"Wait till I get my money right..." -Kanye West
by Frederick Towles
As a new year approaches, it is a great time to starting talking and thinking about your finances for 2012. There are some things that you and I want to consider now for 2012:
Develop a budget
It is going to be important to develop a budget for 2012 and to stick to that budget as best as you possibly can. Here are some things you can do right now to construct your budget.
1. Log onto your bank account.
2. List all of the things you have spent money on from January 1, 2011 until now (include all the transactions in your accounts – checks, withdrawals, debit card usage, bank fees, etc.)
First of all...who the heck knew that Swizz Beats was the CEO of Megaupload??? Smh.
MTV Reports: Super producer Swizz Beatz is in hot water with Universal Music Group over the promotion of his website Megaupload.com, according to reports that resurfaced today. As CEO of the online storage and file-sharing site, Beatz asked buddies Diddy, Kanye and Will.i.am to spread the buzz in a promotional video, the "Megaupload Mega Song," that the artists' label Universal Music Group allegedly did not approve. UMG issued a “take-down notice” late last year and Megaupload has responded with a counter lawsuit against the label.
The 4-minute clip features a slew of familiar faces singing the praises of the popular website, including Kanye West, Will.i.am, Diddy, Alicia Keys, Chris Brown, Snopp Dogg, Lil’ Jon, Kim Kardashian, Mary J Blige, Serena Williams and The Game. Peep the Megaupload song....joint is stuck in my head, even as I post this.
There's lots of talk about Sopa and Pipa...who the heck are these chicks and what do they have everyone so afraid of. Here it is explained in an 11 minute video. Now, I'm a conspiracy theorist...that being said: I think sometimes they throw pieces of news, legislation, etc. out to test the public's reaction to it. I believe they have every intention of eventually enacting these bills, or milder versions of them, but I think they wanted to know what the damage is going to be like. Ultimately we showed them that we care more about our internet access than we do about being government slaves. #SOPA #PIPA.
For a good while now, because of some really bad religious experiences and poor examples of good religion, our culture has openly rejected the idea of “religion.” Openly religious people and their organizations have done terrible things to people and society has responded by saying “keep your religion.” In response, Christianity came up with clever bumper sticker quotes like “I don’t have a religion, I have a relationship” and “I hate religion but I love Jesus.” Lately, there has been this growing sentiment that Jesus “came to stop religion.” and “Jesus hates religion.” But you CAN NOT read scripture and come to the conclusion that God hates religion.
By most definitions, Jesus was a RELIGIOUS man. He went to synagogue every Sabbath - like a good religious Jew, He prayed regularly - like a good religious Jew, He even taught others religion, He gave money and did all the good religious stuff that good religious people did. What He DIDN’T do was be hypocritical, loveless, self-serving and more for the sake of keeping His pet-project traditions alive.
When you look through scripture, there is never a knock on religion in general. The knock is always specifically on BAD religion. Let’s look at a few examples. This isn’t an exhaustive list of every reference to religion, but here are a few:
