TeenScreen - What a Scam!

TeenScreen is one of those things that sounds like a good idea at first. After all, we are all concerned about the rising violence and suicide rates among teens. But when you start actually looking at the plan and its consequences, you soon realize is a nightmare designed to make the situation worse.

The main push behind setting up TeenScreen is coming from the drug company lobby, that want to sell more psych drugs to teenagers, at taxpayer expense.

There is no effective or beneficial mental health treatment coming from the psych community -- all they know how to do is drug, warehouse, and shock. Psychiatric counselling is either ineffective at best or outright harmful at worst. Couple it with the harmful drugs that are administered (now with black box labels on them, thanks to CCHR and other concerned citizens) and you have a recipe for even more Columbine massacres and teen suicides.

Fall

After a long summer and no rain, we're very admiring of fall weather here in coastal Oregon. The last of the maple leaves are falling from the trees, and we're getting frost every night. The light has been magical at twilight.

Google AdWords advice

Here's a question from someone who is afraid of overspending at Google:

Our sponsored link is on page 5 of Google. We signed
up for $.10/click and $33.33/day. What should we do to bring it to page 1?
Please help.

Remember that Google wants to make as much money as possible from your ad. It uses at least three factors to figure out which ads it is going to display.

1. How much per click each ad is willing to pay (the bid amount).
2. How much is the maximum daily budget set for that ad.
3. How often a particular ad is clicked when it IS displayed. If you have a terrible ad that no one clicks even though it is displayed in the #1 position, it won't be displayed there for very long.

So, first, try setting the DAILY budget ridiculously high, like $1000. And monitor it extremley closely for a day or two and make sure it isn't actually costing you more than you can afford to pay (it almost certainly won't).

Second, after you see how that goes for a couple of days, start raising your bid about $.05 every day or two, and monitor the results closely again. You'll hit a point where the ad will show up on the first page of Google's results, even though you aren't paying as much per click as most of the companies on the home page.

If you have a good ad that IS clicked when it is displayed, then you can pay less per click, as long as you are willing to have a higher daily budget, and you will make it onto the first page at Google for less than the other guys are paying per click.

Best,


Jeré Matlock
http://www.wordsinarow.com
Writing | Website Design & Marketing | SEO

Gray Lady in the Red

I read an email summary of the New York Times every day, which they kindly provide by email. It's a masochistic thing to do, I know, but I do it to see just how slanted their coverage really is.

So it was with great relish I saw an article in The Federalist that announced the following:

The Gray Lady is deep in the red, but can anything stop the bleeding? Amid weak advertising revenues, circulation decline and a former Enron advisor pretending to be a columnist, The New York Times Co. announced that it will cut four percent of its total workforce, including 250 jobs for the main operation of the Times itself, the International Herald Tribune and the online Times. New England operations, including The Boston Globe, will lose 160 jobs. This announcement comes on the heels of 200 jobs cut in May. We suspect outsourcing to bloggers and other online news services could be playing a role here. Times' chairman Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., and its CEO Janet Robinson called the new round of cuts "a painful process" but a necessary one given the "continued financial challenges and the cloudy economic outlook for the remainder of the year." Further, they promise to manage the cuts "in such a way that we continue to provide our readers...with journalism of the highest quality." Journalism of the highest quality? Now that's news!

It's no surprise that the circulation of the NY Times is in decline. The more they slant their news to the hard left, the more out-of-agreement it is with the general populace of New York. Sure, there are plenty of democrats in New York who want someone like Hillary as senator (although I wouldn't be too surprised to see her ousted in the next election despite her recent efforts to re-mold herself as being more in the mainstream). But there are also plenty of people who are fed up. I think of those who think and vote more conservatively not as Republicans, but as being "normal people"; those who are fed up with "corruption as usual", with the unstated adoption of multi-culturalism/atheism as the only politically correct national religion, and with the persistent trend of local, state and our national government toward anti-religious laws and hateful intolerance of mainstream ideas.

Regular NY Times columnists Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd have been given a pulpit where their anti-American, anti-religious and anti-Republican extremist viewpoints are made to seem legitimate. Without the NY Times supporting them, they'd have to find an actual soapbox in Central Park where they could shout out their vitriol and where people could do the right thing--ignore them and get on with their lives. It doesn't matter if a hundred people send in emails or letters supporting their extremist views (not that they do). It matters that the thousand letters that are sent in protest of their views are scoffed at and dismissed.

If the New York Times wanted to turn itself around financially -- and I don't think it does, I think Sulzberger is one of those suppressive people around whom everything fails because that IS his covert, psychotic agenda, to make everything fail -- it could gain readership by actually reporting news fairly, concisely, and with compassion. Something it was noted for 50 or 75 years ago. Now its voice is catty, shrill, carping and hostile, like some aged burlesque queen who was, once-upon-a-time, Miss New York. The glamour is long gone--now we can see the hostility it was masking. It only ever pretends to be your friend, but it is not and never was.

Its agenda is not your agenda, unless you want the world to be ruled by UN beaureaucrats, unless you want America reduced to the role of cash cow for the third world, and unless you want the US Governement to run every aspect of your life for you. Freedom is not their guidon any more, unless it is "freedom to destroy".

If the institution that is the Gray Lady fails, it will be good for not just New York, but for the country and the world.

More Katrina disaster relief

Here's FEMA's Katrina Donations page. Pick one, empty your paypal account.

Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief

Make a donation, help put volunteer ministers on the ground helping people in Louisiana.

Scientology Volunteer Ministers Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort

Let's Invade Venezuela!

Found a factual article about why gas costs what it does and how much is typically tax. It goes a long way to disprove the common assumption amongst left-leaning young Americans that the war in the Middle East is all about oil. Here's the article: Gas Prices Primer. It's a couple of years old but the data is still valid.

Hmmm. According to this other article in CNN Money about gas prices worldwide, gasoline costs twelve cents! per gallon in Venezuela.

Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to invade a country like Venezuela (government in disarray, no big army and no organized we-all-hate-America-movement there) and just STEAL all their gasoline? Hell, why invade Iraq for crude oil when we could invade Venezuela where they've already refined it into gasoline!

Glorious Summer

Here in southern coastal Oregon, we've had the most wonderful weather so far this summer. It rarely gets much past 80 during the days, and nights it is in the 50's.

During the warm days we've been taking walks up into the hills or down to the creek. Here's a picture of one of the views from the road.

Life is good.

Cute Psychiatric Word Games

My friend Dean Blehert has been busy looking up words.
Here's his candid report on what psychiatric jargon means: Psychiatric jargon explained.

Read it and you'll be able to withstand the onslaught of psycho-babble that will come at you when you try to point out that drugging 8 million American children might not be a good idea, or that treating post partum depression with drugs might be the wrong tack to take.

Psychs love to talk about the effectiveness of a "double-blind peer-reviewed study" -- they fail to point out that it is usually full of holes and BAD SCIENCE to boot.

The scientific method, as Dean eloquently points out, when used correctly, is used to DISPROVE one's theory, not to prove it. Only if it stands up to an effort to DISPROVE it, are you getting close to doing actual science. The drug companies employ psych "researchers" who work it backwards to try to make their studies make the drugs look like they work.

Like I said - pseudoscience at work.

Psychiatry = Pseudoscience

Definition of pseudoscience from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition:

pseudoscience: A theory, methodology, or practice that is considered to be without scientific foundation.

Doesn't that describe the wayward step-child of medicine that votes to determine what is a mental disease (like "Math disorder") and what isn't (homosexuality)? Doesn't that definition of pseudoscience describe the theory of brain chemistry imbalance? The psychs can't give anyone a single scientific test to demonstrate that a "chemical imbalance" actually exists, much less that their drugs fix such an imbalance.

It's an horrific mass of lies and betrayals.

"Pseudo" is from Latin, meaning: False, deceptive, sham.

Now here are some people who have been working for more than 30 years to expose the lies and show psychiatry for what it is, the chief pusher for the profit-driven drug companies:

• CCHR - Citizens Commission on Human Rights
• What is CCHR
• Nancy Cartwright - CCHR volunteer
• CCHR helps defeat Florida Psych Forced Drugging bill
• Psych Assault & CCHR
• CCHR & psychiatric human rights abuses
• Siberia Bill
• CCHR Hollywood
• CCHR - standing up for human rights
• CCHR & Celebrities
• CCHR - volunteer match

The truth will make you mad as hell...

Get the truth about post partum depression, dyslexia, bipolar disorder, ritalin and school violence, and other frauds the psychiatric and drug industries don't want you to know:

Post Partum Depression

More on Postpartum Depression

Dyslexia

ADD/ADHD

Antidepressants & chemical imbalance

Mental disorders

Bipolar & manic depression

Anxiety disorder

Depression

Ritalin

School violence

Schizophrenia

Racial discrimination

OF COURSE psychiatry is a psudo-science.

Lots of stuff on the airwaves these days about Tom Cruise and the kerfluffle with Brooke Shields and her book touting psych drugs as the remedy for post partum blues. (Here's a clue - they are NOT!)

Here's one MD's take on Shield's position:
Doctors Lambast Shields’ Dangerous Position on Paxil

How about this one: AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION ADMITS THERE IS NO TEST FOR "CHEMICAL IMBALANCE"

Here's an article about the rampant over- and mis-prescription of dangerous drugs for post partum depression: Abusing women in the name of psychiatry, prescription drugs

Maybe they'll be kind to Brooke Shields and name the syndrome after her a few years from now. Drugging of defenseless women should hereafter be called "Brooke Shields Syndrome." What a legacy to leave behind!

Here's a great article by Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, one of the only groups around that stands up to the arrogant asses prescribing mind-altering drugs to toddlers in the name of "help": "Psychiatry is a Pseudoscience"

I like this one too: AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION ADMITS

Here's something long overdue from the FDA: FDA ALERT ON VIOLENCE AND SUICIDE-INDUCING STIMULANTS

It's about time that people are listening to this psychiatric watchdog group: PSYCHIATRIC WATCHDOG SPEAKS OUT ABOUT TOM CRUISE SPEAKING OUT and this release PSYCHIATRIC WATCHDOG SPEAKS OUT ABOUT TOM CRUISE SPEAKING OUT

Climate Catastrophe Cancelled

The recent Michael Crichton novel, State of Fear, has in it hundreds of footnotes that lead to real (non-fictional) information about the lack of global warming. As well as being an excellent yarn, I'm sure it's an eye opener for many people who have been being alarmed and misled by the press about the state of the world's climate.

Like a creep in a theater yelling "Fire" when there is no fire, nor even smoke, the liberal media and academia have been attempting to panic the gullible, and have been attempting to force everyone to accept their newly-adopted religion called Global Warming.

So if you've been having any doubts about the science behind Global Warming, here's a good place to get yourself completely debunked, by a climatologist from The University of Calgary. Global Warming Debunked.

Of course, if you WANT to keep your religious beliefs intact, by all means don't look at any of the science!

Spring rains

The last few years here in Southern Oregon have been dry during May - but not 2005. This year we are getting hammered. I walked to the top of a local hill and took this photo.

I've been too busy to blog much but will try to get back in the swing of it.

With beautiful days like these popping up it's hard to keep the seat of my pants in the seat of my chair and work.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch...

Here on our timber ranch in Southwest Oregon, most events taking place in the world have little effect on us. But some simple events do create an impact--like the price of gas rising because of the law of supply and demand. Globally, crude oil is in demand in China and India as it never has been before, as their growing economies continue demanding more and more oil and gas to fuel their industrial expansion. And our economy continues to grow here in the US.

When I pay $2.58 a gallon locally for gas, it is because there is noplace else where I can get it for less. Supply and demand. Simple, effective, and all you really need to know about this current gas price run-up. If this price hike were artificially being maintained (say by an OPEC embargo as in years past), then the dynamics of supply and demand would eventually bring the price back down as soon as someone saw a way to make money off of it. It's pretty clear to me we aren't dealing with a monopoly or a cartel here -- just supply and demand.

Reporter Released from Imprisonment

Reporter Jim Taricani of WJAR-TV has been subject to house arrest for the last four months, for contempt of court for failing to answer a judge's command regarding the source of his news report.

He was released yesterday according to this report from the NY Times. Be warned it probably contains errors or omissions and is almost certainly biased toward the left--since it WAS published in The NY Times.

There are so few reporters with principals now it is very heartening to see Mr. Taricani take the witness stand, refuse to testify based on his principles (and the fact that release of the information would have most likely endangered his source), be sentenced to house arrest and then serve out his term.

The TV station he works for has paid his legal fees and has continued to pay his salary while he has been prevented from actually working by the terms of his house arrest.

Now that's journalistic integrity where you least expect it - Television.

Are Your Children Crazy?

Here's an excellent and amusing article by Jane Orient, M.D., entitled: Are your children crazy?

I won't tell you the answer to her question, but you may well be informed that they ARE crazy (by a stranger you've never met) and that YOU are mandated to provide them with mandatory prescription psychotropic drugs for their craziness, if the mental health screening to implement the "New Freedom" mental health initiative is ever put in force. Are your kids a little behind on their math? Well, that's obviously "Math Disorder" from the psychiatric "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual" (DSM IV). You'd think by its inclusion in the DSM that Math Disorder is some disease of the brain that can be cured with one of the wonder drugs you see advertised constantly on television. But no - it turns out that the psychiatrists just used a "show of hands" to vote "Math Disorder" into existence as a disease and insert it into the DSM. That's how they add and subtract all mental illnesses from their diagnostic bible. For many years homosexuality was classified as a "mental disease" by the DSM, until the Gay lobby persuaded the psychiatrists to vote it out of the book.

It only makes sense when you learn that psychiatrists can't BILL anyone for their treatment unless it is for a "disease" they vote into existence in the DSM. If it is in the DSM, it's an "official" disease they can use for billing purposes. It's ALL about the money!

Having raised three girls, I can give you my Paleolithic take on sanity and children. Young girls aged 1 to 10 are delightful, fragile creatures. They sing, dance, draw on the cave walls, and jump around like demented midgets BUT they are very entertaining and will occasionally give you a pat on the back for your efforts to feed them. Note: Never yell at them - they will go to great lengths to get even later.

Then they smash headlong into puberty, during which they appear to be ruled by a tribal council composed entirely of hormones, with no input from the analytical (rational) mind. If you can keep them from crying themselves to death for just a few years, they will eventually turn into beautiful young women with all the skills and cunning required to make some young male capture and carry them off to his cave, where the process starts all over again. No drugs are required.

I have no experience raising young boys, but I do recall being one. Robert Heinlein said it best -- I'm paraphrasing here -- "Boys should be raised in a barrel. When they hit puberty drive in the bung."( Meaning seal the barrel.) My escapades seemed like high fun at the time. Sociopathic is probably too harsh a term to label them now, but if I had fallen into the hands of the psychiatrists, who knows?

I'll take freedom over security any time there is a choice.

New Psychiatric Education Site

Here's a new site worth mentioning in light of the recent school shootings at Red Lake MN: Mental Health Abuse.

For the uninitiated--School Shootings are always done by someone who has been prescribed psychiatric drugs that cause homicidal tendencies such as Prozac, Paxil, etc.

The site was put up by an old friend, Fred Hare. Obviously its purpose is to gather information from those who have been abused by "mental health" practitioners. Fred has been a member of CCHR even longer than I have (since 1971). CCHR has been instrumental in closing down many psychiatric institutions for barbaric practices over the years. They spend a great deal of time and energy educating lawmakers on the hoax that is modern psychiatry.


Speaking of which, I sent an email to my local congressman (4th District Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat) trying to get him to support HR 181 (The Parental Consent Act of 2005) - he sent back a long, glib email parroting the talking points he must have been given by the American Psychiatric Association.


One has to wonder how Rep Peter DeFazio can support the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. Read through it and you'll find it constantly refering to "treatments and supports" -- look those up and you'll find that they mandate the Texas Algorithm -- where a regimen of dangerous psychotropic drugs are mandated by law. Even the FDA knows and has issued warnings about the dangers of Paxil and Prozac and how they can make children violent, homicidal and suicidal.

"Fair Tax" Not Fair?

More insanity from Congress:

"When you have a tax, where you pay the same tax whether you're wealthy or you're poor, that's not fair."

--Congressman Charlie Rangel (Democrat, 15th District of New York)

It's hard to wrap my wits around this one. I think he's saying that if I pay the same percentage of tax as the next guy, say I pay 30% of my income and he pays 30% of his income, then it's not fair.
I think he lives in an alternate universe where "fair" means that because I am productive and work 16 hour days (on average), that I should pay a higher percentage of my income than someone who is not as productive as me and works not at all.

Thirty-four years ago I was introduced to a wild notion from L. Ron Hubbard:

"WHEN YOU REWARD DOWN STATISTICS AND PENALIZE UP STATISTICS YOU GET DOWN STATISTICS.

If you reward nonproduction you get nonproduction.

When you penalize production you get nonproduction."

--L Ron Hubbard (from a policy dated 6 March 1966)

It's funny, but in the last 34 years in running many businesses I've never had any trouble applying that bit of revolutionary thought. Of course the corollary of that is "if you reward production, you get more production". It's the kind of keen and uncommon common sense that Hubbard excelled in, actually seeing the obvious and never being afraid to state it or use it or teach it.

My favorite line from that same policy is: "No good worker owes his work. That's slavery."


And having been made at various times by bosses of one ilk or another to feel that I owed my work, I can tell you that there's a boatload of truth in that!

Poem from a friend

My friend Dean Blehert of www.blehert.com sent the following poem entitled "On The Importance Of Knowing How":

Beware of those who want to help
but don't know how,
for they will learn to hate
those they fail to help.

Plenty of truth in it -- you can feel the truth of it reverbrating when you view any groups that obviously started out trying to help and now hate those they failed to help, such as the psychiatric industry and the big drug companies, and the do-gooders in Congress throwing money at the war on drugs, trying not to leave any child behind. Educators are falling more and more into this trap as well.