For the Children

"The best thing for a child is for their parents to be happy. That doesn't necessarily mean they should be together."

The preceding quote was taken from a random anonymous commenter from a reddit thread referenced by Rollo in his excellent post Maddonas and Whores. Rollo's analysis and breakdown of competing male and female mating strategies is well done, but I'm taking this one in a much different direction.

This quote "The best thing for a child is for their parents to be happy..." is one of the biggest loads of bullshit ever propagated by our regularly scheduled mass media programming. At it's root, this pervasive meme is based on myopic, narcissistic selfishness, and is steroids for both male and female rationalization hamsters everywhere.

It is one of the most pervasive and destructive memes, and is the single most influential whisper promulgated to effect the widespread destruction of families in order to shape our Brave New World Order's primary cultural paradigm. It is a primary contributor to the manufacturing of a populace weakened, damaged and dysfunctional, making them much easier to manipulate and control. Nothing creates the damaged psyche of easily manipulated and controlled people better than a family broken apart by a bitter, acrimonious divorce while the children involved are at a young age.

The entire rotten, crumbling edifice of what was once a civilized society, can be pinpointed to the promotion of leading people to think that the key to happiness is to focus on satisfying any and all of their selfish desires. In even simpler terms, it is a message influencing people to adopt a mindset focused on taking and receiving, and not giving and sharing. This attitude is especially corrosive in interpersonal relationships, of which marriage used to be one of the closest and strongest bonds ever created between two human beings....but it also applies to friendships and extended familial bonds as well.

This focus on selfishness is the very anti-thesis of true love.

That's because what most people think of as "LOVE" is nothing more than a feeling. Something you "experience." An abstraction. You'll know it when you feel it. And, oh  yeah, without love, you cannot be happy.

This is a corruption of what love really is. Love is not an abstract noun...an ephemeral feeling. An experience like an intoxicating drug that is somehow sold to us as THE key to human beings achieving  perpetual bliss.

Nope.

Love is a verb.

You can only receive true love by doing it yourself to people worthy of it...by loving people who will love you back. It cannot be forced, nor can it be something you do expecting it in return. And it doesn't only apply to marriages or "romantic" relationships. True friendships are founded on the exact same principle.

As the good Captain wrote in Enjoying the Decline:

What makes friends arguably the most important people in your life, is that they don’t have to hang out with you. They choose to hang out with you. Unlike the family you were born into, your friends aren’t “honor-bound” by blood or social mores requiring them to spend time with you. They consciously decide to spend some of their finite, precious time with you. That’s not only a great thing, that’s a very humbling thing. Out of everything in the world those people could be doing, out of everybody in the world they could be hanging out with, for whatever reason they consciously and purposely chose you over all those other things. This is why you should not only be incredibly grateful for your friends, but why they should play a pivotal role in your life. Because without friends, your life is quite hollow, which is all the more reason we need to learn how to appreciate them and incorporate them into our lives.

First, realize how unique and personalized your friends are. While you can’t pick your family, you can pick your friends. This effectively makes them your own “personally built family.” It also makes them the most important thing you’ll ever build.

What is true of friendship, is even more true for marriage. You want to "build" a family? Than you have to learn how to love, and to wisely and shrewdly pick someone to love, who will love you back in the same manner. And when you find that person to love, do they express gratitude? This is why some of the most popular advice for both men and women dating potential spouses are to watch how the other person treats waiting staff and service personnel. Carefully seeing how a person treats those "beneath" them when they are not consciously thinking about it will reveal their level of narcissism and lack of capacity to love another person more than they love themselves.

When Betty Friedan and her ilk spread their incredibly corrosive propaganda that a stay at home mother cooking and cleaning for her husband and her kids was a "slave" in a "comfortable concentration camp," she basically brainwashed generations of women that loving their families was slavery. That the key to "happiness" was to "love yourself first." This damnable lie has led millions of people into true slavery...enslavement to materialistic consumerism. That by "loving yourself" you can "have it all."

 


Want a good example of "true love?" Here it is, found in an old tale, The Gift of the Magi.

For those unfamiliar with the story, it's a tale of a young married couple who are in love but very poor. Both knows what the other really desires - she, a set of ornate, tortoise-shell combs for her long, beautiful hair, and he, a platinum chain fob for his expensive gold watch he had to use an old, worn out leather cord for a fob.

Unbeknown to each other, on the day before Christmas, she cut off her hair and sells it to a wig maker to get the money to buy the chain fob, while he goes and sells his watch to buy her the combs for her long, beautiful hair.

It's a tale of true love...love the VERB. A husband and a wife loving each other.

The best thing for a child -- or children -- is to have a Father and Mother who love each other. If they're fighting incessantly and constantly, and talking about divorce because it would be better for the kids to have two separated, but "happy" parents...chances are one or both of them are unhappy because they are not loving the other, but focused on "loving" themselves.

Remember JFK's most famous quote? "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

JFK was talking about love. Loving your country. It's the exact same thing in a marriage, or a friendship or any other relationship based on mutual love.

Ask not what your family can do for you, ask what you can do for your family.

THAT is the best thing you can do for the children...not getting a divorce and destroying your child's family because you're  unhaaaaaaapppppyy  focused on your own selfishness.

The Teetotaler's Lament

I'm sure the Tipplers of their era were heartbroken...

Of the several pieces I've written previously on the topic of the positive benefits of the consumption of alcohol, I'm actually a bit surprised that no teetotaler advocates have shown up before to register their objections to my assertions. Finally, one showed up.

"If alcohol was invented tomorrow it would , and rightfully so, be illegal." - Jace

To which my initial urge to respond to Jace with a short quip, referencing the picture at the top of this post: "You forget, Jace. We've been there and done that." However, I assume most people that read this blog, are aware of the history of the temperance movement and the results of the Prohibition era in USA Inc.'s history.

And oh...by the way, on this date in 1933, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment that instituted Prohibition. Now this is a date that should be declared a national holiday!

December 5th, 1933 Prohibition was repealed. CHEERS!

After reading Jace's list of pro-teetotaler arguments, I started to respond, but realized a short comment was not enough to respond adequately. And since I just learned that today was the 80th anniversary since prohibition was repealed, I thought this was the perfect topic for today's blog post.

"The myth that went around about a glass of wine being good for you was due to the grapes and not the alcohol itself."

Oh it's no myth, alright. But I recall the whole "anti-oxidants" argument that wine was good for you. That may or may not be true, but the real story here is that the alcohol itself is good for you, and the benefits of moderate consumption apply, regardless of your drink of choice - wine, beer and/or distilled spirits.

Alcohol lowers blood pressure, relieves stress and helps with relaxation. Studies also show it lowers the risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and osteoperosis...amongst other conditions. But don't take my word for it, have a look at this article and extensive footnotes citing research to make the case: Alcohol: Problems and Solutions

• The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has found that the lowest death rate from all causes occurs at the level of one to two drinks each day.¹⁰
• Drinking alcohol in moderation (1-2 drinks per day for women and 2-4 for men) was found to reduce risk of mortality significantly according to meta-analysis of 34 studies of alcohol and total mortality among 1,015,835 men and women around the world.¹¹
• An exhaustive review of all major heart disease studies found that "Alcohol consumption is related to total mortality in a U-shaped manner, where moderate consumers have a reduced total mortality compared with total non-consumers and heavy consumers."¹²
• A Harvard study found the risk of death from all causes to be 21% to 28% lower among men who drank alcohol moderately, compared with abstainers.¹³
• A large-scale study in China found that middle-aged men who drank moderately had a nearly 20% lower overall mortality compared with abstainers.¹⁴
• Harvard's Nurses' Health Study of over 85,000 women found reduced mortality among moderate drinkers.¹⁵
• A British analysis of 12,000 male physicians found that moderate drinkers had the lowest risk of death from all causes during the 13 year study.¹⁶
• A large study of about 88,000 people conducted over a period of ten years found that moderate drinkers were about 27% less likely to die during the period than were either abstainers or heavy drinkers. The superior longevity was largely due to a reduction of such diseases as coronary heart disease, cancer, and respiratory diseases.¹⁷
• A twelve year long prospective study of over 200,000 men found that subjects who had consumed alcohol in moderation were less likely to die during that period than those who abstained from alcohol.¹⁸
• A study of more than 40,000 people by the Cancer Research Center in Honolulu found that "persons with moderate alcohol intake appear to have a significantly lower risk of dying than nondrinkers."¹⁹
• An analysis of the 89,299 men in the Physicians' Health Study over a period of five and one-half years found that those who drink alcohol in moderation tend to live longer than those who either abstain or drink heavily.²⁰
• An Italian study of 1,536 men aged 45-65 found that about two years of life were gained by moderate drinkers (1-4 drinks per day) in comparison with occasional and heavy drinkers.²¹
• A study of 2,487 adults aged 70-79 years, who were followed for an average period of over five and one-half years, found that all-cause mortality was significantly lower in light to moderate drinkers than in abstainers or occasional drinkers (those who drank less than one drink per week).²²
• A large prospective study found that older men consuming up to about three drinks per day and older women consuming over one drink per day had a dramatically lower risk of dying than did non-drinkers.²³
• A large study found that moderate drinkers, even after controlling for or adjusting for numerous factors, maintain their high longevity or life survival advantage over alcohol abstainers.²⁴
• A Danish study of about 12,000 men and women over a period of 20 years found that abstaining from moderate alcohol consumption is a health and longevity risk factor. Choosing not to drink alcohol increases the risk of illness, disease and death.²⁵
• A 14-year study of nearly 3,000 residents of an Australian community found that abstainers were twice as likely to enter a nursing home as people who were moderate drinkers. Drinkers also spent less time in hospitals and were less likely to die during the period of the study.²⁶
• A prospective study of middle-aged Chinese men found that the consumption of two drinks per day was associated with a 19% reduction in mortality risk. This protective effect was not restricted to a specific type of alcoholic drink.²⁷
• Alcohol prevents more deaths than its abuse causes in the United Kingdom, according to research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.²⁸
• Scientists at the University of London concluded that light and moderate drinking saves more lives in England and Wales than are lost through the abuse of alcohol. If everyone abstained from alcohol, death rates would be significantly higher.²⁹
• The Cancer Council of New South Wales concludes that "If the net effect of total alcohol consumption on Australian society is considered, there is a net saving of lives due to the protective effect of low levels of consumption on cardiovascular disease."³⁰

Of course, and it can't be said enough, these benefits are based on moderate consumption, and not binge drinking in excess with the sole purpose of getting trashed. As Jace commented:

"Its bad for mental health and society as a whole. People will over indulge, no matter how many times you say moderation."

I'll quote the following from Alcohol is a medicine, in response:  

"When a chemical, either found in nature or made in a laboratory, has beneficial effects for the human body, but also, potentially damaging or dangerous effects, we call that chemical a “medicine” and entrust its use to licensed medical practitioners with governmental laws overseeing public access."

Here's where I disagree with that. Alcohol is one of the safest medicines there is in terms of self-medication.

Like any medicine, dosage determines  whether it is beneficial or detrimental to the person ingesting it. Take one or two Tylenol because you have aches and pains from a hard days work or a headache and you'll feel better.

Down 14 drinks in a single drinking session, and at worst, you have a hangover the next day.


Take 14 maximum strength OTC acetaminophen pills at one time, and you can literally die of liver failure.

So, while people regularly die from liver failure due to taking too much acetaminophen, your average person today who gets a headache or has muscle soreness thinks nothing of taking a couple of pills. Nor do they think anything bad of anyone else who relies on moderate doses of acetaminophen to deal with the aches and pains of life. (Caveat: many liver failure cases are caused by a combination of taking acetaminophen and drinking alcohol....so obviously, if take Tylenol, don't drink, and if you drink, don't take Tylenol).

Yet, because a minority of people abuse alcohol -- and yes, despite the mass media and Public Service Announcements by the Government constantly highlighting the negative effects of the abuse of alcohol - the public perception seems to ignore the fact that the vast majority of people that do drink alcohol, do so moderately.

There are barely any warnings to the negative effects of alcoholic beverages on the packaging, no caloric or nutritional information.

Despite that, you seem to know all about the negative effects of the abuse (over dosage) of alcoholic beverages, no?

Tell you what though, I'd much rather be more concerned with the effects of drinking 14 drinks in an ill advised night of binge drinking than take 14 maximum strength Tylenol pills over the same time period!

Also, for someone who portrays such an anti-government persona, alcohol companies have huge sway with lobby groups.

Anti-Government persona? Me?

Seriously, I'm glad you brought this up, Jace. I got a lot of thoughts on the topic of the Government and the alcohol industry.

For starters, I lament the continued vertical integration of the alcohol industry on a global scale. Giant multi-national corporations have been buying out many previously successful, micro-brewed beers. Same goes for craft distillers of quality spirits and wineries are all being bought out, or merged into larger corporate entities.

In most cases, the buy out of small, independent brands has not been good for we, the consumers of alcohol with discriminating palates. There are a handful of brands of beer that have been bought out/sold out or sub-contracted out to the giant Brewing corporations like InBev, for which I noticed a distinct change in the taste and quality of the final beverage has changed, and not for the better.

Just like so many other things in our Brave New World Order, the illusion of choice is presented to the average consumer, but the reality is that most brands that USED to be products of smaller, independent brewery's have been bought out by the multinational corporations, and the quality of the beverages are inevitably compromised. Just off the top of my head are the beer brands I used to regularly buy and drink, that are all now owned by InBev - Beck's, St. Pauli Girl, Red Hook, Bass, Lowenbrau, Spaten, Rolling Rock, Stella Artois, Corona, Modelo, Labatt. Before they were all bought out, co-opted and assimilated, all these beers used to be produced by independent companies.

Funny thing is, I stopped buying and drinking most of those brands for a few years now...and it was not really a conscious decision based on my anti-multi-national corporate stance, either. In every one of those cases, I perceived a change in the taste of the beer, and knew something was different, but I couldn't put my finger on what exactly was wrong. I even thought that perhaps my taste buds had changed. Only later when I did some research as to why Red Hook, which used to be one of my favorite micro-brews, did I discover why the taste of Red Hook had degraded so much.

My first clue was walking into the store to buy a 12-pack, and seeing Red Hook packaging had changed.

Here's what the beer looked like when I first discovered it in college, when it quickly became my drink of choice:

Then one day, I went to my local grocery store and went to beer aisle shelf where I had become accustomed to finding my usual, only to see this:

Huh? Ok....must be trying for a new look to create better marketing appeal. But then I noticed that the new bottles didn't taste exactly like I remembered it. It tasted less rich...a bit watery and less flavorful. At first, I thought it was simply my mind playing tricks on me. Perhaps it was just a psychosomatic effect because I preferred the old look of the packaging? But after drinking several six packs over the course of a few months, I couldn't help but realize the taste had indeed been changed. This was not my favorite beer!

So I logged on to teh Interwebz, fired up google and discovered exactly what happened. They got bought out by InBev. That's the first time I ever heard about that multi-national corporation that had been buying up breweries and brands all around the world.

Like almost any other consumable product,  when a small-time, local producer gets bought out by a large, multi-national corporation, the product is invariably changed to meet the goals of corporate conformity: standardization, homogenization, and up-scaling the volume of production at a centralized facility to realize higher profits from economies of sale. I knew I was right that the taste had changed! Red Hook the original Seattle Micro-Brew? Now a sad memory. This mass produced, slickly-packaged and marketed substitute just was not the same!

I haven't bought a Red Hook since. I began to buy and drink other micro-brewed beers instead.

Then one day, another favorite micro-brew of mine came out with brand new packaging - Kona Brew.
The moment I tasted the new-look Kona Fire rock Pale ale, I knew exactly what happened. DAMN YOU InBev!!!! I knew it before I googled it...

This is what the bottling and labels looked like when Kona Brew was still an independent micro-brew, produced, bottled and distributed entirely in the State of Hawaii:

Kona Brew was initially a micro-brew made at the Kona Brew Pub on the Big Island and the Hawaii Kai Brew Pub on O'ahu. And in fact, if you go to either restaurant (I've been to both, multiple times), you can still get the original beers brewed right there on-site. But go to the store and buy a six pack of the exact same brand (yes, even the stores here in Hawaii....imagine that, shipping "Hawaiian Craft Beer" to Hawaii from a West Coast Mainland Brew Facility), and you can taste a huge difference between the mass-produced InBev botled beer made at one of InBev production facilities on the mainland, and the draft micro-brew still being produced in small quantities locally.

Here's the new look:

Now you can find Kona Brew all over the US. That's what getting bought out by a multi-national mega brewer like InBev can do for you when it comes to distribution and marketing. But the quality of the original product just cannot be duplicated by the giant corporate behemoth.

When I looked further into the topic, I discovered something: Hawaii does not have a glass production plant anywhere in the islands. All bottles used in local beverage productions are imported empty on shipping containers. Empty bottles are more fragile than full bottles, so it costs more to ship empty bottles. So that's one reason to shift bottled beer production to the mainland. But throw in the fact that Hawaii has one of the highest excise tax per 93 cents a gallon for packaged beer, and it's no wonder the owners of Kona Brew sold their soul to the corporate devil.

Now, Kona Brew in the bottle is brewed and bottled in Oregon, Washington (the now InBev owned and run Red Hook facility) and New Hampshire for East Coast distribution. Isn't corporate expansion and distribution awesome?!?!? Now you can buy "Hawaiian" micro brewed beer in about 25 States! Except, it's not really made in Hawaii...

Anyhow, all of this is just a really long way around getting to my original point...I believe moderate alcohol consumption is good for you, a medicine. One for which you can abuse, but that doesn't mean the medicine itself is to blame, but the person who is abusing it. Personal responsibility and all that.

And having the government involved in the industry involves all sorts of corruptions in both production and sale of this medicine.

Mass production by global corporations is a fact of life in the 21st century. The only truly meaningful vote we have in our "Democratic" society, is the votes we make with our fiat-dollars.So when I go to the grocery store or liquor store and do my part to participate in the all important exercise in FREEDOM, I cast my vote for the locally owned, independent breweries.

Hawaiian Craft Beer...Actually Made in Hawaii. STAY AWAY, InBev!!

This is Just the Beginning

I told ya'all before.

If you read the Obamacare bill, and you pay close attention, you'll see that the new bill calls for a consolidation of personal information and documentation into a single, accessible record.

Take a look at page 161 of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

The standards and protocols for electronic enrollment in the Federal and State Programs described in sub-section (a) shall allow for the following:


(1) Electronic matching against existing Federal and State data, including vital records, employment history, enrollment systems, tax records and other date determined appropriate by the Secretary to serve as evidence of eligibility and in lieu of paper-based documentation.

Once you enroll, they will crosscheck your enrollment info with all other info the Government has on you in various computer systems.

(2) Simplification and submission of electronic documentation, digitization of documents, and systems verification of elegibility.

Once they cross check all of your enrollment info with all they data they can find in State and Federal computer systems, they'll compile it all - including digitizing documents that only exist in hard copy - and compile it all into a single record...all under the guise of "assessing eligibility."

(3) Reuse of stored eligibility information (including documentation) to assist with retention of eligible individuals.

See, that documentation - all of it that they used to cross check your enrollment info - will be available for "reuse."

(4) Capability of individuals to apply, recertify and manage their eligibility information online, including at home, at points of service, and other community based locations.

So if a person is able to access this compiled information from the internet...what do you think this will do in terms of identity theft? Or do you really TRUST the government will be able to securely keep all this compiled info private and secure?

Ah, but here's the real kicker:

(5) Ability to expand the enrollment system to integrate new programs, rule, and functionalities, to operate at increased volume, and to apply streamlined verification and eligibility processes to other Federal and State programs as appropriate.

Essentially other Federal and State programs will than be allowed to use all of that compiled private info as they "deem appropriate."

Do you think this is appropriate?  

That was 3 years ago. Now, the American Surveillance Death Star is undoubtedly complete, fully operational, and ready to process, collate and store compiled records of all the citizenry for near-instantaneous retrieval by any Government lackey and stooge with access to the network.

Orwell's total information awareness dystopia depicted in 1984 is already here.

Ellen Richardson was prevented from going on a March of Dimes organized cruise because the U.S. border agent said she was hospitalized for mental health issues in 2012 and she needed special clearance. Richardson was treated for clinical depression but she wonders how he accessed her medical records. 

This will be the first story in what will soon become the new normal for everyone living, working, vacationing and those who wish to enter, and eventually those who try to leave the good ole USA Inc.

Just what are the sheeple really signing up for over at healthcare.gov? Much has been made of how this website "doesn't work."

Don't be so sure it's "not working."

It may be doing precisely what it was designed to do. Get millions of Americans to log on from their personal computers and smartphones and create accounts. Check this out:

Mike Adams at Natural News.com posits a theory:

It is actually a government-run Trojan Horse that suckers people into creating accounts where they hand over:

• Name and address
• Email address and password
• Social security number
• Private bank account details
• Employer details and other information

During the enrollment process, your computer also hands over your IP address which is then tied to your social security number.

This IP address is then handed over to the NSA thanks to its new mega-black-hole data center in Utah, where your IP is cross-referenced with all website visits, including:

• "Anti-government" websites
• Porn sites
• Gambling sites
• File sharing sites
• "Terrorism" support sites
• Encryption service sites like Hushmail
• Chat rooms, message boards and more

Armed with this information, the NSA can then link your seemingly-anonymous online chats, comments and posts with your social security number.

Whether Adams is correct about the intentions or motivations of the Government declaring the website was ready for sign ups on October 1st despite not being "ready to handle the load," was to deliberately gather citizen data or not is debatable.

But the facts remain - when you fill out the account info on the site, unless you're using a proxy server or some other means of masking your IP address, you are giving the Government your social security number and the IP address (or even GPS coordinates if you have any GPS apps running on your device) directly linked with all the other private info you submit with your application, that they can then use to cross reference all other internet activities connected to that same IP address.

Speaking of which...

I saw very similar sign strung up on the wall of a fast food restaurant in a neighboring town the other day, here in Hawaii:

Now why would our government want to give "free" cell phones and "free" cell phone minutes to citizens who are on ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE?

Prior to seeing this PSA in real life, I had always thought the entire "Obama phone" story was just a FOXNews - right-wing-kool-aid exaggeration.

I should have known better.

With sign up for the healthcare exchange website "debacle" and "free" cell phones for welfare recipients, two goals of the omniscient and omnipresent surveillance State are accomplished.

Now the Sheeple's IP addresses on their home and work PC's can now be linked to their SSN's and all the other info they voluntarily submit when they sign up for their "affordable" health care...and they can also now sigh up for the free phone so that the physical location and recorded history of movement anywhere and everywhere they carry their Obama phones.

In 1948, this kind of scenario was considered science fiction:

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

My fellow Americans...sign up for your affordable healthcare and free cell phones, and you can rest easy knowing the Government will be watching out for you.