The use of experimentation on animals has been around for centuries. Animal testing is used mainly for developing new drugs and vaccines for human beings. However, many drugs used for animals in veterinary medicine have also been developed by testing on animals. Animal testing has brought forth many drugs that have saved human and animal lives, but these lab animals eventually end up dying and are subjected to cruel procedures. The lab animals also live in stressful living conditions and sometimes they aren't accurate in determining how a drug will affect a human being. There are many faults to animal testing which is why we should be opposed to it.

Billions of lab animals die each year in the United States alone due to animal testing. Lab animals aren't just rats. Cats, dogs, monkeys, rabbits, and guinea pigs are all used for animal testing. Most of the tests these animals are subjected to are very painful and can cause a lot of stress on the animals. Sometimes the experiments that testers do have nothing to do with what they are researching or trying to develop.

Another downside is that the animals live in poor conditions. They are put into tiny cages and have to sleep and eat among their own feces. They get no exercise and are kept away from the other lab animals. Many times they are kept in the dark and get no sunlight. This is unhealthy and very stressful on the animals.

Lab animals are also not always a reliable source of what medicines and vaccines will do to human beings. Human body systems and animal body systems are different, so drugs will react different with each. If you have heard of a drug recall, this is because a lab animal had no ill side effects to a drug that many humans did. Also, the conditions in which the animals live in contribute to how they react to a drug. They live in unhealthy environments, so this can affect the way their bodies react to a drug.

There are thousands of reasons why animal testing is wrong. Animals cannot give their consent to be tested on, and therefore people believe it is okay to do so. Billions of animals die and results aren't always accurate. Animals testing should be done away with and new alternatives made. Hopefully with technological advances, animal testing will become a thing of the past.

It’s time to boycott the Bank of America. People these days talk about reasons why one might want to boycott Bank of America. Reasons such as faulty credit practices, integrating unsound financial companies when B of A itself is not sound, changing policies on existing credit card accounts with established members, and charging outrageous bank fees to solid customers are just a handful of reasons why Americans are upset with Bank of America. What are my reasons?

As a former banking industry employee, I can speak to the issues of boycotting Bank of America. Although I never worked for B of A, my banking experience allows me to take an insider look at insider banking practices.

I also have banked with Bank of America. Want reasons why you should boycott Bank of America? Ask their customers. Customers have felt the pain, considered it shame, and gotten out of the game.

But I set aside each of these legitimate reasons to boycott Bank of America for one superior reason: the name of the bank.

The Bank of America? What kind of name is that? Does any nation have a truly national bank? Yes, in the former Soviet Union. The Bank of Russia, the Bank of Yugoslavia, yeah, those were successful businesses that looked out for consumers and employees. In America banks encourage customers to save money so that they can turn around and lend out that money in the form of personal, business, and mortgage loans. National banks? They look out for their own interests, not the interests of the nation.

Just look at the problems we have with banks every 15 or so years. We have waves of failures, bailouts, and then prosperity, only to begin the cycle all over again. Imagine the National Bank cycling from prosperity to bankruptcy and back again. Does this really help our nation?

Someone might say that boycotting the Bank of America would be like boycotting America itself. Get a life. The only way to boycott America is to leave America. Boycotting a bank that claims the name of our beloved country, the exclusive name of our nation, is patriotic.

Now consider that the Bank of America is the largest bank in our nation, gobbling up smaller banks, and all the while maintaining that exclusive name: THE Bank of America.

It scares me to think we may soon have only one bank in town.
 

It is important to keep in mind that Israel is violating international laws by retaining land that has been taken in war. In addition the everyday life of the citizens of the occupied territories is made miserable. This is done by means of checkpoints and searches just to harass the citizens there. The citizens need to show identification papers on their own territory. Israeli settlements and highways cut north and south and east and west across the West Bank. It takes hours to get to work and back home for the Palestinians. Their life is hell. Yet we support Israel with 2 billion dollars plus in aid every year. We always veto any UN resolution critical of Israel. It is not morally right.

Palestine is now divided into two by Israel. Is it possible to have a state that has another in between them? The travel between Gaza and the West Bank is strictly controlled and now even more so with Hamas in charge, with the Israelis punishing Gaza because of the election of Hamas. Bear in mind that Hamas won the last election honestly, but is denied legitimacy by the Israelis.

Israel itself started as a state on land that was conquered by them. This land was given to the Palestinians by the UN, yet Israel helped herself to additional territory. Resolutions trying to return any Arab land is vetoed by the United States The city of Jerusalem was supposed to be the capital of both an Arab and Jewish state. Every day the Israelis encroach and confiscate more of East Jerusalem. The Israelis intend to stay on the conquered land and the United States is behind these actions. Rarely does the United States ever criticize Israel. Do not the Palestinians have a right to a state of their own, with real sovereignty? The United States claims to be an honest broker, but is always leaning heavily on Israel's side.

How can the United States support a country that does not support human rights for the Palestinians? It taints our own moral standing in the world when we support a brutalization of a people.

Mattel simply creates unsafe toys. You would have wished that the Mattel Corporation would choose not to have the paint that is made for their toys to be created in China. The fact that the paint use to be made for many of Mattel's toys within the state of Ohio just got U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio to go on a even more wild campaign against China and their unsafe products. Sherrod Brown had already been a fierce advocate for fair trade and already was warning against the terrible labor practices and uncompetitive wages that many Chinese companies offer up and how the United States normalized trade relations with China. Then the fact that Mattel sold the paint recipe of that company in Ohio for the toys was something that just further aggravated Sherrod Brown against the Chinese government and the Mattel Corporation especially.

Sherrod Brown would certainly support the idea of a boycott regarding the Mattel Corporation. Another United States Senator who wrote a book about unfair trade and labor practices within nations like China was Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. The name of the book that Dorgan wrote is called "Take This Job & Ship It." Dorgan and Brown have certainly been two of the strongest advocates within the United States Congress. These two men are heavily supported by unions such as the United Auto Workers and the AFL-CIO for example. These same unions would also likely support a boycott of Mattel especially if it does not effect any remaining Mattel factories within the United States where workers could be damaged financially by such a boycott.

The unions do not want to see such a boycott hurt workers, but such a move may be the only way to get some of these multinational companies to wake up and develop a real plan for the future where workers and consumers especially are protected. You certainly do not want to read anymore stories about kids being poisoned or seriously injured simply by playing with some of their toys. Kids just want to be kids and if they just can't play with their toys in a safe manner the world becomes extremely dangerous. The more likely thing to breed success against a company like Mattel would be strong legislation with some actual teeth to it. The legislation would have to be enforced by a capable Food & Drug Administration among other agencies.

It is with extreme sadness that I have to denounce Bill O'Reilly as an ethnic racist. What is an ethnic racist? An ethnic racist is a person who sets himself up as being better than those of his own race. He is worthy by his own megalomaniac personality to denounce people who have done nothing more than to dare intrude on his air space and possibly attract more attention than him and more favorable attention. He will not tolerate that sort of blatant insensitivity to his god-like persona by mere mortals whom he secretly senses know who he really is.

What is Bill O'Reilly? He is a college professor who finds himself facing a genius who makes no pretensions and has no expectations. He retaliates by casting aspersions on her friends, saying to her in front of her peers that they are only her friends because they are from the same ethnic group. He then turns and joins those ethnic groups and wins their support by passing out high grades to them as if those grades were candy.

What is Bill O'Reilly? He is a racist who uses those people that he secretly feels superior to by attacking their victims and wiping their records clean if they can only pass along another Fox contract to his decrepit show. A Bill O'Reilly is an unmitigated bore who has learned to play the psychological game of race and not race in a country that is as psychologically warped as a prostitute claiming to be St. Diane of Assisi or whatever.

A Bill O'Reilly is capable of destroying the only hope a country has to promote himself and to attack what he knows to be his better. We have seen Bill O'Reilly in action and it is sickening. His supporters are the crud's who feed off of talent and who demand that they be loved because they say so while they are sticking the knife in the country that they profess to love.

Bill O'Reilly would play the part of a healthy opposite of Scrooge's Tiny Tim. He could dance rings around Scrooge but he could make the world put Scrooge in a pot and pass the salt.

How do you do it Bill?

 

Senator Arlen Specter is a true independent voice for the state of Pennsylvania. During his years representing the Keystone State he has worked hard to find a compromise and a middle ground on nearly every issue that has come before him. On a woman's right to choose to have an abortion for example he has consistently upheld the tenets of Roe versus Wade while still giving pro-life judges a fair and open hearing as he served on the Judiciary Committee. He has also consistently opposed the taxpayer funding of abortion while supporting embryonic stem cell research against the wishes of the majority within the Republican Caucus of the U.S. Senate.

Arlen Specter is a man in his nearly thirty years in the United States Senate who has done the best job he can representing all of his constituents within Pennsylvania. Instead of representing one part or the other we have seen Specter be endorsed by both unions such as the AFL-CIO and business interests such as the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Instead of just voting the party line like his past and current colleagues like Harris Wofford and Bob Casey Jr. do Arlen Specter considers the views of all of his constituents before casting a vote. He certainly does not represent the views of many conservative organizations like Focus on the Family do for example. Focus on the Family hailed Specter's former colleague Rick Santorum, but were also critical of Arlen's views on issues such as gay rights and equal pay for equal work.

Arlen Specter has been a consistent supporter of the Second Amendment in his career, a stance that typically fits well within the Republican Party. During his time in the United States Senate he has also been a consistent supporter of increasing funding for the National Institute of Health. His stance on NIH funding draws ire from the same conservatives who would typically be praising him for his stance on gun rights. This is the kind of tight rope that Arlen Specter chooses to walk in order to represent all of his constituents. This is the balancing act that has forced him to draw primary challenges from the right with Pat Toomey criticizing and now from the left and Admiral Joe Sestak. I personally hope that these challenges don't force Specter to stop considering the views of just one set of constituents. He has always focused on the concerns of the people of Philadelphia as well as the people of Lebanon. Hopefully he will continue to get to serve in the United States Senate.