Mindconnection eNL, 2016-06-05

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In this issue:
Good News | Product Highlight | Brainpower | Finances | Security | Health/Fitness | Factoid | Thought 4 the Day

Item 1. The leading psychopath in the world's most feared terrorist organization gets ripped by a Congressman. See the video here: http://americanactionnews.com/articles/tea-party-congressman-destroys-the-irs. Representation of the people? Yes, it actually happens sometimes. Now we need to see indictments and the dissolution of this organization.

Item 2. A recent report stated that an astonishing 5.8% of scientists are optimistic about finding intelligent life in Washington, DC. The authors of the report did not speculate on the reasons for this high level of optimism.

Mindconnection, LLC sells in the major marketplaces. We have a Top Seller Plus rating on eBay, so in this issue we'll again point you toward one of offerings there. This product was featured in our previous issue.

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Take the case of the Unaffordable Care Act, a blatantly illegal scam that any thinking person can see will only increase the costs of insurance and of medical care.

The fact that it was passed illegally (its tax component originated in the Senate, a direct violation of the Constitution's requirement that all taxes originate in the House of Representatives) should have had all intelligent, informed citizens demanding its immediate repeal. And it did; there are just so few of us.

A funny thing about criminal capers. They generate more crime. That is happening with the UCA, now.

The Soetoro mis-administration is illegally paying insurance companies with taxpayer dollars, in clear violation of the letter of the law of the UCA. Even the liberal rag Forbes has documented the illegal diversion of $3.5 billion from the Treasury to sponsors of UCA's policies to compensate them for medical expenses of high-cost policyholders.

Suppose you have a discussion with the typical non-thinking, television sound bite believing, disinformed American citizen about this theft of $3500 million dollars. Where does that money come from? Not the government, but from people who earn the money that the government takes from us. That is, all us working folks. Would your non-thinking, television sound bite believing, disinformed discussion partner understand even that? Nope.

The non-thinking, television sound bite believing, disinformed people can't even grasp that the UCA is illegal. They can't grasp that it has destroyed thousands of jobs and is adding enormous costs to the lives of the people who can least afford even more cost. They can't grasp that the pet name for it (Obama care) is based on an illegal alias used by an illegal alien. You can't have an intelligent discussion about reality with non-thinking, television sound bite believing, disinformed people. But their power, as a group, over your life is immense.

If you average our effective IQs (add up the effective IQs of the intelligent, informed Americans and those of non-thinking, television sound bite believing, disinformed Americans, then divide by the total population), the number ends up being below the retard level. It has to be, or we would not have an illegal immigrant occupying the White House and we would not see all this financial hemorrhaging from the UCA.

So you can do everything possible to raise and maintain your own IQ but when vast hordes of non-thinking, television sound bite believing, disinformed people are in the mix, your efforts really don't matter in the big picture of things. Collectively, we do amazingly stupid things. All the time. It's unrelenting.

There's an adage, "When good men do nothing, evil reigns." I want to update that to reflect today's reality in our society: "When intelligent people do nothing, stupidity reigns."

The audience for this newsletter is self-selecting. Every subscriber I have ever interacted with has impressed me as smart. Some of you, super smart. And you're always looking for ways to be smarter, live smarter, think better, and so on. For yourself, that is. This makes sense. But what about the diluting effect  of all those zero IQ people?

There's an adage, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." I would update that to reflect today's reality in our society: "You can lead an idiot to water, but you can't make him think."

You can, however, coax him to drink. Er, think. And that is my challenge to you. Use your own bright mind to come up with good ideas on how to nudge the zero IQ people around you into actually using their gray matter. Do it in a way that works for you.

Like many "manufacturers" these companies don't make the product; they have it made overseas. For ham radios, that typically means made in Malaysia. Not a bad place, as far as quality goods go. That can't be said of many other places "our" stuff is made.

An entire family of products may be made in the same dingy factory in some dingy country, with no differentiation other than the American brand name and some cosmetic changes. To paraphrase, same junk different name.

Often, "manufacturers" don't even design the product nor do they provide support for it. Technical and warranty support are increasingly falling on distributors and resellers, since the "manufacturers" tend to be very light organizations with scant resources.

There's a reason for this business model of slapping your label on someone else's product and claiming to be its manufacturer. We'll get to that in a moment. But think about how weak this business model is. You're basically an importer who trusts a foreign manufacturer with your company's purported reason to exist. You're not really needed.

How have things come to this? Let's look at the process.

So you want to build a widget. Great. You find a USA factory that will build it for you. They do the extrusion and a few other processes, but must import key components from overseas. This creates operational issues in managing inventory flow. You also want accessories for it and nice product boxes. You contact 12 other American manufacturers, and basically nobody wants to deal with you.

Then you contact Chinese Crap, Inc. They will make your product to substandard quality parameters, but they will make it cheaply and they provide a one-stop shop. Also by going with them you circumvent about 90,000 federal regulations.

That, my friends, is how it works today for just about any new player trying to introduce a new product to market. Unless they have amazing connections, plenty of free capital, and many other resources a small business typically does not have, this is their only available path. The exception is the product is such that all of its components are available locally or can readily be made locally.

This dynamic is one reason that REAL manufacturing in the USA isn't really growing. Hardly anybody builds a plant to produce a new product in the USA. We are manufacturing more bits in total (if the data can be believed), but we are manufacturing less in value overall.

In the sense of manufacturing a complete product (including the box it comes in), do we do ANY manufacturing? Yes, some. For example, we do produce windows and blinds here. Doors, too. There are many other examples, but for each one you can probably find 100 examples where we don't. What good is only part of a product?

If we had an actual government, it could step in to alleviate the situation and make manufacturing strong in the USA. But we have only a crime cabal, and it does not care about USA manufacturing. What used to be a vital industry sector is now pretty much a ghost sector.

So what's your finance tip, here? And why should you care, if you didn't create a product and want to manufacture it? There's a pernicious, multi-layer set of negative effects from this problem. As we outsource more manufacturing, we create less demand for people capable of manufacturing things. This erodes our social fabric in several ways; just think about that. And that's only one of those negative effects.

The fact is we need manufacturing that is real and substantive. We need a vibrant manufacturing sector. So why don't we have one? Are Malaysians inherently superior to Americans and so we can't compete with them? Is that the reason? No, it can't be. The same goes for the Chinese. And the Mexicans.

The criminal cabal I referred to earlier is the problem. What they should be doing is assessing the compliance costs that American firms must bear (especially now with the horrendously expensive Unaffordable Care Act) and leveling the playing field.

Travel to El Paso, some time. Breathe in the brown fog that wafts across from the plants around Cuidad Juarez. Those plants, if located in the USA, would have to comply with EPA regulations. That's not cheap to do. The solution for manufacturers is to locate just across the border. Same with Canada. Drive across the bridge from Port Huron into Sarnia, and you'll find Dow chemical plants all along the Canadian side of the river. Why aren't those Dow plants in the USA, providing American jobs and paying American taxes? You know the answer, already.

How stupid are we to export jobs and import air pollution?

I could write a book on what the pseudo government is doing wrong and another one on what they should be doing instead. But it's a pseudo government and expecting help from that quarter is foolish.

As the Depression grinds on, can we really afford to keep exporting jobs and importing air pollution? And (for the most part) shoddy goods?

Anyone who has paid attention to the charades called "elections" knows that they are fake and we "voters" have no say in the outcome. But we do have a vote. It's called the consumer dollar. How can you vote with this?

Support "Made in America" labels, even if you pay more. That will help. Yes, some of these really stretch the truth, but at least they don't say, "Made in China" right on them. With many goods, you simply will not have a choice. But where you do have a choice, choose Made in USA.

I don't mean that you should do so blindly. If, for example, you really like that Japanese car much better than any American car then you get the Japanese car. But don't get it because it's "cheaper" than the American car because it's really not. I do buy American casual shoes and American dress shoes. I do not even consider foreign-made ones. But when it comes to my climbing shoes, I look at all brands regardless of origin. All else being close to equal, I will choose the American-made ones.

What I'm saying is don't chase the illusion of lower cost via the cheap price tag. Make an intelligent decision based on the quality and other attributes of the product and give extra weight to where it was (allegedly) made.

Choose local or regional banks instead of large banks too, because large banks are a big part of the problem. The large banks are also stealing from you, via inflation. How is this so? Between 2008 and 2012, the nonFederal nonReserve created $49 trillion (49 followed by 12 zeroes) out of thin air and just gave it to the nation's largest banks. That is a lot of counterfeit money, and the effects on the economy have been deleterious in no small way. Local and regional banks didn't benefit from this theft; they were punished by it, just like everyone except the recipients of the counterfeit money.

If you have learned a trade, another thing you can do is pass your knowledge on to the next generation. Maybe you can offer to teach a weekend or evening class at your local high school or community college. Or show your cousin's kid or the kid two houses down how to work with tools. This really can help, because we not only have a shortage of skilled tradespeople, we have a shortage of people capable of being trained in a trade. Relatively few kids today have "tool sense" and other skills that were common not so long ago. Not to mention patience, discipline, attention span, and the ability to set that stupid-phone down and focus on the task at hand.

Even if you have no skills (a situation I highly doubt), you can amaze today's kids by simply sitting still for five whole minutes without once sending a text message. Try this. They may start calling you The Amazing Houdini. Maybe they'll even ask how you did it; "Oh, Zen master, please teach me."

To really show your stuff, demonstrate this ability while (gasp) driving a car. Do it in short sleeves to truly astound them.

It's not that your individual contribution is going to make a huge difference in solving this problem. But it will help. So what about your personal finances, which this column is supposed to be about? Isn't this discussion off topic from that? Not when you think about how your stepping up to the plate will change you.

As you become more thoughtful about this problem and start pitching in to fix it, you will almost certainly become more thoughtful and capable in whatever you're now doing to earn a living. Even if your boss doesn't see the change, someone else will see it (if you're active in your industry) and hire you away with a nice salary increase.

As noted in the previous, issue, my feline companion went missing for four days.

In her case, she was able to trick one of her captors into coming into her cell. She then overpowered him, took his automatic weapon, and began to make her dramatic escape while under heavy fire. At least, that's how she tells it. I have some skepticism regarding this version of events, but I wasn't there so really can't judge.

Anyhow, she did go missing for four tense days and did come home in a state of distress. I learned a lot during those four days. Below is what I did to try to find her. I tried to keep this in chronological order, the steps in the sequence I did them.

I advise copying this into a separate document, then modifying it to be a checklist with your specific information. For example, add the name and URL of your local chapter of the ASPCA.

• Walked the area within three blocks of home, looking for her--house by house, yard by yard. Always do this first, as your pet may have been a hit and run victim. I later expanded this to a wider range, plus visited areas around slightly major intersections (those with stop signs, on the theory she may have jumped out of the back of a truck) up to a mile away.
   
• Canvassed a larger area by car. Probably not effective for cat, as they seldom go more than two blocks from home. But it is essential for a dog.
   
• Walked the smaller area again. Experts advise to keep doing this. There are multiple reasons, but if nothing else do it to generate endorphins and help maintain your sanity. After the first day of searching, always take flyers with you and hand one out to anyone you meet (more about this, in a moment).
   
• Put out a notice on nextdoor.com. If your neighborhood does not have a group, start one. If it does have a group, join one.
   
• Contacted the local chapter of the ASPCA and filed a Lost Pet Report.
   
• Contacted the Center for Lost Pets and filed a Lost Pet Report.
   
• Designed a nice color flyer. I took my time to do this well. You can get templates for these online from many different sources. But my idea was to put a couple of pictures on there under some text saying when she went missing and how to contact me. Put the text above the photos, that's very important.
   
• Then I printed out a huge quantity of the flyer and stuck one on the door of every home in my subdivision (about 70 homes). I went back through every block of the subdivision the next day, and where a flyer was still on the door I went up to the garage door and knocked and hollered for my kitty in case she was trapped inside.
   
• A nice person on nextdoor.com posted a Missing notice on her Facebook page. I grudgingly opened a Facebook acct to get a notice on the missing pets page.
   
• When people contacted me from nextdoor.com, I asked them to physically ask their neighbors about my kitty and to personally check the backyard sheds around them.
   
• Ran with kids who were training for Cross Country, handing them flyers as they ran. Not bad for an old man, but I did earn my Varsity Letter in Cross Country when I was in high school. Yes, they had high schools back then!
   
• Signed up for www.mylostpetalert.com. This is an amazing service. Check out what they do and how reasonably priced it is. I got the $90 package. This step really should be first. In addition to calling 500 homes with a notice (a nicely done one), they placed a Facebook ad and also contacted the animal shelters and veterinarians (within 50 miles) where lost cat might end up.
   
• Gave a flyer to my USPS delivery person, UPS driver, and FedEx driver. All of these men are out in the neighborhood every day. All agreed to write down the address where they saw a kitty matching her description (whether inside or outside) and call me (provided they hadn't seen a cat there before).
   
• Visited animal hospitals, vets, pet stores, and shelters near home. The ASPCA intake center for this area is 1.5 miles from my home.
   
• Filed a stolen pet report with the local police. Not really worth the time, but leave no stone unturned.

In addition to this sequence of steps, I:

• Repeatedly walked through the neighborhood looking for her. The idea here is a missing pet might almost make it home after being abducted. That happened to the pet of a friend of mine. A kid found his cat only two blocks away, starving. The cat died from organ failure, due to the starvation. She was an indoor cat and didn't know how to hunt.
   
• Mentally reached out to her several times a day. I really focused on this, concentrating hard. I did feel a connection and do believe this works.
   
• Recontacted people who had volunteered, to keep them working on the search.

I did not waste time doing these activities:

• Putting posters up at intersections. Really, who is going to read those? Waste of time.
• Calling relatives and crying about the loss. It wasn't a loss, I didn't lose and wasn't going to give up. I did tell my sister, but we kept things brief.
• Walk around asking, "Have you seen my cat?" I did walk around with those flyers. I carried some in a folder with me wherever I went. I also kept some by my front door.

Basically, you want to:

• Keep the effort going wherever you can.
   
• Automate as much as possible. Automation multiplies your efforts.
   
• Ask people to help. Tell them specifically what you want them to do. For example, "If you could check the tool sheds in the yards adjacent to yours, that would really help."
   
• Stay optimistic. There's an adage, "Cats come home." Not much comfort to dog owners, but really if you make all this effort as laid out above you SHOULD be optimistic.

Something I hadn't done prior to her abduction was have her chipped. I took care of that after she came back. Now if she goes missing, any veterinarian or shelter can scan her and know exactly who she is. Instead of driving 50 miles to see if a black cat recognizes me only to find out she doesn't, I'll get a phone call along the lines of, "We have your cat, come and get her."

Before your pet goes missing:

• Take plenty of good, poster-quality photos.
   
• Make a note of any distinguishing marks, behavior, or features. Consider getting your pet a small tattoo for visual ID purposes.
   
• Make sure your pet is chipped. Have that chip checked by your vet with every visit. It could go bad, though that is unlikely.
   
• Be good to your pet. Really good. When some pets run away, I am not surprised. Give them some undivided attention daily, but also include them in your activities. Have some special bonding activities with them. Show me someone who is cell-yakking while walking the dog, and I will show you a dog that does not feel respected or especially wanted.

After your pet is recovered:

• Give your pet a warm welcome. Then give your pet time to get over the stress. Extra attention, extra treats, and extra tenderness from you will really help.
   
• I'm sure your pet is really smart, but I'm going to take a wild guess here that your pet will not submit an articulate written report on the event concluding in how your pet feels now with a nice health assessment wrapping things up. You will have to get information some other way. Over the next couple of weeks, pay attention to your pet's potty habits, eating, hydration, and behavior. If something's wrong, address that. Also visually inspect your pet's stool for signs of blood or parasites (I mean worms, not members of Congress). If anything is remotely suspicious, get a veterinary examination.
   
• Let people know your pet is no longer missing.
   
• Retrace your steps and remove any posters in shelters, etc.
   
• Thank everyone who helped you.
   
• Take your pet for a veterinary exam, just as a precaution.

Now, a final caution. There's a "lost pet recovery" scam where someone steals your pet and then waits a few days. Once your flyers go up, they call you and say they have your missing pet. They demand a reward, typically around $100 to $150. Go ahead and agree to meet them, but say you will need to get the cash from your bank in the morning. Then contact your local police and report the scam. The cops will tell you how to proceed.

A related scam is your pet just runs off, you put up posters, and someone who doesn't have your pet demands a reward. Follow the same protocol.

Now if you have a really smart pet, maybe your pet runs off, you put up the posters, and you pay the reward to a friend of your pet and they both use the money to take a trip to the Bahamas. But I'd say this is unlikely, relative to the preceding two scams. Just my opinion.

More Lies That Trainers Tell

In the previous issue, I discussed some ideas that unqualified personal trainers spew at their victims, er, I mean clients. Here are some more:

• Avoid carbs. This is just stupid. When dietitians talk about cutting carbs, they mean the obese person who's consuming candies, chips, pretzels, and other junk carbs needs to stop consuming those. An athlete needs quality carbohydrates to perform. If you're seriously weight lifting, you need those carbs to get a good workout and to recover from it.
   
• Take this pre-workout supplement (the brand they swear by). Truth: Most pre-workout supplements have no rhyme or reason to their formulation and probably don't do much for you. But the most popular ones contain excess stimulants and taste great. It's better to work on your pre-workout attitude.
  
  If you do decide on pre-workout supplementation, try 5g of glutamine and nothing else for a week. You can consume beta-alinine any time (not just right before your workout), and it will definitely help you with your workouts. I also like L-arginine pre-workout; among its benefits is your body will boost nitrogen.

• Bring the back of your neck to the bar when doing pullups/chinups. Truth: This has several problems, including the fact it puts you at very high risk of chronic stress injury to those cervical disks. It is much more productive, and safer, to bring your collarbone to the bar. I do a variation where I bring my sternum to the bar.
   
• Always exercise with the full range of motion. Truth: If you know anything about mechanical physics and you follow the lines of force you see the fallacy of this idea. Yes, you want to work the muscle over its full range of motion. But you can't do that in a single exercise and get an effective workout.
  
  Picture a standing dumbbell curl. At full extension, the tension on the biceps is very different from the tension at mid-range and at full contraction. You need three separate exercises to properly work the biceps in its full range of motion.
   
• You need to surprise your muscles, thus cross-fit is the best way to build them because it's different every time. Truth: You need to be methodical in how you approach your training. Your muscles don't need to be surprised, they need to be systematically stimulated to adapt (e.g., grow). Cross-fit is great for variety if you need that mentally. It's also great for injury, because unlike the controlled, practiced motions in a weight training regimen, cross-fit motions are often unfamiliar to the participants. Injuries are counterproductive, but occur at a high rate in cross-fit.
   
• You have to lift ultra-heavy, so that you must cheat to perform the positive (lifting) part of the exercise; all the benefit is in the negative (lowering). Truth: You do get more benefit from the negative, and some cheating on the positive can help you squeeze out that last rep. But don't structure your workouts around the idea of bad form going up means great results going down. It doesn't work that way.
  
  Get a copy of Pumping Iron and watch Arnold perform the positive part of curls. Then you'll see there's great value in the positive motion, not just the negative motion.

There are many more "Lies That Trainers Tell." They may not be deliberately lying, they may actually believe what they are saying. Maybe they watched an online video or another trainer told them, or, worst of all, they read it in a muscle magazine.

When a trainer tells you something, say that sounds great and that it would help you to have an explanation as to why that is a good practice.

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

The human brain can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. The real trick is making sense of it all, something most people don't bother even trying to do.

After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box. -- Italian proverb