wisdom – Instant Coffee Wisdom

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

Protection for WHO?

You may not be familiar with the word ‘fomite’. A fomite is any object that, when contaminated with infectious agents, can transfer disease. One example of a fomite is a door knob or push handle. If a sick person with a highly infectious disease touched it, you might contract that disease through contact if you unknowingly touched that same object. Young children have a tendency to touch anything they see, or worse put it into their mouth. I’m sure at one point or another when you were younger your parents yelled at you ‘don’t touch that, you don’t know where it’s been!’, or a similar warning.

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The healthier you are, the stronger your immune system tends to be, and you can fight off infection easier. Health and personal hygiene go hand-in-hand. Good hygiene should always been encouraged from an early age, as habits formed during one’s youth tend to last a lifetime. Habits are easily formed through constant repetition until they become second nature. These go for both good and bad habits. It takes discipline and diligence to improve one’s life by forming good habits and breaking bad ones. As always self-improvement begins with SELF. No one can force you do what you are unwilling to do, short of passing laws with stiff penalties. Even so, laws do not stop people from completely disregarding or willfully violating them. It’s illegal to litter, yet people throw trash in the street. It’s illegal for people not to wear seat-belts, or safety harnesses while driving automobiles in 49 of the 50 US states, yet some people choose not to do so. There are over 30,000 gun laws on the books in the USA, and there is still crime committed with guns. We don’t need ‘better laws’, we need ‘better people’. The Bible is the ultimate self-improvement book.

The Ten Commandments which are the basis for most laws in the western world appear twice in the Bible, first in Exodus 20: 1-17, and then they are restated in Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Decent law-abiding citizens are kept in check NOT by the laws on the books, but by their internal moral code.

MURPHY’S LAW

When I was in high school, my one English teacher the late Mr. Jim Murphy introduced me to a couple of ‘dangerous’ books. These were intended for mature readers, and were definitely way over the heads of most teenagers. There are even ADULTS that wouldn’t be able to handle some of the Science Fiction stories in these books. I refer to the Science Fiction anthologies Dangerous Visions, and the sequel Again, Dangerous Visions, both edited by Harlan Ellison. One of the two stories I vividly remember to this day appears in the second volume and is titled Elouise and the Doctors of the Planet Pergamon by Josephine Saxton. The story involves a perfectly healthy girl who was raised by her mother free of all illness and disease. Unfortunately that is against the law on Pergamon and she is arrested and forcibly restrained and examined by a hundred physicians who mercilessly poke and prod her everywhere.

Last month in mid-March most of the USA, as well as nearly every nation on Earth began shutting down EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE that was deemed non-essential due to the world-wide pandemic COVID-19, AKA the Wuhan coronavirus, sometimes shortened to just corona. COVID-19 is a highly infectious disease, and there are various strains, seven of which have crossed over to infect humans. According to WebMD:
Scientists have divided coronaviruses into four sub-groupings, called alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. Seven of these viruses can infect people. The four common ones are:

229E (alpha)
NL63 (alpha)
OC43 (beta)
HKU1 (beta)

The three less-common ones are:

MERS-CoV, a beta virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)
SARS-CoV, a beta virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19

Scientists are divided over whether or not COVID-19 is transmitted by airborne particles or solely by close contact or by both. According to WHO, the World Health Organization, studies to date suggest that COVID-19 is mainly transmitted through contact with respiratory droplets rather than through the air. These droplets are too heavy to remain airborne. Only tiny air particles known as aerosols remain in the air for a brief period. This type of ejaculate of respiratory particles usually occurs when someone sneezes or coughs. If you’ve ever had someone accidentally sneeze or cough on you and felt a slash of wetness, you understand what I mean. It’s common sense. You cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, and you quarantine sick people to keep THEM from infecting healthy people. If you suspect a person is sick, you avoid contact. If YOU are sick STAY HOME. If YOU have a weak immune system, STAY HOME.

As far as how long the virus can survive outside of a host in can live:

In the air: Up to 3 hours in air particles called aerosols
On copper: Up to 4 hours
On cardboard: Up to 24 hours
On plastic: 2 to 3 days
On stainless steel: 2 to 3 days

COVID-19 IS a ‘nasty bug’, BUT it is NOT a death sentence. HEALTHY people with STRONG immune systems may get sicker than they’ve ever felt before, but will generally make a full recovery with proper treatment and care. As of this writing there have been 2,329,651 cases WORLDWIDE resulting in 160,721 deaths. In the USA, there have been 740,557 cases resulting in 38,979. To put in on a much more local level, in my home state of Pennsylvania, there are 31,731 confirmed cases, and there have been 1,102 deaths. This is ‘about’ the same number as what’s showing in California which reports 30,811 and 1,148. By comparison, the area of Pennsylvania is roughly equal to that of the nation of England, and California as about the same size as Italy. New York is the ‘problem child’ and the epicenter of the US outbreak. NY is responsible for about 1/3 of the total cases and nearly half of all the deaths due to COVID-19 in the US. Those numbers from our fourth-most populous state are 241,041 cases and 39,015 deaths. (Pennsylvania is fifth in population. New York has 19,491,339 people, Pennsylvania has 12,813,969) These numbers CHANGE every second and will probably have increased slightly by the time you finish reading this.

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President Trump is desperately trying to re-open portions of the USA on a case-by-case basis as some states like NY have been hit much harder than the virus, than say Alaska. In a press conference on Wednesday, President Trump made his position clear that he wants to get the nation back to normal and re-opened very soon, possibly before the end of this month, but he would let each state make that determination on when it should, or should not re-open. People are out of work as a result of to the shutdown. Bills need to be paid, and that requires an income. This prompted an immediate retaliation from Democrat run ‘Blue States’ like NY, and PA to issue new mandatory face-mask rules starting by or before this Monday, and a promise to veto any attempts to re-open their states.

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Unintended consequences

When you lock away a sick person, it’s quarantine. When you lock away a healthy person because they MIGHT make YOU sick, you take away THEIR freedom and THEIR rights. There is little or no evidence to suggest wearing a surgical face-mask will prevent a healthy person from getting sick. If a person wants to wear a mask because it somehow makes them feel safer, I have NO problem with that. FORCE ME to do it, and we have a problem. So until this mandate is revoked, my freedom is severely being infringed upon. This is America, NOT Communist China, and I am NOT happy.

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And what those CIVIC-MINDED people who are wearing gloves and masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 doing with their used items? Why just throwing their potentially hazardous medical waste on the ground to blow around town like little coronavirus-tumbleweeds.

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And then there’s identity. Who’s behind the mask? Anyone, EVEN dangerous criminals and sex-offenders can now move about freely with their identity concealed behind a mask. If someone robs your essential business, how do you describe the criminal. He was wearing a mask. JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE IN THE STATE.

It was a running gag at the end of every episode of The Lone Ranger that some character would say “Who was that masked man?”. The Lone Ranger character was created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker and first aired as a radio drama on radio station WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan, in 1933 running up until 1954. There was a movie serial in 1938, and then a television show that ran from 1949-1957. Clayton Moore Portrayed the Lone Ranger alongside Jay Silverheel’s Tonto. Moore often was quoted as saying he had “fallen in love with the Lone Ranger character” and strove in his personal life to take The Lone Ranger Creed to heart. He was never seen in public without his mask until a 1979 lawsuit forced him to turn in his mask. He donned sunglasses before returning to his mask when the lawsuit was dropped three years later. Doing what you love to do causes personal happiness, and Moore loved to be the Lone Ranger and wore his mask proudly, because he wanted to. He is forever synonymous with the character he portrayed. As always, I wish you success and happiness!

DUST AND THIRST!

Success requires both!

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I get knocked down, but I get up again. You are never gonna keep me down…– Lyrics from the song Tubthumping by Chumbawamba

Sir Richard Branson is one of my role models. I admire the man, he is an inspiration although I do not agree with him politically. Everyone is entitled to their personal opinions. One of the goals in HIS bucket list is to go into space. When I was in elementary school, that was something I wanted to do as well. When I was a young boy, the only people who actually went into space were astronauts. That goal is a very high bar which I abandoned in high school for various reason.

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As of February 2020, the world population is about 7.7 billion people. In the history of the world ONLY 536 people have gone into space. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was the first man in space. The first woman in space was also a Russian cosmonaut, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (6 March 1937–). When you raise the bar from just going into space to going to the moon, only 12 men have ever walked on the moon, astronaut Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was the first to do it on July 20th, 1969. In case you’re wondering, the last man to walk on the moon was Eugene Cernan in December 1972. The oldest person to go back into space was John Glenn (77 years and 103 days old) when he ventured into space once again aboard the space shuttle Discovery on STS-95 in 1998. John Glenn could not have gone back into space had he not maintained a lifelong discipline of healthy diet and exercise.

The Sky’s the limit!

Sir Richard Branson has an excellent chance of going into space because not only does he maintain a healthy diet and exercise regiment, he’s attempting to create a space tourism company Virgin Galactic, and is currently funding and building reusable space planes. Fellow billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are also pursing similar ventures with SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively. There are over 2000 billionaires on Earth, and they pretty much collectively own everything. With a bottomless bucket of health, wealth, and knowledge at your disposal, you can accomplish damn near anything you set your mind to. If it’s possible, it will happen! It’s only a matter of time.

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Now here’s the key to success. All of these billionaires started small. Richard Branson opened a record shop. Jeff Bezos sold books on the internet from his garage, Elon Musk was a co-founder of PayPal. At one point or another, each of these people encountered failures and setbacks. Their thirst for success enabled them to dust themselves off, pick up where they left off, and begin again. Each successful and completed goal lead to bigger and better dreams, and those dreams became reality because they took a chance and started something.

In life you have choices to make every day. Most of the time, you will make the wrong decision. Knowledge and experience will reduce the tendency to guess wrongly, but you will never be able to totally eliminate mistakes and human error. If you quit every time you fail, you will never accomplish anything. If you do not make plans, nothing will happen. If you do not do the work, it will not get done. No one is going to live your life for you. YOU have to make it happen! YOU have to make the plans and do the work. YOU, and ONLY YOU. There will be mistakes and setbacks. DO NOT QUIT! You have to have the thirst for success and the wherewithal to accomplish your goals. They will require your health, wealth, and knowledge to be top-notch. You have to be strong in all three areas, and you can’t fake strong. Do not sabotage your success by starting ludicrous goals. Start SMALL and build your strengths, then move on to bigger and better.

It is my ULTIMATE goal as a runner to run an ultra-marathon. If I would have started my first race with a marathon, I would never have accomplished that goal, and I probably would have sustained serious injury or death . My first official race was a 5K run, and I kept building up distances, and training between races. I started training months before I ran my first 5K on April 28th 2019. I ran 11 official races last year. This year I have so far run 2, and have another 22 slated by the end of the year. This does not even take into account the time at the gym running 5K after work, between races. My first marathon is scheduled for November 22th, 2020, months from now. I will run FIVE half-marathons, Three 15Ks and about a dozen 5Ks between now and then. All the while dieting and cross-training. And at the end of NEXT YEAR, I will attempt an ULTRA if and only if I make it through this first marathon.

There are long-term goals, and there are short-term goals. Bigger and better means starting, and starting small. Great things come from humble beginnings. You just have to start somewhere, so hit the road because your journey begins today! As always I wish you success and happiness!

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A LONG WINTER’S NAP

Wrapping up 2019

A LONG WINTERS NAP

“A Visit from Saint Nickolas” is a well-known poem written by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823. Some people refer to the poem by it’s opening line, “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. This traditional poem was written by Moore for his children, a fairy-tale to amuse them, and he originally published it anonymously. The eight line of the poem “Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.” As we wrap-up 2019 and put a bow on it, this is perhaps the best piece of advice I can leave you with.

I started writing my blog http://www.InstantCoffeeWisdom.com over two years ago on September 10th 2017. This is my 113th article.

The vast majority of our troubles are wealth related. Improving our wealth situation is key to improving our lives to attain success and happiness. Wealth is not only about money and finance, there are three main components of wealth .

Money is the first thing people think of. It’s nice to have, but it’s just a tool. Like any tool if you misuse it, you will break it, or hurt yourself. You must learn to use it responsibly and skillfully.
The second is your health, and more precious than silver or gold. Investing time, money, and effort in attaining the peak of physical health will do wonders for your attitude.
Last but not least, is your wealth of knowledge. The more wise you become, the greater your chances of stumbling upon the solution to whatever it is that is holding you back from achieving your dreams. Oftentimes, it is a sobering revelation to discover the greatest obstacle keeping us from accomplishing our goals is ourselves.

In three days it will be Christmas Day. Six days later it will be New Year’s Eve. The year is more or less over. Aside from a few last-minute-gift shopping, and maybe wrapping some presents, it’s all downhill from here. The hard stuff has be done, or never will be at this point. If you busted your ass this past year, take the remaining days to rest. You’ve earned your long winter’s nap. Bask in the warm glow of your accomplishments as you look back upon all you did. You earned it. 2020 is days away and you need to rest-up so that you can achieve new heights in the coming year!

On a personal note, my greatest accomplishment this past year was training to run half-marathons, something which was greatly aided by the encouragement and knowledge shared by the running community. Yes, I DID THIS, I did the work and I ran the race, but I truly believe I could not have done it without YOU backing me. I ran eleven races, everything from 5K to Half Marathons. My ‘Twelfth race of Christmas’ will be the Kris Kringle 5 Mile Run in Leesport PA on December 29th 2019. In 2020 I plan to run twice as many races as I continue to train towards running full marathons, and eventually ultra marathons. A side effect result of my running is that I have encouraged others to do likewise. A year ago, I could not have done this, now I can. You change the world by your example, not your opinion. Be the change you wish to see.

On the flip side, if your had a lack-luster year, take a long hard look in the mirror. Don’t play the blame game, OWN IT. If you did little or nothing, YOU did little or nothing. The one thing we all get each day is the same 24hrs. The wealthy and the poor, the successes and failures, and the happy and the not. If you’re not an example, then you become a cautionary tale. Don’t be ‘THAT GUY’. We all have a ‘THAT GUY’, someone we know in life who did nothing with their life, and we can’t fathom why they ‘let themselves go’. Everyone wants to be around successful happy people. Their positive energy draws folks like a magnet. Like the angel Clearance reminded George Bailey in the film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, no man is a failure if he has friends. But don’t despair, God allows U-turns. Christmas Day is in three days. Enjoy the wonder and beauty of the season, and take a long winter’s nap. Rest up, in six days it will be New Year’s Eve. Pick yourself up, dust off your failures and start again. 2020 is a whole new year. Don’t waste it! Learn from your mistakes and try something different. If you don’t know where to start, I have written 112 other articles covering just about every aspect pertaining to self-improvement. The one thing have been doing ever January 1st for years is I read the Gospel of John. It’s one of the 66 books of the Bible. Christmastime is inseparable from Christ, and there are many sources of inspiration and encouragement to be found in the pages of the Holy scripture. I could not have reached the height I have attained without Jesus. God is good, always!

http://www.InstantCoffeeWisdom.com will return in January 2020 with new content. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and as always I wish you success and happiness.

THE BLAME GAME!

Whose fault is it?

The Blame Game

“Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.”–Lou Holtz

When you were younger, you thought you could conquer the world but somewhere along the way you let the world get the best of you. Maybe you tried and failed. Maybe someone told you it was impossible. Maybe fear held you back. Soon, it became easier for you to just shift the blame for your lack of success on everyone else. They never taught you. They held you back. They won’t help. They, they, they… never YOU!

When you were a child, your parents may have mollycoddled you but once you turned eighteen, you gained certain legal rights granted to adults. You no longer needed a nanny, so it was no longer a question of who’s minding you . I’m going to clue you in on two important secrets which when you utilize them, will give you an incredible edge on your path to success. No gimmicks, nothing to buy. These two secrets are yours absolutely free. These two secrets will give you incredible power to achieve your goals in life. Are you excited yet? You should be, because these two secrets when used properly will change your entire life.

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THE FIRST SECRET

The ‘THEY’ that are holding ‘YOU’ back are very real, and they don’t want you to succeed. You don’t need to know who THEY are, just that THEY exist. THEY can include the liberal media which feeds you negative messages, questionable entertainment, and fake news. THEY can include the corrupt government officials behind the Deep State that inhabits the D.C. Swamp, which President Trump is fighting to drain. THEY can even include your family and friends, who messed up their own lives and need you to mess up yours too because misery loves company. THEY are real, and THEY want you to fail. Their goal in life is to control every aspect of your life by manipulating your thoughts with a steady stream of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ or G.I.G.O. And IF you lose all hope that things will improve by listening to their negativity, THEY WILL WIN!

Now you may be thinking ‘how does this first secret help me?’ Knowledge is power, and knowing is half the battle. If you think of SUCCESS as a ‘road’, and the THEY as ‘potholes’ in the road, by avoiding the ‘potholes’ you will move faster and easier down the ‘road of success’. Which brings us to the second secret.

“The size of your success is measures by the strength of your desire, the size of your dream, and how you handle disappointment along the way.” – Robert Kiyosaki

THE SECOND SECRET

The second secret is that the power THEY have over YOU is an illusion which YOU allow them to have. You do not have to give them that power. You don’t have to listen to their negativity. You don’t have to acknowledge their lies. YOU are stronger than THEY are. You have the power to be all that you can be! It’s very easy to play the blame game and blame everyone else for are failures. The reality is that we are responsible for the vast majority of the decisions we make in our lives. The GOOD ones, the BAD ones, and even the MONUMENTALLY STUPID ones. If you have the privilege of living in The United States of America, then you also have the freedom and opportunity to pursue your goals and achieve whatever level of success you choose. If you’re a failure, it’s because you chose not to be a success. At some point, you stopped listening to the possibilities YOU told yourself existed, and YOU listened to the lies and impossibilities THEY told you. When you quit, they won. You need to own that. And if you want to change that, you need to start TODAY. Winners never quit, and quitters never win. If you really want to be a success, you can never quit. More importantly than not quitting, you have to start. It doesn’t matter if you fail, try again, but don’t quit no matter what. THEY may call you crazy, obsessed, stupid, or out of touch with reality. What THEY say and think has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them. YOU are capable of anything you choose to do. You just have to want it, and you have to work for it. Success does NOT happen overnight. It takes time and effort.

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“Obsessed is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated.”–Russell Warren

The future’s so bright, I gotta’ wear shades!

For the past two years, I’ve been sharing my knowledge and advice in order to help you achieve a happy and successful life. I can honestly say that my life has never been better, and it’s improving on a regular basis. I worked my way out of the poverty I was born into, listened to wise council, and avoided many pitfalls in life by examining the mistakes of others, and avoiding those errors. I wanted a better life. and I worked for everything I’ve achieved. I am a lifelong Republican, and have been a Christian since college. I live in a great country, and I have a great president. I started running a few months ago, ran my first 5K race in April, will be running my first 15K race today July 7th 2019, and in two months I will be running my first half-marathon. In May of this year, I purchased the Jeep I’ve wanted to own for the past decade. As a result, I now currently own THREE automobiles. If you don’t believe that success and happiness are within your power, let me assure you, it is possible, but it takes time, and YOU have to work for it. No one can do it for you. Success, or failure, it’s all up to YOU. As Always I wish you success and happiness!

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THE NAME GAME

Word Association in a Land of Confusion.

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“The people’s silence is a tyrant’s greatest advocate. The less captives talked, the less they knew; the less they knew, the more they feared; and the more they feared, the more easily others could manipulate them to their own ends, the more easily the captives could be controlled.”

― John Kramer, Blythe

The socio-economic, geopolitical field is dominated by billionaires and multi-millionaires who have used their wealth and influence to seize power over the common man. Having reached the limits of control in their modern Game of Kings, these leaders of men will stop at nothing to further their goals and remain in power. The right person in power will lead a nation to prosperity, just as the wrong one will destroy all that is great. In 2016, the people spoke up and banded together to place a Washington outsider in office to ‘drain the swamp’ and take back power for the people. Since the upset against the liberal left in 2016, President Donald J. Trump has been working hard to undo the damage done by prior administrations. The result has been lower taxes, higher wages, the lowest unemployment levels in decades, and unprecedented job creation. His reward from the vocal minority has been constant criticism and insults. The man has been doing a phenomenal job and being called every name in the book by confused fools who do not comprehend that what he’s doing is for the good of the nation.

There are many different ways to control people, but perhaps the most insidious method is by confusion. The less educated and intelligent a person is, the easier it is to be manipulated. First off there is a difference between education and intelligence.

Education is the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.
Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

Our entire life is a learning experience, and knowledge doesn’t end at formal education. There are also various life skills and things that are not taught in school that one must acquire throughout one’s life in order to be successful and happy. Unfortunately not every person is born a genius. Likewise there are few true morons born, and a vast number of average intellects. Public education attempts to mainstream and provide an average education of approved material. So the knowledge that is being disseminated to students is approved by a committee school board, and these board members are elected. As more and more leftists have taken over schools both as educators, and school board members, what has been being taught in school has changed drastically. The common core method of mathematics teaching is an abysmal mess that has produced a generation that can’t do basic math without a calculator.

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“The Feeling of Power” is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the February 1958 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction. Although written over sixty years ago, this is a chilling cautionary tale of the distant future humans who live in a computer-aided society and have forgotten the fundamentals of mathematics, including even the rudimentary skill of counting. A similar work of fiction “The Marching Morons” is a science fiction story by American writer Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy in April 1951. In this tale, a present day man awakes from suspended animation to discover the world is 99.9% populated by morons, and the few smart people are trying to keep things running. This second tale of the great dumbing down of society was the basis for the movie Idiocracy (2006).

Children are the future of society, and this is why every tyrant from Hilter to Kim Jong Un has focused on educating and indoctrinating the lest wise members of society so they can be better controlled. Liberals in the USA have been covertly using this same principal of brainwashing by subtlety changing words and confusing arguments. It’s all a power play to determine who’s minding you in a nanny state that has stripped you of freedom by tricking you into giving it away. The exceptions are NOT the rule.

The USA is the longest lasting Constitutional Republic in the history of the world. It is NOT a direct democracy, because direct democracies do not last, and fall victim to mob rule.

Democrats want to amend the Constitution to eliminate the 2nd Amendment, because they believe guns are dangerous, and you really don’t need one. Instead of focusing on mass shootings, they advocate gun control. If you ban guns, only criminals own guns. The 2nd Amendment protects the rest. Since most gun crimes are perpetrated by Democrats, perhaps we should bar Democrats from owning guns?

The 1st Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Democrats really hate this one. Whenever you disagree with them, the label it ‘hate speech’, call you a fascist, or a racist bigot. You can’t argue with liberals because they are convinced that they are right, and nothing you say will change their minds. Christianity is the backbone on American society, and liberals want it muzzled at all costs. They label passages in the Bible as hate speech for condemning homosexuality and abortion. Both are sins, and God hates sin. All sin. The Bible only contains truth. It is 100% free from error and the most successful and content people read it daily.

There is a constant stream of FAKE NEWS broadcast by left-leaning liberal media. It applies not only to the content of newscasts, but also popular TV shows and movies which have taking on a stronger and stronger anti-conservative bias. There was no Russian collusion, yet the liberal media continues to broadcast editorial opinions disguised as fact to further confuse viewers. They want to examine every word, and now every pause in a sentence. Yet they still find nothing while screaming the same narrative.

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Recently the left-leaning ‘fact check’ site Snopes came up with a new definition of truth, the “factually inaccurate but morally right” fact check result for claims they don’t want to debunk because they coincide with Snopes editors’ worldview. First whose morals?

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Atheists do not understand Christianity, and morals are not the same as ethics. You can’t change the definition of a word to fit a narrative and call it truth. Lies are still lies. Morals are absolutes based on Biblical scripture, whereas ethics are situational and based on accepted societal norms and laws. This is why abortion is such a hot topic. It’s not unethical because it’s not illegal, but it is totally immoral despite being legal. The fact that it was legalized to begin with is based on bad science and lies. Women were told it wasn’t a baby, it was a blob of tissue. It wasn’t a person. It wasn’t alive. It’s an IT not a he or she.

Only Christians understand Christianity. It comes from Bible study. You can’t take words out of context, and change meanings to fit your narrative.When you hear people swapping out one term for another and changing the conversation mid-topic, beware. When you try to explain a question they ask you, and talk over your answer, they do not want to hear your response. Liberalism is a mental disorder. You can’t confuse someone with facts. If they are a confused person , no fact in the world will make sense to them. The Bible has some sound advice for arguing with fools.

Proverbs 23:9 – Do not speak to a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.
Proverbs 26:4- Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.
Proverbs 29:9- If a wise man goes to court with a fool, there will be raving and laughing with no resolution
Matthew 7:6- Do not give dogs what is holy; do not throw your pearls before swine. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.

Electing Donald J. Trump was the first step towards healing our lend. When America blesses God, God will bless America, land of the free, because of the brave. InstantCoffeeWisdom .com will return in June. Happy Memorial Day Weekend and as always, I wish you success and happiness!

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Who’s Minding the Food?

Junkfood junkies!

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“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.” ― Orson Welles

The Standard American Diet is about 2,200 calories per day, with 50% of calories from carbohydrates, 15% protein, and 35% fat. It is very different from those of our forefathers.

Since the start of the industrial revolution, the everyday lifestyle of mankind has changed in many ways. When the United States was founded in 1776, the vast majority of its citizens lived in an agrarian society. We farmed and grew our own food, or worked for those that did. Once industry took hold, and large cities began to spring up, we shifted to a largely metropolitan society. In 1870, almost 50 percent of the U.S. population was employed in agriculture, today it is less than 2%. Farming is neither glamorous, nor easy.

This shift has resulted in a two-fold negative lifestyle impact on the people in our nation:

One – We must buy processed and preserved food from supermarkets.

Two– We no longer endure the physical labor needed to burn off the calories in the food we eat.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”– words of Jesus Christ from Matthew 7:9-11 NIV

We in the USA may take it for granted because our nation has never known long-term widespread famine, or food shortages, but food is perhaps the greatest way to control a country. Laws ,economics, and education may restrict your life in a myriad of ways, but cut off your food and water long enough and you’ll die. Poison the food supply, and you slowly sicken, weaken and given enough time, kill the people who eat it. All food is made of up to three components: Fats, proteins, and carbohydrates (carbs for short). Carbohydrates are just the scientific word for sugar, and comes in two forms, complex and simple. Simple carbohydrates are made up of just one or two sugar molecules. As such, it doesn’t take much for your body to break them down and absorb them (as glucose) into the bloodstream. For this reason, simple carbohydrates raise blood sugar much faster and usually higher than complex carbohydrates.

According to a study printed in The BMJ (formally called The British Medical Journal) in an average American diet, about 57.9% of the daily caloric intake of about 2200 kcals is coming from ultra-processed foods, 9.4% from processed foods, 2.9% from processed culinary ingredients. Only a mere 29.6% (less than a third) of our food intake is from unprocessed or minimally processed foods.

There are more than 38,000 processed food products on grocery shelves in the US. This includes the so-called ultra -processed foods which accounts for 90% of the added sugar in the Standard American Diet . Additionally the majority of these items contain chemical additives, dyes, and preservatives that are unhealthy to say the least. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) often takes the place of refined sugar, but is far worse. The human body can’t process this artificial sugar made by converting starch into fructose. HFCS has been added to many products to ‘make them taste better’. Whenever you see ‘new improved’ on a box, automatically think added sugars and fat. Any calories you consume that you don’t burn off daily are stored in your body as fat.

The Standard American Diet is SAD indeed.

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Feed The World?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock your entire life, it should come as no surprise to you that billionaires (and to a lesser extent multi-millionaires) control the world. They are the modern day equivalents of kings, and world domination is a game of kings. As such, these contemporary would-be rulers reign over almost every aspect of our lives. They may not officially own the country, but they do control either the food supply, or the distribution chains for it. (I’m not even going to get into restaurant chains. Americans may be eating-out more than ever, but restaurants are still just a luxury, not a necessity.)

Of the 38,000 processed foods on the shelves in food stores, more often than not we go for a trusted name-brand. All of the major supermarket chains have an in-house brand that’s comparable or sometimes superior to the national brand. They may even have similar packaging and be placed side-by-side on the shelf. Many of these knock-offs or, no-frills alternatives are manufactured by the same exact factories as the recognized brand. All of the official brands in the world are owned by just ten corporations as shown in this infographic from Oxfam.

oxfam

Additionally most supermarkets stock all major brands. There are few exceptions such as the Trader Joe chain which stocks nearly 95% of their store brand instead. Trader Joe is an American company which specializes in organic health foods. Their groceries are top-notch, and cost a few pennies more. You get what you pay for. The top-selling supermarket company in the world is Kroger.

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Top 10 Supermarket Companies in 2018

(Sales in billions)

The Kroger Co., $105.10
Albertsons, $57.39
Royal Ahold Delhaize USA, $43.20
Publix Super Markets, $34.56
Aldi, $25.86
H-E-B Grocery, $21.94
Neighborhood Market/Marketside (Walmart), $17.04
Wakefen/ShopRite, $16.30
Whole Foods Market (Amazon), $15.40
Southeastern Grocers, $10.63

We are what we eat!

There are countless diet cooks, cook books, and health books in print and on line, yet two out of three Americans are overweight. This is senseless! Food is necessary for life, but not everything we are able to eat is good for us. Sometimes it’s a matter of the ingredients, other times it is portion size. The times of day and the frequency of which we eat can also play a part. Some people eat to live while others live to eat. Of all the addictions in the world, food addiction is the worst because you need to eat to live. Junkfood may taste wonderful, but all things in moderation. The quality of life of a morbidly obese person is far diminished from that of a person leading a healthy, active lifestyle. The bottom line is that health is far more important than wealth if you want to live a successful and happy life. No one can force you the eat healthier, that decision rest sole with you. As always I wish you success and happiness!

Who’s Minding The Market?

Is the game rigged?

‘The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.’ —Brian Tracy

You’ve probably heard the old cliché ‘the rich get richer while the poor stay poor (or get poorer)’. Although this truism is often used by the media as a way of stirring up class warfare, it would be more accurate to say, ‘you get what you pay for.’ Success expert and motivational speaker Brain Tracy often remarks that the real reason people are poor is because they haven’t decided to be rich. The truth hurts, but facts are facts. Facts may offend, but facts are incontrovertible, transcendent of whomever says them. Rich people didn’t get rich by making poor people poor, for the most part, they did it by fearlessly investing their money somewhere.

Knowledge is power

There is a lot of fake news out there, and our society has never been more plugged in and connected. Unfortunately there is a big difference between reading something and understanding it. Not every bit of information being relayed to you is for your benefit. Some information like advertising contains subliminal messages to entice you to purchase their product. Is that flashy new model automobile really that much better than the car you own, or than the dozen other advertisements from other car companies all of which claim to be the best and most reliable on the road? At the end of the day, you can only drive as fast as the posted speed limit, and few people are impressed by your car for very long, if ever. A 17-year old Hyundai Accent that still runs will get you to work just as fast as a brand new one.

Subliminal messages appear in just about every piece of information presented to you. It is a hidden suggestion in the content intended to sway your opinion to their side of the issue. Someone is pulling your strings, and you won’t even know it unless you learn to read between the lines. The poor are exploited by the rich because the rich have power, and the poor lack it.

Money is power

Financial freedom is one example of power that the rich have. When you have enough money, you can do anything and go anywhere. With the possible exception of the nouveau riche, all rich and successful people invest in the stock market. Poor people do not invest in the stock market for a variety of reasons.

The most overused excuse is that they lack money. The reality is that they waste money on junk.
The next excuse is that they don’t want to lose their money. The reality is your money is gone the moment you spend it on any consumable item. Try getting your money back for the pack of cigarettes you smoked.
Stocks are very expensive. Amazon may sell in excess of $1860 a share, but there are literally thousands of ‘penny stocks’ that cost less than a pack of smokes or even a can of soda.
They don’t understand it. That is a valid excuse. A fool and their money are soon parted. However, it is a limitation which can be easily overcome by study and time. Leaders are readers!

“It’s my own desire

It’s my own remorse

Help me to decide

Help me make the most Of freedom and of pleasure

Nothing ever lasts forever

Everybody wants to rule the world.” – song Everybody wants to rule the world by Tears for Fears (1985)

Power is power

The rich have knowledge, money, and power. This allows them to control various aspects of our lives. Some rich people like President Donald J. Trump root for the common man and want every citizen to achieve whatever goals and dreams they aspire to. Others like Bernie Sanders want to control every aspect of our lives from cradle to grave. To warped frustrated old men like Sanders, we are not people, we are cattle. Unfortunately many young mush-heads believe the socialist garbage being spooned down their throats. America is a great nation because of Christianity and capitalism. No nation on Earth is perfect, but the USA is the greatest bastion of freedom, liberty, and opportunity in the world, and there are powerful men that are working hard to change that. The current generation, known as millennials, are the first generation born in the USA not to be richer than their parents. They were duped and manipulated by misinformation, fake news, liberal teachers, and mass media.

Is the stock market being gamed?

All media outlets are ultimately owned by the rich, and they can use these media outlets to influence the thoughts and behaviors of the masses. If a financial expert on a top news program suddenly proclaims that the bull market is nearly over, some people panic and sell their shares because the price drops. A short while later, the stock rebounds to new heights. Not only has the skittish investor lost on their initial investment, but they also missed out on potential gains had they held on to their shares. An important book to read on this topic is Unshakeable by Tony Robbins. It is impossible to ‘time the market’ and a wise investor knows that bull markets are around long, and bear markets only last a short while. The key is to stay the course. The market is not rigged, but there is some level of manipulation being used against unseasoned investors to exploit their fears. As Warren Buffet would say, ‘when everyone’s selling, he’s buying’.

Facebook Stock is currently trading at $178.28 as of April 18th 2019. The 52 week high was $218.62 and the low was $123.02. If you panicked and sold it at $123, you would have missed a nearly 50% gain. If you sold at $218, you could have locked in any gains you made, and reinvested it at a later time buying something else, or buying shares at the current $178 price in the hopes of future gains. If you had bought Facebook in 2012 at its IPO of $38, you would have made out like a bandit in either case. Imagine how the people feel who sold their shares a week after the IPO when the stock plunged to about $26 per share and so-called experts were calling it a bad investment! Better yet, imagine if you had brought AMAZON in 1997 for its IPO at a mere $18 a share. A $10,000 investment in that company alone would have made you a millionaire today. What you hear about a company on the news may cause you to panic and sell at the wrong time, or encourage you to buy at the wrong time, or worse yet never even buy at all. Past performance is no indication of future performance.

Inside, OUT!

You may have heard of Insider trading, where sensitive information about a company is clandestinely shared with an individual so that they can gain an advantage over the average investor. This is against the law, MOSTLY. There are exceptions to this rule for certain people, and possibly even ways to theoretically circumvent the laws if you are rich and powerful.

What exactly is insider trading? In order for a person to be considered an ‘insider’ they need to have either a 10% stake in that company, or access to valuable, non-public information about that company. CEOs, presidents, vice-presidents, and board members are all considered insiders. In order to LEGALLY trade on shares IF YOU ARE AN INSIDER, these transactions must be properly registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and are done with advance filings. It is also illegal to share insider information to protect friends and family members who might own stock in that company. That’s what happened to Martha Stewart in 2001 when she found out her friend’s company ImClone’s new cancer drug was being rejected by the FDA, and she suddenly sold all her shares days before the official announcement. Attempting to save $250,000 landed her in jail. Illegal is still illegal even if you don’t like the law. Had she just waited until news of the rejection of the new drug was publicly aired, she might have taken a little or no loss, avoided jail, and would have been able to write off any losses as a tax credit. Greed can get you in trouble fast.

The bottom line

You will never be able to spend your way into prosperity. The only way to get rich quick is to do it slowly. Rich people run the world, and they got rich because they made the proper choices, took risks, and invested their money. They earned their money the old fashioned way, they worked for it. The good news is that opportunity exists everywhere if you are willing to look for it, and do the work. As always, I wish you success and happiness!

Is It Legit?

Beware ‘professional ‘ beggars.

isitlegit

He who is generous will be blessed, For he gives some of his food to the poor. Proverbs 22:9

The United States of America is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, and more charitable donations per capita flow from the US than from other nations. As a country we are blessed with both the largest percentages of Christians and millionaires. These two groups donate more money to charities than any other according to numerous reports. Because of this abundance of wealth, there are numerous scam artists who prey upon the charity and good will of the generous by flipping the script to take advantage.

Earlier this year, you may have heard this heartwarming story in the national news media about this poor woman who was trying to make it home, but her car broke down when it ran out of gas on I-95 outside of Philly. A homeless vet gave her $20, enabling her to get the much needed petrol for her car. In gratitude, her and her boyfriend befriended the man and set up an online GoFundMe donation account to help this wonderful homeless veteran. As the story went viral, donations poured in and the account grew to more than $400,000. A wonderful story.

gofundme-controversy

Except that’s all it was, a story. The entire account was a fiction, and all three parties were involved in the scam. The vet was indeed homeless, but the couple Mark D’Amico and Kate McClure, conspired with homeless man Johnny Bobbitt and solicited his help as the face of their campaign. The plan backfired when the amounts received from good-hearted donors spiraled out of control. Greed over the size of the split of the ill-gotten gains is what ultimately undid the trio. Bobbit felt all the money belonged to him, as he was really homeless. Mastermind Mark D’Amico believed Bobbit was only entitled to a portion of the money, so Johnny Bobbitt got a lawyer and sued. As a result of the legal action and the resulting media attention on the high-profile case, the elaborate plot unraveled and all three were jailed and charged with theft by deception. GoFundMe has agreed to refund the donations collected.

jail

“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”

The Naked City was a TV crime drama broadcast from 1959-1963 and based on a 1948 film of the same name. Each episode ended with the iconic line about the eight million stories, a reference to the location, set in New York City, and implying that everyone has a story to tell. As I stated before, the USA is the land of plenty, and we do have homeless and poor, but no one staves in this country except by choice, or by malice. There has never been a famine our country, but there are many stupid people who make bad decisions and then want to blame others for their misfortune, or at least make them feel bad. It reminds me of a biblical account of a famine in ancient Samaria found in the second book of Kings.

2 Kings 6:26-30

²⁶As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king!”

²⁷The king replied, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?” ²⁸Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ ²⁹So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”

³⁰When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and they saw that, under his robes, he had sackcloth on his body.

That’s a pretty terrible tale, but it points out poor decision skills, taking advantage of both stupidity and of wealth, and while you feel sympathetic for the victims there are some people that just can’t be helped. It’s not totally clear exactly what type of help the woman is soliciting, but it is implied that she is seeking justice against the woman who scammed her.

Jesus said we will always have the poor among us. I’m not into the so-called ‘Prosperity Gospel’ which preaches that God wants us to be rich and successful, because by becoming wealthy we are in a much better position to help others. There is some truth in this logic, but remember that even the Devil can quote scripture and twist it’s meaning to suit his purposes. There’s a scam out there for every legitimate cause, and they prey upon your sympathy. A ‘church by mail’ called Saint Mathews Churches of Tulsa OK is one such scam that sends out mailings splattered with scriptures and religious iconography promising great blessings in return for ‘seed offerings’. Some televangelists also fall into this category.

stmatt

Sometimes it’s hard to separate ‘the wheat from the chaff’. Sometimes it’s impossible, so don’t feel bad if you gave in error to a fake one. Live and learn, and move on. Good people want to help others, and every organization needs SOME funding for its own overhead. Some organizations are just ‘squeaky wheels’ that exist to cry for donations while little of the funds reach their intended targets. I’m a firm believer in supporting LOCAL organizations. The best nation-wide charities like The Salvation Army https://www.salvationarmyusa.org or Toys For Tots https://www.toysfortots.org can get by on a minimal razor-thin operating budget and have LOCAL offices that cater to the LOCAL community.

If you have any concerns about a charity, you can see how they rank up to similar charities by using the https://www.charitynavigator.org/ website. Charity Navigator is the largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities in the United States providing data on 1.8 million nonprofits.

This doesn’t mean that every need has an accredited 501-c charity that exists to back it. Sometimes, legitimate needs do ‘pop-up’ unexpectedly, due to tragedy or stupidity, or both. Many of these hard luck cases turn to GoFundMe.com There are many true needs out there that need to be met, but like the couple and the vet who scammed over $400,000 some of these ‘needs’ might be fake. Whenever you donate money, never donate more than you can afford to, never feel bad if you have to say ‘no’, and never, ever, EVER donate money if you feel like you are being FORCED to give. Extortion is just as illegal as theft by deception. I have heard of people who used GoFundMe to raise funds for funerals, medical expenses, and because they lost their home in a fire. I once even donated money to a homeless Superman impersonator who had been mugged, had his teeth knocked out, and was robbed of his cape and super-suit. I have also heard of people who used GoFundME because they felt they were entitled to lots of money for their upcoming birthday, or who needed rent money because ‘they just didn’t have it’. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes people are just stupid and make bad decisions. All things come from God and you are the steward of the riches He has bestowed upon you. How you choose to distribute from your bounty is a matter of your heart, and only God can judge you because He knows the truth behind ever human heart. As always, I wish you success and happiness.

At Face Value!

Even a penny is a treasure!

treasure

One of my earliest memories of my father involved him giving me a small metal treasure chest filled with old coins. In actuality, this was a just a metal coin bank, but unlike the usually piggy bank shape, this one was shaped like a stereotypical pirate chest one might see in an old movie, or in an illustration from a book on pirates. Although I was quite young at the time, I do remember three things about the incident.

The first thing was that my father originally told me a tall tale about finding the treasure chest buried in the yard by pirates. Not quite the right thing to say to a young impressionable boy with a vivid imagination. My first impulse was to grab a shovel and start trying to dig up the yard in search of more buried pirate booty. Upon realizing his mistake, retrieving the shovel and re-filling the holes in the back yard, my father confessed to making up the whimsical pirate story in jest to have a bit of fun at my expense. A kid will believe anything, they’re too young to know any better.

After a long explanation that pirates like Long John Silver and Blackbeard were not part of the modern world, the second thing I remember was being delighted that the coins all looked different from contemporary money. I was old enough to know the difference between pennies, nickels, dimes, dimes, quarters, half-dollar, and dollar coins. A lot of the coins were from the 1800’s. This was my father’s coin collection, and he wanted me to have it to encourage an interest in both saving and collecting money. This is something which has stuck with me my whole life. A year or so later, my father died suddenly as a result of kidney failure.

The third thing I remember about the treasure chest of coins was that sometime after the death of first my father, and then my step father, my mother sold the coins to a dealer without my knowledge. It’s not like I looked at them every day, and we had to move quite a bit after she sold the house. Things ‘out of sight’ were always said to be ‘packed away in storage’ until I forgot about them. My mother only understood two things about money, she could spend it, and she never had as much as she’d like.

Bringing home the bacon.

The origin of the piggy bank is disputed by different sources. Some say that early coin jars in the middle ages were made of a type of clay called pygg. This word sounded like pig, and an English potter mistakenly created a pig-shaped bank when someone asked for a pygg money jar. There is little evidence to support this widely believed myth. What is known is that sometime about 1900, the first modern Piggy Banks were sold in the USA, and they cost 25¢. Billed as a new novelty, these early clay banks didn’t have the removable stopper on the bottom of the bank. If you wanted to remove the coins, you had to smash the bank, or kill the pig, so to speak. Even to this day, whenever I empty my coin jar and take a bunch of wrapped coins to the bank, I say to the back teller that I killed the piggy bank.

I never quite understood the charm of a piggy bank, or of giving them to children to teach about saving. A coin jar works much better. It’s my humble opinion that parents who encouraged children to save money in piggy banks did so because young children have a nasty habit of putting everything they can grab into their mouth. By making a game of putting the penny in the piggy bank, it helped keep the coins out of the mouths of babes. Of course, I may be mistaken, but that’s the nature of opinions.

The next time I became excited about coins and money was 1976, the USA bicentennial. There was a lot of hoopla concerning our great nation reaching its second century. Tall ships sailed into NYC, there were extra fireworks around the 4th of July, a lot of patriotic symbols on all kinds of novelties could be had. And the money changed. The quarters, half-dollars, and dollar coins all had a special bicentennial obverse and a double date. Likewise, after a ten year absence, $2 bills were reintroduced with a bicentennial themed back depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I had never seen a $2 bill. My mother was very excited. That was when I suddenly remembered about the long-unseen treasure chest of coins, which I then asked for, only to be told that that was ‘lost in the move’. As a consolation, I was given several specimens of all the new bicentennial money, including several $2 bills. I’ve had a love of $2 bills ever since. I even have some Canadian $2 bills, both the obsolete paper money and the two loonie or toonie coin. Canada stopped printing $1 and $2 paper money back in 1986. Canadian dollar coins have a loon (a common Canadian waterfowl) on the obverse. They were nicknamed loonies. Some Canadians even started referring to piggy banks as loonie bins. In the late 1980’s Playtoy Industries of Toronto Canada manufactured a Giant Loonie Bank. Sadly, according to a recent news article, Canada says that currency which is no longer being printed will cease to be legal tender in the near future, and will become worthless paper.

looniebin2

This takes us back to collecting coins and money in general. For the most part, money is the one collectible item that always retains its face value. The USA considers all US currency to be legal tender. If you take a 1937 ‘Mercury Dime’ to your bank, you can deposit it into your account as 10¢. Once a bank gets a hold of old money, it takes it out of circulation never to be seen again. If you took it to a coin collector instead, you’d get more than face value. The silver content alone is worth more than a dime. To collectors, the condition of the money and its rarity give added value beyond that of the face value. I save all kinds of old money. Some of it is for sentimental reasons, like my $2 bills. Others like my Indian Head pennies are rare. Some coins I have paid slightly above face value to get an entire set in ‘uncirculated’ condition. To collectors, uncirculated coins and collector proof sets command high value. The US Mint sells these collector proof sets for way above face value. The 2018 proof set has ten coins all bearing the ‘S’ mint mark from San Francisco with a frosted, sculptured foreground set against a mirror-like field. You get the five America the Beautiful Quarters, the Native American $1 coin, Kennedy Half-dollar, Roosevelt dime, Jefferson nickel, and Lincoln penny. Face value, it adds up to $2.91. The US Mint sells it for $27.95 +S/h. To me, it’s not worth the extra $25.04 for super-shiny, uncirculated coins. Some people buy these proof sets every year for their children and grandchildren. I’m not saying that they won’t increase in value among collectors, just that they only are worth face value if you spend them. I can’t tell you the exact number of times some teenager came in to the convenience store I worked at back in the day with a horde of old coins. In my mind, I just knew that someone had raided grandpa’s coin collection, but the money was legal tender, and I was simply speculating on how it was obtained. I would buy out the rare monies once they left, replacing the antiquities with contemporary counterparts from my wallet.

I’m probably never going to cash in my coin and paper money collection, but it is a comfort to know that if something terrible were to happen, I could at least spend it for face value even if I couldn’t locate another interested collector willing to obtain the collection for a premium.

“Loose Change” AKA “Penny Song”

Lyrics by Andrew Peterson

I’d give you all of me to know what you were thinking

And if I had one wish I’d wish I wasn’t sinking here

Drowning in this well, oh can’t you tell?

I can’t pick myself up off the ground,

Well I’ve been face down and pushed aside.

Well you know I’d rather just turn tail and run

than lie here in the sun and watch you pass me by

Cause I ain’t worth a dime.

(yeah yeah, oh yeah) Yeah, yeah (yeah yeah)

But If only I could stand up straight, I wouldn’t have to lie and wait,

I could up and roll away, never be ignored

I’ve got a feeling that I’m something more

than just a piece of copper ore, turning green and looking for

The reason I was born.

I’ve been around since 1964, in banks and bottom drawers

And on railroad ties. I’ve been passed around and cast aside

Skipped and flipped and flattened wide, Spun around

And thrown away and left alone to lie

But If only I could stand up straight, I wouldn’t have to lie and wait,

I could up and roll away, never be ignored

I’ve got a feeling that I’m something more

than just a piece of copper ore, turning green and looking for

The reason I was born.

(yeah yeah, oh yeah) Yeah, yeah (yeah yeah) na na na na na

But I heard about a penny found, lying underneath the couch

By a woman who was kneeling down, looking for some change.

Then the woman danced around and called her friends all over town

Told them what was lost is found, it’s another penny saved.

And so I find that all this time beneath the surface I could shine

Like all the gold a king and queen could measure

You see even a penny is a treasure

(yeah yeah, oh yeah) Yeah, yeah (yeah yeah) na na na na na

The 1987 movie Throw Mama From The Train stars Danny DeVito and Billy Chrystal as Owen and Larry. Middle-aged Owen lives at home with his overbearing mother. He seems like he might be a little slow. Larry is his writing teacher at the adult continuing education program he attends. There’s a scene that is genuinely emotionally touching when Owen wants to show Larry his coin collection. Larry doesn’t want to see the coins, but Owen makes him feel bad when he says he’s never shown them to anyone before. Owen slowly pulls out coins saying “This one is a nickel. And this is one is also a nickel. And here’s a quarter, and another quarter, and a penny.” Larry is annoyed at this, as the coins are all seemingly contemporary currency, and not worth anything more than face value. Owen then proceeds to explain how each coin is special to him because they were the change his Dad gave him during various father-son trips. It’s a collection of coins from change his dad gave him, and that’s where their value lies.

Although the original coin collection my father gave to me is long gone, the special memory of the gift remains. Like any successful person who faces a setback, I started over, and in time I slowly began to amass a new collection of coins. As my financial situation improved, I started adding things like old paper money, silver certificates, foreign coins, uncirculated coins, you name it. At face value, my collection is worth thousands. To a collector, it’s worth even more. As far as I’m concerned, it’s priceless, and not for sale. Someday, I too hope to pass my collection to my son, when I finally have a son. Hopefully he will be able to keep it longer than I did my father’s. In either case, you can’t take it with you when you go, and a good man provides for his children, and his children’s children. Money is nice to have, but the memories we make with our loved ones are worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox. As always, I wish you success and happiness!

Gone Phishing?

Beware of Cyber Scams.

gone phishing

Back when I was a young boy and living with my aunt and uncle in Woodhaven, I remember this one day when my late uncle John got very excited because of a letter he received in the mail. It was from Publishers Clearing House informing him that he was in the top 5 to be entered in a drawing for $500,000! He happily showed the letter to my Aunt Arleen, who promptly grabbed it and proceeded to quickly tear it into little pieces. My uncle was devastated.

It amused me greatly. At 13 years old, even I knew that the letter was a scam designed to entice ignorant people into subscribing to magazines in the hopes of winning that big cash prize. The one that some ‘lucky winner’ was guaranteed to receive. I could never fathom how some people could be so gullible as to fall for such things. Unfortunately the elderly are the ones who fall for such scams quite often.

Not born yesterday.

You may have heard the sad tale of Richard Overton, the oldest man in America and a World War II vet who at 112 years old had his entire bank account drained by thieves who managed to use his social security number to gain access to his bank account in June 2018.

Newsflash! Your bank is NOT going to call YOU on the phone and ask YOU to verify YOUR information. Even in the event that YOU call your financial institute for some reason or other, they only usually ask for the last four digits and your date of birth if they ask at all. Yet time and again, people fall for such scams. The number of scams that exist today is so extensive that entire books have been written on the subjects of cyber crimes, phishing, and identity theft.

You’ve got a friend in Nigeria!

One of the most well known internet scams involves receiving an e-mail from the relative of a member of a royal family who was murdered during a civil war somewhere in Africa. This person will cut you in for a percentage of their vast wealth IF you can help them recover their inheritance by sending them a little now money to help them accomplish this task. Over six billion people live on this planet, and this person you’ve never heard of in a country you’ve never been to has sent you an e-mail asking for help? Does this make any sense at all? It’s hard to believe that people can be that stupid, yet for years that scam circulated from one e-mail account to another and dumb people fell for it over and over.

Anyone e-mailing you asking for money, pretending to be in trouble, or informing you that you’ve won some fantastic prize or lottery and need to send a ‘processing fee’ is trying to scam you.

How do you spell that again?

Another popular scam involved either misspelled website addresses, or using the wrong domain extension at the end of a web address to confuse people into visiting a bogus website and thinking it was legit. Back in the early days of the internet, the default extension for a website domain was ‘.com’ but there were others, such as ‘.net’, ‘.org’ and ‘.gov’ which some people were unfamiliar with when the home computer boom took off in the early 1990’s. Scammers used to buy up domain names to create fake sites that seemed legit. One early fake site started in 1997 was whitehouse.com, the real site is whitehouse.gov with the extension .gov used by government agencies in the USA in place of the popular .com. The fake site used to redirect clueless victims to a porn site. Today whitehouse.com is an anti-Trump site, protesting everything that’s good about the USA including our president.

Today there are over 1000 top-level domains (TLDs) for internet addresses, covering everything from ‘.abb’ to ‘.zw’.

A popular trap that many people fell into was visiting these seemingly legitimate sites that were in no away affiliated with the real site. Take the American post office for example. There are people looking for jobs, or maybe there are people that have moved and want to change their mailing address. There are scam sites that pretend to be the United States Postal Service that are totally bogus and will charge exorbitant fees for both of these simple procedures. The REAL website is http://www.USPS.com and they charge $1.05 to change your address. Employment and the required exam are BOTH FREE.

Your computer is infected!

There’s nothing more alarming than having a pop-up window open telling you your computer is infected with a million viruses and that the ONLY way to fix this is to BUY this antivirus NOW from this site. Malware and ransomware will destroy your computer if you fall for this scam, and you’ll probably need to cancel your credit card if you were foolish enough to type it in and purchase this ‘cure’. I know of at least one former friend whose know-it-all teenage son fell for this.

Your mystery date is waiting.

I’m sorry, but from what I’ve seen internet dating sites are bad ideas to be avoided altogether whether they are scams or legit. Even the REAL sites are polluted with fake profiles, so why bother.

In summary, there’s many ways to fool yourself into believing pie in the sky claims, but in the end pipe dreams are just that. There’s an old adage, “if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.” You shouldn’t have to be reminded of this fact over and over again. As always, I wish you happiness and success!