October 2008 Archives

A few days ago I wrote a bit about fatsoze,
high fructose corn syrup, and trans fats. I
received quite a bit of feedback from people
who fought at the Battle of the Bulge. Almost
all of it was positive, and some of the
responses surprised me with their candor.

George was overweight for years, and by
his own admission almost ate his way into an
early grave. His moment of truth came when
he had just purchased a new suit, and looked
at himself in the mirror during a fitting. The
fitting room was all mirrors, and there was no
hiding what he saw looking back at him.

He made his decision to slim down sitting in his
car outside the clothing store.

He started by eliminating one thing at a time
from his diet, and the first thing to go was soda.
He drank at least 4 40's a day of Coke. That's
the industrial size you can get at any convenience
store, and he had one in his car all the time.

His program started with walking every day for
30 minutes. In a month, those two things alone
helped him drop 15 pounds. He followed this
program for three months and lost 34 pounds.

Then he started ratcheting up his program. His
second food change was simple. No fast food.
No McDonald's, Wendy's, Sonic, Checkers,
Pizza Hut, Domino's, Taco Bell, KFC, and so on
and such forth.

In addition to his walking he added 15 minutes of
bodyweight exercises every day. (If you're looking
for bodyweight exercises go to: www.mattfurey.com ,
and order Combat Conditioning, and Combat Abs,
they're the best stuff on the market.)

Six months into George's new lifestyle he was down
67 pounds, and he was feeling like a new man. The
suit that he bought six months ago was now four sizes
too big.

George wasn't satisfied.

He added hill sprinting to his workouts three days a
week, and and the flabbo just kept melting away.
Thirteen months from the day he started, George
had lost 94 pounds, and now weighed 175 pounds.
This is what he weighed when he graduated from high
school, and it made him a very happy camper.

George will tell you flat out that he was a sugar
addict, and half his weight loss was due to his
switch to water instead of soda. The elimination
of fast food eliminated more sugar, and a
substantial portion of trans fats. Eating more
fruit and vegetables gave him more fiber, not
to mention a host of other benefits.

George says most people who are overweight
make the process of losing weight too complicated.
He says he slipped up a number of times, sneaking
some ice cream, or one of his favorite things, a big
PBJ sanwich. But basically, he stuck to his plan,
and didn't worry about his mistakes.

No one is happier about George's weight loss
than his doctor, who told him about four months
before he started his program he was in trouble.
These days he has trouble believing his eyes.

George took that suit in for alterations last week.
The tailor said he could almost make another suit
out of what he is cutting away. George stood in the
fitting room for quite a while, and thought a suit
had never looked better on him.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board.

P.S. I think I'll go ride my bicycle, and burn a few calories.

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

Almost every morning without fail there is a
report on the news about consumer confidence
being at the lowest point in years, and one
report I heard said it was the lowest since
the statistic started being kept.

How does that old saying go?

"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."

I've been working steadily since all this topsy
turvy stuff started happening a few weeks ago,
and no one I talk too has slowed down there
business or buying habits. The agency has
been booking more ads, not less, and we're
booking them for longer periods, say six months
instead of three.

Two weeks ago I attended a sold out football
game in Tampa, and there was a soldout
baseball game in St Pete the same night. A
single beer was 8 bucks, and there were guys
and gals drinking them down at a good pace all
night.

Sunday I had to go with my wife to the mall, and
the place was jammed. You would have thought
Christmas was in a day or two, not weeks away.
So where are all the people who being affected,
where is the epicenter of all this doom and gloom?

Well, its in two places. Washington D.C., and
New York. And guess what's there folks?

Major media, who rarely ever leave the Washington
to Boston corridor. They sit in their plush offices and
pontificate on the "people." They purport to know
what's going on, but they very rarely leave their
desinated squats, or talk to anyone who isn't at least
an equal.(in their eyes anyway)

In other words, the closest they've ever been to an
Indian is Cleveland.

It's all theory and no substance.

In my favorite diner the other morning I asked a
couple of guys who have been around a bit,
(They're in their 80's), what all the doom and
gloom was about.

"Beat's me," said Tommy, a retired electrician.
"I stopped watching television years ago."

His buddy Bill, a retired salesman, said this: "It's
always been that way with the press. Go back
and read what they were saying during World War
II and Korea. The sky was falling then too. The
thing is, I had a family to take of. I never had time
to pay any attention to what they said. I remember
back in the 70's they were saying that no one was
buying, and if I'd have listened to any of that
malarkey we would have starved. Somedays it was
tough, sure, but I never went home without a sale.
I remember knocking on peoples doors when it was
dark, and I was tired, but somebody was always
ready to buy. These guys in the press today are
just like they were years ago...soft. Soft...hell if you
hit them they wouldn't get up."

I'm betting that both of these guys could still do
their old jobs today, and test the mettle of many a
young man.

They're not wimps, whiners, or complainers.

You need an Ivy League degree for that.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. Ain't no stinkin Ivy Leaguers here!

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

The gleeful little piggies in Washington are
starting to oink up a big storm now that their
candidate is already taking victory laps around
the country. Two of the Three Pigs, Pelosi,
and Reid, are huffing and puffing at the Big
Bad Wold, (The Rich), and their minions are
letting the Redisribution Plans out of the bag.

The greedy Democrats are going to tax
everything in existence to spend their way
to prosperity, a system that has been tried
and failed on just about every continent.
You only have to look at South Africa,
and Zimbabwe, to see how this works.

First you take from those that have.

Then they get fed up, and leave the country.

The government then tries it's hand at
replacing the brains and money of the
people who leave.

It fails miserably.

The country starts sliding toward the abyss.

Then the second thing that happens is
that foreign investors, who have always
placed their money in the U.S., start pulling
out, because there is no longer any incentive
to invest here.

Third, giving money to people who have
never had it is a very bad idea. With no
sense of work, or achievement, it will be
readily pissed away, requiring the
government to give more and more. Then
we'll be back to where we were before Clinton
reformed welfare, and made people work to
get money. The result was that a lot of people
found jobs, because they paid better than the
government.

This bailout is far from over. Soon we'll be
bailing out the automaker' s, and then every
large company in America will be in line,
followed by all those who are non productive.

This is a beginning primer on what is going
to happen to your money when the Democratic
super majority takes power, and I'll tell you
something else that's going to happen. Obama
is going to unleash the greatest underground
economy in history. Soon, there is going to be a
lot of cash in the mattress, and more and more
people are going to be claiming that they make
less than 40 K a year, further depleting the tax
rolls and upping the government's ante.

Chicken Little Biden says Obama will be tested
by foreign leaders in his first six months. Well,
I think that if Obama submits all this tax garbage
and redidistributionist crap to Congress that the
real test will be right here.

The thing about voting is that bums can be
tossed out in two years. That's what Clinton
forgot, and Obama will too.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. I'll be happy when the World Series moves
back to Florida. I was cold just watching it last night.

thejoanrandallagency.com
206 407 312

This morning I was eating breakfast at one
of my regular breakfast joints, and I noticed
that almost everyone who came through the
door was fat. I'm not going to sugarcoat it
by saying that some of the people might
have been a smidge overweight. They were
at least 5-10 smidges over the line if my eyes
didn't deceive me.

I don't think they did, because at least two
people had to sit at a table instead of a booth,
because they couldn't park their carcass in a
booth without getting stuck.

Why are people getting fatter and fatter?

I can give you three big reasons.

(There are many more.)

But these are the three main culprits.

1) High Fructose Corn Syrup
2) Trans Fats
3) Lack of Exercise

Today I'm going to examine number one, HFCS.

HFCS is a highly processed chemically altered
sweetener created by a Japanese scientist in a
lab in 1971, and has been used in almost all
packaged and processed food ever since.

The use of HFCS has increased 1000% since
its introduction in 1971. It is in almost everything
packaged.

If you don't believe me, try this little exercise. Go
to your regular grocery, and do your regular
shopping. However, you cannot buy anything with
HFCS listed as an ingredient. For most of you, that's
going to mean your cart is only going to have a few
items in it when you go to check out. If you added
HFCS and trans fats together, and couldn't take
home anything with either ingredient, your cart
would have even less in it.

That means you would have proteins, meat, poultry,
and fish, plus fruits and vegetables. In other words,
healthy food. If you stuck to those items, you would
start to lose weight immediately, even without exercise.

Consider this: The average American consumes 440
12 ounce cans of soda a year. That's an extra 100
calories at a minumum every day, and loosely
translated it means you can gain an extra 10 pounds
a year just from soda consumption, which is loaded
with HFCS.

HFCS is bad news baby!

It also increases your appetite. It does this
with a little slight of hand. If you eat a piece
of fruit for instance, there is a chemical reaction
sent to the brain that you are full.

That doesn't happen with any food that contains
HFCS. It doesn't send that very important signal,
so you become a buffet molester, eating, eating,
and eating some more. And sooner rather than later,
you're what I call a Lardassian.

High fructose corn syrup is in almost all packaged
food. Cookies, pastry, cakes, candy, ice cream,
chips, pretzels; you name it, it's there. And where
HFCS and trans fats are found together, you're
getting a double whammy.

HFCS and trans fats can be found in the diet of
almost patients with:

Heart disease
Diabetes
Insulin Resistance
Impaired Metabolism
Unexplained Weight Gain
High Cholesterol
High Blood Pressure

The bottom line is simple:

Avoid HFCS like the plague.

Stop drinking soda, or at the very least
reduce it. Don't switch to diet soda, that is
another deadly sin I'll talk about later.

Eat real food, not food that comes in
packages.

Limit your intake of all sugars. (This
doesn't mean don't eat fruit.) It can mean
don't drink processed fruit juice, you're
going to have to read the label.

Avoiding HFCS has helped friends of mine
lose a lot of weight, without even making an
\effort. They just substituted good food for
bad. Eliminate HFCS and trans fats, and half
the weight battle is over. Then get moving,
walking, swimming, biking, and if possible, do
it outdoors, and get some sun, which gives you
Vitamin D, which almost everyone could use
more of.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
Chairman of the Board

P.S. Don't count the Rays out!

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

The following explanation is the best way
to understand B.O.'s tax magic.

Suppose that every day ten men go out for
a beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill they way we pay our taxes, i
t would go something like this:

The first four men, (the poorest), would pay
nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man, (the richest), would pay $59.

So that's what they decided to do. The ten
men drank in the bar every day, and seemed
quite happy with the arrangement, until one
day the owner threw them a curve. "Since
you all are such good customers," he said,
"I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily
beer by $20.

Drinks for the ten now came to $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way
we pay our taxes so the first four men were
unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six mem men...
the paying customers? How could they
divide the $20 windfall so that everyone
would get his "fair share?"

They realized that $20 divided by six is
$3.33. But if they subtracted that from
everybody's share, then the fifth and sixth
man would end up being paid to drink their
share.

So the bar owner suggested that it would
be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly
the same amount,and he proceeded to work
out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing. (100% savings)
The sixth man now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings)
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings)
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings)
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings)
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings)

Each of the six was better off than before.
And the first four continued to drink for free.
But once outside the bar, the men began to
compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20" declared
the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man
and said, "but he got $10."

"Yeh, thats right," claimed the fifth man. "I
only saved a dollar too."

"Its unfair he got ten times more than I!"
he claimed.

"That's true," claimed the seventh man.
"The rich get all the breaks."

"Wait a minute" yelled the first four. "We
didn't get anything at all. The system
exploits the poor."

The nine men surrounded the tenth
and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show
up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had
drinks without him. But when it came time to
pay the bill, they discovered something
important. They didn't have enough money
between all of them to pay the bill.

And that, boys and girls, television pundits,
New York Times experts, and Huffington Post
bloggers, is how our tax system works. The
people who pay the highest taxes get the
most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them
too much, attack them for being wealthy, and
they may just not show up anymore. In fact,
they may just start drinking overseas, where
the atmosphere is friendlier.

I am indebted to Professor David Kamerschen,
PHD in economics, at the University of Georgia,
for this gem of a lesson.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. Anybody see O'Reilly on The View?
A most excellent appearance.

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

Yesterday, or maybe it was the day before,
I started hearing this asinine argument from
reporters that I think started with Andrea Mitchell.
Mitchell works for NBC, the Obama network. She
was aghast that the GOP had spent $150 large
on Sarah Palin's clothes.

That's probably what Miz Mitchell spends on
make up.

Everybody in TV land knows that anybody
who is a star doesn't even have to buy clothes,
or accessories. Designers rush to get them them
to wear their clothes, so that millions of people
will see them, and hopefully get up and buy the
items themselves.

Network anchors get the same treatment. They
don't go buying clothes off the rack, they have
stylists who buy all their clothes, and obsess for them.

Would Tom Brokaw go out and buy 200 plus
ties? He wears a different tie on every broadcast.
Does Katie Couric buy all the clothes she wears
on TV? Have you ever seen her in the same outfit?

No. They don't buy their clothes. In fact, they
rarely buy anything. Restaurants pick up their
checks, the network limo's them anywhere they
want to go, and if they want to hit a nightclub
they surely don't have to wait in line.

Their kids go to the finest private schools, and
they all have places in the Hamptons, or Martha's
Vineyard. They ain't regular folks, no matter how
hard they try.

It's just like Jack Cass John Kerry's photo op with
Bill Clinton at the Burger King in 2004. They had a
couple of bites, then retired to the bus where they
had catered French food waiting for them.

(Though I'm betting Clinton stuffed the Whopper in
his pocket.)

So someone bought Sarah Palin clothing. So what.

Does anybody know who does B.O.'s suits?

Who paid for that snazzy tuxedo he wore last week?

Let's try and find a real issue to talk about.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board.

P.S. Why won't B.O. produce his birth certificate?

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

Back about four years ago I walked out
of my job with a major magazine, and
wasn't exactly sure what I was going to
do. The only thing I knew for sure was
that I wasn't going to let any of the many
fools at the magazine determine what I
was going to get paid anymore.

I was the top salesman there, and they
wanted to cut my pay, and give some of
my accounts to other people. Does any
of this sound familiar? They wanted to
spread things around, and help the
salespeople in the office who didn't work
half as hard as I did. So the owner of the
magazine that likes to see himself a big
conservative was really a closeted Obama
man. He wanted to redistribute my income,
and I told him where he could stuff that.

(The moon doesn't shine there.)

The next morning I went to a local breakfast
joint, and sketched out a business plan on
a napkin. I called a mentor of mine, and ran
it by him. He said, "It's all just a dream until
you take action."

The next day I found some office space,
bought some used office furniture, and
had phone lines put in. The following Monday
I went to work with a list of telephone numbers,
and my laptop.

I would make calls all day, and into the night.
My day usually started at 9 AM EST, and
ended at about 9 PM EST. Somedays I was so
tired I didn't make it home, and went to sleep
on the couch in the office. Things were slow
in the beginning, but I made enough to keep
the doors open.

Then one day I landed a big contract, and
things started looking up. Then I landed
another, and another.

But my mentor was right. Nothing happens
without action, and there are many dreams
sketched on napkins, notebooks, legal pads,
and computers. They are still dreams or
business plans, and will stay that way until
someone takes action to make them become
real.

There are many people who talk a good
game, but they never get off the fence. They
just sit there, waiting for something, hoping
that good things will just happen. It doesn't
work that way.

If you want the good things in life you have
to do something. You have to get up off the
couch and start moving, taking action to make
the mental picture a reality.

Otherwise, as the Chinese say, "Just talk."

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. I tried to get a ticket for the World Series
in Tampa. Seats behind homeplate were going
for 6 large, and they were selling. Somebody
must have some money.

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

Over the weekend I attended a business
meeting and by the time Saturday night
rolled around I was pretty tired. I was in
the lobby of the hotel with friends and
started singing the Gumby song for anybody
that would listen. That included a large portion
of befuddled guests. Somehow the tape in
my brain got stuck, and it was all Gumby, all
the time.

I had a couple of warm milks and then
went to bed. I didn't wake up until Sunday
afternoon, and I guess that I really needed
to rest.

One of the themes of the conference was,
"I am making money in tough economic times."

This was a great idea, and nobody I talked
to was suffering because of the current
economic chaos. There are a couple of
reasons for this, which are simple and extremely
powerful.

Number one, all of the members of this
business group get paid up front for
what they do. That means for instance, i
f you sell advertising like I do, at a
discounted rate, that clients pay you in
advance for the service, and to get the
substantial discount. If you are a writer,
you get paid before you write a word. If
you are in the fitness business, you get
paid before you dispense advice or training.

This means that we don't have any trouble
with billing or invoicing. If you want services
from us, you get with our program.

Number two, we live debt free lives. We
don't owe anybody anything. No mortgage
payments, no car payments, no credit
card payments. We pay as we go. This is
not as hard as some people believe. You
just have to believe in the philosophy. I
didn't get to this stage overnight, and
nobody does.

But if you want to get wealthy, these are
two principles you need to follow. And
don't say that this doesn't apply to your
business, or that you can never be debt
free. Members of my business group have
been hundreds of thousands of dollars in
debt, way more than the average bear,
and they have overcome huge adversity
to get to where they now stand. They just
decided to make it happen, and they did it.

You can make it hard, or you can make it
easy. They decided to make it easy, just
like I did. I actually made a chart showing
my declining debt, and my improving cash
flow. It was crude because I ain't much of
an artist, but it was very effective.

And the added bonus is that when you get
paid up front and are debt free, you can
stand in expensive hotel lobbies singing
the Gumby song to people you don't know.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
Chairman of the Board

P.S. How about those Tampa Rays?

thejamesrwhelanagncy.com
206 407 3124

Some of my relatives were farmers; they had
chickens, pigs, and cattle, and they also grew
things like corn, wheat, beans, and fruit. I
wasn't cut out to be a farmer, and as I got older
I tried every trick in the book to keep from going
on those family visits.

One of the things that really got to me was the
smell of chicken blood. The relatives butchered
their own food, and they ate a lot of chicken.
They had a whacking stump, which was a big
piece of tree where the chicken lost it's head,
and subsequently a lot of blood. Nobody ever
cleaned this area, they just sort of left it to nature.

In the summertime that chicken blood, mixed
with an occasional hog, or maybe a cow, would
get hot and smell like nothing I had ever
experienced before. Everybody used to get a
big laugh when I would lose my lunch. I stopped
going on those trips somewhere around fifteen
or sixteen, but I can still remember that smell.

These days you can get a whiff of it around
large restaurants dumpsters, but other than
that I haven't encountered it much.
And it isn't nearly as powerful.

But after observing congress the last few weeks,
that smell is starting to get closer and closer to
being what I experienced some two decades or
more ago.

There sure are a lot of chickens up there in
Washington, and most of them are running around
with their head cut off, and blood running all over
the place. And while it ain't July, it's still pretty warm
there, enough to get that blood to bubblin and stinkin.

Yesterday, believe it or not, after already giving
away billions to a most undeserving bunch, they
were talking about all the new giveaways they
have planned for the new year. 50 billion here,
a hundred billion there, 300 billion on this, and
these stinkin chickins have no idea about how
they're going to pay for it all.

Or they do know, and they think that you jess
ain't smart enough to figger it all out. Believe me,
Senator B.O. knows how he's gonna do it. He's
going to stick a hand in the hardest working
Americans pocket, and take it from you, and
give it someone who hasn't earned it. And the
535 chickens will go right along with the plan.

There is no longer any difference between
Democrats and Republicans. There was
nobody of standing who stood up and said
no, we aren't going to do this. There was
nobody to say to Wall Street, "Clean Up
Your Own Mess!" It may have been hard,
but we would have survived without the bailout.

Genius John wants to treat it like the Great Depression.

B.O. wants nothing short of complete nationalization.
Just like his friend Hugo in Venezuela.

The damage the chickens are doing is
going to be with us for a long, long time,
and it's going to smell like a chicken
was butchered on every doorstep.

I think a whole lot more people than than are going to be losing their lunch soon.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
Chairman of the Board

P.S. Anybody for a head cheese sandwich?

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

I just put down the phone after talking to a
young real estate investor in Houston. He is
making money hand over fist, in spite of the
bad economy, and the recent devastation
in the area by the hurricane.

The key ingredient in his success?

Adaptability.

He has shifted the primary emphasis of his
business 4 times in ten years, and has never
experienced a slowdown, no matter what is
going on. He doesn't have employees, keeping
his operation lean, mean, and ready to go for
the green.

Now he does have people that work for him,
but they aren't part of his operation. They do
all his legwork, and paperwork, so he can
focus on what deals to do. "I just sort things
out, and prioritize deals. I rank them, and start
going down the list. When I find a deal that's
doable, I'm on the phone."

And the thing is, 99.5% of his deals are done
on the phone. His office is in his basement,
and he works when he wants to. "I have a
general schedule," he says, but it can change
at any time. If I'm on a real roll, I might stay
in my office for days. Then, when it slows a
bit, I might just spend two hours a day in the
office, and the rest is family time."

But it's a rare day that he doesn't make a deal.

He is content some days to make $10,000.00,
and spend time with his young children. But
other days he has made $100,000.00 or more.
And he continues to prosper no matter what
the conditions in the market are.

He isn't bothered by the current liquidity
problem because he is 100% liquid himself.
He doesn't need banks, or lenders of any
kind. He buys and sells so fast that it would
make most people dizzy, but he says that
is all part of the fun.

He didn't come from money either. He started
his business with around $2500.00, and
now he has that in his pocket in cash every
day. "It's a reminder of where I started, and it
was all that I had. If I lost that today I wouldn't
even blink."

Sometimes he has given that $2500.00 away.
"There is always somebody who needs something,
and I've been blessed. Besides, it comes back to
me anyway, so I can give it away again."

When I asked him what he would tell people today
he said, "Tell them to turn off their televisions, and
burn their newspapers."

Amen.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. Now who would have bet Cleveland last night?

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

Today I'm printing most of the newsletter I
get from Dr. Al Sears, one of the things I read
religulously. You can sign on to this fine
newsletter at: alsearsmd.com

Dear Reader,

They're at it again...attcking your health. But
they are very clever at it.

The story starts with two mothers at a backyard
picnic. The first mom pours an artificuial drink
into plastic cups for their kids playing outside.
The second mom expresses concern about
giving their children anything sweetened with
high fructose corn syrup. (HFCS)

"I guess you don't care what your kids eat,"
the concerned mother says, "That contains
high frucose corn syrup. You know what they
say about it..."

The other mother replies with a condescending
smirk, "What? That it's made from corn, contains
no artificial ingredients, and like sugar, it's fine
in moderation?"

The worried mom looks embarrased and changes
the subject.

This is one of the new commercials from the
manufacturers of HFCS. Their new campaign
tries to wipe out any concern you may have
about their dangerous product. The basic
message is...you heard wrong. HFCS is natural
and wholesome. Don't listen to the naysayers...
this stuff is good for you.

These folks are worried. Their artificial
sweetener makes Big Buckaluckas. It's already
in thousands of different products. But people
are catching on...HFCS is bad news, and it's
anything but natural.

HFCS is a food processors dream sweetener,
it's cheap to produce, easy to transport and store,
and blends readily into nearly every kind of food
or beverage, from ketchup to beer. It's everywhere.
Check the ingredient labels in your kitchen, and I'll
bet you find it in a majority of foods.

What's more, it's a cash cow for the taxpayer-
subsidized US corn grower's market.

But the "worried" mom's fears were more than
justified. There are clinical studies proving HFCS's
toxic effects.

One animal study found that a diet high in HFCS
resulted in elevated levels of triglycerides and
LDL cholesterol, (which can cause hardening of the
arteries and heart attack), lower levels of superoxide
dismutase...your bodies number one antioxidant
powerhouse, and deficiencies of iron, calcium,
magnesium and zinc.

This means that HFCS can wreak havoc on your
immune system, diminish bone and muscle strength,
make you impotent, and increase certain kinds of
cancer, including prostate and colon cancer.

Nature's source for fructose is fruit, (that's why
it's called fructose). It's not as easy for your body
to processas glucose, the sugar that comes from
starches. Only the liver can metabolize it.

But because it's contained in the fiber of the fruit,
fructose normally absorbs into your bloodstream
relatively slowly, giving your liver time to digest it.
In fact, fructose breakdown is 40 per cent slower
than glucose breakdown, in part because every
cell in your body can convert glucose into energy
on it's own, without help from the liver.

HFCS literally floods into your bloodstream,
overwhelming your liver's processing capacity.
This can lead to liver damage not unlike the
kind that affects alcoholics. Animals given a
diet high in HFCS suffer severe cirrhosis of the
liver...scarring, dead tissue, and poor liver
function. Their livers look a lot like those of
hardcore alcoholics.

As if that weren't bad enough, HFCS also robs
your body of critical nutrients, enzymes, and
antioxidants. We've known about this for years.
Because it keeps your liver from functioning
properly, HFCS causes a number of serious
mineral deficincies that can have a cascading
effect on your health.

This commercial's just another example of
agribusiness trying to make profits at the
expense of your health. The word's getting
out about the true dangers of this product,
so they're getting nervous...and trying to fool
the public.

Anything sweetened with cane sugar is better
than HFCS, (Check the label). You might also
consider adding STEVIA to your favorite sweet
foods and drinks, since it's a natural sweetener
that's completely safe and easily metabolized.

But if you're looking for better thirst quencher,
drink water. It's not as exciting as a pre-packaged,
sickly sweet fruit juice, but your body needs it! A
lot of people are dehydrated and don't even know it.

By the way, HFCS is not a "natural" product.
Several of the enzymes needed to make HFCS
are genetically modified. You would never find this
kind of sugar in a natural setting.

To Your Good Health

Al Sears, MD

JW: It's been a long time since I have written
about HFCS, and trans fats, two things that
make people fat, and are in almost every
packaged food product. No wonder that people
who don't eat any processed food lose weight.

Eat fresh food, fruits, vegetables, and protein,
and you needn't worry about becoming a buffet molester.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
Chairman of the Board

P.S. Dow up, Dow down, it's enough to spin your head around.

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

Boy oh boy I'ma telling you, I have never heard
so much wailing and complaining and finger
pointing. Yesterday I had to kick people out of
my office because the bad vibes were getting
on my nerves.

While nearly everyone else was wailing and
checking their brokerage account, and wailing
and checking their account some more, I was
doing what I do best, which is selling ads. The
stock market may have lost 30% of its value in
the last ten days but I never stopped making
sales. Nobody told me to stop selling, or told
any of my clients to stop buying.

If we all just sit around and tell stories of doom
and gloom, then that's what we'll get. I'm not
going to be a part of it. I even had to explain this
to my wife, who wants to put a bunch of money in
the mattress.

We're a strong people, and a strong country, and
we'll survive this shake up in the markets. I'm more
worried about surviving the next president, who
wants to take this country places I don't want to
see it go.

I know this is a serious problem, and I feel bad
for those whose 401K plan has dropped 30-40-50
per cent in value. But the economy will come back.
The real lesson to be learned is not to trust the
people who run pension plans, whether it be a company,
bank, or brokerage institution.

There is what is called a self directed plan, which
means that you are in charge, and there are other
avenues available to you to control your own destiny.
You haven't heard about them because banks and
other institutions don't want you to know about them.
They have a very big interest in your money, and
they have convinced the public that they should turn
over control of their money to them.

Well, now that we have seen several instances of
what they do with it, shouldn't we all be taking a wee
bit more responsibility for ourselves? Before 10 days
ago, how many people actually knew anything more
about their investment plan other than the phone
number? That needs to change.

And all this government involvement is a serious
mistake.

There just isn't any area you can point to that the
government has made better. Oh...they have the
loftiest of intentions. But the reality is that everything
the government touches turns to crap. Right now
Congress wants to cut off funding for ACORN, after
the organization has been accused of fraud in 12
states, and no one in Congress knows how much
money is being given to them. They can't put a
number on it, because ACORN operates under at
least 75 different names.

This is why it's up to us. We need to stop giving
our authority away, and make our own decisions
about what we are going to do with our money,
and our lives.

Just like in that chick flick on baseball, "There
is no crying allowed here! No crying!"

Get busy doing something productive.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
Chairman of the Board

P.S. I mean it, no crying allowed!

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

We don't have to look very far these days
to find a "butter and egg man." In the parlance
of Sam Spade that would be the guy with the
big bank roll that is dishing out the money at
the hotel or casino. In todays case it would be
the hard pressed AIG executives partying it up
in Hawaii after getting the federal bailout money
with no accountability. Not only did they score
the first time with $85 babillion, they quietly
negotiated another $38 babillion while nobody
else was looking.

So they had a little half a million dollar party
for themselves in the sun, while the dumbass
taxpayers footed the bill. The old robber barons
are turning over in their grave at the thought of
this. The oil company executives ought to feel
like altar boys standing next to these folks.

The testimony this week from Lehman Brothers
Dick Fuld, another candidate for the caboose,
was absolutely incredible. Fuld has received
more than $300 mamamillion dollars in compensation
from a company he ran straight into the ground.
According to Fuld, the company made some
mistakes. I guess they did.

No shame, no apology, and we have seen
murderers and rapists with more regret. Not
Dick Fuld, and not any of the AIG boys, or
anyone else involved in what is The Great
Chisel.

In old Chicago the chopper squads would
already be on the streets. But these guys are
members of the Big Cush, an elite group that
don't dance.

Last night on O'Reilly...he had a good idea for
McCain. He proposed that McCain announce
Rudy as his Attorney General, and that he tell
the American people that he was going after
these thieves on the day he was sworn in. He
would have Romney as Chairman of the SEC,
and together these two would bring all these
grifters and flimflam fakealoo artists to justice.
It wouldn't hurt to have Ralph Nader as a special
prosecutor, backing up Rudy.

I can't help but think this bailout plan, ill conceived
and hastily adopted, will be a disaster, and much
worse than having just let the gamblers fall down
flat on their faces. We would have been much better
served by giving every American half a million dollars,
and letting them decide what to do with the money.

And if Obama thinks the answer is in raising
taxes, he must be hitting the pipe. He still has
plenty of wind power for now, but what happens
when it stops blowing?

We need to put a few hundred of these guys i
n the caboose. Not some Connecticut country club,
a real jail, like Rahway. That would send the
right message, and move the market.

From the big saddle?

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. What's with the Chamber of Commerce's supporting of illegal aliens?

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

My mother used to say to me, "Jim, any fool
can make money, but it takes a wise man to
spend it." The other thing I remember her
saying was "A pig bought on credit is forever
grunting." I laugh every time that thought passes
by, and it has passed by a lot lately.

Many years ago I was reminded of a method,
or philosophy, of debt free living. I had heard
of it before, but I never really practiced it.

I put this idea to work, and it's the reason I'm
not worried about what's going on with the
economy today.

I have no debts. I don't owe anybody any
money for anything. I have no mortgage,
no car payments, no loans for furniture, or
appliances, or a boat. When I buy something
it is a cash transaction, and that more often
than not gets me something I want cheaper
than the average bear.

My business is exactly the same. No debts,
no loans to repay, no fancy building.

I get paid up front, not when I finish.

If the stock market drops 4000 points tomorrow
it won't bother me a whit. If real estate continues
to drop it won't bother me either. (Although I may
start buying a lot of it.)

It bothers me that we have people getting MBA's
in finance and economics who really don't know
anything about the way money really works. They're
in debt up to their eyeballs, and it just doesn't make
sense, or cents.

Almost none of the members of Congress no
anything about money, except how to spend
what ain't theirs. The have, in the words of a
private attorney I know, "spent their entire lives
sucking at the public teat." Most of them have
no business experience at all. They have no
idea at all what it means to start and run a
business at a profit. (Of course if you don't
profit you won't be in business...a fact most of
them don't grasp because in their line of work
the money just keeps flowing.)

We need to return to term limits. The House:
Elect every four years, and they get three terms.
The Senate: Elect every six years, and they
get two terms. The President: Elect every six
years, and they get one term. No reelection.
Give the President time to get what he wants
done, and then he is finished. No worries about
reelection.

Balance the Budget. Members of Congress
should forfeit their pay if they fail to balance the
budget. Just like CEO's should not get a penny
except modest salary if their company fails to
make money.

An old guy down at the beach told me the
other day that anybody who thinks money grows
on trees is bound to be caught out on a limb
sooner or later.

Those old guys are pretty sharp. They didn't go
for all the new fangled and harebrained money
schemes. They understood what money was all about.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. Was that a debate or a sllep aide I saw last night?

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

The McCain Campaign has one last chance
to get some traction tonight, or it's essentially
over. McCain was asked last week by a woman
in Missouri when he was going to start fighting
like a man, and the old warrior appeared
flummoxed by the inquiry.

He apparently thinks he is fighting, and is
making the same mistake Bush I made years
back.

You see, nice guys can't be President, and
McCain is still clinging to being a nice guy.
Guys who want to be President have to want
it so bad they'll throw their pastor under the
bus to get some votes. They have to lie about
their past associations, and what they really
did to bring about the current financial crisis.

McCain hasn't read Saul Alinsky's book,
Reveille for Radicals, or if he has, he doesn't
believe what's at work against him.

And the idiots running McCains campaign
couldn't get their fighter a knockout if they
paid three times the going rate for a lay down.

Their decision to pull out of Michigan is one
of the greatest campaign gaffes ever committed.
And the plain spoken GOP head in the state
was absolutely on the money when he called
them stupid.

There's an old saying that you never get
anywhere alone, or achieve anything alone,
that you always need help. That's true, but it
presupposes you'll get the right kind of help.
McCain got Sarah Palin, then the campaign
idiots kept her off TV and radio. Obama has
handed them an opportunity to knock him off
his pedestal, but no one wants to let McCain
box.

Many years ago I watched an Ali-Frazier fight,
the one called the Thrilla in Manilla. It was Ali
and Frazier's third and last fight. Ali won the fight,
but he admitted years later that Frazier almost
killed him. He got up from a Frazier blow because
he said that he didn't want to die with Joe Frazier
looking down at him.

That's the kind of gut check it's going to take
for McCain to win.

He needs to be John McCain, and forget about
all the filters, and contrived campaign hocum.
He needs to start jabbing, and throwing viscous
left hooks. He needs to hit Obama so hard that
he has to think about how much he wants to be
President. He needs to make him hurt so bad he
wants to stay down.

That's how you get to be President.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. As my uncle Jack used to say, "He needs
to hit him so hard he flys over the river and lands
in Pottawammanee County."

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

You might remember that old commercial that
categorized people into spenders and savers.
Then it made a liitle joke calling some couples
"spavers." There's some smidgen of truth in
that commercial.

After working in sales for a couple of decades,
and for several companies before I started my
own, I can tell you there are two kinds of sales
management, spenders, and savers, and we
used to call the savers "cutters."

It is always better to work for a spender. Spenders
make sure you get the materials you need, pay for
a golf outing, a dinner, whatever it takes to get the
job done. Cutters do the exact opposite, and make
it doubly difficult to do your job.

To give you an example of a cutter, I offer the
following story. We once had a company dinner at
a restaurant that was also one of our accounts. The
executive VP left a 5% tip after running the wait staff
hard all night.

(Mostly to get his drinks.)

Salespeople threw all kinds of money on the table
to cover his extremely low tip. This isn't how you
treat a long time account, but he saved on the bill
by shafting the staff.

He argued about expense reimbursements, and
once threatened to fire me over a $300 Christmas
gift to a very large and profitable customer. The
net profit on that single account was over $350,000.
I told him where he could place those papers, and
I never heard from him again about that issue.

Four years into his tenure he got fired, because
sales had slipped.

He was followed by a spender.

The first year sales rose 40%. The second year
the same. When I left they had never failed to
trample the previous years budget.

Salespeople made plenty of money and no one
argued about expense reimbursement.

If you want to be in the sales game you have to
pay the freight necessary to win the game, or
you're just grandstanding.

When I first started this company I flew to Los
Angeles on a moment's notice just to talk to a
guy who had a big title. It was all gut instinct. I
landed that account within 30 minutes of arrival,
and I still have it today. When I landed it, it
became my biggest account. Today there are
several accounts larger, but that one in the
beginning was crucial to my success. I often
wonder whether the old VP of Sales would
have approved my trip.

And the answer is, probably not.

That's why I have my own company.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. Is anyone in Hollywood going to move to Europe after this election?

thejamesrwhelanagency.com
206 407 3124

Recently I had lunch with a Japanese friend
of mine who had made a few mistakes in the
beginning of a business venture. He was
really depressed and down in the dumps. He
also did not want to tell anyone involved in the
venture about the mistakes, which would only
serve to compound the issue.

When he told me what the mistakes were I
laughed. This through him for a loop, and
he said, Why are you laughing at me?"

That made me laugh even more. All the
mistakes he made were easy to fix, and
after I finished laughing I put him in the car
and took him to my office where I called a
couple of friends, explained the situation to
them, and had them take care of my friend.
In a little over an hour I had "fixed" all his
problems.

He almost started crying, and I told him I'd
have none of that in my office. I told him
about all the mistakes I made when I started
my business, and that I continue to make
mistakes every day.

As the philosopher said, "There is no
teacher like experience."

No matter what you are involved in, you will
always make mistakes.In fact, the more you
try to avoid mistakes the more frequently
they happen. Mistakes are the way we learn
from the time we were born. Just watch a six
month old who already knows they would like
to walk. They stand up, with or without help,
and try that first step, and fall down. Then they
do it again and again and again, and who
knows how many times they did it wrong, we
only remember when they did it right.

When we finally get things right we know a
helluva lot about what not to do. We learn a
lesson by doing things the wrong way. Very
few ever do the right thing on the first try or
venture. The ones who do often take a large
fall later, because they never had the chance
to fail early.

Edison failed 10,000 times to get the lightbulb
right, but when he did he lit up an entire country,
and probably the world.

Without failure we wouldn't have any idea of
what a beautiful thing success is. And though
it often appears that someone succeeded
overnight, that is rarely, if ever true.

Most of my successful friends banged on the
door of success for years before it opened.

When you make a mistake you just brush it
off and say "I'm one step closer to what I want!"

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. The stinking, pork laden bailout passed
this afternoon. Why don't I feel good?

While millions of people are watching the news
and crying in their beer feeling sorry for
themselves, some smart young people are
making a whole bunch of money by selling
products on the internet.

I happen to know one pretty well, and he has
done some business with me. His name is Nate
Rifkin, and he dropped out of the University of
Massachusetts because he was bored, and
wanted to make some money so he could do t
he things he dreamed about.

When he informed all his friends about his
decision they were all negative. They called him
stupid, and ignorant, and those were the nice
things they said. But Nate persevered, and
spent money he didn't have on acquiring some
marketing expertise.

His family didn't support him either, and that
didn't discourage him in the least. He just kept
pushing forward.

He developed an improbable product, called
Lumberjack Yoga, which you can find at:
www.lumberjackyoga.com.
and he started selling it on the Internet with
a fine salesletter that he wrote himself.

In the beginning things were slow, but Nate
kept his eyes on the prize. Pretty soon things
started looking up, and these days Nate's
garage operation is doing somewhere north
of $30,000.00 a month in sales. Nate nets a
very nice percentage of that, and is now in the
top 1% of all wage earners in the U.S.. Not to
shabby for a self confessed lazy college dropout.

Nate has recently writen a book entitled.
"Go For Greed - How To Get Whatever The Hell
You Want Out Of Life - Even If You're Lazy, Miserable,
And People Don't Like You." You can get a copy for
yourself at: NateRifkin.com

Nate's next goal is $100,000,00 a month
online. When he hits it, and I have no doubt that
he will. he will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
that all this emphasis on college is a crock.

Among my many successful friends, only one
finished college, and it took him close to 8 years
to get an undergraduate degree.

Again I repeat the advice in a story told by Dr. Al
Sears, "there are a thousand ways to make money,
and all of them involve selling."

Nate is a seller, and in the drivers seat because of it.
Someday he will have his own plane, several homes,
and a business that will need accountants and advisors
to keep track of it all.

Not bad for a college dropout.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
Chairman of the Board

P.S. I wonder why they don't teach selling in college?

A couple of years ago a salesman stood
in my office and gave an excellent short
presentation. Then a very strange thing
happened. When it became time to close
me, he got very nervous, and his whole
demeanor changed. His hands started to
shake, and his speech became halting.

I knew what was happening, and so I
had him sitdown and relax.

This salesman, like many salesman,
had a huge fear of asking someone for
money. We salesmen have all kinds of
phobia's, enough to keep a shrink on
duty twenty four hours a day. Some of
our phobia's are harmless, like wearing
the same tie when you're on a roll, or
wearing the same sox until you strike
out, things like that.

But this salesman's fears were strangling
him. One thing you have to be able to do
in sales is ask for the money. If you don't
get the money you can't complete the sale.

I offered to help this salesman get over his
fear.

He accepted my offer, and I began to work
with him sometime last year. We have an
hour long chat once a month, and I teach
him about sales situations and how to handle
them, with an emphasis on how to close and
how to ask for the money.

Soon after he started with me he started have
small successes, and then at the beginning of
2008 he started having big ones. He has
followed that up with even bigger successes
since the end of May.

In his last twelves presentations he has
closed eleven, and the last one could fall this
week. That's a perfect closing ratio, and it
doesn't just happen.

Not only is he close to perfect, more than
half of his customers are buying his most
expensive product, or an even more
expensive custom product. He has erased
all his fears of asking for money, and
followed my advice.

Not only has he followed my advice, but
he has adapted what I have told him into
language that he and his prospects are
very comfortable with. He is now able to
establish rapport with almost everyone he
comes in contact with immediately. Spend
five minutes with him and you'll think you
have known him for ages.

What has this done for him?

1) It has quintupled his income in the last
twelve months. He will generate more than
a million dollars in income by December.
Thats not gross sales, that's income from
gross sales.

2) His confidence and self esteem have
gone off the charts.

3) Selling has become so easy for him that
he can spend almost all of his time developing solutions.

He doesn't look like the same guy I met a
couple of years back, and he certainly
doesn't talk like it. Just like me, he has
his own planet. He had to choose a different
name though, because I already own Planet Jim.

The moral of this story is; that not only
did he listen to what I had to say, he had
the courage to put it into action, and to
continue to refine it.

If you're struggling, find a mentor, or a coach.
They can take years off your learning curve,
and help propel you to the next level.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

P.S. In sales there is no such thing as voting "Present."