Ironically found in a pro-corporate-rights neoconjob article at Frum Forum:
I CAN'T AFFORD MY OWN POLITICIAN SO I MADE THIS SIGN
I'LL BELIEVE A CORPORATION IS A PERSON WHEN GEORGIA EXECUTES ONE
And, seen scrawled on rough bark of someone's tree in my neck o' the asphalt:
END WAR
END WASTE
RICH PAY
FORTRESS USA
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Margin Call-ing at the Crater's Rim
Superb review with political-angle relevance as usual from Telly Davidson:
http://www.frumforum.com/in-the-financial-meltdown-who-made-the-margin-call#comments
Here's a great quote from commentor Graychin:
'The highest-paid people in America don’t create value. They only trade the value that others create – like Monopoly deeds.'
http://www.frumforum.com/in-the-financial-meltdown-who-made-the-margin-call#comments
Here's a great quote from commentor Graychin:
'The highest-paid people in America don’t create value. They only trade the value that others create – like Monopoly deeds.'
US Wants Drinking Water from Mexico - Like, Really!
More blind madness based on 'forgetting' that FREE ENERGY - tidal, wind, sun, methane and other biofuels, and the wasted, unrecycled heat and motion of urban/highway busy-ness is in immeasurably vast abundance and availability all over the places mentioned. The head of the Gulf of California / Sea of Cortez, where the depleted Colorado River trinkles to the ocean, is one of the greatest natural places in the world for tidal power, far better than Biscay and Fundy where the tides have electric-powered ever-growing cities effectively for around a century. And forgetting that salt and other natural sea water matter and particulates are valuable, salable commodities.
When will we stop FUKUSHIMAing ourselves - why do the Powers That Be / Princes of the World who rule in a manner that says we can't wipe ourselves out fast enough, but we must try, only delaying if the methods thereto can maximize power and lucre to to those insatiable bloodsuckers - and get real with using
FREE CLEAN ENERGY???????
We know about the Club of Rome -scratch their 'humanitarian' veneer and find that 'humane' for them means anything that reduces the Excess Population, and the pseudo-ecologists (pseudo-animal rightsists, etc.) who want all humans and any life 'compromised' / modified by humans: Domestic animals, horticultural species, any wild flora & fauna who have adjusted to or thrived or been endangered - reduced to (ahem, some humans' notion of a not-good-enough gene pool - by human activity. These are the Let It Burn-ers, the Fire and Death worshippers, the sick, sick souls who cannot imagine a peace that is not the barren rock and lifeless water of post-Ragnarok-without hope. We know about them; we know they are often in very high places; positions of rule. The other side of the coin of these most bleak Robinson Jeffers-style romantics are the Black Metal raving lunatics rioting to cast themselves into the depths of 'the Satanic Paradise'. These drive each other on, misery after misery, exulting in the triumphs of cynicism proved by every act of theirs that makes things worse. The greater mystery is of those who seem to want - to think they can get - a good outcome by supporting cruel wasteful polluters.
It can be hard, sometimes, not to believe in the sci-fi cliche of inimical alien life-forms out to utterly change our poor planet and its natives into things annihilated or drastically re-made as hopeless slaves to themselves. So hard to think that our own can be that bad.
Click here: US Looks to Mexico for More Water
Fox News Latino
Western states have long relied on the drought-prone Colorado River for water to fill drinking glasses, flush toilets and sprinkle lawns. But now it's looking south of the border to fill up on water.
Mexico may start sending water north as four major U.S. water districts help plan one of two huge desalination plant proposals in Playas de Rosarito, about 15 miles south of San Diego. Combined, they would produce 150 million gallons a day, enough to supply more than 300,000 homes on both sides of the border.
The plants are one strategy by both countries to wean themselves off of the Colorado River, which flows 1,450 miles from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez. Decades of friction over the Colorado, in fact, are said to be a hurdle to current desalination negotiations.
The proposed plants have also sparked concerns that American water interests looking to Mexico are simply trying to dodge U.S. environmental reviews and legal challenges.
Desalination plants can blight coastal landscapes, sucking in and killing fish eggs and larvae. They require massive amounts of electricity and dump millions of gallons of brine back into the ocean that can, if not properly disposed, also be harmful to fish.
But desalination has helped quench demand in Australia, Saudi Arabia and other countries lacking fresh water.
Dozens of proposals are on the drawing board in the United States to address water scarcity but the only big project to recently win regulators' blessings would produce 50 million gallons a day in Carlsbad, near San Diego. A smaller plant was approved last year in Monterey, some 110 miles south of San Francisco.
Mexico is a relative newcomer to desalination. Its largest plant supplies 5 million gallons a day in the Baja California resort town of Cabo San Lucas, with a smattering of tiny ones on the Baja peninsula. Skeptics already question the two proposed plants in Playas de Rosarito — known as Rosarito Beach to American expatriates and visiting college spring-breakers.
"It raises all kinds of red flags," said Joe Geever, California policy coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, an environmentalist group that has fought the Carlsbad plant for years in court, saying it will kill marine life and require too much electricity.
Water agencies that supply much of Southern California, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Tijuana, Mexico, are pursuing the plant that would produce 50 million gallons a day in Rosarito near an existing electricity plant. They commissioned a study last year that found no fatal flaws and ordered another one that will include a cost estimate, with an eye toward starting operations in three to five years.
Potential disagreements between the two countries include how the new water stores will be used.
The U.S. agencies want to consider helping pay for the plant and letting Mexico keep the water for booming areas of Tijuana and Rosarito. In exchange, Mexico would surrender some of its allotment from the Colorado River, sparing the cost of laying pipes from the plant to California.
Mexico would never give up water from the Colorado, which feeds seven western U.S. states and northwest Mexico, said Jose Gutierrez, assistant director for binational affairs at Mexico's National Water Commission. Mexico's rights are enshrined in a 1944 treaty.
"The treaty carries great significance in our country. We have to protect it fiercely," Gutierrez said.
Rick Van Schoik, director of Arizona State University's North American Center for Transborder Studies, said laying a pipeline across the border would be too costly.
"It's expensive enough to desalinate. I just don't see how it calculates out," he said.
The other big plant proposal joins Consolidated Water Co., a Cayman Islands company, with Mexican investors. Their proposal would send much of its 100 million gallons a day from Rosarito to the United States via a new pipeline, with operations beginning in 2014.
Mexico isn't likely to approve both plants, said Gutierrez, whose government is sponsoring the 50-million-gallon-a-day plant with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the San Diego County Water Authority, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District and the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
A key question is whether Mexico will allow water first used at the neighboring electric plant to be desalinated — a giant potential savings. California recently adopted rules that prohibit the state's electric plants from sucking in vast amounts of seawater to cool their machinery.
The Carlsbad plant illustrates how difficult it can be to build a plant in California. Poseidon Resources Corp., based in Stamford, Conn., has survived about a decade of legal challenges and regulatory review.
The company, which plans to begin major construction when it secures financing, was required to restore 66 acres of wetlands and take other measures to offset carbon emission from the electricity it consumes.
The San Diego County Water Authority is also considering a plant at Southern California's Camp Pendleton that would produce up to 150 million gallons a day. Poseidon wants to build one in Huntington Beach, near Los Angeles, that would churn out 50 million gallons a day. Those ideas face significant challenges.
"The planets will never be in alignment like they were in Carlsbad," said Tom Pankrantz, editor of Water Desalination Report. "They had the right project, at the right place, at the right time."
The San Diego agency wants to get 10 percent of the region's water from desalination by 2020 as a way to lessen its dependence on the Colorado River, which is connected by aqueduct about 200 miles away. Tijuana also wants to rely less on the river, a priority that gained urgency after a 2010 earthquake knocked out its aqueduct for about three weeks.
The U.S. and Mexico can save money by joining forces, achieving economies of scale, said Halla Razak, the San Diego agency's Colorado River program manager. At least half of the plant's water would stay in Mexico, she said.
"Mexico is the entity that is driving the project, even more than the United States," she said.
U.S. and Mexican officials say they expect the new plants will adhere to the same standards as California, including water quality, but that Mexico's regulators may act faster and shield sponsors from legal challenges.
"The Mexicans will ask all the same questions that we ask here, but it's not endless lawsuits," said Mark Watton, general manager of Otay Water District, which would buy about 20 million gallons a day from Consolidated's Mexico plant for its San Diego-area customers. "You get an answer quicker."
Based on reporting by The Associated Press.
Sorry About the Link Misdirections
For long while, I couldn't get any links to load via the my blog toolbar um, LINK link, except the URL to my own blog. I thought maybe the magic sprites of the unfathomable mysteries of electronic communication would re-translate the links to their proper venues. As usual in the 'Net world, Blogger offers almost no useful help or instruction. Anyhow, it now seems to work right if one has the HTTP type URL link. Not going to try to go back & correct, but hope things will make more sense in the future. (Yeah, right, we know about 'those hopey changey things'! )
Right Back to the Worst of the Right 'Round a Century Ago
Click here: Robert Reich: The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America
A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward.
We are going to battle once again.
Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we're all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.
Regressives take the opposite positions.
Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today's Republican right aren't really conservatives. Their goal isn't to conserve what we have. It's to take us backwards.
They'd like to return to the 1920s -- before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.
In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.
Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s -- the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the "rot" is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).
In truth, if they had their way we'd be back in the late nineteenth century -- before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons -- railroad, financial, and oil titans -- ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.
Listen carefully to today's Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don't help the poor or unemployed or anyone who's fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.
The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation's wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America's wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker's wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers' wage.
This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.
Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they're conservative jurists. But they're judicial activists bent on overturning 75 years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states' rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people.
Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action.
Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.
In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform.
Perhaps this is what's beginning to happen again across America.
A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward.
We are going to battle once again.
Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we're all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.
Regressives take the opposite positions.
Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today's Republican right aren't really conservatives. Their goal isn't to conserve what we have. It's to take us backwards.
They'd like to return to the 1920s -- before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.
In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.
Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s -- the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the "rot" is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).
In truth, if they had their way we'd be back in the late nineteenth century -- before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons -- railroad, financial, and oil titans -- ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.
Listen carefully to today's Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don't help the poor or unemployed or anyone who's fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.
The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation's wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America's wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker's wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers' wage.
This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.
Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they're conservative jurists. But they're judicial activists bent on overturning 75 years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states' rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people.
Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action.
Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.
In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform.
Perhaps this is what's beginning to happen again across America.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
MISSION CREEP: Is It Inevitable?
Should there be a Constitutional amendment limiting federal MISSION CREEP in... Military intervention abroad, at home (installations, investigations, flyovers, takeovers of anything including disaster relief, and that planet-sized Godzilla in the room, the Military-Industrial Complex); ports 'n' borders*. in declared and undeclared acts of war...In paramilitary wars like the War On Drugs**, in metaphorical wars like the War On Poverty and the War On Cancer, and on all sorts of other things that were originally mandated within certain parameters and even time limits but even-if-you-think-they're-mosty-for-the-good,-can-we-use-the-term-metastacized??
*Ports 'n' borders is where I think they should be...
**Click here: Mexico: Marines Seize Marijuana, Kill Drug Cartel Members
Now, these are Mexican Marines, in a country wherein the national military forces have acually spent most of their history in policing their own fellow-citizens with pretty much the willful freedom of an 'occupying' alien conqueror army (thus eliciting all those attempts at revolution), but, considering what they'e up against - narcotraficante warlords, really, with burgeoning cells and agents all over our own USA - it has already become un grito de mas norteamericanos, from racist-paranoid militia types to antiwar lefties and libertarians, that we ought to bring our troops home and go General Pershing on our perimeters to sew up the 'haemorrhaging borders' from continuing to cause bloodshed all over the land.
*Ports 'n' borders is where I think they should be...
**Click here: Mexico: Marines Seize Marijuana, Kill Drug Cartel Members
Now, these are Mexican Marines, in a country wherein the national military forces have acually spent most of their history in policing their own fellow-citizens with pretty much the willful freedom of an 'occupying' alien conqueror army (thus eliciting all those attempts at revolution), but, considering what they'e up against - narcotraficante warlords, really, with burgeoning cells and agents all over our own USA - it has already become un grito de mas norteamericanos, from racist-paranoid militia types to antiwar lefties and libertarians, that we ought to bring our troops home and go General Pershing on our perimeters to sew up the 'haemorrhaging borders' from continuing to cause bloodshed all over the land.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
STRESS> The Reaper
Click here: Top Cause Of Workplace Sickness Dubbed 'Black Death Of 21st Century' - Careers Articles
By Claire Gordon
It's been dubbed the "21st century equivalent of the Black Death." In the U.K., it's the most common reason employees take long-term sick leave. It costs American companies $300 billion a year. In Japan, it's a fatal epidemic.
It's stress.Stress has beaten out stroke, heart attack, cancer and back problems as the main reason British workers take four or more weeks away from the job, according to a new report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The Japan Ministry of Labor began publishing official statistics on "Karoshi" (death from overwork) in 1987, but the first case was documented in 1969, when a worker dropped dead of a stroke. He was 29.
The symptoms of stress are similar to those of someone in withdrawal from an addictive drug: finding it difficult to focus; losing your sense of humor; irritability; and shortened temper. Stress can also lead to under- and overeating, as well as smoking and drinking to excess. And in its most extreme forms it can result in stomach and bowel problems, heart disease and stroke.
"Cortisol, the hormone that the body releases under stress, is the strongest immunosuppressant known," write evolutionary biology researchers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. When Sheldon Cohen studied the sleep habits of 153 healthy men and women and then exposed them to the virus that causes the common cold, he found that individuals who slept less than seven hours per night were three times as likely to get sick.
Human beings haven't evolved to cope with the levels of work in modern society, they claim. For a healthy and long life, people should model themselves on our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
"If you hunt or gather just enough low-fat food to forestall serious hunger pangs," they write, "and spend the rest of your time in low-stress activities, such as telling stories by the fire, taking extended hammock-embraced naps, and playing with children, you'd be engaged in the optimal lifestyle for human longevity."
Unfortunately, that kind of lifestyle isn't particularly practical today, and increasingly less so. In what Mother Jones magazine dubs the "The Great Speedup" middle-income and professional Americans have been working more and more hours since the late 1970s. In that same time period, a full-time American male worker has seen his real wages decline.
The definition of speedup is "an employer's demand for accelerated output without increased pay." It used to be a household word, but today it's so normal it's hardly acknowledged.
The recession has only piled on the stress. And not just for millions of laid-off workers, but for the ones lucky enough to keep their jobs too. While economic production recovered to near-recession levels months ago, Mother Jones notes, the employment rate has not. Not hardly, and particularly not in the U.S. That lost productivity has been made up by those still clinging to their posts.
In the U.K. report, stress was a more common affliction at companies that had announced redundancies.
America is also notoriously frugal in its vacation time. We're one of only five countries in the world without legally mandated paid vacation time, and over a quarter of American workers don't receive any. We're one of only six countries without paid maternity leave (the others are Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Samoa, and Swaziland). We're one of only handful of countries in the world that doesn't guarantee any paid sick days. When 46 percent of Americans have to skip work from sickness, they lose the day's wages, and risk being fired.
Americans work more than most people in the world, 122 hours more a year than the British, and nearly 10 weeks more than Germans. And the U.S. economy has swelled, thanks to this labor, doubling in size over the last 30 years.
"We're not sharing in these productivity gains," says John de Graaf, the national coordinator for Take Back Your Time, an advocacy group pushing for paid vacation time and other worker protections, and the author of the forthcoming book "What's the Economy for Anyway?."
And the extra work has taken a toll on America's health. A 2007 study by Emory University's school of public health found that Americans 50 years or older were more likely to suffer from cancer, diabetes and heart disease than Europeans at the same age. "We have more chronic diseases in old age," says de Graaf. "And those are very expensive diseases."
To really battle stress, de Graaf believes we need to reduce our country's vast disparities in wealth. "Taming inequality is the most important thing. The top one percent is garnering nearly a quarter of all the income in this country. It's outrageous, really."
"There's no silver bullet here," he admits, but he believes increasing the minimum wage would be one powerful way to reduce the psychological burden on many Americans. Giving workers greater control over their hours would also go far. A law passed in Netherlands in 2000 allows employees to request a reduction in their hours, from five days to four, for example. Their wages are cut proportionately and their benefits pro-rated, but the employer must grant the request, unless it's at an intolerable financial cost to the company.
Such a bill would likely get strangled on arrival in America's political system. Not only does the lack of universal health care make such a law immensely more complicated, but America's political attitudes are in general more hostile to mandates on business.
De Graaf helped Rep. Alan Grayson draft his "Paid Vacation Act" back in 2009, which would, if successful, have required companies with more than 100 employees to offer one week of paid vacation time.
"We were attacked for that as if we were advocating the end of human civilization," says De Graaf. The bill found only five Democratic co-sponsors.
A few companies these days seem to understand the importance of workers' health and well-being to productivity and profits. Zappos, Patagonia, and a handful of other firms offer flexible policies to balance work and life, and have become sought-after destinations for young talent.
But this doesn't necessarily represent a tidal change.
"This is going to take rules," says de Graaf. "It's going to take legislation. We need regulations. A football game doesn't work if one team can go in wearing brass knuckles."
It used to be the oft-repeated dream of economists and philosophers that productivity could reach a point where human beings would only need to a work a few hours a day, and still provide for all their needs.
More than 200 years ago Benjamin Franklin wrote: "If every Man and Woman would work for four Hours each Day on something useful, that Labour would produce sufficient to procure all the Necessities and Comforts of Life, Want and Misery would be banished out of the World, and the rest of the 24 hours might be Leisure and Pleasure."
Since Franklin's day, efficiency has increased mightily, but the 20-hour work week is too ludicrous an idea to pass the lips of any mainstream politician.
In an interview in last month's Businessweek, Mitt Romney said "the primary role of the government is to encourage the innovation and risk-taking and entrepreneurship of the American people."
"That would come as news to Thomas Jefferson," says de Graaf. "He said on a number of occasions that the only purpose of government was to increase the happiness of its citizens.
~~~~~~~~~~
Luke 21:26 'Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth...' Luke 21:34 'But take heed to yourselves and be on your guard, lest your hearts be overburdened and depressed (weighed down) with the giddiness and headache and nausea of self-indulgence, drunkenness, and worldly worries and cares pertaining to [the business of] this life, and [lest] that day come upon you suddenly like a trap or a noose...'
James 2:1 My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.
2 For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment;
3 And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool:
4 Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?
5 Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?
6 But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?
7 Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?
8 If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well:
9 But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.
10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
11 For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.
12 So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.
13 For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.
James 5:1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
6 Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
8 Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
9 Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.
10 Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
11 Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
12 But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.
13 Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.
14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
17 Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.
18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
19 Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him;
20 Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.
By Claire Gordon
It's been dubbed the "21st century equivalent of the Black Death." In the U.K., it's the most common reason employees take long-term sick leave. It costs American companies $300 billion a year. In Japan, it's a fatal epidemic.
It's stress.Stress has beaten out stroke, heart attack, cancer and back problems as the main reason British workers take four or more weeks away from the job, according to a new report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The Japan Ministry of Labor began publishing official statistics on "Karoshi" (death from overwork) in 1987, but the first case was documented in 1969, when a worker dropped dead of a stroke. He was 29.
The symptoms of stress are similar to those of someone in withdrawal from an addictive drug: finding it difficult to focus; losing your sense of humor; irritability; and shortened temper. Stress can also lead to under- and overeating, as well as smoking and drinking to excess. And in its most extreme forms it can result in stomach and bowel problems, heart disease and stroke.
"Cortisol, the hormone that the body releases under stress, is the strongest immunosuppressant known," write evolutionary biology researchers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. When Sheldon Cohen studied the sleep habits of 153 healthy men and women and then exposed them to the virus that causes the common cold, he found that individuals who slept less than seven hours per night were three times as likely to get sick.
Human beings haven't evolved to cope with the levels of work in modern society, they claim. For a healthy and long life, people should model themselves on our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
"If you hunt or gather just enough low-fat food to forestall serious hunger pangs," they write, "and spend the rest of your time in low-stress activities, such as telling stories by the fire, taking extended hammock-embraced naps, and playing with children, you'd be engaged in the optimal lifestyle for human longevity."
Unfortunately, that kind of lifestyle isn't particularly practical today, and increasingly less so. In what Mother Jones magazine dubs the "The Great Speedup" middle-income and professional Americans have been working more and more hours since the late 1970s. In that same time period, a full-time American male worker has seen his real wages decline.
The definition of speedup is "an employer's demand for accelerated output without increased pay." It used to be a household word, but today it's so normal it's hardly acknowledged.
The recession has only piled on the stress. And not just for millions of laid-off workers, but for the ones lucky enough to keep their jobs too. While economic production recovered to near-recession levels months ago, Mother Jones notes, the employment rate has not. Not hardly, and particularly not in the U.S. That lost productivity has been made up by those still clinging to their posts.
In the U.K. report, stress was a more common affliction at companies that had announced redundancies.
America is also notoriously frugal in its vacation time. We're one of only five countries in the world without legally mandated paid vacation time, and over a quarter of American workers don't receive any. We're one of only six countries without paid maternity leave (the others are Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Samoa, and Swaziland). We're one of only handful of countries in the world that doesn't guarantee any paid sick days. When 46 percent of Americans have to skip work from sickness, they lose the day's wages, and risk being fired.
Americans work more than most people in the world, 122 hours more a year than the British, and nearly 10 weeks more than Germans. And the U.S. economy has swelled, thanks to this labor, doubling in size over the last 30 years.
"We're not sharing in these productivity gains," says John de Graaf, the national coordinator for Take Back Your Time, an advocacy group pushing for paid vacation time and other worker protections, and the author of the forthcoming book "What's the Economy for Anyway?."
And the extra work has taken a toll on America's health. A 2007 study by Emory University's school of public health found that Americans 50 years or older were more likely to suffer from cancer, diabetes and heart disease than Europeans at the same age. "We have more chronic diseases in old age," says de Graaf. "And those are very expensive diseases."
To really battle stress, de Graaf believes we need to reduce our country's vast disparities in wealth. "Taming inequality is the most important thing. The top one percent is garnering nearly a quarter of all the income in this country. It's outrageous, really."
"There's no silver bullet here," he admits, but he believes increasing the minimum wage would be one powerful way to reduce the psychological burden on many Americans. Giving workers greater control over their hours would also go far. A law passed in Netherlands in 2000 allows employees to request a reduction in their hours, from five days to four, for example. Their wages are cut proportionately and their benefits pro-rated, but the employer must grant the request, unless it's at an intolerable financial cost to the company.
Such a bill would likely get strangled on arrival in America's political system. Not only does the lack of universal health care make such a law immensely more complicated, but America's political attitudes are in general more hostile to mandates on business.
De Graaf helped Rep. Alan Grayson draft his "Paid Vacation Act" back in 2009, which would, if successful, have required companies with more than 100 employees to offer one week of paid vacation time.
"We were attacked for that as if we were advocating the end of human civilization," says De Graaf. The bill found only five Democratic co-sponsors.
A few companies these days seem to understand the importance of workers' health and well-being to productivity and profits. Zappos, Patagonia, and a handful of other firms offer flexible policies to balance work and life, and have become sought-after destinations for young talent.
But this doesn't necessarily represent a tidal change.
"This is going to take rules," says de Graaf. "It's going to take legislation. We need regulations. A football game doesn't work if one team can go in wearing brass knuckles."
It used to be the oft-repeated dream of economists and philosophers that productivity could reach a point where human beings would only need to a work a few hours a day, and still provide for all their needs.
More than 200 years ago Benjamin Franklin wrote: "If every Man and Woman would work for four Hours each Day on something useful, that Labour would produce sufficient to procure all the Necessities and Comforts of Life, Want and Misery would be banished out of the World, and the rest of the 24 hours might be Leisure and Pleasure."
Since Franklin's day, efficiency has increased mightily, but the 20-hour work week is too ludicrous an idea to pass the lips of any mainstream politician.
In an interview in last month's Businessweek, Mitt Romney said "the primary role of the government is to encourage the innovation and risk-taking and entrepreneurship of the American people."
"That would come as news to Thomas Jefferson," says de Graaf. "He said on a number of occasions that the only purpose of government was to increase the happiness of its citizens.
~~~~~~~~~~
Luke 21:26 'Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth...' Luke 21:34 'But take heed to yourselves and be on your guard, lest your hearts be overburdened and depressed (weighed down) with the giddiness and headache and nausea of self-indulgence, drunkenness, and worldly worries and cares pertaining to [the business of] this life, and [lest] that day come upon you suddenly like a trap or a noose...'
James 2:1 My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.
2 For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment;
3 And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool:
4 Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?
5 Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?
6 But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?
7 Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?
8 If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well:
9 But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.
10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
11 For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.
12 So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.
13 For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.
James 5:1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
6 Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
8 Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
9 Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.
10 Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
11 Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
12 But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.
13 Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.
14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
17 Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.
18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
19 Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him;
20 Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.
Face it: The Stock Market is the Evillest Gambling In the World
Keep on a'walkin', keep on a'talkin'; carry it on. On to victory!
Supernatural Bernadette Peters
Hey! I'm saying something nice, for a change!: BERNADETTE PETERS!!! What great person she is! Take a look:
What the article doesn't say (but pictures tend to confirm) was what prompted me to look her up: I saw her recently, and again thought as I have over many years, she hasn't aged since she was eighteen! Live as long as you want to, wondrous B, and age only in refinement of perfection!
Friday, October 7, 2011
Bachmann: Mandate Sonograms for Abortion-Hunters
Points:
1. Who gonna PAY, for it, Mitch? Socialized medicine? If not, how can it be Constitutionally mandated? ...Among other problems of Constitutionality...
2. If (it's paid for by public revenue, and) it's only going to be mandated 'for those thinking of having abortions', it would sorely tempt pregnant women who intend to give birth, and want ultrasound (perhaps also urged by physicians, kin, friends, etc.) to take the no-cost-to-themselves route and pretend that they sought abortion but changed their minds.
3. What of those who, by the process, discovered significant health defects in the child and decided against keeping it alive?
4. In India and China, ultrasound is commonly used to discover the sex of the child, so that females can be aborted. In India, especially Rajasthan, breeding females has blamed on wives - often child brides - and used as an excuse to murder mothers and girl-children, often with particularly deliberate vengeful cruelty. What is to stop state-mandated ultrasound from being misused for vain and bigoted purposes?
5. The process is not nearly as invasive or painful as abortion... Probably no more than any one of the number of pelvic exams gynecologists consider a necessary part of PRE-NATAL CARE. How 'bout them healthy babies? How 'bout taking care of them in womb and out? Who should pay for 'em? If parents can't, should the state, or should they be aborted?
Click here: Michele Bachmann Proposes Mandatory Ultrasounds For Women Seeking Abortions
1. Who gonna PAY, for it, Mitch? Socialized medicine? If not, how can it be Constitutionally mandated? ...Among other problems of Constitutionality...
2. If (it's paid for by public revenue, and) it's only going to be mandated 'for those thinking of having abortions', it would sorely tempt pregnant women who intend to give birth, and want ultrasound (perhaps also urged by physicians, kin, friends, etc.) to take the no-cost-to-themselves route and pretend that they sought abortion but changed their minds.
3. What of those who, by the process, discovered significant health defects in the child and decided against keeping it alive?
4. In India and China, ultrasound is commonly used to discover the sex of the child, so that females can be aborted. In India, especially Rajasthan, breeding females has blamed on wives - often child brides - and used as an excuse to murder mothers and girl-children, often with particularly deliberate vengeful cruelty. What is to stop state-mandated ultrasound from being misused for vain and bigoted purposes?
5. The process is not nearly as invasive or painful as abortion... Probably no more than any one of the number of pelvic exams gynecologists consider a necessary part of PRE-NATAL CARE. How 'bout them healthy babies? How 'bout taking care of them in womb and out? Who should pay for 'em? If parents can't, should the state, or should they be aborted?
Click here: Michele Bachmann Proposes Mandatory Ultrasounds For Women Seeking Abortions
Thursday, October 6, 2011
World's Most Beautiful and Romantic Building
How symbolic can you get!?
Click here: India's Taj Mahal In Danger Of Collapsing
India's iconic Taj Mahal is in danger of collapsing within five years if the issue of its rotting wooden foundation isn't addressed.
The 358-year-old-structure is located in the city of Agra, and serves as a mausoleum in memory of the wife of an emperor. As the most famous of India's tourist attractions, it draws four million visitors annually.
Campaigners exist to protect the Taj Mahal, and according to the Daily Mail, they believe its foundations are compromised, having become brittle over the centuries. Evidence of structural problems include cracks that appeared in the structure last year, and signs that its four minarets are tilting.
Apparently the Taj Mahal stands on the edge of a now dried-up river, and the foundations are rotting due to lack of water.
"This was never anticipated by its builders," Professor Ram Nath, a historian and leading Taj Mahal authority told the Daily Mail. "The river is a constituent of its architectural design and if the river dies, the Taj cannot survive."
The Indian government has set up a body to deal with the preservation of this UNESCO World Heritage site.
Click here: India's Taj Mahal In Danger Of Collapsing
India's iconic Taj Mahal is in danger of collapsing within five years if the issue of its rotting wooden foundation isn't addressed.
The 358-year-old-structure is located in the city of Agra, and serves as a mausoleum in memory of the wife of an emperor. As the most famous of India's tourist attractions, it draws four million visitors annually.
Campaigners exist to protect the Taj Mahal, and according to the Daily Mail, they believe its foundations are compromised, having become brittle over the centuries. Evidence of structural problems include cracks that appeared in the structure last year, and signs that its four minarets are tilting.
Apparently the Taj Mahal stands on the edge of a now dried-up river, and the foundations are rotting due to lack of water.
"This was never anticipated by its builders," Professor Ram Nath, a historian and leading Taj Mahal authority told the Daily Mail. "The river is a constituent of its architectural design and if the river dies, the Taj cannot survive."
The Indian government has set up a body to deal with the preservation of this UNESCO World Heritage site.
Gee, Oh Pee! Candidate Shuffle
I've been late in posting; just as well when I can't keep up with the hoof-in-mouth adventures of politicos out there. Lots of reshuffling of players, lately.
Some will remember the manipulative games the media played during the last few months of Bush (Sr.) - Clinton - Perot. The pundits, publishers and poll-controllers would give each candidate turns of ascendancy for about 3 weeks, musical-chairs switcheroo & over again. Was That Agency or Something Like It really after Perot's daughter? Nuff to have him say so and sound dippy, and hero Stockdale to be incoherent... Like Nixon's enemies back-when: Really more subtle than what happened to Bobby Kennedy and George Wallace and Wallace's wives. A pure repetition of the Wallace woes on another too-warm 3rd-party contender and people might get suspicious. But the R-D Bank Party cloven hoof must not stumble, nor the Cassandra who warned against NAFTA and the burgeoning slag-mountain of debt go unsacrificed!
Games are still being played, but it may be that there is no longer any need for sudden mindforks... When so much of both the electorate and their candidates are zomboid, schizoid and as ready to render and accept the grossest hypocrisies as certifiable pathological liars. Here are some searches. I started with Ms Entertainment Misinformation, then the Globalist Opportunist Pimps:
Click here: "Bachmann watch" - Google Search
Click here: "GOP candidates watch" - Google Search
But the most fun of all - in the last few days, anyway - has been the GOP Back Room Boys' hysterical scramble to try to run Chris Christie up their flagpole the moment Herman Cain won a Florida poll. And now the fat man* won't sing, and erstwhile saint Sarah's said no, too. Hey, what if it's true: Once they've had black (even with a lot of cream, apparently!) they won't go back... Or maybe America is gonna just keep on tryin' till we get DENNIS HAYSBERT or MORGAN FREEMAN. You know they're what we really want!
*There is nothing wrong with cuddly!!!
Some will remember the manipulative games the media played during the last few months of Bush (Sr.) - Clinton - Perot. The pundits, publishers and poll-controllers would give each candidate turns of ascendancy for about 3 weeks, musical-chairs switcheroo & over again. Was That Agency or Something Like It really after Perot's daughter? Nuff to have him say so and sound dippy, and hero Stockdale to be incoherent... Like Nixon's enemies back-when: Really more subtle than what happened to Bobby Kennedy and George Wallace and Wallace's wives. A pure repetition of the Wallace woes on another too-warm 3rd-party contender and people might get suspicious. But the R-D Bank Party cloven hoof must not stumble, nor the Cassandra who warned against NAFTA and the burgeoning slag-mountain of debt go unsacrificed!
Games are still being played, but it may be that there is no longer any need for sudden mindforks... When so much of both the electorate and their candidates are zomboid, schizoid and as ready to render and accept the grossest hypocrisies as certifiable pathological liars. Here are some searches. I started with Ms Entertainment Misinformation, then the Globalist Opportunist Pimps:
Click here: "Bachmann watch" - Google Search
Click here: "GOP candidates watch" - Google Search
But the most fun of all - in the last few days, anyway - has been the GOP Back Room Boys' hysterical scramble to try to run Chris Christie up their flagpole the moment Herman Cain won a Florida poll. And now the fat man* won't sing, and erstwhile saint Sarah's said no, too. Hey, what if it's true: Once they've had black (even with a lot of cream, apparently!) they won't go back... Or maybe America is gonna just keep on tryin' till we get DENNIS HAYSBERT or MORGAN FREEMAN. You know they're what we really want!
*There is nothing wrong with cuddly!!!
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
What F-Word?
Click here: Bono: The F Word
Bono argues that the truly obscene F-word is FAMINE, and no decent being could argue that, but let's consider the eFFing traditional word, and its original meaning: FOLKing, that which tends to produce more folk. People in a situation (which, arguably, is the whole WORLD right now, need to not produce folk - little, tender, helpless, innocent folk whom the wretched present situation is likely to lead into desperate, tormenting need, innumerable brutalities and corruption. The times are so bad, it's a bad time to bring a little trustafarian into the world at the family estate on a lovely private lake in the 'First World'; it's sheer horror guaranteed to bring one into Somalia.
Why do 'they' do it? It's a biological imperative: Sexual desire is a delirious fever that makes almost everyone crazed, heedless, stupid; compulsively overridden. Who has not given in when their better selves have said NO? And all it takes is once. If it's unbearable to the advantaged, how much more to those who have no other comfort? And, in Somalia and so much of the EFFING WORLD, men define themselves by sex-act dominance and begetting, forcing women...
In times like these, perhaps we should ask if FAITH, as the holiest F-word, ought rather to come behind FOOD and even FIX, as in 'have your pets FIXED!!!
Bono argues that the truly obscene F-word is FAMINE, and no decent being could argue that, but let's consider the eFFing traditional word, and its original meaning: FOLKing, that which tends to produce more folk. People in a situation (which, arguably, is the whole WORLD right now, need to not produce folk - little, tender, helpless, innocent folk whom the wretched present situation is likely to lead into desperate, tormenting need, innumerable brutalities and corruption. The times are so bad, it's a bad time to bring a little trustafarian into the world at the family estate on a lovely private lake in the 'First World'; it's sheer horror guaranteed to bring one into Somalia.
Why do 'they' do it? It's a biological imperative: Sexual desire is a delirious fever that makes almost everyone crazed, heedless, stupid; compulsively overridden. Who has not given in when their better selves have said NO? And all it takes is once. If it's unbearable to the advantaged, how much more to those who have no other comfort? And, in Somalia and so much of the EFFING WORLD, men define themselves by sex-act dominance and begetting, forcing women...
In times like these, perhaps we should ask if FAITH, as the holiest F-word, ought rather to come behind FOOD and even FIX, as in 'have your pets FIXED!!!
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