Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Religious Bible Knowledge Test: 64% Atheists, Jews, Mormons, 55% Evangelical

Tags: Religious Bible Knowledge Test: 64% Atheists, Jews, Mormons, 55% Evangelical

My experience with religion is probably similar to many educated Americans. Just before World War II at age four, I recall living in a small house and had a good car. I remember the bombing and asking my mother about the sirens. She did not know. Other than my mother saving my life by pulling the plug when I stuck my fingers in an electric socket just in time.


The next thing I remembered is taking the bus to go to Manzanar, a concentration camp in the Owens Valley desert near Mt. Whitney. I remember always being hungry because the Caucasian staff were stealing meat, sugar, and other food items to sell on the Black Market and providing us with partially cooked rice by not taking into account that at high altitudes the boiling point of water is lower. My father tried to get more food for us by fishing and trapping rabbits and birds, but our medical records indicated we were malnourished during our four year stay in prison.


Those who rebelled including one of my uncles were sent to Tule Lake near the California and Oregon border and then to Japan after the war even though he was an American citizen.


After 1910, Japanese were not allowed to immigrate to the USA or allowed to become naturalized citizens so only their sons and daughters could even own land and many became farmers and provided about 80 percent of the fruits and vegetables in the Western states. The jealous White Farmers Alliance petitioned President Roosevelt to send Japanese-Americans, 80 percent of whom were citizens, to prison so they could takeover their land.


When we returned to Los Angeles, we lived in the largely Black Watts area in a one car garage with no bathroom. My father who was a superb carpenter and cabinet maker installed walls and made our furniture. The Black reverend and his white wife allowed us to use their outside toilet. The rats were huge!


I got severe asthma on returning to Los Angeles so I prayed a lot as did my Christian Scientist mother which did not help at all. We had no doctors because of her religion. I missed about half my classes in elementary school. Sometimes I felt that dying would be a wonderful option.


Then as I started the seventh grade, my father gave me a spray that ameliorated my asthma so I could breathe. The best thing for me was it allowed me to play baseball, basketball, and run track. It changed my life! My asthma disappeared in several years so I did not need any medication at all. It coincided with moving to East Los Angeles where the allergens were much less.


Like many Americans going to church became a social event rather than a truly religious one. I understand and am sympathetic to most religions, but reject the more radical ones such as the current radical Evangelical and Muslim movements. As long as we keep government out of our beliefs as our Constitution commands, I support people having religious beliefs even though mine is rather weak because it does serve a common good and does in modern times provide community of like minded individuals where our corporations have made the work environment hard to take by straying so far from our common good.


However, we have seen corruption occur in all institutions including religion when they acquire so much power that there main concern becomes keeping that power and money which comes from control. Religion has long been used to control the masses as we know from history time after time. Emperor Constantine made Christianity a Roman religion mainly to control what Christianity is and to provide soldiers to maintain the Roman Empire. Religious zealots make superb soldiers as we see in our own country during elections. I cannot stomach how weak the Democrats are in going for the kill!


Jim Kawakami, Sept 29, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com


Religious Test: 64% Atheists, Jews, Mormons, 55% Evangelical, About 50% Rest


Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.


Excerpt:

¶ Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation.

¶ Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ.

¶ Forty-three percent of Jews did not know that Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbinical authorities and philosophers, was Jewish.

The question about Maimonides was the one that the fewest people answered correctly. But 51 percent knew that Joseph Smith was Mormon, and 82 percent knew that Mother Teresa was Roman Catholic. …

INTERACTIVE FEATURE: Test Your Knowledge

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.

That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for nonbelievers that was founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”

Among the topics covered in the survey were: Where was Jesus born? What is Ramadan? Whose writings inspired the Protestant Reformation? Which Biblical figure led the exodus from Egypt? What religion is the Dalai Lama? Joseph Smith? Mother Teresa? In most cases, the format was multiple choice. … http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

National Security Colonoscopy MRI Dangers PSA

Tags: National Security, Immigrant Fears, Political Psychopath Like, Colonoscopy, MS High Dose Vitamin D, MRI Dangers, PSA Test, Financials

National Security:

CIA Drastically Increases Drone Campaign in Pakistan

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/28/headlines The CIA has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks. According to the New York Times, the CIA has launched at least twenty attacks with armed drone aircraft so far in September, the most ever during a single month. According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or al-Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled the region to escape the CIA drone campaign.

(Main reason drone attacks has increased is that instead of the 20 lbs of explosives causing massive collateral damage, only 10 or 15 lbs is use keeping the kill rate to about 4. Jim)


US Attack Helicopters Strike Inside Pakistan

US Apache attack helicopters have carried out at least three air strikes inside Pakistan in recent days, killing more than seventy alleged militants. Pakistan criticized the NATO operation, saying the attack helicopters illegally entered Pakistani air space, but Pentagon officials said the strikes were done in self-defense. While the US regularly uses pilotless drone aircraft for missile strikes in Pakistan, manned military flights across the border have been rare up until now. (Almost certain that the Pakistan government agreed to these strikes, but as is usually done, the Pakistan government condemns us. Politics. Jim)


FBI Agents Accused of Cheating on Exam

In other FBI news, the Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine has revealed that a significant number of FBI agents cheated or acted improperly when taking an exam in 2008 about domestic investigations. The Justice Department has already identified twenty-two agents who cheated on the exam, but the total number is believed to be much higher. (Unfortunately everyone cheats whether in college, medical school, and national security agencies. Jim)


Cyberattack on Iran and Syria, NY Times buried and Implies It was launched by Israel.


The extremely sophisticated worm could only have been made by a government instead of a lone hacker. Unfortunately it has spread to innocent computers all over the world. During the attack of Israel against the presumed nuclear reactor in Syria was helped by worm that turned off the Syrian radar during the attack and was only found accidentally.


Not really understood by many is why do we have seven carriers in the Gulf Oil region? It is supposed to be a defense against Iran launching their longer range missiles and protect Israel and Europe. I can only guess that other plans are afoot.


Anti-Immigration Sentiments Widespread

Students in Los Angeles speak 100 different languages at home. Problems don’t occur to a high extent when the economy is good, but increase sharply during recessions and depressions. Republicans know how to take advantage of this sentiment by pouring gasoline into the fire with almost a half century of practice.


Gingrich ® who probably has psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies can tell lies with a straight face because emotions do not interfere.


From Jonah Lehrer’s book “How We Decide,” Chapter 6 discusses the Moral Mind. He introduces the serial killer who raped and murdered at least raped and murdered thirty-three boys. John Wayne Gacy liked to torture animals without remorse due to a damaged Amygdala, the emotion center of the our brains, where he does everything by reason for his profit without suffering the consequence of a guilty conscience.

Quoting form Lehrer’s book,


“He grew up in the middle-class suburbs of Chicago, where he was a Boy Scout and delivered the local newspaper. He got good grades in school but didn’t want to go to college. … Gacy grew up to be a successful construction contractor and a pillar of the community. He liked to throw the big summer barbecues, grill hot dogs and hamburgers and invite the neighbors over. He dressed up as a clown for kids in the hospital and was active in local politics. The local Chamber of Commerce voted him Man of the Year. He was a typical suburban husband.


The normalcy was a carefully crafted lie. … Gacy seemed incapable of experiencing regret, sadness, or joy. He never lost his temper or got particularly angry. Instead his inner life consisted entirely of sexual impulses and ruthless rationality. He felt nothing, but planned everything. … The Madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”


Colonoscopy Real Dangers


Stephen B. Erickson, M.D., Nephrology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-edge-newspaper-2007/apr-15.html About six months after I had a colonoscopy, I developed a kidney problem. I read an article recently that warned of kidney failure associated with bowel-cleansing products that contain sodium phosphates. I know it's important to have colonoscopies, but since I now have a kidney problem I don't want to risk further damage. Are there safer ways to cleanse the bowel or to have a colonoscopy without bowel cleansing? -- Orland Park, Ill.

Answer:

Excerpt: … Kidney damage is indeed associated with using bowel cleansers containing sodium phosphate, and you would be wise to avoid them in the future. My own feeling is that all colonoscopy patients should avoid them, because safe alternatives are available. But you, and a surprisingly large percentage of the population, would be especially vulnerable to further kidney damage by using such products again.

The problem occurs when phosphates, which should pass through the kidneys, collect there instead. As a result, areas of the kidneys become calcified -- in effect, "turn to stone." This can damage the kidneys in two ways: by clogging some of the organ's ducts, and by disabling some kidney tissue, which is essential for filtering out toxins from the blood. Both kinds of damage are permanent.

While this damage is said to occur "rarely," that's because only the worst cases present symptoms. What concerns me is that we may be recognizing just the "tip of the iceberg." There may be many more instances of mild and moderate kidney damage, which tend to go unnoticed because they are usually asymptomatic. A person's kidney function could go down to 20-25 percent of normal and yet he or she might feel perfectly well. … http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-edge-newspaper-2007/apr-15.html

Prostate PSA Tests in Sweden Who Should Take? NY Times Science Section 9/28/2010

Tara Parker-Pope of the Times makes me wonder if she really understands the implication of the Swedish study. It seems to me that too many men are so scared now and remove their prostate gland and suffer in incontinence and sexual deprivation all their remaining long lives. This cancer is slow growing and the test does not really detect the killer cancer that grows very fast on the surface of the gland.

I try to detect cancer and heart disease and infections in my body with the C-Reactive Protein Test which measure Cytokines which inflames tissue to drive our immune system to the precise location of the injury or growth.

Just about every surgery is over done by a large factor including prostate surgery, colonoscopy, hysterectomies, back surgeries, MRI, Cat Scans, and even Mammograms. Big Pharma also sells many medications over-the-counter which could be extremely dangerous without Pharmacists telling people the potential dangers. I don’t use this because reduce the acidity in my stomach which is needed to start digesting food well and kill bacteria that comes with food. Side effects with other drugs such as Plavix to cause death. Change your diet to stop heartburn. We must like pain a lot from hot peppers. I like them too, but I largely avoid them.

Get control of your own life. Lose weight by essentially eliminating soft drinks, and fast foods and fiberless and tasteless prepared foods with HFCS. Cut some television time and eat slowly. Take at least 2,000 IU of Vitamin D3, calcium and magnesium 1000 mg/500 mg and B vitamins. Official pronouncements about what food to eat is politically motivated at least to some extent. Take the decision out of the Dept of Agriculture who sleep with the food corporations.

High Doses of Vitamin D Cut MS Relapses

Study Shows Vitamin D May Help Reduce Relapse Rate of Multiple Sclerosis

By Charlene Laino

WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

April 28, 2009 (Seattle) --

High doses of vitamin D dramatically cut the relapse rate in people with multiple sclerosis, a study shows.

Sixteen percent of 25 people with multiple sclerosis (MS) given an average of 14,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D a day for a year suffered relapses, says Jodie Burton, MD, a neurologist at the University of Toronto. In contrast, close to 40% of 24 MS patients who took an average of 1,000 IU a day -- the amount recommended by many MS specialists -- relapsed, she says.

Also, people taking high-dose vitamin D suffered 41% fewer relapses than the year before the study began, compared with 17% of those taking typical doses.

People taking high doses of vitamin D did not suffer any significant side effects, Burton tells WebMD. … http://www.webmd.com/multiple-sclerosis/news/20090428/high-doses-vitamin-d-cut-ms-relapses

MRI Gadolinium Contrast Agents Warning Labels

September 9, 2010 — Medscape, Robert Lowes

Authors and Disclosures

Posted: 09/09/2010

Four gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) will feature a new label warning about the risk for nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) in certain patients with kidney disease, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today. NSF is rare but potentially fatal.

Three GBCAs — gadopentetate dimeglumine (Magnevist; Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals), gadodiamide (Omniscan; GE Healthcare), and gadoversetamide (Optimark; Mallinckrodt) — are now contraindicated for patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) or chronic severe kidney disease, as the risk for NSF is higher in this subgroup. … http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/728323?src=mp&spon=44&uac=26057PR

Financials:

Wall Street has recently made a strong push to sell bonds to the public. This usually means they want to get rid of their portfolio. Just a few tenths of a percentage increase in interest rates will cause a steep drop in the price of the bonds. If you need interest income to live, buy Big Oil or Big Pharma whose dividends will increase as oil becomes more scarce. Food companies is another choice, but stick to the Big Five.

Expect riots worldwide and even wars due to shortage of water, food, and oil in the next decade or less. It is already starting. China is now getting oil from Russia through a pipeline. China has threatened Japan of stopping rare minerals needed for cars, cell phones, and other electronic products. About the only large sources come from the Congo and China. That is why we ignore the 5 million people killed in the last 5 years in the Congo.

The way to reduce fear in our tricky financial markets is to read recent books to understand how our financial markets work. Yes, they are crooked, but we have very few choices to make up for our unstable economic picture.

Because everyone is for bonds and gold, it is safer to invest in something else. All markets are risky as are all investments. Keep this in mind. When every likes or hates the market, try to act differently.

Jim Kawakami, Sept 28, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com


Monday, September 27, 2010

Elections Win Dems Should Talk About Own Values Not About Republican Values

Tags: Elections Win Dems Should Talk About Own Values Not About Republican Values

I believe that most corporate Democrats have the problem of choosing the right thing to say in an election because they have conflicting values. They believe in both the Free Enterprise System and helping Americans have a higher income and support system to make their lives better. Its a zero sum game in spite of the objections.

To help the middleclass, the more affluent and wealthy have to be taxed at a higher level because we no longer have jobs that produce adequate income for most families. They have been shipped to other countries with much lower wages. Bush closed 50,000 Ohio Factories overseas, but they still voted for him in high numbers!

All the large corporate CEOs made enormous profits and the ones that fired the most workers got the highest salary too! Bush Republicans introduced no taxes while American profits were overseas, but taxable while here. Then towards the end of his term, he allowed the large corporations to bring back their profits from overseas without paying any taxes at all! Why aren't the Democrats talking about this too?

Reagan policy of making working Americans poorer only worked because they allowed credit cards easily accessible to increase the profits of banks and stores when the impulse buying of Americans kept they in debt at levels of $8,000 with interests rates as high as 29%. The Mafia chieftains

This is easily seen in the numbers where we have a system where the top one percent have incomes greater the all the bottom 90 percent! The top 10 percent make 47% of the total income in America. Before the Financial Devastation, Financials made up about 49% of GDP. After the collapse and recovery of financials, it made up 62% of the GDP!

Democrats rarely talk about this because they are afraid that Republicans will say that its class warfare. So far I have heard no Democrat say the opposite is true which can be easily proved.

Language does not have to be slick when talking directly to voters while looking at their eyes. It is easy to see if they were understood. Talk directly about democratic values and give examples of what it is. Don’t waffle. Don’t every say Republican values are good. Just state your values to Democrats and especially Independents.

If someone mentions abortion, don’t try to fight them. Tell them I don’t want someone telling imposing their religious beliefs in my personal life. Even with Evangelicals, abortion was not a big deal for them.

Only in the late 1970s under Schaeffer did it become a cause although it has always been a cause with the Catholic Bishops in the last half the 20th Century mainly. Abortion became illegal under Roman Emperor Constantine and the Christian now Catholic Bishops adopted it. Priestly celibacy was introduced in the Enlightenment period by corrupt Popes who wanted the Priests usually from wealthy families to give their wealth to the church.

Jim Kawakami, Sept 27, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/why-the-democrats-respons_b_740023.html Rearranged and Excerpted: Professor George Lakoff Communication Advice for Democrats Republicans hire experts and take their advise, Democrats Don’t Listen to Anyone!

They need to speak from their own moral perspective. They need to connect emotionally with voters. The need to stop trying to be bipartisan; that just helps Republicans, who know enough not to be bipartisan in the current electoral situation.

The Democratic strategy so far has been to see each race as separate, with no overall Democratic vision. Bill Clinton sees this as a mistake and I agree. …

In his campaign, Barack Obama articulated beautifully the Democratic moral vision of America. America is based on citizens caring about, and for, each other. The values of empathy, social as well as personal responsibility, and an ethic of excellence lead to a government of, by, and for the people, with values like freedom and fairness, and a governmental responsibility to protect and empower the people.

That is a Democratic view of America. It calls on Americans to come together in difficult times, and it characterizes the party's, as well as the President's, moral compass.

The voting public does not vote on the basis of the economic details, and the voting public does not fully accept the Democrats' system of values as they apply in this election.

First, all politics is moral. People vote for values they identify with, for what they see as right, not wrong.

Second, the facts alone don't set you free. Facts matter, but they must be understandable, that is, framed for normal human beings, and framed so as to be relevant to the moral views that define a voter's identity.

Third, there are two very different moral views at play in our country's politics. Liberal and conservative moral systems are inconsistent as they apply to most major issues. There is no neutral worldview, no worldview of the "center."

Fourth, there are, however, a significant number of voters --as many as 15 to 20 percent -- who have both worldviews, but may apply them to different issues in all sorts of ways. Some may be conservative on social issues, but liberal on economic issues, or conversely. Some may be "up in the air" -- not sure about given issues. I call these "biconceptual" voters. These are the voters who most matter in this election, as in most others.

Five, because people think with their brains, all ideas are physical. They occur in brain circuits called "frames." Biconceptual voters exist because inconsistent ideas can exist in the same brain due to what is called "mutual inhibition," in which the activation of one frame inhibits (that is, turns off) the other. The more a conservative frame is activated, the stronger it gets and the weaker the corresponding liberal frame gets. What activates frames? Language.

Sixth, what follows from all this is that liberals should never use conservative language (e.g., "tax relief" and "entitlements") because it activates conservative frames and weakens their own case. Liberals should not "move to the right" and adopt conservative positions since that will only make biconceptuals more likely to vote conservative.

Moreover, when you negate a frame, you strengthen it. When a liberal argues point by point against a conservative argument, he or she is repeating the conservative argument and hence strengthening its hold on the brain.

Seventh, in political discourse, numbers in themselves are meaningless. They can be made meaningful only in everyday terms and in moral terms. In themselves, numbers from the Congressional Budget Office don't mean much to most people. The facts alone, not properly framed, won't be convincing. This means avoiding policy-wonk talk, the kind of talk the Obama administration has been using nonstop.

Eighth, people tend to adapt their baseline expectations to what they already have. That is why the President gets little appreciation for what he has already accomplished. If he's done it, we take it for granted. People also tend to be risk-averse.

That is why conservative attacks on the president and the Democrats can be taken seriously, even if they are not based on hard economic facts. The moral: Always go on offense not defense.

Liberal morality means more than just empathy for one's countrymen. It means social and well as personal responsibility and it means excellence -- doing your best as a commitment to family, community and country. And it means framing in terms of such moral views and in terms of risk aversion, not just past accomplishments.

Ninth, there is no reason without emotion. Without emotion, you don't know what to want and what to avoid. Rationality requires the proper emotionality. Reagan knew how to connect emotionally without going into a tirade. So did Obama when he ran for President.
Tenth, repetition matters. The language that people hear most often repeated activates and strengthens the corresponding frames in their brains.

Conservatives are better at marketing their ideas. They are better at framing, because they understand the primacy of morality, how their moral system works, and how to talk to biconceptuals. They have a much more extensive communication system, built over three decades, with think tanks, training institutes, recruited speakers, owned media, and booking agencies -- in addition to ads and bloggers. Their messages are affecting the brains of voters 24/7, every day in every electoral district.


Friday, September 24, 2010

Information Overload Delays and Over Networking Counterproductive

Tags: Information Overload, Delays and Over Networking Leads to Ignorance

ScienceDaily (Sep. 24, 2010) — http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100923142448.htm


Pentagon Study Excerpts: "When there are no delays, the more you communicate with your neighbor, the better global performance becomes," …


"Understanding the impact of delays can enable network operators to know when less communication effort can … be more efficient for overall performance." …


"If there are delays, for a while performance will increase, but even if you work harder to better communicate with your neighbors, eventually performance will decrease until it reaches zero. …


“you also need to know when to "shut up," Korniss explained. After a certain period of poor communication, he said, no matter how fast or accurate you attempt to make your future communication, all communication is counterproductive. …


It took me some time to penetrate my thick skull that sending out too much information is contra-productive. If you go to http://jimboguy.blogspot.com , you can read what you want by looking at the blog summaries on the left column monthly.


Jim Kawakami, Sept 24, 2010


Individuals within a networked system coordinate their activities by communicating to each other information such as their position, speed, or intention. At first glance, it seems that more of this communication will increase the harmony and efficiency of the network. However, scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that this is only true if the communication and its subsequent action are immediate.


Using statistical physics and network science, the researchers were able to find something very fundamental about synchronization and coordination: if there are sustained delays in communication between just two or three parts of a system, performance of the entire system will eventually collapse.


The findings apply to any network system where individuals interact with each other to collectively create a better outcome. This ranges from a flock of birds suddenly dodging to the right in one unified movement to avoid a predator to balancing load in large-scale computer networks to the spread of a rumor throughout an online social network.


The findings were published last month in Physical Review Letters.

Previous studies by the researchers have revealed that the minute interactions between neighboring individuals, referred to as nodes, are the foundation for overall network performance. The fast, accurate, and balanced movement of information between neighboring nodes is what prevents the birds from scattering and allows a story to accurately spread on the Web.


But, as is frequently the case in real-world scenarios, what happens when the information from your neighbor is not up to date? What occurs when there are delays in the transmission or processing of the information between neighbors? The researchers utilized stochastic differential equations, a type of mathematical equation used to model the time evolution of complex systems with random variables, to determine what happens when delays are input into the system. … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100923142448.htm

Economy Financial Greed Has Led to Worldwide Poverty: Amy Goodman Explains

Tags: Economy Financial Greed End of Age of Greed and Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global

Paul Mason in his two books “Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed” and “Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global”


When I watch the news, I always think of the question I want the reporters to ask and they never do. Even the BBC which is much better by far, still misses critical questions. Think! There has been a news blackout about the Republican claim that tax cuts will harm small business.


Since most new companies and thriving ones get money from the rich and corporations who want new ideas and products at a bargain price. We really don’t need Wall Street as it is now constituted. See The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein, 2010, The Penguin Press


Quote from last chapter, page 296. “Prior to the ‘90s, the profits of financial firms had averaged about 1.2 percent of the GDP, with little annual variation. But in the ‘90s and ‘00s they soared; in 2005 such profits totaled 3.3 percent. There is no inherent reason why finance should have suddenly tripled its share of the national output, and in a world with less leverage, less risk, less appetite for exotic securities, and, off in the distance, higher interest rates--no reason why it should continue.”


Here again Lowenstein wanted to keep his job at the New York Times. Before the crash, the GDP of Financials was about 42%. After the crash and free money from the Federal Reserve, Financials now take up about 62% of GDP.


It is never mentioned that the Republican definition of Small business unlike President Obama is that they mean a small number of owners, not workers.


Billionaires Koch Brothers whose private oil company is an S-Corporation where they pay taxes like all of us but have the privilege of deferring taxes for many years. They have tens of thousands of employees and is one of the most profitable of all businesses because of all the subsidies they get from our government put in place by Bush and Republican controlled Senate, House, or all three as President Bush.


How to control Americans? Just keep them entertained and ignorant. Orwell’s “1984” I might add, keep them insecure about their jobs by exporting similar jobs.


Television, Facebook, Twitter, Texting, and games leaves little time to learn. No one reads anymore except for weak detective fictions and the like or screen plays books. That is why Patterson books written by many different writers, and overseen by Patterson are so popular. We hear news in soundbites and we read fiction in soundbites.


Some dating sites want cater to those who read serious books of fiction. That is one place we learn about how people behave. Even the adult fable book with spirits and all that stuff I am reading now “Of Bees and Mist” by Erick Setiawan does not veer too far from too many real life examples in how the Right Wing treats their families.


Throughout history, fiction has been used to tell people the truth!


The Jon Stewart Daily Show uses satire to depict Republicans and Democrats. Colbert exaggerates conservative actions to ridicule them, but very few catch on.


Kakutani of the New York Times seems to try to trash both fiction and nonfiction books that has any liberal sentiments. She trashed books during the 2000 election year that made Bush look bad. She did the same with the #1 best selling fiction by Franzen Freedom about our Middleclass. Lot to learn about real life by reading fiction. Obama has bought the book. Oprah recommended!


Jim Kawakami, Sept 24, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com


Economy Financial Greed Has Led to Worldwide Poverty: Amy Goodman Explains


The Census Bureau's latest report shows that the numbers of Americans living in poverty and without health insurance have skyrocketed. 43.6 million people˜about one in seven˜lived below the poverty level of $22,000 for a family of four in 2009, pushing the national poverty rate to a fifteen-year high of 14.3 percent. We speak with British journalist Paul Mason about his new book, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global.


Listen/Watch/Read

(Emotional Response is necessary to remember and make decisions. That is why watching the video is preferred to reading the transcript. Everything we do is now rushed for what purpose? Most smart folks such as reporters and Democratic politicians think they remember everything, but they seem not to remember the really important things. Just gossip. More truths from http://maddowblog.msnbc.com and http://countdown.msnbc.com and especially Amy Goodman http://www.democracynow.org !


This emotion is generated by curiosity and interest and as the Republican exploit well our emotional responses to political ads. Democrats talk too abstractly. Take a lesson from Joe Biden who is a superb salesperson on a one to one basis just like Hillary Clinton. They are not even close to Obama on reading speeches, but excel over Obama in talking to people. Jim)


http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/24/paul_mason_on__live_working


Paul Mason on Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global

pastedGraphic.pdf

The Census Bureau’s latest report shows that the numbers of Americans living in poverty and without health insurance have skyrocketed. 43.6 million people—about one in seven—lived below the poverty level of $22,000 for a family of four in 2009, pushing the national poverty rate to a fifteen-year high of 14.3 percent. We speak with British journalist Paul Mason about his new book, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global. [includes rush transcript] …

Paul Mason, award-winning journalist and author. He is economics editor for BBC Newsnight appearing on BBC America. His books include Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed and Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global.

Age of Greed and Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global.

Paul Mason, it’s great to have you in New York right before you go back to Britain. You’ve been traveling for two weeks now through the United States. Talk about the middle class.

PAUL MASON: It’s disappearing. For us, the Brits, the concept (idea) of the American middle class has always been a bit flaky. We notice that your politicians call people who earn salaries and work "workers" at election time and then "middle-class" when things are going, you know, a little bit south in terms of the economy. The figures you’ve just read out are borne out by the income statistics. We had the Census Bureau telling us that American average incomes have stagnated for a decade—on some measures, stagnated for thirty years. We know what filled the gap: credit. The credit boom is over. And I think, for many Americans I’ve met on this trip, the whole—the economic collapse of their lives. I met a couple who had lost—who had gone from 75,000 pounds a year to 14,000 pounds a year. I said to them, "Do you still feel middle-class?" They said, "Kind of, but we’re not sure what that means anymore." To me, as a journalist looking from the outside, that’s going to have big impacts on your—on the sociology of America, and eventually on its politics.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I was struck in your book where you basically go head on against a myth that’s been spread quite a bit in—especially in Europe and the United States: the deindustrialization of the modern world. (Developed First Tier Countries) And in fact, you say that the opposite is true, that in fact there are more industrial workers than ever before. It’s just that they’re not in necessarily the United States or Germany or England.

PAUL MASON: I think the number one fact that history will record about the three decades we’ve lived through is the doubling of the world’s workforce, "The Great Doubling," as one Harvard academic calls it. Now, this has huge implications. I’ve had the privilege to report on this. You were speaking about contractors earlier, Iraqi contractors earlier on. I went to Lima, Peru, and found some of the people who had been working in the Green Zone, dumped back in Lima with life-changing injuries, no insurance. They’re part of the global working class.

But, you know, just as the stories in history didn’t get reported in that way, they’re not being reported in that way now. I think the story of global labor is one of the most important things we’re living through and certainly is something that everybody should own. It shouldn’t be the property of archivists and activists, because these are great human stories of individual bravery and triumph over adversity. I just wanted to retell them to people who just have no other way of knowing what their grandfathers and great-grandfathers did.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Mason, we were just in London, where you’re going back to, and we interviewed the great spy writer John le CarrĂ©—and we’re going to play that in the next few weeks. You begin your book in the community, often called the slum, in Kenya, Kabira, where—well, people may know it in the United States only as the place—the backdrop of The Constant Gardner, John le CarrĂ©’s book. But why did you start in Kenya, in Kabira?

PAUL MASON: Because I’ve reported from that shantytown, that slum—that self-organized community, as they would prefer to call it—many times. But it always occurs to me that we see it as a poverty story. And, of course, the struggles in those streets are about avoiding your shack being bulldozed by some hoodlum. But just one mile away is the Kenyan industrial district. And every morning at 5:00 a.m., those people go out of the slums and into the factories. We don’t see them as workers, and yet, without those people living in the slums—earning, by the way, much less than a Chinese worker could earn—all our green beans in Europe and our fresh tulips would not appear.

It’s a hidden story. And they need to know, I think, just as the people here in Lower Manhattan, on your streets. You know, they’re having trouble with the geography of the place they live, recent migrants. They don’t know the history, that Irish and Jewish migrants before them fought exactly the same battles and how they won and what it did to them as people and how it raised them up as people. I just think that we’re almost living in a sort of Groundhog Day, where workforces keep repeating and reliving, just as the people in Kenya are reliving what, you know, my great, great-grandfathers actually went through in the first phase of industrialization. I’m from an industrial town in northern Britain.

JUAN GONZALEZ: The impact of the new centers of the working class and the world being China, India, Mexico, these other countries now, where labor organization is a lot more difficult because the government is so—in most of these places, in essence, controlling, even the unions that develop. What is it doing to labor consciousness, to solidarity between labor organizations around the world?

PAUL MASON: Well, above all, I think China is the absolute pivot of what’s going to happen in the world. I’ve managed to track the emergence of the Chinese labor movement. When I first started to go into China, migrant laborers, the most oppressed people, were just happy to be living in a dormitory, to be honest. You interview a young woman who gets her first pair of high-heel, pointy shoes. That is not—she doesn’t see it as a tragedy that she has to live in a dormitory and work twelve, fourteen hours a day.

But now, five years on, it’s not just the fact that the militancy is there. I’ve spoken to some of the people who organize these Chinese strikes. You know how they organize them? I said, "How do you organize a strike?" Woman said to me, "You write on a piece of paper the size of a postage stamp the single Chinese character 'strike.' And then you pass it to the next person on the line." She looked to me gone out, as—that there might be a difficulty organizing a strike. It’s easy, because they see the gap between what they’re promised and what they’re getting. So we are in a tremendously rapid development of a labor movement in China.

Now, don’t think that this is a labor movement that is going to bring down the Communist Party. The Communist Party has done something very clever. It has depoliticized labor disputes, so that these strikes we had this summer, in Foshan with Honda and the Foxconn, the suicide bids, it became political, but it doesn’t become insurrectionary. The Chinese government has learned its lesson from the twentieth century revolutions where those two things mixed up. But we are seeing the development of a labor movement in China. There’s no mistaking it. …

JUAN GONZALEZ: You have in Sweden, in Italy, and even in Germany now, in France, huge anti-immigrant movements that are developing, here in the United States. And in essence, immigration is the other side of international capital. It’s international—people being forced to move to be able to survive. How is this whole anti-immigrant trend feeding into potential fascist movements in many of these countries?

PAUL MASON: Well, the interesting thing is that the European right—you know, most of the European right originated in the remnants of World War II fascism. But it’s evolving. You’d have to say that it’s evolving towards a kind of plebeian—often based on things like opposition to Islam rather than race itself, color of skin. It certainly is there. I think that you have—your news has been dominated by this whole issue of mosques. We have that in the UK.

But I think the point about my book is to say we live in a global labor market. The labor market starts at our door and ends at a bus stop in the poorest city in China. That’s the labor market. And I think organized labor has had a lot of trouble getting its head around this. They hate offshoring. The American unions don’t like it. Fair enough. Then parts of the American population don’t like the influx of migrants. But if you were to stand back and say, "What period of history are we living through?" we’re living through the history of the globalization of labor. So, one has to, in one’s life, get used to it.

My town I come from in Britain is unrecognizable demographically to what it was when I lived there in the 1980s. But when I was in there in the 1980s, it was the same as it was in the 1900s when my granddad was there. The change we’re going through is a one-time-only change, I think. It’s for everybody to decide what they thing about that. But it’s—I can’t see it as stoppable. The country of Spain is short ten million people. It won’t have a pension system, unless it gets ten million more employees by the middle of the century. Where is it going to get them from?

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Mason, why are US labor organizations, why unions, are so vilified in the United States? I mean, you have the blaming of the demise of the auto industry, by many, on the pension plans, the healthcare funds of the United Auto Workers. You have the blaming of the education budget shortfalls on teachers’ unions and their pay.

PAUL MASON: I think you have to see both sides of this. I think when everyone finds the remains of a strong union way of life, one finds people who are grieving about the collapse of the social solidarity around them. I found this in Detroit. You find people who want to hang on to what they have. You know, I think that can sometimes lead to behavior by unions that seems to people who have no rights or benefits as selfish. Now, I think that is where that debate begins. And I think in Britain unions stick to what you’ve got. You hang on to what you hold. The episodes I cover historically in my book are when trade unions stepped out of that. … Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism--1945-1960-- by Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, University of Illinois Press, 1994. … http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/24/paul_mason_on__live_working

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Income Stagnation Articles Analyzed by CJR, Propaganda by Emphasis, No Time to Read Articles

Tags: Income Stagnation Articles Analyzed by CJR, Propaganda by Emphasis, No Time to Read Articles

Kawakami: Whether you are an activist or investor, this analysis is worth reading carefully. No one is completely objective because we are influenced by our life, genes, and experiences.

I will have additional comments between Chittum’s analysis. Edward Bernays established the Public Relations Industry in America and was writing another book when he died at age 104. He sold us the hearty breakfast in 1910 and got us into World War I under Wilson.

The propaganda against labor unions allowed Wilson to put a labor leader in prison for opposing the War! He also made the Huns the scourge of the earth and their lives were threatened and taken by Americans. Wilson also created a climate with propaganda to force Universities to fire any Professor speaking out against the war.

Hitler read his 1928 book Propaganda in prison and used it to win over the German people and created the Climate for the Holocaust where the Germans, Polish, French, Russians, and others joined in the killing of at least Six Million Jews plus gypsies, homosexuals, and other people the command found undesirable. Propaganda has consequences.

Propaganda is now used primarily directed at the elites who support wealth and power and consumers so they can impart through the media their corporate or government truths about what is happening here and in the world. Corporations use it extensively in election ads which greatly distorts the truth.

Part of the reasons that Journalism Schools were established is to control what the public watches, hears and sees. They believed that Public cannot know all the truth because they do not have the training or intelligence to understand the truth. The Internet including Face Book and twitter for good or bad, has changed that.

Amazon.com Book Propaganda by Edward Bernays

Media Professor Crispin Miller of NY University has a wonderful introduction to Edward Bernays’ book Propaganda, 1928 reprint. $10.

Kawakami: Modus Operandi for NY Times. Because I was so busy in the past with hard work, tennis, skiing, amusements, and watching football games, I only read the first six paragraphs of the NY Times story. After the 2,000 faux election of Bush, I started to read other sources such as Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman to find out what was really happening to our country.

I found that reality did not come from skim reading of the front page of newspapers, but an examination of books and opinions which differ from establishment news. Even Rachel and Keith have to be careful what they say and if they say the wrong thing the seven-second delay allows producers to delete segments which happened quite a bit with Rachel until she complained on the air which reduced the censoring. Professional journalist know what not to say so Olbermann tends to stick with them.

Jim Kawakami, Sept 22, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Economic Crisis Income Drop the Last 30 Years Poverty Increased Faux News Ryan Chittum, Sept 19, 2010, http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_wsj_is_good_on_middleclass.php

… There is a difference this time: In the prior three recessions, incomes fell after years of upswing, then resumed growing once the downturn ended. The decline this time comes on top of a long period in which incomes stagnated even through the recovery of 2003 to 2007. …

Friday, September 17, 2010

Finance Bangladesh to America, Improving Corporation Behavior Benefits All, CEO Run Governments Makes Us Poorer, Giving Power to People Great Dividend

Tags: Finance Bangladesh to America, Improving Corporation Behavior Benefits All, CEO Run Governments Makes Us Poorer, Giving Power to People Great Dividends and Economy

Instead of building Coca Cola or Power plants which employ a few people and ruin the water supply and flood lands occupied by many people, India might really subsidize extensive things like solar panels to Empower the poor.

Today President Obama announced the executive appointment of Elizabeth Warren to run the consumer advocate agency to keep a eye on the banks. Warren's march to success is a story from a Janitors daughter to Harvard Professor, Monitoring Tarp, and Now Consumer Protection Agency, would not be possible in today's economic system. Our past system before the Reagan Revolution for corporations only, allowed the same for my high school friend who also had a janitor father was accepted to Cal Tech which accepts only 200 students a year on full scholarship.

Bill's father was also able to afford buying books in advanced math and piano lessons because he was paid for what his work was worth. Today we underpay the underclass for their work and it pains me that much of the wealthy and upper middleclass also underpays the poor who take care of their children. You get what you pay for.

In corporations employees work many hours because of the fear of losing their jobs. They should know that fear stifles creativity. Now the same high school no longer has students who go to Harvard because of overcrowding and violence. Something is wrong with our current school, work, government where one party stops us from doing good for the people of our country. Gerrymandering has made it worse. That is why we must elect Democratic Governors and Senate which can make us hope again.
In which the last ten years, poverty went up sharply in the last decade under Bush where income went down 5% and poverty increased to 44 million. If we did not include the Clinton job increasing years at all levels in the 15 year assessment, the Bush Republican effect would be more clearly seen. I think it was a political move to include the good Clinton years.

Lots of very smart things as far as policies is being carried out without any publicity. Under the Republicans, government only worked for the wealthy and corporations. Because the wealthy make most of their money from investments at a 15% tax rate, their overall tax rate is less than a middleclass American. Of course hundreds of large corporations pay no taxes at all because of all the "friendly" tax subsidies provided by Bush.

With the current overflow of information in misleading soundbites on TV and skim reading everything on the Internet because we have no time to read it all, we have also become a very for forgetful nation because in order for memory to become strong, we need repetition of the right kind of information. We often cannot sort out the key things due to how we contend with this overload. Thankfully we have MSNBS's Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann at 8 PM ET and 9 PM ET and 5 PM PT and 6 PM Pt daily who do the work for us. http://rachel.msnbc.com and http://countdown.msnbc.com .

Instead of corporation taking more away from us such as jobs, our live, and money, why do they just hire CEOs such as Hurd and Fiorina formerly of HP who fired tens of thousands of good experienced workers and replaced them with inexperienced ones who are paid less, but most contribute less. Experience and hard work is required to truly be innovative. Read the "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell who gains his experience by reading widely. An empty brain no matter how smart someone is, does not create. Firing people can be done with a computer.

I remember a lot because I pay attention and am interested. A chemical reaction formed from emotions is necessary to remember. No interest results in information going in or not and fading fast from our hippocampus. The good news is that it is not necessary to know everything if we once get to a core background of information based on real information stored in our brains. Watching financial news on TV is the worst thing most investors can do unless they are able to filter out the bull-crap. I pay attention to those I trust for information, not interpretation. Just last week, most analysts made a 180 degree change about deflation.

Investing in this climate is extremely difficult, but we all need to pay attention to breaking trends, not day to day fluctuations for whatever reasons. Volatility is something you can follow on CNBC top crawl. I find it does predict the eventual change in the market a few months down the road. Try not to follow the herd up or down. The herd is now saying buy Gold, emerging markets, bonds, and treasuries. If we go back to April of this year for the ten year Treasury notes, we would have lost ten percent in value. When there is a run on bonds, the losses could be much more severe than this.

Even though I am well diversified in index funds throughout the world, I routinely go up or down ten percent in one month. Due to heavy professional investors involved in moving markets now with supercomputers and extremely fast trading in less than one second, everything happens too fast for us to really know what is going on until it is too late.

Our pre-frontal cortex ramps down our emotions so as not to panic, but when we don't know what is going on, we tend to panic more easily. Read a book or two by Bogle such as Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John C. Bogle and Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investing by David F. Swensen, current investor for Yale University. The latter book is now expensive so try to check it out of the library. I would recommend Bogle to buy or any of his other books. He is very truthful.

Many of the projects I was picked to solved by management were in areas that I did not have expertise and too much information. I refused to read their reports of failure and just asked individuals questions and listened carefully to get the most important points. They will say much more in private than in public. That is why I abhor the typical corporate way of solving problems. People just ask questions to make points and give answers to get points.

Most of us ignore movie and television critics realizing that trying to explain the emotional experience of movies or television shows is extremely difficult. Like minded friends on Face Book or Twitter is a better source.

Even choosing spouses from an emotional base rather than an intellectual ones is something I learned after many failures. We cannot live with intellect even though it sometimes helps, but for most, an emotional compatibility is a better criteria. As Joan, my close friend and neighbor told me a few decades ago, go with your gut. That is how I choose close friends, but i missed some good picks of a spouse and partner because I relied too much on my intellect. If I don't like someone immediately, the relationship never lasts no matter how many things we like to do together. Its scary! People who rely mostly on intellect have a higher divorce rate. But I still hold to the rational view that let the relationship cool down a little before making a life-changing decision.

Jim Kawakami, Sept 17, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Solar Power in Bangladesh Used to Empower People in Poor, Rural Areas


In Bonn, Germany this week are representatives of the Bangladeshi organization Grameen Shakti, which makes loans and offers technical assistance to allow poor, rural people to install solar power in their homes, often granting access to electricity for the first time in their family’s history. They have helped install more than 110,000 systems, often with a woman hired to maintain the system, creating jobs, empowering women, and raising the standard of living. [includes rush transcript] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/17/solar_power_in_bangladesh_used_to