Harnessing the N quality of your personality. The Intuitive part.

(https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test – a free test.)

Many of you have taken the Meyers-Briggs personality test. If so, you may have scored an N on your test which is a measure of your intuitive ability. Again, this is not a ‘mother’ quality, necessarily. Good mothers probably have a fair amount of this quality; however, so do gamblers, lawyers, negotiators, stock brokers, real estate agents, salespeople and general con artists. But, I am not suggesting that anyone become a con artist!!!! However, your intuitive skills and abilities are very important in inter-relationships with others, especially men.

Aagain, in relationships with men we frequently have to let go of the skills, abilities and go-to places that are so familiar. The Guide, the Counselor, the Helper, the Nurse and the Mother roles feel familiar and safe. Like a heavy winter coat, we need to take off that coat and bring forth other skills and abilities that are there, maybe latent, or underdeveloped. That said, we don’t have to stand naked and shivering in the cold light of day, there are other supports to be developed which we will discuss more in later chapters.

What is my job here if it not nurse, helper, guide, counselor and helpful Hannah?

What is my job in this dating game if it is not these familiar roles? Think of it like a light spring coat, in my mind, it is multi-colored with shades of green and other spring colors. You can imagine your coat anyway you want.

Your job is to listen and absorb information. Then to be open to your own feelings and reactions;, not to guide, counsel, improve, inform, redirect, help, the other person.  Your job is to take care of you. If you do establish a relationship, there may be time to be the helper, to an extent, but regardless, you should never act as the man’s mother unless you want an adult child on your hands.

So, you are having a conversation with a man and you think, I might be interested! You may find yourself slipping into a fantasy about the potential of the relationship with hearts and flowers, la-la-la. Give yourself a mental slap, get back into the now and pay attention to what he is saying.

What is he saying? Talking about the ex-wife, the ex-girlfriends, what happened in the relationship (s), relationships with parents, brothers, sisters, friends, co-workers and others? How does he feel about family, friends and work? Is he happy or unhappy? Is he successful or not, even in relationship according to his own value set. Success does not necessarily mean a big house and a fast car. A man may feel contented with an apartment or condo and a used car. If he is in a serene place with children, ex’s, family, job and his own body, he may a person with room in his life for a relationship.

Pushmi-Pullyu

They had no tail, but a head at each end, and sharp horns on each head. They were very shy and terribly hard to catch. The… men get most of their animals by sneaking up behind them while they are not looking. But you could not do this with the pushmi–pullyu — because no matter which way you came towards him, he was always facing you. [The Story of Doctor Dolittle](Lofting, 1920.)

Every relationship has push and pull components. You push, he pulls – he pushes and you pull. Your job is to use your intuitive self and your 6^th sense to recognize these natural back and forth pulls in the relationship.

Particularly in the beginning of a possible relationship, you need to recognize the point at which the man either advances or he pulls away.

Wow! Oh, my God! He is pulling away! Hit the panic button and the red lights are flashing!!!!!! What now????????

Don’t chase.

The more you chase, the faster he will run the other direction. This is the time when you pull into yourself, center yourself, do your meditation and let go and relax.

How Can I Miss you if you Never Go Away? (1969) Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks.

We can utilize our intuitive sense to feel that the man is pulling away. We can be intuitive but we are not mind readers. We don’t know exactly what the man is thinking during this phase. Too often, as women, we conclude that it has something to do with us. We are too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, too smart, too stupid, too educated or not educated enough, too rich or too poor. We are less than in some terms and that is why he is leaving.

Stop. You don’t know that and stop trying to figure it out. Refer back to the paragraph about men and their fears. The man may be reacting to the fears in his head and it may have little to do with you. However, that said, chasing after the man like a hungry carnivore looking for lunch will not dispel his fears. More the opposite.

What now?

Let go. Trust in whatever Higher Power that you believe in that things will work out the way they should. Relax and focus on you and not him.

This is the time to do You work and take your focus completely off him. Relax that grip you feel in both hands. Relationships are a process. You must let him process his feelings. He may like you, he may like spending time with you. However, like is not love. It can be the beginnings of love or not. He might like you, sense that you have feelings for him and pull away because he a) doesn’t want to lead you on or b) doesn’t want to get tangled up in a relationship, any relationship or c) he doesn’t love you, knows it and wants to cut his losses. Lastly, he may be confused about his feelings for you and distance can be the great clarifier. As he has distance, he is able to sort his feelings out and determine if he wants to reconnect or to disconnect. Either way, you are going to need to be accepting of his decision. The last thing you want is being trapped in a relationship with a man who feels trapped.

Allow the man time. He knows how to reach you. Let him reconnect, if that is what he wants on his own time schedule. If he doesn’t…oh well, sigh. If he does…whee! Imagine your surprise and delight when he re-enters your life and you didn’t have to do anything except sit there!

So, while you are contemplating your navel, feeling down and a little sorry for yourself, contemplate something else. How many times have you been pursued by men you had absolutely no interest in? And have they been relentless and obnoxious in their pursuit? Have you had to take steps to avoid certain men? All the time thinking to yourself, why is it always the ones I have no interest in?????? Maybe that is the point. Men frequently want the very thing they can’t have. The more you say no (and mean it) the harder they pursue.

So, are we playing games here? Not really. Games require work and effort instead of relaxing, letting go and allowing ‘the game’ to unfold without controlling, manipulating, coaxing, threatening, demanding, following, and all other activities that are so time consuming and fatiguing.

We let go and work on the Me inside.

Romantic you:

Your favorite movies are: The Proposal (Ryan Reynolds, Sandra Bullock), The Notebook (Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves), Somewhere in Time, and the list goes on. Your favorite books are all things: HEA (Happily Ever After), you wanted to be Cinderella when you were a kid, your favorite colors are pink or red, you love Valentine’s Day and Christmas (shades of red and pink).

You believe in happily ever after; however, it doesn’t quite seem to be coming true for you. Hmm. How can some women catch the brass ring and others not? What is the difference?

Sometimes it is luck. Sometimes timing. Sometimes, our pickers are a little bent and we tend to pick Mr. Wrong, again and again. Sigh. I want off this terrible merry-go-round she says. Is it possible? It is possible but it does take some work.

Meditation, friends, family, exercise, diet and having a life. Being the best you.

Skills and Hobbies

One of my favorite hobbies is social dancing. Unfortunately, due to Covid, most of us were not able to participate in this sport for some time. Gradually, as people become vaccinated, more people are returning to the dance floor.

I want to talk about one young lady who caught my eye several times. Young, in her twenties, she is not very tall, maybe 5’3” and slim. Not a pretty face either, one might describe it as ‘interesting,’ but certainly not beautiful. She dyed her hair a deep red color and usually spends a lot of time on the dance floor when she is there.

Why? This young lady is a very good dancer and makes a good dance partner. She has clearly been at it awhile and the men are pleased to dance with her. Now, has she gotten a husband/boyfriend off the dance floors? I have no idea. But I do know that she was having a lot of fun while in the studio and probably left feeling good about herself.

Isn’t that the point? Claiming the prize (a man) needs to stop being the all-encompassing motive for our activities. And, by the way, good for her!

The very opposite of that attitude is one held by a close friend of mine. A woman my age who has given up on diet and exercise. Again, why?

According to her, since she has given up on relationships (romantic) there is no need to exercise. Because, of course, the only reason ever exercise is to secure a man, right? My friend has steadily gained weight over the years and is miserable.

We all want relationships, otherwise, why read this book? However, the eye on the prize thinking has to change. We don’t get it together to get a man and then quit. (What is Mr. Wonderful going to think about us then?) We take responsibility for ourselves and our bodies and stop whining about it. Our lives and existence do not have to be, nor should be, all about ‘getting a man.’

I went out the other evening to do a spot of grocery shopping. There is a Dollar Tree store in this parking lot. As I pulled into the driveway, I paused and had to look again to be sure what I was seeing. There was a half naked man behind the Dollar Tree, using the side of the dumpster as a toilet. Then, he was trying to clean himself up with whatever he had available.

The emotions of surprise, shock, disgust all flood my mind. I went and got my items and drove out the same way. The man was still out there, doing what ever.

It is a black eye on our society where people are doing things like this public. This a middle-class neighborhood and I have never in my life seen things like this before. The homeless population grows by the day. The City refuses to fund public toilets because they ‘cost too much money.’ How much are things like this costing us in depreciating the value of our neighborhoods, creating filth, disease and mess that some unhappy worker will have to clean up?

The unemployment and housing crisis in this town is threatening to bring all of us to our knees. We need to address to cause of much of this. Covid of course is out there; however, the escalating cost of housing is outstripping most other problems. We need to try to grasp the fact that commercial real estate transactions have crippled our economy and that goes back to the recession on 2008. The fact that some people get rich while others go into the toilet is not helping. Why do you think that many extremely rich people are moving to New Zealand and remote islands off the coast of Africa? Maybe they remember their history lessons about the French Revolution and want to get out of the way. Here are more articles about the effects that commercial real estate have had and are having on our economy.

Domino Effect: Market Research

2017 – Andrew from DJA, Sacramento “…(we do) careful market research to deliver fair prices….in relation to the area.” (Retrieved from the Internet, 2022.)

What this phrase ‘careful market research’ means is that property management companies do market research for the area where their rentals are located. If you remember your statistics or math classes; the rental prices from a geographical area are gathered, (example – one bed room apartments,) the prices of all units are added and then divided by the total number of units to give the average market price for units in that zip code. This appears to be a fair system, until….one owner raises his price, then another does and another and, so on. In a domino effect, as more and more owners raise their prices, this same system therefore creates a rising average price. And this is whether or not the rise in prices is truly justified or not. For example, as seen in recently rising cost of gasoline and other inflationary costs.

Landlords are never required to give an accounting to their tenants for the increased rent and the reasons for it. They simply raise the rent and justify the cost with such market research tools that support their case.

An antidote to rising prices can be that potential renters, when they see a property that they like, when presented with the usual twenty page lease agreement containing endless Thou Shalt Not clauses, add one of their own stating “It is agreed between the parties that a rental increase of not more than (3-6%) shall attach each year.” When the rental company tells the potential renter ‘we can’t do that’ the renter can say, ‘and I can’t rent from you.’ If enough people did that, it would help curb the mad-dog escalating system that is now in place.

Recession of 2008

MARKETS  INTERNATIONAL MARKETS

The Great Recession

By 

THE INVESTOPEDIA TEAM

Updated May 26, 2022

Reviewed by 

MICHAEL J BOYLE

Fact checked by 

AMANDA BELLUCCO-CHATHAM

What Was the Great Recession?

The Great Recession was the sharp decline in economic activity during the late 2000s. It is considered the most significant downturn since the Great Depression. The term “Great Recession” applies to both the U.S. recession, officially lasting from December 2007 to June 2009, and the ensuing global recession in 2009.

The economic slump began when the U.S. housing market went from boom to bust, and large amounts of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and derivatives lost significant value.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The Great Recession refers to the economic downturn from 2007 to 2009 after the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble and the global financial crisis.
• The Great Recession was the most severe economic recession in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
• In response to the Great Recession, unprecedented fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policy was unleashed by federal authorities, which some, but not all, credit with the subsequent recovery.

Understanding the Great Recession

The term “Great Recession” is a play on the term “Great Depression”. An official depression occurred during the 1930s and featured a gross domestic product (GDP) decline of more than 10% and an unemployment rate that at one point reached 25%.

While no explicit criteria exist to differentiate a depression from a severe recession, there is a near consensus among economists that the downturn of the late-2000s, was not a depression. During the Great Recession, U.S. GDP declined by 0.3% in 2008 and 2.8% in 2009, while unemployment briefly reached 10%. However, the event is unquestionably the worst economic downturn in the intervening years.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/great-recession.asp#:~:text=The%20credit%20markets%20that%20had,Bear%20Stearns%20in%20March%202008.

According to a 2011 report by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the Great Recession was avoidable. The appointees, which included six Democrats and four Republicans, cited several key contributing factors that they claimed led to the downturn.2

First, the report identified failure on the part of the government to regulate the financial industry. This failure to regulate included the Fed’s inability to curb toxic mortgage lending.

Next, there were too many financial firms taking on too much risk. The shadow banking system, which included investment firms, grew to rival the depository banking system but was not under the same scrutiny or regulation. When the shadow banking system failed, the outcome affected the flow of credit to consumers and businesses.3

Other causes identified in the report included excessive borrowing by consumers and corporations and lawmakers who were not able to fully understand the collapsing financial system. This created asset bubbles, especially in the housing market as mortgages were extended at low interest rates to unqualified borrowers who could not repay them. This caused housing prices to fall and left many other homeowners underwater. This, in turn, severely impacted the market for mortgage-backed securities (MBS) held by banks and other institutional investment companies.

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Conclusion: this country has gone through a fantastic financial drought caused primarily by the housing and mortgage lending industries. People have lost jobs, money, retirement funds, the where withal to live and some, their lives.

Once again, the tail that wags the dog, the commercial real estate industry is spreading its tentacles throughout this state. The end result will be systems in place that consistently raise the cost of living to the point it is unaffordable to the average person. People give up saving money, taking vacations, repairing their cars and teeth. The owners increase in wealth and power and exert increasing control and pressure on the economy. While sitting in their Cadillac Escalades, making appointments on cell phones that affect the lives of the ‘common people’ who they have neither a connect to nor any care for. Essential, the middle-class and our way of life rots under the heel of designer boots.

The solution to these problems is for individual cities to be given the authority to place a cap on the percent increase per year, allowed to landlords. An increase that is in line with the ordinary increases in salaries would be fair. Since most salaries increase per year by about 3 to 3.5%, so should rents. It is understandable that inflation this last year has out stripped those amounts, but why should renters be responsible for those numbers? An investment company with $20,000,000 in assets can better afford to take the ‘hit’ of inflation than the renter who has less than $2,000 in the bank. Pressure needs to be put on lawmakers in the State capital to make this a priority issue.

It is time to take back the economy from commercial real estate interests. This dog needs a muzzle.

7/17/22 cew

Senate approves Tucson police Chief Chris Magnus to take over as CBP Commissioner

Tucson City Council taps Deputy Chief Chad Kasmar to lead the city’s police department

Chris Magnus was approved by the Senate to become commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.(Cronkite News)

By KOLD News 13 Staff

Published: Dec. 7, 2021 at 4:22 PM MST

TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) – In an 50-47 vote Tuesday, the Senate approved Tucson police Chief Chris Magnus to take over as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Magnus was hired as TPD’s leader in 2016 when Roberto Villaseñor retired.

“I congratulate Chief Magnus on his appointment and am grateful for his dedicated service and contributions to our community. I look forward to working together with the Commissioner on key issues affecting Southern Arizona,” Tucson Mayor Regina Romero was quoted as saying in a news release.

As head of the TPD, he had more than 1,100 employees. As CBP commissioner, he will lead a 60,000-worker department.

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President Joe Biden in April nominated Magnus for the position, citing his “lengthy career” in law enforcement and experience working in a border state.

“In Tucson, Magnus implemented de-escalation training, sentinel event review processes, and programs to promote officer health and wellness. Because of Tucson’s proximity to the border, he has extensive experience in addressing immigration issues,” read a statement from the White House.

But the nomination was held up for months and things didn’t kick back up until early November.

Magnus has spent more than four decades working in public safety. He began working as a dispatcher and paramedic in his native Lansing, Michigan before becoming a sheriff’s deputy.

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He became chief of the Fargo Police Department in North Dakota in 1999 and took over as police chief in Richmond, California, in 2006.

The Tucson City Council on Tuesday, Dec. 7, unanimously approved Tucson Deputy Chief Chad Kasmar to take over as chief.(City of Tucson)

Also on Tuesday, the Tucson City Council unanimously approved the promotion of Deputy Chief Chad Kasmar to take over for Magnus. The position went into effect immediately.

“During his 21-year career at the Tucson Police Department, Chad Kasmar has earned the respect of our Tucson community as well as fellow officers. Chad has proven himself to be a collaborator who sees public safety through a holistic lens and shares my vision of Community Safety, Health, and Wellness,” Romero said.

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Kasmar has been a member of the Tucson Police Department since 2000, and was promoted to Deputy Chief in 2016.

He is a graduate of Amphitheater Public Schools and the University of Arizona and has spent time in several divisions with the TPD. Most recently, Kasmar served as the interim director at 911 Communications.

Romero says she will ask Kasmar to go on a “listening tour” with community members to further develop his goals for the department.

Copyright 2021 KOLD News 13. All rights reserved

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The world will be watching to see how this new command fairs with these never ending and contenscious border problems.