How Do You Deal With Someone Else's Outsized Ego? Ask Rapper JayZ

 

Photo:  Rolling Stones

Each of us has met our fair share of people with an outsized ego.  An ego that is about as big as the planet Earth?  Yes.  At times, I have acted with such an ego and learned to tame it back down to scale.  As I get older, my ego has been through countless optimizations -- and is humbled.  Taming an ego is difficult sometimes.

How do you deal with people with outsized egos?

Ask rap star and entrepreneur Jay Z.  What?  Really?  If there is one person who has been confronted by outsized egos from potential clients to bosses, Jay Z would qualify.  In his rise to fame, countless egos have passed him and stood in his way.  How did he get around them?  To achieve success?  

In the video below, he is interviewed on this very question.  Here is what he says...

Stay humbled. Learn and earn respect and cash.

Be Unstoppable - Believe, Work, and Commit To Transformation - Meet Vance

 

Photo: Indian Express

A large number of Americans suffer from weight gain.  We are generally overweight as a population.  I know that I am heavier now than at any other point in my life.  Yes, the gym is on the New Year's Resolution List.  But more importantly, starting to walk incrementally is also being executed.

Meet Vance.  Vance was watching a fitness guru challenge him (and other viewers) from the comfort of his armchair.  Suddenly, a thought of motivation occurred.  Dedicate one year to the described workout and see what happens?  What could be the worst-case scenario -- no weight loss?

In the video below, watch through the incremental workout - walking and yoga - a man loses 198 pounds in a single year.  If this video does not move you to tears, I do not know what will:

Happy Holidays!

A Sad Time In America...Kyle Rittenhouse Is Let Off The Hook...Why?

 

Photo: NBC News

Why would a 17-year-old child feel compelled to carry an assault rifle into a 'Black Lives Matter' protest?  Who told him to do so?  Where were his parents?  How did a child get ahold of an assault rifle?  These are the larger questions that linger on the public's mind after a jury acquitted the 17-year-old last week of murdering 3 human beings.  

That is right.  A kid murdered 3 human beings.  3 lives that had potential that will forever remain unknown.  No one wins in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.  Further, I would predict that this is not the last time that he appears in the news.

There are larger questions than those proposed in the introduction paragraph.  Questions that surround racial issues.  This qualifies as a 'hate crime'.  Carrying an assault rifle into a racial protest.  Listen to the guests on MSNBC Ari Melber's Show explain:

Many questions remain unanswered about the future direction of our nation after this tragedy.

Republicans Make Texas First Successful Case Of Redistricting Voting Zones To Favor White Citizens

 

Photo: YouTube

It is a sad day in America.  A day when we realize that successful campaigns across America are being carried out to enforce/enact voter suppression.  Voter suppression that favors white citizens.  This makes me sick to my stomach.  The three white men sitting in front of the meeting in the video below exemplify what is wrong with America.  

Rachel Maddow interviews and highlights the case in Galveston, Texas -- where the last minority is being voted off the council to successfully redistrict his zone to favor white voters.  There are even white voters in the crowd who are disappointed and surprised at the committee's action:

This is what is wrong with America.  Old White Male Priviledge.  When is change going to be taken seriously to give voter equality a shot (a permanent shot) in America?

Are There Any Body Builder's In Their 80's? Meet Mrs. Ernestine Shepard, 85

 

Photo: All4Women

The human mind is beyond comprehension.  The ability of the human being is beyond comprehension.  Technology has allowed us to understand this certainty.  How?  By allowing us to access the human condition across the world through the internet.  

In the example below, Today show hosts interview Ernestine Shepard.  Ernestine Shepard is no different than you or me.  With the exception that she is 85 years old.  Further, that she has set the world record for the oldest female bodybuilder in the world.  Watch the amazing interview below:

What are you doing to improve your outlook and physical health?  Make a decision to change and do it! 

Alex Jones Is Going To Pay For Spreading Lies About Sandy Hook Shooting

 

Photo: CNN

Raising a child is an amazing opportunity.  The process is unexplainable.  Being a parent is an experience that is unforgiving, completely educational and a lifelong process.  What happens when that process is cut short?  Further, what happens when an internet influencer decides to erase the loss of a child?

That has happened over the last few years for the parents of the children who were lost in the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary shooting massacre in December 2012. CBS News has covered the recent case in court that Alex Jones has lost.  The case was brought by the parents of the children lost in Sandy Hook Elementary.  Alex Jones has profited financially and was influential by peddling the misinformation about the mass shooting.

Who does that?  Why would he deny that the shooting actually occurred? Further promoting the idea that the children and parents were actors?  This is not a game.  The people lost children.  What a terrible person to promote such an idea.  I hope that the jury awards enough money to the parents such that Alex Jones is put out of business financially.  

 

Photo: The Boston Globe

Former President Trump's Post Master General Louis DeJoy has successfully implemented measures over the last few years to destroy the Postal Service.  Instead of reviving the service, his team has been looking to dismantle the service in hopes that private corporations might make up the difference while giving back profit to shareholders.  I.E. Privatization!

In a recent newsletter, Activist Ralph Nader talks about reporter Christopher Low's new book on how to revive the U.S.P.S:

New Book Shines Ways to Rebound Our Historic Postal Service

The preventable plight of the U.S. Postal Service, with its over 30,000 post offices, is an important issue for all Americans.  When President Donald J. Trump’s donor and henchman Louis DeJoy became postmaster general in 2020, he started to dismantle the agency.  Thousands of citizens responded by participating in demonstrations that revealed a deep civic commitment to preserving the people’s post office.

While DeJoy triggered a crisis that threatened the presidential election process, attacks on the Postal Service have been ongoing for decades.  The anti-postal campaigns by corporate interests have remained a continuing source of frustration to those of us who have observed the Postal Service’s decline due to unimaginative management, a deck stacked to favor for-profit rivals such as FedEx and UPS, and unfair financial obligations and delivery prohibitions (for example, on wine and beer) imposed by Congress.

The Postal Service is facing a manufactured financial crisis that is primarily the result of a congressional mandate dating back to 2006 that required the agency to pre-fund the next seventy-five years of retiree health benefits in one decade.  This pre-payment requirement is something that no other federal government agency or private corporation attempts to do—not to mention that there is no actuarial justification for such an accelerated payment schedule.  The pre-funding requirement effectively forces the Postal Service to finance a $72 billion retiree health benefits fund for future employees who have not even been born yet.  Despite these facts, Congress has refused to correct the host of problems resulting from its requirements.

The financial pressure resulting from the burdensome pre-payment schedule has led to negative impacts on service for all postal patrons.  Postmaster General DeJoy’s ten-year plan proposes saving the agency money through cutting service and raising prices, which is a formula for sabotage.  He already introduced service changes that have delayed the delivery of all first-class letters on a permanent basis.  As a result, mail is now being delivered up to two days later than before.

Unlike DeJoy, our first postmaster general, Benjamin Franklin, was known for his can-do verve and his appreciation of efficiency and innovation.  Franklin was eager to find ways to have the mail delivered more quickly.  As a stand-alone structure, he never would have imagined that someday post offices would mutate into a counter or kiosk inside a Staples store—or some other big-box store or shopping mall—as recent postmasters general have urged and widely advertised.

The need for postal reform is not just a matter of endangered post offices, disappearing blue mailboxes, slow mail delivery, or the fight to maintain delivery on Saturday, important as these issues are.  Instead of disabling and eventually dismantling the Postal Service, this is the moment to expand postal services.  Congress especially must act to protect rural communities, small businesses, the elderly, and the disabled, among others, by reasserting its authority over the Postal Service and putting a stop to irresponsible cutbacks.  These policies not only threaten the future of the Postal Service in the long term; in the short term, they harm the ability of small businesses to carry out their operations in a timely manner and inhibit the elderly’s ability to receive essential medications by mail.  They also drive ever more consumers away from the Postal Service and toward commercial delivery corporations such as UPS and FedEx.

Post offices ought to offer an honest notary service (badly needed in an era of robo-signings), sales of fishing and hunting licenses, and an option to have gifts wrapped, among other new services.  The Postal Service should accept wine and beer for delivery as FedEx and UPS do, and start delivering groceries as well.  In addition, there is the widespread need for postal banking, given many millions of Americans are without bank accounts.  This service actually existed until 1966 when the political lobbying of bankers terminated the successful and accessible program in communities throughout our country.  The Postal Service recently started a pilot program to test check-cashing services in four select post offices on the East Coast.  This program needs to be expanded to more post offices and be better publicized.

The future potential of the Postal Service is made clear in the just published book First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat (City Lights Books) by Christopher W. Shaw, which could not be more timely.  Shaw investigates why this essential service is in danger, explains how to fight back against its dismantling, and explores what can be done to improve and expand our postal system and have more consumer representation on the Postal Service Board of Governors.

Ninety Members of Congress have called on the Postal Service Board of Governors to remove Postmaster General DeJoy.  In addition to DeJoy’s ruinous USPS policies, he is under investigation by the FBI over illegal political fundraising tactics, and DeJoy’s family has financial ties with XPO Logistics, a company that in April the Postal Service awarded a multi-million-dollar contract.  With the terms of two Postal Service Board of Governors expiring in one month, it’s time for President Biden to appoint new members who will not behave like rubber stamps for DeJoy and his destructive time in office.

The Postal Service is a fundamental institution that binds our country together.  It can and should be updated and freed from the shackles of corporations.  Showing up is half of democracy, so the question for citizens today is: “Are we going to show up for our post office?”  Shaw’s book lights the path forward for all Americans.

Privatizing the United States Postal Service would be a terrible idea.  Definite measures (i.e. actions) need to be taken to revive the postal service.  First, remove PostMaster General Louis DeJoy.