Inspiring Videos

You can waste time surfing the net, reading about murder and mayhem, or..... you can choose to watch a short, inspiring video to get yourself energized.  Sort of like psychological vitamins to augment your daily spiritual routine...

Youtube is full of inspiring videos.  To make it a little easier to find them, hear are a few sites, in no particular order to save you time.  This is obviously anything but a complete list.  Please comment on your own favorite videos!

1. Free inspiring videos: 

here1 and here2 and here3 and here4 and here5 and here6 and here7 and here8 
and here9 and here10 and here11 and here12 and here13 and here14.

Perhaps--with your help--we can add to this and also add some web sites corresponding to inspiring quotes, inspiring stories, inspiring pictures, and inspiring music.

2.  Free inspiring quotes:

The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.. et.al.

The only disability in life is a bad attitude…Scott Hamilton

3.  Free inspiring stories/online books:

4.  Free inspiring pictures:

5.  Free inspiring music:

6.  Philosophies:

It doesn’t work to force compliance through restraint.  Compliance is gained through trust.  When one is caused discomfort or pain, they may not remember “why”, but they will remember “who”.

We usually get back some of the treatment that we give out.  One can never go wrong with kindness.

*Those with schizophrenia cannot control their thoughts thus behavior, and cannot be expected to comply.  They may need restraint with kindness.  Mr. Unknown

Possibly one of the greatest evils is to manipulate others using religion.  Could this be taking the name of our Lord in vain? Anon

"Occupy Wall Street" and the Jobless

I get bored while jogging on my treadmill or stationary bicycle, so I often watch educational DVDs or listen to audio books.  Perhaps a lot of you have seen the highly acclaimed documentary "Inside Job".  It's an excellent, easily understood (and shocking) documentary that describes how the 2008 financial crisis happened.  It's a must-see DVD, and is likely available at your public library.


One lesson from the documentary was that deregulation of the banking industry (coupled with human nature) was a major root cause of the financial crisis and subsequent recession.  But guess what?  Our legislators have yet to do anything substantive about it.  They are still drinking the Koolaid that "less government regulations are always better".  Even Obama has done next to nothing to either restore the banking regulations of the previous 50 years or to punish any bank executives for fraud.  Most of Obama's (and Bush's before him) financial advisers are unfortunately the very same people who led the Wall Street firms that created the mess in the first place.  Another reason for the inaction is the massive clout (read financial perks and donations) Wall Street has on Washington.


A recent article has a lobbyist for U.S. banks proposing to undermine the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters.  Some may say, why should we even care?  They're just a jumbled up assortment of street people, wackos, pot smokers, idealistic and misguided students, rabble raisers and...unemployed people, right?  But most people also know--deep down--that these people are the canary in the coal mine.


Actually, the lack of jobs is not the fault of either political party...and there is no political solution either.  The disappearance of middle class jobs is the result of advancement in technology and offshoring.  And, I would add, our inability to stay ahead of other countries in terms of education.  According to a recent report, out of 34 countries, the US ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th (below average) in math on the 2009 exam.  We may not be getting a lot dumber, but other countries are getting smarter.


We have millions of people who know how to do clerical, security, or industrial assembly jobs that don't require years of specialized education--but those jobs are either being sent to China or India, or they have been taken over by computers or robots.  As this trend continues, we may find we have to use bread and circuses to pacify the majority of our population whose lack of skills render them economically "useless".  In other words,  this group of people could get a whole lot larger.  And they could change from Tea Party wackos to radical socialists overnight, as their stomachs begin to growl.

Freak Show 2011...sigh...

F R O N T   R U N N E R S :

HERMAN CAIN:  "I positively do not remember that woman!!  I also do not remember most other things either..."

Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky seems quite innocent in comparison to Sharon Bialek's claim (backed up by her former boyfriend) that Herman Cain not only made crude sexual advances to her but also implied that sex was a prerequisite for a job.  The saddest part of this is that--despite similar claims from and legal awards given to several other women who filed suit--the Republican party does not seem to care about this moral failing.  In addition, Cain appears clueless on practically every political or foreign relations subject.  For instance, Cain stated that "China is “trying to develop nuclear capability"--something they've actually had for 45 years.  This is only one of many, many embarrassing (and even scary) gaffs that make him sound less intelligent and informed on current events than a 5th grader.  Cain claims that Democrats have brainwashed 80% of the American people, and that he "feels like Moses".  When he can't answer a simple current events question, he makes the excuse that he has "all these things swirling around in my head."
 

NEWT GINGRICH:  "I just won't go away!!  (Except when I'm on a luxury cruise with my latest wifey.)"

Newt has apparently made family values a core platform plank, knowing that this will naturally strike a chord with most of his constituency.  Yet, consider this:  Newt dumped his cancer-stricken 1st wife. When his pastor criticized him for not supporting his two kids, he left the church. Newt dumped his 2nd wife after cheating on her with the Congressional aide who is now his 3rd wife. The scandal sidelined Newt in 2008.  And Newt's latest wife?  Based on the latest reports, it appears that she'll stay married to him during his run for the presidency now that he's given her a million dollar necklace and a cruise among the Greek Islands.  Shifting to the financial side:  Newt Gingrich's consulting firm received between $1.6 million and $1.8 million from Freddie Mac.  (At first it was only $300,000.)   Newt claims it wasn't lobbying but "historical and financial advice".  He claims he was not a Washington insider.  Two Freddie Mac sources who worked at Freddie Mac in 2006 claim otherwise.  They said Gingrich was hired to help Freddie Mac build alliances on Capitol Hill, and to burnish Freddie Mac's reputation. They said he also met with donors to the company's political action committee.  Most people have long forgotten that Gingrich was censored for ethics violations by a near unanimous House of Representatives when he was Speaker of the House, and payed a $300,000 fine.


RICK PERRY:   "Hyuckity yuck.................................heh heh..............................oops."
Rick Perry promised to eliminate 3 federal agancies--the department of education, commerce and energy.  (He couldn't even remember the third one.)  Aside from this painful gaffe, what does Perry really want to do?  Is he proposing to dump the already woefully underfunded U.S. Patent office, or the agency that protects U.S. nuclear weapons from accidents or terrorist attacks, or all of the dozens of other sub-agencies?  Which parts of these agencies does he want to eliminate?  Assuming he can't even remember a sound bite consisting of the names of three government agencies, do we expect him to have seriously analyzed this?  These and many other political gaffes have stoked the common perception that Perry--like Cain--is too dumb to be president.  Of course, there are other issues such as "camp niggerhead", his infamous debate with Romney, his speech while inebriated, his physical attack on Ron Paul, etc.

MICHELLE BACHMAN:  "Either you're for the U.S., or you're not!  We need an investigation!"

Michelle Bachman's gaffes are also numerous, and in this case, intentional.  If the other candidates are accused of being stupid, Bachman is accused of being just plain crazy, or alternatively, the Senator McCarthy of 2011.  Bachman's signing of a declaration that implies Blacks were better off under slavery is just one example of her poor judgment; another was her statement implying that the HPV vaccine caused mental retardation.  The list goes on...and on.  Like many of the Republican candidates, Bachman's all-too-frequent "Gospel of Capitalism" assertions (eerily in the vein of "Atlas Shrugged" by the atheist Ayn Rand) makes one doubt whether her version of Christianity is one's own.  Bachman frequently points to recent natural disasters as being messages from God to Washington, and soon after such a comment, her press secretary does damage control by quickly telling the press it was just a joke.  Bachman frequently indicates that her decisions (such as running for president) are all personally approved by God.
  

MITT ROMNEY:  "Lets put your SS and Medicare money in the stock market, and let's pay those CEO's more money!  I know all about business!"

Mitt Romney is probably the least radical and least crazy--and the most intelligent--of the Republican candidates, with the possible exception of John Huntsman.  Romney's gaffes are less bizarre than those of most of the other candidates.  He is in the enviable position of being able to watch his Republican challengers make fools out of themselves while he attempts to look presidential.  Romney is a Morman who has made $250 million on Wall Street.  In his consulting work at Bain Capital, he played a real part in the trend towards out sized CEO salaries and stock options, not to mention an emphasis on shareholder value above all else.  Some would say that he did not create jobs while at Bain Capital; instead, as a private equaty firm, he bought companies, eliminated jobs to make the bottom line look better, dressed them up nicely to resell, and dumped them for a fat profit.  Romney wants to partially privatize Social Security and Medicare--something that will undoubtedly make Wall Street love him even more.  The wall street elite are now bankrolling his run for the presidency against Obama.  Romney knows business, and he's a problem solver in this respect--definitely a good thing.  The real question is, will he take the country in the right direction?  I.e., will he work to re-ignite the American dream or will he further increase the class warfare that's starting to manifest itself as a result of burgeoning income inequality?

A L S O    R A N S :

RON PAUL:  "I'm the most sensible sounding candidate, except when I say that all government should be abolished."

Ron is a well-meaning, elder statesman, whose sincerity seems like a breath of fresh air compared to the other candidates.  However, he unfortunately happens to be an anarchist--no public schools, no police, no anything, all private competition, competing according to their own rules. In this way, he is similar to Marx or Nietzsche, who proposed their own "good-sounding" ideas of communism or Nazism that nevertheless turned out to be disastrous in the real world.  Trouble is, in Ron's case, the world has already experienced many violent upheavals and subsequent "dark ages" that served to prove just how well anarchy works in real life.  No need for more experiments here.  We also already know what de-regulation did for Wall Street--and deregulation is only partial anarchy.  My personal observation is Ron's most avid followers tend to be naive and know little about history.  To be fair, Ron does often has good, sane ideas on such things as foreign policy that deserve a healthy debate.  However, one or two disastrous ideas is still a disaster, even if it is mixed with other very good ideas.  Perhaps this is why Ron is getting the silent treatment from the media.
  

RICK SANTORUM:  "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the most radical conservative of all?"

I shouldn't waste too much time on this guy, since he's not one of the front runners, but I can't resist talking about a wacko.  Based on his NWS bill, he appears to be a "paid lobbyist" posing as a congressman.  His flap with the school board over refusing to pay $100,000 based on residency issues also begs the question of his honesty.  He also believes that "schools indoctrinate our children to like Obama and Socialism."  Santorum's voting record puts him on the extreme right, as he competes for the "more conservative than thou" distinction.  Rick accused Romney of being more liberal than Obama, accused Herman Cain of being "pro-choice", and accused Rick Perry of being soft on illegal immigrants.  In the category of saying one thing and doing another, he presented an ill-timed award to Jerry Sandusky.  Rick also gets his own award for being the biggest whining professional victim.  If you want to identify the worst, most brutal leaders in history, these are the ones with the most paranoia.

I N V I S I B L E   C A N D I D A T E S :

JOHN HUNTSMAN:  "Gee, I forgot to wear my clown suit!!"

Huntsman is a moderate Republican who worked as ambassador to China for Obama, so he has no chance.  Again, I won't waste time on him for this reason. For anyone who wanted a reasonably intelligent Republican candidate who was capable of working in a bipartisan way, sorry.

BUDDY ROEMER:  You say big money corrupts politics?  Whoa, there!...not so fast...

Buddy who??  Buddy has been excluded from every televised debate and most polls. His name won't appear on key primary ballots in Florida, where the state Republican Party opted to leave him off, and South Carolina, where his shoestring campaign couldn't swing the $35,000 filing fee. Why?  His signature issue is "how big money corrupts American politics."  His presidential theme is "America Needs Buddy".  Need I say more?  Not a chance for this poor guy.  Perhaps he should switch parties.


GARY JOHNSON:  A classic conservative?  No kidding?  Quick, get the specimen jar!!

Gary who??  Gary's campaign web site says "Gary Johnson has been an outspoken advocate for efficient government, balanced budgets, rational drug policy reform, protection of civil liberties, comprehensive tax reform, and personal freedom. As Governor of New Mexico, Johnson was known for his common sense business approach to governing. He eliminated New Mexico's budget deficit, cut the rate of growth in state government in half, and privatized half of the state prisons."  Obviously not radical enough to win.

There is something revealing about the "invisible" candidates---it shows what the Republican party is NOT about--i.e. bipartisanship, anti-influence peddling and efficient government.

HONORARY FREAKS:  Sarah Palin and Donald Trump.  They showed the way to perdition.  

Shocking Facts About the Cost of the Iraq War

Note:  This article is now a bit outdated, but worth a read.  The cost of the 

wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan is now estimated to cost upwards 

of $4 trillion--all money we DIDN'T have.

SHOCKING FACTS ABOUT THE COST OF THE IRAQ WAR

1. The Iraq war since 2001 will have cost between $900 billion and
$3+ trillion, depending whether and to what extent indirect costs are
taken into account. This author will use the congressional budget
office estimate of $1.9 trillion—which includes some indirect but real
costs--as a basis for all the following facts. [1,2]

2. At the outset, the Pentagon estimated the Iraq war would cost
$50-$60 billion, which, in retrospect, was off by a factor of at least
30. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more
realistic, predicting the cost could go as high as $100-$200 billion.
Donald Rumsfeld called it “baloney”. President Bush subsequently
fired Lindsey. [3]

3. The $1.9 trillion war cost translates to $6200 per U.S. citizen,
or $16,100 average per household. [4]

4. Had we instead donated this money to every household in Iraq
(assuming 6.4 persons per household), this would have amounted to a
gift of $386,000 per household. (No, this is not a misprint!) [5]

5. The Iraq war was (is) the most expensive war in our history,
besides WWII, which cost $4.1 trillion in inflation adjusted dollars.
It is the longest running war in our history, with the exception of
Vietnam (so far). [6] It cost us 209 times as much as the Gulf war, in
which we liberated Kuwait from an Iraq invasion. [21]

6. If we had instead invested or deposited the $1.9 trillion war cost
in a bank in exchange for yearly interest payments at 4% of this
amount, we could have funded $76 billion per year in foreign
humanitarian aid for the next 1000 years, which is 33 times the net
yearly amount of $2.28 billion we are currently spending on foreign
humanitarian aid. [7]

7. This $1.9 trillion has “purchased” the deaths of 50,000 enemy
soldiers or combatants. That’s $38 million per head. “Fortunately”,
we got a 3-for-1 bonus deal, though. For each Iraq soldier or
combatant killed, two civilians were killed, for a total of 150,000
deaths. (We won’t talk about the number maimed, tortured, raped, and
pillaged by various factions in the ensuing lawlessness.) [8]

8. In contrast, the going rate for attacks on U.S. forces and
personnel has typically been in the range of $50-70 per head. [9]
It’s not hard to guess who’s going to run out of money first. A
February-March 2007 poll showed that 51% of the Iraqi population
approved of the attacks on Coalition forces. The same poll indicated
that over 90% of Arab Sunnis in Iraq approved of the attacks. In any
case, it’s also not difficult to guess who was going to run out of
willing combatants first.

(In truth, it’s not quite fair to quote these statistics. We had some
disadvantages. We were the aggressors; they were the defenders of
their country from invaders, and the defenders of Islamic Sharia Law
against western style democracy. Our military couldn’t easily identify the
enemy and they weren’t supposed to shoot indiscriminately; in contrast,
the Quran instructs Muslims to fight all infidels, and Jihad warriers streamed
in from many neighboring Muslim countries. Finally, our soldiers were
juxtaposed between rival religious, ethnic and tribal factions unleashed
by the power vacuum to make war on each other. If you were counting,
that’s three strikes against us. [22] )

9. War has become an extremely profitable business for a record
number of contract companies (mercenaries) involved in Iraq. For
example, Halliburton pulled in $13-16 billion worth of revenue related
to the Iraq war. [9]. To put that figure in context, $13 billion is much
more than the net cost to the U.S. government (in current dollars) of the
entire 1991 Gulf War. After he became Vice President, Dick Cheney
received $33 million in backdated pay from Halliburton. That was the
exact amount that Michael Jordan made the same year. [9]

10. Total U.S. government debt has recently jumped dramatically
[11]—in large part due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Public
and private foreign debt is now so large that foreigners would own the
equivalent of every other home in the United States, or $10.7 trillion
[12], assuming they “called the loan” and were willing to take them as
payment. We have, in effect, greatly furthered the selling of
ourselves, our children and our grandchildren into indentured
servitude to foreign masters for the privilege of making war.

11.  A devil's advocate view of the war on Iraq, written by a former 

commissioned officer in the marine corp and appearing in the Reader 

Weekly on Sept 20th, 2001, proves very prescient today.  Written only a
a few days after the emotionally-charged events of September 11th, its sober 
assessment pointed to the difficulty of fighting against a shadowy enemy
with no national identity.  And it warned that Bush's challenge to other
countries that "you're either for us or against us" increased the danger that
the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would become a proxy war waged by other 
Muslim countries against us.  So then, how was this viewpoint so entirely missed 
by the president's defense and intelligence advisors, by the majority of the 
active and retired military heirarchy, by congress and even in all the quiet 
diplomatic conversations with foreign countries?  The only possible answer 
to this is, it wasn't missed at at all.  Bush (or his handlers Cheney and 
Rumsfeld) simply didn't listen.

12. It may shock you, but up until 1992 (while Saddam was still our "friend",
even though we knew he was psychotic), we secretly sold him helicopters and

various munitions purely because it served our own interests to use
Saddam to "wear down" Iran in their war. We also gave Saddam chemical and
biological weapon ingredients, including anthrax and other germs. We also gave
him a small amount of nuclear development instrumentation. He subsequently
used our helicopters and our poison gas technology to gas the Kurds,
as well as for other horrible crimes against his own people--all of
which we were aware of at the time and didn't say anything about.  A month

after the Kurds were gassed, we were still shipping him more weapons.
So what was the name of the secret envoy who arranged all this? Donald
Rumsfeld. Yes, that Donald Rumsfeld.  If the U.S. government had not secretly
engaged in this questionable behavior, some argue this might 

have completely avoided the circumstances (or perceived circumstances)
that led to the Iraq war in the first place. Talk about a high ultimate cost resulting
from a little bit of secret weapons dealings!  Since you may find this too 
shocking to believe, here are some internet links:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/dixon06172004.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo0919.html

13. We may have reignited a new and far more costly arms and
technology race—one that we cannot afford this time, considering that
countries like China and Russia are booming or are flush with oil
money.

The argument goes like this: Iran was labeled as part of the “axis of evil”
by the U.S.and subsequently shown an example (in Iraq) of what we do
to our enemies. Its rulers decided to beef up their military capability.
While Iran only spends 2.5% of its GDP on its military (as compared to
4% for the U.S.), it now has a 500,000 man, well-trained army. As
recently as January 2009, it successfully launched a
domestically-engineered satellite and is thought to have “Shahab-6”
missiles capable of reaching Europe. [13] To address this Iranian
missile threat [14], the US recently signed an agreement with Poland
to begin construction of an anti-ballistic missile shield in Poland
and the Czech Republic. According to a senior pentagon official,
“this anti-ballistic missile shield will cover all of Europe by 2018.”
[15] In November 2010, NATO agreed to this missile shield at a cost
of $273 million over the next 10 years. [16] (Note that it cost us
that much to shoot just 7 enemy combatants in Iraq.) So far, no one
has challenged the $273 million estimate, although it is interesting
to note that in 2009, the military spent $11 billion on missile
defense R&D alone. [17] Of course, the escalation doesn’t stop here.
Moscow views the shield as a security threat designed to undermine
Russia's nuclear deterrent. "We will be forced to respond to this
adequately. The EU and US have been warned," Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev said last month…) [18]

A similar story can be told about North Korea, which is building up
both its nuclear and rocket capability. A joint U.S.-Japanese missile
defense program being built by Raytheon is now slated to cost $3.1
billion, $700 million more than expected…this is a sea based leg of an
emerging U.S. anti-missile shield [19] for the purpose of protecting
South Korea and Japan from the threat posed by North Korea’s ongoing
rocket testing. [19] Naturally, China doesn’t like this, but they
are even more incensed that the U.S. has been selling Patriot air
defense missiles to Taiwan, which they consider a “slap in the face”.
At least partly in response to this, they recently completed a
successful test of a land-based missile defense system of their own.
Writing in the newspaper Study Times, Maj. Gen. Jun Yinan said China
had the power to strike back. “We must take countermeasures to make
the other side pay a corresponding price and suffer corresponding
punishment,” wrote General Jun, a professor at China’s National
Defense University. [20]

These comments are especially poignant, coming from the
representatives of countries that are effectively propping up our own
tottering economy by loaning us trillions of dollars.


We don’t learn from history. Even 100 years before the Vietnam war,
old Abe had some advice we might have heeded:

“Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall
deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so
whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a
purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.”
–Abraham Lincoln

“Military glory—that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of
blood—that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy…”
--Abraham Lincoln

“Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.”
--Abraham Lincoln

“I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.”
--Abraham Lincoln

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and
lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
--Abraham Lincoln

SOURCES:

[1] $900 billion spent or approved costs:
http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm

[2] $3+ billion estimate including indirect costs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt.html

[4 U.S. population of 307 million and 2.59 persons per household, 2000
census: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

[5] Based on Iraq population of 31.5 million, and average household size of 6.4

[6] Cost of WWII: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

[7] U.S. Government spends $2.28 billion yearly on humanitarian
foreign aid: http://truthmonk.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/does-the-united-states-spend-too-much-on-foreign-aid

[8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

[9] $50-70 price per head, and Halliburton/Cheney Information:
http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/transcripts/5287.html#

[10] February-March 2007 Iraqi poll:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_insurgency

[11] Explosion of public debt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

[12] Total foreign debt of $10.7 trillion:
http://www.political-analysis.org/ww/id8.html

[13] Iran military buildup:
http://worldsavvy.org/monitor/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=471&Itemid=900

[14] “…system was intended to protect against future missiles from
Iran, such as the alleged Shahab-6…”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_missile_defense_complex_in_Poland

[15] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1266492/U-S-vows-100-cent-cover-Europe-anti-ballistic-missile-shield-2018.html

[16] http://www.america.gov/st/peacesec-english/2010/November/20101120130310elrem0.4205241.html

[17] http://www.issues2010.com/pdf/Missile_Defense.pdf

[18] Russian opposition to missiles:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hOUimCJ4vK08igzVeFrts-owNltw

[19] US/Japanese Defense Missiles:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0352811220090803

[20] Chinese opposition to missiles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/asia/13china.html

[21] $9.1 billion net cost of gulf war:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War#Cost

[22] Problems predicted by CIA:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-05-25-senate-report_N.htm