Thursday, April 29, 2010

NaturalNews report exposes breast cancer industry lies - a must read for all women



This is something all women should read! We must be our own health advocates and decision makers -- and that takes self-education!

NaturalNews Alert (www.NaturalNews.com)


Don't get another mammogram until you investigate all your options for preventing and curing breast cancer... 

"This report exposes the little-known truth about the massive fraud perpetrated by the breast cancer industry. Every woman needs to read and learn the information freely offered in this eye-opening report." - Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, author of Breast Cancer Deception

 

Nearly everything we've been told about breast cancer by the medical establishment is a lie. Here are just a few of the many shocking truths you've never been told:

  • Breast cancer is 90% preventable through deliberate changes in foods and lifestyle.
  • Chemotherapy only works on 1 - 2% of breast cancer patients.
  • The No. 1 cause of breast cancer is chronic vitamin D deficiency.
  • Mammograms actually cause breast cancer.
  • Breast cancer is not caused by "bad genes."
  • All woman have cancer cells and micro tumors. Simply having a tiny tumor detected does not mean you need chemotherapy or radiation.
  • Ten women are harmed by mammography for every one woman who is helped by it.
  • Countless false positives (false cancer diagnoses) happen every year. You should never trust a single cancer diagnosis.
  • Most breast cancer centers have a financial incentive to recruit patients by "finding" evidence of breast cancer.
  • Many oncologists would never undergo the same chemotherapy they prescribe to patients.
  • Many of the largest breast cancer non-profits are little more than Big Pharma front groups operating a massive patient recruitment scam.

Want to learn more? Read our explosive, eye-opening Breast Cancer Deception report, available right now at: http://www.NaturalNews.com/Report_Breast_Cancer_Deception_0.html

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DANGER - CFL light bulbs


We've been told to use these CFL light bulbs to conserve energy -- but they also contain mercury and when broken can cause mercury to escape into your home environment.  Now it seems there is another danger with these bulbs.  Read on:

Subject: DANGER - CFL light bulbs

 

Below is a picture of a CFL light bulb from my bathroom.  I turned it on the other day and then smelled smoke after a few minutes.  Four inch flames were spewing out of the side of the ballast like a blow torch!  I immediately turned off the lights.  But I’m sure it would have caused a fire if I was not right there.  Imagine if the kids had left the lights on as usual when they were not in the room.

 

I took the bulb to the Fire Department today to report the incident.  The Fireman wasn’t at all surprised and said that it was not an uncommon occurrence.  Apparently, sometimes when the bulb burns out there is a chance that the ballast can start a fire.  He told me that the Fire Marshall had issued reports about the dangers of these bulbs.

 

Upon doing some Internet research, it seems that bulbs made by “Globe” in China seem to have the lion’s share of problems.  Lots of fires have been blamed on misuse of CFL bulbs, like using them in recessed lighting, pot lights, dimmers or in track lighting.  Mine was not in any of those.  It was a normal light socket.

 

I bought these at Canadian Tire or Wal-Mart.  I will be removing all the Globe bulbs from my house.  I have not decided yet if we are going back to incandescent bulbs at this point.

 

Just thought you should know.

 

 

IMG_0478.JPG

 

Jim Millington, P. Eng.

System Engineer - Dough & Cookies

Midland

705-526-2241 ext. 787

 


 

 



 

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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

What It Feels Like to Die -- a positive report

The following material was excerpted from two of P. M. H. Atwater's books – "Beyond the Light:  The Mysteries and Revelations of Near-Death Experiences" (Avon Books, New York City, 1994), and "We Live Forever:  The Real Truth about Death" (A.R.E. Press, Virginia Beach, VA, 2004).  It is based on first-person commentaries from over 3,000 adult experiencers of near-death states.  To learn more about the near-death research of P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D. access www.cinemind.com/atwater.


WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO DIE

          Any pain to be suffered comes first.  Instinctively you fight to live.

          That is automatic.

          It is inconceivable to the conscious mind that any other reality could possibly exist beside the earth-world of matter bounded by time and space.  We are used to it.  We have been trained since birth to live and thrive in it.  We know ourselves to be ourselves by the external stimuli we receive.  Life tells us who we are and we accept its telling.  That, too, is automatic, and to be expected.

          Your body goes limp.  Your heart stops.  No more air flows in or out.

          You lose sight, feeling, and movement – although the ability to hear goes last.  Identity ceases.  The "you" that you once were becomes only a memory.

          There is no pain at the moment of death.

          Only peaceful silence. . . calm. . . quiet.

          But you still exist.

          It is easy not to breathe.  In fact, it is easier, more comfortable, and infinitely more natural not to breathe than to breathe.  The biggest surprise for most people in dying is to realize that dying does not end life.  Whether darkness or light comes next, or some kind of event, be it positive, negative, or somewhere in-between, expected or unexpected, the biggest surprise of all is to realize you are still you.  You can still think, you can still remember, you can still see, hear, move, reason, wonder, feel, question, and tell jokes – if you wish.

          You are still alive, very much alive.  Actually, you're more alive after death than at any time since you were last born.  Only the way of all this is different; different because you no longer wear a dense body to filter and amplify the various sensations you had once regarded as the only valid indicators of what constitutes life.  You had always been taught one has to wear a body to live.

          If you expect to die when you die you will be disappointed.

          The only thing dying does is help you release, slough off, and discard the "jacket" you once wore (more commonly referred to as a body).

          When you die you lose your body.

          That's all there is to it.

          Nothing else is lost.

          You are not your body.  It is just something you wear for a while, because living in the earth-plane is infinitely more meaningful and more involved if you are encased in its trappings and subject to its rules.

WHAT DEATH IS

          There is a step-up of energy at the moment of death, an increase in speed as if you are suddenly vibrating faster than before.

          Using radio as an analogy, this speed-up is comparable to having lived all your life at a certain radio frequency when all of a sudden someone or something comes along and flips the dial.  That flip shifts you to another, higher wavelength. The original frequency where you once existed is still there.  It did not change. Everything is still just the same as it was.  Only you changed, only you speeded up to allow entry into the next radio frequency on the dial.

          As is true with all radios and radio stations, there can be bleed-overs or distortions of transmission signals due to interference patterns.  These can allow or force frequencies to coexist or commingle for indefinite periods of time.  Normally, most shifts up the dial are fast and efficient; but, occasionally, one can run into interference, perhaps from a strong emotion, a sense of duty, or a need to fulfill a vow, or keep a promise.  This interference could allow coexistence of frequencies for a few seconds, days, or even years (perhaps explaining hauntings); but, sooner or later, eventually, every given vibrational frequency will seek out or be nudged to where it belongs.

          You fit your particular spot on the dial by your speed of vibration.  You cannot coexist forever where you do not belong.

          Who can say how many spots there are on the dial or how many frequencies there are to inhabit.  No one knows.

          You shift frequencies in dying.  You switch over to life on another wave-length.  You are still a spot on the dial but you move up or down a notch or two.

          You don't die when you drop your earthly body.  You shift your consciousness and speed of vibration.

          That's all death is. . . a shift.

 

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This is EXACTLY how I feel about it all!

TELL THE TRUTH AND SHAME A POLITICIAN
by Stacie Adams

Right now I have the temperament of a perverted, overweight car salesman in church after spending the night prior knee deep in assorted whores. I am sweaty, panicked and waiting for the other shoe to drop right on my fucking head.

The reason I feel this way has nothing to do with my personal life, or anything untoward that’s happened to me. I’m just being infected by the tenor of society at the given moment. I’ve been trying to put it in words for some time, but surprisingly, words fail me when describing current events.

I just read something by the always awesome Stanley Crouch, wherein he quoted an African businesswoman as saying “The only foreign aide that we need right now is the truth". It was like throwing a light switch in my head. It sounds trite, but very little emphasis is put on telling the truth. I don’t even really speak of outright lies, but just the way things are described by and to the general public just smacks of dishonesty.

For instance, Barack Obama gets his health care reform passed, a bill that greatly resembled one floated by republicans years ago, and neither side gets it right. Liberals call it a stunning victory, conservatives call it then end of civilization as we know it, and a just smattering of people call it what it is; a watered down, big corporation funded and approved bill that garnered team Obama desperately needed political win. It will help a clutch of Americans receive healthcare at a cost to many others, but comes nowhere close to the lofty goal of universal coverage that was promised at the onset. There, was that so hard?

But instead of having a conversation centering on the fact that people wanted actual, legitimate political change and got none, we are stuck discussing a bunch of fanatical nonsense issuing from both sides.

Take Arizona’s recent decision to go fully wolf on illegal immigrants. It is easy to cluck your tongue at those awful racist rednecks and their Draconian laws, but not so to consider what it would be like to live in a border state with hundreds of thousands of illegals, with a good number carting around criminal records, in addition to bringing a raging drug war along with them in some cases.

The solution to the illegal immigration problem is quite easy; go after the businesses that employ illegal immigrants. Hit them hard enough, and you will remove the problem. But we can’t do that, we’ll piss off businessmen. OK, so let’s go about getting these illegal immigrants naturalized, so in the very least they will be on record and accounted for. Well, we can’t do that either because republicans will fall into a dead faint just after shouting ‘Amnesty!’

This is the result when you let the unhinged assholes take charge of the debate. Nothing ever gets solved. As a result of Arizona’s decision, they are going to set off a firestorm of litigation, which will defeat the entire purpose of their attempt at reigning in this problem.

If that doesn’t piss you off, this should. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will be retiring soon, giving Obama the opportunity to nominate a new judge for the position, and republicans are already threatening filibuster. They seem most concerned about abortion, the last thing on the minds of most Americans.

Do you know what would happen if they really went through with their filibuster threat? The already molasses-slow legal process would literally screech to a halt until Obama offered someone hick-friendly enough for the squeamish republicans. And this isn’t even the real issue, given the Supreme Court decided not so long ago in favor of corporations having the same rights (and in some cases, more rights) than people, which sets a disastrous precedent for terminally coddled corporate entities. But chances are you won’t hear a peep about that; it will all be about little Suzy and her love child that may or may not be the second coming of Christ or Martin Luther King, Jr. (or Richard Ramirez or John Wayne Gacy, but don’t tell her that).

Sometimes I feel like it's my job as a writer to offer solutions to these problems, like I'm leaving people high and dry if I don't afford some profundity that throws your switch, like the aforementioned quote from the business woman did for me. But how do you solve something so far reaching, so ingrained as this, that you can't even adequately describe it? How do you make people stop bullshitting you and just give it to you straight? Well, I have absolutely no idea. And unfortunately, that's how I must leave it.


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Monday, April 26, 2010

No REAL progress being made to help Mother EARTH

In an excellent warning article, this author is trying to get the attention of all of us to confront the problem, the ever-increasing problem, staring us in the face. Paul Ehrlich first wrote a warning about it in 1968. Very few were listening then, and it appears that, still, no one is listening. Mankind goes blithely on, whistling in the dark.  Yet the problem grows exponentially bigger and more dangerous with each passing day.  When will we listen? Will Mother Earth have to go on a gigantic rampage to make us listen? Will she herself have to step up her efforts in reducing the excess population that her life-supporting reserves can't possibly sustain?

EXCERPT:
Before most 40 year olds will die, we will add more human mouths -- a whopping three-plus billion -- than existed on the earth in 1960, a rise from today's seven to ten billion souls by 2050. Despite our every effort - wars, invasions, plagues, pernicious life styles, flesh-ripping accidents, wide-scale starvation, birth control, homicides, even bare-knuckle terrorism and governmental assassination -- the panoply of species demolition beyond natural disasters -- humanity adds one billion members every dozen years, give or take tens of millions. In three years, our booming kind reproduces the equivalence of America's population across the planet. Scary, hot and crowded. ...We can't complain Mother Earth isn't blaring forth countless warnings, as glaciers dissolve and temperature rises. We're getting, but not hearing, the earth's blatant 9-1-1 calls.

REAL SUSTAINABILITY NOT PROVIDED BY ONE EARTH DAY
By Robert Becker

With all the Earth Day brouhaha, you'd think the old planet would be out of the endangered, environmental woods - at least those few healthy, sustainable ones not under siege. Media venues small and large declared all the "great progress," implying light at the end of the eco-tunnel. But Earth Day didn't come close to the macro bedrock, focusing instead on positive but micro dimensions, like recycling, select endangered species, or buying greener products.

All good, all not close to enough. When do we in earnest confront what once was called the "Population Bomb," now linked to an equally dire problem, the Climate Control Bomb, itself spawned by the ever-growing Industrial Pollution-Eternal Growth Bombs?

Prove me wrong, but I see ecological tunnel vision embedded in this nation's power centers, where every serious issue is trivialized and the mediocrity of the proposed solutions, even if passed, promise limited respite. W. B. Yeats' celebrated lines capture willful ignorance responding to a multiple calamity, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

Breathtaking 150 Years, Literally

The biggest problem: humankind has been highly motivated, indeed obsessively sanctioned by its holy books, to "control nature" - which it has, in spades. From far enough away, what man hath wrought is an amazing performance in only 150 years: one over-achieving species testing major planetary thresholds once considered off-limits. Yet, despite a predominance of scientific wizards supplying reams of disaster testimony, leaders shrug their shoulders, talk risk-reward trade-offs, and the swamp thickens, weighed down by fragmentation, tribalism, corporate and political self-interests. Wishful thinking and denial against emergency warning lights are no virtues, and trusting to free-markets, magical fixes or divine intervention is playing a long shot.

Before most 40 year olds will die, we will add more human mouths - a whopping three-plus billion - than existed on the earth in 1960, a rise from today's seven to ten billion souls by 2050. Despite our every effort - wars, invasions, plagues, pernicious life styles, flesh-ripping accidents, wide-scale starvation, birth control, homicides, even bare-knuckle terrorism and governmental assassination - the panoply of species demolition beyond natural disasters - humanity adds one billion members every dozen years, give or take tens of millions. In three years, our booming kind reproduces the equivalence of America's population across the planet. Scary, hot and crowded.

Drop in the Bucket

I support buying and thinking green but overall this is a drop in the bucket. Where's today's Gandhi with a clarion call to challenge our universal, religiously-entrenched mission: that progress and growth are inevitable, blessings from God and the earth, and we fail if our children don't live better. I myself don't forego optimistic aspirations, just now acknowledge this overriding dogma covers more land masses and will die harder than fables linking faith or good works to eternal life someplace called Heaven.

Fact: we earthlings are decimating rain forests and, all metaphors aside, poisoning our species' lungs, just like a heavy smoker. If plants don't convert carbon oxygen, our lungs will gasp for the oxygen of life. Under the Obama administration, we still approve intrusive logging roads and clear cutting of national forests without an overall plan or public debate. Ditto, vast offshore regions approved for new, still messy oil drilling. Ditto, money dispatched for "clean" coal burning, "safe" nuclear reactors, and "cost-effective" ethanol production, none of which is achievable by any technology today or anticipated. We're not even widely debating why food subsidies, per Michael Pollen, impede sustainable food production to promote unwholesome, low-nutrition diets that endanger our health and the earth.

Where's the (Clean) Tea Party for sustainable food, clothing, housing, heating or transportation?

Conservation: the Hidden Salvation

I remain wholly mystified there's no all-hands-on-deck, call-to-arms focus on conservation (a watt not used may be two watts saved), the easiest, cheapest, least complicated way to start our energy diet. Nor do we insist on 25-50 year mitigation of "externalities" for big or small development projects, assessing all the impacts from change, not just blatant pollution that muddies rivers. Hundreds of toxic Superfund sites testify to the fantastic sums taxpayers must pony up to force developers (or do it ourselves) to offset unintended, unstipulated consequences threatening soil, water, marine mammals (like 200 million year old sea turtles), fish, reptiles, plants and people.

Do you assume, like most westerners, science and technology will save us? Not according to Bill Gates unless we begin to spend more than pennies on basic research and implementation. Guess what top U.S. companies since 1995 spend for research and development? Less than 1% of their revenue, a penny for every dollar of sales. Despite hordes of Chicken Littles on inevitable energy crunches, the U.S. government spends less than $3 billion annually on clean energy research - vs. $10 billion PER MONTH on wars we're not winning and 80 billion per year on research for better, slicker, faster weapons of mass violence, that is, "defense spending" (plus $600 billion more on weaponry).

Better Not Good Enough

Somehow these frameworks don't make the nightly news, not on Earth Day nor the week after. Even green producers don't tally all the costs, for organic food still needs massive fossil fuel input and making wood pulp feel as soft as cotton has its own complex, heavy pollutants. Likewise, few figure the critical resources, as basic as water, "borrowed" from third-world countries: it takes 1,250 gallons of water to grow one pound of beef, 70 gallons to grow coffee for one cup, 1800 gallons to grow enough cotton for one pair of jeans. Our food and clothing remains fairly cheap because producers everywhere are pumping cheap and plentiful water at unsustainable rates, and not treating workers well, either.

There is admirable progress, but it's fragmented and unco-ordinated. What happened 40 years ago - Clean Air, Clear Water, and Endangered Species Acts - protect irreplaceable national resources. Bravo! But one-third of domestic waterways are still badly polluted, kids' breathing diseases are up, and our food production is no more sustainable than 1970 - still fossil fuel-, pesticide-, herbicide-, and chemical-fertilizer-driven, held captive by beef-, corn-, sugar- and carbohydrate-friendly manufacturing.

If we are what we eat, we are getting more, not less processed, preserved, and artificial than ever. We need more than Slow Food but a revolution in diet and farming. Obesity is an environmental marker as well as a health warning.

Fixing as Quickly as Wounding?

As filmmaker Robert Stone puts it, "global IS the new local," but are we funding the research to describe the problem, let alone solutions? Oddly, Joe Biden's measured Earth Day comments fit, "We've been celebrating Earth Day for 40 years now," but "today may be the first one where we . . . have started down the road to a real clean energy economy -- and a better world for our kids . . . the fact is we've been trying for 40 years, and we've made some progress."

The first day, some progress after 40 years. My fear is enough media "progress" to make us falsely confident we're out of the dark woods. In 40 years, as well, totally unexpected, unfixable fiascos are newly visible. The oceans are littered not only with huge islands of plastic refuge miles long by miles wide by yards deep, but packed with infinitesimal plastic smithereens in every corner of every ocean. Plastic is not good for any living creature - and these smithereens show, as with global warming, man-made stuff can insinuate the oceanic globe in a amazingly short span.

Bottom line, invisible in open debate: can humanity put Humpty Dumpty back together in roughly the same time it took to push him off the wall - 100-150 years? That's a generous estimate for many top experts before tipping points take us over the edge. We can't complain Mother Earth isn't blaring forth countless warnings, as glaciers dissolve and temperature rises. We're getting, but not hearing the earth's blatant 9-1-1 calls. If only we respond to these flashing lights as this scared nation did to that other, remarkably similar numerical wake-up call, 9/11. Then, we have a chance to reverse trends and smell the coffee - even appreciate how much water it took to produce the grinds before we compost them all.
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Anti-depressants don't work: New England Journal of Medicine

WHOA!  Big pharmaceutical companies are NOT going to like having this information revealed to the public. Think of the millions of people on these drugs and of the billions of dollars that have been spent just on Prozac, let alone all the other so-called anti-depressant drugs that flood the market! And now we are being told the truth that sugar pills have been proven to be just as effective.  In their greed-driven madness to make ever more $$, the already bloated Big Pharma companies continue to hide truth from the public, while they foist their wares on us through ever-trumpeting TV ads. This is the way things are "When Corporations Rule the World." (see book by David C. Korten). As for better physical and mental health, we must become our own advocates and care for ourselves in better ways than with drugs.

ANTI-DEPRESSANTS NOT EFFECTIVE
Dr. Mark Hyman

SEE complete article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/depression-medication-why_b_550098.html
Also, see this article from Newsweek:  http://www.newsweek.com/id/232781

EXCERPT:
Drug companies are not forced to publish all the results of their studies. They only publish those they want to. The team of researchers that reported their findings in The New England Journal of Medicine took a critical look at all the studies done on antidepressants, both published and unpublished. They dug up some serious dirt ...

The unpublished studies were not easy to find. The researchers had to search the FDA databases, call researchers, and hunt down hidden data under the Freedom of Information Act. What they found was stunning.

After looking at 74 studies involving 12 drugs and over 12,000 people, they discovered that 37 of 38 trials with positive results were published, while only 14 of 36 negative studies were published. Those that showed negative results were, in the words of the researchers, "published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome."

That means the results were twisted to imply the drugs worked when they didn't.

This isn't just a problem with antidepressants. It's a problem with scientific research. Some drug companies even pay or threaten scientists to not publish negative results on their drugs. So much for "evidence-based" medicine! I recently had dinner with a step-uncle who runs a company that designs research for drug companies. He designs the study, hires the researcher from an esteemed institution, directs the study, writes up the study and the scientist just signs his or her name after reviewing it.

Most of the time, we only have the evidence that the drug companies want us to have. Both doctors and patients are deceived into putting billions of dollars into drug companies' pockets, while leaving millions with the same health problems but less money.

Seven Steps to Treat Depression without Drugs

1. Try an anti-inflammatory elimination diet that gets rid of common food allergens. As I mentioned above, food allergies and the resultant inflammation have been connected with depression and other mood disorders.

2. Check for hypothyroidism. This unrecognized epidemic is a leading cause of depression. Make sure to have a thorough thyroid exam if you are depressed.

3. Take vitamin D. Deficiency in this essential vitamin can lead to depression. Supplement with at least 2,000 to 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day.

4. Take omega-3 fats. Your brain is made of up this fat, and deficiency can lead to a host of problems. Supplement with 1,000 to 2,000 mg of purified fish oil a day.

5. Take adequate B12 (1,000 micrograms, or mcg, a day), B6 (25 mg) and folic acid (800 mcg). These vitamins are critical for metabolizing homocysteine, which can play a factor in depression.

6. Get checked for mercury. Heavy metal toxicity has been correlated with depression and other mood and neurological problems.

7. Exercise vigorously five times a week for 30 minutes. This increases levels of BDNF, a natural antidepressant in your brain.

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Sunday, April 25, 2010

Military Trauma Care Units worse than Iraq


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/health/25warrior.html?hp

Read this article to see how badly FUBARed the military is. Their unforgivable shame is the terrible, and often cruel, treatment of our wounded soldiers when they need help the most. Drugging them, punishing them, and warehousing them after they have been mentally devastated by war.  This is how the military treats our soldiers who are merely chess pieces to them.

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Eulogy for a Soldier

We revere our soldiers far too little for all they gave for their country. I pray for a day when good men do not have to line up for wars created by the rich and powerful. Rich men line their pockets during wars, while the ordinary people make the sacrifices, and good men give their lives.  I've been watching The Pacific on HBO, the story of our soldiers fighting in the Pacific regions during WWII.  As long as greed and power lust rule the leaders, and the ordinary folks continue to vote for them, we will have wars. Sad but true.




 

OUR COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING

A Poem worth reading!
 
He was getting old and paunchy 
And his hair was falling fast, 
And he sat around the Legion, 
Telling stories of the past. 

Of a war that he once fought in 
And the deeds that he had done, 
In his exploits with his buddies; 
They were heroes, every one. 

And 'tho sometimes to his neighbors 
His tales became a joke, 
All his buddies listened quietly 
For they knew where of he spoke. 

But we'll hear his tales no longer, 
For ol' Bob has passed away, 
And the world's a little poorer 
For a Soldier died today. 

He won't be mourned by many, 
Just his children and his wife. 
For he lived an ordinary, 
Very quiet sort of life..
He held a job and raised a family, 
Going quietly on his way; 
And the world won't note his passing, 
'Tho a Soldier died today. 

When politicians leave this earth, 
Their bodies lie in state, 
While thousands note their passing, 
And proclaim that they were great.
Papers tell of their life stories 
From the time that they were young 
But the passing of a Soldier 
Goes unnoticed, and unsung. 

Is the greatest contribution 
To the welfare of our land, 
Some jerk who breaks his promise 
And cons his fellow man? 

Or the ordinary fellow 
Who in times of war and strife, 
Goes off to serve his country 
And offers up his life? 

The politician's stipend 
And the style in which he lives, 
Are often disproportionate, 
To the service that he gives. 

While the ordinary Soldier, 
Who offered up his all, 
Is paid off with a medal 
And perhaps a pension, small.
It's so easy to forget them, 
For it is so many times 
That our Bobs and Jims and Johnnys, 
Went to battle, but we know, 

It is not the politicians 
With their compromise and ploys, 
Who won for us the freedom 
That our country now enjoys.
Should you find yourself in danger, 
With your enemies at hand, 
Would you really want some cop-out, 
With his ever waffling stand? 

Or would you want a Soldier-- 
His home, his country, his kin, 
Just a common Soldier, 
Who would fight until the end. 

He was just a common Soldier, 
And his ranks are growing thin, 
But his presence should remind us 
We may need his like again.
For when countries are in conflict, 
We find the Soldier's part 
Is to clean up all the troubles 
That the politicians start. 

If we cannot do him honor 
While he's here to hear the praise, 
Then at least let's give him homage 
At the ending of his days. 

Perhaps just a simple headline 
In the paper that might say: 

"OUR COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING, 
A SOLDIER DIED TODAY."
Pass On The Patriotism! 
YOU can make a difference
     A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life,
wrote a blank check made payable 'To My Country' for an amount
"up to and including my life." 
That is Honor, and there are way too many people
in this country who no longer understand it.  
 


 
 
 

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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Rare film of Ronald Reagan and James Dean


You couldn't find two people more opposite -- but they starred in a short TV film together...see excerpts from it at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/21/entertainment/main6417586.shtml?tag=stack

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The Death of McCain's Integrity

Actually, I think it died a long time ago...but he put the final nail in the coffin recently. See this Houston paper's editorial about it:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6966118.html
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Monday, April 19, 2010

Truly Great Essay -- about Truth and phoniness

WELL WORTH READING!
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert_becker/28128/life_liberty_and_pursuit_of_phoniness

EXCERPT: 
Phoniness undermines hope, especially remaining correlated with wealth and fame. Karl Rove, the master of guile, is revered, with his own soapbox; W., who mouthed his every deception, is a well-heeled stage monkey; and my favorite, one Alberto Gonzales, the amnesiac attorney general who infected our Justice Dept. with criminal schemes, well, okay, he's a shyster lawyer having trouble finding work.

Let me recognize the rare honest commentators: Bill Moyers, John Dean, Bruce Fein, Frank Rich, Glenn Greenwald, Jim Hightower, Amy Goodman and three or four others I neglect. No doubt a dozen or two politicians still boast insides that match outsides, like Ron Paul, Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich (mostly), Carl Levin, and whatever your favorite pick. Heroes don't have to be right or prescient not to be phonies, just independent, courageously mavericky voices who tell the truth almost all of the time, believe in evidence, reason, democracy, majority rule, elections and precedence.

Which brings us to desperado John McCain, reviled just when he deserves belated credit for admitting he's a world-class flimflammer. "Never a maverick, not me," comes the cry to get re-elected. What about daily reminders with that fellow maverick on the campaign trail? Some other guy titled McCain's autobiography, Worth Fighting For: The Education of an American Maverick....

Beyond politics, phoniness dominates organized religion, business, sports, and the media, even scientists who mess with global warming numbers. It turns out we have "death panels," but intellectual and moral ones - entrenched mindsets that serve not telling the truth, that reward manipulation, discredited ideology, and con artists like Sarah Palin or Michael Steele. Any economic system paying Glenn Beck $32 million dollars, or Rush Limbaugh $400 million, while banishing Bill Moyers, is committing intellectual suicide, awash in propaganda to match its phony wars.
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Sunday, April 18, 2010

WELCOME TO CONFEDERATE HISTORY MONTH

By Frank Rich
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/18rich.html?ref=opinion


Sadly true EXCERPT:
What is known is that the nearly all-white G.O.P. is so traumatized by race it has now morphed into a bizarre paragon of both liberal and conservative racial political correctness. For irrefutable proof, look no further than the peculiar case of its chairman, Steele, whose reckless spending and incompetence would cost him his job at any other professional organization, let alone a political operation during an election year. Steele has job security only because he is the sole black man in a white party hierarchy. That hierarchy is as fearful of crossing him as it is of calling out the extreme Obama haters in its ranks.
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A clear essay that should be read by everyone

Read the following to understand how the financial crisis happened...through greed and power run amok.
EXCERPT:
Bottom line: "The Wall Street banks are the new American oligarchy – a group that gains political power because of its economic power, and then uses that political power for its own benefit." So write Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund; and James Kwak, former management consultant and software entrepreneur, in their important new book, "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown."

CROCODILE TEARS ON WALL STREET
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

With all due respect, we can only wish those Tea Party activists who gathered in Washington and other cities this week weren’t so single-minded about just who’s responsible for all their troubles, real and imagined. They’re up in arms, so to speak, against Big Government, especially the Obama administration.

If they thought this through, they’d be joining forces with other grassroots Americans who in the coming weeks will be demonstrating in Washington and other cities against High Finance, taking on Wall Street and the country’s biggest banks.

The original Tea Party, remember, wasn’t directed just against the British redcoats. Colonial patriots also took aim at the East India Company. That was the joint-stock enterprise originally chartered by the first Queen Elizabeth. Over the years, the government granted them special rights and privileges, which the owners turned into a monopoly over trade, including tea.

It may seem a bit of a stretch from tea to credit default swaps, but the principle is the same: when enormous private wealth goes unchecked, regular folks get hurt -- badly. That’s what happened in 2008 when the monied interests led us up the garden path to the great collapse.

So the Tea Party crowd should be demanding accountability from Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and scores of hedge funds and private equity firms that constitute what we loosely call Wall Street.

But are the culprits taking responsibility for devastating the lives of millions of ordinary Americans? Don’t kid yourself. If you’ve been watching them appear before congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission -- the independent inquiry that’s supposed to find out what really happened -- you’ve no doubt been reaching for the Pepto-Bismol.

Here’s Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary and director of Citigroup, testifying last week. "Almost all of us involved in the financial system, including financial firms, regulators, ratings agencies, analysts and commentators missed the powerful combination of forces at work and the serious possibility of a massive crisis," he said. "We all bear responsibility for not recognizing this, and I deeply regret that."

Okay, maybe you didn’t have a crystal ball. But what about good, old-fashioned business sense? How could you make so much money and not know the score? "You are talking about a level of granularity no board will ever have," Rubin claimed. Citi paid you $120 million as a senior advisor and rainmaker and you’re not responsible for knowing what’s happening below you? You didn't bother to assess the risk you were peddling to clients?

The committee heard a similar alibi from Chuck Prince, who served as CEO of Citigroup during its meltdown: "Let me start by saying I'm sorry. I'm sorry that the financial crisis has had such a devastating impact on our country… And I'm sorry that our management team, starting with me, like so many others, could not see the unprecedented market collapse that lay before us."

Commission Chairman Phil Angelides, the former state treasurer of California, wasn’t buying it. "The two of you, in charge of this organization, did not seem to have a grip on what was happening," he said, and to Rubin, "I don’t know that you can have it two ways: you were either pulling the levers or asleep at the switch."

Nonetheless, the financiers wail, it was all an enormous accident, a once in a century calamity, an act of God. But of course that’s not true. Lots of people saw it coming and made a bundle, taking off with the loot at the expense of the millions who lost their jobs, homes and savings. There’s no longer any question that many bankers continued to game the system after the collapse -- still paying themselves exorbitant salaries and bonuses while hitting everyday people with usurious same day paycheck loans, credit card fees and other charges -- and refusing to help small and medium-sized businesses that could be creating employment.

The Tea Party gang really should have dropped by those Senate hearings this week looking into the failure of Washington Mutual, the bank that went belly up during the meltdown in September 2008 – the largest such failure in American history.

As an 18-month Senate investigation revealed, WaMu made subprime loans that its executives knew were rotten, then packaged them as mortgage securities and pawned them off on unsuspecting investors. Loan officers were paid by the number of mortgages they sold, and ran up the numbers by lying to customers and falsifying data so they could make bigger bucks and win trips to Maui and the Caribbean. At one Washington Mutual office in Montebello, California, 83 percent of the housing loans contained bogus information.

Then there’s Lehman Brothers. Their misfortune, apart from some chicanery only now coming to light, was being small enough to fail. During those black September days two years ago, the Feds decided it was expendable and let it go, leading to America’s biggest bankruptcy ever. In an admirable job of journalism this week, The New York Times reported that Lehman secretly controlled a company called Hudson Castle. Critics say it was used by Lehman to borrow money and to hide bad investments in commercial real estate and subprime mortgages.

But the week’s award for sheer gall goes to a Chicago area hedge fund called Magnetar, named after a kind of neutron star that spews deadly radiation across the galaxies. Thanks to the teamwork of the investigative reporting website ProPublica, as well as public radio’s Planet Money project and "This American Life," we learned that Magnetar worked with Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and other investment banks to create toxic CDO’s -- collateralized debt obligations -- securities backed by subprime mortgages that management knew were bad. Then Magnetar took that knowledge and bet against the very same investments they had recommended to buyers, selling short and making a fortune.

To simply call all of this "creative accounting" is to do it an injustice. This is corruption, cynicism and greed on a scale that would make the Roman Emperor Caligula cringe. Or rather, the Emperor Nero. He didn’t just poison the citizens of Rome; legend has it that he burned the place down, fiddling around in the ashes, just like our Wall Street tycoons.

But since we know all this, why is it so hard to hold Wall Street accountable? Which brings us to what the Tea Party people should have been complaining about this week. The banking industry and corporate America are fighting against proposed financial reform with all the money and influence at their disposal, attempting to preserve a system that would enable them to ransack the country once again.

Look at Eric Lichtblau’s report this week, also in The New York Times, under the headline. "Lawmakers Regulate Banks, Then Flock to Them." The financial services industry has hired more than 125 former members of Congress and congressional staffers from both parties to help them fight off accountability.

No wonder, too, that this headline appeared in the Times this week: "GOP Takes Aim at Plans to Curb Finance Industry." That’s not surprising. Earlier this year Republican politicians told Wall Street: Give us the scratch and we’ll scrap reform.

The GOP’s SWAT team -- also known as the United States Chamber of Commerce -- has already spent three million dollars to try to kill or cripple a key part of reform -- the proposed new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. With the Chamber as their front, corporations have bankrolled ads that make it seem like the Red Army is at our doorsteps.

Advocates for reform have countered with ads of their own, but Democrats are deeply in hock to Wall Street, too. Remember the hedge fund Magnetar that bet against its own products? The owners covered their bets with ample campaign contributions to Rahm Emanuel. Yep, the same -- President Obama’s White House chief of staff. At the time he was an Illinois congressman and chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which collected millions of dollars from the financial services industry.

In fact, the website Politico.com reports that "the nation’s ten richest hedge fund managers have dumped nearly one million dollars into campaign accounts over the past several years... consumer advocates and critics from other financial sectors say hedge funds would get off pretty easily" under the Senate reform bill.

Bottom line: "The Wall Street banks are the new American oligarchy – a group that gains political power because of its economic power, and then uses that political power for its own benefit." So write Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund; and James Kwak, former management consultant and software entrepreneur, in their important new book, "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown."

Their words of warning and the past year and a half make you realize that as usual, Thomas Jefferson, whose birthday we celebrate this week, had it right. Back in 1816, he wrote, "I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."


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Monday, April 12, 2010

Good Quote from Dixie Carter

Dixie Carter just passed away, a good woman and a good actor.
Probably the best line ever in her role as Julia Sugarbaker in Designing Women was, " Yes I do believe in praying, Mr.Commissioner. I pray every day that the people with power will get good sense and the people with good sense will get the power and the rest of us have the strength to endure it until they do."

AMEN, Dixie! Ever onward and upward!
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Good Quote from Dixie Carter

Dixie Carter just passed away, a good woman and a good actor.
Probably the best line ever in her role as Julia Sugarbaker in Designing Women was, " Yes I do believe in praying, Mr.Commissioner. I pray every day that the people with power will get good sense and the people with good sense will get the power and the rest of us have the strength to endure it until they do."

AMEN, Dixie! Ever onward and upward!
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Saturday, April 03, 2010

Good Essay on What Jesus Meant

With so many of the Tea Partiers spouting the wisdom of the Bible, some of the following questions have arisen in my mind, too. I wonder if the Christians among the Tea Partiers can explain it all for us. Personally, judging from the conduct and diatribe of some of the Tea Partiers, I find it hard to believe they are following the words of Christ at all. They seem to have invented in their own minds a new Jesus to agree with their prejudices and hatreds. Just my own opinion.

WHAT JESUS MEANT
By Guy T. Saperstein

I have just finished reading Garry Wills' "What Jesus Meant," and what an extraordinary read it was. For me, it was a reintroduction to the Jesus I grew up with [ages 5-18], reading my Bible and going to the Little Brown Church every Sunday to learn more about this revolutionary man from a lower-class background who spoke truth to power again and again, who spent his life in the company of society's outcasts, who let the unclean touch him, who was born homeless and spent his public life homeless, who treated women as first-class citizens [rare in those days], who was scandalous, who demonstrated super-natural powers repeatedly, who inveighed against the wealthy and powerful, who taught that he who is last shall be first and he who is first shall be last, who said that it was easier for a camel to get through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter heaven, who taught that wealth was the enemy of the spirit, who was a threat to the politicians and churches and who preached unconditional and abiding love.

But some things remain unexplained, things which have bothered me for 50+ years:

1. Leviticus 25.44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided that they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21.7. In this bad economy, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. The Bible teaches that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her menstrual period, but how can I tell? Whenever I ask women I meet if they are menstruating, they take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor to the Lord [Lev. 1.9]. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35.2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination [Lev. 11.10], it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. Are there different degrees of abomination?

7. Leviticus 21.20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus 19.27. How should they die?

9. I know from Leviticus 11.6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes people unclean. Does this mean that Tim Tebow must stop throwing footballs, or that football should be abolished?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19.19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread [cotton and polyester blend]. He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary to get the whole community together to stone them [Lev. 24.10-16]? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family ceremony, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws [Lev. 20.14]?

I know some of you highly-educated people have studied these things and I'm confident you can help. And thank you---and Garry Wills---for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
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Thursday, April 01, 2010

German Bishop, Pope's ally, accused of beating children

EXCERPT: Earlier this month, Germany's Catholic Church announced that it was planning a hotline for sexual abuse victims to call should they be in need of counselling or advice. Given the ever-increasing wave of abuse allegations being levelled at clerics in Germany this spring, however, many critics doubted whether victims would phone up the organization that was responsible for their suffering in the first place. The critics were wrong. On Wednesday, the first full day of the hotline's operation, fully 4,459 people phoned up -- far more than the therapists hired to man the phones could handle.

GERMAN BISHOP ACCUSED OF HITTING AND DEGRADING CHILDREN AT CHURCH-RUN HOME
Boy, this just keeps keeping worse, doesn't it? I would like to add this perspective: In the first half of the last century, it was extremely common for Catholic parents to pledge their first-born son to the priesthood and the first-born daughter to the sisterhood. That must have made for some very angry, repressed people who then took their rage out on children:

The child abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church widened yesterday as a leading German bishop personally appointed by Pope Benedict was accused of ritually beating and punching children at a church-run home during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Five former residents of the St Josef's home in Bavaria submitted written statements to Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper claiming the Bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, a controversial conservative churchman appointed by the Pope in 2005, used to hit and degrade them during punishment sessions at the home.

Bishop Mixa's diocese yesterday rejected the allegations as "absurd, untrue and obviously invented in order to defame the bishop".

The allegations emerged as the Vatican prepares a legal defence it hopes will shield the Pope from a lawsuit in the US seeking to have him answer questions under oath related to an abuse scandal. Court documents obtained by the Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the Pope has immunity as head of state and that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests were not employees of the Vatican. The Vatican is trying to fend off the first US case to reach the stage of determining whether victims have a claim against the Vatican for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

In Germany, Hildegard Sedlmayr, 48, a former resident of the home in the Bavarian town of Schrobenhausen, where Bishop Mixa was a priest, told Süddeutsche Zeitung that at age 15, the bishop dragged her from her bed and punched her repeatedly on the arm.

"He grabbed me by the nightshirt, pulled me up out of my bed and punched me repeatedly on the upper arm. Afterwards it was covered in bruises," she said. "The two years at St Josef's were the worst in my life."

Another former St Josef's resident, named as Thomas Huber, said he was in pain for "several days" after Bishop Mixa flogged him. "I was made to bend over a bench, then Mixa hit me 35 times with a carpet beater," he said.

Three other former residents said Bishop Mixa habitually punished children with slaps to the face, punches to the arms, and beatings. The former residents claimed that Catholic nuns who ran the home also hit children with brooms and wooden shoes.

UPDATE: Church-related abuse was apparently widespread.

A hotline set up by the Catholic Church in Germany to counsel victims of sexual abuse was overrun on its first day, with almost 4,500 calls. Further allegations have continued to emerge even as Chancellor Angela Merkel says the church is taking "necessary measures."

It was a much criticized idea. Earlier this month, Germany's Catholic Church announced that it was planning a hotline for sexual abuse victims to call should they be in need of counselling or advice. Given the ever-increasing wave of abuse allegations being levelled at clerics in Germany this spring, however, many critics doubted whether victims would phone up the organization that was responsible for their suffering in the first place.

The critics were wrong. On Wednesday, the first full day of the hotline's operation, fully 4,459 people phoned up -- far more than the therapists hired to man the phones could handle. Indeed, they were only able to conduct 162 counselling sessions, ranging from five minutes to an hour in length. Andreas Zimmer, head of the project in the Bishopric of Trier, admitted that he wasn't prepared for "that kind of an onslaught." Zimmer insisted, however, that those who leave a message will be called back.


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