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It wasn’t shot down. It didn’t crash. It was hacked!
Thanks to the Internet Archives Wayback Machine, You can read some other posts about Drones / UAV’s being hacked. These posts were on my now ‘defunct site’ Not Another CONspiracy. Maybe you heard of it ? Links after the video from Iran showing the perfect condition of the apparently intact RQ-170 drone.
All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Revolt or WordPress.com
Reminder: Wednesday November 9, 2011 at 2pm FEMA will conduct a national test of emergency alert system. I’ve seen conflicting reports of how long this test will be, from 3 minutes to 30 secs. You will get this alert test from just about every source you can imagine, TV, Radio, Sirens etc. You can read more on the FEMA web-site.
While thinking on this for some time now, I remembered something I wrote and posted on my old blog ‘Not Another CONspiracy’. It was during the time of digital television conversion from analog signals. I now wonder if this might actually happen.
The digital ‘Big Switch’
Friday, December 19, 2008
As in, on and off switch
Think about this- They are able to control your access on the internet, what is to stop that from happening via television. Enter ‘The Big Switch’.
Once the all digital television cable network is up and running, they will CONtrol it. What you receive may become location specific, or geo tagged. When they have full control over the entire network you may not even know what is happening on the west coast if you live on the east coast. You may not be able to read or see information from around the globe, which is already happening in many areas.
Worst case scenario: They will control what all 300 million plus Americans will see simultaneously.
Your signal is digital, there will be NO analog signal for you to fall back on to confirm what you are seeing. There will be no communication allowed from one geo location to the other. Under their discretion you will not be able to contact your friend on the west coast from the east coast to confirm if what you are seeing is actually happening on the west coast. With no news from the outside how are you to decide what is true or false. How will you know if the attack on America soil is real, or just Hollywood make believe.
The other side of this is, if something were to happen in your area, they will control what information you receive. Will it be the truth? They already CONtrol the information you receive at this very moment. Who’s to say they wont go one step further and Make it. You can expect digital blackouts in your future.
All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Revolt or WordPress.com
But I believe this is just part and parcel of an even more encompassing plan for total world control by a very wealthy cabal of banksters and other elitists. To wit, there are many reports about other countries that have or will soon stop trading in US Dollars. As usual Washington’s Blog covers this issue very well. And I have been making the claim, as in yesterday’s post, that when this happens, the US Dollar is near its death knell (for, at some point, we will lose our power of being the world’s reserve currency… which is the only real thing keeping us as the world’s sole super power and Imperialistic Controller). This time is drawing very near.
You will find in the Washington’s Blog linked article above a 3 or 4 year timeline of events and the various countries that have taken steps to begin their refusal of using US Dollars (please go read the entire thing).
Venezuela and 12 other Latin American countries as well as Cuba
Many other countries
Dr Doug addressed this a bit this morning in a comment to today’s post here at B’mans and I wanted to point out that Japan (one country Doug points out) and many others are already on that list as you can see.
The world is pissed (how could anyone blame them, for they now know that there is absolutely no way they will ever get their money back, nor be able to recoup the loses as the dollar dies). This simply goes to show that this part of the plan is plainly underway and near fruition.
There is another “conspiracy theory” involved that says that the latest Middle East eruptions are being purposely driven and is, in fact, an instrumentally planned attack against foreign oil providers by “The Elite” (as Lindsey Williams describes in the following videos from an interview on Alex Jones show) that will culminate in a back stab of their deal made long ago to not drill our own oil here and to continue to purchase theirs.
I have written about “Pastor Williams” before and have admitted that his presentation bugs the piss out of me, but I cannot negate his statements, since he has been correct in virtually everything he says was told him by some of Big Oil’s elite (Ken Frum of ARCO being one). I also am somewhat suspicious of Alex Jones, but I do not focus on him, but those he interviews, then try to find associated evidence.
He suggests that this has been planned and working for decades and that the end game is the demise of the dollar. He suggests that when the oil reaches $200 per barrel, the oil companies will come in as America’s “saviors” and begin drilling oil that is said to be plentiful on American soil, but will keep the pricing around $150 – $200 per barrel (and we will thank them for that). However, he also tells us that this oil can be obtained for around $60/barrel, which means we will be paying ungodly profits to thieves (which is hardly something new).
In this case, tho, it will continue the downward spiral that is planned to culminate in a new world government, run with a new world currency. Whether or not you like AJ (or Lindsey), I advise you to watch the following two videos in their fullest to hear his story. Again, he has been correct thus far, so it isn’t easy for me to simply sweep away his opinion.
Alex welcomes back to the show Lindsey Williams, the pastor with an inside track to the elite who correctly predicted a significant rise in global oil prices and the collapse of the american currency.
On a side note, many of my friends on Facebook have been complaining about gas prices, electricity prices and food prices, but most can’t seem to connect the dots that the Federal Reserve’s money pumping scheme is a common denominator. But using oil pricing as a catalyst to speed the agenda’s ultimate goal of US Dollar destruction is also a factor I am trying to grasp and understand.
Adrian Salbuchi does connect some of the dots (and confirms some of Lindsey Williams claims). But I am open to dialogue from anyone here in this whole issue.
“From the point of view of the long term planning, of a power elite, a global power elite that is wrapping up globalization after 20 years because it has served most of its purpose and it’s ushering in a coming world government, in a coming world government you would need to, in a controlled manner, erode the relative power of nation-states. That is what I believe is happening now in America and also in North Africa.”
I want to know what you think about my theories. Am I off my rocker? Should we, as Americans, be pitching a fit about this?
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All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Revolt or WordPress.com
It is getting many of my friends. Dog got it way back in the mid 90′s. It (or probably the Chemo) killed him. Elmo got it and is fighting it with Chemo and the latest update is that his tumor has shrunk. Jen, my buddy, died from a brain tumor that THC heals, but she didn’t have that option. My Mom’s friend (and new friend to me) Ruth has it.
I have many friends and relatives who have or had cancer: some live and some died.
But what is it and why do we have it on earth?
Abnormal Angiogenesis is the culprit and the hallmark of every type of cancer. We will all, 100% of us, experience microscopic cancer cells within our lives (especially if we live to be around 70). Many of us will have these small cancers well before then. But, we may never develop a mass of cancerous cells UNLESS angiogenesis occurs (the body’s ability to make blood vessels that feed the cancer). If we stop angiogenesis, we stop the cancer. Here is a very good description of the details of how and why:
Mr William Li tells us that it is not enough to use angiogenesis to stop cancers that are already surviving and growing in our body, but the best way is to stop the blood vessels in the first place. But how? Of course, via nutrition. Dr Mercola explains it even further, then adds this very important information about vitamin D:
It’s virtually impossible to discuss cancer prevention today without discussing vitamin D, as the scientific evidence of its anti-cancerous benefits is truly impressive.
For example, intake of vitamin D3 and calcium could potentially prevent 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer annually in the United States and Canada, according to a complex computer prediction model.
This model also predicted that 75 percent of deaths from these cancers could be prevented with adequate intake of vitamin D3 and calcium.
Theories linking vitamin D to certain cancers have been tested and confirmed in more than 200 epidemiological studies, and understanding of its physiological basis stems from more than 2,500 laboratory studies, according to epidemiologist Cedric Garland, DrPH, professor of family and preventive medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.
Dr. Garland is widely regarded as the leading epidemiologist on vitamin D and its relation to health. He led one of the latest studies on vitamin D for cancer prevention and proposed a new model of cancer development — dubbed DINOMIT– that is centered on a loss of cancer cells’ ability to stick together.
The model is a departure from the older model of cancer development, which centers on genetic mutations as the earliest driving forces behind cancer. According to Dr. Garland:
“The first event in cancer is loss of communication among cells due to, among other things, low vitamin D and calcium levels. In this new model, we propose that this loss may play a key role in cancer by disrupting the communication between cells that is essential to healthy cell turnover, allowing more aggressive cancer cells to take over.”
So clearly, no cancer prevention plan is complete without this simple lifestyle modification.
Normalizing your vitamin D levels with safe amounts of sun exposure is one of the most effective, and least expensive, strategies that is available to most people. Ideally, you’ll want to monitor your vitamin D levels to make sure your levels stay within a therapeutic range year-round.
Here are several additional strategies you can incorporate to virtually eliminate your cancer risk:
Get appropriate amounts of animal-based omega-3 fats.
Exercise. One of the primary reasons exercise works is that it drives your insulin levels down. Controlling insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks.
Have a tool to permanently erase the neurological short-circuiting that can activate cancer genes. Even the CDC states that 85 percent of disease is caused by emotions. It is likely that this factor may be more important than all the other physical ones listed here, so make sure this is addressed. My particular favorite tool for this purpose, as you may know, is the Emotional Freedom Technique.
Only 25 percent of people eat enough vegetables, so by all means eat as many vegetables as you are comfortable with. Ideally, they should be fresh and organic. However, please understand that, frequently, fresh conventionally grown vegetables are healthier than organic ones that are older and wilted in the grocery store. They are certainly better than no vegetables at all, so don’t use that as an excuse. If you are a carb nutritional type you may need up to 300 percent more vegetables than a protein nutritional type.
Obviously, the best approach to cancer is to avoid it in the first place. Good diet, sleep, and certain minor changes in lifestyle can help avoid cancers. But what if much of the food you have access to is some of the main culprits in the cause? What if cancer cells feed on fructose (which is sugar, especially the refined stuff, and most especially the high fructose corn syrup found in virtually everything, including breads and soft drinks, etc)?
WASHINGTON — Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.
Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.
They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.
“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.
“They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”
Cool. So avoiding sugars, especially refined sugars like the mess they put in cokes and bread is a way to limit the ability of these cancers to form and grow. And this is something my family has been doing for a while, although getting it ALL out is virtually impossible, if you ever buy anything at the grocery store or at a fast food restaurant.
Now, something that is extremely interesting and seems to bolster this idea about added sugars, is a recent study that found that researchers cannot find cancer in ancient humans or dinosaurs. Meaning that cancers are a relatively recent phenomena (the Greeks first knew of cancers over 2,000 years ago), but it was relatively obscure. The rapid rates we see now can conceivably be connected to the food and nutrition of today’s man. Read the words of Professor Rosalie David in the following UK Mail Online article:
‘In industrialised societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare.
‘There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle.
‘The important thing about our study is that it gives a historical perspective to this disease. We can make very clear statements on the cancer rates in societies because we have a full overview. We have looked at millennia, not one hundred years, and have masses of data.
‘Yet again extensive ancient Egyptian data, along with other data from across the millennia, has given modern society a clear message – cancer is man-made and something that we can and should address.’
So, cancer was relatively unknown back before the industrial age and the age that we started this insane diet that we now embark upon. It gets worse the more of the refined sugars and bad nutrition are attributed. But, many of us are growing older and have a lifetime of consuming this crap. Is it too late? What if we get cancer? What should we do?
Elmo is getting Chemo and it seems to work. But, in many cases, this is not the case. I want to present the following movie, especially for my friend Ed at Not Another CONspiracy. Ed’s sister is extremely sick and near death. She is scared and I understand that fear. Her only recourse is additional chemo which could likely kill her, for much of that stuff is toxic and as I explained earlier, is what I believe got Dog many years ago.
That is just part 1 of 13 and well worth every minute. Please watch the entire series. I loved this film for its information and hope.
I want to add that the “sick care industry” wants you sick. You MUST understand this simple point. If you aren’t sick, they make no money. To this end, we must always realize that there is a profit motive to keep people eating this crap… not only for the food manufacturers that cut corners and save money using less than healthy ingredients, but there is an undeniably HIGH profit motive in the so-called “health care industry”.
I can attest to this simply from my last visit to my doctor (which has now been over 6 months). There, I ask the Nurse practitioner if diet and exercise could help my blood pressure and lose weight? This person is MUCH larger than I was at the time and basically told me that it might help, but medications would help also.
See how that works?
If these people actually understood the body and how it uses nutrition to fight illness, that story would be what I preach to you now.
But that is NOT, by and large, what the health care industry is interested in. Cause if I get healthy and have no reason to go see them, they make no money.
This ain’t rocket science, you know?
Now, I wonder if this could also be the prime issue with MANY of our diseases like Alzheimer’s, etc? Could we stop many of the debilitating diseases simply by diet, nutrition and exercise?
(Oh, and don’t be freaked out over a coffee enema… I have had barium shoved up my hiney, so there)
All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Revolt or WordPress.com
I have been preaching about being ready for the fall for quite some time (that link is but one of many examples). But I have not only preached to you, I have lived by my sermons. I run across various lists and only on a few occasions have highlighted them here. But maybe it is a good idea to share some of these, in case you learn something new.
#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation.
#2 Dell Inc., one of America’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.
#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in November. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.
#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
#8According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.
#9 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.
#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul, Minnesota. Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford’s new “global” manufacturing strategy.
#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.
#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.
#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.
#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.
#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
I gotta ask you rednecks if you have ever worked in some manufacturing plant? Most of the people who I know do or have. Many are telling me about even more plant lay-offs and factory closings that were once the very bread and butter of a small town (or, at least one of the key employers). I attended a “Job Fair” in Mississippi last week and saw a very old friend who had been working at World Color and she told me that they are shutting down that plant.
I spoke with representatives from Caterpillar who told me that even tho they were attending and manning the booth at this Job Fair, they didn’t have any active jobs available, except in their temporary operator program (this is code for “we don’t have to pay any other perks or guarantee even 40 hours per week”). There was a booth for a local plastics company, but they didn’t have any viable positions open, either.
As a matter of fact, I am not sure why they bothered to hold this event, if the truth be known. I must have asked 25 people, at least, if they got anything out of the event. Not one person told me they did. And this venue was PACKED out with every sort of person you can imagine, looking for a job.
There were countless community colleges and technical schools present and the spiel was that if you could get the grants, they could teach you something and you could use the rest of the money to take care of your other needs (I am not saying this is a bad thing, but the quest SHOULD be to gain knowledge that will put you to work later, I would think).
The entire group of unemployed workers, by and large, looked like a bunch of beat-down zombies looking for brains to eat. Unfortunately, all the non-zombies have already been eaten.
So, it is apparent to me that there will be little in the way of industrial jobs available any time soon. What does that mean? Well, you can always apply at the Carlisle Group’s table and get a job at Wendy’s. Or take any of the many sales jobs that pay commission only and hope for the best (lame assed insurance jobs).
Or maybe, JUST maybe you need to get prepared, just as I have been warning you for over a year.
TIP ONE: Get Real. You must realize you are being lied to by the media, the politicians and the experts. If you don’t accept this reality, then you will not be serious in your efforts to change your situation.
TIP TWO: Be Prepared. Figure out what you’ll need to survive and examine what you have. This will tell you what you don’t have. Start a plan so you can get what you need, but don’t yet have.
TIP THREE: Become Self-Sufficient. The more dependent you are on others, the less likely your chances of survival. Start with the basics: food and water. Do you have a plan for feeding yourself if the food supply chain breaks down, supermarkets go out of business and your cupboards are bare?
TIP FOUR: Be Secure. As things get worse, those that have will become targets of those who have not. Is your home secure? Are you hiding your “wealth” and looking poor? Are your assets easy to get to but securely protected?
TIP FIVE: Get Off the Grid. As resources dwindle a steady, reliable source of power will become a necessity. Solar, wind and hydropower are all within the reach of the individual, depending on your location. Transportation
needs also must be considered, especially if you are reliant on public transit. Do you have a bicycle?
TIP SIX: Get Out of the Dollar. You will need an emergency fund. Dollars are not the currency you want this fund in. Think precious metals and buying a safe to store them in as your bank may not be around much longer.
TIP SEVEN: Think Individually, Act Privately. Be brutally honest about your skills. If your skill set will enable you to do things that others are going to need, you’ve just improved your odds of survival.
TIP EIGHT: Educate Yourself and Your Family. Go old school. Read books. Don’t satisfy yourself reading just those who mimic your beliefs; read about alternative viewpoints, too. The more you know, the more you grow. The wise man learns something new every day. When was the last time you learned something new?
TIP NINE: Investigate the Opportunities. Every situation has opportunities, even our current economic climate. Keep your outlook positive, surround yourself with upbeat people and keep your eyes open for opportunities to present themselves. They will. Just make sure that you seize them when they do.
There is a Tenth Tip, but I won’t feature it here, for if you are hurting for money, one of the last things you (or I) can do is buy a video. Maybe this site will find some way to offer the video in some other format, if they are serious about helping. But, as I review the other hints, I can’t find much to argue with and have done most of it, personally.
I am actively working to set up my “network” or “community”. This is nothing more than trusted friends who have something to offer the community when the SHTF. I am becoming much more vocal in real life (as an example, I recently turned on my next door neighbor to the eBook, “Earth’s Forbidden Secrets” that I featured here by Max Igan. This work is a preface to understanding my goal of community and how we can defeat the current, corrupt system. You can also access it from the sidebar on the right.
My brother called me the other day and told me about an old friend of ours, Weanie, who had just passed away. Her real name was Jeanie, but when her Daddy saw her for the first time after she was born, he looked down at the little red-headed girl and said, “She looks like a Weanie’”
It stuck. For the rest of her life she was called Weanie. All her family, friends, teachers, co-workers, everyone.
I was a good bit older than Weanie and really didn’t get to know her as well as my younger brothers, but the little we did hang out, I could tell she was genuine and cared. Cared about life, about her family about the situation our government has taken us (and the fact that we are letting them). She opened her home to people who didn’t have one. She cared and not everyone does what she did with as little as she had.
I didn’t know she had much of a political side, for truthfully, other than a very few people I know from my hometown, I am one of the few that seem to study this crap (Dr Doug, Ollie and a few others notwithstanding). Hopefully Ollie is here now checking us out (I asked her via Facebook and also asked that she keep this between us for right now). I do wish people would say something in comments, so Ollie, if you are reading and something strikes your fancy or if you disagree or can add additional information, please do so. You folks are important to me, because you are some of the few that seem to have eyes to see. I know we don’t always agree, but we are both open to learning from each other (I hope I have shown that I am). Of course, when I feel I am correct and have studied a subject matter and convinced myself I am on track, you better be prepared to debate, if you have another theory or idea. I don’t form these thoughts willy-nilly. I study and try to come up with a logical progression (but I am no writer, so it is sometimes difficult for me to get the point across for others to understand).
Back to Weanie. Apparently she was a big fan of The Revolt (did you notice I changed the name?). Only slightly, for I feel it was just a bit misleading. I know things now that I wasn’t so sure about when I first started this blog a few years ago… that it isn’t ONLY about revolting from a Red State, but that it is a revolt from the corptocracy; from this Fascist ideology that has swept this country. I finally shucked the brainwashing and see that it isn’t just red states and blue states. It is a Fascist State.
Weanie must have known this because she would read regularly and she would tell her husband, Jason, what I was writing about on some particular day and according to my brother, she would mostly agree and tell others about it.
Now don’t get me wrong. I know this place is no blog magnet, meaning very few people read here (yesterday, this blog received about 890 hits, so this blog is no killer of stats). Many are robotic links and I erase at least 25 porn spams that my spam filter finds daily. So who knows what the real count is.
But I have never been about trying to get numbers. Anyone who pays attention knows that I don’t like ads and I have never received a nickel here. Sure, I’d love to make some money, but I know that this is simply an opinion blog and I have not wanted to cloud the opinion by asking for money in any way (and I don’t intend to start now). The way I look at it, when someone starts paying me money, then I am beholden to them (as an example, when I was “teaching” a church group that called me an assistant pastor, which I abhor and would never have called myself that, I refused money offered to me). I never want to be a paid shill for an ideology. I simply want to see truth and help others see it, too.
I do want to be a source of information to a certain type of person, tho, so I find myself balancing anonymity and the desire to spread my thoughts to people who are interested. Many know who I am in real life (and it isn’t that difficult to find out). Until recently, I was very afraid to let people know about this place, for it rubs the general population the wrong way, due to the way politics brainwashes people. But if I am going to be true to what I feel and believe can help fix this great country, then it appears I will need to open up a bit more. To let people know who I am and why I do this. I once explained to Scott at American Everyman that I keep my anonymity because of threats I have received over the years. Literally, I have had people threaten to kill me over this blog and my opinion. But I have also held a career that was sometimes dependent upon the very people who I think are brainwashed and duped. This was always a double-edged sword and to be honest, I thought may times that it would cost me my job or career.
But now that I have lost it all (my business, bankruptcy, my new job and virtually everything except my family and friends, what else do I have to worry about?
Because many of the death threats had to do with the left/right paradigm and me revolting from a red state. Well, I am revolting from the entire corrupt fascist system. So the way I figure it, either I will double the threats or maybe minimize them when people realize I ain’t on the other “side”. I am on the side of truth and truth is not contained within the left vs right paradigm.
And, yes, I know I can be a prick. I know that when some jerk wad comes around and isn’t even slightly open to what I am sharing and they become a dickhead, I have the ability to become a bigger dickhead. This scares some people. It turns others off. But the one thing you will notice is that I will not sacrifice my values or opinion just to make someone happy, or much less to make them believe we think the same. Just ask my buddy Lynda, who shares here. She and I have had some disagreements and she knows I am can be an asshole, but she still hangs out. I assume she knows that I love her, no matter what my opinion is (and vice versa). And believe me, she has no problem telling me I am an asshole (even tho she does it with tact and love every time).
The same holds true for Doug. Of all the people who are regular, Doug knows me as well or better than anyone and I am willing to bet he will acknowledge what I write here about myself and about how he feels about me (Doug is really my best friend, if the truth be known). And I believe the same holds true for all you regulars that I appreciate immensely. I think that most of you know that I am sincere and mean well, even when I am being an asshole. I appreciate you very much, Lynda, Doug, kelso, Ed, Roschelle, 2Truthy, B waves, Just Me, Kenny, Greg, Scott, Jay, Suzan, Reverend Manny, Lisa, Tengrain, Joanaroo, Chicken Bill, GranAmVixen, Wilderside, (hopefully, Ollie), G (if you still read… I read every post of yours still) and the all the others who are regulars but change your screen name every time you comment. Forgive me if I missed someone, for I know I have.
What I am saying is that you are all important to me. I learn from you and this is my practice for the community work I believe with my whole heart I must begin to establish soon.
But I hope you ALL know that I am genuine. That I mean what I say and say what I mean.
Sometimes I wonder why others have a blog. Is it to gain friends? To become famous? To fulfill some writer’s dream? To make money? To run elbows with the famous or the interesting?
Maybe all that would be ok, but none of that is my reasoning and/or purpose.
If nothing else, this blog is a way for me to let off steam. A way for me to share these redneck thought patterns I have. I don’t always claim to be right and I never claim to be perfect. Many times, I ask for clarification and additional information that you might can share to color in the picture that I might see or might draw for you.
I wrote recently about community and how we might be able to take back this country. This is one very real, but almost ineffectual way to create community, but it is a place to start and learn. Of course, not all of you have sat down with me and looked me in my eyes as we speak, but I would be willing to bet a dollar to a donut that the ones who do know me, know without any doubt that I am serious and am truthful (maybe to a fault). For it is true that the truth can hurt. It breaks down barriers we put up to protect ourselves. It tears down the walls of lies that keep us penned up.
I honestly believe that as I begin to open up this blog a bit more, I have a small opportunity to make a difference to some people… and some of those I would have never expected (you might be surprised how cautious I am to share this place with people who actually know me personally).
I also know that where I am from, I can be considered overly offensive, simply from some of the language that I use. I generally use foul language when I get pissed and/or for effect, and since I stay pissed about the government and how things are done here in America, I use a lot of foul language. This offends some of you and for that I apologize and will try to work on that (I am not saying I will never cuss again, for at times, there is no better way to get a point across, imo).
Weanie apparently read here a lot and I wish I had known. I wish that people who care, whether or not you agree, would say something. Explain how you might think I am incorrect or give me a slap on the back when I hit the right button.
I know there are more of you out there and you are welcomed here.
But SAY SOMETHING!
Weanie, I will miss you (Susan and I have thought and spoken about you many times since the last time we saw you before moving). I am glad you aren’t suffering.
Jason, take care, my man. Weanie was a good one! (and so was your Dad, btw)
A dear friend wrote me this morning, sharing an article he read (and I appreciate the leads and input very much and he knows it). In this article by Jim Hightower, we find that that we need to be worried about the right-wing agenda and what a couple of Billionaire brothers are doing. My focus wasn’t on the article, so I won’t add any of it here (although it is worth the read, if you follow the link). My only real comment was that Mr Hightower seems to be little more than a Dem mouthpiece and seems to miss the fact that both sides/parties/ideologies aren’t different, really.
I wrote:
Hightower is such a Dem Party hack. This is no “right-wing” conspiracy. For that matter, there is no “left” anymore. It is blatant Fascism. Both parties/factions/sides are plainly to blame, yet Jim tries (again, sigh) to make it the right wing problem.
He is also part of the problem.
I don’t mean Mr Hightower is stupid or even a “hack” on purpose, but seems to be missing the overall scenario that these two entities are like con-men working us all like the marks we seem to eagerly be. As a matter of fact, I think Mr Hightower is funny and brilliant, but he appears to be stuck in this paradigm of doom (and that is exactly where they want him to be).
My buddy agrees and points out that the reason he wrote was to point out where the Tea Party gets its money. And, of course, I agree. The Tea Party has been hijacked by the same Corporatist, Big Money machine that always hijacks any “movement”.
I also must point out that another dear friend, Ed, at NotAnotherCONspiracy posted something similar and linked to an article by Chuck Baldwyn, where Chuck also says some of the same type things (which is sort of startling in and of itself). Chuck is fed up, thinks we need a revolution and is apparently moving to Montana (not exactly sure what moving will get him… but). He wrote this:
And it is the influence of globalists and neocons upon national and international politics that the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck simply do not get–or do not want to get. And because many Tea Partiers are so enamored with these two (and allow them to do much of their thinking for them), they remain clueless as well.
Yes, many, if not most Tea Partiers are clueless. But they do have an anger. They know something is wrong, but they are so brainwashed by the system, thinking that they need to work within their right/left, liberal/conservative paradigm, that they (or any so-called “progressive”) could ever get anything done. They fall for all the bullshit.
I critiqued a bit of what I read from Chuck and had this to say in response to Ed:
I agree that the storm is coming. I also agree that a new revolution is needed… one that reinstates the Republic, of which the united states once stood.
The revolution doesn’t have to be fought with weapons, tho. Knowledge is key along with the ability for those of us who disagree on the details to find common ground.
I almost believe that it is too late and damned near impossible, without even further loss of liberties and rights. When the mass of Americans see the pain, maybe.
..
Ed doesn’t think that knowledge alone will do it (and, of course it won’t, as he points out to me in his response). I think he agrees that some sort of revolution is needed (and so do I).
However, to clarify just a bit (and share my thoughts openly here), I want to post what I wrote in further response to my other friend, after he explains that he sees no other way out except a revolution:
I think a totally different tact should be taken than force. They have the Big Guns. They have organization, whereas they easily control us via division and fear.
We don’t have any of that. Sure, many have weapons, but not what they have (they can microwave us to death, as an example). There sure as hell is no organized method of enough Americans to fight them on their playground. So let us bring it to our playground.
To me, the fastest way to stop the tyranny is for us all to find some way to meet and realize that the system is beyond corrupt. For community to get together and rebel from the system. Stop voting R&D. Have community gardens and farmer’s markets, where-by we don’t have to participate in their poisoning of us. Boycott Big Box stores in mass and only buy from local vendors. Pull money out of their banks.
If me and my neighbors could start and it spread to this side of town, then the whole town, then county, then state… THEN…
Is it a dream? Perhaps, but armed rebellion is exactly what they want. Don’t you see that? They are doing everything they can to instill such a thing and are trying to invent what they can’t find in reality.
They are desperate because they know an awakening is happening. They want us to make armed , aggressive moves, so they can bring in the power and squash us. Jail us.
But, how can they “defend” against an unarmed, knowledgeable, but non-participatory mass of citizens?
I am convinced that this non-compliance with their system must start locally and grow.
I can’t help a soul dead or in their prison.
Just a thought.
Maybe I should have said, “Stop Voting. Period.” But you get the point. If no one voted R or D, the political problem would right itself. But, as long as the Sheople feel as if they NEED to fit into the prearranged “sides”, this will never happen. It can’t happen. For as long as people stay brainwashed into the left vs right meme, they win. Always. And I don’t mean that the R’s win or the D’s win. I mean the Corporatists /Fascists win.
You see, I believe that any armed revolution is impossible at this point. Yeah, I hear about all the guns in America and if we were all to band together and fight, we could take America back. But I also know that this is fantasy due to the advantage they have with weaponry and organization. Not to mention that I do not believe that violence will stop evil, maniacal, power freaks… especially when they are organized and the mass of Americans are not. It is disaster waiting to happen, for in reality, they have all the power and we have been divided into small, unorganized, fractured, and SCARED groups and individuals. They rule us via fear.
However, there is a way. I believe it with my whole heart. My little response is a snapshot of my thoughts, but my new friend Max Igan posted his latest radio show up on Youtube today and DAMN, if it doesn’t speak about the very same thing (he gets into a little side issue on the pineal gland that a few that read here might appreciate, as well).
As far as I am concerned, this is a must-hear:
Part 1 of 4
Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4
Part 4 of 4
All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Redstate Revolt or WordPress.com
SOME of The Globes Worst “ONGOING” Ecological Disasters
NIGERIA
Disaster: Oil spills
Going since: Around 1966
Damage done: The Deepwater Horizon incident may have been the worst oil spill in U.S. history, but it pales in comparison to the ongoing catastrophe that has afflicted Nigeria’s Niger River Delta over the last five decades. As many as 546 million gallons of oil are believed to have spilled since oil exploration began in this region — the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every year. There are around 2,000 official spill sites in the region, some of them decades old.
Oil companies operating in the region blame thieves and sabotage for the majority of the spills, though local activists say aging equipment and lax safety are the cause of many of them. The number of severity of the spills may actually increase in coming years as the industry moves into more remote and difficult terrain in the delta.
It’s not just the spilled oil that can be dangerous. Pipeline explosions, like in the one that killed more than 100 people outside Lagos in 2008, are increasingly frequent as well.
CHINA
Disaster: Coal fires
Going since: 1962
Damage done: China’s recent industrial growth depends heavily on coal — the source of 70 percent of the country’s energy — a major reason why it recently became the world’s largest carbon emitter. The country’s mining sector is also extremely dangerous, killing as many as 13 miners every day. But nowhere is the danger of China’s out-of-control coal addiction more evident than in the 62 raging underground coal fires that have burned in Inner Mongolia since the early 1960s.
Covering an area more than 3,000 miles long, China’s northern coal fires are estimated to destroy as many as 20 million tons of coal per year, more than the entire annual production of Germany. According to some estimates, these fires could be the cause of up to 2 to 3 percent of the world’s carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. A new initiative by the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region aims to put half the fires out by 2012.
Inner Mongolia’s coal fires may be the most severe, but they are hardly unique. An underground fire in Centralia, Pa., begun the same year as many of China’s, is also still burning.
[remember they are battling an enormous oil spill in the China Sea currently]
HAITI
Disaster: Deforestation
Going since: 1492
Damage done: Haiti and the Dominican Republic share an island, as well as similar geographic and climate conditions. So why do severe storms and hurricanes — not to mention earthquakes — only cause horrific human tragedy on the Haitian side? One large reason is the almost complete destruction of Haiti’s trees.
When explorer Christopher Columbus first landed in what was then dubbed Hispañola, around three-fourths of it was covered in trees. Today, 98 percent of its forests are gone — one of the worst cases of deforestation in human history.
The main culprit is charcoal, by far the country’s most popular fuel source, which consumes up to 30 million trees per year. The Dominican Republic has banned cutting down trees for charcoal and subsidized propane as a substitute, and the contrast can be seen in satellite photographs of the border.
Without roots to hold the soil together, hurricanes and earthquakes are much more likely to case deadly landslides. The erosion of high-quality topsoil has also devastated Haiti’s agricultural sector, exacerbating its endemic poverty.
The list of challenges confronting Haiti following this year’s earthquake is long and daunting, but if the country is ever going to stand a fighting chance, what it needs more than anything else is more trees.
UZBEKISTAN/KAZAKHSTAN
Disaster: The shrinking of the Aral Sea
Going since: The 1960s
Damage done: Straddling the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth-largest inland water body and home to at least 20 species of fish and a thriving coastal economy in the surrounding towns. In the early 1960s, the Soviet government built more than 45 dams and 20,000 miles of canals in an effort to create a cotton industry on the desert plains of Uzbekistan, depriving the sea of its main sources.
Over the next three decades, the sea shrank to two-fifths its original size, turning fishing villages into barren desert outposts. Thanks to the high salt content in the remaining water, all 20 fish species are now extinct. Drinking water supplies in the area are dangerously low and the ground contains dangerous pesticides from the cotton farms. When the wind sweeps across the now-dry sea bed, it spreads up to 75 million tons of toxic dust and salt across Central Asia every year.
Thankfully, dams constructed in the last decade on the Kazakh side seem to be leading to a partial recovery. The Northern Aral’s surface span has grown by 20 percent and fish and bird species are starting to return. The Southern Ara
PACIFIC OCEAN
Disaster: The Eastern Garbage Patch
Going since: Discovered in 1997
Damage done: Somewhere between California and Hawaii lies the world’s largest garbage dump — a massive soup of plastic and debris one-and-a-half times the size of the United States and 100 feet deep. The “patch” is the product of the North Pacific Gyre, a loop of currents that picks up trash from the West Coast of the United States and East Asia and funnels it into an endless loop in the North Pacific.
Within the patch, pieces of plastic outweigh zooplankton by a factor of 6 to 1, and are often mistaken by fish and birds for food. Chemicals from the plastic can also make their way into the food chain, including fish consumed by humans.
The patch is the most widely publicized example, but this is a global problem. According to the U.N. Environment Program the world’s oceans contain 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile. These plastics are responsible for the deaths of more than a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals every year.
The world is going to be close to it’s breaking point very very soon!
All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Redstate Revolt or WordPress.com
Lately, it seems I need a daily reminder that I am a very Blessed woman. A friend sent me this video– I had seen it before, but it is worth the lesson again, and again……
Okay folks– just for the sheer sake of jumpstarting your nervous system today. Read this report. I promise you that in it you will discover one sentence that will make you pause your breath for a second– and then you will think “ How did I not already figure that was coming”. What a deal folks, what a deal!!!!!!!!!!!
European Stocks Climbfor Sixth Day; BMW, BP Shares Advance
July 13, 2010, 12:14 PM EDT
July 13 (Bloomberg) — European stocks climbed for a sixth day to a three-week high as Alcoa Inc. began the U.S. earnings season with profit that beat estimates, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG raised its forecast and BP Plc gained.
BMW, the world’s biggest maker of luxury cars, jumped the most in 15 months after saying higher volumes in 2010 will boost profit. BP increased 2.9 percent after installing a new cap on its leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico and as Abu Dhabi said it’s considering making an investment in the company.
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index advanced 1.9 percent to 255.99, erasing this year’s losses. The measure has risen 8.2 percent over the past six days amid easing concern about the economic recovery and speculation that the selloff in equities since April has overshot the outlook for company profits. The gauge remains 5.9 percent below this year’s high.
Earnings “forecasts look too low and we expect a strong majority of companies to beat their numbers,” said Graham Bishop, the London-based head of pan-European equity strategy at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. “We already know a great deal about the performance of the global economy through the second quarter. Consensus economic forecasts have actually been revised materially higher.”
Portugal’s PSI-20 Index was the second-weakest western European market today as Moody’s Investors Service cut the nation’s credit rating by two notches to A1 because of a growing debt burden and weak economic growth prospects. The gauge gained 0.1 percent, while the U.K.’s FTSE 100 and France’s CAC 40 surged 2 percent. Germany’s DAX rallied 1.9 percent.
Greek Bond Sale
Greece’s ASE Index surged 2.6 percent as the nation sold 1.63 billion euros ($2.1 billion) of 26-week Treasury bills at a rate below the 5 percent charged by the European Union for its bailout package, easing concern the country faces punitive costs to borrow.
BMW rallied 8.3 percent to 42.13 euros, leading a gauge of auto stocks to the biggest gain among 19 industry groups in the Stoxx 600. The luxury-car maker forecast 2010 sales volumes will rise by about 10 percent to more than 1.4 million units, with a full-year profit margin of more than 5 percent expected for the automobiles segment. Rival Daimler AG advanced 5.4 percent to 43.81 euros.
Automakers Advance
Peugeot SA climbed 5.3 percent to 24.37 euros and Volkswagen AG preferred shares gained 5.2 percent to 77 euros. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its price estimate on the French carmaker by 3 percent to 34 euros and on the German automaker by 4 percent to 78 euros, saying increased demand and “attractive valuations” favor the industry, according to a report today.
BP advanced 2.9 percent to 410.35 pence, extending yesterday’s 9.4 percent jump. The oil company installed a new cap on its leaking Gulf of Mexico well and will start testing today whether this will stop the gusher while work continues on a permanent plug. Separately, the Financial Times reported that BP expects to be able to write off the oil-spill cleanup costs against taxes, without saying where it got its information.
Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan said the emirate is considering making an investment in BP.
‘Still Thinking’
“We are still thinking about it,” he said in an interview in Abu Dhabi today, when asked about potentially buying a stake in the London-based oil producer. “We are looking across the board. We have been partners with BP for years.”
Alcoa, the largest U.S. aluminum producer reported second- quarter profit that topped analysts’ projections as higher metal prices boosted sales. Earnings from continuing operations were 13 cents a share, exceeding the 11-cent average estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
Profits for S&P 500 companies are projected to have increased 34 percent in the second quarter and by the same amount in 2010, according to analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Intel Corp., the biggest maker of semiconductors which reports quarterly earnings after the close of U.S. exchanges today, is among 23 companies in the index to announce results this week.
Burberry Group Plc surged 3.7 percent to 818.5 pence, the highest level since at least 2002. The U.K.’s largest luxury retailer posted a 27 percent gain in first-quarter sales, beating analysts’ estimates, led by growth in Asia and deliveries to wholesale customers.
Unilever, BAT
Unilever, the world’s second-largest maker of consumer products, gained 2.9 percent to 1,898 pence and British American Tobacco Plc advanced 2.6 percent to 2,277 pence as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. upgraded both companies to “buy” from “neutral.”
SEB AB surged 4.9 percent to 48.75 kronor after the second- largest bank in the Baltic countries returned to profit in the second quarter as loan losses in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania decreased.
DNO International ASA rallied 4.9 percent to 8.74 kroner, the highest close since April, after the Daily Telegraph reported that RAK Petroleum Pcl has made an offer to buy the remainder of the Norwegian oil producer. DNO Chief Executive Officer Helge Eide said he had “no comment and no information” on the report.
–Editors: Andrew Rummer, David Merritt.
All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Redstate Revolt or WordPress.com
WTF are people supposed to do?? Hell, I wish my Grandfather was here so I could get some insight as to how to navigate through times such as these!!! He was born in 1898. I did listen to him when he spoke about the Depression– but I sincerely would like to of heard the deep ‘how tos’. God Bless those fromback then– and God Bless us from today!
Michael A. FletcherWashington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 13, 2010 TOMS RIVER, N.J. — Even before his unemployment checks ended, Dwight Michael Frazee’s days were filled with the pursuit of any idea that could earn him a buck. But few are working out, and now his nights are filled with dread.
In the coming weeks, the Senate is expected to resume its debate about whether to extend the emergency jobless benefits that were passed in response to the steep increase in unemployment caused by the recession. But people like Frazee, who have suffered the longest in the downturn, will not be part of that conversation. They are among the 1.4 million workers who have been unemployed for at least 99 weeks, according to the Labor Department, reaching the limit for the insurance. Their numbers have grown sixfold in the past three years.
The 99ers are glaring examples of the nation’s most serious bout of long-term joblessness since the Great Depression. Nearly 46 percent of the country’s 14.6 million unemployed people have been out of work for more than six months, and forecasters project that the situation will not improve anytime soon. Currently, the Labor Department says there are nearly five unemployed people for every job opening.
Frazee, 50, has applied for work at more places than he can remember since he lost his construction job two years ago. He has tried car dealerships, Kmart, Home Depot and the funky shops on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, near Toms River. He looked into becoming a commercial crabber, working in title insurance and as a bail bondsman. But no dice.
While searching for work, he lived on $585 a week in unemployment payments. But the checks were cut off in May when he reached 99 weeks. Now Frazee, who is married and has a 5-year-old daughter, is in a financial free fall with no safety net.
“My life has been total stress. I sleep maybe four hours a night, worrying about money,” he said. “I understood the president and Congress had to stabilize the banks, get Wall Street going. I figured something would be done for middle-class Americans, that they couldn’t abandon us. But I was wrong.”
Since the recession began in December 2007, lawmakers have passed several extensions that stretched the normal 26-week limit for unemployment benefits to as long as 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. In the Washington area, only workers in the District, where unemployment is 10.4 percent — well above the 9.5 percent national rate — qualify for the longest-term unemployment benefits. Virginia and Maryland residents can receive benefits as long as 86 weeks, including 60 weeks of federally financed benefits. The Labor Department has no statistics on the number of workers in each jurisdiction who have exhausted their benefits.
With the federal extensions now up for renewal, Congress has shown decreasing enthusiasm for them amid increasing concern about the ballooning deficit.
On several occasions, Senate Republicans have said they would not vote for stimulus bills that included unemployment extensions, saying any new spending must be offset by cuts elsewhere. With the extensions expired at least temporarily, more than 2 million Americans have lost their unemployment benefits, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization. A report by the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that 21,700 Virginians, 12,300 Marylanders and 5,200 D.C. residents lost their benefits when the extensions ended.
Congress’s inaction has been accompanied by a growing sentiment among lawmakers that long-term unemployment benefits create a disincentive for the jobless to find work.
“Workers are less likely to look for work, or accept less-than-ideal jobs, as long as they are protected from the full consequences of being unemployed,” said Michael D. Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “That is not to say that anyone is getting rich off unemployment, or that unemployed people are lazy. But it is simple human nature that people are a little less motivated as long as a check is coming in.”
That was disputed by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, who cited a recent study ordered by congressional Democrats. “These benefits do not inhibit job seekers from vigorously looking for or accepting work,” she said.
The growing backlash against unemployment insurance has left the 99ers with few political advocates. President Obama, buffeted by GOP criticism of his economic policies as unemployment rates hover at their highest levels in 28 years, has been struggling to win support for renewing the extended jobless benefits. Consequently, any help for the 99ers is off the table, at least for now — leaving them angry at their political leaders.
“President Obama talks a lot about making the victims of the gulf disaster whole, but what about the victims of this economic disaster?” Frazee said. “Nowadays, he seems mostly concerned with image. Now, he doesn’t want to be seen as a big spender. But people need help.”
A 34-year-old resident of Vienna, Va., named Brian, who withheld his last name because of his embarrassment about being out of work, worked in corporate finance for nine years before being laid off three years ago. He exhausted his unemployment benefits long ago and has been living off savings and credit. “Before this, I figured that if you can’t find a job in two years, you’re not looking,” he said. “But I keep looking and jobs just are not there. The economy is not recovering. It’s being propped up by government spending. But when that ends, I think this whole mess is not over with.”
Here in Toms River, Frazee has not earned a regular paycheck since working as a $75,000-a-year laborer during the construction of the Borgata hotel in Atlantic City. That was in July 2008, just as the economy was imploding — and just after he was returning to health after having a cancerous appendix removed.
Since then, he has not worked, save for a recent four-day stint cleaning up a construction site at a nearby state college. He has fallen behind on mortgage payments for his sunny townhouse, and he is staring at the prospect of foreclosure even after negotiating a loan modification with his lender, Wells Fargo.
Most of the time, Frazee said, he has been confident that things would work out, if only because they always have. He started as a construction worker after his father’s endorsement helped him land a spot in the Laborers’ International Union Local 415 shortly after he graduated from Toms River South High School in 1978.
When he wasn’t working construction, he had jobs on oil rigs off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., and in the Gulf of Mexico. He also was a bounty hunter. “I’ve never been one to feel sorry for myself,” he said. “I’ve always worked.”
Until now. The longer he is out of a job, the more unemployable he feels. He suspects that potential employers are turned off by his age and by the fact that he has been out of work for so long. But he is moving near the top of the hiring list for his union. And in the meantime, he has been buying mail-order children’s quartz watches from China and selling them on consignment at local convenience stores. He clears close to $3 per watch.
“I’m a union construction worker, but I think I can be a hell of a salesman,” Frazee said. “A lot of the stores around here are owned by Indian Americans, and they like me. They’re taking my watches. Maybe India and China are going to help me out of this jam if my country won’t.”
All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Redstate Revolt or WordPress.com
Ya know– I hate ‘sound-bites’ and I sure am wise enough to know when I end up listening to something in pieces, that I do not nor will I ever have the entire history regarding anything that I just heard. Now– I do know the following–
1] This woman was in control of the call and dialoge
2] I do not believe he knew it was being taped
3] She said what she wanted said on the tape
4] If we taped anyone of us during a domestic tyrate it would not be pretty
5] He sounds like every Biker [sorry bikers] I ever knew
6] IF domestic violence did happen, he is wrong– flat out wrong
7] I am not a shrink, so there can be no diagnosis from me while I sit in my armcahir
8] I have used almost every word he used at one time in my life
9] I actually don’t think this tape is any of our business
10] Obviously he is out of control about something way past what we are aware of… in their life together
11]… He should never ever hit nor threated to put her [or anyone] under.
12] Can anyone one of us look back honestly in our own lives and say that we or someone we knew had never ever gotten into a heated screaming match? Would you want it recorded for all to hear out of contents??
AGAIN== Mel is wrong with his rage and violence… I am just speaking to the ‘taping’.
The media is having a hayday with this… Mel needs help, counceling…. something. And she needs to just do what she has to do in court, get to court and settle whatever she wants to settle– but ya know, somewhere in the nasty oh-so-wrong shit is a bid for money– and tons of it. I am not saying Mel didn’t do terrible stuff, he most likely sure as hell did– but I am just not excusing her or the media on this one either. The Radar Online folks stated that she personally did not give them the tapes. I am sure she sure as hell had a hand in it– she needed public outrage, or so she thinks. Screw this mess… I want to hear the well is capped and the clean-up is going well, and the troops are coming home [which will add to millions of more unemployed Americans because WHERE ARE OUR TROOPS GONNA WORK?? So there ya have it– this story is not a news worthy story!!! Jobs, Troops, Wars, Unemploymeny, healthcare, enviornment are true stories!!!
All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Redstate Revolt or WordPress.com
I am lost and forgotten in this hell where countless Americans exist!! My Unemployment runs out very soon… and also while you read this, know that they only cleared me for $16.00 per month for Food Stamps! Now let me bitch about the new healthcare for Pre-Existing folks. What I feared the most about this bill came true! I knew they all talked about healthcare for everyone– no one turned away or denied. BUT what they never ever said was ’ affordable to the poor”. I contacted the state about the pre-existing Ins. Oh, I can get it– but the premium is 600 per month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Suck, things suck badly! WTF! People need jobs!!!!!!
WASHINGTON — Keeping unemployment benefits flowing for millions of workers whose jobs were eaten by the recession should have been a slam dunk in an election year.
But until this month, Senate Democrats have been unable to bring themselves to pass a simple bill that just does it. Instead they’ve demanded a series of unrelated and often controversial tax and spending add-ons that have enabled Republicans to mount successful filibusters.
Now that the legislation has been shorn of all the extras, the bill could win final passage soon. It can’t come soon enough for more than 2 million people whose checks have been cut off in a five-month impasse in which there’s plenty of blame to go around:
_ Democrats and their leaders made several decisions that in retrospect look like miscalculations, like pulling the rug out from under a bipartisan measure launched back in February and loading a subsequent bill with $24 billion for governors — guaranteeing that most Republicans would vote against it.
_ Republican moderates voted one way in March to help the bill pass but changed their minds just weeks later, having gotten religion from GOP leaders and tea partiers on the budget deficit.
Little remembered amid the ongoing partisanship and recrimination is that jobless benefits also got sideswiped by President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
To reduce the health care bill’s impact on the deficit, Democrats decided to close almost $30 billion in tax loopholes. Until the final health care push, those revenues had been designated to cover the cost of extending other popular family and business tax breaks as part of a broad bipartisan jobless benefits package.
Besides the jobless aid, the measure contained a payroll tax holiday for businesses, tax breaks for business, health insurance subsidies and help for doctors facing a cut in their Medicaid payments. It had support from across the political spectrum, from Obama to conservative Senate Republicans.
Some liberals, however, balked at the deal, which was cut principally by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and the committee’s senior Republican, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa. The liberals didn’t like that their “jobs agenda” seemed hijacked by business lobbyists, who won items like research and development tax credits and some arcane measures such as tax breaks for NASCAR tracks. With unemployment hovering just under 10 percent, they also thought it was too light on subsidies for preserving and creating jobs.
So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blew up the agreement, instead advancing a pared-back jobs bill excusing businesses from having to pay the employer share of Social Security taxes this year on any new workers they hire. Economists were dubious it would produce many jobs. Meanwhile, unemployment aid would wait for later legislation.
“We could have had this bill passed in three days and … Reid decided to scuttle it,” Grassley complained. “Baucus read about it in the paper.”
The delays meant that Congress had to pass a short-term extension of jobless benefits at the end of February. Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., worked out a deal for a quick vote to avoid an interruption in benefits.
But another Kentucky Republican, Sen. Jim Bunning, single-handedly held up the bill for days, demanding that government spending elsewhere be cut to pay for the jobless benefits rather than add to the federal debt. Bunning folded on March 2. But his fight resonated with tea partiers and millions of other voters worried about year after year of trillion-dollar deficits.
In the meantime, Reid resurrected the longer-term jobless aid package. He mixed in familiar elements like extending expired tax breaks and added a $24 billion package of aid to cash-starved state governments so they could avoid layoffs of tens of thousands of public employees — a key part of last year’s economic stimulus bill.
The result was a bill adding almost $100 billion to the deficit. That meant that GOP support would be limited. But it still passed in March with support from several Republicans, including key moderate Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and George Voinovich of Ohio.
That was the bill’s high point. The political sands soon began to shift.
Another short-term unemployment insurance extension — needed to buy time for negotiations on the bigger bill — came at the end of March. It would be the last. Beginning in June, hundreds of thousands of workers unemployed for more than six months started losing the weekly checks.
More Republicans picked up on Bunning’s position and demanded cuts in other programs, including Obama’s $862 billion stimulus bill passed a year earlier, to pay for the extension.
It was a message the party felt increasingly comfortable with after losing the health care fight, especially as the European debt crisis roiled the markets and the U.S. government’s debt topped $13 trillion. Republicans stressed that with the unemployment rate still near double digits, jobless benefits averaging $300 a week should be extended — but that they should be paid for.
“You never know in politics when that magic moment comes when things really begin to change, but I believe that it has occurred now,” GOP Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona told reporters March 26. “I think you’ll see a much greater commitment now to fiscal responsibility.”
The short-term jobless aid extension passed, but it took until late May for their House and Senate negotiators to agree on a longer-term jobless aid package featuring new business tax increases but still racking up $115 billion in new government debt over the next decade.
This time, conservative House Democrats recoiled. House leaders were forced to sharply pare the measure back, eliminating new aid for state governments as well as a longer-term fix for doctors threatened with a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments.
The House passed the bill on May 28, returning the measure to the Senate, where debate consumed the Senate’s entire June schedule. Democrats still wanted to help governors with their payrolls but ultimately acceded to cutting it by one-third and paying for it partly with cuts from last year’s stimulus bill. Even that measure failed just before Congress recessed for the July 4 holiday.
Reid is now resigned to a stand-alone six-month extension of unemployment benefits at a cost of $33 billion. Aides say he will try to pass it when West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin names a successor to fill the seat of Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd, who died two weeks ago. Those who lost benefits will get them retroactively.
Democrats also maintain hopes of passing a $16 billion aid package for governors aimed at preserving the jobs of tens of thousands of state workers through the election. They intend to pay for it in part by cutting food stamp benefits.
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These are the figures for U.S. Trade per Country….
Call me crazy– but first : I don’t believe ‘all’ the figures
and secondly I just keep thinking ‘ what exactly did we trade for that couldn’t of been produced here?”
And why the hell do we trade with our enemies???? To win their hearts and minds…? How about winning your own citizens hearts and minds so they can get back to work, make a liveable wage, stay healthy… and pay into their own systems .
Nation building in Afghanistan is not our job— it is theirs.
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, June 25, 2010
Washington Post
The good news? Nobody has to pretend anymore that Gen. Stanley McChrystal knew how to fix Afghanistan within a year. The bad news? No
President Obama was absolutely right to sack the preening McChrystal, whose inner circle, as portrayed in Rolling Stone magazine, had all the seriousness and decorum of a frat house keg party. And it was a brilliant political move to turn to Petraeus, who is made of purest Teflon. Critics who might have been tempted to blast the president for changing horses in midstream can hardly object when he has given the reins to the man who averted a humiliating U.S. defeat in Iraq.
Note that I didn’t credit Petraeus with “winning” in Iraq. He didn’t. What he managed to do was redeem the situation to the point where the United States could begin bringing home its combat troops. If the Obama administration’s aims in Afghanistan are recalibrated to accommodate objective reality, then Petraeus can succeed there, too. But this means that the general’s assignment should be a narrow one: Lay the groundwork for a U.S. withdrawal to begin next summer, as Obama has pledged.
After relieving McChrystal of his command Wednesday, Obama called in his national security team and read the riot act. No more bickering, sniping, backbiting or name-calling, the president ordered. Play nice.
But all the comity in the world doesn’t resolve the essential tension between those who believe our goal in Afghanistan should be defined as “victory” and those who believe it should be defined as “finding the exit.” Two thousand years of history are on the side of the “exit” camp, and the fact is that at some point we’re going to leave. The question is how much time will pass — and how many more young Americans will be killed or wounded — before that inevitable day comes.
McChrystal, who designed the counterinsurgency strategy being attempted in Afghanistan, didn’t disguise his opposition to administration officials such as Vice President Biden, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who questioned whether the strategy could work. Petraeus is far too good a politician to fall into that trap. He won’t allow any daylight between himself and the civilian leadership.
But ultimately, there’s going to be no way to avoid the central question: What kind of Afghanistan will we leave behind?
One answer would be that we have to leave in place a durable, functional central government that has full legitimacy and control within the nation’s borders. This would provide the United States with a reliable ally in a dangerous region and also ensure that Afghanistan would never again be used as a launching pad for attacks by al-Qaeda. But to get the country to that point, given where it is now, could take a decade or more of sustained, concentrated attention. It would mean not just defeating the Taliban but molding the regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai into a reasonably honest, effective government. This would be a tall order even if Karzai were a stable, consistent, loyal partner. Does anybody believe that he is?
A better answer would be that it’s enough to leave behind an Afghanistan that no longer poses a serious threat to the United States or its vital interests. Nation-building would be the Afghans’ problem, not ours.
Petraeus was successful in Iraq because he realized that he couldn’t create an Athenian democracy in Baghdad. But the highly imperfect Iraqi government is light-years beyond what the general is likely to be able to achieve in Kabul. Even after the war, Iraq was left with modern infrastructure, a highly educated and sophisticated population, and a sizable percentage of the world’s proven oil reserves. Afghanistan has none of these advantages. The political culture is stubbornly medieval; the populace is poor, uneducated and wary of foreign influences. Afghanistan does have great mineral wealth, apparently, but no mining industry to dig it out and no railroads to get it to the marketplace.
In recent testimony before Congress, Petraeus was less than definitive when asked about Obama’s July 2011 deadline. Because he has such credibility and standing in Washington, his view on when we can begin to leave Afghanistan will be more important than McChrystal’s ever was. I hope that by putting Petraeus in charge of the war, President Obama hasn’t consigned us to a longer stay. His comments Thursday seem to indicate the possibility.
Oh– and I can bet you that Petraeus told the President that he would accept this position with a few conditions– Like ‘Hey I am a Battle Field General.. And I want to WIN, [ like there is such a thing as win] not mandy-pandy around. I am going to make a few changes to your rules of combat– LIKE allow the men to shoot!!!!!” “ Oh and by the way, Rolling Stone Mag, set up McChrystal!”
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