I thought this was pretty funny and gave a pretty good overview of the debate over vaccines.
 
I was able to view Blood Money last night.  I wrote a short blog on this movie in October.  This is a documentary film that talks about the business of abortion.  Even though I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about the abortion issue, this film was filled with things I had never heard and things I had never even thought of or considered about abortion.  Below I will share some of things in the film that have stuck with me.  Hopefully I won't spoil it for anyone who is going to see it.

One of the things I had never thought about regarding abortion was how, even though allowing for abortions is considered a pro-choice position, what you find with many women who have abortions is that they are doing it because they feel they don't have a choice.  They feel like that is their only option, so in a sense it is not really a pro-choice position.  It just occurred to me how ironic this is.  If this issue was really pro-choice, you would see a range of choices for the women to make, including support in the case where she decides to keep the baby.  Right now, only the pro-life movement is providing that support.

I also had not considered how easy it would be for women to go into a clinic and not actually be pregnant but be told that they were pregnant and then be convinced to go through with an abortion.  There is testimony of people who have worked years at abortion clinics and they go into great detail about the wording that they use to get women to agree to abortions.  And how if they come up with a negative pregnancy test, that they would do an ultrasound and show them a blob and say that they are pregnant.  The women would never know any different.

They talk about how easy it is to cover up botched abortions because most women will not sue because they don't want it to get out that they had an abortion.  The shame is enough to keep them quiet.  They talked about the infection rate being very high because of the number of patients per day that they get through there and they just don't have time to do a thorough cleaning of the instruments.   They talk about how easy it is make abortions look safe by not reporting any problems.  This is a serious medical surgery that women are just not given informed consent about what the potential side effects are. 

Women are not told that they could spend years with guilt and grief issues that can lead to health issues like depression that for many women can lead to suicide.  Biologically something happens in women when they are pregnant.  So, to go against that, it affects a woman's body even if she doesn't want it to.  Women will tend to be ashamed and will hide the abortion for years without telling anyone, all the while they are suffering inside. 

In addition, a woman's whole family is affected by this decision, including the father and other children.  A woman talked about the day when she told her daughter that before she had been born, she had had an abortion.  The daughter was shocked that a mother would kill her own child.  I have to wonder if she was starting to question whether she might be next (children sometimes come up with these things).

The movie talked about how abortion in-proportionately targets black women.  And how women in crisis go to a clinic and are counseled to have an abortion by people who will gain financially if the person chooses an abortion.  The councilors are trained in just what to say and do to get women to agree to an abortion.  A counselor position is really a sales position.  The woman never actually talks to a doctor till the abortion is performed, so forget about that idea that women are making this choice in council with their doctors. 

Life was talked about and how it is known that life begins at conception and to say otherwise goes against logic and science.  In order for many people to justify abortion, they have to decide that a baby who is not born is not human and is not alive.  They have to ignore the growing that is going on and the completely separate DNA that a baby has when they are conceived.  They are a complete being that only uses the mother for nourishment and a .

In our country we recognize that we have certain rights that we have that are not given to us, but are inalienable.  The first of those is the right to life.  A right is something that we have that cannot be taken from us without our consent.  For something to be a right, it cannot take away a right from someone else.  Abortion cannot be a right because it takes away the right of another human, the right to life.  Legally, abortion is breaking the law of our land.

I have made some changes in my thinking over the years on the abortion issue.  When I was in college, I always said that I personally would never have an abortion, but I didn't care what anyone else did.  Then at some point I decided that I did care about these little babies, but I still have never been outspoken on the issue except to say that this is something the courts should not be deciding.  Now I am seeing it more in the light of a human rights issue and that little babies are being killed by the millions in this country for profit and most in our country just turn a blind eye.  I am having a hard time believing that so many in our country do not see what is going on.  I hope if this movie gets out, that more people will become educated on this issue.


 
Extending unemployment benefits is being talked about again lately.  On the face, this seems like it would be the caring thing to do to help out people who have not yet been able to find work.  Anyone who would oppose something like this is surely heartless and misguided.  Right?

Well, I am one of those people who disagrees with extending unemployment benefits.  When a person looses a job, unemployment will help them out, temporarily, so that they can keep their families running while they locate work.  Many people will go out fairly quickly and locate some kind of work so that they can get on with their life.  This is how it is supposed to work. 

Others on the other hand will see this as a temporary paid vacation and will ride it out till they are close to the end of their unemployment benefits and then they will find a job.  We all know there are jobs out there, they just aren't the kind of jobs that pay what people would like.  So when someone says they can't find work, it is most likely that they can't find the kind of work that pays them what they want so financially it makes more sense to stay on unemployment and see if something they like comes along.

Since many of these unemployed people have job opportunities which are not all that appealing and would actually pay less than they are making on unemployment, it logically makes more sense to stay on unemployment till they can find a better job or till their unemployment runs out and then they will have to take a job they don't really want or find some other alternative.  In addition, unemployment will allow them to spend more time with their families which is a positive thing.  They can even do odd jobs here and there to bring in extra money, so being on unemployment can seem like it isn't such a bad thing.  I think all this makes good sense to most people since they figure it really is their money that they have been paying into the system so why not use it.

So, what happens then when someone hears that their unemployment will be extended?  The people who have not yet gone back to work will continue on with what they had been doing previously instead of taking a pay cut to do a job they don't want to do.  Why take the lower paying job now when they can just stay on unemployment?

So how does this impact everyone else?  If a person continues to stay out of the work force and just live off unemployment, then the unemployment levels will continue to be low.  Isn't one of the goals here that we want to get people back to work and the economy going again?  If we continue to extend unemployment, people who have just been riding it out, will continue to ride it out waiting for a good job to come along.  Without that unemployment, they will be forced to take whatever job they can find, which in turn will help out the economy which will eventually provide the type of job they are looking for. 

Additional to all this, once we have people back to work, even if they are working lower paying jobs, there will be more tax revenue coming into the government.  Our politicians should love this since we have lots of bills we need to be paying with all the spending we are doing.

I know taking a job somewhere like McDonald's or as a newspaper carrier are not prestigious jobs that require an expensive college degree, but they do provide money.  Sure, you might have to work a couple jobs in the short term to bring in enough money for your family.  You might even have to pack up and move your whole family across the country to find work, but these are the kind of things that people do in order to provide for their families.  Slowing down the inevitable is not really helping anyone.  Keeping people artificially out of the work force does not help the economy which in turn will not help create the kind of jobs that these people would like to have in the long run.  It's like a vicious cycle.

If you want to get people back to work, you cannot continue to encourage them to not work.  With the unemployment benefit being extended yet again, logically it will make more sense for someone not to work.  It is like they are getting something for free.  That is just how the brain seems to work.  For example, it is amazing how many people will buy something just because it is free even if they don't need it.  That just seems to be human nature.  I know several people who got a flu shot because it was free, not because they actually wanted it.  But we know that nothing is ever actually free.   We always pay for it in one way or another.  In the case of extended unemployment benefits, we are paying by artificially keeping the economy from growing.

It won't be the end of the world if they extend unemployment yet again, but it certainly will not help bring the economy back or bring people the jobs that they are looking for.  It may seem like the caring thing to do, but it is similar to allowing your adult child to live at home instead of encouraging them to get out and on their own.  Parents can really hinder the growth of their children in the same way that the government can create people who are dependent on them.  A parent can be there to help out in the short term, but I think most people realize that if this arrangement continues for long, it will make it harder for the adult child to get back out on their own.  This is the same thing that can happen with unemployment if it is allowed to go on for too long.
 
I just came across the International Medical Council on Vaccination.  It states in the header: Critical Thinking for a Critical Dilemma and it says it is A Resource for Physicians and Laypersons.  This website is put together by doctors to educate other doctors as they are first learning about vaccine dangers.

You can listen live to the upcoming webinars, like Debate on Vaccination: Do Vaccines Cause Autism?  This one is at 8pm on Dec. 13th.  I imagine it will be archived and added to their past webinars which can be found on their site.

Take a look at all the different videos and webinars that go into all areas of the vaccine debate.  The first one I took at look at was Graphic Reality: The Charting of Truth.  This presentation is full of all kinds of graphs that talk about diseases and vaccines from many different countries.  You will see declines in all diseases, including those without vaccines, coming down at the same rate before vaccination was ever begun.  There are graphs showing certain conditions like diabetes going up and down with the curve of certain vaccination rate.  If you are researching vaccines, this is a must see video that will give you information that would be hard to put together all on your own.

Overall, I can't believe I haven't come across this site before.  It is such a wealth of information on the vaccine issue.  And most of that information comes in the form of videos that you can sit and listen to and watch, which is one of my favorite ways of learning.
 
If you have not seen Vaccine Nation by Gary Null Phd., now would be a good time to view it.  It talks some about the history of vaccines and discusses the case where a man was accused of Shaken Baby Syndrome.
 
I have been spend some time listening to Milton Friedman talk about his views on government and libertarianism and wanted to share a few short videos.  If you go to youtube, there are many other videos on Milton Friedman that you can watch as well. 

Here are a few more videos talking different myths:
 
One of the website I visit almost daily is Feebie of the Day.  Every weekday they offer a free resource and today's resource was a link to Heritage History.  Heritage History says it "Puts the Story Back into History."  The idea is that rather than teach history from a textbook where someone else is interpreting history for you, you instead read from storybooks of the time. 

Heritage History has taken many old books that are no longer copyright protected and converted them to an online format for easy access.  They even have color pictures included.  They cover many different civilizations and offer other features with their website like maps, the ability to ask question and read responses, and also their advice on history teaching.  I think this could be a huge part of any history education and it is free.

I hope you will find this resource useful.  I have also compiled other online book websites on my Free Online Books page.