Help For Boston Marathon Bombing PTSD Sufferers

Many people who witnessed or were injured by the Boston Marathon bombing will undoubtedly experience emotional trauma and PTSD, which can severely impact the quality of their lives. PTSD often manifests itself in flashbacks, uncontrollable ruminations, anxiety, insomnia, and other symptoms. People often seek help from mental health professionals, which may not be effective in helping. Therapists often invoke catharsis in their clients, which often backfires and makes the problem worse.

Traumatic memories are problematic due to their high negative emotion content. Our memories that have the highest emotional content are most easily accessible, whether we want to access them or not. Those are the thoughts that keep you up at night and generate flashbacks.

The practice of invoking catharsis causes the client to become emotional in the therapist’s office, which can intensify the emotional content of the memory. That is exactly the opposite of what the client who suffers from PTSD needs! It can make the problem worse!

PTSD does not need to destroy your life. There is a new technique called Closed Eye Oscillation Relaxation and Thought Stopping, or CEO-RTS. The way it works is you close your eyes and move them back-and-forth while deliberately try to recall the disturbing event. Move them at a moderate rate — about once per second in each direction. You’ll find that it is difficult to recall the event while moving your eyes back and forth and you only get bits and pieces and none of the emotion. This process actually fragments the memory and diffuses the emotion. Should the memory pop into your head again, repeat this process.

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I have used that technique and it works.

Petition to Kick Texas Out of the Union — Please Sign!

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
kick Texas out of the Union. They are an embarrassment and should not be part of our great nation.
Texas continuously embarrasses the rest of our country by electing people who shouldn’t be allowed to run a lemonade stand, much less participate in our Congress or be elected president. They have caused far too much damage to our country and we can no longer stomach them to be elected to high levels in our government. For those reasons, and the fact that they talk funny, they should be kicked out of our Union and no longer be part of the United States of America, which many of them believe to be the “United Steaks of America.”
Click HERE to access the petition.

Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads

When Romney struggled to raise funds [to start Bain Capital] from other traditional sources, he and his partners started thinking outside the box. Bain executive Harry Strachan suggested that Romney meet with a group of Central American oligarchs who were looking for new investment vehicles as turmoil engulfed their region.

By 1984, the media had thoroughly exposed connections between the death squads and the Salvadoran oligarchy, including the families that invested with Romney. The sitting U.S. ambassador to El Salvador charged that several families, including at least one that invested with Bain, were living in Miami and directly funding death squads. Even by 1981, El Salvador’s elite, largely relocated to Miami, were so angered by the public perception that they were financing death squads that they reached out to the media to make their case. The two men put forward to represent the oligarchs were both from families that would invest in Bain three years later. The most cursory review of their backgrounds would have turned up the ties.

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Quotes by Nazis

“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
~ Hermann Goering

“Education is dangerous – Every educated person is a future enemy”
~ Hermann Goering

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
~ Adolf Hitler

“It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.” ~ Adolf Hitler

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
~ Adolf Hitler

“What luck for the rulers that men do not think.”
~ Adolf Hitler

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
~ Adolf Hitler

“The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others.”
~ Adolf Hitler

“The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one.”
~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.”
~ Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
~ Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.”
~ Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
~ Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
~ Josph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

Obama spending binge never happened. Government outlays rising at slowest pace since 1950s.

What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress. The president only begins to shape the budget in his second year. It takes time to develop a budget and steer it through Congress — especially in these days of congressional gridlock.

The 2009 fiscal year, which Republicans count as part of Obama’s legacy, began four months before Obama moved into the White House. The major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year were made by George W. Bush and the previous Congress.

Like a relief pitcher who comes into the game with the bases loaded, Obama came in with a budget in place that called for spending to increase by hundreds of billions of dollars in response to the worst economic and financial calamity in generations.

Before Obama had even lifted a finger, the CBO was already projecting that the federal deficit would rise to $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2009. The government actually spent less money in 2009 than it was projected to, but the deficit expanded to $1.4 trillion because revenue from taxes fell much further than expected, due to the weak economy and the emergency tax cuts that were part of the stimulus bill.

The projected deficit for the 2010-13 period has grown from an expected $1.7 trillion in January 2009 to $4.4 trillion today. Lower-than-forecast revenue accounts for 73% of the $2.7 trillion increase in the expected deficit. That’s assuming that the Bush and Obama tax cuts are repealed completely.

When Obama took the oath of office, the $789 billion bank bailout had already been approved. Federal spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicare was already surging to meet the dire unemployment crisis that was well underway. See the CBO’s January 2009 budget outlook.

Obama is not responsible for that increase, though he is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill, from the expansion of the children’s health-care program and from other appropriations bills passed in the spring of 2009.

If we attribute that $140 billion in stimulus to Obama and not to Bush, we find that spending under Obama grew by about $200 billion over four years, amounting to a 1.4% annualized increase.

After adjusting for inflation, spending under Obama is falling at a 1.4% annual pace — the first decline in real spending since the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon was retreating from the quagmire in Vietnam.

In per capita terms, real spending will drop by nearly 5% from $11,450 per person in 2009 to $10,900 in 2013 (measured in 2009 dollars).

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GOP Newsletter Calls for Armed Revolution if Obama Re-Elected

In the “Whitehouse Watchdog” column, editor Ponch McPhee says that America cannot survive four more years under Obama, a “political socialist ideologue” who is “unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized.” McPhee argues that Americans will have no option “but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November:”

Source

Good, that will give us an excuse to rid our country of some of these degenerates.

U.S. Leads Industrialized Nations In Health Care Costs, Falls Behind In Quality: Study

Health care in America costs more than in other industrialized nation and we aren’t even getting the world’s best care for our dollars, according to a new study.

The United States spent $7,960 per capita on health care in 2009, the most of 13 industrialized nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, reports the Commonwealth Fund, a research institution. That’s almost three times the amount spent in Japan, which has the lowest expenses of the countries reviewed.

Americans pay the highest prices for physician visits, hospital treatments and prescription drugs and get expensive diagnostic tests like MRIs at a higher-than-average rate. More Americans are obese, too, though the nation’s population is younger than all the other countries but New Zealand and is the least likely to smoke cigarettes than people anywhere but Sweden, according to the report.

Escalating prices for health care and high use of potentially wasteful, inefficient and unnecessary medical services are the main reasons for the rapidly escalating cost of health insurance, the growing ranks of the uninsured and the fiscal burdens of Medicare and Medicaid. Big price tags also lead Americans, even those with health insurance, to go without care they need.

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How Conservatives Decide Which Policies To Support

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

Source

Saturday, April 28th, 2012: Thousands to March in Denver

On April 28th, 2012, at 9:30 a.m., thousands of Colorado women and their family members will gather at Civic Center Park’s Greek Amphitheater for a rally to protect women’s access to health care, and for the right of each woman to make her own health care decisions. State and federal legislators, musicians, poets, community leaders and ordinary Coloradans will be addressing current legislation in Colorado and other states. Following the rally, attendees will march around the State Capitol and back around Civic Center Park to where they started.

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Massive Gas Leak in the North Sea

Exclusion zones have been put in place around the Elgin platform in the North Sea, which has been suffering a serious gas leak since Sunday.

Coastguards said shipping was being ordered to keep at least two miles away and there was a three-mile exclusion zone for aircraft.

A cloud of gas was reported to be surrounding the platform, which is located 150 miles (240km) off Aberdeen.

Workers from a second platform and drilling rig have been removed.

Shell has moved 120 non-essential staff from the Shearwater platform and Hans Deul drilling rig, about four miles from the Elgin, because of the drifting gas.

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Drill, baby, drill! If you want to destroy the world.

Obama Video: The Road We’ve Traveled (or the Destruction Caused by Republican Policies)

Republicans destroyed our economy and the world economy, allowed us to be attacked in 2001, got us into two unwinnable wars, rendered most regulatory agencies impotent (which led to the BP oil disaster), politicized the justice department, created most of the 15 trillion dollar national debt, and blocked nearly all efforts to try to fix our country’s problems. How anyone could vote for a Republican is incomprehensible after all the damage they’ve inflicted on our country.

NPR Will No Longer Balance Facts With Right-Wing Spin On Facts

NPR [now] commits itself as an organization to avoid the worst excesses of “he said, she said” journalism. It says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report. It introduces a new and potentially powerful concept of fairness: being “fair to the truth,” which as we know is not always evenly distributed among the sides in a public dispute.
Maintaining the “appearance of balance” isn’t good enough, NPR says. “If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side…” we have to say so. When we are spun, we don’t just report it. “We tell our audience…” This is spin!

There was nothing like that in the old Code of Ethics and Practices.

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Boycott Companies That Advertise On Rush Limbaugh’s Show

Follow this link for a list of companies that advertise on Rush Limbaugh’s show. These right-wingers would call their mothers a whore if they thought they could make money from saying that, and the only way to fight these hate filled bastards is to hit them where it hurts: in the wallet.

So if you can, boycott companies that advertise on Limbaugh’s show and on the Fox propaganda channel, also.

The Republican Mandate: Ultrasounds For Women Seeking an Abortion!

A bill requiring a woman to get an ultrasound before having an abortion is poised to pass Virginia’s legislature this week, placing it on track to be signed into law by Gov. Bob McDonnell.

The bill, which could pass the Republican-led House of Delegates as early as Tuesday, is one of the stronger ultrasound laws passed by states in recent years. If it is adopted, Virginia will become the eighth state to require ultrasounds before abortions, a rule that anti-abortion forces hope will cause some women to change their minds but that women’s advocates call an effort to shame women and interfere with their privacy. The Senate, which is split evenly along party lines, narrowly adopted the bill this month.

Source

Talk about big government! An ultrasound can cost upwards of $1000. So who foots the bill for this procedure? What if the woman can’t afford an ultrasound… Does that mean she can’t have an abortion? Anybody with answers to these questions, please reply.