At a time when people are feeling powerless and hopeless, I hope you’ve noticed some things happening around us.  We have had three very meaningful events unfolding recently that hold a bit of hope, give us a reason to raise an eyebrow and say, “Hmmmm.”

Let’s think about how powerless we all feel against the elite, wealthy and powerful companies who seem determined to bleed us dry of not only our resources, but also our joie de vivre.  It feels like we had the boot of Covid on our throats and it never really lifted.  Life has been quite difficult; it has emitted a feeling of uncertainty, a shifting of solidness, even fear.  People don’t laugh anymore.  Everyone’s angry, on the edge of combustion, all the time.

Well well well.  It seems like the population at large do have a rudder; we do have a hand on the wheel.  Think about CNN, think about Budweiser and now…think about Fox News.  It has been simple, really.  We just took our attention and our money to another place.  We watched CNN crumble before our eyes, once we got tired of being lied to and fed a version of information that wasn’t right, didn’t resonate with the truth, and eventually sought to make the middle-of-the-road, grassroots people feel stupid.  We’re not stupid.  We were smart enough to select another source of ‘news’.  We don’t like being pushed THAT hard.  Let me be clear: I think we accept far too much blatant manipulation.  But it would appear there’s a limit after all, which, dare I say, gives me hope.

Then there’s Bud Light.  One voice, one person, inexperienced with real life, decided what that brand should represent, or ’embrace’, whatever you want to call it.  She dissed the base of the brand by asking whether we thought she hadn’t thought about losing that demographic and how it wouldn’t matter.  Ha!  I laughed at that.  Oh boy, did I laugh.  And almost instantly, that product couldn’t be given away.  Hard working people, people who don’t want others’ ideology shoved into their eyeballs, turned around, took their wallets, and bought a different product.   Suddenly we saw the horses, the cowboys, the sweeping landscapes.  Yeah, show them some pictures and they’ll swallow the pill, accept the indoctrination.  But wait!  Where are they going???  Then, let’s give the morons free product; that’ll bring them (their money) back.  Nope.  It went elsewhere.  I’m thinking Miller, but I don’t drink beer so what do I know.  I just know that even free beer stayed in the cooler.   It would appear there’s a limit.

Watch out now; this stuff catches on.  People have FINALLY figured out that these corporations need US, we the people, our money, and without it, they crumble to their knees.  What???  CNN???  Oh yeah, big, powerful CNN.  Oh they try firing some of the loudest voices (biggest mouths), or they cut prices, or they ‘change the programming’. But here’s the thing:  We watch.  Especially these days, we watch where our MONEY goes.  And more and more, we’re tired of being poked in the eye with the sharp stick of something that makes our senses cry out in discomfort, saying, “What the hell is going on?!?!”  

Oh I’m hearing that question every day, many times a day.  I say it myself.  But here’s a little side whisper for you.  I quit CNN many YEARS ago, missing only the financial programming.  But they were speaking a language that crucified MY ears many years ago.  And I know, I am mainstream.  Where I go, working people usually go as well, unless they are afraid, never brave.  They are the ones most easily manipulated with fear, a favorite spice stirred into the fare they feed us.  But what I think, I always hear others speak.  So with my experience and my data gathering penchant, I have learned that my views are pretty common, very popular, very mainstream.  

There’s Fox News.  Because of, and mainly because of, what they did to Tucker Carlson, man was there a mass exodus.  Including me.  Look, I was seeing the cargo ship turning a while ago, so my viewership had diminished anyway, but now?  No more Fox of any ilk for me, and remember…I am mainstream.  We are watching the leviathan stumble, hearing the harsh sound of metal bending, ripping and collapsing.  I, for one, won’t be sad to see it fall. I do have sympathy for some of the other big voices there whose income will dwindle away.  But what Fox did was wrong, stifling the voices considered when the Constitution was written.  How many speeches, how many soliloquies, how many shouts and whines do you think I have listened to that went against my grain, while I understood the right for those noises to be made?  A lot, my friends, a lot.  But I just changed the channel.  I didn’t have a screaming meltdown.  But wait, this is a wealthy giant!  Well the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  

Bottom line is this: We are not powerless.  We have had enough of being poked in the eye and brutally shoved into the corner by unintelligent, inexperienced people with money, who bought power.  Have you noticed how many people are not going to doctors anymore?  Why?  They have lost trust because we were shoved into a corner by the government and pharmaceutical companies, manipulated and strong-armed (well not me and not some others, but most).  Mainstream folks don’t respond well to strong arm tactics.  Doctors are leaving the profession by the thousands.  Why?  Because, as one said, “There should be no politics in treating patients.”  And yet there were politicians with zero science experience, and exceptional monetary incentive, telling doctors HOW TO TREAT PATIENTS.   I can’t say that without raising my voice.  OMG imagine Kamala telling MY doctor how to treat me.  well, that wouldn’t work because I don’t go to the doctor.  

Maybe health ‘care’, now health ‘business’ needs to take a look at what is happening to the other three giants I mentioned.  Here’s a question:  How long do you think the drug companies can direct your life if you just stop taking drugs for every change of wind direction?  That’s a question I’ve asked for decades.  We actually listen to JINGLES about drugs, of which the side effects of many, is DEATH.  Sorry, that’s just stupid.  STUPID.  Yet we robot walk to the doctor and ask for the drug that says K is for Kidney.  Oh my god kill me now.  And then I say maybe this is natural selection.  Sorry not sorry.  People are so afraid they’re killing themselves trying to live a terribly unhealthy life and still want to live forever.  Yeah, that’s natural selection.  We get what we accept and/or deserve.

So look around you.  Look at CNN.  Look at Bud Light.  Look at Fox News.  And remember your own power as a consumer.  And take that to the polls with you if you’re tired of having that sharp stick shoved in your eyeballs.

 

Well, well, well, whaddaya know.  Baby Boomers have come back to the top.  Boomers are now the number one age group buying homes.  Overtaking Millenials.  Imagine.  WHAT’S THIS WORLD COMING TO?

Check out Lennar.com to see their 3D printed homes.  The process is amazing and the homes look great.  Check it out at Lennar.com.

Alex Murdaugh.  I’m guessing everyone has heard that name by now.  The Murdaugh name came forth years ago, in fact, after ‘The Boat Crash”, during which Paul Murdaugh was supposedly driving The Boat.  It was a runabout, center console it looked like, nothing fancy, but still deadly in the hands of drunk kids, mildly or terribly.  Mallory Beach died in that crash, a lovely young woman with the whole world at her feet.  I was heartbroken for her and for her family.  And I felt terrible for the other kids too, the ones who lived and now must live with that tragedy a part of their psyche.  And I also reflected on how many times I should not have survived my own antics, and the universe wobbled a bit.  Why do some of us just get away while others go down in flames?  Are we able to sit in judgement solely because we didn’t get caught?  No.  We are not.  But then we do, we all do, and this makes me sad for us.

All of the teens had been consuming too much alcohol, it is said, with Paul and another young man on video at a bar doing shots just before heading toward home, intercepted by The Crash. I was a boat person once; that kind of behavior is completely illegal and dangerous…as it turned out to be.  There was a terrible crash into a bridge during which Mallory was thrown overboard, not to be found for days.  Others were taken to the hospital.  Immediately, we saw, a swarm of legal guys rallied around the emergency room (it’s on camera), one of whom was Paul’s father, Alex.  It seemed wrong that attorneys were talking to these kids, or attempting to engage them, without their parents being there; something just felt wrong about that.  And that was my introduction to the Murdaughs and that area of South Carolina.

Then there was the suspicious death of Stephen Smith, with the Murdaugh name woven into that story as well.  Stephen’s death wasn’t suspicious.  Someone knows exactly what happened to that young man.  Again, a beautiful young life with the world at his feet, snuffed out terribly.  He was left, dead, on that SC road and I think his killer(s) hoped he’d be hit by a vehicle on that dark, unlit road, conveniently blaming his death on the victim being in the middle of the road.  Thankfully that didn’t happen.  Someone saw him and called the police in time for him to be moved off the highway.  But something fishy happened with the coroner’s report or the medical examiner.  I can’t keep them straight.  But the news says, over and over, there was zero indication of a hit and run.  More likely he was hit by an object (baseball bat), held by a person leaning out of a speeding car.  You know that stupid game.  Seems like all young upstarts do it, usually targeting mailboxes.  Yeah, I think that’s what happened to Stephen.  And I listened to his mother and cried with her too, at the death of her boy, and at the surety that nothing would be done to find out the truth.  Man’s inhumanity to man.

Then there was the shooting on that lonely SC highway.  Someone shot at good old Alex Murdaugh.  He was driving a Mercedes SUV, the ones that have drive-flat tires?  And he stopped to change a tire.  Pa-lease.  Nobody driving a Mercedes gets out to change a tire.  I know.  I used to drive one.  You either call roadside assistance, or BETTER YET, drive those drive-flat tires to a shop for repair.  Then we find that Alex set the whole thing up to have himself wiped out so his oldest son could inherit 10 million dollars.  Well…what about his WIFE and his YOUNGEST SON?  What about THEIR 10 million dollars? See now I’m starting to smell something that kind of smells like a rat.  I’m sensing a family divide: Maggie and Paul on one side and then Alex and Buster on the other.

And let’s not forget about the drugs.  Oh my.  A twenty year addiction to opioids, if you can believe that.  Who was addicted?  Well Alex Murdaugh.  There’s that NAME again.  And listen, I can’t keep up with how many pills he took or bought, but apparently there were SO many that he had to steal to pay for them.  From whom, you might ask?  Well let’s take a look.  And by the way, I do not believe Alex’s addiction story.  I just do not.

He was a personal injury lawyer, apparently.  And he handled the big cases, along with some small ones.  He won multi-million lawsuit payouts and then, well, kept the money.  From a LOT of his clients.  From a young man on life support who later died, from a young woman whose mom and brother were killed in a terrible accident she survived.  She lived in poverty because Alex kept her payout, embarrassing her by having her ask for grocery money when by then, she was actually a multi-millionaire, not knowing it.  Then there was Alex’s housekeeper who ‘fell down the stairs’ at Alex’s house after which he jumped in and volunteered to sue himself.  Gloria died, leaving children behind, and Alex got a huge insurance payout.  He kept that money too.

Then he stole from his law firm.  Millions!  His law partners had to come out of pocket to pay his debts and make his clients whole.  Alex’s firm had a manager and an accountant, who were responsible for the firm’s numbers adding up.  He threw them right under the bus.  His paralegals were stunned, fooled by lies and sleight of hand.  These things hurt.  They hurt because this behavior is perpetrated by someone trusted and even loved.  Man’s inhumanity to man.  Inhumanity without the slightest hint of regret.

Now, the horrific murders:  Alex’ wife Maggie and son Paul were BRUTALLY murdered by gunshots, from both a rifle and a shotgun.  Maggie was shot 6 or 7 times, two of which entered her head.  Paul was shot twice, the last one blowing his brain out of his head, or what was left of it. The intent was murder.  No doubt about it.   Alex Murdaugh has been found guilty of this crime, folks.  The husband and father.  It might seem somewhat run of the mill these days; there are SO MANY murders by ‘loved ones’.  And Alex lied and lied about nearly every step of that investigation.  It seems he put a lot of thought into how to do this and get away with it, and seemed to be establishing alibis in the immediate aftermath.  But still, he was the husband and father.  How could this even be real?

This man fooled every single person he knew, lied to every single one.  Every one, meaning he was a special kind of liar, a very good one to say the least.  He seems to be a narcissist or psychopath, or maybe both.  Because of that I fully expected him to take the stand in his own defense.  He would have thought, and probably did, that he was the smartest person in the room.  He was wrong.  He didn’t fool anybody.  His jig was up.  And how many dead bodies are scattered around this man?  I count at least 6, including the boy on life support: Mallory, Stephen, Gloria, the young man on life support, Maggie, Paul.  There may be more.  Man’s inhumanity to man.

Now comes the part I can’t understand.  I saw him break down when he heard or spoke about Paul…not Maggie, just Paul.  Those tears seemed real, and I believe they were. But psychopaths don’t feel pain like normal people,  and when narcissists don’t need you anymore, you are worthless to them.  I get that.  That’s when it gets dangerous.  That’s when you become expendable.

And still, I feel terrible for Alex too.  I cannot shake the sadness I feel about this tragedy, the entirety of it, including Alex, which had to begin with one decision, one moment in time when he decided that rules didn’t apply to him.  We had the chance to meet Alex’s family during this trial and they seemed like really good people, part of a close knit family who loved one another…except for Alex, who was just fooling them all.

Then I think about Buster Murdaugh getting kicked out of law school for cheating and how hard his legal family were working to slide him back in…he did nothing to help himself, by the way.  And there’s Paul.  Paul had a nickname for when he was drunk.  His personality was so angry and aggressive, abusive, that they called him ‘Drunk Timmy’.  And after the Boat Crash, he was walking free, ostensibly awaiting trial.  He had been charged in that case.  So what kind of legacy was Alex leaving behind anyway?  And now, it looks like Buster might as well choose another course of study because the Murdaugh name has been x-ed out with red paint.  I don’t know how I feel about that yet.

See, this “rules don’t apply to me” mentality had to come from somewhere, and maybe Alex’s DNA was inherited.  Maybe his long-standing legal eagle family members were also criminals.  Well, we may find out.  That’s being looked into.  And it seems Stephen’s death is now being investigated.  So the Murdaugh name may still pop up again.

And I will be reminded how important choices are, how important it is to have consequences for our actions, to not be rescued from crime, even the small ones.  And I will still feel so incredibly sad about how we treat one another.  We are supposed to love our enemies, and maybe this sadness I feel has something to do with that.

First, our market is the NC Triangle Market, with Raleigh NC at the center.

Second, real estate agents don’t own a crystal ball. We cannot materialize buyers.  We don’t actually control the rotation of the earth.  Hurts to admit that.  FORTUNATELY we have access to market experts who can tell us what to expect.  Here, (Triangle, remember?) we have FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE A MONTH moving in, according to the Triangle Business Journal.  I know that’s true when I drive around.  And, our market is predicted to keep right on humming along.  Hmmmm.  I wonder if the Journal are biased in any way.  Don’t think so.  Why?

Our area ranks fourth in the US, behind Seattle, Austin and San Francisco.  People love it here, particularly people from NY, CO, NJ, FL, TX and AZ (again, according to the Business Journal).  Why?  Tech jobs, healthcare jobs, universities, and just plain awesomeness.  That’s from me.  I live here and I work in real estate.  We are halfway between north and south east coast, halfway between mountains and coast.  I know, the only reason people from Seattle would come here is 1) job; 2) running away from something.  That’s a joke.  No, not really.

Well what happened in Dec and Jan around here then??  Well, holidays, interest rate shock, actually nose bleed from the fast elevation of interest rates, price increase of everything needed to survive, and maybe sheer exhaustion from 2022.  But things are beginning to normalize and will continue to do so, and people realize that even with a 6.5% interest rate, you can still buy a home.  And don’t forget that lenders are working hard to make it possible to get a loan.  Relax!  You can do this!  My first home carried an interest rate of SIXTEEN PERCENT and that was with perfect credit.  Seriously, relax.  I did it in my 30’s.  You can do this.

We have to keep an eye on the tech PLANS, because there are supposed to be some big dogs coming in to our area who may be slowed down because of inflation and all of the accompanying poop storm.  But they still have to have a ‘forward’ team who need housing and my expectation that they will 1) buy rather than rent; and 2) look in the luxury market.  Let’s see how that goes, because that’s a wild guess.  I do know that executives are ‘expected’ to live to a certain standard.  In other words, don’t count on them to buy the flipper house.

I have seen an early bump in activity in my business.  Normally my market wakes up and stretches in February’s but it started stretching in January.  That’s early.  So far, that’s supporting the TBJ prediction about the health of our market for 2023.  In the 2008 crash, as a reminder, we were the LAST in the US to fall, and the FIRST to start climbing out.  This wasn’t a crash, it was a forced nap; so we should be fine.

If you want to buy, you should still expect to put some cash up front on the table.  Due diligence, earnest money, inspections, etc.  Want to get a handle on that stuff?  I can help.  NOTE: Real estate laws in NC are not the same as those in TX, FL, CO, NJ, NY, AZ.  Yes you have the internet, but yes, you need an agent.  Because this is NC.

If you want to SELL, by February, you should be calling me to list your home, because by March it’ll be a race again.  I’m Brenda with Coldwell Banker Advantage.  Call me.

I tell the truth and I apologize if I hurt someone.  I do the right thing, even when it might hurt.  That’s what my father taught me.  My mother taught me that I’m no better than anyone else and neither is anyone better than me.  Look people in the eyes, in other words, on equal ground and expect them to be looking back.  It was a great lesson.  I live by it every day.  I am also a person of faith and my faith says “Love one another”.  This is why I cut out CNN and anyone or anything associated with them, years ago.  They in every way go against my value system….and apparently that of a LOT of others too.  

I’m patient, and I know it takes time for ‘voting with my feet’ to take effect.  I knew, years ago, that spewing out hatred, attacking individuals and institutions that disagree with you, was the absolute wrong thing for a respected, beloved NEWS organization, to do.  And I knew CNN was crippling itself by degrees and would fall to its knees.  I also know that when I feel this way, so do a WHOLE bunch of other people.  I knew others were doing the same thing I did.  

CNN was my go-to for news, for truth, for objective reporting, done professionally.  Then…the environment became toxic and one pointedly trying to make me believe what they thought I should believe.  WAIT a minute.  YOU are supposed to tell me facts, people, just facts.  I can make up my own mind how to FEEL about them.  Exactly who gives you the right to tell me how to think and how to feel??  And I saw things happening in the news that CNN wasn’t reporting, because it apparently didn’t align with the great big talking head on the screen’s agenda.  What exactly was happening over there?

Look, I don’t watch one single outlet; I watch dozens.  So I can clearly see when the same phrase is recited by ALL of the manipulating outlets.  People don’t do that.  We’re not robots.  We don’t walk in lockstep repeating a mantra doled out by the great big talking head on the screen.  Good writers don’t WANT to use someone else’s words!  Apparently CNN does, and so do their affiliates.  That tells me something about their content writers, actually.  So the intelligent ones of us who like the truth and need clean data in order to make decisions, can EASILY see ‘talking points’ shared among the outlets who have an agenda to manipulate, rather than to disseminate actual news.  The job of these people is to JOURNAL the truth, not to fold in their corporate agenda designed to manipulate the people.  That’s why they are CALLED journalists, but actually are not.  There’s no journalizing; it’s called crybaby whining and temper tantrum manipulation.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Now, it should be said that this TACTIC works for ‘some’ people, who might say, “Oh wow, they’re all saying the same thing!  It must be true!”  Well bull crap.  That behavior should make you nervous! Why?  Because you are very likely to be manipulated.  Check it out.

I don’t CARE what your political affiliation is, nor do I care what anyone’s is, unless they try to strong-arm or manipulate me to thinking like THEY think.  I get to make up my own mind and furthermore, I’m capable of doing that.  I refuse to hate anyone and certainly won’t do it because you TELL me to.  That goes against what my parents taught me, it goes against my faith, and…I have a high IQ and I use it.  By the way, if you are a news anchor I should in NO way be able to detect your political leanings.  I do not CARE how you feel about the news.  

Speaking of IQ, I could see that every issue they ‘hated’ they made sure to say ‘Trump’ with it.  I believe it to be a psychological ploy to align the name Trump with everything bad.  That, by the way, is still going on.  Watch for that and see what you think!  Trump can’t be the reason for everything that goes on!  Intelligent people know that, and we also know…are you ready for this…ALL politicians are full of crap.  ALL of them.  So when you try, as a NEWS organization, to make me think Trump and Bad Stuff go together, give me a break. Go away.  Oh yeah, that’s what you’re doing.

Trump.  Oh my god.  I got SO tired of hearing them smear him like school children misbehaving!  I did not care, do not care now, what they think about him, and if they know anything about politics, they know ‘mainstream’ means people use some of the democrat ideas and some of the republican ones.  That’s the mainstream, the ones CNN lost, by the way.  MAIN being the operative part of that word, implies the great numbers of folks they were pissing off.  Well, good bye CNN.  I hope you get the message finally.  You are still on your knees but you will fall onto your back soon enough, and that will be okay; in fact it was my hope when I cut you out of my life. There’s no coming back from a cancer like the one that took over this once great company.  It’ll be a shame, because I REMEMBER when you were the giant, the best, the most trusted.  I kept you on my TV all the time in those days.  But, now, I will still be glad to see truth win.  Truth, remember, is important to me.

Now when I see the vitriolic talking heads being fired or moved to the shadows, I’m not sorry.  They are getting what they deserve.  They forgot they are there to tell the news, unbiased.  Didn’t that used to be part of their advertisement years ago?  Apparently MSNBC takes some of them, but hmmm.  Let’s see what happens there.  And here’s another thing personal to me: I’m not inclined to be a follower, particularly a follower who looks right into the butt of the mule on the cart path in front of me as the CNN employees do,   I’m either a leader or a loner, most of the time.  If I’m in a job where I am forced to go against my upbringing, I’M QUITTING!  Why?  Because the dollar bill is not my god.  In other words, I have integrity and I have a brain I actually use.  And now, what are the chastised ones saying?

Oh they’re denying they did what they did, the things that are actually in video archives to be replayed to the universe.  So when they lie, it’s a galaxy-wide lie.  And the ones glad to see the lying institution falling, are happy to show those videos.  Look, these toxic people need to be OFF CAMERA.  Period.  I don’t need to be whined to; I need the news, the FACTS.

Late night talkshow hosts who jumped on that bandwagon were also cut from my list of people to watch.  So, mainstream, whatcha think?   Netflix?  Are you listening?  Facebook, looked at your stock lately?  Disney?  How about you?  Twitter?  I know you are.  All of our ‘institutions’ need to get in touch with reality, the mainstream, and start realizing, we can take you down, and we are doing that.  Watch the news, watch the stock market.  WE matter.  WE are the mainstream, and we are all colors, all genders, all socioeconomic groups, all faiths, we work all kinds of jobs and we do not like hate being forced into our lives.  

Do we want you to think like we think?  Nope.  We want you to see facts, all of them, so you can make up your OWN mind.  You can still do what you do, but you won’t have the big microphones and big cameras to try to manipulate smart people.  You will still get the dumbasses to follow you, the ones too lazy to do little bit of homework, but that’s another blog.  Know there are a lot of thinking, smart folks out here, who do NOT do the things you accuse us of, and we do NOT think the way you say we do.  We DO love one another; we are NOT racist; we are not killers; we are not ANY of the things you “stereotype” us to be.  We are good people, hardworking people, who pay taxes, who help others, who donate to causes, you know, the mainstream stuff.  And isn’t it wrong to stereotype?  Isn’t it wrong to discriminate?  Well, CNN, that’s exactly what you have been doing to us.  So good riddance.

I don’t have anything against a good debate.  I grew up in science, where sometimes scientists disagree and they have debates, they defend their work, they work it out!  And then, we went for coffee together and talked about our lives.  A true debate has NO HATE in it.  It has a position to be defended.  Remember, you learned that in college?  If you have to manipulate and lie,  you have no actual position; you have a WISH.

So yeah, CNN.  I would say, “See ya”, but I won’t see ya.  Haven’t for many years.  MSNBC, look out the window at the mainstream down on the sidewalks.  Don’t say you weren’t given a heads up.