Archive for May, 2009
The New Vampires
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | Economics | 2 Comments
It seems that we are going through another round of Vampire worship. Twilight, True Blood and the Underworld movies could lead one to believe that they are benign. We must never forget that they are bloodsuckers. The new Vampires may be even worse.
I recently got a letter from my credit card company that said that they were raising my rates again. Some of these bloodsuckers have raised my rate to the point where I may have to give them up.
Once again the government has come up with a TLTL ( too little, too late)plan and missed what should have been an important feature in the bill: a federal usury rate. There was a time when banks would give you 5% on your savings and charge you 10% for a loan. Now they give you .1% and charge 29% on your credit card loans.
Financial advisors tell you that if you pay the minimum it can take thirty years to pay off your credit cards. At 25% interest will you ever pay off your credit cards?
I don’t worry for myself cause I have decided that if I have to give up my credit cards I will get new ones when I pay them off or I won’t. I think I can do without them because for the most part I can use debit cards.I worry for the people who cannot.
Let me play Nostradamus for a little and say that the credit crunch will cause the really poor to forget about credit and use the “old five finger discount card” for their purchases. The only consolation is that they will be stealing from the rich.
Stop the Torture
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | Politics | 1 Comment
America now has a new policy of not torturing . Actually we had the policy we just didn’t enforce it. The question is what are we going to do about it?
On the one hand, President Obama has more than one thing on his plate right now. The economy might be more important then the torture debate right now. I agree that his focus should be on the economy but doesn’t he know how to delegate? The Attorney General should show some initiative and start prosecuting. President Obama has been described as a Constitutional lawyer so I’m sure he can decipher what constitutes torture.
I may be expecting too much to say that the Congress also knows what torture is. Whether the Speaker of the House knew about it or not we deserve to know if people were tortured. I have no doubt that we did waterboard certain prisoners and that creates a problem. The enemy will use that to justify bringing in a destructive device that will harm Americans that aren’t even aware of why they are dying.
If we want to be a moral country we have to stand up and force our representatives to do what is right and stop the torture.
Miss Californication
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 | General | No Comments
I am so old that I remember when the fact that Marilyn Monroe did a nude layout would have disqualified her from the Miss America Contest. Her layout was so popular that it appeared in the first Playboy. At that time there was a line delineating the good girl from the bad and women had to choose between the two.
Now I challenge anyone to name ten Miss Americas without naming Vanessa Williams cause she had to give up her crown because she did those nude pictures(I’ll allow you to count Vanessa if you can name who took her place). Most people would have trouble naming five winners. Very few of them actually accomplished what you would have expected considering most of them had beauty, brains and a talent for baton twirling. Maybe it was because they seemed too pure and unattainable that they never did more.
Enter Vanessa Williams; she won the contest and then went on to a reasonable career after her real portfolio appeared. I remember discussing her problem with someone who argued that the release of her photos were detrimental to her career. I argued that the photos were probably released on purpose by her because more people knew about Marilyn then Mary Catherine Campbell (She was the second and the third Miss America and came so close to winning a third time that they changed the rules. So she is also the only person to have won twice).
Enter Donald Trump. He saw an opportunity to cash in on America’s Madonna/Whore fascination( this is not a redundancy as some might think but refers to the Madonna or Mary, Christ’s mother) so he changed the Miss Universe contest. He keeps setting the bar so low on morality that I can’t wait to see what he goes for next. There have been numerous times when contestants had racy or nude pictures What next, Porn?
Sins of Omission
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | US Judicial System | No Comments
Last week when I was finishing my blog I got a comment on a previous blog. It was the one entitled Suicide Jury and it dealt with the Louise Woodward case. ordinarily I wouldn’t reply but it bothered me that the comment implied that I hadn’t checked my facts.
In most cases when I start to write my blog I open at least two windows; one to write the blog and the other to check the facts. As far as I can determine factually the blog is correct (to those of you who would be interested in researching it further Google Louise Woodward or click these links to get you started.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Woodward
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-440819/Louise-Woodward-wants-baby-own.html
I didn’t include the fact that one of the doctors has since re-examined his testimony and concluded that with todays science there might be room for reasonable doubt. This to me was not a sin of omission because it didn’t change the fact that she was tried , convicted and subsequently released for time served.
What offended me about the verdict has more to do with what I believed than what was done. I believed that a jury has the final decision and I was willing to accept that. Sometimes it punished the innocent and rewarded the guilty but I felt that it was fair because you had to be sure beyond a reasonable doubt. One only has to mention O.J. to realize that the jury system makes mistakes but nothing is perfect.
Anyway as a public service I offer this link for those of you who don’t want to serve on a jury. This guy got excused
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0430091jury1.html