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Hat tip to Fark.

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...It wastes valuable resources and is often uncovered by the medical review boards at some insurance companies. Of course, I say this with full knowledge that it is the employers who choose the benefits and hand them over to the insurance companies to administer.

Don't be fooled, it's a seller's market still, it's just that we as individual health care consumers have no leveraging power to affect the market--Newt Gingrich will fix this when he becomes the next President of the US in 2008.

GO NEWT!!!

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This is just the nature of geographical migration in our country. I think we'll get back to the days of the rural doctor, the only difference is that they will have access to spectacular medical equipment that is a fraction of what it costs today. This will happen because it is a human need that the market must move to fulfill.

...Ahem, assuming, of course, that the government doesn't step in to try to make a quick buck or to protect vested interests who seek to profit from the old system which is built upon old needs while millions go untreated and die from lack of proper medical care access.

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Hat tip to Fark.

First of all, don't EVER trust anyone who calls you about anything financial who you did not exclusively and directly solicit information from. The credible financial instutitions are no longer marketing their products and services over the phone--that is a dead and decaying path of advertisting value. The big dogs are primarily on the Internet but they also rely heavily on the interruption marketing venues of television and radio.

We all know that advertising is a compendium of liars (and, sometimes outright immoral thieves--Seth Godin, the guru of permission marketing has titled his latest book All Marketers are Liars). But here's a perfect example of why you can't believe shit that you hear over the phone.

I just had some chick call me from "Discover Card" about my low balance transfer rate that was effective up until November, 2005 for a 4.9% transfer rate.

She then asked if I had any card balances I'd like to transfer today.

I told her that 4.9% was a pretty good rate (even though it's not--you should be able to get a 0% balance transfer rate for about a year) and that I would have to look through my papers.

She then asked if she could call me back in a couple weeks to see if I was ready. And here comes the killer mistake she made...

She asked me for my phone number!!!

First of all, she was the one who called me and if she was really with Discover Card she would have had my phone number. So, I said, "Yeah. Just call me back at this number."

She persisted, "And, what is your number?"

And I said, "It's the same number attached to my account, the same one you called me at today."

She say, "Thank you;" I hang up. [I will reserve a free copy of my forthcoming e-Book Flipping the Temple: Win the Information War by Using the Internet to Achieve Fantastic Success as an Author. [MINTON CHALLENGE: Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what sitcom and episode this statement comes from]. E-mail me at josh@joshuaminton.com with your guess.

But I digress...

My guess is that these are some of the dolts behind the recent huge identify thefts related to financial information. The people who are stealing these aren't the crack dealers on the street corner--and they aren't Al Quaida either. There may have been schemes involving identity theft of financial information prior to their opening salvos in The Ongoing Global War on Terror but they are lucky if they can find good toilet paper or, if they're in our country--they are watching every angle of their asses and are losing perspective big time.

The FBI is no joke when it comes to crawling up asses and bless them for it because they are cracking these domestic terrorist fuckers' skulls, man--hunting them down like the Predator going after Governor Jesse the Body. And this ability to clean house is an invaluable tool of civil defense but there are definitions and game rules that must be discussed in an open forum right now. As a society, we need to know where the Nietzschean Line is where you cross over from righteously fighting a demon to becoming one far worse than your opponent.

I'm all for lining suspects up who are crossing our border or flying over our skies and, if someone happens to fit the profile of 99% of all domestic terrorists, I'm sorry but you're getting lined up. I may be on the plane five minutes before you are and all lounged out in my seat but this relatively minor inconvenience to you is the price of my civil security and I'm willing to endorse collective power to make you pay that price of inconvenience until the bad guys are all caught. But I want to caution once again here that we ensure that is We the People who write the definition of who the bad guys and not the career politicians and generals.

Don't get me started...

The whole point in writing this blog is to say that the recent identity thefts were performed by disgruntled employees who had the systems knowledge and process awareness to take advantage of serious security gaps in the company. This is exactly the kind of shit that gets the dumb government's attention as a potential source of wasting tax payers' time to justify it's enormously large operating budget when, in reality, the government should be staffed with temporary lawyers, doctors, educators and military leaders instead of career politicians hell bent on sucking the bone long after the marrow has run dry.

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This is some funny stuff!

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This is truly too invasive into citizen privacy--the government should be forced to obtain a search warrant signed by a judge in good standing.

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I knew this was coming and it has been tried on Tivo and didn't take either. The music industry is losing its grip on musical art as a commodity by the day.

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Hat tip to Fark.

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Hat tip to Fark.

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The US economy is running on credit right now. Only a few people I know are spending within their means, most of them are maintaining a lifestyle on credit, one that includes new clothes every year--high price satellite television, home theatre systems, video games, computers, digital cameras, etc. etc. ad nausea. I was doing it also--but I've been hanging back on my impulse purchases lately. I've been doing more researching than buying and my economic decisions are beginning to result in an inflation in value of the dollars I am spending.

It's amazing that it all comes down to pure Basic Economics--it's all about the allocation of scarce resources to their most efficient uses. Beyond that, it's just a ping pong game (read Donald Trump's latest book for more on the ping theory).

By the way, spending on the margins is what sparked the stock market crash in 1929 and foolish government intervention into the the free market beyond their regulation duties as outlined in the U.S. Constitution is what turned a bear market into a Great Depression.

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Hat tip to Fark.

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There are about four or five AWESOME pictures!

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Hat tip to Fark.

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Hat tip to Fark.

Look, I used to love horror movies in the 80s but they're absolute shit today (1995-2005). It used to be that the first episode in every horror movie was fantastic and the others sucked ass. The first Nightmare on Elm Street was all about the psychological horrors of alcoholism and how it passes from generation to generation. The first Friday the 13th and the first Halloween were killer as well because they were both about the psychological horrors that we inflict on each other as individuals buzzing around in self-chosen isolation but the sequels became about the physical threat of the bad guy (Freddie, Jason, Michael Meyers, etc.).

If you think about it, we do some viscious shit to each other mentally and emotionally. I do believe that our silent intention shines before us in time. I further propose that negative intentions yield very low Time Light which makes it easy to bump into shit and hurt ourselves and other people very easily. On the other hand, I also live by the flip side that positive intentions create a massive LED Time Light that not only illuminates our life choices in brilliant panorama but also lights the light choices of our friends and family.

So, unless a horror movie (or book, hell this is exactly what Stephen King writes about in every one of his fantasic novels) spins its story from this level of thinking, it's shit--CGI shock blood crap that I wouldn't waste time watching if there were a five minute video Cliff's Notes.

Besides, no horror movie will ever be able to top John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness.

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Are you ready to see a capitalistic society, which ridiculously adheres to Communistic philosophies that have been proven by history to be murderous and defunct, explode into the Information Revolution. I've got my popcorn ready for this fireworks show. Let's just hope the government is getting their nuclear aresenal secured for when democracy strikes in the hearts of their individual citizenry.

Ni Hao, Zhong Guo Ren. Wo Shi Zhe Shi Ming.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

I officially proclaim this the Age of Individual Enlightenment.

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This should be pretty cool!

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Is it me, or are they completely missing the boat here? The best thing about podcasts is their originality. See, podcasts are different from blogs because they are much more intimate. I don't go out and listen to hundreds of podcasts like I read hundreds of blogs. But I do listen to a few select ones and I hope that one day many people choose my podcast as one of the select few they listen to. But that aside, these mega conglomerates have no idea about the revolution occurring right under their noses. They are about to be put out of a job and the best they can hope for in the future is to own the service or tools that individuals use to distribute their blogs and podcasts.

Welcome to the new generation.

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I would rather see the UN burn in flames than send one red cent directly from my paychecks to their coffers. It's bad enough that our government redistributes our confiscated funds to these thug criminals--but legitimizing the process would probably piss me off more than just about anything else our government does.

Josh reads his newest essay "America was Born in the Midst of Some Straight Up Godfather Shit that Brings Us to the War on Terror Today."

(6:40)

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This man's karma bank just about has to be bone dry.

This would be me if I were a career politician. If I had political ambitions, I would be inclined to play my enemies against each other, enmesh the world in a constant state of conflict and enslave the entire human race into believing that freedom is something handed down in a sacred document that was written by the feeble hand of man instead of something to be seized and enjoyed in the Living Moment by every individual.

So, don't ever vote for me if I'm stupid enough to run for political office. And don't ever take me too seriously; I'm like the band Tool--rough, deadly serious, then smooth and always tongue-in-cheek. After all, we're all born, experience life as a subjective reality that we foolishly interpret as objective, and then we die and our experiences leak out of our minds into the river of Time which flows ever on. Talk about your cosmic jokes! (Who would have ever thought that we were the wave and not the water?)

So, don't even vote for me to hand out free coffee for your board meetings; It'll be too hot and will always burn your tongue.

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Word! More power to you, brother. Save me a seat in low orbit...I'll be up there within twenty years.

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This should be interesting. The important thing here is that President Bush gets to save face with his religious right backers and that the US remains at the top of the game in stem cell research.

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This is just plain stupid and makes very clear the superficial level at which this man's faith resides. He only knows God through words. He's a lost soul but there is still hope for him as there is for each of us who are alive this moment to make the choice that will determine the reality of the next moment.

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Listen to my podcast about Star Wars Episode III here.

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I've wanted to see it all since Tango and Cash. Do the right thing, Teri, before it's too late to share your naked gift with the rest of the world. And while you're at it, convince Jennifer Aniston and Jolene Blaylock to do the same. You guys are too beautiful not to see naked!

Remember in the Godfather how Michael Corleone played his enemies against each other to assume ultimate power? Well, America pretty much did that during the first fifty years of its existence. The French helped us win the Revolutionary War against Britain and was ready to invade us themselves only fifteen years later when they were engaged in a declared war with Britain.

See, historically, alliances between nations lasted hundred of years. But we stepped back. We were done fighting and ready to get back to our farming, our fishing, our law-making and our incessant worship of the enforcement of man-made laws. We were ready to be civilized again. So, we said no to the French. And, not only that, we signed Jay's Treaty with Great Britain which really pissed off the French. Consider that this was only thirteen revolutions of the earth around the sun after the close of the Revolutionary War.

So France kind of had a right to be pissed.

But George Washington left us with what is perhaps the most prophetic and wise opinion on how We the People could best steer the ship of government so that is does not run into the rocks of history. In his Farewell Address to the Nation on September 19, 1796, the father of our country warned us, emphatically, against becoming permanently allied with foreign powers.

But that was only the beginning of America. Our Founding Fathers were agrarian farmers who loved their families and their relationship with the natural world around them as well as the spiritual worlds inside them. These gentlemen, brilliant as they may have been, had no foreknowledge of what the Industrial and Information Revolutions would do to human society in terms of economics, politics, science, the press and, of course, in human warfare. Had they known the bloody and awful truth of what it would take to maintain this society from meandering in the river of time and crashing into some very big and very nasty rocks, they may have thrown down their pitchforks and muskets and ran back as His Majesty's Loyal Subjects.

But we've done a pretty damn good job of steering this vessel so far.

We, the United States of America, are responsible for opening access to free expression of ideas, services, and products to millions of individual human beings beyond our borders and We are directly responsible for improving the living conditions of man in relationship to man (society) in what will eventually reach out and ecompass all of humanity. It's time we said it and it's time the world damn well acknowledges it. Our principles and our ship of state, which has gone from sail to steam to rocket and now breaks gravity waves in interplanetary and interstellar space, will not be walked on by any foreign power even if that power happens to hold one one of the many reigns of our government. We the People have been endowed with the machinery to weed out the vampire tyrants in our midst and expose them to the sunlight so that they burn in political hell before our eyes (metaphorically speaking, of course referencing the death of their public personae--i.e. Gray Davis, Trent Lott, Dan Rather, etc.). This machine is our Constitution and it may rattle and hum but it still gets the damn job done.

Some people claim that we have ignored George Washington's plea for neutrality to the detriment of the entire human race. I hear what you're saying and it may seem like wisdom except for the stirrings of my heart (An ode to Peter Jackson and George Lucas--Thank you, Gentlemen. You have both done very good work upon this earth and the world is a better place because of your actualized artistic visions) but the historical situation that is currently unfolding is much more complicated than that.

The problem is that we are standing on a rushing river bank with one hand around a solid tree, leaning out over the rapids, trying to pull out as many screaming bodies as we possibly can. But we must be very careful that we do not shift our weight in places that will weaken our grip on the tree, lest we foolishly fall back into the river of sorrow, which is Time.

It is interesting to note that Muslim society lived very much under this same mission statement in their attempt to secure the peaceful exchange of goods, services and ideas while promiting a spiritual relationship with the material world outside and the spiritual worlds inside. This was, of course, until the Roman Empire embraced Christianity as a last best attempt at self preservation; all they needed was a new Caesar to fight for and they got that icon--it looked like this †. The Crusades utterly destroyed the flourishing Muslim civilization which truly improved the living conditions of the world around them and here we are today. (For a great old book that lays the social and spiritual evolutions of human beings, read the book The Mainspring of Human Progress by Henry Grady Weaver--it's an oldie but goodie!).

There is an American mission that is written in the history of our people--you must be able to read Time to decipher the mission statement, however. And if you can't read the language of Time (history), relax because there are crib notes which lie in the most perfect single sentence ever written by a human being.

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Power in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

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Hat tip to Fark.

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I'll be in the other half...on my farm!

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I have long thought it suspicious that Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were the three who died mysteriously close to each other in time.

Perhaps Jim Morrison was the smarter of the three--finally listening to the political devil and pulling his shit together before his life teetered off the edge and his journey came to a untimely end. After all, it's much more preferable to go out going out as Barabbas than it is to go out as Jesus. He did it so we didn't have to, right?

But one thing is for sure--Jim Morrison the icon is dead and gone--etched into time like the human claw marks found in Pompeii and the shadows on what's left of the 1945 cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--cruel reminders of how much we have gained and how much we have lost.

I hope Jim did make it out and has been living a normal and happy life and I hope that Pamela followed him. I will always have Oliver Stone's masterpiece to remember Jim Morrison by. In my heart of hearts, I hope that Jimmy Morrison made it out and bought a farm somewhere obscure and made art works out of his relationships with his family and closest friends.

I hope he finally chose the right door and broke on through to the other side of love which is more about being a human than about being an artist. Stephen King said it best, "Life is not a support system for art--it's the other way around."

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I told you guys that this was a big deal.

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Hat tip to Fark.

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Hat tip to Fark (for the title too).

Sapphire gets into heavy metal cooling

This means faster processing at cooler speeds. Oh yeah!

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Hat tip to Fark.

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It looks like the government wants some money back for all that investment they've put into weather technology. Hey McFlys, you are not a corporation!!! You spend money to make sure that our lives and property is protected. Beyond that, shut your mouth and pay attention to what We the People want from you and then do something about it. Stupid public servants acting all uppity like they are the ones who run this country. Don't make me smack you with the Declaration of Independence.

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I've got news for you. Stem cell research is being done and is going to change the face of medicine. If the US doesn't invest in this technology and research and regulate the industry as it is mandated they do in the Constitution, the US will fall by the wayside in terms of its business and economic development. The height of governmental arrogance is positioning themselves into the market with threat of force in order to block the acquisition and application of new knowledge.

Wise up, Dub. You can't win this one. You have to pick your battles and this isn't one that you you want to stake your legacy on, trust me.