50 pounds down and still counting

Well this adventure started on March 27th. Now on August 5th I am right at 50 pounds down from the starting weight. But that is not the only change I have been experiencing. There is so much more to getting healthy than just taking off pounds. If you are tired of being tired I highly recommend you contact a dynamo young coach that has help me along my way, Hannah Richardson. Contact her at hannahrichardson24@gmail.com. You deserve good health too ya know.

14 Weeks and 35 pounds later

Some of you are aware that this past March I had my semi-annual checkup with my doctor where she told me that I was borderline diabetic and put me on meds. Well she has been telling me I needed to get some of this 300 pounds of weight off of me for awhile. You know how every once in awhile you have something that makes you say enough is enough? Well this was it for me.

Shortly afterward I was introduced to a plan called "Transition for Life". It focuses on a total change of lifestyle, from what and how much you eat to attitude, activity level and everything in between. I was introduced to a young dynamo name Hannah who would become my "Coach". Thank God I found her, she is a very special young lady. Well as the title suggests I have had some wonderful success with this program. Demoting myself from 3x to 2x and most of my pants are falling off of me too.

15 more pounds and I will go into a period of maintenance for a few weeks and then it is back to work and headed for 220.

Bottom line is if you have tried and tried to take off unhealthy weight and failed time after time give my coach a shout and see what she can do to help you get healthy again. She can be reached @ hannahrichardson24@gmail.com. 

Letter from Dimitrios

TO: Whom It May Concern FROM: Dimitrios Karras, CEO Ares Armor SUBJ: Memorial Day DATE: May 26, 2014

Today, we take time to honor those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our once great country. An ungrateful land filled with recitals and incantations that have long lost their meaning. A land where those very same heroes who fight in her defense are labeled as domestic terrorists. Today, take time to really think about the sacrifices that were made. Take time to imagine what it's like to be covered in the blood of one of your brothers. Imagine picking up the torn pieces and entrails of his body, one by one, and stuffing them into a sleeping bag so that at least his body can make it home to be buried by his wife and two daughters. To pick up the small bible that he carried in his pocket for luck and not be able to turn a single page because his blood has drenched and stuck them together. Take time to really ponder what it is like to dream every night of the blood dripping off your hands into the sand as you watch a young boy, barely in his teens, die in his father's arms. Take time to wonder at what it feels like to come home and explain to a friend's mother the events surrounding her son's death, to look her in the face and watch her tears as she hears your story. Take time to really think about wiping a friend's brain matter from your shirt. Feel helpless, as you learn of your friends committing suicide one by one till the deaths of those who have taken their own lives after the war overtakes the number of those who died in the war. Take time! Really take time to think. What was it all for? Our brothers, our sons, our friends and our loved ones, their corpses even now rot in the land of ungrateful wretches such as us. We have allowed their sacrifice to be mooted by an overbearing tyrannical government that has enslaved us. What hubris is it on our part to thank a veteran for their service while we sit by and watch the very thing that they fought for be trampled and trivialized? The very word freedom has become a meaningless cliché used by politicians to further their own political agenda! How dare we. How dare we. Mourn your dead land of the free! Mourn your dead! These sacrifices are not trivial. These men did not die in a pleasant romantic way. For what? For our own people to give away the very thing that could possibly justify their sacrifice? How selfish and self-righteous are we to recite the pledge of allegiance as if it is merely words without meaning? How many of us have taken an oath to uphold and defend The Constitution yet we sit back and do nothing as our Constitution is ripped asunder?

To my friends in the Federal Government: You have sworn an oath to The Constitution of The United States of America. Perhaps, you should do some real soul searching on who your master is and what your actions really are. If you are ordered to do something that is unconstitutional, it is your duty to refuse. To those I saw die in combat: I promise you, I will not forget you. I will do my best to honor your sacrifice. I will remember my oath, I will remember. Dimitrios Karras CEO Ares Armor

A Democracy or a Republic, which is it

I have spent the better part of the last 8 years deeply immersed in the study of our founding as a nation and the application of the constitution as it was written by the founders. One of the most common things I hear that raise questions among novice and the learned alike is the use of the term democracy to describe what our founding fathers envisioned for this nation. Let's take a look at the word and what it actually means:

de·moc·ra·cy

[dih-mok-ruh-see] 

noun, plural de·moc·ra·cies.

1.government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

2.a state having such a form of government: The United States and Canada are democracies.

3.a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges.

4.political or social equality; democratic spirit.

5.the common people of a community as distinguished from any privileged class; the common people with respect to their political power.

 

Looking at all 5 definitions you might come to the conclusion that it fits what this nation is to a tee. Hell, it even says in #2 that the US and Canada ARE democracies. What is missing in these definitions that you normally associate with a democracy? Majority rule, right? Right. In actuality Canada is more of a Socialist country than anything with nearly half of its economy run by the government and a long standing nationalized healthcare system that you only have to take a cursory look at to understand why Obamacare will not work(a whole other debate). True democracy is simply majority rule. Having said that and with the state of things today you can easily see where people might consider the US a democracy. 

 

Rewind to July 4, 1776 on the steps coming out of Independence Hall a woman waited nervously to find out what had been decided. As Benjiman Franklin came out she asked eagerly "Well, what have you given us?" to which he replied, "a Republic, if you can keep it". Why in the world would Franklin use the term republic if it was supposed to be a democracy? He wouldn't. The founders full well knew what the difference was and wanted no part of the democracy that could so easily be abused and modified until it was twisted into Socialism. 

 

Here is the most important difference between a democracy and a republic. A democracy is majority rule. A republic is governed by the rule of law. 

 

Don't believe me? Read for yourself and the Federalist Papers is a good place to start. 

 

Til next time.