Friday, September 30, 2011

Herman Cain--Racist


I'm a conservative republican. One of the main problems with the left is that just by being a conservative, I'm branded as being a racist. Not only am I racist, I am SIXHIRB. That'd be sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, islamphobic, racist and bigoted.

If I were to meet different people in groups and they did not know me, and I mentioned I'm republican, their knee-jerk reaction is that I'm SIXHIRB. Conversation over, I'm not worthy of discussion.

The left's strategy is to marginalize (i.e., to relegate to an unimportant or powerless position) conservatives. This is no small matter. This is what the left does. Watch and you'll see it over and over. Issues can't be discussed, because the person talking is a racist bigot.

Herman Cain, a black man running for president is a republican. A democratic strategist came on CNN's Anderson Cooper saying a comment Herman Cain made is racist and bigoted. So now even if you're black, but not in the leftest fold, one is a racist and bigot.

I hope you can see the irony of this and what the media and the left does. This is not by accident.

Click here to watch the interview with Anderson Cooper.

So here is what gets accomplished by the left calling the other side SIXHERB. The other side are idiots, not worthy of even discussion. And tell me if those on the right are not branded as a bunch of hillbilly southern white rubes worthy of only contempt.

So the actual idea of what Herman Cain said doesn't even get discussed. Why? Because what he said might actually be true. In fact, if one actually looks into what he said, one might come to realize Herman Cain's correct. And if Herman Cain is correct, the democratic party is exposed for what it is.

So Herman Cain must be marginalized. His ideas can't be discussed. Again, I beg you, watch this for yourself and see if this is indeed a strategy the left uses over and over again.

Do you Dear Reader see the irony, the utter ridiculousness of calling a black man a racist against his own race. I guess it is possible Herman Cain's a racist, but how convenient for the left. And does the left even scratch their head saying, "how can the right be racist and bigoted when they are excited about a black man becoming their president?" It doesn't fit the narrative, but for the left it doesn't matter. The narrative is far more important than the truth. Your racist, I'm not, I'm better than you, case closed. You are not worthy of discussion.

PS. This comment below I lifted from from a comment on another post. It's too funny.

LovelyEarth
This is a sick kind of reverse-reverse-racism. Here’s the clear logic: Tea Dunkers hate blacks, it’s in their collective DNA. Thus they hate President Obama. In order to defeat the President, they choose as their candidate a black man (a very black man, I might add…very “coco” in color, with a tinge of deep mocha). They use said black man to say, “see we’re not racist”, and then promote said black man as their poster boy. It’s a kind of reverse-topsy-tervy-backhanded racism that only a Tea Sipper can dream up. Thank whatever higher-intelligent being there is that I attended Columbia University and received an education that allows me to see right through all the psycho-insanity. I credit my study of Freud, that Neitzce guy, and the deeper films of Spielberg and Segal (to wit, “Above the Law” and “Out for Justice”).

Amazon's Web Browser-Silk

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead


I just saw this video last night, and right away I started doing what they're doing in the video. So today is my first day, and it's pretty cool.

Tomorrow I start day 2 and I'll see how far I carry this. I've actually completely fasted (water only) one time for 2 weeks. That'd be 14 whole days with no food. Not too long ago, in medical literature it was stated that one could not live over a week without food.

But I've never done a juice fast before and I find it interesting. So far, it's quite a bit easier than doing a water fast only. Watch the guy in the film that started at 419 pounds doing a juice fast. Watch him when he goes to the doctor for a check-up. "I can keep juicing, can't I?" (A paraphrase.) He realized the great benefit he was getting and did not want it to end. Wait till you see how much weight he lost, and his transformation. I'd like to know where he's at now.

So here's the link. I watched it on Netflix for free, so if you have an account with them, there's no charge. But even if you have to pay, it's worth watching, trust me.

Salad Dressing



OK Mike, why the hell are you making a post about salad dressing? This is a lot more then just salad dressing. Take a look at both videos, and peruse their website.

From SunDrenchers

Here's another interview related to the Salad Dressings.



Ingredients that are in these salad dressings:

Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Agave Nectar
Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Apple Cider Vinegar
Raw, Organic, Cold-Expeller Pressed Sun Flower Seed Oil
Raw, Organic Basil
Raw, Organic Rosemary
Raw, Organic Pepper
Raw, Organic Garlic
Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Flax Seed Oil
Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Sesame Seed Oil
Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Nama Shoyu
Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Ginger
Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Lemon
Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Stone Ground Mustard
Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Garlic Cloves & Powder
Raw, Organic, Un-filtered Onions & Powder

Change Me--I Stink


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Olympic Reflections--Dr Esselstyn



As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Yale 1956 Gold Medal Olympic crew this year, I was asked to share my reflections on the event and what it has meant through the years. The entire experience was further enriched when 5 of us returned as guests of Australia in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Olympic Games.

The crew was comprised of 4 sophomores coxswain Bill Becklean, # 7 Rusty Wailes, #8 Bob Morey, # 3 John Cooke 2 juniors, #4 Don Beer, #5 Charlie Grimes, 3 seniors, #2 Dave Wight, Bow Captain Tom Charlton and # 6 yours truly.

As the years have passed so seemingly has the heroic stature of the 4 races we rowed on Lake Wendouree in Ballarat, Australia. We lost our opening race by a hefty margin to Australia and Canada. We were thunderstruck. Despite being the youngest crew, we knew we were in the best of condition and had the finest coach, Jim Rathschmidt. It was totally a matter of confidence. We had not raced since June and it was then the end of November. Fortunately the competition had not ended for us as all the losers of the first day have the opportunity to climb back into the competition through an extra race - the repechage – in French “to fish again.” That evening of our opening loss it was up to coach Jim Rathschmidt, and he used few words but the right words for his young crew. “You are the finest crew here and I came to Australia for one reason – to bring home some gold!”

The next day we won the repechage race and were now scheduled to meet the Australians again in the semifinal. We went all out and squeaked out a win by about 12 feet. Several of us threw up from the effort and were heavily criticized by the Australian press for going all out when we merely had to come in second to qualify for the final. By now we had regained much of our confidence heading to the final, which was to be our 4th race in 4 days.

At this point Coach Jim Rathschmidt did some clandestine counseling with Bob Morey our stroke and Bill Becklean our coxswain, which I did not learn about until June 2006 – fifty years later. Jim was not at all confident that we could row our usual race at 33 strokes per minute and win the final. Our main competition would be Canada and Australia, and he felt they were excellent crews which in a final would be going all out and our 33 strokes per minute would not be enough. He instructed our stroke Morey and coxswain Becklean to settle to 36 strokes per minute following our racing start. Why was that so hush hush? We had never rowed throughout a race at 36 strokes per minute and Jim must have been concerned there would have been questions and self- doubt about our capacity to sustain such an effort.


Yale's 1956 Olympic Gold Medal Eight

Just prior to the start of the final, sitting in our shell we performed our last minute ritual “passing the shake.” The cox shakes the hand of # 8, 8 shakes # 7, etc., for the length of the boat. Halfway through this custom, Garth Manton, #5 of the Australian crew bellowed out, “I say Charlie haven’t you met Don yet?” Well, just who did he think he was to mock our pre race bonding? It was the absolutely perfect last jibe to stir our adrenalin. Then it came, “Messeurs, etes vous prez –partir!” - The universal international rowing start command.

As we were to learn at our 50th reunion with the Aussies, they had planned to jump us at the start and hold a 20-30 foot lead for the body of the race and extend it with their closing sprint. However, our higher stroking foiled that plan because we did not fade early in the race. We were slightly ahead by 10-12 feet at the halfway point, but our crafty coxswain was telling us, “You’re pulling even!” In my 1956 diary I wrote, “At the halfway point my legs felt like they did at the finish, The higher stroke was taking its toll physically. Immediately after the start Beck (Bill Becklean, coxswain) began calling for power tens (all out effort for 10 strokes). He certainly did not want them to gain too much on us. I was and I guess we all were putting out too much this early in the race, but I had to know I’d given it all I had, Anyway by 500 meters according to Beck (everyone seems to have it differently) we had just about moved up even with Canada and Australia. More power tens, then Bill yelled, “You’ve got a man on them; you’re going to win it!” Those words were too delicious to believe, but we had not yet reached the halfway mark. More power tens and we slowly seemed to eke out about a canvas (10 feet) ahead. By 1000 meters (halfway) I was shot – my head cold and the emotional pre race pressure had taken their toll but I still had the desire and Bill held us together. As I looked at Rusty’s head I could see it begin to weave a little with fatigue and I recall murmuring, “Hang on, Rusty!” More power tens and Beck said we had a bit more than a canvas on the Aussies but he seemed a little afraid of something and asked us to take it up – 38 strokes per minute. My legs were like crow- bars and I had to fight on the recovery to get up to full reach let along drive with the legs. The last 500 meters are still a blank. I remember the sunlight and hearing the Australian oars off to our left and behind us a bit. I remember concentrating on just trying to swing power on and gutting it occasionally with what little I felt I had left. I pushed my hands to the edge of the oar handle to maximize leverage. The crowd roaring was unlike anything I had ever heard and then we took our final sprint up to 40 strokes per minute and I’d sooner die than quit, but the pain was god-awful. I was aware somehow of Canada closing ahead of the Aussies. Suddenly we were over and had won. A nightmare was over.”

With the Australian loss the crowd was hushed and one familiar voice rang out, “Es!” It was Bob Kiphuth, Yale’s legendary swimming coach and a long time family friend who had taken the train from Melbourne to Ballarat to see the race.

After tears and some vomiting off the victory platform, we returned to the boat house and Captain Tom Charlton declared, “We are the toughest crew ever put together and we beat the finest!”

It was my last race. I had taken so much time from medical school I decided to repeat my first year and changed schools from Yale to Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.

Following our victory, we have met every 5 years at the Yale-Harvard race. I’ve never felt so bonded to a group of friends. Sadly the years are taking their toll and three of us have died, Don Beer, # 4 in the 1990’s from a brain tumor, # 7 Rusty Wailes in 2002 from a cardiac arrest and #3 John Cooke in 2005 from a liver malignancy. These are painful funerals.

Those of us who have survived had a glorious time at the 50th reunion in Australia. The Australian crew were genuinely hospitable, friendly and engaging. While we viewed them as the enemy in 1956, they were now rowing comrades and wonderful people, as are all oarsmen. Brian Doyle, the Australian stroke oar, on a night of speech making from all of us, said it most plainly, “ The reason we lost was that we ran into a bunch of Yanks who wanted it more than we did.”

How has the Olympics influenced my life since? For some athletes an Olympic Gold Medal is the pinnacle of their life. I viewed it as a springboard. The experience provided the utmost in confidence, belief in one’s self, the rewards of total effort, personal courage, and most importantly persistence. Following medical school I married Ann Crile and pursued a surgical residency at the Cleveland Clinic and at St. George’s Hospital in London. I’d no sooner finished my residency than I was in the Army with one year of my two years tour of duty spent trying to mend the carnage in Vietnam. In January 1969 I accepted a staff position in the department of general surgery at the Cleveland Clinic where I remained for the next 31 years, retiring in 2000.

Along the way honors and leadership responsibilities occurred such as a Bronze Star in Vietnam, President of the Staff at the Cleveland Clinic, a member of its Board of Governors, Chairman of the Clinic’s Breast Cancer Task Force, and President of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons. It is difficult to evaluate the degree to which the Olympic Experience contributed to these roles, but I am certain about one area of my life where it has always impacted and continues to do so. That is my research.

By the early 1980’s I was increasingly disillusioned with the focus of the medical profession. Epidemiological studies of non -western cultures, who subsisted on plant based nutrition revealed an absence of strokes, coronary heart diseases, hypertension, Type II diabetes, obesity, impotence, dementia, colon, prostate and very little breast cancer. By way of contrast, as the islands of Micronesia and Fiji became wealthy and adapted a western diet, they developed an epidemic of these diseases.

The natural question was can you arrest and reverse these diseases especially heart disease through restoring a totally plant based nutrition eliminating all oils (even olive oil), dairy, meat, processed flour, and excess sugar? In 1985 the Department of Cardiology sent me 24 patients severely ill with coronary artery disease, a number of whom were not expected to live a year. I saw each of them personally every 2 weeks for the first 5 years, every 4 weeks until the 10th year and quarterly until the 12year. At each visit I checked their diet diary, blood pressure, weight, and lipid (cholesterol) profile.

I reviewed their status last year (twenty years later) and all compliant patients are living, even the ones expert cardiologists said had but a year remaining. Their angina has disappeared, cholesterols plummeted, weight and blood pressure normalized and most strikingly there are multiple examples of disease reversal and widening of their narrowed coronary arteries. This has all been written up in peer reviewed journals. (See my web site, heartattackproof.com)

I have recently summarized all this for the public in “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, Avery-Penguin, release date February 1, 2007. While I was not the first to demonstrate one could reverse coronary artery disease, it would appear that my study, now beyond 21 years, is the longest of its type. Just how does my Olympic experience play into all of this?

You would think there would be dancing in the streets. Cardiovascular disease, which is the leading killer of men and women, can be eliminated through plant-based nutrition. The reason I am more passionate and determined than ever to get this information to the public is the unbelievable resistance and apathy from quarters you would least expect.

While cardiologists freely admit that coronary heart disease is caused by the animal based western diet, one wonders why do they use as their focus for therapy drugs and mechanical intervention like stents and bypass surgery which they freely acknowledge is but a mere temporary patch job? The answer sadly is money, huge guaranteed money for stents and bypasses. For hospitals these procedures are their big winners. Almost all cardiologists lack skill, interest, or training in counseling patients toward a healthier lifestyle. They will say that patients won’t follow such a significant nutrition change. That is simply NOT true. There are still plant- based cultures across the globe through heritage and tradition. My own research beyond 20 years and the hundreds I have counseled outside of the research study cherish the idea that they have become the locus of control of their disease.

Industry is of no help. Johnson and Johnson and Boston Scientific both make drug eluting stents for narrowed coronary arteries. It is annually a 6 billion dollar market. It has had a record meltdown. These drug eluting stents require an anti clotting drug for at least 6-12 months after insertion. There now appears to be unexpected clotting of the stent when the anti-clotting drug is stopped. When the stent clots half will have a heart attack and over half die. If you are asked to continue the anti clotting drug indefinitely you are more prone to develop bruising or serious gastrointestinal bleeding. Worst of all there is the panic about stopping the drug when you need dental work, hip replacement or a colonoscopy for fear of a heart attack or dying. That has happened.

The elephant in the room here is that after stents and by pass, there is no decrease in mortality or the incidence of new heart attacks. The drug industry loves heart disease. The statin drugs are a 20 billion dollar annual market. Pfizer just spent 800 million dollars on a “miracle” drug to raise HDL good cholesterol. It raised the death rate so high the trial was canceled. The answer to an epidemic is not drugs or procedures. The answer is life style.

Where does the government and the United States Department of Agriculture fit into this picture? The USDA is a disaster. Its leadership is all a retread from the food industry. The USDA food pyramid is loaded with the very dairy, meats, oils, and refined flour that will destroy you. Having the USDA design your food triangle is like having Al Capone do your income tax.

At our class 50th reunion in June I was not surprised to see so many who were overweight, even obese and diabetic. Many had had stents or a bypass. There were others nursing an enlarged prostate or spoke of that gland now missing. A few attended with dementia and there was a hushed epidemic of erectile dysfunction.

Because of my research displayed in the Class of 1956 Sterling Library exhibit, I was contacted by a number of classmates. My plea to them was to consider going plant based. By age 85 years, 50% of Americans have Alzheimer’s or dementia that is mostly vascular in origin and need not occur.

A strong argument can be made that chronic illness need never exist. There are still third world and developing nations that consume plant-based nutrition and avoid heart disease, strokes, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis, the common western cancers of breast, prostate, colon, endometrial, ovary as well as gall stones, diverticulitis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis to mention a few.

Just as a subtle change in temperature from 33 degrees Fahrenheit to 32 degrees Fahrenheit can change water to ice, so can the barrage of free radicals in the Western diet marinate within our cellular matrix producing microscopic irreversible injury. These subtle injuries accumulate decade after decade until we as physicians declare a diagnosis.

This endeavor has become my second Olympics. It is my dream that the public will be made to understand the causation of chronic illness. How do I answer my critics who say you can never change this much behavior. Maybe that is true. Perhaps I can not, but I am very optimistic. Look how aware people are of the ravages of smoking. Also look at what happened last year in my own counseling practice to arrest and reverse coronary heart disease. Two interventional cardiologists who had developed heart disease themselves came knocking at my door. Hope springs eternal.

I would like to end sharing with you the motto of our 1956 Olympic Champion Crew- “Press on Regardless.”

Bush Lied, People Died

Never a more dishonest line.

Comments from a few on the left:

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
--President Bill Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
--President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
--Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
--Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by:
-- Democratic Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others, Oct. 9, 1998

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
-Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
-- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
Letter to President Bush, Signed by:
-- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), and others, Dec 5, 2001

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them."
-- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
-- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
-- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
-- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
-- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
-- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
-- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do"
-- Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
-- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
-- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."
-- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

Monday, September 26, 2011

Why Does The Good Life End--VDH

Victor Davis Hanson

Redistribution of wealth rather than emphasis on its creation is surely a symptom of aging societies. Whether at Byzantium during the Nika Riots or in bread and circuses Rome, when the public expects government to provide security rather than the individual to become autonomous through a growing economy, then there grows a collective lethargy. I think that is the message of Juvenal’s savage satires about both mobs and the idle rich. Fourth-century Athenian literature is characterized by forensic law suits, as citizens sought to sue each other, or to sue the state for sustenance, or to fight over inheritances.

The subtext of Petronius’s Satyricon is an affluent, childless, often underemployed citizenry seeking inheritances and lampooning the productive classes that produce enough excess for the wily to get by just fine without working. Somewhere around 1985 in California I noticed that my students were hoping for a state job first, a federal job second, a municipal job third — and a private one last. Around 1990, suddenly two sorts of commercials were aired everywhere: how to join a law suit by calling a law firm’s 1-800 number or how to get a free power chair, scooter, or some other device by calling the 1-800 number of a health care company that would do the paper work for Social Security on your behalf.

Why is it more moral for a federal bureaucrat in a state-supplied SUV to shut down an offshore oil rig on grounds that it is too dangerous for the environment than for a private individual to risk his own capital to find some sort of new fuel to power his government’s SUV fleet? All affluent societies believe that they are just too rich not to be able to afford another regulation, just one more moralizing indulgence, yet again an added entitlement. But as we see now in postmodern America, idle 250,000 acres of farmland for a tiny fish, shut down an entire oilfield, put off a new natural gas find in worry over possible environmental alteration, add a cent to the sales tax, mandate yet another prescription drug entitlement not funded, or offer yet another in-state tuition discount to an illegal alien — and the costs finally equate to an implosion as we see in Greece or California. Read more

Saturday, September 24, 2011

LA--Not quite Right

This is a picture taken in Whittier. Whittier is a city in Los Angeles county CA. It's a landlocked city. So where the ocean view is is your guess as good as mine.









In the second picture, it was taken in Montebello. Also in LA county. As far as I know, there's no rivers passing through Montebello, not unless you want to count the water that sometimes flows between the concrete barriers we call the LA river.

And the last picture was a street called Grand View. The grand view you see is a recycling plant whose building has graffiti on it.

I'm from the eastern US and when there was a street called Riversedge, it was because the street had something to do with a river. Not in CA. You can name anything anything you want. How about the city of Lakewood, CA. There ain't no lake and there aren't any woods. Does it matter? Not in CA.

That's one of the reasons I liked Steve Wynn's casino in Vegas called Mirage. Because the joke was on us. Vegas is nothing more than a mirage, created to take money from your pocket to theirs.

Friday, September 23, 2011

How to Use an Olm Meter



This is an excellent video on using a meter to see if there is continuity, ie, if something is good or not. Check other Youtube videos to view instruction on how to use a meter. It really is not difficult.

If you're not mechanically minded, using a meter can be daunting. But it need not be that way. Meters can be bought for less than $10 and can be used to test light bulbs, batteries and electrical sockets.

Obama--Fairness

This is a telling point about Obama that Charles Krauthammer makes clear:

In a 2008 debate, Charlie Gibson asked Barack Obama about his support for raising capital gains taxes, given the historical record of government losing net revenue as a result. Obama persevered: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

A most revealing window into our president’s political core: To impose a tax that actually impoverishes our communal bank account (the U.S. Treasury) is ridiculous. It is nothing but punitive. It benefits no one — not the rich, not the poor, not the government. For Obama, however, it brings fairness, which is priceless.

For more

No 368



So I want to get rid of a grapefruit tree in my back yard. I make a free post on Craigslist, along with a couple of pictures of the tree. I write, you dig up the tree, you get it for free. In minutes I'm getting calls on my cell phone to come and get my tree.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Why I Love the Internet--Reason 367



I'm reading a book that I'm loving. I didn't think it would be this good. But good is when something I'm reading finds me saying yes to the author's ideas. I love that.

So when this author who I'm loving is talking up another book, I figure I should get that one too.

The book I'm reading now is titled Mortgage Free by Rob Roy and the book Rob recommends is How to Live Without a Salary by Charles Long.

So I go to my computer, click on Amazon in my bookmarks, type in the name of the author, and his book comes up. I click on the book and buy it with the Buy It With One Click icon. I don't believe this process took over 30 seconds, and the book will be delivered to my mailbox. The book is used at a little over a dollar, with a $4 shipping charge. Can't beat it. (Well I guess I first should have checked Open Library, Project Gutenberg, or epubBooks first.)

The EFFO Diet



As we all know, there are a ton of diets out there. Mostly they are divided along two lines: One that recommends a high protein (IE meat) diet, a la Adkins and the South Beach diet. The other is a high carbohydrate diet (high in the sense of percentage of calories to fat and protein), a la McDougall, Dr Dean Ornish, Esselstyn, and T Colin Campbell.

I am on the side of a carbohydrate diet, which is the opposite of what most Americans would consider the way to safely lose weight. But if one looks at world populations, and most suffer little obesity, it is because their diet consists mostly of carbohydrates.

But the carbohydrates I'm talking about are whole foods. Fruits, veggies, beans, whole grains. Not processed foods such as white bread, soda drinks and pastries. In fact, I wonder if refined carbohydrates are actually worse than eating meats, dairy and oils.

What it all gets down to is what I have dubbed the EFFO diet. Eat Fiber Foods Only. If one were to eat only foods that contain fiber, one could not help but lose weight and achieve delirious health. Look at how sick we are and look at the types of foods we put in our body. If you think there's no relation, I beg to differ.

The EFFO diet may seem to be a daunting exercise in asceticism, but after doing it for a few months, a whole world will open up that you would never have believed. People feel sorry for me for my spartan diet, while I wish they would just give the diet a chance that would change their lives in unbelievable ways.

Palestinian Lie

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

A Dollar Saved, A Dollar Earned?



In my last post, I wrote about how much I bought with so little money. Also how I saved over $75 by buying a cable with Amazon rather than buying the keyboard.

We also spent $25 on a lunch that for me was just too much to spend for what we got.

Onto the saying "A dollar saved is a dollar earned". It's not true. It takes a lot of earned dollars to save a dollar. In fact, many people are a paycheck away from being homeless. They have lived their whole lives and are in debt with not a dollar saved.

It is sad to say, it may sound like a novel concept but we are the ones who are in control of our finances. How we make our money and how we spend it is our decision alone. We must take responsibility.

Word of Mouth--99 Cent Store



Just got back from shopping at the 99 cent store. Twelve items, twelve dollars. The corn on the cob was five for a dollar and I bought 10. Three bags of candy for Halloween, three dollars. Needless to say, lots of stuff for a great price. Even Walmart is now getting into the produce business, but it's still way more expensive than this store. These same apples would have cost $4 at Walmart.

A guy in front of me at the check-out register purchased 3 huge melons for three dollars. He said they would easily cost $8 at Albertson's. Then he said "I should know, I work there".

Before going to this store my wife and I went to Best Buy to buy an adapter for my keyboard. It's an old school keyboard but it works really great. The adapter cost $36.99. The salesperson then said why not just buy another keyboard and took me over to the boards which were about $75. Instead we went to Amazon via my wife's phone and found the adapter for $2.39. Now I recognize it's not right to go in and take a person's time at the store, but I do believe $36.99 is gouging. Especially when whoever is selling the same adapter is making a profit at $2.39.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Google Mobile Payments By Phone


The day in not the too distant future, in my repair business I will be getting paid by simply bumping phones with a customer, transferring funds from his account into mine.

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. rolled out its mobile- payments application on Sprint Nextel Corp.’s network, and said it’s teaming up with Visa Inc., Discover Financial Services and American Express Co. to make the service more widely available. For more

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Dr Barnard

Dr McDougall's Youtube Channel

This is Dr McDougall's Youtube channel.

Rice Diet, Walter Kempner

Starch

A Video About Longevity


Watch this interview about longevity. More people are talking about it. In roman days, the average age people died was 25. In 1850 as the interviewee points out, the age was 45. Today it is almost 80. And there is thought that people before long will average 100. Living not only to be a 100 years old, but to be viable and contributing to society.

Has Obama Learned Anything


Below is an article from Commentary. The article pretty much hits it, but I think it's even worse. Obama's arrogance, his lack of respect for the previous president, and his over-reaching rhetoric will come back to haunt him as indeed it should. The idea that Obama was somehow a messianic figure, while at the same time keeping from the public any of his writings, is absolutely pathetic. Obama's a loathable character deserving any ridicule that will finally come his way. My only hope is that he hasn't ruined this country so much that we won't be able to come back.

From Commentary:

Imagine you’re in the Obama White House, and this is what you face. Democrats lose a special election in a congressional district they have controlled since the 1920s and which was framed as a referendum on the president. There’s a possible scandal brewing over the White House’s effort to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion dollar loan to a solar-panel manufacturer, Solyndra. The most recent Census Report shows median household earnings fell for the third consecutive year, back to 1996 levels. A record number of Americans are in poverty. In Afghanistan, the Taliban mounted a fierce assault on the U.S. embassy and NATO military headquarters in Kabul. A new CNN/ORC poll shows Obama’s disapproval rating has reached a new high while the number of Americans who think he is a strong leader has dropped to a new low. And that’s just today.

On a human level, one can sympathize with what the president, his advisers, and his supporters are going through right now. But there is a cautionary tale in this as well. When Obama was running for president, he was dismissive of those who came before him. The problems we faced, at home and abroad, would be fixed by signing this executive order and passing that piece of legislation. Hope and change were on the way. “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game,” Obama is reported to have said back in 2004.


Being president seemed so easy before he actually was president. At the point he took the oath of office, the problems became harder to manage, more difficult, more intractable. “When I said, ‘Change we can believe in,’ I didn’t say, ‘Change we can believe in tomorrow,’ ” Obama told an audience last month. “Not, ‘Change we can believe in next week.’ We knew this was going to take time, because we’ve got this big, messy, tough democracy.”

Every person who runs for president, it’s fair to say, has a healthy ego. But Obama was different; the self-assurance, the arrogance, the sense that he viewed himself as a world-historical figure was almost palpable. “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,” Obama told congressional Democrats during the 2008 campaign. A convention speech wasn’t enough; Greek columns needed to be added. “Generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment,” Obama said – a moment when, among other achievements, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” And during the campaign, while still a one-term senator, Obama decided he wanted to give a speech in Germany– and he wanted to deliver it at the Brandenburg Gate.

Yet now we see the Obama presidency coming apart, piece by piece, day by day. Democratic lawmakers are attacking the president on the record. The unhappiness in Obama’s own party toward the president might soon evolve into an open revolt. Those who supported Hillary Clinton in 2008 are saying, with some degree of self-satisfaction, “I told you so.” And the words of Solomon will be proven right again. “Pride goes before destruction,” he wrote in Proverbs, “a haughty spirit before a fall.”

If you dig beneath the rationalizations and the excuses, the field of strawmen, and the barrage of attacks on the motives of his opponents, one can only wonder: In his quiet moments, during times of self-reflection, has Obama –an educated and literate man — learned much of anything from all this?

Saturday, September 10, 2011

The Great Dennis Miller

Helping Citizen Gets Ticket


Below is an article by CBS LA about a citizen helping direct traffic during a black out. He alleviated a mile long back up within 15 minutes. He got rewarded by being ticketed by the police. Not only that, after being ticketed, the police did not take it upon themselves to direct traffic.

When the news showed the black out in San Diego, I mentioned to my wife that you don't see any police officers directing traffic. But let someone not make a complete stop and there would be an officer at the ready to give a ticket. Their motto should be changed from "Protect and Serve" to "Let me write this bullshit ticket to help pay for my bloated retirement".

Here's part of the article below:

When a major traffic light in the area went out Thursday morning, Alan Ehrlich took matters into his own hands, directing traffic at Fair Oaks and Huntington avenues.

“I grabbed a bright orange shirt that I have and a couple of orange safety flags. I took it upon myself to help get motorists through that intersection faster,” said Ehrlich.

Before Ehrlich stepped in, traffic was backed up for more than a mile and it took more than 30 minutes to get through the busy intersection.

Ehrlich said the Sept. 8 incident wasn’t the first and that the light goes out regularly.

“It was just kind of chaos of cars . . . there were stop signs up. But people were challenging each other to get through the intersection,” said Richard Gerrish who works at an office located at the intersection.


Gerrish said Ehrlich cleared up the mess in 10 minutes. After 15 minutes, South Pasadena police say they finally received a call about their newest traffic officer.

Police responded to the scene and told Ehrlich to stop and issued him a ticket, but never stepped into direct traffic themselves.

For more

Thursday, September 8, 2011

The 3 Stages of Man



Every now and then I read a book that is so profound, so full of truth, and so full of looking at something in a fresh way, that I wish I could put this book in everyone's hands to read. I guess that's a reason why we have so many blogs. The book I'm talking about is The Pleasure Trap, and what follows is directly taken from the book.

Man has gone through 3 stages of life. The first stage was pre 8500BC when what killed man were other predators and starvation. Two huge inventions propelled man into the second stage: language and agriculture. From hunter/gatherer we learned to grow seeds and civilization was born. Via domesticating animals, it no longer was large predators that man must defend against, but micro predators such as measles and small pox.

Now we're in the thrid stage and what is killing us is not anything from stage one or two, but what are known as the diseases of kings. We are dying from our own affluence. The foods that nature tells us that we want and desire, is causing us to suffer from diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

If you want to read a book that is eye opening and full of wisdom, take a look at The Pleasure Trap.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Simply Evil


This article by Christopher Hitchens tells how we over intellectualize reality, instead of just looking at the facts as they're displayed.

Simply Evil
A decade after 9/11, it remains the best description and most essential fact about al-Qaida.
By Christopher Hitchens
Updated Monday, Sept. 5, 2011, at 10:12 AM ET

The World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001
The proper task of the "public intellectual" might be conceived as the responsibility to introduce complexity into the argument: the reminder that things are very infrequently as simple as they can be made to seem. But what I learned in a highly indelible manner from the events and arguments of September 2001 was this: Never, ever ignore the obvious either. To the government and most of the people of the United States, it seemed that the country on 9/11 had been attacked in a particularly odious way (air piracy used to maximize civilian casualties) by a particularly odious group (a secretive and homicidal gang: part multinational corporation, part crime family) that was sworn to a medieval cult of death, a racist hatred of Jews, a religious frenzy against Hindus, Christians, Shia Muslims, and "unbelievers," and the restoration of a long-vanished and despotic empire.


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To me, this remains the main point about al-Qaida and its surrogates. I do not believe, by stipulating it as the main point, that I try to oversimplify matters. I feel no need to show off or to think of something novel to say. Moreover, many of the attempts to introduce "complexity" into the picture strike me as half-baked obfuscations or distractions. These range from the irredeemably paranoid and contemptible efforts[MN1] to pin responsibility for the attacks onto the Bush administration or the Jews, to the sometimes wearisome but not necessarily untrue insistence that Islamic peoples have suffered oppression. (Even when formally true, the latter must simply not be used as nonsequitur special pleading for the use of random violence by self-appointed Muslims.)
Underlying these and other attempts to change the subject there was, and still is, a perverse desire to say that the 9/11 atrocities were in some way deserved, or made historically more explicable, by the many crimes of past American foreign policy. Either that, or—to recall the contemporary comments of the "Reverends" Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—a punishment from heaven for American sinfulness. (The two ways of thinking, one of them ostensibly "left" and the other "right," are in fact more or less identical.) That this was an assault upon our society, whatever its ostensible capitalist and militarist "targets," was again thought too obvious a point for a clever person to make. It became increasingly obvious, though, with every successive nihilistic attack on London, Madrid, Istanbul, Baghdad, and Bali. There was always some "intellectual," however, to argue in each case that the policy of Tony Blair, or George Bush, or the Spanish government, was the "root cause" of the broad-daylight slaughter of civilians. Responsibility, somehow, never lay squarely with the perpetrators.
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So, although the official tone of this month's pious commemorations will stress the victims and their families (to the pathetically masochistic extent of continuing to forbid much of the graphic footage of the actual atrocities, lest "feelings" and susceptibilities be wounded), it is quite probable that those who accept the conventional "narrative" are, at least globally, in a minority. It is not only in the Muslim world that it is commonplace to hear that the events of 9/11 were part of a Jewish or U.S. government plot. And it is not only on the demented fringe that such fantasies circulate in "the West." A book alleging that the Pentagon rocketed the Pentagon with a cruise missile—somehow managing to dispose of the craft and crew and passengers of the still-missing Flight 77, including my slight friend Barbara Olson—was a best-seller in France, while another book about another 9/11 conspiracy theory was published in the United States by the publishing arm of the Nation magazine. Westminster John Knox Press, a respected house long associated with American Presbyterianism, published Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, which asserted that the events of that day were planned in order to furnish a pretext for intervention in the Middle East. More explicitly on the Left, my old publishing house Verso—offshoot of the New Left Review—published an anthology of Osama Bin Laden's sermonizing rants in which the editors compared the leader of al-Qaida explicitly, and in the context not unfavorably, to Che Guevara.
So, for me at any rate, the experience of engaging in the 9/11 politico-cultural wars was a vertiginous one in at least two ways. To begin with, I found myself for the first time in my life sharing the outlook of soldiers and cops, or at least of those soldiers and cops who had not (like George Tenet and most of the CIA) left us defenseless under open skies while well-known "no fly" names were allowed to pay cash for one-way tickets after having done perfunctory training at flight schools. My sympathies were wholeheartedly and unironically (and, I claim, rationally) with the forces of law and order. Second, I became heavily involved in defending my adopted country from an amazing campaign of defamation, in which large numbers of the intellectual class seemed determined at least to minimize the gravity of what had occurred, or to translate it into innocuous terms (poverty is the cause of political violence) that would leave their worldview undisturbed. How much easier to maintain, as many did, that it was all an excuse to build a pipeline across Afghanistan (an option bizarrely neglected by American imperialism after the fall of communism in Kabul, when the wretched country could have been ours for the taking!).
My solidarity with soldiers, cops, and other "responders" didn't make me a full convert to the police mentality. I was a named plaintiff in the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Agency, for its practice of warrantless wiretapping. I found a way of having myself "waterboarded" by former professionals, in order to satisfy my readers that the process does indeed constitute torture. I have visited Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, those two grotesque hellholes of American panic-reaction, and written very critically from both. And I was and remain unreconciled to the stupid, wasteful, oppressive collective punishment of Americans who try to use our civil aviation, or who want to be able to get into their own offices without showing ID to a guard who has no database against which to check it. But I had also seen Abu Ghraib shortly after it was first broken open in 2003, and could have no truck with the moral defectives who talked glibly as if that mini-Auschwitz and mass grave was no worse. When Amnesty International described Guantanamo as "the Gulag of our time," I felt a collapse of seriousness that I have felt many times since.
One reason for opposing excesses and stupidities on "our" side (actually, why do I defensively lob in those quotation marks? Please consider them as optional) was my conviction that the defeat of Bin-Ladenism was ultimately certain. Al-Qaida demands the impossible—worldwide application of the most fanatical interpretation of sharia—and to forward the demand employs the most hysterically irrational means. (This combination, by the way, would make a reasonable definition of "terrorism.") It follows that the resort to panicky or degrading tactics in order to combat terrorism is, as well as immoral, self-defeating.
Ten years ago I wrote to a despairing friend that a time would come when al-Qaida had been penetrated, when its own paranoia would devour it, when it had tried every tactic and failed to repeat its 9/11 coup, when it would fall victim to its own deluded worldview and—because it has no means of generating self-criticism—would begin to implode. The trove recovered from Bin Laden's rather dismal Abbottabad hideaway appears to confirm that this fate has indeed, with much labor on the part of unsung heroes, begun to engulf al-Qaida. I take this as a part vindication of the superiority of "our" civilization, which is at least so constituted as to be able to learn from past mistakes, rather than remain a prisoner of "faith."
The battle against casuistry and bad faith has also been worth fighting. So have many other struggles to assert the obvious. Contrary to the peddlers of shallow anti-Western self-hatred, the Muslim world did not adopt Bin-Ladenism as its shield against reality. Very much to the contrary, there turned out to be many millions of Arabs who have heretically and robustly preferred life over death. In many societies, al-Qaida defeated itself as well as underwent defeat.
In these cases, then, the problems did turn out to be more complicated than any "simple" solution the theocratic fanatics could propose. But, and against the tendencies of euphemism and evasion, some stout simplicities deservedly remain. Among them: Holocaust denial is in fact a surreptitious form of Holocaust affirmation. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie was a direct and lethal challenge to free expression, not a clash between traditional faith and "free speech fundamentalism." The mass murder in Bosnia-Herzegovina was not the random product of "ancient hatreds" but a deliberate plan to erase the Muslim population. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fully deserve to be called "evil." And, 10 years ago in Manhattan and Washington and Shanksville, Pa., there was a direct confrontation with the totalitarian idea, expressed in its most vicious and unvarnished form. Let this and other struggles temper and strengthen us for future battles where it will be necessary to repudiate the big lie.