A blog about Business & Finance.
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Al Qaeda's Message Spreading Through English-Language Sites Very sad news from a blogger friend Live from New York, a terror trial we'll regret - Jacoby Fox gets interview with obama Lou Dobbs explains why he left CNN Obama and 'The Great I Am' Fresno State Bulldog Football game on at 1 PM today, Channel 45 Would you like a joint with your fries? A joke for you, may be old, I dunno. Don't stop me if you've heard it. What's going in at the old 3Way Chevrolet place on California? August 06 September 06 October 06 November 06 December 06 January 07 February 07 March 07 April 07 May 07 June 07 July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 November 08 December 08 January 09 February 09 March 09 April 09 May 09 June 09 July 09 August 09 September 09 October 09 November 09 
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Michael Savage's long, strange tripHow a Jewish kid from the Bronx went from swimming naked with Allen Ginsberg to spewing the ugliest bile on talk radio. By David Gilson March 5, 2003 | At first glance, Michael Alan Weiner seems like an improbable candidate to be America's angriest, most vicious conservative radio host. Born 60 years ago in the Bronx, Weiner has lived in Northern California for most of his adult life, making a living as an herbalist and nutritionist. He communed with Fijian traditional healers, got married in a rain forest and studied ethno-medicine at the University of California at Berkeley. He swam naked with Allen Ginsberg, dreamed of being the next Lenny Bruce and wrote a rambling novel about a half-mad alter ego. His son's middle name is Goldencloud. For years, he made a name cranking out a pile of books on alternative medicine, recommending bizarre remedies such as using vitamin C to stop AIDS and kicking cocaine with coffee enemas. These days, Weiner's more interested in purging the body politic. Using the pseudonym Michael Savage, he's launched a one-man mission to save America from its enemies at home and abroad, which on any given day includes liberals, gays, academics, the homeless, the Clintons, immigrants, feminists, CNN, the American Civil Liberties Union, Muslims and other minorities. Broadcasting three hours a day, five afternoons a week, from a rented studio in downtown San Francisco, he gives voice to the right wing's darkest fantasies. He muses about launching preemptive nuclear strikes on the Middle East ("I wish to God the hatches were open and the missiles were flying!"), suggests gunning down illegal immigrants ("If we had a government, we'd blow them out of the desert with airplanes!"), dreams of dispatching with "commies, pinkos and perverts" and other undesirables ("I say round them up and hang 'em high!") and even paraphrases a remark attributed to Nazi leader Hermann Goering ("When I hear someone's in the civil rights business, I oil up my AR-15!") Woe be unto those who label him racist, sexist or homophobic -- or even worse, threaten his livelihood. When an Oregon group started a boycott of his advertisers last summer, he became downright apoplectic. "I'm more powerful than you are, you little hateful nothings!" he screeched, before intoning darkly in his trademark New-Yawk accent: "I'm gonna warn you again: If you harm me -- and I pray that no harm comes to you -- but I can't guarantee that it won't." Just last week, Savage fumed about the "brownshirt groups" who dare to criticize him: "You stinking rats who hide in the sewers! ... You think I'm going to roll over like a Kitty? You're wrong!" Michael Weiner's long and circuitous road has taken him from being a scientist and entrepreneur, through stints as a hipster, novelist and aspiring comedian, to becoming the personification of straight white male rage. Today he likes to play up his unconventional career path, to an extent. He's the kind of guy who never lets anyone forget he has a Ph.D. His Web site reminds visitors that he is a "World Famous Herbal Expert" and the author of 18 books. But just as his gap-toothed grin has been replaced by a row of airbrushed pearly whites on the front cover of his new book, he gives his audience a whitewashed version of his past. The real story is far more interesting, not just for its ironies and contradictions, but for the often disturbing clues it provides about the man now so well known as Michael Savage. He's gone through at least one political makeover. He's turned on old friends, or they've turned on him. If his semi-autobiographical novel is any guide to his own life, he's keeping a few skeletons in his closet. In the end, the picture that emerges from his books, from interviews with past and current associates, and from his radio show is that "The Savage Nation" is just the latest undertaking of a man who's spent his life trying to get the world to notice him. Savage's office said he was too busy preparing for his TV show to be interviewed for this article. Earlier interview requests by phone and e-mail prompted an irritated phone call from a woman named Janet, who announced that Savage would not speak with me. Asked if she was his wife -- who happens to be named Janet -- she said she was not. "I am not affiliated with him," she insisted. "I'm just a fan." After a few minutes of testy back and forth, she suggested that it would be unfortunate if my e-mail address and phone number were somehow posted across the Internet. Savage has come a long way since he emceed school assemblies at P.S. 42 in the Bronx. His father, a Russian Jewish immigrant, made a living selling antique bronzes on Orchard Street. An imposing figure who died of a heart attack in the early 1970s, he is the frequent subject of his son's on-air stories. Speaking at a convention sponsored by the trade magazine Radio & Records in March 2001, Savage recalled getting his first lesson in politics -- and cynicism -- from his dad. "[H]e explained politics to me very clearly. He said, 'You see, this is how the world works ... In this beautiful country of ours there are two bands of thieves: the Republicans and the Democrats.'" Though Savage waxes nostalgic about such father-and-son moments, it appears that his parents were no Ozzie and Harriet. "I was raised on neglect, anger, and hate," he writes in "The Savage Nation." But growing up with little parental approval or praise was a good thing, he says. "Frankly, that's why I'm driven the way I am." Savage, who now decries "propaganda about America being the Land of Immigrants," isn't ashamed of his own immigrant parents. However, his Jewish upbringing is strictly taboo. And he often makes Joseph Lieberman, Barbra Streisand and Larry King the butt of stale ethnic jokes. Brad Kava, radio columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and a longtime Savage critic, thinks Savage's ambivalence toward Jews is a misguided attempt to pander to conservative Christians. "He's Jewish, but he always acts like he's Christian," he says. In his book "The Savage Nation," for example, he complains of an anti-Christian bias in America. When Kava, who is Jewish, "outed" Savage several years ago, Savage reported him to the Anti-Defamation League. Dr. Robert F. Cathcart, a longtime friend of the talk-show star, speculated in a telephone interview that Savage says little about his background so that he appears more "neutral" when he discusses Israel or religious topics. A 2006 study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year.
Another study found that Americans drink an average of 22 gallons of beer a year. That means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles per gallon." Not Bad Someone sent this to me today and though it may have been around a while, it's still a "take me back" piece. What Made Me Me Long ago and far away, There lived a race of innocents, Oh, there was truth and goodness For Ike was in the White House, And they could hear us coming We longed for love and romance, We danced to "Little Darlin'", And only in our wildest dreams We fell for Frankie Avalon, We didn't have a Star Trek Five, We had a Mr Wizard, We had our share of heroes, For youth was still eternal, We'd never seen the rock band We'd never heard of Microwaves, And pumping iron got wrinkles out, We hadn't seen enough of jets Buicks came with portholes, And Coke came just in bottles, We had no Crest with Fluoride, We had no patterned pantyhose And middle-aged was thirty-five But all things have a season, And they send us invitations So now we face a brave new world --Author unknown In celebration of Mother's Day, we thought we'd right a wrong with your We went thru a series of these a while back but I don't know where the thread is to add these on. So..here we go again. The lack of road courtesy was brought up on another blog so I'm wondering...what is YOUR pet peeve when it comes to traffic? We've probably done this before but the good thing about bad memory is that we can discuss the same thing over and over and it's always new. My top 10. 1. People pulling out in front of you when there's no one behind you...then lollygagging along. 2. People who know two lanes are narrowing to 1 (construction) and stay in the closing lane til the last two feet...THEN they want to crowd over. 3. People who leave their turn signal on for 26 miles faking you out so you're afraid to pass them. Sure as the world when you brave it, it's like "oh..this is where I want to turn..just warning you ahead of time." 4. People who weave in and out of lanes at high speeds. We'll meet up at the next red light goofball. 5. People who start to pass you at 2 miles an hour more that you're going so they block both lanes. 6. Truckers who do the above in the mountains forcing YOU to gear down and drive 5 miles an hour. 7. People who park the wrong way on residential streets. (don't know why it bugs me but it does. Maybe it just seems against the order of things, never having lived on a one way street.) 8. People who pass on double yellow lines. They're there for a reason. 9. People who see you are waiting to turn at an intersection and don't use their turn indicators so you can go. 10. (Inside the car) People who want to tell you how to drive even though you've gone for 40 years without having an accident, or causing one. The day this blog talked about the shooting I mentioned it was typical to turn it into a gun control issue. Lo and behold, I opened the Jacoby piece today and was glad to see I wasn't alone in that feeling. Please take a few minutes to read it all the way to the bottom.
A TIME FOR TEARS AND SILENCE, NOT POLITICS By Jeff Jacoby The Boston, Globe Sunday, April 22, 2007 http://www.boston.com/news/... Paul Helmke didn't miss a beat. The bodies of the Virginia Tech shooting victims weren't yet cold when the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was out with a press release. "Details are still forthcoming about what motivated the shooter in this case to act," Helmke's statement said. "It is well known, however, how easy it is for an individual to get powerful weapons in our country. . . . It is long overdue for us to take some common-sense actions to prevent tragedies like this from continuing to occur." Helmke was far from the only belligerent in the gun control wars who couldn't wait to exploit the awful news from Virginia Tech for political purposes. The Million Mom March put out a statement calling the massacre by Seung-Hui Cho "a heartbreaking commentary on American values." A New York Times editorial insisted, "What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss." In the Daily News, columnist Michael Daly sneered: "Still love those guns, Virginia? . . . Feel different now that the blood is the blood of so many of your most promising young people?" On the other side of the gun debate, the Second Amendment Foundation piously lamented that rather than respond to the deaths in Virginia with "deep reflection," its opponents were "shamelessly dancing in the blood of crime victims to advance their agenda" -- something the Second Amendment Foundation, which made sure to put the words "Dancing In Blood" in the headline of its statement, would surely never stoop to. Within hours of the slaughter, meanwhile, ABC News had an interactive poll up on its website, the better to turn a horrific atrocity into instant political fodder: "Do you think this incident is a reason to pass stricter gun control legislation?" It wasn't only pro- and anti gun partisans who rushed to make political hay of the bloodshed at Virginia Tech. Within an hour of the second round of shootings, Daily Kos blogger L C Johnson was noting smugly that "this gives us an idea of what it is like to live just one day in Iraq." An anti-American diatribe on the World Socialist Web Site blamed the killings on a culture in which "the lesson taught by the ruling elite is clear: in achieving one's aims, any sort of ruthlessness is legitimate." Republican blogger Mary Katharine Ham was alarmed that the leading GOP presidential candidates didn't have messages of sympathy prominently emblazoned on their Web pages, while those of the Democrats did. Ugh. There is a time for everything, and the immediate aftermath of a ghastly mass murder is a time for tears and silence and prayer -- not for exploiting the dead to advance a political agenda. Of course, political agendas matter; democratic self-government would be impossible without them. The Supreme Court's abortion ruling last week was a reminder that when a highly contentious issue is forced outside the political realm, the results can be unsettling and inflammatory. In 1973, Roe v. Wade deprived voters and legislators of the right to make abortion policy for themselves, announcing instead an all-but-impermeable constitutional "right to choose." Yet far from settling the matter, Roe turned abortion into one of the most divisive subjects in American life. It is a classic illustration of the folly of suppressing political energy. But that is no justification for allowing politics to ride roughshod over human tragedy. Every death should be a reminder that our time on this earth is limited, and that the passions of the moment will not occupy us forever. Your first reaction to a horror like Virginia Tech shouldn't be to milk it for partisan advantage, but to remember that every day may be your last, and to adjust your priorities accordingly. On April 4, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was on his way to a campaign rally in Indianapolis when he learned that Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis. Breaking the news to the largely black audience, the normally hyperpartisan Kennedy had the grace and good judgment to rise above politics. "You can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge," he told his listeners. But "what we need in the United States is not hatred . . . but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another." From memory, he quoted Aeschylus, who wrote 25 centuries ago of the wisdom that pain and despair can reveal. And Kennedy ended with a plea as poignant and relevant today as it was in 1968: "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country, and for our people." (Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.) 
-- ## -- I seem to have a problem getting pics on other blogs so I'll do it here. Tom..have you seen vents like these? As I stated, as far as I know they vent directly into the attic but are probably covered with insulation. The first one is the bathroom, the second is the kitchen and the third is the living room with the rounded corners.
I heard that some guys opened a tank that holds the odor used in natural gas to make it have that distictive odor. Last I heard it traveled as far as Arvin. Anyone else smell it?
It would seem most of the regular bloggers are a good bit away from needing to make medicare decisions but maybe some will know..or some other folks out there would care to share their experience. I have to make that decision and am totally lost. I understand that part A is free but part B and C will cost about 124 per month. How on earth can they expect people to pay that kind of money out of a SS check? I'm still working, and will be for the foreseeable future so I have insurance that I pay for already. Does anyone know how that works? Do you continue to use your own insurance AND pay for Medicare? Or one..or the other? I'd like to get perspective from others who have had to make this decision. I fully intend to get advice from SS also but sometimes they just make it more confusing. Here's a question for you folks. Are there any words that bring back an instant visual of something from your childhood? I just mentioned "tipping over my giggle box" on Rons blog and it instantly brought back a visual of the water fountain in the old country church I went to as a kid. It was in the back corner and was enclosed in wood like narrow tongue and groove and had the ball shaped dispenser with the hole in the middle that you used to see. I have no clue why that seems to be a giggle box in my mind but there you are. That image pops up every time I use the giggle box expression. Another is Thornton. When I was little, 3-4 years old, we lived on Edison Highway in one of the camps (pictured here). Near where the Mercada sits now (used to be a lumber yard) there was a brick yard with red/orange dirt all around. Sitting there was a huge hopper on tall legs and that always pops into my mind when I hear the word "Thornton." Now I know that sounds nuts, but think I might have a reason for that. Prior to that time, we lived in Rio Vista and the city of Thornton so I'm assuming there must have been big hoppers like that and I just associated the town with the sight. Smells are a different thing but when I smell exhaust from an old car it immediately brings up a memory of sleeping in the back floorboard of our car on a trip back to Texas. Knowing the exhaust smell might have been a warning, it's a wonder we weren't asphixiated. :-) How 'bout you folks..any memories like that?
I just heard that in some places, cities are talking about supplying porta potties and dumpsters in homeless "communities" to help keep them more sanitary. Do you believe these "squatters" (no pun intended) should have these amenities at your expense?
The Easter Dad Stopped Drinking A former co-worker once asked me if I believed in miracles. It was during the Easter season and we were in a department store filled with pastel eggs, colorful baskets, and lovely spring fashions. I told her that I did believe in miracles; her question took me back to a time when God's power transformed my family from chaos to peace.
I was a precocious nine-year old at the time and I had watched my dad's unstable journey with alcohol for my entire life. Because of this, I was amazed when I saw my father suddenly transformed into a totally different man. For the first time, our home was filled with peace. Holidays and weekends were filled with joy as we spent time together. Sobriety gave dad a new interest in our living conditions and he began making repairs to the house. He also began attending church, reading the Bible daily, and attempting to make amends to those he had hurt. In his own way, dad followed a spiritual recovery program, turning his problems over to God and associating with new, sober friends. Also, instead of going to bars and getting into fights, he began taking his family out to eat, playing golf, and going to the zoo. Once I overheard him telling a co-worker that his family now came first and he would no longer be going out for drinks. I felt like I was in a heavenly place where monsters would no longer enter. No more sleeping in my clothes or worrying that dad might hurt mom or burn down the house. There was also milk to drink and plenty of food to eat because alcohol was no longer the head of our home. Check it out... hopefully it will work.
You always hear the Mideast, Greece, and Rome mentioned as "ancient land" or "ancient soil." I 'm wondering how it got to be so much older than the land here.
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