The Law of Increase

"Being thankful is also the law of increase. What we give thanks for is automatically multiplied. If we have only a dime and give thanks for it, it will soon be increased. If we resent our position and dwell upon what we lack, that is exactly what we get back."
by, Robert Scheid

I'm not sure if I fully agree with this, and can't explain why. Do you agree with Robert's statement?

Happy Anniversary Panama

We've just past the anniversary of the US invasion of Panama, and I decided to do some research online about it. So I Googled it, and got 1.43 million hits. Well that's not much considering if you Googled Britney Spears you get 16.1 million hits. So what does this lead me to believe, that we care more about a pop has been than the deaths of some 15,000 innocent men, women & children? Come on are we that calais?
What was the real reason for the invasion of Panama? I believe that the Americans were concerned that they were about to loss political influence over the region and one of the most valuable pieces of infrastructure in the Americas, to the Chinese.
Will we ever really know the truth about this event or will it be another Kennedy type coverup.

What are we living for?

You know the lyrics to the Queen song? Show must go on.

Well I was reading an article in USA Today about Debt and a few thing stood out to me.
Here is the Article

Debt has forced some young people to change their career plans. Of those surveyed, 22% say they've taken a job they otherwise wouldn't have because they needed more money to pay off student-loan debt. Twenty-nine percent say they've put off or chosen not to pursue more education because they have so much debt already. And 26% have put off buying a home for the same reason.

A smaller percentage say they've put off marrying (11%) or having children (14%).

Makes you wonder what you might be putting off because of your debt.

Watching a program last night about Warren Buffet. He stated that Young adults today are living better than the Rockerfellers of the Nineteen Twenties. If you think about it were well clothed, well entertained, lots of expendable income, Ipod, lap tops, cars. What do we really stand in need of?

The tale of Craig & the video games

Ok heres the truth, along time ago in another city my brothers and I would go to the local grocery store to play video games. You remember don't you? You put the quarter in and if you were good you could play for a very long time, if you were bad at the game it would be over before it began. Lets just say I wasn't very good, but I did have alot of money. I had a paper route and was clearing close to two hundred dollars a month. What's a 12 year old to do with that kind of money?

Anyways, the story goes that we got busted. I lied about playing the video games, and my brother lost his wallet as he was "irresponsible in manageing his financial affairs". I look back now and the amount of money that I spent playing video games by the quarter I could have personally bought a couple of gaming consoles back then. Oh well it was fun, even if we were defiant to our parents. I played video games through most of high school, during the lunch hour, again I had a part time job at the mall, and was making more money than I knew what to do with. I was also into comic books and had a walkman.

Then I bought this ridiculously expensive discmen, it lasted forever. It was the top of the line with all the latest gadgets and improvements, it was miles ahead of anything my friends had or could aford. Anyways, I eventually left home for two years to serve, and when I got back my brothers told me they wrecked the discmen one day when they spilt some liquid on it. It was unrepairable. Looking back the amount of money I spent on that discman I could now have bought 6. But, we were even, yah?

Terms of a Contract

I try to live my life by the book, or more specifically I conduct my business in a professional manner; by reading understanding and complying with the specific terms of a contract. If it says that I don't proceed with something until I have it in writing then everyone should be willing to live by those terms.

However, I do take exception to these terms when there is a mutal understanding and respect between parties. For example, if a client were to ask me to proceed with something and paper work would follow, and I respected their word, I would proceed without caution.

Hence, I can't understand why when I'm working with someone where there is mutal disrespect that they could have the audacity to request a favour of this type. I should stick to my guns and hold my position to the terms of the contract.

What are your thoughts?

Welcome to Edmonton

Homicide capital of Canada

My oh my what a lovely city I associate myself with. Maybe Edmonton should consider changing its welcome signs from "City of champions" to "Homicide capital of Canada"?

At least the statistic is based on per capita and not total, so, somewhere in Canada there are more murders total, if that provides any comfort?

A first for the Democrats

Have you heard yet? The first victory for the Democrats has come in the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld.

"U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the controversial face of U.S. war policy, quit on Wednesday after Democrats rode Americans' anger and frustration over Iraq to victory in Tuesday's congressional elections."

Full article click here

HEY! I'm an angry Conservative... happy to see some balance of power in America. Score one Democrats. What's next guys? Hopefully some foreign policy changes :)

Voting problems

Voting machines not working

Have you seen, or heard, or read this today or last night. Were talking about the (supposedly) Greatest Nation in the World, and they can't seem to get a simple democratic process down like voting. They go around the world influencing other nations to be like theirs and why? What's so great about your nation? Americans are plagued with problems these days and you don't have to look very far to see it. Start with page one of your local news paper. Murders, rapes, drugs, corrupt politicians, failed marriages, and on and on. How long will you people stand for this? When will you stop preaching to the rest of the world the your way is the best way and take a deeper Look at your failed and corrupt government institution.
This blog is the only way for me to vent my frustrations at this time, until I can find a better way. And so I will continue my rampage, another day.

What gender do you feel like being today?

Change your sex

Came across this article today, and I must say the world is going to hell-in-a-handbag daily now. Since when does a doctor or a politician get to play God? Did anyone think of the repercussion of enacting a bill of this kind? Is it really necessary that any one be given the right to change how they were born, even if your not chopping anything off? There are far to many things wrong with this for me to keep going on, but this has got to stop. Somebody tell me how do I stop this?
For a greater understanding of my beliefs on this issue and related issues read this article.

Same Gender attraction

Where in lies the truth?

I heard this on the radio today and thought how true.

Olbermann: Bush ‘appearing to be stupid’ about Kerry’s joke
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
Countdown
Updated: 7:33 p.m. CT Nov 1, 2006

On the 22nd of May, 1856, as the deteriorating American political system veered toward the edge of the cliff, U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked for the familiar figure of the prominent senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had delivered three days earlier — a speech against slavery.The congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in midair and smashed its metal point across the senator’s head. Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Sen. Sumner somehow got to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him and delivered untold blows to Sumner’s head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and bleeding on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him only because his cane finally broke. Others will cite John Brown’s attack on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.
In point of fact, it might have been the moment, not when Brooks broke his cane over the prostrate body of Sen. Sumner — but when voters in Brooks’ district started sending him new canes.
Tonight, we almost wonder to whom President Bush will send the next new cane.
There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.
There is no line this president has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party in power. He has spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency. And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or laughably transparent.
Sen. John Kerry called him out Monday.He did it two years too late. He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000, just as millions of us have been too cordial ever since. Sen. Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial. He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education — that “if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you can get stuck in Iraq. The senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid. The context was unmistakable: Texas; the state of denial; stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required. And Mr. Bush and his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid. They demanded Kerry apologize to the troops in Iraq.
And so he now has. That phrase — “appearing to be too stupid” — is used deliberately, Mr. Bush.
Because there are only three possibilities here. One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted. This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not “make the most of it,” who do not “study hard,” who do not “do their homework,” and who do not “make an effort to be smart” might still just be stupid, but honest. No, the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest. The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Sen. Kerry said to fit your political template; that you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops or even on the nation itself. The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario: that the first two options are in some way conflated. That it is both politically convenient for you and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.
A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America. You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political; to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn’t about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either, that the insult, in fact, is you. So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans’ deliberate distortions.
Thus, the president will now begin the apologies he owes our troops, right? This president must apologize to the troops for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, “look like just a comma.” This president must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong. This president must apologize to the troops for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in harm’s way. This president must apologize to the troops because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators. This president must apologize to the troops because his administration ran out of “plan” after barely two months. This president must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed. This president must apologize to the troops for getting this country into a war without a clue. And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency. We will not receive them, of course. This president never apologizes. Not to the troops. Not to the people. Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him. In calling him a “stuffed suit,” Sen. Kerry was wrong about the press secretary.
Mr. Snow’s words and conduct, falsely earnest and earnestly false, suggest he is not “stuffed,” he is inflated. And in leaving him out of the equation, Sen. Kerry gave an unwarranted pass to his old friend Sen. John McCain, who should be ashamed of himself tonight. He rolled over and pretended Kerry had said what he obviously had not. Only, the symbolic stick he broke over Kerry’s head came in a context even more disturbing.
Mr. McCain demanded the apology while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois. He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how “many of them have lost limbs.” He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there, Tammy Duckworth.
Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one. And exploit all the veterans and all the still-serving personnel in a cheap and tawdry political trick to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the president had been stupid.
And to continue this slander as late as this morning — as biased or gullible or lazy newscasters nodded in sleep-walking assent.
Sen. McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats — one of them his friend, another his fellow veteran, legless, for whom he should weep and applaud or at minimum about whom he should stay quiet.
That was beneath the senator from Arizona. And it was all because of an imaginary insult to the troops that his party cynically manufactured out of a desperation and a futility as deep as that of Congressman Brooks, when he went hunting for Sen. Sumner. This is our beloved country now as you have redefined it, Mr. Bush. Get a tortured Vietnam veteran to attack a decorated Vietnam veteran in defense of military personnel whom that decorated veteran did not insult. Or, get your henchmen to take advantage of the evil lingering dregs of the fear of miscegenation in Tennessee, in your party’s advertisements against Harold Ford.
Or, get the satellites who orbit around you, like Rush Limbaugh, to exploit the illness — and the bipartisanship — of Michael J. Fox. Yes, get someone to make fun of the cripple.
Oh, and sir, don’t forget to drag your own wife into it. “It’s always easy,” she said of Mr. Fox’s commercials — and she used this phrase twice — “to manipulate people’s feelings.” Where on earth might the first lady have gotten that idea, Mr. President?
From your endless manipulation of people’s feelings about terrorism?
“However they put it,” you said Monday of the Democrats, on the subject of Iraq, “their approach comes down to this: The terrorists win, and America loses.”
No manipulation of feelings there. No manipulation of the charlatans of your administration into the only truth-tellers.
No shocked outrage at the Kerry insult that wasn’t; no subtle smile as the first lady silently sticks the knife in Michael J. Fox’s back; no attempt on the campaign trail to bury the reality that you have already assured that the terrorists are winning.
Winning in Iraq, sir. Winning in America, sir. There we have chaos — joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoints at Sadr City, the base of the radical Shiite militias, and the Americans have been ordered out by the prime minister of Iraq … and our secretary of defense doesn’t even know about it! And here we have deliberate, systematic, institutionalized lying and smearing and terrorizing — a code of deceit that somehow permits a president to say, “If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don’t have one.” Permits him to say this while his plan in Iraq has amounted to a twisted version of the advice once offered to Lyndon Johnson about his Iraq, called Vietnam.
Instead of “declare victory and get out” we now have “declare victory and stay indefinitely.”
And also here — we have institutionalized the terrorizing of the opposition. True domestic terror:
Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax.
Braying newspapers applaud or laugh or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation. A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published “national security information” that was openly available on the Internet. One radio critic receives a letter threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun. And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the senator’s supporters and thrown to the floor in full view of television cameras as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent — and the rage — of the day Preston Brooks found Sen. Charles Sumner. Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things. You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax, nor undermine the FBI’s case, nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times, nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller, nor beat up a man yelling at Sen. George Allen, nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox, nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.
No, you did not. And the genius of the thing is the same as in King Henry’s rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

Don't get me wrong I'm a huge right wing supporter, but the Bush administration discussed me.
So, Go Democrats Go.

The cure to inflation

Reading an article in USA Today about inflation and at the end of the article they talk about the cure to inflation.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/inflation/2006-10-31-inflation-usat_x.htm

" the only cure to inflation is a sharp recession, as the USA saw in 1981. With wages flat, however, consumers are going into debt instead, to keep pace with inflation"
"...inflation is a force to be feared and combated. It erodes the value of a nation's currency and diminishes a country's monetary stature among other countries."

I say bring it on, bring on a recession. Consumers, stop spending, start saving, send a message to corporate American that you don't need stuff. You can control the economy. Think, with a market crash how things will correct itself and our dollars will stretch further.