Please Send All Your Positive Thoughts And Prayers To Lynda

Today, my friend and blogging partner, Lynda, is having surgery for some skin cancers she has been diagnosed with. This is a fine person, who loves and cares about her fellow man. I believe that she deserves any person’s positive thoughts and/or prayers (no matter your religious persuasion). Just knowing you care is extremely important.

I also want to share some links that a visitor called “Don’t Freakout” shared here and found the information extremely enlightening to me (and should be a wonderful resource for the future, should you be faced with any of this).

If you are fighting cancer, start here:

Green Med Info For Cancers

Then go here:

Squamous and Basal Cell Carcinoma Treatment Strategies Part I

A Good Video on History and Related Cures which are Alternative

I don’t pretend to be a doctor and I have no medical training. But I have witnessed far too many young people die from these diseases and hopefully someone can find supplementary or alternative treatments to help themselves. As my friend Elmo found, medical treatments didn’t help him and arguably is what killed him before the cancer did.

It is always wise to consult your doctor, in any event, but self-education and illumination can’t hurt.

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Did I rub you the wrong way or stroke you just right? Let me know below in the comments section or Email me at buelahman {AT} g m a i l {DOT} com

If for some reason you actually liked this post, click the “Like” button below. If you feel like someone else needs to see this (or you just want to ruin someone’s day), click the Share Button at the bottom of the post and heap this upon some undeserving soul. And as sad as this thought may be, it may be remotely possible that us rednecks here at The Revolt please you enough (or more than likely, you are just a glutton for punishment??), that you feel an overwhelming desire to subscribe via the Email subscription and/or RSS Feed buttons found on the upper right hand corner of this page (may the Lord have mercy on your soul).

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

My Friend is Correct—

 

Watch Video–

   http://youtu.be/lW0-HdN0cK8

Then as now— it all echoes back , for me, to hearing Dwight David Eisenhower’s Presidential Departure speech “Beware of the Industrial/Military Complex”.

Currently trying to wrap my weary brain around the fact that our government is going to intentionally flood miles of farmland, homes and businesses to supposedly save miles of farmland, homes and businesses that WHAT???— are more important? more valuable? AND pay nothing to these people that THEY are doing this too??? I am SO like Carlin right now. And I shouldn’t be… really I just shouldn’t be. There actually still should be a voice in me that does and says more than Fuck It, I give up.

                                  I miss you B’man…  love to all!

BuelahMan Sits In His Front Row Seat With His Notebook

When you are born in this world, you are given a ticket to this freak show.

When you are born in America, you are given a front row seat.

Kelso shared this video below on Facebook a few weeks ago and it stuck with me, for it sort of explains my transition lately. When I started this blog in 2007, I was one of the people who thought I might be able to make a difference, especially towards reaching Southern Folk. I endearingly call us all “rednecks”, in such a way NOT to offend, but to try to bring humor to what many take offensively (or perhaps better yet, what many others use AGAINST southern folks offensively). I splattered around some funny stuff every now and then, hoping this might also attract a few folks whose work and over-burdened lives was causing them great distress.

Image via Wikipedia

As I read and learned and as I experienced my own many problems (bankruptcy, medical issues in my family, deaths, loss of job and basically the falling apart of everything I ever worked for), I began to realize that there was something afoot that was beyond my ability to make change or improve (or even slow or stop the demise I was personally experiencing). So, I evolved and this blog evolved. She (the blog) and I both became angry. We both saw that something was purposefully being done to change our lives in America and the rest of the world.

I began researching and then sharing what I found in commentary. I began asking others to join me and share their thoughts, because I want to hear others’ progression thru their change/evolution and be able to share that here. Linda put up with a lot of my assholeness, but still loves me. Kelso joined up in an attempt to share a very different perspective (and he truly has a gift for writing, among many other gifts). Then I reached out to an old friend when I saw him on Facebook (Dr Doug).

Dr Doug was one of those staunch Republicans, at one time. He has shared with me that thru things he and I discussed, he started seeing some truths as I do (I am not suggesting that we see everything eye to eye). He is one of those folks that gave me hope that maybe there was something I could do to make a change in American perception and attitude (especially among “rednecks”). He proved to me that people are not beyond reach and if they simply open their minds, things like 911 suddenly become “not so clearly” the official story (not to mention how bogus the D vs R false political paradigm is). I was very glad when he agreed to share things here and he brings a different take to a lot of issues and has many alternate skills that The Revolt needed.

There are quite a few excellent regulars that share in comments and the wealth of information I learn from them is amazing. I have also set up a very nice, but evolving set of reference blog links. They generally all have different strengths and even purposes. I have made a lot of online friends and recently one of these fine folks wrote me, noticing that my family and I are going thru some rough times, and offered to send me some money to help us. That particular person may never understand what such a thought means to me (don’t worry, everybody, I ain’t asking for money and turned him down, too, with much gratitude).

In many cases, some of these blogs have changed in some way and end up writing shit that causes me to re-question their motives. When and IF I see that something is looking dubious or peculiar, I cull them much like I recently culled over 125 Facebook “friends” (and then I de-activated the account, no longer considering that the network is a means to reach people). Sure, several of them enjoyed what I would share, but if I were a fly on the wall in the majority’s homes as they looked at their FB wall, I bet 1/2 or more had blocked my feed (and I understand that a lot of what I shared rubbed them and their comfort zones in a really bad way). Such is life and such is blogging (sometimes you just got to cull the baggage or the wolf that is dressed in sheep’s clothing or simply the dumbasses).

I had mentioned leaving FB several times before on my wall and inevitably, several people would write and ask me not to, but I was still only preaching to an ever-shrinking choir. I had shared enough links from here that if they want to know what I think, they can come read (and would be welcome). Many have recently joined by subscribing, as a matter of fact (thank you all). I like to think that these people, who are mostly folks that I have known for a very long time (many going to highschool with), know I am genuine and that I ain’t stupid. I believe they know that I try my best to study, evaluate, and take time to form an educated opinion, altho I am an expert in only a couple of things (and I NEVER write about those things).

I guess what I am saying is that I have (in Carlin’s words) become one of those people who sit back in my front row seat and take notes. I wish I had his gift for humor and insight, for he was an amazing individual, but I am what I am, lacking in many ways.

Listen to a genius describe what I am trying to say:

If you like what you see here at The Revolt, please subscribe via Email subscription or by the RSS Feed button found on the upper right hand corner of this page and/or hit the Share Button at the bottom of the post to share via various means.

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

…keep dancing…

All wars are terrifying gambles, but the wars justified with moral claims of humanitarianism carry a distinctively harrowing set of risks and problems — above all, the challenge of preventing massive human catastrophes with limited means. In Libya, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Obama are already beginning to confront many of the classic dilemmas that bedeviled their predecessors facing massacres and genocide in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda.

The big democracies usually stand idly by during the worst atrocities, including the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda. Simply to defend core national security interests, the Western allies might have been better off this time concentrating on threats in North Korea, Pakistan or Yemen. (After the United States invaded Iraq, Condoleezza Rice reportedly warned George W. Bush about Darfur: “I don’t think you can invade another Muslim country during this administration, even for the best of reasons.”) If Western strategists saw a more complex interest in furthering the democratic impulses of the Arab revolutions, Libya still may not have seemed of paramount importance compared with, say, Egypt or Tunisia. But what seemingly counted most in Libya was that civilians in Benghazi might, as Obama said last month, “suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

This raises the first inevitable problem: Since the goal is the defense of humanity, and there are humans facing violence in many places, how do you intervene in one spot and not another without drawing accusations of hypocrisy? After all, horrific mass atrocities happen all over the world; there are other countries that have endured worse slaughter than Libya without eliciting Western interventions. As the writer David Rieff has noted, during debates about rescue in the Balkans in the 1990s, skeptics would say, “I’ll see your Bosnia, and raise you one East Timor.”
Obama has rightly said that the duty to rescue endures, even though “America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs.” Yet this offers only the beginning of an answer. Why strike in Libya but not do more for Congo, or Ivory Coast (where up to 1 million people have fled post-election violence), or Bahrain, for that matter, where the United States has largely stood behind the monarchy as it crushes peaceful protesters? Moreover, other critics will inevitably ask, if the threat to innocent human life in Libya was so great that it justified emergency violations of national sovereignty, then why settle for half-measures such as a no-fly zone?
A major reason for limiting the number of interventions — and for giving each intervention a limited mission — stems from a second classic problem: Western democratic leaders have powerful political incentives to do humanitarianism on the cheap. Sarkozy, spectacularly unpopular at home and facing a presidential election next year, may score political gains for his leadership, but there is more for politicians to lose if the intervention goes badly than there is to gain if it goes well. Whatever credit President Bill Clinton might have gotten from the American public for saving untold thousands of Somalis, he retreated fast after 18 U.S. troops were killed in Mogadishu in October 1993. And particularly after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is scant French, British or American public appetite for more military adventures in Muslim lands.
Indeed, the very success of a humanitarian intervention can undermine its rationale and public support. If Clinton had swiftly sent troops to Rwanda in 1994 and stemmed the genocide, critics might have accused him of overreacting. White House official Dennis Ross reportedly said that the allies acted in Libya to prevent a “Srebrenica on steroids,” claiming that 100,000 people might have been slaughtered in Benghazi. But since those kinds of gruesome headlines have been forestalled, all anyone can see are the problems of an ongoing war. And once a one-sided slaughter becomes a two-sided war, it is easier for butchers to try to imply a moral equivalence — as when Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic complained that NATO leaders were the real war criminals for bombing Belgrade in 1999.
The result is a third recurring quandary: Humanitarian interventions tend to use limited means, while flirting with maximalist goals.
In Bosnia before 1995, Britain, France, Canada and the Netherlandssent U.N. troops, but these governments were more worried about the safety of their own soldiers than about protecting Bosnian civilians. The United Nations declared Sarajevo, Srebrenica and four other Bosnian towns to be “safe areas” but did not provide forces that could defend them — paving the way for the extermination of 7,000 Bosnians at Srebrenica in July 1995.
In Rwanda in 1994, the genocidal government killed 10Belgian U.N. peacekeepers, driving the United Nations to pull out most of its troops — even while Rwandans sought shelter at U.N. posts. In Kosovo in 1999, Clinton refused to commit ground troops, relying only on air power even as Milosevic’s forces unleashed fresh assaults on the Kosovars on the ground. And in Darfur in 2004, the African Union sent a small peacekeeping force, which was overwhelmed by the scale of the problem and later had to be reinforced by the United Nations.
This leads to a fourth perennial problem: Humanitarian wars, like all wars, tend to escalate. In Libya, the shared original objective might have been to protect civilians, not to overthrow the regime, but what if Moammar Gaddafi retaliates against outside intervention with terrorism or by killing more civilians, after the U.N. Security Council has approved action precisely because he was killing civilians? What if the civil war drags on for years, as such conflicts usually do? Reluctant Western allies and the Arab League could be pulled even deeper into Libya.
Such a wider war points to a final dilemma: Because outsiders are wary of sending in ground forces, they find themselves relying on locals willing to fight.
In Rwanda, the genocide of the Tutsi minority was stopped not by the international community but by the Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. The Bosnian government army, although hobbled by a U.N. arms embargo, fought hard against the Serb nationalist onslaught. As John Stuart Mill wrote in 1859, “The only test . . . of a people’s having become fit for popular institutions, is, that they . . . are willing to brave labor and danger for their liberation.”
There is no such thing as a neutral intervention, one that solely protects civilians without taking sides. In Libya, Sarkozy’s government has recognized the rebels as the “legitimate representatives” of the people, while Obama has said that Gaddafi should go. Western and Arab leaders will probably find themselves facing calls to train and arm the rebels or oust Gaddafi, and Obama has already stated that he has neither ruled in nor ruled out providing military assistance to the rebels.
But a local army or rebel group will not always be a champion of human rights. In 1971, to resist Pakistani atrocities against Pakistan’s Bengali population, India trained and armed Bengali guerrillas, who used child soldiers as young as 10. Soon before NATO bombed Serb forces in 1995, Croatia launched a ground war to recapture the Krajina region from Milosevic, ruthlessly expelling at least 120,000 Serb refugees. And today, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that “we’re still getting to know” the Libyan opposition leaders.
Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama have acted on principle in Libya. If Benghazi had gone down in history as another Srebrenica, they would surely have regretted it, much as President Clinton now regrets not acting in Rwanda. Their problem now is that virtue is not its own political reward, even if the war goes well — and especially if the war goes badly.

Gary Bass/ Washington Post
4/2011

Ok, I get it… Ok, so i get what they are ‘trying‘ to tell me! , they want freedom. Gaddafi is an evil tyrant. But how in the world did they come up with this stuff? I am pretty sure that if the people here in the U.S. decided to rebel, there would be a bunch of farmers with small arms running around getting blown up by tanks, para-military groups with a bigger stash of arms– ….BUT These people JUST STARTED TO REBEL!! God, every other man there seems to have some sort of anti-aircraft weapon mounted in the back of a truck! It’s like the Libyans have been waiting for SOMETHING to happen. “No matter what I am ready. I have bottled water, canned food, 50 cal and ammo, emergency blankets, rocket propelled grenades, and my ipod loaded with plenty of ass kicking music, just in case shit really hits the fan…”

IMO… it is about resources… all about greed under the moral code of ‘let’s go help them’

One way to keep the defense department from cutting its budget is to get involved with yet another country in a war or no-fly or simply to base a lot of folks there due to an impending threat. It may sound crass but if you are spending 700 billion on basic defense and then line iteming a few hundred billion more in excursion here and there…well it adds up. We will soon be spending a few hundred million a day to patrol the skys over Libya and that will grow some as Libya tries some funny business here and there…here and there.

Afghanistan grows the seeds of the drug trade that is their “cash crop” until a few years ago when someone found a few zillion square miles full of litium.. Then comes a ramp up of troops to fight in a country that has 4-5 dozen bad guys scattered here and there and bingo we are 2 billion $’s a week and 150,000 troops and no one is sure what we going to do when we succeed in doing it. What is for sure is that lithium is of interest to us and we are not going to let it go without a fight.And now… awwww, while saving souls in Libya we ‘just now’ discover that they too have lithium… come on sheeple!

Here is a list of the oil producers. Note that it is a couple years old but fairly representative of country by country production. It is also a list of places, in order of importance, where we will participate in no-fly zones or send troops or both. I suppose that if there was another column to the right that noted the ‘despot/dictator” index, we could refine it even further.
Point is that if an oil producer is on that top list it is fair game for our military interests. Libya is about #18 or so – a couple million barrells a day of some of the best sweet crude on earth and suddenly our fleet shows up in the Gulf of Tripoli and we refight the Barbary Coast thing from 200 years ago.

I’m pretty certain that the big oil lobby is in full throttle at the Pentagon and in the Halls of Congress making sure we “do the right thing” on behalf of the folks fighting for “freedom” there. I’m also pretty sure that they won’t give up their tax breaks to help pay for the few million a day soon to be a billion a week it will cost to be involved. Meanwhile it is now official. The citizens of the USA no longer have a country they own and support. You better learn Chinese, Japanese, German and Russian. God help us when they call in their markers. Plus our false allies the Arab’s now have cut ties with the USA and have openly stated they will no longer do business with us.

Is this all there is? Let’s keep dancing.

If you like what you see here at The Revolt, please subscribe via Email subscription or by the RSS Feed button found on the upper right hand corner of this page and/or hit the Share Button at the bottom of the post to share via various means.

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

Weanie and The New Revolt

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)

Act of God debate

I was pondering all the cases lately that made their way to the Supreme Court and then an “Act of God” ran through my mind. I guess with everything else that has been changed or challenged lately I was sort of surprised when I thought– ” It is a wonder this has never been challenged or tested as a defense”. First that the word ‘God’ remains… and second I had always felt that no one could prove what God did or didn’t do or cause or produce. How could someone prove God didn’t tell me nor motivate me to kill my husband? [just an example folks!!!! lol] Think about it. The courts would have to either abolish the word ‘God’ or state that God remains God, or re-constitute a definition for God. This being such a ‘Global’  but ‘politically correct’ world, the outcome would be the lighting of the final fuse I would think. But I sure as hell see it happening. I know for myself, there have been times that I 100% knew and felt God set before me an action. This one statement or explaination as to why something happened is huge. Here are a few definitions… then I want the debate to start!
Seems to me that someone would have to prove, literally prove there is no God and no evil. OR finally define ‘God’.  Again– I can see this coming!
1]
n., pl., acts of God.
A manifestation especially of a violent or destructive natural force, such as a lightning strike or earthquake, that is beyond human power to cause, prevent, or control.

2]

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3474465

3] [insurances]

Quote
WHAT IS NOT COVERED: THIS PLAN DOES NOT COVER: (1) INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (2) PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS; (3) DAMAGE FROM ABUSE, MISUSE, INTRODUCTION OF FOREIGN OBJECTS INTO THE PRODUCT, UNAUTHORIZED PRODUCT MODIFICATIONS OR ALTERATIONS, FAILURE TO FOLLOW THE MANUFACTURER’S INSTRUCTIONS; (4) ACCESSORIES AND SUPPLIES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO: BULBS AND/OR LAMPS, BATTERIES, ANTENNAS, CARTRIDGES, STYLUSES, RECORDS, AUDIO/VIDEO DISKS, TAPES, COMPUTER SOFTWARE OR DISKS, PRINT ELEMENTS, EXTERNAL POWER SUPPLIES; (5) ACTS OF GOD; (6) PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE; (7) INHERENT PRODUCT DEFECTS, ( MULTI-USER ORGANIZATIONS, PUBLIC RENTAL, OR COMMUNAL USE IN MULTI-FAMILY HOUSING; (9) DAMAGE WHICH IS NOT REPORTED WITHIN 30 DAYS AFTER EXPIRATION OF THIS PLAN; (10) LOSS OR DAMAGE TO STORED DATA, REPAIRS RELATED TO INSTALLED SOFTWARE, COMPUTER VIRUSES, CRACKED OR PHYSICALLY DAMAGED SCREENS OR COMPUTER HARDWARE WHICH IS ADDED AFTER THE ORIGINAL PURCHASE; (11) BURNED-IN PHOSPHOR IN CATHODE RAY TUBES OR ANY OTHER TYPE OF DISPLAY; (12) ANY DAMAGE TO RECORDING MEDIA INCLUDING ANY SOFTWARE PROGRAMS, DATA, OR CONFIGURATION/SETUP INFORMATION RESIDENT ON ANY MASS STORAGE DEVICES SUCH AS HARD DRIVES, CD-ROM DRIVES, DVD DRIVES, FLOPPY DISKETTES, TAPE DRIVES OR TAPE BACKUP SYSTEMS, AS A RESULT OF THE MALFUNCTIONING OR DAMAGE OF AN OPERATING OR NON-OPERATING PART, OR AS A RESULT OF ANY REPAIRS OR REPLACEMENT UNDER THIS PLAN; (13) PRODUCTS WITH REMOVED OR ALTERED SERIAL NUMBERS; (14) LOSS OR CORRUPTION OF DATA AND/OR THE RESTORATION OF SOFTWARE AND OPERATING SYSTEMS; (15) LOSS AND/OR THEFT OF THE PRODUCT; (16) LOSS OF USE, LOSS OF BUSINESS, LOSS OF PROFITS, DOWN-TIME AND CHARGES FOR TIME AND EFFORT; (17) ANY FAILURES, OR PARTS AND/OR LABOR COST INCURRED AS A RESULT OF A MANUFACTURER’S RECALL (18) DAMAGE COVERED UNDER ANY INSURANCE POLICY, OR ANY OTHER WARRANTY OR SERVICE PLAN.

Pot 4 Pain

We ALL already knew this– but hey, as long as it keeps getting postivie press— YEA!

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/30/health.pot.reduce.pain/index.html

(Health.com) — People with chronic pain who aren’t getting enough relief from medications may be able to ease their pain by smoking small amounts of marijuana, a new study suggests.
Marijuana also helps pain patients fall asleep more easily and sleep more soundly, according to the report, one of the first real-world studies to look at the medicinal use of smoked marijuana. Most previous research has used extracts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in the cannabis plant.
“This is the first time anyone has done a trial of smoked cannabis on an outpatient basis,” says the lead researcher, Mark Ware, M.B.B.S., the director of clinical research at McGill University’s Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain, in Montreal.
Health.com: Medicinal marijuana, state by state
The study included 21 adults with nervous-system (neuropathic) pain stemming from surgery, accidents, or other trauma. Fourteen of the participants were on short-term disability or permanently disabled. All of them had tried marijuana before, but none were current or habitual smokers.
“They were not experienced marijuana users,” Ware says. “They came because they had severe pain that was not responding to any conventional treatment.”
Each patient in the study smoked four different strengths of marijuana over a period of 56 days. The THC potency ranged from 9.4 percent — the strongest dose the researchers could obtain legally — to 0 percent, a “placebo” pot that looked and tasted like the real thing but was stripped of THC. (By comparison, the strongest marijuana available on the street has a THC potency of about 15 percent, Ware estimates.)
Health.com: Medical marijuana may help fibromyalgia pain
The participants — who weren’t told which strength they were getting — were instructed to smoke a thimbleful (25 milligrams) from a small pipe three times a day for five days. After a nine-day break, they switched to a different potency.
The highest dose of THC yielded the best results. It lessened pain and improved sleep more effectively than the placebo and the two medium-strength doses (which produced no measurable relief), and it also reduced anxiety and depression.
The effects lasted for about 90 minutes to two hours, according to the study.
The results were published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Health.com: 8 natural remedies to help you sleep
Though small, the study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that cannabis has painkilling properties that may be useful in medicine, perhaps in addition to other treatments. THC extracts have been shown to help ease cancer pain and the nausea associated with chemotherapy, while a few small studies in hospital populations have found that smoked marijuana can help relieve neuropathic pain.
But medical marijuana isn’t ready to become a mainstream chronic pain treatment, says Andrew McDavid, M.D., director of the division of pain management at Scott & White Healthcare, in Temple, Texas.
“The studies out there show some decrease in pain, but it’s not alarmingly or shockingly great,” says McDavid, who was not involved in the new research. “Although it may have some use, it’s probably going to need to be used with something else, if it’s approved.”
As the study notes, the pain relief the patients experienced from marijuana was modest compared to that seen in studies of analgesic medications such as gabapentin (Neurontin) and pregabalin (Lyrica).
Health.com: 6 mistakes pain patients make
Christopher Gharibo, M.D., an anesthesiologist at the New York University Hospital for Joint Diseases, in New York City, points out that the study didn’t address whether marijuana enabled the patients to perform everyday activities without pain — the best test of a chronic pain treatment.
“I’m not convinced [marijuana] helps from a functional standpoint,” he says. “I’m not even impressed by the pain reduction. We have analgesics that do much better.”
The potential long-term side effects of habitual marijuana use could prove problematic as well, Gharibo adds. Over time some patients may experience weight gain, a generalized feeling of sedation, and even changes in mood and cognitive function, he says.
Health.com: Can psychedelic drugs treat depression?
The study participants did report some minor side effects, including coughing, dizziness, headache, and dry eyes. Few reported feeling “high” or euphoric, however, which suggests that abuse or addiction is not a major concern with amounts as small as those used in the study.
“We had a total of three single episodes where patients felt a little bit high,” Ware says. “So it was extremely rare. The possibility that one would become addicted is low.”
Still, if marijuana were to become a more common pain treatment, it’s possible that some patients might overdo it, McDavid says.
“We saw the problem with narcotics. You can’t ever predict which people, when prescribed, will abuse it or not. Obviously there needs to be more research.”

Viva de Gangsta– ASSHOLES!

This post is from todays AOL News Page.

Ballad and narcocorrido singer Sergio Vega was shot and killed while driving on a highway near Los Mochis on June 26 — just hours after he contacted the press to refute rumors of death. The gunmen who murdered the singer have not been apprehended.

As Mexico grapples with a lengthy and increasingly bloody drug war, tunes glorifying drug runners, gang enforcers and narcotics cartels have emerged as the songs of an era.

“Narcocorridos” are in many ways a continuation of Mexico’s long “corrido” tradition of lyrical storytelling. But instead of singing the praises of folk heroes like Pancho Villa or a woman who saved her village from a flood, these ballads are musical tributes to the generals and foot soldiers in a drug war that, according to the U.S. State Department, has claimed some 23,000 lives since December 2006.

“The ballad is completely alive in the present day, and it’s about things going on in the present day,” said Elijah Wald, author of “Narcocorrido: A Journey Into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas.”

Corridos first emerged in the 1800s as a kind of historical ballad that honored famous people and notable exploits. Though there were some Prohibition-era crooners who sang about booze smugglers sneaking liquor across the border, modern narcocorridos only emerged in the 1970s as drug trafficking became increasingly lucrative in Mexico.

That’s when groups like Los Tigres del Norte began documenting the drug trade with tunes like “Contrabando y Traicion” (“Contraband and Betrayal”), a song detailing a Bonnie and Clyde-style couple who smuggle drugs across the border, only for the girlfriend to gun down her man and escape with the money.

A decade later, Mexican immigrant and Los Angeles resident “Chalino” Sanchez brought a gruff voice and a tough persona to the world of narcocorridos. While earlier singers of narcocorridos became popular as documentarians of the drug trade, Sanchez became a star by acting as if he was a part of it himself.

Eduardo Parra, WireImage
The Mexican group Los Tigres del Norte has been singing about the drug trade with narcocorridos for more than 30 years. The band, pictured here playing in Spain in 2009, started with a Bonnie and Clyde-style tune called “Contrabando y Traicion.” Newer tunes include political commentary about Mexico’s drug war.
“Chalino Sanchez was a little more like Tupac [Shakur] in a sense,” said Mark Edberg, author of “El Narcotraficante: Narcocorridos and the Construction of a Cultural Persona on the U.S.-Mexico Border.”

“He was a little bit more in that world, unlike some of the other singers. In fact, he pulled out a gun and fired at the crowd at one of his shows,” Edberg said.

Sanchez was shot and killed in 1992 after a concert in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, a major drug-running region. But his violent death only added to the mystique of narcocorrido songs and their singers.

above:
The Mexican group Los Tigres del Norte has been singing about the drug trade with narcocorridos for more than 30 years. The band, pictured here playing in Spain in 2009, started with a Bonnie and Clyde-style tune called “Contrabando y Traicion.” Newer tunes include political commentary about Mexico’s drug war.

“After some of the original narcocorrido heroes like Chalino Sanchez, the record companies realized that there is street cred and street value in these things, and they started marketing them and playing them up, looking for the most exaggerated and extreme form of the character,” said Edberg, an associate professor at George Washington University. “The marketing becomes the reality — like gangsta rap.”

Since then, narcocorridos have continued to gain fans both north and south of the border.

The tunes themselves aren’t bound to a distinct sound — they can be performed over a number of different musical arrangements, from brass-heavy “banda” stylings to “norteno” backings featuring an accordion, a 12-string guitar called a “bajo sexto” and other instruments.

That said, many narcocorridos have powerful lead vocals, a steady, polka-influenced beat and intricately crafted lyrics filled with evocative language and thinly veiled puns.

For instance, if you ever hear the words “cuerno de chivo” — literally a “goat horn” — the singer is really talking about an AK-47 assault rifle.

“Corridos are an old, traditional form,” said Edberg. “There are little subtexts and humor that you find in these things. At a concert where narcocorridos are played, there may be exaggerated gunfire sounds — but people are dancing happily and treating it almost like pro wrestling, almost like a cartoon

It’s the lyrics that make a tune a narcocorrido, and like the historical corridos of yesteryear, today’s songs often describe specific events such as shootouts and drug runs.

Narcocorridos can also be boastful “corridos de amistad” — songs of friendship — that are reminiscent of many boastful gangsta rap songs.

“Corridos de amistad don’t tell a story, they just say, So-and-so is the greatest ever, he has the biggest guns, the fastest cars, the prettiest girlfriends,” said Wald.

“The big advantage of the corrido de amistad is that [the subjects] don’t have to have done anything impressive,” he said. “It means they can hire someone to write one. A lot of corrido writing is done for hire — particularly the corridos de amistad.”

In a music market largely demonetized by piracy, connections to drug traffickers can prove lucrative for musicians and songwriters. For the narcotics cartels, the songs serve as a kind of an ad, according to Edberg.

“The traffickers commission them,” he said. “They are like advertisements in a cultural form that are known.”

As narcocorrido musicians have emerged as historians of the drug trade — and sometimes even hire court singers for drug cartels — some musicians have met the same violent fates as the characters in their songs.

Gregory Bull, AP
Ballad and narcocorrido singer Sergio Vega was shot and killed while driving on a highway near Los Mochis on June 26 — just hours after he contacted the press to refute rumors of death. The gunmen who murdered the singer have not been apprehended.
Singer Valentin Elizalde was murdered in 2006, and many fans of narcocorridos believe his death was linked to his song “A Mis Enemigos” — “To My Enemies” — which mocked the Gulf Cartel drug gang.

The following year, Sergio Gomez, the lead singer of the group K-Paz de la Sierra, was kidnapped, tortured and strangled to death after a concert. Gomez wasn’t known for his narcocorridos but rather his love songs. However, some speculate that the 34-year-old was murdered by drug gangs in the Michoacan state because of ties to rival narcotics traffickers.

In June, narcocorrido singer Sergio Vega, 40, was killed hours after he gave an interview to a news website, denying rumors of his murder.

“It has happened to me for years now — someone tells a radio station or a newspaper I have been killed, or suffered an accident,” Vega told La Oreja shortly before gunmen ambushed his vehicle with automatic weapons. “And then I have to call my dear mother, who has heart trouble, to reassure her.”

Wald doesn’t think narcocorrido singers are necessarily being targeted because of the content of their music — unlike many American gangsta rappers from the 1990s.

“These are people who play at parties for the drug lords, they do songs for the drug world,” he said. “They are in that world, and that is a very dangerous world to be in. Whether the murders have any connection to the music, nobody you ever talk to will know the answer to those questions.

“Once you are in a world where they are killing a dozen people a day, it doesn’t take a lot to get killed,” he said.

As the Mexican government has attempted to crack down on drug cartels, there has been a push to limit the radio play of narcocorridos, and even imprison musicians who sing them. But according to Wald, the tunes were never big radio hits — instead they were performed live and distributed on bootleg tapes, CDs and now YouTube.

“Now they are talking about a national ban in Mexico,” he said. “Nobody in the business is bothered by the concept of a ban. The government is just posturing.”

Despite governmental opposition, the music remains popular in Mexican regions where the narcotics trade thrives, like the states of Sinaloa, Sonora and Michoacan. The tunes are also popular in Mexican neighborhoods around the U.S.

Why? Well, for the same reasons that gangsta rap, crime movies and violent video games have found audiences, said Edberg.

“You do get a lot of people saying, ‘This is horrible, this is terrible,’” he said. “But you also have people saying, ‘This just reflects reality — we’re just telling stories about what we see every day.’”

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

Flash Back

             http://www.planetpuna.com/Dolphin-Birth-Hawaii/index.htm

Dolphin Attended Birth
and
Dolphin Assisted Therapy
in Hawaii

Well– I do believe that back in the 60’s this idea had to come from a ‘head’ on the island….lol. And to be honest– back in the day I just might have done this. Don’t tell my daughter!!! lolololol  Naw, it sounds just ‘out there’ enough to be pretty cool!       

SOME Ongoing Disasters!

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/16/the_world_s_worst_ongoing_disasters

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

I wanna hold your hand…

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……

                                      http://www.wimp.com/watchingthis/

                                                …. yes; I am Blessed. AND so is he!!

The Sweetest Deal EVER made—

…. who made it and who was in on it????

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 Climb for Sixth Day; BMW, BP Shares Advance
July 13, 2010, 12:14 PM EDT

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-13/european-stocks-climb-for-sixth-day-bmw-bp-shares-advance.html

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

$16.00 Per Month…

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!!!!!!

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20100712/US.Jobless.Aid.Analysis/

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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According to Uncle Sam’s Accountants…

                             http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/

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 .

This is what BP is saying…

       http://www.bp.com/bodycopyarticle.do?categoryId=1&contentId=7052055

The above link is to their site….

Thought you all might be interested…