New Year's Resolutions

I would like to start off by wishing everybody out there a happy new year. This year has been a very hectic year for many Americans. Many people have gone into foreclosure, lost their jobs, health insurance, sanity,money and even their freedom. For instance, there were many people who got caught up in the latest scams out there. There are some pretty unethical people out there who only care about making a fast buck and they do not care who they hurt to get it.

This year alone there have been thousands of Americans who got letters in the mail or email that stated that they are the one million dollar winner and that to just take this check and cash it at your bank and mail me a $2500 for the processing fee. If you ever get these things in the mail or email throw them out or click on report spam on your email account. These are con artists and thieves who want to rip you off. If you are desperate enough to try one of these hoping and wishing that it is not a scam you will be hurt in the long run.

The federal government is not doing anything about this problem. If you were dooped by the scammers and participate your bank could over draft your account to try to force you to pay the difference or they may even be vicious enough to call the police on you and have you arrested. It doesn't matter if you have been with them for years. They call this check fraud, because that is what it really is. The only thing is the people who take these checks to cash at their own banks are totally innocent and also completely oblivious to the whole situation and they are basically left to fend for themselves if their bank cashes these checks.

There have also been many different types of mortgage scams that have hit people so bad that they have lost their homes because of it. The government stepped in to penalize these different companies and banks who practice this. This is the main reason for the mortgage melt down. We are all starting to feel the effects of this, because the interest rates have gone sky high which makes everyone have to pay more on their credit cards, loans, and mortgages. This has also caused a rippling effect, which causes everyone to always owe money.

My New Years resolution for this year is to finally get all of my bills paid of by March so that I can just pay my mortgage and electric bill. I, just like many others out there, I am going to start eating right and exercise daily to be healthier and hopefully happier for this year. It is very stressful for people when they are living paycheck to paycheck and do not even have $10 left over after paying bills, which has to last until the next pay period.

My only advice to everyone out there is do not get a pay day advance or rush off and do your taxes early. You can never pay off a pay day loan, because its designed to keep you coming back. My only way out of one of those loans was for me to work a lot of overtime at my job. The only reason why I say don't rush and do taxes early is, because people usually do not itemize, go through receipts or write down things they purchased during the year. I take doing taxes very seriously, because this is the money that I worked for or lost from shopping that I need to get back to help give me a good boost until the end of the summer. Once again, happy New year to all!

Tragic news event

Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto died today from a fatal gun shot wound to the neck shortly after a campaign rally. She was speaking at one of her support rallies today at 5:30 a.m. this morning eastern standard time. Several of her supporters were also killed due to an explosion , which was started by a suicide bomber. She was running for the Presidency of Pakistan, and she was the only opponent running against the current President.

The current President was afraid of her outspoken nature. She had many followers and her campaign against him proved that she was giving him a run for his money. I think that it was utterly ridiculous for the people to allow this to happen. He basically wanted to start a Monarchy again. Something just doesn't seem right about the way that Prime Minister Benazir was assassinated. It seems like this could even have been a plot to get her out of the way, since she was the only one strong enough to stand up and voice her opinion.

Unfortunately, it is well known that in Pakistan, there are very few women in power. Women are second class citizens there and are not allowed to voice there own opinions. They still have to wear the vale when they leave their homes. I noticed that you would sometimes see Benazir wearing it also at times, but I think her honoring the vale made her look strong to the rest of the world. It made the statement," yes I am a women, but I am a women who is smart, strong and well spoken, a women of power". She did a lot for her country while she was alive as the Prime Minister. It was stated by many of her supporters that she may even have won the Presidency.

I believe that the more she spoke out in public the more her life was in danger. There is no other explanation, because this was not a freak accident or her being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was actually sought out and eliminated by someone, because they viewed her as a major threat. The country also has been starting to be over run by the Taliban and Alkidah. Since this has occurred, it looks like the country is going to have a major unrest and the Pakistani army may have to try to keep the peace until things settle down more for the weeks to come. The life and efforts of Benazir Bhutto will surely be missed, hopefully some of her work will live on.

Family togetherness

The family setting has changed drastically, I have noticed that less and less families sit at the dinner table together. There just is no more unity being established. I remember growing up watching leave it to Beaver and little house on the prairie, and thinking that is the way we all need to act.

Instead today the American family has grown to become very hard and cold. Some parents can't wait for their children to turn eighteen so they can throw them out of the house. I understand that some parents feel like they spent eighteen years struggling to care for their children and after that they should be able to be on there own, but what if staying home a few more years can drastically shape their lives?

The only way they can really feel the nurturing that they desperately need is for their parents not to make them feel that they are a burden. They also need to see there family get together and keep in touch often. Everyone should not be scattered across the four corners of the earth. This just does not set a good example for children to follow, and children live whatever they seen. They can also incorporate it into their lives later on in life. Parents need to spend several hours a day with their children so they do not feel left out.

It is important to remember that little things count. They love for you to just sit and read with them, brush their hair, play video games with them, watch cartoons with them, play outside with them, playing board games with them, or even just eat a burger with them. You will find that they will greatly appreciate these things, and that they will remember them the most.

Happy tresses

I just always wondered why some people struggle with growing their hair, and why some peoples hair just naturally grows like a weed. My only answer to this phenomenon is that it is mostly about the genetic make up of people. It is in some people's genes for their hair to grow really fast. Other people have the more recessive hair growth gene, so their hair takes many months to grow. Another factor that we also have to consider is vitamins in your diet. Are you lacking in any, and if so which ones are you deficient in? My theory is that no matter what may be in your genes, if you supplement the vitamins that you might be deficient in you can thus increase your hair growth along with the thickness or volume. There are also products out there that claim to help aid in hair damage and can help increase hair growth. I am not sure how true their statements are, but I have used many different products and some of them have seemed to be helpful.

I have also learned that hair texture has a lot to do with hair growth. Some African American people have more of a coarse textured hair type. Where as people of other races seem to have hair that is either curly or very straight. I have noticed with my very own experience that the softer your hair the faster it grows, no matter what the texture is. If you let your hair dry out it will get very brittle and start to break off. There for, premature hair loss can begin because of this reason. There are also natural aids that can be used to help aid in hair strengthening and also increase hair growth.

You can utilize egg protein, this helps to strengthen and stop breakage. Kelp is a natural herb that can also help to increase hair growth. Another important thing for people to also keep track of is keeping your ends trimmed. This prevents the split ends and eliminates the ones that have occurred so that they cannot do further damage to your hair, because when left unattended the split end will just move all the way up the hair shaft and then eventually the hair will just split in half and fall off. This can also start the hair thinning process. Everyday a person should loose one hundred strands of hair, and when more than this amount is lost that should become a cause for concern.

Mortgage Meltdown

There has been a lot of controversy about the mortgage industry that is finally being brought out into the open today. The highlight of the collapse in the mortgage market has been from the adjustable rate mortgages that were sadly obtained by many unsuspecting Americans in the past years.

The adjustable rate mortgages start out really great because the interest starts very low. As time goes by the interest on those loans start to get much higher. This will then change the cost of your mortgage and has made it even impossible for home owners to make their monthly payments, which has caused many families to default on their loans. This could have been avoided by mortgage brokers simply explaining the risks of getting this type of a loan.
Many people who defaulted on their loans stated that they did not understand the risk and had they known they would have thought about their decision more carefully.

These defaulted loans have made things more difficult for people that want to obtain a loan to purchase a home. The interest rates have gone up, and the acceptable credit score range for purchase has also gone up. They also look at your credit history and your monthly income to see if you qualify. In other words they want to make sure that you can afford your monthly mortgage payments. The safest thing for people to do when purchasing a home is to go for the fixed rate mortgages. That is the only way your payments will stay the same. I still believe in no down payment loans, if you can still find one out there.

I purchased my home without a down payment and that worked out great for me. If you can afford a down payment that is also great, because it will bring your payments down. The adjustable rate mortgages are really for people that are not planning to live in the homes for long or that are planning to flip the house, which basically means renovate it and then sell it fast. Whatever you choose you need to read up on the market, save some reserve money and most of all be prepared.

Housing outrage in New Orleans

I wanted to give everyone who was not aware about the housing situation in New Orleans a chance to hear about what is really going on over there. It has come to my attention while watching the news today that the government passed a bill of some kind to demolish a huge housing unit that houses hundreds of the needy inner city. They claim that they want to demolish these units so that they can build some so called affordable income housing units in there place. Now in reality the public knows that affordable housing is really just another term for lofty condominiums.

The sad thing is all of this is going on when the people over there are still scrambling for places to live after the disastrous hurricane Katrina. They have been pretty much left hanging by the government and of course the treacherous Fe ma organization, who let the housing aid they promised to help citizens rot away on some lots in New Orleans. The people are fighting for a place just to be, and even that is getting taken away from them. Where are our great leaders out there?

The citizens were forced to storm city hall today to try to get in to fight for a right to be heard. Instead they were all pummelled and sprayed with pepper spray, trampled by police, and some were even arrested. Some politicians even had the nerve to say that the reason why this demolish was taking place was because the inner city was being riddled with crime. They believe that building new unit complexes will get rid of a lot of the crime wave. My question this evening is when will the people of New Orleans get a true chance to recover and have peace?

Blogging the genious of entrepreneurism

The newest craze in the work at home profession is blogging. This is a phenomenon where everyone writes just about anything that has been weighing on their mind. A lot of really good information has been put out there for viewers to read. There have been many topics that were written by the blogger that may have been ignored for a really long time, and needed to be brought out into the open for discussion. It is now getting very common that when people are searching for information that they can find it in a blog.

The reason why blogging has become the work at home profession of choice for more and more people, is the fact that advertisers can now use a lot of blogs to put their advertisements on. The blogger helps them by offering them space on their blogs and in turn the advertisers pay them a wage, which is the same thing they would do on websites, magazines,or news papers. This type of work is very flexible for stay at home moms or people with part-time or full-time jobs. It is a great way to earn basically whatever you want. The more you work on these blogs, the more you can earn.

Blogging used to be a way for teens to let out there frustrations, and now it has become much, much more. This has become an exciting new way to earn far beyond your wildest dreams, and also away to communicate with everyone about important information, and it is also a way for people to create lasting friendships, or to communicate with family members who live far away. I would love to get some feedback about this from anyone out there, so please do not hesitate to leave me a comment about this topic.

Nursing shortage

Today I would like to discuss the apparent nursing shortage that we have been having in America. It is getting very dicey out there in the medical world. Right now the patient to nurse or C.N.A ratio is pretty high. There are way more patients than nurses and the result is poor medical care.

The same thing is happening with the nursing assistants. Very often they have to take care of up to 35 patients at a time on a scheduled work week. The funny thing is that more people are running into the nursing assistant profession than ever. I would have to suspect that they found out that it is really not as glamorous as the instructors make it seem during class. This is a profession that you would really have to be doing it for years, because you really want to help the elderly and the sick.

It is not a beautiful job as they make it seem when you are studying it. There should actually be a law passed that states that C.N.A's should be responsible for about eight people at a time. Unfortunately, that will not be anything that happens for a long time, since the state licensing board seems to think that the amount of people C.N.A's take care of now is actually over the staff limit. I just want people to really think about this for a moment. Suppose you or a loved one happened to be really sick and needed to be in the hospital for a while, and maybe even needed to live in a nursing home for rehab for a while. The shortage of nursing could affect the type of care that they are given and it could even cost them their life due to this fact.

The reason why this should become every one's concern is, because whenever a nurse has to work short she has to take care of even more patients. This causes fatigue, it can cause depression, it can even delay the amount of time patients get much needed medication. This would not be an issue if we had more nurses working on the floor. Now the latest thing that is happening, is that more and more C.N.A's are going back to school and becoming nurses. I have also joined the reigns of going back to school for nursing. This really helps the situation, and if more and more good C.N.A's do this then this will not only help with the nursing shortage, but it will also drive back up the rate of pay for nursing assistants all over the country. Since everyone is flocking to go back and become a nursing assistant, this has made the pay drop immensely. Hopefully in five years there won't be as bad a shortage as there is now. There will always be a shortage unfortunately, because people really do not appreciate nurses as well as they should.