Struggling Towns Begin Printing Their Own Cash

In an echo of the Great Depression, local currencies with their own special flavors are popping up all over in attempts to give commerce and communities a lift.

Last year, two Detroit businessmen were bemoaning the local economy—no one in the city had cash, and when they did, they spent it in the suburbs. Then the pair hit on a solution: Print their own money. Thus was born the “Detroit Cheer,” a local scrip accepted by a handful of city businesses, including a pizzeria, an electrician, a few local pubs and a doggy day care center.

She did everything right except...

Sometimes the people hired to protect us demonstrate, for all to see, that they are so pathetically incompetent, so cowardly in their actions, and so void of any social conscience, that we finally understand our safety and the safety of our children rests SOLELY in our hands and we cannot rely on anyone else!

Here is yet another, UNBELIEVABLE video that should be a wake up call to you and your family. Folks, you must adopt the mindset that you are on your own when it comes to your personal safety.

Watch this teenage girl, who could be anyone’s daughter, do everything right except…

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SAS Survival Secrets

Episode 1, part 1 of the interesting documentary series.

The Who Sing to the Obama Faithful

I must admit that as soon as I heard that The Who would be the halftime entertainment at the Super Bowl, the timeliness of what would likely be their last song immediately crossed my mind. However, that didn't lessen the impact of seeing the aging rockers belt out their classic, "Won't Get Fooled Again," although this time with more significance for America than at any time since the song was written. The enthusiastic crowd -- thousands of whom undoubtedly sport Obama/Biden bumper stickers on their vehicles -- joined Townshend and Daltrey in thunderous unison each time the line "We don't get fooled again" was sung. Ironically, the extent to which the song indicts Obama was probably lost on all, save the venerable old Englishmen themselves, who hail from a bygone era when the left was actually anti-establishment.

The U.S. Constitution: The 18th Century Patriot Act

At some point in the past, the American ethos was centered on suspicion of government –whether liberal, conservative, or otherwise. For most of America’s first two centuries, Americans were taxed less, regulated less, and left more alone by their government than any other people in the world. These conditions resulted in an explosion of innovation, wealth, and culture unsurpassed at any time in human history.

As that trend seems to have reversed, Americans look to their past to try to establish where we have gone wrong and what we can do to solve our problems. Increasingly, some Americans point to the U.S. Constitution and our abandonment of its “limits on government” as the reason for our downfall. It is generally argued by “strict constitutionalists” that the purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to limit the power of the government. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Rice Fields of Japan

Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan, but this is no alien creation. The designs have been cleverly planted.

Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye.
Instead, different color rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.

As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.










The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed Kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed Tsugaru, a Roman variety, to create the colored patterns in the time between planting and harvesting in September. The different varieties of rice plants grow alongside each other to create the masterpieces.



A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants. The colors are created by using different varieties. This photo was taken in Inakadate, Japan.

From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work. Closer to the image, the careful placement of the thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen.

Napoleon on horseback can be seen from the skies. This was created by precision planting and months of planning by villagers and farmers located in Inkadate, Japan.

Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives are featured on the television series Tenchijin, appear in fields in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture of Japan.

This year, various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming areas of Japan, including designs of deer dancers. Smaller works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan such as this image of Doraemon and deer dancers.


The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square meters of paddy fields.

Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew from meetings of the village committees.

In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year. But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention.

In 2005, agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous rice paddy art. A year later, organizers used computers to precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the images to life.