What Can We Learn From A Kelpie?

 

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM A KELPIE?
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, September 25, 2026

According to ChatGPT: A well-trained sheepdog can typically control 50–100 sheep by itself, and sometimes considerably more.

For large flocks, an experienced Border Collie, or a Kelpie (an Australian version of the Sheep Dog or Border Collie) may work several hundred sheep, especially in open pasture. That is worth repeating, ONE dog for SEVERAL HUNDRED SHEEP. For exceptionally large groups—500 to 1,000+ sheep—shepherds commonly use two or more dogs WORKING TOGETHER!

Why would I ever write a Nugget for the Noggin about an Australian Dog that most people would be unable to identify? I am SO glad you asked. Let me tell you.

Before I do, understand that it was NOT that many years ago, you could never get me to talk to anyone about political issues; I just did not care, and I said that every chance I got. That was then, this is now! Unlike today’s youth, I KNOW WHAT COMMUNISM IS! I KNOW WHAT MARXISM IS! More importantly, I KNOW WHAT CAPITALISM IS! I ALSO KNOW THE DAMAGE AND DEATHS CAUSED BY BOTH MARXISM AND COMMUNISM! I believe that today’s youth have not a clue to the damage and death caused by countries ruled by Marxist or Communist leaders if it was not taught in our schools. We certainly do not see it taught through documentaries on our television sets. If they were shown on our televisions, how many children would watch a documentary about historical events? In fact, the destruction and death created on 9/11 is not broadcast on television except on the anniversary each year. I doubt that it is taught as well. How else can you explain away that the very man elected to be the Mayor of New York City has the same beliefs of the men who “supposedly” flew the planes into the Twin Towers. In just twenty-five years, it appears that the people of New York City, at least the people who voted in the last Mayor’s election, did not seem to care or worse, did not even make the relationship between the two. Given the choice I would choose CAPITALISM, EVERY TIME!

That is NOT the case for so many American citizens in 2026 if what we see and hear on our television sets and on our electronic devices is true, which it is. People are going to vote for Democrat Socialists (DSA) in the mid-term elections in 2026. A vote for a DSA candidate IS a vote for Communism, Socialism, or some combination of the two. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THAT HAPPEN. Since you are reading this and have gotten this far, I am assuming that you do not as well.

Let us get into the weeds! I had never heard of Operation Mockingbird before the 1990s. That is when I read the book titled The Naked Communist, which is when everything changed for me. I could no longer sit idly by and say nothing about the significant changes I saw happening throughout America. I began to see them very differently than most Americans did. The changes I saw did not originate from the grass roots, meaning that they just grew on their own. No, the changes I saw happening were farmed! By farming, I mean people, real people, planted seeds, watered them, fertilized them, made sure they received plenty of sunshine and weather conducive to help them grow strong and sturdy.  While the seeds were growing, most people, like me but certainly not you, just did not care. I did not want to talk about them. Politics to me was a dirty word. The Naked Communist changed all of that!

If you owned one hundred sheep and needed to move them about your property, how would you go about it? You would purchase a Kelpie or the more popular Sheep Dog. I chose a Kelpie for this Nugget hoping that just the unusual word would be enough to trigger your interest enough for you to read this Nugget as compared to using a Sheep Dog.  You buy the Kelpie; it is well trained. If it is not well trained, you ensure it gets the training it needs. You then decide that 100 sheep is insufficient, so you buy 100 more. You discover that the ONE Kelpie is having a tough time controlling the sheep you have so you purchase a second Kelpie and then it becomes case of rinse and repeat. The more sheep you add to your herd, the more Kelpies you purchase.

I was going to add a brief explanation of Operation Mockingbird or provide you with a link where you could check for yourself, but I realized that most people would not click on the link and the term would be lost and never explained. Therefore, here is the ChatGPT explanation of Operation Mockingbird, IT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW AND UNDERST AND HOW EASY IT HAS BEEN TO CONVERT CLEAR THINKING INDIVIDUIALS INTO THE SHEEP WE HAVE BECOME.

From ChatGPT, words in parenthesis are my words: “Operation Mockingbird is a name commonly used for the CIA’s Cold War-era relationships with journalists and news organizations. The basic idea is real, but the popular version often combines several different CIA activities under one label.

During the early Cold War, the CIA considered newspapers, magazines, radio, publishing houses, and individual journalists (and television) useful for intelligence and for influencing opinion abroad. The Senate’s Church Committee, which investigated intelligence abuses in 1975–76, documented secret CIA relationships with members of the American media. Contemporary accounts of the committee’s findings reported that 50 American journalists had covert relationships with the CIA, ranging from freelancers and foreign correspondents to people associated with publishing organizations.

Those relationships were not all the same. Some journalists supplied information they encountered overseas; some provided cover or assistance to intelligence officers; and CIA covert-action programs also planted or encouraged propaganda abroad (the word propaganda is a kind way of telling LIES). Material placed in foreign media could sometimes make its way back into American reporting. This is the historical basis for the broader claim that the CIA sought to use media as an instrument in the Cold War. (Since the information, propaganda, came from a foreign newspaper, it must be true, right! It is like the exercise we all did as kids. One kid would tell a story and say pass it on. Each time it was passed on, it was embellished and by the time it got to the last kid in line, the story was completely different.)

There is an important distinction concerning the name “Mockingbird.” Declassified CIA records definitely identify Project MOCKINGBIRD, but that particular operation was a 1963 surveillance operation, not the name in those records for the entire CIA-media network. The CIA secretly wiretapped two Washington-based syndicated journalists, Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott, from March 12 to June 15, 1963, because they were publishing classified information. The CIA's own historical account confirms this.

The much broader meaning of “Operation Mockingbird”—a coordinated CIA program for influencing the press—is associated heavily with later writers and journalists. In 1977, investigative journalist Carl Bernstein reported that hundreds of American journalists had performed services for the CIA over the preceding decades. Author Deborah Davis subsequently used “Operation Mockingbird” to describe an extensive CIA-media influence network. Historians continue to debate whether there was actually one centrally organized program formally called Operation Mockingbird matching that popular description.

What is not seriously disputed is the underlying conduct: the CIA maintained covert relationships with journalists and media-related people during the Cold War. The controversy became substantial enough that in February 1976 CIA Director George H. W. Bush announced a new policy prohibiting the CIA from entering into paid or contractual relationships with accredited American news correspondents, while still allowing journalists voluntarily to provide information. (Like so many government activities, the simple statement that something has stopped does not mean it has really stopped. Many people, me included, believe that the program still exists to this day.)”

If you only watch ONE mainstream news outlet, there would be nothing to compare their broadcast to, and you would accept what you have been watching as being the truth. But…if you watched more than one mainstream outlet, you would think that you might get a different story on the same subject matter, that is what I thought! What I discovered was that it did not matter which outlet I watched, I not only got related stories, BUT I ALSO GOT EXACTLY THE SAME STORY ON EVERY CHANNEL USING THE SAME WORDS, PHRASES AND LANGUAGE. I EVEN NOTICED THAT THEY ALL HAD ALMOST IDENTICAL BODY LANGUAGE WHEN DISCUSSING THE SAME STORIES NO MATTER WHICH CHANNEL I WATCHED! That is impossible UNLESS…all the stations received their news articles from the SAME PLACE!

Our supposedly unbiased mainstream news media has become our Kelpies! We all watch on different channels but come away with the same story and beliefs. That is precisely how we all began to wear medical masks and stood no closer than six feet to everyone. That is how members of a junior high school band would sit in plastic bubbles and play instruments to prevent the spread of a disease that we were all taught was real and dangerous to everyone, young and old. We all watched in disbelief how some experts and non-experts spoke out against the disease and they were all cancelled. We saw doctors whose medical licenses were being threatened by the government if they did not follow the guidelines put forth by our government and REENFORCED on every news broadcast by the mainstream media. No one was permitted to speak out against these policies or procedures and feared for their own freedom from penalties for speaking out. The exclamation mark on this practice was visible when you saw the exact same practices occurring in every city around the world. The message had to be coordinated by someone to get that result!

How did something like that happen? We all became SHEEP. The government working closely with the media and our televisions became the Kelpies who not only watched over us, but they also controlled our every movement. If we failed to obey, we would be denied medical care, some lost their jobs. The penalties were severe! What did we all do? Like the sheep being corralled by Kelpies, we did what we were directed to do, and we went were we were told to go, and we dared NOT to speak out against all of this guidance given under the guise of being protected.

There is one word that EVERYONE should understand and that word is FEED! They call it “the news FEED” for a reason. A second word that everyone should understand is “programming.”  People understand that computers are programmed to cause them to react as we want them to react. Television news and television programming work on the same principle. We are being fed the subconscious messages that the people who wield power and who want us all to hear and believe the same things. That way WE become PROGRAMMED to react the way those in power want us all to react. To most people 2 + 2 = 4. To a much smaller handful 2+2 is 44. These are the people who think “outside the box” that frighten the people in power the most because they see through the organized programming and they ask questions. They do their own research. They find their own answers or find enough information to seriously question the programming they see and hear on their television sets. That is who I have become. Where do you stand?

We have all been programmed to believe certain events in our history occurred just as we have been told that they did. During my lifetime, the BIG ones have been Vietnam, the murders of JFK, RFK, MLK but especially JFK. We believed that Iraq had and used Weapons of Mass Destruction, 9/11, COVID and now election integrity. I am only guessing but if you did your own study by asking people you know about these events, you would get the same or remarkably similar explanations from each one; the stories would not vary. That is effective programming of the mind! As an example, we were all told that we HAD to fight in Vietnam because the North Vietnamese attacked two U. S. Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. We were told that we could not permit that to happen, so we entered the war. Thousands upon thousands of people on both sides were killed and many more wounded for life all based upon an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin that did not happen. But we believed it did.

The next time you watch the news, watch it as an observer would. What was said? Was it 100% the news or did the statements include news AND the commentators’ OPINIONS? You will discover as I did, there are about as many OPINIONS broadcast as there is NEWS. Then if you go further in your observation, switch channels and try to find a news outlet covering the same story and listen to the words and phrases used. YOU WILL FIND THEM, if you pay close attention.

Today’s news is fraught with examples of INSTANT PROTESTERS blocking traffic, abusing law enforcement officers, and using some of the foulest language. If you look closely, they are all wearing the same type of clothing with the same messages and same professionally prepared signage. These protests were not grass roots; they were well organized and well-funded. The protesters have become the sheep, and the organizers and money people have become the Kelpies controlling them.

If you have not figured it out, WE ALL HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED!

Simple Steps to avoid being brainwashed:

1.      Learn to pay attention to everything.

2.      Question everything, you hear or see.

3.      Trust no one in the media.

4.      Realize that politicians lie.

5.      Just because someone else does something does not mean you have to do the same things. This is particularly true in the world of fashion, fads and social media.

You might find the following WEBSITES interesting. If the links do not work, copy and paste them to your browser:

45 Communist USA objectives described in the book The Naked Communist, a 3-minute video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofB4hbFvhis

 

Operation Mockingbird:  https://allthatsinteresting.com/operation-mockingbird

 

The Art of Brainwashing:  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-chemistry/201803/the-art-brainwashing

How the Gulf of Tonkin incident Sparked the Vietnam War:  https://allthatsinteresting.com/gulf-of-tonkin

Closing Gifts (Applies to anyone in sales)

 

CLOSING GIFTS
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, September 24, 2026

BACKGROUND: I retired from the real estate business in 2012 after 33 years in the business. One question that continually surfaced was “closing gifts” for customers. Do you engage in the practice or not? If you engage, how much do you spend? Do you know how much the Internal Revenue Service permits you to deduct on your income tax return identified as closing gifts to customers? Obviously, I have been out of the business for over 13 years and things change but I was shocked to discover that the IRS has NOT changed the amount for at least that length of time even though the cost of everything has gone up and not down. 

To be honest, it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to purchase a closing gift worth less than the IRS limit of $25.00 that has the desired meaning for giving such a gift to your customers. According to ChatGPT, here is a summary of the IRS rules extracts in September of 2026:

“The IRS generally allows you to deduct up to $25 per customer, per tax year for business gifts.

For example, if you are a real estate agent and give a customer a $100 gift basket at closing, you can generally deduct only $25 of its cost.

The $25 limit applies to the total gifts you give the same customer during the year, not to each individual gift.

There are two useful exceptions:

·         Packaging and shipping: Gift wrapping, engraving, and shipping may be deductible in addition to the $25 if they do not increase the gift's value.

·         Promotional gifts: Items costing $4 or less, permanently displaying your business name and widely distributed, generally don't count toward the $25 limit.

Keep receipts and records of the recipient, date, and business purpose.”

What can you give to a customer that would serve the purpose of keeping you and the service you provide ever present in their mind. Here are some negative things about closing gifts that I have observed over the years.

Flowers – they typically die quickly.

Plants – some succeed and some do not. If the customers eventually plant them in the ground, they remain with the house even after the customer may have sold it and therefore would serve no future purpose to keep your name ever present in their mind. If the plant dies that would be a negative reminder.

Meals. You can get a delicious meal, or you can get a bad meal. Customers may temporarily remember a delicious meal but for how long. I can assure you that they will remember a bad meal and whoever gave it to them for an extraordinarily long time. Meals have no shelf-life after the customers eat them.

Where am I going with this Nugget? Do I believe in closing gifts or not? I do believe in not only using closing gifts but also giving gifts of thanks in general. Why are closing gifts and gifts in general important for your business?

I will answer the last question first. They are NOT important to you and your business IF the closing gift turns out to be a bad gift OR the gift has no shelf life. By “shelf life” I mean, will the gift be around long enough to remind the customer of you and your service the next time the need arises? For most closing gifts the answer is no, they will not. If that is the case for the gifts you give, you may want to consider saving your money or changing your gift. As to the importance, you want the closing gift to have a shelf life with a positive memory and more importantly, whenever the customer sees it, the gift reminds them of you, the service you provide and how professionally you provided the service. Using real estate sales as an example, you want your gift to broadcast the message, “When YOU think of REAL ESTATE, you think of (insert your name)! If you currently give a closing gift, does the gift serve that purpose? If not, you need to rethink what you are doing and how you can do it better.

I would not write this Nugget if I did not think I had a better idea for people in sales to use and I do. Why? Because I know that it worked for me. First, you MUST eliminate the restrictions that the Internal Revenue Service has placed on you regarding the amount you can deduct as a business expense on your tax return. That restriction will significantly hamper your goal of helping the customer to remember you and the service you provided to them. Take whatever deduction you can and move on! Having someone remembering YOU and the SERVICE that YOU provide is far more important and is PRICELESS!

What checked the biggest box for me was giving people something that most people would want to keep and if they kept it, it would serve my desired purpose, being remembered! I purchased a box of note cards, the kind you would or should be using to write personal notes to probable customers and people you do business with. The cards I purchased had a pen and ink drawing of famous landmark type buildings located in the town I served, Slidell, Louisiana. By most city standards, Slidell would be a small town but even a small town with several memorable and iconic buildings.

I worked out an arrangement with a local art/frame store where they would mount three of the cards onto a colorful background, (I chose a simple solid blue felt like background) and then the store would frame them and cover them with glass. On the back of each creation, the store applied the brown paper that you see on all artwork like the one created for my customers. It was a beautifully finished product if I may say so myself. But…I was not done. I authored a poem, an original poem that I unfortunately have lost. The poem told the story about making a house a home (there is a difference). The premise was that a “house” just sits there until you insert a family and then it becomes a home where memories are created. I would take a Sharpie pen and copy the poem in my own handwriting on the back of each picture and then sign it.

Now, as the infamous radio announcer Paul Harvey would say at the end of each broadcast, “And now for the rest of the story!”

This is what happened and I swear as unbelievable as it may sound, it is just as I describe it. I do not recall any customer who received one of these works of art, never being extremely thankful for the gift. I have personally been in the homes that I had sold to customers who received the gift and it was still hanging on the walls within their home that they bought thirty or even forty years ago. They have told me that every time they notice it, they think of our sale together. That IS PRICELESS!

You can believe what I am about to tell you or not, that is your choice. I received a call from a woman who I had given one of these frames to and this is what she told me over the phone. “I was looking at the three cards, and I remembered that you wrote something on the back. I remembered that it was a nice thought when you gave it to me, but I had forgotten about it until this past week. I took the frame down to read what you had written, and it made me cry because it struck an emotional chord. I cried a lot and (as she said, here it comes) the tears dropped down on the back of the frame sitting on my lap and the ink ran and ruined what you had written. Can you send me a copy of the poem?”  That happened just as I had explained it. The actual words may have been different, but the message is the same. After all, this happened over thirty years ago so please do not fault me for not remembering the exact words she said. Due to a major computer crash, I lost the original poem I had written.

How much did the frames and cards cost? Great question. I think I may have spent $15 to as much as $25.00 on the box of cards but I do not remember how many cards were in the box. I did not consider the cost to be excessive. As I stated, I worked out an arrangement with the art store that they would get repeat business from me every time I closed a sale and they could put the name of their company and contact information on the back so it was a form of advertising for them and a business deduction for them as well. I do not remember the price we settled on but I remember it was less than $100 for each piece. It was more like $75.00. Keep in mind, I could deduct $25.00 on my income tax so that may the difference in the real cost to me was more like $50.00. Was spending $50.00 worth giving a customer something they would keep for life and that every time they saw it, they would think of me? Is a Giraffe afraid of ceiling fans!

If you could find something like the cards that I had discovered, you could do something similar. You could also save money by framing just ONE of the cards and making the item smaller and therefore much easier for the customer to find a place to hang it.

What did the finished product look like? This is one of the pieces the frame/art store made for me, and it still hangs on my wall as well.