By Dictator Hater for the Corbett Report.

Many of us have been waiting for “The Big One”. I’m not talking about earthquakes, I’m talking about the one big thing that will happen that shows us once and for all that we are slipping into fascism.

The problem with the big one is that there is no big one.

What we are seeing today in our government and rule making bodies is a descent toward something like Fascism but laced with Communism. It doesn’t matter what you call it, in the end you can’t tell one from the other.

Waiting for the big one has paralysed many people into believing that until “it” happens, they have no right to protest or do anything about it. It makes us doubt ourselves and feelings of being unsure hold us back. What many people forget is that the courts in this country convict many of our fellow citizens with circumstantial evidence and in lesser courts, a preponderance of the evidence. There is no need for eyewitnesses in these types of convictions, just enough evidence to prove that if it goes moo, it’s a cow.

Instead of waiting for the big one, it is time to take a hard look at the circumstantial evidence and ponder it.

Our government has been corrupt ever since it came into existence. Any time someone has something, there is always someone out there trying to figure out a way to take it away so they can profit. Personal freedom is no exception Since the erosion began, centuries ago, we’ve been turned into servants to the state, our labor is exploited by the government and is used to back up the debts these criminals run up so high that Jack’s Beanstalk pales in comparison. Think about it, you are what the government uses to back their bonds. Your labor and your children’s labor in the future. We are nothing more than bond servants to them, allowing them to issue servant bonds to support their spending sprees, graft and corruption. Now if that doesn’t make you mad, I don’t know what will. What do you think “backed by the full faith and credit of the United States” means? The government bodies do nothing that produces a product or any form of profit, they are there to restrain the people.

The amount of nose thumbing at the people of the United States of America has been staggering as of late. Those of you who are quick to call Americans “Sheeple” would be served by taking a lesson in how much uproar there was during this last Bailout of Wall Street. But, no matter, the criminals in charge went ahead and gave away their Constitutional powers of the purse over to the Treasury in spite of all the uproar.

We are on the train tracks that lead to hell and the powers that be are stoking the steam engines with paper dollars as fast as they possibly can. If we can see where we are going, why can’t they? The answer is, they can and they are doing this on purpose.

Why in the world would anyone want to bring down the economy of the entire world, you may be asking yourself. If you look at the top dogs, they are not being brought down, they are being lifted to heights of wealth that to an average person are unimaginable. Money does not just simply disappear, it is transferred from one hand to the other. Speculation can cause markets like real estate to turn into a bubble, but the actual materials and labor it took to build the buildings sitting on the land is real. Then comes the supply and demand principals that in a normal market are supposed to dictate value further. The toxic loans and low interest rates fueled speculation and caused the housing bubble, the breakdown of our labor force through job losses and stagnant incomes is causing demand to slip. It is at this point where, if you have cash, you can buy up land and houses for less than it cost to build them. Now, ask yourself, just who is it that is sitting on all the cash?

One answer to this could be found in the end of day stock rallies we see happening so frequently, these are rallies that defy logic. There is no good news to drive them. Thus, one might ask, why are they happening? Is it due to stock market manipulations which allow certain people to bail out at the right moment so they do not suffer the same losses that those who are not in the know are unable to avoid? It is a known fact that the Plunge Protection Team and government intervention has been the backbone of the stock market all the way back to 9/11/01 and that this administration has interfered in the stock market more than any other in it’s history.

Cash is King right now. The question for these Kings who hold the cash is, where exactly is the bottom of the real estate market and when is it safe for them to invest their money and be sure they are buying up something that isn’t going to fall further? I almost (not really) pity the poor middle Kings because they still believe that the markets are operating under the old principals they’ve always been able to rely upon. These people will take a bath while trying to profit off other’s misery. They believe they are part of the elite segment of this country. The truth is, they are fodder for the big guys, just like the rest of us poor slobs who think we are middle class, this is evidenced by the losses of those who didn’t get the go ahead to bail while the stock market was up for those few hours.

Those puny middle guys who believe they are Cash Kings are in for a big surprise if they hold onto that cash too long. The plan is and has been all along to devalue the U.S. dollar and crash it into oblivion. Or should I say, it has been said that this is the plan?

All the wild-eyed conspiracy theorists of the past thirty or so years who have predicted these events are beginning to look a lot saner in today’s world. They were not wrong about what was going to happen, the only thing they’ve been wrong about is when. I doubt there are many of them, although exonnerated by these recent cataclysmic events, who are gloating and saying much along the lines of I told you so’s. What I see are these visionary’s trying to help people prepare and learn to do things in order to be more self sufficient in order to stave off hunger and abject poverty while that window of time is still open a crack.

The ones who are left with fistfuls of dead dollars are going to be in for the shock of their lives. They will discover that they are not “all that” anymore when dead broke, if they have allowed their money to define who they are. If you are one of them I doubt you are reading this article, after all, you know better than a poor dumb slob such as myself, that’s why you’re holding all that money and I am not.

So, cruising through the news the other day, I see that Bush and Lady Bush are going to move into an affluent community around Dallas, Texas. I remember thinking that what our soon to be ex-president deserves is not a cushy retirement (PLEASE let this guy live out his days in obscurity) but a jail cell for the rest of his life.

Watching the suits stand up on television and trying to tell us that they know best is truly a sight to behold these days, since their evilness is what got us here in the first place. Marie Antoinette comes to mind when I see them standing up their in their two thousand dollar suits and expensive leather shoes. Liar, Liar and damned Liar is another one.

The more they try to fix things the worse they get. Any doubt yet that they are not trying to fix things, other than to rig the game for those who are in on the biggest swindle in the history of the world? They must hurry and transfer those dollars to the right people before they crash the current monetary system. This way, they can invest into tangible assets for pennies on the dollar and the heirarchy will come out of this smelling like the proverbial rose.

I’m no prophet and I do not have a crystal ball, but I do know one thing. What cash I can get my hands on these days is invested in equipment that can benefit me in the future, where I don’t have to rely on others to do things for me. I am leaning new skills at every opportunity to help myself and my family in the event all of the dire predictions come to pass. Other money is used to create a food stash which is constantly being rotated.

I cannot begin to stress to you the importance of food independence. Get your house in order now. Even if you don’t have much money, you can still cut corners and buy an extra bag of beans or a small bag of rice to start a small stockpile. Don’t forget fruits and vegetables, if you are trying to make a food stash. Those who control the food are the ones who really have their fingers around the neck of humanity. No matter how much material goods or gold you may have, you cannot eat it. Gold is at some point only going to be as valuable as what it can buy. If food scarcity becomes so dire as to threaten life, people are not going to trade their food, even for gold.

Well here we are, the supposed most fortunate generation in history and yet we are facing the complete annihilation of our way of life.

We have been deceived, coerced, cajoled and forced into giving away our freedom and our future in pursuit of the tainted promises of a consumer utopia. “Buy, buy, buy, borrow, borrow, borrow. Look the other way while we ship all of the jobs overseas and ship back in all of the nasty, low quality junk that you must buy, buy, buy with the money that we got you to , borrow, borrow, borrow”.

Why did you have to borrow that money anyway? BECAUSE YOUR WAGES WEREN’T HIGH ENOUGH!!! BECAUSE THE GOOD JOBS HAD BEEN SHIPPED AWAY!!! Except you didn’t notice it right away because - that’s right - you were distracted by all the money you could borrow, borrow, borrow and all of the shiny stuff that you could buy, buy, buy and all of the plastic people on tv that you could watch, watch, watch. Yippee what fun.

But then the credit/fun tap got turned off and the rest is history, or rather history in the making.

Don’t you remember when not so long ago one income would support a family?

Look at the state of our youngsters. Many people are scared of groups/gangs of children. How did so many go off the rails? Why are so many dumber than dirt?

Where were the parents when they should have been instilling values into them?

Both working to make ends meet and hoping that the children processing factories (schools), would turn out an acceptable product at the end. How can anyone hope to counter the low standards of public education when they are working all day and then distracted by 1001 other things in their time off.

Do people even connect the dots here I wonder. Maybe not, if they did they wouldn’t send their kids off to be so thoroughly disserviced. Would you keep returning your car to a shop that routinely screwed up the job? No. But you send your kids to institutions that do just that. Look at all of the money that goes into the education system and they still don’t get it right. Ah but they do get it right. The system is doing what the slave masters want it to do.

The system is doing what it was designed to do. Turn out cogs. We think it’s a failing system because we don’t understand the purpose of the system. We are told that it’s all about education, and we fall for it, then we are puzzled because the education doesn’t seem to be working properly. The promise of education is just a smoke screen to lull you into sending your children off to an institution where they will be mashed up and remolded into cogs. Inquisitive, lively, individuals go in and sullen, boring, clones come out. We are easier for the slave drivers to  manage that way. Some children do well in spite of their education, but a honest look at the degenerate state of our society reveals the true picture. How can a one size fits all system do anything other than fail individuals.

John Taylor Gatto can fill you in on the details if you care to read about them.

Just in case any crazy parents take it into their heads that they could do a better job of educating their children themselves, you’ve got states and countries outlawing the practise. Even though the majority of home ed children run rings around their schooled counterparts academically, can think for themselves, are better at problem solving and due to the time spent around caring adults (who aren’t being paid to be with them, it’s a labor of love and it makes a difference), don’t turn out to be the kind of youths that grown ups are scared of!!

i’ll get back on topic now.

Our economies here in the West were just a house of cards waiting to crash down. The people that pushed this consumerism/globalism drug on us have made their money, they are sitting pretty, while we fret and worry about putting food on the table and keeping a roof over our heads.

They and their brought and paid for politicians (yeah your vote really is worthless in this world), will do nothing to fix this. You are mad if you sit around thinking they they even intend to fix this. Take your obama tinted glasses off, he won’t save you, he doesn’t want to save you.

He won’t even put voters minds at rest by proving that he is eligable to hold the office of president.

Do you think a “small” thing like his eligibilty doesn’t matter? The people spoke, right? Wrong, dead wrong.

If he is not eligable to hold office, every law passed, every penny spent, every judge appointed, every deal struck, will be invalid. Plus what happens when some foreign country who does hold the goods on Obama decides it’s time to blackmail the pres and have him do their bidding? He needs to show his documentation. If he is legit then so be it.  If he stood for president illegally and knew it, then do you really want a fraudster in charge from the get go?

England has an unelected Prime Minister right now. I wonder at the true legality of everything that has passed into law in the UK since he took office.

We are entering the worst economic period in modern history. We are entering a time of deprivation when people have record levels of debt and no idea how to fend for themselves. You can thank the school system for that last part. The school system that teaches you to be a cog in a machine. What happens when the machine gets broken, or get’s taken away or the feul runs out? You are just a useless cog with no other function.

You only have to look at the growing unemployment lines for the proof of that. Unable to find work in the machine, the cogs are on the scrapheap.

Well you know what, it doesn’t have to be that way. We can come through this econmic wreckage but we have to think and act outside the box.

Hankering for yesterday and things to go back to how they were were last year won’t work. Why would we want to go back a system that has always been set on self destruct anyway? Yes, there is comfort in what we know and are familiar with, but it’s only temporary.

We need to move forward, we need to kick out the slave masters - yes the corporations are slave masters and we are still their slaves, our chains are called pay checks and the overseers are the endless government bureacracies that dictate every move that we may or may not make.

No one person or group will come along to save you. If you want to be free of the chains, you have to break them yourself.

As I have written before, we don’t need their junk food, infected with preservatives and pesticides and who knows what else. We can grow what we need on a local basis. A small town in England is doing just that.

If you have lost your job, get together with some others and figure out how you can create your own work by producing food.

The money is generated in your local economy and it stays in your local economy. It isn’t being sucked away by foreign corporations and shareholders looking for profit. You get some money in your pocket to spend in other local outlets, so they don’t go out of business.

If car ownership is out of reach now, or if those monthly payments are crippling you, why not start a community car share scheme? 4 families could use  2 vehicles, so instead of finding the money to buy 4 cars, and pay 4 lots of tax and insurance and maintenece, you are only paying for 2. This won’t work if you have to commute miles for work but if your activities are more locally based it can work out just fine.

Around here we often borrow one anothers vehicles if one of us has a car out of action and we give rides to people who don’t have a car at all.  A car scheme would just be a formal extension of that.

About to be evicted? Don’t end up on the street. Ask around, find someone who will rent to you (if you still have income) without credit checks. Find someone who needs help around the place and see if you can move in and supply that help in return for a place to stay.  House sit.  Move back in with family.  Squat a bank owned property.  See if your church can help. If you have even one person who claims to be your friend, then you should never be homeless.

Would you stand by and watch someone you care about, go and live in a tent, on a piece of waste ground?

Fair weather friends are good for just that, the good times. When the going gets toughs the fickle f**k off. I hope your friends are made of stronger stuff.

For further insight and ideas I suggest reading this article Anti-Consumerism and The Alternate Economy.

It’s full of simple ideas to help get jobs back, for example, don’t use your ATM card, insist on withdrawing cash inside with the help of a living, breathing bank teller. How much extra profit did the banks make once they had conditioned us to use plastic and pay for the privalage? One losusy machine costs a lot less then a bunch of employees who need living wages and expect to receive health benefits and pension contributions.

Help keep jobs. Use services that are provided by people. It might be your job that is saved.

We did sit back and let this happen, so did our parents generation. If we sit back and let this continue we will be despised by all generations who follow us. We are custodians of liberty and we are losing it fast.

Look at England. Papers please will soon be as common a phrase on the streets of England as it was on the Streets of East Germany. Laws that were embraced by a terrified public subjected to false flag attacks are now used on innocent newspaper delivery boys. These anti terror laws are used to spy on the public. It’s the same deal with the patriot Act. That was written long before 9/11 and congress were not even given time to read the thousands of pages before they had to vote on it.

How did all of this happen? How did we get so swindled like this? BECAUSE we weren’t paying attention. We were too busy shopping for crap, thinking about crap and watching more crap on TV. Talking about sports and celebrities, instead of scrutinizing our laws and our lawmakers. We trusted the media the tell us the truth, but the media are just establishment mouthpieces. That is why they didn’t report the truth about the economy for years, that is why they are now accelerating the decline by filling their pages with doom laden predictions. They can’t wait to tell us how bad it really is now, because a frightened populace will meekly accept the next bunch of draconian measures that the slave masters spew out. Just like we all accepted the anti terror measures after their false flag attacks which have in fact been directed towards spying on us and controlling us.

Are we waking up yet to our responsibilites? Don’t sit back and take it. The only way to fight back is to develop alternate systems. They are expecting either a tired and weakened populace to either roll over and comply with their plans or a desparate populace to get violent. Violence will be met with violence, so don’t go down that road, it’s pointless. Why do you think they have developed sound and heat weapons? They are expecting trouble at home that’s why. How about the active duty troops being redeployed within the US?

Don’t fall into their traps. If enough of us turn away from this consumer fantasy and get down to some hard work we can throw a spanner in their works.  It’s down to us, this is the oly window we have left. As that lying dog, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of England said “the peices are in flux”.  Yes they are, but if we let them fall as planned then it’s really game over for us.

So carpe diem (seize the day), our future is down to us.

Did you know that McDonalds is now the second largest merchant vendor for credit card use?

What does that tell us about the state of the economy? It tells us that people don’t even have the cash to buy a burger and fries!

What is going to happen if the proposed cuts in lines of credit take place? The talk is of credit card companies slashing lines of credit by two thirds.

Credit card spending is shooting for the moon as consumers, (wait, strike that . We are more than consumers, we are living, breathing, feeling people), as people are forced to put most of their expenditures onto plastic.

Credit card balances have risen more in the last 10 weeks than they did in the last 10 months combined and now the plan is to pull over 2 trillion dollars of credit lines.

What this means is that the rug is going to be pulled out from under you. The safety net that you were relying on to to see you through any rough times will be gone.

What will you do if you lose your job and your available credit is somewhere near zero?

This system that we played so happily in, for so long - I can buy what I want, yes I can, cus I got money from the plastic man! -  is now squeezing us hard. The shocks are coming hard and fast and no end, no relief is in sight.

This is the time to plan how you are going to survive this catastrophe. Those of us who saw the writing on the wall some time ago, have been storing food and buying equipment to enable us to become more self sufficient. Instead of watching tv or wandering around the mall with plastic in hand, we’ve been learning how to grow food and figuring out how to cut our expenses to the bone.

I’m not going to be standing in line, waiting for food to feed my children. I’ve got some land and we can (with a lot of work) provide sustenance. I’ve got trees growing that will be cut for firewood for the woodstove, when our current 3 year supply runs out and you can bet that I’ll be planting some more too.

We’re building an enclosure for the chickens that we are getting next week, our neighbor is giving us a rooster, that is meat and eggs covered.  Right after Christmas we will plant seeds in starter pots so that they are ready for planting out in early February.

We lost some fruit and nut trees to the seizure of some of our land for road construction, so we need to replant those, the apple, peach and plum trees will take a couple of years to start producing, the almond trees will take 5 or 6. Luckily we planted 10 more almond trees from seed 4 years ago so they will hopefully produce soon but they won’t produce anywhere near the quantities that we got from the old trees, for many years .

We are thinking about getting a couple of goats, we should get them, they will give us milk (and butter and cheese), they will eat weeds and save us a lot of mowing, especially on steep banks which have to be cut with a trimmer.

I’ve got my solar water heating (mostly) sorted out.

My point in describing my plans to you is this. Don’t wait for some politician to come to the rescue, don’t wait for the bankers (funny how that rhymes with w….) to turn the credit taps on again (not going to happen). Don’t react. ACT.

If you don’t have any land, band together with your neighbors and start a community garden or farm, you can provide food for yourselves and sell surplus to the rest of your community. Sell for less than the big stores and you’ll be doing everyone a favour. Get some chickens and goats, maybe a pig or 10 on there too.

If local ordinances give you trouble, then get them overturned.  You are the people that local government is meant to serve. Your needs should shape the policies. Government serves you, you don’t serve it!

Get the issue on the agenda of the next town/city council meeting and get the rules changed. While you’re at it, if you are persecuted by the no line drying rule, get that vanity serving rule thrown out too.  Who cares if some uptight snobs think washing lines look untidy. Those rules belong to the era of cheap electricity (which is over), to a time when most of us didn’t know or didn’t care about the pollution that our daily activities unleashed. Well we know now and I hope enough of us care.

Don’t end up in a food line where you will be part of the problem, get active now and be part of the solution.

How will you feel when your kids are hungry and your credit card gets declined at YukDonalds?

What will you do to put food on the table?

Will you try and take what doesn’t belong to you from people who worked hard to get their act together?

Don’t go down that road because people who have been preparing certainly did not forget to stock up on measures to defend themselves and their property.

By Dictator hater for the Corbett Report

In order to become more self-sufficient, you will have to spend some money for the equipment you will need. In order to avoid all the preservatives and other chemicals no one can pronounce that are in most store bought food, you need to prepare your food from scratch whenever possible. This will save you money, but it will not always save you time. Much of saving money means relying on your own labor for things you used to pay others to do for you, such as baking breads and making pies.

Tonight I got out my trusty bread machine. It had been under a cabinet, I am almost ashamed to say it with the price of bread being what it has been, for almost eight years. I bought five pounds of bread flour (high gluten Better For Bread) for $2.00 and used only three cups of the flour and spent thirty cents on some rapid rise yeast. One tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of powdered milk were the only other ingredients required besides water for this particular recipe. It cost less than a dollar to make a loaf of fresh, piping hot white bread. If you buy your products in bulk (especially the yeast) this cost will go down even more. All you have to do is throw the ingredients into the machine and a few hours later you pop out a loaf of bread. What was I thinking, owning this machine and not using it for so long? There’s nothing like the smell of bread baking to make a house a home. If you have a neglected bread machine, now is the time to start using it again. Mine will be getting a workout from now on. Just make sure you have a good bread knife to cut the bread and you should be in business. If you do not own a bread machine, look around for a used one or try www.freecycle.com to see if anyone has one in good working order that they are looking to discard. These machines can be used for making pizza dough, rolls, bagel dough, whole wheat bread and more.

Even if you do not have a bread machine and you can’t afford one, now would be a good time to start making your own bread and baked goods. The cost of these once cheap ready to buy items is now taking a sizeable chunk out of our paychecks. Many recipes for homemade breads or rolls can be made in advance and frozen or refrigerated for future use. This will save time and money if you make up a large amount at one time and only take out what you need. This website tells you how. A dozen pre-made yeast rolls costs around four dollars at the grocery store. The savings on breads alone is huge when added up over a one year period.

This pie crust recipe is delicious, costs pennies and takes very little time to make. The instructions were very easy to follow. For an apple pie, it takes about four large fresh apples to fill a regular sized pie tin and their recipe for the filling can’t be beat, just buy the cheapest apples you can find, any will work in this recipe. Frozen or ready to eat bakery pies cost anywhere from four to six dollars each and you still have to use the energy to heat them in your oven for about an hour. Make your own and you will know exactly what is in the pie you are eating. Pies can be made in advance and put in the freezer, here’s how.

This year, we decided to skip most of our usual expenditures for Christmas. We contacted the friends and relatives with whom we usually exchange gifts and told them they wouldn’t be getting any goodies from us this year and we asked them not to send us any either, because we were cutting costs. Their reaction was totally unexpected. They were actually glad that no one expected them to go out and run up their credit cards for presents they would be paying interest on for months or years to come. You might be surprised to find that many of your friends and relatives are thinking the same thing. There is no shame in being frugal in times as tough as these. Putting up a false front while going into debt needlessly does no one any good whatsoever.

Since there are no children in the house, we decided to use our money that we usually spend on fun gifts, for useful items. But, they are items that are needed by anyone who wants to become more self sufficient and cut back on their spending in the long term. The initial outlay is a bit painful. We decided to buy a new pressure cooker/canner, a meat grinder and a meat slicer.

Canning our own food is something we all should learn to do now. This endeavor involves some initial outlay. In searching for a new pressure canner this past week, I found a great deal here on the All-American pressure canners with free shipping. I was torn between paying around $100.00 for another Chinese made canner and the All-American. That cheapskate in me just keeps popping out and has to be held at bay in times like these. There were two reasons for not going with the cheaper brand. First was the fact that the All-American canner is made in the U.S.A. Second, it is the Cadillac of all pressure canners on the market and has been for many, many years. Price, even when trying to save money, is not all there is to consider. Quality is extremely important when buying a piece of equipment such as a pressure canner. You will never be sorry you bought the very best or at least middle of the road in quality, if the wallet will allow. If you can’t afford the All-American, then suffice it to say, since this is such a very important piece of equipment to own, then buy what you can afford, just make sure you own one and that it will fit your needs. You will need to do some research on canners, especially regarding size, to make sure you buy the right one for you and your family. For example, a fifteen or sixteen quart sized pressure canner will only hold seven quart jars or ten pint jars. The quart size, in regard to pressure canners, reflect the amount of liquid they will hold, not the number of quart sized jars.

If you are going to can your own food, you will need canning jars. Try thrift shops and yard sales to find them at the lowest price, just make sure they are all perfect with no chips, cracks or other defects in them. Otherwise, you’ve wasted your money, they will likely break in the pressure canner and you will have wasted your food as well as having made a huge mess to clean up. I’ve scoured the internet for the cheapest new canning jars I could find and here is where I found them. There is no charge for shipping to your local store where you can pick them up once they are delivered there. Make sure you have on hand the lids and bands that fit your jars. The bands may be reused, but the lids may not. You will need new lids each time you can a new batch of food, so you will need more lids than bands at any given time.

Canning cat and dog food could be a real money saver and a life saver for our animals. As of the present time, there is little to no information on this subject. I will be writing more about this in the future for Corbett Report as many have concerns about how they are going to be able to feed their pets and the animals they depend upon to guard their homes in the event of a complete economic meltdown. Canned and dry pet food will disappear, along with everything else, from our grocer’s shelves.

Meat grinders are important because you can make your own ground beef, pork, chicken or whatever type of meat you want to use in ground form. Many hunters use meat grinders for wild game. You can choose a manual grinder, which is probably the best type to own in the event we are thrown into the stone age with no power. You can pick one up for around $25.00 or so. Just make sure you receive fine, medium and coarse grinding blades with the one you choose, they all have different uses and most do come with all three. If you can afford an electric grinder, they are a great tool to own at present, especially if you are planning to use it a lot. Make sure, if you purchase an electric grinder that it has sufficient horsepower. This is not an item to cheap out on when making your purchase. Many grinders are also sausage casing stuffers, which is great. I won’t go into what is contained in the sausages and hot dogs that we buy at the grocers, suffice it to say you’d probably never eat another one if you really knew. I chose this grinder that seems to be more than enough to fit our needs, we will be using it quite frequently. There was also a ten percent discount coupon on ebay that you may still be able to take advantage of, if it hasn’t expired by the time you read this article.

Meat grinders can also be used to make raw cat food and raw dog food. If you decide to make your own raw pet food, as I do, make sure that you do the research needed to ensure your pet is getting all the nutrients he needs. Cat food is harder to make than dog food, because cats need extra nutrients in a special balance of taurine (for heart support), vitamin A, B vitamins, etc. I am a firm believer in a raw food diet, especially for cats. It’s great for dogs, as well, but if you have large dogs, it might be cost prohibitive. Here is more information on raw feeding of cats and here is information on raw feeding of dogs. I have found that raw feeding my cats is a huge saving on vet bills, they are healthy and active. The twelve and fourteen year old Persian rescues that own me act like kittens since having been switched to a raw diet. I’ve also been able to avoid having a dental performed on one of my dogs, which involves anesthesia and several hundred dollars, by feeding her raw beef rib bones a few times a week. It has completely cleaned all the plaque from her canines, they are now sparkling white. Make sure that all raw food has been frozen for several days before ever giving it to your pet. And if you give your dog raw bones to eat, make sure that you take them away from your dog before they dry out. They can splinter and cause internal injuries, just as cooked bones can. Never, never feed your dog or cat cooked bones. Knowing how to raw feed your animals could come in very handy in the event that you only have raw meat to feed them. If the supply lines are cut and there is no more canned or dry food at the grocers, this will be very important knowledge to have, before it happens.

We purchased the meat slicer in order to stop buying deli meats and other high priced sliced meats at the grocery store. This is another item you do not want to cheap out on when making your purchase, but you don’t have to have one that is restaurant or butcher quality either. Middle of the road is good and I found this model to be just what we needed without breaking our bank. Roast turkey at our grocer’s deli is around eight dollars or more per pound. I can buy a turkey breast, roast it myself, know exactly what is in it and whose hands touched it for around $2.00 to $3.00 per pound and slice it deli thin for brown bag lunches. Compare this also to buying a turkey sandwich at the restaurant and you will see that it will not take long for this piece of equipment to pay for itself. For example, sliced pork steak cost more than a pork roast. If your butcher will slice this for you, the way you want it, for free, then there is no savings, but if not, you will save anywhere from twenty to forty cents per pound on presliced meats. This can add up over time. Of these three “Christmas presents” we bought ourselves, this is probably the most frivilous of the three.

I can’t say that I am at all disappointed in receiving these items instead of the usual kinds of Christmas presents that would be under our tree. In fact, I am very excited to have been able to purchase them with the cash we have saved by not eating out, foregoing Starbucks type lattes and other things we have done to tighten our belts these past months.

It’s time we all do some rearranging of our priorities and figure out what is necessary as opposed to what is simply a want. It’s also time we all grow up and stop being afraid of hard work. We must spend our time doing things to save our hard earned money and stop saying we don’t have time to do things to help ourselves when we are spending hours in front of the television every night.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you have a Merry Christmas this year. At the end of it all, love is the most important gift we exchange. Let’s make that our priority in the coming year, it’s going to be more important than it has ever been if the world continues in the direction in which we are headed. I don’t see an end to it anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean that we have to give up and live in despair. We’re Americans, true Patriots and we have always survived whatever came our way with dignity and ingenuity. The coming year and the years after can be no different, we are what we are.

This is going to be a quick post because this image by David Dees says more than I ever could.

If you want this sorry world to change, you have to change. No if’s, no but’s.

Break the hold of the mega corporations and we may just have a chance.

We don’t set out to harm others, but we do enable visicous, morally bankrupt, global corporations to cause harm, every time we put our money into their hands.

Srtike at the root!

Stop buying their junk.

There is abundance in this world for every mans need but not for every mans greed.

Did you enjoy your lunch today?

Did you see the news story?

The Wal-Mart worker, trampled to death by the disgusting, bargain seeking, selfish, seething mass, that was masquerading as humanity at the Valley Stream, Long Island branch of the store today.

What the hell have we become that some utter piles of shit in Wal-mart are worth killing for?

This has to be the most chilling news report that I have ever seen and boy have I seen some!

If the police don’t scour that cctv footage from inside the store and link it up to cctv footage in the parking lot that identifies license plates and arrest every freaking one of those damned animals then I want to know WHY NOT!!!

Every one of those sorry excuses for a human being is guilty of MURDER.

I am so disgusted that I barely have the words to communicate how vile these people are.

The wheels have come off our economy and these lowlife, bottom feeders, that think nothing of trampling a poor store worker to death, will be visiting a neighborhood near you…soon.

All I can suggest is that you forget the politically correct idiots that want to disarm you and make sure that you have adequate defence for your family and that you know how to use it.