Convicted...

A Florida widow was found guilty of murder in connection to her husband’s 2000 slaying that was staged as a boating mishap.

Denise Williams, 48, was convicted  in the death of her high school sweetheart, Mike Williams, who disappeared in December 2000 while on a hunting trip to Lake Seminole in Florida. She faced charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy and accessory after the fact. 

Denise was having an affair with Mike’s best friend, Brian Winchester, before his death. They alleged the lovers plotted to kill him so they could be together and she could cash in on his $1.75 million life insurance policy.

Denise and Winchester  carried on with their relationship after her husband’s death, they married in 2005. The pair separated then divorced in 2016.

Winchester allegedly became paranoid that Denise would tell authorities the truth about Mike’s disappearance. He was arrested in 2016 for kidnapping Denise at gunpoint to convince her not to turn him in to police. 

He was offered immunity in Mike’s case and he confessed. The details Winchester provided to police were corroborated by the discovery of Mike’s body in Carr Lake.

Denise  thought she can manipulate Winchester to do the dirty work and he did. But what happened after her husband's death indicted her. Just a thought.

Clingy...

A woman in her 50s has learned that she doesn’t need a relationship in order to be happy. She has a full life, including close friends, children, exes, family, and plenty of hobbies and interests. So if a woman in her 50s is interested in dating you, chances are she thinks you’re worth her time.  she is very rarely clingy.

She knows what she wants in life, including in her relationships.  Her maturity also means she can easily communicate her wants  clearly and effectively.  

She already has kids who are now grown up or moving out of her house any day now. Her schedule is no longer tied down to shuttling between baseball practice and doctor appointments, nor is she pressured to find “The One” ASAP due to a ticking biological clock.  

No longer awkward or uncomfortable due to the inexperience and insecurity of her youth, a woman  knows how to hold a conversation,  and steer it. She’ll let you talk about yourself, while also ensuring she shares enough about herself.  Expect a smooth, flowy conversation peppered with witty jokes that will surely make your night.
Like a fine wine, few in her 50s has only gotten better with time. If you’re lucky enough to date her, it’s sure to be an extraordinary experience, but that depends on where she has been before.

Out of...

American policy on Syria took a U-turn with the news that President Donald Trump was preparing for a “full” and “rapid” withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Syrian civil war. Trump:“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there.”

 By September, ISIS had lost 99 percent of the territory its vaunted caliphate once held, according to a Pentagon Inspector General’s report.  

This decision will upset most of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, which generally supports a more expansive war in Syria.  

U.S. forces protecting Kurdish allies have engaged in tense stand-offs with Turkish forces in northern Syria. Israel attacks on Iranian-backed forces in Syria risk wider war that could embroil U.S. forces.

Most worrying, given the nuclear stakes, is the potential for inadvertent war with Russia. In February, U.S. commandos and airstrikes killed scores of Russian “mercenaries” in a prolonged battle. Ambassador James Jeffrey later remarked of the incident that “this has occurred about a dozen times in one place or another in Syria,” and “there have been various engagements [with the Russians in Syria], some involving exchange of fire, some not.” This revelation somehow did not set off alarm bells in Congress, which never authorized the war in Syria, let alone conducted serious oversight of it. 

Benjamin H. Friedman and Justin Logan, Opinion contributors Dec. 20, 2018 | Updated 5:21 p.m. ET Dec. 20, 2018

Cold Turkey...

Now that rescue cycle is deemed over, the Federal Reserve has decided to reverse the QE, to get its assets and liabilities downsized. From a QE high of $4.5 trillion they have shrunk the balance sheet down to $4.1 trillion.

It is no coincidence that this process started in earnest this January and coincides with the U.S. stock markets going into cardiac arrest or at least changing its never-ending upward trend into a serious of vicious slumps and rallies.

The rest of the world who have bathed in cheap dollar finance are especially suffering from this credit ‘cold turkey’ and markets and economies all over the world are suffering the beginnings of an economic winter.

Now the danger is reverse-QE will crash the markets and crush the global economy and the Federal Reserve is not stupid. You can see the $80 billion stated number as about equivalent to the level of economic growth in the U.S. economy. 

It’s a number that could strike a balance between liquidity withdrawn and liquidity generated. As such, reverse-QE might not break the system. 

But fear and worry can take the system down. Just a thought.

Brett...

Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, 

had been planning to exit his post in February 2019. But sources said  he informed 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that he will accelerate his departure due to a strong 

disagreement with President Trump's decision to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria,  

McGurk submitted his resignation, just one day after Defense Secretary James Mattis

 quit his post citing fundamental disagreements with the commander-in-chief.

The special envoy was publicly left in the lurch by the president's declaration that

 he was pulling U.S. forces out of Syria, against the advice of his top national 

security advisers.

It appears that many in the State Dept. wants to continue the war. Haven't we 

learn something about the previous wars we have been in? Was there ever a good outcome? 

 Just a thought.

Ranked...

 

Alcohol is the most socially acceptable drug on the market and the most accessible.  The general public still has a tendency to believe alcohol is an acceptable form of relaxation. 

Alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of death in the U.S.  Alcohol causes 88,000 deaths each year. 

Alcohol is different than other illicit substances  in that it can cause overdose deaths and  also kill people slowly by deteriorating the body.

According to a study released in 2010 by a group of British scientists, alcohol was rated the most harmful drug overall and almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco. In comparison.

This ranking encouraged the scientists to say that aggressively targeting the harms of alcohol is a necessary public health strategy.

Falsche...

A respected German mainstream magazine fired one of its award-winning contributors after discovering he included fake news in several stories.  

Der Spiegel admitted that reporter and editor Claas Relotius had "falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues."

Some of the stories were set in the United States and played to unpleasant European prejudices about Americans, raising questions as to why Der Spiegel accepted them so trustingly.

Relotius had worked for Der Spiegel in various capacities since 2011. He contributed more than 50 articles, of which at least 14 contained fabrications.

Some of these tainted pieces were nominated for, or even won, awards, and the freelancer was hired by Der Spiegel as an editor. He remained in that job for a year and a half ... Relotius was honored in 2014 by CNN as its Journalist of the Year.

Satisfaction...

We think we want to be happy. Yet many of us are working toward some other end, according to Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics.

Kahneman contends that happiness and satisfaction are distinct.

Happiness is a momentary experience that arises spontaneously and is fleeting. Meanwhile, satisfaction is a long-term feeling, built over time and based on achieving goals. 

 Spending time with friends is highly effective. Yet those focused on long-term goals that yield satisfaction don’t necessarily prioritize socializing, as they’re busy with the bigger picture.

We’re not as interested in happiness as we may claim.  We're actually want to maximize our satisfactions.

 Life satisfaction is connected to social yardsticks–achieving goals, meeting expectations and accumulate wealth.   Money has a significant influence on life satisfaction, whereas happiness is affected by money only when funds are lacking. Poverty creates suffering, but above a certain level of income that satisfies our basic needs, wealth doesn’t increase happiness.  Just a thought.

Backfire...

The deal was done, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn was cruising toward a sentence of no prison time after admitting he lied to the FBI when interviewed about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

But then, Flynn and his lawyers did something they came to regret: They made a filing to the court suggesting the FBI set him up.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan showed his deep displeasure with Flynn at one point asking a prosecutor whether the retired general could be charged with treason. 

The judge told the former national security advisor "arguably you sold your country out"  and warned the fallen Army lieutenant general that he might be sent to jail if he did not agree to delay the hearing.

Mueller's schedule suddenly upended by a defendant with cold feet and a judge with a hot temper.

Shut Down...

A partial shutdown of the government officially went into effect at midnight Saturday as the House and Senate adjourned late Friday with negotiations stalled between the White House and congressional leaders over border wall funding. 

The House and Senate are expected to reconvene at noon on Saturday to continue negotiations.

Many House and Senate lawmakers headed home after leaders promised to provide 24-hour notice ahead of any funding vote. Late Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted a video of himself speaking to the importance of border security.

The first United States federal government shutdown of 2018 began at midnight EST on Saturday, January 20, 2018, and ended on the evening of Monday, January 22. The shutdown began after a failure to pass legislation to fund government operations and agencies. This stemmed from disputes over the extension of status of persons affected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration policy,