History of Playing Cards

Entertainment, Games, History 5 Minutes

When playing cards first arrived in Europe toward the end of the 14th century AD, they caused quite a furor. In 1377, the town council of Florence complained that the playing of “a certain game called naibbe has recently been introduced into these parts,” and by a vote of 98 to 25 decided to prohibit it. In the same year cards reached Paris, where new city regulations cracked down on working-class cardplayers but apparently left nobel devotees alone.

European Playing Cards

The following year, in the Bavarian city of Regensburg, the council tried to limit card games to small stakes. By 1387, cards had arrived in the Spanish kingdom of Castile, where the government tried to ban them.

The killjoys were fighting a losting battle, however, for even at this early stage, cards began to acquire royal patrons. In 1379, the prince of Brabant, in Belgium, bought a highly decorated pack of cards, while in 1392 the mad French king Charles VI received three packs of cards painted by artist Jacquemin Gringonneur “for his amusement during the intervals in his sad illness.”

Charles VI/Gringonneur Cards

Playing cards soon led to the emergence of cardsharps, and the mother of all card swindles is recorded in the Parisian court annals for 1408. Two dubious characters lured a traveling merchant into an inn with talk of a good currency deal. One of them then produced a pack of cards from his pocket and demonstrated an amusing game of guessing the identity of a card while seeing only its back. The astute merchant soon noticed that one of the cards had a slight but distinctive mark on the reverse, so he happily joined in when the betting started. When the marked card turned up, the trader put his shirt on it, only to find that the front of the card was not the same, as it had been switched for another.

The French also made one great contribution to the development of playing cards by inventing, around 1480 AD, the names and shapes of the four suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) we still use today. These simple geometric shapes did much to encourage card playing. By the end of the 15th century, playing card manufacture was a major industry, and even Johannes Gutenberg, often claimed to be the inventor of movable type, became involved.

Johannes Gutenberg Card

He developed some of the mechanical methods of production and, at a time when his finances were in desperate straits, he used drawings that his artists had prepared for his famous Bible to decorate the back of a deck of playing cards.

From this point the history of Western playing cards is clear. But who brought them to Europe in the first place? The subject is swathed in mystery, and it has at different times been claimed that they were introduced by Marco Polo (1254-1324), the Crusaders, or the Gypsies. The most exotic theories credit the Gypsies with the invention of cards (as a means of divination), and it has therefore been argued that their origins lie in India or even Egypt. The truth is that playing cards are a Chinese invention, but the problem has been that little is known of their transmission from China to the West.

Ancient Chinese Playing Cards

Playing cards had been invented in China by at least the 9th century AD when, according to tradition, a princess and her relatives played the “leaf game,” or cards. Women were certainly important in the development of card games, for one apparently wrote the world’s first book on the subject (now lost), later in that century.

By the 11th century, cards were printed with woodcut blocks, and in the early Ming dynasty (1369-1644 AD) famous artists were employed to design card backs with portraits of characters from favorite novels, such as The Water Margin. Chinese cards were much smaller than ours (about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide) and were printed on fairly thick paper, which made them hard-wearing but difficult to shuffle. Chinese “money cards” had four suits: cash, strings (of cash), myriads (of strings) and tens (of myriads), with the numbers 2 thru 9 in the first three and 1 thru 9 in the fourth.

Ancient Woodcut Playing Cards

The Chinese of yesteryear were enthusiastic cardplayers and gamblers, as they are today. Ming Dynasty books on cards praised them as superior to all other amusements, for they “were convenient to carry, could stimulate thinking and could be played by a group of four without annoying conversation, and without the difficulties which accompanied playing chess or meditation.” Also, “cards could be played in almost any circumstances without restrictions of time, place, weather, or qualification of partners.”

But this still leaves us without a link to Europe, for early Western cards don’t resemble Chinese ones and have different suits. The missing link appears to be the Islamic world, despite the fact that card playing was frowned on by Muslim clerics.

In 1938, Professor L.A. Mayer came across a pack of 52 cards while searching through the collections of the famous Topkapi Museum, in Istanbul, Turkey. They had been made in Egypt about 1400 AD, using designs that closely resemble those of early Italian cards.

Second card from left: The Seven of Swords (equivalent to Seven of Clubs)

Third card from left: the Malik of Cups (equivalent to the King of Hearts)

The Arabic inscriptions on the court cards make clear the origin of the word naibbe for cards (used by the Florence council); they are called the Malik (King), Na’ib Malik (Governor), and Na’ib Thani (Deputy Governor). They are in 4 suits – swords, polo sticks, cups, and coins (equivalent to modern clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds).

The only significant difference between these and early Italian cards is that the Egyptian ones are, like the Chinese, long and thin. Even this difficulty seems to have been overcome by the find of a single card with an Arabic inscription made around 1200 AD; its dimensions are like those of Italian cards, which are still slightly narrower than those made today in the rest of Europe.

There can now be little doubt that the Arabs were the intermediaries for the widespread transmission of one of ancient China’s most popular inventions.

Source: Ancient Inventions

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Published by NebraskaFilly

Army veteran (1976-1979), retired with entirely too much time on my hands

Published

109 thoughts on “History of Playing Cards”

  1. Morning All!
    very interesting Filly!
    I often wondered if playing cards were adapted from tarot cards…
    I bought a deck of tarot cards at a gift shop once to use with my Halloween costume–I was a gypsy– black wig and all. I read the instructions and practiced so I could “do” readings for my coworkers.
    at first it was a hoot–I correctly predicted a pregnancy and an unexpected houseguest. but I also saw a death of a family member but never told my friend–I thought it was morbid…then that too came thru. I then took the cards and destroyed them…

    Liked by 2 people

  4. Liked by 1 person

  5. Liked by 1 person

  8. so the woman the National Guardsman drowned trying to rescue was a drug mule? (That makes this situation even more tragic!!! I am quoting the author here–but i honestly agree.
    FTA

    Two illegal migrants who a now-missing Texas National Guard soldier tried to save from a river were involved in “illicit transnational narcotics trafficking,” officials said Saturday as the search for the missing service member resumed.

    The soldier went missing on Friday after entering a river in Eagle Pass to help two migrants who officials say “appeared to be drowning as they illegally crossed the river from Mexico to the United States.”

    In a statement, the Texas Military Dept. said that initial reports from Texas Rangers “have determined that the two migrants were involved in illicit transnational narcotics trafficking.” They are both in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody.

    snip

    I’m going to say something very cruel but, I believe, necessary: It’s time for Americans to stop saving illegal aliens. No more Rio Grande rescues. No more searching through the border desert to find stragglers. No more American lives lost aiding criminal activity that hurts America and Americans.

    The burdens need to shift to the wannabe illegal aliens to create a disincentive for their criminal conduct. These are not people fleeing a holocaust. These are economic migrants who do not want to wait their turn to immigrate legally to America. Instead, they want the instant gratification of the benefits Americans are forced to pay for, even as the illegal aliens drain American wallets and put American lives at risk.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/the_tragic_irony_of_a_national_guardsmans_death_in_the_rio_grande.html

    Liked by 1 person

  10. EXCERPT: “Joe Biden met with Hunter Biden’s business partner, Eric Schwerin, at the White House 19 times as Vice President, according to a new report.

    Schwerin was welcomed at the White House a total of 19 times between 2009 and 2015, according to Barack Obama’s White House visitor logs the New York Post reported Saturday. The contact between Joe Biden and Schwerin directly contradicts Joe Biden’s repeated claims he was never involved in the family business. The Post’s reporting adds a twelfth instance Joe Biden has been involved in the family’s business scheme.

    In November 2017, Schwerin met with Joe Biden in the West Wing. Schwerin was the president of the infamous but now-dissolved investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners. According to the Post:

    Meeting with Joe Biden aide Evan Ryan (10/28/2009)
    Meeting with Jill Biden special assistant Meg Campbell (2/13/2010)
    Meeting with Joe Biden assistant Michele Smith (10/24/2010)
    Meeting with Joe Biden (11/17/2010)
    Meeting with Joe Biden assistant Kellen Suber (8/22/2011)
    Meeting with Jill Biden aide Betsy Massey (3/31/2012)
    Meeting with Joe Biden assistant Michele Smith (2/7/2012)
    Meeting with Joe Biden’s Director of Administration Faisal Amin (3/28/2013)
    Meeting with Joe Biden assistant Kathy Chung (5/20/2013)

    ‘The logs also reveal that Schwerin met with various close aides of both Joe and Jill Biden at key moments in Hunter’s life when he was striking multi-million dollar deals in foreign countries, including China. Yet President Biden has long insisted he had no involvement in his son’s foreign affairs. “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said in 2019.
    …
    Of all Hunter Biden’s business associates, Schwerin had the most intimate access to the vice president’s personal finances. His deep involvement in the personal and professional lives of both Bidens were first revealed in emails contained on a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair store in April 2019.’

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/23/report-joe-biden-met-with-hunter-bidens-business-partner-at-white-house/

    Liked by 1 person

  11. EXCERPT: “The entry for Hunter Biden’s investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners was censored from Wikipedia on Wednesday — allegedly because it was “not notable” and a “magnet for conspiracy theories.”

    “Keeping it around additionally risks WP:BLPVIO, as this is a magnet for conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden,” the site said in justification of Rosemont’s disappearance from Wikipedia. The edit was made by “AlexEng,” who claimed Rosemont “is only mentioned in connection with its famous founders, Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz,” and therefore cannot be trusted. AlexEng’s Wikipedia user page acknowledges he has an implicit bias. “I always edit with the best intentions, but I sometimes make good faith mistakes,” his bio reads.

    “Occasionally, I may let bias seep into my work… Of course, everybody has implicit bias, and this list should not be considered exhaustive,” he writes. “This list should also not be used as ammunition in a content dispute, though I am quite sure somebody reading this will consider that option.”

    Rosemont Seneca Partners was also managed by Eric Schwerin, Hunter’s business partner. Schwerin was embraced at the White House a total of 19 times between 2009 and 2015, according to Barack Obama’s White House visitor logs, the New York Post reported Saturday.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/23/magnet-conspiracy-theories-hunters-investment-firm-entry-censored-wikipedia/

    Liked by 1 person

  13. OK – WTH is going on with this ship??!!??

    “A Virginia medical examiner has determined a sailor aboard the USS George Washington died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 15, marking the third suicide by a sailor assigned to the vessel in a week’s time, according to reports.
    ———————
    Mitchell-Sandor marks the third sailor assigned to USS Geroge Washington to commit suicide in the past month, USNI noted, citing the local medical examiner.

    On April 9, Retail Services Specialist 3rd Class Mika’il Sharp died by suicide, and the following day, Interior Communications Electrician 3rd Class Natasha Huffman took her own life, the medical examiner determined.

    In a statement obtained by the Daily Press, the Naval Air Force Atlantic confirmed seven servicemembers assigned to the vessel died over the past twelve months, including four in 2021.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/health/2022/04/23/report-three-sailors-assigned-to-uss-george-washington-commit-suicide-in-7-days/

    Liked by 1 person

  14. EXCERPT: “And that gets me to Johnny Depp. Over the years, he’s been politically innocuous. He’s also shown himself to be a talented actor. He gets points for both those things.

    However, poor Depp is also the perfect star stereotype: Horrible childhood, limited education, substance abuse, and sexually perverse relationships. On-screen, he’s in control, even if his character is not; off-screen, he married a woman who was famously crazy and vicious and then suffered horribly at her hands because he’s weak and lacks internal resources.

    The headlines tell the story: drunken binges, screaming fights, physical violence, severed fingers, drugs, fecal matter, and an atmosphere of paranoia and hatred. It made me think that, back in the old days, when ordinary people viewed actors with deep suspicion as immoral, they may have been on to something.

    One day, we’ll look back on the second and third decades of the 21st century as the “great revealing” because we’re finally seeing past the shiny surfaces our institutions presented. We’ve learned that our American government bears little relationship to its constitutional guidelines and is scarily close to a third-world dictatorship. We’ve learned that our federal law enforcement agencies are dangerously corrupt. We’ve learned that those institutions to which we’ve entrusted our children, whether schools or corporate entertainment (Disney, Nickelodeon, etc.), aggressively indoctrinate our children into leftist politics and dangerous gender lunacy. And we’ve learned that the people who have a disproportionate amount of control over American culture are truly awful, second-rate human beings.

    Dennis Prager is fond of saying “I prefer clarity to agreement.” Well, we’re getting our clarity and I think a lot of Americans are reaching an agreement: Our institutions are broken and must change. And getting back to Depp v. Heard, one way to start that change is to withdraw our money from Hollywood. These people really don’t deserve it.”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/the_larger_message_of_the_appalling_johnny_deppamber_heard_trial.html

    Liked by 1 person

  15. EXCERPT: “Theologians have studied evil for centuries but curiously enough, there seems to be no discipline outside of theology that studies evil academically, or as a separate discipline within the Humanities. Many philosophers and theologians have described evil as a deficit of “the good” and we will examine this idea. Using an assortment of intellectual tools from the past, coupled with modern wisdom, a map of the darkness caused by evil can be charted.

    A critical notion, ignored by many, is the role of the human will in making bad choices. We can say that the will, like a heat-seeking missile, is attracted to and motivated by anything that appears to be good, unvetted as it were by cultural constraints and intellectual considerations. Let us use a crude but compelling example. A fifty-year-old man may be attracted to a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl. His will apprehends a certain “good” relating to his own sexuality and hers, but his intellect, if properly informed, will tell him to steer clear of sexual entanglement and help her to achieve her potential, by not engaging in acts that properly belong to romance, marriage, and the long horizon of her childbearing or professional years.

    Disregarding long-term “goods” in favor of the gratification provided by short-term “goods” can have negative social consequences that reverberate through generations. Sexual predators, such as Hugh Hefner, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton, and Jeffery Epstein, for example, probably ruined the lives of countless young women by turning the natural instincts of these women from long-term commitments to short-term gratification.

    This deficit of the will, in terms of not immediately grasping the social dimensions, and long-term political, and other consequences of unvetted bad choices, began to be addressed scientifically, and in a creative manner, when Andrew M. Lobaczewski, a professor of psychiatry, and a group of psychologists in Poland, developed analyses of the methods of those who oppressed Communist society in the 1950s and 60s. Lobaczewski spent his early adulthood suffering under the Nazi occupation of Poland, closely followed by the brutality of Soviet occupation after the war. His experience of these horrors led Lobaczewski to develop the concept of Ponerology (from the Greek word poneros meaning evil). Ponerology is the study of evil, particularly from a political, social, and psychological perspective, rather than a religious judgement.

    His book, Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism, describes the genesis of political and social evil. He describes the origin of what he calls macrosocial evil, which tends to come about when psychopaths and sociopaths, under various political systems, take charge of governance and create pathocracies. Joseph Heller described one extreme aspect of this ponerogenic process in his book, Catch-22:

    “It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

    “In ponerogenic processes, [notes Lobaczewski] moral deficiencies, intellectual failings, and pathological factors intersect in a time-space causative network to give rise to individual and national suffering.”
    ————————-
    The older notions of virtue and vice, distinguished from a religious association with the diabolical and sin, might function as a secular map of the darkness of evil. The notion of a separation between moral, intellectual, and spiritual excellence (virtue) can do much to illuminate the culturally estranged territory of good and evil. Theodore Roosevelt noted that “educating a man in mind and not morals was to create a monster.”

    Ideologies, or power structures opposed to schemas of virtue and vice, are merely symptomatic of ponerogenic processes that seek to obscure the consequences of evil. Political structures that understand that the Divine inclines us in the right direction, and that evil inspires us in the wrong direction, need to codify this understanding more clearly without endorsing any specific religion.”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/a_map_of_the_dark.html

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Linked in that article:

      EXCERPT: “THE FOUNDERS’ CODE

      1. Existence is the ultimate force in the universe and source of all religion.
      2. The soul or life-force is a dynamic link between Existence and all living things.
      3. Moral law is based on a relationship between Existence and the soul.
      4. Responsibility and accountability are based on a hierarchy of moral and intellectual values.
      5. There are five intellectual values: Science, Wisdom, Understanding, Prudence and Art.

      6. There are ten moral values: Courage, Self-Restraint (Continence), Liberality, Magnificence, Magnanimity (selfless generosity), Honor, Gentleness, Friendship, Truthfulness, and Justice.

      7. The vices or bad habits, such as gluttony, greed, laziness, intemperance, lack of self-restraint (incontinence), cowardice, injustice, lying, parsimony (cheapness), rudeness, ill-temper, impatience, violence and hatred are the doorway to evil.

      8. Honor and happiness come to those who practice moral and intellectual excellence.
      9. The family is the first school of the soul.
      10. All things return to Existence. This is the basis for the mystery of life.”

      https://founderscodeusa.com/

      Liked by 1 person

      1. He has a lot of interesting books listed on his site: Edwin Vieira, Jr., Thomas Sowell, among his own and a couple of others.

        EXCERPT: “America was not founded by atheists, and the current liberal enterprise, under the guise of “progressive constitutionalism” to delink America from any substantial reference to God or Natural Law, is in direct contradiction to the Declaration of Independence, and is contributing to the moral fracturing of America. As Thomas Sowell noted in his penetrating analysis of American politics, A Conflict of Visions, the “constrained vision” of the Founders was based on governance bound by the (then) commonly agreed upon principles of Natural Law. The unconstrained vision of “progressives,” on the other hand, driven by moral relativism, positive law, and masked by concerns for social justice, consistently works to remove any reference to God, or a moral sensibility derived from values usually attributed to a Divinity who draws all things towards Himself. No one has stated the universal connection to Natural Law more clearly than Cicero in De Re Publica:

        “There is indeed a law, right reason, which is in accordance with nature; existing in all, unchangeable, eternal. Commanding us to do what is right, forbidding us to do what is wrong. It has dominion over good men but possesses no influence over bad ones. No other law can be substituted for it, no part of it can be taken away, nor can it be abrogated altogether. Neither the people or the senate can absolve from it. It is not one thing at Rome, and another thing at Athens: one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow; but it is eternal and immutable for all nations and for all time.”

        “One Nation Under God,” as it says on the dollar, is not a trivial assertion, but the attempt to re-imagine America as a land without a consistent and original vision, not subject to objective principles, is a course that will continue to fragment our national sense of unity. The fall of Rome was once unthinkable, as is the fall of America, but if we do not return to the values of the Founders, what is unthinkable may become our unfortunate reality.”

        Liked by 1 person

  16. EXCERPT: “Cawthorn alleged in late March that lawmakers invited him to an orgy and snorted cocaine in front of him. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise met with the 26-year-old representative to discuss the allegations for roughly 30 minutes.

    McCarthy later said Cawthorn lied about the allegations, calling his statements “unacceptable” and unbecoming of a congressman.

    “There’s a lot of different things that can happen. But I just told him he’s lost my trust. He’s going to have to earn it back,” McCarthy told reporters, according to the Washington Post. “I mean, he’s got a lot of members very upset.”

    https://dailycaller.com/2022/04/22/rep-cawthorn-responds-photos-lingerie/

    Liked by 1 person

  17. cute story from tcth

    Todd W
    April 24, 2022 10:46 am

    I thought some might enjoy this story. My daughter called me while returning home from a fundraiser type activity in Morgantown, WVA. yesterday.

    At the event she said there were your typical raffles, plenty of food and drink and the like. Coming to the end of the afternoon the Emcee of the event, turns the microphone over to what my daughter said was obviously one of the local veterans. She just thought he was going to give an announcement and thank those for coming.

    He takes the microphone and exclaims “F__K Joe Biden” and hands the mic back. My daughter said the place exploded in cheers and laughter. She said the Emcee, looked stunned and basically said “um, well, OK thanks”.

    Funny thing was it was going out live on at least one radio station there.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. EXCERPT: “Two groups representing major corporations inched closer this week to backing a carbon tax policy critics argue would raise energy prices for consumers.

    The American Petroleum Institute (API) privately drafted a proposal that would include a tax of $35-50 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted by fossil fuels, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday evening. On Tuesday, meanwhile, the Business Roundtable (BR) — of which Amazon, Google, Apple, JPMorgan Chase and many other corporations are members — released an energy policy roadmap that endorsed carbon pricing, which forces emitters to choose between higher costs and transitioning to renewables, that they said incentivizes the “deployment of technologies to lower emissions.”
    ———————-
    A carbon tax of $35 per ton would raise gasoline costs by about 28 cents a gallon while a $50-per-ton tax would increase pump prices by 41 cents a gallon, according to Energy Information Administration data.

    “No company pays a carbon tax, consumers will,” Daniel Turner, the executive director of Power the Future, told the DCNF in an interview. “This idea that we will tax carbon and therefore have less of it, is just a complete fallacy.”

    “Just like every other industry, big corporations love big government, and the oil and gas industry is not immune from that,” he added. “It is unsurprising that some of the biggest producers and the biggest corporations want some sort of new regulation that they can afford, that their competitors cannot afford.”

    Turner added that large oil corporations may support a carbon tax policy in an attempt to “buy goodwill” from environmental groups and activists. Still, other groups have echoed the API’s view that a carbon tax wouldn’t raise consumer prices if coupled with wide-scale deregulation of the fossil fuel industry.”
    ————————
    Less than half of Americans would support a carbon tax while just 29% would oppose it, according to a 2019 poll from the Associated Press. But voters in the state of Washington soundly rejected two separate carbon tax proposals between 2016-2018.”

    https://dailycaller.com/2022/04/22/business-oil-industry-carbon-tax-climate/

    Liked by 1 person

  19. I’ve always liked Charles Payne:

    EXCERPT: “Fox Business host Charles Payne went down the list of why he thinks CNN+ quickly collapsed while appearing on a Friday episode of “Fox & Friends.”

    CNN executives announced the network will end the streaming service’s operations April 30 after launching March 29. The platform had low subscription numbers and under 10,000 daily viewers.

    “They spent so many millions on this thing, it was just an unmitigated disaster right out of the gate,” Payne said. “Streaming is huge, its estimated [that] global streaming is going to be about a $150 billion industry by 2026, but that’s a lot of players. I think the idea is that you’ve got to bring something fresh, something kinda unique and I think they started with a similar situation when we’re talking about wokeness … These are people who have harshly gone after half of this country for having your own political ideas.”

    “You’re gonna launch a product and ask me to pay for that so I can hear someone call me bad names? Hell no! And you have all these old, boring people on there that we’ve been watching for long, that by the way, we were watching, that’s why they’ve got them in the first place,” he continued. “It was so nonsensical, and the logo sucked. How bad was that logo? I could’ve sworn it was a pharmacy I saw in Italy. I went ‘what the hell is this?’”

    Video @ link: https://dailycaller.com/2022/04/22/charles-payne-cnn-plus-fail-fox-and-friends-subscription/

    Liked by 1 person

          1. One late night in 1989, we were watching the coverage from the first Iraq war on CNN because my brother was there – now that I think about it, my other half-brother I didn’t know about then was probably there, too.

            Anyway, we were watching it after having toked up and we heard a knock on our front door. I was renting the place next to Frying Pan Park in Herndon and boarded horses. People behind us had horses, too.

            Some of their horses had gotten out and it was the cops. Of course, I immediately stepped outside and closed the door behind me! LOL

            Once they finally listened to me and left me alone with the horses, I rounded them up (3) and got them back into their pasture.

            Close call, there!

            Liked by 1 person

  22. I’m certainly not going with the Trump-endorsed Charles Herbst! Nope – I’ll be voting for Pillen instead.

    EXCERPT: “With that said, here are the reasons why he’s making so many bad endorsements. The first and most important one is his desire to always be on the winning side. This isn’t just ego. It’s part of his strategy in maintaining the highest position of influence over the GOP. If he makes too many endorsements that don’t win, corporate media will be blasting out for weeks about how he has lost his importance in the eyes of Republican voters.

    Moreover, he’s a numbers guy. He always had an unhealthy obsession with polls and statistics, and having the highest possible success percentage is extremely important to him. He wants to emerge from the primaries and then the midterms by being able to say something to the effect of, “99% of the people I endorsed won their races.”

    The second reason he’s endorsing some RINOs is because of donor considerations. There are two groups of people in his ear about candidates: His advisors and representatives of his potential large donors. They make their recommendations based on what’s best for them. For his advisors, political considerations are more important than ideology. They’re supposed to pick winners. For his donors, it’s all about influencing Trump to back their people, and they’re willing to promise campaign and PAC contributions in exchange.

    This second reason behind his endorsements may sound like shady politics, but here’s the thing. It’s just politics. I don’t like it but that’s really just the way it is. Trump is solid when it counts. His policies promote an America First agenda and he will hold the RINOs’ feet to the fire when the time comes. We saw what he did to Mitt Romney. Lest we forget, Trump endorsed him, too.

    The third and most important reason is a personal situation with Trump. It’s both a strength and a weakness that he accumulates allies for the purpose of future consideration. He loves loyalty and expects those he helps to be there for him when he calls. In business, it was a tremendous strength. In politics, it yielded Rex Tillerson, Reince Priebus, Jeff Sessions, Omarosa Manigault Newman, Anthony Scaramucci, and a long list of other friends and allies who ended up being awful as part of his White House.

    While I’m not concerned about his endorsements, I’m extremely concerned if he continues the practice into his second administration. They only way he’ll ever be able to drain the swamp is if he stops propping up swamp creatures. Mike Pence, John Kelly, and Bill Barr come to mind as people he surrounded himself with who were actually working against him the whole time. That can’t happen the second time around. He needs better discernment and a willingness to stop making promises.

    The fatal flaw in his political style is that he’s a loyal person who expects others to maintain their loyalty to him. But other people generally aren’t like him. They will do what’s best for themselves, and if that means working against Trump behind his back, they’ll do it.

    I was interviewed by Chad Caton on Brighteon TV to discuss this very topic:

    We need to help America First candidates win their primaries, and sometimes that means going against Donald Trump’s endorsements. In the long run, he and America will be stronger because of these actions.”

    https://freedomfirstnetwork.com/2022/04/why-some-of-trumps-endorsements-dont-make-sense

    Liked by 1 person

    1. i think you should vote for whoever you think is best…that being said…
      the person writing the article is speculating….nobody knows what’s going on in Trump’s head…

      Liked by 1 person

  24. gosh it’s really warm here! we got some more outdoor maintenance stuff done–straightened the fences around the fruit trees and the small oak. then we knocked down 2 encroaching sticker bushes and washed the garage floor!
    yeah!

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Good for you! Still only 45 here – it was spitting rain a tiny bit when I ran to the store but it didn’t last long. Still windy and cloudy. I was able to get the glider upright, with the cement block back across the bottom bar, and managed to keep the cement birdbath from toppling over. Good thing ’cause it’s way too heavy for me to move!

      Liked by 2 people

      1. we talked about a bird bath too…but the bears would knock it over and might ruin it just having fun…
        same thing with a small fountain type thing

        Liked by 1 person

    1. If it’s still just projected…..I read an article earlier about 3 districts that overwhelmingly voted for LePen but there are 18 regions, with 13 of them being in Europe and 5 overseas. So 3 isn’t much, unfortunately.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. True. I mean MSM likes to push so who knows.

        Unless if true either people aren’t sick of him. Or they let the illegals vote OR the DS cheated as they always do and get away with it

        Liked by 1 person

  28. Oh filly you have no idea how much I enjoy playing cards. I have so many of them from airlines. They used to back in the day give them to you for free.

    Great opening as always

    Liked by 2 people

        1. My adopted parents were into cards as well, Mom played bridge a lot, and pitch was what most couples played at get-togethers for the most part. The parents played cards while we kids played our own games. When my Mom died, I found one entire drawer – a long, shallow drawer in a side cabinet – filled with packs of cards, new and used. There were at least 50 in the drawer. LOL

          Liked by 1 person

  31. Homeschool because you have no idea WHAT schools are doing

    “SECRET Gender Transition Closets,” Where Young Children Can “Trans” Without Their Parents’ Knowledge, Are Popping Up At Schools Across the Country

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/secret-gender-transition-closets-young-children-can-trans-without-parents-knowledge-popping-schools-across-country/

    The goal of the transition closet is for our students to wear the clothes that their parents approve of, come to school and then swap out into the clothes that fit who they truly are,” the teacher said.

    The California Family Council and others eventually confirmed the identity of the teacher as Oakland Unified School District Spanish teacher Thomas Martin-Edwards, who is also the founder of “Queer Teacher Fellowship.”

    Martin-Edwards, the teacher who runs the trans closet, is also transgender. He has posted videos of himself in the classroom showing off the stilettos he wears to school.”
    As for the school? They are apparently just letting it happen. Neither the district nor the teacher responded when asked for comment by the Epoch Times.

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Sure….Ummm why fight mild forms?

    COVID shots still work but researchers hunt new improvements

    https://www.kmov.com/2022/04/24/covid-shots-still-work-researchers-hunt-new-improvements/

    Already there’s public confusion about who should get a second booster now and who can wait. There’s also debate about whether pretty much everyone might need an extra dose in the fall.

    “I’m very concerned about booster fatigue” causing a loss of confidence in vaccines that still offer very strong protection against COVID-19′s worst outcomes, said Dr. Beth Bell of the University of Washington, an adviser to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    No shit you mean people see the scam.

    For the average person, two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine plus one booster — a total of three shots — “gets you set up” and ready for what may become an annual booster, said Dr. David Kimberlin, a CDC adviser from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

    See above scam.

    Liked by 2 people

  33. Liked by 2 people

      1. Or it could be similar to the virus I got just as I was getting ready to move here in 2013. The only symptom was excruciating lower stomach pain and I couldn’t eat for a week. Absolutely NO other symptoms. Very strange!

        Liked by 2 people

          1. I was so pissed off…..Finally, after a week, I went to the local clinic here – I was positive that I had a Neurovirus that was going around some areas of NE. I told them I didn’t have insurance but she insisted, since I didn’t have any of the other symptoms, that just couldn’t be it. No, she had to X-ray my stomach!

            The test for the virus was a simple, cheap stool sample but no……she comes back and says, “Well, it’s empty!” Well, duh, I told her I hadn’t eaten for a week!

            Turns out, I did, indeed, have a virus. Simple antibiotic and voila – gone! Cost me close to $400!!!!

            Liked by 2 people

              4. That clinic is connected to our hospital that sent my Mom home after COVID with a blood clot in her leg and pneumonia – after 1 full day of physical therapy out of the 9 she was prescribed!

                Liked by 2 people

      1. I did, thanks…till 3 in the morning.
        thought i heard something on the deck and hubby was sleeping so soundly i didn’t want to wake him…but then i lay there for 2 hours wondering it was…
        don’t see anything this morning…???

        Liked by 1 person

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