How To Live On The Cheap In NYC

Living in NYC can be hard. Everything costs more money here. Rent is outta hand, with small one room apartments in the outer boroughs renting for $900-$1000 without even a separate kitchen.

So what's a hard-working girl like me to do. Stretch your budget.

Neccesity is the mother of invention....

If you're willing to take a train ride out of your neighborhood or if you have a car a great place to go food shopping is National Wholesale Liquidators.

OK they suck in that store. There is no customer service and it's almost always a mad house BUT it's like the be all and end all of 99 cent and up stores.

Notice there are 24 items on the table and only one of them is not a well-known brand name.

$30.68

And yes this is what I will be eating for this weeks menu.

D.O.M. will be happy to see the soap and shampoo products I bought.

Another tip which I shared earlier today with him is to go to the store without showering, brushing your hair etc...because people will happily part the way for you and you can get to whatever item you need first. Helps to get through a very crowded store faster.

Favorite find today was the tuna. None of that chunk lite in oil crap. It was solid in water for only $1.29 a can. Woohoo.

Second tip for today comes from being a temp. If you don't know what that is, it's what so many people in NYC do for a living. I work for a temp agency and get sent around to many places. It pays ok enough and I get to see different corporate cultures and basically sit on my ass all day and blog for a few dollars a day.

Many companies put food out for their employees, especially those in the creative industries. No one will think twice if you grab a whole stack of M&M packs and bring them to your desk, not even as the temp. If you score an assignment at a company that has these things in their kitchen -- take as many as you can each day and take them home with you. No one needs to know that sometimes the candy is your lunch, so that you can save your small temp paycheck for your bills instead. Recently I was at a place that had granola bars, pretzels and all kinds of chocolate candy plus bagels each morning and often brought in lunch. They were more than happy to make sure I was included in the breakfasts and lunches and even offered me a free manicure from the woman who comes each week. I partook in every meal offered and made those M&M's last a few days after the assignment was over.

Shit chocolate is a food group anyway isn't it?

Baggies are your friend! Divy everything you bought up into little baggies and make them last for as many days in advance as possible, taking those treats with you to work. That box of cookies in the photo today are going to last me at least 2 weeks and be my sugar wake me upper snack at work. When those run out or I am bored, the little prepacked fruit cups will be my sugary treat for my work day.

I almost never buy trash bags. I'm all about saving the environment as well as my money. So I take those plastic bags that all my goodies came in and I use them for the trash. I throw out that bag every day, so I don't let the bugs have something to eat in my home. The only bags I buy are for changing the cat litter. Those require industrial size. Nothing I can do about that.

If you have a pet, Petco is your friend. It's a larger store and can offer the same items at slightly less money than your local pet store and sometimes they run specials. This week I hit a super find. Since my kitties are special needs I only buy them the top of the line food, Wellness. The bag was already $3 less than my local guy and with it was a FREE item called Pure Delights meaty cat treats. There's over 300 little pieces inside and the bag was 3 oz. Usually this item is $5 but was free with the dry food I had to buy anyway.

And last tip for today on how to live on the cheap in NYC -- BARTER. Do you have a skill someone else wants? Make an exchange. I often don't have the money for a massage or energy session. But since I too am an energy worker I often do exchanges with other professionals. Saves me at least $85 a session and I get to stay in good mental and phsyical working healthly order...well at least I think so, but I guess that is subjective ;-)

Well it's time for me to go make some noodles and peas for lunch.

Go ELSIE!

Check out what THIS 83-year old did!

Slavery Lessons

In the anti-white mania which has gripped modern Britain, the Atlantic Slave Trade is to be given wide prominence in schools from this term onwards—but the million Europeans who were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 will be ignored.

The untold story of the million whites enslaved by non-whites is covered in a new book by Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University. He developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said.

Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who travelled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland.”

“Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,” Davis said. “Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger—about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas.

But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature—that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” Davis said. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.”

During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa—cities such as Tunis and Algiers—would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children.

The impact of these attacks was devastating—France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic between 1785 and 1793.

Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened. “The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era,” he said.

Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of that time—both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners—did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.

So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.

“The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down—figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,” he said. “It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransomings, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period.

Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries. The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.

Davis said his research into the treatment of these slaves suggests that, for most of them, their lives were every bit as difficult as that of slaves in America. “As far as daily living conditions, the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn’t have it better,” he said.

While African slaves did grueling labor on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, European Christian slaves were often worked just as hard and as lethally—in quarries, heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves.

Davis said his findings suggest that this invisible slavery of European Christians deserves more attention from scholars.

“We have lost the sense of how large enslavement could loom for those who lived around the Mediterranean and the threat they were under,” he said. “Slaves were still slaves, whether they were black or white, and whether they suffered in America or North Africa.”

What's Happening In Italy?

The Italian government, which scaled back a crackdown on illegal immigration and other security measures after critics alleged they were too heavy-handed, now faces accusations that its security efforts aren’t even working after brutal attacks on four tourists.

Silvio Berlusconi’s Rightist government, elected in April on a platform of making the country safer, encountered roadblocks as it tried to implement its security program, including declaring a state of emergency on illegal immigration, assigning soldiers to patrol sensitive areas, and having traffic police carry guns.

During the summer, the measures drew accusations of heavy-handedness and xenophobia from human rights groups, the European Union, and the Catholic Church. Others also voiced concern about possible resurgent fascism in Italy.

In response, the government moderated some plans: The effort to fingerprint all of Italy’s estimated 150,000 gypsies, including children, was trimmed to only some cities because of allegations that it was discriminatory. A law forbidding street begging and rummaging through garbage bins also was scrapped.

{snip}

Despite criticisms against the government, most Italians back the security clampdown, and Berlusconi has a 55 percent approval rating in polls—the highest of any European leader. His supporters argue that most crimes are committed by foreigners, unemployed immigrants or gypsies in particular, and that tackling the issue is in everyone’s interest.

The government believes that a nationwide census will cut crime, stop children from being used for begging or theft, and help identify illegal immigrants for expulsion. Roman gypsies protest that not all of them are criminals and feel they have been blamed unfairly since a Romanian immigrant brutally killed a navy officer’s wife last year.

{snip}

Vatican officials voice private concerns about possible rising xenophobia. Without specifically referring to Italy, Pope Benedict XVI called last week for an end to racism in favor of building a society based on justice and peace. The government’s critics interpreted the comments as an endorsement of their criticisms.

Carrie's Friday Foto Fiesta

It's that time of the week again.


Here's my photos for Carrie's foto fiesta.

Here's What Needs To Be Done With Wall Street

Using the principles of k.i.s.s.

Make it THE LAW that if a firm is about to file for bankruptcy the last three CEO's are required to bail out the firm with whatever cash and property they have. The government has the right to take their property immediately and sell it should they claim they have no money (because they hid it on some off shore account) AND

if the government still needs to add money to the pot to rescue said firm, that money comes with a guarentee that each employee at said firm who makes $100K or less is guarenteed NOT to lose their job until the monies are paid back.

The Stoning Of Soraya

Have you read this book or seen this movie?

After reading about this real life situation on Phyllis Chesler's blog today I know this is the next book I must read and I will do my best to find where this movie is playing as well.

"In it, Sahebjam writes that in contemporary Iran, “being born female is both a capital crime and a death sentence.”

"The book is a haunting and carefully rendered account of how, on August 15, 1986, a thirty-five-year-old woman was stoned to death in Kupayeh, Iran. Soraya, (peace be upon her), was lynched and stoned to death by the villagers with whom she had lived all her life. Her own father, her two sons, and her lying, greedy, heartless petty criminal of a husband, Ghorban-Ali, all threw the first stones."

To learn more please visit Phyllis's blog today.

Softball is usually all the tech guys,Bowling is all the girls and the gays.

And just when I thought I found a new fun idea on where a nice single gal like me could go to enjoy herself and possible meet a guy...

And a shout out proposal to Aleta...I'll run another personal ad if YOU market me and set up the dates. Game?

What IS a girl like me to do?

I love the theater.
I love to sing.
I love screaming at a ballgame.
I love pizza.
I love ice cream.
I love a good cup of coffee.
I love to blog.
I love my kitties.
I love good analytical thought...but also down time and non-thought time.
I love to belly laugh.
I love sushi.

Well you get the point...HELP!

Attitude

"Americans tend to frame things in terms of contests and wars that must be won or lost. Many challenges, however, are about hanging in there and managing a bad situation." -- By JOHN SCHWARTZ

I've been talking with a new friend about life lessons. It's helped me to see some of my own issues, growth and places I still need to grow.

So I was instantly pulled to reading the article (link above) about Lessons Learned in the Losing.

The author is writing about his son Sam and describes him as a young child this way, "Sam, the poor guy, took after me. He was so clumsy that, if he was at a school desk and leaned over to pick up his backpack, he was likely to tip out of the chair and sprawl onto the floor."

I'd have to say it sounds a lot like my brother. Poor guy couldn't hit a baseball, sucked on the little league teams and really got picked on. Eventually he found his way.

When I read this story as well as chatting with my friend it makes me realize that many of us were not offered the lesson of how to hang in there when these rough moments happened.

I am not going to completely fault my mother. She probably just didn't know how to deal with these situations herself. I always saw my mother as a rock but the truth is it was just the hard exterior she learned to surround herself with.

If you grow up with parents that don't explain to you that everyone feels the same shitty things as you do and sees each let down as proof of your failure along with you, or your lack of how to know how to just muddle through, without the guidance to shepard you through those times, you're gonna grow up with a warped sense of who you are. And you're gonna teach others to think of you in that warped way too. And it's going to be cyclical.

One of the reason's I named my blog after the India Arie song was because of her soulful honesty. She seemed to speak directly to me. Her songs taught all the lessons that I had wished I learned as a child, that this author seems to have brought to his son Sam.

I also believe as the author does, that it's true that we learn the most from the lesson of loss.

It's all about reframing your thoughts on yourself and the situation. THAT is what gets each of us through all the hard moments in life.

Thank you to that friend (you know who you are) that has been my mirror.

News From Around The World

Seems reasonable to me!

By Jason Webb
in Madrid
SPAIN, where unemployment is rising rapidly, will stop issuing visas to most migrant workers.
No more visas will be granted to low-skilled workers, such as those employed in restaurants and shops, a spokeswoman for the labour and immigration ministry said yesterday.

She said the government would also insist that companies prove they cannotADVERTISEMENT fill posts in Spain before bringing in foreign workers. She did not say when the measures would take effect.

Celestino Corbacho, the employment minister, said on Wednesday that the government would cut the number of work visas "to roughly zero" in 2009.

"It doesn't seem reasonable that with 2.5 million unemployed, we continue to recruit workers from abroad," said Mr Corbacho, who wants to pay unemployed foreigners to return to their countries. About 180,000 foreign workers arrived in Spain last year.

Unemployment has leapt by 500,000 in a year as the construction boom has evaporated. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the socialist prime minister, who announced an amnesty to about 700,000 illegal immigrants soon after he took office in 2004, has done a U-turn on immigration since being re-elected.

In March's poll, the opposition conservatives won working-class support by playing on fears about Spain's growing Muslim community. The conservative Popular Party welcomed the visa crackdown.

"This is going in the right direction," said a spokesman before calling for more action to stop illegal immigration. Spain's immigrant population has risen to 10 per cent of the population from nominal levels a decade ago, with mainly low-paid workers arriving from Latin America, Morocco, Asia, eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.

---

Before you start spouting that Americans won't take these jobs ...

Ed Kemp, Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi), August 27, 2008
Howard Industries found itself at the center of activity again Tuesday.

Hundreds of job applicants lined up, eager to take advantage of the sudden job openings at the plant located in Jones County, where the unemployment rate is 6.3 percent.

ICE agents on Monday seized 595 plant workers suspected of being in the country illegally. Several workers, who did not identify themselves, said Tuesday they were working and trying to keep the plant operational in the wake of the sudden loss of co-workers.

They said it was common knowledge many of their co-workers were suspected to be illegal.

It’s an idea that maddens Samantha Stevens, 18, of Heidelberg, who was among those who pulled up to Avenue A across from the plant’s entrance throughout the day. She said she has been unable to find a job since she graduated from Heidelberg High School in the spring and blames, in part, the willingness of companies to hire illegal workers.

{snip}

Gwendolyn Watkins, 40, of Stonewall said she drove 40 miles to Laurel to fill out an application with the electronics maker. She worked at Tower Automotive in Meridian as a production worker for eight months before job cuts in June left her unemployed.

She now hopes to get on at Howard, and said that, while “everyone needs a job,” she believes that legal workers should be the priority.

Clinton fundraiser backs McCain over Obama

Someone who shares my point of view! You go Lynn Forester de Rothschild !

Is This PRO Feminist?

Hillary Clinton pulls out of pro-Israel rally after learning Sarah Palin will be there

Is this CHANGE you can believe in or change you CANNOT BELIEVE!?

"Her attendance was news to us," Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines said last night. "Clearly there was some miscommunication because this was never billed to us as a partisan political event. Sen. Clinton will therefore not be attending this event."

UH WTF??? Mr. Reines, this makes NO SENSE. If this wasn't billed as a partisan event then why is Mrs. Clinton refusing to attend? It is SHE who is MAKING this partisan.

A vote for Obama is a vote for more of this kind of behavior and politics for at least 4 years.

The Democratic party has become the party of divisiveness, partisan politics and LIES! Party of unity MY ASS!

The PC Police

Fighting over a previously respected word that has "New meaning" is proof of the insanity that continues. Change is good. But ignorance is dangerous. This has gone beyond sensitivity...into insanity.

In our ever sickening society, political correctness has come to mean not only the definitions of words but the intent of words. The intent of the word is now allowed to be defined by a few to effect all. The liberals play up to minority idealologies by passing insane laws on words and intent. The ACLU, New York Times, CNN and Power groups continue to press forward on diversity and political correctness in an attempt to segregate the country. Many of the proud people that fought so hard against segregation are now the real segregationists ...and don't even realize it ...because the main stream media refuses to criticize them... or even analyse their "intent".

I Just Can't Help Myself

Porn passed over as Web users become social: author

Well I guess THIS explains that idiotic email I got from my Ex a couple of weeks ago.

It's so ironic that this story is on Yahoo today as I was just thinking about how I didn't mention his little internet pornographic indiscrections in my tell off post.

I guess he's moved on to a new addiction.

The View's Vicious Interview

The hosts of ABC's The View were vicious to Sen. John McCain during his appearance this week.

OK OK these ladies are NOT journalists they are television personalities BUT I remember when Michelle Obama was on their show. The tone was so very different. They were cordial and respectful and even had a conversation about how diversity was so important.

EXCEPT when the diversity comes from another point of view/opinion...then all best are off and it's ok to be rude in your questioning and uncivil to your scheduled guest.

The irony of it all was that they were attacking McCain for what they felt were attacks on Obama. They felt that some of his ads were lies. Therefore justifying the 1-lack of eye contact from Barbara WOOWOO and 2-her very obvious body language of crossed arms and angry facial expressions. This from a newswoman who is supposed to be unbiased and has made several stated claims about how she cannot talk about certain topics on The View because of her role in ABC's news division.

Forget about the way Joy Behar went after McCain. Ms. Behar, it's ok to disagree or even not like the ad McCain ran, but you took all your legitimacy from your argument away when you showed that you had no sense of decorum in your delivery of your questioning.

What was all the hoopla about? It was about two ads that McCain ran that he endorsed about Obama's comments regarding the "lipstick on a pig" remark and Obama's position on sex education.

Were those ads exaggerations? Yeah I would say so. I never agreed with the press making such a big deal out of an expression so many people use even if the timing was suspect. And yes McCain used spin to make Obama's position on sex education to 5 years olds look suspect.

THAT'S WHAT POLITICIANS DO!

These women didn't seem to have any contempt for The Obama's at all, even though they sat in a racist church for 20 years and have personal friends who bombed and killed innocent civilians right here at home.

Nope they were cordial including Elisabeth Hasselback who is a Republican.

Were these same women as angry about the lie-filled ad Obama ran about John McCain and his supposed ignorance to the use of the Internet and e-mail?

You'd have thought that at the very least Sherri Shepherd would be offended since she has a son with disabilities. Or perhaps it is just that with Ms. Shepherd her value system is such that the race of the person trumps the actual issues and character. I wonder if that is the case how she will feel when the shoe is on the other foot and she goes to someone for help for her son for his disabilities and they choose to help someone else first based on race.

I thought the Democratic party was supposed to be the champions of the disabled and their rights. YEAH RIGHT?!

Tom Bluner at newsbusters.org says the following about this ad against McCain:


It has already been established (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) that the Obama campaign's ad ridiculing John McCain's computer skills, including the claim that McCain "can't e-mail," has several reality-based problems:

McCain has been an e-mail devotee since 2000, if not earlier, receiving help from a loving spouse to respond to messages, and was described by Forbes Magazine that year as "the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist."
The reason McCain gets help with e-mail is that his severe war injuries prevent him from doing many things many of us take for granted, including typing on a keyboard.
Further, the current and previous Oval Office occupants have rarely used e-mail -- the former because he never learned how while in office, the latter because of legal considerations. Future occupants will likely be, and probably should be, similarly constrained.
So it's as clear as can be that Obama's ad is wrong and, intentionally or not, very mean to a man whose physical challenges are a result of beyond-the-call service to our country.

Beyond all that, Kevin Aylward at Wizbang has noted that McCain's 2000 presidential run was effusively praised as a groundbreaking high-tech campaign by a Democratic Internet pioneer in a 2005 book.

In Their Own Words

Democrat Senator Robert Byrd former member of the KKK used, "White Niggers" in a speech.

Black Caucus members have used words like White Boys and Honkies.

Jesse Jackson said if he was walking down a dark street at night and heard footsteps behind him, " I would hope it was a white person not a black."

Hillary Clinton called one of her campaign organizers "A Jew Bastard."

George Orwell Quotes

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

Test Your Outrage Day 2

Four years later - a white man named Ken Tillery, hitched a ride in Jasper, Texas. He was given a lift by four black men who then murdered him to a deafening national silence. Like Byrd, Tillery was held hostage and beaten. Then he was run over and crushed to death. The copycat nature of the crime made it a natural news story. But there was none, except a small story in the Houston Chronicle. This savagery was apparently nothing. The pigments were politically incorrect. It was only some white guy, whose ancestors probably owned slaves.

What would happen if, instead, we returned to the idea of individual accountability, and gave up the totalitarian fantasies of reparations and "social justice," in which oppressed classes exact retribution from their age-old oppressors? What if we returned to the real world in which individuals commit indefensible misdemeanors (Los Angeles) and monstrous crimes (Wichita)? What if we revived the idea of making the punishment fit the actual deed? Think of all the people who wouldn't know what to do with themselves if that were to happen.

Discuss

(I'll cite attribution where I got this from in comments if asked...I did not write this.)

Reforming The Views Of Others

"If there is hope for true peace in the Middle East, it won't simply come from Israeli and Palestinian leaders shaking hands at a formal ceremony. It hinges on extremist Islam reforming its view of others." --Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (see full article)

I've been listing a lot of facts on my blog about racism and terrorism. When I listen to those who object, both in my personal life and via media coverage I realize that the objection stems from a disbelief of what I and others like myself are disseminating. So much so that we are the ones being labeled as offensive and only trying to charicature other cultures, and that somehow those of us distributing the findings that we pull directly from those cultures papers and other media outlets are trying telling tales of the few as though they are the masses and therefore it is not the perpetrator that is evil but the truthteller that is.

Ironically the same people have no trouble believing that it is our culture and country that are collectively evil, but dare you say it about Islam, to a liberal/left-leaning person here in the United States and you are now a terrible person who broad brushes an entire people to spread hate.

I cannot speak for everywhere in this country of course, BUT here in NYC, the communities I see that share these values of hate America first are the very same ones that have the nicest things available to them all the time. They have more school choice than kids in the burbs do. They have the nicest parks to visit with their kids. And while I am a big proponent of organic foods, they are expensive...and there always seems to be the specialty shops in large numbers and people always able to purchase them without a problem financially etc...

And yet they never seem happy with what they have and are ALWAYS angry with our government first and NEVER feel that places like Iran are evil or perpetrate hate.

Even more ironic is their protectionist feelings for us not to bomb Iran, a country that just convicted two men for being Infidels for converting to Christianity and believes that gays don't exist in their country yet do not seem to have any problem voting for a man that has direct personal ties to a man who bombed his own country and killed innocent civilians and says we didn't do enough.

I just don't get it. If you are for women's rights, gay rights, and freedom of religion and you are living in a country that allows such communities to thrive without any fear of retribution, how can you be so angry and believe your country so bad yet not have any problem with the countries that do partake in these horrible acts against human beings?

I know I know...because you don't believe what I have shown you and you think it is I who is racist for showing the failures of another culture. Up is down and down is up.

Global Warming

Look I don't know so much about this global warming thing, well at least not that we are creating it. YES, we are polluting and that's wrong. We have only so many resources left and need to live honorably -- yes yes yes. But many scientists don't believe in this man-made global warmning crapola and after seeing this article today I believe we have some evidence that this is just how the cycle on our planet works. It's a long cycle albeit but a cycle nontheless. Hey Al G. NEENERNEENERNEEEEENER! :-p