Damn interesting?

[charles royer]

The Dutch Tulip Bubble of 1637
The later part of the 20th century saw its share of odd financial bubbles. There was the real-estate bubble, the stock market bubbles, and the dot com bubble, just to name a few. In each instance of price inflation people paid exorbitant amounts for things that shouldn’t have been worth anything like the going price. And each time people stood around afterwards and said “What were we thinking?”

One has to believe that the same thought occurred to the Dutch in the 17th century when they settled down after their bout with tulipomania, wherein the humble tulip bulb began to sell for prices to make New York Realtors blanch.

As much as the tulip is associated with Holland, it is not native there. Rather it was introduced in 1593 by a botanist named Carolus Clusius, who brought it from Constantinople. He planted a small garden, intending to research the plant for medicinal purposes. Had Clusius’s neighbors been morally upright, the tulip might still be a rare exotic in the gardening world. Instead they broke into his garden and stole some of his bulbs in order to make some quick money, and in the process started the Dutch bulb trade
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-dutch-tulip-bubble-of-1637/
Just sayin!

[The Bull]

[The Bull]

The Democrat party has come a long way from it beginning. Indian extermination, trail of tears, Reservations, Slavery, Civil War, KKK, anti rights for freed slaves,  end of states representation with the 17th amendment, Segregation laws enacted, Jim Crow laws enacted, KKK member given a seat in the supreme court Hugo Lafayette Black appointed by  Roosevelt, President Wilson and Truman were both members of the KKK,  prolonged the depression, Japanese interment, apposed civil rights bill, gave us the Viet Nam war, refused to enforce the peace treaty that ended the war, gave us the "Great Society, that destroyed the black family, gave us legalized abortions, Yes I would say that the Democrat party has come a long way.  

[charles royer]

ANN ARBOR (WWJ) – Can a person’s race change over time? No — but preschoolers seem to think so.

According to a University of Michigan study, white preschoolers often believe a person’s race can change over time, and the youngsters even think they can can grow up to become black adults.

Steven Roberts, a U-M doctoral student and the study’s lead author, said that although children may be aware of races other than their own, they don’t have a strong understanding of what race is — at least not to the degree of adults.

Roberts and colleague Susan Gelman, U-M professor of psychology and linguistics, examined the extent that children believed race was stable; that is, whether a black child would grow up to be a black adult.

The experiment included 74 children and 28 adults. Children were recruited in the Midwest at museums, and adults were recruited online.The data were collected between 2014 and 2015.

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2016/05/19/can-white-kids-grow-up-to-be...

[kevin kiernan]

Were do these children get this from. Are the parents doing nothing to explain things . Or do they avoid the subject of race like it`s the third rail...

[charles royer]

 "Liberalism" is a mental disorder . Mike Savage.

[The Bull]

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

[kevin kiernan]

Putin says we will destroy America if Hillary gets elected

[charles royer]

Tucker Carlson: Glenn Beck Acted Like He Was Auditioning to Be Mark Zuckerberg’s Manservant
On Thursday morning, FOX News contributor and Daily Caller Editor in Chief, Tucker Carlson ripped on Glenn Beck after the meeting.

Tucker Carlson: Some of the conservatives there asked tough questions, others sucked up, basically.

Steve Doocy: Like who?

Tucker Carlson: You know, wll known talk show host who you think would be asking tough questions who said things like, “You’re such an innovator. You’re such an impressive guy.”

Steve Doocy: Now who said that?

Tucker Carlson: Oh, come on, you could imagine.

Hmm. The only current talk show host on the list was Glenn Beck.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/05/tucker-carlson-glenn-beck-a...

[charles royer]

Oboma holding fannie & freddie hostage
Fannie, Freddie and the Secrets of a Bailout With No Exit
When Washington took over the beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the collapse of the housing market and the financial crisis of 2008, it was with the implicit promise that they would be returned to shareholders after being nursed back to health.

But now, with the unsealing of documents this week that were produced as part of a lawsuit filed against the government, new evidence is coming to light on how intimately the White House was involved in the Treasury’s decision in August 2012 to keep all the companies’ profits for the government. That move effectively maintained Fannie’s and Freddie’s status as wards of the state.

The newly released documents go beyond previous disclosures in the case and make clear that the Obama administration never had any intention of restoring Fannie and Freddie, which enjoyed implicit backing from the government before the takeover, to their status as stand-alone entities.

An email from Jim Parrott, then a top White House official on housing finance, was sent the day the so-called profit sweep was announced. It said the change was structured to ensure that the companies couldn’t “repay their debt and escape as it were.”

The documents also show the Treasury moving to modify the terms of the mortgage finance giants’ $187.5 billion bailout shortly after a July 2012 meeting when the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie’s and Freddie’s regulator, learned that they were about to enter “the golden years” of profitability.

Since then, Fannie and Freddie have returned to the Treasury over $50 billion more than they received in the bailout. But the amount they owe to the government remains outstanding.

The new materials cast further doubt on arguments made in court by government lawyers that the profit sweep came about because Fannie and Freddie were in a death spiral and taxpayers needed protection from future losses. Documents unsealed last month also served to undermine that legal stance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/business/how-freddie-and-fannie-a...

[charles royer]

New vans all look alike!
In 1947, Freightliner Corporation resumed truck-building operations at its new manufacturing facility in Portland. Amidst the postwar boom, Portland’s Hyster Company became the first private carrier to order a Freightliner in 1950. Business grew quickly as word spread of Freightliner’s ability to make trucks to customers’ specifications. Production volumes grew from 116 vehicles in 1950, to 931 in 1960, and 6,206 in 1970.

In 1981, Daimler-Benz AG, one of the world’s premier automotive companies and builder of heavy-duty commercial vehicles, purchased Freightliner from Consolidated Freightways. In the next decade, vehicle sales more than doubled. With its vast technological resources, Daimler-Benz helped Freightliner reach the top of the North American heavy-duty truck market by 1992.

The 1990s marked a decade of acquisitions and significant growth. In 1995, Oshkosh Corporation’s chassis division was purchased, becoming Freightliner Custom Chassis Corporation. Freightliner also acquired firefighting/emergency vehicle manufacturer American LaFrance that year. In 1997, it purchased the heavy truck division of Ford Motor Company, launching the Sterling brand soon after. Continuing its acquisition of complementary products as a member of the newly formed DaimlerChrysler, Freightliner acquired school bus manufacturer Thomas Built Buses in 1998. Further growth and diversification continued with the purchase of Western Star Trucks in 2000, and the launch of Unimog North America in 2003.
Something else we no longer own,way to go amerika!
http://www.daimler-trucksnorthamerica.com/influence/history/

[charles royer]

Haitians are upset by the reconstruction effort managed by the Clintons.
May 18, 2014
The news website Tout Haiti reported last month that two prominent lawyers have petitioned Haiti's Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes, demanding an audit of Bill Clinton's management of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). There are powerful interests that won't want to see the petition succeed and it may go nowhere. But the sentiment it expresses is spreading fast. In the immortal words of Charlie Brown, Mr. Clinton has gone from hero to goat.
Four years after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake toppled the capital city of Port-au-Prince and heavily damaged other parts of the country, hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department's U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), allocated to the IHRC, are gone. Hundreds of millions more to the IHRC from international donors have also been spent. Left behind is a mishmash of low quality, poorly thought-out development experiments and half-finished projects.
Haitians are angry, frustrated and increasingly suspicious of the motives of the IHRC and of its top official, Mr. Clinton. Americans might feel the same way if they knew more about this colossal failure. One former Haitian official puts it this way: "I really cannot understand how you could raise so much money, put a former U.S. president in charge, and get this outcome."
Allow me to hazard a guess: While Mr. Clinton was running things for the IHRC, and the U.S. was leading the reconstruction effort, Hillary Clinton was the U.S. Secretary of State, which means that Mr. Clinton was reporting to his wife. Cheryl Mills, Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff and counselor to the State Department (an adviser and consultant to the secretary), traveled to the country an estimated 30 times in four years. A State Department spokesman told me that "reflected the high priority the United State places on Haiti's recovery and development." Requests for comment from Mr. Clinton, through the Clinton Foundation, about the petition and his IHRC record went unanswered.
The Clinton crowd has a lot of experience in Haiti. After President Clinton used the U.S. military to return Jean Bertrand Aristide to power in 1994, assorted Friends of Bill went into business to milk Haiti's state-owned telephone monopoly. Telecom revenues were one of the few sources of hard currency for the country so the scheme hurt Haitians. (See Americas columns Oct. 27, 2008, and March 12, 2012.)
Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck sheds light on Mr. Clinton's most recent Haiti adventures in the 2013 documentary "Fatal Assistance." Mr. Peck uses footage from an IHRC meeting in December 2010, when 12 Haitian commissioners confronted co-chairmen Mr. Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive, complaining that the commissioners had been marginalized.
http://commonsensewonder.blogspot.com/2014/05/another-example-of-bi...

[charles royer]

Nets Ignore Investigation into Va. Governor/Clinton Friend McAuliffe
On Monday afternoon, news broke that Virginia’s Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe was being investigated by the FBI for illegal campaign contributions. “We know that this investigation dates back at least into last year and this is looking into donations to McAuliffe's 2013 campaign for governor,” reported CNN’s Evan Perez on The Lead with Jake Tapper. It’s not every day that a sitting state governor gets investigated for illegal contributions, yet none of the big three news networks decided to report it in there evening broadcasts.

In addition to being the Governor of Virginia, McAuliffe is also a longtime friend of the Clinton family. He’s so close to the family, in fact, that he sat on the board of the Clinton Global Initiative. “As part of this investigation the FBI has gone back to look at McAuliffe’s time as board member for the Clinton Global Initiative, that’s the foundation that was set up by former President Bill Clinton and his family,” continued Perez. Although he did mention that there have been no allegations of wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation in this matter, so far
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2016/05/24/n...