Christmas, HR3962 and Stupak

Those who want the Stupak Amendment added to HR3962 are against the "killing of innocent children" no matter whether they are already dead or would be born without a heart or a brain.

We all agree that the killing of healthy innocents is wrong, although some of us think it matters how many cells a zygote has and whether or not that zygote would be able to live after birth. Yet, these same anti-abortion Christians/Jews don't support the public option. I have tried to point out that once those children are born, their families might need support. They then tell me that it is the woman's "personal responsibility".

I have pointed out that the woman was accepting her responsibility when she made the difficult choice to have an abortion, and it was the Christian/Jew who took away her ability to make that decision. Therefore, it becomes the Christian/Jew's responsibility, at least in part I think, to insure that she has the means to properly care for that child.

"No" says the Christian/Jew. She should have kept her pants zipped. (Let's not get into the dress code here....) I pointed out that the man could have kept his pants zipped.... The Christian/Jew answers, that it is their personal responsibility also.


Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

A person can only be responsible if s/he has life and liberty, and authority over his/her own life.

When the founders wrote the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, they lived in a land that had water with abundant fish, and in a land with abundant game and timber. Any healthy person with some skills could live abundantly. If a family was large, you simply chopped down a few trees and built an addition to your home. It was more hands for fishing, farming or for cooking. This gave people authority over their own lives.

This is not so true today. For a person living in poverty, it's very difficult to provide for a family. The larger a family becomes, the more stress is put on the family economy. This stress forces a family to make decisions between buying health insurance, or paying the mortgage, or between after school activities and private school, or even Mom's medication and food for dinner. Many upper and middle class men are choosing to have vasectomies to limit family growth.

But, what about the woman whose boyfriend or husband doesn't have a vasectomy? Should she allow all her children to suffer if she becomes pregnant? We certainly can't answer this here, but it is not such a simple problem once a pregnancy has started.


Let's talk a little more about authority over one's life

In urban areas, there is a strong correlation between living or working near a power plant, and respiratory disease. As you probably know, power plants are not generally put in the wealthy areas where people have health insurance. They are built in the poorer areas where people have low paying jobs that don't come with health insurance.

These families without private health insurance take their asthmatic children or elders to the nearest hospital ER or free health clinic. These are costly visits for the US government and are partly responsible for the rapidly increasing costs of Medicare/aid.

Those Christians/Jews who speak so easily of preventing abortions are not accounting for the environmental illnesses that are part of living in a poor area. The poor have less access to clean air, a stress-free environment and fresh vegetables. This contributes to an increased incidence of asthma and other illnesses.

These families do not have the freedom to move to a better location, far from power plants. However, Medicare for all would give these families greater authority over their lives. They would have access to a family physician who could help with preventive care and family planning as well as consistent palliative care.


Community Responsibility

One might expect that the Christian/Jew who insists on preserving life would also seek to protect those lives. This is not the case. Those who speak against abortions do not generally accept the principle of community responsibility. They call this "communism" or "socialism". They speak against community responsibility as an affront to their "freedom".

It is alright for a private health insurance executive to earn a salary of millions of dollars, yet, they are blind to any connection between this salary and the high cost of health insurance. This is "free enterprise". They blame increasing health costs on the government.

In every other country that has government health care, costs are lower and outcomes are better. Their argument is easily refuted, but the anti-abortionists are arguing from principle rather than from fact or history.

So, the anti-abortionist insists that they have the right to prevent a woman from exercising free choice over her family size but that the woman does not have the right to expect any responsible assistance from them.


Right to Life

This is the most absurd phrase in the American political lexicon. Those who identify with this term generally:

• Believe in preventing abortions (thus forcing more births) but not in taking care of those children
• Believe that most Moslems are political extremists and terrorists and should be killed
• Believe that the US has the right to kill and that the soldier can do no wrong until s/he comes home and needs health care and benefits because s/he can't work to support him or herself
• Believe that Capital Punishment is a deterrent to murder, and that state sanctioned murder is fine
• Believe that doctors who care for women seeking abortions can (or should) be murdered because they murder fetus'
• Believe that wealthy CEO's who cause the deaths or illness of other Americans through extreme pollution or rescission of health insurance are not murderers but "free market capitalists" which is somehow close to godliness or sainthood.
• Believe that government officials who seek to provide christian charity to those who can't provide for themselves, are anti-American

I have to admit that I can't see the logic in this position. This is a lot of killing for someone who claims to believe in the "right to life." Can anyone explain this to me? Please comment and I promise I will write you back.

Motorola Droid Review

The Newest, thinnest, sliding phone for $199, and with a two year contract you get a $100 rebate! Whoo, hoo.

Great Features:

The Screen is beautiful! It has a very clear display, more clear than the IPhone. A simple tap zooms in or out of an app. And, you can scroll through your contacts on the screen.

The keys on the keyboard are close together and this takes a little practice if you have heavy thumbs.... The virtual keyboard is easier to use and has a nice little vibration when you strike a key.

The Google Maps application is fabulous. You can easily scroll across the map directly on the screen With this phone, you won't need another nav system. It gives perfect directions, quite loudly, and quickly recalculates if you take a different turn.

It allows on screen widgets for easy access. This will please busy Twitter or Facebook users. When the Droid is "on" you are notified immediately of any new Twitter updates. If the Droid is "off" with a dark screen, there's an LED light in the upper right hand corner that flashes different colors for different applications, such as email, or Twitter.

Not So Great...

The Facebook sync is a little tedious as it has no way of separating the "bob"s or the "Trish"s, but you can do this ahead of time by renaming your contacts to match their facebook id's which will be unique.

If you like downloading music, you can copy from your computer by mounting the SD card into your USB and copy the files manually. Or, you can get Sailing Media (WIndows/Mac) to copy ITunes playlists.

As with any Bluetooth phone with a WIFI radio, or any phone that keeps apps up and running, this uses power. Some owners have complained about a short runtime battery. This can be fixed by turning off apps that you aren't using. One user who bought it on Friday, has found that without special treatment, his charge lasts from 8am to 7pm, which is before he generally gets home. One other site set the screen lightness to max, set the media app to "repeat all songs" and the screen to "never sleep". They used 1 hour of Google navigation. They got 7 hours of battery life.

The camera is not the strength of the Droid as many users have complained, but at this time there are only 2 camera apps in the Android marketplace so this will likely get better when there has been more innovation in this area.


General Review by Mobile Tech

Peace is Coming! It's Election Day in the USA

And, health care is coming too, because those of us who want what's good are now focusing on what we want rather than what we don't want. This was a big mistake we made in 2004. I pray that we continue today with the insights that we had in 2008. The article here is one that I just wrote for Ezine Articles. It seemed appropriate for today as well.

Now, take notice of the beautiful blue artwork to the left. This Blog Blast for Peace is the work of Please join if you have a blog. The idea is to flood the blog-world with Dona Nobis Pacem.... But, let Mimi tell you. Click on her artwork to the left.

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According to Universal Law and Ho'oponopono, I'm 100% Responsible For Everything in My Life, and so Are You for Your Life

I'm Sorry. Please forgive me.

This is Ho'oponopono. I am responsible for everything in my life. I can clear, clear, clear by saying, "I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me." This simple prayer has cured physical illnesses and mental illnesses. Dr. Hew Len, PhD. learned about it from Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona who healed his child from a life long skin disorder. He studied and became a master of the method and used this cleansing prayer to cure an entire hospital for the criminally insane in Hawaii. Dr. Hew Len explains that it works because once you cure/clean the error in yourself, then those around you who are expressing your error are cured. As he says, "You never saw a psychologist with healthy clients, did you?"

I have been practicing Ho'oponopono since August, 2007 when Joe Vitale's book, Zero Limits came out. I have seen it create change in the lives around me as I take more and more responsibility. The Buddhists, I believe, were the first to notice that we are all One. We are all connected to the One. To give you an example, if I am sorry for my frustrated feelings, ask that they be removed and replace them with love, the crying, screaming child in front of me calms and laughs. If I am feeling frustration at the traffic, and ask to be forgiven, and then replace those feelings with compassion for my fellow drivers and faith that Divinity will get me to wherever I'm going when I need to be there, the traffic almost always improves -- but I do always get to my appointment on time whether or not it does.

How Does this Fit with the Law of Attraction?

What we think about comes about is one of the principles of the Law of Attraction. It's a matter of putting your energy and your attention on to some wanted or unwanted result. It doesn't matter which. If you are attending enthusiastically to your business, and expect to see customers finding you, they will come. If you are worried about your business, and keep looking to see whether or not customers are coming, they will not come.

When Mother Teresa was asked to join an "Anti-War March, she refused. She asked to be invited when they had a "Peace March." This is a story told by Jack Canfield who explains that she understood the Law of Attraction. Of course she did. Look at what she did with nothing! She knew that being positive was the only way to achieve your goals.

This also works with politics:

We watched in 2004 when an unpopular war and an unpopular presidency was elected for two reasons:

1. What we think about comes about and those who wanted President Bush and Vice President Cheney defeated, could hardly think about anything else.
2. John Kerry, who was running against them, was not clear about his goals, except to overturn what President Bush and Vice President Cheney had done. He was doing just what his supporters were doing and was thinking about the other guy!

Thus, what we were all thinking about in 2004, the election of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, came about. This is also a principle of advertising. "Say whatever you want about me, but spell my name correctly."

Our reality begins with our thought. Thought moves into vision which might inspire action and vision makes us feel. Feelings change our vibration. This is the Law of Attraction. This is cause and effect.

Ho'oponopono and Cleansing Correction
In 2008, I remembered to think about what I want, rather than what I don't want. In 2000, 2004, and 2008, I didn't want Dick Cheney or torture or Gitmo or Abu Grabbe. I was so passionate about not wanting any of this, that they were re-elected in 2004. By 2008, I had remembered to focus on what I did want, and so did almost 70% of other voters. I did Ho'oponopono and took responsibility.

I focused on my vision of the United States. I chose another dream. I'm sorry. I love you. Many of us did this. We reminded ourselves of what we love about our country. I took responsibility for violence and torture. Ho'oponopono. I'm sorry. I love you. Please forgive me. Thank you.

The new dream was of a fair man who had been raised (because I was getting tired of the fear) in Hawaii, the only state in the union where they still pass a stress test as unstressed. (This is well documented in the book, The Heart's Code.) I remembered that in the United States we dream and work together and don't let our neighbors suffer.

The Acts after the Great Depression:

1. The Wagner Act of 1935, mandated unions when 51% of the workers voted for them,
2. The Social Security Act (Act of August 14, 1935) [H. R. 7260] An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws; to establish a Social Security Board; to raise revenue; and for other purposes and
3. Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938 - 2009 set a minimum wage and standards regarding overtime and child labor and record keeping.

I remembered that in the United States, there is not a huge difference between the rich and poor. (Prior to President Reagan in 1980, corporations voluntarily held the top salaries of their executives to no more than 25 times the salary of the lowest paid employee.) I remembered that in the United States, a poor boy who has a great dream can become a great man (President Lincoln being a notable example). I remembered that in the United States we appreciate people with different ideas (such as Steve Jobs, adopted as a child, and subsequent travel to India and study of Buddhism and Calligraphy which lead to his development of Apple Computer) because those ideas add to the creativity of our solutions. I remembered that in North America, we have honored Mother Earth (so that in the 1700's, the trees were 200 feet high at the end of Long Island, and the top soil in the Great Plains was 40 inches deep) and learned to live within her tolerances and can do so again.

My new thoughts created a new reality. I had not remembered this in 2004 when I was filled with sadness and distress. My strong feelings for the changes in the land I loved overwhelmed my support of John Kerry, and I caused George Bush and Dick Cheney to be re-elected. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. But, in 2008, I remembered in the nick of time.

Our Ideal, and Our Heartfelt Desires will Always Manifest


This is the Law of Attraction. Take 100% responsibility for this. Ho'oponopono. I love you. Thank you.

I desired a man who was intelligent, calm, kind, articulate and would have the courage to speak to foreign leaders as equals without bullying them.

Our ideas, if connected to strong feelings and strong belief, will always manifest. And, it seems, many people had the same idea. Enough was enough with the torture and disregard of Habeus Corpus. Perhaps we could elect a man who seemed to respect others.

And, like Dwight Eisenhower, President Obama is not afraid to put the corporations in their place (in his proposition to having a Public Option in the health reform bill and laws to ensure that the insurance companies keep to their contracts). Like John F. Kennedy, he has a vision of an innovative America that is not afraid to take risks in order to lead the world to a bright new future (in his support of clean energy).

Let's focus on peace, good health and abundance for all. Let's stop focusing on war. Ho'oponopono. Take 100% responsibility. When you heal the war inside you, and I heal the war inside me, we will have peace.

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Nancy J. Stremmel is the co-owner and developer of: http://www.Mindbridge-LOA.com the compendium of information on the Law of Attraction. She is a writer, licensed Social Worker, educator, artist and therapist. She believes that everyone can make the Law of Attraction work for them.

This was a show of the practical effects of taking 100% responsibility. For more serious studies of the Law of Attraction, I have given access to core historical teachings here. http://www.mindbridge-loa.com/law-of-attraction-theory.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nancy_Stremmel

Medical Bankruptcies

This is great. Al Franken schools Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Diana Furchtgott-Roth about medical bankruptcies.Our bankruptcies in the US are caused about 62% of the time (according to the American Journal of Medicine) by medical costs. And, of those, nearly 78% of the people had medical insurance.

Whoo. How could that happen? I always thought that if you had medical insurance you had access to the greatest medical system in the world! Well, it happens because there is such a thing as "lifetime limit" and if the insurance company can find one mistake in your application (which could be as small as your weight or treatment for acne or asthma when you were ten years old) then they can rescind your application and cancel previous as well as current liabilities.

This was a hearing held the other day in the Senate Judiciary Committee on medical bankruptcies. If you haven't seen it, it's well worth watching.

How Bad is the Deficit?

Are we simply at the precipice before it all is so much easier?

There has been a lot of worry about the deficit, and this is a problem because it adds to the National Debt. The interest on the National Debt is one of the largest items in recent Federal budgets. Just as this is a problem when it's true in a family budget, it's true at the National level. This is something we must deal with or soon it will be the only thing in the budget....

But, there have been some really frightening estimates and proclamations of the catastrophic results of current spending. We wish to allay those fears based on data analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office.

The deficit is dependent on the government's income. This is dependent on taxes. When millions of people are falling off the tax roles and onto the unemployment compensation roles, it makes the deficit bigger and bigger every day. This is not because spending is increasing every day, but because the income is decreasing. This is not the current administration's fault but because the economy exploded in 2008.

It is, however, something this administration must live with, and we have done this before. When Bush took office, the deficit was a surplus of $431 billion each of the prior 3 years before W. This was achieved because Clinton had to live with a pay-as-you-go law passed by Congress. In the past, administrations assumed that this was the way to run a government, but that had been forgotten in the 1980's. This Congress has remembered, in part, because things got so our of control in the last 8 years after the law had lapsed.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Bush's deficit in 2008 was $459 billion. Now, since this is a budget deficit, and the wars were never in the budget, doesn't that mean that his deficit was even greater?

From the AP

"The deficit will hit $482 billion in the 2009 budget year that will be inherited by Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, the White House estimated Monday. That figure is sure to rise after adding the tens of billions of dollars in additional Iraq war funding it doesn't include, and the total could be higher yet if the economy ..."

Obama put the wars in the budget. And, when that was written by the AP, they didn't know that the economy would take such a serious and debilitating dive. However, in spite of all this, there is hope in our future.

From the CBO

"CBO estimates that, as the economy recovers, if current
laws and policies remained in place, the deficit would
shrink but remain above $500 billion per year, or more
than 3 percent of GDP....As the economy improves and spending related to the financial rescue and the economic stimulus package tails off, the deficit is projected to gradually diminish; by 2013, it would amount to 3.2 percent of GDP (about the same level as in 2008), under the assumption that various tax provisions expire as scheduled and that discretionary spending rises at the rate of inflation. Between 2013 and 2019, deficits are projected to range from 3.1 percent to 3.4 percent of GDP, well above the 2.4 percent of GDP that they have averaged over the past 40 years."

CBO Summary of Budget 2009, page 6.

According to CBO estimates above, in 4 years, the deficit is going to be at about the same as it was in 2008, 3% of the GDP. Isn't that what even Republicans said was good?

I don't think that is good enough, and neither does Obama, which is why this Democratic Congress passed the pay-as-you-go bill in April. As the economy recovers, this will put us in a position to begin to pay down the National Debt.

We can keep the pressure on our representatives. There is no reason that the Public Option, if a buy in to Medicare, can't support the costs of the seniors even better than private for-profit insurance supports those members who are using their health benefits with those who don't need to use theirs but are continuing to pay premiums.

This could be a win-win!

The National Debt and TARP - Your Money?

Back to serious matters. There have been so many questions about the banks and the bailout money and the Federal Deficit -- your money?

First, since there is such attack on Obama and Democrats right now, I'd like to talk about the national debt in graphic form. If you look right now at the graph of the National Debt from 1940 to the present, you'll see a modest increase during WWII, and then it's almost flat until the Viet Nam War. From 1975 to 1980, it begins to go up. This is the period of Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter. Gerald Ford came into office during double digit inflation (topping 12% in 1974), high oil prices, and low confidence in government as a result of post Viet Nam, and post Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation. By March of 1980, inflation and interest rates were topping 18%. Even so, the debt went up moderately, and if you look at the other chart comparing it to GDP, the debt continued a down trend through Carter's presidency.

Then, came Reaganomics, and top-down Supply Side Economics, and huge tax cuts for the rich. Look at the two big rises in National Debt as compared against GDP. Both rises were during the big tax cuts of Reagan and both Bush's. Clinton took back some of the giveaway and reduced the budget still constrained by pay-as-you-go, and the National Debt was greatly curbed. Compared against GDP, it was reduced.

At the beginning of Reagan's term, the National Debt was about $1 trillion. By the time a Democrat was back in the White House, it had climbed to over $3 trillion. Clinton kept it below $6 trillion, tapering off significantly during his last 4 years. Bush lowered taxes again, raising the National Debt to $10.6 trillion by the time he left office.

Now, let's look at the National Debt as compared to GDP, and you'll see that the differences are even more pronounced. National Debt goes down during Democratic control, and up during Reaganomics and the Bush eras.

Finally, the graph from Emmanuel Saez (below) showing the income share of the top .01% of earners, that Paul Krugman published in August of this year. As Thom Hartman keeps saying, tax breaks for the rich result in bubbles which inevitably pop. The dot-com bubble caused by the excitment of a new industry increased incomes across the board, but also created some tremendously wealthy entrepreneurs. The stock market decrease approaching 2000, the end of Clinton's term, lowered the top income from 5% to 3% of total income share and lower than it was in 1986 when Reagan lowered the income tax for the top incomes from 50% to 28% and raised the lower level taxes from 11% to 15%.

George Bush came into office and again lowered taxes every chance he got until we have another serious recession, bordering on depression, and the highest spread of income ever -- at 6%. The peak in 1928-29 resulted in the Great Depression. A peak in 1986 was followed in 1987 by Black Monday and a stock market crash. Again, as Thom Hartmann points out, tax reductions for the rich results in a bubble that pops. This was repeated in 2000 when the stock market crashed again after the .com bubble.

And, this has come to that: The Bank Bailout

There's a list of recipient banks here: at CNN
which shows that about $200 billion was borrowed and about $70 billion has been paid back so far.

Now, where did the money come from in the first place? It was called the Capital Purchase Program and the effort was to prop up capital and make available additional money for lending. It didn't come from the taxpayer. It was part of TARP.

The TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) allowed the US Treasury Department to buy preferred (non-voting) shares of hundreds of banks. The US taxpayer was told that there would be a modest return including a 5% quarterly dividend. To date, we've seen better than expected profits of 15% or a total of $334 million in profit from the large banks who have repaid their debts and an additional $35 million from 14 smaller banks.

However, to stay realistic, Citigroup and Bank of America are still troubled, and neither is going to repay their bailout money soon. Their stocks have surged this summer, but they are both still sitting on mortgages that don't look good.

Will the Paybacks happen soon enough?

The US Treasury is subject to a Congressional debt limit. In February it was raised to $12.1 trillion. It currently stands at $11.7 trillion and was scheduled to hit the limit in mid-October. There are steps it can take short term to free up cash but none of them are long term solutions. Some of them are an avoidance of investing in Federal employees pension or G fund, or in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. Payments to this fund are normally $5.63 billion every month.

The Fed has been one of the biggest buyers of US Treasury's and government backed mortgage debt. What does this mean? The regional banks comprising the Federal Reserve System have agreed to buy the debt of their weaker brothers. In the second quarter, the Fed bought $164 billion of the $339 billion in new Treasurys. The Fed has been buying upward of 80% of the bonds issued by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. This has propped up the Real Estate market, but in October the Fed is scheduled to stop buying those bonds.

Luckily, US Households have been buying US Treasurys at an unusual rate. Is this because they are unsure about their local banks? This week, the government is auctioning a record $112 billion in debt. If the US citizen continues to buy our national debt, we can at least keep our debt out of foreign hands.

US Debt of George Bush: From $5.6 trillion to $10.6 trillion 1/20/09.

US Debt during year 2009: From $10.6 trillion to $11.8 trillion.

Obama has returned to pay-as-you-go which created the dip in National Debt that we saw during the Clinton years. Please support this practice as it seems to be the only way to constrain the lawmakers. Additionally, the top tax rates are now below what they were during the 1950's and the Eisenhower presidency. This is not helpful. A return even to the Reagan tax rates would greatly reduce the National Debt.

There is a myth being perpetrated that Republicans handle the Nation's money better. Not so. It would seem that they handle their money and our money better while the Nation goes deeper into debt!

People of Walmart

It's a holiday weekend, so we're going to set you up with the funniest web sites. Be the first, or 100,000th on your block depending on where you live, to visit these sites. The first is People of Walmart.

People of Walmart is not easy to get in to, but it is well worth the try. This is one of the hottest, and newest sites (with an Alexa rating of 59,037 in it's first month.) Three friends set it up, Andrew, his brother Adam and their friend Luke. In their own words:

“People of Walmart was founded in August of 2009 by three friends and roommates after an international trip to Walmart. Let’s face it; we all have seen the people who obviously don’t have mirrors and/or family and friends to lock them in a basement, and they all seem to congregate at Walmart. It’s not everywhere that you can shop for milk at 10 a.m. next to a 400lb mother of 6 wearing a pink tube top, leopard tights, and hooker heels.”

You can find the site here: http://peopleofwalmart.com

Race Day: Get there early to get a good seat!

Photos are up by date, and you are allowed to browse the previous day for the best in hairdo's, outfits, cars and pets! It's a "don't miss" from Mindbridge Trends!

They are asking for photos, so grab your camera on your next trip to Walmart if you haven't got anything better to do! Oh, one thing, there is a disclaimer:

"We would also like to stress that we are in no way liable if you get your ass beat by Bubba when he catches you taking his picture. Be discrete, have fun, and Enjoy!"

Once a Flower Child, Always A Flower Child....

Ha. Good heads up. Maybe you should avoid weekends....