Update: Celebrities leaving the USA

Just spent over an hour scouring on-line sources to see how many of the people in the list I posted a couple of weeks ago have left the country, you know the ones the vowed that if Trump got elected, they would leave.

Well, I may have missed something, please someone correct me if I have, but no-one on that list has left the country yet!  It may still be too early, it's only been 15 days, so I'll keep an eye out to see if some leave at a later date.

In case others are interested in these things, for now, here is the count,

Day 15: 0 Celebrities who promised to leave the country have done so!

Just saying...

Leaving the country if Trump is elected!

I read of hundreds of people (mostly actors/artists who are better than everyone, anyway) vowing to leave the country, if Trump was elected president.  It always intrigued me how artists that make close to zero contribution to society make such statements and I decided to put together a short list of such claimants and then check a few months after the election to see how many of them have made good on their promise. So, as of 11/9/2016, here are the people that over the past year or so have stated they would leave the country if Trump was elected.


Alec Baldwin ****
Al Sharpton **
Ali Wentworth ***
Amber Rose **
Amy Schumer *
Armie Hammer *****
Barbra Streisand *
Barry Diller **
Bryan Cranston *
Chelsea Handler *
Cher *
Chloë Sevigny **
Eddie Griffin **
Eddie Vedder ****
Elizabeth Moss *****
George Lopez **
Jenny Slate *****
Jennifer Lawrence *****
Jurnee Smollet-Bell *****
Jon Stewart *
Kathryn Hahn *****
Katie Hopkins **
Keegan-Michael Key **
Lena Dunham *
Michelle Branch *****
Miley Cyrus *
Natasha Lyonne **
Neve Campbell **
Ne-Yo ***
Omari Hardwick **
Raven-Symoné **
Rosie O'Donnell ****
Ruth Bader Ginsburg **
Sienna Miller *****
Samuel L. Jackson *
Spike Lee **
Stephen King *****
Whoopi Goldberg *
Zosia Mamet *****


And here are the sources of information:

* http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/11/08/celebrities-leaving-u-s-trump-wins/

** http://townhall.com/tipsheet/catherinedunn/2016/09/08/these-10-celebrities-say-theyll-leave-the-country-if-trump-is-elected-n2215391

*** http://www.wnd.com/2016/11/celebs-who-said-theyd-leave-u-s-if-trump-won/

**** http://ijr.com/2015/12/504520-trump-wins-moving/

***** http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/celebrities/celebrities-who-said-they-ll-leave-america-if-donald-trump-becomes-president-1.12588837

Donna Brazile - Scam :-(

So, Donna Brazile was in the news again yesterday.

She is the poster person of what is wrong with the political operatives in this country.

A history of ~30 years of lying, making things up, circumventing rules, and "playing" the system. Ran the unsuccessful campaign of Jesse Jackson, following by the unsuccessful campaign of Gepheart, thrown out of the Dukakis campain for making up stories about Bush, she finally works on the Bill Clinton campaign and gets "connected".  From there, a commentator at CNN, where else :-(

When the leaked emails come out and the plot to thwart Bernie's efforts by the "other" corrupt, evil politico Wasserman Schultz resigns, Donna becomes the interim DNC chairperson.  At least some stability, honesty and respect, they thought - Wrong!!!

She gets caught giving questions for one of the CNN debates to Hillary ahead of time, then denies is when interviewed, span around, twisted, lied, invoked the "poor me" defense, claimed that since the source were leaked emails, the charge did not hold, and through all that CNN was silent on the issue.

Ah, but more emails leak and she is caught giving the answers to Hillary once again.  Well, CNN can no longer stay quiet, they have to act, so they ask her to resign from her spot as a political commentator, i.e., they fire her.

"Donna Brazile...  Hacked emails from WikiLeaks show she shared questions for CNN-sponsored candidate events in advance with friends on Hillary Clinton’s campaign."   "We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor," Lauren Pratapas, a network spokeswoman, said in a statement.

But you know, to people like her that doesn't matter.  So what?  She'll lie and make things up and invoke all shorts of defenses and deflect, and spin and she'll end up is some political appointment (or some politically influenced media job), all along believing (because she DOES believe it) that she is better than everyone, that she knows what's best for everyone, while being just scum!

What a sad statement about our political system :-(

I have been listening to the news about Grexit and how bad things are in Greece and in Europe, in general, and I have been pondering about our own situation in this country, the good old US of A.  In addition to pondering, I started looking around to see if I could validate some of the claims being made by people that this could never happen to us, it's happening in Greece and Europe because they have mismanaged their affairs and so on.  Really?

So, Greece's public debt is ~400 billion dollars and the US's national debt is about 18 billion (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/), but this would not, or could not happen here? Well, pundits will say, yeat but Greece is tiny country of about 10 million  and we are over 315 million, that's why our debt number is much higher, it makes sense, right?

Well, it turns out that according as of 2014 (last year), the per capita public debt of the USA is higher than that of Greece.  Yes, that's right, each one of us owes more money than a a person in Greece. While looking for that information, I also unearthed some other countries with a surprisingly high per capita public debt.  See if you agree with me:


Country Per Capita
Public Debt ($)
--------- ---------------
1 Japan 99,725
2 Ireland 60,356
3 USA 58,604
4 Singapore 56,980
5 Belgium 47,749
6 Italy         46,757
7 Canada 45,454
8 France 42,397
9 UK 38,938
10 Switzerland 38,639
11 Austria 38,621
12 Greece 38,444
13 Netherlands 37,233
14 Germany 35,881
15 Norway 34,910
16 Spain 30,031
17 Finland 29,930
18 Denmark 28,778
19 Portugal         26,770
20 Sweden 25,155

Here is the source: http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/p/countries/japan

LinkedIn is not the same as Facebook, or it shouldn't be!

What is happening with LinkedIn?  

When everyone was creating facebook accounts, I was reluctant to join them.  I wasn't sure I wanted to spend my time updating my hourly social timeline, "now I am dressing my kids, I am on my way back from the supermarket, my dog just bit someone,..." No, I don't think there is anything wrong with it.  If someone has the time and desire to post and someone else has the time and desire to read such updates, more power to them!  I just didn't care to do neither.  Reluctantly, I joined the crowd and after a while, I realized it wasn't so bad.  So, you share personal moments with friends, you tell your cousin about little Johnny's first steps, plus it gives you a chance to socialize for a few minutes a day, why not?

LinkedIn, not that's a different thing altogether, I thought.  It's a "professional" network where people of similar interests meet to discuss and exchange ideas about topics they share a professional interest in.  A place where you can network, meet more people in your field, share technical information, and so on.  And, that's what it was, at first, for a few years.

But, leave it to the social law of the lowest common denominator.  Everything, always levels off at the lowest level it could be, without crashing/imploding, the level of mediocrity.  

It wasn't long before LinkedIn posts started to appear about someone's horse being sick, someone kid starting kindergarten, someone's father celebration their 75th birthday.  Hey, I have no problem with you being proud about any of  these events.  I can understand you wanting to share these events with friends, seriously, I do.  But, do it with style and consideration for people you are connected with.  Do it on Facebook,  whose purpose is just that, to share social type information with your relatives, friends and neighbors.  Let LinkedIn be what it was supposed to be, a professionals network.  

Chine posed to capitalize on space, when the time comes

China completes the first soft landing on the moon, most certainly to be followed by landing humans on the moon, not in the too distant future.  And, the US the lead the space race for decades is quickly falling behind (and not just behind China).  What happened to us?  Is China just wasting money on their space program while we have wised up and realized that such investment may not be worth it?  I don't think so!

I believe we have just gotten complacent and allowed this to happen.  There is no question that space will be the arena where market competition will be taking place in the future.  There is also no doubt (in my mind) that if one wants to be ready to compete in the future, they need to start preparing now!!!  Unfortunately, our leaders have lost sight of that :-(  We'll ALLsee the results and pay the consequences, in the future, but it will be too late to do anything about it.

Sad, sad state of affairs.

Only elimination of corruption will help Europe

I have been following the European economic crisis for the past year, or so, who hasn't?  I closely watched the Spanish bailout, the downgrade rating of the Italian and French banks, the two rounds of elections in Greece.

Then today, I read that the 4 powers of Europe are meeting to discuss their plans for getting out of this mess.  Germany, France, Italy and Spain are meeting to solve the problem.  What, are they just kidding themselves?   So, Spain is broke and borrows money at very high interest rates, Italy and France are almost at the same situation (totally broke and paying high interest rates) and Germany is the only one that may still have some reserves to help out.  So, how are the other three going to help the European crisis?  What are they going to do, threaten Germany that if they it doesn't decide to help them they will go bankrupt and take it down with them?  I mean, what will be their contribution to the possible solution?

I am not an economist and I know that most of us tend to oversimplify things but from what I've read so far, and I've tried to read a lot on the subject, although not the only one, a primary contributing reason these countries are is such dire economic condition, is the rampant corruption and misuse of public funds.

So, why not start correcting the problem at its root?  Fight corruption, prosecute anyone involved, put them in jail and revert ownership of anything they own back to the public coffers.

That might be a good start to get on the road to recovery!  Unless and until this happens, all these bail-outs and loans that are supposed to help the average citizen of the suffering countries cope, will instead go to lining the pockets of the same, few corrupt individuals!