Los Angeles Pawn Shop
Photo by: javazetti

My father used to tell me this story: Jake came up to my father and asked, "Herschel, how much do I owe you?" My father answered, "Twenty zloties, Yacov, why?" To which Jake responded, "Lend me ten more and I'll owe you thirty."

The next week the scenario repeated itself, Jake: "Herschel, how much do I owe you?" My father would say thirty zloties and Jake would ask to borrow another ten.

The issue of lending money to relatives is very neuralgic to the average person. There is nothing more uncomfortable than having a cousin, niece, nephew or sibling ask you for a loan. While I find no problem with loans to businesses or strangers, lending money to relatives is a lose-lose proposition.

So here you are, not making any interest on your money and actually worse, losing interest you could have made by keeping cash in a CD or savings account. If your relative can't pay you back, what are you going to do, sue? Have Tony Bagodonuts break some legs?

No, if you want to keep your relations happy, then disabuse yourself of the notion that lending money to your sister Mary can end in anything but bitterness and regret, by both parties.

But you may ask, "If I have the money to spare and they really need it, shouldn't I lend it to them?" No, no, no, no. There is nothing worse than lending money to people in need. Banks don't do it, neither should you. You should only lend money to people who don't need it and can pay you back. But if that's true then they can get the money from a bank and they shouldn't be bothering you.

One of the reasons a bank makes money by lending is that they charge interest, they spread the risk among many borrowers, and they sell the loan when it turns bad. Unless you intend on charging interest, lending to a few hundred relatives, and foreclosing or selling the loans if they turn bad, then do not ever, ever lend money to relatives.

If Aunt Martha needs a kidney transplant or cousin Betty needs a breast implant (at least you may get some benefit if cousin Betty (pictured here) shows you the after photo), then you can help them out by simply giving them money instead of making a loan.

What you give will depend on what you can afford to throw away. If you decide that $500.00 is the amount then say to Aunt Martha, or better yet to cousin Betty, "I'm sorry, I cannot lend you $5,000 - and I know you need to have big boobs badly but all I can afford to give you is $500.00; it's not a loan, please take this as a gift. I don't want you to repay it, if you try I will refuse. I hope this helps."

In this manner you do three things:

1. You help your relative out; not completely but at least some help.


2. By giving a 'gift' you preclude the possibility of your relative coming back and asking for another gift. Asking for another loan is easier than going up to someone and asking for another gift. That's not how gifts work. Try it yourself. It's not uncomfortable to ask for a number of loans but no one will come up to you and say, "Hey, Joe, give me another $500.00."


3. Since there is no loan, there will be no bitterness on either party since there will never be any request for repayment. Nothing destroys a relationship as a bad loan. When they are unable to repay they will avoid seeing you.

The only time to break this rule is if you actually want your relative never to come around ever again. In that case, lend him or her enough money to ensure that they will never be able to pay you back. Harangue them a few times when they are late in paying you back and you will never see them again.

Now it may happen that a relative will ask you for a thousand dollar loan for some project or deal and you have that amount of money and you don't mind lending it to them. Don't do it. Make it a gift. Just because you can afford to make the loan is no reason to do it. If you want to ruin your relationship then lend away. But lending money to them will only make your relatives despise you. First because you have the money and they don't and second, because you put them in a subordinate position. When someone receives a gift they do not feel as if they are less a person than you.

The beauty of a gift is that if things get worse for your relatives they will not hate you for their predicament. If they borrowed a few hundred dollars and they need ten bucks for food and can't pay you anything that week, they will curse you for putting them in the position of a borrower and they will never forget it. If you gave them a gift and they have little money for food they will not curse you because you are not even in their minds, in fact they forgot that you even gave them any money. Certainly, they will not have any reason to avoid you.

There is nothing more important than family. Keep it that way.

President George W. Bush speaking during
a special session of the Israeli Parliament
in Jerusalem
Photo Credit: Ariel Schalit

If George Bush had said, "There are some people in this country that seem to enjoy eating chocolate-covered cockroaches," would Obama have thrown a hissy fit over the statement? Would he have thought that he was the object of the attack? Obviously not, unless Obama actually enjoys eating chocolate-covered cockroaches. An innocent person would have laughed off the comment by saying it couldn't possibly be referring to him. In fact a truly innocent person wouldn't have responded at all.

So why is everyone protesting too much? All the Liberals and Leftists have suddenly suffered a collective apoplexy over the appeasement remark; here's Joe Biden [a tip of the turban to Americablog]: "This is bullsh**t. This is malarkey. This is outrageous."

But what's so outrageous? Here's the text:

The Wall Street Journal, Bush Charges ‘Appeasement’ in Knesset Speech

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

By the way, Bush could not have been referring to Democrats or Obama since the Senator who made the remark was the defeatist, isolationist, appeaser Republican, William Edgar Borah [PolitickerMD] also [Washington Post]. So there.

Photo: Skeptical Monkey

Your first reaction upon reading that headline should be, "Wow, Great! Finally the Brits are wising up and getting rid of Muslims in their country." Sadly, it is only about psychics and mediums. Muslims will still be able to pretend that the militant political ideology known as Islam is a religion. By the end of this month the Brits are set to pass a series of regulations consistent with those of the EU intended to protect consumers from commercial scams that we in the states are all too familiar with.

Here's the gist of it:

Digital Journal, British Government Set To Crack Down On Psychic Community

As reported in the Guardian: "If the Consumer Protection Regulations are approved by Parliament, as is likely...the regulations will come into force on 26 May. They will ban 31 types of unfair sales practice outright, including bogus closing-down sales, prize-draw scams and aggressive doorstep selling, and will for the first time establish a catch-all duty not to trade unfairly, closing loopholes that rogue traders have been able to exploit".

By lumping spiritualism in as a consumer service, mediums assert they are prone to a spike in lawsuits if customers are somehow dissatisfied with the information they receive. The solution, according to legal experts is to provide a disclaimer up front, making it clear that any communication with the other side is undertaken strictly for 'entertainment purposes' or as a 'scientific experiment'.

Spiritualists claim that such measures discriminate against their practices which they believe are religious in nature.

There are over 300 Spiritualist churches in the UK; it will be interesting to see how the new regulations will apply to them.

The carnage of the Great War of the last century left so many dead it dramatically increased the calls for 'services' of mediums who could help them make contact with the dearly departed. Taking that into consideration, I suggest that the psychics in the UK convert to Islam so that in the course of practicing their new religion they can slaughter infidels and make money at the same time by fleecing the surviving relatives.

So just like auto-glass companies that send out workers to crack windshields when business is a little slow, Muslim psychics can always engage in a mini-jihad whenever they need a little boost in revenues.

To be fair, I don't see why British mediums, snake oil dealers, psychics, storm-door salesmen, healers and Tarot card readers will have to prove in court any of their claims that they can heal people, see into the future, save on heating bills, or talk to the dead, after all, Muslims are never required to prove that Islam is the Religion of Peace. And how many times have you heard that claim?

Who called me chicken?
Photo by: mselderhuis

Arthur Neville Chamberlain was 68 years old when he became Prime Minister of Britain in 1937. Like many who had lived through the horrific years of the Great War, Chamberlain would do anything to avoid going to war again which explains why he bent over backwards for Hitler and took it up the wazoo. In his defense, I should mention that I am now beginning to think that conciliatory cowardice is a mental illness that afflicts old men who have lived through a previous war.

This may explain why John Murtha is a cowardly defeatist. Anyone who wants us out of Iraq precisely because he thinks that negotiation and appeasement will work better against our Muslim enemies than a whack over the head has to be mentally ill.

What is it about these old farts that turns them into drooling, sniveling, servile knee-bucklers?

ethanol powered car
Photo by: homedad33

Contrary to all the hype we now know that Ethanol is not the liquid filling the cup of the Holy Grail: it requires massive subsidies (In 2005 alone corn subsidies totaled $9.4 billion); it will never displace any significant amount of imported oil; it has a deleterious effect on air quality; and it's the major cause of the rise in food prices [George Edward Loper].

The subsidy process, aside from money, requires tremendous legislative efforts: acording to Global Subsidies Initiative [PDF] there are now in place hundreds of programs to subsidize nearly every stage of the ethanol and biodiesel supply chains. The National Biodiesel Board, for example, notes that it is tracking more than 160 pieces of legislation at the state level for biodiesel alone.

It is not only air quality that suffers:

Madville Times, 7 Dec 2007, Ethanol Pros and Cons: Energy Independence, But Poison Burgers

One of the great side-benefits of turning corn into ethanol is that the ethanol plants also produce distiller's grain, which makes good cattle feed. Feed your car, feed your cows. Heck of a deal!

But then along come those darn scientists, having to point out the downside: AP reports that Kansas State University researchers have found cattle fed distiller's grain are twice as likely to carry deadly E. coli 0157. E coli -- that's that bacteria that causes 73,000 infections and 61 deaths each year.

And now the New York Times is suggesting the time has come for Congress to rethink ethanol. One of the reasons: studies suggesting that some biofuels — corn ethanol in particular — could accelerate global warming. Interestingly, while the Old Gray Lady does not miss a sharp dig at President Bush, she did fail to mention Al Gore and his role in saving Ethanol:

The Clinton White House Website, 1 Dec 1998, THIRD ANNUAL FARM JOURNAL CONFERENCE

Al Gore: "I was also proud to stand up for the ethanol tax exemption when it was under attack in the Congress -- at one point, supplying a tie-breaking vote in the Senate to save it. The more we can make this home-grown fuel a successful, widely-used product, the better-off our farmers and our environment will be."

Even as we learn more and more each day of the Global Warming Hoax, Al Gore is still pushing this now-debunked myth out in Burma blaming the loss of tens of thousands of lives on a Global Warming cyclone instead of the military junta that surely made the disaster worse. Of course, before Al Gore brought us the truth of Global Warming there were never events in our past history of anything like cyclones or earthquakes. These are new phenomena brought on by a greedy, consuming Capitalist culture.

It must have been a wonderful thing - the good old days - before industry and modern civilization screwed up the Earth; imagine a time when there were no natural disasters!

Here for your edification my dear Mr Gore is the inconvenient truths about Ethanol, one of the worst fuels one can use:

• Subsidies to biofuels cost us between $5.5 billion and $7.3 billion a year [Global Subsidies Initiative]


• If you drive cars made before 1990 (or before 1994 for biodiesel) there may be rubber in the fuel system (I drive a 1989 Honda Civic, 33 miles per gallon) which Ethanol will have no problem dissolving along with any other rubber or plastic componenents. Three years ago I had my fuel lines and fuel pumps replaced. If you have an older car, you should do liekwise unless you want your car to go up in flames.


• Ethanol is more conductive than gasoline and will act as an electrolyte causing galvanic corrosion in the fuel system unless that too, is re-engineered. Ethanol can have adverse effects on materials that gasoline would not. Brass, zinc, lead, and aluminum will all degrade when exposed to a strong alcohol like ethanol, not a good idea since the infrastructure for transporting oil or fuel is through the use of metal pipelines, tanker truck or railway tanker. [Science.Propeller.com]


• Because of the above problems, we will need to build an entirely new infrastructure:

  Energy Refuge, What is ethanol?

  an entire pipeline network would need to be constructed, or a virtual pipeline with dedicated tank trucks and railcars. Also, large-scale bio-refineries would have to be built.

  
  
  
• If your gas station is distant from the corn growing area you will find that Ethanol is as expensive or more costly than gasoline.


• Some experts estimate that cars running on E85 get 10 to 20 percent fewer miles per gallon than on gasoline.


• It is harder to start a cold engine on ethanol. The higher the percentage of ethanol, the sooner this will become an issue [Ethanol Fast]

For more inconvenient truths and misconceptions about ethanol read Cato Institute: Ethanol Makes Gasoline Costlier, Dirtier.

Sadly, Presidential Candidates wanting the support of Iowa voters have to pretend that Ethanol is the miracle cure that will get us off the teat of the oil tyrants in countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (it will not), clean up the environment (actually the opposite), save us money (in your dreams), and whiten your teeth. OK, OK, Al Gore didn't promise that last thing. Yet.

Now comes visual proof from reader and photo-blogger Edward Cropper from his article Such A Drink I've Never Tasted whose work I reproduce below with his kind permission.

Hate them Jews!
Photo by: Great Beyond

It happens all the time. I'll write, "Muslims are a threat to civilization," or "We should deport all Muslims," and some intellectual giant will comment, "Just substitute Jews in place of Muslims and you'll see how your remarks are no different than those of anti-Semites."

I suppose when I swap the words I am expected to admit that the sentiments expressed are no different than Hitler's. There is a difference. A big difference. Hitler knew Jews were not dangerous when he said that Jews were a threat and so all Jews should be deported. His purpose in making those allegations was to create a bogeyman in order to establish, consolidate, and increase his political power in Germany. If the number of Chinese in Germany were as large as the number of Jews he would have said exactly the same thing about the Chinese. He was no more anti-Semitic than I am.

Jews did not attack German citizens, did not plot to create a world Rabbinate, and could care less if anyone converted to Judaism. In fact if you go to a Rabbi today and say you want to be a Jew, most likely you'll get talked out of it: "Are you meshugah, you wanna be a Jew, vat for? You know vat kind of trouble your asking for? Such a headache being a Jew! Ehhh! Better you should go be a Baptist."

You will never see Jews capturing Journalists and promising to let them go if only they become Jews. It is to laugh. But OK, let me take the challenge: here is what I have written hundreds of times: "Muslims want to convert the whole World to Islam at the point of a sword." There are hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who believe that. But let's see how it sounds with the swap: "Jews want to convert the whole World to Judaism at the point of a sword." It's not only patently untrue, there is not a single, sane person who would believe it - not even Muslims.

It is not intolerance to say the truth. In actual fact, it is intolerance to yell 'bigot' or 'racist' when you disagree with someone because you have no logical argument to offer in response. First you should refute my statements with appeals to reason and logic and then conclude with whatever epithets are appropriate. But simply commenting, 'nyaah, nyaah bigot," without some convincing argument in rebuttal is not only childish but moronic, if you don't mind me saying.

Maybe if Our National Anthem
was "America the Beautiful..."
Photo by: TW Collins

In nature, the entity that supplies most of the benefit to a community gets most of the resources. Let's take the example of the Queen Bee. A queen develops from the same egg or larva as any other bee; the only difference is that she gets vastly greater amounts of royal jelly than the average worker honey bee. Because of this the queen develops into a sexually mature female.

It is the Queen Bee that ensures the survival of the hive and despite the communist misconception that it is the workers that contribute the most to society, nature itself makes the value judgment by allocating the greatest resources to whom she considers the most important. Of course, worker bees never complain that her Highness is only one bee yet consumes a greater proportion of resources than the rest of the hive. They know she deserves it.

Since I was a child I have heard, read, and seen reports about how much of the world's resources we few greedy Americans consume. Here's one:

Solar Energy International, Energy Consumption

• Though accounting for only 5 percent of the world's population, Americans consume 26 percent of the world's energy.


• In 1997, U.S. residents consumed an average of 12,133 kilowatt-hours of electricity each, almost nine times greater than the average for the rest of the world.


• America uses about 15 times more energy per person than does the typical developing country.

Mindfully.org, Consumption by the United States

On average, one American consumes as much energy as

• 2 Japanese


• 6 Mexicans


• 13 Chinese


• 31 Indians


• 128 Bangladeshis


• 307 Tanzanians


• 370 Ethiopians

So Average Joe American uses as much energy as 370 Ethiopians, so what? What the hell do Ethiopians contribute to the world? Nothing but more Ethiopians who consume the Earth's oxygen, beg us for money, food, and medicine and then bad mouth us for helping them.

We deserve to use more resources. It is Americans who have contributed the most in medicine, physics, and chemistry (38% of all Nobel Prizes); we are the most generous people on this planet; when there is a disaster somewhere the world expects us to help.

If you read the previous article posted today at Reject The UN, Who is Selfish? by An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings you would learn:

The overwhelming bulk of the burden in feeding the world’s starving poor remains with the United States and a small group of other predominately Western nations, a situation that the WFP [United Nations World Food Program] has done little so far to change, even as it has asked for another $775 million in donations to ease the crisis.
...
Donor listings on WFP’s website show that this year, as in every year since 1999, the U.S. is far and away the biggest aid provider to WFP. Since 2001, U.S. donations to the food agency have averaged more than $1.16 billion annually — or more than five times as much as the next biggest donor, the European Commission.

OPEC Countries with gazillions of dollars of oil revenues donated diddlysquat. Perhaps that's why Arabs introduced the concept of zero (from the Hindus) to the Western world: so they could give zip in humanitarian aid.

We contribute more to the world than we get back; if the world was fair we'd be consuming 75% of the world's resources and no one dare complain. When the rest of the world bitches about it it's because they are ungrateful wretches - without America the world would still be living in 1910 (although it should be noted that Muslim countries still live in 632 A.D.).

Related:

SFGate, 9 May 2008, UN to resume food aid flights to Myanmar

The United Nations says it will resume food aid flights to Myanmar on Saturday.

It also forecasts heavy rains next week in the country already devastated by a cyclone.

The U.N. food program says it will send two planes with goods to feed hungry survivors. The World Food Program had suspended help after Myanmar's junta seized U.N. aid shipments headed for hungry and homeless survivors.

I wonder if the United Nations Human Rights Council will officially condemn the junta or will it blame Israel for somehow causing the natural disaster?

Planck's Constant: For Gods Sake - Stop Helping Africa

Planck's Constant: Africa better off under Colonial Rule

Cross-Posted at Reject the UN

I would like to report the following news to you, my dear readers, using the new protocol suggested by our government in referring to terror groups. That is, to avoid referring to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups as Islamic or Muslim, and not to use terms like jihad or mujaheddin. Basically, we should avoid using terms that we in the West consider to have negative connotations when they, the , consider those terms in a positive light.

Normally, I view censor bars as silly devices that attempt to mask the truth but end up in fact revealing more than they hide. In the following case we may in fact see the truth more plainly through their use. So here is an article from Reuters that might interest those of you that follow the activities of UNRWA in Israel:

EXCLUSIVE-Gaza headmaster was "rocket-maker"

By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, say, he built rockets for .

The Israeli air strike that killed the 33-year-old last week also laid bare his apparent double life and embarrassed a U.N. agency which has long had to rebuff Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted fighting the Jewish state.

In interviews with Reuters, students and colleagues, as well as U.N. officials, denied any knowledge of Qiq's work with explosives. And his family denied he had any links at all, despite a profusion of posters at his home.

But leaders allied to the enclave's ruling Hamas group hailed him as a who led "engineering unit" -- its bomb makers. They fired a salvo of improvised rockets into Israel in response to his death.
...
Qiq's body was wrapped in an flag at his funeral, pictorial posters in his honour still bedeck his family home this week, and a handwritten notice posted on the metal gate at the entrance to the school declared that Qiq, "the chief leader of the engineering unit", would now find "paradise".
...
Qiq's sister said his wife and five children were worried by the lack of news on any pension payment: "Awad did a lot for UNRWA," she said. "The family hoped UNRWA would support them."

So it seems Israel was not far off all these years when they complained that that militants use UNRWA vehicles and facilities in its attacks against Israel. Who knew? Now the UN can't deny it. What's instructive is that this mild-mannered, model citizen was in fact a . As I've always said, we can't tell the from the moderate, peaceful Muslim and we shouldn't have to. If we don't deport them all now and keep out all new ones then one day we will be faced with a very, very horrible alternative.

[A tip of the turban to Infidels are Cool]

Cross-Posted at Reject The UN, Stop Raping Israel and Jihadi Du Jour

First let me give you the Zionist lie, the cover story that even Wikipedia repeats for general consumption as to how Pepsi Cola started: Before Pepsi was Pepsi it was called "Brad's drink" and was first made in New Bern, North Carolina, in the United States in 1893 by pharmacist Caleb Bradham.

A few years later, a soft drink competitor from Newark, New Jersey marketed a drink called "Pep Cola" but went bankrupt in 1898 at which time Caleb bought the trade name for $100 and renamed his drink "Pepsi Cola."

That's the official story. Now I will reveal to you the truth as discovered by Islamic scientists. I know what you are going to say, Islam with over 1.5 billion adherents has only produced 2 scientists who are Nobel Laureates, so why are Muslims wasting time looking for the secret origins of Pepsi?

I'll tell you why: because Pepsi is in actual fact a Zionist front. If you don't believe me, listen to Salem Salamah, a HAMAS Member of Parliament who, without revealing the names of those who discovered the sinister truth [Israeli agents would murder them immediately), explains the hidden meaning behind the letters forming the name PEPSI.

Salem Salamah: There are companies established by the colonialists and occupiers - large companies with branches all over the world, like Pepsi, Pepsi Cola. This is a well-known company.

Pepsi is an acronym. P-E-P-S-I - Pay Every Pence to Save Israel. Pay every pence - pence is one hundredth of a dollar – to save Israel. Pay every pence to save Israel. Shouldn't the Muslims have a fund, a company, or a large project to save the Al-Aqsa Mosque?

See the video below. If it doesn't play click this link.

You are probably amazed at the cleverness of the Zionists occupiers. In 1898, they already started collecting one pence for saving Israel (out of 5 cents a bottle) almost 2 decades before the end of WWII. How did these filthy Jews know that Turkey would ally with Germany in a war the Turks would lose that would result in the Treaty of Sèvres (the peace treaty of World War I between the Ottoman Empire and Allies), which treaty incorporated the Balfour Declaration which itself was a policy statement of the British government that it would "view with favour" the establishment in Palestine of "a national home for the Jewish people" and all of which was contingent on Turkey losing the war and the British administering the Mandate of Palestine? Just a fortunate guess?

No, this was no lucky prognostication. The Jews caused WWI precisely to set in motion the necessary chain of events that would lead half a century later to the establishment of the State of Israel:

MEMRI, 20 August 2004, Saudi Armed Forces Journal on the Jews

"The Jews caused the outbreak of World War I and World War II, after they deceived the English into believing that they would be the sole beneficiaries of the First World War. The wealthy Jews made fantastic profits, paid for by the blood of millions of Englishmen, Americans, French, etc.
...
"The Jews succeeded in preventing Turkey from exiting the war before its final defeat. Chaim Weitzman, Herzl's successor as leader of the Jewish Zionist movement, admitted that he prevented Turkey's exiting the war before the final victory."
...
"When the Jews took control over Eastern and Western Europe after the French, English, and Communist revolutions, they turned to the building of their state in Palestine..."

When will the world's peoples realize that Jews have dominion over them?

By the way my Muslim friend, don't bother switching to Coke instead of Pepsi, Coca Cola too is run by Jews. Ah, Jews, for only 19 million of them they seem to control everything.

Cross-Posted at Stop Raping Israel.

Poster: Paramount Pictures

The trouble with American kids and here I speak of 20 and 30 year olds, is that the moment they graduate high school, get a job, or meet their 'true love,' they want to flee the nest. On this forum the question was asked, "What is the average age to move out?" and 66% responded with 20 years old or less with many posters suggesting that even 17 or 18 is a good age to leave home.

In Italy, eight out of 10 Italians aged under 30 still live at home, and the average age for moving out is 36:

Annotico Report, 7 Oct 2007, Italy's Mamma's Boys Given Cash to Fly Nest

"Let's get these big babies out of the house," said Mr Padoa-Schioppa, who left home himself at the age of 19 to work in Germany.

"If young people stay with their parents, they do not get married or have any independence," he added.

Italian men make up the bulk of those staying at home, at around 67 per cent, and a mocking phrase has even been coined to describe them: "Mammoni" or "Big Mummy's boys".

Next year's budget will offer almost £700 [~$1400] in tax relief to Italians under 30 earning less than £10,500 [~$21,000] a year, and half that to those earning more.

In addition, the government will pay 19 per cent towards the cost of renting accommodation for university students if they study at least 65 miles away from their home.

• Italy 95%


• Spain 94%


• Germany 60%


• UK 57%


• France 57%


• Sweden 46%

I have two sons, two daughters-in-law, and two grandchildren living with my wife and me. My younger son had left a few years ago after he got married but after blowing $55,000 on rent, utilities, and food in two years he realized that it would take many years before he could save up to buy a decent home so he moved back in last year.

Three families can live cheaper than one. Think about it. Taxes on one large lot with a three family home are cheaper than for three separate one-family homes. Less food is wasted, certainly nothing is left long enough in the fridge to go bad. I pay the mortgage so my boys can save for their future. My housing costs are a lot less than three separate bills would have been for rent and utilities.

We all have cellphones but if we lived apart we each would have needed one land-line for emergencies or for billing purposes for DirecTV. Now we only need one. As for satellite TV, each additional DirecTV connection only costs $5.00. We have 8 DTRs and subscribe to the highest package you can possibly get and it still costs less than if we had 3 separate DirecTV accounts. Each grandchild has her own DTR or recorder so they can tape (that's an old word, no?) their favorite Hannah Montana shows without bothering mom or dad.

From May to September all of us enjoy a 28 foot in-ground pool in the backyard. It costs me the same amount of money to fill and heat the water whether I live alone or with my boys.

We have a 10 TB media server with 1500 movies, thousands of recorded TV shows, videos, photos, etc. that would have been three times more expensive if we had to triplicate it. When we buy a Blu-ray disc we save a copy to the media server and store the disc for safekeeping. We share the cost of buying among us. Even when we rent a movie, there is anywhere from 1 to 3 families watching it.

None of my boys have any debt. With 6 adults we get by quite easily with 4 cars. Normally each family would have needed 2 cars for work, shopping, etc. Five of us work, but with car-pooling we get by with 3 cars and always have one extra as a spare. If we all want to eat out at the same place out of town, 2 cars are enough for the eight of us. Had we lived separately in different cities we would have met up at the appointed restaurant with three cars.

We could get by with one washer and dryer but we have 2 of each just in case. Again, if we lived separately there would have been 3 sets of washer/dryers.

We only need one vacuum cleaner, one set of tools such as a hammer, screwdriver, drill set. The three families share two refrigerators and when Costco has a sale on 5 pounds of grapes I don't have to worry that they'll spoil before they can all be eaten.

If my son and daughter-in-law want to go see a movie or dine out alone, there is no need to find a baby-sitter, grandma and pop-pop are there. Arrangements can always be made. If the grandparents are retired there is no need for daycare.

The immigrant families that live in my neighborhood are a lot smarter than the average native-born American: they tend to live with three generations in a household, grandparents, parents and grandchildren. They save their money, work together in a business, pool their energies, husband their resources, and succeed in America better than the average non-immigrant.

I know that for many young Americans there is a stigma attached to being a momma's boy, but my boys laugh at that notion all the way to the bank. I cannot tell you how many times whenever we have a party over at the house that my sons' friends come up to me and ask if I can "adopt" them.

It is not just my sons who enjoy more of the finer things in life, the fact is it applies to all those who live with their parents; let me give you for example, the study of college kids who live with their parents [Harris Interactive]:

In every instance, college kids who live with their parents have more TVs, computers, DVD players, games consoles and so on than their fellow students. In addition, students who stay at home spend thousands less on non-educational expenses [Statistics Canada]: "Not surprisingly, living with parents or guardians while attending school had a big impact on non-educational expenditures at all levels of education. The average full-time university student living with their parents spent $4,400 on non-educational items compared to just over $8,160 for those who did not live with their parents. Median costs for full-time college students living at home were $3,700 compared to $8,100 for those living away from home."

As for Europe, although young people there generally stay home more than their counterparts here in America, economic troubles in the past few years have caused more of them to say home even longer:

BBC News, 12 Mar 2003, Young 'cannot afford to leave home'

The rising costs of housing and further education together with a reduction in state support is making it increasingly hard for people in the 18-24 age group to strike out on their own.

The research, by independent market analyst Datamonitor, found that 67% of 18-24 year olds across Europe still relied on their parents for housing last year.

There is also an increasing likelihood that young people in Northern Europe return home having left, a phenomenon described as 'boomeranging'.

Here's a snapshot for the US of 1990: Age is the strongest predictor of leaving home. According to the U.S. Bureau of Census, 74% of 18-19 year olds in 1990 lived with parents, compared to 40% at ages 20-24 and 16% at ages 25-29.

By 2000, the figures barely changed. If there is a perception that more young adults live with their parents now than ever before, it is inaccurate, for more detail read Po Bronson, Failure to Launch -- or Failure to Respect the Facts?

Another predictor other than age in the US of how long an adult child will live with his parents is geographic; of U.S. 18-34-Year-Olds Living with Parents (2006): 35% live in the Northeast, 27% in the Midwest, 25.5% in the South, and 24.5% in the West.

I know I have not mentioned the cons, some parents can find the dress and living habits of their children intolerable. Adult children may bristle under some fuddy-duddy "rules" their parents may want them to adhere to. But if parents want to avoid the empty-nest syndrome and want their married children to stay home they must make accommodations; parents cannot treat their married children as if they were infants. The new son- or daughter-in-law will have a greater influence on their children than the parents used to and this must be accepted.

Living with anyone is difficult. The high divorce rates and the number of children living in broken homes is staggering. This is not the way for a society to flourish. There is obviously something wrong. Living in a larger family setting may help with finances and offer more free time for the just starting husband and wife. Certainly issues of money, careers, and sexual problems contribute to divorce. Living in a big home, women can more easily raise a child and still pursue a career. Having grandparents to help with the kids can give parents more free time for themselves.

Grandparents, instead of having useless lives with nothing to do can now have fun with their grand-kids instead of seeing them on two or three holidays a year. Once or twice a week my granddaughter comes to our bedroom to sleep with us. We watch her favorite Disney films until she falls asleep. The time this gives her parents to be alone is precious beyond measurement. Perhaps it's not so surprising that parents burn out, what with each having a job and trying to take care of home and child and no free time to snuggle and be with each other alone.

Afternoon nap
Photo by: Ba Bu Shka

Grandparents can enjoy shopping again. Last year I saw an old woman buying a small package of Corn Flakes and noted that the larger package would give her twice as much cereal for only a few pennies more. When I suggested this to her, she told me that it's wasteful to buy the larger version since she could hardly finish the size box she was buying before it goes stale.

You can tell who lives alone by observing the checkout at your supermarket. The single pork chop, the smallest container of milk, the half-loaf of bread. An entire life tallied on a shopping receipt.

Both of my sons are the most fierce, independent-minded individuals you will ever meet. But living with their parents does not mean they are dependent, helpless, vulnerable human beings. Some of the most fierce, independent-minded individuals who ever existed lived with their sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, cousins, uncles, aunts, parents, altogether in caves or tents or treetops. They shared resources, pooled their hunting, took mutual care of their young. That group grew and prospered until they took dominion over the Earth.

We've come a long way as a species, but in some regard we have lost family. Perhaps one day it will be a stigma to live away from family.

Related:
Causes of Divorce:

DivorceForm.org, What are the most common Causes of Divorce?

Time, sex, money biggest obstacles for young married Couples

A recent study by the Creighton University Center for Marriage and Family suggests that time, sex and money pose the three biggest obstacles to satisfaction in the lives of newly married couples. The study found that debt brought into marriage, the couples' financial situation, balancing job and family, and frequency of sexual relations were of greatest concern to those ages 29 and under. Those age 30 and over shared with their younger cohorts the concerns of balancing job and family and frequency of sexual relations, but also added as problem areas constant bickering and expectations about household tasks.

New grads find home is sweet, Excerpt: "63 percent of U.S. college students said they planned to live at home, according to an online poll by MonsterTRAK.com, a job search company."

Living with your grown children can also help keep grandparents married to each other:

About.com, The Empty Nest Syndrome in Your Marriage

The sad news is that there has been a steady increase in the number of divorces among couples married 30 or more years. Many long-term married couples divorce one another after the kids leave home.

They realize too late that their children kept them together. Other couples divorce during the empty nest years because they can't handle the health issues and the sense of an uncertain future along with being overwhelmed by too much togetherness.

The Queen of Hearts
Photo by: Halloween Scene

The year was 1951 and I was only a few months past my 6th birthday when I fell in love with Disney's animated feature Alice in Wonderland. The previous year I had seen my first Disney film, Cinderella, and I thought that was the best thing I had ever seen in my 6 years of life, but now this Alice - this was mesmerizing.

The lunacy of Wonderland was intoxicating with characters and scenes popping up here and there with no sense or reason; I shivered as Alice struggled through the menacing forest; I couldn't take my ears off the mentholated purring of the Cheshire Cat; I strained to decipher the gibble-gabble of the Mad Hatter and his friends; I was a thrall to my seat throughout the film.

One thing that children are most sensitive to is the unfairness of adults. We want to stay up all night but mom says no. We want to eat ice cream and push away the broccoli but dad says we can only get to enjoy ice cream after we clean the plate. We want to run with scissors and swing wooden swords at our little brother but nanny takes away our weapons. So what I remember most starkly and what has remained riveted in my mind to this day was the ridiculously unfair trial of Alice by the tyrannical Queen of Hearts.

If you recall, the Queen summons the March Hare, the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse as witnesses against Alice and they end up holding an absurd, unbirthday party for her.

So now, whenever the UN demands, "Off with her head," in regard to Israel, no matter who's at fault, I am reminded of Alice in Wonderland.

Come on now, just on a practical level, more people die in Darfur in one month than Palestinians in the entire 8 years past, yet the Sudan, a country with egregious human rights abuses gets a pass from the Council with only an expressed "deep concern." Does that make any sense at all?

And it's not just the Sudan that is ignored by the HRC:

Washington Post, 25 Jun 2007, A Shadow on the Human Rights Movement

... the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the "human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories." In other words, Israel (or "Palestine," in the council's terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. That's in keeping with the record of the council's first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticized any other government.

Genocide in Sudan, child slavery and religious persecution in China, mass repression in Zimbabwe and Burma, state-sponsored murder in Syria and Russia -- and, for that matter, suicide bombings by Arab terrorist movements -- will not receive systematic attention from the world body charged with monitoring human rights. That is reserved only for Israel, a democratic country that has been guilty of human rights violations but also has been under sustained assault from terrorists and governments openly committed to its extinction.

Remarkably, Irwin Cotler, Canada's former Minister of Justice was similarly reminded of Alice in regard to the HRC:

Israpundit, Cotler attacks the United Nations

In one week, at a meeting of the Human Rights Council, it did the following; it replaced John Duggard, who is the special rappatuer for Israel human rights violations in the occupied territories. I am not saying that the UN shouldn’t investigate human rights violations in the occupied territories. I am saying that the mandate is only to look into violations by Israel in the occupied territories. At the same time there is a special permanent UN Agenda item called Human Rights Violations by Israel in the occupied territories, and another one for the rest of the world.

In other words only one country is singled out for an Alice in Wonderland condemnation before the hearing takes place, under the auspices of the UN. The special rappatuer, John Duggard, who likened Israel to an apartheid state. You may not appreciate the seriousness of likening Israel to an apartheid state, is the cognoscenti of the UN and you should know that these meetings are attended by all kinds of people who are all exposed to this denunciation. In the lexicon of the International Criminal Court Treaty, an apartheid state is a criminal state that warrants being dismantled. All those who support that state are also seen to be complicit in the commission of a crime against humanity.

Is there any country worse than Israel? Not to the UNHRC. The March Hare, the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse are now running the Human Rights Council. Perhaps it's time to host an unbirthday party for the United nations?

Cross-posted at Stop Raping Israel and Reject the UN and Jihadi Du Jour

Two years ago I noted that hundreds of blogs and websites mistakenly offer up the statistic that there are 10 or 11 Muslim Nobel Prize Laureates. Excluding the Nobel Peace Prize which does not reward intellectual achievement (after all, Yasser Arafat got one) I wrote that there were only three Muslims (out of 1.5 billion) who have won Nobel Prizes. Two in Science (Abdus Salam, and Ahmed Zewail) and one in Literature (Naguib Mahfouz).

Seven months after I wrote that article I should have updated the total to 4. So please add Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. Pamuk, it should be mentioned, is hardly a Muslim having been brought up in a secular, westernized family. He is what I call a MINO, a Muslim in Name only.

Another MINO is Ahmed Zewail, a most busy scientist to whom many Muslim websites like to proudly point as an example that a Muslim can indeed achieve scientific success. However, Zewail himself has written that one of the barriers to scientific and technological success in backward Islamic developing countries is the mixing of Shariah state laws and Muslim religious beliefs. That certain cultures, nations, religions (without naming them) lack appreciation for science and technology. There is more detail in his commentary given to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican, "Science for the Have-nots" [PDF].

Readers who read my article at the top of the fold know that Ahmed Hassan Zewail is an Egyptian American chemist, and the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in femtochemistry. The operative word here is American.

Femtochemistry, in case you skipped your post doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, is the study of chemical reactions across femtoseconds. That clear it up for you? Let me get to the politics here: I have no doubt that Arabs would have as many Nobel Prizes as Jews if only they were freed from the grip of Islam. Zewail, rather than an example of how Muslims can achieve scientific success is actually the opposite lesson.

Zewail succeeded in spite of being Muslim.

As I noted in How Many Muslims have won Nobel Prizes, anyway?:

So it becomes a bit clearer why most Muslims are so backward. It's their religion. As I've said all along, Islam keeps its subjects as backward as the religion itself. If Muslims in America seem educated, it is because Islam has less an influence on their lives than in Muslim countries. None of the Muslims who were Nobel Laureates lived under the stultifying cloud of Islam, except for the dead terrorist Yasser Arafat.

Bio:

• Ahmed Hassan Zewail was born on 26 Feb 1946 in Damanhur, Egypt. He has a wife, Dema and two daughters (Maha and Amani) and two sons (Nabeel and Hani).


• He graduated from the University of Alexandria (BS 1967, MS 1969) and University of Pennsylvania (PhD 1974).


• Wolf Prize in Chemistry 1993


• Guggenheim Fellowship 1987


• Naturalized US Citizen 1982


• American Physical Society 1982


• National Academy of Sciences 1989


• Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society 1992


• American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1993


• American Philosophical Society


• Egypt's highest state honour, the Grand Collar of the Nile 1999


• Cambridge University Honorary Doctorate in Science 2006


• Member of Pontifical Academy of Sciences



• ArabianBusiness, Power 100, The World's Most Influential Arabs, Rank List 2007

  56# Ahmed Hassan Zewail
  ...
  This key work has enabled scientists to analyse transition states in selected chemical reactions, as the technique allows the description of reactions on very short time scales.

  He received his first degree from the University of Alexandria, before moving from Egypt to the United States to complete his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania.

  After post doctorate work at the University of California, Berkeley, he was awarded a faculty appointment at Caltech in 1976, where he has remained ever since.

  He became a naturalised citizen of the United States in 1982, and in 1990, he was made the first Linus Pauling Chair in Chemical Physics.

  In 1999, Zewail became the third ethnic Egyptian to receive the Nobel Prize, following in the footsteps of Egyptians Anwar Sadat and Naguib Mahfouz.



• One of the original editors of the Encyclopedia of Analytical Chemistry



• Caltech Media Relations, Zewail wins Nobel Prize

  His international awards include the Welch Prize, King Faisal Prize, the Wolf Prize, the Carl Zeiss Award, the Leonardo da Vinci Award of Excellence, the Bonner Chemiepreis Award, and the Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

  Among his national prizes are many from the American Chemical Society, including the Harrison-Howe Award, the Peter Debye Award, the E. Bright Wilson Award, and the Buck-Whitney Award. The American Physical Society has honored Dr. Zewail with the Earle K. Plyler Prize and the Herbert P. Broida Prize. He has also received the Chemical Sciences Award from the National Academy of Sciences. In 1995, the president of Egypt, H. Mubarak, honored Dr. Zewail with the Order of Merit, First Class.T

As I said, a most busy scientist. Ahmed Zawail has an excellent Website.

Of course, anyone who reads blogs other than The Daily Kos knows that women under Islamic law only have half the equality of men. A women who is raped needs 8 female witnesses to 4 male witnesses.

A reader left a comment calling me "a biased fool." Perhaps he's right; perhaps I have overlooked discrimination of women in my own backyard. So I searched the Internet to see if there are public places in America, infidel places, that do indeed treat women differently than men. What is more non-Muslim than a pub, I thought to myself; what I found was quite disturbing:

Sexual discrimination in America; will it never end?

Related:
There are a number of Bar Supply companies that sell the sign, further promoting this disgusting treatment of women. Sadly, I do not make a commission mentioning them.

Suppose we lived in a world where there was a religion that required the faithful to carry an AK-47 in public similar to the Sikh wearing of daggers (known as kirpans); would we bend over backwards to accommodate that religion even at the peril of our lives? It happens with Islam. The weapon: a mask to thwart identification and evade capture. In Islam the masks are called niqab and burqa.

Yesterday, the Gateway Pundit told us that Burka-Clad Bank Robbers Killed a Policeman in Philadelphia. We so cower before Muslim intimidation that we allow women, or it could be men, to cover themselves from head to toe in disguise.

Muslim apologists will argue that allowing someone to wear a Burqa is not the same as allowing them to carry an AK-47. Actually it is, since one would have no problem entering a bank with an AK-47 hidden under that garment. One of the disadvantages from openly carrying a weapon into a bank is that one can be spotted from the outside and the police can be alerted or that one is spotted as he or she enters with the weapon and an alarm is either given or the guard on duty can draw his weapon in response.

Almost 16 months back Daniel Pipes chronicled dozens and dozens of criminal incidents involving Muslim garb in The Niqab and Burqa as Security Threats: the niqab and burqa should both be banned on security grounds, "as one cannot have faceless persons walking the streets, driving cars, or otherwise entering public spaces."

Burka Bandit Robs Bank
Officials aren't sure whether they are looking for a man or woman after a bank robbery.
Source: WSOC
October 19, 2007

As much as I want to see a ban on the wearing of a burqa in public there is one exception which we should allow, I am not, after all, a completely heartless person: