Stucky QOTD: Cabinets

We haven’t sold the house yet.  The most common objection has to do with the kitchen;  it’s either too small (can’t do much about that), or old-fashioned, or “tired”.

— The old-fashioned part probably has to do with the 60’s style pink-ish Formica.

— The “tired” part has to do with the cabinets …. almost all the cabinets have wear-marks right where the hardware is, I suppose from 15 years of grubby fingers rubbing against the wood. (The wood is stained, not painted.)

Today, a kitchen-dude from a kitchens-only shop in town stopped by to give us an estimate on sprucing up the joint.  I told him beforehand that we are selling the place, and are loathe to spend additional monies, and that we want something inexpensive, but without looking cheap-ass.  Well!  …. he quoted us at $11,000 to resurface the cabinets and install granite counter-tops.  Uh huh.  Fuck that shit!!

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James Grant: Negative Interest Rates Will End… Badly

Submitted by Matthew Borin via CFA Institute blog,

Negative interest rates are unsustainable and once investors decide to stop paying for the privilege of holding government debt, a banking crisis could result, says James Grant.

The founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer was one of several speakers at the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA)’ Annual Benjamin Graham Conference to remark on the ramifications of unprecedented loose monetary policy.

Historic Lows

Central banks are treading in uncharted waters. Sidney Homer and Richard Sylla, the authors of A History of Interest Rates, found no instance of negative rates in 5,000 years. Now there are $11.7 trillion invested in negative-yield sovereign debt, including $7.9 trillion in Japanese government bonds and over $1 trillion in both French and German sovereign debt.

Grant posed a tongue-in-cheek question: “If these are the first sub-zero interest rates in 5,000 years, is this not the worst economy since 3,000 BC?”

This is not a bad economy by most measures. Household wealth in the United States has grown steadily since the Great Recession. If these gains were the result of greater productivity, interest rates would not need to stay at historic lows. Grant says they are “a sign of someone’s thumb on the currency.” Negative rates are propping up risk assets. He critiqued US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen’s touting of the bull market in equities as a sign of prosperity by alluding to Brexit voters.

“Asset prices have failed to pacify the world’s unprofitable voters,” Grant said.

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The Most Dangerous Candidate

The blathering that negotiation with Vladimir Putin is more dangerous than backing him into a corner would be laughably absurd if the consequences of the latter weren’t so potentially devastating.

Guest post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic

U.S. Conducts Airstrikes Against ISIS in Libya reads The New York Times’ August 1 headline, capturing virtually everything wrong with US foreign interventionism. Tracing the strands emanating from that headline regrettably requires a deep dive into an ideological and moral cesspool, on which Hillary Clinton luxuriates in a floating lounge chair, sunning herself and sipping a piña colada, evidently not put off by the stench.

What’s ISIS doing in Libya? It’s an offshoot of ISIS in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, which is an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq. That group was formed from an embittered core of Sunnis dispossessed of positions and property and jailed by the US government-installed majority Shiite government after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Al Qaeda’s family tree starts with the mujahideen in Afghanistan, who were backed by Presidents Carter and Reagan in their war against the Soviet Union. The goal was to draw the Soviet Union into a protracted and debilitating quagmire.

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Where’s the Rest of Hillary’s Sarin?

Guest Post from Single Dude Travel

The Two Faces of Hillary Clinton by Ben GarrisonThe other day I was reflecting on the precarious condition of the world right now, and a question came to me:

What happened to the rest of the Sarin gas the Syrian rebels had in 2013? Where is it, how much is there, and who has it?

Let’s back up a moment and set the stage. Obama and Clinton wanted a war with Syria and to get rid of Assad. The US took down Gaddafi for their usual reasons of power hungry world domination. Here’s how Hillary summed that one up:

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Germany’s Migrant Rape Crisis Spirals Out Of Control

Submitted by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

  • Germany’s migrant rape crisis has now spread to cities and towns in all 16 of Germany’s federal states. Germany now finds itself in a vicious circle: most of the perpetrators are never found, and the few who are frequently receive lenient sentences. Only one in 10 rapes in Germany is reported and just 8% of rape trials result in convictions, according to Minister of Justice Heiko Maas.
  • Up to 90% of the sex crimes committed in Germany in 2014 do not appear in the official statistics, according to André Schulz, the head of the Association of Criminal Police.
  • “There are strict instructions from the top not to report offenses committed by refugees. It is extraordinary that certain offenders are deliberately NOT being reported about and the information is being classified as confidential.” — High-ranking police official in Frankfurt, quoted in Bild.

Sexual violence in Germany has reached epidemic proportions since Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed into the country more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Gatestone Institute first reported Germany’s migrant rape crisis in September 2015, when Merkel opened up the German border to tens of thousands of migrants stranded in Hungary. A follow-up report was published in March 2016, in the aftermath of mass attacks against German women by mobs of migrants in Cologne, Hamburg and other German cities.

Germany’s migrant rape crisis has now spread to cities and towns in all 16 of Germany’s federal states. Germany is effectively under siege; public spaces are becoming increasingly perilous. Police have warned about a potential breakdown of public order this summer, when young male migrants are likely to see women lightly dressed.

During the month of July 2016, hundreds of German women and children were sexually assaulted by migrants (see Appendix below). The youngest victim was nine; the oldest, 79. Attacks occurred at beaches, bike trails, cemeteries, discotheques, grocery stores, music festivals, parking garages, playgrounds, schools, shopping malls, taxis, public transportation (buses, trams, intercity express trains and subways), public parks, public squares, public swimming pools and public restrooms. Predators are lurking everywhere; safety nowhere.

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ANOTHER REASON TO VOTE FOR TRUMP – NEOCONS HATE HIM

Every time a group of establishment hacks jointly attack Trump as reckless or dangerous, you know he is on the right path. These 50 statist, nazi neocons are the reason we are bogged down in endless wars around the globe. They insist we police the world with our military, intimidating any and all who don’t follow our orders. These 50 scumbags work for the military industrial complex and have been ordered to stop Trump at all costs. Know your enemy.

Via Newsmax

50 Top GOP National Security Officials Sign Letter Opposing Trump

Image: 50 Top GOP National Security Officials Sign Letter Opposing Trump

(AP Images)

By Greg Richter   |   Monday, 08 Aug 2016 06:51 PM

Fifty of the country’s top Republican national security officials have signed a letter saying they do not support their party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

The New York Times first reported the letter, which was signed by people who worked under Republican administrations from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. Those signing the letter include former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Homeland Security Security secretaries Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge.

Trump, the letter writers argue, “would be the most reckless president in American history.”

“None of us will vote for Donald Trump,” they say, though they acknowledge that many Americans have concerns with the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, as well.

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SHTF Arrives Early, Now What?

Hat tip Darknlovely

Guest Post by Capitalist Eric

Things have been rather exciting over the last year, as we swing into the final months of the Constitutional Republic formerly known as the United States of America. And so I’ve been watching a lot, reading, thinking about all of this… While I work through current problems in my own life. And a very interesting question came up, which is the point of this post. The problem is that, to adequately answer the question, requires quite a bit of time to set up the background, so the answer makes sense. So here goes…

The MSM is thrashing around as they slowly die of lost legitimacy

In the last year, the veneer of decency and honesty has been completely stripped away from our uniquely American “fifth column,” the media, whose responsibility it was to monitor and report on the corruption of government. Instead, they have been utterly exposed as the lying scum most people suspected them of being. They’re just willing propaganda outlets for the government, like Pravda or TASS were, for the Soviet Union. White is now black, up is down, wrong is right.

lying media

And of course, the media pimps for their political whores, manipulates polling data which affects “their guy” winning or losing. The most obvious results regarding the press: only 6% of the population still trusts the media. Literally, the public trust used-car salesmen more than they trust reporters. As we used to say in the Navy, they’re “lower than whale shit.” Pretty much.

The media manipulation initially provided cover to the corrupt government, but has now backfired;

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Who Got Us Into These Endless Wars?

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Who Got Us Into These Endless Wars?

“Isolationists must not prevail in this new debate over foreign policy,” warns Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The consequences of a lasting American retreat from the world would be dire.”

To make his case against the “Isolationist Temptation,” Haass creates a caricature, a cartoon, of America First patriots, then thunders that we cannot become “a giant gated community.”

Understandably, Haass is upset. For the CFR has lost the country.

Why? It colluded in the blunders that have bled and near bankrupted America and that cost this country its unrivaled global preeminence at the end of the Cold War.

No, it was not “isolationists” who failed America. None came near to power. The guilty parties are the CFR crowd and their neocon collaborators, and liberal interventionists who set off to play empire after the Cold War and create a New World Order with themselves as Masters of the Universe.

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Students Upset by Truth. College Takes Down Historical Paintings.

Via Truth Revolt

Bradbury and Orwell would have been impressed (or saddened) to see so much of what they prophesied come to life.

tradersuwstout

The University of Wisconsin-Stout has removed two large historical paintings after the school’s “Diversity Leadership Team” proclaimed the paintings might be psychologically damaging to American Indian students.

Since 1936, two large murals by Cal Peters portraying early Wisconsin history have dominated the common area of Harvey Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Stout (UW-Stout). One mural shows French fur traders and American Indians traveling down the Red Cedar River by canoe, while another portrays a wooden fort constructed by the French. Neither painting shows any violence at all.

In this day and age, these paintings are “offensive.”

In addition, UW-Stout’s Diversity Leadership Team complained about the murals to Meyer, arguing their presence helped to perpetuate racial stereotypes.

“There’s a segment of Native American students, that when they look at the art, to them it symbolizes an era of their history where land and possessions were taken away from them, and they feel bad when they look at them,” UW-Stout chancellor Bob Meyer said.

The paintings will be moved from the common areas into the Harvey Hall library and a dean’s conference room. Some have accused the university of censoring history and have said the decision is political correctness run amuck.

Chancellor Meyer disagreed, calling it a good business decision not based on political correctness.

“So, we want to make sure that, really, what we decorate our hallways with and what we put in our hallways is consistent with our values to try to attract more Native Americans to the university,” Meyer said.

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