Here's to Thanksdrinking

 

For people concerned with the impact on health our annual, national celebration of partially hydrogenated gluttony, I bring holiday tidings of joy!

Now these joyous tidings are essentially a rerun of a topic I've covered before....namely the idea that not only is drinking alcohol NOT bad for you (the caveat of moderation certainly applies), it is actually good for you.

Well, this post is not entirely a re-run, as I came across two different articles that corroborate the somewhat controversial ideas I've previously covered.

First up, a report in the UK paper, the dailymail: Drinking Doesn't Make You Fat

Anyone who’s ever gone on a diet is told to lay off the booze because it’s high in calories.
And that, of course, must make it very fattening indeed. Go onto the NHS Direct website, and you’ll be told a glass of wine contains as many calories as a slice of cake. Or if you prefer beer, the British Nutrition Foundation reminds you two pints are roughly the equivalent in calories to a full glass of single cream. So you may be surprised to learn that there’s no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the idea that alcohol makes you put on weight.

Does that notion surprise me? Not at all. That article is rather long (read the whole thing!), but it covers several different ideas I've written about before as well...namely that the reason why so many folks consider alcohol fattening is due to it's supposed high calorie content. Problem is, not all calories are equal. And alcohol appears to be one of those substances for which the human body does not metabolize/assimilate the calories in alcohol.

But of course, as I've pointed out many times before, weight gain and weight loss are not the be all, end all of health. Fat or skinny, most people can still gain the longevity benefits of moderate alcohol consumption. Here's the case for it made in another Dailymail article, Alcohol is good for your health:

A businessman goes to his GP. ‘My hands hurt, I get a bit of a pain in my chest sometimes, and I’m beginning to forget things,’ he complains.

The doctor examines him and says: ‘You’ve got a touch of arthritis, possibly mild heart disease, and you may be in the first stages of dementia. How much are you drinking?’

‘Never touch a drop, doctor,’ says the patient proudly.

‘Ah, that explains it,’ says the GP, wagging an admonishing finger. ‘Here’s a prescription for red wine — a quarter of a litre a day.’

Ridiculous? Absurd? A story from the Bumper Book of Jokes for Alcoholics? Absolutely not.

Let me tell you this: if GPs fail to recommend alcohol to at least some of their patients, they should be had up for medical negligence.

That, at least, is the logical conclusion I’ve drawn from an in-depth study of around half-a-million scientific papers about alcohol.

To my surprise, they contained findings that would make any pharmaceutical company uncork the champagne. Except they never will, of course, because alcohol can’t be patented as a drug.

Aaah. Therein lies the rub. Remember, moderate, daily consumption of alcohol is a known factor in increased longevity.

So, in the spirit of this holiday season, I raise my glass and make a toast to you, the readers of this blog and all the other participants out here in these fringes of the anti-establishment arena on teh Interwebz!

On our traditional day of giving thanks for all that is good in our lives, let us also give thanks for our daily dose of the world's best medicine!

It's Just Good Business

So, remember the third, terrible Pirates of the Caribbean movie? The big villain is Lord Cutler Beckett, a bigwig at the fictional East India Trading Company (any similarity to the East India Company purely coincidental).

His catch phrase, which he says whenever he is screwing someone over or doing something unethical, is "It's just good business." - J. Wilkins

I finally got around to reading a book I've always intended to for years,  The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. What I find most interesting was reading his critiques of the British Empire's Mercantilist system and extrapolating it to our current global economic paradigm.

Let's entitle this exercise in abstraction:

 The Wealth of Corporations at the Expense of the Health of Nations: A Treatise on the Extrapolation of 16th century Mercantilism to 21st century Globalization.

Of course, with the current state of Idiocracy amongst the general populace in today's Brave New World Order, that title may be a bit too comprehensively challenging to the average bleating sheeple, so we can just simplify the concept here: The More Things Change, The More They Stay They Same

Consider Smith's conclusions regarding the Mercantilist system:

Though the encouragement of exportation and the discouragement of importation are the two great engines by which the mercantile system proposes to enrich every country, yet with regard to some particular commodities it seems to follow an opposite plan: to discourage exportation and to encourage importation. Its ultimate object, however, it pretends, is always the same, to enrich the country by an advantageous balance of trade.

There currently exists only one real advantageous balance of trade in the 21st century, and it serves to enrich the international Banking establishment. This is done with the collusion of multi-national corporate cartels to provide goods and services procured from the corporation's sweat shops production facilities and natural resource mining operations in third world nations, and then sold to various first world nation-states.

In nearly all cases, these purchases are made on a macro level through debt-financing of the Government spending by the globalized central banking system. On the micro level, the same is accomplished via credit cards, signature and equity loans and other means of debt financing available to the individual consumer at the company store.

In both the macro and micro perspectives, the same end goals are achieved: enslavement of the global populace via the tyranny of usury.


The following indictment by Smith of Mercantilism also applies to our current paradigm of corporate collusion to benefit the cartel's profit margins at the expense of consumer health and well being:

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.

In the 21st century version of Mercantilism - Globalized Corporate Collusion -  this particular facet of Mercantilism has been taken to a whole new level. Big Government, Big Science, and Big Media promulgate lies and propaganda to brainwash the masses to the effect of making the average person believe that up is down, right is left, evil is good and good is evil. 

The mis-informed and dis-informed consumers then engages in commerce (People spending money they don't have on things they don't need, ) that essentially is harmful to their own health and well being, while the producers -- our multi-national corporate overlords and the financing Banksters 2Big2Fail -- continue to rake in the profits.

Another interesting aspect of Smith's critique of Mercantilism has been inverted to benefit the now Globally-based "producers."

In the restraints upon the importation of all foreign commodities which can come into competition with those of our own growth or manufacture, the interest of the home-consumer is evidently sacrificed to that of the producer. It is altogether for the benefit of the latter that the former is obliged to pay that enhancement of price which this monopoly almost always occasions.

Protectionism for home-grown products and services was the antiquated practice tied to patriotic notions of loyalty to your nation-state. But the multi-national corporations have no loyalty to any nation-state, only the state of their bottom line; their stock valuations and profit margins.

Now most everything consumers buy is foreign produced and the consumers of the first world nations pay a different price that is not measured in mere currency valuation....instead, the price we now pay is one of dependency and loss of self-sufficiency.

People used to know how to produce and manufacture a wide variety of goods, as well as repair and extend the useful life of various products. It was more economical to do so. People used to be able to sew, mend, and repair clothing and other textile products. Now, it's simply much easier and more economical to throw it away and go buy a new product manufactured cheaply in China or Mexico, available at your nearest Big Box Corporate Retailer.

Same goes for big ticket items like appliances and modern automotive vehicles. In many cases, parts break, and the replacement part and labor service fees may cost half or more of the price of a new product.

And even if you can't afford to just buy a new item to replace your old, broken and/or worn out product, why you can just go and get a loan from your local branch of the Usury Cartel and "buy" a new one.

As time progresses, knowledge to manufacture, maintain, repair and reuse many items of commerce becomes lost amongst the masses, increasing dependency on the Global Corporate Cartels and antiquating any formerly held notions of self-sufficiency and thrift. This is the very essence of our waste-driven, consumerist culture of materialistic consumption.

And that's exactly how our Corporate Overlords want it. In pursuit of improving their bottom line and overarching goals of global economic and political domination, it's just good business.

Nutritional Deficien$$ies

Within the darkened confines of a Sheeple FEED Production Facility

There's a reason why the CAFO system warehouses chickens and pigs in an environment of complete darkness and feed them genetically modified grain feed that fattens them quickly for harvesting and processing. That reason is profiting from nutritional deficiencies.

Take the following excerpts from a transcript of the documentary Food Inc., the seminal expose of the Corporate Feed Production Industry:

The chicken industry has really set a model for the integration of production, processing and marketing of the products that other industries are now following because they see that we have achieved tremendous economies. In a way, we're not producing chickens; we're producing food.

Not quite...you're producing feed.

It's all highly mechanized. So all the birds coming off those farms have to be almost exactly the same size. What the system of intensive production accomplishes is to produce a lot of food on a small amount of land at a very affordable price. Now somebody explain to me what's wrong with that.

Because you're not producing food that nourishes and strengthens the human body. Your producing sheeple feed that leads to malnourishment and diseases that provide a continual source of revenues for the Healthcare-Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex.

But is it really worth it for the average, modern day chicken farmer to invest themselves in this occupation? Does manufacturing sheeple feed pay well enough to fund the American Dream of life, liberty the pursuit of happiness?

Here's what one chicken farmer told the documentary film maker:

The chicken industry came in here and it's helped this whole community out. Here's my chicken houses here. I have about 300,000 chickens. 

We have a contract with Tyson. They've been growing chickens for many many years. It's all a science. They got it figured out. If you can grow a chicken in 49 days, why would you want one you gotta grow in three months? More money in your pocket.

Sounds like a good deal for the chicken farmers, right? Except the chicken farmer also realizes something is intrinsically wrong with the science of producing chicken FEED in 49 days.
 

Farmer: "These chickens never see sunlight. They're pretty much in the dark all the time."

Interviewer: "So you think they just want to keep us out?"

Farmer: "I don't know. If I knew, I'd tell you. It would be nice if y'all could see what we really do, but as far as y'all going in, we can't let you do that. I understand why farmers don't want to talk -- because the company can do what it wants to do as far as pay goes since they control everything."

The interviewer and the farmer can only speculate as to why the Feed Production Corporation insists they have to have their chickens housed in total darkness. They even proffer a lame justification for it later on in the film:

Farmer: "When it's dark inside the houses, the chickens lay down. It's less resistance when they're being caught."

So that's why? But what about this?

It is nasty in here. There's dust flying everywhere. There's feces everywhere. This isn't farming. This is just mass production, like an assembly line in a factory. When they grow from a chick and in seven weeks you've got a five-and-a-half- pound chicken, their bones and their internal organs can't keep up with the rapid growth. A lot of these chickens here, they can take a few steps and then they plop down. It's because they can't keep up all the weight that they're carrying.

Oh, so they need to be raised in total darkness around the clock so as to make them easier for the undocumented migrant workers to capture them when it's harvest time...but these chickens can't even take a few steps because they've been genetically altered and bred to grow so quickly that their bones and organs can't even keep up? That doesn't add up.

I'll tell you what does, though.

You know the old saying, "you are what you eat?" Well, if the predominant source of animal based saturated fats you eat are the lean boneless/skinless chicken meat of factory farmed chickens who are raised for their entire lives in complete darkness, you're eating meat that almost completely void of vital fat soluble vitamins - most importantly, vitamin D.

Most animals, like humans, require sunlight exposure to manufacture Vitamin D, the keystone vitamin for nearly all life on the planet, and chickens are certainly no exception. The promotion of fear of red meat and saturated fat for decades by our corporate mass media and academic institutions, combined with the fear of sun exposure all play a role in the operation of promoting Vitamin D deficiency for profit.

Many of the chicken farmers know that animals raised in fresh air, sunshine, and uncrowded conditions  makes for nutritious, healthy food, fit for human consumption.

But they can't do anything about it, because they are indentured into their servitude by debt financing:

The companies keep the farmers under their thumb because of the debt that the farmers have. To build one poultry house is anywhere from $280,000 to $300,000 per house. And once you make your initial investment, the companies constantly come back with demands of upgrades for new equipment, and the grower has no choice. They have to do it or you're threatened with loss of a contract. This is how they keep the farmers under control. It's how they keep them spending money, going to the bank and borrowing more money. The debt just keeps building. To have no say in your business, it's degrading. It's like being a slave to the company.

What we see here is the intersection of corporate entities across various industries and how they work to provide continuous revenue streams -- renewable resources -- for each other. It is the vertical integration of markets to enable Corporate Oligopolies to harvest and consume the very life essence - our very health and vitality - of we the sheeple.

It's the inhumane, systemic exploitation of life to feed the profits and stock value for the inhuman, corporate entity, and it works something like this:

Big Oil corporations provides the technology and energy capital that enables Big Agriculture to produce Federally Subsidized grain surplus, that is used by Big Food processing corporations  to create food products and for the production of grain feed for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, which in turn manufacture nutritionally deficient and environmentally destructive meat products for human consumption.

Big Government regulatory agencies enforce stringent regulations on smaller businesses and competitors, ensuring almost complete market control by the Big Feed producers. These corporate Oligopolies also fund studies done by Big Science entities who publish studies based on deliberate lies, distortions, data manipulations and outright falsehoods for Big Media broadcast propaganda that brainwashes the masses into making consumer choices that support the consuming of FEED produced by this infernal conglomerate of incorporated fiends.

Over a life time of eating processed grain products and nutritionally deficient meats from processed grocery, convenience and fast food industries (who are also in part, owned by Big Insurance), the average sheeple becomes critically malnourished and sick, so they go to their Big Healthcare provider to get their maintenance medications from Big Pharmaceutical corporations.

Oh, and let's not forget that it's Big Banking - TOO BIG TO FAIL - that debt finances the production, distribution and marketing of every aspect of this corporate leviathan that manages the concentrated sheeple feeding operations here in good 'ole USA Inc. But I digress...

What it really all comes down to, is this - the corporate leviathan that rules our Brave New World Order has a simple paradigm they follow to maintain their power:

If you control the feed, you control the sheeple.

Marriage Equality

15 down, 35 to go.

HONOLULU (Reuters) - Hawaii's governor signed into law on Wednesday a bill extending marriage rights to same-sex couples, capping 20 years of legal and political rancor in a state regarded as a pioneer in advancing the cause of gay matrimony.

The new law, which takes effect on December 2, makes Hawaii the 15th U.S. state to legalize nuptials for gay and lesbian couples, rolling back a 1994 statute defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Marriage Equality will soon be law in all 50 States...you can bet the house on that.

I know a lot of people here who are upset about this state of affairs. Many of the folks opposed to today's legislative milestone were opposing it under the banner of DEFENDING MARRIAGE.

Others are exultant and exuberant. They feel like they were a part of a movement as momentous and historical as the civil rights movement for teh Blacks in the 60's. WE SHALL OVERCOME!!!!!!!

This new law signifies two things: its just another milestone for the gradual, incremental progress for the social engineering of our society towards the Brave New World Order, and oh yeah...the Family Law Industrial Complex in Hawaii has just acquired a whole new niche market for developing future revenue streams.

You see, prior to the passage of Marriage Equality in 15 States here in USA Inc., the State had a hard time finding profits in the dissolution of gay relationships, unlike the lucrative harvest the Family Court Industrial Complex has enjoyed in deconstructing heterosexual relationships since the advent of No-Fault Divorce for cis-Gendered marriages.

These sorts of injustices have gone on long enough!

Take the case of one gay man in Pennsylvania, who was denied the benefits of Marriage Equality, as recounted by a Divorce attorney:

The related, and far more common, would-be client is the unmarried gay person whose long-term, marriage-like relationship ends. Can he avail himself of the remedies available to married people under our divorce laws? Is she entitled to any assets or support from her ex?

That’s the question I was asked by Eddie, who’d been in a relationship for twenty-two years when his partner dumped him for another man. Older, educated, and successful, Marco, the ex, owned a house, investments, and a pension. Eddie had none of those. He was a high school graduate who essentially hadn’t worked since he moved in with Marco at the age of twenty-one. He dabbled in various artistic pursuits, none of them profitable. But that was okay, because Marco supported him and, according to Eddie, specifically, explicitly, told him that he always would. So Eddie enjoyed their comfortable, middle-class life together, and never took any measures to ensure his own financial security. When Marco ended the relationship, Eddie was faced with the hard reality that here he was, forty-three years old, with no money in the bank and no ability to earn much more than minimum wage. He came to me to find out if the promises Marco made could be enforced.

Since Marriage Equality has not been legalized in Pennsylvania, Eddie was unsuccessful in his bid to enforce Marco to pay him alimony to maintain the lifestyle he had become accustomed to.

I made our pitch during closing arguments, asking her to award Eddie $300,000, which was the amount Marco received from the sale of the house where he and Eddie had lived for twenty-two years and Eddie had come to think of as his own. We argued that this was a reasonable amount to fulfill the promise of lifetime support, as it would enable Eddie to buy his own house. The judge nodded as she listened. My associate and I packed up our files and went back to the office, chewed our nails, and waited for her decision.It came two weeks later. We lost. We never got out of the starting gate. The judge ruled that she could not find there was a contract.

We as a society cannot abide such glaring examples of gross injustice and oppression!

Now that Marriage Equality is spreading to all 50 States in USA Inc., these sorts of problems will no longer trouble our formerly oppressed, second-class citizenry. They too will soon enjoy the benefits of court ordered indentured servitude to upkeep an ex-domestic partner in the lifestyle they had become accustomed to.

We should all consider ourselves blessed to be living witnesses to such an era of Progressive  advancement.

Free at last, free at last.... oh Glee!

Jane Lynch has proclaimed that her divorce from estranged wife Lara Embry is "not dramatic," and we're hoping it stays that way after the "Glee" star gets wind of her ex's recent request.

According to legal documents obtained by TMZ, Embry is asking Lynch to pay her $93,809 a month in spousal support.

Embry stated that Lynch's "income, investments and assets increased dramatically with her newfound acting success," and TMZ reports that Embry wants to be able to sustain the lifestyle she was used to during the couple's three-year marriage.

This is the perfect example of Marriage Equality all those backwards, intolerant and bigoted Christian fundamentalist homophobes have been denying our second-class gay citizenry for too long!

Affordable Cartel Collusions

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. - Benito Mussolini

Of course, the biggest topic in the media and on teh Interwebz right now is ObamaCare, aka the aptly named Affordable Care Act.   

"Wait, wha....?! "Aptly named!?"

Of course. We've gone over this before. The ACA is the perfect name for this Fascist take over of the Health Care and Insurance industry, just like everything else in our Brave New World Order. Such a ludicrous name for this Government sponsored and enforced cartel creation is based on the principle of Inversions.

Cue the outrage and anger from all the voters who assented to their slavery by pulling the lever in the curtained booth at their nearest youth brainwashing facility to participate in the Democratic selection of the most authentic President we've ever had presiding over the country in the past 100 years.

Many of these proud  participants of democracy are flabbergasted and furious now that they are discovering the health insurance cancellation notices that have begun to arrive in their mailboxes.

We voted for Affordable Care!

The question you forgot to ask was this: Affordable for whom?

Affordable operating expenses for the Healthcare Insurance Cartel, and affordable for the Healthcare - Pharmaceutical - IT Industrial complex, that's who.

What, you actually thought we live in a  free country with a Government elected for the people, by the people?

Pffft.

To those of you still clinging to the ethereal wisps of the rapidly disintegrating phantasm formerly known as THE AMERICAN DREAM, this is your wake up call.

Their are two kinds of people in USA Inc. Human beings, and Corporate beings. Haven't you heard? Corporations are people too! Not only are they legally considered people now, they actually have more rights and privileges than the human people.

All people are equal, it's just that the Corporate people are more equal than the human people.

Do you need proof?

I don't recall where, but I recently came across an article linked in some comment section somewhere on teh Interwebz, that referred to this 2010 study published in the American Journal of Public Health: Life and Health Insurance Industry Investments in Fast Food.

Previous research on health and life insurers' financial investments has highlighted the tension between profit maximization and the public good. We ascertained health and life insurance firms' holdings in the fast food industry, an industry that is increasingly understood to negatively impact public health. Insurers own $1.88 billion of stock in the 5 leading fast food companies.

Got that? All of the corporate cartels that OWN this country, collude to create profit streams amongst We the Sheeple. They collude to make us sick, then sell us the medicine and treatments to make us last long enough to pay them until we're broke, used up and impoverished or dead.

I've previously written about how the Big Agriculture Corporations are also shareholders in the Pharmaceutical Corporations, to create health problems and degenerative diseases amongst all the human people for which the Pharmaceutical Corporations then supply the meds to treat the symptoms of those problems. 

Well, now we see the other side to this triangle of corporate collusion - the Insurance Cartel is heavily invested in the Fast Food industry that also plays a key role in creating the future customers of the Healthcare Industry that we are all now legally required to buy insurance from to receive their services.

...fast food consumption is linked to obesity and cardiovascular disease, 2 leading causes of preventable death.^3–5 The industry markets heavily to children and often builds restaurants within walking distance of schools.^6,7 Children who live near fast food restaurants consume fewer servings of fruits and vegetables, drink more high-calorie soft drinks, and are more likely to be overweight.^7,8 In addition, fast food restaurants are more prevalent in Black and low-income neighborhoods, likely contributing to the burden of obesity among these groups.⁹
And, finally, the fast food industry exacts a heavy environmental toll.²

In 2009 Americans were expected to spend $185 billion on fast food, and consumers globally were expected to spend $481 billion.¹⁰ In addition, there has been a greater than 5-fold increase in fast food consumption by children and adolescents aged 2 to 18 years between 1977 and 1995.⁷

The Insurance Corporate people invest in the Fast Food Corporate People, who manufacture their products from the Agricultural Corporate People.

 The human people eat the fast food, and eventually they get sick, thereby getting their Pharmaceutical Corporate People's products prescribed to them by the Healthcare Corporate People...who get their profits from the Insurance Corporate people, so that they can ameliorate the symptoms caused by the Corporate People's manufactured feed.

That way the human people can stay ON FEED until they die, with all the Corporate people profiting off their sickness and death, every step of the way.

It's evil genius incorporated!

Shall we name some names of these Corporate people?

Major insurers own $1.88 billion of stock in the 5 leading fast-food companies, representing 2.2% of total market capitalization of these companies on June 11, 2009. United States–based Prudential Financial, an investment firm that also provides life insurance and long-term disability coverage, has fast food holdings of $355.5 million, including $197.2 million in McDonald's, $43.7 million in Burger King, and $34.1 million in Jack in the Box. United Kingdom–based Prudential PLC offers life, health, disability, and long-term care insurance and owns $80.5 million in stock of Yum! Brands, owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and others. Standard Life, also based in the United Kingdom, offers both life and health insurance and owns $63 million of Burger King stock.

Canada-based Sun Life and Manulife offer life, health, disability, and long-term care insurance. Sun Life owns almost $27 million of Yum! Brands stock, and Manulife owns $146.1 million in fast food stock, including a $89.1 million stake in McDonald's. Holland-based ING, an investment firm that also offers life and disability insurance, owns $12.3 million in Jack in the Box, $311 million in McDonald's, and $82.1 million in Yum! Brands stock.

Guardian Life, MetLife, New York Life offer life, health, disability, and long-term care insurance. Northwestern Mutual and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company offer life, disability, and long-term care insurance. All of these companies are invested in the fast food industry to varying degrees. Northwestern Mutual's stake is the biggest, with its total investments in excess of $422 million, including $318.1 million in McDonald's alone. Massachusetts Mutual owns more than $366 million of fast food stock, with its single biggest investment being $267 million in McDonald's.

This, folks, is what Fascism really looks like.

It's not tyrannical authoritarians in brown shirts, jack boots, or riot gear beating down the sheeple with truncheons to force compliance to their ideology.

It's the Corporate people merging with the power of the Government to rule, exploit, and consume all of the nation's human resources.

And the Fascist Corporations that rule us, literally show us to our faces what and who they are. To see it, you only need learn to recognize the symbol that is their calling card: the fasces.

THEY are telling us with their symbols presented in plain sight, exactly what kind of country we have here.

Let's play a game called "Where's the fasces?"

JFK? LBJ? Democrats? Liberals? Progressives? 

FASCISTS.

Look closer at the memorial for Honest Abe.

 Fascist extraordinaire.

Socialism, Capitalism, Feminism, Communism, Nazism, ...all the "isms" are nothing more than separate sticks, all bundled together to prop up the only true political system that rules our Brave New World Order.

 
Where you find the fasces, you find the fascists.