Rangel's H.R. 5741 Universal National Servitude Act

On July 15, 2010 Charlie Rangel introduced in Congress the Universal National Slavery Act, or H.R. 5741 Universal National Service Act:

"To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes"

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-5741

H.R. 5741, The Universal National Slavery Act, will require every man and woman to give up all rights and freedoms for a bare minimum of two years and if they do not perform their services satisfactorily they will be penalized. Isn't being forced into servitude penalty enough? They'd have to come up with some kind of torture to penalize me, because I'd be pretty numb and unable to feel punished if I was a walking dead person anyway.

Supposedly, America needs more homeland security and reserve power for when we go to war. We've been at war since I was born. It's like Brave New World and I have grown almost apathetic towards it. We're always in some little podunk country, fighting drug cartels or religious extremists. Supposedly, they're always uncivilized and living in the Stone Age, yet seem to wreak havoc and put our technology and enlightenment to the test. And we always think we have a moral perrogative to discipline these dirty little children for fear of their Weapons of Mass Destruction and fundamentalist religions.

Are we officially the home of the New Nazi Germany? Who the heck are we planning on invading and going to war with in the near future that requires forced national servitude to Homeland Security and the Armed Forces? Why does America see a need for increased Homeland Security?

The fact is that the U.S. is slowly being turned into a giant continental prison. We are tracked, scanned, told what we can and can't ingest, and controlled for our own "protection," exactly the same way prison inmates are treated. Often, when a prisoner is let loose they don't know how to function in the free world and end up back in prison. Americans are inmates and have no idea how to function outside its dirty walls.

America doesn't need Universal National Slavery. We need people to have a country that makes them proud and protective and loving enough to volunteer of their own free will. We need hearts, not mere bodies in the Armed Forces. I want the best and the best comes from the heart and freedom, not from forced servitude. Slaves don't put pride into their work. Free people do.

image: Arch of Titus

Nicotine Replacement Therapy Targets Youth and Females in Your Local Store

It's time to start complaining to our local merchants, retailers, and newspapers about the shelf placement and advertising of Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" (NRT) products. Like tobacco products, they should be out of reach of underage users and require an I.D., and advertising should not appeal to youth.

The other night, in the local Wal-Mart I noticed that the NRT aisle was provocatively placed on an edge which everyone has to pass as they go to the toothpaste, deodorant, condoms, vitamins, and tampons. The shelf was under five feet tall -- very low, beneath the eye contact of the average adult, but perfect for a younger person. The location of the patches, gums, and candies was ideal for those making a quick run into the store for those items.

And doesn't nearly everyone brush their teeth, and hair, and buy shampoo and other body cleansing and grooming products? Young women, especially, have to pass by the NRT aisle, because it is they that spend the most money and time grooming and beautifying themselves. Evidently, the shelf placement of NRT is directly aimed at those of the underage female persuasion. The aisle was also conspicuously close to the condoms. Again, this indicates marketing and placement aimed at the youthful and sexually active. Imagine getting it on and pouching a piece of "gum" at the same time! The beauty of it!

This moral and health issue must be remedied. The anti-tobacco groups have lately launched a complaint campaign, asking their niacin deficient pellagrins to complain about in store tobacco advertising and placement. The same must be done with NRT products to protect the children from the health and economic burdens inflicted upon society by addictive and dangerous Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" products.

We cannot allow this social ill to continue. Children are daily exposed to Nicotine Replacement Therapy advertising via school programs, T.V. advertising that directs them to look up sites such as Shardsofglass.com, and are being led to beleive these products are safe and responsible. Even the President of the United States is pushing NRT, offering it to others, saying it's good, with children viewing this unhealthy behavior.

And soon, we will hear more and more of the deaths caused to children that used NRT because it was so easy to buy and because they ignorantly believed it was safe. They will put the trans dermal patch on and die of heart failure, mix the patch with other drugs; or mix the gums and candies with other drugs causing a dangerous reaction. Children are natural little chemists and experimenters. And Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" doesn't work the same way as tobacco on the brain. Much of it is actually a type of ionization process, replacing one thing with another. We must protect our children and our young females and demand that NRT be placed behind the counter and that I.D. be required in order to make a purchase.

Also, taxes need to be raised to make this too expensive for youth to afford and to pay for the health costs caused to society. Most NRT products are imported and don't have to pay tariffs. We need to remedy this issue, and make these Big Ionized Nicotine companies pay up, rather than reaping the money, and addicting an entire generation of youth for life to this habit.

Shakespeare's Retelling of an Old Tale: Romeo and Juliet

"When good manners shall lie in one or two men's hands, and they unwash't too, 'tis a foul thing" (Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, I.V)

"Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his
own fingers: therefore he that cannot lick his
fingers goes not with me" (Romeo and Juliet, IV.II)

I have finished reading William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet for the first time. For years I have deliberately avoided reading it due to its overly quoted sap. Lines such as "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"(II.I) have made it into something that cloys the senses.

But, of course, Romeo and Juliet is not at all the thing that the masses have made it into and the serving people always have something intelligent to say. In Romeo and Juliet the servants often let us know what they think about those, like our politicians and others who can cook up a feast to serve to others, but don't dare take a taste of it themselves.

And, of course, Romeo and Juliet is about love, love that knows no boundaries and defies earthly confines. A love that does not parade itself and is secret and gives no material gain to anyone. It is the story of Passover and Easter and of breaking Time's grip.

Shakespeare is always about Time and of a world most of us don't even know how to dream of. I have found it nearly impossible to understand Shakespeare until one has actually experienced a transformative or eye-opening time in one's life. Until one has actually lived the words of Shakespeare they cannot understand him on anything other than the superficial level.

And it is no wonder that Romeo and Juliet has been made into something cheap and vain. I never would have understood this play a few years ago. This is not merely a tale of two "star-cross'd" lovers or feuding families who would not approve of their marriage. This is about a love that most of us, even those that think they have been loved or in love, will never understand. I can think of only two comparable and secret love stories: Abraham and Sarah and that of Jesus and His Father.

image: Thisbe by John William Waterhouse

States Ban Marijuana Replacement Therapy (K2), Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" Should Be Included

There has been recent media attention and fear mongering regarding the smoking of herbs laced with synthetic marijuana. Supposedly, people are showing up in emergency rooms vomiting, hallucinating, and poisoned after using synthetic marijuana which is often marketed as incense. There is even one reported suicide alledgedly linked to the synthetic marijuana, also called K2. One suicide, a few possible vomiting patients.

The problem is that synthetic marijuana is being made by too many small businesses and not a large pharmaceutical monopoly. If synthetic marijuana were being made and marketed as "therapy" for a malady and provided to patients with state subsidies, the way Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" (NRT) and Varenicline are it wouldn't matter how many people vomited, hallucinated, committed suicide or died from high blood pressure. Thousands could die and it would be lauded as a great thing, a final solution to health problems, a cure.

There are no media investigations into the thousands, perhaps millions, of lives ruined by Nicotine Replacement "Therapy," or Varenicline. There are no statistics being kept (that I know of) on how many heart attacks have occurred as a result of the transdermal nicotine patch, or cancers caused by the gums and candies.

One person kills them self on synthetic marijuana, while hundreds have killed themselves or committed violence against others on Varenicline. A few people have temporarily hallucinated on synthetic marijuana, while thousands have been made into psychiatric patients after being legally prescribed Varenicline as a quit smoking aid -- with our tax dollars.

So far, it appears that unregulated street chemists offer safer synthetics than the State Pharmaceutical chemists and dealers, and this is bothersome to these corporations.

See "Synthetic Marijuana Spurs State Bans," Malcolm Gay, New York Times, 1o July 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/us/11k2.html?_r=1

One Life Saved From Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" and Misc. Other News

One life saved from Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT), many more to left to save.

I am pleased to announce that I have saved one soul from the curse of nicotine lozenges and their threat to the health of good people. A few days ago, I was greeted by an acquaintance, who lifted their cigarette towards me, gave me a hug and told me that they had taken my advice and quit sucking. Hallelujah!

This reformed NRT user informed me that they felt good about it and were glad they had quit sucking because the lozenges are very unconscious and habit-forming in comparison to cigarettes. I agreed. Anything that is kept in the mouth like a candy for long periods of time becomes thoughtless and unconscious. Smoking a cigarette is very conscious and not a habit.

A habit is something that one doesn't think about, isn't aware they are doing, but does with no pleasure. A habit is similar to knuckle-popping, nose-picking, hair-twisting, nail-biting, gum-chewing and other annoying habits people are prone to do. It's very difficult to quit a habit and retrain one's patterns. But a cigarette user cannot make an unconscious habit of smoking, thus if one chooses to quit they have more control over their ability to do so.

Over the week I have encountered a few interesting people. One, a Vietnam vet about to retire from the Postal Service in California. He looked clean cut and fatherly, but was a typical drug-infused, closed minded person of his generation. He lives on marijuana, mushrooms, and peyote (which he said cured him of his LSD use). He's had several heart surgeries, and along with the hallucinogenics takes what the doctor deals him too: statins and a host of others. He thinks tobacco is evil. Hmm. That drug regimen is quite effective.

The Postal Vietnam Vet informed me that he is moving from California upon retirement to get away from the airport because it gives him flashbacks (sounds like he's nicotinic acid deficient). He said California was the most open-minded state in the Union and where I live is infested with "Tea Baggers." Nice. I love it when I meet open-minded people trying to leave the places they've destroyed to come and destroy my state with their open-mindedness.

Why is it that people who call themselves "Open Minded" are always unhappy, angry, doped up on drugs and medications and judgemental hypocrites? And why is it that this man's generation, in their 60's got to party it up with the Grateful Dead and the Loving Spoonful, have "Free Love," tobacco, beer, and marijuana; but my generation is told these are all sins? Sounds like greed to me.

Many of the 60s generation are still drug addicts and still immature. They fried their brains on all of the acid and now, prescriptions; and are paranoid freaks. They pass many of the laws against freedom, calling it "protection," and think that driving hybrid cars saves the planet even though they had to rip apart the land in China to obtain the rare metals required in those land-raping hybrids so their exhaust won't stink in the U.S. Anyway, this guy made me angry with his arrogance. Maybe, if he stopped the hallucinogenics he'd stop having flashbacks.

Thankfully, my faith in the older generation was restored after a conversation later with another older man who was in a wheel chair because his leg was missing. I don't know if he was a Vietnam Vet too. He came rolling out onto the pavement after the kind bartenders helped him out the door so that he could have a cigarette break (tobacco bans are particularly discriminatory to those with handicaps). Here was a person with a physical handicap, yet far less handicapped than the Postal Californian.

The man in the wheel chair had no bitterness and seemed quite happy. He could carry on an intelligent conversation without being arrogant. I told him to read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, a fantastic feat of American literature about a character that most readers and academics are trained to believe is a Savior type. In my estimation Invisible Man is about ignorance and our blindness, even as readers, being deceived into believing that a great and ignorant orator is a savior, although he's the greatest evil on the street. The man in the wheel chair laughed when I described the book and the brilliance of Ellison's main character, saying, "So, the character's like Obama?"

And then, there is the "subversive" activity. I encountered a person that informed me that we have three years to get ready. Three years. He's building fuel cells in preparation. He told me that his uncle is working for the government at an abandoned asbestos mine, welding shackles into rail road cars. I don't know what to say about things like this. What am I supposed to believe?

I don't believe there were shackles in the cattle cars used to haul the Jews and Gypsies to the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry's camps. When people are packed in tightly there is no need for shackles, which offer far too much comfort and individual space, things antithetical to a Marxist or other fascist Utopia's mode of operation. I think someone's uncle was telling tall tales. I hope so.

And then, there is the Apocalypse, which is actually an eye-opening. I've had some plague activity here. I'm not sure which Bowl Judgement hailstones are. But I've had them. It looks like the heavenly host descended upon the land and whacked everything into shreds with baseball bats. There are more leaves and branches on the ground than on the trees and shrubs. My car got beaten, the trees have had their bark stripped, and several people lost windows in their homes. The gardens are decimated. And another Plague Storm game is scheduled for later in the day.

And I wonder, when these Acts of God, as Nature's violent tempers are called, strike a nation already bowed under the burdens of over taxation, joblessness, rules, and regulations; can it stand? Will the people groan, unable to make the State Pyramid Scheme Bricks without straw? How will we function when there are not enough hours in a day, and no money to pay our taxes with? How will those in their 60s afford their drugs if the young Israelites can't support them? Cattle cars? I hope not.

All of you older hippies, now turned yuppie, beware how much law you pass onto us younger ones, beware how much behavior modification, and regulation and unconstitutional fascism you lay upon our backs. When young people aren't free they feel burdened and bitter, and the elderly are among the first to disappear. Have mercy on us young ones and we'll have mercy on you.