only in america

Canadians Version of David Lettermans Top 10. Just makes you
want to shake your head in disbelief, and, just maybe choke someone in
charge.

This is Canadas Top Ten List of Americas Stupidity. Of course we
look like idiots - we are!

#10 Only in America... could politicians talk about the greed of the rich
at a $35,000.00 per plate Obama campaign fund-raising event.

#09 Only in America... could people claim that the government still
discriminates against black Americans when they have a black
President, a black Attorney General and roughly 20% of the federal workforce
is black while only 14% of the population is black, 40+% of all
federal entitlements goes to black Americans - 3X the rate that go to whites,
5X the rate that go to Hispanics!

#08 Only in America... could they have had the two people most responsible
for our tax code, Timothy Geithner (the head of the Treasury Department)
and Charles Rangel (who once ran the Ways and Means Committee), BOTH turn
out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

#07 Only in America... can they have terrorists kill people in the name of
Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be
harmed by the backlash.

#06 Only in America... could you collect more tax dollars from the people
than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion dollars more
than it has per year - for total spending of $7 Million PER MINUTE, and
complain that it doesn’t have nearly enough money.

#05 Only in America... could the people who believe in balancing the
budget and sticking by the countrys Constitution be called EXTREMISTS.

#04 Only in America... could you need to present a drivers license to cash
a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.

#03 Only in America... could people demand the government investigate
whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went
up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. Oil company
(Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).

#02 Only in America... would they make people who want to legally become
American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of
thousands of dollars for the privilege, while they discuss letting anyone
who sneaks into the country illegally just magically become American
citizens. (probably should be number one)

#01 Only in America.... could the rich people - who pay 86% of all income
taxes - be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who dont pay
any income taxes at all.

Either the above is not based on fact, or we're really headed downhill

Skytiger wrote:

Either the above is not based on fact, or we're really headed downhill

This is a piece of pretty typical propaganda for the extreme right in Canada, and it's based on an interpretation of various political and economic data taken out of context.

I disagree with the migrant workers' issue. They actually work, and they contribute to the economy, though under the table. Statistically they contribute more than they take for schooling, roads etc. and after amnesty, you usually find a bunch of them desperately wanting to be absorbed, they even vote Republican sometimes (I knew a Mexican fireman with a white wife in the South who was so Conservative that they had to read Ayn Rand all the time...)
You would find the prices of fresh produce from California or Florida double if the illegals disappeared... Again, in Hungary a person from the Middle East may buy settlement rights (because it is the EU) for a few tens of thousands of dollars or starting a business, while Syrian refugees - even those that have M.D degrees or are computer geeks have virtually no chance to settle in this country... A Hungarian ethnic person from a neighboring country may even get voting rights now in a few weeks, even though they have not paid taxes in Hungary... whereas people born in Hungary but who are working abroad have a hard time registering to vote at various embassies thousands of miles away.

I think all people who wish to work in the USA should come in by following the rules. I'm also think they should pay taxes.

About produce, there ate machines that can pick a lot of produce, and cost less to use and maintain than salaries paid people. Back in the 70s & 80s my uncle used more labor to bring in wheat and other grain crops. His machinery was old but he kept it going. Then one day two bored hired hands decided to play chicken while driving combines. They ran head on together, destroying part of the machines. He was so mad he fired them on the spot and made them walk back to town. Because of this, he decided to buy better and bigger machinery, needing less hands.
A lot of farmers have done the same thing, some due to like circumstances.

IMO machinery can and will eventually replace all farm labor, as farming families ... father and children... do all the work themselves using machinery.

It takes a certain mind set to work the land, raise crops and livestock. Its easier to have a desk job, safer to. I know having my saddle horse walk over the top of me, leaving a hoof print on my thigh and head. Thank Creator for deep soft sand, the reason I still inhabit this body. Sold the horse.

regmelocco wrote:

I disagree with the migrant workers' issue. They actually work, and they contribute to the economy, though under the table. Statistically they contribute more than they take for schooling, roads etc. and after amnesty, you usually find a bunch of them desperately wanting to be absorbed, they even vote Republican sometimes (I knew a Mexican fireman with a white wife in the South who was so Conservative that they had to read Ayn Rand all the time...)
You would find the prices of fresh produce from California or Florida double if the illegals disappeared... Again, in Hungary a person from the Middle East may buy settlement rights (because it is the EU) for a few tens of thousands of dollars or starting a business, while Syrian refugees - even those that have M.D degrees or are computer geeks have virtually no chance to settle in this country... A Hungarian ethnic person from a neighboring country may even get voting rights now in a few weeks, even though they have not paid taxes in Hungary... whereas people born in Hungary but who are working abroad have a hard time registering to vote at various embassies thousands of miles away.

I agree with everything you just said, and remember that back in the Fifties, my father, who had been a labor union organizer before he got blacklisted in the McCarthy era, saying it looked like illegal immigrants were going to replace what he called Negros as "the new underclass that will provide scabs and sweatshop workers". He didn't live long enough to see this actually take place, but I watched this happen every step of the way.

Skytiger wrote:

I think all people who wish to work in the USA should come in by following the rules. I'm also think they should pay taxes.

About produce, there ate machines that can pick a lot of produce, and cost less to use and maintain than salaries paid people. Back in the  70s  & 80s my uncle used more labor to bring in wheat and other grain crops. His machinery was old but he kept it going. Then one day two bored hired hands decided to play chicken while driving combines. They ran head on together, destroying part of the machines. He was so mad he fired them on the spot and made them walk back to town. Because of this, he decided to buy better and bigger machinery, needing less hands.
A lot of farmers have done the same thing, some due to like circumstances.

IMO machinery can and will eventually replace all farm labor, as farming families ... father and children... do all the work themselves using machinery.

It takes a certain mind set to work the land, raise crops and livestock. Its easier to have a desk job, safer to. I know having my saddle horse walk over the top of me, leaving a hoof print on my thigh and head. Thank Creator for deep soft sand, the reason I still inhabit this body. Sold the horse.

You are correct that farming can be automated, but if all the poorly paid farm workers were replaced with machines, the price of all the food items involved would still double.

Food will double simply because of drought, flooding, and weather patterns changing across the country.

Doesn't matter who or what plants, waters, or harvest the crops. We are all subject to Mother Nature.

Skytiger wrote:

Food will double simply because of drought, flooding, and weather patterns changing across the country.

Doesn't matter who or what plants, waters, or harvest the crops. We are all subject to Mother Nature.

I agree with what you just said, but it's important to point out that these environmental factors will indeed also double the price of food ... AFTER it has already been doubled by the increases in cultivation overhead that we've been talking about.

Not so sure about that RR. An onion farmer wasn't making much with hired workers, back in the 80's.
They walked out, wanting more money which would mean he would not make enough to support his family and pay the workers. He simply bought an onion picker - think that's what it was called.
The machine picked onions faster and cost a lot less than paying migrants to pick them.

Sometimes I think 'city folk' think farmers and ranchers make lots of money. They do not take in to consideration, taxes paid, electric bills for irrigation, machinery prices and upkeep, housing and wages for hired help, plus insurance. All paid before a crop is harvested. A good harvest is never guaranteed, yet hired help gets paid, even when the owner may have to borrow money to keep on farming. Rain and good weather determines what farmers make or don't make. I can see good reason to buy machinery to do the work.
If one doesn't make money and decides to quit, they can sell machinery, and maybe have enough to start over.

Plus if we want to help the environment we would have to give up all gas and oil machinery, cars, all transportation plus heating and air conditioning, all the things that make life 'good'.
I don't understand why people don't realize electric cars and electricity come from coal, oil and gas.
We have a ways to go before solar and wind supply all our energy.

Skytiger wrote:

Not so sure about that RR. An onion farmer wasn't making much with hired workers, back in the 80's.
They walked out, wanting more money which would mean he would not make enough to support his family and pay the workers. He simply bought an onion picker - think that's what it was called.
The machine picked onions faster and cost a lot less than paying migrants to pick them.

Sometimes I think 'city folk' think farmers and ranchers make lots of money. They do not take in to consideration, taxes paid, electric bills for irrigation, machinery prices and upkeep, housing and wages for hired help, plus insurance. All paid before a crop is harvested. A good harvest is never guaranteed, yet hired help gets paid, even when the owner may have to borrow money to keep on farming. Rain and good weather determines what farmers make or don't make. I can see good reason to buy machinery to do the work.
If one doesn't make money and decides to quit, they can sell machinery, and maybe have enough to start over.

I agree with everything you just said, but the Information Revolution is going to change the farming industry quite soon, along with every other industry in the high-tech countries. I foresee a day when almost all farm work is automated, but the machines are operated and repaired from a distance by people working through the Internet. This means that the labor standard of distribution will become obsolete because the automated economy can easily produce enough for everyone to live in reasonable comfort.

Skytiger wrote:

Plus if we want to help the environment we would have to give up all gas and oil machinery, cars, all transportation plus heating and air conditioning, all the things that make life 'good'.
I don't understand why people don't realize electric cars and electricity come from coal, oil and gas.
We have a ways to go before solar and wind supply all our energy.

What I've been channeling for many years is that when a true civilization is created on Earth, it will be designed to work from the bottom up rather than the top down, with most people staying at home, working over the Internet, and living a lifestyle that uses a minimum of energy.

I am not a "city folk" - not completely as early in my childhood I spent all summers with "peasant families" - and occasionally helped out with milling corn, feeding animals and working in the garden. Then I lived in rural Virginia for quite a while in the US though I worked in the city on weekends.

Farming changed so much already in my lifetime that dairy farmers in the US in the early nineties were forbidden to drink their own milk. They did not use stables even in the winter - even though we had lots of snow sometimes; they gave antibiotics to the cows instead. I started to feel like a time lapse photograph from a past their grandfathers knew only... When I was small, one of my first memories was that my dad helped milk a cow into a regular pail and let me taste the milk with a ladle. (And we had not a single disposable object in the household - not even diapers or tissues.)

This contrast was quite odd, but a few years later a worldwide movement started for organic and natural environments - partly by my generation which was fed up by the naturalness produced by Farm Fresh and all that level.

However, when I crossed the orange fields in Southern California in 1996, I did not have the feelings that this was an unpredictable business where you could lose a lot. Everything was square-shaped, futuristic, by the signs you could tell that miles and miles belonged to one "farmer" (these guys were farmers but they were obviously not peasants in the sense I used the word referring to Central Europe). Water came from canals and it was pretty efficient and mechanistical, nothing left to chance... It was actually pretty and futuristic, except for the barbed wire fences (possibly the oranges wanted to get lost sometimes?)

reg, #14, re: "I am not a 'city folk' - not completely as early in my childhood I spent all summers with 'peasant families' - and occasionally helped out with milling corn, feeding animals and working in the garden. Then I lived in rural Virginia for quite a while in the US though I worked in the city on weekends. Farming changed so much already in my lifetime that dairy farmers in the US in the early nineties were forbidden to drink their own milk. They did not use stables even in the winter - even though we had lots of snow sometimes; they gave antibiotics to the cows instead. I started to feel like a time lapse photograph from a past their grandfathers knew only... When I was small, one of my first memories was that my dad helped milk a cow into a regular pail and let me taste the milk with a ladle. (And we had not a single disposable object in the household - not even diapers or tissues.)"

I'm old enough to remember the revolution in farming your referring to occurring right before my eyes, both in the news, and in my own observations. Insecticides such as DDT and the heavy use of antibiotics on farm livestock were hailed for a long time as major steps forward in agriculture that would play a major part in eliminating hunger and starvation world wide by the end of the Twentieth century. However, this naive viewpoint has gradually faded away, starting in the Nineties.

re: "This contrast was quite odd, but a few years later a worldwide movement started for organic and natural environments - partly by my generation which was fed up by the naturalness produced by Farm Fresh and all that level However, when I crossed the orange fields in Southern California in 1996, I did not have the feelings that this was an unpredictable business where you could lose a lot. Everything was square-shaped, futuristic, by the signs you could tell that miles and miles belonged to one 'farmer' (these guys were farmers but they were obviously not peasants in the sense I used the word referring to Central Europe). Water came from canals and it was pretty efficient and mechanistical, nothing left to chance... It was actually pretty and futuristic, except for the barbed wire fences (possibly the oranges wanted to get lost sometimes?)"

I've always found it ironic that the movement for "organic and natural environments" has gained ever-increasing support among consumers of all social classes, but the producers have been steadily moving in the oppostie direction ... towards more and more automation in farming and the processing of animal and plant products into food.

Sky, #16, re: "I cannot imagine anything more boring or distasteful than not working with nature. I used to do more when I was younger. I still miss my horses, esp a stud called Wiz. Riding pasture, counting livestock, and the occasional fast chase of cows who didn't want to change pasture. To have to spend most of my time stuck in a house working on the internet, would be HELL to me. If we don't expend energy, we will turn into fat slobs, unless we exercise. Guess I will be going to a planet where everyone lives in and works WITH Mother Nature. Hopefully with a very small human population."

Can you imagine a world where, instead of merely riding on a horse, you can BECOME a horse whenever you want to? Or an alpha cow leading the rest of the herd from one patch of pasture to another? And you neither know nor care what the human population is, because you only interact with other humans face to face by mutual consent?

Yes I can imagine it, but I wouldn't want to live in it. I'd rather reside among the stars, going from universe to universe.

IMHO, we will be able to do all of what we both wrote, if we want to. We could even do that now IF we weren't bogged down in false beliefs. We are in truth light beings, experiencing many things on our individual journey of experience.

Skytiger wrote:

Yes I can imagine it, but I wouldn't want to live in it. I'd rather reside among the stars, going from universe to universe.

IMHO, we will be able to do all of what we both wrote, if we want to. We could even do that now IF we weren't bogged down in false beliefs. We are in truth light beings, experiencing many things on our individual journey of experience.

I agree, and the existence of cyber reality is a step in that direction. Seeing is no longer believing and the difference between dreams and realities grows smaller every day, as does the difference between time and eternity.

We are not the body without, we are the light within.
When we sleep our light travels and experiences without the burden of the body.
Our memories of our nightly travels we call dreams.
Dreams are often more real than our illusion of life experienced when the body is awake.

I don't see a total contradiction between automatization of food production and raising the level towards more natural, more humane and yes, even small-scale. It is precisely the Information Revolution that allows this. When I was young, more efficient used to mean large-scale. Today you can turn on the watering system of your farm or house on a remote continent if you know the correct codes and have access to a computer. There is a trend towards regarding animals as something like our spiritual brothers and sisters, and even having a different relationship - such as the one RR describes above, involving telepathy and even identification, as a first step, you need to imagine yourself in the animal's body and adopting its point of view. I have a dog and it is excellent practice - dogs see and smell the world differently. The second step is that while you see the animal's dogness, for my dog, the various kinds of dogs and people, male and female, age and master's character (a dog does require a master that it partly regards as a more dominant dog, unlike a cat or a horse) etc. are where her world starts to become interesting.

And yes, if people require more direct contact with farm animals, unfarmed nature etc. that will also come to pass. At the highest level, animals would give what they want to give to humans in exchange for other things that humans are good at - procuring fodder, providing veterinary care and companionship.

However, this requires far less humans on the planet. The entire large-scale thinking is an inheritance of the initial change into modern society and a sudden population boom. While I do not support political conservativism, I basically subscribe to the belief that having less children but caring for them well - excellently and responsibly - is far better than just having children because of desire or ego-gratification. It is not the job of states or popes to proclaim this - you can simply convince people on a personal basis and show them examples - it is rewarding to have a good relationship with a child, and adult child as well, and get the feedback that you did well as a parent and they appreciate you.

Looking at the earth's resources, it would be possible to feed and house everyone, but not at this level of uniqueness, harmony, responsibility and a happy marriage of high technology and organic naturalness I envision. To reach that, people would need to pass beyond antiquated tribal beliefs and the coding systems we call language, without reverting in their evolution. And that is the real tricky thing...

reg, #21, re: "I don't see a total contradiction between automatization of food production and raising the level towards more natural, more humane and yes, even small-scale. It is precisely the Information Revolution that allows this. When I was young, more efficient used to mean large-scale. Today you can turn on the watering system of your farm or house on a remote continent if you know the correct codes and have access to a computer."

Yes! This is one of the most important lessons I've been trying to teach ever since I came back on line in 2005, and fortunately, the more technology advances, the easier it becomes for people to understand it. There used to be only two levels of reality: physical and mental/spiritual. The Information Revolution has already created another level, virtual, that lies between the two and can be used to bridge the traditional gap between them ... but only for individuals who know the techniques for doing this.

re: "There is a trend towards regarding animals as something like our spiritual brothers and sisters, and even having a different relationship - such as the one RR describes above, involving telepathy and even identification, as a first step, you need to imagine yourself in the animal's body and adopting its point of view. I have a dog and it is excellent practice - dogs see and smell the world differently. The second step is that while you see the animal's dogness, for my dog, the various kinds of dogs and people, male and female, age and master's character (a dog does require a master that it partly regards as a more dominant dog, unlike a cat or a horse) etc. are where her world starts to become interesting. And yes, if people require more direct contact with farm animals, unfarmed nature etc. that will also come to pass. At the highest level, animals would give what they want to give to humans in exchange for other things that humans are good at - procuring fodder, providing veterinary care and companionship."

A lot of the so-called "primitive" cultures have realized this on a much deeper level than has been case so far in modern, technological cultures. So it behooves those of who have made this breakthrough in personal consciousness to teach it to others through our words and deeds.

re: "However, this requires far less humans on the planet. The entire large-scale thinking is an inheritance of the initial change into modern society and a sudden population boom. While I do not support political conservativism, I basically subscribe to the belief that having less children but caring for them well - excellently and responsibly - is far better than just having children because of desire or ego-gratification. It is not the job of states or popes to proclaim this - you can simply convince people on a personal basis and show them examples - it is rewarding to have a good relationship with a child, and adult child as well, and get the feedback that you did well as a parent and they appreciate you. Looking at the earth's resources, it would be possible to feed and house everyone, but not at this level of uniqueness, harmony, responsibility and a happy marriage of high technology and organic naturalness I envision. To reach that, people would need to pass beyond antiquated tribal beliefs and the coding systems we call language, without reverting in their evolution. And that is the real tricky thing..."

I totally agree, and this is a powerful argument for working towards population reduction, using any means that aren't in themselves violent or destructive.

SR #19 & #22 :

in your #19  you appear to talk preventively
about the 7th physico-mind control scheme ?

this "virtual behaviour" reality technology can induce
constructive purposes especially for people having major physical handicaps
or cause destructive effects on people, according to how
any individual is perceived and judged by the controlers and the controlers plans

as this is a field that is not legal and regulated for the moment,
we should try to avoid it in most circunstances and take any willing means of precautions

in your #22 i understand you try to findm pragmatic solution
to some sikuation who will call for both temporary new pragmatic food sourcing

also 2 reassure individuals
especially to those who seem "blocked" in any manner
because of aberations or errors, (such as temporarely, regularly or
permanently living a state of physical  mental/spirigh separation ) by these personalised
games : adwanced spirigh in the astral condition are able 2 give some care and assistance