Monday, June 25, 2012

Optimus Pwime GIF

Optimus Prime

Thursday, June 14, 2012

The Truth About Public Assistance

The ultimatum 
Why have public assistance programs grown so much in the past few decades?
Is it people being lazy? No.  
Is it people abusing the system? Hardly. 
Is it out of necessity? BINGO! 

For decades the cost of living has increased with a minimal increase in wages. 

Food Stamp Statistics
Individuals Receiving Food Stamps (Annual)
With the minimal increases in wages, productivity has skyrocketed and the profits have been reaped only for the top. I'm not a socialist by any means, but that is blatantly unfair! 

To continue, for decades education costs have skyrocketed with federal assistance (pell) staying the same. With the cost increases, parents have also had less disposable income to invest in their children's education. 

In a sense, we are in a new age of slavery. The working man has become an indentured servant to wall street. If we don't accept our meager wages, we don't work, subsequently we foreclose on our mortgage and our home goes to the bank. We earn just enough each week to give it back to the corporations that run our lives, and with that, they call foul at the thought of being regulated a little bit better or paying fairer taxes. 

Corporate profits are at an all time high, they are sitting on billions, and we are at the table begging for scraps like a dog.

The GOP has been bought. The 1% owns them, no doubt about it.  Super PACs have been formed to combat this information age.  Laws suppressing our right to vote have been passed.  And wall street is keeping us too busy to learn the facts so we may make informed decisions. 

We are being kept poor to make us dependent. Most of use either earn so little we are dependent on public assistance to get by, or we earn too much to qualify but just enough to get by. 

We are at a crossroads, do we expand public assistance, or get rid of outdated regulations and replace them with new effective ones that will allow us to EARN a livable wage? 

Are we going to increase minimum wage to coincide with the Cost Of Living? 
Are we going to fairly tax the rich who profit most from government spending? I'm talking about 50% + for people making $1,000,000 or more a year. 
Are we going to start enforcing anti-trust laws already on the books? 

These are the solutions to the problems we face. Give us minimal but reasonable laws and we can take care of the rest. Is everyone going to have the same opportunity? No. Is that a reason to stifle it for everyone else? No.

Public assistance

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Hospital Releases First Picture Of The Miami Cannibal Victim's Face [WARNING: GRAPHIC]

Earlier, we reported Ronald Poppo, the man attacked by the Miami cannibal, was awake and walking in a Florida-area hospital. Poppo was attacked by Rudy Eugene over Memorial Day weekend. Eugene ate most of Poppo's face before police fatally shot him.

Here is the before and after picture of Poppo, courtesy of Jackson Memorial Hospital:




ronald poppo miami cannibal victim



ronald poppo miami cannibal victim

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/florida-hospital-releases-first-photo-of-miami-cannibal-victims-face-2012-6#ixzz1xeLVGfgj

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A pair of lungs found on a Los Angeles sidewalk

A pair of lungs were found on a Los Angeles sidewalk around 8:30 p.m., PT Sunday night. A passerby noticed the strange internal organs and called authorities. This could spike zombie apocalypse fears once again since the Miami cannibal attack happened almost three weeks ago.
The lungs found along LA's South Avalon Boulevard are being investigated by a coroner. It's unclear if the lungs belong to that of a human or animal, authorities reveal.
“I don’t think they’re lungs. I don’t know what it is,” Detective Phil Martinez of the LASD Homicide Bureau said. “It takes an expert to determine that. A coroner doctor has to take a look at them, and that’s not scheduled until tomorrow. They looked like internal organs. They’d been sitting out there all day long.”
If the lungs found on the sidewalk belong to a human -- or an animal -- why were they left along a public road? There seems to be no rhyme or reason for crimes involving the dismemberment of dead bodies. With the fear a zombie apocalypse could be taking over, this will be yet another story that makes believers feel uneasy.

Source: Examiner.com

Republicans are the Problem, They Are Sabotaging The Economy for Political Gain

A new Daily Kos/SEIU poll released today found that nearly half of voters believe that Republicans are intentionally stalling efforts to jump start the economy to ensure that President Barack Obama is not re-elected. 49 percent of respondents to the poll say that Republicans are intentionally stalling the economy, compared to 40 percent who say they are not. 11 percent replied “not sure.”

Among independents, 50 percent said that Republicans are stalling the recovery compared to 40 percent who said they are not, and 61 percent of self-described moderates said they are compared to just 40 percent who said they are not.

Recently, news analysts from major networks (not Fox) have began to question whether Republicans really are deliberately tanking the economy to defeat Obama. The behavior of Republicans in Congress is beginning to give credibility to that charge. The poll shows that a very large number of Americans including half of Independent voters agree.

Take the Highway Bill for example, we have been ignoring our infrastructural needs for decades. Not only about roads and bridges, but also water, sewage, power, and communication lines to name a few. In the senate, the highway bill was written with bi-partisan support, however the house refuses to pass it. Why? Probably because of the estimated 1 MILLION jobs it will create....

Jeb Bush: Reagan would have struggled with today's GOP

It is funny how beloved Reagan is among the GOP. Politicians from the right are consistently gushing over who is most like Ronald Reagan, however none of them have the will to reach across the isle, one of Ronald Reagan's biggest strengths. Jeb Bush, former FL Governor and brother of George Bush spoke out against the GOP's shortsightedness and how they compare themselves to Ronald Reagan.however, just that morning he had been spouting the opposite, so flip-flopping is running rampant in the GOP.

"Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad -- they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party -- and I don't -- as having an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement, doesn't allow for finding some common ground," Bush said, adding that he views the hyper-partisan moment as "temporary."
"Back to my dad's time and Ronald Reagan's time -- they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support," he said. Reagan "would be criticized for doing the things that he did."
Republicans do not know about the true Ronald Reagan it seems.
Check out: 10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan

10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan


1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. 
As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.


2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. 
During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.


3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. 
Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.


4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously.
Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.


5. Reagan was pro choice
As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.


6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.”
He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.


7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. 
Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.


8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. 
Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.


9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. 
which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”


10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. 
Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendancy.


Sources: Think Progressive

Pastor Hangs Obama in Effigy

From: jdjournal.com

Obama Being Hung in Effigy


An effigy of President Barack Obama has been hung outside of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. The effigy is hanging from a gallows on the front lawn of the center. The effigy was hung in response to the endorsement by Obama of same-sex marriage and his stance on abortion, according to pastor Terry Jones. Jones is reportedly being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service in response to the effigy being hung on the front lawn of the center.


“The Secret Service is aware of this incident and will conduct appropriate follow-up,” Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said.


The effigy is hanging from a homemade gallows with a yellow rope. The effigy of the president has a doll in its right hand and a gay pride flag in its left hand. Jones said that the gay pride flag is there to bring attention to Obama’s feelings about same-sex marriage and then said that the doll is present because Obama is “favorable toward abortion.” Jones went on to say that radical Islam is “the most dangerous threat to life and national security in America.”

At the foot of the gallows stands a dummy of Uncle Sam, which originally was supposed to be hanging by Obama, but the center decided to change the display on Wednesday of last week. On a trailer parked behind the effigy, the words ‘Obama is Killing America’ are painted in red letters.

This is not the first time the DWOC made the news. In 2011, Jones burned a copy of the Qur'an that sparked three days of violent riots in Afghanistan that killed 21 people, including seven workers from the United Nations. The center has also come under fire for its internal rules that its members must follow, with many media outlets and critics calling the center ‘cult-like’ because of its rules.



Friday, June 8, 2012

The GOP's "Job Creators" Don't Create Jobs


 From www.dailykos.com

For years, Republicans have warned that President Obama's proposal to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the top two percent of taxpayers would crush "job creators."  As Speaker Boehner protested:
"The top one percent of wage earners in the United States...pay forty percent of the income taxes...The people he's [President Obama] is talking about taxing are the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy."
If so, those expectations were sadly unmet under George W. Bush. After all, the last time the top tax rate was 39.6 percent during the Clinton administration, the United States enjoyed rising incomes, 23 million new jobs and budget surpluses. Under Bush? Not so much. On January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, "Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record." (The Journal's interactive table quantifies his staggering failure relative to every post-World War II president.) The meager one million jobs created under President Bush didn't merely pale in comparison to the 23 million produced during Bill Clinton's tenure. In September 2009, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee charted Bush's job creation disaster, the worst since Hoover.
That dismal performance prompted David Leonhardt of the New York Times to ask last fall, "Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?" His answer was unambiguous:
Those tax cuts passed in 2001 amid big promises about what they would do for the economy. What followed? The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II. Amazingly, that statement is true even if you forget about the Great Recession and simply look at 2001-7...
Is there good evidence the tax cuts persuaded more people to join the work force (because they would be able to keep more of their income)? Not really. The labor-force participation rate fell in the years after 2001 and has never again approached its record in the year 2000.
Is there evidence that the tax cuts led to a lot of entrepreneurship and innovation? Again, no. The rate at which start-up businesses created jobs fell during the past decade.
The data are clear: lower taxes for America's so called job-creators don't mean either faster economic growth or more jobs for Americans.
It's no wonder Leonhardt followed his first question with another.  "I mean this as a serious question, not a rhetorical one," he asked, "Given this history, why should we believe that the Bush tax cuts were pro-growth?"  Or as Mark Shields asked and answered in April:
"Do tax cuts help 'job creators' or 'robber barons'?"
Just days after the Washington Post documented that George W. Bush presided over the worst eight-year economic performance in the modern American presidency, the New York Times in January 2009 featured an analysis comparing presidential performance going back to Eisenhower. As the Times showed, George W. Bush, the first MBA president, was a historic failure when it came to expanding GDP, producing jobs and even fueling stock market growth.  Apparently, America's job creators can create a lot more jobs when their taxes are higher - even much higher - than they are today.
(It's worth noting that the changing landscape of loopholes, deductions and credits, especially after the 1986 tax reform signed by President Reagan, makes apples-to-apples comparisons of effective tax rates over time very difficult. For more background, see the CBO data on effective tax rates by income quintile.)

"Dead" Boy Wakes Up in Coffin at Funeral

Website ORM claimed that Kelvin Santos stopped breathing during treatment for pneumonia at a hospital in Belem, northern Brazil.

He was declared dead at 7.40pm on Friday and his body was handed over to his family in a plastic bag.

The child's devastated family took him home where grieving relatives held a wake throughout the night, with the boy's body laid in an open coffin.

But an hour before his funeral was due to take place on Saturday the boy apparently sat up in his coffin and said: "Daddy, can I have some water?".

The boy's father, Antonio Santos, said: "Everybody started to scream, we couldn't believe our eyes. Then we thought a miracle had taken place and our boy had come back to life.

"Then Kelvin just laid back down, the way he was. We couldn't wake him. He was dead again."

Mr Santos rushed his son back to the Aberlardo Santos hospital in Belem,where the doctors reexamined the boy and confirmed that he had no signs of life.

He said: "They assured me that he really was dead and gave me no explanation for what we had just seen and heard."

The boy's family decided to delay the funeral for an hour in the hope that he would wake up again, but ended up burying him at 5pm that day in a local cemetery.

Convinced that his son was victim of medical malpractice, Mr Santos has now registered a complaint with the police who have launched an investigation

He said: "Fifteen minutes after rushing him away for resuscitation, they came and told me he was dead and handed me his body. Perhaps they didn't examine him properly. Dead people don't just wake up and talk. I'm determined to find out the truth."

The local state department today confirmed the boy had been admitted to hospital in a critical condition and was declared dead after suffering cardiac-respiratory failure.

Source: www.heraldsun.com

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Capitalism VS Corporatism and Cronyism

So today while on Facebook I read a status about how someone I know hates capitalism. I shook my head in disappointment even though no one would see me and thought to myself, this isn't capitalism. With capitalism, corporations and banks are not so heavily protected. With capitalism, your ideas do not belong to the company you work for, the belong to you. So I found an article on forbes

Capitalism Isn't Corporatism or Cronyism
From: Forbes.com


Capitalism is the greatest socio-economic system in human history, because it’s so moral and so productive – the two features so essential to human survival and flourishing. It’s moral because it enshrines and fosters rationality and self-interest – “enlightened greed,” if you will – the two key virtues we all must consciously adopt and practice if we’re to pursue and attain life and love, health and wealth, adventure and inspiration. It produces not only material-economic abundance but the aesthetic values seen in the arts and entertainment.

But what is capitalism, exactly? How do we know it when we see it or have it – or when we haven’t, or don’t?

These aren’t easily-answered questions, because for more than a century capitalism has had more critics than champions, and because the critics have given biased or bigoted portrayals of what they feel is a demonic system. These critics despise capitalism’s root ethic (self-interest) as “evil” and then blithely presume the system harms human beings or sabotages societal peace and prosperity. Anti-capitalist prejudice has been perpetuated for decades by parents, teachers and preachers alike, who claim that to benefit yourself (egoism) is bad, but to benefit and serve others, especially at our own expense or sacrifice (altruism, or “other-ism”) is good – that it’s better to give than receive, to be our “brother’s keeper,” to serve or suffer rather than profit or enjoy. In truth, capitalism, the free society, means people trade value-for-value to mutually beneficial gain.

Historically, capitalism is only about 250 years old – a mere flick of the clock hand relative to mankind’s total time on earth so far (roughly 200,000 years, and only 15,000 years in the Americas). Capitalism arose during the Renaissance (1500s-1600s) and Enlightenment (1700s), which entailed a re-birth of reason, self-confidence, culture, and commerce – in short, the pursuit of one’s own personal happiness. This was in sharp contrast to what had preceded it for a millennium: zeal and faith, superstition, ignorance, oppression, torture, and economic poverty, imposed by church and state alike, amid religious Medievalism and the Dark Age. Capitalism has been co-extant with the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the Political Revolution, the last of which was realized in the U.S. Constitution (1787), which soon also abolished slavery.

The question of “what is capitalism,” exactly – and likewise, regarding its main rivals, what is “statism,” “socialism,” “social democracy,” “communism,” “fascism,” or “corporatism” – shouldn’t be a matter of mere semantics. These are real political systems affecting real people, whether for good or ill. Political systems are free, un-free and oppressive, or mixed. We cannot legitimately make up terms or equivocate (i.e., switch meanings from one argument to the next, to evade or twist the logic) about these political systems.

Capitalism has been blamed for the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and for the financial crisis and bailouts of 2008, but it’s not “capitalism” but the mixed economy and corporatism-cronyism that did it. We’ve had corporatism in the U.S. for roughly the past century, and it’s getting worse over time; it’s also the system we’ve seen in Europe since at least the time of Germany’s Otto von Bismarck, who launched the womb-to-tomb welfare state in the 1870s. In the interim, of course, Europe also imposed communism, socialism and fascism. The result, we know, was mass murder, world war, and the continent-wide destruction of wealth.

Capitalism’s greatest intellectual champion, Ayn Rand (1905-1982), once defined it as “a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.” This recognition of genuine rights (not “rights” to force others to get us what we wish) is all-crucial and it has a distinctive moral foundation, according to Rand:

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.” “The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.

Elaborating, Rand explained in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966) that historically, politically, economically, and morally, capitalism was the superior socio-economic system, yet also how, for decades, its achievements and virtues had been hidden and buried deliberately in an avalanche of prejudice, distortion, and falsehood. Rand argued that capitalism is a moral ideal yet also was made real, and to the greatest extent, in America in the 19th century, especially during the Gilded Age (1865-1890). Thus she called the U.S. “the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.”

Most people today can’t even fathom (let alone endorse or advocate) a government that’s strictly limited to protecting each person’s right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. They assume a government must be controlled by some pressure group or another, in a “zero-sum game” of unavoidable exploitation – that “power” is ubiquitous and ineradicable, while the only question is who wields it and whose head gets bashed in. They say “timocracy” is rule by the military for the sole benefit of the military, that “plutocracy” is rule by the rich for the sole sake of the rich, that “socialism” is rule by labor for the sake only of labor, that “capitalism” is rule by capitalists (or Wall Street bankers) for the singular benefit of capitalists, and that “democracy” is rule by people (i.e., the majority) at the expense of the minority (true!).

Notice, by this bizarre approach – with its hidden premise that there can be no harmony of interests among people – that no space is permitted for a political system of liberty, justice and equality (for all) before the law. Why not? Call such a system what you will (semantics aren’t the issue), yet ask: why isn’t this one of the possible systems to choose from? Why is it not an option? Indeed, given what we know from history and human nature, why isn’t it the only system worth adopting? Today’s political “thinkers” can only imagine a government that’s controlled by one distinct group or another, which then systematically oppresses its rivals.


In fact, capitalism is the system of rights, liberty, civility, peace and non-sacrificial prosperity; it’s not the system of government that unjustly favors capitalists at others’ expense. [i.e. Bailing out wall street and leaving main street hanging] It provides a level legal playing field plus officials who serve us as low-profile referees (not arbitrary rule-makers or score-changers). To be sure, capitalism also entails inequality – of ambition, talent, income, or wealth – because that’s how individuals (and firms) really are; they’re unique, not clones or inter-changeable parts, as the egalitarians claim. Capitalism is the political system which ensures that innocent “economic power” (i.e., the power to produce) isn’t mixed with force to become invalid political power (i.e., the power to loot); it’s the system that separates business and state, for the same good reason that it also makes sure to separate church and state. Neither of the two recent political movements – “Occupy Wall Street” or the “Tea Party” – seem to fully grasp this.

Yes, there’s an alternative system that does entail the government unjustly ruling business and government, in turn, improperly controlled by business for business’s exclusive benefit (whether by subsidies, special favors, monopolies and franchises, tax breaks, or bailouts), even as it nominally still permits private property holdings: it’s called “corporatism” (sometimes, synonymously, “cronyism” or “fascism”). Corporatism was the system originated almost a century ago by the American “Progressives,” and later by Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and Roosevelt in the U.S. (see his 1933 National Recovery Act, struck down by the Supreme Court in 1935 as unconstitutional because it was so corporatist). Corporatism goes hand-in-hand with statism, with abandonment of the fully free economy and adoption of the welfare-warfare state. Yet while many oppose cronyism, corporate welfare, and bailouts, they also endorse handouts to almost everyone else, including to the politically-valuable cronies so easily found among today’s labor union leaders, “green” companies, under-water homeowners, over-indebted college students, and war-happy munitions makers.

Those who speak of “crony capitalism” use a smear, to blur distinctions and blame innocents. But let’s keep facts (and terms) perfectly straight. Let’s not equivocate. Above all let’s acknowledge that the real culprits in corporatism are precisely those people who pretend to rail against it: the likes of Ralph Nader, Robert Reich, Barack Obama, and their friends in “Occupy Wall Street.” They all want bigger, more intrusive government in our lives; they are all full-throated pushers of the welfare state and “social democracy” (socialism by vote). Yet they whine against the undue influence of big business and corporations (and their cash) on political campaigns, lobbying, and policy-making. If government is going to intervene to redirect literally trillions of dollars of income and wealth from natural flows into artificial ones, it’s positively inviting and fostering cronyism. The closet corporatists claim to want to get money out of politics, but they won’t dare get politics out of money-making; they claim that capitalists and bankers are to blame for our many woes, but they won’t dare advocate capitalism, the only system that specifically precludes favors to capitalists (or any other sub-group). They deride influence-peddling but demand ever-more intense forms of government influence.

In the world today (and for most of the past century) we haven’t had capitalism per se but instead the welfare state and corporatism; we’ve had what are commonly called “mixed economies,” those with some remaining vestiges of capitalist freedom but also many (and fast-proliferating) controls and taxes. Obfuscations about capitalism’s real nature and the blurring of distinctions between the terms capitalism and corporatism make it difficult for most people to discern cause and effect whenever some disaster or corruption arises, and thus it’s difficult to assign proper blame or achieve a lasting remedy. Yet people should always remind themselves that freedom breeds peace, justice, and prosperity, while coercion breeds violence, exploitation and poverty. When a mixed economy fails, it’s not its capitalist aspect that fails – unless you believe freedom itself fails.

Whenever we observe indisputable socio-economic disasters or injustices – in the best recent example, the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the 2008 financial crisis (and TARP bailouts), the sub-prime loan debacle, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, underwater mortgages and defaults, persistently high jobless rates – we shouldn’t waste any time disputing whether they were caused by the freedom or rather the coercion part of the mixed economy. They were caused by the coercive element, not the free one (or from “deregulation”) – and that’s where all remedies must lie. We need more freedoms and less controls. We must identify, locate, and excise all those many government agencies, subsidies, taxes, and regulations that violate our liberties and rights, those that transform officials from mere referees on life’s field into savages running amuck, altering rules and redistributing well-earned points – and thereby wrecking an otherwise perfectly fine and fun game.

Study: Atheists more driven by compassion than highly religious people

From: Raw Story



Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than atheists, agnostics and less religious people, according to a new study.

Research from University of California, Berkeley published in the most recent edition of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found a stronger link between compassion and generosity among non-religious or less religious people.

“Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not,” UC Berkeley social psychologist and study co-author Robb Willer explained. “The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns.”

Lead author Laura Saslow recalled she became interested in the topic after an atheist friend said he had only donated money for earthquake relief in Haiti after watching a touching video of a woman being pulled from the rubble.

“I was interested to find that this experience – an atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers – was replicated in three large, systematic studies,” she noted.

In one experiment, researchers analyzed a 2004 survey of 1,300 American adults to find that non-believers and the less religious were more likely to participate in random acts of kindness like giving food or money to a homeless person.

“These findings indicate that although compassion is associated with pro-sociality among both less religious and more religious individuals, this relationship is particularly robust for less religious individuals,” the study said.

Two other experiments also confirmed that more religious participants seemed to be less generous.

“Overall, this research suggests that although less religious people tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling compassionate, they may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens than more religious people,” Willer concluded.

Source: Raw Story
this experience – an atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers – was replicated in three large, systematic studies,” she noted.
In one experiment, researchers analyzed a 2004 survey of 1,300 American adults to find that non-believers and the less religious were more likely to participate in random acts of kindness like giving food or money to a homeless person.
“These findings indicate that although compassion is associated with pro-sociality among both less religious and more religious individuals, this relationship is particularly robust for less religious individuals,” the study said.
Two other experiments also confirmed that more religious participants seemed to be less generous.
“Overall, this research suggests that although less religious people tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling compassionate, they may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens than more religious people,” Willer concluded.
Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than atheists, agnostics and less religious people, according to a new study.
Research from University of California, Berkeley published in the most recent edition of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found a stronger link between compassion and generosity among non-religious or less religious people.
“Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not,” UC Berkeley social psychologist and study co-author Robb Willer explained. “The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns.”
Lead author Laura Saslow recalled she became interested in the topic after an atheist friend said he had only donated money for earthquake relief in Haiti after watching a touching video of a woman being pulled from the rubble.
“I was interested to find that this experience – an atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers – was replicated in three large, systematic studies,” she noted.
In one experiment, researchers analyzed a 2004 survey of 1,300 American adults to find that non-believers and the less religious were more likely to participate in random acts of kindness like giving food or money to a homeless person.
“These findings indicate that although compassion is associated with pro-sociality among both less religious and more religious individuals, this relationship is particularly robust for less religious individuals,” the study said.
Two other experiments also confirmed that more religious participants seemed to be less generous.
“Overall, this research suggests that although less religious people tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling compassionate, they may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens than more religious people,” Willer concluded.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The Cost of War

We cannot put a price on human life, however we can put a price on the tools we use to take it away.

We have lost thousands of soldiers and killed over 100,000 Civilians in Iraq. For what? To "prevent" Terrorism?

See:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ 
http://costofwar.com/en/

Give me a break, we are creating more and more terrorist everyday by being in the middle east. It is not about cutting and running, but about respecting another nation's sovereignty. I'm not a pacifist by any means, if someone attacks me it's a fight. Iraq didn't attack us nor any of our allies. Afghanistan did not attack us or any of our allies. Terrorist attacked us on 9/11 and it is the terrorist who should pay, but before we jump the gun, why did they attack us?
WE ARE THE AGGRESSORS! We have been bombing and pillaging the middle east for decades and we need to stop before we create even more enemies!

The Cost of War so far
$807.4 billion to Iraq
$570.9 billion to Afghanistan
Imagine What we could have done domestically with the money! Imagine the infrastructure that could have been constructed, the bridges that could be brought back up to code, the investments we could have made in education, etc.


Now onto the cots of War Weapons
  • Cost of a single Javelin Missile: $80,000
  • Cost of a single Tomahawk cruise Missile: $900,000
  • Cost of a single F22 Raptor: $135 million
  • Cost of a single AC130U Gunship: $190 million
  • Cost of a single F117A Nighthawk: $122 Million
  • Cost of a single B2 Bomber: $2.2 Billion

Two Fun Facts About Tomahawk Missiles:

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, more than 725 tomahawk missiles were fired at key Iraqi targets.
725 x $900,000 = $652,500,000
$652 Million

On 19 March 2011, 124 Tomahawk missiles were fired into Libya.
124 x $900,000 = $111,600,000
$111 Million


Next time someone grovels about the deficit, ask them about the cost of war.

Monday, June 4, 2012

President's Use of Weed and other Drugs

"Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?" - Henry Ford

Marijuana is an imbedded part of our American culture, before our nation was founded and a single document drafted, we have grown to rely on marijuana for much more than just getting high. Prohibition has been pathetically unsuccessful and many lawmakers refuse to acknowledge the truth that it is a fight they cannot win. More than half of the adult population has at least tried to smoke Marijuana and our Founding Fathers praised it! We have official Government documents that were written on hemp paper including the Declaration Of Independence and the US Constitution.

Marijuana consumption is about more than just getting high, it is about our liberty and our prosperity as a nation.


President Bill Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton's publicly admitted to trying marijuana during his younger days, by his account, he never actually felt its effects.


"When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and never tried it again." –Bill Clinton

As part of MTV's "Choose or Lose" get-out-the-vote campaign for the 1992 presidential race, the cable network hosted a town-hall style meeting with then-candidate Clinton. When asked whether he had smoked marijuana, Clinton answered he had, but he "didn't inhale."


President Barack Obama
"When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point." - Barack Obama
"The war on drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our nation's marijuana laws." -Barack Obama

President Barack Obama's recent biography detailed a young Obama smoking marijuana during his high school days. The president had previously admitted to using the drug in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams of My Father."

Obama's history of drug use is a past behavior that is certainly still frowned upon, but he is by no means the only president to have a drug history.


President George W. Bush

Former President George W. Bush, had a turbulent drug history before his political career.

Bush has maintained a policy of silence around his past youthful indiscretions, other than to say he has been clean since 1974.

Reports of his younger days, however, suggest that Bush had a wild lifestyle for a time, indulging in marijuana and even cocaine.


President John F. Kennedy, Jr.

President John F. Kennedy, Jr., might have the most complex history with drugs out of any president in U.S. history.

Like some 42 percent of Americans today, Kennedy tried smoking marijuana during his younger days, according to an ex-girlfriend who knew him during his college years. In a book released last year, she recounts an incident in which Kennedy lit up while on vacation in Jamaica.

Kennedy also took many different prescriptions for a variety of health conditions that he kept secret from the American public. These drugs included "codeine, Demerol and methadone for pain; Ritalin, a stimulant; Meprobamate and Librium for anxiety; barbiturates for sleep" and more, according to medical records.


President Franklin Pierce

President Franklin Pierce may have had an odd way of motivating men on the battlefield.

According to contemporary accounts of Pierce, he used to smoke marijuana with his soldiers during wartime. In fact, during the Mexican-American War, Pierce declared that smoking cannabis was "about the only good thing" about the conflict.



President Ulysses S. Grant

Long before cocaine was a controlled substance that came with a heavy jail sentence for abusers, it was a legally available and widely used pain reliever. The drug, however, was as addictive then as it is now.

Stricken with oral cancer, President Ulysses S. Grant used cocaine throat drops regularly to soothe his pain. In fact, Grant reportedly took cocaine while he wrote his now famous memoirs.

He would remain addicted to the drug until the illness claimed his life at age 63.


President Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was another president who openly smoked marijuana on occasion. Like Pierce, Jackson smoked with his troops during wartime, along with tobacco cigars.







President Thomas Jefferson

"Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see."  - Thomas Jefferson
"Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country."Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and one of the country's Founding Fathers, grew vast fields on hemp of his plantation. In fact, an early draft of the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, a common material at the time.

Whether Jefferson actually smoked his crop is a matter of historical debate. Jefferson's Farm Book includes references to growing hemp that could indicate he was growing them for purposes of recreational smoking.



President George Washington

"Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere." - George Washington

George Washington, arguably the most admired figure in U.S. history alongside Abraham Lincoln, was not only a user of marijuana, but a major advocate for the spread of hemp as a cash crop in the United States.

Washington grew hemp as a fiber, and even has several journal entries detailing his efforts to grow a better crop. Washington also suffered from tooth pain, and it's believed that he smoked marijuana to bring relief.


President James Madison

James Madison was once heard to say that smoking hemp inspired him to found a new nation on democratic principles.








President James Monroe


James Monroe, the 5th US President, was introduced to hashish when he was serving as Ambassador to France, and he continued to enjoy the smoke until he was 73 years old.








President Zachary Taylor

When Zachary Taylor served as a military commanders, he smoked hemp with his soldiers.










President Abraham Lincoln

"Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica." - Abraham Lincoln

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bound of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded" -Abraham Lincoln


President John Adams

"We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption."
- John Adams, U.S. President








Also See: A few facts about Hemp, in case you were wondering:



A few facts about Hemp, in case you were wondering:

From: The Huffington Post


  • The first Bibles, maps, charts, Betsy Ross's flag, the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were made from hemp. 
  • 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets, etc. were made from hemp until the 1820s with the introduction of the cotton gin. 

  • It was legal to pay taxes with Hemp in America from 1631 until the early 1800s. 

  • Refusing to grow Hemp in America during the 17th and 18th Centuries was against the law. You could be jailed in Virginia for refusing to grow hemp from 1763 to 1769. 

  • Rembrants, Gainsboroughs, Van Goghs as well as most early canvas paintings were principally painted on hemp linen.
  • In 1916, the U.S. Government Dept. of Agriculture predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees need to be cut down. 

  • For thousands of years, 90% of all ships' sails and rope were made from hemp. The word 'canvas' is Dutch for cannabis. 

  • The hemp plant produces up to four times more cellulose per acre than trees. Hemp cultivation and production do not harm the environment. The USDA Bulletin #404 concluded that Hemp produces 4 times as much pulp with at least 4 to 7 times less pollution.

  • Hemp fuel is non-toxic, biodegradable and does not contribute to sulfur dioxide air poisoning.

  • In Feb. 1938, Popular Mechanics called Hemp a 'Billion Dollar Crop.' It was the first time a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a billion dollars.

The following information comes directly from the United States Department of Agriculture's 1942 14-minute film encouraging and instructing 'patriotic American farmers' to grow 350,000 acres of hemp each year for the war effort:

'...(When) Grecian temples were new, hemp was already old in the service of mankind. For thousands of years, even then, this plant had been grown for cordage and cloth in China and elsewhere in the East. For centuries prior to about 1850, all the ships that sailed the western seas were rigged with hempen rope and sails. For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable...

...Now with Philippine and East Indian sources of hemp in the hands of the Japanese...American hemp must meet the needs of our Army and Navy as well as of our industries...

...the Navy's rapidly dwindling reserves. When that is gone, American hemp will go on duty again; hemp for mooring ships; hemp for tow lines; hemp for tackle and gear; hemp for countless naval uses both on ship and shore. Just as in the days when Old Ironsides sailed the seas victorious with her hempen shrouds and hempen sails. Hemp for victory!'


Victory indeed.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Miami Zombie Attack Prank


Mom Eats 3 week old Baby

Zombie WomanWith all of the Zombie talk going on lately, I have become a victim of the information insemination. That being said, I found an older story of a Mother eating her Infant baby

Don't Miss "Dead" Boy Wakes Up in Coffin at Funeral

Back in the summer of 2009 in the city of San Antonio, TX, Otty Sanchez was found by police with self-inflicted wounds to her chest and throat screaming "I killed my baby!". She told officers that the devil made her do it.

What exactly did the devil make her do? Well she slayed her son, then proceeded to eat him. Not only did she eat his body, but his brain too!

The slaying occurred a week after the child's father moved out. Sanchez's aunt, Gloria Sanchez, said her niece had been "in and out" of a psychiatric ward but did not say where she was treated or why. She said a hospital called several months ago to check up on her.

Seeing that she was clearly mentally unstable, and her husband had just left her, this is clearly not the T-Virus.

Also See: 11 Stories that Prove we are on the verge of a Zombie Apocalypse 
And: Miami Cannibal Victim Before and After Pictures

The Zombie Apocalypse Epicenter: Bath Salts

Many people are talking about the face eater and the possibility that he was on "Bath Salts"

Whether this is true or not is yet to be seen, the toxicology has not been completed, but it has left many people wondering, "what are bath salts?"

From: WebMD

"The presumption is that most bath salts are MDPV, or methylenedioxypyrovalerone, although newer pyrovalerone derivatives are being made by illegal street chemists. Nobody really knows, because there is no way to test for these substances," Horowitz says.

Why are they called bath salts?

"It’s confusing. Is this what we put in our bathtubs, like Epsom salts? No. But by marketing them as bath salts and labeling them 'not for human consumption,' they have been able to avoid them being specifically enumerated as illegal," Horowitz says.

What do you experience when you take bath salts?

Besides an extreme hunger for homeless human flesh, "Agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, chest pain, suicidality. It’s a very scary stimulant that is out there. We get high blood pressure and increased pulse, but there’s something more, something different that’s causing these other extreme effects. But right now, there’s no test to pick up this drug. The only way we know if someone has taken them is if they tell you they have.

The clinical presentation is similar to mephedrone [a chemical found in other designer drugs], with agitation, psychosis, and stimulatory effects. Both of these agents should be of concern, as severe agitated behavior, like an amphetamine overdose, has occurred.
A second concern is the ongoing suicidality in these patients, even after the stimulatory effects of the drugs have worn off. At least for MDPV, there have been a few highly publicized suicides a few days after their use," Horowitz says.

Are bath salts illegal?

"You can find them in mini-marts and smoke shops sold as Ivory Wave, Bolivian Bath, and other names," Horowitz says. "The people who make these things have skirted the laws that make these types of things illegal. While several states have banned the sale of bath salts, ultimately it will have to be a federal law that labels these as a schedule 1 drug, which means it has no medicinal value but a high potential for abuse, and declare them illegal."

Friday, June 1, 2012

11 Stories that Prove we are on the verge of a Zombie Apocalypse

So I posted Yesterday: It's Official, The Zombiepocalypse Is Starting!!!

But Then I Found More!

Message From the CDC:

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you're not likely to find the dead walking around, gnawing at your flesh.
"CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)," agency spokesman David Daigle said in an e-mail to the Huffington Post.
Yes, you read that right: The federal agency aimed to protect the United States from disease outbreaks has officially weighed in on the possibility of actual zombies.



In California:
The Nose-Biter When all else fails in a fight, use your teeth. This was apparently the muddled thought process of an intoxicated California man who resorted to biting off the tip of his cousin’s nose during a physical fight on Sunday


In Canada!
The Body-Part Mailer
Authorities in Canada have launched a massive manhunt for a suspect after a severed hand was sent to Canada's Liberal Party, a foot to the Conservatives and a torso was stuffed in a suitcase and tossed in the trash of the Montreal apartment building where he lived.


In The Garden State! (New Jersey)

Did you think the north would be safe from said Zombie Apocalypse? Well if so, WRONG!


A New Jersey man rips his torso open and throws bits of his intestines at police, according to the Bergen Record.


When police officers arrived at the Clay Street home, they kicked in a door to his room, which had been blocked with furniture. Carter was in the corner of the room with a knife in his hand, and he stood up, he yelled at police while stabbing himself all over his body. Officers noticed that his intestines were protruding from a wound in his abdomen, Heinemann said. Carter allegedly threw some of his skin and intestines at officers as they tried to enter the room, Heinemann said.

The officers ordered him to drop the 12-inch kitchen knife, but he didn’t. Carter is accused of swinging the knife at officers, police said. The officers sprayed two cans of pepper spray at the man without any effect. The officers retreated and called the Bergen County SWAT Team, which helped subdue Carter so he could be taken to Hackensack University Medical Center.


Yes, After two cans of pepper spray, SWAT had to come in!!

In Maryland


Alexander Kinyua, a 21-year-old Morgan State University student, admitted to murdering his roommate Kujoe Bonsafo. Not only did Alexander Murder him, not only had he killed Agyei-Kodie by cutting him up with a knife and then dismembered him, he ingested parts of the victim's brain and all of his heart.
Full Story Here

Yes That is right, HE ATE THE DUDES HEART AND BRAIN!!!!!

I know what you are thinking, One case is hardly enough to validate a claim of the zombiepocalypse starting, so here is another one....



It's Staring in The South!!! (7 Cases)



In Georgia 









In Florida (4 Cases )


The Face Biter:

A man who acted like a zombie right out of the "Walking Dead" by chewing another man’s face to the point where he was no longer recognizable! The attack, which happened on a busy Miami highway ramp, was gruesome and something you’d only expect to see in a movie or on TV. A witness happened upon the attack and ran to get a police officer. When the officer arrived on the scene, the naked man would not stop chewing on the victim.

The officer pulled his gun and ordered him to move away from the victim, but he continued biting the man’s face. The officer then non-fatally shot the man in hopes of getting him to stop this horrendous crime. Even after the man was shot he wouldn’t stop, leaving the officer no other option but to continue to shoot him until he was incapacitated. The deranged naked man died from the gunshot wounds.
Full Story Here 
Also See: The Zombie Apocalypse Epicenter: Bath Salts


That's Right, HE KEPT EATING AFTER BEING SHOT!!!



The Blood-Spitting Anesthesiologist:


The Mysterious Rash 1