The supplement you must take if you're on statins

The supplement you must take if
you're on statins 
By Bob Livingston
In all matters of health, you must think for yourself and realize, how in the world can drugs replace or do the work that nutrition is meant to do naturally within your body? They can't, no matter how much drug orthodoxy promotes that they do. You do not get high cholesterol because of a deficiency of statin drugs.

However, it is probable that your doctor will prescribe you a statin drug should they "diagnose" you with high cholesterol. It's even possible that your insurance will be dropped unless you take it. If this is the case, and you must take a cholesterol-lowering drug, there's a nutrient you should also take as well. 

When you take statin drugs to lower your cholesterol levels, you're likely to become deficient in CoQ10. This is due to the fact that while statins work by reducing an enzyme in your liver to decrease the production of cholesterol, they also lower the body's production of CoQ10.

When this happens, you can end up with severe muscle aches, pains and weakness.

In order to counter this effect and restore your natural levels, it's important that you take a supplement that's a minimum of 100 mg of highly absorbable CoQ10 each day.

It's even more important that you supplement with CoQ10 if you're over 40, which the majority of statin-takers are, because your body's natural production of CoQ10 declines drastically once you're past that age.

If you're both over 40, when your levels are already dropping, and taking statins, which decrease your body's ability to make CoQ10 even further, you could be seriously CoQ10 deficient.

Higher levels of the antioxidant have been proven to support normal blood pressure, maintain heart health, erase migraines, promote healthy gum tissues, maintain normal memory function and contribute to keeping your brain and nervous system perfectly healthy.

The form of CoQ10 your body can best use is called ubiquinol. Ubiquinol is a reduced version of CoQ10, so your body doesn't have to convert it in order to use it. All the heavy lifting has already been done.

The ubiquinol supplement that I recommend is from Peak Pure & Natural. It's called Peak CoQSol10 CF™. It's ubiquinol in its most highly absorbable form.

You can also get some CoQ10 from the foods you eat. You'll find it in small doses in:

• Grass-fed beef
• Free-range chicken
• Rainbow trout
• Sardines
• Pistachios
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Strawberries (organic, always)
• Oranges

Are Republican politicians on our side?

Are Republican politicians on our side? 

(This is the first installment of a four-part series on how conservatives should view the upcoming national midterm election. We will publish subsequent installments each Monday between now and Election Day.)

If the Republican politicians are our friends, who needs enemies?

There is a common theme in discussions with conservative friends who believe that Republican politicians — particularly those residing for very long in the District of Criminals — are cowards or become cowards who are afraid to stand up for conservative causes. It's also a message regularly delivered by Republican-loving scribes and talking heads who claim to be conservatives. 

An example of this trope appeared this week recently on the website American Greatness. Author Brandon J. Weichert writes:

There are times I forget the Republican Party won the 2016 election. The reason is simple: because most of the establishment GOP continues the loveable loser act. The Republicans appear to be appealing to some invisible referee who will wade into the great debate between those on the American Right and those on the Satanic Left and adjudicate the arguments fairly... If elected Republicans stood together the way the Democrats somehow manage, there is no policy that the GOP could not push through. Yet the Republicans struggle because their leadership is weak and malleable.

The Republican Party has well earned the appellations from conservative voters the "Loveable Loser Party," "the Stupid Party," the "Coward Party" or "weak" — all terms I've heard or seen used by Republican voters — based on its abandonment of moral and genuine conservative principles as well as its inability to lead in Congress. Not that the Democrats are any better, mind you, because their claims to morality and principle are even more ludicrous!

The abysmal Republican failures in Congress, most notably their inability to repeal Obamacare, unwillingness to reduce government size and spending and fumbling over the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seem to give weight to the premise. But this is a page right out of Republican Party politics 101, which promises conservativism to its followers but delivers unmitigated collectivism.

Republican politicians, for example, profess pro-Christian, anti-big government ideals but join the Democrats in faith-destroying, socialist legislation to expand the welfare state. The Republicans are not stupid, fickle or cowardly, they are hypocrites. They are not more effective, much less more trustworthy, than the Democrats in preserving your liberty. Republicans have long claimed to have the corner on genuine conservatism, much as Democrats claim to have the corner on genuine liberalism. Both claims are untrue but are perceived as true thanks to mass deception. Today's conservatism and liberalism are but twin pincers of the same, dynamic, ever-changing, collectivist dialectic.

I want to limit my examination to the conservative side of the problem because today's pseudo-conservatives are particularly adept at leading astray large numbers of middle-class Americans, especially Christians, patriots and other good folks. Also, if not for the consistent acquiescence of Republican "conservatives" to the collectivist agenda, America would have retained its limited, constitutional Republic, even in this "sophisticated" day and age.

Note that in a federal government dominated by a Republican majority, the federal leviathan grows in power, coupled together with New World Order. Note, too, that Republican judges and juries continue to rule for the state; codifying into law the evil practices of the progressive left such as socialized "healthcare," sodomite "marriage" and the right to murder the soon-to-be-born.

The Republican Party was born of corporatism and nurtured on bloodshed, and that continues to this day. As the historian Bruce Catton wrote in The Civil War, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln wanted to be the nominee of the Republican Party — a party that consisted of an amalgam of former members of the defunct Whig Party, Free Soilers (those who believed all new territories should be slave-free), business leaders who wanted a central government that would protect industry and ordinary folk who wanted a homestead act that would provide free farms in the West. "The Republican platform, however, did represent a threat to Southern interests. It embodied the political and economic program of the North — upward revision of the tariff, free farms in the West, railroad subsidies, and all the rest."

In the early 1860s, the Republican Party's flurry of new laws, regulations and bureaucracies created by Lincoln and the Republicans foreshadowed Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" for volume, scope and questionable Constitutionality of its legislation.

The term "New Deal" was only co-opted by Roosevelt. It was first coined to describe Lincoln and the Republican agenda by a Raleigh, N.C., newspaper editor in 1865.

"Lincoln's massive expansion of the federal government into the economy led Daniel Elazar to claim, '...one could easily call Lincoln's presidency the "New Deal" of the 1860s.' Republicans established a much larger, more powerful, and more destructive federal government in the 1860s," Mises.org explains.

Already a fascist party (as evidenced by its long history of corporatism and its embrace of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism," bailouts, big government and perpetual wars), the Republican politicians have slowly and almost imperceptibly abandoned any pretense to adhere to conservative first-principles while positing the notion that what was once true conservativism is now extremism.

True conservatives reject statism, embrace small government and abhor confiscatory taxes. Conservatives believe in a strong military for the nation's defense (not military adventurism). Conservatives defend innocent life. Conservatives advocate liberty and personal responsibility.

The Republican Party is ruled by CINOs (conservatives in name only), pseudo-conservatives who bow to the will of their corporatist masters while playing the fools. 

Growing number of $100,000-plus public pensions in Illinois cost taxpayers

• By Greg Bishop | Illinois News Network

The Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois.

John Spataro | Illinois News Network

Two recent studies of public sector pay and retirement benefits show tens of thousands of retired Illinois public employees making six-figures or more in all levels of government, dwarfing figures from states with more people.

Two organizations that reviewed and released the information hope it encourages taxpayers to seek change.

Illinois has more than $130 billion in unfunded pension debt for its five state-run pension systems. Adding in other post employment benefits, that number climbs to more than $200 billion. Municipal governments in Illinois also are struggling with unfunded pension liability. Some report using most, if not all, of their share of property taxes to pay pension costs.

Taxpayers United of America said Illinois’ public sector pension plans are too expensive. To highlight the problem, its annual pension report of all public employees in Illinois shows nearly 19,500 government retirees getting a pension of $100,000 or more. That’s 2,500 more retirees than last year.

The group's founder, Jim Tobin, said that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“The pensions are just out of line,” he said. “We’ve got one guy here who’s getting an annual pension of almost $600,000 a year and he’ll get $22 million if he lives to be 85. It’s ridiculous.”

OpenTheBooks.com founder Adam Andrzejewski said Illinois has more educators in the so-called $100,000 Club than more populous Texas, which has 7,300 educators making that much or more.

“Just on salaries, Illinois has nearly 20,000, so it’s three times worse, yet Texas has twice the population,” Andrzejewski said.

Andrzejewski’s research shows overall, 23,000 retirees got $100,000 or more in annual pension payments. Adding in the 71,000 employees at every level of government making at least that much in pay, and the number is 94,000 current public employees or pensioners making $100,000 or more a year. That costs taxpayers $12 billion a year.

There were also private associations Andrzejewski’s research highlights where it’s employees are getting big payouts.

“Two of the highest earners within the municipal pension system work for private associations – not government,” the report said, showing two park district association officials making more than $320,000 a year. “These private nonprofits muscled their way into the government system, and their huge salaries will guarantee lavish taxpayer-funded pensions.”

Then there are double dippers, including a former governor.

“Former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar double dipped the Illinois General Assembly pension ($166,000 per year), the State University Retirement System pension ($83,000 per year), and was hired back ‘part time’ by the University of Illinois for another $62,769,” Andrzejewski’s report said. “In total, Edgar pulled down more than $311,000 last year – in addition to the $2.4 million in compensation from the University of Illinois (2000-2013) and another $2 million in pension payments already paid-out from his 20-year career as legislator, secretary of state and governor.”

The Taxpayers United of America report found there are two pensioners making $500,000 or more a year. Nine retirees are getting in excess of $400,000 a year in pensions, 42 make $300,000 or more a year. From there, the numbers climb. More than 440 government retirees make $200,000 or more a year. More than 19,480 government retirees make $100,000 a year while the bulk, 107,092, make more than $50,000 in annual pensions.

The average total public sector pension payout for a lifetime, according to Taxpayers United of America, is $1.45 million in Illinois while the average retirement age almost 61 years old.

“We have to work into our 60s and 70s so these people can retire in their 50s and 60s on these ridiculous exorbitant pensions which is nothing short of legalized theft,” Tobin said.

Even more stark is what Taxpayers United of America reports employee withholdings deposited into the various funds, or $1.9 billion, compared with the $8.7 billion taxpayers pay into the funds.

“Nowhere is that available in the private sector,” Tobin said. “It’s just something that doesn’t happen, but it happens here in Illinois every time people get into these government pensions wherever they are in the state of Illinois.”

Tobin said all government new hires must be put in self-managed plans and the state constitution should be changed to allow diminishment of benefits.

Andrzejewski said “it’s time to slap a pay cap on the highly compensated public employees at every level of Illinois government.”

“People need to raise their voice, they need to give public comment, they need to start holding their elected officials accountable for tax and spend decisions,” Andrzejewski said.

The exorbitant pay and benefits is unsustainable, he said, and it takes resources away from other government services.

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