PJBoosinger

“Four common bad habits combined — smoking, drinking too much, inactivity and poor diet — can age you by 12 years…  These habits combined substantially increased the risk of death and made people who engaged in them seem 12 years older than people in the healthiest group…  The healthiest group included never-smokers and those who had quit; teetotalers, women who had fewer than two drinks daily and men who had fewer than three; those who got at least two hours of physical activity weekly; and those who ate fruits and vegetables at least three times daily.”

“These habits combined substantially increased the risk of death and made people who engaged in them seem 12 years older… Study subjects were asked about various lifestyle habits only once …  Death certificates were checked for the next 20 years.”  I see support there for the concept that these habits MAY cost one 12 years of their life but zero support for that nonsense about making people “seem 12 years older”.  Shoot, this “study” looks like junk science more than anything else.  For the sake of argument, I’ll assume it’s true that one may lose 12 years of life in exchange for having all 4 bad habits.

History is replete with brilliant people who also had bad habits.  Some of them were miserable and some were quite happy and the exact same can be said of those with NO bad habits.  It’s fairly well established that much of the brilliance would have been lost along with some of the functional and not so functional addictions (and I don't mean just drug additions, all habits are addictions and you never get rid of them but merely exchange them for other habits).  This country was founded on fundamental rights to do as one pleases unless it harms others and yet there is always a push by the mass of followers to insist that everyone be coerced into whatever narrow model of humanity the group think is currently dictating.

Who decided that physical health and longevity were the only standards of measurement for a life?  I only have 2 of these “bad habits” but you can have the whole 12 years of decrepitude off the end of my life so I can keep my bad habits and be happy!  It is my fundamental right to decide how I live my life and you health nuts need to butt out.  Don’t tell me I cost society more either because we now know that those of us who die earlier from these “bad habits” actually cost the whole system less because we die sooner and faster and tend not to want extraordinary measures at the end of life.

The same crazy thought process goes into animal rights activism thought that animals are better off dead than in the hands of those they designate as “bad” owners.  Seems mostly it’s the same people too.  It won’t be long until they say you’re a “bad” owner if you can’t afford extraordinary measures for end of pet/animal life too and, that failure to actually use extraordinary measures to keep an animal limping along for as long as possible, is also “bad”.  Where does this come from?  If one doesn't believe in life after this, then one rarely fears death and wants as much freedom here as possible since THIS IS IT.  If one believes in life after death, what are these humans so afraid of on the other side that they need to hang on to this life so desperately?  Oh, it just dawned on me.  They're killing and abusing humans AND animals in all this so, yeah, I'd be afraid of judement day too if I were them.

Well, having seen yesterday that the vast majority of humans will simply walk by the injured and dying and, on Dateline, that 90% or people will sit still in a room as it fills with smoke rather than be the first one to get up and leave, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised there is such a large number of people who will just follow along to dictate what some group of scientists has dictated as “best” rather than allow people to choose for themselves.  Nor should I be surprised at how many are so willing to pant the ARA chant, no matter that they will eventually be on the receiving end of what they are now doling out for others.

There’s always a debate over whether “venting” is good for one’s health or not.  I’m in the “oh, yeah, venting is GREAT for health and blood pressure and strokes” camp.  Can you tell?

They also say laughter is good for one so I’ll share what made me laugh today.

“Democrats and Republicans must work together to tame deficit-spending habits”

ROTFLMAO.  Yeah, that’s gonna happen!  Both of these groups LIVE to drive up the deficit.  Every new president runs into office, passes their pet projects swearing they know how they’ll pay for it, and then (ONLY THEN) starts the “must control the deficit” nonsense.  We all know that means it’s increase taxes time; time to take away more from each of us to pay for what they supposedly will give us later.  “I’ll gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today…” except we aren’t going to get the full hamburger!  Where’s the beef?

“Federal Reserve chairman said failure to mop up red-ink spending would "ultimately do great damage" to the country…  produce a deficit no bigger than $550 billion by 2015, an amount equal to about 3 percent of the total U.S. economy. That would require deficit savings in the range of $250 billion or more”

Budgets are really simple.  You either have to increase what’s coming in or decrease what’s going out to balance them.  It ain’t rocket science and, while it’s disturbing to see the allegedly smartest people in the country, like the Fed chairman, apparently befuddled by the very concept; I’ve decided to laugh at it all today instead of blowing a fuse and ranting.

"You're going to have to raise taxes. You're going to have to cut spending," Urban Institute President Robert Reischauer said to the panel. "It's going to have to hurt."  Even before the panel convened, however, House GOP leaders issued press releases urging it to take tax increases off the table as a deficit-closing option.

I see it’s time to cut anything and everything OTHER than what was passed this past year or so.  :)  It’s just so funny they won’t just SAY IT.

“The most obvious solutions, higher taxes or fewer government benefits, are the most toxic — one reason the 18-member panel has instructions to deliver its recommendations after the November election.”  I wonder if that will work this time around.  Oh, yeah, it always does to some extent.  We’ll either elect these bozos or the other set of bozos and, either way, they’ll just keep spending and spending.

Being president of the United States is about the last job on the planet I would want but, hey, elect me.  I’ll fix the budget by executive order (why not, it’s how so much is done these days) in DAYS just by disallowing funding for all unconstitutional spending.  We’ll be in the black by the end of the first year I’m in office.  Well, darn, I know that’s not going to happen.  I have skeletons in my closet because I'm a real person, not a politician!

There’s a point when the lights on the train coming at you while you’re tied to the tracks where one has to choose between being the wide eyed frozen deer or to laugh at the death and destruction bearing down on one.  Today, I choose to laugh because about the only thing I'm sure of is that we're a bunch of sheeple who will go wherever we are mindlessly lead or shoved, including to our financial deaths, death or our happiness, or the death of animal ownership.

Who gets to decide?  Clearly, it ain't me!