There is not just one cause of depression. It is a complex disease that can occur as a result of a multitude of factors. For some, depression occurs due to a loss of a loved one, a change in one's life or after being diagnosed with a serious medical disease. For others, depression just happens, possibly due to their family history.

Factors involved in depression, include:

- A history of depression in the family. It is believed that depression is passed genetically from generation to generation, although the exact way this occurs is not known.

- Grief from the death or loss of a loved one.

- Personal disputes, like conflict with a family member.

- Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.

- Major life events, such as moving, graduating, changing jobs, getting married or divorced, retiring, etc.

- Serious illness. Depressed feelings are a common reaction to many medical illnesses.

- Certain medications

- Substance abuse. Close to 30% of people with substance abuse problems also have major depression.

- Other personal problems. These may come in the form of social isolation due to other mental illnesses or being cast out of a family or social circle.

Biology versus emotions

There is absolute proof that people suffering from depression have changes in their brains compared to people who do not suffer from depression. The hippocampus, a small part of the brain that is vital to the storage of memories, is 9 to 13 percent smaller in women with a history of depression than in those who've never been depressed. A smaller hippocampus has fewer serotonin receptors. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, which is a chemical messenger that allows communication between nerves in the brain and the body.

What scientists don't yet know is why the hippocampus is smaller. Investigators have found that cortisol (a stress hormone that is important to the normal function of the hippocampus) is produced in excess in depressed people. They believe that cortisol has a toxic or poisonous effect on the hippocampus. It's also possible that depressed people are simply born with a smaller hippocampus and are therefore inclined to suffer from depression.

Depression is a complex illness with many contributing factors. As doctors gain a better understanding of the cause(s) of the illness, they will be able to make better "tailored" diagnoses and, in turn, prescribe more effective treatment plans.

Genetic link

There is evidence that suggests a genetic link to depression. Children, siblings, and parents of people with severe depression are much more likely to suffer from depression than are members of the general population. Multiple genes interacting with one another in special ways probably contribute to the types of depression that runs in families. Scientists have not been able to identify a "depression" gene, however.

There is not just one cause of depression. It is a complex disease that can occur as a result of a multitude of factors. For some, depression occurs due to a loss of a loved one, a change in one's life or after being diagnosed with a serious medical disease. For others, depression just happens, possibly due to their family history.

Factors involved in depression, include:

- A history of depression in the family. It is believed that depression is passed genetically from generation to generation, although the exact way this occurs is not known.

- Grief from the death or loss of a loved one.

- Personal disputes, like conflict with a family member.

- Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.

- Major life events, such as moving, graduating, changing jobs, getting married or divorced, retiring, etc.

- Serious illness. Depressed feelings are a common reaction to many medical illnesses.

- Certain medications

- Substance abuse. Close to 30% of people with substance abuse problems also have major depression.

- Other personal problems. These may come in the form of social isolation due to other mental illnesses or being cast out of a family or social circle.

Biology versus emotions

There is absolute proof that people suffering from depression have changes in their brains compared to people who do not suffer from depression. The hippocampus, a small part of the brain that is vital to the storage of memories, is 9 to 13 percent smaller in women with a history of depression than in those who've never been depressed. A smaller hippocampus has fewer serotonin receptors. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, which is a chemical messenger that allows communication between nerves in the brain and the body.

What scientists don't yet know is why the hippocampus is smaller. Investigators have found that cortisol (a stress hormone that is important to the normal function of the hippocampus) is produced in excess in depressed people. They believe that cortisol has a toxic or poisonous effect on the hippocampus. It's also possible that depressed people are simply born with a smaller hippocampus and are therefore inclined to suffer from depression.

Depression is a complex illness with many contributing factors. As doctors gain a better understanding of the cause(s) of the illness, they will be able to make better "tailored" diagnoses and, in turn, prescribe more effective treatment plans.

Genetic link

There is evidence that suggests a genetic link to depression. Children, siblings, and parents of people with severe depression are much more likely to suffer from depression than are members of the general population. Multiple genes interacting with one another in special ways probably contribute to the types of depression that runs in families. Scientists have not been able to identify a "depression" gene, however.

He looked at me and asked, "how old are you Joe?

"Seventy," I replied.

"Do you feel that you have the energy and mental capacity to be president?

"Yes," was my answer. 

The real question in my mind is whether nature will be good to me, and let me keep my health and energy as I age. I fully intend to stay healthy, and today, I am reasonably healthy, but will I stay that way for much longer? I don't know, neither do you. Only the Lord knows what is ahead of us. All we can do is, "Remember yesterday, Dream tomorrow, Live today." 

So what if our current conservative candidate is old? He will select a younger Vice Presidential partner, who will rise to the occasion if it is necessary.  It is also a fact that young men die too. Many of them live a higher risk life style than older men, so their chances of meeting with injury or accidental demise is probably greater. Remember Christopher Reeves, "Super Man," broke his neck while enjoying his passion, i.e. riding a horse. More recently, Heath Ledger died of too many medicines at one time. To quote a line from the movie "Forest Gump,"

" Shit Happens."

 Life is filled with stories about people who die when they shouldn't.

Instead of worrying about a candidate's age, and his prospects for surviving life, we should concentrate on which political philosophy we want our kids, and grandkids to grow up with. We should be discussing our life values and the reasons that we believe in them.

My parents were staunch Democrats. They made one "X" on their ballot. They believed in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the saviour of the working class. Mom and Dad, lived through the depression, they blamed President Hoover for everything that went wrong with the economy. Yet, when I think about how they taught me to live, they were as conservative as the day is long. They never spoke of conservatism, but they lived it. They wouldn't have understood what "Green" meant, but they lived more "Green" than any modern citizen does today. Their bottom line philosophies:

"If you don't have the money, don't buy it."

"When you have land, you will always be able to feed yourself."

Mom wasn't talking about acres or hundreds of acres, she was talking about a back yard. She made our tiny yard into a farm. She raised vegetables, chickens, flowers, and some grass too.

"Never waste." Mom knew how to mend socks, shirts, and pants. She knew the value of re-cycling hand-me-downs, and somehow we managed to survive without knowing we were poor.

"Welfare is for people who are worse off than we are." My Dad would have hung himself before he accepted money from the government. He came to this country with the clothes on his back, got a job, learned English, took abuse from his co-workers, and managed to feed and educate three kids.

If you believe in big government, and the philosophy that Big Brother should take care of you, that's okay. You should vote for the Liberal.

I happen to believe that the government is way too big, and the National Debt is out of control. If you want to tax me to pay off the debt, okay. If you want to tax me to pay for more social programs, go fly a kite.

I'm voting conservative even if the candidate is 101 years old. He'd be the much wiser choice.

I don't normally put in links on my blog but this one about Ukraine and their memorial of remembering those who died of starvation is something I couldn't resist inserting.  I hope my reading audience has a better understanding of my passion to get this information out so that more people are aware of what bad government can do to good people.  Turns out that after the 1917 revolution those communist elite who mimicked Lenin's words of "religion is the opiate of the people" did not have a clue what a relationship with God was really all about.  Yes, admittedly religion can be dried out and oppressive if going through motions and rituals. However, many of those Ukrainian farmers mowed down by Stalin's edicts to eradicate "kulaks" who owned small plots of property and worked hard off the soil of the land were merely God-fearing peasants.

Those professors in academia who want to suppress this truth about the evils of the Soviet Union in their hallowed halls of our American institutions are not being intellectually honest.  They are trying to promote their socialist, Marxist agenda once again but now this time they are trying to vilify Christians who may have a simple faith in God and are just ordinary citizens.  Instead of "kulaks" who were persecuted 75 years ago and starved to death, now they are going after the big corporations as the evil entities.  If those who in power had their way, they would want all those entrepreneurs and others who are in business to make money through the capitalist system to be punished.  However, if that were to happen those lower in the chain of command would lose their jobs and we would eventually have another Great Depression.  That is, if the intellectuals had their way and wanted to start a class warfare which seemingly worked in the 1930s.

These very people in the ivory towers who want their young students to believe in Utopia little realize they are trying to preach a certain poisonous opiate of their own concoction.  "Opiate" and "Utopia" share many of the same letters (can you tell I've been playing lots of online Scrabble?) These dishonest professionals are attempting to drug the younger generation in believing that Christians are evil and that their hardsell for Utopia or the nothingness of postmodern de-constructionism is the right way to think.  Ron Vossler has a new book he is working on which, of course, he says it way better than I ever could.

The following is one of the many projects from Ron Vossler's website: Communist East Dakota: How Twenty Years Teaching at a Midwest University Turned Me into a Republican. This irreverent book---a Hunter Thompsonesque account of a fictional adjunct teacher perched on the lowest, dung-smeared rungs of a backwater Prairie University —portrays an academic Don Quixote, who after discerning the deep Marxist bias prevalent in American higher education, wages a humorous battle against the dark forces of left-wing propaganda that pollutes both his colleagues’ and students’ minds.

I'm sure that was all mind-blowingly groovy, but I have news for you, Grandpa (and Grandma): Reminiscing about the sixties now is like recalling Prohibition was when we were young. Cue wavering voice: "Let me tell you, sonny, we got up to some crazy shenanigans in those speakeasies." For those of you who are mathematically challenged, it's been 40 whole years since 1968, the same amount of time as 1968 was from 1928.

As further illustration of how long ago that all was, check out these words coined in 1928, from the Online Entymology Dictionary, a very dry name for one of the very best sites I know. Nookie with a bimbo, anyone? But words brought to you by 1968 don't sound much more modern: unisex, dweeb, and the Fosbury Flop.

The point: The sixties are ancient history and not of great interest to anyone who wasn't actually there. So too the seventies: We really don't need to know who did what to whom that night you went to Plato's Retreat (ewwww, you did?) or what you snorted with whom at Studio 54. Even the eighties, which I basically missed thanks to the joys of parenthood, are getting kind of antique.

As one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons, by Jack Ziegler, goes: "The sixties are over. The seventies are over. The eighties, for God's sake, are over." And now the nineties are over, and pretty soon the oughties will be over too.

Young people are allowed to have nostalgia for the decades and icons of their childhoods: early Madonna and late Kurt Cobain, leg warmers and flannel shirts. You can reminisce about where you were in Y2K.

My father was born in November 1930. As a child of the Great Depression, his formative years were defined by these circumstances. My grandparents, whom I didn't get the chance to meet (they passed away before I was born) lost their home to foreclosure. My grandfather had left his job in Detroit to take a management position with an out-of-state factory, only to arrive and find that his job was gone and the factory had closed down. When my grandparents, dad and his two sisters returned to Detroit, the Great Depression was a grave reality.

Talking to my dad a few weeks ago, we discussed those times and how his family managed to survive. Though times were tough with unemployment rates over 25%, Dad remembered that his parents never stood in any food lines, even though my grandfather was out of work for several years. They certainly didn't live lavishly, but somehow were able to make ends meet. In fact, Dad recently asked his older sister, my Aunt Giny, about those times. He asked her, "How did we survive? Father was not working, but he never stood in any food lines. How did they always put food on the table?" Aunt Giny apparently wandered into the basement one day during the 1930's and stumbled upon a sizable amount of liquor. When she asked, my grandfather shooed her away and told her never to speak of it again. Could my family, strict Presbyterians, have survived the Depression by selling alcohol during Prohibition??? I guess we'll never know for sure.

One thing I do know is that the generation that lived through and grew up during the Depression was changed forever from it. For many years Dad never used a credit card. Neither did his parents. If they didn't have cash, they didn't buy it. When you live through something like that, I don't think you forget about it. It changes the way you live your life and the way you spend money.

I believe our current market woes will change many, many people. I've seen so many bank-owned homes in the last 3 years in the Sacramento region. These REOs are often fantastic deals for the savvy buyer, but each listing was once a home to somebody, an American dream that turned into the American nightmare.

So many people made unwise financial decisions over the last decade. I hope that this changes us as a nation, that we collectively learn from our mistakes. From lenders who made bad loans to the homeowners who bought homes when they really weren't qualified to do so. The people who refinanced their homes to buy expensive automobiles, kitchen remodels, or swimming pools, and now have no equity in their homes.

I hope we take this information and, as a country, become savers instead of spenders, investors instead of just consumers. I hope more folks tear up the credit cards and choose to only buy what they can afford instead of insisting on keeping up with the Jonese.

However, the Bank of England has decided to leave the base interest rate at 5 percent in spite of the economic downturn. Apparently, the committee members were split on the decision, caught between inflationary pressures and a slowing economy. Leaving the interest rate at such a rate will not help the struggling housing market.

Consequently, consumers continue to reign in spending as they preferred to pay off remaining balances on credit cards rather than use credit to make new purchases. The consumer seems to be aware that the economy is worsening and is preparing for further economic impairment in the months ahead.

This article was the first of a two-part series. It focuses on Coughlin's leadership of the Christian Front, a militia network that was shut down by the FBI when they were discovered to be accumulating weapons and plans to overthrow the government.

Click and zoom for a closer look at the article.

Video of Father Coughlin giving a speech can be seen at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum web site.

*

Read Full Article Here

Bloomberg
July 21, 2008

Investors who plowed money into Wachovia Corp. and Washington Mutual Inc. last week after competitors posted better-than-expected quarters may find out tomorrow if that was a good idea when the two lenders report their own results.

Wachovia and Washington Mutual may have combined second- quarter losses of $3.8 billion, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Wachovia, the nation’s fourth-biggest bank by assets, and Washington Mutual, the largest saving and loan, rank among the top providers of ``option-ARM’’ and subprime mortgages that now have some of the highest default rates.

``These are certainly troubled companies that aren’t going to improve anytime soon,’’ said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Chicago-based Harris Private Bank, which oversees $65 billion. ``I still would need to see the banking sector as a whole show some sort of fundamental improvement’’ along with better housing data, he said.

Read Full Article Here

Police ordered angry customers lined up outside an IndyMac Bank branch to remain calm or face arrest Tuesday as they tried to pull their money on the second day of the failed institution’s federal takeover.

Police stood by at some other branches around Southern California but there were no other reports of problems.

$1 Billion of uninsured deposits lost in IndyMAC collapse

My grandmother lived to be 90, and in all those years, I don't think she ever threw anything away that could possibly be used again.  I know other people have told me that their relatives who lived through the Depression did that too.  It's too bad that not very many of those folks are around these days; they'd probably have a lot of good advice for us.

Anyway, the reason that the margarine tub made me think of my grandmother - after she passed away, my dad and I went over to her house to start cleaning up, getting ready to sell the house.  We opened up a kitchen cabinet, and about 50 plastic pimento-cheese containers, with lids, fell onto our heads.  We laughed about it.  Unfortunately, the containers were all thrown away after all, because there is no plastic recycling in the rural area where my parents and grandmother live(d).

I think that frugality as a lifestyle is hard for us as adults these days, because most of us have never been forced to do it by circumstances outside of ourselves.  As with everything, we get better at it with practice, but it still doesn't come naturally.  And because not everyone chooses to or has to practice frugality, there isn't a sense that "we're all in this together" like there was during WW II.  I think the federal government has contributed to this by encouraging everyone to "go shopping" and keep spending money.  They certainly could have taken a different approach to the post-9/11 condition of our country, building on what happened during the disaster response in NYC to encourage the entire country to come together in a sense of cooperation and service.  But that didn't happen.

We have a phrase down here in Florida that the weatherpersons use when a hurricane is coming - "hunker down."  That means gather your resources and get ready.  To me, it feels like we should all be in "hunker down" mode in our current economic and environmental circumstances.  Maybe this recession (or whatever it is) won't last long, but there will be another one, and our environment isn't going to improve much at all (and more likely will continue to get worse).  I plan to stay in a "hunker down" condition from now on, as much as is possible.  How about you?

Read Full Article Here

Gold makes another record, hits $982

The News
July 16, 2008

Gold once again broke all barriers on Tuesday and created a record high of Rs22,071 per 10 grams and yet remained under-cost compared to international markets leading to a cold local market and high selling in the UAE.

President All-Pakistan Supreme Council of Jewelers Association, Alhaj Haroon Rashid Chand said that the yellow metal had reached Rs25,750 per tola, which is a new record in Pakistan.

Chand recalled that gold had reached its highest of Rs20,657 per 10 grams and Rs24,100 per tola on March 17 in Pakistan when international yellow metal prices were US$1,032 an ounce four months earlier before creating new records over the past week.

He explained that the upward trend had resumed for the yellow metal following rupees further depreciating against US dollars and crude oil reaching fresh records per barrel.

He also informed that gold was being sold across the sea to Dubai markets in great amounts as the precious yellow metal was under cost in the local market by Rs580 compared to the Dubai bullion market.

Chand said that the trend of selling gold in UAE markets through smuggling or other illegal means, was adversely affecting Pakistan as the same gold was melted and then was reverted back to Pakistan at higher prices through the green channel. This, he added, led to a great imbalance in the country’s Balance of Trade.

He said that despite several appeals to the government to take note of the matter, it continued to remain ignored, while gold traders had also ceased to trust the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) as the official representative body, for it had also disappointed them.

The jewelers association’s president said that KCCI was now dominated by industrialists who looked after their own benefits and raised personal points in front of the government rather than equally representing the small traders, leading to disharmony amongst businessmen and traders and moreover, heavy losses to the gold traders.

Dealers at the Kharadar Sarafah bazaar informed that there was absolutely no purchasing in the markets across Pakistan and small traders feared the continuity of their businesses.

They explained that both investors and customers were opting for alternative solutions rather than buying gold. While investors had slowly ventured into other commodities and investments, gold markets remained deserted as customers looked the other way towards artificial jewelry.

Many jewelry traders said that they had been compelled to reduce their profit margins to keep gold jewelry within affordable rates, but now could not further reduce their ‘making charges’ as that would mean higher losses for them.

The international bullion market recorded an upward rise of $23 to $982 per ounce on Tuesday, against $959 an ounce a day earlier.

Oil prices tumble to below $129

AP
July 20, 2008

The price of oil recorded its biggest weekly drop ever, and a gallon of gas finally pulled back from its record high. So is it time to declare the energy bubble popped? Experts won’t go that far just yet.

‘‘It’s too early to say we’ve seen the worst of it,’’ said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst of the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery fell 41 cents Friday to settle at $128.88 on the New York Mercantile Exchange - well below its trading record of more than $147 a week earlier.

Read Full Article Here

George Will: Americans Are ‘The Biggest Cry Babies Of The Western World’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06awZjZTVlQ

Texas Congressman Ron Paul has warned the House that he is "convinced the time is now upon us that some Big Events are about to occur." that will cause liberty to go "into deep hibernation".

Paul told the House:

Read Full Article Here

Ron Paul on Kudlow and Company

Ron Paul on Glenn Beck

Ron Paul on Fox Business News