John Adams - Declaration of Independence

Hello fellow citizens. I'm posting these thoughts in response to a conversation that started with one of my Xango and Facebook friends. She had posted a video from YouTube showing a tiny excerpt from the awesome mini-series from HBO named "John Adams".

I am posting my threads in order to give my readers a chance to read the entire post since the length restrictions on FB are a bit limiting.

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Just finished seeing the HBO series. It is more than awesome! Many facts most of us do not know. This country almost didn't happen. A must for any citizen to see what people with a dream are made of. Sad to see how careless and complacent we have become; taking everything for granted and complaining about everything without offering any solutions. What happened to the American spirit not only our ancestors died for but the whole world looked up to?

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Yes it was titled rightfully so "John Adams". Since the author, McCullough, researched all the material available and paints the picture of Adams & Jefferson creating the "American Spirit" based on French forthoughts (the French Revolution was just a bit earlier). But Adams being the true protector of this country by being the only one bold, selflessness and integer enough to stay on course of the declaration of independence in the beginnings and staying away from bonding with either English or French that asked in return for help in their devastating war that would have destroyed this young and fragile government. And the Germans were the ones that turned around Washington's loosing battles after the New York disaster. So let's never be lead by too much pride and forget who helped us get here. The spirit & democracy is what counts and needs to be fought for by all of us every day. We have forgotten. It's a shame that Adams has never been given the honor to appear on any dollar bill.

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For everyone reading this postings, get the HBO DVD series "John Adams" today! Buy it or get it at your library for free. If you don't see anything else this year, watch this educational and enlightening masterpiece and find out how lucky we are, since this beautiful society and country we live in had almost not come to life. See it - you owe it to yourself, your family, your ancestors, your country. Happy 4th of July!

Democracy is not a given...

... it's not a gift. Yes, most of us were born into a Disneyland and Hamburger world. But these luxuries were fought and paid for with endless numbers of lives. Your ancestors! It's time you started to care again. We need to reclaim values and a sustainable attitude. Alternative resources are not a choice any more. Much less greed and ignorance is needed. Americans seem to know little to nothing about the rest of the world. Nor do we show to care unless gas prices start to climb or some country, whose name we can't even pronounce correctly, seizes to give us more of what we need most: oil. Up next on the list is drinkable water and non-toxic food resources. Watch the PBS channel for a change and get some perspective on other realities. 

Why do you think this country has so many challenges? Why do you think the world despises the American attitude these days? We have become selfish, ignorant and careless - taking, taking, taking. And meanwhile we are loosing our freedom to blind consumption and complacency. Closed-mindedness, pride, false and uncritical patriotism has brought the most terrifying tyrants to the world - be aware and don't think it can't happen right here. These things don't just pop up and jump into your face. They are not immediately and clearly visible. It's a slow and gradual development. You lose rights, you loose interest, a little war here some patriot act there (hardly anyone responsible read it before signing it!). You're busy with your own little daily rat race and one day, you are not even allowed to grow your own tomatoes in your garden because the food and pharma industry have patented everything and taken over the country and the world. Food police! Think of it. If you control oil (energy in general) food production and distribution and pharma (the stuff that made you sick will force you to buy more bad stuff, not to cure but to keep you sick), ergo - you control everything. 

America will seize to exist the we way we know it, if we go on like this. What happened to the land of the brave and the free? It has become the land of the greedy and ignorant. The American spirit, the world once admired and fought for, has almost vanished. Let's re-instill our code of honor and become the leaders & visionaries we once were. But that would mean you'd need to gather some courage, get out of your couch and actually change something - your attitude.

It's complicated...

Hi everybody, I'm posting this blog here today just because I didn't have enough space to answer a colleague of mine on an interesting subject we started. Go here to see the previous thread. http://snipurl.com/6agit


That sounds too black & white. It's much more complicated than that.

This topic, of course, is a very wide and never-ending discussion. Having lived in a few different countries with different systems (democratic and not) in the world, I can sum up that some things are good to regulate (so set the bar or standards and create an equal playing field) and some are not. The wisdom to decide what to regulate, when and what not, is the key.

For instance: Other governments in the world have regulated banking rules much tighter, in order to avoid a fiasco, the US is in now. The US bailout is an excuse, now paid pay the people, screwed up by the private, too loosely regulated, banking companies.

Don't get me wrong. We love free enterprise, free trade and free markets. But none of them are really free. They all have rules. And it's those set of rules the society agrees upon in order to be and get the best out of it. Therefore it shows in what condition a country or society is, when things break down.

How, for example would you evaluate the patriot act? The government stepped in and didn't even ask. The ones that had the power to make the decisions pro or con, didn't even read it, they were sleeping and lazy. Witnesses of the time will concur.

As long as there are humans and their societies, there will be regulations and rules of some sort or else we cannot survive. Anything in the universe has regulations. And rules change as everything changes. The key is to be flexible and adapt and change again in order to flourish and survive. The only constant is change - nothing stays the same. And if you don't have/make a plan, someone else will. So the question is how much can we or do we want to be involved in the process?

You say we shouldn't let our government mess things up. I agree. But our government is "just" our representation we voted for, so we can go about our lives and jobs. Otherwise we'd have to sit there everyday and negotiate. So either we get up there and get gritty ourselves or we shush and take some .... for the compromises we need to make in order to live our lives (in abundance by the way).

Democracy is the most complicated system and usually has a shelf life of 200 years. So I'm glad for every extra day we can speak up and say what we want.

Or can we?

Thanks in advance for having a great conversation.

Ignorance

I'm always speechless when I see someone completely ignoring any common sense toward their environment or other people living in it. Just the other day we had a huge moving truck in Grayhawk Scottsdale blocking the whole street in our community. Not only didn't anyone get in or out. The killer was that the truck driver kept his huge diesel engine running not just for an hour. No, I'm talkin' all day! There was no reasoning with this man: "my wife owns the company. So go ahead and complain." the property management company proved helpless with no leverage whatsoever (what's up with that?) so the truck kept polluting and vibrating all day long. Isn't there a law against this? And here's the kicker. When I asked the trucker why he had to keep it running, he argued: "I gotta keep my little fridge cold for my food you moron. I live here ya know. So get a life."

Wait a minute...did he mean I should get a life or should he get one?

So whenever you feel like hiring an obnoxious and rude moving service, go ahead and give this guy a try.

Posted with LifeCast

Green starts with YOU!

Recycling in communities. This is a frustrating issue. Waste Management keeps showing off how green they are in their TV ads but have a system in place that dates from the 60's. If you want to get ahead you must change and adapt. Cities and companies like WM must help us change things as well. Imagine that there is only one company that will even consider green waste management and recycling in Scottsdale, AZ. Imagine how long it took to change people's minds in our community's HOA to give it a try. Imagine how many people, after the fact, came out of the dark and

 applauded the recycling program. Where were you when we needed your voice and support. It takes more than just words to change habits. It takes your time and actions.
A recycling company like WM, that offers only one antiquated system, that throws everything in one green bin and complains to the people of that community, when there are a few items that "contaminate" the trash (wow, contaminated trash, that's a new one), that they cannot pick up the green bin, they will have to send a "normal" trash truck to pick it up and dump it into landfills, the very thing we're trying to avoid, is not a program that works.

We cannot monitor every individual. We will never have a 100% "uncontaminated" trash, which sounds ridiculous to me anyway; trash, contaminated, how can that be? They should have a system that can handle the contamination. People are people, they will always contaminate to a certain extent. Oh, and did I mention that glass is not a recyclable item to them. So now residents should have how many different bags in their kitchens and garages to separate and make this thing work???

I hope our mayors (Mary Manross), government officials and company owners that "claim" to be green in attitude, realize that if they don't develope and adapt our systems to the real world and provide one that works, the program will fail. They should be eager to get into the glas recycling business as well and have extra bins for that. Either have bins for everything or have many bins for different items. Then the bins could be smaller too.
I keep saying, just pay a four week visit to Germany and copy their system. No rocket science, no reinventing the wheel. Bingo, you will be ahead of the WM pack in no time. I'm also tired of hearing "it can't be done". That only means "we're just too lazy and uninterested to make it happen." We have been flying to the moon and mars for heaven's sake. Then we can solve our trash problems. It's all a matter of will.


America the beautiful? C'mon, we can do better than this.

Have a junk, pollution & trash free day. (Wherever that is)


"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared to believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance."
- Bruce Barton

Government has responsibility to set energy-efficiency rules