Friday, October 31, 2025

A lot of people are really upset in both Parties about Food stamps. I think 1/8 of the American people need food stamps to stay alive

Yes,
approximately one in eight Americans receives benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, with a monthly average of around 41.7 million people in fiscal year 2024. This is roughly 12.3% of the U.S. population. 
  • The program assists low-income people across the nation, using prepaid cards to purchase groceries.
  • The number of recipients can fluctuate, with about 42 million people receiving benefits in May 2025.
  • The percentage of people receiving benefits varies significantly by state, ranging from as low as 4.8% in Utah to as high as 21.2% in New Mexico, according to USDA data. 

  • What Is SNAP? And Why Does It Matter? | Johns Hopkins
    Oct 29, 2025 — Johnson, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) , also known as food stamps, is the United States' large...
    Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
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  • Percent of population receiving SNAP benefits in fiscal year 2024
    Jul 24, 2025 — In fiscal year 2024, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) served an average of 41.7 million people per...
    USDA (.gov)
  • Here's why the shutdown has put food stamp benefits at risk - CNN
    Oct 28, 2025 — Some will miss their payments as soon as Saturday, November 1, while others won't be hit until later in the month. How...
    CNN
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    Federal judge rules Trump can't require citizenship proof on the federal voting form

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    Federal judge rules Trump can't require citizenship proof on the federal voting form

    U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the proof-of-citizenship directive is a violation of the separation of powers.

    Trump's push to resume nuclear testing 'immediately' is unrealistic and could backfire, experts say

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    Trump's push to resume nuclear testing 'immediately' is unrealistic and could backfire, experts say

    Preparing the lone available site for testing would require hundreds of millions of dollars and at least two years, nuclear experts said.

     

    Hurricane Melissa death toll climbs to 46 across Caribbean as recovery begins

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    The State Department's regional disaster assistance response team arrived in the Caribbean yesterday to assist with recovery efforts.

    Suspects in alleged Halloween weekend terror plot had firearms training and access to guns

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    The FBI arrested five people outside of Detroit who were allegedly plotting a violent attack that referenced "pumpkin day."

    Will my food stamps renew? Across the country, a chorus of desperation and anger.

     
    How SNAP recipients and food banks are reeling from the shutdown
    NBC News spoke with 18 recipients who spent the week contemplating once unthinkable tradeoffs to put food on their tables.

    My experience with Mt. Shasta is different than my son's

    For example, he likes living in Suburbia in a big City like Portland Oregon where it isn't as expensive to live like it is in California and many younger people think this way. So, even though he is 51 and his wife is about his age and his son is now 11 years old he prefers not to live in California because Gas and food and Rent are just too expensive and the expense he feels reduces his quality of life.

    Many people 50 or younger are now facing the fact that you can either have children or you can buy a house. The majority of people under 50 are in this quandary right now by the way in this country. It's actually quite horrific for people 20 to 45 years old that they cannot have children and afford to buy a house even with two good jobs. 

    Even my son in law in San Diego County (father of two of our grandchildren) said that if they hadn't bought their home there in 2017 they couldn't afford to buy it now because then their combined income could be about 100,000 dollars a year which allowed them to get a good mortgage for their new home. However, here in 2025 to buy the same home you would need 400,000 dollars a year in income to buy the same home in San Diego County.

    So now, people in California expecting to buy a home between 20 and 45 are mostly screwed and won't be able to ever do this especially if they have children. Of course there are often work arounds but if you are working at a good job somewhere you often are going to have to give that job up to buy a home way out in the country to make it work to own a home for you and your family. 

    This is the reality all younger people are facing now! (At least in places like California!) 

    I just realized I didn't address the question in the title of this article.

    For me, Mt. Shasta is my spiritual home and always will be. I lived there full time from 1976 to 1978 then from 1980 to 1985 and then from 1990 to 1992 when we returned from Hawaii. However, sooner or later I found trying to make a living there was hard. And it is.

    Unless you are a truck driver or musician or a General Contractor or something like this if you want to raise your family there. It's different if you are single of course but with a family living in Mt. Shasta is often a problem making enough money there unless you work online or something like that.

    I found myself returning to the San Francisco Bay area and buying one or more businesses eventually and having to live there to run those businesses. 

    Trump is wrong. Up to 1/2 of the people that voted for Trump are Republicans, especially out in the country that get food stamps

    The term most used in the country for people who voted for Trump likely would be Rednecks which comes from people who work with their hands and have a sunburned neck from working outside.

    I have lived in the country and especially people who have lived there more than 20 to 50 years as a family often are Republicans. In other words they haven't really changed a lot from who they were in the 1950s as a family. If you are different then often you will move away from an environment like this.

    So, Trump is completely wrong about this.

    And people out in the country often prioritize WHERE they live and WHO they live around (as in family and friends) and people in the country are always more Republican than Democrat almost anywhere in the U.S. because they are more conservative and traditional. So, since many many poor people live in the country many many are Republicans. So, Trump is Screwing his Republican Base Big Time.

    What a Damn Fool! To harm the people who voted for him.

    So, up to 1/2 or more of the people actually getting food stamps are Republicans that he is harming and starving Right Now! 

    My Son told me about Mt. Shasta for example when in his high school class the teacher said to them: "About 95% of you will stay right here in Mt. Shasta the rest of your lives."

    This terrified my son because he wanted to live in a lot of places like we had already like Southern California, the San Francisco BAy area and Hawaii.

    So, hearing that 95% of the kids in his high school would stay stuck there in California really terrified him and made him want to move away even more than before.

    Eventually he got his Bachelor's of Science Degree from a Cal state university in Southern california and moved to South Korea to Teach English there where he met his wife and then came back with his son and his wife to live in Portland, Oregon. So, I guess he was one of the 5% of the people in that high school who actually moved away from that little town. 

    Will my food stamps renew? Across the country, a chorus of desperation and anger.

     

    Valerie Buck outside Stewpot in Jackson, Miss., on Oct. 30, 2025.
    How SNAP recipients and food banks are reeling from the shutdown
    NBC News spoke with 18 recipients who spent the week contemplating once unthinkable tradeoffs to put food on their tables.

    In 1983 on the North Fork of the Trinity River in Northern California I became a Great Golden Dragon during a Vision Quest

    This was a native American Vision Quest which means no water and no food for 4 days or 96 hours. I was about several miles upstream from where Crow and Nana lived at Eagle Cliffs then who had a sweat lodge to send me off into my vision quest of 4 days with no water and no food.

    The first couple of days without water or food my mind screamed at me telling me I might die. However, I knew that this was normal so I simply was mentally disciplined to go through this.

    Looking back at this praying for 4 days and nights was a truly amazing experience and in some ways the most amazing experience of my life. Why?

    Because I learned that humans are so much more than they think they are while paradoxically being so much less than they think they are.

    So much of what people believe isn't true. However, there are things no one much seems to know about that Are True.

    So, when you force your body to find ways to psychologically and physically keep you alive you begin to learn just how amazing humans really are both psychologically and physically.

    Let me give you one of my non-ordinary reality experiences to demonstrate this:

    "There were meat hornets that kept wanting to fly up my nose during the first two days of this vision quest and they were annoying me no end of never giving up wanting to fly up both my nostrils. But, because I was in a non-ordinary reality I could telepath with them and communicate with them. This is what I said to them mind to mind: "I will let you clean our both my nostrils of any dust but if you bite me I will kill you both!" And I let them crawl up my nostrils to clean out my nostrils of what they wanted and then they left.

    So, this was a clear communication that I likely couldn't have had with them if I wasn't in non-ordinary Consciousness from fasting from water and food.

    The other thing about this experience was becoming a Great Golden Dragon breathing fire out on thousands of people:

    I realized after being terrified of this experience in that I didn't want people to die from the fire coming out of my mouth. But, I didn't need to worry about them because they all became enlightened by the fire rather than crispy critters.

    At this point I realized I was something entirely different than I thought of before. I was a great Golden Dragon Teacher of thousands of people and that this was a part of my purpose in life in helping humanity survive become completely enlightened during the next 100 years or more. So, in some ways this eventually led to this blog you are reading now in 2007 (even though I had been blogging already since 1999 in June after I survived almost dying from a heart virus for about 9 months. I was the only one in California that I know of who actually survived this kind of heart virus that year by the way.  So, God has worked really hard to keep me alive so I could be here for all of you still here in 2025.

    So, now I'm 77 and God seems to want me to stay alive and to help you stay alive with his ideas too. 

    By God's Grace 

    I was at the "Become the Buddha" Conference at the Scottish Rites Masonic Temple in San Francisco in 1977 in the Fall

    At the time I was in Archangel Gabriel and Hope's Quarter at the Summit University which was then in Pasadena. This is before the Summit bought Camelot in Malibu Canyon which was I believe once a Catholic Monastery before they bought it.

    This Conference in some ways was the most powerful of all the Summit Conferences I have attended then. However, there was a Saint Germain Conference in Camelot which was really amazing like that too.

    Then in 1980 I got my first Tibetan Buddhist initiation in Ashland Oregon over the restaurant called now "The Green Leaf" restaurant by Gyaltrul Rinpoche who was a Nyingma Tulku. This initiation was one of many I received mostly between 1980 and 1990 both here in the U.S. and in India though I also went to pujas in Nepal as Well with Tibetan Tulkus I met there in India and Nepal. I also traveled back to the U.S. with Geshe Lobsang Gyatso and his Translator Lobsang in April of 1986 with my wife and children and they stayed with us a while before setting up the Shamabala Mahayana Institute in California near the SF Bay area.

    However, I would say that doing the Sanskrit version of the Tibetan Buddhist Mantras (which is somewhat different than the Tibetan version) was what drew all these experiences to me and eventually to my family which have forever changed both my life and theirs for the better.

    By God's Grace

    And Yes 25% of Buddhist believe in God like I do too worldwide. And there is no conflict between Buddhism and Christianity simply because Christians believe that Buddhism is a philosophy rather than a religion for a variety of reasons.

    I see it in a different way than likely most Buddhists do because after having studied about Gautama Buddha I realized it wasn't that he didn't believe in God it was that he thought arguing whether God existed or not was a complete waste of time and that people should help each other survive instead of arguing whether God existed or not. People should help each other and thereby increase human civilization as much as possible into something better and better. 

    Green Tara mantra: Mantra: Om tare tuttare ture svaha Purpose: Protection from fear, danger, and suffering

    In Dharamshala, India while I was there where the Dalai Lama and around 10,000 of his followers mostly from Tibet live then in 1986 in January when I first arrived I purchased a Print of the 21 Taras and I kept it on my wall as I gave this Tara Mantra and more specialized ones as well. Over many moves between then and now I lost track of this picture of the 21 Taras. Then recently I ordered a copy of this picture and it arrived from Ukraine which I saw as fortuitous as well because I didn't know where it might come from here on earth so there also must be a Tibetan Buddhist Following in Ukraine as well as the U.S. and the Rest of Europe and North and South America and elsewhere on earth.

    "By this merit may I become like all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the Ten Directions and the three times."

    The ten directions are for navigating in space and the three times are "the Past, Present and Future". So, you are praying to be like all the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas of the entire universe in the past, present and future by that ending line of this prayer. 

     begin quotes:

    Green Tara mantra: Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā - Wildmind
    The main Tara mantra is "Om tare tuttare ture svaha," which is often associated with Green Tara and used for protection, compassion, strength, and healing. Other variations exist for different aspects of Tara, such as the White Tara mantra for long life and the Yellow Tara mantra for abundance. Chanting these mantras is a practice in Tibetan Buddhism to overcome obstacles and achieve spiritual growth. 
    Common Tara mantras
    • Green Tara mantra:
      • Mantra: Om tare tuttare ture svaha
      • Purpose: Protection from fear, danger, and suffering; compassion and strength
    • White Tara mantra:
      • Mantra: Om Tare Tuttare Ture Mama Ayuh Punya Jnana Pustim Kuru Svaha
      • Purpose: Good health, long life, spiritual growth, and blessings
    • Yellow Tara mantra:
      • Mantra: Om Tare Tutare Ture Pushtim Kuru Soha
      • Purpose: Abundance, prosperity, and wealth
    • Red Tara mantra:
      • Mantra: Om tare tam soha
      • Purpose: Love and magnetism 

    Meaning of Om tare tuttare ture svaha
    • Om: A sound that represents the body, speech, and mind of a Buddha.
    • Tare: "To liberate" and refers to liberation from suffering.
    • Tuttare: "To liberate from the true origins of suffering".
    • Ture: "To liberate from all disease or sickness".
    • Svaha: A term that means "may it be" or "so be it". 

    • Tara (Buddhism) - Wikipedia
      The main vidyā mantra of Tārā is: Oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā. This is the most popularly recited mantra of the deity and is her ro...
      Wikipedia
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  • Benefits of Green Tara Practice | SamyeLing.org
    For Tibetans the two practices that everybody does, whether you are in the monastery or outside the monastery, are Tara, or at lea...
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  • 21 Taras powerful Dharani Mantras in Sacred Sanskrit as taught by Buddha
    10th Tara Dharani * Sanskrit: Soka Vinodana Tara. * Tibetan: Na Nyen Me Pi Drolma. * Sanskrit: Jag Vasi Vipan Nirbarhana Tara. * T...
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