Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Perils of being a Christian

I got to thinking a lot lately about how hard it is to be a "Good Christian".  You have so much responsibility.   You always have to keep second guessing the other guy and try to figure out if he is a "Good Christian" like yourself or if he really needs some help, or even if he is really saved at all, and you got to decide whether you need to teach him about what the Word says, or if you need to "Stand in the gap" for him, or if it would be terribly bad for you if you caused him to stumble, etc.  And then it gets even tougher, when you have to decide whether or not, maybe he is a "Better Christian" than you are and maybe you need to listen to him more about what the Word says and maybe he is right to decide, maybe YOU are not really saved and he has some sort of knowledge that you don't have that could really make you a "Better Christian".   I really got to thinking a lot about this after I realized that..."Strait is the Gate and narrow the way that leads to Eternal life and few shall find it but wide is the path that leads to destruction, and many shall go in thereat."    When I got to thinking about all those people who call themselves Christian and how they always call a few others a bunch of Cults, I could not help but wonder, "What if it were those Cult guys who are right and all those others are on that wide path leading to destruction??"  I'm sure that is the way those Cult guys look at it.  They certainly are not going to make the mistake of calling them "Good Christians."  Oh Woe is me,  what can I do to understand which group it is I belong in??   I know if I bring this up to my pastor, he is going to say, all I got to do is study the Bible and it will become very clear to me.  Then he will ask me when It was that I received the Holy Spirit, and if I am not able to tell him the exact day and hour, he will be convinced I am not saved at all and will invite me to come to the Bible study so I can learn how to be saved, and then when I receive the Holy Spirit, I will know for sure what I need to know to set my mind at ease.


Monday, March 05, 2012

The Case against Aspartame

I guess I have been a little bit reluctant to enter into the conversation surrounding Aspartame. This is mostly, because there is a very significant article on Snopes that mostly discounts all the articles written claiming there to be a significant Health Risk associated with Aspartame usage. That is, until I read the original article supposedly written by a non existant person who attended and lectured at a non-existant conference. Makes it look pretty much like scare tactics, as usual. Unfortunately, I began to smell a snake in the grass when I read that Donald Rumsfeld might be involved in a scheme to push the approval through the FDA in the early days of the Reagan presidency. As a matter of fact, GD Searle, the inventor of the original product re-submitted his request for approval the day after Reagan took office. This raised the hairs on the back of my head and I began to have serious suspicions of a government conspiracy at the very highest levels, much as we were pushed into the war in Iraq, by that same Donald Rumsfeld in a later Republican administration. Sure enough, I quickly learned the controversy goes much deeper than Snopes seems to have discovered. It makes you wonder if Barbara and David Mikkelson don't themselves own stock in Monsanto. I was especially concerned after discovering that Monsanto had bought GD Searle in 1985 for 2.7 billion dollars. I knew Monsanto had a history of manipulating their friends in Congress and the white House. Therefore, in my thinking, they must all be guilty as charged. Then when the U.S. Supreme Court, headed by Conservative, Clarence Thomas, who is a former attorney for Monsanto, refused to hear arguments by Consumer Groups that the FDA did not follow proper procedures in approving Aspartame, I was positive there was government and political manipulation going on here.

It was not until 1995 that Consumer activist Betty Martini managed to force the FDA to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act that supplied a list of all the adverse effects reported to the FDA by consumers associated with their Aspartame ingestion. The list is quite startling and
includes four deaths and more than 90 unique symptoms, a majority of which are connected to impaired neurological function. They include: headache; dizziness or problems with balance; mood change; vomiting and nausea; seizures and convulsions; memory loss; tremors; muscle weakness; abdominal pains and cramps; change in vision; diarrhoea; fatigue and weakness; skin rashes; deteriorating vision; joint and musculoskeletal pain.

For a complete time-table in the history of Aspartame, visit the main link supplied in the title of this BLOG. I will be making further contributions to this BLOG, or modifying the existing content, in the coming days, as I further investigate the claims both pro and con.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Social Democrats

My brother, Ron had mentioned to me that he thought we needed to revamp the Democratic Party and get it back to what it was before "...The Socialists moved in and took it over..." He mentioned that it happened in the George McGovern campaign. I knew that my Dad always felt that the McGovern people more or less destroyed the party, but I was quick to point out to Ron that the Socialists had become a part of the party long before the McGovern run in 1972. In fact, they were instrumental in getting John F. Kennedy elected in 1960. I was not too sure when this change had come to pass, but knew that Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale were among those elite Minnesota Democrats who had roots in the Socialist movement.

Anyway, so I decided to write a BLOG about the Socialist movement in America and how it has been integrated into the Democratic party.