The way I see things

The point of this poem is not meant to bring you down,
Nor is it sarcastic or witty, ill leave that for a clown,

Just give me a moment of your workaday life,
And Ill give you some data about peoples worry and strife,

I could go on a banter about McCain or Bush and even Obama,
But that’s for another time – this is for everyone else and their mama,

Let’s talk about situations that need solutions like a baby needs milk,
Like to get a full tank of gas, means you must have come from good ilk,

Or what about the fact that the worlds fastest growing island out in the Pacific,
Happens to be made with plastic bottles and other trash to be more specific,

That’s right - its floating out there near Hawaii and Papa New Guinea
It’s the size of Texas so all you green people should do more than buy that hybrid new Mini,

Or what about education and that we (USA) were named #18 by the UNICEF committee,
That’s quite a statement when we are supposedly the best country with all the best cities

And if you read that report I’ll bet you’ll find something in there,
That made me start thinking (which used to happen in this country a fair share)

So this is what it is that I found that made me realize and I was then off and running
The report finds that educational success or failure is not directly linked to funding

It has been estimated that 40% of Americans are on some kind of medication,
What happened to the good ole days when it was all about god and meditation?

Look, if all that would happen is you took the pill and it did what was stated,
Then I would bring up another topic and let “big pharma” go on unabated

But ladies and gentlemen I am sorry to tell you,
That some of the drugs were designed just to sell you,

I’m not talking about blood thinners and drugs of that kind,
I’m talking about Prozac and Rittilin that destroy your own mind,

So pay attention to me now as I have something rather unsoothing,
Those Psychiatric drugs were in the kids involved in school shootings

There is a silent epidemic that must be put to an end,
For it’s up to us now as god himself will not mend,

But just like the planet Saturn with its many turning rings,
These issues orbit me as well, It’s the way I see things

© Montana Spencer 2008

That spark

Hello! I wrote a poem today and liked it so I figured I'd post it... It's about a very special girl whom I have known for a loooooong time... Why not put it up.






Have you ever looked at a crowd of people from a distance?
And seen that certain type of person slide among with no resistance?

It’s hard to explain what is really occurring,
Other then, when you’re with them its rather assuring,

They do what they want because they have that “pizzazz”,
Their like there own type of music, but not redundant like jazz,

There the kind of person that you can throw into a Unknown bar,
Walk-a-way and come back and “What” there now the local star?!?

What makes them tick I know Ill never know,
But I met someone like that – not too long ago

She is the kind of person that argues about characters from the big screen,
Like his name wasn’t “dark helmet” it was “Lord of darkness” and there is no in-between

She matches the description, right down to the last “T”
She is not your average person, not boring yet quite pretty,

She can make you smile without even opening her mouth
And with her it’s always up, things never seem to head south

So its pretty clear to me I was all alone in the dark,
Then out of nowhere she came and with her – That spark

Later - Monty

Obama or McCain... How about neither!

After months of refusing to endorse any candidate in November's presidential election race, Congressman Ron Paul—who ran a hard race for the GOP nomination—announced Monday afternoon in a press statement that he was supporting Constitution Party nominee Rev. Chuck Baldwin.
Baldwin, a minister at Crossroads Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., and a syndicated columnist, could not be reached for comment, but Frank Fluckiger, the Constitution Party's Western States Area Chairman, told NewsWithViews.com that he and other party officials had "no idea" that Paul had actually decided to endorse their candidate.
"Of course, we are thrilled. It will be a real boost to our party and membership," he said. "It was wonderful for Congressman Paul to do this."
The Baldwin campaign had approached Paul for his endorsement, as had the Libertarian Party and the GOP—with former senator Phil Gramm making the pitch for Paul to endorse Sen. John McCain. But Paul repeatedly refused.
The surprise announcement came less than two weeks after the Texas Republican had hosted a Third-Party Unity Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, under the auspices of Paul's new project, the Campaign for Liberty. At the event Paul called on voters to reject the two major political parties and vote for one of the third-party candidates with him that day.
Joining him at the podium were Chuck Baldwin, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader, Independent.
Paul's intention was to focus voters on the idea that there are other parties out there and other candidates than simply the "big two." That's why he hosted the press conference and invited all the third party candidates. All of them.
But one third-party candidate was a no-show: Bob Barr, a former congressman from Georgia, now the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate for the November election.
Not that Barr hadn't been invited. Not only had he been invited, he had accepted. Then moments before the conference was scheduled to begin he sent word that he would not be attending, saying it would be "a waste of time." Worse, Barr had scheduled a press conference of his own to begin a couple of hours following Ron Paul's event.
"I'm not interested in third parties getting the most possible votes," Barr said at his press conference. "I'm interested in Bob Barr as the nominee for the Libertarian Party getting the most possible votes. Adding insult to injury, he said he'd allow Paul to be his running mate on the LP ticket.
Barr also sent a letter to Paul, explaining why he should not stay neutral but join him in the Libertarian Party fold. The letter has been pulled from the Barr campaign website. Today, Paul replied, declaring at the end of a lengthy essay posted on the Campaign for Liberty site:

"The Libertarian Party Candidate admonished me for 'remaining neutral' in the presidential race and not stating whom I will vote for in November. It's true; I have done exactly that due to my respect and friendship and support from both the Constitution and Libertarian Party members. I remain a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party and I'm a ten-term Republican Congressman. It is not against the law to participate in more then one political party. Chuck Baldwin has been a friend and was an active supporter in the presidential campaign.

"I continue to wish the Libertarian and Constitution Parties well. The more votes they get, the better. I have attended Libertarian Party conventions frequently over the years. I've thought about the unsolicited advice from the Libertarian Party candidate, and he has convinced me to reject my neutral stance in the November election. I'm supporting Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate."

So it looks like if you were a supporter of Ron Paul (as I am) then i guess its clear who he wants you to vote for. I think that its interesting that he was asked to support McCain but he didnt.

What do you think?

Later - Monty

SIN STOCKS

The below article was written by John Carey. John’s Peace and Freedom II blog always contains topical and insightful material. John has degrees in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science from Texas A&M University, and has worked for a major oil company for over 24 years. As a humanitarian endeavor, he has researched extensively on the psychiatric drugging of children.


SIN STOCKS by John Carey

“It is part of the American dream to put a dollar into a company stock today, and get lots of dollars back when you sell. The only modifier to this dream by some is an aversion towards "sin" stocks - avoiding companies that make alcohol, cigarettes, pornography, guns or provide gambling.But when I suggest that you pitch drug companies into this same sin-bucket you probably think I'm joking. But I'll let you in on my reasoning, which includes numerous lawsuits against the companies, lying by the company executives to market their drugs under false pretenses for profit's sake, and drugs pushed on the public which knowingly harm more people with the side effects than they ever help. Side EffectsAll drugs have side effects! Taken for a short time to cure something worse, it is a beneficial exchange. But drug companies can't make the huge profit for an antibiotic you take for two weeks as they can for a "mental-health" pill you take every day for the rest of your life!With the first group of antipsychotics marketed, drug companies freed many people from the state hospitals. But one debilitating side effect of these drugs (like Thorazine, Haldol and Prolixin) was that they caused involuntary, repetitive, and purposeless movements. In the 1990s, newer drugs called atypical drugs (like Clozaril, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Geodon and Risperdal) largely replaced the older meds and were marketed (at eight to twenty times the cost of the prior drugs) as causing fewer involuntary movements, but they have their own side effects such as weight gain, diabetes and early death.* Tens of thousands of people sued Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca, saying that their drugs, Zyprexa and Seroquel, gave them diabetes and elevated blood sugar levels. Eli Lilly reports having paid $1.2 billion to settle over 30,000 lawsuits.
* In 2008, Alaska sued Eli Lilly for the medical costs of Medicaid patients who developed diabetes while taking Zyprexa. One of Eli Lilly's top executives sent an email encouraging Lilly to promote Zyprexa for a use not approved by federal drug regulators (known as "off label") and while doctors can prescribe a drug "off label", it is against federal law for a drug company to encourage this practice. Alaska settled with Lilly for $15 million and now other states are going after this legalized drug pusher. (Global sales of Zyprexa approached $4.8 BILLION in 2007.) Lilly also faces 1,200 cases as well as a federal probe over its marketing tactics.
* Janssen's Risperdal got FDA approval to expand the use of the drug to address adolescent schizophrenia, the irritability of autism in kids and for bipolar disorder. In 2006, it was the most heavily prescribed psychiatric drug in New York's Medicaid kids program, given to 17,393 children. It is also blamed in lawsuits nationwide for side effects including diabetes caused by weight gain, Parkinson's-like movement disorders and gynecomastia, in which males grow breasts which have to be surgically removed.
* The pharmaceutical companies have made astronomical profits since promoting the atypicals to treat mental disorders. Since the drug companies couldn't claim that the atypicals were better than the old drugs, they paid doctors to say so. This brought about a widespread false belief that the newer medications were safer and worth the additional billions of dollars in taxpayer money to make these the states' preferred drugs of choice. Since then, the life expectancy of people treated in community mental health centers has plunged to a point twenty-five years LESS than the average due to a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease as a side effect of these drugs. (For comparison sake, being homeless cuts ten years off your life expectancy.) Chuck Areford said in a 2008 article titled "Antipsychotic Drugs are Doing Harm" that this "…must be ranked as one of the worst public health disasters in U.S. history."Drugs Marketed Under False PretensesIf you are the CEO of a company, a large part of your multi-million dollar compensation is tied to how well the stock does during your tenure. This has led the companies to promote their drugs much like the rest of Madison Avenue promotes cars or the latest perfume. However, while the brand of car you drive doesn't adversely affect your health, which psych drug you take to hide your problems does.* The entire basis for the use of psychotropic drugs is a THEORY, not a fact! The media presents it as a fact that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance. However, even the psychiatric bible clearly states that the cause of depression and anxiety is unknown. Jeffrey Lacasse, a doctoral student co-authoring a study on this is quoted as saying, "… there are few scientists who will rise to its defense, and some prominent psychiatrists publicly acknowledge that the serotonin hypothesis is more metaphor than fact."
* In 2006 4-year-old Rebecca Riley died of an overdose of psychiatric drugs that had never been approved or tested for children. She had been taking drugs for ADD and bipolar since she was two years old and died with four prescription drugs in her system. Her heart and lungs were damaged due to prolonged abuse of the prescription drugs.
* Cheyenne Delp, a five year old, died in 2004 while on five prescription medications. One of the anti-depressants required that she undergo an EKG to determine if her heart was healthy enough for her to take it. The child psychiatrist, Dr. Saran Mudumbi, testified that Cheyenne was out of control and that she suffered from paranoia, depression and anxiety.
* One of the main psychiatrists pushing treatment of children with psychiatric drugs is Dr. Biederman who has financial ties with fifteen drug companies and serves as a paid speaker or adviser to half of them, including Eli Lilly & Co. (Zyprexa) and Janssen Pharmaceuticals (Risperdal).
* A drug is approved by the FDA for narrow uses, but gets tried off-label on hard-to-treat conditions and the drug company's sales force stokes up this usage until the research catches up years later that shows the initial enthusiasm was unfounded. With the limited schizophrenic and bipolar market for the atypicals, the drug companies marketed them as safer than their predecessors. They came to be tried beyond the approved uses for nursing home residents, prisoners, and children younger than six years old. Total U.S. sales for this class of drugs reached $13 billion in 2007, doubling the sales just five years earlier.
* Research by three universities says long-term use of anti-psychotics offers "no long-term benefit for most patients." And while anti-psychotic medication is not licensed to treat dementia it is being given to 100,000 elderly patients in England to keep them manageable! Studies show that these drugs increase the risk of strokes and other harmful side effects. One study showed that after 3½ [years, 60% of the Alzheimer's patients given a placebo were still alive while only 28% of the group given the anti-psychotic medication were.
* While an estimated 30-60% of U.S. nursing home patients are placed on antipsychotics, at the Bronx's Providence Rest nursing home, the staff gives massages to the patients. Utilizing this therapy, the nursing home has cut its use of antipsychotics to 2-3%, the lowest rate of any nursing home in New York!
* The drug companies funded the committees which set up the state plans for defining which drugs to use for which treatments. Drug company profits then soared because the atypicals were listed as the first three choices over the older generic drugs. The states' medical costs for patient care also soared! Now that the links to the drug company funding and the terrible side effects have become known, nine states have sued Eli Lilly, four sued Janssen, and two sued AstraZeneca. Dozens more states have teamed in a joint investigation, seeking billions of dollars in restitution for money they say they overpaid for atypicals through Medicaid.
* In Minnesota alone, since 2002, drug companies have given $88 million in gifts, grants and fees to Minnesota doctors and caregivers. Several states, including Pennsylvania, are suing some drug makers for promoting their drugs beyond approved uses and commissioning "ghost-written" articles to increase sales.
* Drug companies fund and support front groups like NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder )and programs such as TeenScreen, in order to create a demand for their products covertly. These groups may not promote drugs directly but rather they promote disorders, legitimizing mental illnesses that have never been validated as true medical diseases. Drug companies cannot make these claims directly but accomplish the same goal through these other groups and programs. TeenScreen, an invention of psychiatrist (with drug company connections) David Shaffer, is a screening program asking children as young as 9 years old questions like, "Have you often felt very nervous when you've had to do things in front of people?" and "Are you Hispanic or Latino?" Based on their answers, TeenScreen refers them to mental health "professionals", who inevitably decide that these children have symptoms defined as "mental disorders", writing prescriptions for antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs for children with no objective medical testing. TeenScreen's staff and advisory board are loaded with ties to Big Pharma. See: www.teenscreentruth.com/teenscreen_advisory_board.htm. TeenScreen's Director, Laurie Flynn, was formerly at the helm of NAMI, which received over $11 million in drug company funding from '96 to '99: Janssen ($2.08 million), Novartis ($1.87 million), Pfizer ($1.3 million), Abbott Laboratories ($1.24 million), Wyeth-Ayerst Pharmaceuticals ($658,000), Bristol-Myers Squibb ($613,505) and Eli Lilly $2.87 million.
* In 2008 researchers using the Freedom of Information Act dug out information on Prozac that shows it is no more effective than a placebo! The study included clinical trials that Eli Lilly chose not to publish when they studied the drug. The data showed that patients had improved - but those on the placebo improved just as much! (The only exception was in the most severely depressed patients.) 40 million people take this drug, earning tens of billions of dollars for Eli Lilly.Is it the same sin to give capital to Playboy as it is to molest a woman? That is a question that only you can decide (with perhaps help from your pastor), but it doesn't take much of a leap to imagine someone viewing porn and then going out and committing rape. You aren't on the corner selling crack but you are just as guilty if you gave the crack dealer $10,000 to finance his supply.Who knows what potentials for bad hearts, mis-wired brains and early deaths these drug companies have caused our society in their profit search for a daily-pill-solution to what ails us? If putting money ahead of people's lives and preying on those needing real help doesn't make you a sin company, I don't know what does.So whether you now agree that pharmaceutical company stocks belong in the sin-stock category, or you simply believe that there are just too many liabilities for these companies to be good investments, either reason is enough to remove them from your portfolio forever.”CONCLUSION

While none of us may directly own any of these “Sin Stocks”, if we own shares in mutual funds or have an interest in a company retirement plan, it is highly likely that the managers of these funds have purchased these “Sin Stocks.” After all, these managers may not approve of the activities of these criminals and may even have seen the devastating effects of their drugs, but these stocks have shown profits and that is what they value most. If they don’t make profits for their funds, then they will be fired.

Do you want to send a message to the amoral drug companies? Then send the fund manager a copy of John’s excellent article and a demand that they either sell their “Sin Stocks” or you are going to withdraw your money. If it is a company retirement fund, then urge your fellow workers to read John’s article and also to write a letter to the company and to their fund manager demanding that they immediately liquidate these Sin Stocks.

Will these actions have the desired effect? I am not sure but the 18th century British philosopher, Edmund Burke, said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Each of us has the power to protest in our own way anyone who condones the acts of these criminals. Evil has not yet triumphed but it is time for good men to do something.

-

So what did you think? Interesting or what?

Later - Monty

Oil is dropping...

Hello All,

Please if you will, observe the price of unleaded gas during the election year of 2004. watch as the price plummets as the election approaches, then takes off like a rocket as soon as the election is done with and an oil man is safely in office once again.

I only write this as recently I have been hearing people around me "Thanking god" for the low gas prices and frankly I think that there deity might be off in this one - I trully believe that this is purely political - Now don't get me wrong - I fill up at the pump with a smile well worth a photo of but... I just know who to thank, thats all.

So? Do you agree or disagree with me on this?

Later - Monty

Thinking in billions...

A Billion seconds ago it was 1972.

A Billion minutes ago it was 102 A.D.

A Billion hours ago it was the Old Stone Age.

A Billion Dollars ago in Washington is 4 hours ago.

Later - Monty

The "trash" island

A heap of trash that's twice the size of Texas is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it's called, is 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons.

Trapped in a circular course by winds and currents, it's been around since the 1950s, and has been growing tenfold every decade. It's not a dumping ground in the sense that people are flying or boating by and throwing their refuse into the heap. Instead, it's picking up trash that originates onshore, and has since made its way out into the Pacific.

Cleaning it up doesn't sound too likely, since the effort would cost billions, but it would be nice if we figured out a way to stop adding to it. Another possibility: turning it into a sort of anti-Disney World. Surely that would convert even the worst plastic-wasting offenders among us into ardent environmentalists.

This is its pattern - a little blurry but thought it was interesting.

Well - What are we going to DO about this!?!?!

Later - Monty