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Mindconnection eNL, 2011-07-17

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This good news column debuted in our previous issue. Here's more good news.

These are mostly from newspapers (which I don't read,  but I get aggregated blurbs delivered to me in digest form), so the stories won't be accurate. But the kernel of each blurb is accurate (you can verify with some searching). Here's the accurate stuff:

• 29JUN. Master Lock, General Electric and Boeing are just a few of the many U.S. companies that are bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. as a result of American labor efficiencies, rising Chinese inflation, and the complex logistics of international shipping. Source: New York Times (so don't read too much into that, but it is a cheering thought).
   
• 24JUN. U.S. Durables Goods Reached $195.6 billion in May. Manufactured durable goods rose 1.9% in May. Transportation equipment had the largest increase, at 5.8% ($49.6 billion). Non-defense new orders were also up 1.9%. Source: Bloomberg (the numbers are probably off, but are at least in the right direction).
   
• 24JUN. Watson Pharmaceuticals recently announced a $44 million expansion of its manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City, UT. The expansion will add 17,000 sq.ft. of space and create 300 jobs. Source: Industry Week (not a newspaper, and it is accurate. You can trust these numbers).

And a few from the first week of July:

• Caterpillar recently announced plans to build the Caterpillar Griffin Engine Center in Spalding, GA. The engine assembly plant will add 200 jobs and invest $120 million into the region. Source: The Citizen.
   
• Georgia-based firearms manufacturer Daniel Defense, Inc. recently announced plans to build a new factory in Ridgeland, SC. The $5.3 million investment is expected to create 100 jobs. Source: The Beaufort Gazette.
   
• Factory activity rose to 55.3 points last month, representing 23 months of growth. Source: The Institute for Supply Management (an accurate source).

On this last one, other sources are saying companies are producing more output with fewer workers. That's due partly to automation. Technology has been advancing, especially in robotics. This is why manufacturing output in the USA has been rising for a good number of years, though manufacturing jobs keep disappearing.

However, manufacturing would increase even more and bring good-paying jobs, if we had a proper regulatory environment, a sensible taxation program, and a federal government that actually followed the law. Since we have none of those things, both the economy and jobs are attenuated.

The federal government tries to obfuscate the job data by reclassifying burger flipping as manufacturing, on the absurd logic that because the teenager is making a sandwich s/he is "manufacturing." While there is new manufacturing, and with it new jobs, the net job tally in manufacturing is on the decrease. That is, we lose more jobs than we gain. It does not have to be that way. Thanks to a runaway federal government, it is that way.

Anyhow, not all the news is bad news. There are some positive things happening also. Just not as many as we need.

In an age when business (and even personal) phone conversations include at least one person interacting with a computer mouse and keyboard, a headset is the best solution for allowing a smooth process. Make it wireless, and additional benefits accrue.

We have wireless telephone headsets, on sale now. Plus free shipping.

While these can be great for home use, they are increasingly becoming mandatory for business use. The days of the corded handset are gone. One of the great things about Mindconnection is companies can use a PO number in checkout. So tell your boss you need a headset.

A tornado hit in Pennsylvania, with no fatalities and less than 6 injured. The following is from a newscast in 2007, shortly after the tornado hit. It illustrates perfectly how clueless and reality-challenged the mudstream media are.

Either they employ morons, or they employ people whose goal it is in life to never get their facts straight. We see this over and over. Here's a particularly poignant example:

Reporter interviewing Jacob Yoder, local resident:

Reporter: 400 houses are without electricity.

Jacob. They're Amish.

Reporter. Right. 400 Amish houses are without electricity

Jacob: They're Amish.

Reporter. O.K. How long will it be before the 400 Amish houses get electricity?

Jacob. When Hell freezes. Dunderheaded English.

Another example

This is the same mudstream media that branded Ron Paul a nut for wanting to actually use our Constitution (something not done in a lo-o-ong time), but naively took in Obama's lies without bothering to even look at his background or terrible record as a senator. Two years and millions of job losses later, here we are with no hope of change.

The takeaway here is you need to avoid letting your brainpower be diverted by dubious sources of "news" and "information." Instead, look at primary sources.

If you wanted to know about the only 2008 Presidential candidate running on the basis of--gasp--following our laws, then you could find out about his position by:

1. Visiting Ron Paul's Website.
2. Reading the Constitution.

Amazingly, many people do not understand that the Constitution is the basis for our laws. The mudstream media keep spewing comments that allude to the misconception that the Constitution, rather than being our foundation for law (the same way bylaws are the foundation for nongovernmental organizations), it's some kind of historic document that kind of sort of gives us a mission statement.

No, it's our law. There is no higher law than the Constitution. Period. This is Civics 101, day one.

Anything that conflicts with the Constitution is illegal. Anything the federal government does that isn't expressly authorized by the Constitution is illegal (nearly every bit of legislation signed by FDR was illegal). Source: The 10th Amendment. Except for Ron Paul, the "candidates" in the "election" seemed oblivious to what our laws are.

Ron Paul was the only one not running on a platform of violating the law. To me, despite the mudstream media's hogwash, this eliminated everyone else from consideration.

If you had to select a babysitter for your kid, would you not exclude everyone who brags about what felonies they plan to commit? It seems to me that the same criterion should apply for where to throw your vote for POTUS.

When you use a simple filter on all the bulls-- and do a little of your own fact-checking, the choices here went to only one. If there had been two "follow the law" candidates, then I might be proselytizing for the other one or both.

If you ignore the sources of disinformation and seek out sources of information, you can make an intelligent decision. Quite often these days, you're left with none of the most trumpeted choices. But then, those weren't real choices anyhow.

I've never heard parents argue over whether they should hire a bank robber or an arsonist to babysit their children. If those were your only two choices from a list presented to you, would you not "go off list" to pick someone who is not a criminal?

How the media could take seriously a "choice" between Obama and McCain is a mystery, as both men had deplorable records as senators and both waxed on about the ways in which they intended to break our laws. Amazing!

That's not any different from that interview in which the mudstream media moron tried to insinuate the Amish homes don't have electricity due to a tornado.

A third example

Here's another stupidity item that just has me laughing hysterically.

The mudstream media have been reporting on the "debt ceiling debate" as if it merits consideration. And their pundits are asking if the debt ceiling is Constitutional. Do these people ever think? The answer to that question becomes more obvious every day....

The whole discussion is irrelevant and idiotic, because the vast majority (about 90%) of federal "spending" (stealing) is unconstitutional.

Why are the employees of criminals arguing over an alleged theft limit (can spend $30,000 on this stolen credit card, or only $29,000 before it's considered illegal?) when the theft limit question is already answered via the fact the theft itself is illegal?

And we are actually paying these ethically bankrupt morons $200K a year (plus amazing bennies) for this kind of stupidity? We can hire 535 randomly selected winos off the streets at minimum wage and get better results.

What we need is a law-abiding government. That, in itself, will solve the entire debt problem.

The problem there is we don't have a way of enforcing the law. If members of CONgress were indicted for being on corporate payrolls instead of actually representing their constituents, think how that would completely change things.

No longer would the military industrial complex be able to squander $10 billion a day (please play with that number a bit so it sinks in how much that is out of your own pocket) on a pointless war or $21 million an hour on a corporate welfare system known as "the Pentagon Acquisition Program" (which results in only 5% of the funds resulting in a fieldable weapon, and one we probably don't need).

Conclusion

Let's not give the mudstream media the idea that we take their lies and delusions seriously. As long as they persist in this behavior, we must exclude them from any serious consideration.

When a mudstream media inflicted person regurgitates the nonsense as if it's worthy of consideration, make a point of bringing the "debate" back to what is really going on: stealing on a massive scale ($10 billion a day is pretty massive).

Massive stealing is what we get from the Demopubicans and the Republicrats. Any "debating" they do is irrelevant. The stealing is why 53% of Americans aged 18 to 25 cannot find jobs and of the 47% who have found jobs most are at McDonald's and similar.

Allowing our brainpower to be diverted into the Alice in Wonderland scenario promulgated by the mudstream media and its adherents has the same effect as simply shutting our though processes off.

The high costs of medical care consume an entire seventh of the USA economy (add in the high cost of "government," and there isn't much left!).

Important: the vast majority of the medical money is spent needlessly. Studies and analyses repeatedly show this majority to be about 80%. That 80% figure recurs again and again, but a mathematician named Pareto showed us a long time ago to expect that. It's a natural data aggregation thing.

I personally think this figure in this case is a gross understatement, with the actual figure using another Pareto number: 98%. But since the people with access to the data and a means to crunch the numbers say 80%, let's go with it.

If you could reduce your mortgage or rent by 80% for the same house or apartment, wouldn't you do it? Or go out and buy a $50,000 Corvette for $10,000--what a deal!

But with medical care, we have the reverse deal. Do you have a car? Did you offer to pay for it just once, or five times? Think about the math, here. The medical costs consists of 80% waste. You can see where the solution lies, and it's not in coming up with more ways to pay for the waste.

Even if you don't use medical services, they are costing you plenty. That's because those who incur the largest costs externalize them to the rest of us. Is there a solution? Well, yes. But it's not coming from those posers in Washington, DC.

• The Bush misadministration believed the solution was to inflict us with the costly "Medicare D" thing. How exactly this solved any problems, they could not explain. Analyses shows that, like just about every government program, it achieves exactly the opposite of what's claimed.
• The Obama misadministration believes the solution to the high costs of medical care is to increase the overhead involved and then create an insurance monopoly. How exactly this works, they can't explain. Maybe the fact it can't possibly work is why that explanation is just not forthcoming?

One way to eliminate wasted medical care is to make health care a condition of receiving medical care. Another is to take the focus off of medical care, and put it on health care so the problems don't get created in the first place. Why will this work?

If you research the data, you will come across several primary sources (such as the Ornish study) showing that 80% of the medical conditions that get treated are due to five behaviors:

1. Smoking.
2. Overeating.
3. Excess alcohol consumption (not defined that I can see, but to me it is ANY alcohol).
4. Poor stress management (we offer a solution, our Stress Management Course, which is only ten bucks).
5. Insufficient exercise.

Many people think they have the "right" to behave stupidly and stick everyone else with the cost. For example, I know a woman who smoked until she ended up a ward of the medical system. She is extremely disabled from this, and the medical costs she's racked up exceed $5 million. Her husband, apparently not getting the obvious lesson here, has overeaten his way into an extremely obese condition. Gee, want to guess who will pay for that?

Then there's the insanity of the medical industry. This insanity, and I do not use that term lightly, adds hugely to our costs. Why it's even legal, I don't know. But it is.

The vast majority of Americans, inexplicably, prefer a diet that's guaranteed to bring on coronary disease (high in meat and grain, instead of being high in green). The medical industry's response to this isn't to solve for the cause of the problem. Their response is to do a highly invasive, highly traumatic surgical procedure that costs about $100,000 a pop and really doesn't accomplish anything.

Do a little research on this lunacy called "coronary bypass," and you find that nearly everyone who had a coronary bypass has a clogged bypass within two years. Gee, I wonder if the same behavior that caused the first clog might have caused the second? Ya think?

The medical industry also pushes harmful drugs. For example, the commonly-prescribed osteoporosis drugs work by suppressing that part of the body's bone maintenance program that tears down bone material. The idea behind this is then the part of the body's bone maintenance program that builds down bone material won't have as much work to do and you're left with more bone.

But it doesn't work that way. Because the bone-dissolving enzymes are suppressed, the body also stops producing the bone-building ones. The net effect is an acceleration of bone loss. And prescribing these drugs this is legal!

The way to stop the advance of osteoporosis is through a rigorous program of intense, weight-bearing exercise supported by proper nutrition and good stress management (to depress cortisol). This stimulates a testosterone response that builds bone. The drug does the opposite. There is no known way to increase bone density and bone mass, other than stimulating the testosterone response as I described. Yet, the standard treatment is to prescribe the osteoporosis-accelerating drugs instead. Should it be illegal to deliberately accelerate a person's bone loss? If we had an actual government, it would be.

Similarly, prostate cancer is stopped by reducing body fat to a reasonable number like 7% or less, rather than the 50% or more that is common among prostate cancer patients. What doctors do instead is depress testosterone, and that makes the body store more cancer-causing fat! Why is that even legal? These folks must be ducks, because the word "quack" keeps coming up any time an informed person looks at the results of their "treatments."

Generally, you should use health care instead of medical care to treat a chronic illness. Not always, but usually.

So, what's the fix? That depends on what you can and can't do.

What you can't do:

• You can't count on the medical industry to make you well. For many types of illnesses, you can count on them to make you sicker.
• You can't make other people behave in a sane and responsible fashion. It's normal to embrace the disease-causing culture.

What you can do:

• You can almost certainly eliminate medical care from your budget by practicing health care. Refer to those 5 disease causers above, and you'll get an idea of where to focus.
• You can show other people by example that there is another way.

Sure, you save money by practicing health care. However, the many other benefits make it much more than a merely financial decision. My favorite such advantage isn't the long life health care provides, but the quality of the life you have. In fact, I'd pay extra for that. Fortunately, with health care it's free.

Mindconnection sells both hidden cameras (many models, shapes, and sizes to choose from) and camera detectors.

On the one hand, you want to be able to secure your property (or office, storage area, valuables safe, etc.) so you would install a hidden camera that will record intrusions. This way, you have visual proof of whodunit.

On the other hand, you don't want someone spying on you. There may be a hidden camera in your office, so someone is stealing your secrets (and your boss fingers you for it, since it was YOUR office where the information leaked. Or using a camera hidden outside your home to know when you are receiving packages, or to determine when you are most likely to be away from home.

Under the Antipatriot Act, which is blatantly illegal, a law-scoffing agent of any of several federal agencies can decide to monitor you. Without a warrant and without reasonable cause. This person might be trying to protect you against terrorists (and this person might also be making pigs fly), but the more likely scenario is this person--no longer under restraint of law--has an enormous temptation to do you harm.

Followers of the Hoyt Fiasco and Amcor Atrocities know what "outside the law" IRS agents are capable of doing and of getting away with. It's not pretty.

Hidden Cameras

Camera Detector

So with a hidden camera detector, you can destroy the hidden camera. When the rogue agent (or other miscreant) comes to retrieve and replace it, you capture that person on your own hidden camera! Priceless.

Armed with this information, you have some options for stopping the illegal, unwarranted attack on your civil liberties. Your county Sheriff is a good place to start, because your Sheriff has the power to evict those rogue agents from your county. You can also, with the police report in hand, get some action going with the US Attorney General.

Isn't technology wonderful? Get yours, today.

Walk into almost any gym, and something you will observe is people are swinging weights. Typically, those who grunt the most swing the most. What's going on here is they are measuring the wrong things. Their approach to training is based on the concept that the more weight they can lift, the more progress they are making.

The reality is quite different.

Before I tell you want it is, I will tell you that I can spot a workout cheater as that person is entering the gym. I can also spot a serious trainer. In fact, most people do this spotting subconsciously.

What's the telltale sign? Posture. A serious trainer stands erect, chest out and shoulders back.

Age 50.

A cheater rounds his/her shoulders forward.

It's no accident that every Mr. Olympia title holder has that erect posture, rather than the cheater's posture. This erect posture has a direct effect on the efficacy of your workouts.

It also tends to command respect. If you're in a gathering of mostly strangers, for example at a professional association even, you'll probably notice clusters of people. And if you look closely, you'll probably notice that the person getting the group's attention is standing erect.

Back to the workouts. In addition to maintaining good posture throughout, here are some general principles that apply to all exercises done in a weight-training workout (for plyometrics, not all of these apply):

• Before starting an exercise, picture which muscles you are actually intending to work. Take "roll call" by flexing each one. Be very, very clear on this before starting.
• When lifting or lowering the weight, be conscious of which muscles are involved, and don't recruit others into the exercise.
• Focus on contracting the muscle, not on lifting the weight.
• Except for seated calf raises, seated exercises are the least productive option. The reason for seated calf raises is the sheer weight needed to make them effective. I train calves with between 450 lbs and 500lbs. There's no way I'm putting that on my back.
• Standing when exercising forces you to recruit stabilizers and work your core; pay attention to your balance and posture to optimize the effect.
• Range of motion counts. To see the difference it makes, try doing right arm triceps kickbacks with your left elbow on the floor, butt in the air, and right arm jutting back at a 45 degree angle. For building triceps, this vastly outdoes the  standard, limited-range way most people do this exercise.
• Stop at the extreme point of motion, just for a second or two. This prevents swinging.
• Don't hold your breath. Breath out when raising the weight (positive exertion phase), in when lowering it (negative exertion phase).
• Raise the weight slowly. Lower it at half that speed.
• Don't carry on a conversation while lifting. If your mind is on anything but what you are doing, you are wasting your time doing it.

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill. The five dollar bill has lost $4.80 of its value in the last 100 years, due to the counterfeiting done by the Federal Reserve (which is not federal and does not reserve anything).