David Sherman, a long standing fixture in the Great Falls blogosphere is currently posting a new semi-regular feature called “Would You Eat It?”
He explains that periodically he’ll be posting various types or kinds of food items on his blog that may or may not be edible to some and encourages feedback on those food items.
It sounds fun I think.
This week David has whale flavored canned horse meat … um … nummy
Stop in to visit David in your travels. It might be just worth your time.
If you are preaching unity but won’t have anything to do with a Trump or a Biden supporter then I’ve got some news for you — You’re doing it wrong.
Unity, a condition of harmony, or the quality or state of being made one, can’t exist if all you do is rank or berate the ones you claim to want to have unity with. Unity is a word that’s on the verge of being so abused by those who parrot political talking points that we’ll soon be hard pressed to even remember what the word actually means.
Unity is destined for the list of words that have no more meaning. Words like racist, homophobia, narcissism, and sexism, have all lost their distinctive meanings as they are battered about by the unknowing and the uncaring. People with low self esteem would more often than not want to use these words as insults for nearly anything they happen to disagree with. Words taken woefully out of context because the ones using them are either very ignorant, or they just don’t care.
My neighbor voted for one guy, and I voted for the other. Even to this day he gives my wife jars of home made salsa, and I shovel his walks in the winter time.
See how that works?
Unity doesn’t mean that you have to agree with anyone about anything. Unity is the mark that allows us to be and act like responsible human beings. We live in a condition of harmony. It’s understood that as individuals we are free to express ourselves to others who may not agree without the fear of being ranked down or berated in some fashion.
If you think that unity can only be achieved if someone comes around to your way of thinking and eventually agrees with you, then you have indeed been grossly misled. Unity can be achieved either with, or without agreement.
For as much as the political minded are throwing the word unity around these days, I’ll give the word about 4 months before the word itself becomes totally useless and meaningless (not too unlike racism, sexism, and homophobic)
In order to achieve any kind of unity in the world, you’ve got to be stronger than your prejudice, or the political argument of the day. If you aren’t strong enough to desire genuine unity, then I might suggest you stop using the word “Unity” entirely so that those of us who still know what the word means can keep using it.
You may have heard the stories of people who’ve taken the sleeping pill Ambien waking up in the morning with no recollection of an eating binge or, even more scary, a nighttime car ride to who knows where. Well, make no mistake about it, driving and sleeping pills don’t mix. ABC News reporter Lisa Stark put herself to the test in one of the most advanced driving simulators in the country at the University of Iowa.
With 60 million prescriptions for sleeping pills handed out in the U.S. every year, there is increasing reason for concern.
**Watch the video below to get an eye opening view of just how dangerous it can be to drive after taking such a common medication.
The amount of money Americans spend on probiotics has tripled over the last decade. It’s become a billion dollar business — as growing research shows this so-called “good bacteria” can make us healthier. All of us have trillions of bacteria — good and bad — in our stomach, but life can sometimes take a toll on the good stuff.
“When we’re under stress or take antibiotics or eat certain foods that we shouldn’t be eating all the time, then we destroy that natural good defense mechanism that we have,” said Dr. Linda McClintock, Medical Director of Age-less Medicine in Tampa.
Dr. McClintock encourages her patients to take probiotics to add good bacteria to their system. She’s seen it help with many conditions — from urinary tract infections, acid reflux, immunity and digestion. Her patient Rose Rosanelli says it worked for her. “I didn’t really have bloating. I didn’t have gas. I didn’t have the negative things that tend to go with when you’re not digesting properly,” said Rosanelli.
Probiotics have also been shown to help with certain skin conditions like acne, eczema and rosacea. Dermatologists are encouraged by early research. Click here to read more from the American Academy of Dermatology.
With the growing awareness of the benefits of probiotics in the US, we’re seeing more foods on the shelves promoting them. The key is fermented food — everything from pickles to sauerkraut and miso soup and yogurt – all good natural ways to get probiotics.
If you’re not eating enough pro-biotic foods, supplements packed with millions of friendly bacteria can offer similar benefits.
A governmental conundrum
With all of what I’ve learned over the past 20 years with regard to the internet, I’ve found myself settling in to more of a lurker status. I’ll read the outrage blogs, the opinion pieces, the so-called journalistic efforts of shock and awe mainstream media, and so on and so forth. I don’t comment much really on any of it.
Attempting to understand where all sides are coming from is pretty much paramount in these days of the constant confusing and convoluted information that spews forth from miraids of cyber sources that many might consider news these days. Trying to make sense of the the jabber-jockey dialogue on the internet these days is a rather daunting task it seems, but yet I muddle through, with great interest in the ever elusive outcomes that might occasionally present themselves at the end of the day.
Everybody seems to be looking for that one particular “Gotcha” moment that will forever settle their own misguided argument on a matter that really won’t ever make any kind of substantial difference.
Our founding fathers wouldn’t necessarily be rolling in their graves over any of what goes on today, but if they were here, I’m pretty sure that they would be totally blown away at just how wildly successful all of their original efforts have become. The constant tug-of-war of concepts, ideas, thought, and more in Washington D.C. is pretty much what they imagined from the beginning, with the only caveat being that our system of government wasn’t designed to accommodate only 2 political parties. Our founding fathers had somehow envisioned 3, maybe 4 parties in the beginning. More parties, by their reckoning, would mix it up a bit, and keep the ideas flowing with none of the parties really ever getting the total upper hand on the others. Multiple parties would force compromise, expand dialogue, and continue the discussion into areas that might best suit the many, as opposed to just suiting the few.
Currently, our government faces a conundrum. We’ve got only 2 types of people in this nation now. Those who aren’t afraid of anything, and those who are afraid of everything. Our 2 party political mix has only been able to produce 2 kinds of certain outcomes and the government is at an impasse on what to do about it. Ruling by political fiat and executive order is all we have left. Only the few are seeing any kind of certain relief when it comes to government action and the rest are left to fighting and arguing amongst themselves over things they have absolutely no control over.
An example:
The IRS is so far behind in their function that there are literally millions of tax returns that remain unprocessed from 2019. Other government agencies are unable to keep up as well. Immigration is a big one. The flow of asylum seekers has ballooned to the point that our border patrol has found itself grossly underfunded and substantially over whelmed by the sheer volume of those who want to enter our nation, albeit either legally or illegally.
Our Congress hasn’t fared any better than this. Since our 2 party system has never been equipped to address the issues in a timely fashion, it’s devolved into a quasi ponsi-kick-back-pay-day organization. Money laundering schemes run rampant on the hill, and it’s becoming extremely difficult for our so-called-elected representatives to hide it.
Case in point:
Since when does a Muslim nation have a gender studies program? Enhancing Gender Equality in Afghanistan means that more women were able to become bee keepers. An “undisclosed” amount for billions could have at least maybe produced some female Afghan computer engineers or possibly some micro-biologists, but since women have been farming for centuries in Afghanistan already, the best they could possibly produce for all of that money was bee keepers.
Meanwhile, in 1964:
Gender reform was central to the contentious issues which brought about the fall of King Amanullah in 1929. In 1959, the male-oriented government of Prime Minister Daud Khan supported the voluntary removal of the veil and the end of seclusion for women. The 1964 Constitution automatically enfranchised women and guaranteed them the right to education and freedom to work.
Since the 1964 Afghanistan Constitution automatically enfranchised women and guaranteed them the right to education and freedom to work, why do we need to be sending Afghanistan “unspecified” billions for something that was already accomplished clear back in 1964? Doesn’t Afghanistan have it’s own economy and education system? The answer to that is a resounding “yes”.
How much of that “unspecified” billions gets sent back to our representatives through other channels for the favor?
The point I’m trying to drive home here is that it doesn’t really make a difference who the President is. Trump or Biden, the pay-offs are going to continue unabated. The 2 party system of government in this nation absolutely does not work. When a President finds his or herself having to “rule” by executive order, then it’s a sure sign that our “original” system of government is falling by the wayside. When the Congress has become so inept and ineffectual with regard to legislating, it’s time for a change. It may already be too late to allow for other political parties to join the fray. The damage to our system of government may have already become irreparable.
Our government is faced with an intricate and difficult problem. A problem of it’s own creation that becomes seemingly more ignored as the months go by. A government for and by the people has somehow morphed into a government for and by the government, and it appears that the only ones we have to blame is us. The American people would much rather be outraged over the things that don’t matter, instead of being outraged over the things that do matter. The problem has nothing to do with just Trump or Biden, the problem has to do with the government itself. Until we start looking at things for what they really are, it’s going to become worse. A government that’s allowed by it’s people to run totally off the rails is a government that’s deserved by the people that allow it.