Bloodletting

You don't hear too much about bloodletting in modern-day America, but bloodletting has a long history to which blood was considered one of the four "humors", which also consisted of phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile and therefore the lancing of veins in one's body was performed or the usage of leeches were done to help balance out the four humors to which blood was considered to be a substance that must be "let out" because the prevailing belief at that time was that blood was stagnant within the body.

Bloodletting was a common practice for nearly 3000 years and was considered to be a necessary and absolutely vital step to bringing a patient back to good health, when such a patient was obviously suffering from some sort of illness or discomfort.  So common of a procedure was bloodletting, that when George Washington was complaining of a throat infection, he had a massive amount of blood removed from this body within a very short period of time, which was probably and unfortunately the main cause of his death only a few hours later.  That a man of Washington's stature and renown, the father of our country, would be treated in this manner is but a reflection of how mainstream bloodletting was back in its day.

Bloodletting eventually began to disappear out of favor within the last 100 years as medicine became more modern and more knowledgeable, to which the indiscriminate bleeding of patients was no longer considered to be in the patient's best interest.  However, believe it or not, bloodletting has not completely disappeared within the medical annals of today.  For instance, bloodletting with leeches is effectively used for certain microsurgical procedures because of the anticoagulant capabilities of leeches which are critical in preventing blood clots. 

The donating of blood is considered to be a form of bloodletting which benefits the recipients of the blood but probably also benefits the giver of blood too.  That is to say, the giving of blood will help to lower blood pressure which is a known benefit for most people because hypertension is debilitating.  This implies that the voluntary giving of blood, or bloodletting, for those that suffer from hypertension and/or for those who are obese, is something that should be seriously considered.  Another consideration, for modern-day bloodletting is that the giving of blood helps to dispose of excess iron within the blood for those that are predisposed to hemochromatosis. 

In ancient times, bloodletting was used too often and too indiscriminately, with results that frequently were not beneficial or were chimerical for the patient.  Today we are much wiser and more readily recognize that bloodletting does have its place in certain, specific circumstances and for particular patients.  With so many pills, potions, and surgeries in our world today, those that suffer from hypertension and/or obesity may find that regular bloodletting allows them a path to better health and a more fulfilling life.  These areas of bloodletting show much promise and are certainly worth our time and our consideration to explore and to test further.

Why Aren't Abortions Performed In Hospitals Anymore?

America has many great and technologically advanced hospitals which are utilized every day for all types and kinds of medical procedures and surgeries.  Additionally, we also have many small medical centers that attend to the normal day-by-day checkups and routine procedures that are necessary to verify that one's health is satisfactory; it seems rather strange though, a bit out of sorts, that we also have abortion clinics that are stand-alone centers throughout most of our country.  You would think, logically, that since there are over one million abortions that are performed in this country each year, of which the procedure involved to carry out the abortion varies significantly depending upon the length of time since conception, that it would be safer, and far more effective, to have those abortions done within a hospital as opposed to an abortion clinic which often has no full-term medical doctor on staff.

Somewhat surprisingly, we find that when we go back in time to the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, abortions in this country actually were commonly performed in hospitals, to which 80% of abortions were performed in hospitals in 1973, whereas today over 90% of abortions are performed in clinics specifically setup to handle what is an Obstetrician-Gynecologist surgical procedure.  Not only have abortions moved out of the hospitals to abortion clinics, but according to the NY Times, "in 1995, the number of OB-GYN residencies offering abortion training fell to a low of 12 percent." These above actions clearly indicate that it is medical doctors themselves, which have clearly retreated from providing abortion on demand.

Hospitals have turned their back on performing abortions within their facilities for many reasons.  For instance, abortion is at best the termination of the embryonic phase of the normal development of a human fetus, and is at worst a form of infanticide.  This, in of itself, screams of being of a procedure which is at loggerheads with the primary purposes of any hospital which is to help alleviate pain and suffering, to do what is necessary to extend and to save life, and in those circumstances to which physical life has reached its end stages, to provide dignity and care to their patients.   Additionally, protestors against abortion have become quite knowledgeable and vocal in demonstrating their disapproval of abortion through the picketing of hospitals in order to shed light and to embarrass the hospital administration into making changes; this becomes especially effective and poignant whenone recognizes that often a considerable and meaningful portion of the very people that work within the hospital itself, such as doctors, nurses, and the administrative staff, are not themselves supporters of abortion within that hospital.

This means that hospitals will probably not soon again become a ready avenue for abortions in America.   Instead, abortions will continue to be done in stand-alone clinics throughout most of America, and the motivated protestors against such clinics will continue to pick them off, one-by-one, with certain medical doctors reduced to surreptitiously plying their trade like thieves in the night.

We are not our Body

The greatest error that has been made in the western world, and disappointingly so in America, is the assumption or presumption of so many people that all we are is our body and brain, and once that is extinguished, than our existence for forever more is also gone.  That statement is so false, so much in error, and is the indirect or direct cause of so much tragedy and wrong in this world.  It is especially unfortunate that this nation, founded by people of great religious faith, in humility to God, have seen their influence be pushed aside by the secularists and materialists of today's faith.  None of this has brought much good to our country, and much of it has brought much wickedness and disgrace to this nation once as proud and honest as to declare that our essential essence comes from our Creator who is our eternal benefactor.

The most significant problem with the viewpoint that we are our body is that our body becomes the be-all and end-all of our existence.  In any situation in which your body and your brain is treated as if this is your entire existence, your greed to satisfy its needs will be never be satiated, no matter the cost or the cause.  Yet, it doesn't take a genius to determine from a mere cursory examination that nothing physical lasts in this world, all will decay, all will die, all will effectively disappear or will be transformed or will be absorbed.  So those that are materialists have created a false foundation built on sand, which will hardly last through the tides of time that respects no physical man.

You are not your body; your body is merely the encasement of your soul and your spirit.  The normal condition of he who was created by God, is spirit, not physical.  The physical merely houses the spirit for a time, for a while, for a purpose, and when completed or exhausted the spirit will exit that physical realm as easily as the spirit arrived to it.  If life was truly only physical, to which your body determined whether you were alive or whether you were dead, than earth itself would be a cruel trick on mankind, a game with no meaning and with no purpose.  Additionally, all of the great saints would have lived lives of utter futility, because of their inability to escape the hands of physical death.

However, the message of the empty tomb of Christ or the empty sarcophagus of the King's chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza is exactly the same, that there is no death.  Too many believe that physical death is absolute death, but it is not, instead it should be seen as the natural return of spirit to the realm that it belongs to, a "freeing" of the spirit from its physical imprisonment. 

In the western world, the secular message is clear, that we are what we feed upon.  So that if you believe that your physical needs trump all, you will live according to those needs, and when your body becomes ill, or old, or decrepit, you will cry crocodile tears of great sadness because you will believe that life as you know it is over.  The correct and more satisfying viewpoint is to understand truly that your body merely encases your soul and your spirit, wisely feed instead upon those things that will bring eternal joy, and there you will find everlasting treasure and riches, never to depart.

There are Three Americas'

Far from being some sort of egalitarian utopia, America is a nation clearly divided into three very distinct classes.  First, there is a large underclass, at best barely able to sustain itself, which is primarily subsidized heavily by the government and its agencies, to which they have the worst housing, the worst crime, the worst health, and the worst schools.  In the middle is a huge swath of Americans, which are the hard workers that pay their taxes that play by the rules that work from adulthood through retirement, to which they are considered to be good red-blooded Americans that believe in the American experiment.  Finally, there is the smallest group of all, no more than .5% of all Americans, and probably substantially less, these are the true power in America, if not the world, not all care for politics, not all care to be identified, but all have a deep and abiding interest to protect their own, and the rules of the road will make sure to accommodate this need.

These privileged elite are politically connected, but not in the manner in which their alleged party affiliation makes much difference.  At the ground level they are connected locally, to which their first line of business is to live in an enclave that affords them special privileges.  For instance, it is of prime importance to these people that their safety and their privacy of themselves and their children be second to none.  Consequently, within their community there may be their own private security force that will track through cameras vehicles that enter and exit their community.  For a certainty, they will know the business of all that come there, whether they are maintenance men, family, friends, business associates or the like.   The demeanor of the interaction with these visitors is invariability polite and to the point, data will be gathered, databases will be updated, information will be stored and analyzed.  As for the law enforcement, itself, these instruments of the State will be utilized as the citizens of these enclaves best see fit.  For a certainty, there will never be instances of the police harassing or interfering with the actual residents of these complexes, any dealings with this particular population will be in accordance to their power and influence and any "cowboy" cop that doesn't recognize this, will be replaced.

The privileged elite have access and massive influence to layers of power, to the law, to government, that the balance of America does not.  Those that have the titles of mayor or police chief may or may not be part of these same elite, but all know who pulls the strings, and is the real power behind the curtain.  Sometimes a few of these privileged elite must be thrown to the dogs, as scapegoats and sacrificial victims, to sell the illusion that America is a country of laws and justice, whereas it often comes down to bad form, frayed connections, and stupid indiscretions that lowers the boom on them.

If you are very successful and question as to whether you might be part of this select elect, if you don't know that you are, than you aren’t.  This is the club of all clubs, there are rules, there are responsibilities, and there is also that knowledge that you are always right, and that the balance of America is your footstool.

Police Cameras

Depending upon the community that you live in, you may already be inundated with cameras at traffic lights, cameras at intersections, cameras at daycare, cameras outside stores, cameras inside stores, and whatnot.  It would appear that in today's world virtually any activity that is done in the public square is subject to being recorded.  Perhaps that is good, perhaps that is mainly bad.  What this does mean, more or less, is that the public and society in general is more accepting of their activities being recorded.  Further, the type of activities that are in the most need of being recorded are situations to which a citizen is interacting with an officer of the law, because police officers have what appears to be incredibly broad capabilities of arresting, interfering, helping, hurting, or apprehending citizens.

While some police officers may balk at being recorded while performing their duties their primary duty is to protect and to serve the public, not to be the law, not to be above the law, but to see that law is fairly applied within their domain.  I do not for a minute; believe that being a police officer is an easy job, or an easy duty, it is a massive responsibility, not easily accomplished, which entails a strong devotion to principles, discretion, and self-control.  It is also very important to remember that police are however never our masters, they are public servants, receiving their money, their livelihood, and their budget, from the taxpaying citizens of their community to which they must answer to.

When it comes down to police footage of the automated tape of incidents engaging the public, the question must be asked as to who the master is of that recording.  The answer should be it should never be the law enforcement agency itself, because once you decide that law enforcement can both record events and subsequently also be the master of its fate, you have defeated a significant portion of the purpose of the recording in the first place, because it doesn't take any stretch of the imagination to quickly understand that situations that are culpable to police activity will have a tendency to either disappear, become lost, compromised, delayed, or edited, meaning that true events have been modified.  Instead, the recordings themselves should actually be vetted by the same kinds of people that make up a grand jury, as it should ultimately be the people themselves that monitor the policing actions within their community.  Additionally, the beauty of a grand jury type system for this type of oversight is that grand juries, by definition, have basic terms of approximately 18 months, which essentially means that you need not excessively worry about the watchers becoming in cahoots with the watchmen.

On-body police cameras are a significant step in the right direction; it virtually mandates transparency in the interaction of our police force within the community.  In fact, for communities that utilize on-body police cameras exclusively, it is wise to let the general public know this, as just the knowledge that one's activities are being recorded, affords the opportunity to give-in to the better angels of our nature.

People are Living Longer and in Better Health

People are living far longer than they did at the start of the 20th century, a remarkable fact, that is arguably the greatest event that happened in the 20th century, to which in America the life expectancy was previously less than 50 years when the 20th century began, which became nearly 80 years of life expectancy when the 20th century ended.  While there are a multitude of reasons why our life expectancy has greatly increased, the primary ones can be attributed to the vast improvements in health standards, hygiene, medical technology, drugs, immunizations, prenatal care, and nutrition.  For instance, Infant mortality has dropped to just 6.14 infant deaths per 1000 births in America, whereas in the early 20th century that rate was calculated at the chilling rate of 140 infant deaths per 1000 births in America.

Infectious diseases created primarily by bacteria and viruses that were lethal or debilitating to Americans such as cholera, smallpox, influenza, tuberculosis, and yellow fever, have been negated today through immunizations and antibiotics.   The great ability and effectiveness of modern medicine to stop epidemics and pandemics before they even occur is that phenomenal giant leap forward that mankind took during the 20th century and to which all of us should be forever grateful.

While there is a great deal to be said about our remarkable achievement in the extension of life, one must give just as much credit to the fact that the quality of life has also improved tremendously.  That is to say that not only are we living longer but our ability to do things, to stay active, and to enjoy life has also grown longer, until the very late and terminal stages of physical life.  This means that our pursuit of happiness has never been better than it is in today's world.

The next big question to ask is can we continue this increase in the progress of health in the 21st century, much as we did in the 20th century.  That is to say, in the 20th century, life expectancy increased 60%; can we accomplish 60% again, 30%, or perhaps 10%?  To put this in perspective, a 60% increase from 80 years of age would be 128 years of age, an age that no known modern human is said to have achieved.  Yet before we dismiss this as outrageous, recognize too that all that has been accomplished before has been equally seen as miraculous, to which medicine, the health industry, and individuals, are motivated to build on previous success, especially considering the not so welcomed alternative.

It is therefore certainly no stretch of the imagination to believe that our lifespan and quality of life will continue to improve, but it is also conceivable, that we may soon reach the point where accomplishing such a thing may be limited to a select few, because unlike great antibiotics and drugs of the past, which are readily available at a reasonable price for all, future life span extensions may be something that is specifically targeted and priced for certain people that is distinct within that person, and consequently is not something that can be "scaled up" to the general public.

After all, essentially the people of the richest countries live the longest, and within that dynamic, there are motivated and successful rich people who are willing to actively do what they need to do in order to achieve an even greater and better quality lifespan, to wit not all of those people are particularly concerned about whether me and you are also able to enjoy those same privileges.

Multi-generational Living

It seems rather strange that today's newest homes are nearly 1,000 sq feet bigger than in 1973, whereas conversely household size has decreased about 1/2 a person over the same time span as reported by aei-ideas.org.   Although, people are marrying or having children at much later ages than has been the historic norm, one must take into account that the life expectancy in America has increased from the beginning of the 20th century which was about 47 years of age, to nearly 79 years of age presently.  So in actuality, it is highly unusual for children today not to have grandparents, with the additional possibility that they may too have great-grandparents.

All of the above makes one ask the question, if all this is true, why aren't there more multi-generational families living under the same roof, as it would appear that it makes more economic sense along with the obvious benefits of having a multitude of people that can perform, aid, or assist in a multitude of tasks.  Of course, this hasn't even taken into account the benefits of being around people that you often love and cherish; your family and your extended family members that are in essence the most important and the most meaningful parts of your very existence.

According to pewsocialtrends.org multi-generational living under the same roof is in an upward trend, but this statistic is somewhat deceptive, to the fact that it is minority groups predominantly that are much more likely to be in multi-generational households in the first place, and minorities today make up a greater percentage of our population as compared to 1980, to wit "Asian Americans were the most likely of the major racial and ethnic groups to live in multi-generational arrangements (27%). By comparison, 14% of non-Hispanic whites lived with multiple generations of family."  The most probable reason why Asian Americans lead in multi-generational households is that their historic culture has impressed upon their people the interconnectedness and inherent responsibilities of children to parents and to grandparents.

While it certainly can be said that if you are not living in the same community that there isn't any conceivable way that you can still live in the same house, a significant percentage of relatives actually live within close proximity of each other.  In situations, to which family members do not have a healthy respect or regard for other family members it does make sense that living under the same roof would bring in much more tension and unfortunate dramatic situations to make it seemingly untenable.  However, what must also be recognized is that the cycle of life follows all of us around, so that it certainly isn't unfair to believe that we have familial responsibilities that are incumbent upon us to attend to and to embrace.

In an era in which it is common that both parents work, and/or that single parents are overworked and stretched to the limit, there is safety and prudence in embracing a multi-generational family unit that will often be beneficial for all parties involved as each is able to contribute and each is able to receive according to their needs.

Katrina, New Orleans and Levees

Most people are well aware of the disaster that struck New Orleans in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina, a category 3 storm made landfall, but most media outlets were deceptive or outright wrong as to where Katrina made its biggest impact, its category 3 impact, which was not New Orleans, but east of New Orleans, and on the Mississippi gulf coast.  It was primarily the Mississippi gulf coast, not New Orleans that suffered the true category 3 damages of the Katrina hurricane.  In actuality, Katrina first made landfall near Boras, Louisiana, before traveling north and making landfall again at the Louisiana/Mississippi border.  Hurricane Katrina did not directly hit New Orleans, yet within 24 hours, New Orleans began to flood. Why?

The answer to that question was studied and evaluated by several different groups and agencies, including ce.berkeley.edu, a group made up of researchers and professional engineers from academic institutions, private sector entities, and government agencies, with extensive forensic experience and knowledge.  Their report states succinctly that "the flood system surrounding New Orleans was pervasively flawed."  Further that, "the flood protection system was characterized by embedded flaws and inadequacies.  This is a result of a dysfunctional organizational system that created it."  The conclusion is obvious that although Hurricane Katrina was an enabler of the flooding that inundated New Orleans, it was also a manmade disaster that could have and should have been prevented had monies and engineering allocated to the maintenance of levees within New Orleans been properly administered.

This means that rather than looking at Hurricane Katrina and the loss of lives, property, and the flooding of New Orleans as an "Act of God" which was not preventable, we would be far better served to see it for what it really was, a disaster because of man's inability to take the steps and to appropriate the engineering and knowhow to fix or to design the levees to take care of the situation ahead of time.  The basic problem that New Orleans has, is that a significant portion of the city, lies below sea level, consequently it doesn't take a genius to understand that water, storm water, flood water, any type of water in excess is a significant problem that needs to be addressed ahead of time.

Consequently, the only real things that prevent New Orleans from flooding or being susceptible to flooding are levees which hold the waters back in conjunction with the needed ability to pump water out from the city when excessive water gets into it.  In both of these cases, New Orleans was unprepared or inadequately prepared, yet it had all the time in the world to prepare, so that on a fundamental level New Orleans and its disastrous flooding along with its aftermath of 2005, was a preventable catastrophe with tragically real human death and property damages.

New Orleans is the lesson that America must learn from.  Throughout all of America, there is infrastructure to which a basic assumption is made that it will always work, until it doesn't.  The fact of the matter is we usually have a very good foreknowledge of infrastructure that needs to be amended, addressed, fixed, maintained, or repaired.  As the old saying goes, "a stitch in time saves nine", New Orleans demonstrates the folly of ignoring this sage advice.

Food Distribution for the Poor

In America, we don't lack for food; its availability and its general pricing are excellent.  While we should be concern about food and good, clean water in a real emergency, for the most part we can take food for granted, because the process and logistics of food distribution are without parallel.  The long and short of it is, that we eat food that is about as fresh as you could possibly imagine giving that most of us neither live on farms nor have vegetable gardens or fruit trees within easy walking distance.  Therefore, we take the eating of food for granted, which is a fortunate attribute for Americans, but certainly has not been the norm in history, to which the fight for food and survival, has often been virtually the sole drive of human existence.

Today, there exist many countries or pockets within countries that lack both easy access to food or to clean water, and therefore starvation is a real and frightening problem.  One way to help alleviate this problem is to look at new and unique ways to feed populations.  For instance, fresh food is often both bulky in conjunction with limited shelf life, but food product life can be enhanced tremendously and compacted enormously when food is processed in such a way as to freeze-dry it or to dehydrate it which reduces the bulk size of the food to minimal and manageable dimensions which is the exact way that food is handled for astronauts.  For our military under "Meal, Ready-to-Eat" (MRE), food was created and packaged for a very long shelf life in that it was pre-cooked, consequently this food can be eaten without access to clean water, although the availability of water is highly desirable for its palatability and sustainability.

When it comes to easy access to food that will sustain human life, the main considerations should be cost and the logistics of accomplishing this goal, as compared to the far lesser consideration of taste, texture, or content of the food itself.  This should be a very high priority for our charitable missions along with anything else that can be provided that will help in the ease and usage of good, clean, sustainable water. 

The nutrients, fats, proteins, and carbohydrates in food that are needed to sustain human life are known factors and consequently there isn't any reason why pre-processed food can't be utilize for not only short-term but in exigencies of need, for the long-term survival of humans.  In times of war, of disaster, of famine, of governmental corruption, of persecution, of civil unrest, it is needlessly inhumane for civilians to be starved to death.  It is therefore our duty, as the leaders of the free world, to provide the necessary assistance and the humanitarian aid to preclude the unnecessary genocide of certain peoples.

The right to food is a basic human right, we are fortunate to live in such times as to be able to provide food to all, and we should make it a high priority to see that we are doing all that we can to take care of our fellow brothers and sisters, in their time of need.

Darwin's Most Famous Book and its Complete Title

The teaching of evolution is an integral part of our public school system and the acceptance of evolution as being a biological fact is accepted by most scientists.  This does not mean, however, that evolution is a fact, accurate, or even pertinent to mankind itself.  Take for instance, the infamous hoax of Piltdown man, "proving" the vital link between apes and man and "discovered" in 1912 in the United Kingdom.  The fact that this hoax was so easily perpetrated on so many esteemed scientists and experts  for so long is proof positive that evolution in regards to apes evolving into modern man is a theory lacking foundational proof, to wit the missing link that is so richly sought has still yet to be discovered.  The man most often championed for the evolutionary theory is Charles Darwin and his most famous book, still widely used and discussed today, is "On the Origin of Species".  But in fact, the full title of the book as originally published in 1859 was "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."  Later, Darwin would follow up this tome with his "The Descent of Man and Selection in the Relation to Sex".

I suspect that there are few Darwin defenders that are fully aware of Darwin's complete title, to which its meaning is both chilling and very real.  The complete title of Darwin's book is hardly happenstance, it is there for a very valid reason which is to emphasis and to clarify to the reader of the book what the book is actually about, which is that evolution as expounded by Darwin specifically supports the superiority of favored races in the struggle for life.  Consequently, Darwin's book is meant as a clarion call specifically to the Caucasian race that it has evolved far further than, for instance, the aborigines of Australia or the native Africans and that therefore these "less-favored" species of man would consequently either at best be subservient to the Caucasian race or, even better, would be exterminated or replaced in their entirety at some future period of time.

The greatest and grandest disservice which Darwin did to mankind was to lower mankind from being just "a little lower than the angels" to replacing God's handiwork with the thought that mankind was nothing more than an advanced ape to which some of these primates had the right to marginalize or to annihilate other primates because this was all part of the struggle of life, to which the superior species would invariably win out if they only asserted themselves.  This is the true meaning of Darwin's thesis and this is the template that was subsequently successfully used by the eugenics movement in the United States and throughout the world, most notably in Nazi Germany, to justify man's inhumanity to other men, and consequently the liquidation and the cold-blooded killing of unarmed civilians, whose only crimes were their faith, their skin color, their physical disabilities, their sexual orientation, or their tribal or social affiliations.

The legacy of Darwin's evolutionary theory are clear in the horrors and the aftermath of these truest believers.  Those that believe that Darwin deserves a place at the table of knowledge, that Darwin deserves to be in our classrooms, must have the intellectual honesty and candor to title his book as it was titled upon its inception so that his true agenda is out in the open for all to see and to recognize.

Abortion Allows Endless "Do-Overs"

Just about everyone wants to have the power or the ability to turn back the clock and to change circumstances or results to something that is more amendable to what they really desired or didn't want in the first place--sometimes known as a "do-over".  When it comes down to first-trimester abortions, the three basic ways of inducing abortion are either via medication, injection, or vacuum aspiration, depending upon the length of time since conception.  In regards to medication and injection, these procedures essentially fool the body which consequently results in a medically induced "miscarriage" which will often involve discomfort, bleeding, and the discharging of fetus tissue.  However, in most cases no surgical instruments will have been used inside the cervix or uterus of the woman, which means that any possible internal injury will have been averted.   On the other hand, for vacuum aspiration, typically a local anesthesia is used on the cervix for the ease and comfort of the insertion of the medical instrument which will essentially vacuum out the fetus from the woman's uterus.

While none of these procedures sound very pleasant and while none of them seem very comfortable, they are, in the end, almost always totally effective in producing the result that is to be expected and typically within a very short period of time, the woman is able to essentially go back to living life as if none of this had ever occurred.  For some women, there may be significant psychological issues that bother them from their abortion, for others there may be nothing, and for most there is probably a combination of a multitude of feelings, but none of this will change what has happened, which is in essence, as if the pregnancy never existed, by virtue of the fact that no child was born.

While many may applaud that "pro-choice" is a wonderful modern construct that allows women to take charge of their bodies, one could make a very valid argument instead that the ability to get an abortion "on-demand" with a relatively small monetary cost is an avenue best left unexplored.  According to guttmacher.org "in 2011, 1.06 million abortions were performed" in the United States, a statistic that is especially troubling considering that the availability, reliability, and variety of birth control items have never been greater than they are here today.  This then begs the question, why would any woman, of any age, willingly put themselves into a position to which they might become pregnant?  The obvious answer to that question is that women are obviously quite aware that they can take advantage of the fact that abortion is fairly easily available in much of America and consequently they have a relatively good "fail-safe" method of un-doing what has been done.

Because abortion is legal, readily available, relatively inexpensive, and physically safe, women are allowed to make the same weak decisions or non-decisions over and over again, because apparently the consequences of said decision have been found to be not so bad.  If, on the other hand, abortion was a procedure that was either illegal, dangerous, very expensive, or with high social costs, then women really would take charge of their bodies and of their decisions.

USA Superpower

According to The Mainspring of Human Progress, in the 1940s the United States while occupying only six percent of the world's land area and representing less than seven percent of the world's population, owned 85% of the world's automobiles, 54% of the world's telephones, 48% of radios, 46% of the electric power capacity, 35% of the railway mileage, 30% of improved highways, and 92% of modern bathtubs.  America was also the sole country that had harnessed the awesome atomic bomb, until August of 1949. In the mid-1940s, the United States was far more advanced than the European continent, which had been completed ravaged by the destructiveness of the world war, which nearly too brought the Soviet Union to ruin, and left the empire of Japan utterly defeated and devastated.  At that time, the USA was second to none, a true global phenomena, and essentially the greatest superpower the world had ever known in the sense of military strength, in technology, in knowledge, and in wealth, to which there was no part of the known world that America could not claim as it own, should it but desire to do so.

While today, America remains still the sole superpower in the world, its power, its influence, and its wealth, are fraying at the edges, to which America's greatest strength at this point are its military, its technology, its higher education, and its currency, which is the world's reserve currency, giving America untold additional strength and influence.  However, history has demonstrated time and time again, that no single country, no single power, can remain powerful forever without touching, remembering, focusing, and re-invigorating the very characteristics that brought them to the pinnacle of power in the first place.

America's Achilles heel, is that far too many in this country have lost their initiative, have lost their desire to achieve anything of real worth, to be self-sufficient, to understand and embrace the merits of actual work, and would in fact prefer to be kept as wards of the State in perpetuity, which is counter to the founding principles of this great country which has traditionally embraced hard work and responsibility to themselves, to country, and to family.  The more people within our country that will not work, cannot learn, are unable to function as cogs within the system, the more the few must work harder to support the many.  Consequently, America has become a country that must drag an increasingly heavier and heavier weight for each American that is unable, unwilling or seemingly incapable of standing on their own merits or abilities.

The other countries of the world, especially countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) have their tails up and their appetites are certainly whetted, seeing their opportunity to take market share, to command market space, and to nibble away at the big superpower that seems incapable of rousing itself from a deep slumber. 

What America has failed to recognize, is that when you are the sole superpower, you can make the rules whatever that you want to make them, fair or not, and the rest of the world must march to your command, however, when your influence begins to wan, those that were once under your heel, will have something to say, something that you may very well not want to hear, but are incapable of countering, because your influence and your power are suspect, vacillating, and poorly reasoned.

Many that are alive today will not live to see the humbling of America the great, but its humbling is already written and its disgrace only a matter of time.

The Rise of Women

In America, we take too many things for granted, to which there was often a long, hard, and arduous road to get there and the rise of women was one of those long winding roads that took lots of time, sacrifice, and perseverance.  At the founding of our great nation, married women were subordinate to their husbands, no matter how good or bad he was, how drunk or sober, how industrious or lazy, which meant that the husband was the master of his wife, he owned the property, not her, and he owned her labor, not her.  All voting rights were in the hands of men and not women, and the literacy rates of men was far higher than women during our colonial times.

Slowly, however, laws and traditions adjusted within America, to which the literacy rate of women began to rise significantly, and in the mid 1800s on, property rights were given to married women on a State-to-State basis.  Additionally, there had always been men who recognized the worth and wisdom of having a good woman by his side and their liberality helped to slowly forge change in employment and opportunities for women in general. 

Through it all, women recognized the vast importance of the vote, something that had been won for the black male through the 15th Amendment to our Constitution in 1870. Woman's suffrage would not be won until 1920, but once won, the progress of women within this country was significantly changed, and to wit women were now permitted a far greater opportunity for higher education and for additional employment avenues such as teachers, librarians, and for clerical work.  World War I and the rapid industrialization of America gave an early opportunity for women to be employed in the factory and in nursing.  While World War II opened up additional doors for women to work in fields previously dominated by men such as "Rosie the Riveter" and other military jobs in which it was a necessity to hire females to accomplish work previous done by males who were now part of our fighting force.  In fact, it has been said, that part of the reason that Hitler's Germany was defeated in World War II was because of Hitler's bourgeoisie belief that a woman's place was in the home.

Over the last fifty years, barriers for female entry in regards to higher education and for employment in jobs that necessitate an advanced degree have been nearly completely torn down.  Women dominate males in high school by grade point average, in University in the achievement of both Bachelors' and Master Degrees, and have essentially closed the gap in Doctoral and Professional degrees.  There is absolutely nothing to indicate that this trend will be averted anytime soon and with blue-collar jobs on the wane in America, there has never been a better time to be well educated, which positions females very well for more meaningful contributions and achievements.

The rise of women has been a tremendous benefit and boon for America, because their knowledge, their worth, and their industrious have been utilized to benefit not only themselves but more importantly to help advance our country and our lifestyle.   Those countries that have yet to understand the value and importance of a liberated woman have placed themselves into a hopeless situation, to which their males' heads are in the collective desert sand.

The Muslims and Internment

Before America was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, suspected Japanese aliens and citizens had already been identified as enemies of the State, merely awaiting official Executive Orders to exercise their arrest and eventually internment.  Even though there were far more Americans that were of German or Italian descent, Japanese made wonderful and convenient targets for the US Government and military, because of their particular ethno racial characteristics and their overall small size in quantity of peoples.  When it came to the actual internment of the Japanese on American soil, the United States did not hesitate in treating them as enemies, without documentation that substantiated such claims, without due process, and without a care that their actions against the Japanese would eventually be overturned or overruled.

Some seventy-odd years later, the United States since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 have a new "bogeyman" and that are Muslims.  While the playing field has been leveled a little bit in the sense that America jurisprudence has asserted civil rights, this is wholly mitigated by the government's massive database apparatus and its desire to vilify and scapegoat Muslims as a religion and as a people.   The domestic enemies list has already been created, manipulated and processed.   Muslim mosques have already been infiltrated and compromised on virtually every level, with actionable information sorted, locked and loaded.  The US Government cares little if the information that they have is inaccurate, distorted, or erroneous, it cares only that an enemy has been identified and that that enemy will bow to civil authorities, one way or another.

US authorities are only awaiting a true domestic treasonable and terrorist event in America of scale, to which they can instantly react with swift and sure "justice".  The United States is no fool, they prefer the terrorist act to be real, and not manufactured or faked by our government itself, but should they have to help aid such an action, and are assured that there is no possibility that there would be any leaks that they have done so, they would seriously consider doing such.  The powers-to-be are itching, to use all of their massive might against these perceived enemies of the State, and for once and for all, to take control of Muslims, and the Muslim religion in America. 

America interned a few thousand Muslim non-citizens and citizens in the wake of the 9/11/01 attack, with estimates ranging to as many as 15,000, and eventually deported a few thousand of them.     America has already tested the waters of how the public will or won't react to such an aggressive policy of our homeland and have concluded that only a small minority of the population really care.  Young Muslim males make excellent targets for this ethnic cleansing, especially if they look, behave, or wear clothes that are considered to be "out of sorts" with the norms of America.  Consequently, if you are Muslim or a Muslim sympathizer, regularly attend mosque or are a member of a suspicious group or organization that is connected with Muslims, keep a long beard, are dark skinned, you are an excellent target to be monitored and classified.

The United States is ready, the target is known, and the execution will be like sure, swift lightening.

The fallacy of More Laws

In America, each year, far more laws are passed, as opposed to laws being repealed and the ratio isn't even close.  I suppose the ostensible theory behind all these laws that are passed year after year after year, are that we need these laws for better justice, to make us safer, and to ensure our tranquility and happiness.  The thing is the more laws that are passed, means the more laws that you can be arrested or fined for without you ever really being cognizant of some of these obscure laws, as well as these laws essentially transferring sovereignty of yourself to the arbitrary power of the State.

First off, there isn't a really a positive correlation between more laws and justice or more laws and safety.  There is, however, a correlation between more laws and oppression, and more laws and injustice.  Cicero said it right, over 2,000 years ago, "the more laws, the less justice."  This is true because too often manmade laws are read and enacted upon depending upon the prevailing winds of the times which has little to do with justice and a lot to do with those that hold the power.  That is why the Supreme Court Chief Justice could rule in the Dred Scott case in 1857, that the black man had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect."  That case was not refuted until the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, but despite that Constitutional Amendment, the black man, primarily in the South, was held in bondage, serfdom, or servitude for another 100 years, even though the law now argued for his equality.

America doesn't need to be refereed for every possible perceived infraction that may or may not have occurred.  God has graced nearly all of us with common sense and common sense often is good enough to tell us what is right and what is wrong. Too many people falsely believe that a given law is clear and unequivocal, but the fact of the matter is whether through creative legal theories, devious minds, or the like, those that practice the art of our justice system, have the ability to take a law and bend it, curve it, and manipulate it as if they were magicians in a Kingly court.  The law is whatever the masters of that dark trade tell us that it is which is why justice is neither fair, impartial, nor equable in this country and never will be.

The more laws that are passed, the more power that is relinquished to those who administer the laws, whether they be politicians, bureaucrats, executives, lawyers, or similar.  These elite, privileged, and powerful people will decide the rules and limits of the game, while we, the poor subjects will be fleeced, shorn, and discarded, as mere servants to the State. 

Remember this, in reality the law doesn't protect you; good citizens protect you; good people protect you.  Those that believe that they are their neighbor's keeper make the very best citizens, because they understand that as they treat others is how they will be treated in return; laws are a poor substitute for this because too often laws serve the State and are utilized to oppress the people, rather than to be a good neighbor.

Thank you for Smoking

There is an old adage about a fool and his money parting ways, and the bigger the amount of money that is dissipated, the bigger the fool.  In 1998, the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between big tobacco and the 46 States (four States had already signed separate agreements) and territories was agreed upon.  The MSA covered a lot of ground, including specific restrictions on big tobacco in regards to advertising, sponsorship, and youth targeting.  The big kicker to the whole deal, however, was the truly massive payments to the signatories, based on cigarette sales, to which it was estimated that the States would receive in the neighborhood of $200 billion dollars in the first 25 years of this settlement.  While the ostensible reason for the payment to the States was to help setup programs to discourage youth smoking and to set aside funds for medical needs that addressed smoking health issues, there was nothing mandated to the States which would force their hand in doing so.  Not too surprisingly, most States have spent little money on smoke cessation; instead, they have used this "found money" to help cover budget deficits, to replace school bonds, and to provide general health and elderly care.

Unfortunately, the States have also run into some problems with the bonds that they issued for this revenue stream.  While the States were wise to project that smoking rates would decline in America, their projections of the decline in smoking was too pessimistic, in other words, the amount of cigarettes being consumed in the United States has been declining at a far higher rate than anticipated, which has a material impact on the amount of money to be received and consequently impacts negatively the worth of their bonds issued.  Additionally, whenever there are massive amounts of money involved; one should thereby anticipate that there will be novel legal disputes.  Big tobacco has fought against the States in regards to how much money that they should be paying as part of the MSA because they are allowed to reduce their payment based on market share that has been loss to manufacturers that were not signatories to the MSA, especially when the States have been lacking in "diligent enforcement" of collecting those payments from the other cigarette manufacturers.   This means, that most States will not collect as much money as they anticipated from big tobacco, because in actuality they are settling their disputed payment amounts for less than full value to the dollar.

As disappointing as the foregoing has been to the States, many States have done their constituents a far greater disservice through the securitization of these cigarette-based bonds in exchange for upfront and discounted money today.  This is the same type of problem and ill-thinking that brought down the mortgage and housing industry in 2008 and is threatening to wreak havoc in State governments today that have already spent their tobacco money and now are on the hook in the future to make good on their payments to the bondholders, sometimes with massive balloon payments.

Consequently, it isn't any real stretch of one's imagination, to conclude that States do have a vested interest in the amount of smoking and the annual consumption of cigarettes in their State, and they might well conclude that they need more smokers.

Nuclear-powered Automobiles

The United States receives some of its essential energy from nuclear power plants.  Nuclear energy also successfully powers some of our naval submarines, which it has done for a number of years, proving the point and the validity that a nuclear reactor can be scaled down to the size needed for transportation, even in the trying conditions of being both underwater in an incredibly stressful environment of vibration, pressurized conditions, and the pitching conditions of oceanic salt-water itself.   The brilliance, ambition, and success of building nuclear submarines should not be underestimated, with our first nuclear submarine being commissioned sixty years ago in 1954.

Therefore, not too surprisingly, well before nuclear power was vilified by the mainstream press, the automobile industry took a look at providing an automobile powered by nuclear, as opposed to our conventional fossil fuel of choice, oil.  The Ford Nucleon concept car of 1958 was the furthest that Ford Motor got to developing a nuclear car, but the effort was soon given up, mainly because it was thought that the nuclear power needed to power that car would both be too large and too powerful, but times have changed in the ensuing years.

Today, the American public seems enchanted by Tesla and its cars that run on electricity in which the power to run their cars are stored within batteries.  While electric cars are hardly a new novelty, it is gratifying to see that a certain portion of the American public is enamored by it.  Nuclear energy, on the other hand, especially given how little would be needed in order to successfully power up an automobile, is something that is far more intriguing to the transportation world, because it offers the opportunity to drive without re-fueling, without re-charging, whatsoever.

While most people associate uranium and plutonium with nuclear energy, there is another element, thorium which is far better suited as nuclear energy because it is: more abundant than uranium, far less viable for nuclear weapons (if at all), has significantly less nuclear waste, and demonstrates a much higher energy power than uranium as a source of energy.  This element, thorium, is the key for our transportation needs now and into the future. 

The engineering and logistics behind producing an automobile that runs on a scaled-down version of nuclear power would be challenging, but at the same time, achievable, with the additional positives of significantly less pollution, an end to our need or dependence upon oil, and the scales of geo-political power trending significantly to the country or countries that are able to scale up the fastest in bringing this product successfully to market. 

Our world today depends upon energy, without it, without access and the reliability of relatively inexpensive energy, nothing would remain the same, our world would soon become, within a matter of months, pure hell and chaos.  There are over 1 billion cars on our planet, none of those cars have any usefulness without fuel, wars are fought continually to gain access to fuel, nuclear fuel is the answer, it is the future, and it must be pursued with all deliberate speed.

Education

America wastes far too much money and resources on schools that do not do an adequate job in teaching students how to think, how to learn, responsibility, and moral guidance.  It certainly isn't a money problem because America spends billions on educating its youth, but the return on the dollar is poor, to which America consistently scores outside the top ten in virtually every educational achievement category against other countries in the world.

Hands down, the best way to educate someone, anyone, is one-on-one education that is to say, tutoring or home schooling with a competent teacher.  Anytime that you have a classroom of thirty students, there are going to be students that fall to the wayside because they don't concentrate, they aren't able to assimilate or to process the information effectively, they grow bored because the pace of the class is too slow, too erratic, or too disruptive, or they simply don't have a passion or an interest in the subject being taught, amongst various other pertinent reasons.

It is a grave mistake to punish good students, by slowing them down to the lowest common denominator of the class at hand, it is also equally a grave mistake to not make a full effort to provide to all students the basic necessities of education which amounts to having the functionality to read, to write, to do basic math, and to have a clear knowledge of social responsibility as well as a firm basis of an appropriate moral code.

The answer to most of our current problems within our school system, is to have a lot more of one-on-one education, a lot more of peer-to-peer interaction, a lot more usage of computers and specifically programs that will aid and abet learning, and a lot less of bureaucratic waste, wasted motion, and wasted resources. 

Our current educational program is broken and it will not fix itself.  It is a mistake to try to get every student to fit some sort of arbitrary mold to which the objective is for everyone to be just about average, to just kind of get by.  If we truly want our students to excel, to become educated, to achieve, and to utilize their God-given skills, they must be nurtured, developed, and motivated by hard work, discipline, and a deep desire to accomplish something of real merit.

Man could not have progressed so far, so quickly, without the great aid of tools.  In this modern age of computers and the internet, information has never been as readily and universally available as it is today.  A computer program will work for you, 24/7, it will be patient, it will be accurate, and it will help students to achieve.  Tutors are available for students through mentoring, through consultants, through the internet, through family, and through the school system itself, should it desire to set this up.

If the United States does not see that good education is important and vital to the continuing success of this country and for what this nation represents, America will fall back into chaos, and will dissipate, becoming just another country that degenerated and declined into failure and chaos.

Eating out

According to thesimpledollar.com "The average American eats an average of 4.2 commercially prepared meals per week."  That's an incredibly high frequency of eating out, in which the fast food business is a multi-billion dollar business in the United States alone.  While there wouldn't be anything wrong with so many Americans eating out so frequently if we were all materially wealthy, the simple fact is that we are not.  Consequently, money that is spent at a restaurant is money that could have been utilized more efficiently at a grocery store, or a corner store, if we only took the time to preplan and to prepare.

A lot of people will tell you that the reason that they eat out so frequently is because that they are too busy to prepare food at home, or they work too hard and don't have enough hours in the day to cook, or they are buying the meals for the children, and so on.   Most of their reasons have validity, some more than others, depending upon the situation, but the truth of the matter is, transportation, logistics, information, and efficiency when it comes to most everything in this country, including meals, has never been better or more readily available.  In America, there are plenty of grocery stores that are both convenient in the sense of location, convenient in the sense of choice, and priced reasonably in which the cost of making or preparing those meals at home, hands down, is going to be cheaper than virtually any restaurant choice that you could possibly think of.

Consequently, the eating out for so many meals isn't a necessity or requirement for so many people in order to be fed, but in reality it is a preference that has become a habit.  But just like any habit, it can be unlearned, reformulated, and changed, if one puts their mind diligently to the task at hand.  The reason that you should take the time to do so is that the cost of eating out eats into people's disposable income, their money, their budget, and their overall lifestyle.  Most people do not take the time nor have the interest in calculating the amount of their money of theirs that is spent eating out, nor are they willing to do so, but they should.

In America, most everyone loves a bargain, most everyone likes a discount, and certainly everyone wants to feel that they deserve a little extra consideration.  What most hi-volume restaurants are selling are what you, as an empowered individual are capable of doing yourself, for the most part, with various degrees of success, but in all probability, enough success that at a minimum, it will allow you to get by and to survive. 

Perhaps you feel that you deserve your own servant, that you have earned the right to be served, or that you just feel like being spoiled a little bit, that is all well and good, but one shouldn't fool oneself, because you are the individual who is paying the piper at the end of the day.  Do yourself a favor, go without eating out for one entire pay period, and then at the end of that experiment, check your bank account, check your expenditures, and determine whether you have saved yourself some money or not.  You might just find that you have, that you are still alive, and that you are doing alright after all.

Cell Phones in a True Emergency

There are a significant amount of children in our present generation that aren't real familiar with a landline telephone, it's something they have seen at school, or perhaps over at a friend's house, or on TV, but in their own experience they have never actually seen or utilized one in their own household.  This trend of no traditional landlines (I'm not speaking of VOIP telephones) is becoming a real rout, in which the landline phone appears to be going the way of Faxing or telegraphs but there is one significant reason why a landline should have a place at the table and that is in true emergencies.

As it stands right now, cell phones are a great convenience, fairly reliable, and ubiquitous.  The most significant problem with cell phones, however, is that in an emergency situation, in which there has been a bombing, a tornado, a hurricane, flooding, fire, blackouts, or the like, your cell phone has only a minimal chance of being used as a traditional telephone, and even texting will be queued up in which text messages may not be sent or be received for long periods of time, depending upon capacity usage on the carrier's service.

There is something disconcerting and frightening that when you reach for a device that must work for you that it doesn't.  However, your corded landline will often work in situations in which your cell phone has failed you, because your landline capacity works with almost 100% certainty to which the capacity and automated routing of phone calls are part and parcel of the service provided by the landline corporations.  Additionally, even with a power outage, your landline will almost certainly work because it draws its power from the telephone line itself in which that power source has redundancy built into it, that allows it to continue to work, or to draw upon emergency back-up power, if required.

This would strongly imply that most families should seriously consider having a landline as their emergency line, just as you are suppose to have an emergency kit and supplies which include water, batteries, food, and fuel.  Even in the best of times, cell phone batteries go out, cell phones freeze up, cell phones drop calls, and cell phones simply break.  At the present time, cell phones are simply not setup to handle true emergency situations, and it simply isn't a priority for cell phone providers to do so.

Communication is an absolute key in trying circumstances, to which you are either attempting to reach someone to help bring solace or calmness to the situation, or to contact some agency that can bring you the necessary help.  When the communication lines are down, panic and frustration is soon to follow.  At that point, it doesn't much matter how good life was before, what matters is what is happening right then and there.  If by having a landline, you could be better assured of a more successful resolution, than by all means you should seriously consider doing so.