The FDA has approved Stevia to be used in the US as a sweetener....does this mean that Hell has frozen over?

Not really - it just means that Big Business is looking for an out.

You see, for the better part of the last 20 years, the FDA has classified Stevia as a "food additive" and vehemently prohibited it being labeled as a sweetener of any type. They have threatened legal action towards companies that printed recipes using stevia, commandeered supplies of stevia coming into the country, threatened to put companies selling stevia out of business, etc.

Why, pray tell, has the FDA been so afraid of a little green herb that is 30x sweeter than sugar and is safe for diabetics because it regulates their blood sugar? Quite simply, because the sugar lobbyists were too powerful and the Big Businesses like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc., began embracing Asapartame as the sweetner of choice.

Problem with Aspartame, is that it is linked to a whole host of health ailments and the FDA's own doctors provided feedback that it should not be approved when the FDA's head honchos decided to approve it and that fake sweetner is now used in 8,000+ products.

But now, thanks to the amazing grassroots efforts of the health oriented community, the truth about Aspartame has gotten out to mainstream America and people are beginning to realize that their health is vital and that can't keep feeding their body crap and expecting it to run 100%.

So while it is wonderful that the FDA has approved Stevia for use as a sweetener, they still deserve to be bitch-slapped because they didn't approve it for the health of the public but to appease the whims of the likes of Coca-Cola and Pepsi that are reacting to consumer complaints / concerns.

Hopefully, this will be a straw in the wind and more consumers will begin to make the direct correlation between the foods they eat and their health. The human body was not designed to run on fake foods and a host of pharmaceuticals and I personally feel that has become abundantly clear after seeing the rampant increase of "disease" over the past 100 years since the advent of processed foods and the heavier use of meat consumption. The closer to nature one can eat, the better off.

Taking the Bible too literally & Taxing junk food & Greed....

So as most have probably heard, there's a family in Arkansas named the Duggars who have pro-created to the tune of 18 children. 1 male. 1 female. Copulating to send forth 18 offspring -- and they are looking forward to more.

The father, Jim Bob, needs to realize that his wife has a vagina and not a clown car between her thighs.

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New York Governor Paterson recently implemented a whole array of things to tax including soft drinks. People are all riled up over it.

Personally, I don't see the problem.

Obesity is a serious problem affecting this country and with most people being without insurance, it falls onto the tax payers to pick up the costs from the county hospitals. One way or another, we are paying for it.

It's only logical that the very products that are contributing to the poor health should be justly taxed just as cigarettes have been.

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All this yelping about Bernie Madoff and his amazing $50 billion Ponzi scheme is a bit mind numbing. Donald Trump summed it up well when he said most of the people investing with Bernie were greedy.

How else explain why people put 10's, if not 100's, of millions of dollars with this one guy? Trump gave examples of wealthy people mortgaging the family home that had been paid for decades ago just so that they could get their hands on more money to invest. And, as Trump put it, those people are now going to be looking to work at the local drug store.

I also agree with Trump that one solitary little old man couldn't have pulled this off by himself.

I've been reading the New York Post, New York Times and Palm Beach Post about some of these stories and can't even imagine what some of those people are about to go through. Life may throw you lemons at times, but usually you know how to catch them and add some water and sugar. Whereas most of those inherited monied toffs won't have clue 1 as to how to pull their life together.

In the immortal words of Gordon Gekko, "Greed IS good" but let's add the afterthought "within reason".....because let's be honest, very few people in this world can afford to lose $50 million.

George Carlin Was Right About Politics...

Carlin, bless his soul, described the word politics as "poli" meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "blood suckers".

Certain sections of this country looked down their noses because approximately 25% of Texans felt Nobama was a Muslim on some level. We were called ignorant, back woods, etc. I have never stated that he's Muslim but I do have my idle wonderings based upon his schooling and his exposure to certain belief systems growing up. At least Texans had enough sense not to vote for Nobama regardless of their opinions on his choice of religious beliefs.

Sarah Palin was slammed by the liberal media and Democrats as being short on experience because she's only the governor of the largest U.S. state and a former mayor. But yet those same yahoos embraced Nobama who might have enough executive experience to arrange a pub crawl to be our next President.

Nobama also pontificated that it would be a fresh wave of "change" when his happy ass got to D.C. To date, there's a plethora of lackeys from Slick Willy's administration and from the Chicago politics scene -- you know, that same political scene that is legendary for low down dirty dealing? Yep...so much for that fresh wave of change.

Nobama is pontificating that he has an in-house investigation going on regarding this whole "selling his seat" fiasco with the Illinois governor yet he has stated to the press that he is "absolutely certain" that no one from his side chatted sweetheart deals with the governor. At least some of the press were astute enough to ask him how he could be certain if there was still an in-house investigation? Nobama hasn't replied to those questions.

And now we have little Caroline Kennedy deciding she fancies herself a chair in Senate. She'll just slide in and take over Hillary's seat -- hell, how hard could it be? Caroline has herself a law degree from Harvard....never practiced law though. She's even been involved in the organizing committes of some galas. She lives on the Upper East Side, doesn't have a steady job and her husband is a stay-at-home painter. Oh yeah...she's REALLY in touch with America and the challenges the average Joe is going through.

Even the feedback left from readers of the New York Post has been blistering in that Caroline is NOT qualified.

What a cluster fuck.

Texas should secede. We'd be something like the 6th wealthiest nation in the world as our own country again so no time like the present.

In a post on another site, Parkerbraden made the following selling points on Texas secession:

From The People of Texas

We Texans love y'all, but we'll have to take action if Obama wins
president over McCain. We'll miss you too.

Texas has given all those complainers plenty of time to get used to the results. After seeing the whiners along the campaign route, the folks from Texas are considering taking matters into our hands.

Here is our solution:

#1: Elect Barak Obama President of the United States. (All 49 states.)

#2: George W. Bush becomes the President of the Republic Of Texas.

So what does Texas have to do to survive as a Republic?

1. NASA is just south of Houston, Texas. (We will control the space industry.)

2. We refine over 85% of the gasoline in the United States.

3. Defense Industry. (We have over 65% of it) The term "Don’t mess with Texas," will take on a whole new meaning.

4. Oil - we can supply all the oil that the Republic of Texas will need for the next 300 years. Yankee states? Sorry about that.

5. Natural Gas - Again we have all we need and it's too bad about those northern states. John Kerry will figure a way to keep them warm....

6. Computer Industry - we currently lead the nation in producing computer chips and communications: Small places like Texas Instruments, Dell Computer, EDS, Raytheon, National Semiconductor, Motorola, Intel, AMD, Atmel, Applied Materials, Ball Semiconductor, Dallas Semiconductor, Delphi, Nortel, Alcatel, Etc, Etc. The list goes on and on.

7. Health Centers - We have the largest research centers for Cancer research, the best burn centers and the top trauma units in the world and other large health planning centers.

8. We have enough colleges to keep us going: UT Texas, A&M, Texas Tech, Rice, SMU, University of Houston, Baylor, UNT, Texas Women's University, Ivy grows better in the south anyway

9. We have a ready supply of workers. (Just open the border when we need some)

10. We have control of the paper industry, plastics, insurance, etc.

11. In case of a foreign invasion, we have the Texas National Guard and the Texas Air National Guard. We don't have an army but since everybody down here has at least six rifles and a pile of ammo, we can raise an army in 24 hours if we need it. If the situation really gets bad, we can always call Department of Public Safety and ask them to send over a couple Texas Rangers.

12. We are totally self sufficient in beef, poultry, hogs and several types of grain, fruit and vegetables and lets not forget seafood from the gulf. And everybody down here knows how to cook them so that they taste good. Don't need any food.

This just names a few of the items that will keep the Republic Of Texas in good shape. There isn't a thing out there that we need and don't have.

Now to the rest of the United States under President Obama: Since you won't have the refineries to get gas for your cars, only Mr. Kerry will be able to drive around in his 9 mile per gallon SUV. The rest of the United States will have to walk or ride bikes.

You won't have any TV as the space center in Houston will cut off your communications. You won't have any natural gas to heat your homes but since Mr. Kerry has predicted global warming, you will not need the gas.

Signed, The People in Texas

Have a nice day!

This is a great commentary that I wanted to share:

Happy Cyber Monday! A couple of weeks ago, I was discussing geopolitics and economics with someone on Twitter and they argued that we needed yet another bailout in order to prevent a recession. At which point I cursed the poor state of our school systems and replied that not even the US Treasury would be able to prevent a recession, in fact all of this money printing and deficit building would likely only prolong the suffering. Recessions are as legitimate as expansions or booms and bad businesses with fiscally irresponsible and archaic business models need to go out of business to make way for those who have modern business models and financially sound business practices. It is a part of the business cycle.

Reading the news from the Thanksgiving weekend only confirms my belief that we need recessions.

We need a recession because we have lost our ever loving minds.

We need a recession because we have reached a point where people will trample a pregnant woman and stomp another human being to death trying to be first in line to get a flat screen TV that we could have ordered online at walmart.com.

We need a recession because people are having shootouts and brawls at Toys R Us.

We need a recession because people who are two paychecks away from being homeless are running around buying Christmas presents for fully grown people with full time jobs instead of building an emergency fund and acting as if they deserve a gold star for cutting back this year.

We need a recession because fools in Atlanta are throwing $18,000 birthday parties for 12 year -olds catered by Chic-Fil-A and treating charitable foundations like the latest fashion accessory.

We need a recession because the credit glut of the last 20 years has lead to a bunch of materialistic, ravenous, unaccountable consumers who covet things instead of people and the only way to stop that is the power of the business cycle.

90% of GDP is consumer spending. We’re not making anything. We’re just fueling our economy spending money we don’t have..

A recession will soon teach everybody that credit is not wealth. Home debtorship is not home ownership. Your child won’t die if they don’t have a Xbox PSP, Wii, or WXYZ. Yes, you CAN survive living on less than what you earn. In the end all of this junk will end up in a heaping trash pile in somebody’s landfill.

We need a recession to teach us some common sense. That thrift and saving are virtues and Black Friday ain’t really a holiday. Black Friday is a creation of retailers and the news media.

There is a certain wisdom that many of our grandparents have/had. We saw them growing up. Making wine out of water. The original recyclers. They we’re recycling food, clothes, and furniture because they cared about the planet, they did it because they had to. They knew what it was like to walk around in shoes with holes on the bottom. They didn’t place their faith in the daily temper tantrums of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. They kept a little food aside for a very stormy day and for all of our jokes about hiding money in mattresses, they were probably right the way banks are failing these days.

Our political class is run by a bunch of feckless leaders who seem to believe that you can cure a credit glut by offering more credit. Billions of dollars for the bankers who created this mess in the first place? Its like trying to cure a bout of salmonella by eating more contaminated eggs. The sad thing is that our children and grandchildren will be paying for those rotten eggs

My Christmas list has three names on it. I’ll spend less than $200 this year as I do every year because in my family we pull names and I don’t have the problem with telling people NO!

We need a recession to smack us out of the MTV Cribs- Flip That House- coma that has beset us all. It is all an illusion. None of it is real.

I am throughly disgusted by those Wal-mart shoppers who had the audacity to be upset when police closed the store because it became a CRIME SCENE after a human being was trampled to death behind some consumer electronics.

“When told to leave,” some Valley Stream Wal-Mart shoppers “complained they had been in line for up to 24 hours.” A police spokesman said: “This crowd was out of control….” and “described the scene as [one of] ‘utter chaos. SF Gate

We need a recession so next Friday after Thanksgiving these fools will be sitting around the breakfast table enjoying family and friends instead of stomping someone else’s loved one to death or getting miffed that the crime scene tape is standing in the way of their $350 notebook computer.

In fact, I propose that each of you approach your city council with a “Black Friday Ordinance” make every retailer that advertises a “Black Friday” sale have adequate off-duty police officers on site to control the expected crowd and then send the fire marshal around to every store to shut the whole thing down if necessary.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Jdimypai Damour. I am so very sorry for what happened to him.