Ten Reasons we Should . . .

Ten Ways to Stay Warm without Extra Expense

1) Use space heaters that heat only the areas where you spend most of your time. The can be gas, oil, electric, coal, corn, trash,or wood-burning, or other means of heating. Use proper ventilation where required. Many of us grew up using just such methods.

2) Wear more and/or warmer clothes. Duh. Oddly enough many people insist on running around nearly naked during the winter while inside their homes. Then they raise their thermostats to compensate.

3) Use warm trows or comforters while sitting  in your home.

4) Buy and use military surplus wool or wool blend blankets for as little as $8.00 each. These are heavy wool blankets designed to keep the last generation of military outdoor infantry of various countries warm during ravaging winters. Down-filled sleeping bags are also available. If you care for the less fortunate or homeless, buy and give these blankets. Both down and wool are two natural materials that will keep people warm even when they are wet! If you don't know where to buy them, contact me, and I will provide a half-dozen sources.

5) Take advantage of all government incentives to improve the efficiency of your house. These can includeeverything from weather-stripping to dadding more insulation to installing alternative-energy sources, including some of those mentioned above.

6) Consider building your next home hwoley or partially underground. This is not as bad as it sounds. Many, using a southern exposure to the sun, have virtually eliminating heating and cooling expenses by buiding this way. Do a search and read about it before you knock it. It is green, efficient, cost-effective to build, and asethetically pleasant to inhabit.

7) Utilize outdoor woodburning furnaces widely available and practical to fuel using only discarded and naturally dead wood in many areas of our country. Wood is not the only thing that can be burned either.

8) Redirect the heat output from clothes driers, hot-water heaters, cooking stoves, lights and other heat-generating appliances to help heat your home. Do a search to find way to do this.

9) Wear a hat while outside (or even inside). Much of your body heat escapes through the top of your head. A hat can make the difference between feeling chilled or cozy warm. I have an outdoor mask that hasw a unique metal heat exchanger that traps and re-directs your heated breath back onto your face. It is amazing.

10). Wear socks and fleece house-shoes while lounging inside. It makes a big difference in felt warmth.

11) Use wool blankets while sleeping, or downfilled sleeping bags, and turn the heat down or off. When I was a kid, my dad routinely turned our single natural gas space-heater off or way down, until morning. It was cold in the mornings, but that's the way it was done.

Ten Ways to Lower Your Cholesterol and Lose Weight Painlessly.

I have used these techniques successfully; they also have had a positive effect on other aspects of my health.

1. Lose Weight. BTW, if you do the following things, you WILL lose weight.

2. Eat less meat; when you do eat meat, pick a very lean cut, and spring for certifiably organically grown meat.

3. Boil and rinse ground meat prior to using in casseroles and wherever possible otherwise. Sound yucky? Try it. Also drain any leftover oil when frying any meat. Really quality lean meat will require a bit of oil and produce little or none itself when frying. I actually add coconut oil (little bit goes a long way).

4. Use olive oil and coconut oil to cook with. Coconut oil has both lowered my bad cholesterol AND raised my GOOD cholesterol. Coconut oil is a wonderfully and healthy oil that got a bad rap that it has since lived down.

5. Eat oatmeal each morning, preferably with the natural non-caloric plant sweetener, stevia.

6. Eat fresh salmon as often as you can hack it.

7. Eat sardines and tuna often.

8. Take a supplemental fiber, such as Metemucel, daily. Use the unsweetened, unflavored variety.

9. Learn about and use the wonderful quasi-grain known as qiano.

10. Eat whole grain breads only.

OOPS! Five MORE that I MUST include:

11. Take Omega 3 Fatty Acids in the form of clear gel caplets. Make sure the source is cold water fish oil. This is often recommended by physicians. Some recommendations say six caplets twice a day. I take six caplets three times daily. Flax oil is not as effective.

13. Use tons of garlic in your cooking and foods. Take garlic capsules if you can’t manage garlic or add it to foods. My belief is that fresh is better, then refrigeratable, bottled, minced, powder, and last caplets. Members of the onion family seem to help a lot too: onions, scallions, leeks.

14. Sprinkle flax seeds in everything. While flax oil is not so effective as fish oil, the whole flax seeds are. As a matter of fact all true nuts seem to help. I keep a small bowl of raw mixed flax seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, walnuts, cashews, and pecans to nibble on between means. Non-salted nuts are best. I say a small bowl, because nuts are very high in calories.

15. Eat ripe Avocados plain, with crackers, or in salads.

16. Replace whatever you drink now with fresh squeezed lime drink sweetened with Stevia, a wonderful non-caloric plant sweetener. Lemons can be intermingled with the limes if desired. I split an average lime, and squeeze half of it into an eight-once glass. Then I sweeten with stevia to taste, stir, toss the squeezed lime half in the glass and top off with crushed ice. I do this all day as thirsty.

Note: I was able to radically reduce my cholesterol by eating oatmeal for breakfast, sardines for lunch, and fresh fish or chicken for dinner. If that’s too stringent, try small amounts of chicken and lean red meat for dinner, and alternate with tuna at lunch.

Radical results require radical measures. A month of doing this will shock your doctor and control many other leading indicators as well, such as A1C, and liver enzymes.

Ten Vintage Cameras to begin Collecting

You will find reviews on these vintage cameras within my Photography blog; they are a good bet for beginning or enhancing a collection on the cheap.

1. Yashica 124G TLR. This was the best TLR they made. But any Yashica TLR will increase in value. the more rare models include the Yashica 635, Yashica A, Yashica C, Yashicamat
2. Mamiya C330. All of the C Series with the number 3 in it is good. The more lenses with it the better. This is the only later model series TLR's with interchangeable lenses. They are wonderfully versatile cameras with great optics.
3. Any Rolliecord Model. They are underrated and still cheap to buy.
4. Baby Rollie 4x4 TLR. They are almost always in good shape.
5. Ansco Automatic Reflex TLR. This is the best made TLR, and fairly rare, but still inexpensive to buy.
6. Graflex 22-200 or 400. The latter is the most desirable.
7. Ciroflex Models A through F. F is the most desirable.
8. All Meopta TLR cameras. They are little known in the West, and still easy to find and inexpensive to buy. This is a real sleeper. They rival the Rollieflex line, with a complete array of accessories--even some that Rollieflex never offered, and most that Rollieflex did offer. Great optics. Highly underrated.
9. Reflekta II TLR.
10. Minolta Autocord, as well as their Miniflex 4x4.

More to come in future posts.

Ten Reasons Congress Should NOT Pass the Healthcare Bill!

There are way more than Ten reasons that Congress should not pass this health-care bill, but I'll stop with ten. Comments are welcomed.

1) It is loaded with ambiguous phrases that can be used by the government to tax, persecute, and deprive the rights of citizens.

2) The majority of "the people", whom are suppose to be represented by Congress, are against this bill--primarily because of the associated cost of the bill.

3) The bill does not honor our country's historical model of incenting people to work harder and do better.

4) Our government has yet to demonstrate its ability to manage ANYTHING as well as private citizens; the so-called public option places the government at an advantage over private insurance companies and will result in such private companies being unfairly run out of business.

5) Liberal forces, within the media, most of whom are "progressives" are driving this Bill. Socialists or Communists. Communism is a failed ideology. It has never worked. So what is the motivation of this Loud Minority to increasingly turn private free enterprise over tho the government?

6) There is not even close to enough doctors, nurses, and health-care workers and medical facilities to take the burden of so many people added to the mandatory medical coverage rolls. This will lead to long waits and rationed supplies and care.

7) This is yet another way sinister-powers-that-be are taking our individual freedoms away. The United States Constitution is based upon a small government that serves the people, not a large government that the people must serve. This takes the power away from individuals and God, and gives the power to the government.

8) This bill was written by lobbyists, behind closed doors, by a few elite Congressional Leaders. Few people have even read this bill and it is being hurried through the approval process, just like the so-called Stimulus Bill. The stimulus Bill has been a disaster, full or pork and useless funding for the people wh helped pass it. Everyone has essentially been bribed, by getting something they want to tack on to pass, in return for their vote for the larger bill.

9) This bill is loaded with all kinds of hidden taxes that will ultimately fall upon the shoulders of all of us--especially our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, and generations after that.

10) The most compelling reason for NOT Passing this bill is that we CANNOT AFFORD IT! This is ridiculously simple. The money is not there, and theree is no expectation for it to ever be theree. Since the beginning of this year, our dollars have become worth almost a third less. this is not theory, it is reality. When the government just prints up more money--it is still only worth what it was originally worth. It takes a few months to trickle down to us in some cases, but OUR DOLLARS SIMPLY WILL NOT BUY AS MUCH. THEREFORE, BUSINESSES HAVE TO RAISE THEIR PRICES.

China owns most of our debt. This mean they are concerned about our out-of-control spending. Ultimately, the fiddler must be paid to China. We can't just rip them off and make the debt go away. The whole world, led by China will be against of and come collecting. I personally am learning Chinese.

What can we do about this abuse of power by our government officials? Nothing. It is too late! The die was cast when people of the USA elected an extreme liberal to the presidency. The Congress SHOULD vote against this bill, but not enough of them will. 

Conclusion: We are screwed. Life as we have known it in America is over.  

Ten Reasons We should Send more Troops to Afghanistan

It has been eight weeks since top Military leaders charged with the monumental task of winning the war in Afghanistan. Still President Obama has failed to grand this request or to even determine a mission and strategy. Here are the reasons why I feel this should be a no-brainer.

1) Troops are currently dying in Afghanistan as a result of not having sent troops to support them. Every day that goes by without sufficient troops to do the job required, those troops there are in greater danger. 

2) The enemy is having a free reign to reestablish themselves.

3) Meanwhile, previous momentum is being lost by our troops.

4) Uncertainty is being signaled to our troops, the enemy, the citizens of Afghanistan, our allies, the rest of the worlds Islamist extremists, and the rest of the world--including Afghanistan's neighbors Iran, Pakistan, India, and Russia.

5) Pakistan is becoming more threatened by fighting spilling over there. The recent attacks on important Pakistan's governmental facilities by Islamic Extremists, underline the dangers posed by not fully prosecuting this war. After all, Pakistan is a nuclear armed state. do we really want to risk nuclear weapons falling into the hands of those who have demonstrated and stated their willingness to use all means available against Americans and others.

6) This area has long been a combustible powder keg due to both India and Pakistan having nukes. Tensions between thee two nuclear powers have often threatened to destabilize the region and begin a nuclear war. If Pakistan falls to the wrong group internally or by Islamist outsiders, the dreaded nuclear war could be started easily--and lead to the destruction of our entire world.

7) President Obama is a smart man, but he is frighteningly arrogant for him to even think that his judgment about how to win a war is better than the most schooled and experienced military minds our country has ever produced. Does he even understand what weapons are available and for what? He is anti-gun, and has probably never even Has he studied the history of war as have the generals? Has he even studied the great military tactics used to win wars through the ages? Does he even have a plan? He seems to think a trillion dollar health care program is more important than the safety of our economy and the safety of our world.

8) Other nations are watching to see how President Obama behaves in the setting of war and provocation. They will use his faltering to make this decision to plan there own conflicts against us. Had war been front stage during the "debates", people would have undoubtedly elected John McCain. But President Obama sold himself as the superior one when it comes to "the economy".  Not only has he blown that so far, he has been so brazen as to back-burner the "economy", if preference to building his legacy and jamming an historically expensive down the publics throats. Is he really up for the job? Oh, yeah, he has Vice President Biden. Oh, oh, oooohhhhh, yea.

9) Afghanistan kicked Russia's ass, with the help of US arms and training. It was Russia's Viet Nam. Now the same folks we armed and trained are kicking our asses.

10)  We are the greatest military power on earth. We have the technology, we have the volunteers (no draft), and the bulk of the American people have the backbone. Why are we paralyzed by the political whims of a small minority of extreme liberal ideologists who are bent on bringing the American system we know so well, to its knees.