Choosing Flowering Plants For An Organic Garden

There is a simple and fool-proof way to select flowering plants that will enhance the beauty of an organic garden year around. Rather than poring over books with pictures of flowering plants; struggling with unpronounceable Latin names of the plants; and making numerous trips to the nursery to determine if the plants you select are available, let your local nursery do the work for you. Nurseries make money by selling attractive plants; more significantly, to stay in business, they must feature plants that flower at all times of the year, not continuously but seasonably. Thus, if you visit your local nursery periodically throughout the year, in a year or so, you will be able to purchase seasonable plants that will provide color to your garden the entire year unless, of course, you are living in the frozen tundra of Alaska or the Midwest. If that is the case you, unfortunately, you will be stuck with the color white for six or more months of the year, great for making snowmen but not so good for enhancing the beauty of your frozen garden. A significant advantage of this methodology for selecting flowering garden plants results from the fact that nurseries, with few exceptions, only stock plants that will do well in the climate in which you live. Thus, you do not have be too concerned about whether or not the plants you select will thrive in your garden. Not only is nursery shopping a wise way to select plants for the garden it also is a lot of fun. I look forward to my periodic visits to our local nurseries in my never-ending search for new plants that will increase the beauty of my organic garden, I know you will too!

What Does It Mean To Have Faith?

I was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist colony in rural Humboldt County in Northern California. Except for my parents and my Uncle Frank's family, the members of the colony were elderly retired people who had moved to Eel Rock to escape the sins of the large cities and, more importantly, to await the second coming of Christ. Despite the false prophesies of the churches founder, Sister Ellen G. White, these God fearing people believed with every fiber of their frail bodies that the second coming was imminent. All of these true believers have been dead for 50 years or more and, to my knowledge, there still has been no sighting of the savior. Nonetheless, there undoubtedly are many Seventh Day Adventists alive today who cling to the belief that the second coming is at hand, just as they did in the days of my grandfather. As far back as I can remember, I struggled with the concept of faith which, of course, is the basis of all Christian religions. Now, in my 78th, I believe I have the answer. This is a bitter pill to swallow because without faith one must face the fact that at the time of death life ends and there is no tomorrow, here or anywhere else and certainly not in Heaven. So what is the definition of faith? What does it mean to have faith? Faith is the willingness to believe in something that in unbelievable, its really as simple as that. There are many examples of misguided faith in everyday life as well as religious lore. In today's world there are members of religious cults who forgo medical treatment for themselves and their children because they believe, to their dying breath, that their faith alone will be enough to cure them of the cancer that is literally eating them alive as they sit by and do nothing. Millions, if not billions, believe that their prayers will be answered despite clear evident to the contrary. If prayers were answered no none would became seriously ill, let alone die, and everyone undoubtedly would be rich. If only that were the case! The Bible, of course, is rife with examples of misguided faith. In this respect, absent blind faith, could any sane person believe that a man could walk on water; turn water into wine; be born of a virgin; or come back from the dead? Along the same vein, could any rational being believe that holy water has some magical quality or that lighting candles for the dead could possibly be of the slightest significance to the deceased? I think not! I see no harm in having faith except for the fact that to allow one's self to believe in the unbelievable is somewhat irrational and demeaning to the human spirit.

Saving America- Step 1

This is the first of a series of blogs designed to provide solutions to some of the most significant financial and social problems we face in the United States today. The problems are obvious and the suggested solution are, for the most part, simple and could easily be achieved if our political leaders had the will to implement them. In my soon to be published book, America In Decline, I point out the high price Americans are paying for illegal immigration, especially the immigration of low IQ illegal aliens from Mexico. Mexican illegal's are responsible for much of the crime in our large cities in the South and Southwest and the presence of their children in our schools is contributing significantly to the demise of our system of public education. The illegal's, 30 percent of whom are on welfare, also are significant drain of the countries' financial resources. In this respect we are paying a high price for the lettuce we buy at Walmart. Illegal immigration could be stopped in its tracks without building a single foot of new fence and without hireling an additional boarder agent! All that would have to be done to curb illegal immigration is to institute 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 number. Without a NIC a person would not be allowed to work and would not be allowed to vote! To ensure the law is obeyed, employers who hire illegal's without an NIC should be fined or imprisoned. The size of the fines would reflect the size of the employers business enterprise. Repeat offenders, without exception, should be sent to prison. Similarly, counterfeiter's of NIC cards would receive equally severe punishment. Persons without a NIC should not be ineligible for any form of welfare including food stamps, housing aids, non emergency medical care and federal educational grants. Without such welfare it is highly likely that the vast majority of the illegal's in the United States would return to the country of their origin, in this case Mexico. 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 or elderly, to obtain and show an NIC before they can vote. Have no doubt about it, we not talking about discrimination here! Rather, we are talking about the facilitation of voting fraud by the Al Sharpton's, Jessie Jackson's and Louis Farrakhan's of the world, nothing more, nothing less. The claim that a NIC card would impede blacks from voting, is a specious argument at best in twenty-first century America and brings to mind a encounter I witnessed recently at our local Sears department 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, an NIC if you will, and the $15 transaction went off without a hitch. Now I ask you, if a person has to show a pictured identification card to make a $15 credit card purchase at Sears, is it unreasonable to ask him, or her, to do the same before they are allowed to vote or apply for a job? No, the specious arguments made by the liberals against a NIC is simply another of their endless attempts to facilitate illegal immigration and undermine the sanctity of the vote. In summary, the implementation of a NIC solves two of our most significant problems, illegal immigration and voting fraud. Unfortunately, this suggest will not see the light of day anytime soon because the liberals see illegal's as future members of the Democrat party and big business, especially agribusiness, views the illegal's as a cheap form of labor. In the next blog I will discuss ways to decrease the rate of crime in America.

Crime in twenty-first Century America

Like it or not, crime is closely associated with intelligence and race. Throughout the world this general rule applies: the darker are the skins of a country's people the lower is the mean IQ of its population and the higher its crime rate. There is a reason that the countries with the five highest murder rates in the world are all in Africa. In America, which has the seventh highest murder rate in the world, if you remove Chicago, Washington DC, New Orleans and the cities of Flint and Detroit Michigan from consideration, we would be fourth from the bottom in race to become the world's most murderous nation. These crime ridden cities are predominately black and have been run by corrupt incompetent black politicians for the past 50 or 60 years. Liberal theorists argue that environmental factors, including poverty, lack of educational opportunity and the usual litany of other disadvantages that afflict the poor, are responsible for the lack of economic development, poverty and high crime rates in countries and cities that are predominately Black or Latino. These arguments do not explain the fact that cities like Detroit and Flint Michigan were, only a few short years ago, shining examples of America's greatness. That, of course, was before they became predominately black. The disparity in prosperity between nations also can't be explained by differences in national resources as many liberal theorists are want to do. For example, The per capita income in Venezuela is only $6406 a year even though this small South American country has $14.3 trillion in natural recourses, the tenth largest in the world. Similarly, Africa nations have an abundance of national resources including copper, manganese, iron ore, gold, oil, gas, diamonds and uranium yet the vast majority of the African people live in abject poverty. Liberals will maintain, to their last dying breath, that Africans remain poor because of foreign exploration, capitalism and white supremacy. These ridiculous claims are made despite the fact that Charles Taylor, Paul Bizo, Robert Mugabr, Sani Abacha, Seku Toure, Macias Nguema, Siad Barre, Omar Al-bashi, Hissine Habre, Amin Dada and Idi Amin, to name only 10 of the worst dictators running these impoverished African countries, are all black. Reminds one of Detroit and Flint Michigan doesn't it. But, as often is the case, I stray from the point. Author's like Herrnstein and Murray who write about America's social and economic problems do not emphasize sufficiently, I think, the undisputable fact that there is a significant racial component to illegitimacy; crimes such as murder, rape and theft; and other forms of antisocial behavior. These antisocial acts are predominately committed by people of color and until we recognize this reality it is extremely unlikely that the situation will change in any meaningful way. For example, in New York city 96% of the crimes are committed by Blacks and Chicanos even though they comprise only about 50% of the population. This should come as no surprise to anyone who watches the evening news because the vast majority of crimes report on, especially those occurring in American larger cities, are committed by Blacks and Latinos, many of the latter being illegal's from Mexico. As I will stress to ad nauseam in this book we are paying a high price for diversity and a even higher price for not recognizing the fact that, after 60 plus years of political correctness, head start and the host of other social programs designed to lift the down trodden minorities from poverty, the crime rate is many times higher now in the minority community than it was before Lyndon Baines Johnson began his war on poverty. When all is said and done today, after 60 years of every affirmative action program imaginable, black males who do not make it in sports seem designed for a life of crime and poverty. The criminal element in Black and Latino America, irrespective of IQ, has played a significant role in America's decline and it's high time we recognized this all to obvious and important fact. In this respect, when reporting on crimes, newscasters today seldom mention the race of the criminal, even when they are attempting to assist the authorities in tracking down the person, or persons, who committed the offenses. At present it is considered racist even to mention the skin color of a person who has committed a criminal act unless, of course, he or she happens to be white. A good example of this politically correct lunacy is the way the media reports on the knockout game which in now the rage in the inner cities of America. Reporters from all branches of the media invariably report that these crimes are being committed by a generic group of teenagers while it is perfectly obvious to anyone who has TV, or some type of I pad device, that the vast majority of these senseless batteries on innocent victims are being committed by black hoodlums. At this point in time, political correctness has so muddied the waters that members of the media cannot, under any circumstance, make reference to the color of a criminals skin for fear of being tagged as a racist, and they don't! I take the opposite view! Unless we face up to the fact that minority Blacks and Latinos, are primarily responsible for crime in America we will not be able decrease the crime rate one iota. In this respect, we should not be passing out get out of jail free passes to individuals just because they are Black or Chicano. Rather, we should own up to the fact people of color are responsible for most of the crimes committed in Americas larger cities and take whatever measures necessary, including racial profiling when appropriate, to curtain their criminal activity. In the case of inner city crime, I fail to understand why we have not been able to eliminate the gangs that, for all practical purposes control the streets in many of our large cities. This is particularly puzzling since we were able to curtail the mobs in the 1930s and those criminals were, on average, far more intelligent and sophisticated than the members of today's gangs whether they be white, black, Chicano or Asian. In this respect, it should come as no surprise, as Herrnstein Murray point out in The Bell Curve, that 78 percent of all Black and Latino gang members are cognitively challenged. One has to wonder if our adversity to racial profiling has anything to do with the fact that these hoodlums, which now number over 1,400,000 in the USA, are allowed to cause such havoc in our society. If we have learned anything from the failures of the past 60 or so years of failed social engineering, it is that we need to spend more tax dollars on jails and prisons and less on ineffectual pie in the sky rehabilitation programs. Despite what the liberal social engineers tell you, most attempts at rehabilitation of the criminal element fail and, thus, are not cost effective. No matter how you slice it, 70 percent of all crimes are committed by repeat offenders who have failed to benefit from either prison time or r

Corrupt 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 livelihoods 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, interestingly, they were paid only if they showed up for work. At the time of our nation's founding, it was a significant imposition for politicians to leave their farms and places of business to serve in a public office. They made this sacrifice because they cherished 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, as was most often the case, 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 a good salary and many, not so well hidden, perks. For example, if you were a congressman or a senator wanted to make more money you did not have to ask the boss for a raise or increase the acreage of your tobacco farm. Nope, you could just vote yourself a raise and, as long as the legislation authorizing the increase in salary 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. Rather, 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 (to date corrupt female politicians 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 in one of their nefarious and endless get-rich schemes than are the average politicians in other parts of the country. 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 Banes 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 nefarious 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. Feinstein and her husband Richard Blum are worth an estimated 100 million dollars. As was the case with LBJ, whose money was made in the name of his wife, Lady Bird, Feinstein's money has been accumulated in the name of her investor banker husband Richard C. Blum. Much of Blum's wealth was made in federal governmental contracts brokered for him by his wife Senator Dianne Feinstein who, as a member of several important senatorial committees including, most importantly, the appropriations committee, has tremendous clout in the halls of congress. It is highly unlikely that Blum could have been as successful in his business dealing with the government if his wife had not been a powerful US senator who worked behind the scenes to 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, Blum Capital, 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 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 use her political clout 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 were not all that wealthy when they first got 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 and undoubtedly far less than they will be worth at the end of their dubious political careers in Washington DC. No, in the days of our founding fathers 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, their corrupt political practices are ruining the country in the process.

America In Decline

As things now stand, we are living in the last days of the great American experiment, of that there can be little doubt. Flint Michigan, with a murder rate of 64.9 per 100,000 is the largest killing field in the country but other large cities including Detroit, New Orleans, St Louis and , Baltimore are not far behind. Just consider this fact for a moment. In the entire world only one country, Honduras, has a higher murder rate than Flint Michigan. Not only do the majority of our large inner cities look like war zones but 59,500,000 of our citizens are on either welfare or food stamps. Another 10.9 million are chronically unemployed. Seventy two percent of black children are born out of wedlock and 15.1 percent of our citizens live in abject poverty. 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 goes to bed hungry every night. Cities, large and small, are filing for bankruptcy at an alarming rate. California, with the world's eighth largest economy, has $162 billion in admitted unfunded pension liabilities (outside analyst's peg the true figure to be between $500 billion and $884 billion) and already is bankrupt even though the liberals running the state continue to spend money on bullet trains and other boondoggles as if it grew on trees and there was no tomorrow. 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 at a rate of $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! At this point, the only question is what, if anything, will be done to right our sinking ship of state.

What Can Be Fed To Composting Earthworms?

Unlike the magnificent carnivores, the Red Wiggler (eisenia foetida) earthworms used in vermiculture have very small mouths and do not have the greatest teeth. In fact they do not have any teeth at all! Thus, even though they can eat almost anything that was once alive, it may take them a long time to do it. For example, if you give them a raw carrot they will not be able to do much with it until it starts to decompose and softens up a bit. On the other hand, earthworms will devourer a cooked carrot in a few days. Along the same lines, composting earthworms love newspaper and can consume large quantities of it in a relatively little time; however, they cannot handle paper that is matted together. Thus, newspaper should be shredded before it is feed to earthworms. If you do not have a paper shredder you can add single sheets of newspaper to a wormery as long as they are separated from each other by the other organic material in the worm's bedding. Along the same lines, earthworms love cardboard. If you add large pieces of cardboard to your worm bins the worms will love to live in it but they will not be able to eat it until it softens up and starts to decompose. To clarify this issue, I should point out that earthworms are actually eating the protozoa and microorganisms that cover the newspaper and cardboard, the paper simply gets consumed in the process. A lot has been written about what earthworms like and dislike. For example, they are not supposed to like citrus fruit, especially the skins. On the contrary, I have found that my worms love the pulp of an orange and will also consume the rinds as soon as they soften up. The Red Wiggler Earthworms used for composting kitchen waste, however, would not do well if feed nothing but, or primarily, citrus skins or citrus pulp because large quantities of this organic material would make the worms bedding to acidic. In this respect, everything in moderation applies to earthworm farming. Contrary to what you may have been told, composting Red Wiggler Earthworms also will eat any meat product, the rottener the better! Just be sure to bury the meat and other similar items in the bedding so that they will not attract flies. Again, everything in moderation is the rule here. If you give your composting earthworms more than they can eat (over feed them with meat products) the bins will begin to smell bad which, of course, is a problem if your worm bin is indoors. With respect to home vermiculture, the only type of kitchen waste that should not be put in a worm bin is large quantities of fatty substances like grease, lard and butter. Small quantities of these products are OK and need not be separated from the other table scrapes you feed worms. In short, you can feed your Earthworms almost anything from your kitchen, even egg shells! Over wet, worm bedding can be a problem in home wormeries because vegetable scraps, which are excellent food for composting Earthworms, are 80% water. As a result, the bedding of worms that are feed primarily vegetable scraps will rapidly become muddy. The answer, is to place layers of threaded newspaper between the layers of kitchen waste. This practice also will provide a more favorable carbon/nitrogen balance in the worm’s bedding because the high nitrogen content of the vegetable waste is offset by the carbon rich newspaper. What should not be fed to Earthworms? Any leaf that has an aromatic aroma is not suitable for vermiculture. This includes pine and redwood needles and eucalyptus and pepper wood leaves. Redwood and cedar chips also should be avoided in vermiculture. Very large volumes of dairy and meat products should not be fed to your Earthworms because worms have a difficult time digesting high concentrations of oil and fat. However, as discussed above, small amounts of these ingredients are well tolerated and there is no reason to separate them from the other table scraps that you feed your worms.