Donald Trump | Working Stiffed

Newspapers Hide Behind The First Amendment They Trash

I laughed out loud when I read my local paper today. Last August, when newspapers ran editorials protesting Donald Trump’s “attacks” on the media and the freedom of the press, my local paper participated and subsequently published the First Amendment on the editorial page each day for weeks to drive home the point.

Today, my paper, the Florida Times-Union, published a heart-clutching editorial warning of the perils of fake news. They asked: who should be responsible for “sorting” “fake” from “real” news? Then they listed the leftist, partisan Snopes as a reliable source. They earnestly pointed out that France is fighting the scourge by proposing a law that would prohibit “disinformation” in election campaigns. Why not? Most of the countries in the EU are already arresting people for anti-Muslim migrant thought crimes.

The fact that the T-U made such a mockery of the First Amendment, our most cherished right, so soon after plastering it across its editorial pages in defiance of the president’s (accurate) attacks on these partisan hacks who pose as journalists, made me cringe in horror and disbelief.

First Amendment Fake News — Garbage in…garbage out. Fake News and the First Amendment.

They didn’t even realize that they were undermining the intelligence of their readers. They wrongly assumed that we needed (or wanted) to be told what to believe and they were happy to provide a list of biased resources to help us out.

CNN and MSNBC are famous for this paternalistic approach to disseminating information. When Wikileaks released the damaging Clinton emails, CNN’s Chris Cuomo told their viewers, “Remember, it is illegal to possess these stolen documents. It is different from the media. So everything you learn about this, you are learning from us.” No wonder the leftist mobs look like saliva-bubbling zombies. They’re being programmed by half-wits like Cuomo to become shrieking, raging Manchurian Muppets.

These people are desperate to control the narrative. Too bad. It’s not their job. The observant among us know that we should weigh any corroborating evidence presented in all news items. And we’ve found that a large percentage of the stories corporate media deems to be “fake” are in fact true; they just happen to put one or more powerful people or interests in a bad light.

The vulture elite prefer to control the narrative, so they can be free to continue to work against the interests of the people of this nation without scrutiny. They’ve bought up the media companies, Hollywood and politicians (in both parties) to do just that.

Still, as long as the T-U pretends to be a “news” paper, I’m happy to remind them that their job is not to “curate” the news or reprint propaganda. Journalist should be unbiased, committed to following a story wherever it leads and then reporting the truth no matter who it embarrasses or heralds.

Unfortunately, journalism is dead. In the mainstream, anyway. There are only a handful of true journalists left and they are in the process of being silenced and demonetized. In a post-truth world, exposing the truth is a dangerous vocation.

Populist and conservative media outlets that question the official narrative are being attacked and/or ridiculed. They’re also having their social media accounts shut off without warning (and years of content is being flushed down the memory hole) and globalist banking and financial institutions are preventing these companies from monetizing their operations. PayPal accounts are being canceled, banks are refusing to do business with these journalists and other lawful companies that espouse or represent “beliefs” that they don’t agree with.

Funny; I don’t recall these banksters qualifying the multi-billion dollar bailouts they were given by Obama. A lot of that money came from taxes paid by the businesses they are now strangling to death. Hitler did this to the Jews before sending them to the camps. He shut down their ability to make money. Is this what America is about now? This is biased, authoritarian racketeering. It’s crossing some seriously dangerous lines. And it all started with censorship, mislabeled as “hate speech” or “fake news.”

Meanwhile, corporate media presstitutes are celebrating the persecution of independent and citizen journalists. They turn a blind eye and continue to publish the propaganda pushed by elite media owners under the misguided belief that they are beyond reproach. I hate to break it to them, but if they continue to support and endorse this tyranny, the boot will be on their necks, too. Sooner than they think.

Sadly, as I leaf through my paper daily, I find that its pages are littered almost exclusively with AP and Washington Post stories. Most stories put quotation marks around anything the president says (to ridicule and/or undermine him). Few, if any, stories even cover his significant accomplishments, and when they do they always find a way to put a negative spin on his achievements. In fact, 92% of all news stories are critical of President Trump.

When they’re not bashing Trump, they’re running stories or investigative reports designed to inflame racial, gender or sexuality relations. This is partisan hackery. Last week, they actually reprinted a Washington Post “news article” about what Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah thought of one of President Trump’s policies.

Meanwhile, two weeks ago, AT&T announced that they were adding Jacksonville, the market the T-U serves, to the list of cities that will be irradiated with 5G next spring. All I saw was one item in the Jacksonville Business Journal. The Times-Union is interested in more hard-hitting stories. Who cares about the well-documented health hazards we’re going to be subjected to? To say nothing of the creepy surveillance capabilies 5G promises, much to the glee of the anti-human technocrats behind this abomination. The T-U editors think that a Trevor Noah brain fart is more newsworthy. Fake news? Meet dumb news. Different approach; same outcome: The deliberate dumbing down of our citizens.

The elite-sponsored push for banning so-called “hate speech,” is tearing at the very fabric of this country. It’s Orwellian. I may not agree with what some people say, but I’ll fight to the death for their right to speak their truth, whatever it is.

People are motivated to come to our country first and foremost for FREEDOM. It’s no accident that the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights is Freedom of Speech. Most people see the Bill of Rights as rights granted to us by the government; not so. The rights are there to remind our government to not trample on the unalienable, God-given rights of all people. If, in our ignorance or apathy, we let them take our rights, we won’t get them back. I hope the Times-Union and all media outlets realize that someday before it’s too late.

There is a deep state coup in the works right now that stands to destroy the Trump-driven economic recovery we are currently experiencing, as well as our constitutional republic. This is a most frightening development for the millions of Americans who are finally starting to get back on their feet after suffering economic destitution during Obama’s divisive, un-American eight-year reign. Lies and misery will be that clown’s legacy.

I make this observation from personal experience, not force-fed, regurgitated talking points from MSM or alternative media outlets. During Obama’s last five years in office, I came close to losing everything I had worked hard to attain throughout my 35-year career, including my home.

I enjoyed a moderately successfully career in middle management until the company I worked for was acquired by a competitor in 2011. That’s when my nightmare began. I was one of many casualties of the merger & acquisition (M&A) craze that has infested our economy in the 21st century, antitrust laws be damned. Monopoly is not only a board game, it’s the new normal for Corporate America.

I wasn’t immediately concerned when I was displaced, because I was very good at my job and had excellent references. I wasn’t prepared for the radical changes that had taken place under Obama’s then two-year tenure as president.

I soon discovered that the gig economy was being peddled as the new norm and full-time jobs had disappeared. Obamacare made employers resistant to hiring full-timers and I found myself competing against a flood of H1-B Visa employees or cheap offshore labor. I was stuck in a transient employment hell world. Since I live alone and support myself, this was a disastrous situation.

As the years ticked by, I found myself lurching from one short-term “gig” to the next, sometimes going months between assignments. While I waiting for Obama’s “hope” and “change” to kick in, I nibbled away at my modest nest egg until it was almost depleted. And when I needed to withdraw money from my 401(k) to pay my bills and eat, I was penalized, despite being just a few years short of the being eligible to withdraw these funds without penalty.

Obama never waived these penalties or offered any assistance to the middle class workers who were sliding into impoverishment; in fact, he worked overtime to hasten our demise by pushing for the job-killing, globalist screw job known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). He had fundamentally transformed America, all right, but not in the way he led most of us to believe he would when he bullshitted us into voting for him (twice, in my case).

Because of Obamacare, I went without insurance for two years. I couldn’t afford it and, to add insult to injury, I was subjected to penalties, which, duh!, I couldn’t afford, either. Medicaid wasn’t an option, because I managed to keep a couple of thousand in the bank.

For the first time in my life, I was uninsured and I was over 50. The blows kept coming and, like millions of other middle class U.S. citizens, I was sliding into the abyss. When I hear people say now that they wish Obama was still president, I’m sorry, but I want to hit them in the face with a shovel.

The day that Trump was elected, I had not had a single job prospect in five months and my home (which I love so much) had been on the market for a month. As hard as it was to have real estate agents show my beloved home, I prayed I could sell it before I ran out of money. I knew that if Hillary Clinton won, it would be game over for me.

I’m not surprised there’s an opioid epidemic; millions of Americans like me were made punch drunk with despair during Obama’s presidency. I never succumbed to the need to numb my pain or disengage from my hideous reality, but I can certainly understand why some people chose that dark road.

I was on my knees praying to God for an answer; a way out. Days later, Trump won the election and my life was transformed almost overnight.

Four days after Trump’s election, I got an offer for a full-time job. The pay wasn’t great, but it allowed me to pay my bills and take my home off the market. It was a real job with benefits. My phone started ringing and my email was filling up with job prospects (they still are). It was unreal! Four months later, I got another job making twice as much money. There is no question that Trump made all of this happen.

It didn’t surprise me to hear this week that during the first six months of Trump’s presidency, a million jobs were created and that investors in the stock market have made $4 trillion! And now that Trump has deep-sixed the Obamacare penalty and is tightening up immigration and work visa policies, wage growth is starting to become a reality after decades of stagnation!

The deep state doesn’t want to let Trump “Make America Great Again.” They are censoring or downplaying reports of the Trump recovery and they are openly calling for a coup.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, along with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, went on Wolf Blitzer’s show a couple of weeks ago and called for a bipartisan Congressional coalition to remove Trump from office if he fired special prosecutor Mueller (the Clinton operative who was appointed to investigate Trump-Russian collusion, despite no evidence that any crime was committed).

A few days later, former Vice President Al Gore went on James Corden’s show and said that a “challenging event” is imminent regarding Trump. Really? What? An assassination, maybe? Why these treasonous piles of excrement haven’t been arrested, thrown in a dungeon and charged with sedition and/or treason is beyond me. Clearly, these traitors, minions of the deep state, are planning a coup.

Let me tell you something: the millions of Americans who are just starting to crawl out of Obama’s economic destitution pit are not going to take this lying down.

The elites and snowflakes who flipped out when Crooked Hillary lost, insist on calling us homophobic, misogynists and/or racists. They refuse to acknowledge that we voted for Trump, because we were being suffocated into nonexistence as a result of Obama’s policies…the same policies that Hillary Clinton was committed to maintaining and expanding.

These accusations were particularly hurtful to me as a lesbian who fought for LGBT rights in the 80s and 90s. I lost a lot of friends, as a matter of fact: people who have known me for decades unfriended me on Facebook and no longer speak to me. I thought these people knew and cared about me, but the mass mental illness that has resulted from the constant stream of hate and lies MSM and Hollywood are vomiting every minute has distorted their sense of reality.

Millions of friendships, marriages and family relationships all of over the country have been destroyed by this massive, collective manipulation. What the globalist, deep state propagandists are doing is positively diabolical.

As hurtful as these losses have been, I know they won’t compare to the devastation we will experience if we let these treasonous, un-elected members of the globalist deep state “eliminate” our president. It will mean the end of our country and dark days for all Americans.

It was painful to watch Bernie Sanders abandon the populist movement he inspired during the 2016 presidential election primaries and then to watch him endorse (and campaign for) Hillary Clinton.

One would think he would have grown a pair and called her and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) out on their corruption after it was revealed:

in leaked DNC emails that the DNC, led by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, plotted to steal the nomination from him (and succeeded in doing so), and

in a WikiLeaks John Podesta email, Podesta referred to Bernie as a “doofus”

You’d be wrong. We may never know why Bernie folded like a cheap suit as effortlessly as he did. In any event, his betrayal deserves an appropriate anthem. So, in honor of Bernie’s hippie protester roots, I updated the lyrics to Country Joe & The Fish’s iconic Vietnam War song, “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.”

I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Bern Rag

Well, come on all of you Congressmen,
the Clinton cartel needs your help again.
Hillary’s made a terrible scene,
deleting emails to hide her schemes.
So call CNN, The Times and The Post,
let’s see which of you lies the most.

And it’s one, two, three,
What’s Bernie fighting for?
Don’t ask him, he don’t give a damn,
he sold out to Hillary’s scam.
And it’s five, six, seven,
the globalists are at the gates.
Well, there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! We’re all gonna cry.

Come on Wall Street, don’t be slow,
World War 3 is good to go.
There’s plenty of good money to be made,
as Hillary’s friends (thanks to bribes you paid).
Just hope and pray that when she goes all in,
it starts AND ends with Putin.

Well, come on Bernie, let’s move fast;
your big chance has come at last.
We felt the Bern and now wonder why,
you killed a good movement for the Clinton lies.
And now the election can only be won,
after you’ve blown our hopes to kingdom come.

Well, come on voters throughout the land,
get your vote stolen by sleight of hand.
Come on voters, don’t hesitate,
surrender your rights before it’s too late.
Be proud that you just sold your soul,
to Clinton and the Soros troll.

The fact that Bernie’s unwavering loyalty to his corrupt, criminal Democratic Party and the Lady Macbeth-like Hillary Clinton is stronger than his loyalty to the millions of people who were swept up in the “Feel the Bern” movement is a bitter pill for many to swallow.

Bernie inspired millennials unimpressed by career politicians and people across all demographics who are struggling to survive in this post-NAFTA job loss apocalypse. Many people who are barely getting by took money out of their tight food budgets to donate to Bernie’s campaign. They believed he was their champion. He made chumps of millions of our country’s most vulnerable. So, will he give those poor people their money back now that “he’s with her?” Not that I’ve heard.

It’s up to Donald Trump now. Whatever you think of Trump, there’s no question that he has more in common with the Senator from Vermont than Bernie would care to admit. And now that Bernie has cut and run like a gutless wimp (and kept the money from the masses), Trump is the ONLY hope we have of “draining the DC swamp” and halting the Clinton crime wave.

I know a lot of people feel “Berned,” and are considering sending a message of protest by voting for Jill Stein or that wacko Gary “What’s Aleppo?” Johnson. Sure, it’s your right, but keep in mind that this election is bigger than Trump or Clinton…the globalists are at the gate and this election is really about saving our republic. If we allow Hillary to take the presidency (either by popular vote or voter/election fraud), this election may well be the last time we have a say in anything.

Orlando. Pulse Nightclub. A night that will live in infamy. As a lesbian living in Florida, the Orlando mass shooting hits close to home for me, literally and figuratively.

While the Orlando massacre was an unspeakable tragedy, and we mourn the heartbreaking loss of too many young lives, I have to admit that I am dismayed by the LGBT community’s naïve and myopic failure to acknowledge this atrocity for what it is: radical Islamic terrorism.

This is not your garden variety hate crime, people; and banning assault weapons won’t stop future attacks. Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack. It’s no secret that ISIS has been targeting and murdering gays throughout the Middle East and that mosques throughout our country, including the one in Fort Pierce, FL that Mateen attended, preached that homosexuals should be murdered.

Obama calls this attack an act of “homegrown extremism,” but he refuses to acknowledge the Islamic root of that extremism. How can you defeat an enemy, if you refuse to identify them? You can hate Donald Trump all you want, but his take on this issue is spot on.

Jihadis also like to employ suicide bombers. How do you propose we ban or regulate them? Besides, when have criminals or terrorists ever followed the law? And, for that matter, what good is passing laws when the ones already in place are selectively enforced to appease politically correct sensibilities?

Then, there is the embarrassing systemic incompetence of our alphabet agencies. Mateen was interrogated by the FBI several times a couple of years ago and was still issued gun permits and was allowed to work as a security guard and subcontractor for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), no less. How the f*** does that happen? Who’s running our “intelligence” network, Barney Fife?

Oh, and so much for the NSA spying apparatus keeping us “safe”…I guess Mateen bypassed their radar, because they have their hands full monitoring white guys and veterans who hate Obama or Hillary.

This threat requires more sophisticated thinking

Let’s call out the elephant in the room that no politician, including Trump, is brave enough to point out, shall we? These terrorists are targeting us, because while we’ve been busy tweeting, taking selfies and posting to Snap Chat and Instagram, the bankers who own our politicians used our military to invade the Middle East under false pretenses and to depose rulers who didn’t serve us (really, them…the bankers).

How would we react if China or Russia overthrew our government, occupied our country and accidentally killed thousands of innocent citizens during bombings and drone strikes while they searched for what we would probably call freedom fighters?

True homegrown extremism: angry white guys

As for the non-jihadi mass shooters, those (mostly white) guys are a product of our broken economy and Big Pharma’s profit-driven assault on our bodies and minds. It’s not hard to spiral down into anger and despair these days; the spiking suicide rate among middle-aged white people confirms that.

The media plays a significant role in this. After all, we are constantly told that we live in a “consumer-based” economy, but when close to 100 million people in the U.S. aren’t working and there is no (or little) financial support available for U.S. citizens facing economic devastation, you can go sideways in a hurry, I imagine.

And to keep us docile and uninformed, news programming is saturated with mindless coverage of celebrities, instead of unbiased reports about economic or political issues that should be of importance to us. The overall message is that the key to happiness is to be as rich and famous as George Clooney or the Kardashians.

That’s not an easily attainable goal, especially when most of us can’t find or hold jobs (thanks to the go-to recipe for increasing shareholder value that calls for displacing hundreds, or even thousands, of people at a time).

Because our leaders can’t be bothered to work on improving economic opportunities for Americans, physicians are confronted with increasing numbers of broken, disenfranchised people. And they do what their pharmaceutical sales reps encourage them to do: they immediately place these unfortunate people on a steady diet of SSRI drugs, even though most MDs know that side effects include suicidal thoughts…or (ahem) violent tendencies. Problem…reaction…(dangerous) solution.

Others, (especially those who can’t afford prescription drugs and/or don’t qualify for Medicaid), are getting sucked into the heroin epidemic that seemed to materialize as soon as we “liberated” Afghanistan and started growing and importing heroin into this country. Voila! A perfect recipe for mass psychosis.

Instead of “Orlando Strong” we need to get “Orlando MAD”

So, what will stop mass shootings? For starters, putting wedge issues like trannie bathrooms and gorillas on the back-burner where they belong (although these concerns are worthy of discussion, they should not suck all of the air out of the room 24/7). Understand that the powers that be are using these issues to distract you from the big time criminality taking place in Washington and on Wall Street.

We need to focus on electing people who will represent us and throw out (and even arrest) the traitors in government who sold us down this river of insecurity, fear and loathing.

Our new representatives should then get us the hell out of the Middle East and other regions of the world where we don’t belong, prioritize bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., work to create more jobs…and, (drum roll, please)…reign in Big Pharma’s assault on us through overpriced, often damaging drugs and “anti-psychotics.”

Oh, and for God’s sake, the last thing we need is to allow Hillary Clinton to steal the presidency; in addition to her many crimes against humanity, as head of the State Department, our own Lady Macbeth was the midwife who oversaw the birth and growth of ISIS, so guess who has Orlando blood on her hands?

Politicians, led by Obama, and their mainstream media lackeys are working overtime spinning the narrative that this is solely a gun control issue and/or a homegrown homophobic hate crime; this is misleading at best and criminal at worst.

Sadly, many of my fellow LGBTers are guzzling this Kool-Aid. Thank God for enlighted LGBT groups like the Pink Pistols; they understand the folly of giving up your rights for “security.”

What makes this all the more perverse is that Obama and Congress are ignoring or supporting policies that actually jeopardize our safety: they are allowing our borders to stay wide open, they secretly import hundreds of thousands of unvetted Muslim “refugees” (BTW: Mateen was an employee of G4S, a global security firm used by the DHS to move illegal aliens around the country) and they refuse to deport illegal aliens from Latin America who commit crimes (even repeat offenders). Ask yourself, why?

As our modern-day prophet, George Carlin, once wisely observed: Terrorism involves a series of acts intended to put a civilian population in a state of panic, fear and uncertainty in order to achieve some political goal.

San Bernardino, Sandy Hook, the Boston Bombing, and now Orlando…no outcry about the religious, pharmacological, geopolitical or economic motives for these heinous crimes is allowed to be discussed in mainstream media (and dissenting voices are called racists or “conspiracy theorists” and are routinely censored by Facebook and Google and mainstream news sites). We’re just told that the magic remedy is to ban the guns. Again, why?

Tyrants throughout history have understood that disarming citizens is essential for complete domination. And this is accomplished so much easier when you can do it with the support of “useful idiots” (as Joseph Stalin called his brainwashed, compliant citizens).

To understand why, consider what Obama’s close friend (and current Chicago mayor), Rahm Emanuel, said while still at the White House: You never let a serious crisis go to waste. Indeed.

Carly Fiorina’s hapless bid for the presidency should serve as a warning to all self-important corporate executives: Your hubris may not play in Peoria…or Des Moines, Iowa. The exception, of course, is Donald Trump…but then again, Trump didn’t need to slide on his belly, kneecapping smarter coworkers out of his way on his climb to the top; his daddy handed him a successful real estate empire.

After making her mark at AT&T by plowing through a (probably small) crowd of female wannabe executives (from secretary to CEO!!!), Carly Fiorina was tapped to lead Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 1999. Her bipolar self-importance, coupled with her intense, ferret-like gaze, allowed her to become an extremely well-compensated poster girl for diversity in the tech industry. How cool was she to head a company in an industry dominated by men?

Six short years and many bad (often heartless) decisions later (the Compaq acquisition and her penchant for outsourcing everyone and everything top the list), she flushed away 50 percent of the company’s value and 30,000 jobs. In the end, Carly’s greatest achievement at HP was her resignation; the stock shot up 7 percent when she announced she was leaving the company.

This former tech “mogul” didn’t even have the common sense to purchase her own domain name. Instead, one of the many former HP workers that she displaced snatched up carlyfiorina.org and used the site to mock Carly and expose the extent of her relentless need to destroy jobs…in her own words. For example, after being asked how she would handle the layoffs at HP if she had to do it again, she replied: “I would have done them all faster.” O-kay.

Carly has been running for office (and losing) ever since, trying to regain a large canvas on which to paint her human carnage. Such pluck is admired by corporate board members who love putting tenacious, self-centered people in charge of companies…people who don’t mind getting a little (or a lot of) blood on their hands to achieve “economies of scale,” but in the real world, people like Carly are rightly shunned for being the psychopaths that they are.

After a career of failure, scandal, and a complete lack of empathy for the people whose lives she carelessly destroyed as HP’s CEO, politics beckoned. As a former corporate CEO, she didn’t feel the need to start at the bottom, so she ran for senator of California against the Yoda of female politicians, Barbara Boxer (who quickly schooled the “secretary-to-CEO” upstart). And now she wants to fail up to president and become the Republican Party’s Hillary Clinton. Such hubris. The Onion humorously captured her delusional aspirations, as only they can.

I suppose it’s easy to think you’re the cat’s pajamas when you spend years addressing a captive audience of employees who applaud and laugh at your bad jokes at town hall meetings. Still, there’s a big difference between addressing an audience of employees who depend on your approval to keep their jobs and addressing American voters, such as those at the Iowa caucuses this week, who you have to depend on to get the job.

Like all bipolar CEOs, when she does face rejection, she folds like a cheap suit. After a poor showing at the Iowa caucuses, she skipped town and her own party. No need to thank the few people who worked on her behalf; it was time to move on and be a world leader pretend at the next stop on the campaign trail…the New Hampshire primary.

Carly, like Hillary Clinton, are examples of what is wrong with too many women who achieve power. As a woman myself, I have to admit that I preferred working for men. Many of the women I worked for who had high aspirations viewed me as a threat (even though I never shared their C-suite aspirations) and felt it necessary to neutralize my contributions or even to take credit for my occasional good ideas. I can honestly say that I have inadvertently helped a lot of these women move up that coveted ladder without so much as a thank you from them.

I wish I could say that all women leaders are wise, gentle souls who have an innate desire to better the world and nurture the growth and development of other women, but that hasn’t been my experience. I can’t imagine what Carly did to her female coworkers during her meteoric rise up the corporate ladder at AT&T.

On some level, you have to blame the environment…with so few opportunities for women to break through the glass ceiling, I can see how an ambitious woman can turn into a psychopath trying to squeeze through the eye of the needle of achievement. Still, until we can level the corporate and political playing fields and the Lady Macbeth syndrome becomes the exception and not the rule, voters (and employees) need to proceed with caution.

This is the problem I have with identity politics. I’d love to see a woman become president (I wish Elizabeth Warren had decided to run), but I don’t support voting for a powerful woman just because she’s a woman. Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina are flawed, power-hungry, mentally ill women. And the reality is that after a life time of stepping on other women to get ahead, well…they don’t like other women, so why give them your vote, ladies? Neither would make a suitable first female president and it troubles me that so many women are blinded by ovaries wrapped in a power suit.

While it’s easy to single out Fiorina as a narcissistic, psychotic product of corporate dysfunction, the reality is that C-suites at companies nationwide are filled with Carly Fiorinas and even more bipolar or psychologically damaged men.

I wonder how different the corporate landscape would be if leaders were selected by employees, instead of by corporate board members who see personnel as “human resources.” A little more humility and a lot less hubris in leadership would be appreciated.

Yes, it’s true. Obamacare has sentenced me to death…and financial destitution. I feel it’s important to address this issue on this, the last day we are told to register for Obamacare without incurring an unconstitutional tax penalty.

I have been without health insurance, which I cannot afford, for a year-and-a-half and I live in a state that does not extend Medicaid to people in my position. As a result, I am one serious disease or accident away from certain death.

After dutifully paying taxes for close to 40 years, helping to send other people’s kids to school (I don’t have kids) and funding food stamps and benefits for thousands of people, my government is repaying me by turning its back on me during my hour of need…and penalizing me for my new-found destitution, to boot.

How did this happen? I am a 52-year-old woman who was last employed in a full-time position with benefits four years ago; I was part of a group purge after my company was acquired by a competitor. This scenario is familiar to most of you, I’m sure. I thought I’d find another job with benefits easily, but I was wrong.

As The New York Times recently reported, women over 50 account for half of all long-term unemployed people. After remaining steadily employed in good, white collar lower management positions for more than 30 years, I was suddenly an unwilling participant in the trendy new gig economy out of necessity.

For this I owe a big thanks to Bill Clinton and NAFTA, which destroyed the American middle class by allowing companies to ship jobs overseas and import H1-B visa “guest workers.” Now, many of us find that we’re unemployable more than 20 years before we can collect a pension (if we even have one) or Social Security (if it will still exist by then).

My new reality involves going months without work, or “contracts,” and even when I do get a temporary contract position, my “clients” periodically cut my hours without warning. As a result, I made less than $10k last year.

Needless to say, I can’t afford the so-called affordable insurance Obama promised. According to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health care exchange marketplace, I’d need to pay $550 a month for a policy with an $8,000 deductible. And what good is a subsidy when you go months without any income?

A low-cost, pre-Obamacare catastrophic insurance policy would be helpful right about now. Unfortunately, Obamacare-less forces me to buy an overpriced policy with a high deductible, so that I can share the privilege of paying for some dude’s Viagra prescription and pediatric dental insurance (like I said, I don’t have kids).

To make things worse, I’m about to get hit with the Obamacare penalty…and this is on top having to drain my savings and take hardship withdrawals from my 401(k) (which I am also about to be unfairly penalized for) just to survive in our “new normal” transient, gig economy that mainstream media finds so hip and trendy.

I’ve decided that if something happens to me health-wise, I’m just going to die, because if I am hospitalized, I stand to lose my home and what little I have left, so why bother sticking around?

If you like Obamacare, it’s probably because you don’t need it

I am so tired of brainwashed Obamacare defenders crowing about the 12 million Americans who couldn’t get insurance before now having coverage. Frankly, in a country of 330 million people where close to 100 million are out of the workforce (many not by choice), that’s a drop in the uninsured bucket, so bragging is totally uncalled for. Maybe they’re promoting this “success” because they know that math-challenged Common Core students are easily impressed by any number you throw at them.

Obamacare supporters are also quick to blame states that don’t extend Medicaid. Why? Should citizens of states that aren’t on board with Obamacare be penalized? There wasn’t a Medicaid referendum in any state that I am aware of.

And, if Obamacare is supposed to mandate affordable insurance for all, why didn’t it nationalize Medicaid? At the very least, it should exempt those of us who live in Medicaid-deprived states from Obamacare.

And then there’s the pre-existing condition clause. Sorry, Obamacare defenders, but I’m not down with being stuck with the rest of this ugly baby just for that one benefit. Besides, a single-payer health care solution would take care of pre-existing conditions just as effectively. As it stands, the insurance companies are offsetting their pre-existing condition “losses” with double-digit rate increases each year.

Not surprisingly, I find that the strongest supporters of this crony capitalist screw job are people who have employer-paid health insurance or at least make or have enough money to overpay for their insurance.

I know a couple of people who used to sing the praises of Obamacare….until they lost their jobs, were forced to join the gig economy, and had to actually rely on Obamacare for coverage. Needless to say, both have now joined the repeal Obamacare bandwagon.

It’s unconstitutional

The lie Obama sold us (among many) when he was promoting this travesty was access and affordability…and, of course, we couldn’t keep our doctors, after all (not that we can afford them now anyway, so I suppose this is a moot point for those of us who inhabit the Obamacare penal colony). I admit that I bought the spin. I even voted for the lying clown. What we got instead was a gun to our heads forcing us to purchase an overpriced product from PRIVATE companies or face hefty, escalating tax penalties.

No income limits were set; whether you make $10k (or less) or $100k a year, if you don’t buy insurance, you get taxed. Seriously? How is that legal? Or fair? First of all, people who make less than $30k shouldn’t pay ANY taxes, never mind have tax penalties imposed upon them.

And if Obama was so hell-bent on insuring us, why didn’t he mandate maximum premium amounts that insurers could charge? Say, $200 a month? Let’s call Obamacare what it is: a blank corporate welfare check to the insurance companies.

Not a peep from presidential candidates

NOT ONE presidential candidate has addressed this travesty. Several running for president are sitting members of Congress. They’ve taken a two year paid vacation on our tax payer dime to attend fundraisers and campaign for an office most don’t stand a chance of winning. Must be nice.

NOT ONE of them (including our socialist man of the people, Bernie Sanders) can be bothered to spare a moment to introduce legislation NOW to at least waive the “Cadillac tax” penalty. No, instead of nuking the toxic provisions of Obamacare, Congressional members voted to repeal the whole thing, knowing that the president would veto the resolution….pure theater…or political masturbation.

As a member of Congress you have a unique opportunity to demonstrate your leadership abilities through legislation, and there’s no time like the present. That’s probably the ONLY advantage you have over Donald Trump. Talk is cheap. So, why not lead by example? Because, frankly, too many of us don’t have a year to wait for action…nor do we trust empty campaign promises.

Speaking of leading by example, I invite Obamacare defenders to show me how great it is by contributing funds to pay my Obamacare tax penalty and/or my monthly insurance premiums. On second thought, the way our economy is going, maybe you should hang on to your money…you’ll probably need it to pay for your own “affordable” Obamacare insurance someday.

The average person who suffers from bipolar disorder endures a lifelong struggle with mood swings and fluctuating energy levels, all while trying to maintain stable personal and professional relationships; not easy to achieve, to be sure.

Fortunately, many find relief with medication and the support of loved ones, and they can lead successful, fulfilling lives.

But what happens when a bipolar person is in a position of power and/or has achieved an impressive level of entrepreneurial success? Would you feel comfortable suggesting that they need to take their meds, if they feel they don’t…or to lash out at them if they call you at 3 a.m. to discuss their latest great idea?

If they sign your paycheck or you’re dependent on them financially in some way, odds are you wouldn’t. A LOT of CEOs, executives, and entrepreneurs are bipolar, and they are just as likely to be proud of it and acknowledge that their mania is the reason they are successful.

What they don’t always acknowledge is the collateral damage they often leave in their manic wake. But, hey, you gotta crack some eggs to make an omelet, right? Sadly, those of us who have had the misfortune of toiling for manic depressive leaders have been those eggs, and the yolk is often on us.

I’ve worked for more than my share of bipolar CEOs and executives, so it’s safe to say I had to reach for the Maalox more than once.

Bipolar giveth and bipolar taketh away

One manic depressive executive I worked under early in my career—let’s call her Dara—had my whole department in such a perpetual state of flux that we checked in with her executive assistant each morning to find out if Dara was up or down that day. Needless to say, no one approached her on “down” days, even when it was necessary.

The C-suite loved Dara, though…she was a straight-shooter…a risk taker….and she didn’t need (or want) to be micromanaged. Not surprisingly, those were not traits she ever wanted to see in us. Those who were foolish enough to try to emulate her were swiftly terminated.

We were paralyzed by her inconsistent direction and her fluctuating mood swings. Still, those of us who survived her manic meat grinder intuitively found a way to succeed, inadvertently ensuring that she remain gainfully employed.

What else could we do? Her bosses never bothered to investigate the psychological minefield that was her department.

The day did come, however, when she popped a wheelie on national TV and the powers that be got a very public glimpse at the personality we had struggled to manage for years. And just like that, she was gone, and we all heaved a spontaneously sigh of relief and broke out into a chorus of “Ding, dong, the witch is dead…”

Of course, on some level, we felt bad for her, because we knew she was ill, but then again, she had pushed many of us to the brink of mental illness. And in our results-at-an-cost corporate culture, her impact on our mental and emotional well-being was low priority.

The CEO’s Disease

Years ago, psychologists labelled bipolar disorder “the CEO’s disease,” with reason. Numerous studies have found that the manic stage of the disease tends to breed successful entrepreneurs. A recent joint study between Stanford University and the University of Denmark confirmed earlier research, finding that successful people who are bipolar tend to be uber-successful, often earning much more than their peers.

The study also confirmed that the opposite is true for those who can’t effortlessly slide up the corporate ladder through nepotism or who don’t catch a lucky entrepreneurial brake: average bipolar Joes and Janes tend to make much less than their colleagues.

Donald Trump: The Elvis of bipolar CEOs

Unless you live in an underground bunker with no Wi-Fi, you’ve no doubt been exposed to the clown show that is Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. Having grown up in New York City, I am more than familiar with this bloviator in a Mafia Don’s clothes.

Trump is a self-made business tycoon…because he tells you he is, but if you scratch off the cheap, gold paint (found in abundance at any Trump-owned property) you’ll find a string of failures and bankruptcies. He’s not even self-made; his father, a wealthy Brooklyn slumlord, greased his entrepreneurial wheels.

Trump parlayed his hubris and Rapunzel-like comb-over into mainstream success with “The Apprentice,” a TV show that allowed him to yell, “You’re fired!” at some hapless participant on each episode. One person’s humiliation became a control freak’s wet dream…and the nation was enthralled!

Now he has a significant lead over the cattle car full of Republican/globalist hand puppets running for president. And, why not? Unlike the others, he is a straight-shooter…a risk taker….a guy who says what many of us think, but won’t admit in polite company. Plus, he’s running on his own dime! Like the honey badger…the Donald don’t care.

This is a dangerous trap, because when it comes to this Elvis of bipolar entrepreneurs, rest assured, that for every one thing you like about him, there will be ten things that you will find appalling.

Bipolar CEOs are often adept at consensus building. If gifted with sufficient charm, they can get us so focused on their cause when in the throes of their mania, that we’re blinded by the toxic lead under the cheap paint.

This is why so many boardrooms end up putting these literal maniacs in charge of their companies, leaving those of us who owe our livelihoods to these human pendulums to cringe in uncertainty, and to live with the reality that today’s promotion can easily turn into tomorrow’s termination. Not fun.

Tag: Donald Trump

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