EPA to Study 6 Dangerous Chemicals

A number of recent studies point to the increased incidence of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, in the United States. And the October issue of the journal Pediatrics publishes a new government study suggesting that autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder, is more prevalent than previously thought, affecting 1 in every 91 U.S. children.

A search of the literature points to exposure to manganese while self-pumping gasoline, to chronic mercury exposure, to pesticide exposure and to a myriad of unknown factors that may affect genetic expression. A research team from the California-based Parkinson’s Institute recently found that the most common pesticides used in gardening tripled the incidence of Parkinson’s disease. The NIH Website www.medlineplus.gov lists 29 published studies linking Parkinson’s disease with pesticide exposure.

The causes of neurodevelopmental disorders — including autism, ADHD and Asperger’s syndrome — remain elusive. But clearly, to quote Walter Willett, M.D, M.P.H., of Harvard’s Department of Nutrition, the fact that we’ve changed the fat in our diet has a role to play. Changes in diet and activity, the increased use of vaccines, toxins in the environment (including mercury, lead and phthalates) and genetic susceptibility to the multitude of environmental changes could affect our children, whether as individuals or collectively. The combination of factors could impact each child differently.

In an announcement September 29, 2009, the EPA noted that U.S. consumers are “understandably anxious and confused” about chemicals in the environment and in their bodies. Quoted as saying the 1976 toxics law was “inordinately cumbersome and time-consuming”, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson indicated that in the coming months the Obama administration will promote a new law placing responsibility on the chemical industry to prove that its compounds are safe.

In the interim, Jackson said, the EPA would begin to analyze and regulate six chemicals that have raised high-profile health concerns. These include bisphenol/BPA, found in hard, clear polycarbonate bottles and in dentistry materials; phthalates, found in vinyl and cosmetics; brominated flame retardants; perfluorinated compounds used in nonstick coatings; paraffins found in lubricants; and benzidine dyes and pigments. It is feared that these six chemicals mimic hormones. They have already been linked to reproductive problems, the obstruction of fetal development, cancer and other health disorders.

Using its authority under existing law, EPA may restrict the use of these six chemicals or require that product labels warn consumers of the risks associated with their use. — October 13, 2009 – Reprint From American Assn. of Health Freedom

My comment: Notice that the report does not say that the EPA will ban these very dangerous chemicals -  only restrict and label them.  Which basically means manufacturers will still be able to kill us slowly.

Brain Map Your Way to a Better You

I came across an interesting article about studying the use of brain mapping (an FDA-approved procedure) to enhance leadership skills in business executives. I know a little bit about brain mapping. It really is a fascinating technology that can pinpoint brain dysfunction at various levels. After the mapping is done, a neurofeedback training program is then designed based on an individual’s needs. The goal of the program is to boost the brain’s ability to perform better at different tasks. So it helps with cognitive function, memory and concentration and the brain’s processing/learning abilities. It would be a useful tool for anyone concerned with optimizing brain function.

The idea that it could be used to enhance leadership skills in business executives is certainly interesting. I can’t help but wonder if it could also boost ethics. After all that’s the single most important thing many business execs lack. It’s also the thing most lacking in government officials. The more I read about brain mapping and neurodevelopment, the more convinced I am that everyone in government, in the banking industry and on Wall Street should be required to get their brain’s mapped, tracked and hammered into shape. At least, then, maybe the rest of us would have a fighting chance.

Getting back to the serious nature of the technology … if you have any interest in the subject of brain mapping your way to a better you, you may wish to check out an interesting site called BrainTrackers. They go beyond simple brain mapping/neurofeedback to true behavior modification on a number of levels. They tout the procedure for performance enhancement for students, people in the arts, business and sports. I vote we send all government and business execs to them. This is not alien technology and there is no anal probe involved — just a few well placed electrodes around the head.

I’m hoping that the next time I’m on the west coast, I’ll get myself mapped and trained. I need all the advantages I can get, especially in this ongoing government-induced anti-intellectual, rotten financial climate. Maybe it can even get me out of my funk about how bad things are. Of course there’s also a good possibility I may become even more effective in my rants. All gain, no brain drain.

If you think you’ve lost your mind, you probably have. So, who you gonna call?

Corruption at the FDA Over Dental Amalgam

Issue:  Amalgam Dental Fillings = Mercury Poisoning.

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) website recently removed a warning that it previously reluctantly posted about the toxicity of amalgam dental fillings.  Why?  FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg holds stock in the company (Henry Schein) that makes mercury fillings and she thinks it’s okay that Americans continue to be poisoned by this proved neurotoxin.  The silver fillings placed in people’s mouths are comprised of 50% mercury.

Mercury fillings have been proven to release gases (even during normal food chewing) which travel into people’s bloodstreams and into their brains, damaging myriad organs and systems throughout the body.  Most dentists don’t know how and don’t care to learn how to safely remove the fillings.  People end up swallowing mercury chunks and breathe the fumes during the process.

The American government, the FDA, the American Dental Association (which receives billions of dollars in fees derived from holding the patent to the poison amalgam) all say it’s okay to poison people with this stuff at the same time they warn you not to eat too much fish because they may contain high levels of mercury (tuna is notorious for this).

Regarding FDA Commissioner Hamburg:

1. When Senator Enzi asked Dr. Hamburg a written question about the amalgam rule, why did she not then disclose the stock and say she would be disqualified from participating?
2.  Why, when taking office as Commissioner and still holding stock options, did she not recuse herself from participating in the rule-making right away?
3.   On what date did Margaret Hamburg ALLEGEDLY recuse herself?
4.   Did Margaret Hamburg approve any draft of the rule or approve which staff would draft it?
5.  Since Commissioner Lester Crawford was forced out of office in 2005 for conflict of interest involving stock ownership, why does Commissioner Hamburg believe this situation is different, and why does she believe she should remain in office?
6.  Why is the amalgam rule so incredibly favorable to dental products colossus Henry Schein and so unfavorable to America’s children, giving Schein the right to untrammeled amalgam sales without even a requirement that patients be told of the mercury in amalgam?

The FDA is a sham organization and so is the American Dental Association (ADA).

It is unlikely that health care reform will ever take place in this country as long as special interests rule and keep our legislators in their pockets, bribing them with election donations and gifts or threatening to destroy their re-election efforts if they oppose them.

“The Science of Getting Rich” Exposed – It’s Nonsense

In 1910, Wallace D. Wattles wrote a book called “The Science of Getting Rich”. It has been heralded as a classic upon which the more recent book and movie “The Secret” were based. It goes along with the principles of Napoleon Hill (“Think and Grow Rich”), a contemporary of Wattles, who incites people to believe that all they have to do is follow a few set rules and they too can become exceptionally happy multi-millionaires.

People desperate to become happy, healthy and financially sound, if not downright rich, will welcome these kinds of literary works, much as they do religion. It helps get them through their dire existences. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, except, just as some religions corral their sheep into ornate facades to support the greed of the shepherds, these books manipulate the minds of the unwitting and imprison them in a world of make believe for the same reasons.

Wattles’ Principles of Getting Rich in a Nutshell

1. Thought Process: “There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought. Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.”

2. Non-Competitiveness: “In order to do this, man must pass from the competitive to the creative mind; otherwise he cannot be in harmony with the Formless Intelligence…”

3. Gratitude: “Man may come into full harmony with the Formless Substance by entertaining a lively and sincere gratitude for the blessings it bestows upon him.”

4. Mental Image: “Man must form a clear and definite mental image of the things he wishes to have, to do, or to become; and he must hold this mental image in his thoughts, while being deeply grateful to the Supreme that all his desires are granted to him.” Along with this is that man must not display negative thoughts in any form or have doubts as to the “science” behind his principles.

5. Action: He must do all that he can do everyday (even in the work he is assigned, although that may not be the ultimate work that he desires to do).

6. Time: There is no time limit. Good things will come to you when the universe decides, not when you want it.

7. Resources: No resource will ever run out (not the land, nor the air, not the water, not the minerals in the earth) so don’t worry that you won’t get yours before everything is depleted.

8. Dreams: Live according to your imaginings. He uses the examples of wishing for a beautiful house and car, great clothes, etc. and states very clearly that you should ‘live in the house, drive the car’, etc. — but all in your mind.

To the spiritually minded, these principles might seem to be brilliant words of wisdom. But they really aren’t that at all. They are, however, brilliant propaganda.

As the United States was moving fast into becoming an industrial giant back in 1910 when the book was written, Wattles kept referring to the steel magnates – those rich greedy bastards who ruled the world and kept people under their thumbs. Today, you may as well substitute the big pharmaceutical and agribusiness industries. They’re all the same. He tells us not to worry about them. They will pass. And so they did, from the steel magnates right to Big Pharma and other conglomerates. There will always be someone or something to keep the little people in place. One-percent of the population keeps getting richer and the poor get poorer.

Wattles’ propaganda is brilliant because it is designed to do precisely the same thing – keep people in their place – but without people knowing it. It’s a slight of hand, a mind-game, an illusion to make people think they are in control of every aspect of their lives and that, therefore, they can be, will be or are happy.

Here is how he accomplished this.
The Imaginary Life: If I live in a beautiful house filled with lovely furnishings, drive my dream car and wear gorgeous clothing but only in my mind, then I already have these things and shall wont for nothing. Except none of it’s real.

Action/Current Job: I should be happy to work exceptionally hard everyday even though I am not doing what I want to do. If that’s the case then it’s unlikely I shall have the energy (physical or mental), time or resources to pursue my dreams. Once again I am supposed to be happy doing what I don’t want to do because I know I am following the principles that will lead to riches beyond my wildest dreams.

Gratitude: I must be grateful for all blessings bestowed upon me. Wattles does not address how you are supposed to be grateful if NO blessings are bestowed upon you, if no money comes your way and no positive changes in your life occur. It would be very hard to be grateful for one beautiful sunshiny day when for the next week it pours relentlessly and your house is underwater. In fact, why should you be grateful for the sunshine, when it was not given to you alone. Perhaps the sunshine was meant for Joe the plumber. “Blessings bestowed upon you” must be just that – ON YOU.

No Time Limit: I must follow every principle without fail everyday forever. The universe will make me rich when it feels like it. This is perhaps the most brilliant of the propaganda set forth by Wattles. It means I can do everything I am supposed to do by his measure and still not get what I want because the universe just isn’t ready to give it to me.

He has already stated that I may not have doubts; I may not have any negative thoughts. So where does any of this leave me, right where I am now, unhappy and poor. But, by following his principles religiously (and I do means “religiously” because that’s precisely what it is, another religion), I can fool myself into thinking I am on the road to achieving my dreams rather than living everyday a life that’s less than optimal. I am happy to be in my place. Something better is surely coming.

Will some people get rich by following Wattles’ principles? Sure. But these people probably would have gotten rich anyway due to the randomness of the universe, the same randomness that allows bad things to happen to good people. What is randomness? It’s luck; it’s timing; it’s whatever it is. And, yes, sometimes hard work and positive thinking does result in a positive outcome – with a little luck and if the timing is right (just like when the universe decides it’s your turn).

The Science of Getting Rich is certainly meant for the masses. It was a very good way to develop a compliant workforce that would not agitate toward revolution. In the one hundred years since it’s publication, we have seen some of our natural resources dry up, animals have gone extinct and our land, air and water has been poisoned by barons of industry. Yet Wattles said it wouldn’t happen. And still, the same small percentage of people are rich. I wonder how Wattles would have explained all this. Shhh! It’s a Secret!

Let’s Kick Sarah Palin Around

I will never forgive John McCain for creating this monster. The monster without a brain, I like to call her. Yes, I’m referring to Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor twit who now says she’s quitting office. Why won’t she go gently into that goodnight?

Not only did she prove herself ignorant, stupid and inflammatory during her run for the vice presidency, she’s now proved she can’t be trusted to do what she signed up to do.

I’d like to think we’ve seen the last of her and that maybe she’ll go deeper into the wilds of Alaska and meet up with a nice big grizzly who’ll have her for lunch, but I’m guessing she’ll more likely show up on the talk show circuit and become a female Rush Limbaugh. She’ll take to the airwaves and spew loads of garbage, make lots of money; the media will pretend they’re outraged and report about her on a near daily basis.

The republican heart throb, or rather, heart ache, will then become pregnant with 8 babies simultaneously; she’ll give birth by ceasarian section. When they cut into her enlarged tummy, she’ll go flying around the surgery like a deflated balloon. They will make a reality TV show about her and her witless offspring; pay her even more money and maybe if we’re lucky, one of her stupid kids will shoot her in the head when he’s practicing his hunting skills from a helicopter. Way to go, Sarah!

Healthcare Reform Scam

On June 15th, 2009, President Obama addressed the American Medical Association to garner their support for his health care reform agenda. At one point he was actually booed by this organization that allegedly embraces the Hippocratic Oath (‘first, do no harm’). This is the same organization that bows to the pharmaceutical industry and that tells our nation’s doctors (many of whom are too lazy to research new protocols, anyway) that they absolutely may not reveal alternative medical approaches to healing illnesses and disease.

The AMA was devised as a means to protect the interests of doctors not patients. We already know that the Food and Drug Administration really exists to protect business interests. It too bows to the pharmaceutical industry. Just recently I learned that the FDA plans to ban the natural vitamin B6 nutrient pyridoxamine (which by the way, is found in many foods) not because it’s unsafe, but because a major pharmaceutical company wants to patent it, thereby making it only available as a prescription drug! The FDA has definitively placed the interests of big business over the ability of Americans to purchase a safe and natural supplement.

High on Obama’s list of ways to achieve reform was preventive care. IS HE KIDDING?

The AMA won’t let its members give important nutrition-based, anti-aging or complementary care information to patients. The American Dental Association still forces its members to hide the dangers of mercury and push poisonous fluoride into people’s mouths and down their throats. The FDA is a shill for the pharmaceutical industry and big business in general.

All you have to do is look around at all the non-organic, chemical and pesticide-ridden crap that the FDA says is okay to sell to the public (from the food that’s sold to the cleaners we tend to use to the cosmetics and personal care items we might wear and use) .

The Environmental Protection Agency allows businesses to poison and otherwise harm people, animals and the environment on a daily basis.

You want PREVENTIVE CARE, Mr. President? I suggest that America starts doing business differently and embraces a healthful lifestyle on all fronts. Ban the FDA and all the other pseudo-protective agencies that government has coughed up. We’d do better without them.

Educate Yourself: Links:
Learn more about the importance of Vitamin B6 and the FDA scam.

Check brand name cosmetics and ingredients for safety.

Don’t Download Alexa

I used Alexa, the website traffic ranking tool, on my computer for the past couple of years until last week when I made a rather frightening discovery. I own an Apple computer and was using Firefox as my browser. As I launched Firefox, a window from Alexa overtook my home page preference and said something about an update. It happened very fast. I thought it was okay to update the program until I actually got to the Alexa page it was directing me to and read the disclaimer/privacy policy. Alexa is one badass spyware.

The policy states that in addition to tracking the websites I visit, it will register every keystroke I make on a contact form. Well, you know what that means, right? It means if you do any kind of shopping or banking over the Internet, Alexa will register your username, your password, your credit card number, expiration date and so forth. They will know where you live and where you have products shipped. They will know your mother’s maiden name and your social security number and whatever else you unwittingly provide via the web. I quickly canceled the update.

I thought I was now safe. But after that initial update advisory hit my computer, I began to have trouble with my browser. It constantly froze no matter which page I was trying to access. I didn’t realize though that it was Alexa causing the problem until days went by and I was the only one in my location having trouble with my computer.

It dawned on me to uninstall the program which I tried to do by visiting Alexa and doing a search for instructions. Interestingly, there was no advice on how to remove it from a Firefox browser so I had to search the Internet and then found that other people also had trouble with the Alexa tool crashing or stalling their Firefox. I came across advice at Mozilla and was able to uninstall Alexa. My browser is now working fine. I am appalled that I got sucked into the biggest scam on the Internet – Spyware!

Drinking Water Scam

I happen to believe in and follow the advice of many holistic medical practitioners. But the one bit of advice that really irks me is the declaration that I must drink 10-12 or more glasses of water a day. It used to be 8.

The reasoning behind this, they say, is for me to stay hydrated and to be able to flush toxins from my body.

First of all, unless a person drinks absolutely nothing or maybe doesn’t drink enough of any liquid, it’s unlikely they’ll become dehydrated. Coffee, tea and even sodas are all made with water.

As for flushing toxins from our bodies, that’s a farce. Not only is any kind of water available to the public tainted by pesticides, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, bacteria, viruses, parasites and naturally occurring harmful substances like arsenic, but most filters don’t even eliminate all of these things. This is a case of garbage in, without the “garbage out” part.

And even if a person religiously followed their advice and drank all that water and filtered it properly, you can be assured that when it came time to test them for toxins, their bodies would be rampant with every kind of shit man has created.

Drinking lots of water really doesn’t make the shit come out.  It just makes you pee a lot. Coffee, tea and soda will do that too. For the record, I don’t drink soda. That crap will kill you for other reasons.

Internet Traffic Rankings & Alexa.com- A Magical Mystery Tour

Web site “watchers”, those people who profess to be in the know about all things Internet have a tendency to rely on a traffic ranking site called Alexa (alexa.com). These watchers will refer to Alexa to get such information about a web site such as type of site, links to the site, number of people going to the site, page views, etc. While there is some valuable information being offered at Alexa, it is seriously limited as you will soon see.

I have talked to many people about Alexa and traffic rankings and I have to say that there is one very important bit of information that many people simply do not understand. For example, Yahoo! is ranked number 1 by Alexa; Youtube is number 2 and Google is Ranked #3. That means any other web site ranked by them is going to have a higher number. To be popular in Alexa’s network, you would need to have the lowest number possible, not the highest. It seems simple, but trust me, some people just don’t grasp this.

Following are some paragraphs taken from the Alexa website. Read them carefully and you will see what I mean about its limitations. I have highlighted the pertinent sections and made my remarks in italics under them. Additionally at the very bottom, you’ll see a list of Alexa disclaimers. Read them carefully too. It makes one wonder if there is any value at all to Alexa. Oddly, it’s a brilliant scam of sorts. People by the masses, including allegedly smart industry people, have bought into Alexa’s nonsense.

The following information is available at http://www.alexa.com/site/help/traffic_learn_more

About the Alexa Traffic Rankings
A listing of all sites on the Web, sorted by traffic…

Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. The information is sorted, sifted, anonymized, counted, and computed, until, finally, we get the traffic rankings shown in the Alexa service. The process is relatively complex, but if you have a need to know, please read on.

My comments: People surf the web all the time and may visit many different sites in a given day or the same site everyday. Alexa can only measure a web site’s viewership and popularity based upon a person having previously downloaded the Alexa toolbar. This means that a web site’s traffic ranking is based only within Alexa, not the entire activity of Internet usage.

What is Traffic Rank?

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.

My comments: This is patently untrue. I have the Alexa toolbar and I have personally seen the same web site’s ranking drop from a high of 140,000 to a low of 76,000 in a single day. The next day it was 76,000 in the late morning and it moved up to 188,000 before dusk that same day. Then the very next day, the ranking went from 188,000 in the morning to 197,000 just a few hours later. A few days after that it went from 197,000 to 195,000. About four days later the numbers jumped again to 199,000.

Some Important Disclaimers (my comments: how many people actually READ these before they bow to Alexa, the phony god of the internet? These disclaimers are quite important. Here’s another good example. I was speaking on the phone with a potential client who was precisely one of those people who really knew nothing about Alexa’s limitations simply because she hadn’t even bothered to read the page I am referring you to. On that occasion, each of us was looking at her web site’s ranking at Alexa and each of us saw an entirely different number with a variance of over 100,000!)

The traffic data are based on the set of toolbars that use Alexa data, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. Known biases include (but are likely not limited to) the following:

* Our users are disproportionately likely to visit sites that are featured on alexa.com such as amazon.com and archive.org, and traffic to these sites may be overcounted.
* The extent to which our sample may overcount or undercount users of the various browsers is unknown. Alexa’s sample includes users of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Mozilla browsers. The AOL/Netscape and Opera browser is not supported, which means that sites operated by these companies may be undercounted.
* The extent to which our sample may overcount or undercount users of various operating systems is unknown. Alexa sample includes toolbars built for Windows, Macintosh and Linux.
* The rate of adoption of Alexa software in different parts of the world may vary widely due to advertising locality, language, and other geographic and cultural factors. For example, to some extent the prominence of Chinese sites among our top-ranked sites reflects known high rates of general Internet usage in China, but there may also be a disproportionate number of Chinese Alexa users.
* In some cases traffic data may also be adversely affected by our “site” definitions. With tens of millions of hosts on the Internet, our automated procedures for determining which hosts are serving the “same” content may be incorrect and/or out-of-date. Similarly, the determinations of domains and home pages may not always be accurate. When these determinations change (as they do periodically), there may be sudden artificial changes in the Alexa traffic rankings for some sites as a consequence.
* The Alexa Toolbar turns itself off on secure pages (https:). Sites with secure page views will be under-represented in the Alexa traffic data.

“In addition to the biases above, the Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa due to the statistical limitations of the sample. Alexa’s data come from a large sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users; however, this is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000 total monthly visitors. Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes.”

My comments: Alexa will give you a snapshot of what a web site looks like and some other pertinent information, but if you are using its traffic rankings as some sort of true measure of a web site’s worth, you are being fooled or you’re trying to fool someone else. My suggestion is that you get a really good stats program installed on your site and trust your sales and revenue and even the number of people on your email list. That will determine how popular you are and it will be for real!

Foreclosure Eviction & Bank Contractors, Trespass, Attempted Robbery and Threats

On May 20, 2009, a couple renting a house in Kern County, California nearly had their home broken into and everything stolen along with having their pets escape when a bank sent out a cleaning contractor company with orders to “empty out the house”.

The house, unbeknownst to them, had been foreclosed upon a week earlier, and instead of following legal (though highly unethical) eviction procedures, the bank thought it would get a jump on the real estate market and just allow its contractors to commit trespass, robbery and assault.

The woman who was home alone was startled when a large dumpster truck backed up into her driveway in the rural area which is normally fairly quiet. All of her requests for information from the two men were completely ignored. They then threatened her by telling her to stay out of the way as they intended to break in and remove everything she and her husband owned. Terrified, the woman ran in the house and locked the door. At least one of the men moved to the back of the house and she ran to make sure her back door was locked. She continued screaming at them that she was going to call the police. It was then that she heard one of the men mention “the bank” as to who had sent them. Her insistent announcement of imminent police involvement eventually sent the rats scurrying. A formal complaint was filed with the police.

Upon investigation, it was revealed that the foreclosure and subsequent illegal action had been perpetrated by OneWest Bank of Pasadena (formerly the failed IndyMac Bank) in cahoots with Prudential California Realty located in Valencia.

The couple is seeking information from other tenants who may have suffered similar illegal eviction. If you’re one of them, please comment on this blog.