Obama's hidden agenda, Russia's unhidden agenda.

I remember not too long ago writing about a video that I had watched. President Obama was talking to Russian president Putin's predecessor (who also happened to be Putin's puppet). Medvedev . The reporters caught this conversation and it could be heard on the video that President Obama was saying “after the next election I will have more flexibility.” I was wondering what was said or asked of the president to bring on this type of answer.

As it turns out it was about missile defense in eastern Europe:

...He was speaking in Seoul, South Korea, in March 2012, almost exactly two years ago, to Dmitry Medvedev, then in his last year as Vladimir Putin's stand-in president of Russia.

The subject was missile defense, and Obama was apparently seeking time to assuage Russia's objections that a proposed U.S. missile defense system, sited in Romania, Poland, Turkey and Spain, would not be aimed at Russian missiles.

Earlier, in September 2009, Obama canceled missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, to which Russia objected. The decision was relayed by telephone, at midnight European time, on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's attack on Poland pursuant to the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939. The Polish prime minister refused to take the call.

"I understand your message," Medvedev told Obama in Seoul. "I will transmit this information to" -- no question of who was in control -- "Vladimir."

Now after the election, there was clearly more that the Russians would be looking for from Obama.  Did president Obama do whatever he was asked by the Russians? Did it represent for the Russians a signal that it was okay for them to invade Crimea?  Or Ukraine?

 

Is it possible he could have been asked something by Medvedev that would tell them if he was loyal to the USA?  Did they perhaps entrap him into something that he would be obliged to abide by their instructions on whatever they had in mind? No matter what the scenario, Obama would not want to show his true agenda to the American people.

Now by what he’s doing and not doing, he is showing us that it seems his agenda is to run the USA into the ground. Whether it’s done on purpose or not, it’s still being done. The USA has gone from a lion to a lamb and now it’s down to a kitty without any claws.   The Russians couldn't be happier.

Chris Christie and my health (part 3)

[Continued from Part 2]

In the 3 months since I have started smoking e-cigarettes, my heart has gained strength, my lungs seem to have gotten better, my kidneys also have gone back to normal operation. That’s why I say this world is hell - because of people like Chris Christie that would prefer tax money to people's health. I would suggest that governor Christie educate himself on something that he doesn’t know about instead of putting money ahead of people. 

If governor Christie really needs to tax something there are better options.  Something that really could use taxation is alcohol (for instance),  as it drives people to do things which they would not do while sober. That would be taxing something harmful to people and that might actually reduce in some small way consumption of something potentially dangerous. Alcohol can lead to consequences like rape, domestic assault , children going to bed hungry because the father or mother (or both) turn out to be alcoholics. I should also mention illegal drugs. Tax those people that can’t seem to control themselves once full of drugs or alcohol. Or would you feel that if you tax those two things that I mentioned would lower your chances of getting re-elected, governor? 

 

And with that, I am done with this three part rant.

Chris Christie and my health (part 2)

[Continued from Part 1.]

A week after my hearty attack, I felt like I was having a heart attack once again. So back to the hospital I went.  Wile I was waiting for a doctor, I ran out of breath.  I was drowning in the fluids and my heart was too weak to build up the pressure to get the liquids out of my lungs. As a results of this I was declared dead after the priest read me the last Rites of the Church. I did die for a brief period of time but then came back.  The doctor still can’t figure out why I had died but was able to come back. My organs had begun to fail, and you don't normally come back from that.

Now I kept smoking for quite a while after that.  I knew I had to stop smoking but I soon found out that I did not have the will power to do it.  But recently, a friend of my son and I were each given each an e-cigarette kit. This was three months ago.  I decided to try the e-cigarette.  Since then I tried a regular cigarette twice and each time I had just a couple of drags on it.  Both times were in the first couple of weeks.  Both of those brief cigarettes went where all tobacco cigarettes should be -- in the garbage. Because that’s all they are: garbage.

Now it’s been about 3 months and I don’t have the urge for a tobacco cigarette at all. I don’t wake up choking. I don’t take a coughing fit when I take a deep breath. The taste of the food that I eat has improved. I haven’t had another heart attack.  I also sleep better. Just In case you’re not aware of it, e-cigarettes don’t put out smoke but vapor as the liquid is heated by a battery and all you get is vapor when you take a drag on it.  There is no smell of anything like there is in the garbage that is put out by the big cigarette companies, that Chris Christie seems to be protecting by taxing something that doesn’t cause the damage to a persons health.

 

To be continued.

Chris Christie and my health (part 1)

NOTE: This post is being broken into multiple parts as I will not be able to finish all of it in one writing.

While reading the news tonight I happen to notice this article. New Jersey Gov. Christie included in his 2015 budget proposal, a tax on e-cigarettes that would make them just as expensive as traditional combustible cigarettes. The tax hike would raise an estimated $35 million for the state. Minnesota is the only state so far that has passed an e-cigarette tax.

All I can say to this kind of foolishness is that Gov. Christie is the type of person that thinks that money is worth more than a person's life. For a man to think this way he has to be a greedy person or else he doesn’t know what he is talking about. E-cigarettes have a health benefit and that matters more than 35 million dollars.  For 66 years I smoked and I thought was in good health. Then one night just sitting at my computer I had a heart attack.

 

My son called for an ambulance and I was taken to the ER at the Gatineau hospital. Once at the hospital they took x rays and found out that the vein leading to my heart was blocked by a blood clot. Then I was sent home after the cardiologist took the blood colt out and put in a stent. Then I was given a prescription for pills, to lighten my blood.   All of this was important but I was still smoking.

 

What I needed to for the sake of my own life, was to quit smoking.  After 66 years, that's not an easy thing to do.  This is why my personal experience is a good anecdotal explanation of why Governor Christie's decisions don't make sense.

 

To be continued....

My beeef with beef

 

I’ve written before about what disgusting things are added to some of the food we buy in the super markets. Today I decided to revisit the food issue. Do you eat beef? Do you like beef? I used to like beef.

That is, until I read this:

The meat industry likes to call it "lean finely textured beef," but after ABC News ran a story on it, the public just called it what it looks like — pink slime, a mixture of waste meat and fatty parts from higher-quality cuts of beef that have had the fat mechanically removed. Afterwards, it's treated with ammonia gas to kill Salmonella and E. coli bacteria. Then it gets added to ground beef as a filler. Food microbiologists and meat producers insist that it's safe, but given the public's reaction to the ABC News report, there's an "ick" factor we just can't overcome...

Besides a hefty dose of protein, a 2010 report from the United States Department of Agriculture found your beef could also harbor veterinary drugs like antibiotics, Ivermectin, an animal wormer linked to neurological damage in humans, and Flunixin, an anti-inflammatory that can cause kidney damage, stomach and colon ulcers, and blood in the stool of humans...

Thought to proliferate on factory farms where antibiotics are overused to boost animal growth, a January 2012 study from Iowa State University found that the dangerous organisms wind up in supermarket meat, too. The dangerous MRSA strain lingered in 7 percent of supermarket pork samples tested. The bacteria die during proper cooking, but improper handling could leave you infected.

I get the impression that the alarmism on this particular website has an agenda to turn everyone vegan. Now I will not give up on eating beef but I think as consumers we need to be careful about what we eat and knowing this information allows us to do just that. And that is the real issue - we need to know these things to make informed choices.

As I've mentioned before, when we do grocery shopping we buy the foods that are presented to us in these markets we are buying in good faith. Yet it seems that we are being seriously deceived by the producers of some of these foods. One thing I believe is that most of the sicknesses that we have today are brought on by the garbage that we ingest each time we eat. This brings me to what I have been saying all along.

We don’t know truly what we are eating without knowing what has been taken out or added to these foods. I think it’s time to stop talking about what we eat and start demanding full disclosure about what is happening to the foods we buy before we buy them. Some people will say eat lots of fruits because they're. Sure they are safe, if you can manage to wash off all the pesticides that was sprayed on them. It's still the same issue - what has been done to the fruit before it got to your supermarket shelf?

We just can’t win, the beef is full of drugs and the pork full of fat. I hope you’re not having beef sandwiches for lunch. If you are you should have read this after lunch.

New Song of the week. Or month.

I finally changed the song of the month (formerly song of the week) today.  Take a look at the Ink Spots.

Hardcore Pawn

There's a shown on TV called Hardcore Pawn (I'm not sure what network or channel it might be in your area).  By way of background, here's the show's description as it is on TruTV:

At the largest pawnshop in Detroit, every day brings new rewards and new drama. Follow the Gold family as they wheel and deal with colorful customers, manage temperamental employees, and squabble with each otherall in the name of making a buck in one of the most troubled cities in America. This isn't your typical trading post; this is Hardcore Pawn.

Since I have started watching this program, I have developed a fairly song opinion about it. You probably have already realized that or else it wouldn't be here on my Rants blog. The show is supposedly a reality show. I'm not naïve enough to think that it is entirely unscripted, but there is probably some basis in reality and a certain percentage of that show is real or re-enactments of real life events. Regardless of whether it is fictional or real, it doesn’t alter my opinion as to the message that is being sent to weak minded kids that are employed by their parents in whatever business that they own.

On this program, the daughter Ashley and the son Seth have no respect for their father whatsoever. Whatever the father says or does, those two don’t seem to agree with him.

Seth the son thinks that he knows more about the business than his dad does. That's a bad message to send to any child that might happen to watch this program. Disrespecting elders, and even worse your parents, is a bad message to be sending to society. It's the type of thing that contributes to moral decay.

Ashley the daughter, is another story. It’s easy to see that she is not the type of person that should be in a position to be dealing with the public. She doesn’t seem to have any idea of what public relations are all about.

Ashley cannot control her emotions and shows this when she is dealing with a difficult customer. Also at times, she and her brother do not hesitate to start arguing in front of a customer. Again this is a bad message to be sending to children and to society as a whole. Civility is important and something society has been losing year after year. This show does not help in that regard.

The episode I watched last night showed a customer coming in and going to the window to get served. It happened to be Ashley’s window and this customer happened to have a baseball that had been signed by some baseball players on some team. I'd tell you which players but since I don't follow baseball, I don't recall who it might have been.

Ashley took the ball and of course the dealing started about the price. Seth, being close to that window, went over and told Ashley that she didn’t know anything about baseball and it seemed that he wanted to make the deal himself. After listening to those two arguing, the customer decided to take his ball and left the store saying that he thought he was dealing with professionals but that he was mistaken and that he was leaving and never coming back.

To my way of thinking if the producer of this series thought he was making role models with Seth and Ashley for kids that are working in a family business, I would say that he sure missed it. I couldn’t think of a better way of losing all customers than people acting this way in a business setting.

That is my rant for today.