Insurance Stocks

Insurance companies should do well under Trump's presidency, because the Republicans will ensure a massive transfer of wealth takes place from the lower classes to the insurance companies, which should enjoy double-digit growth in their share prices as they provide less and charge more.

Bad Brands for Kitchen Appliances

I wasn't surprised to hear a Hotpoint refrigerator killed scores in England. There are certain brands of kitchen appliances, that if your landlord has installed them, you know he wants to save every dime, and could care less whether you burn to death, screaming in agony while watching your family meet the same fate. By the way, I hope the authorities do put the landlords behind bars, because what they did is just as bad as a drunk driver killing people--just pure negligent greedy stupidity. If a poor man goes to jail for shoplifting a pack of cigarettes, then a rich man should go to jail when his decisions kill people. There are some manufacturers that should simply be liquidated by the government, because their products are just bad and wasteful of materials, if not indeed hazardous. Hotpoint and Magic Chef are two that come to mind. I have first hand experience with both.

Basically, any brand that occupies the lowest 5% of the price range. These types of appliances are missing quality materials that result in a minor price break for the greedy landlord--who, in the end, probably won't save money, because he will be forced to replace the shoddy appliance prematurely. Greedy landlords are stupid.

Good brands include Frigidaire and Kenmore, although Kenmore is a no-go because it requires buying through antiquated and tone-deaf Sears, which is destined to go bankrupt over the next five years.

Alright, Canada!

A Canadian sniper, regrettably but understandably anonymous, made a World record against an ISIS-idiot: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/23/how-canadas-tiny-military-produced-deadly-record-breaking-snipers/

On the one hand, it is surprising, because Canada is not known for its military, but on the other hand, Canada is an awesome country with its act together. I have long believed the United States should study Canada and reproduce its health care system, election system, and probably education and police as well. Canada does things right.

The strongest contrast is between Canada's superb health system and the horrible political football that is our health system, where a poor person just goes to the emergency room when things get bad enough. Our problem is caused by the Republicans. They want to let the poor die, because the poor deserve it, in their view, for being lazy, unlucky, immoral and/or stupid, and evolution needs to occur. Let Mother Nature take her toll and cull out the weak. The Republicans figure, let the poor suffer and die, and that way, there are less of them to worry about, and the ones that survive will work harder to stay alive. The Democrats say, wait a minute, other countries have health care and aren't going broke, why can't we? And healthy poor people tend to be happier and more productive than sick poor people. The question is whether poor people are a resource or a liability. Republicans say liability, so let 'em suffer, let 'em die.

In the end, Republicans don't care about the poor, and Democrats do. The irony is that a lot of poor people vote Republican just because they like that lilly-white Republican brand. It's all about race and tribal identity. Obama was a Negro taking the place of a long line of old white men. It got the racists all up in a lather, and they crawled out of the woodwork, enough for the Republicans to steamroll to victory in D.C.

The greatest irony of all are the religious right, the self-professed "Christians" that support Trump and the Republicans, based upon things like abortion or gays or whatever the current socially conservative brouhaha might be. I really have to call into question their religious scruples in supporting rich old white men letting the poor suffer and die, just so the rich can get richer. Is that would Jesus would do? Eh? I think the liberal churches have it right and are more in tune with Jesus, and if I were ever to go Christian, it would be the real, authentic Christianity, not this faux Christianity of the religious right, with their Biblical literalism. They take religion like lawyers, not like saints. They can't be right.

Sears

Whoever is in charge at Sears is a royal jerk. Sears wants the home internet surfer to become a "member" of some stupid "Sears club" to earn "points" as though we are living in 1970, instead of 2017. Then there are all the "gotchas" like free delivery, until Sears applies automatic discounts to a $440 purchase, bringing it three dollars under the minimum for free delivery, which is $399, resulting in a $69.99 delivery charge. No thank you, Home Depot is one click away. Sears really deserves to go out of business, because their web site is nothing but a time-waster with traps for the unwary.

The Angry Male Shooter

Angry male shooter knows no political party, race, religion or ideology. Left, right, theist, atheist, seems like angry male pops up in the headlines all the time. The only pattern is that the shooter is angry and male. I don't know about any cases of women going crazy and shooting people, although that probably has happened somewhere. Pity that the angry males can't get together and have a shoot-out with each other, instead of bringing down the non-shooters. The angry folk seem to go after those that aren't angry, as if they're jealous of other people's happiness.

It would be interesting to know whether incidents of men going amok have been on the increase or decrease through the centuries, both nationally and worldwide, but I think records are sketchy prior to the advent of computer databases. I suspect that the present time is not much worse than times past. The only thing that may have changed is that guns are easier to get, cheaper and more powerful. That, and news coverage is pervasive--we drown in instant information about every single incident. In the past, things were covered up much more easily. Incidents of men running amok were only reported locally, sometimes only by word of mouth, rather than blared out in the headlines on the Internet. We must not be misled by our Information Age into thinking the situation is worse than it is.

The Little Chipmunk

A middle-aged chipmunk left a pamphlet just for my eyes to see, one of those illustrated palm-sized cartoons that I've seen a thousand times before, explaining how the only key out of Hell's prison is Jesus--that is, the crazed and ignorant Jesus of his abominable cult. I left it on the desk where he had placed it. Faux Christians such as the little chipmunk always resort to passive-aggressiveness to fulfill their petty impulses. A bit of kindness would go a lot further than one of his stupid pamphlets, let me tell you.