• GREEN-FRIENDLY FUEL CELL ELECTRIC VEHICLES aka HYDROGEN-POWERED CARS are the next automotive break-through. Toyota’s Mirai model (successor to the Prius) has a 300-mile range; Honda’s Clarity model boasts up to 435 miles without recharge. Fueling stations are underway in Japan, UK and California (which has allocated $200 million to “build stations in strategic locations around the state.”) Power comes from mixing oxygen with hydrogen in a stack of fuel cells, generating electricity; then, “what comes out of the exhaust is harmless water vapor.” Also, hydrogen can apparently be produced with various sources, including ‘cow poop’ which Toyota’s ads market “fueled by bulls***.”   [THE OPTIMIST – Winter 16]
  • OVER 9 INCHES OF TORRENTIAL RAIN IN THREE DAYS resulted in massive flooding along the Mississippi river this fall. Thousands had to evacuate homes and abandon businesses; over 200 highways were shut down, along with all public transportation; and flipped-over cars caused 25 deaths. Despite a ‘Great Flood’ 22 years earlier which destroyed some 100,000 homes with nearly $20 billion damage, the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA authorized those same flood plains to be redeveloped with commercial & residential property, based on “average weather pattern statistics for flooding,” and ignoring Galloway Report recommendations (from a group of White-House-appointed experts) which called for (1) “discouraging development in such areas that flood frequently”; plus (2) eliminating taxpayer bailout for those who chose to do so. Unsurprisingly, economics and politics prevailed, so “misery repeats itself.”   [THE ECONOMIST – Jan 9 16]
  • THE PLAYBOOK FOR LIBERAL ACTIVISM IS PROGRESSIVISM, a model predominantly influenced by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second ‘Bill of Rights.’ The modern liberal’s attitudes and expectations with regard to domestic policy are that all Americans have Rights including: the Right to a “useful and remunerative job; earnings to provide adequate food, clothing and recreation; a decent home; a good education; medical care and the opportunity to enjoy good health; and to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment… FDR’s list is essentially a list of demands to which everyone is presumably entitled, regardless of personal skills or ability to provide for oneself, and which correspondingly places a demand on the others in this society to provide them…  Everything that modern liberalism accomplishes is at the barrel of a government rifle… with the government empowered to take from those more productive (or their heirs) and spend the money on wasteful, inefficient and/or inadequate Entitlement programs… untrusting in the personal responsibility of the average American and confiscating greater and greater personal liberty, as an axiomatic truth.” For a deeper analysis and perspective: http://www.zerohedge.com/print/519711    [ZEROHEDGE – Jan 3, 15]
  • CALIFORNIA’S PORTER RANCH NATURAL GAS LEAK IS JUST TIP OF AN ICEBERG. Around four-hundred storage facilities “fashioned out of former mines and other underground formations, together store some 3.6 trillion cubic feet of gas moved to U.S. homes, businesses & power plants through a vast network of pipes and service lines” which have not been maintained or updated in decades. The California leak has created one of America’s most serious environmental disasters in history – spilling hourly an estimated 65,000 pounds of methane gas, more powerful than carbon dioxide and equivalent to daily pollution from exhaust of more than 4.5 million cars. Thousands have been forced from homes & area schools, air-flights have been re-routed (from risk of igniting the highly flammable & invisible fumes), a State-of-Emergency was declared by the Governor, property values formerly in the millions of dollars have plummeted, and it will take months to seal off the well.    [TIME – Jan 25, 16]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: The odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are close to one in three-hundred million – you’re 4 times likelier to be killed by an asteroid from outer space, with a 15 times greater chance of achieving Catholic Sainthood.

     The stupid and dangerous hypocrisy of (1) U.S. media elitism: http://www.patcondell.net/we-want-the-truth/  and (2) almost unfathomable Canadian ‘human rights’ decisions: https://www.youtube.com/embed/XELWyJeKSV0?rel=0&showinfo=0

      How obedient is your Right Foot? See if you can outsmart it. While sitting at your table or desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. Focus the foot on continuing that pattern. Wait a few seconds, then draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand and try to keep your foot from changing direction.

UTILIZING GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE FOR OPTIMAL STRATEGIC & FINANCIAL DIRECTION, MANAGEMENT, NEGOTIATION & MEDIATION