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Trump has a (special) way of placing value on his properties. He valued Mar-a-Lago at $739 million. In today's market, it could actually be worth less than $40 million.
So how does he justify a value of $739 million?
Potential... future potential. It's not worth that now... but some time in the future it will be valued at that number.
My suggestion is go with it... reassess the property value to what he says and make him pay taxes accordingly !!
That should fix everything.

In other news, Trump's business fraud case isn't going so well for him.

The judge fined Trump’s lawyers $7,500 each for repeating arguments he had previously dismissed. C'mon guys... don't you remember what you say and do in a court of law?

While many of the Trump corporations are being blocked from doing business in the state of New York, The court has appointed a former judge to monitor their assets and any creation of new entities or transfers. Basically... they're on to you!

Currently, there is a vacancy for the position for Speaker of the House of Representatives. I think Kevin McCarthy was booted out for a bi-partisan effort to stall a government shutdown and that didn't go well with house republicans.
Lots of names came up, but what are the qualifications to become speaker of the house?

Tag. } Special edition..

Tip toeing through the Internet & I stumbled into this gem.
...what a real Columbo investigation looks like...hence the
Run time is l o n . .g..



Note. ) .I don't think he made a part 2 ..

I came across a discussion of Trump's press opportunity with the Trump edition gun where he was recorded saying he wanted to buy one.

Steve Cheung, Trump's campaign spokesperson posted on social media that Trump bought a gun; Brian Glenn, Director Of Programming at Right Side Broadcasting Network and Marjorie Taylor Greene's partner, boasted on Right Side that Trump had bought a gun.

And then CNN pointed out the federal statute that no one can sell you a gun, you can't travel with a gun, you can't take a gun across state lines, etc. if under federal felony indictment. It's typically a condition of pre-trial release that you cannot posess a gun.

There followed a flurry of deletions, claims of erroneous reporting and denials that Trump had actualy bought a gun.

Other public performance related anomalies were raised: Trump typically turning up in restaurants before rallies booming "Pizzas for everyone!" for the photo shoot, yet journalists claiming no one from the Trump campaign ever actually paying for anything; Trump travelling to East Palestine to distribute food aid which consisted out of date water bottes from Mar-a-Largo and tins of Goya beans.

The discussion focussed on the performative nature of the Repubican and Trump's campaigning. One presenter surmised that the performance pretence is a function of Trump's life of extraordinary wealth: he pretends to relate to ordinary people's lives, without having any depth of understanding.

The presenter went on to say that Trump in his Narcissistic Personality Disordered way, pretended to be the president and pretends to be a defendent without any real perception that he might be found guilty and end up in a federal prison.

The bit that the presenter missed out is the depth of the lack of empathy that personality disordered people may experience. Most of us navigate our everyday lives using our sense of empathy, whether that's patience in a shopping queue, interacting with colleagues, listening to the radio, whatever.

Cognitive and emotional empathy is how we build a picture of ourselves, our worlds and how we fit into it all. Without the ability to empathise people have to invent a persona and often alter their persona in a bid to find their place in a bewildering environment.

People who lack empathy are forced to pretend and perform because they lack the skills they need to simply be.

Sorry for the word block, but D!ck Butkus, was a linebacker for the Chicago Bears and considered one of the greatest NFL players. It's reported he died in his sleep at age 80.

Butkus was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. It was an easy pick, because it’s hard to imagine writing the history of the game without Butkus.


(Photo By Barry Staver/The Denver Post via Getty Images)


Link:
*ck-butkus-one-of-the-greatest-linebackers-in-nfl-history-dies-at-80-223149911.html
(word filter block. change the * to i for the link to work correctly)

US Mercenaries Killed in Ukraine


Reports about Americans killed in the Ukrainian conflict zone started surfacing in media mere weeks after the conflict’s escalation.
A CNN article from April 2022 reveals the details of one Willy Joseph Cancel, a 22-year old corrections officer from Tennessee and former US Marine who signed up with a “private military contracting company” not long before February 2022.

In March 2022, Cancel entered Ukraine from Poland to fight against Russian forces as part of a group comprised of men from “all different countries,” only to be killed about a month later. His mother, Rebecca Cabrera, complained that her son’s teammates were unable to recover his body.
On May 15, a 52-year old US Army veteran Stephen Zabielsky got killed in Zaporozhye Region after stepping on a land mine, if a Rolling Stone article from June 2022 is to be believed.

Zabielsky was reportedly operating in the Ukrainian conflict zone as part of a 13-man multinational squad called Wolverines – likely a reference to the 1984 movie “Red Dawn” where a bunch of plucky American teenagers band together to fight a fictional Soviet invasion of the US.

Cancel and Zabielsky thus became referred to by media outlets as the first and the second American citizens (respectively) killed in the Ukrainian conflict.
A 50-year old US Marine veteran Grady Kurpasi was operating in Ukraine as part of a foreign militant group in April 2022 when he and another British fighter went on a scouting mission near the observation post their unit was manning – that was the last time he was seen alive by his fellow mercenaries.

Kurpasi’s skeletal remains were discovered and identified only a year later and were shipped to the US for burial in May 2023.

A friend of Kurpasi who assisted with the effort to recover the ex-Marine’s remains told the newspaper that the US State Department was “absolutely awful” in that situation, and that “it was probably beneficial” that the said government agency was not involved with the retrieval of what was left of Kurpasi.
Yet another report on CBS News reveals the fate of two US citizens named Luke Lucyszyn and Bryan Young who got killed after running afoul of a Russian tank on July 18, 2022.

The duo’s commanding officer reportedly said that Lucyszyn, who was supposedly volunteering as a medic for the Ukrainian forces, first got injured by shelling and when Young and others rushed to help him, both of them got killed by Russian tank fire. Two other foreign militants – a Swede and a Canadian – were also killed in that attack.
In August 2022, a 24-year old US Army veteran Joshua Alan Jones was killed in Ukraine while fighting as part of a militant unit called the Norman Brigade that is apparently comprised of foreign militants fighting for the Kiev regime.

Russian media said at that time that Jones was killed in action near the village of Yegorovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, with local authorities saying that they are willing to help return the militant’s body to his country of origin.

In October 2022, the death of one Dane Partridge was reported by US media. A 34-year old native of Idaho and a former US Army soldier, Partridge was serving as part of a unit for the Kiev regime that included at least several other foreign militants, according to an American propaganda broadcaster.

Thanks to a good friend of mine, my guitar is finally in the shop for a complete overhaul. I could never afford it but my friend told me to put it in the shop and not to worry about it so I did. Frets, nut, bridge being realigned, neck shimmed, the whole treatment. Gonna be a new guitar when its finished. The guy I sent it to is well known locally for excellent work. Gonna be a long wait over the next few days lol.

I've increased my YouTube music obsession lately. The channel Drumeo came up on my suggested list. They offer drum lessons and do detailed videos on many famous drummers, breaking down equipment, background and a little documentary of the drummers they feature in each episode.

Stewart Copeland was one I enjoyed watching.

Best known as the drummer for the British rock band Police, I knew he had a unique style of syncopation and drumming rhythms that was key in the success of Police. Other than an American musician in England, I didn't know his background.
He's very open about family travels, his exposure to music from different cultures and very down-to-earth of his success as a drummer.

It's a 20 minute video and will probably watch it again a few times.

My blog today is about vinyl LP's. It's been 40 years since digital CD's hit the market. I remember they professed it would be the kiss of death to vinyl LP's. CD's are the best and the worst in the music industry all in the same breath. When first released around 1982, people were forced to switch gears and buy new players. People weren't happy. They went through upgrades in 8-track tapes, cassettes and digital cassettes.

The good thing about CD's is you could fit more music on a CD than an LP. I knew a DJ who used to carry boxes and boxes of LP's to his gigs. When he switched to CD's it was only 2 cases.
Play a CD a thousand times and have no loss of quality. No scratching, no skipping. Physically, taking less space for storage, easy to send in the mail. Yet some people hated them.

CD's were easy to rip and download to a hard disk or digital storage. Now, DJ's only need a portable drive... or an iPhone with extended memory for hundreds of songs in their library.
Oh, if you don't have that special request, you can easily down load it from an online library through your cellphone data plan!

All these great things about CD's, but the 2 major drawbacks (that I can think of) is all the visual media is now compressed from 12" to 5" so albums selling merely because they have a cool looking cover has diminished and that warm analog sound of vinyl was replaced by a cold sterile digital representation.
Some people can hear the difference between the same music on an LP compared to a CD. For the most part, it's not important to 95% of the music listeners, so it is what it is.

That said, some artists actually have a small number of vinyl albums pressed and available for the music purists.

I know rap DJ's have CD digital turntables and emulate the 'scratch' sounds they popularized using old turntables.

I had forgotten about vinyl records for a while. Moving storage boxes last weekend I found my collection and oddly while walking through Walmart today, I found a rack of vinyl LP's as proof... vinyl ain't dead!