What I Wish I Had Done Differently in School

Law School

In an alternate universe, I wish that I hadn't deferred my acceptance to law school. I would be curious to see how my life would have turned out if I had gone immediately to law school at Santa Ana law school in California. If I would have been a good attorney and if I would have been successful in my pursuit of environmental law at the United Nations. All this in an alternate universe.

Wall Street Protest, Circa 1967

Dear Chris, I am hoping that the occupywall­street movement really gets the conversati­on away from how to get, plead with, or cajole corporate America to put back in what they have taken out, and steer it back to how our social contract has been usurped by the Wall Street/pol­itical insiders gang. Our focus has been tilted to the very top for far too long, always ensuring that the corporatio­ns are “free” to do their business as to how it best suits their shareholde­rs and their C.E.O’s. It is time for the focus to be re-shifted to the mass majority with a “Made in America” contract renewal. How about some corporate national pride for a change. I am sick and tired of reading how we are lagging, it is embarrassi­ng. I know that winning lotto is a dream for most but really is greed that great? I think not, I think that all most people really want is to find a job, not live paycheck to paycheck, not dread the phone or the mail, be able to send your child to school without ruining your retirement­, is that asking too much? Apparently to the GOP it is because with their economic game plan of the past decade that is where they led us to, not even having what I just asked for, all so that the top tier could have more money than they can spend in a lifetime. It is wrong.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Plan Includes Measure To Make It Easier For Debt Collectors To Call Cellphones

I am sorry President Obama but I can’t support you on this one. First of all, don’t you get charged for every phone call on cell phones regardless if you make them or receive them. It is highly unfair to be charged for debt collection calls and secondly, student loans would not be in arrears if there were jobs available to those students who are doing what you are supposed to do. Get an education and you will find employment­, nowadays that plan is not working. Ask the young people at OccupyWall­Street. There needs to be a huge national discussion on how to explain the 200% increase in college costs across the board. This one factor, our outrageous educationa­l costs as opposed with all other countries, has multi-laye­red consequenc­es throughout our economy. Health care costs, lack of engineers, researcher­s gross over representa­tion in the financial sector. Those geniuses might not be at Wall Street if being at Harvard or MIT or anywhere else didn’t put you in debt for 100K and engineerin­g paid better.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Herman Cain’s (and the GOP’s) Confusion About Black Voters

I for one do not understand how anyone, regardless of color, can vote for the republican party. I find that their message is narrow-min­ded, judgmental and values greed above all else. The GOP demonizes government yet they fall over themselves to be elected so that they can stroll down the corridors of power. I don’t see government as the problem, I see it as the partner in our social contract, without our government doing its job our environmen­t, our schools, our roads, our telecommun­ications systems would fall into chaos and it would be everyone for himself. We are already seeing that with each new cut. I don’t subscribe to handouts and that is not what the left is all about, A better comparison is the way the right views government with suspicion and hostility is the way I view the corporatoc­racy that has dominated our political and economic society for 4 decades. However, I feel that given the steady decline that the 90% have lived through because of policies instituted on behalf of government influenced by that very corporatoc­racy through political donations and the golden revolving door between K street and Government­. The umbilical cord that exists between the two needs to be severed. The OccupyWall­Street movement speaks to that and to so many other issues. Their movement is one that I stand behind and I know that many more will become engaged as the month of October unfolds.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Does everything need to be done in moderation?

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Moderation, postaday2011

If you are part of the group of individuals who do not have a demon addiction to battle everyday, than you can definitely afford to let it all hang out and go crazy and try life to the extreme because you know that you can dial it back to moderation without risk.

I can’t do that, I need to live in moderation with everything I do, to be able to live. I can’t “diet” in moderation, so I don’t diet, I have figured out a routine that works really well for me and I stick to it. The eating in moderation is the hardest battle that I deal with because we have to eat everyday and food enlists all the senses, it also has emotional ties, it fills certain holes in your life. So when I’m depressed, I go to reading and/or writing or some other activity other than eating because it is easy to want to lose yourself in something that triggers that happy center in your brain, if only for that small moment in time. For we all know the regret afterwards, when you are laying down surrounded by empty carcasses of ice cream cartons or cake tins, it isn’t pretty. Thank god that hasn’t happened in quite a while, I have to say that writing everyday has kept me from descending into my periodic depressions.

Addiction is really hard to explain to someone who doesn’t know it. I’ve talked about my relationship with beer and cigarettes before. In 2007 we all had a falling out, it put me in the hospital. I won, people might ask “at what cost?” I would answer, no cost to me. I am living happily without beer and cigarettes and I think that the biggest reason for that is that I am honest with myself, I know that I could never have alcohol in moderation, the same with cigarettes. Once I start, I can’t stop. It might be my imagination, but I remember how that drag from my cigarette would illuminate those pathways in my brain and get me to that happy place. The same feeling would happen with Budweiser, those little pathways would brighten and all you wanted was to keep it that way. What makes me such a lucky person is that by never activating those pathways agin, means that I don’t miss them. I don’t have that itch therefore I don’t need to scratch.

The only pathways that get illuminated in my brain these days is chocolate, anything. I try to stay away from chocolate, chocolate is very nice, there is something so lovely that happens when you are eating chocolate ice cream or chocolate fudge stripe cookies made by the Keeblers elves. If I have one, I can’t stop, I hate it, not the chocolate or the cookie or the ice cream but my failure to stop. Knowing that I have a half-gallon of ice cream opened in the house of my favorite ice cream, Edy’s Fun Flavor Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, will torment me until I go downstairs and get the half-gallon and finish it and put myself out of my misery. What is so weird is that I am okay with any other ice cream in the house as long as I don’t have any,or even the cookie dough ice cream, as long as it is unopened, I’m okay, it’s only that first spoonful, and it is game over. Crazy, crazy I am working on it, honestly however, if this is the worst than I have nothing to complain about. I am aware of my limitations and I am dealing with them. That is what is important.