Warnings on frozen yogurt, cell phones, Fosamax

Soon there won't be anything left for us to eat that is good tasting...
Some informative articles are included here for those who want alternate medical information.

NaturalNews Insider Alert ( www.NaturalNews.com ) email newsletter

Dear NaturalNews readers,

Astonishingly, many people still think frozen yogurt is actually good for you. They don't know it's usually just ice cream with some probiotic powder thrown in.

Today, I reveal what's really in popular brands of frozen yogurt and why people are so quick to fool themselves into believing unhealthy foods are somehow good for them.

Read the full story here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/029038_frozen_yogurt_health_food.html

Medical research subjects, meanwhile, are being subjected to legalese gobbledygook when they sign papers to be experimented on:
http://www.naturalnews.com/029037_medical_research_consent_forms.html

New evidence also links cell phones and brain tumors:
http://www.naturalnews.com/029036_cell_phones_brain_tumors.html

Lots more news below on the dangers of Fosamax, the greed of the cancer industry, and why nutrition may be more important than exercise for achieving a healthy weight...

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Today's Feature Stories:

Frozen yogurt is not health food (NaturalNews) It did not even occur to me that people thought frozen yogurt was a "health food" until I spent some time in the USA. There, people line up in droves at frozen yogurt stores to buy a junk food that they're convinced is good for them. And...

Consent form gobbledygook: Are medical research subjects adequately informed? (NaturalNews) When a person signs up to participate in medical research, he or she is given a form to sign that is supposed to state the goal of the study as well as all the known possible risks of the drug or procedure being tested. But a new report...

Evidence mounts on links between cell phones and brain tumors (NaturalNews) A growing body of evidence, dating back to the 1960s, suggests that brain tumors may be only one of the many health problems produced by our new wireless society will produce. Cell-phone technology "could lead to a health crisis similar...

Australian courts rule that Vioxx should never have been approved for sale (NaturalNews) Australian courts recently ruled that Vioxx, a popular prescription painkiller, should never have been approved and allowed on the market. The case represents the world's first successful class action lawsuit against a drug company for damage...

Acid gel could replace dentists' drills (NaturalNews) A painless alternative to dental drills is already on the market in some parts of Europe, suggesting that drills may become altogether obsolete within the next few years. Dentists currently use drills to grind away at sections of a tooth...

Fosamax: Bone up on drug dangers and alternatives (NaturalNews) The breaking news is that Fosamax, the popular drug for supposed bone strength, may cause "spontaneous fractures." That means you could end up like Sandy Potter, 59, of Queens, New York on ABC News who claims she was in excruciating...

Dying Cancer Patients are Milked for Every Last Dollar Recent studies and reports have revealed that terminal cancer patients are frequently given harsh chemotherapy drugs and radiation treatments long after they have been diagnosed as hopeless. In many instances such treatments continue until...

Nutrition More Important than Exercise for Weight Loss, Suggests Study Women who rely on exercise to lose weight are destined to fail, so says a study that appears in the Journal of American Medical Association. Researchers found that exercise alone was useful in maintaining the weight for women, but...

17 big questions about the handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (NaturalNews) What's clear about the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is that the independent journalists are doing a better job of asking the really tough questions than the mainstream media. Sure, CNN, Fox and others are bringing some...

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More depravity in the Catholic Church is revealed

TOP PRIEST ACCUSED OF SEXUALLY ABUSING HIS OWN SONS-- AND MANY OTHER CHILDREN
It was all kept secret -- Pope Paul was part of the wholesale cover up, as was Pope John Paul II and the present Pope Benedict.  Behind pretended "holiness" lurked great cruelty, perversion, and collusion.  For all the sins committed by the hierarchy of this Church over centuries, the whole organization should collapse into well-deserved oblivion.  Just like in The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which Gray's real depraved character was etched on his portrait while his physical body kept the pretense of youth and beauty, we are now being shown the true picture of the Catholic Church, with its patriarchal corruption revealed for all to see.  Here is the latest story to come out -- and there is little doubt we are still only seeing the tip of a gigantic, long-hidden iceberg in the Church that has controlled and deceived its followers for far too long:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-vatican-priest-accused-sexually-abusing-sons/story?id=10968647

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Ever Wonder Why the "Elites" Don't Want Change?

Cenk Uygur points to the fact that history just keeps repeating itself because the consciousness of the well-contented "haves" stays the same, century after century -- and the condition of the poor therefore stays the same as well:

Why Our "Nobles" Betray Us by Cenk Uygur

I understand that it's a little goofy to draw lessons from a fictional movie, but I am going to proceed nonetheless. My wife and I were just watching Braveheart and there was one interesting element in there. In the movie, the nobles of Scotland keep betraying William Wallace who is fighting for the people of Scotland. And my wife asked me why the nobles continually stab Wallace in the back if he is fighting for their country.

As Robert the Bruce explains to Wallace in the movie, "They have much to lose." You see, those nobles profited from the status quo of that time. Wallace means to up end that status quo. It's naïve to think that they will help him because they love their country. Of course, they will work against him because they don't want to lose their status, power and riches. That status quo might suck for everyone else, but it's great for them.

And so it is with our nobles today. We keep expecting the politicians and the mainstream press to do the right thing. That is profoundly naive. Why is a television anchor making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year going to look to change the system? He loves the system. The system pays the bills.

That's even truer of our politicians. The status quo got them elected. The status quo will get them - and their staffers - great salaries when they retire and become lobbyists. They'd have to be crazy to change the system that put them up on top.

That's why change must come from outside the system. We keep waiting for the Obama administration to bring us the change they promised. What are we, children? The current system got Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, etc. where they are. They have gotten to the pinnacle of power by playing within that system. They've made millions in that system. That's why they have no intention of actually upending it. They just want to tweak it and do exactly what Obama said he wouldn't do if he got elected - play the Washington game just a little better.

This doesn't mean you give up all hope. There are some good guys in DC. I recently talked to a House staffer who said that Senator Franken's staff is excellent. The staff is so important because they are the ones who actually write the bills. I asked him why Franken's staff was better than the others. And he had a simple answer - they don't plan to work as lobbyists in DC when they're done serving in his office.

It's not just the honest senators that should give you hope. What should give you the most hope is that the motivations of people are actually quite simple. So, we can change the results by changing the incentives.

For example, if we pay the campaign expenses of politicians instead of letting the lobbyists pay them, then the politicians might actually work for us. If we ban the politicians and their staff from working as lobbyists, they might not have as much incentive to sell us out.

I know the people inside DC think that last proposal is absolute heresy. How would they get rich if they can't work as lobbyists? And that's precisely what the problem is. They're getting rich at our expense. We're crazy to allow this system to continue.

The nobles will never change it. This is how they got to where they are. This is how they maintain their power and salaries. We have to make them change it. And as William Wallace found out, you can only do that from the outside and by not listening to the establishment that has different (and almost exact opposite) motivations as you do.

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Andy Borowitz (humor): Hawking says aliens 'no longer interested' in invading Earth

This humor comes VERY close to the truth. We earth humans are doing a great job at making our planet uninhabitable for anyone, including ourselves:

June 21, 2010

Hawking: Aliens ‘No Longer Interested’ in Invading Earth

Planet Already ‘Pre-destroyed,’ Scientist Says

LONDON (The Borowitz Report) – Reversing his recent position on the dangers of an extraterrestrial invasion, eminent theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said today that the planet is in no such peril anymore because aliens are “no longer interested” in invading Earth.

“Assuming that aliens have been monitoring Earth for the past month in preparation for an invasion, they’ve probably figured out it’s no longer worth the trip,” Dr. Hawking said.

Speaking at a conference of the International Society of Eminent Theoretical Physicists, Dr. Hawking added, “Most extraterrestrials would want to come to Earth to destroy it, and let’s face it, this planet has been pretty much pre-destroyed.”

Even if aliens planned to travel to Earth to warn humans against destroying their own planet, Dr. Hawking said, “If they showed up now and took a look around they’d be like, ‘Oops, too late.’”

The physicist said that the rocket fuel aliens would have to expend to launch an Earth invasion was significant, “and you don’t spend that kind of money to invade a shithole.”

In recognition of his role in deterring an alien invasion, Queen Elizabeth II of England today knighted Tony Hayward, the CEO of oil giant BP.

In remarks to reporters after the knighting ceremony at Buckingham Palace, Sir Tony said he would be working tirelessly this week to study the impact of the Gulf oil spill on the beaches of the South of France.  More here.

The Los Angeles Times says Andy Borowitz has “one of the funniest Twitter feeds around.”  Follow Andy on Twitter here.

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Paul Krugman's advice -- I hope Obama takes it

We are heading into territory where the middle class will no longer exist. There will only be the rich (lest we forget: Duhmbya Bush calls them "the haves and the have-mores"*) and the poor (that would be us, you and me).  In answer to those who want to cut national spending now, Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has this to say in today's NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/opinion/21krugman.html?hp

*Bush's remarks to his supporters at a fund-raising dinner:  This is an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. [crowd laughs] Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.

EXCERPT: But if we need to raise taxes and cut spending eventually, shouldn’t we start now? No, we shouldn’t.

Right now, we have a severely depressed economy — and that depressed economy is inflicting long-run damage. Every year that goes by with extremely high unemployment increases the chance that many of the long-term unemployed will never come back to the work force, and become a permanent underclass. Every year that there are five times as many people seeking work as there are job openings means that hundreds of thousands of Americans graduating from school are denied the chance to get started on their working lives. And with each passing month we drift closer to a Japanese-style deflationary trap.

Penny-pinching at a time like this isn’t just cruel; it endangers the nation’s future. And it doesn’t even do much to reduce our future debt burden, because stinting on spending now threatens the economic recovery, and with it the hope for rising revenues.

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Apology to BP Shows How Republicans Would Govern

...as if we needed a reminder after the 8 looong years of Cheney/Bush!   But Joe Barton's defense of BP and tirade against Obama (for guaranteeing BP's setting aside $20 billion to pay damages of the oil spill) has made it perfectly clear what the Republicans believe, and how they would govern, given the chance once again. Halliburton is making out from this oil spill like the bandits they are--and you know that means more $$ into the pockets of Dick Cheney et al. I do believe karma will eventually catch up with the Cheney and Bush clans -- but do we EVER REALLY WANT them and their ideological conmen pals back running the country?  It's bad enough that Obama has become Bush Lite.  Do we want Bush/Cheney HEAVY back again, after the 8 years of disaster they caused us all?  I'm grateful that Barton has come forward and reminded us all who the Republicans really serve -- and it ain't "we the people."

READ: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0620/emanuel-barton-shows-gop-govern/
EXCERPT:

"That [Joe Barton's scripted remarks] is an approach -- they see the aggrieved party here as BP, not the fishermen. Remember, this is not just one person. Rand Paul running for Senate in Kentucky. What did he say? He said, the way BP was being treated was un-American. Other members of the Republican leadership have come to the defense of BP and attacked the administration for forcing them to set up an escrow account and fund it to the level of $20 billion. These aren't political gaffes," Emanuel continued.

"I think what Joe Barton did is remind the American people, in case they forgot, this is how Republicans would govern," he said.

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About Time for Obama to tell it like it is!

I felt exactly the same way as the author of this article when Obama, in his Tuesday speech, reached out to the right wing YET AGAIN!  (Quote: When Obama said yet again on Tuesday that he would be “happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party,” you wanted to shout back, Enough already! His energy would be far better spent calling out in no uncertain terms what the other party’s “ideas and approaches” are. The more the Fox-Palin right has strengthened its hold on the G.O.P. during primary season, the sharper and more risky its ideology has become. Unquote)  ENOUGH ALREADY!  It is futile to reach out to those who are owned by the corporations and must vote and mouth the words given to them to say by those corporations.  If Obama hasn't learned that by now, he is a worse dunce than Duhmbya  (and I never thought I would ever have to make such a horrifying statement!  Obama has been a GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT to those of us who really believed he would bring the CHANGE he promised.)

READ: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/opinion/20rich.html?hp

CLEAN THEIR CLOCK
By Frank Rich

EXCERPT: 

When Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, revived Rand Paul’s defense of BP last week by apologizing on camera to Hayward for the “tragedy” of the White House’s “$20 billion shakedown,” the G.O.P. establishment had to shut him down because he was revealing the party’s true loyalties, not because it disagreed with him. Barton was merely echoing Michele Bachmann, who labeled the $20 billion for gulf victims a “redistribution-of-wealth fund,” and the 100-plus other House members whose Republican Study Committee had labeled the $20 billion a “Chicago-style shakedown” only a day before Barton did.

These tribunes of the antigovernment right and their Tea Party auxiliaries are clamoring for a new revolution to “take back America” — after which, we now can see, they would hand over America to the likes of BP.

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Halliburton to make money on Oil Spill

What else would we have expected?  Cheney will be making even more millions -- no wonder he's been keeping his mouth shut about the oil spill....
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0618/halliburton-making-money-oil-spill/

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BP Oil Spill was inevitable

OBAMA: PLEASE LISTEN AND TAKE ACTION!!!

TIME TO TAP T.R. and RENEW PROGRESSIVE TRADITION
by Jonathan Alter
http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/58-58/2239-obama-bp-and-theodore-roosevelt

EXCERPT:

If he can frame the message more memorably than he did in his Oval Office address, Obama may yet use the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history to speed the transition to a green economy, just as George W. Bush used terrorism to refashion foreign policy. To do so, “deregulation”—once a Reaganite call to arms—must be transformed into an epithet. If the president can’t put the antigovernment, Tea Party types in their place now, when will he? The legacy of the American progressive tradition is on the line.

More than 100 GOP members of Congress belong to a committee that attacked Obama’s plan to make BP set up a $20 billion escrow fund.

Conservatives are again trotting out the idea—slam-dunked by history—that energy and environmental regulations kill jobs. If we’d listened to them in the ’70s, we would be living in a cesspool of pollution. And if we listen to them now, and stay addicted to fossil fuels, we’ll miss out on the clean-energy technologies that are already changing the world. On the ballot this fall, it’s the 19th century vs. the 21st.

If you think I’m exaggerating, listen to the Republicans. Glenn Beck believes progressivism is “a cancer” and we should go back to the Gilded Age’s unfettered capitalism. Rush Limbaugh and his Capitol Hill stooges still oppose more stringent regulation and won’t renounce their “Drill, baby, drill!” platform.

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Rachel Maddow gives Obama speech that should-have-been

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/17/rachel-maddows-oval-offic_n_615515.html

Rachel says she will never run for office -- what a shame, because she is exactly what this country needs: no-nonsense, practical, dynamic, and no-holds-barred when it comes to action rather than rhetoric.  This faux-Presidential speech is exactly what Obama should have said, but never will.  He is not the leader he painted himself to be and will never be ranked with the top Presidents -- as of now, in my opinion, he is only slightly ahead of the Cheney/Bush presidency, one of the greatest tragedies our nation has yet endured.

With Rachel Maddow as President, we would already have a renewable energy policy in place or, (sadly, as has been the case with other presidents) she would already have been done away with, one way or another, by those who really hold the power in our country and our world).  In dire warning to us, Eisenhower's farewell speech as President warned of the takeover of our government by the "military/industrial complex."  See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY  What Eisenhower feared has now come to be. The greed-driven corporate self-defined "elite" are in control and our nation is by far the poorer for it.

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Overtreatment a serious problem in our medical system

An Excellent article.  http://www.dddmag.com/news-Overtreatment-A-Serious-Problem-in-the-US-6710.aspx

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EXCELLENT ESSAY -- Obama, the non-doer president

Full of truth about Obama and the corporations who really run our government...and our lives.

The Do-Nothing 44th President
By David Michael Green

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-michael-green/29417/the-do-nothing-44th-president

EXCERPT: Obama had all the cards stacked in his favor, ranging from a destroyed opposition party, to a series of crises, to a public demanding change, to massive majorities in Congress, to global good will. He's pissed it all away in his unrelenting dedication to mediocrity and inoffensiveness.

...It seems to me that there are four options for understanding Obama's self-defeating tendency when it comes to the economic disaster he inherited. One is that he simply isn't so smart, and doesn't get the ramifications of continued unemployment at the level it's currently running. The second option is that he's just a policy bungler, who has the right intentions but makes lousy choices for trying to get there. The third possibility is that Obama recognizes this latest recession as the capstone (we hope) of a three decade long process by the economic oligarchy seeking nothing less than the downsizing of the American middle class, and he simply lacks the courage to attempt any reversal of this tsunami of wealth redistribution. The final, and scariest - but by no means least probable - explanation for Obama's behavior is that he is ultimately no less a tool in that very piracy project than was George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

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On-the-Mark Assessment of the Afghanistan War

If only Obama would listen to the SAGE ADVICE of this columnist!  But the corporations who really rule our country and our world will never let their golden goose of continuous war slip through their greedy fingers.  What would Halliburton, Blackwater and the others do without their multi-billion dollar contracts with the military?

The Courage to Leave
By Bob Herbert

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/opinion/12herbert.html?hp

EXCERPT: The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military.

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Prepare yourself for the BP Bailout Proposal

By Brent Budowsky

Get ready for the BP bailout debate. As the most hated company in America led by the most despised CEO in business continues its systematic deceptions about the magnitude of the catastrophe, its systematic secrecy and threats of reprisal against employees who speak the truth in public and its systematic blockade against reporters seeking the basic facts, get ready for the mother of all political debates.

When the full damage of the oil is calculated, and the full payment of restitution is required and the full consequences of lawsuits are understood and the monetary consequences of such enormous personal and economic misery are realized, BP will tell us that we face the choice of BP going bankrupt and being unable to pay its debts or receiving a government bailout so it can meet its obligations from the damage it has done.

We will be told that BP is too big to fail.

Prediction: Before the rooster crows another 60 times, BP will be seeking a government bailout. If you thought the Wall Street bailout debate was nasty, wait until you see the BP bailout debate.

There should be NO bailout of BP paid for by ANY taxpayer, period, end of discussion, over and out. If necessary there should be a fund paid for by all of the oil companies doing offshore drilling, as the price of their doing business off our shores and as the incentive to make sure this does not happen again.

The economic damage and the political fallout have only begun. If the pictures of oil spewing from pipes are unsavory, and the pictures of angry citizens and dead pelicans are unsavory, watch what happens when we begin weeks of television news of the D-Day invasion of poison oil landing on the beaches of the American Normandy.

It would serve Washington right if the rivers of poison meet the loop current and the Gulf Stream and end up in the river of the Potomac so official Washington can see, taste and smell what has only begun for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Let us hope this does not happen, though it very well could.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should disclose, every video stream and internal memo that reveals the truth, whatever it is, about the size of the ocean of poison.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should disclose, the exact amount of chemical dispersants that are polluting our land, water and people.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should agree, that all restrictions against media be ended and all reprisals against media should be stopped, and if rights are being violated, those responsible should be prosecuted.

The sooner the truth comes out, the safer our people will be.

Today, the president should demand, and BP should disclose, the exact and complete chemical composition of the dispersants so Americans do not wake up on some future morning with news about deformed babies or cancerous disease.

Mark my words: The abuse of dispersants, the composition of which are being kept secret, in amounts that are probably infinitely larger than what is being disclosed, create the potential for a grave, extreme and mortal health catastrophe whose pain and cost are not even remotely understood today.

What does it tell us that these secrets are being kept from the people even today? It tells us that the damage is far more than realized, and that the cost is far greater than understood, and that the BP bailout is far more likely than realized.

With BP delaying so much payment to so many people already, heaven help the victims when the payments due mount from the millions that are currently unpaid today, to the billions of dollars that will be due tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Ladies and gentlemen, mark my words, the BP bailout issue will soon reach the front pages and television screens, and our answer to the "bailout for BP" idea should be simple:

No, no, no, no, no.

Let the cash-rich oil industry pay the full cost, not the hard-hit taxpayers of an outraged nation who have been slammed too hard, far too often.

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Rare photo of slave children from the 1860s

Not a proud time in the history of this so-called "Christian" country...

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=10880072

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In praise of Helen Thomas

http://www.truthout.org/i-come-praise-helen-thomas-not-bury-her60258

If only every journalist could ask the obvious questions as Helen did over her 60-year career!!!  She puts the rest of them to shame.

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Study shows how radiation (mammography) can cause cancer

http://www.naturalnews.com/028959_radiation_brst_cancer.html

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Interesting essay by a Baptist minister

I've often wondered about this paradox myself...

from consortiumnews.com

How 'Power' Christians Ignore Jesus

By the Rev. Howard Bess
June 4, 2010

Editor’s Note: Many American Christians are inclined to boast about the United States and its uni-polar power – a kind of geopolitical chant of “we’re number one” – even as they put bumper stickers on their cars asking “what would Jesus do?”

The contradiction between this muscular power projection of many Christians and the humble teachings of Jesus are so striking that retired Baptist minister Howard Bess wonders whether many of these believers understand what Jesus actually preached:

Are Christians destined to be rulers? Over the past 2,000 years, the vast majority of the followers of Jesus have answered that question with a resounding “yes.” With that answer, we have deserted the very leader we claim to follow.

Among the aphorisms of Jesus is a simple message that his initial followers found troubling: “If any among you would be great, let him be a servant of all.” This saying is found in both the Matthew gospel and the Mark gospel. 

The two gospels set the story a bit differently. However, in both versions, a dispute has arisen among Jesus’s disciples, vying for first place after Jesus was expected to become a powerful ruler. They were looking forward to the day when they would be top dogs in a powerful ruling kingdom.
 
But Jesus had a different vision. The people of God were to be a servant people.

Jesus pointed out to his disciples that other people aspired to greatness by exercising authority, adding: “It shall not be so among you!”

To buttress this point, Jesus quoted from the Isaiah writings of the Old Testament, a passage written during the period of the Babylonian captivity, arguably the lowest point in the ancient history of the Israelites.

Lower Palestine had been overrun by the Babylonians. Most of its inhabitants had been carried off and scattered to the far reaches of the Babylonian empire. The magnificent temple that had been built by King Solomon was leveled to the ground.

Except for a handful of Israelites, who were relocated to the city of Babylon, a once proud and powerful kingdom had disappeared from the earth.

This outcome was a terrible blow to the Israelite tradition which envisioned the children of Israel possessing authority and power, an attitude deeply imbedded in the psyche of a people who believed they were specially designated by God.

The symbols of that greatness had been their capital city, Jerusalem, and their temple. Both were gone, seemingly forever. 

Those who had been chosen to survive as slaves in Babylon were primarily of the priestly class and were educated.  During the 70 years of their life in Babylon, this small band of Israelite elite became prolific writers, rewriters and recorders of Jewish history and culture.

While some dreamed of a day when Jerusalem and the temple would be rebuilt, there was a small inner circle of writers who saw the people of God in a new role. They saw the people of God as servants of humanity, not rulers. These special writings became a part of the Isaiah material.

After 70 years, the descendents of this hardy bunch of slaves were allowed to return to their homeland. They rebuilt a walled city on the site of old Jerusalem and eventually built a new temple as a home for God, and in which they could make their animal sacrifices.

The glory days of David and Solomon never returned, but the majority of the people did not give up their dream of being the ruling nation of the world. At the same time, largely hidden and barely noticed, this other vision of the people of God being a servant people persisted. That vision lurked in the shadows, waiting for the obscure rabbi from Nazareth.

The days of Jesus were not good days for a devout Jew. The temple in Jerusalem was an unholy farce that had been rebuilt for political purposes by a puppet king who owed his allegiance to the Roman emperor. The priests who cared for the day-to-day operation of the temple were corrupt and obeyed the puppet king rather than Jehovah God.

Jesus did not simply reject the temple system because of it corruption. Confronting its corruption was incidental to his more profound message. He proposed the establishment of a new kingdom on earth based on service rather than on authority and power.

There were other rebellious movements among Jews at the time of Jesus. The Zealots were an organized movement that advocated removing corrupt power by military might. Tradition presents the disciple Peter as one who had dabbled in the Zealot movement and who is pictured carrying a sword the night Jesus was arrested in Jerusalem.

Peter had not yet absorbed the servant ideal. A key dramatic moment occurred when Jesus told Peter “put up your sword.” Jesus may well have added: “My followers do not resort to swords.”

This core message from Jesus has left many Christians and Christian churches horribly conflicted. (Some Christians prefer to view Jesus in the militaristic image from the Book of Revelation, the last book added to the New Testament, rather than from his actual teachings recorded in the gospels.)

But the message of service also shines through. I am pleased -- and justly so -- with the services that Christians and Christian churches provide to many communities. I could tell endless true stories of the good that is done every day in the name of Jesus: hospitality, food, clothing, medical care, education, friendship and generous giving of funds.

At the same time, we seem unable or unwilling to lay down our swords and give up the desire for authority and power.

Speaking of himself, Jesus said “the son of man did not come into the world to be served but to be a servant.” His followers should do no less.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. 

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Good quotes

These all contain wonderful truths.   (~.~)

"One thing I know: The only ones among you who will be really happy are  those who will have sought and found how to serve." ~Albert Schweitzer  Bill Moyers on the PBS "/The Power of Myth/" asked Joseph Campbell, "Do  you ever have the sense of … being helped by hidden hands?" Campbell  replied, "All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition  that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the  time—namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind  of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the  life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can  see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and  they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid,  and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."  "You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't  make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and  then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you." ~Maya Angelou   

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Helen is Back!

It's Great to see our real journalist Helen back in the front row at press conferences, embraced by a president who doesn't fear her bold, to-the-point questions (Thank you for asking them, Helen!) -- instead of behind the potted palm in the back row where Cheney/Bush had her banished during their way-too-long brutal reign.  Long may Helen live to ask her genuine WTF? questions we all want answered!!!  Now, if only we could finally get a president who would give her (and us) truthful answers instead of White House spin...

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Bush: Yeah, I waterboarded him and I'd do it again

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/03/bushs-glib-waterboarding_n_599893.html

This is the kind of consciousness we endured for 8 long years in the nation's White House.  The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld years will go down in historical infamy.  How these evil men could have come to leadership positions in our country remains a mystery to me (and I will always wonder at how ANYone could have voted for them!).  They stole the presidency and hurled us backward to the dark ages.  Can we ever recover from the damage they inflicted on our country and on the world?  One can only hope ... and pray.

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Mark Twain in movie film taken by Thomas Edison 1909

The only known film footage of Mark Twain and his daughters Jean and Clara.  http://www.openculture.com/2010/03/mark_twain_captured_on_film_by_thomas_edison_1909.html

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Our Epic Foolishness by Bob Herbert

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/opinion/01herbert.html
Bob Herbert gives sensible, practical advice in this column! I hope Obama takes it -- and runs with it! Damn the conservative naysayers -- we can't wait for them to catch up to the 21st century. Their "No, No, NO's" are holding us back--and killing us in the process. Look at the damage that has been done to our country by this type of thinking -- by the Reagans, Bushes, Cheneys and Palins of our era. They have brought this country to its knees with their deregulation of corporations and banks. It's astounding that Republican right-wingers can still support the policies that have led us to disaster. It's as if they are deaf, dumb, and blind to the consequences of their votes. They vote against their own interests! (Read the book What's the Matter with Kansas?) Instead of looking at where the insanity of the Cheney/Bush years have brought us, many of the racists among them would rather concentrate their outrage against an African-American president, just for the color of his skin. Since we cannot raise the consciousness of these people, by our votes we will have to make sure they don't get any more of their backwards candidates into political leadership positions.

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Scientists studying man who doesn't eat or drink

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/International/man-eat-drink/story?id=10787036

There have been others (Teresa Neumann, a Catholic mystic) who also did not eat or drink for years -- they seemed to live on light or air. (See http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2009/12/therese-neumann-mystic-victim-soul.html ) I have to laugh at the oh-so-certain dietitian quoted in the article. She lives in her own practical world and hasn't a clue about mysticism.  There is so much we do not know, and I am glad these particular scientists have enough curiosity that they want to study this phenomenon.  So-called "scientists" through the centuries have more often proven themselves to be closed-minded about anything that didn't agree with their already-established belief systems.  I've just finished reading a book called The Ghost Hunters, which tells about William James (famous Harvard psychologist, brother of Henry James) and Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge, all of whom were curious about life after death and pursued answers to their questions, despite mockery from the "scientists" around them whose minds were shut tight against new information. I can't understand how one can call oneself a scientist and yet have no curiosity or willingness to pursue new information as it begins to reveal itself in our world. 

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Dealing with out-of-control corporations

This is what we now have to deal with in our world because of capitalism/corporatism run amok! Trying to rein in the big corporations is like bolting the barn door after the horse has run off. Thank you, Ronald Reagan, George H.W Bush, Duhmbya Bush, and Dick Cheney -- and all Congressional representatives (supposed to represent US, tho' they only represent themselves) for deregulating big business and allowing Corporations to Rule the World.  How do you like the world you've created?  It's fine for all of you who have pocketed millions from Big Corporation Payoffs -- but just look at what it is costing the rest of us!  Will common sense EVER, EVER be practiced in our political world????!!!!!  HOW can we get these pigs at the trough to ever listen to us ("we, the people")???? They are too busy gobbling up the riches that the corporate lobbyists deliver to their door, day after day after day.  The power of the corporations has become so great, not even the president can rein them in.  If he tried, he would probably end up like JFK.  Our democratic republic has been dealt a death blow by greed and power.  We are doomed to end up like every other civilization in history that succumbed to the same kind of takeover by the elite.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-obama-should-put-bp-u_b_595346.html

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Stupidity in our kids

Ignorance/stupidity reigns on planet Earth.  New "game" among boys proves it:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/sack-tapping-boys-punch-testicles-game/story?id=10762563

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Top Kill for Oil Leak is not working -- more disaster ahead

The nightmare continues...  Interesting, isn't it, that we hear nothing from the Bushes or the Cheneys about this.  Their chumminess with big oil and their insistence on deregulation of big companies has delivered this disaster to our country.  Even Big Mouth Liz Cheney is keeping mum.  They're all hunkering down in their palatial estates, while they still collect mega bucks from their oil buddies.  And the cry Drill Baby Drill seems to have faded to a whisper these days, except of course for Sarah Palin, heir to the Idiocy Throne vacated by Duhmbya.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/29/bp-says-so-far-gulf-well-_n_594501.html

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WWII Soldier speaks of personal torment in his recently found poem

What comment can there be, when you know you'd feel the same as he? A heart-touching poem by a soldier from WWII.
LONG-LOST POEM REVEALS SOLDIER'S ANGUISH

What does it feel like to kill a man? James Lenihan of Brooklyn, New York, knew.

He fought in Europe in World War II and he killed a German soldier during a battle in Holland. He described how it felt in a poem.

I shot a man yesterday

And much to my surprise,

The strangest thing happened to me

I began to cry.

So begins "Murder: Most Foul," a work that echoes poetry about war in the tradition of William Shakespeare and borrows its title from the bard's "Hamlet."

As powerful as the poem is, the story behind it is also fascinating.

Sgt. James Lenihan returned home after the war, got married, had children and made a career as a salesman in the meatpacking industry.

If he ever wrote any other poems, his son Robert and daughter Joan, who still live in Brooklyn, New York, don't know of any.

In fact, they didn't know about this poem until after their father died. They found it when they were going through his possessions.

Robert and Joan Lenihan found two typewritten pages, each with a copy of the poem. It was unsigned, but Robert believes the poem was written by his father and later typed up by his mother for safekeeping.

The poem describes a killing in Holland, where Lenihan served in the 104th Infantry Division as it battled German units.

It portrays a soldier very upset about taking a life.

I knelt beside him

And held his hand --

I begged his forgiveness

Did he understand?

But even while he describes the shooting as murder, Lenihan makes clear he had no choice.

It was the War

And he was the enemy

If I hadn't shot him

He would have shot me.

Robert Lenihan said the poem is a bit unlike the father he grew up with -- a man who could be a "tough customer" if need be, not someone tormented by a fleeting, albeit intense, moment on a battlefield in Holland.

"I'm just starting to appreciate how much he suffered only now in this part of my life. When I was a kid, like if he yelled at me or something, I'd say 'Well, Dad's being cranky,' " Lenihan said.

Lenihan said even though the incident in the poem took place more than 60 years ago, it still resonates and should be a lesson to young soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan that they aren't the first to face such emotional turmoil as this.

"That feeling they may have of regret and pain and shock of what they've done. It shows they are not alone," Lenihan said.

While Lenihan is obviously proud of his father's poem, CNN sent it to Georgetown University professor David Gewanter, who has published several books of poetry, including "War Bird" published last year.

Gewanter called the poem "accomplished." In an e-mail to CNN, Gewanter said the poem "is good, and its truths are that of experience and some literary traditions."

Robert Lenihan sounded surprised when he heard Gewanter's analysis of his father's amateur poem.

"I'm very deeply touched," Lenihan said. "For an expert to assess it that way and make such important comparisons I'm amazed and quite touched."

The poetry professor said Sgt. Lenihan's poem reminds him of a famous portion of Shakespeare's play "Henry V."

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered --

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

But Gewanter said it perhaps most closely resembles "The Man He Killed," a work by Thomas Hardy written at the start of World War I. In that poem, Hardy writes that the soldier and the foe he killed might have shared a drink or loaned each other money had they met somewhere other than a battlefield.

Sgt. Lenihan's poem ends not with talk of loans or drinks, but a darker scene.

I shot a man yesterday

And much to surprise

A part of me died with Him

When Death came to close His eyes.

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Backwards Planet, Backwards Civilization

This article should be required reading for every politician and corporate head, not that they would pay the least attention to it. They're far too busy feathering their own nests while the nests of the birds on the Louisiana coast are covered with thick, slimy crude oil--all because Cheney/Bush told Big Oil, Big Banks, and other corporations that they can regulate themselves.
TOP KILL, INDEED
by William Rivers Pitt

"Top kill." That has been the phrase on the lips of every network news talking head, and in the lead paragraph of every news report, all throughout this last week. British Petroleum (BP) describes the process this way: "The primary objective of the top kill process is to put heavy kill mud into the well so that it reduces the pressure and then the flow from the well. Once the kill mud is in the well and it's shut down, then we follow up with cement to plug the leak."

Think about that for a second. Here was the Deepwater Horizon, an absolute marvel of high-flying engineering and construction, until it exploded and collapsed into the sea. Afterward, here was this hole in the ocean spewing raw crude into the fertile waters of the Gulf. Despite all the fantastic technological prowess evidenced in the construction of the Deepwater Horizon, it's failure left us so buggered for answers to the oil vomiting from the hole they drilled that they are down to stuffing mud into it and praying that works.

Maybe it has, actually. Friday's New York Times suggested as much, reporting, "By injecting solid objects overnight as well as heavy drilling fluid into the stricken well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, engineers appeared to have stemmed the flow of oil." However, the report goes on to state that we won't really know if it worked for another day or so, and even if it did work, the leak could start up again without warning.

Let's all take a huge, arm-flapping leap of faith for a moment and assume the "top kill" mud bomb did in fact work, and the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster has actually been stopped. A lot of people will probably do some victory dancing on your television screen - BP officials, Coast Guard officials and maybe even the president - and if they do, it is your moral obligation to scream at them until you feel like your throat could burst.

This is just beginning, and even with the oil spigot turned off (for now), it is going to get much, much worse, and will stay that way for a very long time.

This thing has been spewing as much as 19,000 barrels of oil into the ocean per day, every day, for the last five weeks. There are tens of millions of gallons of oil down there, swirling around in the currents and making their way toward a long and desperately fragile shoreline.

Here is one example of what we're all going to be hearing about for the next several months, if not years, to come:

Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama. The discovery by researchers on the University of South Florida College of Marine Science's Weatherbird II vessel is the second significant undersea plume recorded since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20.

The thick plume was detected just beneath the surface down to about 3,300 feet (1,000 meters), and is more than 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) wide, said David Hollander, associate professor of chemical oceanography at the school. Hollander said the team detected the thickest amount of hydrocarbons, likely from the oil spewing from the blown out well, at about 1,300 feet (nearly 400 meters) in the same spot on two separate days this week.

The discovery was important, he said, because it confirmed that the substance found in the water was not naturally occurring and that the plume was at its highest concentration in deeper waters. The researchers will use further testing to determine whether the hydrocarbons they found are the result of dispersants or the emulsification of oil as it traveled away from the well.

The first such plume detected by scientists stretched from the well southwest toward the open sea, but this new undersea oil cloud is headed miles inland into shallower waters where many fish and other species reproduce. The researchers say they are worried these undersea plumes may be the result of the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil a mile undersea at the site of the leak.

Who knows how many of those plumes are lurking in the Gulf? Where will they go, and when will they arrive? Will this oil be carried around Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard, drowning beaches and fishing grounds and every ecosystem it encounters? How much damage will be done by the dispersants that will be used to quell the oil damage?

I don't know. Neither do you. BP doesn't know; the Coast Guard doesn't know; the president doesn't know. Nobody knows.

We're going to find out, though. Slowly, dreadfully, we are going to find out.

Factor this in before you think this is as bad as it can get: it's about to be high, hot summer in the Gulf. Cleaning up oil at sea and on land when it's above 90 degrees and brutally humid will test the endurance of every human who dares to assist in the clean-up. People died when the Deepwater went down, and mark my words, people will die cleaning up the mess.

This, too: it's about to be hurricane season:

The upcoming Atlantic hurricane season will likely be a busy one and may spawn as many as 23 named tropical storms, including up to seven major hurricanes, the U.S. government said Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that eight to 14 storms would strengthen into hurricanes, with top winds of 74 mph (119 kph) or higher. Three to seven of those could become major storms that reach Category 3 or higher - meaning they bring sustained winds of at least 111 mph (179 kph).

"If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record," NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco said in a statement. "The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared."

So, let's be clear. There are millions of gallons of oil threatening thousands of miles of coastlines, ecosystems and livelihoods. Nobody knows how much there is, or where it will appear, or when. It's about to be brutally hot exactly where the clean-up needs to happen, and a whole slew of hurricanes and tropical storms are on the way.

And our best response is to fill a hole with mud, just like the little Dutch boy facing 11 holes in the dike with only ten fingers on his hands. All of this because we are so addicted to oil that the petroleum companies like BP were allowed to "regulate" themselves.

Top kill indeed.

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How Christian are Tea Party followers?

Good article written by a Christian leader: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/how-christian-is-tea-part_b_592170.html
The author brings up some interesting points that I have also been wondering about...

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Oops -- More pesky side-effects: heartburn drugs cause fractures

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MensHealthGERD/fda-warns-fracture-risk-heartburn-drugs/story?id=10746531

Now here's a tough decision:  Which would you rather have?  Heartburn or a spinal fracture?  Pharmaceutical drugs = dangerous side effects.

1/2 tsp. of Bob's Red Mill Baking Soda (aluminum-free, which is not the case with Arm & Hammer) in a glass of water, taken once a day will cure heartburn for good.  It makes your body more alkaline (most people's bodies are acidic).  But it costs hardly anything, so the A.M.A. and Big Pharma don't want you to know about it.  They want you to take Prilosec or Nexium at a high cost for the drugs, and risk bone fractures.  Self education is important in our world today.

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Good Quote re. Dick Armey

""He ( Dick Armey) is like a stupid person's idea of what a thoughtful person sounds like."
--Ezra Klein

Armey is a lying political blowhard, who is leading/egging on the Teabaggers.  He is the Chairman of FreedomWorks, a far right-wing organization (cult). Ezra Klein's quote is extremely apt. (~.~)

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This essay should be read by everyone

I've included some important excerpts, but the entire article is well worth the short reading time it will take. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/lucinda-marshall/29011/when-the-truth-is-found-to-be-lies   We need many more Congressional leaders like Dennis Kucinich and Alan Grayson to combat the entrenched leaden-footed, corporate-funded, lying traitors who pretend to cast their Congressional votes for "the people," but who only enrich themselves with money and power at the cost of the people.  So many are fooled by their town criers, the Rush Limbaughs, Sarah Palins, and Glenn Becks. It's really pitiful.

WHEN THE TRUTH IS FOUND TO BE LIES
By Lucinda Marshall

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/lucinda-marshall/29011/when-the-truth-is-found-to-be-lies

EXCERPT: We have almost pathological blinders when it comes to seeing the obvious perils to our continued existence–climate change and global warming, peak oil, water and food shortages, melting glaciers, species extinction, deforestration, floods, droughts, oceans under siege. But still we gulp the koolaid and believe that growth is good and things will be better soon. And we are just as blind when it comes to understanding that commodifying the sanctity of corporate well-being over human welfare is ultimately our downfall, not the path to prosperity that it claims to be....
And in the Gulf–one wonders if there has been a coup–BP seems to be calling the shots. The EPA tells them not to continue to use a toxic chemical dispersant (see quote below regarding why this is so extremely terrifying and see here regarding the issue that this chemical was approved for use even though we have known about its toxicity for many years), and BP says they will keep using it. When reporters call law enforcement, they reach BP, scientific evidence is being evaluated by a company that counts BP as a client and worst of all, damage estimates are repeatedly minimized.

But the marshes are being destroyed, the oceans poisoned–there is no going back from this and as yet no way to stop it. This isn’t Exxon-Valdez, it is far, far worse and the damage beyond anything this country has ever seen and one which cannot be fixed. The Gulf coast as we know it is gone. The fishing, the tourism. There will be health consequences. There won’t be fish. Or perhaps coral reefs. Or perhaps us. And that is the truth of it.

QUOTE ABOUT DISPERSANTS:

“Dispersants can contain particular evils. Corexit 9527 -- used extensively by BP despite it being toxic enough to be banned in British waters -- contains 2-butoxyethanol, a compound that ruptures red blood cells in whatever eats it. Its replacement, COREXIT 9500, contains petroleum solvents and other components that can damage membranes, and cause chemical pneumonia if aspirated into the lungs following ingestion.

But what worries Dr (Susan) Shaw most is the long-term potential for toxic chemicals to build up in the food chain. "There are hundreds of organic compounds in oil, including toxic solvents and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), that can cause cancer in animals and people. In this respect light, sweet crude is more toxic than the heavy stuff. It's not only the acute effects, the loss of whole niches in the food web, it's also the problems we will see with future generations, especially in top predators."”

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War Is Making You Poor Act-- Please sign petition to Congress

http://www.TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com

Watch video at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/the-war-is-making-you-poo_b_585343.html   and please pass this e-mail along to your friends.

Next week, there is going to be a "debate" in Congress on yet another war funding bill. The bill is supposed to pass without debate, so no one will notice.

What George Orwell wrote about in 1984 has come true. What Eisenhower warned us about concerning the "military-industrial complex" has come true. War is a permanent feature of our societal landscape, so much so that no one notices it anymore.

But we're going to change this. Today, we're introducing a bill called 'The War Is Making You Poor Act'. The purpose of this bill is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars.

Next year's budget allocates $159,000,000,000 to perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's enough money to eliminate federal income taxes for the first $35,000 of every American's income. Beyond that, leaves over $15 billion to cut the deficit.

And that's what this bill does. It eliminates separate funding for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and eliminates federal income taxes for everyone's first $35,000 of income ($70,000 for couples). Plus it pays down the national debt.

The costs of the war have been rendered invisible. There's no draft. Instead, we take the most vulnerable elements of our population, and give them a choice between unemployment and missile fodder. Government deficits conceal the need to pay in cash for the war.

We put the cost of both guns and butter on our Chinese credit card. In fact, we don't even put these wars on budget; they are still passed using 'emergency supplemental'. A nine-year 'emergency'.

Let's show Congress the cost of these wars is too much for us.

Tell Congress that you like 'The War Is Making You Poor Act'. No, tell Congress you love it. Act now.

http://www.TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com

All we are saying is "give peace a chance." We will end these wars.

Together.

See Rep. Alan Grayson introduce the bill in Congress: Video is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/the-war-is-making-you-poo_b_585343.html

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Oil spill debacle -- where is Obama?

What a disappointment Obama has been as President.  Those of us who voted for him and expected so much more are appalled by his lack of attention to this oil spill catastrophe. The corporations rule our world and we the people are all looked on as dispensable by the elite who now run everything for their own profit. I'd like to ask all conservative Reagan and Bush-worshipping Republicans:  How do you like Reaganomics now? How's that old "Trickle-down" theory working for you?

MORE THAN JUST AN OIL SPILL
By Bob Herbert

The warm, soft winds coming in off the gulf have lost their power to soothe. Anxiety is king now — all along the coast.

“You can’t sleep no more; that’s how bad it is,” said John Blanchard, an oyster fisherman whose life has been upended by the monstrous oil spill fouling an enormous swath of the Gulf of Mexico. He shook his head. “My wife and I have got two kids, 2 and 7. We could lose everything we’ve been working all of our lives for.”

I was standing on a gently rocking oyster boat with Mr. Blanchard and several other veteran fishermen who still seemed stunned by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Instead of harvesting oysters, they were out on the water distributing oil retention booms and doing whatever else they could to bolster the coastline’s meager defenses against the oil making its way ominously and relentlessly, like an invading army, toward the area’s delicate and heartbreakingly vulnerable wetlands.

A fisherman named Donny Campo tried to hide his anger with wisecracks, but it didn’t work. “They put us out of work, and now we’re cleaning up their mess,” he said. “Yeah, I’m mad. Some of us have been at this for generations. I’m 46 years old and my son — he’s graduating from high school this week — he was already fishing oysters. There’s a whole way of life at risk here.”

The risks unleashed by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are profound — the latest to be set in motion by the scandalous, rapacious greed of the oil industry and its powerful allies and enablers in government. America is selling its soul for oil.

The vast, sprawling coastal marshes of Louisiana, where the Mississippi River drains into the gulf, are among the finest natural resources to be found anywhere in the world. And they are a positively crucial resource for America. Think shrimp estuaries and bird rookeries and oyster fishing grounds.

These wetlands are one of the nation’s most abundant sources of seafood. And they are indispensable when it comes to the nation’s bird population. Most of the migratory ducks and geese in the United States spend time in the Louisiana wetlands as they travel to and from Latin America.

Think songbirds. Paul Harrison, a specialist on the Mississippi River and its environs at the Environmental Defense Fund, told me that the wetlands are relied on by all 110 neo-tropical migratory songbird species. The migrating season for these beautiful, delicate creatures is right now — as many as 25 million can pass through the area each day.

Already the oil from the nightmare brought to us by BP is making its way into these wetlands, into this natural paradise that belongs not just to the people of Louisiana but to all Americans. Oil is showing up along dozens of miles of the Louisiana coast, including the beaches of Grand Isle, which were ordered closed to the public.

The response of the Obama administration and the general public to this latest outrage at the hands of a giant, politically connected corporation has been embarrassingly tepid. We take our whippings in stride in this country. We behave as though there is nothing we can do about it.

The fact that 11 human beings were killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion (their bodies never found) has become, at best, an afterthought. BP counts its profits in the billions, and, therefore, it’s important. The 11 men working on the rig were no more important in the current American scheme of things than the oystermen losing their livelihoods along the gulf, or the wildlife doomed to die in an environment fouled by BP’s oil, or the waters that will be left unfit for ordinary families to swim and boat in.

This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter.

No one knows how much of BP’s runaway oil will contaminate the gulf coast’s marshes and lakes and bayous and canals, destroying wildlife and fauna — and ruining the hopes and dreams of countless human families. What is known is that whatever oil gets in will be next to impossible to get out. It gets into the soil and the water and the plant life and can’t be scraped off the way you might be able to scrape the oil off of a beach.

It permeates and undermines the ecosystem in much the same way that big corporations have permeated and undermined our political system, with similarly devastating results.

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Want the truth about how much oil is spilling into the Gulf?

BP said 5,000 barrels a day -- more likely it's up to over 100,000 barrels a day.
http://trueslant.com/stephenwebster/2010/05/20/congress-told-oil-gusher-jetting-up-to-104000-barrels-per-day/

Dennis Kucinich, my favorite Congressman, says we are turning our planet into a smoking, glowing, oily mess.  Our poor Earth has a terminal case of the humans.  Read the article below for Kucinich's comments, which are right on
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0521/firedup-kucinich-reducing-earth-smoking-glowing-oily-mess/

EXCERPTS:  "Written in the oily sands of the Gulf," Kucinich concluded, "our world exists through fragile interconnected systems of life. Our survival depends upon reconciliation with – not exploitation of – the natural world."

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Limbaugh leads the way....to disaster

Rush Limbaugh is leading his "dittoheads" and the Party of No into disaster for our country and the world.  Crazy as their rhetoric may seem to anyone with brains, Rush and Glenn Beck and their ilk have followers who dote on their every word...and do exactly what they tell them to do.  If they and their dittoheads prevail in their insanity, they could well be the death of us all.  They don't believe in global warming, they'd love to have Sarah Palin for President, they don't think the oil spill in the Gulf is a big deal,  and they still want to "Drill, Baby, Drill." 

THE LIMBAUGH VICTORY
By Zev Chafets

THERE are many theories for why very conservative Republicans seem to be doing so well lately, taking their party’s Senate nominations in Florida, Kentucky and Utah, and beating Democrats head-to-head in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Some attribute this to a generalized anti-incumbent mood. Others say it reflects the tendency of parties in power to falter in midterm elections. Recently it has been fashionable to ascribe right-wing success to the Tea Party movement.

But the most obvious explanation is the one that’s been conspicuously absent from the gusher of analysis. Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh.

Mr. Limbaugh has played an important role in elections going back to 1994, when he commanded the air war in the Republican Congressional victory. This time, however, he is more than simply the mouthpiece of the party. He is the brains and the spirit behind its resurgence.

How did this happen? The Obama victory in 2008 left Republicans dazed, demoralized and leaderless. Less than six weeks after the inauguration, in a nationally televised keynote address to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Limbaugh stepped into the void with a raucous denunciation of the new president’s agenda and a strategic plan based on his belief that real conservatism wins every time. He reiterated his famous call for Mr. Obama to fail and urged the party faithful to ignore the siren song of bipartisanship and moderation and stay true to the principles of Ronald Reagan.

Democrats responded by branding Mr. Limbaugh — whom they considered self-evidently unattractive — as the leader of the opposition. The day after the conservative conference, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, went on “Face the Nation” and described Mr. Limbaugh as the “voice and the intellectual force and energy” of the G.O.P.

Mr. Limbaugh loved being tossed into this briar patch. He mocked the notion that he was the titular leader of the Republicans even as he was becoming the party’s top strategist and de facto boss.

His strategy was simple. With Democrats controlling Congress, Mr. Limbaugh saw that there was no way to stop the president’s agenda. He dismissed the moderates’ notion that compromising with the president would make Republicans look good to independents. Instead he decreed that the Republicans must become the party of no, and force Democratic candidates — especially centrists — to go into 2010 with sole responsibility for the Obama program and the state of the economy. And that is what has happened.

Mr. Limbaugh was not just the architect of this plan, he was (and continues to be) its enforcer. Dissenters like Arlen Specter, whom Mr. Limbaugh disparaged as a “Republican in Name Only,” found themselves unelectable in the party primaries. Moderates like Michael Steele, the party chairman, were slapped down for suggesting cooperation with the administration. When Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia had the temerity to suggest that Mr. Limbaugh was too uncompromising, he was met with public outrage and forced into an humiliating apology.

When the Tea Party movement emerged, Mr. Limbaugh welcomed it. The movement’s causes — fighting against health care reform, reducing the size and cost of government, opposing the Democrats’ putative desire to remake America in the image of European social democracies — were straight Limbaughism. A very high proportion of the Tea Partiers listen to Mr. Limbaugh. Sarah Palin’s biggest current applause line — Republicans are not just the party of no, but the party of hell no — came courtesy of Mr. Limbaugh. (Ms. Palin gave the keynote address at the first national Tea Party convention.) Glenn Beck, who is especially popular among Tea Partiers, calls Mr. Limbaugh his hero.

So why the lack of attention? Mr. Limbaugh has studiously refrained from claiming credit for the movement. His only intervention thus far has been to quash talk about the Tea Party becoming a third party. He wants a unified, right-wing G.O.P. in 2010, and by all appearances he is going to get it.

Rush Limbaugh came along after the age of Ronald Reagan. He has never really had a Republican presidential candidate to his ideological satisfaction. But if the party sweeps this November under the banner of Real Conservatism, Mr. Obama will find himself facing two years of “no” in Washington and, very likely, a Limbaugh-approved opponent in 2012.

Zev Chafets is the author of the forthcoming “Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One.”

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Oil spill video -- scenes from the air

Our dependence on oil has to end.  The Sarah Palin "drill baby, drill" type of consciousness must die out and be replaced by intelligent, environmentally-conscious decisions on the part of our leaders.

Below is an amateur video of the oil spill.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=did-S6XbpMM

 

 

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Jon Stewart video re. Obama vs. Bush years

This is a very humorous take on how the Republicans are using old Bush comparisons to denounce each and every Obama move now.  After trying to convince us for 8 years that everything Bush did was relevant and intelligent, all of a sudden the conservative pundits/politicians are using all the Bush gaffes/mishaps/mistakes to compare Obama to in order to make Obama appear like the train wreck Bush really was.  It's very comical how their minds can twist and turn on a dime to suit their own belief system.  Jon Stewart, as always, is hilarious in his take on all of this...comparing them to a used-car salesman who tells you how wonderful the car is when he is selling it to you -- and as soon as you buy it, says, "That piece of s--t is your problem now, Buddy."  If you like to laugh and appreciate the oh-so-thinly veiled hypocrisy in politics, this is a must-watch short video. Highly recommended for overall humor value. (~.~)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/12/stewart-hammers-conservat_n_573004.html

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Should this essay be required reading for all Christians? YES.

But I'm sure the political conservatives among them would find a way to shoot it down (with Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck taking the first shots).
HOW DO CHRISTIANS BECOME CONSERVATIVE? (A Very Good Question)
By Mike Lux

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/how-do-christians-become_b_570361.html

EXCERPT: The most fundamental difference between progressives and conservatives is that question of which side you are on. Conservatives believe that the rich and powerful got that way because they deserve to be, that society owes its prosperity to the prosperous, and that government's job when they have to make choices is to side with those businesspeople who are doing well, because all good things trickle down from them. Progressives, on the other hand, believe it is the poor and those who are ill-treated who need the most help from their government, and that prosperity comes from all of us -- the worker as well as the employer, the consumer as well as the seller, the struggling entrepreneur trying to make it as well as the wealthy who already have.

...if you actually read the Gospels, it is clear that Jesus' main concern in terms of the people whose fates he cared about was for the poor, the oppressed, and the outcast. Comment after comment and story after story in the Gospels about Jesus relates to the treatment of the poor, generosity to those in need, mercy to the outcast, and scorn for the wealthy and powerful. And his philosophy is embedded with the central importance of taking care of others, loving others, treating others as you would want to be treated. There is no virtue of selfishness here, there is no "greed is good," there is no invisible hand of the market or looking out for Number One first. There is nothing about poor people being lazy, nothing about the undeserving poor being leeches on society, nothing about how I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps so everyone else should, too. There is nothing about how in nature, "the lions eat the weak," and therefore we shouldn't help the poor because it weakens them. There is nothing about charity or welfare corrupting a person's spirit.

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Bringing the Vatican to Justice

An eloquent essay by Sam Harris, whose proposal at the end is one with which I am in full agreement and support. "By their fruits you shall know them."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bringing-the-vatican-to-j_b_571088.html

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More proof of our upside down world

A Simple Way to End This Recession
by William Rivers Pitt

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/28611/a-simple-way-to-end-this-recession-forever

EXCERPT:

Just dumping the Osprey program would have given us enough money to pay for the disasters in Tennessee and the Gulf, with a whole lot left over to help those affected by the recession and the Wall Street thievery. Shaving the tiniest percent off the 2010 "defense" budget would feed, clothe and educate every person of woman born in the United States, and we'd still have the most awesomely formidable military arsenal in the history of the galaxy.

But we don't talk about that stuff. We close libraries, cut education budgets, tax everything, and borrow from our children's future instead of tapping into the awesome reservoir of taxpayer cash shoveled into the Pentagon each and every year.

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End of the Euro? And what it means...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237645

Will a United States of Europe have to be formed to keep the financial centralization going?  Stay tuned...

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Alarm Bells re. Chemicals and Cancer--from the government

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/opinion/06kristof.html?src=me&ref=homepage

EXCERPT: The President’s Cancer Panel is the Mount Everest of the medical mainstream, so it is astonishing to learn that it is poised to join ranks with the organic food movement and declare: chemicals threaten our bodies.

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Wise Observation!

"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality"
- Michael Ellner

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Huffington Post article on egolessness

Interesting article!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-nichtern/buddhism-religion-the-dis_b_561855.html

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Cancer risks in our world

http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/06/presidential-panel-cancer-risks-underestimated/?hpt=T3

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Rush Limbaugh: Ocean will clean itself from oil spill

Anyone who listens to Limbaugh or Beck and takes what they say to be gospel ought to be institutionalized...

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/limbaugh-environmentalists-square-off-blame-oil-leak/story?id=10542582

EXCERPT:

Limbaugh has downplayed the need for a massive cleanup, saying that oil in the ocean was a natural phenomenon and as a result the ocean would take care of cleaning itself.

"You do survive these things. I'm not advocating don't care about it hitting the shore or coast and whatever you can do to keep it out of there is fine and dandy, but the ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and was left out there," Limbaugh said. "It's natural. It's as natural as the ocean water is."

But according to scientists, while some oil is normal seepage can be handled by natural systems, it's doubtful that the ocean could simply assimilate so much oil. Instead, the oil if left unchecked would break down into a sticky "mousse" coating seabirds, killing fish and spoiling delicate marshes and beaches.

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Who Are We? Experiments suggest we're not who we think...

Interesting article by a medical doctor:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/spirituality-who-are-we-e_b_551719.html

At the end of this article, there are several links to more articles by Dr. Lanza--interesting reading for the curious among us ...

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