Without You, They don't Exist

Hey all you kids out there in TV land. It's not that I think you're necessarily ignorant, or uneducated, or unread, or misinformed. It's not that it matters what I think. What matters is what you think about what you do, and how you are. Do you feel good about living in America? Be honest. Did you ever wonder what it might be like on the Riviera or the French countryside or maybe Tokyo, or one of those European countries where the most used form of transportation is the bicycle? How about the cool high speed trains? Do you even know about real life in other countries? Not just to visit, but to live there now, in the 21st century. Or are the clashes between protesters and police reported in American media all you really "know"?

Are you actually voting for Romney or Obama because you really believe that between these two characters we have the best possible candidates there are? Or are you voting for one because you feel there is no other choice, and the system is rigged, and so you must pitifully stick your tail between your legs and vote for these guys. Do you have any integrity? Does this make you feel good about yourself? Has our government's leadership done anything to actually make things better in the last half century? What would that be? The build up of the greatest war machine ever known, ten times the greatest force of any other country, so unapproachable that it's a joke to say we actually have military enemies? And all this at the expense of our infrastructure, education, health care, economy, food quality, and housing; and more so under Obama than under "bring it on" Bush?

It doesn't matter if I think you have no integrity. It only matters that you think that of yourself. You can't help it if you've been brain drained by the Wall Street owned and operated media. And I know that, if you do believe that you only have two choices, then you do watch way too much TV.

TV watching, especially the news, is known to cause ill effects on society, as found in many scholastic studies. You probably think you have a lot of integrity because you do what you feel is right given the circumstances. What if you aren't aware of all the circumstances?

It's a running joke that people who watch the news everyday are less informed than people who watch none. Thomas Jefferson said this about newspapers. Do you believe everything you read and see in the news? What about what you don't see? What about the stuff that is blacked out in the name of nationalism? What about the stuff that is important to people but doesn't sell airtime? What about the agenda that the media has you on. The war is not on the agenda. Fluoride, GMOs, the cancer industry, foreclosures, the actual state of the American economy are all not on your agenda, because you watch the news.

There is research out there that strongly indicates that fluoride is a cause of cancer in this country, and even responsible for lowered IQ scores in children. Don't let you kids drink public water. Fluoride is placed into nearly every municipal water supply. GMOs are also known to be a huge cancer risk and found in nearly every non-organic American food. Food manufacturers spend tens of millions in campaigns to kill or degrade this information (as in your TV news). Why isn't it questioned? Because you don't care, or don't know about it, or didn't see it in the news.

The US cancer industry appreciates your valued support in keeping as many Americans as sick as possible, and as expensively as possible for as long as possible. And cancer is probably the most expensive, chronic sickness that humans can suffer from. The medical device, pharmaceutical, and "health care" insurance industries all join in thanking you for your continued support to their quest for sadistic greed. This is their American dream. Big money. May tens of thousands of Americans continue to suffer and die prolonged painful deaths so that the few of those who matter may live laughing in sadistic luxury.

So maybe if you like Obama, you're thinking that this kind of philosophy will give Romney more votes. So what? Did things really improve since Bush left office? You can't win by voting for these guys. You lose. You feed their expense accounts. Without you, they don't exist.

Be careful who you vote for. He just might stick it to you like he has been for half a century.

Did you ever wonder why there are only two main candidates in the presidential election? Why do we have just a two-party system? Do we have a two-party system? There are others out there. Some independents actually win elections. Jesse Ventura became a Reform Party governor. Bernie Sanders is an independent Senator. Sanders is one of the few voices in politics that ever bother to criticize the status quo. We need more.

Cindy Shehan, Rosanne Barr, and Jill Stein all have very active political voices and followings in the current election. So why do people think there's only a two party system? Why do they think that voting for a third party candidate is a waste of a vote? Why do they think they are stuck with the best of two evils? It's amazing to me that so many people think this way. They only do so because those same people all think this way. It's like saying I believe I suck because I believe I suck. If only I believed I was good, I'd stand a chance of being good, maybe great. If even just a majority of people were to start thinking in terms of voting for the best of all instead of the best of evils, there would be no more two party system. There would be no more worst of evils. There would be no more independents that don't stand a chance.

We see decade after decade, at least since Johnson left office, that both parties are pretty much the same. Good cop - bad cop. We see people tricked by the political money controlled media into believing they have to accept the tiny little bits of what they perceive as better in one candidate over another. Why do people accept this?

When you go the market, if you have a choice only between milk about to expire in five days versus milk about to expire in four days, do you just go with the five day milk? Are you that lazy that you can't find another store with fresh milk, good for a month? If you keep buying the five day milk, why should the store get fresh milk like the farmer's market down the street? They have no incentive because you accept their crappy milk. The minute I hear someone admit they vote for the best of evils, they lost me. To them I say, it's your fault, because you keep voting for assholes, and I resent it. You're screwing this country. You're screwing me. You're screwing yourself. Why?

OK. Enough food analogies (from the root 'anal'). You get the point. There are only two major candidates because you, the people, believe there are. It's all in your head, as it was in mine for a long time. You have the power to unseat the two party system and make government work for you, and all you have to do is know that you have that power, because you do have that power.

It's a great thing that a black man became president. Unprecedented. It's wonderful. But is this really what the presidency is about? The color of skin? All Wall Street has to do to win you over and make you roll over like sheep is to put a black man on the ticket with the word "change" and you are sold. How easy is that? I voted him in too. I was excited. But then what did he actually do? He maintained all of Bush's policies. He broke his promises. He keep GITMO open. He signed a law that allows arrest and conviction of American citizens without due process in direct violation of the Constitution. He escalated war. Bush could never get away with all that without massive protest and outrage. I doubt Romney could either. You think Occupy was protest and outrage? Imagine what it would have been with Bush still in office. Imagine what it will be if Romney wins? Does that scare you?

Would you prefer a totalitarian America? Doesn't that scare you? Are you not bothered that police departments across America now have military grade weapons and tanks that they roll out against nonviolent protesters? Does it not bother you that police continue to be held above the law, commit murder of innocent people and get away with it scot free? These people in office have absolute power, like a dictator, but with the sham of a staged election to lull you into complacency. Because he is Obama, we all just roll over and accept this police state on the brink of totalitarianism. He gave us a few tidbits of crumbs of change to make us believe that this is how it has to be when you go up against the system. And you accept that?

Do you think the new health care law (ACA) actually helps people? There are a very few token cases cited in the media of people whose lives were actually saved by this band-aid law. This law was passed to shut you up. Doctors and nurses continue to press and protest for better reform for all Americans, not just a select handful. We see this year that 48,000 Americans die every year from lack of health care, compared to 45,000 in a 2009 Harvard study by the same scholars. While the law helps a few, it actually cuts out many more in the name of insurance profits. As long as profit is tied to people's health, people will die for the profits of the investors. But because it's called 'Obamacare' we accept it as teeny tiny little baby step in the right direction. Is it really? Insurance companies have the system rigged in their favor. That's what they do. It's all they do. Don't take my word. Ask doctors.

Do you think not voting is a vote for the opposition? That's negative logic. That's a con man's logic. You're being conned. If it's Romney or Obama it doesn't really matter. It's not Republicans against Democrats. It's fat cat politicians against actual working people like you who feed them with your life blood and sweat; you who send your sons and daughters off to a useless war for oil and war profits at the expense of poor education, poor health care, and a dismal economy. Keep working for the man, keep being exploited and the man will keep on doing it to you. You keep him in his ivory towers with his white tie galas to celebrate your stupidity. He keeps taking your money, borrows from your future, and your children's futures, to pay for his luxury, and you accept it. You cheer for it. You keep asking for it. You get what you ask for. Be careful who you vote for. He just might stick it to you like he has been for half a century.

People are not Savings Accounts for Bankers

Whenever someone says money is the problem, someone else will invariably say, no it's not money, it's the way people deal with money. It's the people who abuse money. Wrong. It is money. If there were no money people wouldn't have an option to deal with it, right or wrong. It's not about people. I mean just look at all the upstanding (mostly white, mostly male) people on Wall Street.  They can't help it if the system works the way it does. They're just trying to survive on a minimum mid six figures. They're just giving their clients what they want. So right there we know it can't be the people who deal with the money. It's the money!

In this clip from Margin Call, Jeremy Irons, perched in his ivory tower, says that without money we'd kill each other for food. Bullshit.  The second I heard that line I suspected this film was Wall Street propaganda. But I haven't seen the whole thing yet so I'll limit my criticism to Iron's dialog here.


As long as money exists as a universal exchange for almost anything you need, even your own health, there will always be people who exploit it and hoard it. Money has only been around for a few thousand years. Humanity got along just fine with out it for many more thousands of years before that. You might look back at bartering and say, 'so am I supposed to trade cows for a living now?' No. People traded livestock because that's what they owned. People own many more things now; computers, cell phones, TVs, cameras, art, music. Barter today might not be so bad an idea. In fact EBay is just one step away from modern day barter, and Amazon and others have simialr operations were people sell all kinds of possessions on the open market.

Is it really so absurd to live without money? What would happen? Would people resort to crime to just take whatever they want, like how we see Wall Street taking people's lives at the rate of 45,000 annually for health insurance profits? Or how the military industry takes millions of innocent lives, devastates millions of American and foreign families, and proliferates and perturbs more wars just to make exorbitant profits?



I think we need to guarantee all people a minimum standard of living, even regardless of citizenship. If war profiteers didn't need to spend hundreds of trillions on useless wars, sucking up over half the federal budget, we could easily afford this. But without money, there would be no affording things. Everything would be resourced based. Do we have the resources to house, feed, educate, and maintain people's health? Of course we do. Do we have the resources to build war machinery and award padded contracts? Without money there is no padding. You provide your services in exchange for comforts and necessities of life. Maybe there could be incentives for more resources for people who earn them. But what would be eliminated is the making of money just for the sake of accumulating money.

Money is not wealth. Money is simply a medium of exchange. If we can't limit money to being only a medium and not a commodity in itself, then it no longer works as a medium, because it is hoarded. A phone line is a medium. If phones were commodities then they could be hoarded and only a very few could have a phone. People try to hoard phone lines by having monopoles. But it hasn't worked yet. There are still many competitive ways to have a phone line. A phone line also has limited value, while money has universal value as long as everyone accepts it.

There's no easy answer. I've heard about individual based currencies where people issue their own money in exchange for someone's goods or services. That currency would have limited value. If the person has a good reputation their money becomes valuable. But they control it. Not the government. And there is no making money on the exchange of money.

Another idea might be to remove interest charges, or at least to limit them to a flat rate and not an annuity. You borrow money for college, you pay it back when you can at a flat 5% interest rate that doesn't increase year after year. If you borrow $10,000 you pay back $10,500 forever. No interest accumulations. People are not savings accounts for bankers.

Are you desperate for Obama?

Chris Hedges: '...when you reduce people to a level of desperation, they're much easier to control...'

A Failure to Communicate

Have you ever been told that you have a communication problem? This is a standard fall line that authoritarians use to intimidate people who they want to control. If they can convince you that you can't communicate, then anything and everything they want to blame you for is suddenly justified. In reality these people have no imagination and are simply using a scene they (or one of their primate ancestors) saw in a movie that impressed them as a way to justify their self imposed authority, just as the Captian does to Cool Hand Luke.

However, communication is not simply one person's responsiblity. It involves many parts. There are books written on the subject of communication. There are industries that exist over dealing with this thing we call communication. There are scholars who spend decades researching every aspect of this deep and far reaching subject. Departments of colleges are dedicated to communication. So how then is it possible that Cool Hand Luke is solely responsible for a 'failure to communicate'? What if what he has to say isn't understood, is misunderstood, is ignored, is belittled, or marginalized? What if he is misinterpreted, or the person receiving the message speaks a different language or perceives a different meaning? What if Cool Hand Luke has no intention of being understood, nor cares if his message is heard or received?

What if Cool Hand Luke isn't listening, doesn't want to listen, or thinks the person talking is a total jackass? What if the person talking is a total jackass and has nothing of any merit to bother listening to? What if authority should always be questioned, and never accepted without question? That's not necessarily a failure to communicate. That's just telling someone to fuck off.

The Newsroom: Fucking Awesome (so far)

"And [to the conservative panelist] with a straight face, you're going to tell students that America's so star-spangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.

...there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. We're 7th in literacy,

27th in math,

22nd in science,

49th in life expectancy,

178th in infant mortality,

3rd in median household income,

number 4 in labor force,

and number 4 in exports.

We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. ...o when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about?! Yosemite?!!!"

Attribute: Arron Sorkin - The Newsroom

Happy 4th

How to be Successful in the Industry

The Newsroom in Brief: Alan Poul

Prop 29: People are Suffering NOW because they Can't Get Treatment

by Maureen Cruise, RN
Prop 29 will unfortunately probably pass no matter what ...Three people ..one MD, one JD and one TV writer ...separately ALL said the exact same thing to me...they "don't care if the money is burned " as long as the tobacco industry gets hurt. Must be a TV ad? .... depressing....

 There is always a larger context.. to No on 29.

I am 100% for extra taxes on tobacco...but Prop 29 tax dollars belong to all the people of California. Public money should go to non profit public institutions for the public good. NOT to a group of unelected, unaccountable appointees in a program to spend almost a billion dollars of public money annually as they please, within some very broad guidelines. Prop 29's program cannot even be amended for 15 years...maybe never with a 2/3 of legislature requirement to amend.

Cancer research currently receives more federal tax dollars than any other disease, $5.4 billion in federal funding. Cancer, lung and cardiovascular diseases together net $8 billion dollars of federal money and receive additional private funding (LAT 4/27/12).

People are suffering because they can't get treatment.... cancer, lung disease, cardiovascular disease treatment ...without becoming bankrupt. We need money to give people healthcare services. It is the people's money and should go to unmet human needs.

Only 20% of the funding goes toward smoking cessation. The funds will dwindle if the prevention part of the program is successful...unless other sources are tapped.

We have information about cancer prevention. It is known that environmental toxins, certain pharmaceuticals, food additives, fossil fuels and chemicals are part of the cancer matrix along with some lifestyle choices. Environmental laws are being ignored by administrative agencies and drug are fast tracked bypassing safety considerations.. Our legislatures would not even ban BPA in baby bottles! BPA is ubiquitous in plastic food containers. We have knowledge about prevention that is ignored.

Prop 29 can outsource jobs, spend millions for over-priced expensive equipment and pay high salaries to people sitting behind desks, while actual healthcare services to people in dire need are being slashed. California's public health institutions funding has been decimated over the past 20 years. ...shuttering the major public health information centers for disseminating prevention information to millions of people.

$ 800 million dollars could be used to expand much needed access to medical services and generate thousands of jobs right here and NOW. We need jobs and we need healthcare. Tax money should go toward alleviating current problems and serve the most urgent needs of California's residents. Investment should be for jobs and access to treatment here in our state.

As LAT reported (4/27/12) " California can't afford to retain its K-12 teachers, keep all its parks open, give public college students the courses they need to earn a degree or provide adequate home health aides for the infirm or medical care for the poor." Now is not the time for billions spent on research. We need healthcare here and now.

Be Well,
Maureen Cruise RN

My Ballot. and NO on 29

This is a guest post by Maureen Cruise RN, former nurse and current activist (I don't vote, and this is why).

Americans have freedom of the press but they do not exhibit freedom of the mind.
Alexis de Tocqueville ' "On Democracy in America" 1835

At the 9/2009 Blue Cross Sit-in - LA - where she gave me a 28 minute interview used as narration in my film, got healthcare?

Non partisan Ballot and candidate choices are the same across all party identification.
My Primary Ballot is a GREEN PARTY Ballot. After serving on the California State Democratic Party Executive Board and as a delegate to the state party for 2 terms, my conscience would no longer allow me to continue working within that fraudulent and corrupt political arena.

As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1831 comparing the two major US political parties ....There may be persons of principle within American political parties but there is no party of principle.  Nothing has changed there. Corruption and the deception and manipulation of the public ...most specifically one's own party "flock"...is the main game in town.

So I vote my conscience rather than vote against my conscience. A vote for candidates who are responsible for increasing human suffering is an endorsement of that human suffering. I do not buy the lesser of two evils argument. Then we always have evil...which we have freely supported and endorsed. A wasted vote is a vote for what you don't want.

Once in office, who knows the deals made. We do our best to cut thru the nonsense by relying on what we do know now....but realize we cannot know the future with any certainty.

GREEN PARTY PRIMARY
I am voting for Dr. Jill Stein for Green Party Presidential candidate.
Central Committee: voting for 2 so far..Mike Feinstein (former mayor of SM...a great guy) , Linda Piera-Avila.

Nonpartisan Offices
*US Senate..Marsha Feinland (because she is not Feinstein)
*Congress 33rd..David Steinman ( because he is not Waxman)
 Assembly... Torie Osborn a single payer universal healthccare advocate and Sheila Kuehl's pick.
Richard Bloom...Not a fan. Kind of an arrogant sarcastic guy...a conservative democrat Mayor of SM
Betsy Butler...heard her speak two years ago defending corporations. YIKES!

* Diane Feinstein  and Henry Waxman are NOT progressives. They both voted for war and surveillance and diminishment of our rights. Waxman in particular is an egregious fraud. He admitted publicly to not reading bills on which he votes.  After voting for the healthcare bill he joked that now we might find out what is actually in it. His committee's energy bill was very corporate and fossil fuel friendly. His healthcare bill written by corporate insurance lobbyists. See my article below published in the LA Progressive.

JUDICIAL I used a few sites. More can always be done but I am done!

Good site for looking at the candidate's endorsers, answers to some questions, listing of candidate priorities.

A conservative site I use to decide who not to vote for. I combine info from this with the LACo Bar and LWV info to make the distentions.

LA Co Bar ASSOCIATION does an exhaustive research/interview/ data laden comparison for these qualities...non partisan.

 Integrity and character
 Judgment and intellectual capacity
 Fairness
 Experience
 Industry and diligence
 Judicial temperament, including whether the candidate would be courteous and considerate of counsel, parties, witnesses and jurors, and whether the candidate is even-tempered
 Professional ability and knowledge of the law
 Absence of health problems that affect the ability to serve as a judge
 Positive professional reputation in the community.

LACBA SUPERIOR COURT EVALUATIONS
Having completed its investigations and deliberations, the Judicial Elections Evaluation Committee reports its final evaluations for the candidates for the following Superior Court offices:
SUPERIOR COURT OFFICE NO. 3
Sean D. Coen __ Qualified
Joe Escalante __ Not Qualified
Laurence N. Kaldor __ Not Qualified
Craig Gold __ Qualified
SUPERIOR COURT OFFICE NO. 10
Hon. Sanjay T. Kumar — Exceptionally Well Qualified
Kim Smith — Not Qualified
SUPERIOR COURT OFFICE NO. 38
Hon. Lynn Diane Olson — Not Qualified
Douglas Weitzman — Not Qualified
SUPERIOR COURT OFFICE NO. 65
Shannon Knight — Qualified
Andrea C. Thompson — Well Qualified
Matt Schonbrun — Qualified
SUPERIOR COURT OFFICE NO. 78
Hon. James Otto — Exceptionally Well Qualified
Kenneth Hughey — Not Qualified
SUPERIOR COURT OFFICE NO. 114
Ben M. Brees __ Qualified
Eric Harmon __ Well Qualified
Berj Parseghian __ Well Qualified

EVALUATION OF NOT QUALIFIED CANDIDATES - SUPERIOR COURT
The committee rated the following 6 candidates as “Not Qualified:”
Joe Escalante, Kenneth Hughey, Laurence N. Kaldor, Hon. Lynn Diane Olson, Kim Smith, and Douglas W. Weitzman. That evaluation reflects the Committee’s opinion that these candidates do not adequately possess one or more of the attributes necessary to perform the judicial function satisfactorily.

MY VOTE.....
> Office 3: Craig Gold
> Office 10: nobody
> Office 38: nobody
> Office 65: Shannon Knight
> Office 78: James D. Otto
> Office 114: Eric Harmon

For DA: There are three non conservatives. See LA Times article below.
MY CHOICE: Danette E. Meyers opposes death penalty and would like 3 strikes revisited among other positions I like ...especially juvenile court treatment.
Bobby Grace is also good on many things. Probably OK as well.
Jackie Lacey supports the death penalty. That's a NO for me.

The cigarette tax state proposition 29 NO for me.
Michael Hiltzik writes a very cogent and thoughtful piece about this position. I have printed it below. My belief on this vote preceded his article because of the past 10 years I spent diligently researching propositions like this one. Beneath the surface is the important part....which never reaches the light of day for most voters. When props involve millions of dollars... examine them carefully! This prop involves billions. Corporations have dozens of staff members whose job it is to figure out how to write props and get the public to indirectly and unknowingly add public money to their private profit coffers.

REMEMBER Prop 3 in 2008?...Jamie Lee Curtis on TV pleading "for the children " !  Prop 3 did NOT give one more kid access to healthcare. Actually did damage. Took money from public treasury used for actual healthcare to fund the medical device industry, huge construction corporations for remodeling of already the BEST funded hospitals in the country. Did not give anyone healthcare. This was a public giveaway to profiteering corporate industries allied with the university hospitals...whose management staff members get lucrative corporate board positions, millions in speakers fees, targeted research money....and the ever present revolving door. Fancied up the facilities with big screen TV's this years model of last years machines with NO ADDED VALUE to healthcare needs. No one got care from this prop and it's misleading advertisements. Costs us plenty. Everyone was on the bandwagon "for the children & children's hospitals".  It hurt children and their families. A fraud.

29 is NO....contrary to all the TV ads assailing the villainous tobacco industry...which is truly villainous. There is always more to the story with initiatives when they involve money, setting up commissions and assignment of specific recipients.  Sight unseen, most if not ALL initiatives should be opposed when 1.) they involve the dispersal of millions of dollars to 2.) specifically named entities. Those seemingly benign entities have financial relationships with not so benign entities.

Some good may occur...some people may stop smoking. But a near billion dollars to start will be funneled to a "selected committee" to decide how it is spent. Once the money diminishes...this committee will be established as a precedent within the matrix of our universities and in need of funding

After researching initiative & props very carefully over the past 10 years, I have come to realize that most are sophisticated corporate scams which funnel large amounts of tax dollars to a very specific few entities at the expense of solving the primary problems facing our population. The initiatives ALWAYS sound wonderful and righteous (of course) ...straight from heaven and the angels.....but have often hidden results that may actually damage the public at large. When recipients of that monetary largesse are specified they always benefit some special (usually corporate) interests that make a lot of money from initiative "ballot box voting".   Added benefit ...it saves them from paying bribes and using pricey lobbyists to convince legislators (who are very expensive).   And the voters choose the situation...what could be better!

Over the past 30 years a very strong triangulation between political institutions, the universities and corporations with revolving doors between them and money flowing freely has developed. Universities are seen as "the good guys" and people trust that money flowing there will benefit society. More and more universities & government employees are paid millions by corporate interests to implement their plans and funnel research money to specific uses. The pharmaceutecal and medical device industry is Notoriously expert at this using university hospitals, research staff, academics and grad students. More on this ....read ANY of Dr. John Geyman's books about the Medical Industrial Complex and how it works through public groups like major universities . Also Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America by Charles H. Ferguson . He is the producer of academy award winning documentary "Inside Job".

The key questions for me involve context as well as the proposition itself.
What..Who.. How.. Does this solve our problems, meet our public needs, efficiently, is it NON PROFIT public?

We need prevention...used to be a public health project. Public health system has been eviscerated due to lack of budget despite being efficient, accessible and non profit.  Why isn't the money going to revive that?  It is much less costly than interfacing with For Profit institutions.

1. Does this prop guarantee that money is spent for prevention or cure? NO
Funds research for "treatment " ...very open ended. Will that "research" money be funneled to the pharmaceutical industry...not for cures but for more drugs and treatment devices?
2. Who decides ...The board members selected will decide. Any room for payoffs here?
3. Funding is an individual product tax...good ... but still the money should be funded to an efficient existing non profit public entity

I am a nurse...was a public health clinic nurse...I am both opposed to smoking, the tobacco industry and opposed to this measure.

Prop 28. I am leaving 28 blank...I do not believe in term limits at all.

County measures H and L: No idea yet. still researching

Be Well,
Maureen

Choose Life

You don't have to chose the lesser of evils. You can choose life. Have you ever heard the expression, 'life is too short' or maybe someone might say they can't deal with this person or that because they spend too much negative energy? When you deal with negative energy you drain your positive energy. Energy and life are resources that you own, along with your time and labor. The most valuable thing you can give someone is your labor. These things are priceless.

Did you ever have a 'friend' who drains your energy and time? You get into arguments about maybe even the most trivial things. Then one day you wake up and ask yourself, why am I doing this? Why am I spending my time and energy in this self-destructive downward spiral?  If something drains your time, your labor, or your energy, it is self-destructive. You have better things to do.You squander your valuable time for what, some useless arguments?

This is the fallacy of both money and politics. We do things for money that we would never otherwise do. Is money really all that important that you have to drain your most valuable assets, your time and labor? Money is a contrivance. It's only a medium, not a goal. It's not tangible. You can only use it to trade for other things that are tangible. Those who exploit you for a paycheck rob you of your passion and your life. You deny yourself of who you are, just for money, just to gain some tokens of exchange. How absurd is that?

I know it's maybe impossible to live without money, and yet you have to ask yourself at some point, am I living or dying? Get busy living or get busy dying. Perhaps you can reach some kind of compromise. Work for the man by day and do your passions by night. Then strive to do your passions by day as well. But you do have control over at least some of your own time, don't you? Are you going to spend it exploited in futile arguments over useless politics that serve only the rich and empower them over you. They are nothing without you and yet you let them rob you of your own life.

So why vote when you know politics is all a sham, a drain of your time and energy? You know it's always the same story. Choose the lesser of evils. But what you are actually doing is choosing to ignore your own passions, ignore your life, and spend your valuable life energy to vote and validate the status quo of the political black hole that sucks in all our life and energy like a debt that continually grows and can never be paid off. When you choose the lesser of evils, you choose evil, and not life. You can choose to ignore evil.

Decade after decade it's the same story and yet people fall right back into the trap like sheep lead to slaughter. Politicians lie and make false promises to get elected, to get you to give to them your most valuable assets, your time, energy, and labor. Your life. They have all the resources to push your buttons. They tell you what you want to hear. "I support gay marriage." "I'll end war." "I'll close GITMO." "I'll give everyone healthcare." Then they get elected and don't come through and you rationalize that at least they tried their best and they did make some kind of tiny dent, temporary though it may be. Are you really that stupid? Can I interest you in some Mississippi delta real estate?