Give me medicine, not prayer!

In this article I found it very surprising that there actually was a study. Prayer is just a christian form of meditation. I can understand that those who practice the religion, believe it helps. There are those who avoid black cats, crosss their fingers, and toss salt over their shoulders.

Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking christians, I am only knocking those who choose to be ignorant. There are those who will not accept blood transfusions due to their religion. Logically, praying for someone, is the same as crossing your fingers for them. Whether you agree or not, this fact is true, but I wonder how much they spent on the study.

The money would have been better spent, helping someone with an illnes, or even a surgery. That's just my opinion there. Had the study not been done, the answer would not be definative.

Don't get me wrong, it is healthy to think of others, and reflect about peoples well being, but it accomplishes nothing for them, other than the fact that they know they are on your mind. That can be helpful to the persons psyche, and help them "hang on", but only in a psychological sense, not physical.

Got Balls?

Testicle cells used for research

I found this article not only interesting, but an eye opener.You know if stem cells work, why not cells from the testes. Heck that is pretty much half of the stem cell. The amazing thing is that this breakthrough can help science in an enormous way. We can avoid the problems with the legalities of stem cell research, aborted fetus research, research on left over fertilized eggs, and research on many othe hot topic cells. As far as the researcher goes, this is a good day, heck most men have testicles, at least in the physical sense.

Until next time,

Snappy

Bush urges patience in Iraq

Bush urges patience in Iraq. This comes as no surprise to me. He and Cheney would be doing themselves an enormous injustice if they were to "cut and run".

They have tried for years to get everyone to "stay the course", and keep their "resolve". What I want to know is, at what point does the average person realize, this isn't working, nor will it work. The way we are trying to force democracy on Iraq is equivilant to screaming english instructions louder to make a non-english speaker understand. Flat out, it won't work.

On top of this, we keep spending money, hand over fist, to keep up this farce. The Palestinian election should have been a great indicator as to how the people of that region want to be led.

I predict within the next year, we will start pulling out of Iraq, but keep up the rethoric as if we are staying. They will try and fade into the night, and not be noticed.


Uggghhhhhh

Good Greif, will we never learn

Bush re-states preemptive policies

How can we afford a preemptive strike on Iran, we could never turn up Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and still have mud on our face over that. Then let's talk about money. Where is that coming from? The latest request from congress will be putting our deficit at 9 Trillion dollars , and I don't know about you, but that is a deep hole to dig yourself out of.

I wish the Republicans still tried to honor their Contractwith America. This was a real well thought out guideline, and I agree with it, or at least the majority of it. Dick Army wrote most of the document. This was put in place in 1994, just six weeks before the congressional election. Which resulted in the first time in forty years that the Congress was not a Democratic majority.

My final gripe on this is that George W. Bush has never, and I mean never vetoed a bill in his time in office. This has even set a record. So just looking at the history of his administration, the latest debt ceiling will rise, and we will try and attack Iran. When will every one wake up and smell the coffee? It is this simple, you either pay now, or pay later. The difference is that it costs more to pay later.

Enough for now, I can only take small doses of ignorance at a time, mine included.

Carbon Dioxide, it's what we have...

Carbon Dioxide article

This article clearly shows we have too many people on the planet, and too little greenery. I don't mean we need to knock people off, but clearly why do we do some of the things we do. Ine example is life in prison, this is more cruel than death. Death is final, life in prison with no parole is an enduring punishment. You know, if everyone knew you would get executed for commiting crime A, you would have a whole lot fewer people risking the consequences.

Trees, convert Carbon Dioxide into Oxygen. When there is more carbon dioxide being produced than can be converted, we clearly don't have enough greenery around. There are only two solutions, more greenery, or less people. Fewer people, would mean fewer auto emissions, less electrical plant emissions and even less crime. Though, most people are against that way of thinking, let's plant more trees! Not only are they pretty, they serve a purpose.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a vegan, I eat meat, and enjoy it, but we have a problem that isn't going to go away on its's own. Someone has to take the first steop, so I am planting two trees, yet again this weekend. Dogwoods, they are nice to look at.

Texas Tragedy

A sad story

This poor girl, a beauty queen nonetheless, was struck by a train. Sure a couple of assumptions and cruel jokes pop up off the bat, that is sadly how my mind works. Let's look at what went wrong, according to the report.

First off, whay was she walking along a railbed? Sure I know many do, bud if you are deaf, would'nt that increase the risk factor?

Secondly, she was "texting" at the time of the accident. Couldn't she feel the vibrations of the train? There is a train that passes by my house, about a hundred and fifty yards away, I can feel the train coming, before I hear it.

Thirdly, towards the end of the article, it sounds as if the police are suspecting foul play. That was thew first thing I thought of.

The snow plow sticks out 16 inches on either side of the engine, why would you walk that close to the tracks. Also, a person questioned in the article stated you can see the train coming, so did the engineer see her? was she pushed out at the last minute? Why was the engineer not interviewed? I figure the police suspect fowl play, and let an article like this to get printed so the murdere will loosen up, and fess up.

Truly, it is sad to hear of anyone loosing their life, especially someones child.

I am not sure why this particular article struck my attention, I could have written on tornadoes, Mitt Romney's gay adoption bill (which I stjll should) or even the earthen damn breaking away in Hawaii. Dunno, other forces at work maybe?

US trade deficit widens further

Foreign imports of oil into the US are continuing to grow

The US trade deficit has hit a new monthly high of $68.5bn, with imports of oil and cars continuing to grow significantly.

January's deficit was 5% higher than a month earlier and exceeded the previous record of $67.8bn seen last October.

The figures make gloomy reading for the Bush administration after the deficit hit an annual high of $723.6bn in 2005.

The value of imports rose 3.5% to $182.9bn, eclipsing a 2.5% rise in US exports to $114.4bn.

Costly oil

Economists said the figures pointed to the annual deficit rising above $800bn in 2006.

The increased cost of oil imports helped fuel the deficit rise, according to figures released by the Commerce Department.

The trade shortfall with Opec, the oil producers' organisation, rose by more than 11% to $8.4bn.

However, imports of a wide range of consumer and industrial goods, including food industrial supplies and cars, also hit record levels.

"You can't blame it all on energy, because the trade deficit excluding petroleum rose faster than the overall deficit," Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at stockbrokers Spencer Clarke told Reuters.

The deficit with China continues to grow amid persistent calls by Washington for China to further revalue its currency.

The US trade gap with China rose 9.9% to $17.9bn.


I found this article on The Raw Story, and Oh My God! We have to do something

We are going to go bankrupt as a nation! We cannot continue down this road. The republican party for years kept saying the democrats just want to tax and spend, basically villifying the party as a whole, but look at where we are now fiscally. You have to tax, if you are going to spend. This country cannot continue to live it's Yuppie, I want it now and pay later ways.

Look, I know there are good and bad politicians on either side of the aisle, but lets face it, the Democratic party, while a more liberal party, are proven to be more fiscally responsible. This is a fact, proven, records show it, case closed. This war, is not only costly, but unecessary. We would have been better off to put that money into our education system, and invest in ourselves, rather than spread the mass destruction we did. I'm not against war, don't get me wrong, I do believe we needed a campaign to oust Saddam. Why did we give up on Osama? Why did we stay in Iraq after Saddam and his sons were removed? Truly, we cannot make Iraq a democracy, nor should we try. Hell, look at Palestine, they had a chance, an election, and they voted Hamas into power.

Though I firmly believe no government should be dictated by religion, neither Muslim nor Christianity, I do believe it is not our place to dictate to another country what is right or wrong there, hell we can't even straighten out our own crap!!!!!!!!

We need a leader in office, not a politician, we need bankers running the budget, not politicians, we need teachers running education, not politicians. We need reform

Thank the Constitution for freedom of speech, and freedom of expresion. Thank the fore fathers, maybe soon we will have leaders with the foresight and fiscal responsibility they had. That will be a great day!