From my friends at FCNL. This program is entirely for political purposes only. We don’t need such an expensive boondoggle.
Author: RJ
How To Deal With Anxiety…. 6
When faced with a challenge, whether you deny the problems it poses or dive in to solve them in a positive way may determine how much anxiety you feel overall.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 40 million Americans ages 18 and older are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder every year. To dig deeper into who may be at greatest risk, investigators from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign surveyed 179 healthy men and women and asked them how they dealt with their emotions and how their answers correlated with their level of anxiety in a variety of settings.
Previous studies hinted that different strategies that people use to handle emotional situations could impact how much anxiety they felt in general; those who tended to focus on positive ways of resolving difficult circumstances, for example, experienced less nervousness, tension and negative emotions compared with those who avoided challenging situations and suppressed negative and uncomfortable feelings. The scientists in the current study, published in the journal Emotion, wanted to explore the relationship further to see whether the more positive emotional strategy could offer more resilience and protection against anxiety than the suppressive approach.
Source: How You Deal With Your Emotions Can Influence Your Anxiety | TIME.com.
This was an interesting article. Of course if you have a more positive outlook on life you will be less anxious. Many times it takes years of studies to understand things that are really just common sense to some of us. The problems with this approach is that it is hard to be positive about things in our country right now. Our government is totally dysfunctional to the point of breakdown. We seem to be constantly bickering with each other over almost all topics. How can you stay positive while living in these surroundings?
One way is to just ignore it all and go on with a life of simplicity. As they say ignorance is bliss. 
Ignore all the negative stuff and just live in your own private world of bliss and hope that all the bickering is just a passing thing. This idea is not new to me. Thoreau discovered it years ago and went off to Walden pond to seek his own simplicity. It took Thoreau two years to fully appreciate a life of simplicity. Timothy Leary discovered it in the 1960s and coined it “Turn on, Tune in, drop out. His answer unlike Thoreau’s was freeform psychedelic rock music and drugs.
It is indeed true as stated above that our mental attitude about what is occurring around us has much effect on how we deal with it. I am trying to deal with my own anxiety by realizing as my hero Will Rogers taught me that “All Politics is Applesauce”. That term was Jazz slang of the period for nonsense. There is no one way to deal with today’s frustrations either personal or corporate. We just need to understand that life can go on in spite of them. Laugh it all off as it is a joke anyway.
Lawmakers say Apple dodged billions in taxes… 6
A Senate panel late Monday accused Apple (AAPL) of using what it called a “complex web of offshore entities” to dodge billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes.
via Lawmakers say Apple dodged billions in taxes – CBS News.
If we could just manage to get a Centrist party in control of those folks in Washington one of the first things I would want them to attack is our bloated tax code. The 10,000 plus pages of rules are at the core of the above article. Of course businesses want to minimize their tax load in order to increase their profits. That is, after all, what the free enterprise system is all about. Profits are the sole driver.
One of my major themes in my life lately has been around the word “Simplify”. Our world is just getting too complicated when it doesn’t have to be. Let’s throw out those 10,000 pages and replace them with just a handful. Let’s take away the means for corporations to move massive amounts of their income into tax exempt entities.
Let’s just make income well, income. If it comes in it is income and you pay a certain percentage of it as taxes to support our government and its business. For the individual that means you pay the same rate for income for profits from your investments as you do from the sweat of your brow. That means if you inherit income you pay your taxes on that amount in order to pass part of your windfall on for the common good. You didn’t earn it so it is taxable income to you. For corporations money coming in is income; doesn’t matter if it was from a foreign sale or one in the U.S.
Lets Get a Centrist party in power and direct them to simplify our tax code. After they accomplish that then I would want them to give us “real” universal healthcare; not that pretend extremely watered down version called Obamacare. But first things first I guess and that is getting centrists into power in our government. Click on the logo below to see more about that.
Hunt Out The Good…. Reply
“Hunt out and talk about the good that is in the other fellow’s church, not the bad, and you will do away with all this religious hatred you hear so much nowadays.” – Will Rogers, 11 March 1923
This quote from Will definitely applies to the churches in the U.S. but it equally applies to many other things that are problematic in our country today. As I commonly state on my other blog over at RedLetterLiving.net there are currently more than 39,000 different versions of the Christian church in the world. Most are the result of splits around different beliefs about this or that. We seem to always be looking at why we should be different and split rather than what we have in common. If we only took Will’s words to heart I think the number would be vastly different.
The political parties in this country have now devolved into hatred for each other over our differences. We can no longer seem to come together for what we find good in ourselves. We no longer seem to be able to compromise. Much of this division is totally unnecessary if only we would swallow a little of our pride in believing that we are the only ones who have it right about this or that.
I have found that sometimes it is better to just say “I know this is not the way I would have done (fill in the subject) but that’s ok. Not everything in life has to go totally our way in order for us to be happy. When we insist on that happening then we most assuredly doom ourselves to frustration and constant bickering. That is not a way to live during our brief time on this earth.
Niagara Falls Reply
I had my first and only visit to Niagara Falls in the Summer of 1999. The falls were impressive and yes I did put on the rain coat and toured them close up via the little boats shown below.
Bigger Than…. Reply
“This country is a thousand times bigger than any two men in it, or any two parties in it.” – Will Rogers, 2 November 1932
I seem to often get ground down by the politics of the day. Especially with all the gridlock and bickering that is always there. Thanks Will for reminding me that the country is a thousand times bigger than all those ornery folks in Washington or the two parties that now occupy space there.
Outside the Washington beltway and several State houses there is still a lot of good going on in this country and lets never forget it. As Will says “Politics is applesauce”.
Burnout….. 8
I know I am getting burned out on all this constant bickering in the U.S. I watch little or no news on TV now. All the news channels seem to be about inciting a riot among us. My internet news sites which I visit first thing every morning are now for the most part briefly scanned. I am just tired of all this stuff. It may just be time for me to go “Walden” as Thoreau did and drop out for a while. I seem to only be able to see the dark side of life and I just can’t live in that mode very long.
Since the Spring and Summer months are the busiest times away from blogging for me I will likely be limiting my posts to one every other day or so for a while and I will likely stay away from politics, at least for a while. I just need time to get things back in perspective again and get all this fighting off my mind….
Secession….. 3
Take an essay in The Daily Beast last week, in which Bronx-born culture critic Lee Siegel used the gun rights fight as one reason for the South to “Go ahead, secede already!”
With secession, a “red-state nation, giddy with new mobility, could make the 1958 Chevy its official car … [and] it could arm all of its citizens, and thus relieve itself of the financial burden of maintaining law enforcement for its citizens,” he wrote. The North, he added, could be unshackled from its Bible-crazed, knuckle-dragger anchors, to venture forth to establish the America envisioned by the enlightened: “Universal health care. No guns. Strong unions … high revenues from a fair tax structure.… In short, a society on a par with most of the rest of the industralized world.”
Source: As NRA meets, Great Gun Debate intensifies America’s culture war (+video) – CSMonitor.com.
Sometimes I think that maybe secession is about the only way to get over our constant squabbling between the red States and the blue. We seem to just fundamentally disagree on so many topics I’m not sure that we don’t have irreconcilable differences. The major problem with this idea is that there are very significant numbers of blues in the red States and visa versa. How do we handle that?
So many in the red States don’t seem to want any form of government. They prefer a survival of the fittest world where individual fire power is the dominant factor. Everyone for themselves is their motto. It boggles my mind to realize that less than 10% of our citizens are able to basically shut down all our democratic processes with constant filibustering.
Maybe the only way we can finally join the rest of the world in several practices is to split. Universal healthcare, despite the meager advances from Obamacare, is pretty much doomed. Any common sense gun regulations seem unaccomplishable. There is very little sense of “the common good” amongst many of us. Paying for a healthy infrastructure is doomed due to the no-tax pledge chanted by many. Maybe it is time to go our separate ways?
Maybe it is time to start thinking about three countries in North America or maybe even fifty-one? I know that Lincoln is perhaps President Obama’s favorite past president. I wonder how he would handle a red State secession?
By the way, the map above is what it would look like if the red/blue States were sized by population instead of geographical space.
Fertilizer plant that exploded in Texas carried $1M policy 2
“The bottom line is, this lack of insurance coverage is just consistent with the overall lack of responsibility we’ve seen from the fertilizer plant, starting from the fact that from day one they have yet to acknowledge responsibility,” Roberts said.
Roberts said he expects the plant’s owner to ask a judge to divide the $1 million in insurance money among the plaintiffs, several of whom he represents, and then file for bankruptcy.
He said he wasn’t surprised that the plant was carrying such a small policy.
“It’s rare for Texas to require insurance for any kind of hazardous activity,” he said. “We have very little oversight of hazardous activities and even less regulation.”
Source: Fertilizer plant that exploded in Texas carried $1M policy – CBS News.
I have long known that Texas is the execution capital of the world but didn’t know about its dismal lack of oversight until I read the above. For six years I was a sole-proprieter cabinet maker. I sold a few thousand dollars worth of furniture and cabinets each year; not enough to make a living on but it did supplement my pension. In that small non-hazardous (except maybe to me) business I carried a $1 million insurance policy. That is just standard in this part of the country.
When I learned that a large fertilizer plant near such a dense population carried no more than I did I was just astounded! How could oversight body have allowed this? They say there were no inspections of the plant in several years due to the lack of taxes to fund them. I’m sure that the hundreds of people who were killed or maimed or their families now regret allowing such disgraceful oversight by their government officials.
Why God Is a ‘Mother,’ Too…. 1
Long before I became familiar with the academic debates concerning calling God “Mother,” debates that I am now currently a part of as a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, I was being raised in a household where I instinctively understood that the divine presence was manifest in the loving hands and arms of mothers, and most especially in the life of my grandmother who raised me. My grandmother’s kitchen was a theological laboratory where she taught me how to love people just as naturally as she taught me to make peach cobbler and buttermilk biscuits. I watched and listened as she ministered to the sick and the lost, with a Bible in one hand and a freshly baked pound cake in the other, despite having no official ministry role.
I knew that if God was real, if God truly loved me as a parent loves a child, then God was also “Mother” and not only “Father.” Only years of dogma and doctrine force you to unlearn what you know to be true in your own heart, demanding “Father” as the only acceptable appellation and concept for God.
God is love. There is no doubt about it for me that is the primary definition. Although I myself lacked a loving earthly mother I see that love manifested all around me.
Happy Mother’s day….
Blooming Oaks
This is a rather simple picture but a meaningful one to me. It is of the grandfather oak tree on our property. I’m pretty sure it pre-dates our 1925 farm house. In our part of the country oaks are about the last trees to finally leaf out so this must finally be Spring.
F-35 Bookkeeping… 7
As defense secretary, Robert Gates withheld $614 million from Lockheed Martin in 2010 for its lackluster work on the $400 billion F-35 fighter program, the most costly weapon system ever bought.
Source: F-35 Bookkeeping | TIME.com.
A few hundred million here a few hundred million there and before long you are talking about real money. It is totally unfathomable to me how we could spend $400 billion on one plane design! But it seems that the $614 million that Gates took away was actually just delayed. He planed on giving it back at a later date. I can only hope that Secretary Hagel is a little more stingy with my tax dollars.
I like to figure, especially when my money is being spent, just what something is going to cost me and what benefit will I glean from it. For the sake of this post let me assume that I am in the military aircraft buying mode. I can’t possibly see that actually happening even in a moral support thing but lets assume it anyway.
At an estimated $140 million each these planes will be by far the most expensive ever built. I’m sure a very big percentage of that cost is justified as being about pilot safety. Being stingy with my own money I can’t see why we don’t shelve this whole thing and build a few more pilotless drones to replace them.
The F-35 is as above costed at $140 million each and is estimated to cost about $600/hour to operate. The MQ-1 drone, which is currently the primary drone of choice costs about $4 million each and cost about $3.50/hour to operate. So getting my calculator out I can buy thirty-five drones and still save money and of course risk no pilot’s lives. If I were the enemy which would I be more fearful of, one super expensive plane with a pilot on board, or thirty five drones circling over head. I don’t know much about the terrorist business but I would expect the later.
I hope there are at least a few bean-counter left in Washington to figure this stuff out. I know the drone industry is much like the fighter aircraft business who see this cash-cow and are trying to figure out how to add more bells and whistles to drones to drive up the costs and therefore their profits so we might just have a short window of opportunity to make a decision here. If they don’t have enough calculators in the Pentagon I would be more than willing to send them a few of mine. I seem to have plenty of them around.
Just Another Obsession???
ob⋅ses⋅sion /əbseʃən/ – noun
an unhealthy and compulsive preoccupation with something or someone
syn: fixation
Storyline:
The gun was small and light, the training wheels of firearms. The .22-caliber, single-shot Crickett rifle turned deadly on Tuesday, officials in Kentucky said, when a 5-year-old Cumberland County boy shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in what the coroner described to a local paper as “just one of those crazy accidents.”
Source: Guns made for kids: How young is too young to shoot? – U.S. News.
The above definition of obsession is a pretty simple yet accurate one. Are guns an unhealthy and compulsive preoccupation with some of us, particularly in the U.S.? I think the parents who gave a five-year old a loaded gun definitely fit that definition! Like Newton, sadly there is a two-year old life that was extinguished as a result and an innocent five-year old who will have to live with that for the rest of his life. I wonder if that tragic loss of life changed those parents views of guns? I kind of doubt it because if they buy a gun for their five-year old their guns are probably a very deep-rooted compulsion. I hope that they at least suffer some legal consequences for this death but since Kentucky is a pretty NRA leading red State I doubt that there will be any action taken against them. As the coroner said “just a crazy accident”. The Crickett rifle did not turn deadly; it was deadly to start with!
I know I will get a healthy share of flamers with this post but again but I just can’t understand how something whose sole purpose is to kill became so endemic in our society. Guns, besides death and inflating egos has little or no purpose. But, shamefully it has become so engrained that even classrooms of kids dying and a five-year old killing a two-year old has no effect on the ”protecting my guns at all cost” mentality.
A five-year old killing his two-year old sister with a gun given to him by his parents! How sad and tragic is that. That is probably one of the saddest parts of the twenty-first century for me. Thirty-five thousand Americans will die as a result of guns in our country this coming year. Why can’t we find a less deadly toy to occupy our weekends?
Growing consensus” in Senate for U.S. action in Syria 1
With evidence indicating that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime has used chemical weapons in Syria, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday on “Face the Nation” that “there’s a growing consensus in the U.S. Senate that the United States should get involved.”
Source: Graham: “Growing consensus” in Senate for U.S. action in Syria – CBS News.
It is interesting that Senator Graham is able to find a “growing consensus” in the Senate but what about a consensus of the people who elected them? Do any of these guys actually listen to their constituents anymore? Everyone knows that Senator Graham is a war hawk. He like Senator McCain seem to have never found a conflict they didn’t want to be involved in. I thank the Lord everyday that we didn’t give Mr McCain the Oval Office five years ago. Lord knows how many more wars we would be in right now. President Obama is bad enough for continuing to throw money into the two he inherited.
But, getting back to the topic at hand just where do our elected representatives go to find out how to vote? It seems that the party they belong to is the top source. If the party leaders says vote for or against something then they almost always heed that call. They know if they don’t they won’t get the powerful committee assignments they so desire and Washington, if nothing else, is about power. The second source seems to be the lobbyists. Since many of these guys go on to be lobbyists themselves this is known as investing in your future to them. Kind of like almost every general who does the same thing at the DOD.
The next one on the list of who are representative listen to seems to be the NRA and folks like Grover Norquist, or Rush Limbaugh. When any of these yahoos open their mouths scores of our supposed representative anxiously await their marching orders.
Pretty far down the list for how to vote comes the people they represent. That is a sad but obvious fact in today’s world. One basic thing that allows that to happen is that we the electorate seem oblivious to the power that we hold. Only about half of us even bother to vote and the half that do seem more attached to a party line or just plain selfishness than to the common good of all of us.
If only the electorate realized that they could easily change almost anything to do with our political system if they only had the will to do it. The true power in the country still resides in the vote; someday we may actually come to realize that fact.
The latest polls show that almost 2/3 of us think that the U.S. should stay out of this latest conflict. We don’t need to be the policemen of the world. Let some of the regional players who have much more to lose get involved. If we kept our nose out of these things I’m sure others would come forward. But why should they bear that burden now when they can so easily push it off on us?
More Diagnoses of Hyperactivity… 2
Those are astronomical numbers. I’m floored,” said Dr. William Graf, a pediatric neurologist in New Haven and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine. He added, “Mild symptoms are being diagnosed so readily, which goes well beyond the disorder and beyond the zone of ambiguity to pure enhancement of children who are otherwise healthy.”
And even more teenagers are likely to be prescribed medication in the near future because the American Psychological Association plans to change the definition of A.D.H.D. to allow more people to receive the diagnosis and treatment. A.D.H.D. is described by most experts as resulting from abnormal chemical levels in the brain that impair a person’s impulse control and attention skills.
Source: More Diagnoses of Hyperactivity Causing Concern – NYTimes.com.
The whole idea of medicating kids who are a little different is very disturbing to me but it seems like this is becoming more and more common. I am sure that if I were born fifty years later than I was I would be one of those drugged kids sliding through life. Are we really medicating out a large degree of creativity in this next generation? I really fear that is the case.
I’m sure severe cases of A.D.H.D. are about chemical imbalances in the brain but like many things today that diagnosis seems very much abused. I hope that it is not the teachers who are promoting this new pattern. Maybe they are just tired of that over rambunctious kid in their class who disturbs the normal class flow. Just who is behind this dramatic increase in drugging our kids?
I am very aware that through numerous media the drug companies are trying to increase their sales by having patients go to their doctors asking for certain drugs. I know that I am currently on five different medication to deal with various health issues I now have. Am I being drugged more for a beneficial effect or to increase a drug companies profits. One pill I take that is still under patent protection costs more than the other four combined.
Viagra is one of those cases of obvious abuse in my mind and no I don’t take that one. It supposedly produced to help older men maintain a satisfying sexual life but has since morphed into a drug to be used by every male who is seeking and enhanced sexual thrill. I’m sure that Bob Dole is no longer the typical user of Viagra.
Getting back to the original thoughts on this post are we drugging creativity out of our kids in order to obtain increased conformity in our society. That is the fear I have…..
Brainwashed??? 4
I just read a news article about a woman who says she is going to convert to Islam. Her family shouts that she has been brainwashed and needs an intervention to prevent that from happening. Just what does it really mean to be brainwashed? Brainwashing like many other words and conditions has a myriad of definitions depending on the speaker.
Here is what Wikipedia says about brainwashing:
Mind control (also known as brainwashing) refers to a process in which a group or individual “systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of the person being manipulated”. The term has been applied to any tactic, psychological or otherwise, which can be seen as subverting an individual’s sense of control over their own thinking, behavior, emotions or decision making.
Who is to say what is an ethical vs. unethical manipulation for convincing someone of a different truth? Aren’t we all manipulated in one degree or another almost every day?
- When I was a kid if I wanted to go ride my bicycle I just went to the garage and jumped on board. Now if you want to ride a bike you have to go to a store and get all the proper bike riding clothes, riding shoes and especially a helmets before you ride. Am I being brainwashed into thinking that somehow this additional $200+ expense for clothes I would not normally buy will somehow make the ride more enjoyable?
- I have spent sixty-seven years on this earth brushing my teeth twice a day but now I find that isn’t good enough. Now I am supposed to spend several dollars a month for products that bleach them to a very unnatural white. Am I being brainwashed into doing something that actually have some long-term negative consequences?
- I am told that I just can’t cook a tasty meal unless I have granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and cherry cabinets. Everything else is just substandard and will therefore make tasteless meals.
- For pretty much most of my life I was told by numerous sources that the founders intended this country to be a Christian nation. It was not until I researched it on my own that I found that to be false. Was I brainwashed into something that served a political or religious agenda?
- I was first told by my Catholic teachers and clergy that Catholics would be the only ones in heaven. Later when I became a Lutheran I received the same message except that now it was Lutherans who are the only ones going to heaven. Have I been brainwashed all these years?
- When I was a rebellious teenager I was told by all the tobacco company experts that cigarettes were not addictive and definitely didn’t cause cancer. I know I was brainwashed in this area. It took me twenty-five years to break that addiction.
I could go on and on about being brainwashed about one manner or another. In order to sell their products Madison Avenue and the drug manufacturers attempt to brainwash me everyday to buy their products. They want me to go to my doctor and tell him I need the particular drug that sell. Religious organizations try to brainwash me into believing that they are the only ones among the thousands of religious denominations out there that have it right about things spiritual. Everyone else is simply wrong.
Let’s face it brainwashing sadly is just a fact in much of today’s world. I think we all need some serious intervention for many of the things we have been brainwashed about.
But I’m just a simple guy so what do I know….
An Inspiring Spring Day 5
I have chosen the crabapple tree in the front yard as my inspiration theme for this Sunday. I just love watching things come back to life after a dormant cold season. The horses across the street are wintered someplace else. This was the first week they were back.
Crazy Glass… 2
October 2007 – Milwaukee Art Museum. This crazy looking piece of glass art is in the crazy looking museum. We very much enjoyed our visit there…
A Reagan Apostle On The GOP
“The Republican Party is not really a party. It doesn’t stand for anything except re-electing itself,” Stockman, who directed the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, tells Newsmax. “The neocons are only oriented to an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy of big defense establishment and suppression of our civil liberties. That’s bad.
“The tax cons want to just cut taxes — any time, any day — regardless of the fiscal situation,” Stockman adds. “That has gone to an absurd length. The social cons, social policy people — the right-to-life issue and gay marriage and all of that — that’s irrelevant to governing a democracy in a free society.
“That’s basically the heart of the Republican Party,” Stockman concludes. “In that mix, how can you find anything that’s going to stand for conservative economics, fiscal rectitude, free markets, sound money? It’s not there.
“The Republican Party is basically irrelevant to the economic crisis that faces the country.”
Source: Former Reagan Budget Head Stockman Critical of GOP.
Now before you conservatives out there start piling on I want you to know that these words above are from David Stockman who was a Reagan apostle who invented “Trickle Down” which still remains the siren of the GOP. The party seems to have taken on the mantel of being anti-deficit even though Reagan was anything but a deficit hawk.
I won’t add too many other words. These speak very well on their own:
- imperialistic foreign policy of big defense
- suppression of civil liberties (that was a Bush thing)
- just want to cut taxes – anytime any day
- No stands on fiscal rectitude, free markets, sound money.
- basically irrelevant
These are awfully strong words coming from an apostle within the party. And here I thought Karl Rove was pretty harsh…..
Fodder For Our Prison System?? 11
HOUSTON — As school districts across the country consider placing more police officers in schools, youth advocates and judges are raising alarm about what they have seen in the schools where officers are already stationed: a surge in criminal charges against children for misbehavior that many believe is better handled in the principal’s office….
Such criminal charges may be most prevalent in Texas, where police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets each year, said Deborah Fowler, the deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a legal advocacy center in Austin. The students seldom get legal aid, she noted, and they may face hundreds of dollars in fines, community service and, in some cases, a lasting record that could affect applications for jobs or the military.
Source: With Police in Schools, More Children in Court – NYTimes.com.
As if we needed more opportunities to put our citizens into the prison system; we are far and away already the number one incarcerater in the world. Now it seems, especially in Texas that we are dipping into the youngest generation for additional fodder.
I don’t know how the NRA feels about our prison system. Since they seem to have so much sway with our government representatives maybe they should chime in here with their opinions. I know that our prison systems were severely privatized by Mr. Bush and most Republican governors in the last decade or so. I also know that those corporations are among the most profitable in America. But to increase profits, and isn’t that the sole purpose for corporations, means more prisoners. I know there are documented cases of judges getting kick-backs for sending more people to prisons but I just don’t know how wide-spread this is.
Lets get back to the core of this post. More police in our schools as the NRA is advocating is adding to misdemeanor tickets in a serious way. Is that a necessary requirement for protecting them from a nut job with a legal assault weapon? Maybe there is some grand conspiracy that I am missing out on here.
