Most of us are familiar with the notion of unrequited love: someone deeply and passionately loves someone else, but the feeling is not mutual. The love sick person longs for the other to reciprocate and respond in like manner, but alas, a heart is broken as the love interest withholds affections. This unrequited love could lead to despair, depression, and ultimately to death, if the rejected person cannot resolve this properly and find healing for his or her broken heart. If you or someone you know is in such a place, thankfully one of the stated reasons why Jesus came to this earth is to mend the brokenhearted (Luke 4:18).

Karen De Coster, CPA is an accounting/finance professional in the healthcare industry and a freelance writer/blogger. She writes about the medical establishment, Big Pharma, Big Agra, the Corporate State, health totalitarianism, lifestyle fascism, industrial-medical-pharmaceutical complex, and essentially, anything that encroaches upon the freedom of her fellow human beings. She is a proponent of ancestral health and the natural, eco-ag farming community, and she opposes the Fed’s anti-food choice totalitarianism. 

ILANA MERCER: State-subsidized Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are the intensive rearing facilities in which the animals we eat live wretched lives and die a ghastly death. Libertarians ("bookish buffoons" you call them) generally consider these death camps for critters as exemplars of the free market. Most have not awoken to the fact that factory farms (CAFOs) are antithetical to the free market. Explain.

I've always struggled with attending funerals. After my father passed on, the struggle intensified. When I received an email that my Precept Ministry Bible leader's grandson had lost his life fighting in Afghanistan, my heart wept for Jan Priddy and her husband Don. However, attending the funeral wasn't an option — until I opened the attachment. When I looked into the young faces in the photo, Jonathon David Hall's life became personal. He stood in front at the far left. Another photo was of fellow soldiers standing alongside the tarmac awaiting the plane that would bring his body back home. Tears flowed. It was then I knew I had to be there to pay respect and honor this twenty-three-year-old young man who'd given his life so that I could live in a free nation. 

Likely you’ve heard about the random acts of kindness that occasionally take place at fast food chains like Starbucks. The “Pay It Forward” phenomenon has been cropping up throughout the country for several years now. It all starts when a customer at the drive-thru tells the cashier that they would like to pay for the order placed by the car behind them. The kindness then becomes contagious as the happy recipient reciprocates by perpetuating the gift to the approaching customer in their rear view mirror. The most remarkable episodes are the ones that do not let up all day, sometimes stretching the java generosity to more than 150 customers. Surely an awesome event! I wouldn’t mind taking part in something like that, provided I am not followed by a stretch limo full of parched travelers.

As I sit in my camouflage cargo pants (fashion not force) in my 3,000 sq. foot Sin City home, a recent story my friend Stryker told me keeps popping into my head. Stryker's nickname is due to the movie, “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” and he acquired it during his 22-year stint as an RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) in the Marines during the Nam era. (PS: He enlisted.)

Late last year when a presidential primary candidate was asked how he was going to reach women voters, he responded that he was polling well with women. Oh, oh. He seemed clueless about what most women really want. Once again, women were being taken for granted and once again we could lose – big time. And lose, we did.

How many of us were stunned when we heard that all references to God were removed from the Democrat platform? It was astonishing to watch the pandemonium on the floor at the Democrat National Convention when under political pressure the convention chairman, Antonio Villaraigosa, called for a vote for a rule change to allow God in the platform. Amid booing and shouts of protest there were three separate votes before the wording was changed.

Many have argued that individual business owners work on their own to build successful businesses. This is correct. The President has a different, and now infamous, opinion. I don’t think Obama was making a straightforward statement as many have argued, though. He wasn't merely claiming that individuals don't build up their businesses through their own hard work. I think he made a much more dangerous statement that people are ignoring. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Americans are jarred by the realization that the Supreme Court ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act failed to protect and preserve their sacred liberties.

“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care. In clear violation of our First Amendment rights Barack Obama-with his radical pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path”. – Illinois Bishop Daniel Jenky, speaking before a Catholic audience, April 2012.

I recently saw a cartoon in the Chicago Tribune, in the Perspective section, which showed two men on a park bench. One was an elderly fellow, dressed in rags. Another was a college grad in his graduation gown and cap, holding a sign about student loan debt. The implication was that the graduate was a fool, while the bum was smarter for not having even gone to school.

Just because something did not happen does not mean it could not have happened, and just because someone cannot imagine something does not mean it is impossible.

Money “talks” and the majority of living, breathing citizens are rendered increasingly silent. What qualified candidate from a more modest background, unwilling to sell their candidacy, can afford to run? We have a recent example from Florida. Romney spent more money on the Florida primary alone than McCain spent on his entire bid for president! This is campaigning that has gotten way out of hand. Money should not become both “voice” and “vote” in a democracy made up of a vast majority of people in both middle and lower socioeconomic levels.

Nine years after the search for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq developed into an invasion, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared an official end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq. The occasion was cause for celebration among soldiers and their families, but it also marked the beginning of an era of uncertainty for those concerned with national security. Shadowing America’s recent withdrawal from Iraq are the proposed $260 billion in defense budget cuts that will roll out later this week.

The budget cuts were triggered by the debt super committee’s failure late last year, and are compounded by other defense cuts proposed by the Obama administration. While defense spending is hampered by unprincipled defense contractors, fraud, and porky appropriations bills, all of which merit getting severed, overall defense spending is quite low when compared to previous years. Currently, 3.9 percent of our GDP is spent on defense compared 6.2 percent in the 1980s and 9.5 percent in the 1960s. Regardless of the relative costs of defense in America, if the existing budget cuts go through, the Pentagon’s strategy review believes that the United States would no longer be able to conduct two ground wars simultaneously.

Recently I watched the new U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary, John Bryson, speak on how the United States is essentially a non-participant in world trade. He detailed precisely how we unilaterally permit numerous nations nearly unfettered access to our markets, but less than one percent of our businesses market any of our products or services abroad. Of that one-percent about two-thirds market to either Canada or Mexico, or both.

My view of our slice of the pie is that we only have a tiny sliver of world trade. We market to non-North American countries at a pauper’s rate of participation at 0.35 percent or less. If his assessments are correct we might as well become isolationists. Is there something awry in our trade agreements?