Message to CBS News about Rawesome raid by FDA
Here is the message i sent to CBS News (Twitter handle: @CBS8), on August 8, 2011.
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On 3 August 2011, Rawesome Foods, a private food buyers club in Venice, CA was subjected to a SWAT-style armed raid conducted by the FDA assisted by 2 or 3 other government agencies. Although the reason for the raid was conspiracy to sell raw milk and cheese, authorities confiscated not just dairy, but also mangoes, watermelons, computers and cash - in fact, they completely cleaned out the whole place. The news about this has been widely disseminated through Twitter and various other news sources.
I watch CBS News every evening at 6 and 11 o'clock, thinking of CBS as a reliable and unbiased source. So, it has been a big surprise to me to not have heard a single word on CBS about this raid since it took place. I have, however, seen CBS stories about a missing dog and other relatively minor events.
So, a couple of questions come to mind, like:
Social Security is an "Entitlement?"
Someone sent me this in an email. I am reproducing it here - verbatim - because it's relevant to the present situation in our country.
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An "Entitlement???"
What the hell is wrong here?
Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only 30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500. If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working (me) you'd have $892,919.98. If you took out only 3% per year, you receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years, and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month. The folks in Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever had.
This new excuse for being flaky is becoming a classic
Lately, when I don't get a response I am expecting and follow up on it, I often get "Sorry, your message got caught in my spam folder". Consider this:
- You send someone (hereinafter called "the flake") a polite email regarding an important issue, knowing that it is the recipient's duty to address your concern and expecting a reply within a day or two.
- A week goes by and you hear nothing.
- You send the flake a second polite message; another couple of days pass, nothing.
At this point, most of the time you say "screw it" and forget the flake exists, as there are many alternatives.
Note I said "most of the time". But if the flake is the gateway to something you really want and there are not a lot of alternatives, maybe you go farther.
- You get a little pissed off and decide to take further action, even if it means lightly stepping on the flake's toes. So you contact a third person who you know can put the flake on the spot; you tell this person what is going on and ask if he/she can help. The helper can and says "I'll give the flake a call and get back to you".
- All of a sudden you hear from the flake, who apologizes profusely, even sends you a free sample of a product, after telling you your original message got caught in the Spam folder. You know he values this tool because "Spam" is capitalized. Most flakes are proficient at being flakes and many times nothing happens afterwards anyway; but that is beyond the scope of this item.
Sometimes step 4 is skipped. Either way, I now realize that the spam folder excuse is just that: an excuse – and it's BS.
The flakes have no excuse; it's their spam folder and it's up to them to set it up and deal with it in a way to not miss important communications. We have all this technology to help us get things done, not to use it as a stupid excuse.
I have a spam folder. I don't empty it without giving a quick look to the subject lines of the messages it contains. I am glad I do this because, a couple of times, I have caught items that I wanted or expected. It's a pain in the ass, but necessary. It's like going through your post office mail; you give a quick look and dump most of it.
"Your email went to the spam folder" is the 21st. century's "I got a flat tire" or "The check is in the mail" – 99.9% of the time, a lie.
Don't buy it. Nail the sommbitch!
Of tigers and other important matters
Most of us know about a certain tiger who was compelled to submit to sex rehab recently. Too early to know if that is going to work (I doubt it); if it does, maybe it would be a good thing for a bunch of catholic priests.
But now, I learned about something else that struck me so hard I just had to write about:
Now we have these "experts" working on "rehabilitating" a female wild tiger because she killed people who stole her cubs, I am not kidding! Go to the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/world/asia/22tigers.html?th&emc=th and read the NYT article.
Some of these schmexperts are isolating tigers so they "grow to fear humans again"; if I were a tiger, I think I would attack if I were scared, so I really don't like the idea of tigers fearing me. Plus I think a tiger's fear is inversely proportional to its hunger at the moment.
Those of us who have seen the numbers know that rehab does not work, except in very few isolated cases. It's just amazing to see the things people dream up to put their energy and resources to work, as if there were not a ton of more important issues we should all be working on.
If this rehab thing is any good, I can think of several much better candidates: cub thieves, members of Congress, bank, insurance and Big Pharma executhieves.
An open letter to Big Pharma
Dear Big Pharma:
Your industry is truly amazing: your accomplishments include:
- the recent deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson (common sense from just reading the news, but here is a reference: http://www.naturalnews.com/026511_cancer_chemotherapy_doctors.html);
- through the years, you have killed more people than all terrorist organizations combined.
FDA Promotes Unsafe Milk Due to Industry Pressure
FDA Promotes Unsafe Milk Due to Industry Pressure
I browse news about the FDA and Big Pharma a couple of times a week; I don't recall a single one of those browsing sessions not yielding one or more items about the crimes that these two - the FDA and Big Pharma - continue to commit. Here is one such item that particularly pissed me off, published less that a week ago – February 8, 2009. You can read the whole item here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/fda-promotes-unsafe-milk_b_184886.html.
The title of this post, same as the title of the news item, says it all. I have been writing – on this blog and in my timos web site – about the scariest, most powerful drug cartel in the world, the USA Drug Cartel, not only the biggest and richest one but the best protected one, thanks to the FDA gang. This alliance between the FDA and Big Pharma makes the Italian Mafia look like a bunch of choir boys and girls.
The USA Drug Cartel is alive and well...
... and keeps expanding business by perpetrating more crimes against Americans.
The Big Pharma disease mongers,
not happy with being able to sell anti-depressants for use on pets, recently
obtained approval from their partner in crime – the FDA, another bunch that
should be behind bars – to promote the use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs
for use by children age 8 and up.
But wait, there's more: the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee has announced
that infants as young as TWO years old need to be screened for high cholesterol!
Read these facts on my web site and try not to toss your cookies: http://www.timos.com/timos/timoCorner/timoArticle.cfm?locale=en_US&itemID=78.
Something else, curious, to say the least: just a few days ago, I took my granddaughter to a place called Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego. Imagine my surprise when, looking to get a cup of coffee, I am directed to the food concession for this hospital for children, which turns out to be part of America's biggest cholesterol palace – a McDonald's. Makes one wonder who gets a referral fee from whom.
How to win enemies and piss off people using your email list
If a modern version of the famous Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People were to appear, I am sure it would have a chapter on how to use your email list properly.
Some years ago, when I was still running my restaurant, I used to play the market. It was more or less a hobby, not a big time endeavor, but there was not one single year in which I didn't have some taxable income from that activity. The whole thing really boils down to establishing some kind of system and following it without letting your emotions influence the moves you make. But that's a subject for another post, which I will probably not be writing for a long time.
Anyone who is in the stock market has heard of Jim Cramer, his Mad Money TV show and his web site, 'thestreet.com'. Years ago, this guy used to be a sports coach somewhere and ended up becoming very well known in the Wall Street circles. He is one of today's gurus in stock market investing.
A horrific possible outcome if we keep screwing with the environment
This should be enough to shut down several government agencies, including but not limited to the EPA, the FDA, the USDA, and start over.
The Letter Written in the Year 2070 has been circulating since 2002, when it was first published. I just learned about it by chance, a couple of weeks ago, when someone emailed it to me. But I couldn't find an English version anywhere, so I did a translation.
This, you MUST see – and spread it around as much as possible. Just go to this page on my web site.
Some may think it's bullshit or a scare tactic. But it's a possibility. Don't miss it.
