Live longer--Discipline your eating Habits

Numerous studies have been done on rats, mice, and monkeys that demonstrated when restricted to a diet that reduced their normal caloric intake but still provided a healthy and balance diet, that these animals lived considerably longer and were in much better physical health than animals that did not have these same dietary restrictions.  In fact, the evidence indicates that a diet low in sucrose in conjunction with a diet that doesn't permit overindulgence promotes healthier animals that suffer far less from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.

In regards to humans, more people than ever are living to 100 and beyond in the world today, in which, for industrialized nations, Japan has the highest percentage of centenarians.    Not too surprisingly, Japan has a far lower incidence of obese people as compared to countries such as the United States, in which, only 3.4% of Japanese are obese, whereas America's obese level is over 30%.  Additionally, by taking a careful look at healthy senior citizens, that are still vibrant and getting about on their own power, they are, on the whole, those that maintain a desirable body weight.

In America, there are many people who strongly desire to live both long and healthy lives, but there is often astrong disconnect in believing that doing so, is in their control, but often times it really is.  The fact of the matter is that what we eat, how we eat, and how much we eat, has a strong correlation to our overall physical health and weight.  This correlation has been proven in animals that have 96% of their DNA in common with humans, which strongly signifies that this is something that should be paid attention to.

Humans are creatures of habit which often comes from their environment, their family, peers, and their natural inclinations.  Just because we, as humans, have been doing something for a number of years, which has become a habit for us, does not mean that that particular habit is beneficial for us or right. A man's mind, his beliefs, and his actions are powerful things, so that patterns are not easy to break, but break they can be, if we so desire it.

In a world in which we too often just look at things from a very short term perspective, it is easy to put off doing certain things and creating certain habits that will be beneficial for us in the long term, by simply not being concerned about the long term overall or by simply following in line by rote habit.  When it comes to food, there is a belief for some people that food is pleasure, or should be a culinary pleasure, or a social exercise, or satisfaction, or a combination of all or some of these things, but food is too important to our overall health to leave to blithe ignorance. 

Living a longer and healthier life is not about starving one self, but is definitely about being more diligent in consuming a diet of healthy foods, which typically means a significant reduction in refined carbohydrates, as well as avoiding added sugars, and all foods that have had their good nutrients bleached out from their product.  The foods that we eat and how much that we eat, most definitely matter, and those that adhere to this law, will more often than not, live longer and healthier.

Let the Dollar Be Backed by Oil

The United States government use to back the dollar with gold, but in the depths of the depression, FDR took the United States off of the gold standard in 1933, with the additional requirement by law that all citizens that had either gold bullion, coin, or certificates must redeem those items by May 1, 1933, at the redemption price of $20.67 per ounce.  Then, in 1934, the United States returned to the gold standard, and set the price of gold at $35/ounce, effectively inflating the price of gold by 69%, which simultaneously took away real assets from people that had redeemed their gold by deflating their net worth with the new government manipulated increase in gold pricing.  The price of gold remained stable, though, by law until 1971, when President Nixon took America off of the gold standard, once and for all, to which the country since that time has not returned to it. 

Today, our country has a deficit of approximately $17,810 billion dollars, whereas in 1971 the deficit was under $400 billion dollars. Today, gold is worth $1323/ounce whereas the price was previously fixed at $35/ounce.  The dollars that we use to conduct our business and financial transactions today, states that: "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."  The note, aka the dollar, is backed by the Federal Reserve, it is not redeemable in gold or any other specie, and is primarily backed by government debt, issued in the form of US treasuries, and their equivalencies.  Since 1971, America has had double-digit inflation in four different years, although none during this current millennium.

The fundamental problem with the issuance and use of dollars today as our currency is that there is no real foundational soundness backing the value of the dollar, other than that it seems to work, even though the overall deficit that we have accumulated year by year has gotten larger and larger, with little or no constraints on this government largess and mismanagement of the commonweal.  In order to rein in this free spending mindset that is in essence sticking future generations with debt created by the present generation and those before it, the dollar should be constrained and this could be done by using oil or possibly other domestic natural resources as the backing for the dollar.

The thing about oil is that America has a good abundance of it, to which America is now, once again the largest oil producer in the world.  Additionally, oil, bar none, is the most important commodity in the world and has been the most important commodity in the world for a century; in addition, fundamentally much of this nation's success, power, and wealth, is due to the successful exploration and exploitation of petroleum. 

It is only natural then, that there should be a formal union of oil with the United States dollar, which will by its effectiveness, constrain the Federal government from running amok, and force it to get its fiscal house in order.  This would not only stabilize America, but would also allow, the US dollar to continue to be the monetary medium of value for other countries to establish their currencies against, so that, in effect, America's oil-backed dollar would become a true stable value as an international currency reserve.

Food Is Fuel

Our physical body needs food and water in order to survive, and in the absence of these things, starvation, followed soon by death will be the end result.  In general, most people have a pretty good idea, that their automobiles will only run on the appropriate fuel for that car, which is why, you don't see people filling up their gas tanks with water, or other stupid stuff, which will ruin their car; as well as in general, people understand that proper care and maintenance are fundamental keys for sustaining not only life in general, but material things that we utilize each and every day.  This then leads to the question; if we are intelligent enough to recognize that things of some worth to us have specific requirements to maintain them in good condition, than we probably too want to treat our body as if it really matters vitally to us by making good decisions.

For instance, most people understand that excessive smoking and excessive drinking, will take their toll on our bodies to which we will suffer from cancer, or cirrhosis of the liver, or other associated physical ills, not to mention that it will likely impair our judgments and damage family relations.  So too does excessive caloric intake which will over a period of time, increase our body fat, our girth, and our weight, to such an extent that the extra weight that we carry upon our physiques will take a toll on our bodies to the point that we may be prone to suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, as well as often having lower self esteem.

The thing is that the foods that we consume each and every day most definitely have an outcome on not only our physical health, but our mental well being, psychological feelings, and overall demeanor.  This means, that all things being equal, we should want to consume the foods that are more beneficial for us, and to try to stay away from the foods that are detrimental to us, as quite obviously, not all foods are the same in substance or effect for our physical body.  The finding and the knowing of which foods that are more desirable to partake of, isn't necessarily very easy, as we are inundated everyday with all sorts of commercials, ads, and propaganda, that appeal to the emotional parts of our being, to which beneath the surface, the product may or may not be profitable for us.

Additionally, news reports, media, books, and friends, provide us with all sorts of contradictory information, that even if we are quite diligent about eating the "right" foods that the definition of "right" appears to be in flex all of the time.  If we think that we can short circuit this process by simply only eating foods that taste good to us, we often will find that people will gravitate, most unfortunately to things that are sweet as opposed to neutral or bitter tasting foods, and sweet foods, in particular processed sweet foods, because of their sugar content have been shown to be almost conclusively not good for our bodies.

The thing is our body is our own, and ultimately it's up to us to make good food choices, and to then implement those choices into our diet.  After all, food is fuel, and we should want to run our body on the fuel that is most beneficial for us or clearly understand the tradeoffs if we don’t.

Evolution is real

America is a country founded on religious principles, to which we are reminded that each of us is born with inalienable rights, yet the way that today's western evolution is taught is at contradistinction to that mindset.  That is to say, far too many scientists and far too many textbooks, take a certain perverse pleasure in describing how somehow living organisms originated from some primordial soup, which ultimately led to human life, itself.  This theory is fundamentally flawed, however, on two very basic and important levels.

First, there is an old Latin saying, ex nihilo, which means "out of nothing", which signifies in its statement that you cannot create anything at any time from nothing, ever!  For every cause there is a beginning, or if there was not a beginning, than that must mean it existed always and always will exist.  Further, anytime that there is a beginning, than there must so too be an end, and by definition, that end would signify that what was there from the beginning had in its makings, its inevitable end.

While evolution is real in the sense that life evolved over time, through the adaptation to its environment, and through natural selection, to then from that statement believe that material life is all there ever was and all there ever will be is a falsehood of immense proportions.  The propaganda that is spread so prevalently by so many people of such high intelligence, but apparently also of low common sense, is that somehow you can create consciousness out of nothing.  Further to this point, there is a fundamental mistaken belief that evolution somehow proves God does not exist, to which, those that believe in such nonsense, miss the entire purpose of human life on this plane, completely.

Evolution can be looked upon as progress, with many a false step here or there, but over long extended periods of time, a relentless pursuit of adaptation that proves the adage that this world truly does represent the survival of the fittest.  If the lower forms can adapt and evolve over time, why not then, would this law not hold true for mankind, itself?

In point of fact, evolution does hold true for mankind, to which man, has an innate desire to seek out truth and light.  For scientists, this often seems to mean, and only means, a natural progression through natural laws, without the guidance of any Higher Being; but this type of thinking is a falsehood, because where does your consciousness come from; it cannot come from nothing, it cannot come from the evolution of mere material matter, it must come and does come from the breath of God, Himself. 

Most die-hard evolutionists believe strongly that man is the measure of himself.  This is a pathetic joke and hubris on man's part. The whole purpose of man's evolution on earth is to find his way back to God, while also lending a hand to his fellow man in so doing.  None of this can be achieved without the ability to communicate, relate, and to understand the essence of one another.  Those that believe that evolution is strictly a material process get caught up into a material world, a world that will entrap them and confuse them, and they will therefore never break free from the delusions of this world until such time that they come to recognize the avatars that have come upon this earth time and time again, are here even now, that state as simply and succinctly as possible, the purpose of evolution is to re-unite your true self with God, and that is all.

Calories are not all equal

Scientists and the government gets things wrong all of the time, to which as a consumer and as a human being, we must always be vigilant in recognizing that not everything that we are taught, is the truth.  Sometimes, information is wrongly applied, sometimes information is just plain wrong, and sometimes information is misinterpreted, and when it comes to calories, pretty much all of these things are true.  A calorie as defined by Merriam-Webster is: "a unit of heat used to indicate the amount of energy that foods will produce in the human body."   I suspect that definition, in of itself, will surprise people, who are actually completely clueless about what a calorie is. Now, because the human body is a complicated and masterful piece of work, to which because of the biochemical reactions within the human body when processing food, it is not possible for all foods to be assimilated exactly the same, you come across the basic calorie conundrum.

While the fundamental premise from scientists/government is that a calorie is a calorie that is one of those regrettable half-truths, that is dangerous for all those that do not know the full truth, which is that all calories are not the same, because different calories are treated differently within the human body. To the point, scientists have conducted numerous experiments that measure and test the effect of different dietary restrictions on animals that are similar in biochemical makeup to human beings, to which they have definitely determined that it isn't the caloric quantity or amount that matters, but the substance of the calories themselves.

This means that most diets and exercise programs get it all wrong when it comes to reducing weight, in which the basic belief from these pundits is that to reduce weight comes down to simple mathematics.  That is to say, they first determine the normal amount of calorie intake that your body needs to maintain its weight on a daily basis while also possibly formulating a program which adds on some bodily exercise, and then they reduce your daily caloric intake, accordingly.  This means, that with lower caloric intake, you will actually lose weight, which is true, and your ability to continue to lose weight or to maintain your weight loss simply comes down to being disciplined, and nothing much more, which is also true.  The problem, though, the fundamental problem with this type of approach if it is done to perfection, will be that it typically works for a while, until it no longer works, because the person under this caloric intake reduction program simply can't overcome the constant hunger that they feel within their body.

Instead, when it comes to losing weight and for general good health, one should not be focusing exclusively on caloric intake, but should instead be focusing mainly on the content of the calories.  The fact of the matter is that the human body and mind, treats and processes foods differently, based on the food that is being consumed.  That is to say, not all calories are equal, because foods are not equal.   In order to lose weight then, one needs to reduce their intake of bad foods and bad calories, and to replace them with good foods and good calories.  This means pretty much the obvious, that eating ice cream of 500 calories is not the same as eating a steak of 500 calories.

This leads to the point that our food choices do matter, which means that the consumption of foods that have limited or virtually no nutritional benefits should be eliminated or significantly reduced, and instead should be replaced with foods which have known nutritional value. 

The Exploitation of Middle Eastern Oil

No matter how you slice it, oil is the most important commodity in the world and will probably continue to be the most important commodity in the world for the foreseeable future. Not only is oil the most valuable fuel in the world, so that without it, economies would quickly falter and then decay, but its incumbent uses such as in plastics, roadways, chemical products, and so forth, are seemingly endless.   While nations can be successful without strong domestic oil reserves, such as Japan, Germany, and France, there are then also nations with strong strategic reserves that are rich simply because of their oil wealth, and for no other discernible reason, such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.

Because of the dual value of oil, to which simply having it and successfully exploiting oil will increase the wealth of your nation, as well as in the usage of it domestically, which provides jobs, stability, growth, modernity, infrastructure and all the incumbent advantages of being in control of a reliable, consistent, and inexpensive fuel source forming a solid basis for a nation; oil is, by definition and practicality, that incredibly valuable commodity that greatly influences the outcome of wars and of wealth, along with its inherent weaknesses of corruption and the exploitation of nations.

Western nations are very good at many things, and certainly one of those many things, is in the exploitation of those that are ignorant of the true value of certain commodities and goods.  While it might seem amusing that valuable jewels, minerals, and furs were traded by illiterate savages in yesteryear for mere trinkets and cooking utensils, it isn't so amusing when blowback comes back to haunt you.  For instance, the House of Saud, made a formal agreement with Standard Oil of California in 1933, to which, Standard Oil was granted exclusive rights to the oil in the eastern desert, which later proved to be the greatest oil find in the 20th century.  While Standard Oil, later to be known in its partnership with the house of Saud as the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) provided monies and funds to Saudi Arabia in return for its oil, the main intricacies of the negotiation wasn't really with Saudi Arabia, but with Great Britain, so that these countries jointly would be able to exploit and extract whatever amounts of oil that they could from the Middle East for their mutual benefit.

Not too surprisingly, domestic oil companies while working in partnership with foreign nations, found it to their benefit to negotiate with countries that had a political structure in which the power and resource control were held in the hands of the elite few, as opposed to truly democratic countries. This meant too that the United States in conjunction with oil companies, made it their policy to supply whatever that needed to be supplied logistically, militarily, strategically in such a way that America's access to cheap middle eastern oil would not be tampered with by middle eastern nations, reneging on their contractual obligations to this country.  By virtue of this mindset, American companies were able to exploit and to profit by billions of dollars from their favorable deals as well as providing military supplies, communications, and technology to protect or uphold these foreign oil regimes from foes, both domestic as well as foreign.

While Middle Eastern nations have asserted more sovereignty over their own affairs in recent years, they are, to a large extent, still at the mercy of the technology and infrastructure of Western nations and their immense power, to which the tentacles of the West reach into virtually every aspect of their lives, their politics, and their country, and with the massive amounts of money that oil represents, corruption is absolutely rampant, meaning for the most part, that countries such as Saudi Arabia are in so deep that they could not possibly extricate themselves from the West; while the massive wealth inequality breed inside their restrictive country sets the stage for citizen revolt and upheaval that very well may shake the very foundations of this world.

The All Important Difference between Darwin and Wallace

Unless you are in the scientific field, a good student, or someone that knows their history fairly well, you probably aren't familiar with the name, Alfred Russel Wallace, whereas the name, Charles Darwin, is a name that most everyone is both familiar with as well as having a general idea of the fact that he is the man behind the origin of theory of evolution and natural selection.  The thing of it is, though, although Darwin seemingly gets all the accolades, each biologist actually independently came up with the theory of natural selection, although there were differences between the two, with Wallace emphasizing more the adaption of species to their environment, as compared to Darwin and his belief in the survival of the fittest, as well as species changing via sexual selection.   That said, the two biologists had their papers read at the Linnean Society of London in 1858, to which the society stated that, "The gentlemen having, independently and unknown to one another, conceived the same very ingenious theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of varieties and of specific forms on our planet…" 

Nowadays, if this sort of thing would have happened, as in a "co-discovery" and "independent," it might have well have degenerated quickly into an all-out fight as to who was first, original, and so forth, but fortunately those Victorian times were different and far more genteel.  The fact of the matter is that Wallace was entirely gracious to Darwin, his social superior in class conscious England, but at the same time Wallace never felt upstaged or in egotistical need for his name to be emblazoned in glory.  Above all else, Wallace was a colleague, a scientist, a biologist, a naturalist, as well as being a reserved man, who felt more comfortable standing behind "Darwinism" than being front and center with it, with Wallace, himself, clearly being a man who appreciated those that advanced science for the benefit and education of mankind.

The theory of evolution, however, was something that for a religious society, especially those of a religious stripe that took their Scripture as the literal truth, was both of momentous as well as terrifying importance for the meaning of mankind, itself.  For Darwin, man, was subject to the same laws of other species, to which mankind must therefore too have descended from earlier species, which in our case meant the great ape family, signifying that man, himself, had evolved from apes.  It was that type of admission, or theory that would obviously create havoc for both the meaning of man, as well as to man's status in the world.  That is to say, if man was merely a creature that had somehow evolved over time, this could conceivably be also seen as a stipulation that God was either irrelevant or non-existent, and that therefore it then followed that the Bible, itself, was merely a fable.

While we cannot know for a certainty what Darwin's enlightened views were on God, he self confessed to being an agnostic; whereas Wallace was a devout Spiritualist, freely admitting that given the right circumstances the living could communicate with those that were physically dead as well as humans having the innate ability to communicate or to become attuned with the Higher Intelligence.  This meant that Wallace knew that the evolution of mankind which gave man the ability to think, to reason, to communicate, the knowledge of mathematics and symbols, space and time, as well as our innate code and understanding of ethics, moralityand natural law, could only have come to us via a Higher power.  Because Wallace knew this, he intuited and understood that each human life, without exception, has intrinsic value as well as being given a free will, so that each of us is ultimately the sum of what we have accomplished by our conduct and interaction here, and that therefore our evolutionary spiritual progress was written by our deeds which we carried with us upon our departure from this material plane.

Man's Search for Altered States of Consciousness

Inside each of us is a desire to know something more than what we see or respond to in this material world.  However, there are plenty of those who contend that this indeed is all there ever will be, and anything else beyond this world is merely wishful thinking; yet, each of those people, each night, experiences a world beyond this world in their own dreams, which often takes them beyond time and space.

Man has an innate need to find something outside of himself and outside of his typical world.  While some may find this altered state of consciousness easily through prayer, quiet contemplation, or meditation, others take an entirely different route with the usage of drugs and assorted substances that through chemical reactions to the brain force the consciousness into a different state than it is at everyday rest; very often this desire to get "high" comes from the desire to become something other than your perception of whom or what you fundamentally appear to be.

This need for an altered state of consciousness, no matter how it is attempted, comes from a thirst for something outside of ourselves that will provide meaning, purpose, contentment, and answers to the questions that we have.  Each of us believes, no matter where we are at, at one time or another that we are lacking in something, which means that we should be searching for that something else, although often we don't really seem to know what that something is.

For some of us, we try to drown out that search by staying busy and occupied, so that we never have to take the time to actually contemplate that beyond our small little world, are things that are so much bigger.  For others, that search is so vague; we don't know how to go about searching for it, so we take substitutes for it, by ingesting or smoking substances that will ease our mind in such a way, that we aren't worried about the search, itself.  Then there are those that know that if they can just still their active mind, and turn within, that they can indeed connect with a dimension beyond this one, and experience true peace and love at a capacity previously unimagined.

It is that search that pushes man inevitably forward, even though at times, it appears mankind is in a period of moral decay and decline.  That search is the reason for being, it is the reason that people do not give up and will continue to push on, even under the most trying of circumstances.  No matter the noise of a busy day, or the sheer boredom of a day without direction or purpose, we are pulled, always pulled to find that which must be found.  We can talk about it, ignore it, take drugs to try to kill it or push it to the edges of oblivion, deny it, curse it, or we can embrace it and become one with it. 

Our mind cannot know peace and tranquility until it reaches union with the One mind--and with that union this delusion that traps us so well within this world will vanish as if it never was.

King Henry VIII and the break from the Catholic Church

In the sixteenth century the King of England and his court were the rulers of their people and of their nation.  Still, despite that undisputed secular authority, the Catholic Church, with its seat of power and wealth in Rome, held both valuable land in England, priestly authority, educational status and influence, moral suasion, and significant sway upon many vital areas of everyday English life.  While the Catholic Church did not rule England, or share rule with England, its services, impact, and strength were paid for in one form or another by English tribute to the Church.  For the most part, the State through the King, his court, and parliament in conjunction with Church representatives as authorized by Papal authority, worked together so as to hold dominion over the peoples of England for primarily the benefit of both ruing authorities.

However, in any sharing of power, there often comes a time, when one party recognizes that by usurping power from another, his will increase, and theirs will correspondingly decrease.  When the Catholic Church was put to the test by King Henry VIII in regards to Henry's desired divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon, the church would not accede to his demands, but in proof that every action or decision that we make has consequences, King Henry VIII had his response.  Henry VIII's response, was undoubtedly, well thought out and contemplated by his court, to which his chief advisor Thomas Cromwell, in conjunction with the Parliament, decided that the king, and not the pope, was the supreme head of the Church of England, and that therefore no decisions from Rome were binding upon the kingdom of England, and that therefore the Catholic Church was now in conflict with the absolute authority of the realm, itself.

The upshot of this fundamental religious change within England was that the control of papal lands, assets, priests, and the influence of religious thought, was now under the guidance and command of the King of England to which those that were of the Catholic faith, would now be compelled to become part and parcel of the Anglican faith, which for all expressed purposes, was now formally separated from the Catholic fold, so that those that failed to affirm their faith to the avowed Defender of the Faith (King Henry VIII) would now be subject to the persecution of treason to the State.  This meant execution for some priests, banishment for others, and conversion by those that were perhaps more pragmatic in their outlook.

King Henry VIII's bold break from the Catholic Church enabled the taking of papal lands and assets within English territory, without compensation to Rome.  This obviously meant a very nice bounteous gift for those in authority, those in the court and those in parliament, with perhaps a small trickle-down effect for the commoners of England.  This also meant that since the King and the Church were now in total agreement as they were one and the same, that an appeal by the people to either one, would result in the same resolution, as the King was by law head of the State as well as head of the Church, meaning that not only did he have the Divine right of Kings, but was the direct interpreter of such.

Judgment at Nuremberg

Wars are often regrettable and are almost always a very nasty business, which often brings out the worst in people as well as their countries, although on the other hand there are those that display incredible courage, prescient vision, and bold gallantry that best defines a man that has risen and commended themselves well to the difficult tasks that occur when worlds collide. World War II was a war that cost millions upon millions of lives, to which not only were there a tremendous amount of soldiers that died, but also civilians, in particular defenseless citizens that were deliberately bombed without any real strategic purpose, dragged into concentration camps and/or murdered, and so forth.

Yet, in the end, one side was victorious, to which history tells us, that they were in the right, but to subsequently believe that all of the war crimes were committed by the Axis nations, and none were committed by the Allied nations, would be a grand disservice to mankind, and a form of propaganda that deliberately skewed the facts in such a way as to define, one group of nations as being evil, and another group of nations as being good, with no shades of gray in-between.  The fact of the matter is that there were atrocities committed against humanity on both sides of the war, as well as tremendous acts of courage by representatives of each and every nation.

Since the Allied nations were victorious, and at a tremendous cost, they felt that the vanquished should have to face the music for what they had wrought.  The tribunal at Nuremberg, however, was made of, and only of, representatives of France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Republic, and no other countries.  This, In of itself, was deliberately prejudicial against the German defendants, as without any judges from their country on the tribunal, it mattered little how good or how bad their legal defense was, whether evidence was favorable or not, as the result was determined by the tribunal who would ruled over all, to which all of the tribunal members were members of the victor nations who had suffered greatly.

At the Nuremberg trial, the German defendants were essentially accused of war crimes, as well as crimes against humanity.  The problem with these charges was that they were either essentially ex-post facto laws, or international laws, subject to interpretation, that were applied in this trial to only the defeated nation of Germany, as if by definition, the victorious nations were absolved of all, without question. While there isn't any doubt that certain Germans committed terrible atrocities, waged aggressive war of conquest, cheated, stole, tortured, abuse and killed civilians as well as prisoners, were inhumane, broke treaties and agreements; the trial itself was far less than a search for truth and justice, and far more of making sure that some would pay in blood.

This judgment at Nuremberg, which ostensibly was meant to demonstrate justice and fairness in jurisprudence, was neither. Instead, it merely took on that guise and was instead a corrupted form of retribution that resulted in the death and imprisonment for those that were conveniently found guilty, whereas those that had a scientific or other marketable value to any of the Allied nations, were often given a free pass; mirroring in a sick way, that those that have utility would live, and those that did not, would die.

Islamic Fundamentalists, Women, and Oppression

In any country, there are laws, and for most people, there is an obligation to obey the State as well as to adhere to specific religious commands.  In some countries, there is minimal mixing of religious with secular law, whereas in other countries, there is a commingling of such.  In most of the western nations, the battle for woman's suffrage and equal rights is for all practical purposes over, with women now standing as co-equals with men.  This, in itself, is both a great advancement for women as well as for mankind, which is richer for having recognized that women both deserve their voice as well as their place at the table of life.

However, human progress is never exactly easy, nor necessarily linear, nor do all societies see things in the same manner or same way.  In recent years, we have seen the increase of Islamic fundamentalists that have made it part and parcel of their religious belief and way, that women must conform to certain rules within their society or suffer the consequences for their disobedience to such.  The seriousness and severity that Islam takes in regards to their task of what women can and cannot do within their family, within their community, and within their country is not something to be brushed aside as of no real importance to those not of the faith, or not residents of such country, but should instead concern all of us, because we are all members of the same world.

Life is full of restrictions and punishments, in any country, and in any religion, to which the fact that these things exist, is because countries and communities are made up of laws.  Ideally, those laws are just, equally applied, and in accordance with natural law, but too often they are arbitrary, capricious, and wrong.  There are two sexes in this world, and one sex should not be allowed to run riot over the other, as if one sex, by innate order, has dominion over the other. 

There are many ways to insist that one person should have power over another, such as through divine revelation, scriptural interpretation, manmade law, tradition, power, strength, and fear, but this does not mean that this is right or in accordance with justice.  The problem that many Islamic States have and that the communities and families of such have at the present day, is the wrong belief, that somehow their interpretation, their law, their rules, and their commands, are sanctioned by the prophet or of God, himself.  It is always rather convenient to be both the lawmaker as well as the law interpreter, to which all sorts of mischief can be accomplished under these false flags.

The thing is, it comes down to this fundamental fact, that life moves too fast for certain peoples in the world today, and consequently because of that fear they want to turn back the sands of time, and thereby to control certain things as if their judgments were sacrosanct, but they are not.  This mistaken belief, taken to the extreme, means that incertain countries or communities, women must be "protected" by restricting their movements, by eliminating their clothing choice, by taking their right to an education away from them, by monitoring them day and night, and ultimately in practicality, doing and thinking for them.

This is oppression, pure and simple, for some perhaps the cage that they are in, is gilded, for many it most certainly is not.   Whichever it is, and however it turns out, the caged bird will sing, and its song must and will be heard.

Is Marijuana Legal?

The one thing that we have learned over the last fifty-odd years in the United States is that Federal law trumps State law, for better or for worse.  While it may be true that many States have decriminalized marijuana, and that some additional States have legalized recreational marijuana, from a Federal law perspective, marijuana is in direct violation of Title 21 United States Code (USC) Controlled Substances Act.  This means, that at any time, without notification, the Federal government has what clearly appears to be the legal authority to shut down recreational marijuana, no matter the State legal status of such. 

However, in demonstration that the laws of this country are truly arbitrary, clearly dependent upon which political party is in power and how that political party prioritizes what it will or will not prosecute, recreational marijuana is alive, kicking, and legal in four States of this union.  Each of those States that have legalized marijuana have done so while a Democrat has been in the office of the Presidency, whereas most Republican candidates for the Presidency have made it clear, that should they be elected, that they would enforce the law of the land and therefore federally prosecute clear and present violations of the Controlled Substances Act.

This means, in effect, the laws of the United States in regards to the legalization of marijuana are most definitely not equally applied, and are wholly dependent upon who is in authority in this country.  This is why banks that are federally charted will not and have not conducted business with organizations that are legally selling cannabis within their State, because the banks do not want to be caught in the crossfire of aiding and abetting consortiums that are clearly in violation of Federal law.

Further to this point, all landlords, vendors, employers and employees, and any and everybody that is directly or indirectly involved in the cultivation, storing, and selling of marijuana in States to which it is legal, are everyday putting themselves in legal danger, of being subject to prosecution actions by Federal authorities.  The legal status of marijuana in those States that sell it is most definitely a status that rests on a foundation of sand, and until such time that the Federal government removes marijuana from its list of Controlled Substances that fact will not change, despite marijuana's ostensible popularity or State legislative approval.

In actual fact, marijuana proponents are in a race against time, to which four States, are not in aggregate even close to a plurality of the States needed to end this game in their favor.  In all probability, the only real possibility for the Federal government to change its laws in regards to marijuana is for a significant number of States to legalize marijuana over the next few years and the number of those States probably needs to be somewhere around twenty States. 

Should marijuana become legal in about twenty States, and should the office of the Presidency remain in Democratic hands, then and only then, would it become greater than 50:50 that marijuana would soon become legal and regulated throughout the entire United States through Federal legislation that applied equally to all fifty States.  Until that time, those purveyors of legal marijuana, cannot rest easy, despite however much comfort they may get from the smoking of cannabis, itself.

"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"

The above quote was made by Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of State, in regards to diplomatic correspondence and the reading of it, by the United States, in 1929.  Depending upon your point of view, Stimson's attitude was either one of courageous insight which upheld the rights and the concept that diplomatic communications of nations that we were not at war with should not be intercepted and decoded, or just plain stupid naiveté of a sleuthing amateur, far outside his element, and lacking in the basic knowledge that information is power, no matter how that information is obtained.

Those spying days are generations removed from where we are today in regards to intercepting communications both domestic as well as foreign, and our ability to decode, process, along with our skill in correlating information today is unparalleled.  While there is definitely controversy about spying in America, most of that controversy nowadays is directed more towards the protection of our own citizen's 4th Amendment rights which are meant to secure us against unreasonable searches, rather than being concerned whatsoever about spying on enemies or allies. 

The thing is, if you do truly believe that it's just fine to spy on other governments as well as other country's citizens, whether they are allied with your country or not, it sure doesn't take much more effort to move the needle a little bit further over to authorize that the government should also have the right to spy domestically because we can't trust certain people from certain countries that are within our borders, nor can we trust their friends, or their friends of their friends, or associates, or their visitors, or sympathizers, or people that are in the same vicinity, or go to the same functions, or share some common link with those people, until after connecting all the dots, and all the degrees of the dots, you pretty much come to the conclusion, that the government has to track everybody, all of the time.

If you then still believe that all of this is right and good, and in fact, is patriotic in some way, than it isn't too much further of a stretch to stipulate, that the government should have the right to especially track, harass, arrest, and/or punish people that through analytical analysis are more likely than others to be a potential enemy to the State as it exists today.  This is the path that we are currently on, a country that treats its citizens separately and unequally without fairness or justice.

Do we really need to read each other's mail?  Do we really need to know all the minutiae of everybody?  The government insists that we do for our own protection and for our security, but that's simply the excuse that they use in order to more effectively monitor and to control its own citizenry.  The government wants to have all of this information on all of us to ensure that they have the means to suppress and to control us.  So far, it's working quite well for the government, while there are always going to be a few outliers, many more are content just as long as they continue to reliably receive their bread and their circuses.

Colleges, Student Loans, and Debt Collectors

Colleges are not in the business of charity, and the reason we know that, is because most colleges charge good money for their curriculum to their students.  Unfortunately, wisdom and prudence is not something that we born with, it is more something that is developed over a period of time, and for some of us, it is never developed at all.  Too often in America, higher education exploits its students, by convincing them and providing loans to them, of such staggering amounts, that common sense is completely left out of the equation.  The fact of the matter is, many students do not have a real grasp or conception of just how expensive their education will be for them, how slippery the slope is for their student loans, nor do they properly understand the ramifications of becoming indebted at such a young age for such a large amount of money, yet, the result will be that it is their life, their lifestyle, their credit, and their pocketbook that will be effected by these earlier decisions.

Most students believe that the loan that they take out will always be between them and their college of choice, in which, perhaps these students feel that since the college knows them, and that these students know personnel within the college, a relationship has been developed, and whatever transpires, there is a good chance that a happy medium, in one form or another, one way or another, will or has been achieved.  Unfortunately, that isn't the way many colleges are structured, for whatever reason, some colleges are not structured to collect on the loans that they have issued, and therefore preferred to have those loans processed and served by a third party that specializes in debt; additionally, there are colleges that are forced or compelled to sell their loans, in order to free up money to make additional loans to new students that are coming onto their campus.  In any event, the selling of student debt to debt collectors that specialize in collecting this sort of debt is part and parcel of the way this game is played.

Once your debt has been sold, there are additional problems that a former student most contend with, such as the fact that inevitably the debt amount has increased and will continue to increase because of added penalties and fees that the debt collector tacks on.  Moreover, whereas your college campus previously may have been seen as both your friend and confidant, your new debt collector is neither one, and any calls or communication made by you to your college campus will be of no avail, since your debt is now out of their hands and into the hands of the debt collector.  The debt collector only has one purpose in contacting you, again and again, and that is to collect the money or to start a program to collect the money and they will often be relentless in doing so, because your money fuels their business model.

The bottom line is, like slavery of old, you have been sold, and your new master, doesn't care whether your education was of value or not, doesn't care about your current job pay or personal situation, but simply is after the money, and doesn't much care about anything other than that.  Your failure to pay your new master, will ultimately mean the destruction of your credit rating, as well as the strong possibility that any State or federal tax refunds you are entitled to will instead be allocated to pay that student debt from yesteryear.

Are Credit Cards Even Necessary

There was a time when there weren't any credit cards at all, and later there came a time when credit cards were issued only to those that were deemed most credit worthy, whereas today credit cards are often marketed and issued to people of questionable earning capacity.  We are taught nowadays that we need credit cards in order to establish our credit rating and to build up a good credit score, but what is often forgotten is the downside of not being responsible with your credit will destroy your credit score, possible preclude you from employment at certain companies, and stick you with debts that will be part of your life for the foreseeable future. 

When it comes to the necessity of credit cards, we can say for a certainty that those of high income and/or deep assets don't have a need for a credit card, because they already have the wherewithal to pay for the things that they need with their income stream or assets.  For those that make a decent income and/or have decent assets, credit cards are often not needed, but may be desired for those times when funds are a little tight or something unexpected comes up.  Then there are those that are limited in both their income and their assets, who often may strongly desire to have a credit card, but most definitely don't need to have one, mainly because there is a near certainty that having a credit card will put them into a situation to which they will be subjected to penalties, high interest rates, and fees.

There is a fundamental reason why banks issue so many credit cards to so many people and that reason has absolutely nothing to do with people deserving credit cards or the like, and everything to do with the money that banking establishments make from the issuance of credit. While banks will make money even on people that pay their credit cards in full each month, by virtue of the fees that they charge merchants, and of which, incidentally, those costs are pass onto the consumer in the form of slightly higher merchant pricing; they make a lot more money from those that do not or cannot pay their credit card bill in full each month. 

There is one other reason why credit is issued so easily to so many people in America and that is the inherent tendency for people to treat a credit card purchase differently from a debit card, or cash, or a check-issued payment.  For whatever reason, and perhaps it simply comes down to the reality of it, when you pay for something with cash or cash equivalent, it feels real, because it is real, as that money literally has left your hands and will not be returning to you; whereas with a credit card charge that is merely a debit to your account, representing something that doesn’t have to be paid immediately, and consequently doesn't feel like money or its equivalent, instead it feels more like an exchange that benefits you.

The banks that issue credit cards understand the psychology and the lure of easy credit, and make it their policy to stick it to those that aren't capable of understanding that by their participation, they are playing in a game to which if they, the consumer, loses, they will have to pay penalties, fees, and high interest rates to the banks, to which it can be stated, just like in gambling, the house never loses.

Your Interest Rate, Annual Percentage Rate (APR), and Amortization

At some point in your life, you will probably take out a rather large loan, typically for a home, to which you will be assigned an agreed upon interest rate and then often, a higher APR rate.  A lot of people don't pay a lot of attention to the fact that the APR rate is higher than the advertised interest rate, or even if they do recognized that one number is higher than the other, don't understand why, or even question it, but they probably should, because they are the ones responsible for making those payments over the term of the loan.

For instance, your credit score might qualify you for a thirty year fixed loan rate of 4% in which after your down payment on the property, you have a principal of $200,000 to service.  You might think then that to figure out how much your monthly payment would be would could down to a simple calculation of 4% of the principal amount of $200,000 which would equate to a total of $667 per month.  That number would not be correct, because it only takes into account, the interest portion of the loan and does not take into account that the loan as given by the bank in which you will become the owner free and clear after thirty years, that you must also pay down the principal of the loan, which is $200,000, month by month.  In this particular example, your actual payment would be $955, of which $288 would be applied to your principal of $200,000 and the interest would be calculated against that same $200,000.  The very next month, your payment would be the same, but the division would be ever so slightly different, because the principal would have dropped from $200,000 to $199,712, meaning your interest payment would drop from $667 to $666, and your payment towards your principal would have risen to $289.  So that, inexorably, over the length of the loan, while your payment amount would remain the same, the amount of money being paid to interest would decline, and the amount of money being applied to your principal would increase.   After ten years, your principal will have declined from $200,000 to $157,568, or a decline of 21.22% in your principal, even though you have been paying on your loan for 10 years, or 33% of the length of time for your loan.  What this means and signifies to the consumer, is that even though you have been paying your loan faithfully for ten years, your ownership equity is significantly less than the amount of time that you have been in the house, so that if you were to sell or move from the house your equity would not be 33%, which seems reasonable, considering that you have been in the home for ten years, but would instead leave you with an amortization percentage of just 21.22%, plus any appreciation of the home.

Then there is the difference between the interest rate as advertised, for instance, the aforementioned 4%, and the APR rate which will typically be slightly higher.  The reason that this is true, is that oftentimes there are fees, points, and other assorted charges, that rather than being assessed against you in such a manner that you pay those costs up front, they are tagged onto the loan itself, so that instead of a loan of $200,000, your loan might be $204,000 because of necessary fees and points, and that extra $4,000 must be paid off, and the only way to do so is to make it part of the loan, which would increase your payment from $955 to $974 a month, and make your APR therefore 4.165%.

Those that aren't gifted with dealing with numbers will often just end up trusting that the numbers as presented by the bank are both fair and accurate.  While they certainly will be accurate, the fairness depends a lot upon your particular circumstances, recognizing that the entire banking apparatus are experts at this game, and you facing the most important financial obligation of your life, are probably not.

You can Bet High School Football

Americans love to gamble and will gamble on just about anything, and those that run gambling sites overseas are well aware of the fact that Americans have the money and the desire to gamble, which is why they try to accommodate most everything that would entice an American to visit and to play for real money on their offshore internet site.  When it comes to football, in order to get betting action on a football game, a line is produced which handicaps one team against the other, which means that the favored team will have to give up points against the weaker opposition, so that you will invariably see printed in papers or online, things such as the Patriots -6, meaning that when the game is over and score is tallied up, that determining the winner of the bet comes down to subtracting 6 points from the Patriots score and whoever then has more points after this adjustment is made is the team that actually wins the bet. 

The actual betting on football games is legal in America, but only in a few particular states, to which the industry leader is Nevada.  This means for the vast majority of Americans, that they must turn to other sources to make their bets and the offshore internet betting sites are well aware of that propensity and have successfully taken advantage of a market that is underserved in America.  One of those sites that accept American players is the Costa Rican-based 5dimes which has been handling sports betting since 1998.  What makes 5dimes a bit more interesting than most, is that they actually make lines on some important High School football games, which seems like a joke, but in actuality is absolutely true.   This means that Americans can place a bet on High School kids from the comfort of their home, which certainly seems unfathomable but it does indeed exist.

While the High School football lines on 5dimes are structured the same as their NFL and college lines, there are two important and critical difference, to which one is the vigorish, that is to say the percentage that the bookmaker takes or charges its customer when they make their bet, as well as the fact that the monetary limit for High School football is only $100 per account.  The "vig" for High School football is -120, whereas typically the industry norm is -110, meaning that a bettor must put up $120 to get $220 from the bookmaker ($120 + $100 for a winning bet), which equates to an actual winning percentage of 54.55% just to breakeven over a period of time. 

Yes, when it is all said and done, on your computer or mobile device, you can bet on certain, specific High School football games, which consist of unpaid High School students from the ages of 15-18, and of which the players themselves as well as the coaches are typically blithely unaware of the betting action, incapable of believing that there is a line on the game, or that any of this is even possible, but there it is. 

The bottom line, is the need for betting action on High School football, merely reflects back to us, how serious these games are for certain players, coaches, teams, communities, fans, parents, and recruiters, that take the actual play of the game as serious enough to lay real money on it.

The Importance of Good Water

Too often we take for granted the things that we really need and are dependent upon, until such things are either in short supply, damaged, or unavailable, and then we realize just how important certain things are to us, our day-to-day activities, and to our survival.  One of those very important things is water, to which, if we didn't have good water that was abundantly available our lives and livelihood would be in a constant state of danger.  We often don't realize how versatile water really is as we need it for proper agricultural irrigation, sewage,  mining, hydroelectric power, and so many other routine industrial uses that without water being readily available for industry, the whole infrastructure of food, transportation, and power would quickly begin to crumble before falling into utter chaos.

The fact that our physical bodies are about 60% water should send a signal to us that the quality and ready abundance of water, or its substitutes, are of vital importance in the maintaining of good physical health.  This means too that we cannot assume that water that is coming out of our tap, or in a river, or a lake, is de facto, water that is good or safe for us as too often water is contaminated by the aftereffects of an age in which we live, which amounts to dangerous manmade chemicals that get into our water supply through happenstance or by design.

There is an assumption that our municipal water supply is carefully monitored by governmental authorities and while this is true to an extent, what is often not discussed is that what an agency decides is an acceptable degree of chemical infiltration may not be actually be safe, let alone measure or count everything that needs to be measured or counted.  The Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently stated that: "After analyzing water samples from 201 municipal water systems from 43 states, EWG found chemicals considered “probable human carcinogens” in every single water system they tested."

Most of us believe that the water that we are drinking and utilizing each and every day is safe for us, because it looks safe, it smells safe, and it tastes safe, but that does not necessarily mean that it is safe, and if you are consistently consuming water that has some degree of contamination to it, day after day, this will not be beneficial to your health.

You might very well ask the question as to why our government might allow us to utilize and consume water that is not as safe as it should be and the answer to that question is somewhat complicated, as one esteemed scientist may believe that toxins at a certain low level are not harmful, whereas another esteemed scientist can produce data that demonstrates that it is.  The other issue is that the maintenance and continual safety of our water costs time, money, and energy, to which most municipalities do not have an abundance of any of those things.

The one thing that we can state with certainty is that this modern age with its overabundance of manmade chemicals, is an era of uncharted territory, and that should our water become contaminated, this would have very dire implications.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Payment

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a federal program meant to supplement the income of primarily low-income wage earners as a way of providing a helping hand for those that are qualified and working at gainful employment.  According to cbpp.org "in the 2013 tax year… over 27 million working families and individuals received the EITC;  ….the average EITC was $3,074 for a family with children." The EITC payment is made once a year, upon the completion and submission of the subject's fiscal tax year, to which the recipient of such, will receive their EITC payment in one lump sum.  Not too surprisingly, this lump-sum payment for virtually all EITC recipients will often be looked upon as a monetary bonus or the equivalent of hitting the lottery, and thereby will quickly be allocated and used for the purposes of paying down debt, furniture, car expenses, clothing, medical needs, shopping spree, or similar, with very little or nothing being set aside as savings for future expenses or needs.

The EITC payment money is so important for so many recipients often because throughout the year they have struggled to make ends meet and quite frequently have had to use other means, such as the use of credit cards, friends, family, or charity, to keep their bills current or at least somehow to keep their creditors at bay.  This implies strongly that each dollar of the said EITC monies, is of value to the recipient, and while it is one thing for the recipient, to spend it somewhat unwisely or carelessly, it seems a real shame to have a significant portion of that refund, siphoned off by tax preparers such as H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, who take advantage of people's fear of the IRS, or of filing taxes correctly.

What these tax preparers do for the most part, is play upon the fear on their consumers as well as offering them the convenience and lure of getting their money even sooner, but like most anything, that sounds too good to be true, those tax preparers make sure to get significantly more than their fair share, for tax anticipation loans, for the preparation and filing of your taxes, for add-on services, and for useless audit and error-protection guarantees.  Unfortunately, for the consumer signing up for these services, since they aren't actually paying anything out of their pocket, but instead are having these fees and services taken from their refund, they just see it as nothing more than the cost of doing business with the man.  However, those hundreds and hundreds of dollars add up to millions of dollars of extra revenue for the tax preparers, while taking away much needed money from those that can least afford to sacrifice those dollars.

The main problem with the EITC as currently structured is that the payment is provided to the recipient as one lump sum, to which often they are not skilled in the best way to handle this money, and are invariably surrounded by sharks, parasites, leeches, snakes, opportunists, liars, cheats, con artists, and those that are expert at extracting monies from people in one way or another.  While the government likes to pat itself on their back about how wonderful this program is and how responsible and beneficial it is to the working poor, they conveniently forget that it enriches far too many undeserving people and organizations at the very expense and on the sore tired backs of the exploited poor.

Multigenerational Housing

The average home in America has doubled in size from the 1950s and whereas it was routine back in the day, for a home just to have one full bathroom, or for your children to share a bedroom, it is quite common for even the smallest houses of today, to have at least two bathrooms, and a separate room for each child.  The strangest thing is that in 1960 the average household consisted of 3.33 members whereas in 2014 it had been reduced to 2.54 members per household, so one can only assume that the increase in square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, are because of man's increased desire to have more space, and more privacy.

While there is something to be said for having more space, more privacy, and for striking out on your own, especially if the situation pretty much warrants a separation from blood family ties for reasons that may be quite legitimate and understandable, there is also something to be said for maintaining those connections, because your quality and the substance of your life will often be better for having done so.  Although it is probably a reflection of an economy that does not seem to have enough good paying jobs to spread around, there has been an increase in America of multigenerational households in America over recent years, so that according to slate.com there are now "56.8 million" people living in multigenerational households for one reason or another.

While there are obviously downsides to have multigenerational people living together under the same roof, such as the lack of privacy, lack of people just minding their own business, lack of space, sharing, meddling, elder care, or nursery/babysitting obligations, and so forth, there are also enormous benefits that typically far outweigh the disadvantages.  For instance, the monetary savings for living together are substantial, as housing costs are the number one expense for any family, so through the sharing of these expenses, everybody benefits.  Also, there is less of a need for daycare, extra automobiles, outside tutoring or mentoring, and there is much more of opportunity to learn and respect the wisdom of elders, the joys of seeing a baby take in the world for the first time, and the fact that often there is somebody that will listen to or be a shoulder for you on those difficult days.

So often we hear about peace on earth, and goodwill for all, but if we are unable to have peace within our homes, and to spread goodwill amongst those that we care and love for the most, how can it be possible that peace on earth can ever come about?  To a large extent, multigenerational housing is an opportunity to understand the meaning of words such as: compromise, sharing, selflessness, caring, love, and to recognize that each of us will invariably have their own exit that follows from their own entrance, to which multigenerational living will afford us the opportunity to remind us of this salient fact.

In a vibrant multigenerational household, when we look into the eyes of our fellow housemates, we should see the reflection of ourselves, and therefore be able to say, this too is me.