The Best Way to Cure a Cold

Day 115 – Chicken soup for the soul

The old wives tale of feeding the patient suffering from a cold chicken soup has been shown to be medically effective. There is something about the properties of chicken that helps alleviate the symptoms of a cold.

If you had your one currency, what would you call it?

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currency, postaday2011

I’ve said this before but I am really stinky at naming things. Before the Euro part of the fun of traveling from country to country was accumulating all the different currencies. It also helped keep the mind nimble with the mental gymnastics needed to figure out how much things cost in American currency. There was a vast range of value between the German mark and the Greek Drachma and in a sense that hasn’t changed even with the Euro much to the chagrin of the German taxpayers.

I have the old names stuck in my head such as the guilder, the lire, the German mark and the French franc. Who came up with the dollar? And why dollar or even dime as names?

If I had my own country perhaps I wouldn’t even have currency, I might go back to the barter system. I don’t know, I’m quite put off by the currency system in general especially seeing what is happening here with the ever-widening income inequality gap between the ultra wealthy and the rest of us. The gap that exists is primarily due to the collusion between the political class and the insane amount of money thrown in political campaigns, when I think about it, it just lessens the value of currency in general. It becomes all about power, manipulation, inclusion and exclusion.

I think that I would rather keep my country simple, I know that it is a utopian vision perhaps, but it has been awhile since a utopia has been offered up as a futuristic vision. So I say why not, I am aiming for a society not based on a currency but a sense of community and everyone working together.

Newt Gingrich’s Business Network Getting Second Look

Gingrich isn’t a very good historian because he can’t properly remember how he has worked the Beltway ever since he left the speaker ship in disgrace. Moreover how can you be a historian when you are so obviously a hypocrite, in my opinion a historian needs to be objective, when you are a hypocrite you are obviously a liar and a manipulato­r. His time during the Clinton Administra­tion is a black mark on his character, there is nothing worse than when the person leading the charge to take someone down is as bad or even worse. I also feel that he has been useless at the debates, instead of dazzling the public with analysis or insight, he stands there speaking in circles and criticizin­g the moderators­. What purpose does he serve on the campaign trail? None in my opinion.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

OWS: From Building Awareness To Maintaining Momentum

What I have read about the originsof the OWS movement has given me a lot of hope that this movement is truly building itself up to be a people’s advocacy movement to be reckoned with. We have seen at the OWS in Zucotti Park the model of direct democracy in action, now we see the birth of the spokes council which would provide more efficiency in gathering consensus for decision making. These exercises in building a movement and a solid voice for the many is going to take time. The urgency that many of us are feeling is that economical­ly many of us are on our last legs of independen­ce and we don’t want to teeter into reliance on others. Managing all the bills, the debt, often with taking care of both children and parents without recourse to an actual living wage is really taking a toll on so many families, all they see is a congress led by a GOP dominated house that concerns itself with reaffirmin­g the nations motto , deregulati­ng the E.P.A and causing more harm to the environmen­t and causing more health problems for Americans than putting those Americans back to work. The GOP attack on working class Americans, the middle class, the unions, the unemployed and the poor has given rise to the Occupy movement. The GOP was in effect the catalyst that set the stage for all these occupation­s, they have no one to blame but themselves­.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

TV SoundOff: Sunday Talking Heads

What is comical is that apparently only congress actually believed that the “super” committee would accomplish anything. Everyone that has written about deficits, budgets and everything else economy has said repeatedly the super committee is never going to be able to come to an agreement about anything because tax increase won’t fly and hopefully the democrats won’t cave on medicare or social security. I can’t remember who it was, it might of been Jonathan Chait who said if we did nothing the deficits would decrease on their own over a decade because of the various tax cuts expiration dates and he said at the veru beginning of the “super committee”­. This essentiall­y means that the whole debt ceiling “agreement­” was a waste of time and a sham. It is pathetic that we have come to this point, our congress can’t govern.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost