Stress

A lecturer when explaining stress management to an audience,

raised a glass of water and asked "How heavy is this glass of water?"


Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.

The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it.

If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem.

If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm.

If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance.

In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management.

If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. "

"As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again.
When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden."

"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down.

Don't carry it home.

You can pick it up tomorrow.

Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can."

So, my friend, Put down anything that may be a burden to you right now.

Don't pick it up again until after you've rested a while.

Here are some great w ays of dealing with the burdens of life:

* Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.

* Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

* Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be
recalled by their maker.

* If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply be kind to others.

* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.

* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

* Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.

* The second mouse gets the cheese.

* When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

* You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

* We could learn a lot from crayons... Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.

*A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

Have an awesome day and know that someone has thought about you today...I did.

-anonymous

Breeding Ground for Jihad

ZARQA, Jordan — Abu Ibrahim considers his dead friends the lucky ones.

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Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Abu Ibrahim, right, and one of his mentors prepared to pray in a house in Zarqa. Abu Ibrahim, who uses this name as a nom de guerre, regrets that he has not carried out a suicide attack.

Four died in Iraq in 2005. Three more died this year, one with an explosives vest and another at the wheel of a bomb-laden truck, according to relatives and community leaders.

Abu Ibrahim, a lanky 24-year-old, was on the same mission when he left this bleak city north of Amman for Iraq last October. But he made it only as far as the border before he was arrested, and is now back home in a world he thought he had left for good — biding his time, he said, for another chance to hurl himself into martyrdom. (more ...)

Ten Key Values of the Green Party

Help Me I'm Turning Green!
After my last post. I decided to do a little research and see what was so terrible about the Green Party and this is what I found:

Ten Key Values of the Green Party

Originally ratified at the Green Party Convention in Denver, CO, June 2000.

1. GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY
Every human being deserves a say in the decisions that affect their lives and not be subject to the will of another. Therefore, we will work to increase public participation at every level of government and to ensure that our public representatives are fully accountable to the people who elect them. We will also work to create new types of political organizations which expand the process of participatory democracy by directly including citizens in the decision-making process.

2. SOCIAL JUSTICE AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
All persons should have the rights and opportunity to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment. We must consciously confront in ourselves, our organizations, and society at large, barriers such as racism and class oppression, sexism and homophobia, ageism and disability, which act to deny fair treatment and equal justice under the law.

3. ECOLOGICAL WISDOM
Human societies must operate with the understanding that we are part of nature, not separate from nature. We must maintain an ecological balance and live within the ecological and resource limits of our communities and our planet. We support a sustainable society which utilizes resources in such a way that future generations will benefit and not suffer from the practices of our generation. To this end we must practice agriculture which replenishes the soil; move to an energy efficient economy; and live in ways that respect the integrity of natural systems.

4. NON-VIOLENCE
It is essential that we develop effective alternatives to society’s current patterns of violence. We will work to demilitarize, and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, without being naive about the intentions of other governments. We recognize the need for self-defense and the defense of others who are in helpless situations. We promote non-violent methods to oppose practices and policies with which we disagree, and will guide our actions toward lasting personal, community and global peace.

5. DECENTRALIZATION
Centralization of wealth and power contributes to social and economic injustice, environmental destruction, and militarization. Therefore, we support a restructuring of social, political and economic institutions away from a system which is controlled by and mostly benefits the powerful few, to a democratic, less bureaucratic system. Decision-making should, as much as possible, remain at the individual and local level, while assuring that civil rights are protected for all citizens.

6. COMMUNITY-BASED ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
We recognize it is essential to create a vibrant and sustainable economic system, one that can create jobs and provide a decent standard of living for all people while maintaining a healthy ecological balance. A successful economic system will offer meaningful work with dignity, while paying a “living wage” which reflects the real value of a person’s work.

Local communities must look to economic development that assures protection of the environment and workers’ rights; broad citizen participation in planning; and enhancement of our “quality of life.” We support independently owned and operated companies which are socially responsible, as well as co-operatives and public enterprises that distribute resources and control to more people through democratic participation.


7. FEMINISM AND GENDER EQUITY
We have inherited a social system based on male domination of politics and economics. We call for the replacement of the cultural ethics of domination and control with more cooperative ways of interacting that respect differences of opinion and gender. Human values such as equity between the sexes, interpersonal responsibility, and honesty must be developed with moral conscience. We should remember that the process that determines our decisions and actions is just as important as achieving the outcome we want.

8. RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY
We believe it is important to value cultural, ethnic, racial, sexual, religious and spiritual diversity, and to promote the development of respectful relationships across these lines.

We believe that the many diverse elements of society should be reflected in our organizations and decision-making bodies, and we support the leadership of people who have been traditionally closed out of leadership roles. We acknowledge and encourage respect for other life forms than our own and the preservation of biodiversity.

9. PERSONAL AND GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY
We encourage individuals to act to improve their personal well-being and, at the same time, to enhance ecological balance and social harmony. We seek to join with people and organizations around the world to foster peace, economic justice, and the health of the planet.

10. FUTURE FOCUS AND SUSTAINABILITY
Our actions and policies should be motivated by long-term goals. We seek to protect valuable natural resources, safely disposing of or “unmaking” all waste we create, while developing a sustainable economics that does not depend on continual expansion for survival. We must counterbalance the drive for short-term profits by assuring that economic development, new technologies, and fiscal policies are responsible to future generations who will inherit the results of our actions.

Ten Key Values from other state and local Greens.
There is no authoritative version of the Ten Key Values of the Greens. The Ten Key Values are guiding principles that are adapted and defined to fit each state and local chapter.

Where Your Gas Money Really Goes

Newsmax ^ | 5/3/07 | E. Ralph Hostetter

Posted on 05/03/2007 7:34:30 AM PDT by prophetic

Suppose a handful of leftist activists in America were to position themselves to levy an unlegislated tax on the American public.

This tax would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars a year and a substantial part of the proceeds would be sent to potential enemies and those who speak unfavorably about the United States, some of whom would use the money to produce atomic weapons.

What should be the reaction of so-called "red-blooded" Americans? Outrage.

Every day America imports 10 million barrels of oil from foreign nations, paying an artificially set price per barrel established by a cartel (OPEC) which is composed in good part by avowed and potential enemies of the United States.

The price of this crude oil bears little relationship to the normal controls of supply and demand which determine value in the public market place.

As a matter of fact, the price of crude oil today is controlled by bad news. For example, the bad news of Hurricane Katrina caused a spike of some $10 per barrel and that increase is still being felt. It is bolstered by the drumbeat of the dominant — some say corrupt — media, which specializes in turning unpleasant news into major incidents.

The 10 billion barrels of oil is refined to some 200 million gallons of gasoline plus other distillates which makes up about half of the 400 million gallons of gasoline consumed on a daily basis by America's vehicular traffic.

Unfortunately, this price per barrel has been extended to America's own domestically produced oil.

The price of crude oil on May 1 was $65 per barrel. The national average price of gasoline on May 1, according to AAA, was $2.965. The price of crude oil in 1973 was about $3 per barrel on average and the price of a gallon of gasoline was 38.5 cents per gallon. The 38.5 cents per gallon spiked to $1.66 per gallon in 1981 when crude oil rose to $40 per barrel following the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

With better news from the Middle East, gasoline prices settled down to 87.4 cents in 1986 and held to less than $1 until Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The continued unrest in the Middle East brought the price per gallon to a high in 2006 of $3.32.

The United States, according to the Department of the Interior's 1995 estimates, has reserves of 132 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil, enough to meet America's needs for about 50 years.

Adequate development of America's own oil resources would return oil pricing per barrel to the traditional supply and demand method, cutting the cost per barrel by at least 40 percent or about $1.18 per gallon.

This savings of $1.18 per gallon would save the American motorist and transportation industry $474 million per day or $173 billion per year.

The full $2.965 per gallon at today's prices costs the American public some $1.186 million per day, or nearly $433 billion per year. About half of the $433 billion or $216.5 billion per year represents imported oil and much of that goes directly to the coffers of our avowed enemies and would-be enemies in the Middle East, principally OPEC country.

Assuming the United States receives value of product for 60 percent of the imports, the remaining 40 percent ($1.18 per gallon) falls into the same category as a tax.

In effect, the U.S. citizen is paying a 40 percent tax on nearly all oil imported via OPEC, for which it gets nothing in return, except the knowledge that billions may go into the development of nuclear weapons for possible use against Israel, the United States, and its allies. So why doesn't the leadership of the United States develop its own petroleum resources and free itself from the domination of its enemies?

It does not dare!

It's a question of whether the leadership of America is hiding behind a green wall or whether it's afraid to climb over it.

The political entities who oppose all energy development, including atomic energy, are readily identifiable. One of their spokesmen, Ralph Nader, campaigning on the Green Party ticket for president in 2000, said; "There will never be another atomic energy plant built on American soil." He may as well have included oil and gas wells, off shore, too.

It is no secret that nearly all leading environmental activist groups including Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Friends of the Earth, Earth First, and so forth, oppose the development of America's energy resources. They claim they are protecting the environment.

This is a false claim for two reasons. One, the extraction of natural resources today has been made environmentally safe; and two, these groups are more interested in destroying capitalism and America's economy.

Their motives are best described as anti-capitalistic and opposed to America's economy and free enterprise system.

The Web site www.greenparty.org describes capitalism as "a wealthy class of social parasites who make no productive contribution to society . . . Unless surgically removed, this cancerous capitalism will kill its host, the biosphere."

Unless and until Americans, who have their country's best interests at heart, react and demand their elected representatives provide the means to make America totally energy independent, Americans will continue to be heavily taxed by their enemies.

The Greens will prevail until America sees red.