Bound By Grace

Link to YouTube - White House Fence Jumper Speaks

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From 2005

Interview from 2006

Posting these videos should not be seen as a blanket

endorsement of everything said on them nor as support

of every goal and ideal of the makers of them. They do,

however, contain information of which we all should be

aware. Our founders set up a government that requires

an informed, wise, and involved citizenry. Without which,

we have tyranny. Become educated, pray for wisdom;

reverse the tyranny.

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The following is an edited version of an article by Dr. J. R. Crewe, of the Mayo Foundation, forerunner of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, published in Certified Milk Magazine, January 1929. We are grateful to Dr. Ron Schmid, ND of Middlebury, CT for unearthing this fascinating piece. The “Milk Cure” was the subject of at least two books by other authors, written subsequently to Dr. Crewe’s work. The milk used was, in all cases, the only kind of milk available in those days—raw milk from pasture-fed cows, rich in butterfat. The treatment is a combination of detoxifying fast and nutrient-dense feeding. Note that Crewe quotes William Osler, author of a standard medical textbook of the day. Thus, this protocol was an orthodox, accepted therapy in the early 1900s.

Real Milk Cures Many Diseases, by Dr. J.R. Crewe

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From 1998: 

Yet Iraq has only refused the continuation of inspections until the lifting of the blockade, one of the most severe in modern history, according to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The blockade prohibits almost all imports except food and medicine and then leaves Iraq with barely half the proceeds of its limited oil export revenue, and the money is allocated by a United Nations’ bureaucracy (slowly while the people starve)….

Washington keeps moving the goal posts demanding an interminable blockade for the nation where already in the last 8 years 1,200,000 have died from starvation and disease. This after the American bombing of the sanitation, electric, and economic infrastructure of the nation in l990. Even now Washington prevents Iraq from obtaining repair parts for its oil production so it can sell some oil for food imports and to repair its irrigation and sanitation systems….

Read the whole thing: Blast from the Iraq War Past - Mises Economics Blog

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So my mom is in a bit of a pickle.

After 50 years of marriage, she’s living on her own - since the end of January. Yes, my dad is still around, but he just isn’t a positive daily influence on her life. He has a ton of his own issues — and added to my mom’s, serious implosions between the two were a regular occurrence and they both individually were extremely difficult for loved ones to deal with as a result.

Except for about a year around 18 years ago, my mother has never lived alone. She married at seventeen when my dad was 29. Things were a lot different for her 18 years ago. She was much more on top of things. But it wasn’t long before her and my dad got back together. (I am intentionally avoiding the “issues,” much too difficult to discuss right now.)

Anyway, overall, my siblings and I agree that they are better off separated.

Thing is, she’s living on her own in a little house rented from her brother. My dad has not been in the state throughout most of this period. Four of my siblings live in other states, and my one brother who does live nearby hasn’t been real involved.

My mom has been through a lot over the years. She’s been diagnosed and treated for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and following that has been given a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. She’s on a litany of medications for pain, depression and anxiety. And right after she moved in January, suffered a great deal of emotional trauma and spent a week in the hospital because of it. (My mom expected my dad to stay where they had both been living for 18 years once she moved, but instead he quit his job and picked up and left for my brother’s in Virginia the morning my mom intended to move.)

My mom has the capacity for great intelligence and she works hard to make use of it, but she has difficulty sleeping and has issues with remembering things. She has kept up with bills and banking accounts for 50 years, with some added help from my dad in recent years. Since January this has not been the case. Bills have piled up and some things haven’t been given the notice that they should have.

Tim and I have worked to help her in many ways. She visits us and we visit her quite often. We seek to see that she eats as she should, we take care of her medicines and try to make sure things are taken care of, doctors appointments, washing a load of laundry, etc. One thing I have not spent much time tackling is her bills. That takes so much time. And I have a weird somewhat disorganized way of taking care of our own bills. With her living 20 minutes away, keeping up with her mail has not been something I’ve been on top of. I did her and Dad’s taxes for last year, and seek to interpret and deal with any notices she brings to my attention, but with everything else, some mail that may be important gets past me at times.

I’d have her living with us if we could give her her own private space, but that is just not possible at this time. It’s not that she’s totally incapable of taking care of herself, and she’s together enough to know when she’s being pacified or treated as a total dependent. I can still carry on adult conversations with her.

Anyway, here’s the deal.

My mom has one bank account where her retirement income is directly deposited. This is the account she uses most actively and I am most familiar with. She has another account that, setting aside bank company turnovers, she has maintained for probably over 20 years. That account was actively used for some bills and so forth while her and my dad were still together. I’m not sure whose or what money was put into it, but since they separated no new money has gone into it. She was watching it and wrote some checks on it while there was still a balance. In April she knew it was under $100 and paid a couple small-cost items with it.

Another bill was then also paid with that account that she doesn’t recall paying, especially through that account. This did not put her in the negative, but left her with a balance of less than a dollar.

When she received her statement near the end of the month, what she saw was a balance of $1.66. So she set it in her mind to no longer draw from it and to plan to close out the account “one of these days.” This was a “free” checking account, so there are no charges for low balances.

Unfortunately, what the statement actually showed was a negative balance of $1.66. A $2.00 charge had been added. This $2.00 has been added every month since at least the beginning of the year. Sometime in the last months of last year the bank sent a letter notifying it’s customers that they would continue to receive scanned copies of checks drawn against their accounts each month, but they would be charged $2.00 each month for it. This would begin to be charged automatically unless the customer notified them that they didn’t want it. This is the classic “Opt-Out” method that favors the company over the customer. What’s more, if a customer did choose to opt-out, they would no longer have visual evidence of checks written for their home records. I don’t know of anyone who receives the actual checks back anymore.

Well, this past month slipped by on my mom, she had numerous doctors’ appointments and other goings-on to keep her busy. Her intentions to deal with that bank account got buried in her priority list (she did mention it to me a couple times). Until she received her next statement with a closing date of May 19, that is.

It caught her attention because it didn’t add up to what she knew about this account. It had “withdrawals” of $140.00 with an ending balance of
“-$141.66.”

The bank had been slapping her account with a $35.00 overdraft fee every 7 days.

Immediately upon receiving this statement she contacted the bank. They explained to her what was going on and she tried to explain her circumstances and failure to properly interpret last month’s statement, and was told that they would see what they could do but didn’t promise much since it was written bank policy. She was nearly resigned to paying those fees. Later she received a call and was told the supervisor would waive half the fees if she came in and paid the rest.

She went in, began to write a check for her “share” and said she wanted to go ahead and close her account. The supervisor, who had been hovering nearby, then jumped in and said that he couldn’t waive any of the fees if she was going to close the account.

Long story short, she ended up walking out without resolving anything. That was the week before this past week.

It took me until the end of this week to finally get ahold of her last four months’ bank statements and give it any of my attention.

My dad has been staying with my brother who lives nearby for the last 3 weeks (flew out to my sister’s in MN Thursday morning). My mom had asked him to go with her to help her straighten it out (his name is also on the account), but he never did.

I took her for an MRI on Thursday and took the bank statements with me when I left. On the way home I stopped in at the same bank branch she dealt with in an attempt to get somewhere with them. It’s small and prison-like with glass and counter between me and the 2 tellers present. One was the woman who dealt with my mother and she appeared quite annoyed (insinuating that my mom was unreasonable to have walked out on the “deal” they had offered her). The supervisor wasn’t there, he was filling in at another branch. Of course, the tellers were mere tellers, they could do nothing about the situation. They advised me to either go to the other branch or come back when the supervisor would be there.

This supervisor, btw, can make no deals without first getting approval from his supervisor. I wonder how far up that actually goes before it gets to someone who can actually make a decision on his own on the matter?

I do have my own life to attend to, ya know. I needed to be getting back to my family. I attempted to get a name for the supervisor’s supervisor - contact information for someone who could actually decide something.

They gave me a dumb look and said I needed to talk to Nick (their supervisor).

I walked out.

Someone please tell me I’m not being unreasonable in believing that all the $35 OD charges could be waived without anyone losing anything. That the mechanical automatic charges are extortion of the worst kind, heartless anti-customer behavior (when it’s applied on a “no-matter-what” basis and not just to discourage habitually poor financial behavior from customers) with a chain of command such that no one that actually has to have contact with the customer can be held accountable. It’s someone else’s responsibility. Always.

Even if you can’t go that far with me (I only got to that point after attempting to take it on myself), couldn’t you at least go as far as to agree that this is such a case, circumstances being what they are - my mom with her medical issues and on a fixed income, and that she did not attempt to withdrawal money below what she had in there - that it would be good and wise customer service for this bank to waive her fees and allow her to quietly close her account since all her small income goes into the other bank and it makes little sense for her to keep two accounts open.

OK. Insist that she pay $35 plus $1.66 in order for her to close her account. But, land sakes, don’t fuss about such a small potato in the whole scheme of things. It’s a big deal for my mom, it would be a big deal if we were hit with such charges, I would think those who read my blog would also feel such a hit to their budget. But for the bank, the only thing they are “losing” is a chance to make a very small PROFIT — It’s not COSTING them anything.

What should - or CAN - I do about this?

The only thing I can think of is attempting to contact someone in the bank with more influence. Not sure going through their website would help accomplish that, or calling their toll free number. I may try going to the larger local branch office, but still don’t expect to come face to face with someone who would feel a sense of personal responsibility or at least fear the risk of negative consequences (that is, unless they moved in favor of my mother).

I must say, it’s difficult to stay calm when addressing these bank folks whose fall-back line is always, “There’s nothing more I can do, it’s not my decision to make.” Grrr!

The only armor I can come up with is to declare that I am prepared to tell everyone with whom I come into contact my mom’s story and make sure they know which bank is doing it, and encourage them to keep their money in some other bank. Let them know my story is already on the Internet, with only the bank to be named and that I would work to get the story in the newspapers if necessary.

But a few problems with that: My words may not reach anyone who actually cares about the potential repercussions. Most banks probably engage in similar activities, and they figure no customers (or “regular” bank employees such as Tellers) actually care enough to do anything about it. And the fact that I really have no desire to draw any public attention to myself.

But this really does tick me off. It’s just another sign of the ruination of this country, and the lack of true freedoms and free market power that we have and that most people don’t even care enough about such things to deal with the inconvenience it would require from them to get some of these company policies changed. Am I the only one to notice that similar practices are becoming common in most stores - which are big store chains? How often do you receive truly personal service anymore? You deal with Employees. Many of whom may follow a set of written rules in order to receive their paycheck. I say may because many of them don’t seem to care about keeping said job. Those that care, do things to keep their bosses happy, not the customer (and the bosses often make decisions as if they believe enough customers will keep coming back in order to satisfy their bottom line - and whatta you know? They usually do! And if they don’t, the boss can usually get just as lucrative a position somewhere else where he will suck another bunch of customers dry. No real skin off his back.)

So, what do I do?

Oh, and every week this situation remains unresolved, they are continuing to charge her another $35.

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“Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon’s illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see….This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008l 20, 2008
English: King James Version (1611) - KJV
 

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“The Pentagon program, which clearly violated US law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers — most of them with financial ties to war contractors — into the TV networks as ‘message surrogates’ for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences.” — John Stauber, Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online, CouterPunch

Source: Pentagon Planted Military Analysts on TV News « Scribblative Agincourting

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 Who was George Mason?

“I abominate and detest the idea of a government, where there is a standing army,” exclaimed the immortal George Mason, the stalwart Anti-Federalist during his state’s constitutional ratifying convention of 1788.

Why did Mason work so hard for the Bill of Rights? Did he have any real reason to be concerned?

In a March 14, 2003h 14, 2003
English: King James Version (1611) - KJV
Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

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memorandum, former administration legal counsel John Yoo — yes, the same one who discovered the presidential authority to order the sexual torture of children — made the arresting claim that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to “domestic military operations.”

More recently, the Bush Regime has used the ongoing legal conflict over the detention of suspected terrorist Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri to argue that the president can exercise martial law powers at whim. Al-Marri was designated an “unlawful enemy combatant” by presidential ukase in June 2003; since that time he has been held in military detention.

In its ruling a year ago, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals pointed out that the president cannot exercise military authority over civilians in the United States “absent the suspension of … habeas corpus or [a] declaration of martial law….” The Bush Regime appealed that decision without seriously objecting to its assumptions.

In essence, the appeals court said: Your claim assumes that some kind of martial law is in effect.

To which the Bush Regime effectively replied: And your point would be…?

Please go read the whole article: Pro Libertate: Martial Law on the Installment Plan

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International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology

Evidence Based Dentistry

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A lovely lady named Heather is giving a free art class online. It is geared toward kids, but anyone may participate. My daughter M (11 in July) is doing it. Lesson 1 requires her to draw a person from her head the way she thinks a person looks.

Here’s M’s work for Lesson 1:

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Overall, this reading of James 2 does seem to fit what appears to be the theme verse of the whole book: “Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, but the rich in his humiliation” (James 1:9,10James 1:9,10
English: King James Version (1611) - KJV
9 Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted: rejoice: or, glory ¹⁰ But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.  

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). The whole book, like most of Scripture, seems to focus on how to be an alternative nobility, not like the nobility of domination and empire. At least try reading James as unified around that theme, and then all the book’s talk about faith and the tongue take on new significance.

Source: James’s Strange Impartiality « Scribblative Agincourting

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