Kim Jong Il has died...

Farewell, so long, good riddance and don't come back anytime soon.

Via Gawker

Scott Olsen shot @ POINT BLANK range by Oakland PD

If this don't piss you off, nothing ever will. What the hell is wrong with the Oakland PD that they not only fire a tear gas canister at POINT BLANK range at someone's head, but that they follow that up by firing flash grenades into the crowd as they try to help the person who the police have injured.

I'll be honest, when I first heard that Scott Olsen, (for those of you who haven't heard, was a veteran to two tours of duty in Iraq and a Marine), had been wounded by the police I thought one of two things, one was that he probably got in the middle of a crowd that was violent or that the police had fired randomly into the air and the canister had come down on his head. You see, I couldn't imagine that the police would *really* be jackbooted thugs. Not here. Well, watch the video and you'll see. The Oakland Police Department are indeed a bunch of jackbooted thugs.

The videos show it all. The protesters were peaceful. Nothing was being thrown until the police fired tear gas and someone in the crowd threw one back. The crowd did not become violent at all, not even after they were attacked by the police.

And "unlawful assembly"? It is our constitutional right to assemble anywhere on public property that we god damned well please. Requiring a permit even is a violation of this right, and most cities are in violation of the Constitution of the United States.

By the way, the fascist thugs should know that this ain't 1933. You can't make up lies any more because the cameras, they don't lie.

Footage of Scott Olsen being shot by Police at Occupy Oakland from Raleigh Latham on Vimeo.

And it begins...

It's only a matter of time until they declare martial law and start shooting people. Teargas fired at Oakland protesters? Because the People are pissed and occupying a public space? What is this? A third world dictatorship? It's certainly beginning to seem like it. (Actually, it's seemed like it for a while now, we're all just in denial.)

Erin Burnett mocks #Occupy: No surprise because...

...she's worth 12 million dollars. To top that off, she makes two million dollars a year. And I thought congressional members made an absurd amount of money. That totally pales in comparison to the $174k a year that they make, even with the 26 weeks of vacation. Ridiculous.

These media jackals keep saying that they don't know what these people are protesting. Yeah, they can't say because it would take more than the two second sound byte to do so. The list is fuck-off long as to just how jacked up this system of ours is. I believe it can be fixed though. There was a ton of greed and avarice in the 1920s and our grandparents paid for it with the Great Depression, and it took a while, but things turned around and were even better than before. I just hope that Obama grows a pair and rivals FDR when historians look back on this era.

Herman Cain: Don't blame the Corporatocracy, Blame yourself

Herman Cain is an (un)American idiot. If you recall back in July he was clamoring for religious tests before people can serve in government here. Any sixth grader who's taken government studies could tell you that that is unconstitutional, a violation of Article Six of our Constitution. Now he tells ordinary, average Americans that it's all their fault.

"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks," he continued. "If you don't have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!

Really? I wonder when Herman Cain last visited a ghetto. Maybe he should take a stroll through public housing. While he's there he'd do well to look at all the children living there. Children brought into this world, born into poverty, through NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN, who do not stand a chance with people like Herman Cain running things.

"While Cain dismissed the protests, he stressed in his interview with the Wall Street Journal that he's more in touch with the middle class than the GOP frontrunner, Mitt Romney."

O rly? Well, I suppose this could be factually accurate since there's not much of a middle class left here in the United States and what is left is on it's way out. I guess it's easy to be more in touch than your opponent with something that doesn't exist.

"And while Cain has been successful in business, he told the Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray, "Don't spread this perception I'm a kajillionaire.""

This is of course a lie. Only the rich can run for office in this country. I suppose an exception might be made if someone of lesser means sold out and was funded by a Corporate backer *cough* tea party candidates *cough*

Actually, Herman Cain's net worth is reported to be $18,000,000. How many years would you have to work to earn that much money? If I went by my last full-time job, which happened to pay ABOVE the median wage for an individual in the United States, I would have to work over four hundred years to earn what Herman Cain is worth. At the rate I'm going now, since I'm underemployed, it would probably take me closer to a few thousand years to earn that much. There's something wrong with that. But then again, Herman Cain is in the top 1% of people in this country. Besides the non-existant middle class, I'm sure he's in touch with his profit margin.

Judging from his self-serving demeanor, I dare say that Herman Cain would not want to raise taxes on the rich, unlike Obama, since Herman Cain acts like an entitlement whore, in that he's entitled and the rest of us are just SOL.* Herman Cain doesn't care about this country. He doesn't care about our Constitution either, and he doesn't care about you. Unless 'you' happen to be Herman Cain that is, or one of his cronies. And if Herman Cain reads this, since he claims to be Christian, maybe he ought to ponder the second half of the nineteenth chapter of the book of Matthew.

"You know, where it ends, usually depends on where you start." --Everlast, What it's Like

*Hint:Obama is rich too, but still raised taxes on himself.

An answer to the right-wing pundits and tea-baggers:

Since reading the news about the Occupy Wall Street protests I noticed a few common themes in the comments from tea-bagger types. I'd like to take this time to refute the corporate shills' tea-baggers' ideas (which are absolute nonsense).

Teabagger: Aren't these protesters just a bunch of whiney rich kids with nothing better to do?

Me: Um, no. If they were rich they'd be on a yacht off the coast of Monaco thinking about all the ways they can get out of paying any taxes on their capital gains.

Teabagger: The government would have an easier time of it if they just didn't have to pay everyone their "entitlements" like Social Security.

Me: Last time I checked, Social Security is not an entitlement. The government has been taking money out of my check since I was sixteen years old. When I retire, they give it back plus interest. Maybe the teabaggers should take a simple course in economics before they decide to lecture about it.

Teabagger: These kids took student loans out of their own choice and therefore it's their problem.

Me: No, it's really society's problem. When millions of Americans desire an education and cannot afford it and therefore must go into debt to get it, something is terribly wrong with the system. Australians and Europeans get free higher education if they do well in school, and are not saddled with debt the second they get out. We have twenty-something year olds in debt before they even get started in a career path, and then add to that the massive unemployment and the fact that possibly 50% of recent college graduates are either unemployed or working in jobs that do not require a degree, and we (yes we!) have a huge problem on our hands.

To add to that, we waste human capital (not that that matters to the Corporate elite, although it should). Just because you're born into poverty doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a chance at things. Isn't that what the so-called American Dream was all about? If someone is intelligent, they should be given an education free of charge. The teabaggers are a cabal left over from feudalism, wishing to see us return to a time when (corporate) lords protected people (serfs) from the ravishes of the world in exchange for absolute bondage to them. They stand for something that is the very anti-thesis of a free and democratic society.

What is wrong with these teabaggers and those who share such ideology? I'd start with the fact that besides the psychological problems and ignorance they obviously have (signs held up at their "parties" about government staying out of Medicare say it all), they also have no empathy. Why else would you boo a veteran of our armed forces? Or cheer because someone without insurance dies? Or absolve yourself of all interest in your fellow Americans.

Obama was quoted as saying that's not who "we" are. I want to know who these asshats are. Is it just ignorance? Is it that they can't think for themselves so they just parrot whatever they've been spoon-fed by Faux News? Whatever it is, it's refreshing to see that there are still intelligent people left in this country.

"Because if this is gonna be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition -- and then admit that we just don't want to do it." --Stephen Colbert

American Autumn

A single snow flake can start an avalanche.

A single drop of rain can precede a flood.

One person can change the entire world.

I know what you're thinking. The first two are true and the third is bullshit. But it's not. Think about it for a minute. I'm sure you can come up with a handful of people who, if they had never lived, the world would not be the same place. Maybe more than a handful. They may have had help, they may not have done it alone, but without them, things would not be the way they are now.

The corporate media is determined to undermine the Occupy protests. They're dismissing it as a bunch of hipsters who don't want to work. Corporate shills Trolls online are calling them communists, as if they even comprehend the meaning of that word. Communist, liberal, socialist, fascist, conservative etc. have all lost their meaning because of the misapplying of these terms to things/people/movements that do not fit into their definition. The mainstream media are owned by powers that wish to see us made into serfs. If you think this is also bullshit, I suggest you turn off Faux News and take a look around. Corporate profits are up 22% since 2007. Why are so many people out of work? Because they're pocketing the money on the backs of their workers. But that's just the tip of the iceberg and only one of the many problems that are facing us today.

Why are CEOs making more than ever when the average American's salary has fallen? More importantly, why are so many Americans hoodwinked into thinking that if there is regulation of a system it won't benefit them? Why do these same people think that regulation equals communism? Or that providing for the poor equals communism? (Jesus was apparently a communist in that case.) Public education in this country is the first thing cut, and when you think about it, from an almost conspiracy-theory-esque sense, that's been a boon to the Corporatocracy. What better way to control the masses, to make them believe your propaganda newscasts than to give them a lackluster education and discourage critical thinking skills. I'd like to believe that it's a serendipitous by-product of unintended consequences, but after a while discounting the multiple "coincidences" tends to make one question their sanity anyway.

You may also think that everyone is just too lazy or too comfortable to do anything about it. After all when we can sit around and poke at facebook or lose ourselves in online games, why would we want to put ourselves in danger of being arrested, pepper-sprayed by police or worse? But always, always throughout history, there comes a tipping point. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that, "all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." What happens when everyone has had enough? What happens when a military you have equipped and trained (and that qualifies for food stamps with what they are paid) have themselves had enough?

The congressmen and women in Washington are no longer working for We the People. They have been bought by the Corporations. They have turned their backs on the Constitution of the United States in exchange for thirty pieces of silver. Except the thirty pieces of silver wasn't enough for them, and the billions weren't enough for their Corporate masters. It's never enough; they must have more. And that "more" comes at the expense of the middle class. At the expense of US. And that is why things have gone they way they have. People may have been willing to forget about it if it hadn't gone so far, if they were able to have a decent life, send their kids to college and have a nest egg for retirement. Instead they have seen their wealth vanish and the price of their home plummet. They give up 40% of their income in taxes, and their children graduate from college tens of thousands of dollars in debt and are not able to find a job. They have seen their hopes and dreams evaporate. And meanwhile, the super rich are getting richer and pay no or few taxes by taking advantage of loopholes in the tax code.

Every single politician in Washington ought to be recalled and sent home. And every single lobbyist should be standing in the unemployment line. Free elections should be called with NO CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP AND NO CORPORATE MONEY. We the People want our country back. We want our Constitutional rights restored to Individuals and stripped from Corporations. We want our jobs back. Those are our demands. We may not be able to Occupy Wall Street because of distance, but we can Occupy our towns. And when we can't do that, we can Occupy the Internet. We are here and we aren't going away. We aren't shutting up. We aren't going to accept serfdom so that 1% can accumulate more and more. We're fed up and we've had it.


"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

PS. As an aside, if you had asked me in 1995 what the greatest threat to this country was, I'd have told you it was religious fundamentalists. And maybe it still is to some degree because they are the ones who have been hoodwinked by these Corporate bastards. They are the teabaggers and their hangers-on, funded by Corporations. I however would never have thought that business would become so corrupt, and our politicians so enamored by their money, that our very democracy could hang in the balance over money. Ideology yes. But money? It seems so ridiculous. As they say, truth is stranger than any fiction.

The Inadequacy of Lesser Equality

A presidential candidate that I admit I've never heard of (probably because until recently I have avoided reading the news like the plague) has openly trampled all over the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States. I'm sure he's prime oval office material. I mean after all, Gee Dubya wiped his ass on the Constitution, so why not have Herman Cain wipe his feet on the amendments.

Herman doesn't seem to think that Muslims deserve to be able to build a mosque in which to worship. Would he think the same if it were a church that was being built? Of course not. The state of Tennessee is one of the most backward-racist-homophobic-stupid-bastard states in the country. I wonder if it escapes Herman's menial thought process that forty years ago he would have been sprayed with water hoses if he'd have dared try to run for the office of dog catcher, much less the office of President of the United States.

Of course he's also apparently itching to wipe his ass with Article Six too. I hope he doesn't mind that Gee Dubya already used it for toilet paper.

"On the Glenn Beck Show today, the host asked the Georgia Republican about his refusal to appoint Muslims. Cain told Beck that he would be willing to appoint a Muslim only “if they can prove to me that they’re putting the Constitution of the United States first.”"

Too bad Herman Cain doesn't put the Constitution of the United States first.

"...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Black Children were better off under Slavery

Yes, you read that correctly. Or at least the right-wing wackos in Iowa think so. Maybe it's really just a tempest in a teacup, but I have to rant for a moment, so keep your arms and legs inside the car and hold onto your ass.

Where do these people get off? Who in the hell do they think they are? What do they think gives them the right to upend our democracy and impose on us a western style Sharia (aka theocracy)? WHAT THE FUCK?!

Okay, I feel better now. I'm sure it won't last. Between the mess with the economy and these fucktards running around begging to flush their freedom down the toilet, I don't hold out much hope for humanity or this country.

And the right-wing bloggers are complaining that the "liberal media" took it out of context. I'm sorry, but there's nothing to take out of context. I know that their reading comprehension skills rival a first grader's but really.

"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President."

What do you think that says? Hmm? I think it implies that a child was better off under slavery solely because they had two parents. And the kicker, it's not even fucking true. Children were often sold away from their birth families. Parents were often sold away from their children.

I have a suggestion for these "pro-family" (and I use that term loosely) asshats, and that is, if the corporations that are backing them would pay people a fair wage, one parent could stay home with their children. But right now, that's usually not possible. The behavioral problems with children stem from having to rely on daycare. Daycare teaches children that the peer group is in charge because one adult to twenty plus children is bullshit. And that has nothing to do with marriage or divorce, but rather with economics, like everything else that has had to do with economics, from slavery and the Civil War right down to the war in Iraq. It's all about money. And you can take that to the bank.

An open letter to the people of North Carolina, district 5

Dear people of North Carolina,

This week Virginia Foxx sponsored an amendment to de-fund medical schools that teach abortion. Now, regardless of what your stance is on abortion, sometimes it is medically necessary and not a choice at all. In cases of ectopic pregnancy, severely deformed fetus or in the case the mother would definitely die if allowed to attempt to carry the pregnancy to term. Whatever you may think about god and life, pregnancy is not perfect. Shit happens. Sometimes very bad shit. Doctors need to know how to perform abortions. This isn't the dark ages. Please do not let people like Virginia Foxx drag us back into one.

I was born in North Carolina, and I would thoroughly appreciate it if you would vote this crazy bitch out of office. It makes all of us look bad. I know quite well that most of the people of North Carolina are indeed sane and rational people, whatever their political persuasions. Unlike Virginia Foxx, who is to put it mildly, quite mad.

Sincerely yours,
–Quite Mad (but not crazy like a Foxx)

Doomsday has been rescheduled...

Due to technical difficulties, doomsday has been moved to the 21st of October this year. If you heard peals of mysterious laughter this morning, that was twitter exploding in unrestrained hysterics.

The Doomsday that Wasn't

It seems that Harold Camping has emerged from hiding. It seems he's a bit embarrassed.

"Camping's PR aide, Tom Evans, told the L.A. Times that the group is "disappointed" that 200 million true believers weren't lifted up to heaven on Saturday while everyone else suffered and eventually died as a series of earthquakes and famine destroyed the Earth."

Don't you wonder about the sort of people who would be disappointed about something so catastrophic not happening? I don't particularly care for these fundies, but I don't want them to die or anything. *sigh*

The sad part is, there are some really gullible people in the world. Many people quit their jobs, spent their retirement and all their savings, and for what? For something that any rational person should realize is not happening.

If people would focus more on the here and now, rather than on some afterlife, or god, or whatever, the world would be a better place. If these people had spent all the money they did on feeding the hungry, or helping homeless veterans, etc., how much more good would that have done. The dogma that faith is more important than works is something that evangelicals should re-examine. That of course would require them to actually read the New Testament and listen to what Jesus and his followers supposedly said.

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead." James 2:14-17

Why is a pagan like me having to quote the bible for these people? Shouldn't they know this? Apparently not.

Love Wins

This video is from a few years ago, but I just saw it tonight. It's thoroughly made of win.



It starts off with the usual back and forth arguments between the crazy preacher and the crowd. I say never argue with crazy, it's like running on a treadmill. You don't get anywhere. And then the end was so worth it. What happens in the end is the antithesis of everything these hate-filled fear mongers are preaching. And that's what makes it so awesome.

How do you like your rights violated? Bastrop High School Senior rubs it in

Via Friendly Atheist:

A public school district in Louisiana ought to have their asses sued right off them.

"I was initially chosen to deliver the invocation, but I was recently informed that I would be giving a moment of silence. However, before I fulfil my obligation, I would like to say that I am of the Christian faith. Now I respect those who do not share the same faith that I do. But at this time I would like to give thanks to the god who has made the class of 2011 a great success..." (followed by a long prayer)

No. She didn't respect the beliefs of others, and neither did anyone who clapped in that audience. Neither did the school officials who failed to cut her mic and ask her to leave the stage. They violated the rights of other people to not have to be subjected to their drivel. I don't know who that girl is, but she has been done a great disservice by a community that has raised her to believe that respecting the rights of others is the same as trampling all over said rights.

If you don't like the fact that our public schools are secular, then send your little fucking spawn to a private school, where they can say prayers all day long and none of us give a shit.

This is your tax dollars at work, turning out good little morons who can't think for themselves or follow the law, or more importantly, do what is right.

edit:

Via Death and Taxes, the student who trampled all over Damon's rights is named Sarah Barlow. Shame on her. And shame on the entire town.

Apocalypse FAIL

The 'post rapture looting event' on facebook did give me many lulz, so I can't say that I'm completely disappointed that Harold Camping is an idiot. Usually I would weep for humanity.

However, I do think they could have done something better with the millions of dollars they spent marketing their rapture. Feeding and housing the homeless comes to mind. Maybe following the actual teachings of Jesus? Nah. That's absurd.

The end of the world? Not again!

How many times does the world have to end anyway? I guess I could gamble that it really is going to end, and blow all my savings and go to Carcassonne again. That would be nice. But I'd regret it come the 22nd, which incidentally two years ago to the day, Carcassonne is where I was. *sigh*

Why'd I log in to write this? Oh yeah, because I wanted to say that if it really is the end of the world, and if these asshats really are right, just go ahead and toss my ass in the lake of fire, because I have no desire to spend eternity with a bunch of jerk asses and their evil god. That's my feeling on the matter. At any rate, they're more full of it than a turkey at Thanksgiving dinner, so I look forward to the 22nd and all the snark that's going to go with it.

Anonymous wages war against Copywrong

This is some funny shit.

Is it wrong? Criminal? Well I suppose that depends on your definition of wrong and criminal. Wrong is suing poor grandmothers for an absurd amount of money for downloading a song. Criminal is G. Dubya Bush, but I digress. Plenty of people get away with wrong and criminal actions all the time. Got money? Got a good lawyer? You too can get away with shit.

Poor? No lawyer? 1/2 ounce of pot? Go to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200!

I never thought of Anonymous as being leverage against stupid corporate shit, but maybe it could be. Except, I don't think they do enough. And they probably aren't organized enough. And are most of them even in this country? Do they all share similar goals? Probably not on both of those counts. That's probably all that keeps corporations from being under constant attack by them. Or maybe they have better things to do? Hard to say.

What pisses me off, is that the laws of this country, our Constitution, etc. were designed to protect individuals, not Corporations. Copyright law was intended so that individuals would not be stolen from. And individual musicians, they don't get shit from the behemoth that is the record industry. The majority of the profit goes to the industry, not to the musician. Maybe the big name ones get advertising gigs and that's how they wind up with a lot of money, but the small time musicians rely on their concerts and personally selling their CDs at said concerts to generate income. So, the industry is not suing on behalf of the musician. They're suing to protect their own profits.

Is being sympathetic to Anonymous a way of promoting anarchy? Maybe. But socialism, communism and capitalism don't work. Why not try anarchy for a while? I'm kidding. Aren't I? The problem with any form of government, is that the greedy always worm their way into power, and then use their power to rewrite whatever laws they want in order to line their pockets. That's the way it always is. The only way it won't be like that, is if greedy people cease to be. And that probably ain't happening any time in the next ten millenia.


"If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn." --Henry David Thoreau

It should be a rule of the internet...

...if it isn't already that you never mess with Anonymous. For those of you not too hip on the intertubez, just keep on surfing LOL

I'm amused that they've issued a warning to the Westboro Baptist Church, props to Joe My God, I haven't read anything this funny in a while. Indeed, I haven't read much of anything in a while, because it merely infuriates me and 'teh stupid' just keeps on rolling whether I write about it or not.

I'm hoping they ignore Anonymous like I think they will, and hilarity ensues.

A Nutritious Belief

Belief. It's an interesting thing. I once naively thought that it was only in religion that one found this thing we called belief. It seems however that belief extends to other categories of thought where it really has very little business being, like politics, science and nutrition. Unlike the intangible, these are subjects where FACTS should speak for themselves, leaving no room for belief.

That people can be shown concrete, scientific evidence to the contrary of what they think is true, and not change their mind, is to put it mildly, absolutely mind-boggling.

I used to think that eating fat would raise your cholesterol and give you a heart attack. I believed it because that's what organizations like the American Heart Association tell you, and well, you would think that scientific research in the 20th (and now 21st) century was high enough that they really did know what they were talking about. Unfortunately, they don't know what they're talking about, and it is almost unbelievable to say that an absolute fraud has been perpetrated not only on the American people, but the people of this entire planet. I suppose that it's irony that they chose to represent what we should eat by a pyramid, appropriate in that it surpasses the ponzi scheme carried out by Bernie Madoff by light years. And it's worse than that though, because whereas Bernie swindled people out of their money, the AHA and others have swindled people out of their lives.

I just got through reading a book by a Swedish doctor named Uffe Ravnskov called "Fat and Cholesterol are Good for You". He had written another that is now out of print ten years ago that I missed, and is now expensive to buy, called "The Cholesterol Myths." I already knew that they had the diet we should be eating all wrong thanks to Gary Taubes, who I personally think deserves a Nobel Prize.

The "research", and I use that term very lightly, carried out on the effects of cholesterol on the human body, is blatantly unscientific and in some of the studies seems to be an outright scam by the pharmaceutical companies so they can sell you expensive statin drugs.

So why am I writing about this on a blog dedicated to the absolute madness that politics and religion cause on otherwise seemingly rational people? Well, that same madness extends to other areas of our life as well. It goes back to belief. People have been indoctrinated to believe that fat is bad for them. They have been brainwashed to believe that high cholesterol will kill them. And then they're confronted with the fact that none of what they've been told is true, and only a few change their minds! Most stick their heads in the proverbial sand, for whatever reason, and continue believing what they've always believed. I'm sure most of the researchers do this because if they published literature to the contrary, they'd lose their soft funding from the food and pharmaceutical industries.

If you read the news and look into some of the studies they quote about nutrition, you will find that in a lot of them they use no control group. Or they don't isolate one variable, they have five or more variables and yet they pick the one they want and go with it. I'm not even a scientist, and from my limited science classes in college, even I know that this is bad science! And the research is equally bad, something I know a bit more about. When you write about something, you really ought to present opposing viewpoints, even if it's only a small mention in your paper, especially on subjects where things are really controversial. But these researchers who write up reports on these studies choose only the ones that agree with what they want to say, and ignore anything else. They also ignore the numbers. They'll dump out half a study and only use the part of it that they like if necessary. What kind of science is that? The answer is, it isn't science. It's fraud is what it is.

And our government, that is supposed to protect us from snake-oil salesmen, has been suckered in to buy up all that snake-oil as well. Our representatives, like our doctors, get told by the pharmaceutical companies what drugs are good for us, and what kind of research (on their terms) needs to be done, and that's how it goes. Your doctor doesn't know jack about the real effects of medication on you. S/he's too busy running a practice and keeping up with paperwork to read any journals. Reps from the pharmaceutical company come by the office and tell him or her how their drugs are so good for you, the patient. And they buy it, hook, line and sinker and then prescribe it to you. Maybe that's okay for short-term medications, like something you take to clear up an infection. But we're talking long-term drug use here, and without any really long-term studies. Most of the studies were for five years. The pharmaceuticals are advocating that everyone, even children, be on statins. Besides the fact that in almost all of their studies more people died in the treatment group than in the control group, and besides that fact that people (especially women) with higher cholesterol live longer, what are the effects of shutting down a normal biological process in people starting at a young age? No one really knows because no such study has been done, but I daresay it probably isn't a good outcome.

Cholesterol is important. It repairs damage. Fat, especially saturated fat, is important for brain development and function. Did you ever wonder why there has been an increase in ADHD? Or an increase in obesity? The correlation is inverse with the low-fat diet craze. But that's another post.

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." --Morpheus, The Matrix

Life is Stranger than Fiction

They just identified the 9 year old girl who was shot today at the Gabrielle Giffords event as Christina Taylor Green. The irony of it is she was born on 9/11/2001 and died today 1/8/2011 (1+8=9) at the hands of an insane terrorist. I suppose all terrorists are insane to some degree. No sane person would fly a plane into a building, or shoot a 9 year old girl.



Such senseless violence, and for why? Because a psychopath was upset with our government? Even if the government is flawed is that any reason to kill people? I feel so sorry for the neighbor who invited her to attend the event, I'm sure they blame themselves in a way even though it isn't their fault.

It was only a matter of time...

...unfortunately.

I'm sure most of you have heard that Gabrielle Giffords (Democrat Rep from Arizona) was shot at point blank range by some deranged motherfucker at an Arizona Safeway. She was having an open meeting with her constituents and a gunman walked up and shot her in the head, and then open fired on the crowd. According to news reports a 9 year old child and a federal judge, John Roll, are dead, in addition to others. The person arrested for the shooting, (if this had been in Texas, he'd have gotten one shot off before someone in the crowd took him out, just sayin') was Jared Lee Loughner, who it was reported left paranoid rants online about the government, a North American currency (which has been a conspiracy since before I was born probably), and immigrants who don't speak English.

What with the Tea Party crazies and Sarah Palin's ilk inciting violence, is it any wonder? What sort of nation are we when we can't have political discourse without crazy people assassinating (or attempting to) our Representatives? This isn't happening in a vacuum! Giffords had her headquarters vandalized and the federal judge who is dead had received death threats! There are nutcases online everyday ranting about how terrible our government is. So like I said, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. I hope Glenn Beck is pleased with himself. It's people like him who are responsible for urging on these paranoid people. Maybe he's paranoid himself, I don't know. This is why we need state hospitals. Paranoid, psychotic people should be committed, not left to wander around shooting people because they think Big Brother is out to get them.

BTW, the link to the article about John Roll from Politics Daily, I just want to say that Politics Daily has the right idea about comments, that they can't be personal attacks and they are all read before being published. Too bad Yahoo News won't do that. The comments on their news stories rival youtube for the inanity, insensitivity and overall crassness. I'm all for free speech, but not when it's trollish or inciting violence (we see where that leads don't we?).

Anyway, the most important thing here is this: my condolences go out to all the people affected by this senseless act of violence.


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This is totally off topic, but Huffington post had a picture of Obama reacting to the shooting and my thought was, 'I want a room like this in my house!' I know, it's like the White House, but it looks so cool...