Mindconnection eNL, 2017-06-18

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In this issue:
Good News | Product Highlight | Brainpower | Finances | Security | Health/Fitness | Factoid | Thought 4 the Day

Item 1. The "Border Adjustable Tax" has zero chance of surviving the Senate and very little chance of getting passed in the House.  This is very good news, because this crazy scheme would effectively give $4.6 trillion (not merely billion or million) to certain large corporations to erase their tax bills while saddling American families with an additional estimated $1700 per year in costs for essential items look food and clothing (source, Retail Industry Leaders Association).

Item 2. Technological breakthrough offers hope for the libtarded (and also those who text while driving). Read the full story here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/researchers-grow-brain-cells-on-a-chip

Item 3. The EU is probably going to levy a fine of $1.17 billion against Google for its morally bankrupt behavior. Read the full story here:
http://searchengineland.com/eu-sources-say-1-17-billion-antitrust-fine-google-coming-weeks-277215

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Let's analyze the following statement, using the brainpower techniques of:

• Knowing the correct definitions of the terms being used.
• Knowing or looking up pertinent facts.
• Understanding fundamental concepts related to the statement.

The statement is "Obama brought us out of the recession."

Analysis of terms:

• Obama. The pseudonym for Barry Soetoro, the worst big-spender in the Senate while he was there. Clearly not someone who would have a positive economic effect.
• Recession. A meaningless, made-up concept that is based on cherry-picked metrics. It's a lie.

The pertinent facts:

• We are in a depression. See the Finance tip for the explanation.
• Obama more than doubled the national debt, via aggressive advocacy for radically high levels of spending.
• All depressions are due to excess government spending, because that is what sucks productive capital out of the economy.

The fundamental concepts:

• Just as you cannot raise the water level in a swimming pool by draining the water out, so you cannot raise economic output by draining out the productive capital needed to produce said output.
• To have improved our economy, Obama would have had to reduce spending but he radically did the opposite.

When you analyze statements using this methodology, you avoid drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid. If you are disciplined to do this routinely, you make yourself brainwashing-proof. Rather than have an opinion, you know.

Some people are spreading dangerous lies about Barry Soetoro, aka Barrack Hussein Obama. Not drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid there is vital to your economic health. And please correct anyone who spews the nonsense. This article will inform you, so that you can do so. 

One lie is that "he brought us out of a recession." A recession is defined as two quarters in a row with no increase in GDP. If you look at what constitutes GDP, you quickly see this number is a tool for political manipulation rather than economic evaluation. And it gets changed as expediencies dictate. In other words, "recession" is a lie. There are other metrics that give you an accurate picture of economic health or lack thereof.

A depression is historically caused by excessive government debt. That is because excessive government spending reallocates limited resources (capital) away from the productive sector. This is analogous to drilling holes in the side of a swimming pool; the water level does not rise, it falls.

When Obama took office, the national debt stood at about $9 trillion (9 followed by 12 zeroes, or 9 million million dollars). He aggressively pushed spending. Unlike Bill Clinton, who ran budget surpluses, Obama ran $1+ trillion deficits year after year. When Obama left office, the national debt was nearly $20 trillion. 

Here are some numbers for you:

1. The homeless rate (% of population that is homeless) is higher now than during FDR's phase of this Depression (it's the same Depression, we had a short respite during WWII and until about 1958 because our competitors had bombed each others' factories and cities to rubble). That is NOT an improvement.

2. HHS has classified 70% of American children as officially "Hunger insecure". Widespread poverty is the reason, and there are far more impoverished Americans now than when Obama took office.

3. What is the real rate of unemployment? Last year, I put an info request in with my Congressman. I asked what % of working age American adults had jobs. According to the BLS, the number is 48%. What do you call someone who doesn't have a job? Unemployed. When Obama left office, our REAL unemployment rate was 52%--not 9% or whatever he claimed. The low figure is only the NEWLY unemployed.

Note that when Obama was a senator, he abstained from voting on ANYTHING unless the vote was for one of two issues:

1. Spending money; he voted FOR every spending bill regardless of what it was.

2. Anything that would help ensure that violent criminals are protected from their victims, instead of the other way around.

In 2008, we were already reeling from 8 years of deficit spending that reversed the progress (vast reductions in federal spending) made during the Clinton years. Before Clinton left office, the family that owns the Debt Clock in NYC took it down. A growing debt was "a thing of the past," and we were on the road to recovery. While much of this involved "creative accounting" the fact is that Clinton did actually reduce spending. Significantly. 

GW changed that, with a net increase in debt by 2008. The 2008 Wall Street Theftcapade didn't help matters exactly, either. In 2008, GW sent his last budget to Congress. It was running a $250B deficit. Congress added $150B of TARP money, for a total for $400. Obama and Pelosi revised that budget, bloating it out by another $800B for a total deficit of $1.2T which Obama publicly blamed all on GW. 

Some people have mindlessly argued that the deficits were mere coincidence, as if Bill Clinton never existed and as if Obama didn't relentlessly advocate one spending measure after another and then brag about it afterwards. And as if somehow the vast difference between his deficits and those of any other POTUS were simply coincidental. I find this line of lying particularly braindead, because:

• Obama threatened he would do this or that (usually illegal) additional spending.

• He was filmed live, in front of hundreds of witnesses, signing the spending measure into law.

• He repeatedly bragged about it afterwards. 

So according to the libtard viewpoint, some OTHER PERSON successfully impersonated Obama during these public appearances while leaving Obama completely unaware it was happening. And we let libtards vote? These people are delusional in the extreme. If we let the libtards spew their delusions unchallenged, the plundering will continue.

It's not debatable and not a matter of opinion that Obama was by far the most destructive POTUS in our history. It just is. You have to look past the propaganda and the lies to see the reality. The real numbers are not just sobering, they are sickening. That is the legacy of Obama.

Awareness your first line of defense. Mindfully examine your environment, and look for signs of danger. Let the texting addicts be the victims (good riddance), not you.

Let's say that, despite your good attention to your surroundings, a thug manages to surprise you. What now? Suppose that thug is much larger than you. If you are prepared, his size won't matter.

To prepare yourself for just such an emergency I suggest you practice the eye stab, as it's very effective.

Place your middle finger over the top of your index finger. Relax your arm. Practice throwing your hand (jabbing motion) at an imaginary target. You can graduate to using paper targets; you should be able to penetrate them.

If you practice this for 10 minutes every Tuesday and Thursday (or pick two other days), you will eventually be proficient. And likely abduction-proof. Also works great as a throat jab. Or if you jab right below the collar bone, that arm should be immediately useless.

Don't practice this every day just to check off the box, because the practice doesn't work unless you are fully engaged in it. If you have a really long attention span, you can practice longer. Or if you know you can practice more often without degrading the quality of the practice then do so.

One countermeasure for a potential eye jab is to grab the person. If you're ever grabbed, here is a simple release technique. Grab a single finger with all of yours and yank it or shove it backwards as hard and fast as you can. It will break, as will the attacker's will at that moment.

Mindfully practice these; visualize if nothing else. It needs to be automatic.

Do you have kids? Train them in these techniques for their protection, but emphasize this sort of response is for a true emergency only. See if you can work out modified versions for handling playground bullies. For example, jab hard in the solar plexus rather than the eye or throat. For grabbing, pull the finger back rather than yank it back.

However, good posture is more than that. Let's think about posture as one of the things you do to make your body mechanically efficient. Poor posture equals poor efficiency.

Think of posture in three dimensions, not just one. It matters not just whether your back is "straight," but also how you position your shoulders at the top of your torso, your hips at the bottom of your torso, and your head above.

In many Asian martial arts, novices are taught to imagine their upper bodies as sitting on top of a ball. The idea is to position your body so no energy is required to keep it on top of the ball. For this to happen, your shoulders, hips, and head must align.

When they don't align, you are off balance. And you are mechanically inefficient. You want your spinal column to transmit force, not absorb force. With less than optimal posture, you lose much of the power generated from your core. This makes a punch slower and weaker.

But it's not just punches that are diminished. It's anything you do that involves speed and/or strength.

By "absorb force," I don't mean the way a shock absorber does. When your spine absorbs force (instead of transmitting it), that force usually gets concentrated at the posture weak points. For example:

• If you have head forward posture and go jogging on concrete, your cervical disks will be greatly abused.
• If your shoulders  are rotated forward (even a little) instead of in their proper position, you have incorrect angles at your tendon attachment points. Typically, biceps tendonitis is the result though other kinds of tendonitis may affect a particular individual in addition to (or instead of) biceps tendonitis.
• Walking with a swayback focuses the force on your sacrum and/or your lower back muscles. The neck will also often be a victim.

Bad posture is normal, today. A lot of that has to do with using computers and smartphones; there's that head forward thing. But it's also true that a weak core is normal. People just don't train their core, though quite often they believe they are training their core.

For good posture:

• Work your core. Hard.
• Be mindful of your posture when moving.
• Be mindful of your posture when seated.
• Don't flop into a chair, sit with deliberate motion.

More, below....

Top photo taken 16SEP2016, just days before 56th birthday; bottom photo taken 3 days after 56th birthday

• Hanging leg raises.
• Roman chair.
• Front squats.
• One-legged squats.
• Dead lifts.
• Planks.
• Vacuums (super-beneficial).
• Climbing (after sufficient technical skill training).

I regularly do all of the above, except one-legged squats and dead lifts. I don't do sit-ups; these actually weaken your core. When I say "work" your core, I don't mean absent-mindedly crank out a lot of reps of something. I mean squeeze your abs, glutes, obliques, or whatever is driving the motion. You want a hard contraction. That is what will give you the adaptive response and that powerful, beautiful core.

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.