Rudolf The Red Nosed Wine-deer.

It was the day before Christmas and all was abuzz at the North pole. In the old days Santa and his elves could load the sleigh in a couple of hours but now, with so many more children to reach, it took several days to load the giant Airbus A380 that carried the presents Santa delivered to children who lived in all four corners of the world thousands of miles from the North pole. In any case, the job was finally done and the elves gathered around the fireplace for a glass or two of Mulled wine to celebrate the completion of another year of hard work. Toy making kept the elves busy most of the year and they were looking forward to their annual vacation in Santa's tropical retreat at his secret island in the Caribbean. They could already envision the scantily clad native girls that would be frolicking in the island's warm water with the reindeer. After a few glasses of the mulled wine they could even imagine that they actually could catch one of these water nymphs, although they had no idea what they would do with her if they did. As most of you know in times long past, Rudolf got the job as lead reindeer because of his shinny red nose which, of course, lit the sky's so that Santa could see where he was going on this annual Christmas eve flights. Less well known, is the reason for Rudolph's nose being so bright and shiny. Yep, you guessed it. It was that magical mulled wine! Rudolph had tumbled to the fact, quite by accident centuries ago, that the more wine he drank the shiner became his big red nose, just the thing for guiding Santa's sleigh through the crystal clear Christmas eve nights. Of course Santa paid a price for having a tipsy lead reindeer and, on occasion, Rudolf got a little confused and missed a house or two as he made his way through the star lit sky. But, as luck would have it, the houses missed most often those of children who had been very naughty the past year and didn't deserve presents anyway. So in the end things worked out for the best. Now days, of course, Santa didn't need a reindeer with a magical nose to guide his massive Airbus through the Christmas eve sky's. Bill Gates, who provided Santa with the state of the art airplane, also provided a crew of pilots to fly the plane. Rudolf, the honorary leader of the Christmas eve flights, now sat in the executive suite in the back of the plane with Santa, Doner, Dancer, Blixen, Dasher, Prancer, Comet, Cupid and the elves. Mrs. Santa made the mulled wine from a recipe her mother had given her centuries ago. After all these years Rudolph's nose still shown as bright and shiny as ever, although it had increased in size a little with time.

America In Decline

We are living in the last days of the great American experiment, of that there can be little doubt. Detroit, with a murder rate of 54.58 per 100,000 is the largest killing field in the country but the nation's capital of Washington DC is not far behind with 13.9 murders per 100,000. Seventy two percent of black children are born out of wedlock; the streets of large cities like Oakland California and Detroit Michigan look like war zones; 59,500,000 of our citizens are on either welfare or food stamps and another 10.9 million are unemployed. Just a few decades ago the USA was the wealthiest nation on earth, now we rank 7th in per capita income and one in every six Americans struggles with hunger. Cities, large and small are filing for bankruptcy at an alarming rate. States like California with $162 billion in admitted unfunded pension liabilities (outside analyst's peg the true figure to be between $500 billion and $884 billion) is already bankrupt, but most of the people living there don't know it. The nation as a whole, with a federal debt exceeding $17.3 trillion, also is bankrupt. Each citizens share of this debt, which is increasing $2.7 billion each day, is an astonishing $54,345. The printing presses of the Federal Reserve cannot keep this sinking ship afloat much longer. No, as a nation we are finished, may as well stick a fork in us and be done with it!

Trench Gardening

Winter is upon us and this is a great time to consider a soil rehabilitation program for your garden, especially if you are dealing with an inhabitable clay or sandy soil. The soil rehab program, which I call trench gardening, admittedly, requires a fair amount of work but I believe you will be amazed at the results that can be achieved by this simple gardening technique. Organic gardeners are going to be particularly pleased with the vegetables they produce in a trenched garden. In some ways a trenched garden is similar to a raised bed except that it is buried in the ground rather than being above the ground. There are no fixed rules for the size of the trenches or, for that matter, the positioning of the trenches in a garden. However, as a general rule of thumb, I believe the more trenches and the closer they are positioned to each other the better. In this respect, one 30 foot long 8 foot wide section of my garden is a solid two foot deep trench consisting of about 65% organic material, 25% earthworm castings and 10% native clay soil. However, most gardeners who use the trench gardening technique, construct 1 foot wide and 1.5 foot deep trenches (the wider and deeper the trenches the better). The trenches run the length of the garden and are positioned 3 to 4 feet apart. The trenches can be filled with any organic material that one has available. I fill my trenches with primarily with horse manure, fir sawdust and oak leaves. The sawdust is mixed in with the manure I attain from a local stable. If it were available in large enough quantities, I would add food scraps to the mix. Several authors, who write about trench gardening, recommend that composting earthworms be added to the material in the trenches but this is not necessary if the trenched material contains horse, cow or some other form of manure because these animal wastes invariably contain composting earthworms. In fact, red wiggler composting earthworms are commonly referred to as manure worms because they are invariably found in manure throughout the world. In any case, plants and vegetables are planted beside the trenches so that their roots can have access to the rotting organic material that has been placed in the trenches. For a gardener raising organic vegetables it doesn't get any better than this! The following winter one can dig another trench adjacent to the initial one and repeat the process. If the trenched gardening technique is continued for a few years, depending on the size of the garden and the width of the trenches, the soil in the entire garden will have been converted from the initial inhabitable clay or sandy soil to a wonderful organic rich loam ideal for raising almost any plant or vegetable. I hope you have found this blog to be of interest, please consider becoming a member of my blog.

The Islamic Culture Will Prevail Without Firing a Shot!

In this blog, I will summarize the startling information presented in a recent You Tube video entitled The World Is Changing. First, realize that for a culture to sustain itself, its population must have a fertility rate of at least 2.1. If the fertility rate falls to 1.9 it is difficult to reverse the trend and if the fertility rate falls to 1.3 the culture is doomed irrespective of the steps that may be taken to save it. The fertility rate in Europe has been declining for decades and will continue to decline for the foreseeable future. Today, the fertility rate is 1.8 in England; 1.3 in Greece and Germany; 1.2 in Italy; and 1.1 in Spain. The problem in France, and most of the Western world is that, while the fertility rate of the native population is falling, the overall population is increasing due to unchecked immigration, 90% of which is Islamic. Southern France already has more Islamic mosques than churches. The problem of Moslem immigration is complicated by the fact that the fertility rate of the Muslim immigrates is 8.1 as compared to the 1.8 for French citizens. As a result, one of every five Frenchman is now Islamic and in just 39 years France will be an Islamic Republic. This will occur without the Jihadists having fired a shot and, of course, the French would not lift a finger to stop them, even if they did! In Great Britain, 30% of newborns are Islamic and the numbers of Muslims has increased from 82,000 thirty years ago to 2.5 million today. If this trend is allowed to continue, in only 15 short years, 50% of the population in Great Britain will be Muslim. The fertility rate in the European Union is a meager 1.38 and, if immigration policies are not changed, in a matter of a few years Europe, as we know it, will cease to exist. Things are no different in the rest of Europe, in Russia 25% of the population is already Muslim and 40% of its solders are Muslim. The German government recently reported that the fall in the German population cannot be stopped and, by the year 2050, Germany will be a Muslim state. In the Netherlands 50% of newborns are Muslim; in only 15 years 1/2 its population will be Muslim. There are now 50 million Muslims in Europe, that number will double in 20 years. Closer to home, in Canada, which has a fertility rate of 1.6, the population increased by 1.6 million from 2001 to 2006; 1.2 million of this increase in population was the result of immigration, the majority of which was from Islamic countries. In the USA the native declining fertility rate of 1.6 is propped up to some extent by the higher fertility rate of Latinos immigrants, but even considering this fact, our overall fertility rate is only 2.11, barely high enough to survive as a society. As a result of immigration, the number of Muslims in America has increased from 100,000 in 1970 to a whopping 9,000,000 today. If the demographics do not change there will be over 50 million Muslims in America by the year 2043. The video the World Is Changing concludes by stating that the information presented should serve as a " Wake up call" to the Western world. On this I certainly concur; however, unfortunately, the video does not give a single suggestion as to what we in the Western world should do to save our culture from the Islamic invasion. Possibly they thought the solutions were to obvious to warrant discussion. In any case, to assure that we will not become a Muslim nation we must do two things. First, we must stop Muslim immigration in its tracks, not a single additional Muslim should be allowed to immigrate to the United States of America, not a single one! Second, we whites should get off the couch and go back to bed! Of course, it goes without saying, that our wives should throw their birth control pills in the toilet, at least until they have had three or more children. Along these lines governmental policies should encourage procreation not the mass slaughter of babies in the womb. As things now stand, the Muslims are winning the war, not on the battle field, but in the bedroom and, if we are to have any chance of saving our Western culture, this must change. Please consider becoming a member of my blog.

GREEN MANURES

Winter is here and the garden looks a little raunchy. Now is the time for gardeners to start dreaming about spring; more importantly, it is time for organic gardeners to start preparing for spring by planting a manure crop. There are two basic types of green manure plants: those that fix nitrogen to the soil and those that do not. Plants like mustard, ryegrass and buckwheat are sown in the fall and turned into the soil in the spring. The primary purpose of these cover crops is to enrich the soil by adding organic material to it. Cover crops are primarily used in large agricultural operations by farmers who have the tractors and plows necessary to manage crops of this type. For the home gardener, cover crops like ryegrass and buckwheat may be more trouble than they are worth, at least that has been my experience. The second type of green manure actually fixes nitrogen to the soil. These plants have bacteria that live in the tiny nodules of their roots that remove nitrogen from the air and add it to the soil. The nitrogen-fixers include alfalfa, red clover, lupin and fava beans. I consider alfalfa and clover to be weeds and would not plant them in my garden. On the other hand, I have found fava beans to be an ideal winter cover crop. Fava beans are easy to grow and, although not my favorite variety of bean, they are eatable. Plant the beans one inch deep and six inches apart in rows about 12 inches in width. Don't forget to soak the beans in water overnight before planting them. Be sure to turn the plants in, rather than pull them out, next spring since most of the nitrogen they add to the soil is attached to their roots. Finally, let a couple of rows mature and save the dried beans so that you do not have to buy them again next fall when you plant your next green manure crop. I also have a generous sprinkling of lupins throughout my organic garden; however, these plants are grown for their beauty rather than their nitrogen fixing capabilities and, in any case, are not a winter crop.

Curbing The Welfare State

At first glance, it would seem obvious that we should be taking measures to curb the ever expanding numbers of Americans who are unemployed and on some form of government dole. Indeed, politicians on both side of the isle give lip service to the goal of reducing the numbers of those on welfare by putting the unemployed back to work. However, many conservatives are skeptical about the liberals assertions that they are doing everything possible to support policies that would encourage employment in our stagnate economy. What is the basis for this skepticism? With the exceptions of a few very wealthy individuals in liberal hot-beds like the Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the democratic base consists primarily of people who are dependent of the government for their very survival. This dependency may take many forms including, but not limited to, extended unemployment benefits; relaxation of the requirements to qualify for permanent disability; medical care; school meals and head start programs; tax rebates for those that pay no taxes; and generous food stamp allotments for those who claim to be poor. In this respect, not everyone on food stamps is poor; in fact, the Inspector General claims that food stamp fraud costs the tax payers around $222,000,000 a year. The list of government giveaways and entitlements is literally endless! These government programs have one sinister goal, to increase the dependency of ever increasing numbers of Americans on the government for everything from toilet paper to flat screen TVs. This ever expanding group of, what I call dependency Americans, form the rock solid base of the democratic party and the career liberal politicians will do everything in their power to expand the numbers of people who are dependent on the government for their well being from the day they were born to the day they die. Admittedly, since the liberal political machine is dependent on the votes of those who are dependent on government handouts, it will be difficult or impossible to curb our present ever expanding welfare state. However, curbing it we must if we are to have the slightest chance of reversing America's inevitable decline into national obscurity. As will be discussed in the ensuing chapters we can do this by limiting the right of non-taxpayers to vote; stopping illegal immigration; reviving America's manufacturing base so that there are jobs for those who want to work; and, most importantly, reviving the work ethic in American culture. Please consider becoming a member of my blog. At times I feel like I am preaching to an empty room and your comments, good or bad, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Doc.

Limiting Voting Rights

This country was founded as a republic which guaranteed its citizens specific inalienable rights that could not be taken away by a majority of the voters; however, our government has evolved into something that more closely resembles a pure democracy than the republic envisioned by the founders. As a result, we now have majority rule, with little or no regard for the interests of minorities unless, of course, they are ethnic minorities. The most blatant example of the trampled rights of minorities rights (yes, productive members of society are now a minority in the good old USA) is our present confiscatory system of taxation which basically takes monies from successful members of society and redistributes it those who have been, for whatever reason, less successful in life. In this respect, our corrupt politicians now give cash payments, in the form of tax credits, to low income families on April 15 of each year, the same day that many of our citizens are struggling to come up with enough money to pay their federal and state income taxes. As discussed in chapter 3, because of the scarcity of jobs available to the uneducated members of our society, there will have to be some redistribution of the nation's wealth during the time it takes to revitalize the countries manufacturing base. However, these redistributive of wealth schemes should be of limited duration and viewed as a necessary evil rather than an acceptable way of life. So, what can be done to stop career politicians from taxing the successful members of society and using that money to buy the votes of the underclass? As with most of the solutions suggested in this book, the answer to the confiscatory taxation policies of the liberals are straight forward and simple but, admittedly, difficult or impossible to implement. My belief is that, with only a few exceptions, only those who contribute to society should be allowed to vote. In other words, a chronically unemployed person sitting on his or her living room couch swigging beer and watching TV should not be allowed to vote for a politician that will increase the time he or she can receive unemployment insurance or the size of his or her welfare check. Rather, only those that pay federal income taxes should be allowed to vote in federal elections. Similarly, only those who pay state taxes should be eligible to vote in state elections and only those who pay local taxes should be allowed to vote in local elections. In other words if you cannot, or will not, contribute to society you will not be granted the privilege of voting. The liberals will fight this common sense proposal to their last dying breath insisting that a change in policy such as this would take away one of the most cherished of America's rights, the right to vote. Well, yes it would, but pure democracies have never worked throughout history and ours is no different from those of the past. Limiting the voting rights of the unproductive members of society will be a major step in the right direction with respect to raining in the democracy that is destroying our country. The bleeding heart liberals also will insist that any attempt eliminate the voting rights of the underclass will result in increasing poverty and even the mass starvation of large numbers of our citizens. This prediction flies in the face of historical fact. We have always looked after the poor and under-trodden in this country, always have and always will! However, we have no moral obligation whatsoever to pay the unemployed more in welfare benefits, housing aids and medical care than we pay those that are working two jobs to support their families. By the way, as you know, every relative study related to charitable giving has shown that conservatives give far more of their money to organizations like the Red Cross and Salvation Army than do liberals. What are the chances that we can stop this democracy in its tracts by limiting the right to vote to those who pay taxes? The answer, unfortunately, is slim to none!

Increasing America's Mean IQ.

As detailed in Part 1, the mean IQ of those living in the western world has dropped about 18 points since the Victorian era. In the United States the average IQ of its citizens is decreasing about 1-2 points each generation. Changes of this size may seem, at first glance small and inconsequential but, unfortunately, this is not the case. As emphasized by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray on page 364 of their book The Bell Curve, "When the mean of an IQ distribution shifts a little the size of the distribution's tails change a lot." For example, if the mean IQ of the American population were to fall three points, from 100 to 97, the numbers of its citizens with IQs above 120 would fall by 31 percent and the percent of the population with IQs above 135 would fall by 42 percent. More importantly perhaps, if the nations mean IQ fell 3 points, the percentages of the population with IQs below 80 would increase by 41 percent and those with IQs below 65 (currently the bottom 1 percent) would rise by 68 percent. What are the consequences to American society for such shifts in the cognitive ability of its citizens? If the mean IQ of our population decreased 3 points, as it has in the past one and a half generations, the overall poverty rate would increase by 11 percent; the proportion of children living in poverty would rise by 11 percent; the number of men in jail would increase by 13 percent; the numbers of women on welfare would increase by 14 percent; and the high school dropout rate would increase by 15 percent. I would argue that this is exactly what we have witnessed in the United states over the past 60 years and that our nations woes are, in no small part, a result of the deteriorating American IQ. In any case, it should be readily apparent to anyone who is willing to address the issue from a scientific point of view, that a relative small shift in mean IQ of a population can produce important social and economic outcomes. But, for a moment, let's consider the oppose side of the coin. What if we could shift our nation's mean IQ in the positive direction by as few as 3 points? If our nations mean IQ could be raised from 100 to 103 points the statistics show that the present poverty rate would be reduced by 25 percent and there would be 25 percent fewer men in jail. Similarly, welfare recipiency would fall by 18 percent and there would be 20 percent fewer children living in poverty. I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that the dumping down of the average America citizen has played a major role in the countries decline from its former supper state status to the debtor nation we have become; fortunately, we can reverse out slide into mediocrity, and this is how it can be done. As with most of the concepts on this book, the steps which must be taken to improve the nation's cognitive ability are relatively simple and straight forward; unfortunately, there may not be the will to implement the political changes we must take to improve the intellectual status of the nation, but it can be done if we have the will to do it. First, and possibly most importantly, we must stop illegal immigration in its tracts! We simply cannot close our collective eyes to the hordes of low IQ peoples of Mexican descent who are crossing our southern border and diluting our nation's gene pool with every passing day. As disused in the next chapter, we do this by denying illegal's the right to work in our country and by curtailing significantly the welfare they receive while they are here. Second, we must stop paying low IQ single females from having babies, the policies of Lyndon Johnson and this great society have been a unmitigated disaster in this respect and the sooner we take steps to curtail the rate of illegitimacy in the United States the better. At present we pay low IQ single mothers to have illegitimate cognitive deficient children. In fact, the more children they have, the higher is their government stipend. Illegitimacy is an extremely important factor because 65 percent of illegitimate children are born to dull to very dull women. This is an important statistic because low IQ mothers beget low IQ children. In this respect, less than two percent of high IQ women produce very low IQ children while 30 percent of low IQ women produce children with low or very low IQs. In short, unwed mothers usually are stupider than their married counterparts and they produced stupider children than do married women. No matter how much money is spend programs like aid to dependent children and head start, nothing will change this genetic reality. We must stop paying single low IQ mothers for having children out of wedlock and start paying then not to have illegitimate children. Fortunately, modern medicine has provided a solution to this problem, it is called Norplant. One Norplant injection will render a female sterile for five years, thereafter her fertility returns to normal. The attractive thing about a Norplant injection is that, unlike permanent sterilization procedures, its effects wear off in a relatively short period of time; thus, a women who has a Norplant injection is nor burning any long tern bridges when she elects to have this form of birth control. We could begin this national IQ enrichment program by paying single females on welfare $5000 to have a Norplant injection that would prevent them from becoming pregnant for five years. During this five year period all the financial support they receive from the federal and state governmental agencies would continue. After five years we would give these women another $5000 if they agreed to have a second Norplant injection. The five year payment program would continue until they reached the age of forty at which point their chances of becoming pregnant decrease significantly. The advantages of a pay them not to have babies program would be twofold. First, and most importantly, it would reverse the present trend where in high IQ mothers are having fewer babies than their cognitive deficient counterparts. The discrepancy in the birth rates of high IQ and low IQ mothers must be reversed if we are to have any chance of improving the overall IQ of the nation. Paying low IQ mothers not to have children is one way to accomplish this goal. When one considers the staggering social and financial costs the nation pays for tolerating illegitimacy, I believe a program that pays low IQ single mothers not to have children would also be cost effective. To test my theory, let's begin by paying the nation's 13.7 million single moms not to have additional children. All of the monies provided to them by the government to support their families would be continued, but we will give them an additional $5000 if they agree to have a Norplant injection and, if they agree to continue in the program, we would pay them an additional $5000 when they had their second Norplant injection five years later. This voluntary birth control program would be continued for a total of 20 years at a cost of $20,000 per recipient, thus assuring that the vast majority of single mothers who participated in the study would not conceive again during their child bearing years. (I should get the Nobel Prize for economics for this idea!) In any case, the total cost of the program, assuming full participation by all single mothers in the country, would be about $27.5 billion. Admittedly, this is a lot of money to spend on a trial balloon. But maybe cheap, at twice the price, if you consider the alternative, which, of course, is to continue the status quo. Consider this statistic. Benjamin Scafidi PhD, a Georgia State University Economist, has shown that single mothers cost the tax payers a whopping $112 billion a year. These expenditures in tax, or more correctly increases in the national debt, does not begin to reflect the burden of single motherhood on society, because you can't measure the pain and suffering of crime victims who have been raped, robbed and murdered by the low IQ children of unwed mothers in dollars and cents. It is hard to believe that society would not be better off if these criminals had never been born. Now you may be thinking, after all these years, we should have learned our lesson, why not just stop paying single women to have babies, sure as hell would be a lot cheaper! Well, sure it would, but you are never going to be able to sell such a change in social policy to our gimme-gimme society, not in a thousand years you won't, especially since the democrats depend on the votes of the underclass to stay in power! However, for the most part, we are dealing with a group of unintelligent and illiterate women here and I'll bet my last dollar that if you pay them enough they will end up doing the right thing, despite their natural tendency to reproduce like rabbits. Yes, Mable, not having kids out of wedlock is a goal worth fighting for, no matter what the liberal intelligentsia tell you, and we can achieve that goal for far less than we are spending now to support the offspring of the dependent class! I will leave it to the economists to sort out the details of a Norplant program that would increase the mean IQ of the nation by decreasing the birth rate of unwed mothers. However, I believe it could be accomplished for far less than we are now paying for the failed social programs that caused the problem of illegitimacy in the first place. In this respect, the moneys that would be saved by reducing the numbers of children entering our failed head start programs each year alone would go a long way towards financing such a project. Finally, addition steps that can be taken to reduce the birth rate of cognitive challenged women include: oral contraceptives, the morning after pill and, yes, abortion on demand! All of these medications and abortion services should be made available at no charge to financially strapped cognitively challenged women of all races. Women of means, of course, can pay for their own contraceptives and abortions. However, one way or the other, educated working women are not the problem; rather, it is their low IQ uneducated sisters that society must come to grips with. The primary emphasis, of course, should be on the prevention of unwanted pregnancies, especially those of low IQ single mothers on welfare. However, no matter how much one detests abortion, it is difficult, if not impossible, to argue that the nation's mean IQ would not be much lower than it now is if abortions were not readily available to single mothers. For example, in the black community alone, over 684,000 black babies are aborted each year. Seventy-two percent of these abortions were performed on single black mothers. I know that abortion, especially late term abortion, is a bitter pill for most conservatives to swallow; however, for all practical purposes, a women's right to choose is here to stay. At this point in time, our goal should be to limit the procedure to the first trimester of pregnancy. As an aside, the liberals find themselves in a box when it comes to the issue of abortion. On the one hand, they must support abortion on demand or face the wrath of the feminists, the largest liberal voting bloc. On the other hand, by supporting liberal abortion statutes the democratic party have significantly decreased the size of their black voting base. In this respect, since 1973 16 million black women have had an abortion. Without these abortions the potential black democratic base would be 16 million larger than it now is. In summary, we can increase the mean IQ of Americans by curtailing illegal immigration; decreasing the rate of illegitimacy; and by encouraging all forms of birth control including first trimester abortion on demand.

Career Politicians

It is highly unlikely that the founder's of our nation ever considered the possibility that our elected public officials would spend their entire working lives in one of our state capitals or Washington DC. If they had, our constitution undoubtedly would have included a clause or amendment pertaining to term limits. However, in 1776, such a law would have been unnecessary because we were an agrarian nation of farm and plantation owners whose livelihood depended on the crops they could produce, not on the paltry stipends they would receive while serving in a government office. In this respect, from 1789 to 1815 congressmen received $6.00 a day and they were paid only if they showed up. Thus, it was an imposition for them to leave their land to serve in a public office. They made this sacrifice because they loved their country and, as good citizens, felt compelled to serve. But, with rare exception this compulsion did not oblige them to serve more than one or two terms. At that point they either ran for higher office or, most often, when home. As we moved from an agrarian society to an industrial nation things began to change and not necessarily for the better. At some point in time, probably around the beginning of the twentieth century, politicians tumbled to the fact that they could make more money in government than they could in the private sector. Public service became a pretty good racket with many, not so well hidden, perks. For example, if you were a congressman or a senator you did not have ask the boss for a raise. Nope, you could just vote yourself a raise and, as long as the legislation authorizing the raise included something for the president, he was likely to sign it. But the real money to be made in public service is unrelated to salaries, medical care or lucrative retirement packages. No, the real money comes from the use and sale of the power inherent in any public office whether it be dog catcher, state or federal legislator or head of state. Occasionally a member of the ruling class gets caught with his pants down (so far the females have escaped scot free) and is forced to spend a little time in a federal prison. This is particularly likely to happen in Illinois where their mentally challenged politicians are exceptionally brazen in their self-serving illegal abuses of power and, thus, more apt to be caught. But governmental abuses of power are not limited to crooked politicians from Illinois. No, dirty self-serving career politicians are a dime a dozen and come from every region of our nation. Here are two well known examples of political corruption that should make you grit your teeth and spit nails. Lyndon Baines Johnson began his working life as a near penny-less high school teacher. Thereafter, before being forced into retirement because of the Vietnam debacle in 1969, he spent his entire working life as a public servant in Washington DC. This consummate career politician died a multimillionaire. Most of his fortune was made in his wife's name but, as Robert A. Caro explains in The Years on Lyndon Johnson: means of ascent, Johnson was very adept at using his political clout behind the scenes to grease the skids for his wife's various business deals which made her, and him, a fortune. Possibly the most outrageous example of the abuse of power by a career politician is the shenanigans of California's liberal Senator Dianne Feinstein. The Feinstein's are worth an estimated 45 million dollars. As was the case with LBJ, whose money was made in the name of his wife Lady Bird, the Feinstein's money has been accumulated in the name of her investor banker husband Richard C. Blum. However, it is highly unlikely that Blum could have been this successful in his business dealing with the government if his wife had not been a powerful US senator who worked behind the scenes steer government contracts his way. The most notorious of the deals senator Feinstein cooked up to feather her own nest occurred in 2009 when she introduced legislation that provided $25 billion in tax payer money to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This agency then awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell millions of dollars worth of foreclosed properties at rates higher than industry norms. The most recent example of the Dianne Feinstein's nepotism involves the contemplated sale of 56 US post offices throughout the United States. These properties are worth billions of dollars and the firm brokering the deal will make millions of dollars in commissions. It should come as no surprise to anyone to learn that Richard C. Blum's real estate firm will be handling these transactions. Meanwhile, senator Feinstein fly's around in her 55 million dollar Gulfstream jet claiming that she is an innocent bystander and knows nothing. Well, she knows how to make money, lots of it, that's for sure. The net worth's of our public servants in Washington DC tells the whole rotten story. In 2011 the average US congressman was worth $6,594,859 and the average U.S. senator was worth a whopping $14,013,596! Now it's true that some of these people were wealthy before they ran for public office and some, like John Kerry, married into their money while in office. But most of the newcomers to Washington DC are not all that wealthy when they get there. In fact, the net worth of the 94 new senators and representatives in 2011 was only 1.07 million, much higher than the $66,740 of the average American, but substantially less than that of their more senior colleagues. No, in the days of our founders men went to Washington DC to serve their country. Today, with rare exception, the career politician goes to our nation's capital to make money, it's really as simple as that! Unfortunately, they are ruining the country in the process.

Achieving Immigration Reform

As discussed in chapter 3 of Part1, illegal immigration has had a devastating effect on the social structure of our country and has contributed greatly to our present economic woes. Obviously, it is the height of folly to continue policies that encourage further immigration of low IQ uneducated people of Mexican descent who take the jobs of American citizens; disrupt our educational system; organize gangs in our major cities; and contribute disproportionally to the increasing rate of criminality in inner our cities. We, as a society, are paying too high a price for the menial jobs they perform in the United States. Fortunately, of all the problems facing America today, illegal immigration is, perhaps, the easiest to solve. Whether or not we have the will to do so, of course, is an entirely different story. All that must be done, to stop illegal immigration in its tracks is to introduce laws that prevent illegal's without green cards from working in the United States. Most, if not all, of these laws are already on the books but, for the political reasons discussed above are not being enforced. At this point in time to seems clear that we will have pass additional laws and regulations which will make it difficult or impossible for employers like Tyson and Foster Farms to hire illegal's. Here are three simple steps we can take to stop illegal immigration in its tracks. First, we must have a national identification card (NIC) which clearly states that a person is a citizen of the United States and includes a picture of the card holder and their social security. Without a NIC a person could not work and could not vote. Employers who hire illegal's without an NIC should face large fines, in proportion to the size of their business enterprises, and repeat offenders should be sent to prison. Anyone carrying a counterfeit NIC should be charged with a felony and counterfeiter's of such cards would be severely punished. Second, persons without a NIC would be ineligible for any form of welfare including food stamps, housing aids, non emergency medical care and federal educational grants. Third, and finally, the law which grants citizenship to babies born to illegal mothers while in the United States must be repealed. This will require an amendment to the constitution, but such an amendment could be easily passed if there was a national will to do so. There is absolutely no reason in today's America to give citizenship to the so called anchor babies. It is long past time to repeal the law that makes babies of illegal aliens legal, just because they were born in the United States. These babies are just as illegal as their mothers and should be sent back, along with mothers, to the nations from which they came. If these three simple steps were taken our illegal immigration problems would be solved once and for all without hiring an additional border agent or building a single foot of new fence. Obviously, if illegal's are not allowed to work and are prevented from going on welfare they will not come. More importantly, many, if not most, of those now here will pack up and go home! We will still need border agents to curtail drug traffickers and potential theorists from crossing our boarders but these unsavory characters will be much easier to detect if they are not allowed to mix in with the multitudes of illegal's who are now streaming across our southern border. There will be three predictable objections to the implementation of these relatively simple steps which, if implemented, would solve the illegal immigration problem once and for all! Liberals will scream bloody murder while claiming that it would be discriminatory, and a violation of the equal rights amendment, to require blacks, especially those who are poor, illiterate and elderly, to obtain and show an NIC before they vote. Have no doubt about it, we are talking about the facilitation of voting fraud by the liberals here, nothing more nothing less. In any case, this is a specious argument at best in twenty-first century America and brings to mind a encounter I witnessed recently at our local Sears store in Concord California. I was in the checkout line behind an elderly black man who was in the process of purchasing a small item which cost around $15.00. This gentleman wanted to pay with his credit card and the clerk said that he would have to see an identification card before he could complete the transaction. Without the slightest hesitation the customer pulled out his wallet and showed the clerk his driver's license which had his picture on it. This took me somewhat by surprise because it appeared that this elderly person would have been too old to drive. Nonetheless, he had a drivers license with his picture on it. Now I ask you, if a person has to show a pictured identification card to make a $15.00 purchase at Sears, is it unreasonable to ask him, or her, to do the same before they are allowed to vote? No, the lame arguments made by the liberals against a NIC is simply another of their endless attempts to encourage illegal immigration and enable voting fraud by minority voters. The second argument will be made against the elimination of all forms of welfare, with the exception of emergency medical care, to illegal immigrants. Liberals and like minded companionate conservatives will claim that it will be inhumane to curtail, in any significant way, the billions of dollars we spend each year to support the Latino underclass. Well, maybe so, but this is the price we will have to pay if we are to have any hope of taking our country back. When all is said and done, we have no moral obligation whatsoever to spend the taxpayers hard earned money to support people who were born in Latin America and broke our laws while coming here. With respect to the fourteenth amendment there is absolutely no reason not to repeal it, none at all! There simply is no logical reason that the babies of illegal mothers should automatically become citizens of the United States just because he or she was born here. A person would have to be blind and deaf and dumb all over to think otherwise. So, what is to be done with the tens of millions of illegal's that are already residing in the United States? What about the children of the Illegal's? If we deport their parents, what will happen to these innocent young people, many of whom are, under our antiquated laws, legal citizens? As stated above, if we prevent the illegal's from working in America and eliminate the welfare we provide them, many, if not most, of those illegally here will go home on their own volition. Thus, the problem of what to do with the illegal's that are already here will not be as great as it now seems. Having said that, there will still be millions of illegal's who remain and we as a society will have to deal with them. Possibly we can give illegal's who were brought here as children and adults who have worked and lived here for a number of years (five to 10 seems reasonable) a type of green card that lets them stay in our country indefinitely as long as they abide by our laws, pay taxes and stay out of trouble. A path to citizenship also would be appropriate for many of these people. However, under no circumstances should any of these amnesty-light measures be considered until the proposed laws that would curtail future illegal immigration are implemented. We must not fall into the same trap Ronald Reagan did when he signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. This foolish piece of legislation granted citizenship to millions of illegal's supposedly in exchange for strict boarder control measures that would have prevented future illegal's from entering the country. As we know, the illegal's were made citizens but the borders remained as porous as ever. The old adage fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me comes to mind!

The Deterioration Of Medical care in the USA

When I entered UC Berkeley in 1955 where was no major called pre-med; however, there were about 300 of us who had our hearts set on going to medical school and we all took the same classes. The majority of these classes were those that were prerequisites for medical school and had to be taken in proper sequence to make sure that the student would have completed them all by the end of their third year in college. As such all premed students took chemistry 1A in the fall of the first semester. Most chemistry majors deferred chemistry 1A until the spring semester. They did so to avoid having to compete with the premed students who were considered to be some of the brightest in the school. To make a long story short, it was very difficult to get into medical school in those days and, for the most part, only the brightest made the grade. However, despite the rigorous competition to get into a medical school in the 1950's and the intensive effort made by the medical schools to weed out those who were not qualified, two students in my 1963 class of sixty-four at the University of Southern California did not have the intelligence to be there. The point being, that even in the days before affirmative action, some students who did not have the intellect to become good doctors slipped through the cracks and became physicians despite the best efforts by admission committees to keep them out. The situation is much worse today because, with rare exception, the best and the brightest are not going into medicine. Rather, students who used to go into medicine are now becoming engineers and technology wizards. Why? Because the government run medicine of the twenty-first century is too controlling and doesn't pay enough. As I pointed out in my book So, You Want To Become a Medical Doctor it makes little sense to spend half of one's life while becoming hundreds of thousands of dollars debt to enter a low paying government run profession like medicine if you have the smarts to become wealthy in half the time by working for a company like Google, Macintosh or Apple to name only three of today's technological giants. Not only are the best and the brightest not going into medicine today but the medical schools, through their affirmative action programs, are encouraging those with marginal intelligence to become physicians. Napoleon Bonaparte once said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This may be, but the true story I'm about to relate will go a long ways towards explaining the adverse effects affirmative action programs have had in the doctors being graduated from today's medical schools. I first published this article on my blog The Conservative Pulpit in June of 1912. I tilted it: Low Pass: affirmative action at its worst and the end of medicine as I knew it! When I moved back to California in 1973, after 7 dreadful years in Minnesota (the weather not the people), I was on the Urology faculty in the Surgery Department at the University of California Davis. As a member of the surgery department, I participated in the oral examinations given to UCD’s third year medical students after completion of their surgery rotation. To put what I am going to relate to you in perspective, before the days of affirmative action, the weeding out of people who wanted to become doctors but were not qualified, occurred before they got into medical school. In other words, it was tough to get in, but once in you were accepted to medical school you almost sure to graduate and to pass the licensure examinations thereafter. This is not to say that the training and testing of medical students was anything but rigorous, to say the least. It was just that if you could get into medical school, you were able to handle most anything that the faculty could throw at you. This, as you may know, is the opposite of what happens in Law schools where almost anyone who can come up with the tuition can get into a law school somewhere and the weeding out process occurs during the first year and later at the bar examinations. Anyway, getting back to the event that I am about to relate, there were around 15 pairs of professors who were charged with examining the third year medical students at UCD; in my case, I was paired with a general surgeon, and we gave oral exams to about 6 to 8 individual students who were taking their oral examinations that morning. Each examination lasted about 15 minutes and each student was examined by 4 different pairs of examiners. Each of the students also had completed a multiple choice type of written test, although we did not know, by design, until later how they had faired on the written examination. To make a long story short, all of the students that my partner and I quizzed did reasonably well and we were not able to stump several of the them no matter how difficult we made the questions. That is all but one, a black female who didn’t seem to have a clue about anything we asked her. I recall specifically that she had no idea as to the significance of red blood cells in the urine and was clueless with respect to the difference between a direct and indirect inguinal hernia. We, of course, had no option but to flunk her. When the oral examinations were concluded and we all convened to determine the grades the students would receive, the other three pairs of faculty members who had examined this black medical student also came to the same conclusion we had. One examiner commented that he couldn’t believe that she had actually taken the surgery course, "Seemed impossible" were his exact words. Considering her lack of knowledge, it was no great surprise to learn that she had also failed the written examination. When it came time for the final vote, every single one of the 30 or so examiners, with little discussion, voted to flunk her. As it turned out, this was her second try at passing the surgery course. She had flunked the first time around and flunking again meant that she was out of medical school, which should have been a blessing for everyone concerned and especially for her future patients. What happened next took me completely by surprise. Understand that we did not have affirmative action in the University of Minnesota at that time and I, as a new member of the faculty at UCD, was unaware of the school liberal bent and totally unprepared for what was to happen next. In any case, the chief of surgery, Earl Wolfman (may he spend eternity roasting in the hottest part of hell), who had not said a word during the grading session up to this point, cleared his throat and said the two magic words that all low achievers want to hear, "Low pass". At that point, I knew that medicine, as I knew it, was a thing of the past. Those that make policy relating to medicine in the United States have been extremely successful in their efforts to conceal the changes that have been made medical care over the past 50 years. Where we live, in central Contra Costa county, recent renovations in the Walnut creek and Concord campuses of the John Muir hospital syste are expected to cost the John Muir Medical Foundation an estimated $800 million dollars. But, just how good is the medical care provided in these shinny new medical facilities? My wife was recently hospitalized in the new wing of the John Muir hospital in Concord. This was an eye opening experience for both of us and showed how much medicine has changed since I retired 13 years ago. My wife's surgeon was an extremely qualified laparoscopic surgeon of Asian descent who had gone to medical school in the orient before doing his surgery residency in a well known medical center on the East coast. To my amassment, her preoperative evaluation and post operative care was provided by physicians called hospitalists. Not a single one of these young doctors had gone to medical school in the United States, the majority of them were Indian females who had gone to medical school in India and had received most of their training there before immigrating to the United States. The hospitalists are hired by the John Muir Medical Foundation and have replaced the private practitioners who, in my day, were responsible for a patient's care when they were hospitalized. The question, of course, is just how well trained are these so-called hospitalists? Based on our experience, not too well. After spending about six hours in the emergency room, my wife was admitted to a surgical ward in a glittering new wing of the hospital. She was placed in a single bed room with a beautiful view of distant Mount Diablo. The hospital bed alone must have cost $20,000 the thing had every gadget imaginable and probably could do anything short of flying. My wife's Indian hospitalist ordered a battery of the usual blood and urine tests, an EKG and, most importantly, a flat plate of the abdomen. I knew that the x-ray of the abdomen would most likely confirm that she was experiencing another episode of intermittent bowel obstruction. This diagnosis seemed most likely since she had developed intermittent attacks of bowel obstruction on three occasions since undergoing an hysterectomy some 20 years before. The tests and flat plate (x-ray) of the abdomen were performed and the hospitalist returned to give us the results. To my surprise, she informed us that the x-ray of the abdomen was negative. Based on that finding she had concluded that my wife was suffering from some form of intestinal flu and that she was being transferred to a medical ward where her condition would be investigated further and treated appropriately. I was unprepared for such a diagnosis and was, momentarily, left speechless. When I finally came to my senses, I queried my wife about the abdominal x-ray, how was it performed? Apparently she had been wheeled into the room; transferred to the x-ray table lying on he back; and told to hold her breath while the x-ray was taken. I was stunned to learn how the x-ray was taken. Why, because the whole point of taking the flat plate of the abdomen was to determine if there were air-fluid levels in the intestines and one cannot detect air-fluid levels unless the patient is standing or lying on their side when the film is taken. At that point the mystery was solved and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that my tentiyive diagnosis of a small bowel obstruction had not been ruled out. I was about to leave the room and track down the hospitalist when a nurse entered the room to check on my wife's vital signs. I informed her about what had transpired and demanded that the abdominal flat plate be repeated, this time with my wife standing or on her side. To make a long story somewhat shorter than it actually was, we never saw the hospitalist again, she was replaced with another female hospitalist, again of Indian descent. Several hours later my wife underwent laparoscopic surgery to relieve a partial bowel obstruction brought on by adhesions that had formed after her hysterectomy twenty years before. Obviously, one cannot make a federal case on the basis one experience like this. However, it is impossible for me to believe that any third-year medical student attending an American medical school in the 1960's, or before, would not have known that a patent must be standing, or positioned on their side, when an abdominal x-ray is taken to rule out bowel obstruction. None of my classmates would have been so ignorant. So, how did it come about that Americans with serious medical conditions are being cared for in our major medical centers by doctors trained in faraway places like India? I think the answer to that question is obvious. Because of financial considerations, the best and the brightest American young people are not going into medicine today as they were in the days before the government took control of the medical profession. At this point in time, physicians, with a few notable exceptions such as neurosurgeons, invasive cardiologists and laparoscopic surgeons, are poorly paid servants of the bureaucracies that now control every aspect of medicine in this country. In former times doctors ran hospitals now administrators with no medical background what so ever determine every aspect of the medical care a person receives when he or she enters a hospital. Most persons untrained in the medical arts do not understand the significance of the changes that have occurred in medicine over the past century in the United States. When the average citizen enters a hospital today he leaves his personal physician behind and equates the palatial surroundings of the hospital with good medical care. In reality, the medical care they receive is provided, most often, by foreign trained females who hover over them like mothers and give the impression that they know what they are doing, while in reality, often times they do not have a clue. I have spent a fair amount of time on this subject because medical care related entities comprises one sixth of the American economy. As such, the passage and implementation of Obamacare was a gigantic blow to capitalism and the American way of life. I will not suggest a remedy for the situation in which we now find ourselves, in part 11, because I do not believe, at this point in time, there is one. Like it or not, we now have socialized medicine in this country and we are only one small step away from a one payer system similar to those of Canada, Great Britain and all of the other European socialized democracies. God help us!

Illegal Immigration-a high price to pay for a Cheap head of lettuce or Foster Farm Chicken.

As of 10/26/13 the American population exceeds 316,500,000 and is increasing at a rate of one person every 12 seconds. In California, which has a population exceeding 38 million, there are approximately 232 people per square acre of land, even though much of the state is sparsely populated. Mice and rats do not do well if kept in crowded cages and neither do human beings. I believe it is the height of folly to continue governmental policies that encourage immigration, whether legal or illegal. However, the 1.1 million legal immigrants who reside in this country are not the problem, the vast majority of foreigners with green cards are productive members of society who work, play by the rules and pay taxes. In many case they perform work that American's, because of their lack of education, cannot do. As I will discuss at length below, with the tens of millions of illegal aliens who have made America their home it is an entirely different story. With the exception of being a major factor in keeping the Catholic Church afloat, these people, most of whom are uneducated Mexican nationals, contribute little or nothing to the betterment of society and are a tremendous economic drag on the country. To date, nothing of significance has been done to curtail the flood of illegal aliens across our southern border because the democrats see the newcomers as future members of their liberal voting block and big business, especially agribusiness, see the illegal's as a cheap source of labor. Both of these observations are undoubtedly true and speak volumes with respect to the corruption of the political system we are all living under. In this chapter I will discuss the real costs of illegal immigration to America's citizens. As you will see, it is not a pretty picture. Far from it, illegal immigration has been and is now, nothing less than an unmitigated national disaster. The liberal crowd, supported by republicans who call themselves compassionate conservatives, claim that illegal immigration is a net plus for the economy because the immigrants pay taxes on the goods they buy and perform necessary work that Americans refuse to do. I will address the issue of Americans refusing to work in Part 11 of this book. However, the assertion that the piddling amount Mexican illegal's pay in taxes for the goods they purchase, somehow makes up for the costs inherent in having them in our country is simply absurd! Nothing could be further from the truth. To the contrary, as we will see shortly, illegal aliens are a tremendous economic drag on society. Just how serious is this problem? First let's consider the criminal implications of illegal immigration. These statistics were recently published in the ultra-liberal Los Angeles Times and pertain to the Los Angeles basin, but there is no reason to believe that things are a lot different in other large cities in the south western areas of the United States. This data reported by the Los Angeles Times has been largely ignored by the rest of the liberal press and their colleges in the drive-by media. In any case, as the late Paul Harvey would have said, "Here is the rest of the story!" Forty percent of all workers in Los Angeles County are working for cash and not paying a dime in payroll taxes! No, not a thin dime in taxes, even though their children go to our schools; they receive free medical care at our emergency rooms; and 29% of them are on one or more welfare program. What about the criminal aspect of the illegal immigration story? I think you will agree that these statistics are truly unbelievable and, more importantly, totally unacceptable! The Times article reports that ninety-five percent of all warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens of Mexican descent. Similarly, 75% of the people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are Mexican illegal aliens. (These people are not only good at picking grapes, they are adept criminals as well.) Finally, to complete the criminal side of this unseemly story, 35% of all inmates in California's detention centers are illegal Mexican nationals and, nationwide, 29% of those incarcerated in federal prisons are illegal aliens from Mexico. the FBI also reports that half of all the gang members in Los Angeles are illegal aliens from south of the Rio Grande. Are you beginning to see the cost, not only in monies, but in human suffering, we are paying for allowing the Mexico underclass to set up shop in America? Clearly, our politicians have not! By the way, educated, intelligent, successful Mexicans are not among those who flood across our borders by the hundreds each day! No, it is the uneducated Mexican underclass that make the trek through the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico to enter America illegally. The Mexican government, of course, is delighted to be rid of them. But the criminality of the Mexican illegal's is only a part of the problem. The story gets worse, much worse! Over 2/3rds of all births in Los Angeles County are from illegal alien mothers on Medical. These births, of course are a tremendous drain on the tax payer. Worse yet, many, if not most, of the children born to illegal's will become wards of the state and, unbelievably as it may sound, all of them instantly become United States Citizens the moment they are born. Insanity at its highest level, don't you think? Here are a few additional statistics that should curdle you blood. Over 300,000 Los Angeles illegal's are living in garages. Nearly 60% of all HUD properties are occupied by illegal aliens. Twenty-one of 110 radio stations in Los Angeles are Spanish stations and of the 10.2 million people living in Los Angeles County, over 38% speak only Spanish. If these statistics don't alarm you, maybe a few additional facts will get your attention. Less than 2% of the illegal aliens in this country pick our grapes while 29% are on welfare. Over 70% of America's population growth is a result of illegal immigration and in states like California, Florida, and New York, illegal's account for over 90% of the increases in population. If this trend is allowed to continue we will become a third world Spanish speaking nation before you can say Rumpelstiltskin. I would argue that statistics like this only scrape the surface with respect to the price we are paying for governmental policies that are allowing large segments of the county to be literally, overrun by illegal's from south of the border Throughout the country, our schools are inundated by cognitively challenged Mexican children who do not speak a word of English. Just how is a teacher, no matter how gifted or dedicated, supposed to deal with classroom that is a mixture of students, some of whom speak English and some of whom do not? How does an English speaking student fair in such an environment? Not as well as he or she would in a school where all students speak and are taught in English, I would think. The medical expenses incurred by illegal aliens also are a major drain on the economy of the country. Our emergency rooms are flooded 24/7 with illegal's requiring routine as well as emergency medical care. The illegal's impair the medical care provided to our legal citizens, by clogging up our emergency rooms, and, because they are non-payers, drive up the cost of medical care for the rest of us. In this respect, the state and federal governments pay about 2 billion each year for the medical care provided to illegal immigrants. Ultimately, of course. the tax payers pick up this expense or, more correctly, it is added to our 3.8 trillion dollar national debt. Estimates on the costs spent on welfare payments to the families of illegal aliens range from just over 10 billion to over 330 billion. Whichever figure is correct, it is much too high. One undisputable fact is that 57% of all illegal immigrant families are on one or more welfare program. There is no way to sugar coat these statistics, we as a society are paying an extremely high price for the illegal's who provide cheap labor for agribusiness and potential voters for our liberal handlers. With respect to the so-called cheap labor component of the problem, just what would the consumer have to pay for a head of lettuce or a Foster Farm chicken if the price of these products reflected the hidden costs society pays to support the millions of illegal aliens who are on welfare, using our medical facilities and taking up space in our overcrowded jails and prisons? In truth, I have no idea what the true cost of a head of lettuce or a chicken should be at Safeway if it included these hidden expenses, but it undoubtedly would be many times higher than the figure you see on your grocery receipt. When all is said and done, we are paying a very high price for those cheep groceries we buy at the local food market. The cost we pay in blood, tears and other forms of human suffering for having illegal's in our country, of course, can't be measured in dollars and cents but is, none the less, very significant, as the crime statistics reported by the Los Angeles Times indicate. We need comprehensive immigration reform in this country in the worse way, but not the type of reform proposed by the politicians in Washington DC. We need to stop future illegal's from coming in and throw the ones that are here now, out!

Composting With Earthworms- The Right Thing To Do.

In my latest book, The Earthworm Farmer's Bible, I tell you how to compost your kitchen waste and newspapers with earthworms, but why do it? First, I would argue, because it is the right thing to do from an environmental standpoint. Did you know that we generate over 250 billion metric tons of garbage in this country every single year? Probably not, but, more importantly, I'll bet you didn't know that 50% of everything we throw in the trash can is organic material that can be consumed by our friends the composting earthworms. Just think of the difference it would make if we all composted our table scraps and paper waste with earthworms. That would mean that 125 billion tons of our waste would not end up in the abominations we call landfills. Second, because earthworms turn organic waste into castings, the most valuable, as I say in my book, organic fertilizer on the face of God's green earth. Be careful not to confuse earthworm castings with the humus produced in a compost pile, they are entirely different products, primarily because castings are loaded with beneficial microorganisms and trace elements that make the plants in your garden flourish while the material coming from a regular compost pile is just plain old humus, nothing more nothing less. Third, regular composting is very labor intensive and takes, literally, forever! Earthworms are capable of eating their weight in organic material every single day, no time off for weekend breaks or holidays, they just eat 24/7. Finally, consider this fact. If you chose to add kitchen scrapes to a regular compost pile you will, if fact, be creating a mini-garbage dump in your backyard. The pile will smell bad, attract rodents and produce the same greenhouse gases as a regular garbage dump!

Introduction to Part 11 of my new book-SAVING AMERICA

In part 1, I relied heavily on the statistical data that Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray provided for us in their remarkable book The Bell Curve to support many of my assertions regarding the deteriorating effect modern liberal social policy has had on America and its citizens. Although I instinctively knew the reasons for America's demise before reading The Bell Curve I did not have the statistical data to support my beliefs before I, quite by chance, stumbled onto this extraordinary book. I am, as we all should be, in Herrnstein and Murray's debt for expending the enormous amount of time and energy required to collect and organize the complex statistical data presented in their book in a way that non-statisticians, such as myself, can read and understand. Few people have the cognitive ability to pull something like this off, but they did it and the world is a much better place for their effort. Having said this, I believe Herrnstein and Murray were less successful in their attempt to provide practical solutions to the problems facing twenty-first century America. Their failure to do so was the primary reason for me to write this book. I agree with the authors when they assert that a primary responsibility of social policy is not to give a person dignity but, rather, to make it possible for a person to achieve dignity by working hard and making the most of the talent God gave him. In this respect, their concept of valued places in society is right on and I will devote a chapter to this hypothesis. However, other than to suggest that we decentralize the government, and by so doing return policy making to local governmental bodies, the authors suggest precious little that will make it easier for a person with average or below average cognitive ability to find his place in modern America. Similarly, Herrnstein and Murray propose that we simplify, or do away with, tax codes and the multitude of other bureaucratic regulations that make it difficult for the mentally challenged people to complete the paperwork necessary, for example, to form a small business. Simplification of tax policy and the elimination of bureaucratic red tape is a good thing. On this point I think we can all agree, but will doing so really do much to reduce illegitimacy, decrease criminal activity or solve any of the other social ills the authors discuss in The Bell Curve, I think not! The authors also assert that our criminal laws are too complex for the average person to understand and to unevenly enforced. Maybe so, but will simplification of the criminal code make it less likely that a black, or white, teenager of low cognitive ability who was raised by a low IQ mother single mother commit a crime? Again I think not! Rather, I will argue in the ensuing chapters, the answer is to pursue social policies that will discourage low IQ single mothers, of any race, from having illegitimate children. With respect to marriage, Herrnstein and Murray suggest that we return to the olden days, before women's liberation destroyed the concept that sex outside of marriage was verboten. If the authors have their way, the institution of marriage will, once again, become a rock of society. In this new marital utopia sex outside of marriage would be fronded upon and unwed mothers who became pregnant would have no legal basis for demanding that the men who they slept with contribute to the support of the illegitimate children that was produced by the encounters. Similarly, under this new system, men who participate in these anti-social acts would have no legal rights to visit the child and no say whatsoever in how the child is raised. Whether or not society will accept changes such as these is questionable but, one way or the other, I do not believe attempts to revive the marriage contract will do much of anything to decrease the rate of illegitimate births among unwed mothers in today's America. Molly Lard may be dead but feminism is alive and well in twenty-first century America. None the less, as we will see, there is a way to decrease the illegitimacy rate and we will not have to rely on draconian measures to do it. Finally, the authors of The Bell Curve make a good case for some form of income redistribution, not because wealthy people do not deserve their wealth, but because a person who works hard should be able to earn enough to support a family which often is not the case in twenty-first century America. This does not mean that entry level jobs flipping burgers at McDonalds should be paid be paid $25.00 an hour. Rather, it means that a 30 year old full time farm worker should be able to make enough money to feed and clothe himself and his family and that those of us who buy these commodities is produced should be willing to pay enough for them to make this happen. I will have a great deal more to say about the concept of a fair minimum wage for the cognitive challenged in chapter 6. For now let me say that I agreed with Herrnstein and Murray that some form of income redistribution will be necessary as the jobs available to the American average American worker become more technical and intellectually demanding. However, under no circumstance should future government redistributive policies serve to support, in any way, the life styles of able bodied men and women who choose not to work. If America is to survive as a viable economic power there must be a job for everyone who is willing to work and we must insist that everyone who can work do so.

Sun Dried Tomatoes

Have to many tomatoes? Don't know what to do with them? In my opinion, you never can have too many home grown tomatoes. I dry my excess tomatoes in the late summer sun and store them in plastic containers for use during the winter months. Here's how to do it. Purchase some 1 X 4 lumber and a role of 3 foot wide plastic window screen. Fashion two identical trays (size is optional) that will be stacked one over the other. I staple the window screen to the 1 X 4s. The lower tray will hold the tomatoes and the screen overlying the top tray will keep the fly's off the tomatoes while they are drying. I place my sun drying trays on saw-horses over a cemented area in the back yard that gets particularly hot during the day. Select large ripe tomatoes and slice them in half. Cross hatch them with a sharp knife so that they will flatten out. Salt and pepper generously and transfer the tomato halves to the drying screen. If the weather is hot they will take only 4 to 5 days to dry. They will last forever and there is a zillion ways to use them in the food you cook. Look for sun dried tomatoes the next time you go shopping. You will be amazed at the prices they charge for something you can make so easily at home.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Chemical Based Fertilizers.

Although the day may come when we run out of natural gas, the primary ingredient of ammonia based chemical fertilizers, it will remain abundant and relatively cheap for the foreseeable future; thus, chemical based fertilizers are, and will continue to be, a relatively inexpensive way for the gardeners to fertilize their plants for many years to come. The primary ingredients of chemical based fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) also are produced in a form that is readily available to the plant and thus provide a quick fix for a gardener, or farmer, whose plants are suffering from a deficiency of one of the three major plant nutrients. Note, however, that chemical fertilizers do nothing to replace the deficiencies of trace elements which may hamper plant growth because the vast majority of these chemical compounds are devoid of these important nutritional factors. Like it or not, however, large agricultural operations which produce crops like corn and wheat, are now, and will continue to be, dependent on the mass production of chemical fertilizers for the foreseeable future because there simply is not enough environmentally safe organic fertilizer to meet their needs. Home gardeners, on the other hand, are not laboring under constraints of size and can easily produce enough cheap and safe organic fertilizer for their own gardens by following the relatively simple organic gardening techniques championed below. (This is an excerpt from a book I am writing on organic gardening) The disadvantages of chemical based fertilizers. Most chemical based fertilizers are produced either by the Haber- Bosch process, which combines natural gas and atmospheric nitrogen to form ammonium, or the Odda process which combines phosphate rock with nitric acid to produce a mixture of phosphoric acid and calcium nitrate. Controlled-release chemical fertilizers are most often produced from urea and formaldehyde- yuk! There are several significant disadvantages to the production and use of these potentially toxic products. With respect to the production of energy, in 2004, 317 billion cubic feet of natural gas was consumed in the industrial production of ammonia for the fertilizer industry. To put this in perspective, about 25.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is consumed in the United States each year for other purposes. However, as suggested above, it is not the depletion of our natural gas resources that is the primary disadvantage to the use of chemical based fertilizers; rather, it is the damage to the environment (primarily the soil and atmosphere) that speaks in deafening tones to the disadvantages of using these toxic products to fertilize the plants we grow and eat. Water pollution is inevitable in large agriculture operations when nutrients, especially nitrates, are washed into the watercourses. High intake of nitrates from contaminated ground water has been linked to thyroid cancer, skin rashes, hair loss, birth defects and the blue baby syndrome, a potentially fatal blood disorder in infants. Indications of nitrate poisoning in animals include discoloration of the mucous membranes, a sluggish staggering gate, labored breathing, rapid heart rate followed by collapse, coma and, in severe cases, death. Excess nitrates in the waters of our lakes and streams induce the growth of algae. When the algae die the microorganisms that consume them strip oxygen from the water causing the death of invertebrates, fish and shellfish. Anyone who has observed a stagnate pond has experienced this process first hand. For sure, it is not a pretty sight! Contamination from impurities is an inevitable result of the fertilization of plants with chemical based fertilizers. The type and concentration of these impurities, which may include fluorides, cadmium and uranium, will vary depending on the material used to manufacture the fertilizer, but you can rest assured that the inorganic fertilizer you purchase at your local nursery is never completely free of potentially toxic impurities that will end up in the food you eat, if you use these chemicals to fertilize your vegetable garden. By the way, the abomination called hydroponics is the ultimate chemical garden because plants are grown exclusively in a nutrient bath composed of man-made chemicals. Another significant disadvantage of chemical based fertilizers, of special concern to climate change enthusiasts, results from the fact that nitrogen based fertilizers are converted by soil bacteria to nitrous oxide the green house gas responsible for acid rain. Some environmentalists also believe that nitrous oxide is a significant contributor to global warming. Finally, and possibly most importantly, the prolonged application of chemical based fertilizers to the soil invariably results in a condition called fertilizer dependency. This is so, because the continuous application of fertilizers derived from chemicals eventually kills the organisms responsible for the soil ecosystems that produce natural organic fertilizers, like earthworm castings, to the soil. I will have a great deal more to say about this important subject below; however, for now, realize that the dearth of beneficial microorganisms and larger invertebrates in the soil renders the cultivation of plants totally dependent on the continuous use of the toxic chemical based fertilizers that caused the demise of the fragile soil ecosystem in the first place. If you have any questions Email them to me at docmerrill@aol.com.

The Dumbing Down Of American Youth

The indisputable decline of our once great country, America, began in the early 1960's under the administration of that colossal buffoon Lyndon Baines Johnson and his liberal followers on the far left. Johnson's Great Society was responsible for many of the ills that plague America today but, arguably, the most important of his misstep's were the policies that resulted in the dumbing down of America young people. From 1963 to 1980 the national mean SAT scores for white pre-college students dropped almost half a standard deviation on the verbal portion of the test and about a third on the math side of the test. This represented a 25 point drop in the math SAT scores and a whopping 45 point drop in the verbal scores. By the way, like it or not, the SAT test is one of the more reliable indications of cognitive ability ever designed by the sociologists that study the intellectual capacity of America's teenagers. Thus, this remarkable fall in SAT scores represented a significant decrease in the mean IQ of young people in America during the 60's and 70's. The social engineers in the Johnson administration, and most of the educators of the day, attributed this decline in the national cognitive ability of our youth to the fact that, as time went on in the 60's and 70's, more and more students from disadvantaged homes were taking the test. Thus, because cognitive ability is largely dependent on environmental factors, they wrongly argued, the mean SAT scores were bound to fall as educational opportunities were expanded to include an ever increasing number of children who were raised in poverty or near poverty in environments that were not conducive to the development of normal intellectual ability. Alas, most liberals, including their political leaders, and, most importantly, the liberal press and TV personalities on the left, still believe this erroneous explanation for the nation's intellectual decline today, 50 plus years after Lyndon Johnson picked up his beagle dogs by the ears because, he assured us, they liked it! However, most of the sociologists and psychologists who spend their lives studying the effects of all the factors that influence the intellectual development of the human brain, do not agree with Johnson's assertion that dogs like to be picked up by their ears, or this commonly held explanation for the falling SAT scores during the 60's and 70's. Rather, the vast majority of social scientists have concluded that the primary thrust of education, which prior to the Johnson administration had been concentrated on the education of the nation's brightest students, shifted 180 degrees in the early 1960's, when, In an effort to expand educational opportunities to all American children, irrespective of race or the socioeconomic status, educators supported by liberal politicians, initiated educational reforms that favored students with average and below average cognitive ability at the expense of those with very high intelligence. This shift, the experts tell us, was responsible for the declining SAT scores from 1960 to 1980. In short, the socialists effort to educate America's underclass had the effect of dumbing down the rest of the population. The effect of these shifts in educational policies, and most importantly where the educational dollars were spent, by the social engineers in the Johnson administration was to make it easier for students with average or below average intelligence to succeed in grade school and high school. The ultimate goal was to have as many of these under achievers as possible go to college whether they were college material or not. These unwise shifts in educational policies, of course, made it easier for gifted students to succeed in high school without really even trying. Only those who had their, and their parents, heart set on going to the elite ivy league schools and Stanford made a maximal effort to do as well as they possible could in high school. Unfortunately, the numbers of these over-achievers were too small to make a significant difference in the falling SAT scores of average students who took the test. In summary, scholars studying this phenomenon, the dumbing down of American students, have concluded that the decreasing demand for excellence in our schools in general and the shift in emphasis in educational goals from the gifted student to the mundane is largely responsible for the observed fall in intellectual capacity of today's student population as compared to the students of past generations. It is commonly said that the SAT was democatized in the 1960's and 1970's. If so, the results have been nothing short of disastrous for American life and it's culture as shown by the alarming increase in the rate of incarceration, the rate of single parent families, the outrageous increase in illegitimacy, and the staggering unemployment rate, to name only a few of the nation's most egregious social problems. If you are interested in pursuing this subject further, I suggest you invest $20.00 in Herrnstein and Murray's masterpiece- The Bell Curve. I assure you , it will be the best $20.00 you have ever invested in your education! Yes Mable, it is never too late to learn something useful! This book was a New York Times best seller for years despite the controversial nature of its content. For those of you who refuse to accept the fact that there has been a conscious effort by educators to dumb down the education our students are receiving from institutions of public learning, consider this. Since the 1960's the vocabulary in text books has been deliberately simplified in an effort to pander to IQ challenged students. This dumbing down of textbooks came under the guise of "readability" formulas devised by the school boards who buy the textbooks our elementary and high school students read. Thomas Sowell gave a good example of this effort to dumb down American textbooks. In this glaring example of stupidity on the part of one school board charged with the education of children in their district, the words spectacle and admired were deleted from a text book because they were deemed to be to difficult for high school students. As Sowell points out, "in the old days, words like species, dialogue, health, and benighted were intended for 8-year olds." Now days, they are not even expected to know what a spectacle is or what it means to admire someone or something. Yes, education has fallen a long way in this country and the national IQ has tumbled right along with it! Unfortunately, the end of this intellectual train wreck is nowhere in sight.

Organic Gardening- What is it? Why do it?

In its most basic form, organic gardening is the growth of the various forms of vegetation without the use of the chemical based fertilizers you buy at the local nursery or hardware store. Most gardeners add various mixtures of chemical fertilizers to the soil to feed the plants they are attempting to grow. Organic gardeners, on the other hand, add natural forms of organic material such as earthworm castings, manure, alfalfa pellets and humus from a compost pile to the soil to encourage the growth of beneficial microorganisms which, in turn, feed the plants and vegetables they wish to grow. In this respect, organic fertilizers such as bone meal and fish meal are similar to many of the chemical fertilizers in that they flood the soil with plant nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium; they differ, of course, from the chemical based fertilizers because they are produced from organic materials that are perfectly safe to use in a garden. In short, chemical fertilizers feed the plant directly with highly concentrated bursts of fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) produced by a chemical process while organic fertilizers feed the organisms in the soils natural ecosystem which, in turn, produce the sustained low levels of nutrients, including trace elements, necessary for healthy plant growth. Next week I will discuss the advantages of chemical fertilizers.

Should the U.S. pull out of Chicago?

The answer to this question have implications for all Americans as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century. Without any doubt Chicago is a microcosm that represents almost everything that is wrong in the land of Lincoln. Just think of this, 221 Americans were killed in Iraq during the last 6 months while 292 Americans were murdered in Chicago during the same period. Can't blame Republicans for this; there aren't any in Chicago! The Chicago school system is one of the worst in the country. Can't blame republicans for the cities fall into abject illiteracy; there haven't been any republicans on the school boards in Chicago for decades. The Illinois state pension fund is $78 billion in debt, worst in the country; can't blame republicans for this since, as I've said, there aren't any in Chicago. The Cook County sales tax is 10.25%, the highest in the country; can't blame republicans, the last one left this liberal hell-hole years ago. George Ryan is no longer governor, he's in the big house along with Illinois' last governor Rob Blagojevich. Chicago's Representative Jesse Jackson, along with his crooked wife Sandi, are headed for the same big house. In fact, I think they checked in yesterday. One of Chicago's best known sleaze balls, our president Barack Hussein Obama, should be in the big house and probably will end up there sooner or later, if junk food, liquor and cigarettes don't get him first. Dick Durban, Pat Quinn Mike Madigan, Lisa Madigan Illinois' State Attorney General, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel are all crooked white liberal demorats supported by Chicago's corrupt public employ unions who control the low IQ blacks and poor white trash who are the majority voting bloc in Chicago. So, common sense would suggest that we cut our losses and bail out of Chicago. Unfortunately, the problem is more complicated than it might seem at first glance. In the first place, and most importantly, there is not just one Chicago! Today, the US is full of Chicago's; Detroit, Washington DC., Oakland California, Richmond California, Stockton California, Los Angeles, Richmond Virginia, to name only a few of the most obvious liberal enclaves that have imploded, or are about to implode. All of these third world county like enclaves are run by corrupt liberal demorats who have been in charge of their local and state governments for many decades. In states like CaliMexico the entire state government is run by corrupt liberal politicians and the self-serving public employee unions who support them. It has been years since Republicans have had enough political power to make the slightest difference in the state's policies. Unlike Rush Limbaugh, I do not believe this sad state of affairs can be turned around at the ballot box. Similarly, Mark Levin's belief that enough people will wake up and support a state convention that will amend the constitution and bring the federal government and Supreme Court back in line with what the framers of the constitution intended, is simply silly! When all is said and done, you can't expect people who are on the receiving end of government largess, to vote against, what they perceive to be, their best interests and the freebees they receive from their local, state and federal governments. This will not happen, not in a million years it won't! Limbaugh and Levin have been sniffing to much fairy dust. No, as I pointed out in my novel Escape from Chaos, there is only one answer to the mess the liberals have made of the once great cities of America, a second American revolution. The sooner we get on with it the better!

Standard composting-Part 11

After constructing a cage, the material to be composted is merely thrown into the wire cage as it becomes available. Rather than turning the material every week or so to aerate it, the wire sidewall of a circular gage is lifted off the original pile and moved to a flat area adjacent to it. A shovel is used to transfer the decomposing material into the now empty circular wire container. This maneuver minimizes the labor required to aerate the composting material in the pile; however, irrespective of the methodology employed, a compost pile must be turned at least once a week for aerobic decomposition to occur and to prevent it from becoming anaerobic and sour. Anaerobic piles smell like vinegar and take on a matted slimy appearance that attracts flies. A sure way to achieve an anaerobic compost pile is to add a solid layer of green lawn clippings to the pile. As many of us have learned the hard way, the lawn clippings will quickly turn into a dark green slimy smelly mess. What can be put into a compost pile? Gardeners fill their compost bins with a combination of organic wastes commonly referred to as browns and greens. These materials may be added in layers or mixed together, ideally, at the rate of about three parts brown to one part green; however, for practical purposes, the exact proportions of each ingredient is not too important. So, don't worry too much about the ratios of browns to greens when adding organic material to your compost pile; if fact, I never give the issue a second thought. Green materials are rich in nitrogen and include green lawn clippings, fruit and vegetable kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, tea leaves, egg shells and, most importantly, animal manures. I expect that egg shells, although carbon based, are considered to be green because they usually are mixed with green kitchen scrapes. Browns are rich in carbon and include dried lawn clippings, tree leaves, dead plants and weeds, sawdust, straw, cardboard, shredded paper and paper towels. What should not be placed in a compost pile. Human or pet feces should not be added to a compost pile because they may contain harmful pathogens and parasites. Cat feces can be particularly harmful because cats often are infected with the toxoplasmosis parasite that can cause blindness. Kitchen waste that contain oil, fat, bread, pasta, cooked food or nuts should not be added to a compost pile first, because they are slow to decompose and second, because they will attract pests and vermin to a compost pile if it is not covered. It probably is best not to add weeds that have gone to seed to a compost pile because the temperatures in the pile may not get hot enough to kill the seeds. Finally, do not attempt to compost plastic or synthetic fibers since they will not decompose, even under the most optimal conditions. Constructing a simple efficient compost pile. First, obtain a segment of wire mesh, like chicken wire or Yard Gard Vinyl covered welded wire, approximately 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. Overlap the cut ends of the wire to form a circular structure approximately three feet in diameter. If your are forming a cage from chicken wire use staples or roofing nails to fasten the cut ends of the wire to two pieces of four foot long 1'' x 4'' so that the ends of the wire cage you are building are easy to manipulate. Drill two 1/4'' in diameter holes in the 1'' X 4''s about one foot from each end and join them together with two threaded quarter inch bolts that are three inches in length. Alternately, hold the ends together with a short bungee cord. You have now formed a light weight easy to maneuver wire cage that will hold about 30 cubic feet of compost, perfect for a backyard compost pile! Now, select a space to place the wire composting cage. The area must be flat and large enough to accommodate at least two gages side by side (even if you will be using only one composting cage there must be sufficient room so that it can be moved to the side when you refill it every week or so. A compost pile may be placed on any surface; however, if it is to be placed on a surface like cement or asphalt, be sure to add a handful or two of fertile soil to the mix so that the pile has enough bacteria to begin the decomposition process. It doesn't take much, as one tea spoon of fertile soil adds 100 million bacteria and 400 to 800 feet of fungal threads to the material to be composted (Oregon State University). Begin the composting process by adding a 6 inch layer of brown waste consisting of tree leaves, dry grass or threaded newspaper to the bottom of the pile, follow this with a two inch layer of green waste, kitchen scrapes or animal manure. Continue to add alternate layers of brown and green waste until the cage is full, adding water to each layer as you build the compost pile. The material should as wet as a wrung-out sponge. Alternately, add a mixture of browns and greens as they become available. As long as there is a sufficient amount of nitrogen (green waste) in the mix it should begin to decompose within a few days. You can follow the process by monitoring the temperature in the pile with an inexpensive compost thermometer purchased at your local garden store. How to use compost. I cannot think of a situation where compost will not improve the condition of garden soil. For all practical purposes, there is no limit to the amount you can add to the soil in your garden, the more the better. Compost is particularly valuable as a soil conditioner for soils with either a high content of clay or sand. In sandy soils compost aids water retention and it adds organic material to infertile adobe and clay soils. One word of caution though, if the composting process is not complete before it is added to garden soil, it may rob nitrogen from the soil as the material being composted continues to break down. How to determine if the composting process is complete? This can be a particularly vexing problem, especially if new material is continually being added to the pile as it becomes available; in that situation the composting process will never be complete. However, here are a few guidelines to follow. Finished, or almost completed compost, will have a dark brown color, a crumbly texture and an earthy smell. Few, if any, particles such as small pieces of leaves and grass, will be visible in the compost. Finished compost will be reduced to 1/3rd of its original volume. Finally, the internal temperature of the pile will approach the ambient outdoor temperature when the decomposition process is complete. The temperature of the pile, as mentioned above, can be determined with an inexpensive compost thermometer. Finally, I do not believe it is necessary, or advisable, to add lime, activators or accelerators of any kind to a compost pile. These additives are not necessary and are potentially harmful to the composting process. How long will it take to compost my green and brown waste? The composting process can take as little as one to two months or as long as two years depending on the material to be composted and the care given to maintaining the pile. As mentioned above, for efficient composting, the ratio of browns and greens in the pile should be about three to one; the volume of the pile should be at least 27 cubic feet; the pile should be kept moist, but not wet; and, most importantly, the material in the pile should be turned no less than once a week. Finally, in cold climates the compost pile should be covered with something like a tarp or old rug to prevent, as much as possible, heat from escaping from the pile.