Posted in Uncategorized on July 31, 2011|
The headline may sound like the typical quick fix lead in to some fad… if that is what you are looking for then don’t bother reading the man’s article… The article is about what most of you already know you should be doing to eat right, but do not…
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Posted in Uncategorized on July 31, 2011|
Self explanatory…
Leviticus 20:13
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them…
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Recruiters pressed to reach out to gays once ban is lifted
An underground gay group in the military wants recruiters to reach out to the gay community in the same way they target blacks, Hispanics and women.
The Pentagon’s ban on openly gays members is due to be lifted Sept. 20, meaning avowed gay people can sign up, those in the ranks can come out of the closet and the military will no longer discharge personnel because of sexual preference.
What is unclear is the number of post-ban policies that might be adopted to meet the demands of gays and ease integration of different sexual identities.
The group OutServe, which claims more than 4,000 gay and lesbian military members worldwide, plans a “coming-out party,” of sorts, in Las Vegas in October.
The group has invited Defense Department officials to attend an OutServe Armed Forces Leadership Conference and expects hundreds of military personnel to attend.
J.D. Smith, an active-duty Air Force officer who founded OutServe, said the military should think of gays when recruiting. “J.D. Smith” is an alias he uses because the ban is still in effect.
“Absolutely, we endorse the DoD advertising recruiting for the gay community, just as they would any other community,” he said in an email exchange with The Washington Times. “The DoD regularly attends public events to recruit, and we believe they should be at Pride events next year around the country to let the gay community know the opportunities to serve their nation.
“The DoD doesn’t need to do a campaign to let the public know they accept gays; they should do it so gays know of the opportunity now open to them.”
Robert Knight, a conservative columnist, said he expects a list of gay-oriented demands for the Pentagon.
“No one should be surprised at what will be an increasingly shrill set of demands to use the military as an endorsing agency for homosexual activism,” said Mr. Knight, who helped draft the federal 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
“The idea that they would be satisfied with a military that is merely indifferent to sexual preference ignores what they’ve done in other institutions, such as corporations, schools and even some church denominations.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said no decision has been made about whether the department will officially attend the OutServe conference.
As to specifically recruiting in the gay community, she said, “The services are always looking for smart, talented young men and women who want to serve, and they determine which recruiting/marketing venues best meet their needs.”
What the gay community would like to gain from the Pentagon may materialize at the four-day Las Vegas conference. The agenda calls for several workshops, dinners, board meetings, group breakout sessions and an open-microphone session.
OutServe is urging attendance from cadets and midshipmen from the academies, active-duty personnel, veterans and federal employees. Conference sponsors include the CIA and Amazon.com.
OutServe says the conference will provide “a means of building professional networks, sharing best practices and formulating strategies that help build a stronger and more inclusive military community.”
The Pentagon has said it will not track the number of gays in the ranks as it does other minority groups, arguing that one’s sexuality is private.
Advocates in the Department of Agriculture have urged the Obama administration to make gay sensitivity training available throughout the federal government, which presumably would include the armed forces. To date, the administration has balked.
“Post-repeal, the armed forces should be reaching out to all qualified Americans, including gays and lesbians, who are prepared and want to serve their country,” said Aubrey Sarvis, director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which pushed to repeal the ban. “There is no right to serve in our military, but all who are qualified and fit should be considered.”
Last week, President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, certified to Congress that openly gay members will not disrupt combat readiness. The certification was the last step in the ban’s full repeal after gay sensitivity training for troops was completed worldwide.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 30, 2011|
What happens when the whores don’t get paid???
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Link to song “”Tribute” to politicians” by Carl Klang
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It’s another assault on retirement accounts
by Simon Black · View Comments
July 28, 2011
Belgrade, Serbia
When I was a kid, it was a big deal when the postman came around. He was an important man carrying important documents from far away lands that we could only dream about… and each time he pulled up there was a brief glimmer of anxiety, wondering what unexpected surprise he might be delivering that day.
At the time, I remember postage stamps for first class mail costing about 20 cents. If you’re a bit older than me, you might remember them being much cheaper than that.
In fact, prior to President Nixon taking the US dollar off the gold standard in 1971, stamps cost 6 cents. In the 40 years since then, the price of a first class letter has been raised 20 times, nearly 8-fold higher than before.
To put things in perspective, the price of a stamp in 1863 was 3 cents… so we’re talking about a 100% increase in 108-years, followed by a 733% increase over the next 40-years. And yet, despite such rampant price inflation, the US Postal Service is hemorrhage cash and nearing failure.
In fiscal year 2010, the Postal Service suffered a $8.5 billion net loss, the latest in a serial trend of widening losses. The only way the Postal Service keeps surviving is from the generosity of US taxpayers and Chinese bondholders who foot the bill for its continuance.
The Postal Service has nearly 600,000 employees; it’s larger than the active component of the United States Army, in fact, and, similar to how the Army is far-flung all over the world in places where it has no business operating, the Postal Service has offices across small-town America where there is no chance of profit.
There are over 3,000 post offices across the country that generate less than $27,500 in annual revenue. It’s barely possible to pay rent and keep the lights on with that kind of revenue, let alone hire a staff, maintain delivery vehicles, or pay for fuel.
An organization with such a costly structure is doomed to fail, and if it weren’t a government agency, it would have gone bust a long time ago. By the government’s own admission, the US Postal Service can’t compete with private courier services, yet politicians insist on keeping it alive in the only way they know how– theft and deceit.
Senator Tom Carper recently introduced a bill called the Postal Operations Sustainability and Transformation (P-O-S-T… get it? See how clever they are?!?) Act of 2011.
The bill is filled with oodles of luminous wisdom like, “The United States Postal Service shall develop a plan for the expansion of retail alternatives to post offices, such as… the Internet.”
It literally takes an Act of Congress for the Post Office to incorporate the Internet into its business model… and this is what passes for a turnaround business plan in Washington.
More importantly, a full 50% of the legislation provides for all sorts of accounting tricks that the Postal Service can use to misstate its fiscal condition, as well as provisions to steal from federal pension and healthcare funds.
Last month, in fact, the Postal Service stopped making payments into the Federal Employee Retirement System in order to conserve cash… and this is becoming a bigger and bigger theme across government.
Retirement funds have become the ultimate fudgemaking tool of corrupt fiscal policy around the world. Treasury Secretary Tim Geither has been robbing federal pensions for the last several months in the absence of a debt deal, and several governments overseas have also stolen from retirees in order to continue financing their largess.
Bottom line- if these bankrupt governments and agencies owe to retirement funds, they’ll stop paying whenever it suits them. If they have access to steal from the retirement funds, they’ll steal.
We’ve seen several examples of this over the last two years, and we’re seeing more all the time. This is one of the issues that concerns me the most because I know how many people are completely unprepared for this eventuality.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 30, 2011|
Acts 20:35
… remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
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Facebook and Twitter are creating a vain generation of self-obsessed people with child-like need for feedback, warns top scientist
By Sarah Harris
Last updated at 2:41 PM on 30th July 2011
Facebook and Twitter have created a generation obsessed with themselves, who have short attention spans and a childlike desire for constant feedback on their lives, a top scientist believes.
Repeated exposure to social networking sites leaves users with an ‘identity crisis’, wanting attention in the manner of a toddler saying: ‘Look at me, Mummy, I’ve done this.’
Baroness Greenfield, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, believes the growth of internet ‘friendships’ – as well as greater use of computer games – could effectively ‘rewire’ the brain.
Vain generation: A top Oxford scientist has warned that repeated exposure to social networking websites could harm users. (Picture posed by model)
Vain generation: A top Oxford scientist has warned that repeated exposure to social networking websites could harm users. (Picture posed by model)
This can result in reduced concentration, a need for instant gratification and poor non-verbal skills, such as the ability to make eye contact during conversations.
More than 750million people across the world use Facebook to share photographs and videos and post regular updates of their movements and thoughts.
Millions have also signed up to Twitter, the ‘micro-blogging’ service that lets members circulate short text and picture messages about themselves.
Baroness Greenfield, former director of research body the Royal Institution, said: ‘What concerns me is the banality of so much that goes out on Twitter.
‘Why should someone be interested in what someone else has had for breakfast? It reminds me of a small child (saying): “Look at me Mummy, I’m doing this”, “Look at me Mummy I’m doing that”.
‘It’s almost as if they’re in some kind of identity crisis. In a sense it’s keeping the brain in a sort of time warp.’
The academic suggested that some Facebook users feel the need to become ‘mini celebrities’ who are watched and admired by others on a daily basis.
They do things that are ‘Facebook worthy’ because the only way they can define themselves is by ‘people knowing about them’.
‘It’s almost as if people are living in a world that’s not a real world, but a world where what counts is what people think of you or (if they) can click on you,’ she said.
‘Think of the implications for society if people worry more about what other people think about them than what they think about themselves.’
Her views were echoed by Sue Palmer, a literacy expert and author, who said girls in particular believe they are a ‘commodity they must sell to other people’ on Facebook.
She said: ‘People used to have a portrait painted but now we can more or less design our own picture online. It’s like being the star of your own reality TV show that you create and put out to the world.’
Posted in Uncategorized on July 30, 2011|
Spending money and shedding blood… as long as it is not theirs…
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Posted in Uncategorized on July 29, 2011|
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Ephesians 2:5-7
…even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus…
Posted in Uncategorized on July 29, 2011|
(pickin’s getting slim for parasites…)
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Isaiah 13:14-15
And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, or like sheep with none to gather them, they will each turn to his own people, and each one flee to his own land. Anyone who is found will be thrust through, and anyone who is captured will fall by the sword…
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Improving Mexican economy draws undocumented immigrants home from California
By Stephen Magagnini
smagagnini@sacbee.com
Published: Thursday, Jul. 28, 2011 – 12:00 am | Page 1B
Last Modified: Thursday, Jul. 28, 2011 – 11:16 am
There are fewer undocumented immigrants in California – and the Sacramento region – because many are now finding the American dream south of the border.
“It’s now easier to buy homes on credit, find a job and access higher education in Mexico,” Sacramento’s Mexican consul general, Carlos González Gutiérrez, said Wednesday. “We have become a middle-class country.”
Mexico’s unemployment rate is now 4.9 percent, compared with 9.4 percent joblessness in the United States.
An estimated 300,000 undocumented immigrants have left California since 2008, though the remaining 2.6 million still make up 7 percent of the population and 9 percent of the labor force, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
Among metropolitan areas with more than 1 million residents, Sacramento County ranks among the lowest, with an unauthorized population of 4.6 percent of its 1.4 million residents in 2008, according to Laura Hill, a demographer with the PPIC.
The Sacramento region, suffering from 12.3 percent unemployment and the construction bust, may have triggered a large exodus of undocumented immigrants, González Gutiérrez said.
The best-paid jobs for undocumented migrants are in the building industry, “and because of the severe crisis in the construction business here, their first response has been to move into the service industry,” González Gutiérrez said. “But that has its limits. Then, they move to other areas in the U.S. to find better jobs – or back to Mexico.”
Hill said it’s hard to know whether the benefit of having fewer undocumented migrants outweighs the cost to employers and taxpayers.
California may have to provide less free education to the children of undocumented immigrants and less emergency medical care, she said, but it will also get less tax revenue.
In 2008, at least 836,100 undocumented immigrants filed U.S. tax returns in California using individual tax identification numbers known as ITINS, said Hill, who conducted the tax survey.
Based on those tax returns, the study found there were 65,000 undocumented immigrants in Sacramento County that year, far fewer than in many other big counties.
Sacramento’s undocumented population ranked 10th in the state that year, behind Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Santa Clara, San Bernardino, Riverside, Alameda, Contra Costa and Ventura.
There were an estimated 12,000 undocumented immigrants in Yolo County; 9,000 in the Sutter-Yuba area; and 8,000 in Placer County.
An analysis of local ZIP codes showed that Sacramento (95815, 95823, 95824), West Sacramento (95605), Clarksburg (95612), Esparto (95627), Guinda (95637), Knights Landing (95645), Winters (95694) and Woodland (95776) each had an undocumented population of 10 percent to 15 percent.
Yolo County relies heavily on migrant workers to grow and harvest crops.
“People in construction are now turning to agriculture; it’s the start of the tomato season so the harvesters will be jump-started pretty soon,” said Woodland Mayor Art Pimentel, whose 55,000 residents are 48 percent Latino, some of them undocumented.
Some aren’t sticking around for the upcoming tomato harvest, said Sylvina Frausto, secretary of Holy Rosary Church in Woodland. “Some have a small parcel in Mexico. They own their own home there, so instead of renting here they go back to their small business there.”
Many raise animals, run grocery stores or sell fruits and goods on street corners.
“They’re going back home because they can’t get medical help or government assistance anymore,” Frausto said, “And when it’s getting so difficult for them to find a job without proper documentation, it’s pushing them away.”
Anita Barnes, director of La Familia Counseling Center on Franklin Boulevard in Sacramento, said she recently spoke to a high school graduate who had lost his job in a restaurant and was thinking of going back to Mexico.
“He came over with his mom, who was in the process of losing her restaurant job,” Barnes said. “It’s frightening, especially for the children. They feel this is their country, they don’t know anything else, and they find they can’t get driver’s licenses or jobs.”
As its economy rebounds, Mexico “is becoming a better option than it was in the past, but you still have to find a job and reconnect,” Barnes said.
While the weakened U.S. economy, rising deportations and tougher border enforcement have led to fewer undocumented migrants, changes in Mexico are playing a significant role, González Gutiérrez said.
Mexico’s average standard of living – including health, education and per capita income – is now higher than those in Russia, China and India, according to the United Nations.
Mexico’s growing middle class “reduces the appetites to come because there are simply many more options” at home, González Gutiérrez said. “Most people who decided to migrate already have a job in Mexico and tend to be the most ambitious and attracted to the income gap between the U.S. and Mexico.”
Mexico’s economy is growing at 4 percent to 5 percent, benefiting from low inflation, exports and a strong banking system, the consul said.
Mexico’s birthrate is also declining sharply. “As a natural consequence of us transforming from a rural to an urban society, we are running out of Mexicans to export,” González Gutiérrez said. “Our society’s growing at a rate of 2.1 children per woman – in the 1970s it was more than five.”
Once the U.S. economy recovers, the flow of migrants moving north “may go up again, although most likely they will not reach the peak levels we saw in the first half of the decade,” González Gutiérrez said.
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Update… can’t steal an American’s job when there are no jobs…
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Lack of work in U.S. cuts migration from Mexico
By Ken Ellingwood Los Angeles Times Originally published November 23, 2011 at 8:12 PM | Page modified November 23, 2011 at 9:08 PM
Data from both sides of the border suggest illegal immigration from Mexico is in fast retreat, as U.S. job shortages, tighter border enforcement and criminal gangs on the Mexican side dissuade many from making the trip.
MEXICO CITY — North of the U.S.-Mexico border, Republican presidential candidates are talking tough on illegal immigration, with one proposing — perhaps in jest — an electrified fence to deter migrants.
But data from both sides of the border suggest illegal immigration from Mexico already is in fast retreat, as U.S. job shortages, tighter border enforcement and the presence of criminal gangs on the Mexican side dissuade many from making the trip.
Mexican census figures show fewer Mexicans are setting out and many are returning — leaving net migration at close to zero, Mexican officials say. Arrests by the U.S. Border Patrol along the southwestern frontier, a common gauge of how many people try to cross without papers, tumbled to 304,755 during the 11 months ending in August, extending a nearly steady drop since a peak of 1.6 million in 2000.
The scale of the fall has prompted some to suggest we may be seeing the end of a decades-long migration boom, even as others argue it’s only a momentary drop.
“Our country is not experiencing the population loss due to migration that was seen for nearly 50 years,” René Zenteno, a deputy interior secretary for migration matters, has said.
Douglas Massey, an immigration scholar at Princeton University, said surveys of residents in Mexican migrant towns he has studied for years found that the number of people making their first trip north had dwindled to near zero.
“We are at a new point in the history of migration between Mexico and the United States,” Massey said in a Mexico City news conference in August.
Experts in Mexico say the trend primarily is economic. Long-standing, back-and-forth migration has been thrown off as the U.S. downturn dried up jobs — in construction and restaurants, for example — that once drew legions of Mexican workers.
About 12.5 million Mexican immigrants live in the United States, slightly more than half without papers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
These days, Mexicans in the United States have discouraging words for loved ones about prospects for work up north. U.S. contractors who used to recruit in Mexico likewise have little to offer.
“What stimulates migration is the need for workers,” said Genoveva Roldán, a scholar at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “Right now, the migrant networks are functioning to say, ‘Don’t come — there’s no work.’ ”
Juan Carlos Calleros, a researcher in Mexico’s National Migration Institute, said the agency’s surveys find a large share of Mexican migrants coming home on their own or sent back by the Border Patrol had spent only a month or two on U.S. soil and returned because they lacked work.
Alongside the bleak jobs picture is a trek that has grown riskier and expensive because of stepped-up enforcement on the U.S. side, a crackdown that at the same time has prompted many migrants to stay in the United States rather than try to cross back and forth. Migrants also cite an increasingly hostile political climate north of the border, as expressed in state laws targeting illegal immigrants.
“It keeps getting harder and harder,” said Joel Buzo, 35, who returned to the central state of Guanajuato after a three-month search turned up only irregular, poorly paid work tearing up old railroad tracks in Utah. He lasted six more months before giving up.
Buzo, a musician, said it’s easier to get by in Mexico, even though jobs are also scarce. He has no plans to travel north again.
“What’s happening up there is happening here,” he said by telephone from the migrant-heavy town of Romita. “But it’s worse there.”
In Guanajuato, long one of the country’s biggest migrant-sending states, thousands of Mexicans have come back, but “it hasn’t been a massive return,” said Susana Guerra, who heads the state’s migrant-affairs office. She calls the decline in northward migration a “spasm” — not a lasting reality.
Safety in northern Mexico also has become a growing worry for would-be migrants.
Nearly 200 people, many of them U.S.-bound Mexican migrants, were killed in the northern state of Tamaulipas last spring after being seized from buses by gunmen believed tied to the Zetas drug gang. A year earlier, 72 migrants from Central and South America were massacred in the same area.
“It’s not worth it — for now,” Calleros said.
The real test of whether the migration drop represents a lasting change will come when the U.S. economy gets back on its feet.
Carlos Mireles, who lives in the town of Manuel Doblado, Guanajuato, said two nephews moved to Mexico City after they lost their restaurant jobs in Chicago and spent six months without work. But the young men, in their 20s, haven’t given up on life north of the border.
“Their idea is to go back to Chicago when things get better, because wages are so little here in Mexico,” Mireles said. “That’s why they want to return to the United States.”
Los Angeles Times reporter Cecilia Sanchez contributed to this report.
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Jeremiah 50:16
… from before the sword of the oppressor they will each turn back to his own people and they will each flee to his own land…
Posted in Uncategorized on July 29, 2011|
Posted in Uncategorized on July 29, 2011|
Watch this one… especially those on the south Texas coast…
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Update 30 July ’11…
click on images to enlarge… (note time/date stamp… Don gone in one day???)
www.accuweather.com (what a difference from what they were forecasting)
Posted in Uncategorized on July 28, 2011|
www.scripturesforamerica.org
News for those with Eyes to See and Ears to Hear 