.... or, and this is the sad one, a hand full of people who had suffered years of phone ringing abuse by people calling them looking for resident manager jobs which had nothing to do with the person’s private number. The numbers were just WRONG. Period. Let me just say at this point, I am not a resident manager some 9 months after taking the class, and I must have talked to about 250 people on the phone. Over and over and over again it was the same thing: “Sorry, we’re not looking for anyone at this time”. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I did manage to get a few interviews, with people who were more curious than serious, and one in particular old gentleman who just wanted someone to talk to..... and TALK DOWN to, but the real interviews revealed something that seems obvious to even someone who is not involved. Mainly, like any other position, it does’nt matter how many resident manager classes you paid for, you have to have experience or they don’t want you. Even the Craig’s List ads for managers come straight out and state this: If you haven’t any experience, don’t call us!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A second point to make here is one about maintenance of the property. The class instructor casually informs the class that if you have never fixed anything, then you can just go to YouTube and watch a video and learn how to fix anything you might need in an apartment complex. When I mentioned this in my interviews I got chuckles and eye rolls as a response. That might make great sales chatter in a class room setting, but NO one else in a hiring position agrees with this. Plainly: you HAVE TO BE ABLE TO FIX THINGS YOURSELF. Owners don’t want to have to hire handy men from outside if they don’t have to, and the jobs that are available will go to those with experience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Is this </span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles </b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">class worth $400 dollars for education and information? Probably. There is a lot I learned which I could never have guessed on my own about resident manager work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Will this class help you in finding employment? Probably not. Better to just get an internship and learn on the side. Save your money.</span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-14149170380717032892014-07-22T15:43:00.000-07:002014-08-26T17:07:34.524-07:00Staywell Research<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>It wasn’t all that long ago</b> that I saw a blog post on the internet, giving instructions to whomever reads it, directions in the development of what is called “multiple streams of income”. There are many suggestions for those who are struggling financially and looking to get some assistance. One of those suggestions is to engage yourself in a medical research trial. This kind of trial requires one to take a certain drug and or other type of pill, and perhaps some other form of trial application, and then after a hand full of months there is a compensation paid for the patient’s time and effort. One of these companies is named: <b>Staywell Research</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I decided I would test this idea out, as one of several I will be reviewing over the next year, and I joined a trial. The ad for this trial on the local Craigslist stated that the trial would consist of a six month period with a “diet pill” test which would pay $500.00 with a $500.00 bonus if the person was still participating at the end of the trial. This would, of course, result in a $1,000.00 pay day for those involved. It’s important to note at this point that the ad makes mention of the total amount to be payed when the client is still present at the end of the tial. (Get your Orwell earphones working!)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In March of this year I joined the trial and was given a bottle of green pills which may or may not have been the real thing. The point, so I was told, was to use placebo pills in the tests to find out the ultimate result of whether or not the medical benefits actually worked. For myself, this had to do with weight loss. The pills themselves were actually appetite suppressants which were to be taken a half an hour before eating in order to discover the effects on my personal weight over the six months during usage. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was also given several diaries and charts to keep a record going of daily activities, these included what I had eaten each day, how much I had walked, walking everyday being the method of approved exercise in this case, and other things like my daily weight and such. I was also given a thing called “Fitbit” which records your every movement during the day and reports that to a website where one can also record the daily intake of food, water, and watch the number of steps that I took each day. I really like Fitbit, and I would highly recommend it for anyone interested in tracking themselves on a daily basis. I know there have been complaints in the news about people gaining weight with this thing, but I believe you have to get past the initial temptation to eat more than you should, because Fitbit makes you think about it a lot more than usual. Once I got past that, I was fine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One is also required to make several visits to the <b>Staywell Research</b> offices and also to speak with a nutritionist on the phone about your progress during the study. There is a lot to do, and if done correctly, then one should be paid for their time and effort. Therefore, I spent a good three months of the trial giving the system a good work out. I tracked all of my water intake, changed the food listing for my daily intake, walked everyday, took the pills, filled out the paperwork and also made the five mile trip to have my measurements taken and my weight recorded. Amazingly, the trial worked! The appetite suppressant was very effective and combined with the huge amount of water I had to drink and all the walking I had to do, I lost almost 30 pounds. I sit here today typing, six weeks later and the weight has not come back. Did I drink and walk the weight off? Hmmmm, could be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">During one of these visits, I saw a man come into the office and try to get his compensation, he had been given the run around several times over the phone and had never received anything. A manager then met with him and when he left, he still had nothing. I kept this event in mind the entire time I continued. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At the end of three months, I was told that the trial was over, and I was required to return Fitbit and my daily logs and the pills to the research center. I was also told that I would NOT be paid the money they owed me. I made an appointment with one of the managers to discuss the problem since it was not myself who had failed to complete the trial or had quit ahead of time. My position is that if the company says that at the end of the trial I am still on the project, then at that time, I will be compensated. Unfortunately, they play games with the definition of when things come to an end, and stick to the original ending date, which would have been some time in August, even if they, themselves, call an end to things. This is crapola of the highest degree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was told that because they had “over booked” the trial, they would have to let some of the participants go early and they would only be compensated for the visits they had completed. I had done five visits, but they insisted it was only four. It was not. I was only to receive $160 dollars instead of the $1,000.00 that the “bait and switch” style advertising had promised. No amount of the 45 minutes or so I spent arguing the case with the manager made any difference at all. According to him, they were continuing with the other people in the study and would not continue with me, which is odd, because I was actually making the thing work. Seems you “over book” because you expect a good number of people to do the study incorrectly or perhaps quit prematurely. So, therefore, you need me in the study in case that sort of thing still happens before the ending deadline. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Regardless, the arrangement is for a certain amount to be paid at the end of the study no matter who ends it. If I quit ahead of time, then I can understand their position, I did not complete the study and therefore, I am not present at the end of it. However, if I am told the company is ending the study, then the study ends NOW, and I am still here and should be compensated. They did not, of course agree, and despite the ease with which they could do this sort of thing over and over with many people involved, they stood their ground. This is called: “Legally scamming the public”. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If I were to join another study with any company like <b>Staywell Research</b>, I would insist that they sign a contract written up by myself stating that if the company ends the survey, then they have to pay in full. They will, of course, never sign something that states this, which means they are playing the loop hole and probably paying out to NO ONE the $1,000.00 pay day. Basically, they get to a point where they feel you have made the thing work, and they have all the info they need, and then they pull out on you and leave you with pocket change. There is very little evidence to prove that this is NOT the case.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are many such complaints about <b>Staywell Research</b> on the internet and I would heed them and myself well if you feel you might be able to make some side money from this endeavor. I realize there will always be the person who will tell you that this has never happened to them and that they make a living doing this sort of thing, but that is not my testimony. I sit here with no payout from this company more than 35 days later and honestly, I expect to receive nothing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Be forewarned! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>editor's note: It is now 75 days since this project ended and I still have received nothing. 75 days being the deadline for paying this thing off.</i></span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-80158152494773920632014-06-12T09:47:00.000-07:002014-06-12T09:47:01.928-07:00FACTA Will Destroy Your Money<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anyone who may be watching the stock market </b>has seen the S&P 500 nearly reach 2000 in an all time high. In fact, much of what is happening on Wall Street seems downright positive, but don’t be mislead. Trading on the markets is at an all time low as buyers and sellers seem to be sitting on the hands they are holding, like poker players in a high stakes game. What could possibly be causing such a dry run in the trading game? Do they know something most folks are not aware of? They very well could, indeed. Way back in the year 2010, the House of Representatives passed a bill called H. R. 2847. Deeply tucked away inside of this bill is something called <b>FACTA: the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act</b>, and it could very well destroy much of your money, holdings and security.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On July 1st, 2014, this bill will begin to perform some very troublesome things. Firstly, it requires all worldwide banks to answer to the IRS, the United States IRS, if they do any business with United States dollars in their transactions. The U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, at least at the time I am writing this, and this essentially means that all banks, everywhere, must comply. That is, with a few exceptions of smaller community banks. They will be required to dig into their own funds, costing thousands and thousands of their own currency in order to track down, ferreting out and then tax their U.S, dollar transactions by as much as 30%. Failure to comply with this directive will require them to disavow all of their U.S. customers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The wave of reaction that will come from this directive will be gargantuan. This will entice more and more institutions world wide to move away from using the United States dollar as currency, more so than has been happening for a while now. This also means that Americans in North America will have the hardest time getting their money out of U.S dollars and utilizing banks like Everbank, to help them keep money in whatever the highest yield currency of the day might be. As I write this, international wire transfers are being eliminated around the globe as institutions follow the lead of J.P. Morgan Chase and HSBC. When I say eliminated, I mean OUTLAWED. Yes, international wire transfers are being outlawed to keep United States money out of foreign currency holdings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What could FACTA possibly do to you and I as it destroys the money in our pockets? The savings of millions of Americans could be wiped out over night, for one thing. It’ll change the way you live your life on a daily basis, where you shop for food, where you send your kids to school, how you protect your family and home. Things could get very bad, very quickly and those FEMA camps don’t seem so far away for those who might not want to tow the line with the Government. The debts that America has run up just won’t disappear, and bailing out crashing companies has its effects. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Commodity prices are about to skyrocket. You and I may find ourselves paying $20 for the loaf of bread you just bought for $1.29 at the local mart. Many well thought of banks, who seem quite stable, will suddenly start closing their branches all over the country. Our credit cards will stop working. We won’t be allowed to by gold as well as those foreign currencies I spoke of earlier. Will food stamps suddenly fail? Will Social Security checks stop coming in? I personally know a small group of people who live on the edge, who would find themselves out in the street tomorrow if such a thing happened. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You may laugh at what I have told you as being the rantings of “sky is falling” fear mongering, but let’s talk a bit about why this could all happen. The United States government has been borrowing way too much money for a long time now, often with short term loans, and very soon even the interest will not be affordable. Every single HOUR the Government spends about 200 million that it does not have. In two months time, the Government borrows more money than the annual profits of the 100 biggest traded companies in America. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We began 2014 with a net public debt that has doubled and more since the year before Obama took office. Government agencies and businesses taken over by the Government have their own 5 trillion dollar obligations. What is the full burden of these debts? We have no idea at the moment due to the Federal Reserve’s power to tweak interest rates, and that power is unlimited. How much of Fannie and Freddie Mac’s bad debts will be covered by the treasury? We have no idea. We also don’t know what long term effects will happen, due to the Reserve’s ongoing expansion of the monetary base. The United States now has more debt than any country in known history. If you combined the debt of every nation in the European Union, you could not equal United States debt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Federal Reserve has interest rates down to practically zero at this time. The benchmark rate has been lowered ten times since 2007 from around 5.25% to almost 0%. But that rate couldn’t last forever. In 2014, the rate is now back to about 3%, and could go up 4% each year. If the rate stops around 6%, we’ll need $43.1 trillion dollars just to cover our debts to the world. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The easy answer, of course, is to simply have the Government prevent the Reserve from ever raising these rates to those levels. The bad news is that politicians seem to belive that they can fix anything with more deficit spending, kicking the can down the road for the next generation; since we’ll all be dead by then anyway. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Money, however, and the related idea of credit, is always based upon terms of soundness. It allows the sale and exchange of good and services, which are also taxed, by the way, even though you already pay an income tax. (Add that all up one day and see if you aren’t paying way more than 33% on your overall tax burden.) This helps to specialize labor, and fuel competitive advantage. Pricing guides production and consumption. But, when the money can’t be trusted, the whole system goes to hell.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Our economy refuses to pay those who save money, any real pay back above the rate of inflation on their money. Dividend stocks are a great way to find extra income but they belong to the super rich. A dividend stock may pay 11 cents to a share and if the stock is bought at $30,000 for about $10 a share, then it will pay about $330 dollars monthly. This is hardly an attractive offer, no matter what some will tell you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The bottom line here is that a default on the American economy would have already happened by this point, if not for one thing. The United States can legally print it’s own money even though it owes a fortune to the world. The debt doesn’t get paid, but the country stays afloat. If you and I tried that with any credit card or student loan we were way behind on, we would be in court and possibly jail within days. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The dollar forms the basis of the world’s financial system. Banks around the world hold it in reserve against their loans. We don’t go broke, simply because we just print more money beyond the debt ceiling. But, keep in mind that America is the only country that doesn’t have to pay for its imports in a foreign currency. In America we have been able to consume as much as we want without worrying about the means for paying for it, because dollars are accepted everywhere around the world. We haven’t had to produce anything, or export anything to get all the dollars we need to buy oil and such, because the money is accepted everywhere, and the pricing for goods is also in dollars. We just borrow and print more money.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the latest round of “Quantitative Easing”, the Federal Reserve began printing about $85 billion dollars a month, over a trillion dollars a year. Creditors WILL, in our lifetime, begin to call in their chips. They will stop accepting the dollar as repayment. Already, China is taking big steps to phase out the dollar as a form of monetary payment. They have already signed international currency agreements with Germany, Brazil, Russia, Australia, Japan, Chile, The United Arab Emirates, India and South Africa. They will put together their own unified currency for replacing the U.S. dollar. <b>FACTA</b> will be a big push to accelerate the destruction of the money in your pocket as more and more nations quickly follow suit and join China in its directive. The U.S, dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for most of the lives of those living today, so most don’t have a clue of the danger that lies ahead. It’s happened before in other places and America is no angel that will be protected from what must, and will happen in the same vein as other historical victims of too much debt and too much consumption. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Most of America doesn’t know of Britain’s winter of discontent when the Government put a freeze on wages while at the same time devaluing the currency 14% overnight. The country went broke and couldn’t make any money. This was the 1970's. Inflation was 26.9% and they attempted a three day work week for the whole nation. Higher prices for living and less money for the people made for some very angry voters. Electricity was rationed and even garbage couldn’t be picked up and it littered the streets as it lay rotting and endangering the public health.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. dollar has fallen about 10% since 2010 and continues to fall to this day. But you must understand, the Government cannot simply stop printing money, because we simply cannot pay our debts any other way. As the country devalues everything it prints, more and more, the stocks you hold will devalue perhaps by 40%. U.S. assets will be destroyed by <b>FACTA’s ravaging of the money in our pockets</b>. Everything is priced in our currency, so everything devalues as it devalues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the history of our nation, no asset has ever gone up in price for 12 straight years. But, gold has; and the reason is that people are “getting out” of the dollar while they can. As we lose our position as the world’s currency, there will be a brutal downturn in our economy which hasn’t been seen since Germany in the 1920's, just before the rise of Naziism. Massive inflation is something we can look forward to, as they did back then.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">These are basic laws of economics and finance, and America is not going to be spared. This kind of problem has arrived at the door step of a dozen or so other nations over the last 100 years and it is always the same. Our Government is a runaway train with the bridge out and “NERO” fiddling as the train races faster and faster towards its inevitable conclusion. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One need only look at local government to see the politicians running for the hills. A small town in Ohio turned off a large number of street lights to save money and those lights have been off for a few years now. Philadelphia closed 37 schools because they have no other choice. California releases prisoners and mental patients to the streets on a regular basis, and if you have ever been to a big city there, you know the homeless population is a major crying shame. New Jersey is seeking to slash its pension benefits to government employees. Six U.S. communities have declared bankruptcy. And we need not mention Detroit, which has become the poster child for the disassembly of American life. The city of Baltimore is right behind them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>FACTA is coming for you and for me</b> on July 1st, and it has its hand in your pocket, destroying your money from the inside. You’ll see prices go up, jobs being lost, unemployment sky rocketing, the government doing strange things like building FEMA camps (which are surrounded by barbed wire) and there will be rioting in the streets. Whatever happens, there will be a new world around us, and I hate to think just who might step forward to take the reigns.</span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-44946661118918229222014-04-11T11:53:00.001-07:002014-04-11T11:53:29.597-07:00Gold Will Not Go Away<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeQSuG8psqAXkbAgHj20CCanVdPf5yxdjX0DkLIcKM20aggmiig5wPhRtImJOeDbf0OE6U1eBz53A3RDskFMII-AAyiThoa_gvpIT7vqouTIaNJKbJlUg-RZFgxi-0gGEtabfHFeD9Jyi0/s1600/gold+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeQSuG8psqAXkbAgHj20CCanVdPf5yxdjX0DkLIcKM20aggmiig5wPhRtImJOeDbf0OE6U1eBz53A3RDskFMII-AAyiThoa_gvpIT7vqouTIaNJKbJlUg-RZFgxi-0gGEtabfHFeD9Jyi0/s1600/gold+2.jpg" height="280" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Gold, and its resultant protection of your financial life</b>, simply will not go away anytime soon. Despite what some would say about gold being yesterday’s investment, one can be assured that even the most savvy of gold investing detractors knows to at least stay connected to a gold investment, somewhere and somehow. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Gold is not only a beauty to have in your hands, but it has some amazing chemical and physical properties that make it unique in all the world. Water doesn’t effect it, and neither does oxygen cause it to rust. Rust being to metal what cancer is to the body, this makes gold “superhuman” in this comparison of metal and biological resistance. It is also an amazingly recyclable product.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It can be pounded into a thin sheet that is so incredibly thin that light can pass through it, but there will be no damage to the gold itself. Electrically conductible wires can be stretched as thin as a human hair with no effect to the metal or its properties. It can be planted inside of the human body for medical reasons and resist bacterial growth far beyond the patient’s life time. Gold is the ultimate metal, all other ages have come and gone, from the bronze to the iron, but Gold just won’t go away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A huge number of mechanical devices rely on the gold in their systems to keep them functioning properly. Billions of computers, home appliances and the telecommunications network relies on gold electrical connectors for continued performance. Protection from solar heat is also manufactured into the shields of satellites using gold. Air bag systems rely on gold coated contacts to keep your automobile safe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Technology and deregulation have brought down much of the cost of our everyday living despite what the regular news will tell you. Food and gas are, of course, always a concern among the constantly rising and falling prices that keep us all in check on our spending for daily needs. The long term, however, has proven to be a different story, and gold is at the heart of this revolution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Just take a look at your cell phone and all of its capabilities. You can not only call someone, but you can text them as well. You can open a calculator, set up an alarm clock, take photos, play chess or video poker, have a music play list, an FM radio, maps and navigation and also internet access. All of those things together would have cost quite the pretty penny in the not too distant past, and gold is right there on the cutting edge. And, also, one can get incredible computing power today in relation to what was on the market just ten years ago. A computer that cost about $2,500.00 with a tower and a monitor, now costs about $700. As you might have guessed, gold is a major player in this amazing shift of cost. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Thinking about investments on the long term with gold just makes good sense from a financial standpoint. Eurozone countries have shown that dirty political games and ineffective decision making can cause difficulties from the past to suddenly appear at the front of your social problems. Sovereign debt is all too often taken from the banks and passed on to the taxpayers. Politicians who can’t get a grip on their own money, your first tax payment, often believe it’s just a matter of taxing the people once again to fix a fiscal problem. Long term irresponsibility with money invariably leads to bankruptcy, be it personal, or corporate, or sadly, entire governments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Gold’s refusal to go away</b> anytime soon may well be the hedge against the failures of the currency around you, and not sometime far off in the next generation either. The wolf may indeed be at the door. Reports of the looming currency law and President Obama’s intended proposition may or may not cause a chaos as predicted by those who oppose his intent, but if you have gold investment, you will perhaps rest a bit easier if indeed the wheels come off later this year.</span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-48599273340337067242014-04-10T11:23:00.000-07:002014-04-10T11:23:14.582-07:00Fort Hood and Bill Clinton and Blood Moons and Buffalo <div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2PYfUTXxWANATcdSoJOGrTWl7yXpE0DVtfwnnrNixiu0a3T9tGU44U4AhpSAP_34zc5K2IRHzDDQ8EwkRN8XlcJireGuT2PHTlpG-wWITd9zkaJJgACfH1JpBaip-y-ImGA6YEPToNdIf/s1600/Story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2PYfUTXxWANATcdSoJOGrTWl7yXpE0DVtfwnnrNixiu0a3T9tGU44U4AhpSAP_34zc5K2IRHzDDQ8EwkRN8XlcJireGuT2PHTlpG-wWITd9zkaJJgACfH1JpBaip-y-ImGA6YEPToNdIf/s1600/Story.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>It’s the end of the world as we know it. </b>And I feel fine. Increasingly in our day and age of over information, coming from television, the internet, radio and just about anywhere and anything that wants to compete for our attention and, of course, our dollar, we find ourselves awash in a sea of truth, fiction, or a combination of both. These are the reports from news and internet sources that bring together subjects like the tragic Fort Hood shootings, President Bill Clinton chatting about space aliens, blood moon harbingers of the future and stampeding buffalo in Yellowstone Park. It’s difficult enough to see burger chain restaurants selling pizza and submarine sandwich fast food places selling tacos without the addition of our news spilling over into the range from what is, to what might be, to the totally outrageous. If you peruse the internet for any length of time, you’ll realize that information itself has lost its moorings and gone adrift.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Forth Hood</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Recent stories like the tragic shooting in <b>Fort Hood</b>, which seem to be on the rise all over the world, are now linking themselves up with the internet “doomsayers” on a consistent basis. Increasing earthquakes, which are documented from 1990, are also now included in the “end of the world” notices that accompany each new shift of tectonic plates. There is even a video online in a recent news story of buffalo stampeding through Yellowstone Park, as though they are escaping some up and coming natural disaster. Animals are a pretty good judge of these kinds of events, and indeed something could happen with volcano activity in the area. But you can be sure to find that someone somewhere will be warning of the sky falling when it does happen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is an interesting news story of former <b>President Clinton</b> appearing on a popular talk show and discussing space aliens, and how he had once ordered an investigation <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeumGEP52j_5Hu-SfQTxd4HDWiGyma3HXTT1xq4nc6aEXSXq-epVJhakc80TOHq1AzywjaU8nHgQqtgCw1Melv_4_BwDiq0SOmDdmkpoA8g5L42tap5IBTHzUy0HKCQKTfcxM83JFUBZKE/s1600/clinton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeumGEP52j_5Hu-SfQTxd4HDWiGyma3HXTT1xq4nc6aEXSXq-epVJhakc80TOHq1AzywjaU8nHgQqtgCw1Melv_4_BwDiq0SOmDdmkpoA8g5L42tap5IBTHzUy0HKCQKTfcxM83JFUBZKE/s1600/clinton.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
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into the phenomenon. If you have done any creative searching on the net, you’ll find that this isn't the fanciful entertainment news that it seems to be to a lot of the internet populace. Self proclaimed “time traveler” Andrew Basiago and those who subscribe to him, would indeed tell you that President Clinton knows more than he lets on - a lot more. Mr. Basiago claims that every president from Jimmy Carter to Barak Obama knew they would be president years ago due to a government program known as Project Pegasus. His information on aliens, space aliens that is, would seem to also inform us that conspiracy <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andrew Basiago</td></tr>
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theorists and those who live on the fringe have more on the ball toward the truth of the government’s involvement with space aliens than can be realistically portrayed on say, an episode of the X Files. By the way, Mr. Basiago plans to run for President of the United States in 2016. It’s the future, he says. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Whether you agree with informants such as <b>Pastor John Hagee</b> or not, he is indeed a respected practitioner within his circles, perhaps more so than Mr. Basiago, but that is a matter of personal choice. Recent stories about the coming <b>blood moon</b> eclipse may be to many an interesting lunar event which happens only once in a “blue moon”, or it may indeed be something attached to Jewish prophecy and historic holidays. Pastor Hagee believes from his studies on the subject that the event is indeed more than just an interesting science study and he outlines this as being the first of four lunar events which will harbinger major changes in the world as we know it. Once again, this is serious stuff depending on what you, the reader, choose to accept as truth, fiction or truthful fiction/fictional truth. The bottom line is, however, that all of this is being reported as news. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Major stories of global warming, and the world’s ill preparedness on the subject are now also a regular offering in the news arena, but they too, also carry the naysayer responses to what is referred to as “chicken little” reporting. One need not look too far to find evidence for the idea of global warming as a fact, but it’s the interpretation of information that brings the debate forward. In many instances the debate itself gets its own news story. Indeed the lines have become blurred between what is the truth of data disseminated to the public and what is fanciful opinion. One has to ask, with hands thrown up high, if anyone and any informant can be trusted. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Recent YouTube video graphically showed the problem with much of the news reported today. In the video, a local news station cut away from their own live broadcast, to report on a plane that had gone down on a major freeway. In the helicopter cam shot, the viewer was witness to a small prop plane that had crashed on the freeway which was surrounded by several accidents that apparently had happened as a result of the incident. The anchors were quite serious and heartfelt as they attempted to describe the horrific scene to the viewer, only to be interrupted when they were told it was a set piece for a filming television show. Ah well, back to the news.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is the real story? What is worthy our time? Is the <b>Fort Hood</b> shooting and the increase in this sort of lunacy taking place in our society a social problem or is there indeed a bigger story of signs of end times? Or is it both? Are <b>blood moons</b> merely a science story or a bigger sign toward a major shift in our way of life upon Earth? How much does <b>Bill Clinton</b> really know? Can anyone tell us the truth unequivocally or do we rely on the scatter-shot information which comes and goes and may or may not manifest itself, while in the meantime garnering our attention and filling up our time? Let’s ask the stampeding buffalo, they seem to be the most reliable source for our undivided attention.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Or perhaps we should just join them.... and run! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">*Originally written for a more neutral editorial page, but you know where I go to get my guaranteed information. </span> </div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-77229221970346278252014-04-09T11:01:00.001-07:002014-04-09T11:01:56.037-07:00Neil deGrasse Tyson Liberal Elite<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI2SxCAAWCedx2YRIYAr2sBi4WI-Au6xJNJ7noEQfDRpe-84tVYy6h2ivAoLiJ5BGOBG2N55PqbYYi9513g4PwFi1tWZIUPOSmJuyQhxeHtp8eL4tslWBKuGmwbFMkrNd2C-BK3ONbRYz9/s1600/1-12-14-Neil-deGrasse-Tyson-inside-alternate-ftr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI2SxCAAWCedx2YRIYAr2sBi4WI-Au6xJNJ7noEQfDRpe-84tVYy6h2ivAoLiJ5BGOBG2N55PqbYYi9513g4PwFi1tWZIUPOSmJuyQhxeHtp8eL4tslWBKuGmwbFMkrNd2C-BK3ONbRYz9/s1600/1-12-14-Neil-deGrasse-Tyson-inside-alternate-ftr.jpg" height="250" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal;">Neil deGrasse Tyson</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Could it be possible that the heralded scientific spokesman, Neil deGrasseTyson</b>, hosting the re-invigorated television science program, Cosmos, is indeed one of the liberal elite that we hear about so much these days? The term "liberal elite" often carries the implicit connotation that the individuals described by the term are hypocritical. When Mr. Tyson recently broadcast his views on the age of the universe on his PBS program, his stance could easily have been taken as an implication that secular views on the age of the universe are a “done deal”. He based this information upon the agreed secular definitions of science fact about the speed of light and it’s true nature in the reality of the universe. The implication could very well be that everyone should just accept that as truth. This attitude is one that many today are increasingly labeling as an elitist position. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In this program he presumably de-bunked the Creationist “belief” (italics mine) that the universe is only around 6,000 years old. His scientific focus was upon the Crab Nebula; 6,500 light-years or so away from Earth. He explains that the nebula is the result of an exploding star larger than our own sun. The light seen from this nebula takes about 6,500 light-years to reach our eyes. This, of course, works primarily in a static or slower than light universe where nothing else moves along with or as fast as the path of light. Therefore, calculations of distance and time can be problematic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">To assume that Creationists who oppose his science fact, with their own science fact, are simply wrong because they do not rely on the secular viewpoints of the definition of science results and configurations, is to indeed find Mr. Neil deGrasse Tyson on only one side of an argument which indeed possesses alternative views to the so called “liberal elite”. Some of these views are provided by faith to be sure, but others are also provided by good old scientific research itself. To ignore the science side of the opposing view points merely because The Bible, a spiritual book, is involved is to be less than honest toward ones own scientific veracity. If opposing views based upon science research and fact do indeed exist, than they should never be ignored by scientists. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It would be quite easy, one might attest, to claim that the Big Bang, a dearly held position on the origins of the universe, could have somehow begun and then continued in the 14th of a second that it would require, without light itself, but that would be against known physical laws. Similarly, if the universe had light at its beginning, then it follows that light has always traveled along side of an expanding universe. If the universe were only a week old, then light itself, no matter the speed of it, would not only be seen by those traveling the cosmos in the same direction with light, but light itself would only be a week old. However, this argument isn’t necessary considering the offerings from the Creationist science community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What are indeed those science issues that <b>Mr. Neil deGrasse Tyson</b> has ignored in his “liberal elite” positions? Briefly, there are many, and some of course include the faith in a universe created with age, and fully functional to support the planned forms of life. However, not everything necessitates a reliance on a universe created with age. For one, distant starlight has never been an adequate argument against a young earth due to the lack of rigidity of the flow of time. Science knows all about the relativity of time and the inaccuracies of clocks, which exist at different physical points in relation to the varying strength of gravity at different locations, right here on our own home planet. Gravity can be so strong that it does indeed affect time and light. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Science also knows that there are multiple rotating galaxies that could not have lasted billions of years due to the laws of physics that would command them to become twisted conflagrations. Also, there are hot blue stars out in the void which themselves cannot last billions of years. Without going too deeply into any one of these science FACTS, it would be ingenuous to attest to one singular view point toward any science proof or concept which did not present the whole of the matter as it has been unveiled by scientific process itself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Creation science has called Mr. Neil deGrasse Tyson “on the carpet”</b> to allow for equal time from a science view point not singularly his own or even that of a labeled liberal elite. His response will attest to his “elitist” position and reveal to his public base the depth to which he feels science needs to be exposed to the masses even when it doesn’t necessarily line up with his own views. In the end, it will always be the people who decide if they are getting the whole story. In the interest of science, I hope Mr. Tyson can see his way to equal time for all scientific positions. </span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-78049809486477805682014-04-08T18:34:00.001-07:002014-04-08T18:34:57.497-07:00Firefox Enters World War Sex<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih8hIATI_N2HMPx-cHWVVrJFqqm9pbzASEegn58PSWUXxyjnRG3Gcq5MYk2GeyxCbgLforl918pT14YZmfSspNmv8B8__we5HZ_KXx4nwFoKuESlKjsaEs1HDs5aV4BrhhcrkPxgTZZIK6/s1600/eich.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih8hIATI_N2HMPx-cHWVVrJFqqm9pbzASEegn58PSWUXxyjnRG3Gcq5MYk2GeyxCbgLforl918pT14YZmfSspNmv8B8__we5HZ_KXx4nwFoKuESlKjsaEs1HDs5aV4BrhhcrkPxgTZZIK6/s1600/eich.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brendan Eich</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>One has to wonder if indeed the recent protests </b>by the Gay lobby over the CEO of Firefox’s contributions to Proposition 8 in California, isn’t symptomatic of a greater world wide war over sex and an individual’s right to choose his own predilection for it accordingly. <b>Brendan Eich</b>, Mozilla's new CEO made a $1,000 contribution to the California ballot measure back in 2008. It wasn’t until 2012 that the information was uncovered. Now in 2014, the Homosexual Rights lobby is making a stand and calling for everyone to utilize another browser for internet use.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One has to wonder if the lobby itself isn’t developing a “headhunter” mentality in defending their position in the public eye. Recent news has been rife with the mention of this ongoing battle, as is most recently provided by the Phil Robertson scandal involving statements he has made which imperiled the “Duck Dynasty" television show for a brief time until public outcry pressured for his return. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Author Linda Harvey, who runs a pro-family ministry called Mission America, is now also under attack for a book she has written entitled: Maybe He’s Not Gay. This book, which outlines her reasons pre-pubescent children do not need to be confronted with sexual choices, came under brutal attack by activists who had not even read her book. In the meantime, she has asked Amazon.com to take the book down for offered sale and it is now, for the present time, only offered on her website. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">American food chain, Chic-fil-A was also targeted by a homosexual rights group. They referred to the chain’s food as “hate-filled homophobic Chicken.” They have also attempted to prevent Chick-fil-A from doing business in the state of Illinois. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The problem isn’t simply a North American one, though much of the impetus for the lobby does indeed come from the United States. The fight, as it were, has appeared across the world. On Dec. 31, the Moscow Theological Academy, the Russian Orthodox Church's top learning institution, removed Deacon Andrei Kuraev from his position within the organization. They claim he regularly appeared in the media with shocking statements, and his activity is overly tumultuous. It was not the deacon's stand on political prisoners or outrageous stunts by musical acts that resulted in his dismissal. Instead, it was a LiveJournal post about a teacher from the Kazan Seminary who was fired for making homosexual advances to students and then given a better job elsewhere. Kuraev believes this exemplifies a broader "gay metastasis" in the church.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">BBC News anchor, Clare Balding, was a victim of an abusive internet attack on Twitter over her decision to front the BBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics despite Russia's laws against gays. Miss Balding, herself a lesbian who is about to tie the knot in the near future, felt no remorse or animosity toward those who opposed her. Her attitude is admirable considering that much of the abuse contained slanderous and defamatory language, which incidentally, came from those who support gay rights.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni recently announced his intention to sign a bill dubbed the “jail the gays” bill, saying he was declaring “war on the homosexual lobby”. In a recent statement, Pope Francis has himself referred to there being a Gay lobby and for there to be a need to have something done in relation to the lobby. He certainly did not mention any sort of “war” on the Gay lobby, but it is clear that conflict can certainly be coming on the horizon with the Pope and the Catholic Church, that is to say, more so than is already present.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Considering the larger scope of the ongoing world war over sex and the inclusion of <b>Firefox</b> CEO <b>Brendan Eich</b> in the issue, despite the action in question being a private one of his own choice and also that of it being an issue from the year 2008, one has to wonder if things aren’t getting to the point that the gay lobby itself is becoming as militant as those they claim to be in contention with. Can we now look forward to the American people losing their right to place votes, as was the case for the Proposition 8 ballot in California, when votes were tossed out after the measure passed? Do businesses like Chic-fil-A not have a right to do business because they don’t agree with the Gay lobby? Will high ranking officials, celebrities and business persons be forced to “go into the closet” in order to allow the Gay rights activists the freedom to not have the burden of opposing view points? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Brendan Eich and Firefox</b> appear to be only the latest victims dragged into a war over sex that appears to be happening all over the world. It is a fight that may or may not be won in the trenches of legislation, but it is one that will certainly wear out its welcome in the hearts of the public. Just what happens when this resistance lowers is anyone’s guess. When the picket lines are crossed, and the songs of peace and freedom end, what sort of world will we find as a result of the division and animosity created by movements on both sides - simply over sexual preference? </span></div>
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Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-9628722680667917342014-04-07T18:21:00.001-07:002014-04-07T18:21:38.024-07:00Captain America on the Edge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3mmfJXkUxnvNRp17_5O1KHStBx2bZdhI2TYrw6bmh4HmJ0KVbglAzum7eMUZnrG6X3AJYFSbqe_yZCJCGD0QqJ1hPah1HOFztxpkzZ5FmGg0_TIReys8rjcee6zStgknKIM96L_6j2O4F/s1600/captain_america_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3mmfJXkUxnvNRp17_5O1KHStBx2bZdhI2TYrw6bmh4HmJ0KVbglAzum7eMUZnrG6X3AJYFSbqe_yZCJCGD0QqJ1hPah1HOFztxpkzZ5FmGg0_TIReys8rjcee6zStgknKIM96L_6j2O4F/s1600/captain_america_3.jpg" height="286" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Captain America is living on the edge these days.</b> He does this right along with the rest of us, in both movie adventure and, questionably, the real lives we live every day. The Winter Soldier’s story writing and movie making bring us the best of what movies have to offer us today in the way of real life resonance and technical know how which is both involving and uniquely emotionally compelling. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One may groan at the thought of yet another superhero movie in the offering, and rightfully so some my attest due to the last ten years of post 9/11 movie making, but you would be remiss to skip this second installment of Captain America. We’re no longer in the 1940's folks. The enemy is at our doorstep, in our backyards, and has a very, very big gun aimed right at us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In todays headline filled information society, we’ve all become begrudgingly aware that something, someone at sometime has come stalking us all. It might not be an overt villain like say, the Red Skull from Captain America: The First Avenger, but it might be something more insidious, more ethereal than can be displayed upon a movie screen whose character is torn from the pages of a comic book. This is a villainy threat that we all have a nagging feeling about and are made aware of now almost on a daily basis. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In this latest installment, the writers are proving themselves “hip” to the social wonder-ings we’ve all developed as we watch rapid and dangerous changes take place within our surrounding world. In the guise of villainous bad guys, including corporate, governmental and also from the source of impossible technical fantasy, we’re reminded of that which has been made public on the information highway. This highway, like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, has become rife with “speeding cars” and “tragic accidents”. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Fictional bad guys from the Marvel Universe have become the hidden secret societies of today. Captain America, with his “Gomer Pyle” type affectations, is drawn to the edge of this so-called alternative agenda which has come our way in the form of the argument over how much freedom must be sacrificed in order to maintain social balance. Our world may have no other worlds to conquer for it’s 7 billion inhabitants, except perhaps, it’s own. These bad guys could easily have been subjects of real life speculation such as the Freemasons, the Illuminatti and others who have supposedly directed history behind the scenes for generations now, all in an attempt to bring about their concept of how the world should be. There is even the mention of the now well known concept of a New World Order. What’s frightening is that this NWO may be something we, as ordinary citizens may have no choice about living within, and there will be NO Captain America to pull us back from the edge. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We’ve all become regularly aware of the subject matter being covered here, and the cold reality that it doesn’t just belong to a country somewhere over there who is threatening our life over here, but your next door neighbor just might like the New World Order’s agenda. If you look closely at some of the scenes in this film, and some dang exciting ones there are, you’ll see technical prowess seamlessly placed into the mix between real life and what is done in the computer. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In one scene Captain America is lowered down onto a ship by his comrade the Falcon and then they both start to walk toward the camera. If you are not looking closely, you won’t catch the fact that the landing moment is all computer generated image and we really don’t see the actors walking towards us until a moment later when real life and movie magic are miraculously made into one. If you consider it, it’s kind of a hidden commentary on the subject matter at hand that this sort of thing happens all over this film with the viewer never realizing it. It is a good thing, of course, to not be reminded that I am indeed in a movie, but the film is a product of it’s own times, in technology, social conscience, and the draw of the characterizations of the actors upon the viewing public. The viewer won’t even realize it’s insidious effects whether pro or con.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Captain America: The Winter Soldier</b> lives on the edge of all of our lives in both the large an small segments that affect us all. Marvel is almost genius in its realization of what would make a great movie for today’s viewing public, and one has to wonder just how long and how hard the crew that produced this heartfelt, wickedly smart and thoroughly engaging film, had to work in order to bring us a movie that drops right into the center of our lives. Consider the fact that a movie called Captain America has already broken records around the world before it had even opened in the United States, and you get a real feel for how the whole world has become aware of life on the edge. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">5 0f 5 stars </span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-34883139633673691032014-03-12T16:42:00.000-07:002014-03-12T16:42:34.521-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>A lot of people have given poor reviews </b>for this epic, but I really have to wonder if they are purists or atheists. Surely, this is as familiar as Christmas itself, but is given some dramatic flair and human view points of the "political" positions of the side line principals which is barely ever explored in grander, more "by the book" movies on this subject from the past. I think that slight shift and exploration was a needed and, if i might say, novel approach inside of a story we all know too well. Writing, performances, camera work, and musical score are excellent, so I think those efforts need to be addressed and appreciated as well. The major problem others have told me about are the slight variations on the requirements of certain roles, which are adjusted for dramatic cursive, and not necessarily cannon to the text - and I can agree to a point on this. I'm willing to allow Nicodemus to have more of a role as the "independent" between the two extremes and Judas to have human confusion and regret, if not only for the literary tension and depth that it creates. Such "creative writing" to dress the narrative is not dangerous enough to turn the truth into a lie. Parents may want to ensure that little ones understand that the writers aren't being pin point accurate in some spots, on character and also chronological issues, but this is movie making, and it's not to the point where Jesus has a relationship with Mary Magdelen or some such thing. With that in mind, it IS possible to have an engaging experience with this film making.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">4 out of 5 stars</span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-74656492613263805192013-06-15T18:06:00.004-07:002013-06-15T18:06:49.748-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpIoEVF51p-zYrDl47byo-ZGydKvl_7j_zc3SidLOF_xokFMmeWaI3uyc2s0OBX_TSjcf9yKdDq4HrPScvxaFjlQdjDoiW0cOEgqkYKDQU2Tn5WRTjo7UWDL6PN3tbOg2BkQKcwpxIdO5H/s1600/Man-of-steel-2013-movie+(6).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpIoEVF51p-zYrDl47byo-ZGydKvl_7j_zc3SidLOF_xokFMmeWaI3uyc2s0OBX_TSjcf9yKdDq4HrPScvxaFjlQdjDoiW0cOEgqkYKDQU2Tn5WRTjo7UWDL6PN3tbOg2BkQKcwpxIdO5H/s400/Man-of-steel-2013-movie+(6).jpg" width="308" /></a></div>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b> Man of Steel</b></span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>A film that brings the best aspects of the Justice League type Superman</b>
to the real live screen, but with just as much depth as the 2-D animated
series. Cavill and Adams bring all the best of "actor ability" to their
respective parts as Superman and Lois Lane, directed well enough by
Snyder to show us their earnest positions and motivations, but we fail
to receive much in the way of motivation to root for them. Much as we
want to believe that this is a "first contact" type film, Lois Lane
seems a bit too ready to accept that she's smack dab in the middle of
science fiction type realities that her character can't possibly piece
together while in the midst of facing certain death at every turn.
Cavill's Clark Kent does a bit better with a boy/man who like many of
the audience when they were a child, might often wonder if they are the
only one going through strange life moments that may or may not also
belong to the rest of the surrounding society. Kent comes out of his
bizarre childhood experiences simply befuddled, instead of deeply
psychologically scarred, and then somberly comes to grip with the self
revelation of his own history which would truly take a SUPER man to come
to grips with. We believe his understanding and commitment to his new
found life, but boy Kent just doesn't "fall apart" enough to make us
want to be glad to root for him once he becomes steady in his new found
role. <br /><br />Michael Shannon's General Zod has an eclectic mix of good
and bad points in his own motivation which leaves one actually
considering his position as not necessarily wrong, just different from
Russel Crowe's Jar-El. Zod is actually a hometown hero who is tragically
attempting to maintain the status quo of his society's existence, an
existence he is deeply committed to keeping alive. We can understand his
position to a point, and even consider that perhaps the concept of
genetic engineering, loathed by us Freedom loving Americans, is perhaps
better nipped in the bud than allowed to flourish for centuries, before
we condemn a man who is only attempting to preserve his way of life. We
get his argument position, no matter how seemingly wrong it is, but
we're held back once again from committing to him because of his wanton
disregard for alien life, namely the Earth's alien life, at the expense
of maintaining the dream lost by circumstances beyond his control. <br /><br />Jar-El
and his wife, Lara-Lor Van are tragically accepting of the end of their
lives and their world, and this makes them unfortunately one
dimensional in comparison to the motivation behind Zod and his people.
We CAN root for them... of course.... and the actors bring a sense of
grief and inevitability to their roles which sits wholly on one side of
the issue. Despite this, they are still off the scale of human empathy
to the point where we can commit to feel for them, and the
glod-black-silver color motif of Krypton itself is so befret from color
and visual relevance for the audience that one feels trapped in an 18th
century french mausoleum. <br /><br />The relief comes from the ordinary
humans of Ma and Pa Kent, played with their own understandable
somberness by Kevin Costner and Diane Lane. Superman is one lucky guy to
have come from heroic, self sacrificing parents and then landed on a
world where good and just farmers take him in and give him the stability
he needs to deal with an encroaching reality that would turn most kids
into psychopaths. Earth itself is damned lucky not to have an
unstoppable monster that could have resulted from this scenario, just as
easily as the global protector Superman does become. However, in the
case of the overall film, only Ma and Pa Kent bring to us the soul and
heart we're looking for when supporting the good guys. Costner is great
at keeping his shirt on for his son in explaining his son's position and
then committing to his own prime directive in dealing with Clark's
otherworldly history. Diane Lane proves that beauty has a face at any
age, and her Martha Kent is as open and supporting of her adoptive son
as we would like to expect ANY mom of Earth to be when her child is set
apart from the cumulative standard. These folks we know... we understand
and we wish they were a larger part of the overall principle so that
their heart and soul could leave us "wowed' when the movie is over. <br /><br />This
is simply not the case, however, as the principles already discussed
seem less human in their all too ready acceptance of an incredibly
bizarre plot which is understood to be something earth DOESN'T see
everyday. In the end, after all the amazing fight scenes from the
planet's floor and then out into space and back, we're left with the
feeling we've been eating dessert for lunch. Don't get me wrong here,
there are some amazing set pieces, and wonderful screen shots that would
make classic art posters that few could imagine creating with just a
pen and pencil, but is it enough to be able to knock out the audience
visually? And you can believe it, it does indeed entertain in that
aspect! But it's also hard to ignore the fact that all the explosions
and falling buildings and disaster footage could not have gotten past
the inevitable death toll that followed the destruction of Metropolis.
Superman did have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, but the movie
ignores the carnage that we're all becoming increasingly aware of in our
own everyday reality, and that too is a bit of a cheat. Superman is as
equally wrong in his disregard for the destruction and death that had to
follow this movie's plot as Zod was in wanting to terraform Earth at
the expense of it's inhabitants. But he's Superman, so we forgive him.
.... and really, what choice does he have for most of the events that
happen here? Snyder's movie is indeed a tour def force of movie making, I
just wish I could have gotten my gut more involved in the proceedings.
</span></span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-11320804895531649782013-03-24T17:54:00.001-07:002013-03-24T17:54:22.891-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJRCwssHfutIkm5q9QCkmELVyTorHsxjlRCiCi45uqt5_GEo55zfeJYR4snP3973BU9Wl01j2Otj3xl6pXtlX_1w4okD-jHxVC7Ze6zCZjpId8umTyA2mFNO9YkLga0n1cI2Q4cDramJ5V/s1600/descent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJRCwssHfutIkm5q9QCkmELVyTorHsxjlRCiCi45uqt5_GEo55zfeJYR4snP3973BU9Wl01j2Otj3xl6pXtlX_1w4okD-jHxVC7Ze6zCZjpId8umTyA2mFNO9YkLga0n1cI2Q4cDramJ5V/s400/descent.jpg" width="263" /></a></div>
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<h2>
<span style="background-color: #e69138;"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: #e69138;">My Descent Into Death</span></span></span><span><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span><span><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span></span></b></span></h2>
<br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #e69138;"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">By Howard Storm</span></b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I was frightened, exhausted, cold, and lost. It was clear that the help that these terrible beings had first promised was just a ruse to trick me into following them. I was reluctant to go farther, but any hesitation on my part brought abuse and insults. They told me we were almost there, to shut up and take a few more steps. </span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />A few of the voices attempted a conciliatory tone that amused the others. Among themselves the mood was one of excitement and triumph.</span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />For a long time I had been walking with my gaze down to watch my step. When I looked around I was horrified to discover that we were in complete darkness. The hopelessness of my situation overwhelmed me. I told them I would go no farther, to leave me alone, and that they were liars. I could feel their breath on me as they shouted and snarled insults. Then they began to push and shove me about. I began to fight back. A wild frenzy of taunting, screaming, and hitting ensued. I fought like a wild man. As I swung and kicked at them, they bit and tore back at me. All the while it was obvious that they were having great fun. Even though I couldn’t see anything in the darkness, I was aware that there were dozens or hundreds of them all around me and over me. My attempts to fight back only provoked greater merriment. As I continued to defend myself, I was aware that they weren’t in any hurry to annihilate me. They were playing with me just as a cat plays with a mouse. Every new assault brought howls of cacophonous laughter. They began to tear pieces off of my flesh. To my horror, I realized that I was being taken apart and eaten alive, methodically, slowly, so that their entertainment would last as long as possible. </span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />These creatures had once been human beings.” </span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><b>When I read the rest of the telling of Howard Storm’s story,</b> the above exchange was a hard one to put away. In fact, it has never really left me since I read the account of his trip through death and back some months ago. The very hard thing to accept was that not only were the creatures who were torturing him now some form of demonized humans who, like himself, had found themselves cast into the outer darkness once they had died... but they were his own people. They were people from his own family, some of which he had known and who were sent forward into the dark at the time of his death to retrieve him and bring him to his final destination.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />In a complete reversal of the book <i>“Heaven is for Real”</i>, the story of a trip through what happens when someone dies, related by young Colton Burpo; <i>My Descent Into Death</i> is very much a dark an unflinching re-telling of the trip into the death of an adult atheist who was given a second chance to come back and tell his story. So while one may look with mild curiosity at the story of a small, 3 year old boy, it is much more difficult to ignore a college professor who always thought that those who wanted to believe in God were just suckers who deserved whatever they got in life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Howard Storm found himself at the height of his career, the summit of his human power, with all the answers. He had fought the good fight, he had never broken the law of man to achieve it either. Nope, he had simply taken what worked in the reality of man’s existence and laid out his success accordingly. Then suddenly he found himself far from home and deathly ill. One day he was standing on the mountain, the next he was flat on his back bleeding to death internally with no hope coming from the medical community around him.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><b>Having died in his Paris hospital bed,</b> he suddenly found himself standing there staring down at himself, feeling completely disconnected from the flesh and bone before him. As he says, the body in the bed seemed like some other thing, some other object and not really himself. Next to his bed his wife silently sat, her face etched in quiet disbelief and sadness. Before he knew it, there was a doorway with voices from far away calling to him to join them. It was another world, another existence, which as an atheist he had always denied even existed. There would be no arguments, no parrying back and forth about what may or may not be true, or the scholarly interpretation of facts and imaginings. The grey area he had once lived in was now overwhelmingly black. That blackness was beyond debate. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />I’ve read a lot of the atheist manifesto about what they believe in reference to God and the Bible and even Angles and their existence. It’s really something the extent to which they will go to explain how something like Angles don’t really exist and how Satan was just a created concept out of ancient beliefs to only symbolize other created concepts and so on and so on. And I know in my own heart, that it takes a mighty ego to push aside the <b>FACT</b> that the Bible was written over 1500 years by different authors who all ended up composing the same story from beginning to end, or the <b>FACT</b> that Israel as a nation was scattered over the world for hundreds of years and yet remained a nation, or the <b>FACT</b> that millions and millions of people down throughout history have not only KNOWN God personally, but have changed the world with their lives because of him. It takes a big, big ego to see all that and yet say man only believes in God because his mind is not yet evolved beyond a need for there to be a God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Here, Howard Storm finds himself actually dead, a devout atheist, and even in the throws of vicious attack by those who would probably lead him into an eternal sadistic torturing, he is admonished to pray to God. Finding his situation beyond his ability to argue it away, or even deny it even exists... he is left with no choice but to pray. And pray he does, to his best ability. Nothing he has worked for here on Earth is available to him once he has passed on. No logic. No education. No empathetic reasoning. Only an appeal to God. A God he strove to dismiss all of his life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><b>Given this chance, the reality of this spiritual existence</b>, formally unseen, spreads wide the gap between what he was sure he knew about the stark reality of man’s existence and the inevitable final end he was now being inexorably drawn into. Retrieved by Angels who don’t exist and being guided by a loving savior, Christ himself, who takes him on a journey through this spiritual world which includes a trip to the Holocaust, Storm’s concept of reality is forever shaken to its roots. Brought back from this journey, and now living with us today, I know it must be difficult to understand how atheists think and feel about God, Jesus (Yashua) and Angelic existence and realize that he was once one of those who spat on the love and immense care that God has for each individual born into the flesh upon Earth. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />The lessons he learned from his ordeal and the message he has today for each of us still living in that “grey area” are paramount in their implications regarding how we are to live here in this life and the decisions we make concerning our eternal existence. What does God care about? He cares about people. He cares about you and me. Keep in mind that the risen Christ is risen as an intricate part and at the same time a wholeness of the Godhead who also still retains his human form in which he became a unique creation in the universe. He is people, too. He also understands wholly who and what we are as people, this focus on the hearts of mankind over the immense, incredibly diverse universe, should make everyone hold their collective breath when attempting to “figure out” God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />I could say more, but one needs to read Howard Storm’s book for themselves. And, I certainly hope that when you finally leave this mortal coil, that you will meet your long passed relatives along a beautiful river surrounded by trees whose colors you have never seen, on your way to a party that will never end; and you will not meet them in the tragic way described in this book.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Yashua, the sacred name. </span></span> </div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-52651358219130614652013-02-09T13:33:00.000-08:002013-02-09T13:33:18.318-08:00<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2SmPlZTxZdHIrpuh5qZOiGZSineNRdHw_nNNl3Il-x7MZdvMtFSIMdup-on75wGgkSnVsf2zkZohhNjlkGAjddykOCjB0oZhU9VfPD1ibD_thHUsYafkvjyQh88id_RG4o2akf5DeM6_d/s1600/boiler+room.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2SmPlZTxZdHIrpuh5qZOiGZSineNRdHw_nNNl3Il-x7MZdvMtFSIMdup-on75wGgkSnVsf2zkZohhNjlkGAjddykOCjB0oZhU9VfPD1ibD_thHUsYafkvjyQh88id_RG4o2akf5DeM6_d/s1600/boiler+room.jpeg" /></a><span style="color: #e69138;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Con men: Snake Oil in the New Millennium</span></b></span><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>ne might be amazed in this day and age of high technology</b> and supposedly higher education that con men still exist. Indeed they do, and still today many thousands of people are given a “financial shiv” for even considering the wares that are promoted to the public. Some con men have made a decade of living off of selling junk to the public in the form of fraudulent business operations and made millions, no matter how far fetched the deals may seem to the persons who come across their unscrupulous paths. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">In the movie <i>“Boiler Room”</i>, there is an excellent representation of how just such an operation works. Although in this case the movie is about stock brokers, much of the same motis operandi still applies to the real criminal organizations. It’s a contest to see who wins and who loses. If the salesman gets your money, he wins. Guess who loses? Boiler rooms still do exist, and are often raided by the Feds, sometimes in multiple locations as they move from place to place preying on the public. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And it can all seem rather innocent and legal. They can run ads on television for something like an internet kiosk business opportunity. Investors can make millions they say, with these kiosks set up in high traffic areas like airports and shopping malls. For a small fee, travelers can do business on the kiosk or check email and such. This was of course, way before the technology that we all have today, and was a great idea based on finding a need and filling it.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Interested parties were told that they could make about $30,000 dollars on one of these kiosks. But, of course, this would never happen. Sold at markups that would seem embarrassing, they could have taken in about $17 million in eight months time. Employees in the offices of these boiler rooms often would not even know there was a criminal organization giving them employment. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">When the Federal Police arrest these criminals, they often go to jail for maybe three years or so. And YOU KNOW what happens next.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>The people who run these scams love to hear</b> you say how obvious a scam is, and how they would never fall for it. They love to hear it because you would be surprised at the professional level of those who do fall for them. Just like in the movie, <i>“Boiler Room”</i>; these people don’t want to chat with the so called “stupid” people who fall for “get rich quick” scams. They want people with money. Now and then, of course, there is the young person who has just gotten an inheritance from a dying parent and is fresh for fleecing, but that is small potatoes to the professional scam artist. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">They want persons with $50,000 to invest. Those people are often doctors, lawyers, engineers and college professors. Fraud is a crime that anyone can fall for. All it takes is the right con man and the right victim. The victim with the right buttons to push.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">These are dangerous predators, make no mistake about it. If they set their mind to have you hand over your grandma’s insurance money and her gold coins, they will make it happen. How will you know them? They will usually say one thing every time: “You and I are going to make a lot of money together.”</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>I have written in this blog</b> before about the car dealership industry in my article: <i><b>“Car Dealership Hell”</b></i> and mentioned how the industry actually favors hiring ex-cons because they don’t mind the way car dealerships do business. Personally, having seen the workings from the inside, I am amazed that ANY dealership isn’t outlawed in every state. But, for the boiler room con artist trade, it’s the <b><i>drug user</i></b> who is favored. They actually like the experienced person who will do anything for that next fix, and if that means saying anything and everything to get you to sign over the mortgage from underneath your family’s feet, then so be it.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It begins with the assuming of a social mask, a phoney persona, if you will. In a deceitful acting job the seller comes off as a person that seems legitimate. This is someone who is confident and successful on the phone, even if the reality is that he sleeps in his car.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Just like in the real “sales training”, the workers are told to imagine themselves in the big office, driving the Ferarri. They are the college football hero with trophies on the wall, pictures of their smart kids entering Harvard or Stanford for a bright future. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">They are the big wig everyone wants a piece of, whom everyone wants to know because they figured it all out. They found the magic coin that turned failure into a King’s ransom. The idea is that when you finally ask for the money... and we’re talking hundreds of thousands here, their is no hesitation whatsoever in implying that the client on the phone isn’t going to be making the next entrance to easy street. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Understand this now, what I have said here</b> is the key to understanding how drug addicts can persuade successful professionals into writing ridiculous checks without any investigation of their own. They are charming, forward thinkers with pin striped tailored shirts that have white cuffs and collars and a watch and chain hanging between their vest pockets. They have no conscience or love for their fellow man. They are street corner thugs without a gun, but with a million dollar smile instead.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Amazingly, a business can hire professional actors and run commercials right there on television with the late night movie. I personally know of a scam business that paid for a news segment on a morning show to advertise their “opportunity”. (In the guise of a news item) This was a “personal assistant” business on the outside, but inside it was a “money mule” smuggle. Thousands and thousands of people respond to these advertisements based on the appearance of a famous face, and it’s all a sham. The poor actors are paid for their read and their presence for the veil of legitimacy and then they leave when the contract is fulfilled. (Imagine having been a kid who just wanted to act, only to grow up and finding this kind of thing a reality.)</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">So how can this happen? How can successful smart people get conned so easily? Well, its all about the cloud of emotion. If you think you can’t fall for a scam, just be careful not to underestimate your emotions. We all have emotional needs, and they make us vulnerable. Fraud victims can’t separate their emotional needs from financial decisions and that is what makes them easy prey. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Getting a person emotionally confused is the first step to putting you under the “spell”.</b> Yes, salesman everywhere know this is a sales tactic. Just try to talk to a car salesman’s customer when he is getting something from his office, he might pull a gun on you for messing with his “magic spell”. It’s called “under the ether” when they have a client in the fuzzy state where one doesn’t know which way is up. Once you are fuzzy and emotional, or in the case of the car salesman; once you have been in the dealership for eight hours and are worn out, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. You are fodder for the slaughter. (By the way, never give your keys to the salesman so he can move your car for you, they will throw them on the roof to keep you there until you buy.) </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Need and greed are two of their most powerful tools for making you their victim. Once salesmen begin to engage you in the personal questions mode, the game has begun. I have had salesmen tell me that this is not true, right in the middle of a sale as if he had not even started on the presentation yet, but I know better. The sale begins with “hello.” <i><b>Don’t you ever believe anything else.</b></i> The conceit is that no one anywhere has ever had sales training and no one knows how it works or what they are doing, but if you’re reading this, you do now. So don’t be bullied into believing I am just a sore loser or some such thing. This is the truth.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i><b>Once your conversation sounds like a first date, you are being sold.</b></i> “How many kids do you have?” “Are you paid off on your house?” Even scam artists know where to look for button pushing in your life. Once you start thinking about problem solving and NOT whether or not something is a scam, they have you right where they want you.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">If one uses logic to deal with the sale, one would walk away every time. Your hard earned money is better off in your pocket or bank account than in some ”opportunity” presented by a complete stranger. But in a world where we are constantly fed “Nihilistic” philosophy; that is... that man is alone in the universe.... the more we tend to want to believe that the only fix to our problems comes from ourselves and the quick acquisition of fortune when it suddenly appears.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The other side of it is the promise of huge sums of money. For many people this is a life long dream, and they are already in love with any idea that looks like it can deliver. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Older people get scammed all the time</b> because they are sitting on a nice, hefty, life long build up. The emotional needs of an elderly person are much more fragile. Ever ask how the grand kids are? You know what comes next. They have some real world concerns, things like having a fixed income or an economy that is leaving them behind... not to mention a world that places them on the fringe until they leave the world for good. With these folks, button pushing is easy and the tiger traps don’t have to be too deep.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">One may not realize it, but there are traps everywhere, hiding in plain sight. Much of what you see in oil and gas deals, or bogus business opportunities, or even gold coin offers; are really just tools for <b><i>stealing your hard earned money</i></b> by convincing you to turn it over. Men are usually the biggest targets for these kinds of flim flam deals. Man is full of ego and “alpha male” type psychology, and that is all driven by their emotions. Insecurity is a silent partner, and “never feeling adequate enough” is the guy who lives in the guest room.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As I have said here, the sale begins with hello. If the guy on the phone can get you to do <i>something</i>, then he’s only a few steps away from getting you to do <i>anything</i>. If you are even directed to just write down the salesman’s name, because “it’s a name you will never want to forget”, then you have let the wolf in the door. Telling the guy you’ll just grab a pen and be right back is a big part of it, but it’s HOW you do it that tips the guy off. Rolling over emotionally and turning your brain off will cause you to come across as submissive. They have a sixth sense when this happens, and you are already sold, and sold hard... you just don’t know it yet.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Getting emotional quickly and forgetting the logic of it all is like placing the word “sucker” on your forehead. And conversely, if you investigate too strongly, ask too many questions or want to review with a lawyer first, the guy on the phone will probably hang up. It happens this way in car dealerships, too. If you insist too hard on having things that fit YOUR budget, and not the dealership’s profit, they just might angrily tell you to get lost. I’m putting that nicely for my readers. You had better not pull out a calculator either, or you will incur the wrath of hell. But, think of it this way, those are sure fire exit strategies if you ever need them. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Suckers don’t ask questions... they answer anything the sales guy asks. They don’t read paperwork, they don’t look for why the offer is a scam... they want the salesman to babysit them. You can always ask them for verification of the offers productivity, but you’ll be deferred to do so until after the call is over. At that time it will be too late. Funny thing about people is they often just want to hear the sales guy confirm legitimacy, rarely do they ever do their own homework. Scammers <i>know this</i>, and they count on the public’s “lemming” type thinking.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>I know there are many of you who have seen</b> the ads for reverse mortgages on TV. There are some older actors who seem legit and remind the home owner of his or her younger years, but these too can very easily be only a scam. If your home is worth $500,000 and you have paid it off, then you have $500,000 in the bank. Scammers know this, and they spend a lot of time just coming up with entire promotions to make you think about situations you would probably never consider otherwise, to loosen up your “invisible” money. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Why leave that equity for the grand kids, when you could turn it liquid now and invest in my dried up oil well? Wouldn’t a thriving oil well pay off better than the equity quietly sitting in your home value? They want you to think so. And remember, those commercial actors often know nothing about the veracity of the offer, they are just doing an acting job. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Not everything is a scam, of course, but often times the deal is a better one for the salesman than it is for you. I simply don’t understand how anyone can live with themselves working in sales. I really don’t know. Tell your grandma never to sign anything that some stranger gives her for taking out a loan with the bank and making investments. Make sure there is always someone who knows the legalities of any agreement before pen goes to paper. I say this because, going to the lawyer afterwards will get you invited to the door quicker than you can imagine. No one can really help you once you have signed to an agreement. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It isn’t only the real estate market which can be operated in an unregulated fashion, much to the hurt of the relator industry, but also the coin industry goes unregulated. Gold and silver coins can be sold today at stupid prices and their total lack of value won’t be discovered until years later when the trail has gone cold. I am not talking small change here either, one could pay around $25,000 dollars for those “once in a life time rare coins”, only to find they are worth only a few thousand dollars a decade later.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Just try and remember folks, in a fallen world, there are many people who do the will of their father, and that will can be very harmful to you and your loved ones. Be smart with money, learn discipline and teach it to your kids early. There are sharks in the water.... and they want your life blood.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">...and oh yes, one more thing. NEVER finance your car through a dealership. NEVER! Listen to me, not them. You’ll thank me.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNYsAH091l5MFAUZI-ch-XbtSmzl-KhsSXt6hWHryIMkV6YNMnKP91rmtQ6-9fuUjv7tY-11baxIjEa4TQPpK3Y8aOk9j3ychaNHKdB8C4KlW6IhDMRnt7hLGg6gNCtC0MZFHAa-kq1HfN/s1600/scam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNYsAH091l5MFAUZI-ch-XbtSmzl-KhsSXt6hWHryIMkV6YNMnKP91rmtQ6-9fuUjv7tY-11baxIjEa4TQPpK3Y8aOk9j3ychaNHKdB8C4KlW6IhDMRnt7hLGg6gNCtC0MZFHAa-kq1HfN/s640/scam.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ah! There he is!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span>Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-57072402176946508402013-01-10T19:22:00.000-08:002013-01-10T19:22:38.857-08:00<div style="text-align: left;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH4Pn0p5e2w3c86o0Aj3es2ez0j4m0Vbv-vZ_bnJRaLR8AjhcgC-prLFzwtkcu0erGEMu84RLnW_l6FjL1IGaP9VhhAm79arQexWW8qXhUxAohxIhUY2HdecK5Nh_ooqauvSt9GBzHxZy3/s1600/jeremiah+3+fx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH4Pn0p5e2w3c86o0Aj3es2ez0j4m0Vbv-vZ_bnJRaLR8AjhcgC-prLFzwtkcu0erGEMu84RLnW_l6FjL1IGaP9VhhAm79arQexWW8qXhUxAohxIhUY2HdecK5Nh_ooqauvSt9GBzHxZy3/s320/jeremiah+3+fx.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Though this section is devoted to the Babylonians, the Assyrians </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">deported </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">thousands of captives </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">after their defeat of the Judeans </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">in 700B.C. Here a group of </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">men, women </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">and children are </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">leaving </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Lachish after it was sacked and burned </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">by Sennacherib's army. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Some road in </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">ox </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">drawn carts, but others were </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">forced to walk</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> hundreds </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">of miles to Assyria. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">A sudden </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">plague stopped them at Jerusalem, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">but in this campaign </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Assyria captured 46 towns</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #e69138;"><u><i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> Jeremiah:</span></span></i></u></span></b></h2>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #e69138;"><u><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">Anguished Prophet </span></i></u></span></span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #e69138;"><u><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">of Disaster </span></i></u></span></span></b></h2>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #e69138; font-size: large;"><u><i>Part 3</i></u></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The First Exiles </b><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">to Babylonia</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span>hen the Babylonian forces first marched</b> on Judah in 604 B.C., King Jehoiakim gave up without so much as a struggle and paid heavy tribute to Nebuchadnezzar. In 601, the Egyptians won a major battle against Babylon and forced them to retreat back to their homeland. Jehoiakim made a foul error in rebelling against the Babylonian overlords at that time. The Babylonian king, still rebuilding his army, sent several vassal states against Judah before finally sending his own army to finish the job. <br /><br />Before any action could be taken against the imminent attack, Jehoiakim died without warning. His son, the 18 year old Jehoiachin, was thrust into the role of King just in time to face the legions that were surrounding the capital. After three months of siege the city surrendered on March 15, 597.<br /><br />Many treasures from the temple were carted away by the invaders, though the capital was hardly effected. Jehoiachin and all his peoples; the nobles, the soldiers and influential citizens, skilled craftsmen and “celebrities”, were all taken away as prisoners to Babylon. Zedekiah, the Kings uncle, was installed as the ruler pro-temp. He was a weak leader, one who was constantly being influenced by those who wanted a return to independence from Babylon.<br /><br />Jeremiah, watching these things unfold, demanded that the nation accept its fate in payment for violating the Lord’s covenant. He then, as is obvious, became even more unpopular to the citizenry at large. He was regarded as turncoat by many. To dramatize the need to submit to God’s judgement of Judah, he wore a yoke around his neck for months in the streets and in the temple precincts. <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSiwRNdjuZuX1Sw8foWdZLCuEgNwG-OU0JIfTbvSkaTYR9uy0ewJ2Ehcscm2z1-Dwd_Auo0atEUc_Jd-tkkGC8Ad-pW-KntcPARbSyWC4GVQLlNvavAgw8igQymO8avN9W0D7ut9K5loF/s1600/jeremiahC002+fx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSiwRNdjuZuX1Sw8foWdZLCuEgNwG-OU0JIfTbvSkaTYR9uy0ewJ2Ehcscm2z1-Dwd_Auo0atEUc_Jd-tkkGC8Ad-pW-KntcPARbSyWC4GVQLlNvavAgw8igQymO8avN9W0D7ut9K5loF/s400/jeremiahC002+fx.jpg" width="350" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Babylon's Ishtar Gate guarded the northern entrance to the city.<br />It lead to the Processional way, a road that passed in front <br />of Nebuchadnezzar's palace. Brick was the standard building<br /> material in a land almost without ANY stone. </td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /><b>Zedekiah and his compliment were one day plotting </b>a revolt when Jeremiah sent them all a message. His message from God went like this: “If any nation will not serve the King of Babylon, I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine and with pestilence.”<br /><br />“Bring your necks under the yoke of Babylon, and serve the King and his people.” Whatever may have been the case for Zedekiah’s next action, cannot be fully said, however, Zedekiah did indeed abandon the conspiracy. <br /><br />Jeremiah then sent word to the Judean exiles in Babylon telling them to submit to the rule of the Babylonians, for it was God’s will that they remain for seventy years after which they would be restored to Judah with all their fortunes and peoples from all the nations. This did, of course mean, in terms of generations, that only the children would return to Judah and those taken away had been exiled for good. <br /><br /><b>Back in Judah, nationalist factions continued</b> to press for independence. Nine years went by, and Zedekiah finally gave in to them. Ignoring Jeremiah’s warnings, he declared independence. Nebuchadnezzar, now at full strength, bulldozed through Judah. Azekah, Lachish and Jerusalem were the only cities left at one point, and put up a mighty resistance, but to no avail. In December of 589, Babylonian soldiers hammered at the walls of Jerusalem.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxkeIZZ-wnrT39i3TGoOE8jroF_38OmJSq60exuqC8s97FVpTE-1cZZOWwbmnwJs5Zei1JaGL0cMBrVXeS1Rycsnix-_QuccEgG39kfw61Z11fpu1puuBr53TiL0Am2CG_sJz08HJTicpq/s1600/jeremiah+babylon+fx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxkeIZZ-wnrT39i3TGoOE8jroF_38OmJSq60exuqC8s97FVpTE-1cZZOWwbmnwJs5Zei1JaGL0cMBrVXeS1Rycsnix-_QuccEgG39kfw61Z11fpu1puuBr53TiL0Am2CG_sJz08HJTicpq/s640/jeremiah+babylon+fx.jpg" width="563" /></a></td></tr>
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Jewish exiles wept for their lost city by the waters of Babylon. No doubt they felt strongly that they had betrayed their ancestry and destroyed the legacy their forefather's had suffered and died for. In this painting derived from excavations, the Euphrates river runs past Babylon's western wall. A temple of Marduk and a huge ziggurat, (South America?) dominated the city's enclosure. Already 1000 years old when Nebuchadnezzar was king, this 300 foot tower could have been the Tower of Babel </div>
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One does have to wonder though, how a people can expect to reach heaven </div>
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with a base that isn't the breadth of a mountain like Mount Everest. </div>
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Zedekiah sent a delegation to Jeremiah to ask for counsel from on high. Jeremiah’s response was, for all intents and purposes, a snubbing of the King and his wishes. He was told that only those who surrender will live. All those who resist are destined for death. The King of Babylon will purify the land with fire, he told the King, and his own anguish at the news sent Jeremiah weeping once again.<br /><br />Surprisingly, an Egyptian army invaded Judah and the Babylonians withdrew from Jerusalem to deal with the new threat. Undaunted, Jeremiah continued to press for surrender from the people. When he tried to leave the city to visit his homeland, he was arrested as a traitor and brought before the ruling council, who had him beaten and thrown in a dungeon. He was there for three days before King Zedekiah sent for him. There in his home, the two secretly spoke. <br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPN3OipevA24vxLadjGPXEBIck-Hd5vel0WFi5LXziDOo7DjCv42AMwR1NaH4FWYeYrIaSynylmYBJIUIB99wAemHoZ1Qoz6o9J9fAuUlZRyUNTXNiCnY3Ff9Sj6LNcUHw63vdTeBrlm15/s1600/jaremiah+babylon+2+fx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPN3OipevA24vxLadjGPXEBIck-Hd5vel0WFi5LXziDOo7DjCv42AMwR1NaH4FWYeYrIaSynylmYBJIUIB99wAemHoZ1Qoz6o9J9fAuUlZRyUNTXNiCnY3Ff9Sj6LNcUHw63vdTeBrlm15/s320/jaremiah+babylon+2+fx.jpg" width="281" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Excavation of the city of Babylon</td></tr>
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Zedekiah pleaded with him for a word from the Lord. Jeremiah flatly informed him that he would be turned over to the King of Babylon. Zedekiah reduced Jeremiah’s sentence to a mere house arrest despite his disappointment at the bad news Jeremiah always seemed to have.<br /><br /><b>The respite lasted almost two years</b> before Babylon picked up where they left off before leaving to deal with the Egyptians. Jeremiah’s renewed insistence on surrender resulted in the people calling for his execution as a seditionist, and the King agreed, placing him in a deep cistern filled with mud to await his demise.<br /><br />An Ethiopian named Ebed-melech, pleaded for Jeremiah’s life and the King, ever wavering, had Jeremiah lifted from the cistern. A few days later he once again inquired of Jeremiah if indeed there was any hope for the city. Jeremiah would no longer cooperate under the usual terms and refused to answer unless his life was sworn to be safe from the King and his peoples. With that promise made, Jeremiah told him once more, “Surrender and your life will be spared. The city will not be burned and the people will live.”<br /><br /><b>Zedekiah simply could not bring himself</b> to come under the direction of Jeremiah’s prophetic warnings and the siege continued. In the city, food supplies dwindled, water became scarce and suffering increased in leaps and bounds. Jeremiah, still imprisoned, was given a loaf of bread each day until all the bread was gone. The summer heat was now an added enemy of Jerusalem as the smell of rotted corpses filled the air. Babylonian soldiers made ready outside the gates with giant battering rams, ready to knock down the walls of the slowly dying city. The next step, as one can imagine, was the people of the city turning to cannibalism. <br /><br />In July of 587, the walls were breached and Babylonian warriors flooded into the city. Zedekiah ran from the city with some of his people but was soon re-captured near Jericho. In Riblah, north of Damascus, he was forced to watch his sons executed. He was then blinded and taken in chains to Babylon where he died in prison.<br /><br /><b>As was true to the word of Jeremiah,</b> Nebuchadnezzar had the city razed and looted. The buildings and walls were flattened and the people were slaughtered and left to decompose on the open ground. To our day and time, the ninth day of Ab, the Jewish people have remembered this day as a day of mourning.<br /><br />Jeremiah was now about 60 years old and spared by the King of Babylon for his insistence on surrender. Brought to Ramah, about 2 miles north of Jerusalem, a Babylonian official told him that he had free reign to do as he pleased, to go where he desired. His choice was to remain in his homeland. The government of Judah was now relocated to Mizpah, about 8 miles north of Jerusalem. Gedaliah, a former prime minister, was now appointed leader of the government. To Mizpah Jeremiah went, to his home, but with a broken heart over the fate of Judah. <br /><br />Things went well under Gedaliah for quite a few years until a "rabble rouser" named Ishmael began making noise of a resistance with the King of Ammon. IN 582, during a banquet, Ishmael’s group turned on Gedaliah and his people and slaughtered them. The next day they moved forward and made many citizens their prisoners, including Jeremiah. <br /><br /><b>A Captain Johanan and his group of loyalists,</b> crushed the rebel forces but allowed Ishmael and his people to escape. Babylonian retaliation was now a very real fear. “What to do now?” Everyone wondered. Flight to Egypt seemed the best recourse. Jeremiah prayed for ten days for guidance and then advised them all to remain in Judah. Once again, however, no one listened to him. Johanan’s group fled to Egypt dragging Jeremiah along with them. (One would have to wonder just how many things have to come to pass for a prophet before anyone pays him any <br />heed.) <br /><br />With the murder of the Babylonian officials by the rebels yet un-avenged, Babylon returned to carry away still more of the citizens who yet remained. A Samarian governor was placed in charge and settlers from Edom, Ammon and Moab moved in to merge with the remaining Judeans. Thus the Israelite social order and religious identity were all but swallowed up. <br /><br /><b>Jeremiah never saw his beloved land again.</b> He strove to keep the Israelite identity alive among the people who now lived in Egypt and may or may not have died in that country. Some say it was Jeremiah who sailed a boat to the eastern shores of what is now known as Ireland with the young red headed princess of the King of Israel known as “Tea Tephi”, in the line of King David and that is where one of the lost ten tribes has now spread forth throughout northern Europe, but that is perhaps a story for another time... another day.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNGMdc57O7KkHoAp8i0OhMRlFuujes-Sg3Ia8dUBDZSL_LCLuh2mGXX4ysWhXZTHtg-z3XUX5OcItS2d_-t2NiNmHhG8yZd8yCLTD6a1VFNNgvkQJD_b6LZZUoU_lVMWDYGAOukJAFBNOK/s1600/tea+tephi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNGMdc57O7KkHoAp8i0OhMRlFuujes-Sg3Ia8dUBDZSL_LCLuh2mGXX4ysWhXZTHtg-z3XUX5OcItS2d_-t2NiNmHhG8yZd8yCLTD6a1VFNNgvkQJD_b6LZZUoU_lVMWDYGAOukJAFBNOK/s1600/tea+tephi.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tea Tephi?</td></tr>
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Jeremiah’s prophecies gave renewed hope to those carried away in exile and those dispersed throughout the world. <br /><br />“Surely the little ones of their flock shall be dragged away. Surely their fold shall be appalled at their fate. At the sound of the capture of Babylon the earth shall tremble, and Babylon’s cry shall be heard among the nations.”<br /><br />“Israel and Judah have not been forsaken by their God, the Lord of hosts... Babylon must fall for the slain of Israel. As for Babylon have fallen the slain of all the Earth.” </span></span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-44418820131184651172012-12-25T10:46:00.001-08:002012-12-25T10:46:20.063-08:00<h2>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Jeremiah</span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> <b> </b></span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Anguished Prophet of Doom Part 2</b></span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /><b>In the early days of Jehoiakim’s reign,</b> around 608 BC, Jeremiah was instructed to stand in the Lord’s house and proclaim the message coming forth. This was September or October during the Feast of the Tabernacles. Jeremiah must have been a part of the crowd that followed the procession of believers into the temple. The priests circled the altar and the worshippers waved their lulabs (ceremonial plumes woven of different types of plant leaves) and joined in the singing. <br /><br />Jeremiah would have interrupted the ceremony in order to protest the false orthodoxy. “The Lord says to amend your ways.” He told them. “I will let you live in this place if you will cease your murder, adultery, Baal worship, and idol worship and come before me and declare that you have been delivered! Has this house become a den of robbers in the Lord’s eyes?”<br /><br />As Jeremiah went further to predict the destruction of the temple itself, the angry mob; still upset that Josiah’s previous reforms had only led to Egypt’s conquest of Judah, seized Jeremiah and proclaimed his death. Court officials rushed to the scene and held an inquiry. The priest told the inquiry that Jeremiah deserved death for prophesy against the city. Jeremiah basically replied that it was God who had sent him to speak of the fate coming to the temple and the city. He also told them that if he was killed, it would bring innocent blood upon the city and its inhabitants. The officials released him.<br /><br /><b>Even though he had been almost killed</b> due to his bold prophecy, he was again threatened in his own home town of Anathoth, and warned not to “prophesy in the name of the Lord!” Intrepidly, however, Jeremiah continued on. His next destination was the “burning place” of human sacrifice.... if you can believe that there was such a place among the house of Israel. Topheth was located in the Valley of Hinnom, and was known for its ritualistic murder/worship. The elders and priest there were either a group of pagans from some unknown cult or else they were of a corrupted form of Judaism, it is not clear, but Jeremiah felt they had to be confronted. In their presence Jeremiah broke and earthenware flask and told them that the Lord had called for their destruction as the flask had been destroyed, and that they would never be mended.<br /><br />Jeremiah went all over the area telling the people that their days were numbered because the Lord was fed up with their “stiff necks” and deaf ears to his word. The high priest, Pashur, was enraged to hear the prophesy and flogged Jeremiah where he stood. He was then placed in the stocks at the Benjamin gate. Released the next morning, Jeremiah told Pashur that his name before God was not Pashur, but “Terror on all sides” and Pashur was to be captured and dragged off to Babylon like the rest of people, and there he would die and be buried.<br /><br />Jeremiah often found his life a shambles because of his mission and he cried out to God in anguish on many occasions. “Oh, Lord, I have become a laughingstock all the day long. I am continually mocked for crying out VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION. But if I fail to speak the Lord’s truth, there is a fire in my heart and burning in my bones and I am so weary from it that I cannot fail to proclaim the Lord’s words.”<br /><br /><b>King Jehoiakim ignored Jeremiah</b>, no doubt he remembered the interruption of his coronation ceremony. Taxing the already strained finances of the people, the King built himself another palace with forced labor in the south of Jerusalem. Jeremiah condemned him for building a house to himself with the people’s money and forcing them to work for nothing. <br /><br />In 605 bc, the Babylonian’s under Nebuchadnezzar crushed Pharaoh Neco’s forces in northern Syria. King Jehoaikim then became the servant of Nebuchadnezzar and paid him tribute. However, Nebuchadnezzar’s father the King had died soon after and it was necessary for Nebuchadnezzar to return to the throne and be crowned. <br /><br /><b>In the fourth year of King Jehoiakim,</b> Jeremiah was instructed by God to write down all the words concerning the nations of Israel and Judah and also all the nations. “I whish to forgive them their iniquity and sin, but they must first turn from their evil ways, and they must be given fair warning afore hand.” The Lord told him.<br /><br />Jeremiah hired Baruch, a scribe, to take down all of his most important sermons and oracles. These were taken down on a scroll and in the future Baruch would become Jeremiah’s personal secretary. These events happened before 605 B.C., early in the year before, when the Babylonians had returned and were advancing against Ashkelon. Jeremiah had proclaimed a fast against the Babylonian activity and he told Baruch to read the scroll in presence of all to hear during the fast. In the temple he read the scroll aloud. When the court noblemen heard the words of Jeremiah, they knew they must report this to the King and they told Jeremiah and Baruch to go and hide themselves and let no one know where you are.<br /><br />The King was then read the scroll while arming himself near a brazier in his quarters. Each time a portion was read to the King, he took that part and burned it in the brazier until the whole scroll was destroyed. He then sent for the arrest of Jeremiah. Jeremiah, however, now well hidden once again dictated the Word of God to Baruch and this time added much that was not in the first draft. <br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><i>more on this next time, and I promise it will be soon.... it’s important to finish the current postings on Jeremiah. </i></span> </span></span></div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-71854404167570760322012-12-05T10:43:00.000-08:002012-12-05T10:43:01.841-08:00The SnowmanHello, please come by and see an animated story time for little kiddies called The Snowman, it features original voices, music and animation. They will love it and .... maybe you will too!<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwZVWitdYBI&feature=share&list=UUE-vObP0JkUbiQ1bB_tTjNA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwZVWitdYBI&feature=share&list=UUE-vObP0JkUbiQ1bB_tTjNA</a><br />
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ThanxHubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-8309409760803509052012-09-21T14:43:00.000-07:002012-09-21T14:43:25.260-07:00Jeremiah: The Anguished Prophet of Disaster<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Assyrian siege of Lachish</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>The
warnings of Judah’s last prophet fail to prevent the fall of Jerusalem
and the exile of its people. With this calamity, the kingdom ends and
the city is all but deserted.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Jeremiah:</b></span></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>The Anguished Prophet </b></span></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>of Disaster </b></span></span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>It was Jeremiah’s unfortunate job</b> to predict misfortune. It was then to his great distress to have to witness the outcome. Solomon’s glorious temple is destroyed and the kingdom of Judah is taken away to Babylonian captivity. <br /><br />His ministry spanned the period from 627 b.c. to 580 b.c. and he was rejected and given short shrift by those he would save. He was often lonely and filled with sorrow, but his life is a testament to faith in God even in times of great distress. <br /><br />Born in the village of Anathoth, the top of a broad hill about two miles outside of Jerusalem, it was a place set aside for the priestly ministry in the times of Joshua and ever since that time the priests had insisted on strict adherence to the laws of Moses. Jeremiah’s father, Hilkia, was one of those priests and his son was given deep respect for the laws of Moses. Its no guess that Jeremiah believed he belonged to a tradition that went back in time with his ancestors and was closer to them than what was currently happening to the people of Jerusalem of his day. <br /><br /><b>Jeremiah lived in a wilderness</b> which offered no relief from a brutal sun. The land was also quite brutal, containing many ragged cliffs, huge boulders and also a 3000 foot cliff drop to the Dead Sea. Images of the desolate area would be burned in the young boys mind, and would surface in his writings. To the south, he could see the shining city of Jerusalem, a place filled with people he would love and chastise. <br /><br />At home, Jeremiah was probably shielded from the crazies of Jerusalem. A small child when King Manasseh died, he was witness to the evils that had corrupted the people and had also become a way of life. For quite some time, Jerusalem had been a vassal of Assyria, and was obligated to honor their gods. But Manasseh did far more than pay token homage. He didn’t prevent the worship of Yahweh, but he did re-open local heathen shrines, installed pagan altars and even restarted the practice of human sacrifice. Ishtar, the Assyrian god of love and war, was placed in the temple in statue form. In her name the priests and male worshipers practiced ritual sex with “holy” prostitutes who lived in the temple. This was a practice that was supposed to promote fertility in the crops, the herds and the families. Statues to the sun god, Shamash, the moon-god, Sin, and other deities representing heavenly bodies were erected within the temple courtyards. Although sorcery was forbidden, wizards and enchanters were flourishing. Those who opposed the King’s decrees were executed or driven underground. <br /><br /><b>In 640 b.c. the King’s son and successor,</b> Amon, was murdered. His eight year old son, Josiah, was then placed on the throne. As Josiah matured, the surrounding nations of Babylonia and other vassal states began to challenge Assyria’s waning power, and Josiah himself found strength to assert some resistance. In 628 b.c. he defied his Assyrian overlords and launched a religious reformation to clean Jerusalem of its pagan influences. The shrines were destroyed and the temple was cleaned, and too, the temple priests and prostitutes were executed. <br /><br />Jeremiah was called about the year 627 b.c. when he was 17 or 18 years old. <br /><br /><i>“Now the word of the Lord came to me saying: Before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you prophet to the nations.”</i><br /><br />Then I said, <i>“Ah, Lord God! I do not know how to speak for I am only a boy!”</i><br /><br />But the Lord said to me, <i>“ Do not say I am only a boy, for to all those I will send you, you will go. Whatever I command you, you will speak. Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth, and said to me, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.”</i><br /><br /><b>God then revealed to him</b> the impending doom of Judah. <i>“Out of the north evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.... and I will utter my judgements against them, for all their wickedness in forsaking me: they have burned incense to other gods, and worshiped the works of their own hands.”</i> The divine voice warned Jeremiah not to be dismayed by the persecution to come: <i>“They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail. I am the Lord, and I am with you.</i>" God also ordered him NOT to take a wife, for Judah faced destruction and family lines would perish. From the outset, Jeremiah faced loneliness, implacable enemies and his country’s bitter destiny.<br /><br /><b>It was with great heaviness of heart</b> that Jeremiah took up his calling. Like those before him he admonished the shoppers in the marketplace and the crowds in the temple courtyards. He would join the worshipers and deliver his grim warnings dressed in a long white robe of the priest. He was young and full of anger, and must have presented quite the spectacle. <br /><br />Hear the word of the Lord, he would say. <i>“As a thief is shamed when caught, so shall the House of Israel be shamed! Those who worship wood and stone and call it their father who gave them birth! Be they Kings, Princes or stone cutters! All will be shamed!” </i><br /><br />Before long he would become quite the well known thorn in the side of the people despite their ridicule. <i>“They bend their tongue like a bow.... falsehood has grown strong in the land!”</i><br /><br /><b>Josiah’s attempt to revive Judaism</b> gained impetus around 622 b.c. with the discovery of an old law book now called Deuteronomy, outlining the theology of the Mosaic covenant. In line with the precepts, all sacrificial ceremony was now to be performed inside the temple. The clergy were invited to participate in this ritual, but most of them would refuse. <br /><br />The reforms met with little support, the people suspected political motivation of the King and also feared Assyrian retaliation. At best, the people kept everything that had been doing and only added the King’s wishes into the mix. <br /><br /><b>Meanwhile Assyria was failing on all fronts.</b> The Babylonians destroyed the capital of Nineveh in 612 b.c. and marked the virtual end of Assyrian power. Josiah, committed to renewal, carried his reformation into the old kingdom of Israel. Now free of Assyrian influence, he extended his reach as far north as Galilee and then west to the Mediterranean sea. <br /><br /><b>Looking to create a buffer</b> between aggressive Babylonia and his own empire, Pharaoh Neco of Egypt decided to aid Assyria. Knowing that an Egyptian-Assyrian alliance would interfere with an independent Israel, Josiah led an army to intercept and delay the Egyptians. He met them in battle about 50 miles northwest of Jerusalem, in the place known as Megiddo. He was mortally wounded there and died in transit to the capital. His forces were then badly routed by the Egyptians. Judah then fell temporarily under Egyptian domination. His son Jehoahaz the II was then crowned King. Within three months, Neco carried the new King off to Egypt, placing his brother Jehoiakim on the throne. The new ruler, having no respect for Josiah’s reforms, threw open the doors wide to paganism once again. <br /><br />more next time </span> </div>
Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-22311543792232768682012-01-02T09:48:00.000-08:002012-01-02T09:49:45.025-08:00Reviews by Hubie Goode: Chronological Bible<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFh-bqE3EpOkRDv-4nstvbzsXYIMvBG6jFkQAd7-5uPuZ-7_ifg-C9BhhGYN84WeyEkcdumZYbJS5bmmcuj7bM1197gu40K-xzh0iP5ZTJtFkgVhj-UrrJlWQKSsTkm3xLFxrCo3rQ8Ypu/s1600/Bible+Cover081.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFh-bqE3EpOkRDv-4nstvbzsXYIMvBG6jFkQAd7-5uPuZ-7_ifg-C9BhhGYN84WeyEkcdumZYbJS5bmmcuj7bM1197gu40K-xzh0iP5ZTJtFkgVhj-UrrJlWQKSsTkm3xLFxrCo3rQ8Ypu/s400/Bible+Cover081.jpg" width="277" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><strong>The Daily Bible</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><strong>Chronological Edition</strong></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Well, Happy New Year everyone! I'm looking forward to a brand new year full of blessing and I wish the same for all of you as well. Let's start it off with an exercise in daily Bible reading, spending time in God's word and keeping him in front of us. This is the Daily Bible put in chronological order, or the order in which things happened (as best as can be expected). I started this last year and was very blessed by the way this issue was done.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">The compiler, <strong><em>F. LaGard Smith</em></strong>, has put together a Bible you may have never seen put together quite like this before and I found it to be a great way to go through the word. I highly recommend it. However, it starts now, with the beginning of the year so you had best get cracking on getting your issue. I don't have much more to say on this other than that it is one of the best Bibles I have ever read. Get one for yourself!</span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Happy New Year, Hubie</span>Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257518614356316254.post-10976474001197116532011-11-11T11:54:00.000-08:002011-11-11T11:54:37.106-08:00Reviews by Hubie Goode: The Life and Times of King David part 5<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivN3KzmHtpoRQMFk59Yh6Yt6P2dRqA3Ybg3W2TQ6mepgjES3max41XuPIlqzd2xHh6R7seEkdml89AhFaR51DHvthfp7oPW5juJwahAdXjFHdyOqpjftz3x3h8yIWM0YpWFICyCj_L0KgY/s1600/kingdavidlion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivN3KzmHtpoRQMFk59Yh6Yt6P2dRqA3Ybg3W2TQ6mepgjES3max41XuPIlqzd2xHh6R7seEkdml89AhFaR51DHvthfp7oPW5juJwahAdXjFHdyOqpjftz3x3h8yIWM0YpWFICyCj_L0KgY/s400/kingdavidlion.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>The Life and </b></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Times of King</b></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>David</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b>part 5</b></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span>hen king David finally learned about his son’s insurrection</b>, it was almost too late. His court had become divided over his leadership and the people had formed a social movement in favor of Absalom. Now aged and an unlikely competitor for the younger man, David was forced to flee his capital, across the Jordan to Mahanaim. Several hundred of his loyal followers went with him as he made his way east. These consisted of his servants, his runners, his soldiers and his household. However, his priests Abiathar and Zadok remained behind to report on Absalom’s actions.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijojyRPetTp5mVXCMyD5OuNprUGGsOFZi3wOh_wLe-rYal86N6A-6qqljnIaB3JQPAvb9ZOgOPZQapO53apVp_ZBJgDdqGaprk_d1wjQcd72dEnmELwWMIrEpoOIrPa_Pze_NhkakO1kZM/s1600/absaloms+pillar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijojyRPetTp5mVXCMyD5OuNprUGGsOFZi3wOh_wLe-rYal86N6A-6qqljnIaB3JQPAvb9ZOgOPZQapO53apVp_ZBJgDdqGaprk_d1wjQcd72dEnmELwWMIrEpoOIrPa_Pze_NhkakO1kZM/s320/absaloms+pillar.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Absalom's Pillar, which he built to himself, still exists.</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;">Once outside the capital, David could then see the mood of the people. An old man assaulted him with rocks and curses. But to many of the people it looked as if David had given up the throne to Absalom. Many of them wept as he passed by, but in Jerusalem, Absalom took the capital without a struggle. <br />
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The chief adviser to Absalom recommended an immediate attack on Mahanaim, before David could gather his armies. He had about 12,000 men under his command, more than enough to claim victory if he did indeed act swiftly. But a second adviser told Absalom to mobilize all of Israel against his father. This man, Hushai, had pledged allegiance to Absalom but in reality he was a double agent for David. His suggestion was a play for time as David gathered his forces. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Absalom</td></tr>
</tbody></table><i>“You know that your father and his men are mighty men, and your father is expert in war.”</i> Hushai told Absalom. There was enough truth in that statement to deter the young king long enough, and when he did finally attack, David was ready for him.<br />
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<b>The battle was a rout</b>, as the conscripted rookies of Absalom went up against the battle tested veterans of David’s troops. Thousands died in the battle and even though David had requested Absalom be spared, Joab took Absalom out as he hung from a tree by his own hair. <br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMFV3aWO8nlIrHNAFXoZdHGBND1L_lv-qefisNFMgZsGQNNjPgrwIZqmoAg7GWIzdCuufyRXDBxGFShA35aGTZCihooQZhFAfaIuXBiz-j8x6d765_j9q_gm_QknIk-Lok-v2HksmtYmTK/s1600/Joab_Absalom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMFV3aWO8nlIrHNAFXoZdHGBND1L_lv-qefisNFMgZsGQNNjPgrwIZqmoAg7GWIzdCuufyRXDBxGFShA35aGTZCihooQZhFAfaIuXBiz-j8x6d765_j9q_gm_QknIk-Lok-v2HksmtYmTK/s640/Joab_Absalom.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><b>When notified, David went into mourning</b> over his son. He had a great love for his children no matter what they had done to him, and he sequestered himself away in his bedroom. Joab knew that David risked losing his supporter by isolating himself and he confronted the King. <i>“You shame those who love you today,”</i> he told the king. <i>“You make it clear that commanders and servants mean nothing to you as you love those who hate you and hate those who love you. If you don’t go out and speak to your men, then by morning there will be no one left!”</i><br />
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<b>Joab was probably right</b> and when David felt shame by his general’s accusation, he did indeed go out to the people. But before he could return to his capital a new cry of insurrection erupted. A man named Sheba, a Benjaminite, made one last effort to split the kingdom that was now under one rule. Joab, loyal to a fault, followed Sheba to the town of Abel, and the people of the town , in an effort to save their own hides, cut off Sheba’s head an threw it over the wall to Joab. Both insurrections and Sheba were now dead. <br />
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<b>Adonija, David’s eldest surviving son, was now heir apparent.</b> But at this time there was no precedent for succession to the throne. He was deeply concerned about the influence of Bathsheba, mother to his half brother Solomon. She had the powerful palace clique behind her and David was old and on his last legs. Adonijah had both Joab and the high priest Abiathar on his team, and he decided the time was ripe to strike. He took it upon himself to declare his King ship of Israel, and performed all the required activities for doing so. His supporters gathered for a festive banquet to celebrate.<br />
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When Bathsheba heard of this from the prophet Nathan, she went directly to the bedridden King. She told him of his son’s treacherous actions and reminded him of his promise to make Solomon king.<br />
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<b>David immediately ordered</b> the appointment of Solomon as King of Israel and gathered all of Solomon’s supporters for his own inauguration. When Adonijah’s followers heard the news, they quickly abandoned him. Adonijah sought sanctuary in the temple and was spared by Solomon. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bathsheba presents Solomon to his father the King</td></tr>
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<strong>By this time, David, former shepherd</strong>, had reigned in Jerusalem 33 years. The about the year 960 B.C., he died in a good old age, full of years, riches and honor. He had broadened the borders of Israel, and made her richer with the spoils of war. He left a golden age for his son Solomon who would succeed him in a time of unprecedented peace. To the world he left the city of Jerusalem, and of course, his beloved psalms.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS; font-size: large;"></span>Hubie Goodehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745615366793584503noreply@blogger.com0