My brother and I got into a discussion about Steak 'n Shake. I took the position that it is one of the healthier fast food restaurants and he was trying to tell me it was no different from any other one. It turns out he was right. Well this got me thinking about food in general and I was surprised with my findings. The food in our society is as close to poison you can get without being charged with a crime. Even our fresh fruit and vegetables are saturated with chemicals.

Many restaurants are owned by big corporations or at least by entrepreneurs seeking to make money. The more people who frequent their establishment, the more money they will make. The average American Joe wants to eat food which tastes good and hardly ever looks at the ingredient list. As long as it pleases the pallet, he’ll eat it. No one cares the burger you choke down contains more fat than eating a chunky scoop of lard or more salt than you should have in a week. Should restaurant owners have some responsibility in ensuring their food is healthy?

This is where my fundamentalists’ roots are still showing. I assumed the companies would not serve anything too unhealthy. We all know McDonald's is bad but Steak 'n Shake is supposed to be “in sight and it must be right”. The slogan should be “In sight of a quadruple bypass.” These restaurants, even the ones you assume are healthier, are just as bad as the fast food crapola which McDonald’s sells.

When I do a comparison on the different meals I eat at the different restaurants (and I use that term loosely) everything is almost the same including the levels of fat, salt and carbs. I might as well open up my veins and shoot animal fat, salt and sugar directly into them. The cholesterol and salt content of all foods served by restaurants including the ones you assume are good are actually VERY bad.

Well I didn’t stop there. I started looking at other foods sold in grocery stores and found that most of the food we eat is poison. I already alerted you to the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup a while back but there are so many more other bad ingredients within our food that it is troubling. Why do we need so many chemicals?

The food lobby is a very powerful lobby. More importantly, there are many hands in the “kitty” wanting a paycheck. Every time somebody takes a bite of a sandwich the producers of these chemicals get paid. If we remove these chemicals we will eliminate a huge market and since our country is about making money, our government allows these companies to exist at our own detriment.

I am NOT saying these chemicals will kill you tomorrow if you eat them tonight. But I am saying if you do not regulate your dining out then you are sure to develop troubles later in life. Like high fructose corn syrup will increase your chances of diabetes, these other chemicals and additives will increase your risk of a host of other diseases and complications if not regulated.

Another false assumption is diet soda, since it has no calories it is healthier than regular soda. Well if you look only at the calories then it is better but the list of chemical ingredients reads like the molecular chart of a meteorite in a science journal. Artificial sweeteners are very bad for us. The only exception is Splenda, but it is still too new for any long term research on the effects to be known. But if you are a diabetic what other choices do you have?

The government is on the side of the capitalists. They care little for the health and well-being of society and care more for keeping the profits margins high for corporate America. I think the schools should include classes teaching kids how to manage calories, read food labels, and exactly how to spot unhealthy foods. If our habits change then the blood-sucking corporations will be forced to change or lose out to those who will.

Sugar makes food taste good. When our ancestors were roaming the bush looking for non-poisonous foods, sweet tasting items were usually guaranteed not to be poisonous. Sweet foods also provided them with much needed nourishment because of the carbohydrates.

However, since mankind has developed technology for growing and concentrating refined sugars in unimaginable levels, our sweet tooth has become our enemy within. Like a moth drawn to a flame, that sweet tooth leads us to greater and greater heights of sugar intake. More sugar does not make us healthier, so our taste buds are leading us down the slippery slope of diabetes, heart disease and a host of other ailments.

This is evident in our children, in which we are raising the most obese and sedentary generation in the history of mankind. We reward out kids for sitting around all day playing video games with candy. We encourage them to eat more, do less. At meal time when they might accidentally eat something healthy, we allow them to smother it with ketchup or some other sugar enhanced condiment so the kids’ taste buds are forever tainted. This is very evident when I read an article like this.

In an effort to curb the epidemic of obesity, the federal government mandated healthier lunches in schools but our children’s taste buds are so corrupted they cannot handle eating foods devoid of heavy doses of sugar. These kids will not eat salads, vegetables or fruit because they are “gross”. They even put less sugar in the lunchroom cookies but the kids will not eat them unless they contain dangerous levels of sugar.

This has happened because instead of parents requiring their children to eat healthy, they have allowed children to choose their own food. Now we have a generation of sugar addicts and lazy malcontents, whose only legacy will be to contribute to ever exploding levels of diabetes and other ailments in the future. In today’s household menus, it is evident that vegetables, fibers and fruit are absent from the plate and replaced with a mixture high fat and high sugar. But why?

Are the parents conveniently avoiding arguments early in a child’s development risking long term damage to the child’s health for peace in the home?

“:Eat your veggies, Johnny!”
“No! WWWWAAAAAAA!!”
“Okay……… here………… eat this candy …………just stop crying!”

Are the parents not capable of controlling their own diet so the child takes on the behavior of the parent?

Parent opens the fridge. “What should I make for dinner today? Hot dogs and Ding Dongs sound good to me. What do you think, Johnny?”
Little Johnny nods with a smile on his face.

Not only are the foods we eat very bad for our health but the size of the portions we consume are irregular. After eating the healthier meals which included portions sizes conducive to the child’s age, 149 out of 175 complained they did not get enough food. So not only are the hot dogs and Ding Dongs being consumed but they are being consumed from an elephant’s plate. Again, what is going on with these parents?

After dinner, instead of the parent sending the child outside for some much needed exercise or maybe even a brisk walk, its back to the ass.

“Fire up the video game! Warm up the TV! The ass is getting a vigorous work out tonight!”

I applaud the federal government in their attempt to bring some health to America (and I don’t applaud them for very much these days). But this effort will fail unless the parents are accountable and enforce some basic fundamental rules. You can’t live on hot dogs and Ding Dongs. Doesn’t anybody remember the four food groups anymore?

Many Americans want to eat healthier but I suddenly realized why many do not. Because it is many times more expensive to eat fresher, healthier food? I bought three medium sized peaches at the store the other day for two dollars!! Holy shit!! I could have bought two McDonald’s Big & Nasty hamburgers for two dollars; and they would have cooked them for me too.

Basically, eating fresh should be cheaper but cheaper is not what corporate American wants; they want you to spend more buying their chemically enhanced products. They use catch words like “fresh” and “handmade” but these are just marketing words and do not represent what is in the package. Do they put these additives into our food so they can charge us more?

After the origin of HIV post, I started thinking about other areas where corporations save money at the expense of the health and welfare of society and I found more examples of it within the food we eat everyday.

The definition of poison is:
Substances that cause injury, illness, or death to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale. Some poisons are also toxins, usually referring to naturally produced substances that kill rapidly in small quantities.

Basically the food we eat is poison. Hydrogenated vegetable protein, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, BHT, monosodium glutamate, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate, modified food starch, high fructose corn syrup are just a few of the poisons we eat in our food everyday. In my opinion high fructose corn syrup is the worst poison of all.

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is produced by processing corn starch to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose to produce a high percentage of fructose. It all sounds rather simple—white cornstarch is turned into crystal clear syrup. However, the process is actually very complicated. Three different enzymes are needed to break down cornstarch, which is composed of chains of glucose molecules of almost infinite length, into the simple sugars glucose and fructose.

Consumers may think that because it contains fructose—which they associate with fruit, which is a natural food—that it is healthier than sugar. A team of investigators at the USDA, led by Dr. Meira Field, has discovered just the opposite.

Sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose. When sugar is given to rats in high amounts, the rats develop multiple health problems, especially when the rats were deficient in certain nutrients, such as copper. The researchers wanted to know whether it was the fructose or the glucose moiety that was causing the problems. So they repeated their studies with two groups of rats, one given high amounts of glucose and one given high amounts of fructose. The glucose group was unaffected but the fructose group had disastrous results. The male rats did not reach adulthood. They had anemia, high cholesterol and heart hypertrophy—that means that their hearts enlarged until they exploded. They also had delayed testicular development. Dr. Field explains that fructose in combination with copper deficiency in the growing animal interferes with collagen production. (Copper deficiency, by the way, is widespread in America.) In a nutshell, the little bodies of the rats just fell apart. The females were not so affected, but they were unable to produce live young.

"The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar," says Dr. Field, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."

HFCS contains more fructose than sugar and this fructose is more immediately available because it is not bound up in sucrose. Since the effects of fructose are most severe in the growing organism, we need to think carefully about what kind of sweeteners we give to our children. Fruit juices should be strictly avoided—they are very high in fructose—but so should anything with HFCS.

Interestingly HFCS is used in many products aimed at children. So avoid eating or drinking this crap and especially avoid giving this stuff to your kids. Frankly, I don’t know how these corporations get away with this.

As of October of 2005 nearly 21 million Americans or roughly 7 percent of the population have diabetes. If you can imagine a standard diagram you can see how the use of HFCS and the diabetes rate increase in parallel since 1970. Today, HFCS are engrained into our society. The well funded corn lobby and corporate America has managed to mortgage the health and welfare of our population to cheaply manufacture their goods.

Millions of Americans get diabetes as millions of dollars flow into the coffers of the super rich food corporations which in turn pay off politicians through the lobbyists to keep the cycle going. I don’t want to eat this stuff but I have no choice because it is in everything. Unless you buy fresh produce (if you can afford fresh produce) there is no way to avoid these ingredients.

Most of the America’s farmland is owned and controlled by corporate American now. Is this why fresh produce so expensive? The individual farmers don’t get any of that money so where does it all go?

Just remember that corporations don’t give a squat about you. All they care about is the money in your pocket. In this case, they are getting rich by selling us poison and the government is allowing it to happen. Just as we have created HIV, we have probably created diabetes with our poisonous additives in the food.

More about the dangers of HFCS as it pertains to soft drinks.

I would like to give credit to Linda Forristal for the scientific analysis of HFCS.

For R

She is 25, a beautiful flower just beginning life’s journey but it was almost a year ago she confided in me that she had HIV. I have known her my entire life; she is like a sister to me. After the words rolled off her tongue, I still remember feeling like I was frozen, unable to move and everything started moving in slow motion. Then I went numb. For years I had been the strong one, always able to bail her out of any trouble that came her way but not this time. I sat helpless, unable to remove this demon that had invaded her body. I still get numb thinking about that day.

Only having a few sex partners it was easy for her to find the guy. He was a 35 year old businessman wearing a suit and tie. They had a 6-month relationship and the condom did not come off early. A DNA test confirmed the AIDS virus came from him. The bastard wanted to infect other women to pay back the woman who infected him.

He was taking medicine but he stopped so now he is suffering with full blown AIDS. Today he is rotting away in a hospital bed waiting for death’s hand, so prosecution is not worth it. He killed my friend as sure as if he had taken a gun and pulled the trigger.

From me to him: I hope death waits and leaves you to suffer. When I think about the countless women you infected, the lives you destroyed I want you to get a long lasting dose of suffering. And when you are getting ready to take life’s final breath to relieve your pain, I can only hope the hospital staff revives you to live on another week or month. In the words of Pinhead, “Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell!!” So, live on asshole; enjoy the ride!!!

This is what led to my odyssey into finding out about this terrible disease. Many of my conservative friends believe that God put this disease on our planet to curse the homosexuals. After reading countless books and stumbling on articles and various documentaries, I think I finally have the true story.

HIV is a virus manufactured by humans while trying to cheaply manufacture a polio vaccine in the early 1950’s. HIV is a mutated form of SID syndrome found in primates. They would take the livers of primates and combine those cells with polio cells to produce a polio vaccine. This vaccine was cheaper to produce than the synthetic one.

Doctors warned these researchers NOT to do this as contamination with other diseases was possible but the companies had dreams of making millions of dollars so nothing could stop them. They wanted to test this new vaccine on America but since our population was already exposed to the existing polio vaccine they decided to test it on a virgin test group. Target Africa.

After vaccinating an entire village the first reported case of HIV in humans was reported only weeks afterward. But did they stop there? NO of course not. The thirst for profit and the taste of money is hypnotic to many in our society, so the research and the vaccinations continued. They thought even if HIV spread to other villages that it would never reach America or Europe.

Fast forward almost 50 years and now my friend is cursed to spend her life alone, without love; no husband for her, no kids for her, no white picket fence in her future. Nothing but a future filled with doctors, drugs and experimental procedures.

Countless millions are already dead and many more people to follow; all in the name of corporate greed. We have reached the point where the goals of mankind and the goals of corporations are not in line with each other. I know that greed is the bane of our existence because this greed unleashed the black plague on our generation. This is why I spend so much time writing these articles pointing that out to people.

Change is slow but it must start somewhere. Like throwing a rock into the water, the ripples will eventually reach the shore; that is how change is too. Information like this is one hell of a rock, now we must be the ripples and carry this message to shore. The truth hurts but it must be exposed. I said in an earlier post that I was ashamed to be a man because of the stupid things that men do. I haven’t yet changed my mind because the more research I do into things, the more stupidity and utter disregard for our fellow man I uncover.

You don’t believe me? Then read The River : A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS by Gary Paulsen or see the documentary The Origins of AIDS.

Does anybody care about professional athletes taking performance enhancing drugs? Are you concerned about Barry Bonds passing Babe Ruth on the all time home run list? Do you actually care if Albert Pujols is taking drugs? If you answered “yes” to these questions consider our society; we live in a drug culture. If this era in baseball is considered the “Steroids Era” then this era in American civilization should be considered the “Drug Era”.

We have drugs for everything: concentration, sleeping, staying awake. shitting, eating, pissing, not pissing, not shitting, erections, pregnancy, heart problems, vein problems, hypertension, depression, quit smoking, gout, AIDs, cancer, diabetes, flu, cough, headaches, numbness, irritable bowels, anxiety, and everything else not mentioned. Are you hooked on drugs? No problem, we have a drug to get you off drugs. Of course these drugs don’t actually cure anything; they just keep you coming back for more pills.

Our entire society takes performance enhancing drugs on a daily basis to help concentrate better and to work more efficiently. So why does society seemed outraged at athletes for doing the same to help them work better. I wonder how many of these hypocrites who are complaining, take drugs to enhance their life on a daily basis. Probably most of them.

I also find it humorous that plants like marijuana are illegal. These plants grow in the ground and are as natural as a rose garden but yet they are evil. Give me a freakin break!!! Most of the drugs people take for the above mentioned ailments are more toxic than marijuana. Hell, alcohol and nicotine are just as bad as marijuana. Yet our government actually sends police into the forest to find and execute these plants.

They showed one of these “missions” on Cops and I laughed my ass off while watching it. They marched into the forest dressed in camouflage, jumped from helicopters like Delta Force, using the latest in technology gadgets as if they were hunting Al-Qaeda to find these evil plants. When the perpetrators were found, they were ripped from the ground and burned alive. This was a very serious “search and destroy” mission, because we are at war with ........plants! Maybe instead of burning, they should have taken some prisoners of war and moved the plants to Guantanamo Bay for "questioning" with the other terrorists.

If our Fore Fathers knew we were spending all these tax dollars hunting plants as fugitives they would rise from the grave, march to Washington and kick our legislatures in the balls. And after they ate the brains of Congress (which collectively would equal a little more than a small smack) they would migrate to Canada for healthcare. (I love zombie films!)

Why don’t they “search and destroy” plants that are really hazardous like poison ivy or poison oak? Those are worse than marijuana and cause more damage. I also have some weeds growing in my front yard that are destroying my grass. Why don’t they hunt and destroy those? Do you think if we smoked rose petals they would have "missions" to hunt down and destroy those too? Are they going to make mushrooms illegal too – those can get you feeling "good"?

The real problem with marijuana is the drug companies don’t make any money from the sales. They don’t want people cutting into their sales; that is the primary reason marijuana is illegal. So instead of smoking a natural plant which grows in the ground, the government would prefer you take some artificially manufactured drugs made from toxic materials. Did you realize there are more toxic chemicals in a Twinkie or a can of soda than there is in a marijuana plant?

Anyway, getting back to my original point, who cares if baseball players take growth hormones or steroids? Besides taking these drugs cannot aid a player in hitting a ball, you still have to have talent. But if you could take a drug and earn tens of millions of dollars, would you do it? I’ll bet 9 out of 10 would do it. It’s their body; if they want to take the risk then we should respect their decision. We take risks with every drug we take and many of the legal drugs have deadlier side effects than growth hormones. But if we do care, then we should clean up our own drug problems first. Let’s start with the American drug companies. I wish these sports geeks would shut the hell up and find something new to bitch about.

By the way this is probably my last post until June 6. I am leaving for South Dakota and Wyoming tomorrow and will not return until then. I will try to post some pictures while on the road but that all depends on the Internet access at the hotels. For new visitors check out the archives, I’ve posted some good love stories under “From the Heart” You’ll find more archived political essays and some paranormal stories if you look to your right.

For Rozetta.

Imagine you are standing in line at a supermarket buying a loaf of bread. The guy in front of you just paid one dollar for his loaf of bread and the guy in front of him paid fifty cents. Now it’s your turn in line. The cashier scans the loaf of bread and says, “That’ll be $2.50.” You would never tolerate this behavior but this is how the medical field bills you.

Did you ever notice there is no sign hanging in the doctor’s office or hospital explaining fees or hourly rates. That is because you are charged based upon your ability to pay. If you have no insurance you are charged more than the guy with insurance. This reminds me of the movie Vacation when Chevy Chase gets his car fixed in that small town. When the car is finished he asks the guy, “How much?” And the guy responds with, “How much you got?” I laughed my ass off then, but I cry today because this is no joke – it’s the reality.

Health care providers can legally charge one individual 5 and up to 10 times more than someone else for the exact same service. A retiree on Medicare or an employee at a Fortune 500 company pays the least. Everyone else pays more with the uninsured paying the most. Why is this tolerated?

The primary reason nobody can afford healthcare is because about twenty years ago the healthcare industry was given a make over by Washington. A system that was completely non-profit and committed to patient care is now run by "for profit" corporations only committed to earning fat profits. Publicly held corporations answerable to stockholders decide which doctor we can see, which test we are given, which treatment we get as a result of the test, and if we live or die.

Patients wait months for appointments as their medical condition is often evaluated by accounting clerks with no medical training. And these are the lucky ones, the ones who are lucky enough to work for a large corporation with healthcare. Everybody else when they get sick will either be denied healthcare and die, or will lose their home and all other possessions to get treatment. 18,000 uninsured people die every year in America because they have no health insurance and cannot get the treatments needed to save their life.

Politicians like to say that American has the best healthcare system in the world. In truth, it doesn’t come close. Sure we have many talented doctors and nurses but our system is the worst in the civilized world. Here are some facts about America’s healthcare system:

• Excludes 44 million Americans.
• Excludes patients with “costly”, life threatening diseases.
• Discourages doctors from practicing in rural areas.
• Protects bad doctors, driving up malpractice insurance for good doctors.
• Focuses on saving dollars NOT saving lives.
• Allows unscrupulous doctors to victimize elderly patients by prescribing painful, dangerous procedures that are unnecessary but highly profitable.
• Rewards doctors for prescribing less-costly procedures for the insured, regardless of the effect on the patient’s health.
• Taxpayers subsidize the cost of pharmaceutical research and then pay the highest price for drugs than any other country in the world.
• Hospitals charge the highest prices to those least able to pay.
• United States spends more on healthcare than any other nation – 15.3 percent of gross domestic product, and fewer are covered.
• Pay for a man’s ability to get an erection but deny a woman’s coverage for birth control pills.

This does not sound like a good healthcare system to me. Other civilized nations have national healthcare plans so their citizens get healthcare when needed, and they spend less than 15.3% of the gross domestic product for complete coverage. They do not have to worry about seeking care if they become ill or losing their house or filing for bankruptcy. Instead of a war on terrorism or a war on drugs why don't we declare war on healthcare costs?

This is another classic example of how our government, both Republican and Democrat, has abandoned the middle and lower classes and left us as at the mercy of wealthier, corporate America. The lobbyists for these corporations have given much wealth to both political parties to get the rules changed. Even though these rules do not help Americans, our government allowed these changes. In a rational and logical society, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few but not in America. The needs of the wealthiest 1% outweigh everybody else.

As long as Washington continues to abandon its citizens and let corporate American run healthcare, tens of billions of dollars that should be spent on patients will vanish in waste, inefficiency, fraud and profits.

I started this blog with the promise of neutral viewpoints in my posts. This is going to be one of those rare times I disagree with the viewpoint of an entire political party on an issue. This issue is Social Security.

When I first heard about President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security I completely supported it. What a great idea; I could control my own destiny!!! When I began to read the fine print and read the list of supporters I got suspicious and then quickly changed my mind. I soon uncovered that the Republican Party under the leadership of President Bush is trying to eliminate Social Security under the false pretense of “saving” it.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) signed the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935 amid an economic crisis. This crisis was the Great Depression. Many lower and middle class families were homeless, had little or no food, and little hope of gaining employment. The Social Security Act was part of FDR’s New Deal with Americans and was created to prevent life long, hard working Americans from losing everything due to retirement.

Before the New Deal, the federal government did little to help American citizens and gave less than 3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product back to the people. The result was cyclical depressions and mass poverty suffered by the middle and lower classes. The New Deal was a incredible plan created to put Americans back to work and help lower classes get back on track. The Republicans, including Senator Prescott Bush (President Bush’s grandfather), were opposed to this ideal at the time, have fought through the years to defeat it but lost, and continue to oppose it today. Apparently the Republicans today and yesterday appreciated the Great Depression and support legislation and an economic plan to restore America to that period of its glory.

One of the most notorious attempts to destroy Social Security was made by Barry Goldwater, a political candidate for President in 1964. He actively campaigned against the program, calling it “a welfare program”, “a cancer”, he claimed that Social Security had “come to the end of the road”. Americans responded by voting overwhelming against Goldwater in one of the most lopsided elections in history. (Important note: GW Bush was a staunch Goldwater supporter and shared Goldwater’s opinions regarding the destruction of Social Security).

In fact, twenty years ago when Republicans mentioned cutbacks in Social Security benefits they lost control of the Senate. So now they have not changed their opinions of Social Security but have changed their strategy of attacking it.

For example, they now use phrases like “saving” and “strengthening” Social Security when they plan to do just the opposite. The “President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security” is an ethnically diverse commission but is composed of individuals committed to privatizing Social Security. When President Reagan instilled a similar commission in the 1980’s he included the Democratic leadership and the commission was composed by appointees from both parties. The result was a bipartisan plan that strengthened Social Security. However, President Bush's commission did not get the approval of the Democrats and is comprised of people that share his opinions of Social Security. So what conclusion do you think they will come up with? You guessed it..........whatever the President wants.

The Privatization of Social Security

I understand why the upper class is in favor of the privatization of Social Security as it will reduce their taxes by virtually eliminating the program. Remember, they are wealthy and do not need a program like this to survive. But middle class families who support the privatization of Social Security must not really understand what this plan entails. If you support the President’s plan, here is what you support:

• Reduce benefits.
• Increase the Retirement age.
• Substantial risk management fees would drain income.
• Investment choices are severely limited.
• Earnings will not be passed to heirs because the purchasing of annuity plans would leave little to be inherited.
• If the stock market crashes or does not perform, or if you invest unwisely then you have no retirement at all. You are on the streets!!!

This does not sound a plan to "strengthen" Social Security; this sounds more like "limiting" and "eliminating" Social Security.

The President is using a scare tactic by claiming if Social Security remains unchanged the plan will be bankrupt. The truth is that if he would eliminate the “donut hole” tax gap and stop reducing taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans, the Social Security fund is very capable of supporting the baby boomers and can remain solvent for generations. But he is opposed to any plan where the upper class would have to participate. So his plan to “strengthen” is really just a plan to “eliminate”. So don’t be fooled by the words the government uses. Remember the Clean Air Act actually INCREASED the amount of pollutants that are allowed into the air.

I am not bashing Republicans or President Bush in general; it is important to note that I was just as critical of President Clinton when he did something (like sign NAFTA) that doomed the middle and lower classes. I cannot support a plan which could create an environment like the Great Depression. Most people live paycheck to paycheck, so the wealthy 1% of Americans can and should help out those unfortunate families incapable of funding their own retirement.

So now what is your opinion of the privatization of Social Security?