IDEALISTIC BUT  “CLUELESS” POPE

For What It’s Worth – Buffalo Springfield

Is it me or is Pope Benedict just clueless as to what’s really going on in the world?  In his message for the Roman Catholic Church’s annual World Day of Peace, to be marked on Jan 1 and whose theme is “If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation,” Pope Benedict said;

“Humanity needs a profound cultural renewal; it needs to rediscover those values which can serve as the solid basis for building a brighter future for all.”

If humanity needs to rediscover those values which serve as the solid basis for building a brighter future for all,” how bout we start by putting an end to empire building, ending the war in Afghanistan, create peace on earth, goodwill toward man and stop sucking up to global warming frauds like Al Gore. If you want to protect creation- STOP THE KILLING! You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand this fundamental truth. Stop empire building,   telling third-world developing nations how to run their affairs and let them develop – ON THEIR OWN! America needs to stop telling other countries how to run their affairs, our CIA needs to stop interfering with the government regimes in developing nations, stop aiding and arming the contra’s, stop trying to topple dictators. It was the CIA who put Saddam Hussein in power to replace the Ayatollah. Then years later, when Saddam began burning oil -fields in Kuwait, we had to go back over to Iraq and stop him. It was not George Bush Senior’s intent to remove Saddam from power, merely to get him to stop burning Kuwait oilfields. What happened after “Desert Storm” became a personal feud between the Bush family and Saddam Hussein which ultimately led to Bush Jr sending the troops back to Iraq, over-running Iraq in two weeks, Saddam Hussein found hiding in a hole and Saddam Hussein ultimately hung by a noose around his neck until he was dead. Feud Over.

The mission statement was clear- GET SADDAM HUSSEIN. Period! There was never any goal of fighting a prolonged “drug-war” against an invisible enemy called the Taliban, one which the United States will never win. So why has new president Barack Obama become so buffalo’d by General McChrystal and the joint-chiefs and sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan when one of Obama’s campaign promises was to: BRING THE TROOPS HOME!

America had its drug-war in the golden-triangle in the killing fields of South Vietnam. WE LOST! Can America really afford an indefinite, prolonged drug war against a better armed, invisible enemy than the NVA in Vietnam? Such wars have a prolific tendency to escalate. DO we want a third world-war raging in all the Far East? North Korea and Iran are both pursuing nuclear weapons and a nuclear agenda.

Does Pope Benedict not see the developing military crisis around the globe as developing nations pursue a nuclear agenda? That wacko, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez  who once threatened the life of American president George W. Bush is trying to start-up the “Cold-War” again between US and Russia by praising Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Wednesday for standing up to the United States. Chavez has been sucking up to the Russians to buy arms. Chavez, a former soldier who led an abortive 1990s coup before later winning an election, has purchased more than $4 billion worth of Russian arms to rearm the Venezuelan army, including fighters and thousands of Kalashnikovs.

Yet Pope Benedict sucks up to gobal-warming frauds like Al Gore:

“Sad to say, it is all too evident that large numbers of people in different countries and areas of our planet are experiencing increased hardship because of the negligence or refusal of many others to exercise responsible stewardship over the environment,” he says. He called on all people to “move beyond a purely consumerist mentality” so that they could “rethink the path which we are traveling together” and adapt “a lifestyle marked by sobriety and solidarity” between the haves and the have nots.”

Idealistic but “CLUELESS!”

That may well be true but there are higher priorities, especially for the Pope who is God incarnate on this planet. Arms control is definitely a higher priority than any global-warming threat. Genocide- definitely a higher priority. Global-warming which now the experts disagree on, takes a backseat when it comes to the total extermination of every man, woman, child on the planet in a nuclear WW-III. I see this Pope, as a man who seen as staid, stuffy and who is trying way too hard to appear, hip, popular like his predecessor  Pope John Paul II who died of an irreversible cardiovascular collapse and septic shock at 9:37pm on April 2, 2005 at age 84. As the leader of the free world, sucking up to global-warming frauds like Al Gore does not make Pope Benedict look cool, trendy, hip nor does it make him popular like John Paul II. It makes him appear like a “clueless suckup.” What will make Benedict a great Pope and not just a mediocre one is to use the might of the church to demand America pull its troops from Iraq/Afghanistan. To demand that Russia stop dealing arms to wacko’s like Chavez. To demand that Iran cease and desist its nuclear-arms program. The way to do this is to encourage millions of Catholics world-wide to peacefully protest. This is how Pope Benedict should use the power of the almighty Vatican - but not to suck-up to the likes of Al Gore and other global-warming frauds who continue to line their own pockets with millions of dollars.

OSCAR TRASH TALKING

Jive Talkin – Bee Gee’s

It’s no secret to anyone who follows Hollywood that in recent years, the studios campaign for an Oscar win the same way politicians campaign for presidency, and using many of the same marketing strategies and political dirty tricks. Hollywood knows well that HFPA has a long tradition of voting for whomever gives them the best swag. But that supposedly ended after the uproar when Sharon Stone gifted members with expensive Coach watches before she picked up a nomination for the little seen The Muse. I’m told that, the morning after Leo’s party for Tobey, the HFPA phoned Kavanaugh and said the Blu-ray goodie violated the group’s rules. So all 15 HFPA had to give back the DVD player.

As the Golden-Globe nominations, the first of 2009’s award-shows were announced this week, the  Oscar trash-talking and political campaigning of films has begun. I keep hearing what little money Kathryn Bigelow’s -  The Hurt Locker and Clint Eastwood’s – Invictus have made, and how that should prevent both films from winning Best Picture. This falls under the badmouthing category known as ”Oscar voters don’t want to look out of touch with moviegoers“. Size does matter when it comes to box office, but that’s something Academy Motion Picture Arts & Sciences members ignore with ridiculous regularity. Sometimes it seems they purposely vote for the little known pics just to fuck with Hollywood’s head. For the record, Summit Entertainment’s drama hasn’t made much money since its release June 26th: domestic $12,671,105, foreign $3,436,487, worldwide $16,107,592. But it’s still very much an Oscar-worthy film. As is Invictus which opened soft last weekend with only $9M.

The Oscar nominations will be announced January 22, 2010 and already the race is on as each studio vigorously campaigns for its candidate or film.

The Locks: Overwhelming buzz means three movies are sure to be nominated: ‘Up in the Air,’ ‘The Hurt Locker,’ and ‘Precious’

The Oscar Hopefuls: Movies destined to get multiple acting, writing and directing nominations stand a better chance of getting a Best Picture nod as well.  ‘An Education’,  ‘Invictus,’ ‘Nine’ and ‘A Serious Man.’ The remaining slots could go to children’s movies, animated films, or other blockbusters that pleased mass audiences ‘Up,’ ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ and ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox,’ as well as smart, grown-up action hits like ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Inglourious Basterds.’

The Long Shots: Conversely, the inclusion of more populist movies could elbow out the acclaimed but low-profile indie and art-film fare that usually merits a slot (or several) in this category. ‘The Messenger’, ‘The Last Station,’ ‘Bright Star,’ ‘A Single Man,’ ‘Brothers,’ ‘The Road’ and ‘Crazy Heart,’

Too Soon to Tell: Does ‘The Lovely Bones’ have a shot? Does ‘Avatar’?

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences plans to stage Hollywood’s big event on March 7, rather than in late February, to avoid a collision with the closing ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada.

VEGAS DOWN ON ITS LUCK

Luck be a lady tonight

They call her Lady Luck but there is room for doubt because at times she has a very unladylike way of running out. Lady Luck it seems has run off with another fella if you talk to the folks who live and work in Las Vegas these days. they’ll tell you a lady doesn’t leave her escort. It isn’t fair, it isn’t nice . A lady doesn’t wander all over the room and blow on some other guy’s dice.

Before the economic downturn, the new owners of The Sahara (privately owned by Los Angeles-based SBE Entertainment and private equity firm Stockbridge Real Estate Funds of San Francisco. They purchased the Rat Pack-era Sahara in late 2007 for $331.8 million) .planned to build a new 1,000-room hotel tower. The renovation plans also called for demolishing the 200-room Tunis tower, and completely renovating the 17-acre property. The Sahara closed two of its three hotel towers for the winter season because of low demand,and the casino and other amenities are struggling to remain open.

It used to be that Las Vegas was the land of riches but  the “boom-times” are over. In the first quarter of 2009, even the biggest casino companies in the town struggled. Las Vegas Sands, MGM, Mirage, and Wynn Resorts,  were all feeling the effects of the economic slowdown in the United States and around the world.

As if the struggling economy and shuttered construction sites weren’t bad enough for Vegas this year, then there was “Black Sunday,” One of the worst NFL weekends in the history of Nevada. Football is the key sport for Las Vegas sports books, with NFL bets accounting for about 28% of their business each year, and college football next at about 19%.

“Every sports book director in this town was on their knees crying uncle,” said Jay Kornegay, director of the Las Vegas Hilton’s race and sports book. “Black Sunday,” he called it, his worst in 22 years, noting he paid $3,000 to a 65-year-old woman holding five $2 NFL parlay bets.

All told, the city’s sports books lost about $8.5 million that day, said Jay Rood, director of the city’s largest sports and race book, MGM/Mirage. The losses could have been twice as big, he said, except the underdog Arizona Cardinals beat the New York Giants that Sunday night.”

“One of the worst NFL weekends in the history of Nevada,” Rood said.

Las Vegas has suffered greatly during this economic downturn, with visitor traffic, hotel occupancy and gambling revenue tumbling, atop a major housing crash. In 2007, the city lured 39.2 million visitors, who filled 90% of its hotels and motels, gambled $6.8 billion on the Las Vegas Strip (sports accounts for about 4% of all gaming), and paid an average room rate of $132, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. It has been downhill since then. Last year, Las Vegas’ occupancy fell to 86%, room rates dropped to $119, and gambling revenue fell 10.6%. And through September of this year, occupancy rates are down to 82.8%, even though average room prices are $92, and gaming revenue is off another 12.5%.

When the football season started, Las Vegas’ 2009 sports betting volume was below its 2008 levels, Kornegay said, because horse-racing betting is down and baseball and hockey interest remains flat. Some veteran gamblers say Las Vegas sports books are hurting because they won’t compete with the lower fees and more creative betting options offered by Internet gambling operations.

A full recovery from the country’s financial crisis hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t look likely with the regular football season coming to an end in the next two weeks. Sports Books in Vegas are hoping to attract customers by offering “Parlay bets” – a big part of the NFL betting action. Las Vegas offers 80-1 odds for those who can pick all eight winners in an eight-team parlay card. Four- and five-team parlays offer 10-1 and 20-1 prices, respectively.

IS THERE REALLY A HUMAN RACE?

Warning: Graphic Images!

You may remember her as “scream queen” because of her starring roles in many horror films early in her career such as Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train. Jamie Lee Curtis has since compiled a body of work that covers many genres and now  with a 13-year-old son at home, she is the author of children’s books.

In her latest book, Is There Really a Human Race?  is a  book about a young boy who wonders if there really is a human race. He is thinking that the word race means an actual running race. The boy questions if the race is fair, will he win? In the end, the mother suggests that we should help others and make the world a better place rather than come in first place in a race. This story relates to social justice because it talks about different races and learning about how people may look different, but in reality we are one-in-the-same. This boo relates to building community and understanding among races.

Is there really a human race?
Is it going on now all over the place?
When did it start?
Who said, “Ready, Set, Go”?
Did it start on my birthday?
I really must know.

With these questions, our hero’s imagination is off and running. Is the human race an obstacle course? Is it a spirit? Does he get his own lane? Does he get his own coach? Written with Jamie Lee Curtis’s humor and heart and illustrated with Laura Cornell’s worldly wit, Is There Really a Human Race? is all about relishing the journey and making good choices along the way—because how we live and how we love is how we learn to make the world a better place, one small step at a time.

MEEP!

E-Mail Thomas Murray About MEEP at: murray@danvers.org

Here’s a clue to Danvers, MA High-School Principle Thomas Murray. If you’re hoping to win the respect of the school and the community instead of making a total ass of yourself- you NEVER!!! throw down the gauntlet with a bunch of high-school kids who exist for one reason and one reason only- to challenge authority. That’s the job of high-school kids- to challenge authority and in doing so- learn what it means when they become that authority one day.

Danvers High parents recently got an automated call from the principal warning them that if students say or display the word “meep” at school, they could face suspension. “Meep” doesn’t mean much, unless you are Beaker — the hapless, orange-haired assistant to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew on “The Muppet Show.“

While meep may be nonsense, what it represented was no laughing matter to the high school’s administration. High school Principal Thomas Murray said students were using it and other words to disrupt school in a particular part of the building on Cabot Road. The term later became part of a disruption some students were planning online.

“It’s really not about the word in particular,” Murray said. “The reason for the message (was) a group of students were instructed to refrain from that language and other language in a particular part of the building.”

Murray gave students “a reasonable request” not to use the word to disrupt school in a hallway, and to stop other behaviors, but they did not listen, Murray said. “Students were not going along with the direction or refraining from a particular type of language,” he said.

Murray did not elaborate on how the students were acting out. But he did say the phone call home was an attempt to head off a disruption being planned on the social networking Web site Facebook.

The disruption never happened, and Murray credited students for heeding his warning. Murray said,  “The school must react when online activity crosses paths with the school day. To that end, some students — Murray did not say how many were suspended, but there were additional factors involved in their suspension unrelated to simply saying “meep.”

Besides it being a “free speech” issue, (a violation of a student’s First-Ammendment right to freedom of expression)- the word Meep doesn’t exist. It can’t be found in the dictionary, it is not a word and as such,  it is not vulgar. It sounds to me as if the word “Meep” became a fad in the Danvers High School.    A wise high-school principle would have recognized this knowing that “fads” never last and the word “Meep” would soon be replaced by another useless, idiotic word. I mean, there are a lot worse words out there the students could have been using.

A wise principle would have ridden it out knowing that in a month’s time the word would be replaced by another slang-expression. If Murray felt the need to address the student body at say, “an assembly,” he might pointed out that use of the word “MEEP” just makes the student using it look idiotic and immature. He could have sugested the students not use it in the classrooms only but to throw down the gauntlet, create a challenge for high-schooler’s who live to torment administrators was ignorant to say the least.

It was a “non-issue.” By making it an “issue” and phone-calling parents, suspending students, Murray made it an issue at a time when our public school have more severe issues to deal with like drugs, (heroin use is back) gang-activity, teen pregnancy,  and crime.

NOTE TO MURRAY: You need to get your priorities straight. This was not a matter of behavior, or offensive speech, this was a mater of one insecure high-school principle trying to excercise control over a school and an entire community. A principle that now, no doubt, the students in that high-school and folks that live in the community of Danvers, MA hate and despise. Not to mention that he made a total ass out of himself on the “National Stage” when the tabloids picked up the story. The respect Murray hoped to win by the ban and subsequent suspensions, has made him instead a laughing stock. a “Jack-ass.”

QUESTION FOR MURRAY: Why is it you are a principle? Did you get into education to “educate“ or for power and control?

There was a better way to educate the youth of Danvers High School. Making  a national “ass” out of yourself was not one of them.

KH

THE ANATOMY OF A CHRISTMAS STANDARD

Judy Garland – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is a Christmas song introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis. The song was credited to Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane.The song first appeared in a scene in Meet Me in St. Louis, in which a family is distraught by the father’s plans to move to New York City for a job promotion, leaving behind their beloved home in St. Louis, Missouri just before the long-anticipated Louisiana Purchase Exposition begins. In a scene set on Christmas Eve, Judy Garland’s character, Esther, sings the song to cheer up her despondent five-year-old sister, Tootie, played by Margaret O’Brien.

The sentimental setting of the tune in the finished scene owes much to the understated orchestration by Conrad Salinger and musical direction of Georgie Stoll. However, when presented with the original draft, Garland, her co-star Tom Drake and director Vincente Minnelli criticized the song as depressing:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last,
Next year we may all be living in the past
Have yourself a merry little Christmas, pop that champagne cork,
Next year we will all be living in New York.

No good times like the olden days, happy golden days of yore,
Faithful friends who were dear to us, will be near to us no more.

But at least we all will be together, if the Fates allow,
From now on we’ll have to muddle through somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Though he initially resisted, songwriter Hugh Martin made several changes to make the song more upbeat. For example, the lines “It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past” became “Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight”. Garland’s version of the song, which was also released as a single by Decca Records, became popular among United States troops serving in World War II; her performance at the Hollywood Canteen brought many soldiers to tears.

In 1957, Frank Sinatra asked Martin to revise the line “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow”. He told Martin, “The name of my album is A Jolly Christmas. Do you think you could jolly up that line for me?” Martin’s new line, “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough,” has since become more widely recognized and sung than the original phrase.

In 2001,  the 86-year-old composer Hugh Martin, occasionally active as a pianist with religious ministries since the 1980s, wrote an entirely new set of lyrics to the song with John Fricke, “Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas“, a religious version of the secular Christmas standard. The song was recorded by gospel female vocalist Del Delker with Martin accompanying her on piano.

Ruthie Henshall – Have Yourself A Blessed Little Christmas

Some of the recorded versions

Katie Melua – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Coldplay – Have yourself a merry little christmas

James Taylor – Have yourself a Merry little Christmas

SUNDAY MORNING TV

Blues Brothers Church

I just can’t get used to the new digital-conversion box. Not only does the image freeze every Saturday night when I am watching the movie on ION-TV, and at exactly the same time, (9 pm) which I still cannot figure out why, but now with so many channels to surf through, I can’t find what I’m looking for. Every Sunday morning, with the old rabbit-ears, the only thing on besides the infomercials  was what I call the Church Of The Blue Brother’s. You know, the high-energy black church where they dance in the aisles and the preachers screams, “Can I get an Amen?” “Halleluia!”

(A little video for The Blues Brothers Movie is “Old Landmark” by James Brown. The Blues Brothers was directed by John Landis and written by John Landis and Dan Aykroyd, based on characters created for Saturday Night Live.)

This morning that’s all I was looking for, the Blues Brothers Church while I tried to wake up and eat my french-toast breakfast. It’s on every Sunday  between 6 am and 7 am.

Couldn’t find it. As I surfed through all 33 channels, there were the “Smoothie-Shake Women,” making smoothie-shakes. I don’t know about you- but 7-am Sunday morning is wayyyy too early to deal with the “smoothie-shake” women. Then there was the infomercial station on WLS TV. Was it WLS 1 or WLS 2?  I can’t remember. They were selling what looked to me like miniature Pokemons.

Then there was the re-run of Perry Mason on another channel, my grandma used to like that show. She’s been dead 30-years. Most of the channels had weather maps accompanied by that annoying music that you find on weather channels. Elevator music. But what was really annoying was how many channels had WGN1 / WGN2 or WLS 1 / WLS 2. As if one channel with total crap on it isn’t enough they have to give us two of them.

I believe the show I was looking for is:

Note to FCC: Give me back my rabbit-ears (regular antenna TV)  and my Blues Brothers Church.

CELEBRITY LIES

“I never slapped anyone in the face…. Even symbolically, “She left her room, said ‘bye,’ walked out the door. That was the last time I saw her,”  I have not had an affair with Tiger Woods, The stories in particular that physical violence played any role in the car accident were utterly false and malicious,”  I never had sex with that woman, “hiking the Appalachian Trail,”  “death-panels,” and other  celebrity lies.

Most of the time when celebrities do something stupid and have to practice CYA (Cover Your Ass) damage control, they issue phony sounding platitudes that everyone knows is a lie. This week, the public got a whole bunch more “celebrity lies.” There was Tiger Woods denying that violence played a part in his 2 am run-in with a fire-hydrant and a tree. “The stories in particular that physical violence played any role in the car accident were utterly false and malicious.”

SNL’ Criticized After Airing Tiger Woods Domestic Violence Skit While Rihanna On Show

Like what else could he say: “The damn bitch chased me out of my own house with one of my own golf clubs?” There was Woods mistress of late denying the affiar, “I have not had an affair with Tiger Woods. Like what could she say. If she admitted the affair- Tiger wouldn’t pay her lots of cash to remain silent.

Then there was Amanda Knox. The American college student who killed her prissy room-mate in Italy. “She left her room, said ‘bye,’ walked out the door. That was the last time I saw her.” What else could she say? She was on trial for murder and looking at a life sentence in an Italian Prison. Meredith Kercher was a 21-year-old British student who was part of a university exchange programme to Italy. On 2 November 2007, her body was discovered by Italian police at the house that she shared with other students in Perugia, when tracing mobile phones discovered in a nearby garden. She was found lying partially clothed under a duvet in her locked bedroom, her windpipe crushed and her throat partially slashed.  Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, began on 16 January 2009. On 4 December 2009, both were found guilty of murder, sexual violence, and other charges. Amanda Knox, 22, was sentenced to 26 years in prison, while Raffaele Sollecito, 25, received 25 years. Accompanied by two smitten young men vying to impress her, a resentful Amanda Knox toyed with a knife and then plunged it into her roommate’s neck, killing her, an Italian prosecutor charged in closing arguments Friday. Knox was particularly brutal yet, to hear Knox tell it: “I confided in her, I would often ask for her advice. … When Meredith had a problem over my behavior, she would tell me. That was it. There was nothing she would keep hidden or that we couldn’t find agreement on.”

In response to questions about a published report in which Cook County Board President Todd Stroger dubbed the mayor’s lack of support in his re-election bid as a “slap“ Chicago’s Mayor Daley said Saturday, “I never slapped anyone in the face…. Even symbolically,” Stroger made the comment in a Friday New York Times report delving into his apparent uphill battle in next year’s election. Daley  backed away from an endorsement in that four-way Democratic race. Also running for County Board president are Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terry O’Brien.Though Daley has publicly denied it, several Democratic ward committeemen have told the Sun-Times he has said he doesn’t think Stroger can win. And Daley remained vague Saturday about whether he would eventually endorse a candidate.

SHOULD GOVERNMENT PROTECT US FROM PAPPARAZZI?

No sooner did Gold Digest condemn Americans for handling revelations of Tiger Woods “swinging” badly – Elin Nordegren was rushed to the ER after an overdose. Paramedics responded to a medical call at Tiger Woods’ home in Orange County, Florida, early Tuesday, the county fire service said. A patient was taken from the home to a hospital, said Genevieve Latham, a spokeswoman for Orange County Fire Rescue. Paramedics responded to an address that, according to tax records, belongs to Woods’ and his wife, Elin Nordegren. Medics arrived at the home at 2:37 a.m. and stayed until 3:13 a.m. when an ambulance from Health Central Hospital in Ocoee arrived, Latham said.

CNN affiliate WESH-TV reported that the ambulance carried a woman to Health Central. Footage that CNN obtained showed a blonde woman being taken out of an ambulance on a stretcher and carried inside the hospital.

As a retired newspaperman of 30 some years, I know the importance of a “free press.” The same freedoms of speech we enjoy can also be subverted to cause other’s harm and at those times, government, the courts must step in to protect the innocent, the public from further harm by a callous, muckraking paparazzi. During a highly publicized trial like the OJ Simpson murder trial or other’s, the court imposes a “gag order” on the press for many reasons. Mainly, to not influence or taint the jury, and in some highly emotional trials regarding sensitive “race” issues- the court is protecting the public from rioting, looting etc. In the recent scandal regarding Tiger Woods, it’s one thing for Saturday Night Live to do a harmless spoof about the incident which Tiger must have chuckled at. It is another for an army of paparazzi to camp out on Tiger’s front lawn or show camera’s in the faces of  the mom’s or young children that might be involved.

Elin Nordegren was just 24-years-of age when she married Tiger Woods. Both, are still young kids as far as I’m concerned. In highly publicized cases like this, government must step in to prevent a callous paparazzi from inflicting further harm upon the participants. One of whom, now, has tried to take her own life.

I am not talking about censorship (when it comes to responsible journalism) I am talking about in certain circumstances like the Tiger Woods case, the government could intervene to prevent vicious libel, outright falsehoods and mostly a physical assault upon the persons of Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren by  hungry, vicious journalists known as the paparazzi. Many will remember the night Princess Diana was killed, she was fleeing at a high rate-of-speed from an unrelenting paparazzi. Had government intervened, could they have prevented Diana’s car crash? Maybe.

All I’m suggesting is that in highly emotionally charged incidents like Princess Diana, Tiger Woods and other’s where the potential by callous muckrakers can do more damage to the participants and the public than good- there should be “guidelines.” Since responsible journalism outlets long ago stopped enforcing any “guidelines” in search of ratings – it is up to government to be the responsible ones.

AS THE GOLF BALL TURNS:
Woman from Woods' home hospitalized, now released...
Police suspected Tiger drank alcohol on day of crash...
Denied Blood Sample...
Medics went to Tiger Woods' complex...
9 Women Linked...

Journalism and Freedom

Government assistance is a greater threat to the press than any new technology.

At a time when many news enterprises are shutting down or scaling back, no doubt you have heard some tell you that journalism is in dire shape, and the triumph of digital is to blame and that newspapers need government bailouts to continue to exist. Rupert Murdock, my former employer at the Chicago Sun-Times disagrees and says so in a scathing editorial published in The Wall Street Journal. I just want to share with you a few talking points which I also believe are true:

1. The future of journalism is more promising than ever—limited only by editors and producers unwilling to fight for their readers and viewers, or government using its heavy hand either to over-regulate or subsidize us.  From the beginning, newspapers have prospered for one reason: the trust that comes from representing their readers’ interests and giving them the news that’s important to them. That means covering the communities where they live, exposing government or business corruption, and standing up to the rich and powerful.

2. Technology, the digital-age,  is not the enemy of journalism. Technology creates the means to reach billions of people who until now have had no honest or independent sources of the information they need to rise in society, hold their governments accountable, and pursue their needs and dreams. Some newspapers and news organizations do not have the finances to adapt to the digital realities of our day—and they will fail.They should not blame technology for these failures. The future of journalism belongs to the bold, and the companies that prosper will be those that find new and better ways to meet the needs of their viewers, listeners, and readers.

3. Mindless government regulation. In the last two or three decades, we have seen the emergence of new platforms and opportunities that no one could have predicted—from social networking sites and iPhones and BlackBerries, to Internet sites for newspapers, radio and television. And we are only at the beginning.

The government has a role here. Unfortunately, too many of the mechanisms government uses to regulate the news and information business in this new century are based on 20th-century assumptions and business models. If we are really concerned about the survival of newspapers and other journalistic enterprises, the best thing government can do is to get rid of the arbitrary and contradictory regulations that actually prevent people from investing in these businesses.

One example of outdated thinking is the FCC’s cross-ownership rule that prevents people from owning, say, a television station and a newspaper in the same market. Many of these rules were written when competition was limited because of the huge up-front costs. If you are a newspaper today, your competition is not necessarily the TV station in the same city. It can be a Web site on the other side of the world, or even an icon on someone’s cell phone.

These developments mean increased competition, and that is good for consumers. But just as businesses are adapting to new realities, the government needs to adapt too. In this new and more globally competitive news world, restricting cross-ownership between television and newspapers makes as little sense as would banning newspapers from having Web sites.

Jobless professionals vie for holiday sales work

Though the unemployment rate dropped in December back to 10-percent from 11.4-percent, the US economy is still “stuck.”

5.9 million Americans have been jobless for at least six months. Now they belongs to a subset of the group: Out-of-work professionals and managers, engineers and teachers who have turned, in desperation, to holiday-season jobs as sales clerks.

Retailers report a surge in applications this year from professionals who had never applied for such jobs before.

“You’ll find Wall Street stock brokers and small business owners trying to find temporary retail jobs during the holidays,” said Ellen Davis, vice president of the National Retail Federation.

The pay is low, the jobs temporary. And the work is hardly equal to their experience or expertise. Yet the nation’s unemployment crisis left these people jobless so much longer than they’d expected that many count themselves fortunate to have anything.

FIERCE SNOWSTORM-MIDWEST’S FIRST

A howling winter storm barreled through the West, hitting the mountain states with snow and fierce winds as it headed toward the country’s midsection on Tuesday.

The far-reaching storm system stretched from California to Indiana, gathering strength as it raced eastward.

Parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin were bracing for blizzard conditions and up to 10 inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service.

“The storm system is really strengthening as it goes, and that’s usually a recipe for some heavy snowfall and a lot of wind, and that’s what we’re watching for,” said Mike Welvaert of the National Weather Service in La Crosse, Wis.

The storm hit nearly all of the western mountain states on Monday, leaving places like Flagstaff and Reno, Nev., under a thick blanket of snow.

KEEP THE FAITH!

KH

THE TIGER AFFAIR

Running from the devil

Is it just me or does anyone else think that Tiger Woods golfing career suffered a sharp decline after he married 24-year-old Elin Nordegren in 2004?  Maybe next time Tiger will listen to good-ol-dad (Earl Woods) who was dead-set against Tiger marrying  at such a young age with his entire golfing career ahead of him.

These days, with a 2:25 a.m. domestic-violence episode at his Orlando residence in which his wife Elin Nordegren apparently chased  him out of the mansion with one of Tiger’s own golf-clubs before busting out the windows on Tiger’s SUV, Tiger being found by police lying face-down on the pavement unconscious with scratches all over his face after running over a fire-hydrant and hitting a tree, and with allegations of an adulterous affair with Rachel Uchitel, a woman he met at a social-club, it’s beginning to look like Tiger’s best days in golf are behind him. The simple life ain’t so simple when you jump out on that road.

911 Audio

It has been six years since Tiger Woods won a major gold event. The last full-field PGA tournament he won was the Western Open in July 2003. In 2009, there is no doubt that Tiger Woods is in the midst of some kind of ultimate decline based solely on his performance over the past few months.

Woods is struggling, there is no doubt about that.

His tee shots are all over the map and for the third consecutive time, Woods has been unable to mount any kind of Sunday afternoon charge despite being well within striking distance of the leaders. He is completely missing greens with basic approach shots. He has made only a fraction of those 10-foot putts we have become so accustomed to seeing Woods make—with the same ease and consistency as most other PGA Tour players sink three-inch tap-ins.

The world’s greatest golfer can take credit for all the major championships he wants, but when it comes to the quality person that he is—the dignified star, the respectful youngster, the cooperative icon — Tiger Woods knows he must give thanks to his dad, Earl. Earl Woods died in 2006 at the age of 74, a small piece of Tiger Woods died, too.

“He has the power to do a lot of things with his charisma,” Earl Woods said on the eve of the 2003 Deutsche Bank Championship outside of Boston, a tournament that would benefit the Tiger Woods Foundation. “Some day, he will do a lot of great things. I don’t know what they are yet, but knowing Tiger Woods, they won’t be small.”

When Earl was alive, Tiger once caused a stir by saying he felt fortunate to win a tournament because he didn’t have his best stuff. How shocking. Another time, he chose not to sign a golf ball by a couple of PGA Tour colleagues who were going to raffle it off for charity. Then there was the time he wouldn’t take the media’s bait and condemn Augusta National officials for maintaining its men’s-only membership, even while beloved American icons such as Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus accepted their memberships and were spared a criticism that would have been warranted.

“What I thought was a bad idea was what her family had in mind,” said Earl Woods. “They had determined that Tiger was going to make a lot of money. They were meaning to make the relationship a permanent relationship. I could see this, but Tiger couldn’t. As a parent I could do one of two things; I could forbid him to see her, or I could counsel him and then wait for him to grow and determine what was right for himself. I chose the latter.

Tiger Woods sunset wedding was held October 5, 2004 under a white-netted pagoda decorated with red roses on the 19th hole of the Sandy Lane Golf Resort in Barbados. The exclusive resort is located on the west coast of the Caribbean locale. The wedding reportedly cost between $1.5 million – $2 million. Tiger hired the whole complex for a week including 110 rooms and and three golf courses. The rooms reportedly cost from $700 to $9,000 per night each.

These days, Tiger is being chased out of his mansion by a golf-club wielding jealous wife. How far the mighty have fallen.

The National Enquirer posted a story that Tiger Woods is cheating on his wife with a woman named Rachel Uchitel (photo  left), who might sound familiar to gossip followers.  Rachel Uchitel is the same woman that ‘Bones’ David Boreanaz was accused of having a torrid affair last year via the other popular tabloid, Star Magazine, while his wife was pregnant with their child.The National Enquirer apparently has pics of Uchitel entering Tigers hotel in Melbourne, while he played down under in the Australian Masters. Enquirer  sources claim they have also had liaisons in New York and Las Vegas, apparently proving what happens in sin city doesn’t always stay there. I don’t see allegations made that Tiger Woods is cheating on his wife of six years, Elin Norgegren, and mother of his two children, happening without a fight.  So I see a lawsuit in the works if the Enquirer doesn’t have some proof of their claims.

New reports indicate that police are attempting to gain a warrant to look at Woods medical records to determine if his facial lacerations were from an accident, or an assault by wife Elin Nordegren.

The airbags in the 2009 Cadillac Escalade that Tiger Woods was driving never deployed. This would indicate that he was either driving less than 33 MPH, or that they were defective. Despite this, Tiger Woods had facial lacerations and was taken to the Health Central Hospital, where he was treated and released. Police hope to determine forensically, or at least, theoretically, from the medical records, if the lacerations were from the accident itself, or domestic violence. Police have not managed, to this point, to speak to the couple, although they have attempted to do so three times. Police have also indicated that they want to stay out of any “Tiger Woods mistress” talk, and focus on the incident. Previously, however, police indicated that the investigation is ongoing and that “charges could be pursued.” It’s unclear if they were speaking of possible domestic violence, or DUI. TMZ has previously indicated that Woods told a friend that he was taking prescription medication for pain, which could be consistent with a DUI.

Tiger Woods released a statement on his blog about his recent single-car accident. Part of the statement refers to his wife, Elin. “The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false.”

Their private life is just that: private. Anything that goes on behind closed doors is their business, and theirs alone … as long as no crimes have been committed. Without speculating on the Woods case, any time there is a reasonable suspicion of domestic violence, it does indeed become a public matter.

Did the death of his father Earl send Tiger Woods off the rails?

You see what happened to Dominic Carter last week. his wife tried to withdraw her domestic violence charge, but it was too late. now his career, if not totally ruined, is thrown way off track.

Tiger Woods will go down in history as a great golfer but unlike, say, Muhammad Ali or Arthur Ashe he will never be considered a truly great sportsman because, unlike Ali and Ashe, he has consistently refused to use his influence and power to shape the society he lives in.

Queen of Blogs

Queen of hearts

Queen of Quirky aka Stephanie Mitchum is a former print journalist turned radio journalist turned Morning Edition host turned back to print journalist who decided she had such a wide-range of journalism experience, she should try her crack at P.R.  Queen of quirky is her non-professional quirky blog where she now finds her voice. (Her journalism professor would be so proud — and by proud, horrified.) On her blog, like a million other American housewives, many of whom do not have the advantage of having been former professional journalists like Stephanie or myself, she blogs about quirky take on life, divorce, food, marriage the second time and occasionally the thing that started it all — running.  All material is viewed under the microscope of the queen’s mantra, “keep it quirky.”

Stephanie’s blog was recently chosen by WordPress.com as one of the featured top-ten blogs of the day. It’s a good blog. I checked it out and although I am not a woman, it is well done. My question is, how many blogs are out there anyway and how many people have to read your blog before you can make any real money by blogging?

Technorati currently states it is tracking over 112.8 million blogs, a number which obviously does not include all the 72.82 million Chinese blogs as counted by The China Internet Network Information Center.

On WordPress.com I can track the number of daily viewers my blog receives. I average around 500-readers per day. Which is good, considering there are over 112.8-million blogs. But bloggers get paid by the number of “hits” or “diggs.” In order to be a regular blogger for a major blog like say Arianna Huffington, a blogger needs 5,000 hits-per-day. Arianna Huffington;’s blog receives nine-million-hits a month.

Which brings me to my question. Are most of the 112.8-million-blogs turned out by bloggers, well-meaningful or not, irrelevant if few people read them? Or if only 500-people-a-day read them? Is blogging, which takes an extraordinary amount of time, an excercise in futility?

Blogging may well be one way to keep in touch with family and friends, ultimately replacing hand-produced newsletters, Christmas letters and the like but other than that- for most bloggers- are we wasting our time? And with the proliferation of  blogs, some 112.8-million of them, who has time to check out even a third of them? That would be all you would be doing, all day long, every day. In order for blogs like WordPress to be able to operate- they make money by advertisers. Again, needing a certain number of “hits” before advertisers will agree to advertise on your blog. By WordPress and other’s offering “free” blogs, it’s one way of guaranteeing advertisers a certain number of “hits.” So, are we bloggers just being used so that blogs like WordPress and other’s can make money off us? If we’re just a “hit” or way to make money and if these blog-services do not really care about us other than as a statistic- agin, what is the purpose of blogging?

I have been blogging for over a year now on various services and while I enjoy blogging it does take up way too much of my time, time that could be better spent working on my books. I am glad for those readers who have actually read my blog and enjoyed whatever content I have offered, either political, entertainment, sports or other. But lately, I  am coming to the opinion that blogging is an excercise in futility and I question the future of bogging as a whole. I do not think it will be as popular in another ten-years. I think blogging was a “fad” as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are “fads.” Fads do not last.

Another 9-years in Afghanistan?

I’m beginning to think that maybe it was a good thing that the NVA kicked our ass in Vietnam. It may have been the only way for Nixon to bring the troops home. The unpopularity of the war, the violent protests, marches, riots, increasing pressure on President Nixon and the NVA over-running Saigon may have been the only way America could have gotten out of there. Otherwise, the Industrial-military complex, like they are doing in Afghanistan, would prolong the war indefinitely to forever line their pockets. Afghanistan is the perfect “indefinite” war. There are more murders committed everyday in America than number of troops lost on both Iraq and Afghanistan. The military-industrial-complex can make a fortune turning out robotic weapons like the Predator drone, robotic tanks and other weapons that do not involve loss of life if destroyed by the enemy. So why shouldn’t they prolong the war as long as they can? For them , it’s like shooting fish-in-a-barrel. For the families of the troops however, there have been permanent, irreversible effects of the now 9-year “police-action.”

I needn’t remind readers of the embarrassment to the Bush administration caused by Guantanamo Bay, water-boarding, that fiasco of a prison detainees forced to build a naked human pyramid.

President Barack Obama issued orders Sunday night for a revamped war strategy in Afghanistan that includes tens of thousands of additional U.S. forces and benchmarks for the eventual transfer of Afghanistan’s defense to the Afghan government. Mr. Obama met in the Oval Office Sunday at 5 p.m. with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Gen. David Petraeus, head of Central Command, National Security Adviser James Jones, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. He then communicated his decision to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of the multinational force in Afghanistan, and U.S. Ambassador to Karl Eikenberry over a secure video link from the White House situation room.

News Hub: Afghanistan Tops Obama’s Policy Agenda

President Barack Obama’s biggest challenge this week will be delivering his Afghanistan strategy speech Tuesday The decision launches a week-long effort to convince Congress and the American people of the wisdom of the new strategy.

Despite the growing clarity on the strategy, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan still have important doubters. The Obama administration has soured on a call from its top commander to double the size of the Afghan police and army, reflecting the White House’s continued skepticism about the Afghan government even as the U.S. prepares a surge of troops into the country, people familiar with the matter say. Mr. Obama may need Republicans to back his latest troop increase to make up for Democratic antiwar defections. The GOP, however, will question any decision that falls short of Gen. McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops, said Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.). In a phone interview from Afghanistan, where he and other lawmakers were visiting, Mr. Price was skeptical of what he feared would be half measures to try to please both parties. “If what you’re trying to do is to please all people, than that might not make any sense,”

In the bleak war assessment that he delivered to Mr. Obama earlier this year, Gen. McChrystal called for expanding the Afghan army to 240,000 and the Afghan police to 160,000, roughly twice the size of their current growth plans. The proposal initially found support within the administration, where senior officials have talked openly about wanting to quickly transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces. But as the months-long administration strategy review has worn on, Vice President Joe Biden and other senior administration officials have become skeptical that the Afghan central government could retain, train and support so large a force, even with considerable Western support. For U.S. forces in Afghanistan, meanwhile, the expected troop surge can’t come fast enough. “We could use as many troops as possible,” said Staff Sgt. Jeff Schaffer, a 25-year-old Black Sheep squad leader. “It’s ridiculous to think you can tame a city like this with as few people as we have.”

Here at home, the anti-war protests are heating up.

This war is not over,” said Jason Moon, a member of Iraq Vets Against the War. “Tell the guys coming home in boxes that the war is over.“

It is impossible to stem such a war of insurgency, as the USSR learned to their dismay in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and it looks like the US is getting another lesson on that in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Can the U.S. Woo Afghanistan Taliban to Switch Sides?

The message today by anti-war protestors is to end the occupation in Iraq/Afghanistan  and focus on spending the money instead on human needs, like say the economy, creation of new jobs, helping people stay in their houses. Millions of jobs in the manufacturing sector have been lost to China and N. Korea that America is never going to get back. Obama needs to get America working again before the economy crashes and makes the aGreat Depression of 1934 look like a minor recession. Obam needs to get America working again to avoid the violence and bloodshed that is sure to come if millions more Americans lost their jobs. Black Friday sales were flat, with consumers only buying the most deeply discounted items but not opening their wallets wide.

The season for Christmas orders has passed, and Chinese exporters do not yet see the slightest trace of any rebound. The export market for Chinese goods next year shows no promise and is hovering near its lows.

KH

OBAMA- IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

SNL slams Obama on China

Once candidate Obama’s biggest supporter’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) has become scathingly critical of President Barack Obama and slammed the president yet once again on his China policy. SNL Rips Barack Obama on Excessive Spending, Debt, Jobs, Stimulus, Obama care, Cash for Clunkers. SNL has of late, become one of Obama’s biggest critics asking in the China Cold Opener, “How many jobs has your stimulus package created? Obama says, “None.“  “Why is it that all the programs you claim will save Americans money cost even more money? This does not inspire confidence.” “How does extending health-care coverage to 30-million Americans going to save the government money?

SNL then suggests the Chinese president likes to be kissed when someone is trying to do the sex with them before he bend over and offers his rear-end. Obama comes off as a stereotypical black man, (a fast talking con-artist).

Obama: There are signs that are bail out has steadied the financial markets and stimulus package has been effective in fixing out jobs crisis.

Chinese President: I am curious, how man jobs has it created?

Obama: Answer, so far … none.

Chinese President: How exactly is extending health care coverage to 30 million more people going to save money?

Obama: I don’t know.

Chinese President: And this “Cash for Clunkers” program, I am to understand that you purchased many of these clunkers with our money … Just so there is no misunderstanding, you are not allowed to pay us back in Clunkers.

Chinese President: While you are here are you at least going to treat me to dinner and a movie?

Obama: I am sorry?

Chinese President: I think it’s the polite thing to do before, DOING SEX TO ME!!

if SNL and others were portraying Obama like this during the Presidential campaign instead of protecting him and saying nothing that he does is funny. Does any one think he would have ever been elected? Obama has been a target rich humor and satire environment for quite some time; however, the liberal LEFT has refused to go there. If they had during the campaign and the Democrat Primaries, Obama would still be a community organizer Senator. Now … after a year “wasted” on a health-care bill that never had a chance of being passed into law- as the unemployment rate in America rises to “depression” levels of 11-percent while continuing to climb, the president’s stimulus plans not working, and America spinning morally out-of-control with blatant sex and kinkiness on TV with shows like Cougar, and in films with sexy vampire and werewolf characters, even the Liberal Left is becoming concerned about America’s direction. The republicans are asking the Liberal Left:

Where is your Obama-messiah now?

Makes one kind of miss the cowboy instead of a weak and ineffective leader.

What a shock, Obama being nice and kissing the ASS of world leaders gets America nothing. The Republicans have no room to gloat- for had the Repubs demanded McCain pick a serious running mate like NY’s Rudy Gulliani instead of a nitwit like Sarah Palin- it would be McCain and Gulliani in the White House instead of Obama. The declining media in America, instead of demanding leadership and direction from Obama or giving him leadership and direction, concentrate instead of the type of Halloween costume Michele Obama wears or the gown she wears to an insignificant state dinner.

America- we are all to blame for this weak, ineffectual professional student sitting in the White House. We are all to blame- those who campaigned and voted for Obama and those who could have campaigned harder for McCain and demanded he pick a serious running-mate like Rudy Gulliani.

A McCain/Gulliani ticket would have beaten Obama.

Perhaps next time, America will not be so quick to messiah-nize a candidate like Obama who tells us what we want to hear but lacks any experience or understanding of what actually needs to be done to get America working again and keep America competitive in the world marketplace. Bailing out the corporate crooks who would have bankrupted this nation because of their own greed and ego- is not the way to get America working again. It enables the crooks- Obama should have directed the FBI to begin mass arrests. Someone should have gone to jail besides Bernard Madoff who became nothing more than a scapegoat for all the crooked stockbrokers, bankers, and real-estate spectators.

NOTE TO OBAMA- IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID!

TURKEY PARDON

West Wing Turkey Pardon

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama will grant a “pardon” to two otherwise-doomed Thanksgiving turkeys, Courage and Carolina (official video preview). These Princeton, NC natives (story at WRAL) will be honored in a ceremony on the White House lawn before boarding a plane to California, where Courage will serve as honorary grand-marshal for Disney’s Thanksgiving Parade. (Carolina, as the Alternate National Turkey, will be ready to step in should Courage be unable to perform his duties.) Following the parade, the pair will settle into a stuffing-free life at Disneyland’s Frontierland theme park.

The earliest provable instance of the word “pardon” being used in connection with a presidential holiday bird attaches to a gobbler given in  1963 by the California Turkey Advisory Board to President John F. Kennedy. However, Kennedy did not pardon the creature presented to him in the Rose Garden on 1963; he merely announced he didn’t plan to eat the bird. Newspapers nevertheless reported the following day the bird had been “pardoned.”

The first president to use a form of the word “pardon” in connection with a turkey was President Ronald Reagan in 1987, but even then he wasn’t granting a stay of execution to a bird at risk of being eaten; he was deflecting with humor some questions posed by the media that he did not want to answer. Reagan parried queries about whether he would pardon Iran-Contra figures, Lt. Col. Oliver North and former national security adviser John Poindexter by joking that if that year’s turkey had not been destined for a petting farm, “I would have pardoned
him.” Surprisingly, this tradition which now everyone remembers as having gone on forever apparently began with President George H.W. Bush in 1989. At that year’s Thanksgiving presentation of a bird for the First Family’s table, in his remarks to those assembled, he said, “But let me assure  and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table. Not this guy. He’s been granted a presidential pardon as of right now, allowing him to live out his days on a farm not far from here.”

Exploding Turkey

President George H.W. Bush bestowed subsequent poultripital pardons on Thanksgiving birds in each succeeding year of his presidency, thereby establishing the tradition. The National Turkey and the Alternate National Turkey (in case the national bird can’t fulfill his duties) both receive pardons that spare them from becoming anyone’s dinner and go on to live out their natural lives in petting zoos or on farms. However, those granted such reprieves generally fail to live for long; they usually succumb within a year of their pardons. Fast-growing, commercially raised turkeys tend to expire fairly quickly, as they grow too large for their body structure and are too susceptible to disease.

Thanksgiving traditions that should die. Now.

BLACK FRIDAY

For many of the nations retailers, Black Friday 2009 is a “make or break” year. With retail bankruptcies Christmas 2008 and dismal sales for most of 2009, for many of America’s retailers- Black Friday (Nov. 26, 2009) will either ease retailers financial distress or slam the lids on their coffins and we will see another round of corporate retail bankruptcies as with 2008’s Circuit City, Comp USA and other’s.

Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, which is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. The term dates back to at least 1966, although its usage was primarily on the East coast. The term has become more common in other parts of the country since 2000. Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November.

Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many employees have the day off (with the exceptions of those employed in retailing and banking), which increases the number of potential shoppers. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas and holiday season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open extremely early, with most of the retailers typically opening at 5AM or even earlier. Some of the larger retailers (depending on the location) such as Sears, Best Buy, Macy’s and Walmart have been reported to open as early as midnight on the start of Black Friday in localized areas and remain open for 24 hours throughout the day until midnight the following Saturday. Upon opening, retailers offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season at least since the start of the modern Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the term “Black Friday” has been traced back only to the 1960s.

Consumer participation in Black Friday has declined slightly but steadily over the past four years, from 26 percent in 2005 to 20 percent in 2008, according to a holiday poll from Consumer Reports National Research Center. Part of that decrease can be attributed to the economy, but also to an increase in consumer savvy, experts say. Shoppers know they no longer have to battle crowds to get the same deals they can get online or later in the season”. With the trampling death of a Wal-Mart employee and shooting in a Toys R Us on the day after Thanksgiving last year (2008) heightened concerns about shopping safety. And anyone who’s competed head to head for a Black Friday deal knows it can get ugly. Most retailers with door-buster-type deals plan to clearly state how many products they have in stock at discounted prices, to hand out tickets or wristbands to those who are eligible for them, and/or cut off lines at the point where people won’t be able to get the deals.

•Wal-Mart has already announced plans to stay open on Thanksgiving and through the night to avoid an early Friday rush.

•Target plans to spread out hot items in different areas of the store and provide maps and other tools to help shoppers find them.

UN-FRIEND

Good Morning America is sooo uncool

Okay, so “unfriend” may be the word of the year, but why did Good Morning America see fit to use Chris Parillo’s  face as the one to illustrate it to the world?! GMA- you’re sooo uncool.

“Unfriend” has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, chosen from a list of finalists with a tech-savvy bent. Unfriend was defined as a verb that means to remove someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook. In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.

Other words deemed finalists for 2009 by the dictionary’s publisher, Britain’s Oxford University Press, came from other technological trends, the economy, and political and current affairs. In technology, there was “hashtag,” which is the hash sign added to a word or phrase that lets Twitter users search for tweets similarly tagged; “intexticated” for when people are distracted by texting while driving, and “sexting,” which is the sending of sexually explicit SMSes and pictures by cellphone. Finalists from the economy included “freemium,” meaning a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, and “funemployed,” referring to people taking advantage of newly unemployed status to have fun or pursue other interests.

In the political and current affairs section, finalists included “birther,” meaning conspiracy theorists challenging President Barack Obama’s U.S. birth certificate, and “choice mom,” a person who chooses to be a single mother. Novelty words making the shortlist were “deleb,” meaning a dead celebrity, and “tramp stamp,” referring to a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman.

KH

The Oprah Winfrey Talk Show will come to an end in 2011 after more than two decades on air.

Mad TV – Oprah Winfrey

After 25 seasons, the self-anointed high priestess of the religion of Oprah,  talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey is calling it a day. Frida morning Oprah will announce the end of her hugely successful TV chat show, to her Chicago audience. The iconic figure in television who gave the world such pills as Martha Stewart, Dr. Phil Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart, Madonna and “O” magazine.

Many people are saying, “Thank God! Party in the USA.

After months of rumors, it has finally been confirmed–Oprah Winfrey will soon bow out of daytime television, effectively ending her beloved talk show in 2011.

Into your kitchens, your bedrooms, your lives

“We have the greatest respect for Oprah and we wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors, we do know anything she turns her hand to will be a great success,” said a spokesman for the CBS Television Studios, which distributes her show. We look forward to working with her for the next several years, and hopefully afterwards as well.”

According to ABC News, insiders report that Winfrey informed her staff of the decision after a company meeting, which was described as “emotional, supportive and respectful.”

Winfrey’s “Oprah” talk show debuted on television in 1986.  From Michael Jackson to Tom Cruise to Sarah Palin, Winfrey’s show has been an important platform for celebrities to both promote their work and rehab their image while making Oprah the richest African-American of the 20th century, and the most philanthropic African-American of all time who courts the likes of President Obama.

As a newcomer, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” chipped away at talk-show king Phil Donahue’s dominance. Later, it turned to inspiration. Donahue today is reduced to begging independant film-makers to make documentaries with little success. The Oprah Winfrey show’s coverage ranged from interviews with the world’s celebrities to an honest discussion about Winfrey’s weight struggles. As the show evolved, it really kind of dressed up the neighborhood of the daytime talk show compared to her sleazy competitors like Jerry Springer, Montel Williams, Chevy Chase, Ellen DeGeneres.

In 1986, pianist-showman Liberace gave his final TV interview to Winfrey, just six weeks before he died. In a 1993 prime-time special, Michael Jackson revealed he suffered from a skin condition that produces depigmentation. Tom Cruise enthusiastically declared his affection for the much-younger Katie Holmes on the program in 2005 — and jumped on the couch to prove it.

In 2004, Winfrey unveiled her most famous giveaway, when nearly 300 members of the studio audience opened a gift box to find the keys to a new car inside. The stunt became a classic show moment as much for Winfrey’s reaction — “You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car!” — as its $7 million price tag.

The show also became a launching pad for Oprah’s Book Club, which then launched best-sellers. The titles ranged from “Song of Solomon” and “Paradise” by Toni Morrison to Wally Lamb’s “She’s Come Undone” and Elie Wiesel’s “Night.”

Lately, the rehab their image thing hasn;t been working so well. All of the celebrities whose careers she helped launch are under fire from Dr. Phil the pill, to Martha Stewart, Tom Cruise (who can forget the jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch manic episode?) Oprah’s Book Club backfired when Oprah personally selected,  “A Million Little Pieces” which exploded in sales after Winfrey chose the James Frey memoir in fall 2005. Soon after, it was revealed as a fabricated tale of addiction and recovery, and Winfrey later chewed out Frey on her show. There was Michael Jackson’s death due to overdose, celebrity-chef Rachel Rey caught up in her husbands adulterous scandal followed by erotic-photo shoot by Ray followed by an ugly divorce  and even lately Oprah has been getting a lot of flack for her recent interview with wacko Sarah Palin. Suddenly Oprah’s “vision,” whatever that is- is under fire as being out of touch with reality.

She has had her critics in the past twenty-five years. Her loyal followers, feel Oprah has always been real, down-to-earth, a humble person. Her critics say that she is a “Queen Diva” who only cares about Oprah and has always been on the “wacko” fringe, out of touch with reality and buying loyal viewers with money and give-a-ways. Recently Oprah has come under fire by Rosie O’Donnell and other “out of the closet” lesbians for Oprah and Gail Kings refusal to “come clean” about their lesbian relationship.

However you feel about Oprah Winfrey, lover her or hate her, Oprah will remain an icon of American television. My  beef with Oprah is that she is one of the biggest hypocrites of all time, examples of her hypocrisy range from championing gay and lesbian rights when she herself doesn;t have the courage to come out of the closet about her lesbian relationship with gal-pal Gail KIng. Had she had the courage to come clean about her lesbian relationship as Rosie O’Donnell did many years ago- Oprah would have earned my respect.

Through all of these, Oprah preaches “how to be your best self” and “live your best life.”  Unfortunately, a predilection for radical Islam and excusing terrorists is a prominent element of Oprah’s “best self.” Cheating husbands don’t get off as easy as Islamic terrorists, murderers, and torturers in Winfrey’s world. Take “O” Magazine, Oprah’s monthly print version of self-conceit.  Like every other month, the cover of the June issue of “O” features Oprah—for the gazillionth time.    Unfortunately, also for the gazillionth time, the inside of the glossy mag features Oprah’s unique brand of understanding and empathy for terrorists and radical Islam. Last month, Oprah’s “O” asked readers to understand “The Heart of a Destroyer,” Mohammed Atta.  You remember him—the Al-Qaeda ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers who murdered 3,000 Americans. But that’s not exactly the way “O”’s “reading room” wants you to remember him.Beneath a picture of young Mohammed and his smiling sister on the Egyptian beach, “O” exhorts you to read a book that “sets out to understand the hearts and minds of the men behind the photos” of the 9/11 hijackers, a group of “lonely, exiled young men.”

Over the  years, Oprah and her publicity team have pushed Oprah’s latest weight loss—to loud, gushy media acclaim.  Oprah, girlfriend, if only you could have gained the weight of a conscience.

My other beef with Oprah through the years is that she has given the “whack-jobs” like Tom Cruise, Dr. Phil, Martha Stewart, Madonna,  a platform to market their hypocrisy, lunacy through the medium of her show and O-magazine to  make millions. The whole world knows what a “whack-job” Dr. Phil is.  L.A.’s Cedars-Sinai Hospital granted TV’s Dr. Phil access to Brit’s hospital room unannounced. (In L.A. county, celebrity doctors are legally permitted to walk into hospital rooms unannounced.) But in a shocker, the diva in distress actually walked out on Phil. (In L.A., patients still retain the right to reject the advances of celebrity doctors, though this is under appeal.)

Mad TV- Dr. Phil

I think it’s time Oprah left the stage and gave other Chicago talent a sot at stardom like Oprah has had. Chicago has a lot of very fine local talent, Richard Roeper, Cheryl Burton, Robin Baumgarten, Sylvia Perez and Linda Yu to name a few. Perhaps, Oprah could remain in the backgrond as producer and not the “main attraction.” IN the last few years Oprah has flown too near the sun and it has brought her much controversy not to mention personal anguish. It’s time to step aside and let other’s have their shot while remaining in the shadows.

Note to Oprah: 2001 is too far off. Don’t wait till 2011 to end your hypocrisy, do it now! By January 2010.

Hire Me! Will Work For Minimum Wage

I’ve hit a few speed bumps along the way, as I’m sure, most of us who are middle-aged (or older) will testify to. Facing pink slips, repossessions, foreclosures, and a sinking economy may force some of us to take on any job available. More than once, as a college graduate in my 30s, a prospective employer told me that I was overqualified — the euphemistic way of saying that he didn’t think that I would last long on the job, and that investing in my training would be a waste of time for the company. hire me, will work for minimum wage, minimum wage, pizza delivery, wall street. Unfortunately these days, employers will have to face an increasing number of applicants who will be trying out for jobs they are highly overqualified for. With the unemployment rate rising, more and more people no longer have a choice about the kinds of jobs they’re pursuing. Sadly, these tough economic times have been forcing many highly skilled individuals to shift careers and downsize their jobs involuntarily, and to apply for jobs that they claim they would never have dreamed of doing in a previous life. Take the story of the hedge fund manager who earned $750,000 a year just a few short years ago. He’s now a pizza delivery guy.
Will You Work For Minimum Wage?

He’s not the only pizza man in town. What about the fellow who was dismissed as a restaurant manager making $55,000 a year? He now packs pizza boxes in his family car and spends the night delivering pizzas for $10 an hour. Is he ashamed of his new position? Yes, his wife grudgingly admits. And yet, honest work should always be a source of pride, no matter what the conditions are.

Radical Tips To Get Employed

1. Consider other career paths.
As mentioned, times have made it harder for people to stick to the familiar jobs and careers that they’ve long been cultivating. So would you be willing to take any job that’s out there? Or maybe it’s just a matter of shifting expectations and casting a wider net as far as what type of job it is you should consider.

2. Retrain yourself and build new skills.
You may not have to put everything you own on eBay, as a family from Georgia recently did to help defray heavy medical bills. A better choice would be to retrain (e.g. go back to school). For job hunters out there, you may be interested in a book by Ben Kaplan, called How To Go To College Almost For Free, which offers some options for the laid-off worker who wants to retrain. For those in a tough bind, you may be able to receive special help at no or very low cost.

Also, with the new stimulus package details in place, look for Obama to include retraining as part of the job stimulus programs in the works. Many jobless people only need to learn a new trade to find employment easily. One of the areas that has seen growth in spite of the crisis is the medical field. There are all kinds of jobs that do not require you to study medicine or nursing.

3. Advertise your skills through unconventional methods.
If you are not familiar with Craigslist, now is the time to find out what it is. Many skilled artisans have placed ads on Craigslist detailing their various abilities, and have subsequently found jobs quickly. You may have to pay a small fee to post your request, depending on the city.

4. Join networks.
If you are a professional, I recommend that you join social networks which are much more a fit to your skills and interests than your career or past job history. For example, although I’m a teacher, I also belong to ELanceTalk.com, a community of freelance writers who exchange information about our trade. You’ll be surprised by the opportunities you can uncover through these avenues.

5. Stay honest!
What’s so radical about being honest? Well, when times are rough, it’s much more tempting to bluff our way into a job we so desperately hope for. But avoid embellishing your resume with exaggerated facts or untruths. As a former HR manager, I’ve had the chance to detect lying candidates who were desperate to find a job. I strongly recommend that you don’t lie about your education. If the new employer finds out, he will lose confidence in you. Tell them the truth, but make sure you emphasize your commitment to the new job and what you can bring to the bottom line.

Hollywood Collapse

Of the recent movie 2012 film-critic Richard Roeper had only this to say about it, “WHEN IS THE F—— MOVIE GOING TO END?!?!?!?

With the new electronic media and all the new “Vampire” and Werewolf” movies that abound, Francis Ford Coppola thinks Hollywood is collapsing.

“The cinema as we know it is falling apart,” says Francis Ford Coppola. “We used to think of six, seven big film companies. Every one of them is under great stress now. Probably two or three will go out of business and the others will just make certain kind of films like ‘Harry Potter’ — basically trying to make ‘Star Wars’ over and over again, because it’s just become such a business.”

Vatican sinks teeth into new TWILIGHT movie…

Cinema is losing the public’s interest,” says Coppola, “because there is so much it has to compete with to get people’s time.” The profusion of leisure activities; the availability of movies on copied DVD and on the Internet; and news becoming entertainment are reshaping the industry, he says. Companies have combined businesses as customers turn to cheap downloads rather than visit shops or movie theaters.

In 2002, director Woody Allen commented on the current state of Hollywood in his film, Hollywood Ending. Val Waxman (Allen) is a one-time prestigious film director lately reduced to overseeing cheesy television commercials in order to pay his bills and support his current live-in girlfriend (Messing). When he is thrown off his latest effort (a deodorant commercial being filmed in the frozen north), he desperately seeks a real movie project. Out of the blue, Waxman receives a offer to direct a big-budget blockbuster movie to be set in New York City. However, the offer comes from his former wife (Leoni) and her current boyfriend (Williams), the studio head who stole his wife from Waxman several years ago. Pushed by his agent (Rydell), Waxman agrees to the project, but a psychosomatic ailment strikes him blind just before production is set to begin. The movie plays out with an aging director struggling to regain his vision, both metaphorically and literally.The movie is a not-so-subtle metaphor for Allen’s real-life struggles during the 1990s to regain (or retain) his early momentum in the film-making milieu.

Gone are the times when writers sat outside restaurants and bars sucking cigarettes and downing glass after glass of brown liquor, exhausting themselves over their next novel or screenplay. From Hemingway penning  The Sun Also Rises amid cafe hopping among some of the great Parisian cafes of the 1920s, to Diablo Cody scribing “Juno” at a Starbucks inside of a Target, the times are a changin’, my friend. It’s a known fact that LA is littered with screenwriters. Lots of them. Tens of thousands to be exact. Some are professionals, some are hobbyists, and others are uninspired goons trying to cash in on the illusory spec sale lottery. Anyone who lives in Los Angeles and has walked ten paces to a Starbucks knows that there is a good chance the coffee shop chain will be infested with amateur and professional screenwriters penning the next summer blockbuster or quirky-ironic indie cult hit.  What the movie-going public gets is movie’s like, Snakes On A Plane with Samuel L. Jackson mouthing dialogue like: “I want these motha fuckin’ snakes off my motha fuckin’ breakfast sandwich!” The dialogue exchanges between the three main characters in New Moon are so overblown and cheesy that I just can’t take any of it seriously. There’s one exchange between Bella and Jacob that rivals Anakin Skywalker’s “sand is coarse, not like you” speech in Attack of the Clones for the most unintentionally lamest dialogue ever spoken on screen.

Film critic Michael Medved, cohost of PBS’s Sneak Previews, presents a scathing indictment of Hollywood that is sure to be controversial. Asserting that “the dream factory” has become the “poison factory,” Medved criticizes Hollywood movies for portraying religion unfavorably, glamorizing violence, and celebrating immorality. Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) is among the films censured at length, and there are many others whose objectionable scenes are singled out, from Total Recall (1990) to The Prince of Tides (1992). Those who lament America’s loss of what lately have been generally called “family values” will agree with Medved, while others are likely to dismiss his impassioned text as a windy sermon.

The point is that the past few years Hollywood is turning out “clunkers” that make millions of dollars, 2012 made $64-million-dollars it’s opening weekend while the star of the film, John Cusak couldn’t string together a few words to put together for use in an intelligent sentence. Now I like Chicagoan Cusak, but he was definitely miscast here. A dramatic actor known for dramtic performances in Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, Beng John Malkovich, the Ice-Harvest,  1408 and other’s-he is not an “action” guy. Though he did farely well in Con-Air with Nicholas Cage who would have turned in a better performance in 2012 than Cusak.

Actor’s today are being offered sooo … much money to appear in these dogs like 2012, it’s getting very difficult for them to turn down the money. And that’s the problem with Hollywood these days. It’s all about the “green-screen,” special-effects, and box-office sales like 2012 which will most likely clear well over 100-million by the time the DVD is released and with world-wide promotion.Hollywood today has an over-abundance of acting talent but few good writer’s like Elmore Leonard. (Get Shorty). So, the next decade Hollywood will churn out a boatload of crap like we have seen the past ten-years, one super-hero, fantasy, action movie like Spiderman, Transformers, 2012 after another until they all begin to look the same. Mindless entertainment bringing in mega-bucks.

If you’ve watched the Academy-Awards the past few years, it’s getting hard and harder the the board-of-governors to weed out the crap and select a truly fine film.Best motion picture for 2009 was awarded to a “foreign film” called Slumdog Millionaire because it was better than all the crap Hollywood made in 2009 like The Dark Knight for which Heath Ledger won best-actor posthumously.

Forbes List Of Most Overpaid Hollywood Stars

Nitwit Palin strikes again

Once again demonstrating her incapability for becoming or running for president in 2012, disgraced Republican Sarah Palin said this week of the FT. Hood shooter that the military should do profiling on all our military bases. They do and the Ft.Hood shooter, being the base psychiatrist would have been doing that profiling. Nitwit!

As Sarah Palin blanketed the media on a whirlwind book promotion tour, the former vice-presidential contender once again landed in hotwater this week first by the biased journalism cover in Newsweek and then by Fox News. Anchor  Jarrett claiming video is of “Huge Crowds” on Palin Book Tour was actually 2008 Campaign Footage. Bill O’Reilly Had “Hissyfit” Over Sean Hannity’s  Sarah Palin Interview. Fox News, which  continues to be the “Republican channel,“ was later forced to apologize.

BARBARA WALTERS, ABC NEWS: Have you seen the cover of Newsweek? It’s a picture of you in shorts from a photograph that was taken for a Runner’s World magazine. So how do you feel about they’re showing you like that on the cover?

SARAH PALIN, FORMER VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think that it’s so cheesy. Had I known then that a picture of me in shorts would end up on the cover of Newsweek I would not have allowed Runner’s World to profile me. I think that that — for me, personally, it’s a wee bit degrading. Newsweek should be more — more policy oriented, more substance oriented than showing some gal in shorts on the cover.

Runner’s World did not provide Newsweek with the image. Instead, it was provided to Newsweek by the photographer’s stock agency without Runner’s World knowledge or permission.” Instead of Palin going after Newsweek for biased reporting and using its front-cover to editorialize- Palin, nitwit that she is gossips with “Babs” about  how cheesy the photo is. It’s a “hot” photo I admit but had Palin half-a-brain, which she hasn’t, I would like it even more if she got tough and vigourously went after her attackers. How the hell can she ever be Vice-Presdient or President if she can;t even go after Newsweek and Fox News when she clearly has a case?

Use of the photo by Newsweek was  demeaning and degrading and Newsweek knew exactly what it was doing. They made sexuality a part of her performance. And this is something that if it had happened to someone on the left, the feminist organizations would be screaming about. The other thing is,  that the editor of Newsweek said that they chose a cover that was most interesting. One that was available to them to illustrate the theme of the cover, and that they apply the same test of photographs of any public figure.

Oh really?

Schwarzenegger rules out another run for office

No More Fires!

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won’t say what his plans are when his term expires next year, but he won’t be running for another office.“I have never labeled myself as a politician, so I am not going to run for anything else,” Schwarzenegger told reporters in Milan on Tuesday. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, is restricted by California law from seeking a third term as governor when his tenure expires at the end of 2010. He has previously indicated that the only other political office he would be interested in seeking is president, and he can’t run because he was born in Austria.

Facebook abuse

Man in the box

I signed up for Facebook for one reason and one reason only. To keep tabs on all of my ex-girlfriends, ex-wives, high-school and college friends to make sure that none of them are  living more meaningful lives than myself. They are but that’s not the point.  I did not join FB  to be harassed by a faceless army of Facebook morons whom I have never met, who have no life and way too much time on their hands and are constantly updating their status.

I recognize that I have “friends that I have requested and I  don’t know how to “unfriend” people. I haven’t found that button yet.Unlike certain celebrity’s, I did not join FB to see if I could reach 5,000 friends and then get pissed off that Facebook won’t allow you to have more than 5,000 friends per FB site. Many of these celebrity’s who “friended” me have now “unfreinded” me now that they reached the 5,000 friend goal. Which leads me to the question, how can you be friends with people you have never even met much less keep track of them all if you have 5,000 in your friends list?

I don’t want to see anymore pictures of people’s  dogs. Get a life!!! I don’t want to know which Care-bear, Muppet baby, or type of “old person” I am. I don’t want to know

What The Who Song would you be?2. What Grateful Dead Song would you be?3. What Romance Movie would you be? What is your Santa Claus Name?2. What is your Super Villain Name?3. What is your Spanish Name?4. What is your Naughty Elf Name?5. What is your Nickname Name? What Hot Sauce would you be?2. What 50s TV Show would you be?3. What Cookie would you be? What is your Prison Name?2. What is your Thanksgiving Turkey Name?3. What is your Serial Killer Name?4. What is your Anne Rice Vampire Name?5. What is your Royal Name?

I don’t want any gifts from “Farmville” and please stop sending  me drinks. I won’t drink them. And then there’s the people on FB who don’t want to share any information with the public. Like why the f …  are you on Facebook? It’s a “social” network.

Please stop inviting me to use certain applications or attend special events. (like your boyfriends shitty rock-band playing at The Plaza). Chances are I won’t be attending.

My FB page is an  “interactive” marketing tool which keeps me connected to other professionals in the publishing, journalism, media fields. Unlike MySpace, which got a reputation for being a “F…. Space” and which many public libraries and other free wi-fi venues block out, FB allows me, in the media, to keep in touch with fellow “medians.”

KH

THE BOAT THAT ROCKED

Pirate Radio Trailer

There is an old saying that says,    “If you can remember the ’60’s- you weren’t really there.” There is a tendency  with Hollywood movies the last 40-years to romanticize the ’60’s and throw in a groovy ’60’s soundtrack but all of the movies inaccurately portray the ’60’s by adding poetic license with the facts. The truth is- the 1960’s were a very violent, turbulent decade. The ’60’s started with the idealism of peace. love and rock-n-roll,  with pop singers like  Simon and Garfunkel but ended violently with murder, war, protests, riots, marches. The idealism of the make love not war decade ended when Charles Manson and his followers brutally murdered pregnant actress Sharon Tate Polanski and cut out her baby. A besieged president Nixon, did the only thing he could do in 1974- he brought the troops home when South Vietnam fell. Not unlike  the “Police-action” in Iran/Afghanistan today, the long, drawn out “police action” simply became a drug-war ion the “Golden Triangle.”

The new movie, Pirate Radio has an all-star cast with star actors like Bill Nighy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Kenneth Branagh. The British Invasion might have been taking America by storm as British bands ruled the airwaves stateside,  but the hidebound BBC broadcast only allowed 48-mutes of pop a week. Seeing a need, some rebellious disc jockeys filled it by working from boats anchored offshore. Radio Caroline is the name of various broadcasting ventures situated in several different countries, from ships that were anchored in both territorial or international waters.

Radio Caroline

The name originated with fashion and society magazine editor Beatrix Miller as early as December 1961 but the first attempt to use it for radio broadcasting only began in 1964. While some people involved with this first usage had also associated themselves with other radio broadcasting ventures of the same name, the original commercial operation was financially and legally unrelated to those that followed after 1967. The station first took to the air during March 1964 from a former Danish passenger ferry called M.V. Fredricia and renamed “Caroline”. The ship was anchored 3 Miles off the coast of Felixstowe, Suffolk, England just outside British territorial waters. Shortly after this Radio Caroline was joined by a second ship, the M.V. Mi Amigo which anchored off the coast of Harwich, Essex, England. That ship, a converted coaster, broadcast as Radio Atlanta. Both stations continued to operate independently for several months but the sales operations were soon merged under Caroline brand name.

The M.V. Caroline then moved to an anchorage off the coast of the Isle of Man and broadcast as Radio Caroline North while the M.V. Mi Amigo remained off the coast of Essex broadcasting as Radio Caroline South. The British government classified both operations as pirate radio stations.

n 1966 the British government introduced a law that made the existing arrangement unprofitable, even with some new investment. Eventually, after the new law came into effect after 14 August 1967, the two Radio Caroline ships entered into a phase of financial instability and were eventually towed away to the Netherlands in March 1968 to secure collection of unpaid bills for servicing. At that time the Motor Vessel Caroline (Radio Caroline North) was scrapped.

The vessel that was used as Radio Caroline South (1964-1967) was later rescued from the scrapyard and it eventually came into the possession of a new group who’s primary intention was to return Caroline to the airwaves. That ship, The M.V. MiAmigo, eventually sank during a storm in 1980.

The British government responded to the presence of Caroline and the other offshore stations in 1967 by passing the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act which made it an offence to advertise or supply an offshore radio station from the UK. However a rearguard action was attempted by the Manx parliament Tynwald to exclude the North Ship from the legislation with an appeal to the European Court on the legality of the act being applied to the Isle of Man. All the offshore stations off the British coast closed, with the exception of Radio Caroline, which moved its supply operation to the Netherlands where national laws had not made offshore broadcasting without a license a criminal offence.

It was a neat idea — and might have been a neat idea for a movie back in 1966 or so, when all of this was going on. But the film seems a little after-the-fact now, while Curtis (directing for only the second time, after “Love Actually”) feels behind the times. If rock ’n’ roll is about joy and rebellion, then a movie about it should be joyful and rebellious, too. But “Pirate Radio” is staid and stolid and plays fast and loose with the actual facts in the case.

THE DENVER BEARS

Coming into the game 6-1 after having a “bye” week and getting beat up by the (4-3) Ravens, QB Kyle Orton, traded from the Chicago Bears for QB Jay Cutler, played exactly like he did with the Bears, expecting the “defense” to win games for him. It didn’t work for him with the Bears and it certainly isn’t working for him with the Denver Bronco’s. Orton threw 2 interceptions picked off by #43  (Troy Polamalu) of the Steelers and scoring both times as the Steeler’s went on to defeat the Denver Bears …. er Bronco’s 28-10.

Why is it that these NFL teams think that trading one so/so player for another is going to change things. Going to make them winners? Why is it that these teams make exactly the same mistakes year after year after year and wonder why they continue to have a lackluster season? The Bronco’s trading Orton for Cutler did not fix anything either for the Bronco’s or the Bears- the just exchanged one set of problems for another. Both teams now have seen their 2009 season murdered right before their eyes. In last THursday nights Bears game against the SF 49′ers, many consider the “worst” team in the league this year, Bears QB Jay Cutler was sacked 5 times and threw 5 interceptions. A record only slightly worse than Bronco’s Orton. Had Cutler stayed on the Bronco’s instead of throwing a “hissy fit” when Bronco;s owner Pat Bowden fired Mike Shanahan for failing to make the playoffs- at east Cutler wold have had a line to defend him. Orton has all the time in the word to get rid of the ball but doesn;t know how to pass like Cuter and he certainly doesn;t know how to run the ball or scramble ot of the pocket.

So the Denver Bears end u being the same lackluster team they have been since John Elway retired in the late ’90’s and the Chicago Bears just plain suck. It’s interesting to note that since ____ when the Chicago Bears went to the Superbowl and everybody in Chicago was doing the Superbowl shuffle – the Bears have had 33 QB’s.

Now the Bronco’s are repeating the same mistakes the Bear’s have made the past dozen years. Copying from someone else’s test when they get all the answers wrong gets you an “F.”

BOth the Bears and the Bronco’s need to pick one guy as QB – then stick with him for the next 5 years as he develops into a John Elway. Changing up QB’s every year or every other year puts you back at square one, you have to start over every year. What team can hope to win the Superbowl when they are “rebuilding every year or every other year?

This year, out of nowhere come the New Orleans Saints. They;re hot! UNless they start dropping game after game- most likely they will win a playoff berth as will AFC Indianapolis Colts.

The Denver Bear’s ?  Better luck next year!

OPRAH STILL IN THE CLOSET

It’s not a new rumor that Oprah and her BFF/editor-at-large of O Magazine Gayle King are lesbian lovers. In fact, they’ve even been asked point-blank many times over the years and have always had the same answers:”Of course not” and “If we were, we’d tell you.”

Gail King went public this week  after Rosie O’Donnell, who made some random assumptions on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM show regarding the pals’ sexuality, o not only remain in the closet about their lesbian affair but to publicly deny accusations of the lesbian relationship that everyone knows they are having. Here’s Rosie O’Donnell’s assertion about Oprah and Gail:

“I don’t know. I think [Oprah’s] never been married and she’s exceptionally close to Gayle. I don’t know that [Oprah] and Gayle are necessarily doing each other, but I think they are the emotional equivalent of.. [a gay couple]. When they did that road trip, that’s as gay as it gets, and I don’t mean it to be an insult, either. I’m just saying, listen, if you ask me, that’s the couple.”

Gail King fired back in the media at last night’s Glamour Women of the Year Awards in New York City, and shot them down to Access Hollywood. with this retort:

“The thing [is], if we were gay, we would tell you. We would so tell you. We wouldn’t try to keep that a secret because there’s nothing wrong with being gay. So if we were, we would tell you. The truth of the matter is we’re not. It’s hard enough for me to get a date on a Saturday night as it is. This isn’t a rumor I’m trying to continue to explore, but no there’s nothing, there’s nothing wrong with it. Oprah, who is always very candid about her life, including her childhood abuse, is one of the last celebrities who would keep any kind of secret, especially one that it doesn’t seem she’d be ashamed of in the least.”

Oprah Winfrey who claims to be a “gay advocate,”  has gay friends, touches on and supports gay issues on her TV show is in fact, a lesbian according to those who work for her, those who know her and other “gay advocates” like Rosie O’Donnell.  The fact that she never married her longtime partner Stedman Graham who in fact moved out of the couple’s townhouse in Chicago recently and remains in the closet about her “lesbianism” makes Oprah Winfrey the worst kind of hypocrite. In the August issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, the reigning daytime TV queen and media mogul said some people misunderstand her close friendship of 30 years with Gayle King, an editor of the magazine and Oprah’s longtime confidant and BFF.

“I understand why people think we’re gay,” says Oprah in O magazine and in an accompanying article online. “There isn’t a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it—how can you be this close without it being sexual? How else can you explain a level of intimacy where someone always loves you, always respects you, admires you?”

In the article, the dynamic duo, who often appear side by side on Oprah’s shows, tackle their 30-year friendship and their “four-times-a-day phone calls.” Oprah’s strongest supporter’s argue that the self-appointed “Queen-Diva” of daytime talk-shows should be left alone. “As arrogant as she can be, ” supporters say, “she has helped a lot of people and she has plenty of other things to worry about.”

Like say their almond and water diet.

I say that Oprah Winfrey, and the spawn-from-hell Dr. Phil whom Oprah launched upon an unsuspecting world, are the worst kind of hypocrite’s and they continue making millions lying to a “naive” public. I was never much of a Rosie O’Donnell supporter before but now I thank-god for the Rosie O’Donnell’s  of the world because they are the only one’s who have the guts to confront the liars and hypocrite’s of the world like Oprah Winfrey. Dr. Phil and other’s like them.

SKIPPY BACK FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY

The legendary CBS 2  team of Bill Kurtis and Walter “Skippy” Jacobson hadn’t hosted a news show together for decades. Two legends in Chicago broadcasting were re-united for a one-night only broadcast on WBBM-TV (Channel 2) news to fill in for anchor Rob Johnson. We began our careers here, and we are flattered to be asked to help out,” Kurtis said.  “I haven’t been in front of a teleprompter in 3 1/2 years,” Jacobson said. “I’m a little nervous.” Co-anchors of the WBBM-Channel 2 10 o’clock news,  they were No. 1 in the late 1970s to mid-1980s.

In a landmark case in media law, Jacobson and WBBM’s owner, CBS, were found guilty by a federal jury in Chicago in November 1985 of libeling the Brown & Williamson tobacco company in a November 1981 expose in which Jacobson accused the cigarette manufacturer of marketing cigarettes to children and teens. The next month, the jury awarded Brown & Williamson $5.1 million, with Jacobson personally liable for $50,000. An appeals court ultimately cut the award to $3 million, but let Jacobson’s share stand. “I feel some outrage, some fury as well as disappointment. I am outraged at the cigarette industry for trying to intimidate the press. I don`t feel intimidated,” Jacobson told the Chicago Tribune in an article that appeared on December 6, 1985.

PALIN GOING (V) ROGUE

Sarah Palin  hit the book tour trail this week to promote her new book, Going Rogue. And in Vogue style for this moose-shooting, hockey mom and political nitwits from Alaska- who once had to have the McCain Presidential campaign give her and her family a total image makeover and buy her a $10,000 dress to attend the Republican Convention, her current book handlers have “Vogued” her up for public appearances with the expensive hairstyle, the sophisticated look in photo’s and public appearances.

There are still those political nitwits, like Palin herself who think Palin still has a chance at a political career. To those people I say: “She doesn’t. Palin is through. That political career is dead, slam the lid on the coffin and good riddance. John McCain- (though he treated the entire 2009 presidential campaign as one big joke)- would have been elected hands down by American voters had he picked a reputable running mate and not a half-baked political nitwit. Sarah Palin killed McCain’s chances of becoming president and SNL helped nail the lid on her coffin with Tina Fey’s spoofing of Palin. Palin doesn’t seem to get this- they were making fun of her- not with her, laughing at her- not with her.

When Sarah Palin first burst onto the national political scene her handlers emphasised her uniqueness, a moose-shooting, hockey mom from Alaska who was a real independent woman, had a mind of her own and wasn;t afraid to speak her piece. Americans in the lower 48 soon came to realize the woman was a nitwit and began to suspect that most Alaskan’s were nuts. Palin soon began embarrassing herself, her home state and McCain when it was clear in the TV interviews that the woman didn;t have a clue about George Bush;s foreign policy or anything else. And these softball questions were thrown at her by journalistic fluff-piece Katie Couric of all people. The only important story of her career  (besides appearing on the Today Show and waving like Princess Diana) was Harry Potter. After the disastrous Katie Couric interview it was clear to McCain how “ill-prepared” this woman was and he had his own handlers step in to try and do damage control. Give Palin and her family a more sophisticated look, forbid her from doing interviews or talking to the press without McCain’s handlers being present. It was disastor control but the damage was already done. Most Americans thought Palin – a heartbeat away from the presidentcy should something happen to the aging McCain- was too “ill-prepared” to become president.

And Obama made great speeches despite the fact that Obama would go on to become the most “do nothing” president since Jimmy Carter.

The Oprah Interview

Now Palin is going vogue and rogue again in her book about the disastrous republican campaign of 2009 in Ging Rogue. There are no new “revelations” in the book. Palin admits what millions of Americans have known for well over a year. That she was ill-equipped to be the republican running mate, that the Katie Couric interview was a disaster. Palin’s confession is now on record and further seals her chances of ever resurrecting a political career.

My advice to Palin is this- you’re through. Your political career is over with no chance of a miraculous resurrection. You resigned in disgrace as Governor of Alaska before official investigations into misconduct could be brought. Stay in retirement. Keep a low profile and keep your family members from further embarrassment. After one daughter (Bristol) got pregnant outside wedlock and the father Levi Johnston   has made a total public joke of himself and the Palin family- it’s time to bring down the curtain on Sarah Palin. The show is over. Don’t try for a sequel in total humiliation.

LOU DOBBS TAKES A HIKE

Dobbs resignation speech

The only person who didn’t know that Lou Dobbs was doing biased reporting as anchor for CNN was Lou Dobbs himself. So prejudiced had he become at what he referred to as a “Mexican Invasion” and illegals taking over America, Dobbs could no longer see the forest for the tree’s. His no-holds-barred, sometimes acerbic style brought him a loyal following, but also attracted controversy both to him and to the network, especially over the subject of illegal immigration. Even when a movement sprang up to have Dobbs fired from CNN- Dobbs was totally oblivious to his eventual fate, believing tha he was untouchable and that his job as anchor to CNN’s afternoon drive was secure.

Last week- it was quietly announced  by CNN that Lou Dobbs had stepped down as anchor of the afternoon news and would be replaced by John King, a Dobbs wannabe and corporate suck up. CNN anchor John King, the upright, square-jawed good-looker who made his name with the “magic map” – that big-screen thingie where you move your fingers around and it gets bigger or goes over there - is taking over for Lou Dobbs at the 7 p.m. slot.

CNN tried to frame King’s qualifications for the job by stating: “With characteristic forthrightness, Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere,” Mr. Klein said. “We respect his decision.” King’s program “will reflect what CNN is all about: straight facts from our anchors and the widest range of opinions from across the political spectrum.”"John has enthralled CNN viewers with his vast political knowledge, and he has spent the past year reporting from beyond the Beltway on pressing policy issues and the real people they impact. Every night, he’ll share his passion and his insights about what is really going on in Washington and across America.”

Basically what CNN was trying to tell members of the Latino movement that got Dobbs fired was that John King was not Dobb’s.

We’ll see. Though head of CNN denies that the movement was instrumental in having Dobb’s removed- no doubt had Dobbs not resigned- CNN would have fired him.

Mr. Dobbs said his world view changed after the 2001 terrorist attacks and corporate corruption scandals, and he began to more freely express his opinions. He was particularly persistent in bringing the immigration issue to the foreground, winning him both higher ratings and enemies. Latino groups had an active petition drive seeking his removal. His presence became awkward for CNN, particularly as it began emphasizing reporting and non-opinion shows. He angered management this summer by pressing questions about President Barack Obama’s birth site after CNN reporters determined there was no issue.

“This will be my last broadcast,” Mr. Dobbs said after giving the day’s headlines. Mr. Dobbs, who hosts a daily radio show unrelated to CNN, said the network had allowed him to be released early from his contract. His resignation was hailed by activists who were seeking his ouster. “Our contention all along was that Lou Dobbs – who has a long history of spreading lies and conspiracy theories about immigrants and Latinos – does not belong on the most trusted name in news,” said Roberto Lovato, co-founder of Presente.org. “We are thrilled that Mr. Dobbs no longer has the legitimate platform from which to incite fear and hate.” Tom Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defence and Educational Fund, the leading Latino legal organization, said, “I think the Latino community can and should celebrate that Lou Dobbs is no longer on CNN.”

MAYOR EBERT GIVES GLOWING REVIEW TO 2012

Of 2012,  I can only say this- Roger Ebert was the only film critic to give the movie a glowing review. Most of the other long-time film critics like Richard Roper and Richard Curtis panned the film. In Godzilla, director Emmerich has a character named Mayor Ebert. Since Ebert gave Emmerich’s 2012 film such a glowing review- calling it the thrill-ride of a lifetime- no doubt in his next movie you will see a character named “president Ebert.  Now that Richard Roeper and Richard Curtis have panned 2012- what horrible demise will director Emmerich have in store for these two in his next film?

In ‘2012′ John Cusack plays a failed science fiction writer who has to fight, along with his estranged family, to survive the end of the world. Along the way his character has to survive every matter of peril that director Roland Emmerich throws at him.

In his 2006 novel Next (released November 28 of that year), Crichton introduced a character named “Mick Crowley” who is a Yale graduate and a Washington D.C.-based political columnist. “Crowley” was portrayed by Crichton as a child molester with a small penis. The character is a minor one who does not appear elsewhere in the book. A real person named Michael Crowley is also a Yale graduate, and a senior editor of The New Republic, a liberal Washington D.C.-based political magazine. In March 2006, the real Crowley had written an article strongly critical of Crichton for his stance on global warming in State of Fear. Crowley responded by saying that he was “strangely flattered” by his reference in Crichton’s novel. “To explain why, let me propose a corollary to the small penis rule,” he wrote. “Call it the small man rule: If someone offers substantive criticism of an author and the author responds by hitting below the belt, as it were, then he’s conceding that the critic has won.”

If director Roland Emmerich has the power to create a “Mayor Ebert” character in Godzilla, what will he do to Roeper and Richard Curtis who panned his movie? Create a Richard Roeper or Richard Curtis character who comes to a horrible demise in his next film?

I absolutely agree with Roeper and Curtis on 2012. Time was, folks would get into a lather about the simplistic thumbs-up, thumbs-down method of cinematic analysis practiced by film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper on their little TV movie-review show. Ebert, movie critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, and Roeper, columnist for  the Chicago Sun-Times debuted on PBS in 1978 under the title Sneak Previews, the duo’s half hour became one of PBS’ highest-rated shows — in no small part because, like that other halcyon PBS hero, chef Julia Child, Ebert and Siskel were unusual but natural TV personalities. When Gene Siskel tragically passed away, Roeper filled in after Ebert could not carry the show alone.

We have to get Mayor Ebert and Richard Roeper and their show, Sneak Previews back on the air. The young kids today just don’t have the experience to adequately critique a movie and when we’re talking about parting with $9-bucks for admission and another $20-bucks for popcorn and soda- it’s vital to know which movies are dogs. Beside’s- Roeper and Ebert had wonderful banter together and the public misses them.

KH

Unemployment 2009

Being unemployed for any length of time is not a good idea and can lead to frustration, anger, and depression and toomuch time on your hands which you fill making goofy “You Tube” video’s like this one.  The online job-sites like Dice.com, (Dice is nice!) hotjobs at Yahoo, (Ya ..hoo ….!) and Monster-jobs are an exercise in futility. Most of the people reviewing your resumes are interns right out of Junior College. That’s when you can remember the user-name and password you first used and are able to log in in the first place. Good-luck with the Wal-Mart site if you can;t remember your username and password. Tons of video’s are popping up on the internet regarding how to survive unemployment. Check this one out:

How to survive unemployment

Experts say that people unemployed  in 2009 will be unemployed four months longer than in the past.

Face it! The economy sucks. Most of the good paying jobs have left America and wound up in China. In America, corporations have to comply with all the government regulation, OSHA, pollution-controls, insurance benefits for full-time workers. Then … after they’ve jumped through dozens of government hoops, the government rewards big business by hitting them up with a big tax. Big business in America is saying, “Who Needs This Shit?” We can move off-shore to third-world nations that have no government regulation and low taxes, if any, because we provide thousands of jobs to Chinese, N. Koreans, Phillipino’s and Mexicans.  Jobs that used to belong to American’s.

I wrote about this trend and corporate greed in my blog: All We Gotta Do Is back when unemployment rate in America hit 9.5-percent in June.

If you just got laid off, downsized, fired, or quit and are joining millions of Americans this fall 2009, forget everything you knew or thought you knew about job-hunting. You’re going to have to learn the new rules and the new reality which is that job-hunting in 2009 is a lie. The main job of businesses these days in a time of record un-employment is to find ways to “screen” you out or have the computer “screen you out.” In the old days you could walk right into a business, fill out a paper application and maybe the manager would have time to do a preliminary interview. If he/she liked your looks, the way you presented yourself, you had a shot at either being hired on the spot or being invited back for a second interview. Try getting your foot in the door today. Nobody has paper applications anymore and nobody answers their phone. Everyone from Arbys, WalMart to temp agencies and big corporations hire “online.” By now, if you are job-hunting these days,  you are probably sick of hearing “You have to apply online.” For a fricking, minimum wage fast-food job? You got to be shittin me!

Then  after you complete the 45-minute application process complete with the same boring psychological profile by Kronos which you now have to fill out for every job application, you never hear back from the employer. So you call the employer. They never got your application, or they can’t find it. So you repeat the “online” application process. More weeks go by without hearing. So you call the employer again. This time they got your application and here’s another phrase you’ll get sick of hearing, “We received your application and if we’re interested we’ll call you.”

But they don’t call you.

And why is it that a chain that has multiple Chicago locations  do you have to repeat the 45-minute process for every frickin location? You would think, like the WalMart site, that you could just check off multiple locations you are interested in applying for.

Here’s another frustrating thing new job hunters should know especially if dealing with Walmart. Say, you click off multiple locations or cities you are interested in working at. If even one location prints up your application, “Bada bing …bada boom!” it’s out of the  system. So, weeks go by and here you think multiple locations are considering you and you are not even in the system at all cause some fricking WalMart printed up your application and either never called you or called you for an interview.

Remember the old days when most people did not have a computer and went to the state job office, or Workforce to use the “online” computer’s to hunt for jobs? Try going to the Illinois State Work Office today. They may have 5 computers, all crappy Dell’s and they’re booked all day. So you go to the library to use their desktop computers. Again, crappy Dell’s, same thing. They’re all in use. Today if you are a job hunter, you need your own laptop and even then, like with myself looking for a 2009 seasonal/holiday job, you never hear back.

Paper applications in the old days were date and time stamped so employers couldn’t use the excuse,   “We never got your application” as a way to weed out undesirables and minorities. Today, it’s easy for employers to practice discrimination,  even age discrimination simply by using the excuse, “We never got your application. Maybe they did and deleted it, maybe they didn’t. How do you prove it in any law suit brought against the employer?

Here’s the sobering reality folks of the economy in 2009:

The unemployment rate in the US jumped to 10.2 percent in October, the highest level since 1983

I got married in 1982- got divorced in 1983 and it was largely because of the unemployment rate. Young newlyweds just cannot make it when unemployment levels are above 8-percent.

So if you are a young couple considering marriage in what’s left of 2009 or 2010 my advice to you is WAIT!!!! It does look like unemployment will creep much higher than 10.2-percent before we see unemployment levels come back down- if they ever come back down. My feeling is with the millions of lost American jobs oversea’s- we’ll look back in ten-years and say that 10.2-percent unemployment levels were the “good-old days.”

The US economy has lost 7.3 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, when the unemployment rate stood at 4.9 percent. Since Obama took office in January, the economy has lost 3.49 million jobs. The so-called underemployment rate—which includes part-time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking—reached a record 17.5 percent in October from 17 percent,

We’ve got lots of people just giving up and leaving the labor force,” said Julia Coronado, a former Fed economist now at BNP Paribas in New York. “Consumer incomes are under pressure, and that raises questions about the sustainability of the improvement we’ve seen in consumer spending.”

Obama may or may not give Americans health-insurance but here’s my question. Will we really need insurance if we don’t have jobs?

If the economy doesn’t turn around soon- we’ll all be like:

Will Hatcher’s: Crank Dat Homeless Man

Economy experts are saying that it will take 4-years for the unemployment rate to even get back down to 8-percent. How many years will it take to reach the 2007 levels of 4.9 percent?

Here’s my advice. Worker’s over 30 should begin starting their own businesses. Definitely start your own business if you are over 50 and just got laid off after 20-years. Go back to school for the necessary tools. The survival jobs workers used to take for granted are gone- filled now by Mexicans and teenagers. Most fast-food managers are 27-year’s of age and making more money per year than most Americans made at the top of their careers. Most, are Hispanic and are bi-lingual. The seasonal Christmas jobs we used to take for granted are also gone. When the retail industry went belly-up Christmas of 2008- most retailers have gone to self-service checkout’s. The Apple Store in Woodfield even did away with their cash register’s last week when I visited for service. Seasonal cashier and sales jobs have gone the way of the doh-doh bird. Most Christmas shoppers order “online” these days. If you’re a younger worker age 27 or younger- you are in high demand. Walk into employers with an attitude and demand a high hourly wage. You’ll get it. No longer do younger workers have to settle for minimum wage as my generation did. Chances are- if you are a younger worker, not only will you get a “survival” job at a hgh hourly rate but in six-months time they’ll make you manager like with my nephew Danny. First day on the job, they promoted him from being an “Ass Man” (Assistant Manager) to Store Manager. He is paid around 27,000-dollars per year and gets a three-hour lunch.

KH

CIT files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

Money

Lender CIT Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday Nov. 1, 2009, a potential blow to the thousands of small and mid-sized businesses that rely on the company for loans to keep their operations afloat.

The Chapter 11 filing is one of the biggest in U.S. corporate history, following Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, WorldCom and General Motors. CIT’s bankruptcy filing shows $71 billion in finance and leasing assets against total debt of $64.9 billion. A prepackaged bankruptcy, which has the support of major bondholders, speeds up the process of restructuring debt and could allow CIT  to exit court protection by the end of the year. In addition to reducing its debt, CIT said the plan cuts cash needs over the next three years, which should help it return to profitability more quickly.

Americans say Bullshit!

Instead of government protections in the form of Chapter  11 and government bailouts while the executives of these companies continue to receive huge bonuses- I say the Obama administration and the FBI need to arrest these “white-collar” crooks and throw their ass in jail to sit alongside with other CEO crooks like Bernard Maddoff, Koslowski, and Enron’s CFO Jeff Skilling.

Government (particularly he Obama administration) is in bed with these guys. Americans knew it the minute Obama appointed Geithner as Treasury-Secretary. Timothy Geithner was the one who bankrupted Lehman Brothers and Obama puts him in charge of the administration’s economic recovery?

Americans are tired of being lied to, tired of watching the majority of good paying jobs being shipped over to China. Sooner or later, Mr. President- AMERICANS WILL NOT SIT STILL FOR YOUR LIES, they will stop listening to your empty words and great speeches and they will revolt. When Americans are pushed to the wall- which they are now by watching their jobs going over-sea’s and their quality of life disappear, watching millions of illegal Mexicans move into American and living better lifestyles than Americans- the revolution will come in one form or other. either they will throw Obama’s ass out of office in 2012 or there will be riots in the streets as in the 1960’s.

Note to Obama- the revolution is coming! (one way or other)

Obama, smart politician he is- will most likely duck out the side-door before the proverbial shit hits the fan. Rather than be humiliated in a overwhelming defeat in 2012- Obama will announce he will not be running for re-election. It is clear to many of the Obama faithful that Obama was more interested in “winning” the presidency than actually “being” president. Obama is demonstrating  an,  abundancy of late,  to being the most “do nothing” president in modern history, even more so than “do nothing” Jimmy Carter.

Already well into a four-year term, Americans are at the breaking point. They hear that the economy is recovering but continue to see jobs disappear. Americans have always equated a healthy economy with lots of jobs everywhere, a plethora of jobs, particularly at Christmas.

Here in the Chicagoland area- Rockford, IL. has been rated one of the top-ten cities in America where there are no jobs. Rockford includes Chicago’s Far-West suburbs. Most of the business like Caribou Coffee, Starbucks,  and other’s  you may walk into around the Chicago suburbs- have only teenagers behind the counter. Where are the older workers? The retired workers? The housewives who used to work part time? Where are the alpha-males over age 50? All retired?

Most businesses in America hire young kids to work a register who have never worked a cash register before and they’re paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 hour. And business wonders why customer service sucks?

Slashing CEO bonuses, Bankruptcy and government bailouts will not protect millions of Americans from massive job loss. Government is responsible for forcing big business to move to China through over=-regulation, (Osha, pollution controls, providing health insurance to all employees) and then after business pay all that- the government turns around and hits them with huge taxes. And Americans wonder why jobs are moving to CHina where there are no such controls, where there are not taxes and where China enjoys a 30-percent tariff on all goods the US sells to CHina while we hit CHina with a mere 3-percent tariff.

Bears fans never happy

Chicago sports-critics are particularly brutal on the hometeam. They always find fault with local teams. Bears beat Browns 30-6 and headlines claim, “ugly win,” or “not too memorable.” Not too memorable? They beat the Browns frickin 30-6. For the Bears that’s memorable. This finding fault with every little thing has become a Chicago habit. Chicagoans it seems are not happy unless they’re finding fault with something.

Bet the Bronco’s won’t be taking a week off again this year

The Denver Bronco’s had a week off. Young coach (Josh McDaniel’s) insisted they not practice. Special teams on the Ravens destroyed them 30-7. The Bronco’s have their work cut out now – they don’t appear to be built to put up points quickly on teams. Quarterback Kyle Orton is going to have to look downfield a lot more now…..16 pass attempts for 44 yards is pretty disgraceful.

I bet the Bronco’s won’t be taking another week off anytime soon.

Unclassic Halloween

Scared Stiff

For those of you older than 40- remember when TV used to schedule the classic Halloween movies on Halloween night? Bela Lagosi as Dracula, Lon Chaney as Wolfman,  and Boris Karloff as the Mummy. I even looked for Mel Brook’s classic, Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder and could not find it. In my Chicago suburb, Comcast, the local cable provider with over 200 channels to choose from, did not have one decent Halloween movie on. What happened to all those Halloween comedy’s they used to show like Arsenic and Old Lace, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in Scared Stiff or Abbot and Costello in Meet Frankenstein?  I did watch The Canterville Ghost but it was not the classic 1945 version with Charles Laughton  and Margaret O’Brien BUT the Alyssa Milano/Patrick Stewart version.

What has happened to the state of TV programming in America? Have TV stations just caved in to Blockbuster and the Internet? TV doesn;t seem to even try to schedule quality programing anymore. Only Rich Koz (Svengoolie) ay Chanel 26 “The U” here in CHicago had a first-rate Halloween movie on, Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Kudo’s to Rich Koz.

Eight weeks to Xmas

Clay Aiken – Merry Christmas

some years there are 10 weeks from Halloween to Xmas. This year. the way the dates fall on the calendar- there are only 8. We will be inundated now with 8 weeks of Xmas commercials. Here’s one way to screw with corporations who have taken a very blase approach to Xmas. Next time you’re in the WalMart- wish the cashier a “Merry Christmas.” They’re not allowed to wish you one- they;re only allowed to take you’re money but my feeling is that if you have just dropped a bundle of cash in a WalMart- you should be able to wish anyone a Merry Christmas. That;s the power of capitalism.

Pizza Parlour Explosion

Shaddap You Face – Joe Dolce

The last time I tried to find a pizza parlour in my area there were only one or two. Today, I noticed while driving the major highway a plethora of new pizza parlours. There’s White ____ Pizzeria, Nicks & Willy;s Pizza, Danny’s Pizza, Little Caesar’s, Pizza Hut, Jake’s PIzza, Domino’s, Papa John’s, etc etc. When did the “pizza-wars” heat up? Even visiting my local grocery chain there seems to be a pizza-war” going on in the frozen foods. Remember when DiGiorno’s was the only “self-rising” pizza? Looking in my frozen pizza section, there are now at least a dozen “self-rising” pizza’s. The pizza wars have intensified recently in the battle for the multi-billion dollar delivery and restaurant industry.

Pizza Wars

In the midst of an intense pizza war, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s are spending millions in marketing to outdo the other. The rivals are even mentioning each other by name – once against basic marketing rules – in an attempt to dominate the $25 billion pizza industry. “When you have lots of competition, as there is with pizza, you attack your opponent,” said James Lowry, a marketing professor. “The old rule of not naming your competition in advertising has fallen by the wayside. Now, you just attack.”

Dallas-based Pizza Hut bills itself as the world’s largest pizza restaurant company with more than 7,100 restaurants and delivery units in the U.S. and 3,000 international outlets in 86 countries.

Papa John’s chief executive officer is John Schnatter, a 1983 Ball State graduate. The Louisville-based firm has 466 company-owned outlets and 1,314 franchised stores in 45 states and the District of Columbia. Papa John’s plans to add 400 more restaurants in each of the next two years. “You can say you have the best tasting pizza or even have the lowest prices every day,” Schnatter says, “but it is the consumer who ultimately will make the decision of who is better.”

Corruption in the desert

Over the weekend it was announced that Hami Karzai’s political-opponent, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah,  had dropped out and that there would be no “presidential runoff“  in Afghanistan at the same time it was reported that Karzis brother was not only being propped up by the CIA but was being paid by the Taliban drug-lords as well. As President Obama tried to make the tough decision whether or not to send an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, the revelation of corruption in the desert left many Americans asking the question, “Just what the hell are we doing in Afghanistan?”

Hamid Karzai was declared winner of the presidential vote in Afghanistan on Monday after his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from the runoff. But questions concerning the Karzai government’s legitimacy and corruption remain as unresolved as before.

The case of Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Karzai’s brother, shows how difficult it is to deal with the government now in place. The Times reported last week that Ahmed Karzai is paid by the C.I.A. to help recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the agency’s direction. He has been linked to Afghanistan’s narcotics trade and is the most powerful figure in the swath of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban’s insurgency is strongest. The report that the Central Intelligence Agency has been secretly paying Ahmed Wali Karzai — the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and allegedly one of Afghanistan’s biggest drug barons — demonstrates the complexity of the war we are fighting there. Ahmed Wali Karzai is the face of corruption in Afghanistan, and given that President Hamid Karzai has lost much of his former legitimacy over his own reputed corruption, for the C.I.A. to be seen helping to support his far more corrupt brother seriously undermines the reputation of our entire military and diplomatic effort in Afghanistan.

President Bush committed the US and our troops to a prolonged mess with no “exit strategy.” Clearly now is the time to just bring the troops home and leave Iraq and Afghanistan to stand or fall on its own merit. America cannot hope to win being caught in the middle of a “drug war.” Just as we supplied the Taliban weapons to use against the Russians, the Russians who are now laughing at us, have been supplying the Taliban with weapons against us. It’s time to get the hell out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

What the heck is going on with our weather?

The Singing Weatherman

Last week as Denver received its second “snow=storm” in October, and up to three-feet of snow, and the ski resorts in the mountains received only an inch or two- many people are now asking the question, “What the heck is going on with our weather?” By now, the majority of Americans no longer believe in “Global Warming.” So, is the wierd weather just “cyclical?”

Global Warming? Chicago – 2009 Coolest July 8th in 118 Years

For the 12th time this meteorological summer (since June 1), daytime highs failed to reach 70 degrees Wednesday. Only one other year in the past half century has hosted so many sub-70-degree days up to this point in a summer season — 1969, when 14 such days occurred.  July closed with eye-catching temperature deficits over a wide swath of the northern U.S. overnight. Chicago’s 69.4-degree average July temperature at O’Hare International Airport was the coolest of the past 17 years. But at Midway Airport, the month’s 71.0-degree average temperature was the site’s coolest in 42 years. Estimates based on the month’s temperatures suggest the need for air conditioning was 30 percent below the long-term average.
Cool as it’s been in Chicago, in a number of Midwest cities July has never been cooler. Records were established in Rockford; Madison, Wis.; South Bend and Ft. Wayne, Ind.; and Benton Harbor, Saginaw and Flint, Mich. The month’s temperature in those cities finished 4.5 to more than 7 degrees below normal.

“Scientists Debunk UN “Global Warming

El Nino Is Back

The United Nations exaggerated warming 6-fold: the scare is over. SPPI’s authoritative Monthly CO2 Report for July 2009 announces the publication of a major paper by Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, demonstrating by direct measurement that outgoing long-wave radiation is escaping to space far faster than the UN predicts, showing that the UN has exaggerated global warming 6-fold. Lindzen’s paper on outgoing long-wave radiation shows the “global warming” scare is over.

H1 N1 flu shots- making kids sick?

My brother, a retired paramedic of 30-years believes that our public schools are making thousands of kids sick by giving them the H1 N1 flu shot.

Months back, when a swine flu vaccine was still just a glimmer in scientists’ eyes, US health officials were driving home the message that children, and especially those with underlying health conditions like asthma, and pregnant women were at greater risk of dying from H1N1 influenza and should be first in line for inoculation. But after rolling out the vaccine early last month, the authorities ran into a problem: there was not enough to go around.

“The National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have done a very good job of emphasising the importance of getting vaccinated. But then there’s no vaccine,” said Steven Salzberg, director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland.

So why are they being so heavily pushed onto the general public? Why is there so much enthusiasm for flu shots in general, and especially the new H1N1 flu shot or nasal spray, when there’s basically no proof whatsoever that getting it is any more effective than saying a prayer that you won’t get it?

Why did New York try to force unwilling health care workers to get the H1N1 vaccine, when it’s already known that flu vaccines are not very effective?

There has been an American Medical Association study that concluded that for every 100 people who get a flu shot, it will prevent 1 person from getting the flu. So, even in the most rosy, best case scenario possible, the flu shot still seems fairly ineffective. That you might be that lucky 1 in a 100 for whom the flu shot actually works, doesn’t seem worth the risk that you will be one of the many unlucky ones who develops unwanted side effects.

So, should you get the regular flu vaccine or the H1N1 flu shot this year? That’s your call. Why not if it makes you feel better, or if you think getting shots is pleasurable? But if you decide not to, then from a scientific perspective—no one who believes that scientific based evidence is worth something will blame you. For the last three winters my job has offered flu shots at work, for the special discount price of something like $18 to &20 (USA) I want to say. For the first two winters I got the flu shot I remember being congested and tired, all the way into spring. Every time anyone got sick around the office I seemed to pick it up and it would linger and not go away. Last winter I decided not to get the flu shot and I hardly got sick at all. I did get a pretty bad cold at the end of the winter but it did not lurk into springtime like when I had gotten the flu shot. Personally I’m choosing not to get one this year either.

KH

THE KING OF NOTHING

If I could rule, I’d dance my cares away, find romance everyday.
I wouldn’t have to listen to these poor fools say,
“I’m the King, I’m the King, I’m the King of Nothing.”

~Seals and Croft

Barack Obama is becoming the biggest “do nothing” president since Jimmy Carter and like Carter, when the approval ratings are down, Obama gives a great speech.  But it’s all talk – and no action. Or failed action. Once his biggest supporter during the presidential primary with Obama making several appearances on SNL, even Saturday Night Live has of late, begun lambasting Obama as a “do nothing” president with this clip from the show opener two weeks ago:

Obama – do nothing skit

In 2008, Obama was elected by overwhelming mandate to bring America change they could believe in. Many of the Obama faithful are angry and dis appointed that it has been a year and Obama has nothing to show for it. He has done nothing. The ring-wing “Nazi” talk show hosts like Glenn Beck, Rush  Limbaugh, Hannity and others have been quick to point out Obama’s dismal record and shortcomings. In fact, Obama’s lack of a “Mission Statement” is proving to be fodder for the talk-show Nazi’s and Obama’s political enemies. His first day in office, Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay detention facilities. He has backpedaled. Instead of tackling jobs and the economy right away, Obama backed himself into an impossible corner like Hillary Clinton trying to “re-invent” health care. he will lo se. Already Obama has backpedaled on his own “Public Option” plan . Whatever health-care plan COngress comes up with is not going to be what Americans want or need. Have you seen how the federal government runs the food-stamp program, unemployment, Medicare or public transit in America? Miss an appointment and they cut you off for food stamps. Are Americans going to get a letter in the mail stating that due to a missed appointment, we are cutting off your health insurance? And anyone in America who has ridden government subsidized bus service like Pace, CTA, RTD, who build crappy plastic bus shelters, whose buses run every hour when they run at all and are never … on time, whose drivers are from some African nation, do not speak English and do not know where any landmarks are on their own bus route, government subsidized bus companies that now charge $3 per ride with no transfers and yet, who always beg for more government money- do we really want health insurance like the government-run food-stamps, unemployment or public transit? Do we really want government panels deciding who lives, who dies, who has pre-existing co nditions and are not eligible for health care. Do we really want government putting caps on medical procedures like they do with Medicare?

Underweight toddler denied health insurance

As President, Obama had a moral and ethical responsibility not to re-invent health-care but to regulate insurance companies who have been gouging for years and cherry-picking pre-existing conditions.

Here is Obama’s record  on the Obama-meter the first year in office and the overly ambitious campaign promises he has failed to deliver to the Obama faithful:

No. 24: End income tax for seniors making less than $50,000

No. 517: Negotiate health care reform in public sessions televised on C-SPAN

To achieve health care reform, “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”

No. 000: Here are other overly ambitious campaign pormises Obama has failed to keep.

Ending the Irag/Afgani war and bringing the troop’s home, closing Guantanamo Bay, providing those who could not afford health-insurance with a “public-option” plan.

As SNL lampooned, it took Obama four-months to choose a dog for the White House. To add insult to injury. the Nobel committee decided to hand out prizes this year for ambition – not performance by awarding Obama with a Nobel Peace Prize- for doing nothing. Many joked that the Nobel committee awarded the prize to Obama because he was not George Bush. (see previous blog: How to win a Nobel Peace Prize without really trying). Perhaps “doing nothing” is …. keeping the peace. Particularly when America has a long-established pattern of butting our noses into the affairs of other nations, having the CIA topple regimes considered “unfriendly” to us. If the Republican party hadn’t derailed itself by letting the wackos and nitwits  like Glenn Beck,  Rush Limbaugh  and Sarah Palin hijack the party, Michael Steele  would now be capitalizing on Obama’s failure to keep his promises to the millions who elected him. They would be strategizing to win back Congressional seats in 2010 and picking a strong candidate to soundly defeat Obama in 2012. A candidate Americans could get behind. But alas, the Republican Party is being seen as the party of “Nazi’s.” If Obama hopes to win re-election in 2012 he had better turn around his dismal administration and start becoming the mover and shaker he promised Americans he would be. Obama’s first move should be to scrap the health-care plan. Tell Congress that they can come back to it later in his presidency (if he has one) and in the meantime Obama should concentrate on jobs and the economy.

Obama is a “professional student,” he has no “street-smarts.” Perhaps it was naive of Obama to make so many overly ambitious campaign promises. Promises which he could never keep. But perhaps it was even more naive of millions of Americans to out an overly naive “professional student” in the White House to begin with. The wacko Republican Party with its nitwit candidates of John McCain and Sarah Palin did not leave many Americans much choice. Election time always seems to come down to the lesser of two evils these days. Obama promised to change the way politics is conducted in America:

POTHEAD COUNTY

Is it a good idea to decriminalize Marijuana in the ghetto? I think not. It’s not the Marijuana itself, it when they combine Marijuana with alcohol, harder drugs and other criminal activities pertaining to Marijuana.

The dispensary has a TV lounge, a pool table and snacks and acupuncture are free for customers who drop up to $130 an ounce for 16 varieties of Marijuana.  Welcome to Pothead County, Colorado (Summit County) the latest Colorado county where Medical Marijuana dispensaries are exploding. Despite the Deadhead and Grateful Dead Posters on the wall or the Mexican blanket tablecloths, business is booming as the number of dispensaries are exploding. This is not the “ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH” that John Denver had in mind. Medical Marijuana users can also look at dozens of websites on the complimentary Internet rating sites such as Yelp or Citysearch to find their Marijuana of choice. The dispensary has five I-phone applications to assist “weed fans” find the closest place to buy bud in 14 states that allow medical marijuana.

Here in Slumming County- former country sheriff is pitted against current country sheriff in the debate. Gary Lindstrom, retired country sheriff and pot-head is in favor of Nov 3, vote to decriminalize pot. Current pain-in-the-ass sheriff John Minor is busting pot-smokers for smoking a joint in their car in the parking lots of the local ski resorts because he knows there’s much money in “fines” to be had.

In my previous blog I wrote about the ghetto conditions of Summit County. (THE GHETTO MENTALITY)

Drugs and alcohol in this high mountain ghetto is about escapism, from low wages, exorbitant rents, conditions of abject poverty, incest, domestic violence. The Summit County Sheriff’s Office logs some 3,000 DUI arrests every month. Add to this the fact that local city-councils have curtailed the number of liquor stores but are allowing Marijuana dispensaries to pop up everywhere simply for the tax revenue,  and you have one big accident waiting to happen. Voters in other wealthy resort towns like Vail and Aspen recently voted down the idea of “Medical Marijuana” dispensaries in their resort towns with the voters clearly stating in exit polls, “ the children in Vail already struggle with identifying appropriate adult conduct because they see guests “acting out” while on vacation. Approving the sale of ‘legal’ marijuana in Vail may further cloud their view of suitable behavior as they approach adulthood.”

Councilman Andy Daly said the Vail community has always been family-oriented and medical marijuana dispensaries aren’t consistent with that. Gee, and here I thought that Summit County (Silverthorne, Dillon, Breckenridge) were family-oriented communities with family-oriented ski resorts like Keystone. Guess I was mistaken. The greed of local city councils in allowing Medical Marijuana Dispensaries to open and operate in a ghetto environment is just one more reason to prohibit them or at least prohibit them prohibit them until the state legislature votes to correct some of the flaws in Amendment 20, the statewide voter-passed amendment that legalized medical marijuana in 2000. But greed and poverty run rampant in Summit County, Colorado and no doubt Summit County will sink into further poverty with rising drug use, crime rates, domestic violence and incest and a lowering of local wages and morality.

HAS TV GOTTEN TOO KINKY, TOO SATANIC? (WELCOME TO COUGARTOWN)

Reminiscent of Michelle Pfeffer’s sexy performance as a lounge singer in The Fabulous Baker Boys, the television trailer  for the new TV series Eastwick shows
a redhead wallowing  atop a grand-piano as she sings the song “Spooky” for the local powerful warlock sitting at the bar. Then the trailers pans to a couple caught by  a local policeman in an alley having just copulated. The trailer for Courtney Cox’s new TV series, Cougar show her throwing herself at a good-looking man walking down the street before she realizes she has already seduced him.  Since ABC-TV is now owned by “Disney” a family-oriented company, the question on many American TV viewers minds is this: HAS TV GOTTEN TOO KINKY, TOO SATANIC? (WELCOME TO EASTWICK AND COUGARTOWN)

Eastwick is an American television drama series created by Maggie Friedman. The series is a television adaptation of the John Updike novel, The Witches of Eastwick, and its 1987 film adaptation. The show currently airs on ABC and is currently being produced by ABC Studios. The show premiered on September 23, 2009 at 10:00 PM ET. The show follows the lives of three strangers, Roxanne, Joanna and Kat, who meet at a wishing fountain and soon become friends. A mysterious man named Darryl Van Horne has moved to Eastwick and has sinister plans for the women, but befriends them. Even more dangerous, he unleashes their supernatural powers. By igniting their hearts’ desires, he might just be opening Pandora’s box. Eastwick opened with initially mixed reviews. Metacritic has given the series 49 out of 100 based on the pilot episode, based upon 20 critical reviews, and a user score of 7.6 out of 10 based on 33 votes. Entertainment Weekly gave the pilot episode a B, stating the show “plays like Desperate Housewives if the Wisteria Lane ladies liked prestidigitation instead of poker.” Variety was also favorable by saying “the pilot represents a polished product that neatly introduces an array of characters and establishes Eastwick as a project with no small measure of potential.” Boston Globe gave the show a more positive review, even though he still compared it to Desperate Housewives, but said, “Desperate Housewives is frustrating because it can’t seem to decide what it is: murder mystery, silly farce, or realistic look at domestic woes. Eastwick is allegory and knows it, so it can be plausibly silly and over-the-top, and hint at real issues – women in the workplace, gender politics at home – without trying too hard … I’ll take witch hazel over wisteria any day.

Cougar Town is an American television sitcom, which premiered on ABC on September 23, 2009. The Urban Dictionary defines “Cougar” as a derogatory term for an older woman who frequents clubs in order to score with a much younger man. The cougar can be anyone from an overly surgically altered wind tunnel victim, to an absolute sad and bloated old horn-meister, to a real hottie or milf. Cougars are gaining in popularity — particularly the true hotties — as young men find not only a sexual high, but many times a chick with her shit together. “That cougar I met last night, showed me shit I didn’t know existed, I’m goin back for more.”

The series focuses on a recently divorced woman who re-enters a dating scene filled with younger men while living with her 17-year old son and embarks on a journey to self-discovery while surrounded by fellow divorcees.The pilot episode of the show was broadcast after Modern Family on September 23, 2009, with the broadcast of the pilot episode achieved 11.28 million viewers. Critical response was mixed, with Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times stating that the show’s “plot description alone could drive away male viewers”while the Los Angeles Times‘ Mary McNamara opined that it “is fun and exciting for women over forty. Where Sex and the Single portrayed women over 40 as being desperate and lonely, Cougar Town portrays 40 something women as unabashed sluts willing to do anything to get laid by a young hard body.

Critics are having their say today and they’re pretty mixed about the new ABC comedy “Cougar Town” The New York Times said the show is “funny even when its heroine is not.” The Times said “the dialogue, timing and jokes have the madcap pace and anarchic spirit of ‘Scrubs’ and it takes a while for Cox to recalibrate her Monica persona from ‘Friends.’ To her credit, Cox is game for anything, and the humor is raunchy and Seth Rogenish.”TV Guide critic Matt Roush writes, “The show’s a little frantic and more than a little crude, but the jokes keep coming and many of them score.” He added, “Watching Cox accentuate her body-image flaws may seem preposterous to most of us, but her goofy self-deprecation is quite endearing.”USA Today’s Robert Bianco says that Cox makes a “sparkling return to television” as Jules Cobb, and that she is “not only convincing but touching – and unfailingly funny.” The Los Angeles Times, while acknolwedging “some funny lines and good acting all around,” said it is a “crude show, built on jokes about oral sex and droopy breasts, a show in which words like “coochie” are used with regrettable abandon.”The Boston Globe rates the show as a C+, saying it “has the potential to be more than a one-joke affair, although Cox hitting on high schoolers is not exactly ha-ha funny. Let’s see how it develops.”

Fortunately for most TV viewers, Eastwick is sinking fast and soon to be cancelled while Cougar Town may or may not be re-newed for 2010-2011 season. Depends on how disgustingly perverted Courtney Cox is willing to get with her character and will parent company of ABC (Disney) let Cox get disgustingly perverted with high-school boys or is it easier for Disney to pull the plug and replace Cougar Town with a Teen show like Dadnapped?

BRONCO FEVER

WARNING!

Bronco Fever is a highly contagious non curable condition that creates severe dependencies in certain individuals. Loss of balance in life is known to occur. An elevated view of the role of college athletics can lead to chronic lack of concentration during more meaningful activities. The typical course of action for sufferers is to enter an “off season” recovery program beginning in the first week of January and continuing through Early August. Symptoms tend to flare up in March and April with the occurrence of spring football camp, but then subside until the beginning of August when unstable individuals can experience a complete recurrence of all symptoms and the condition can worsen. Total break down can occur in some cases after several years of repeated remission / recurrence cycles.

Much has now been said about Josh McDaniels, 33-year-old coach of the Bronco’s and the Bronco’s new Quarterback Kyle Orton, which the Bronco’s received on a trade deal with the Chicago Bears after unloading hissy-fit quarterback Jay Cutler. Poor Bears. Heading into a “bye” week, the 2009 Bronco’s are 6-0. As Bronco fever builds to all time high’s, I thought now would be a good time to present:

TOP TEN SYMPTOMS OF BRONCO FEVER

10. Your idea of Monday Night “Family Home Evening” is gathering the whole family together and curling up to listen to the weekly Chris Peterson interview streamed over the Internet into your living room.

9. When talking to your friends, you tend to ramble about Jeron Johnson’s latest bone-crunching hit. You know you’ve gone too far when you look up and notice their blank looks.

8. When fall rolls around and some one remarks about the beautiful “fall colors” your mind turns not to the reds, browns and yellows of autumn, but to the BLUE AND ORANGE!!

7. When discussing favorite superheroes, Kellen Moore’s name keeps coming to mind.

6. You actually know how to pronounce, Yriarte, Iannacchione, and Bozikovich.

5. You don’t make a single social arrangement from August to December  without first consulting the “Schedule.” (which of course everyone should know and understand to be the Bronco Football Schedule).

4. You truly believe that the BCS should be renamed “Bronco Championship Series” and BSU should be participating in the National Championship Game yearly.

3. While the rest of your family would like Bronco Game Days to be a social event involving friends and family, you discourage the practice to shield the innocents from your excessive game day “intensity.”

2. You secretly wonder if your local auto body shop actually has the “right” Bronco blue and orange for that special 1980’s auto you treasure and wonder if the new paint will clash with its red interior.

And the number one symptom you might have Bronco fever is…………

1. Three Words……..Bronco Toilet Seat!

If you have a symptom we haven’t covered here, please comment! It is vitally important that people become aware of this condition, before it takes them unknowingly. Already thousands have been affected! We’ll update this at a later time. Spread the word about Bronco Fever!

FLU VACCINE SHORTAGE (IS THIS YEAR’S “FLU SEASON” CONTRIVED?)

The novel H1N1 virus first appeared in April. According to the Center for Disease Control, a pandemic – global disease outbreak – of H1N1 flu is under way. Because H1N1 is a new influenza virus there is little public immunity, so the number of those infected is projected to be high. The prediction is that 40 percent of the U.S. population will be infected with the virus over the next two years. One of the biggest differences from seasonal flu is that adults older than 64 years do not seem to be at an increased risk of H1N1 complications. In seasonal flu about 90 percent of deaths are in the older population, with H1N1 the majority of deaths up to this point have occurred in individuals under the age of 50.

Mass TV, radio and newspaper ads are encouraging people to go to their local City Market, Safeway, etc for flu shots only when you arrive you see a piece of paper written in black or blue marker stating: OUT OF FLU VACCINE.

So is the 2009 flu season real or contrived?

Dr. Joel Lehman of the Union Hospital Emergency Department says, “Although there is the possibility of having complications from the H1N1 virus, serious illness from flu is not a new thing. Every year we see many patients in the ER with problems from seasonal flu. In fact last year there were 36,000 deaths in the United States from influenza. A lot of those could be avoided by getting vaccinated. I recommend that people take advantage of the vaccine,” said Lehman.  He continued sayin g that although the H1N1 vaccine is not yet available it is projected to be ready for disbursement by October.”

“People need to be aware that the seasonal flu vaccine is different from the H1N1 vaccine. You will need two separate vaccines in order t o be protected from both viruses.”

Pam Dummermuth from Community Health and Wellness at Union Hospital says that their mantra for flu prevention is hand washing. “I cannot stress enough the importance of good quality hand washing and common sense. Wash hands often and thoroughly,” she said. “Avoid contact with those who are sick. If you personally are sick, stay home.”

The flu is very serious.  Every year, more than 200,000 people are hospitalized because of flu complications.  About 36,000 people die annually from the flu.

Symptoms of the flu include:

• fever (usually high)
• headache
• extreme tiredness
• dry cough
• sore throat
• muscle aches
• runny or stuffy nose
• stomach symptoms (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea)

More serious complications of the flu are more common in certain groups of people.  These serious complications include:

• bacterial pneumonia
• ear infections
• sinus infections
• dehydration

Persons who are more likely to develop these serious complications include:

• children aged 6 months to 5 years
• people 50 years of age and older
• people with chronic medical conditions, such as
• heart disease
• lung disease (including asthma)
• diabetes
• weak immune systems

The single best way to fight the flu is to get a flu shot every year.  The flu shot is a vaccine that contains dead influenza viruses.  The flu shot cannot cause the flu because the flu viruses in the vaccine are dead.  Rather, the vaccine causes our immune systems to make antibodies against the flu virus. After receiving a flu shot, a person’s immune system is better prepared to fight off the virus, and thus reduce the chance of becoming ill.

October or November is usually the best time to get a flu shot.

For more information from the CDC visit www.cdc.gov

Medical professionals and the CDC recommend that in addition to getting a vaccine, individuals take the following everyday actions in order to prevent the spread of seasonal flu and the novel H1N1 virus.
• Cover your nose or mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Dispose of the tissue after use.
• Wash hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol based hand cleaners are also effective.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.
• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
• If you are sick with flu-like symptoms, keep away from others. You can spread the virus up to seven days after being symptom free.
• Clean frequently touched surfaces. Studies show that the influenza virus can survive for 2 to 8 hours after being deposited on a surface such as a desk or a door- knob.

THE AMAZING APPLE KEEPS COMING UP WITH MORE MYSTIFYING PRODUCTS TO BLOW YOUR MIND. (Or how I learned to swallow the worm and love the Apple)

The amazing new I-Mac

Watching the new video from Apple on its new I-Mac by Jony Ive, Senior Vice-President of Design you quickly realize how much thought and care Apple puts into all its products. This is what makes Apple superior over all non-Apple or PC hardware like Toshiba, Sony, Dell and HP. What makes Apple a superior company to the Windows-based competition is Apple’s overall operating philosophy which seems to be that they work out all the bugs before …. they sell you an Apple product. Windows based computers sell you a product before working out all the bugs which they then have to give customers a “patch” down the road or a series of patches.

Another thing Apple has done in the past two-years to attract even more customers is:

1. lower prices

2. provide a variety of laptops/computers at a variety of prices instead of just two models like when I bought my Macbook Pro in 2006. It just came in white. A year later they added black and now have a one-piece aluminum shell for its Airbook.

Windows launched its new operating system last week, Windows 7- reviews are so/so. Most loyal Windows customers are still using XP Pro with the majority of Windows customers disgusted with the Vista operating system, a Windows 95 jazzed up to seem user-friendly but ended up causing more crashes and technical problems for Windows customers.

Apple, on the other hand, keeps getting better and better with its new operating systems. The new “Snow Leopard” is a “smart” computer which learns from the user which are the most visited sites, the most listened to I-Tunes songs, etc.

For the price I paid for my Macbook Pro in 2006- today I could buy Apple’s top-of-the-line 17-inch Macbook Pro with three-times the features.

Way to go Apple!

YOU’RE NOT GETTING OLDER YOU’RE DEFINITELY GETTING BETTER BABY

Back when I was a kid, I remember a TV commercial for hair color that told women, “You‘re not getting older. You‘re getting better.” Of course, as the ad suggested, women needed a little help in the form of hair color, plastic surgery, tummy tucks, or the truckload of excercise equipment sold on late night TV. Recent photo’s of some of Hollywood’s sex-kittens show that they didn’t need hair color, tummy tucks, plastic surgery or the ton of excercise equipment which finds its way to the annual garage sales. Andie McDowell, Courtney Cox and Cindy Crawford are back and they’re hotter than ever. All of them seem to balance children, husbands, sex lives and a fulfilling career which seems to say to women that you can have it all.

Cindy Crawford, famous for the trademark mole on her face, hails from Dekalb, Illinois and home of Northern Illinois University, recently launched a new line of furniture under the “Cindy Crawford Home Collection” name. This collection is manufactured by HM Richards Inc., and is sold through many retailers including Art Van Furniture and Rooms To Go. She assisted in the creation of the line by directing the designers to include certain features, colors, or styles that fit the needs of families or reflected her own tastes. She also has a furniture line with Raymour & Flanigan and will launch another home goods line with J. C. Penney in late 2009.

Courtney Cox best known for her role as Monica Geller on the sitcom, Friends. Courteney has also starred in Dirt and the Scream series, and has guest-starred in Scrubs. is currently starring in Cougar Town.

Andie McDowell achieved stardom due to the box office success of the 1993 comedy by Harold Ramis, Groundhog Day, and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), opposite Hugh Grant (who admitted afterwards to being intimidated by both MacDowell and her then-husband). Groundhog Day and FWAAF remain MacDowell’s biggest box office hits. MacDowell appears in print and television advertisements for the cosmetic and haircare company L’Oréal.

HALLOWEEN 2009

THE MONSTER MASH BY BOBBY “BORIS” PICKETT

In night when colors all to black are cast,
Distinction lost, or gone down with the light;
The eye a watch to inward senses placed,
Not seeing, yet still having powers of sight,
Gives vain alarums to the inward sense,
Where fear stirred up with witty tyranny,
Confounds all powers, and thorough self-offense,
Doth forge and raise impossibility:
Such as in thick depriving darknesses,
Proper reflections of the error be,
And images of self-confusednesses,
Which hurt imaginations only see;
And from this nothing seen, tells news of devils,
Which but expressions be of inward evils.

~Sonnet 100
Lord Brooke Fulke Greville (1633)

HottestCostumes.com has published the results of it’s survey of the top costumes for Halloween 2009. Each year the website contacts retailers of costumes to get a pulse of what are the hottest costumes for that year.

The 2009 results displayed a trend toward traditional costumes. While this was not totally unexpected due to the typically lower cost versus costumes that are licensed from recent movie blockbusters. There were still several movie character costumes that made the top ten. This was especially true in the mens and boys costume categories.

Kristen Grace, Affiliate Marketing Manager of BuyCostumes.com stated “Given the fact that Halloween falls on a Saturday this year means adult ‘party-going’ customers will likely buy one or even two costumes! We expect our adult customers to spend just as much on Halloween as last year.” when queried about expected sales due to the current down economy. “Responses similar to Kristens’ lead us to believe that even with consumers feeling a financial pinch, they are looking forward to the inexpensive escapism that Halloween provides” stated Steven Stackman owner of Specialty Marketing Service, the operator of www.HottestCostumes.com and www.BestCostumeContest.com a site for consumers to upload their favorite costume pictures and compete to win prizes.

The complete list of the 10 hottest costumes for girls, women, boys and men has been published at www.HottestCostumes.com along with prices and online retailer availability.

batgirl costume batman costume boy costumes clone trooper costume dorothy costume gi joe costume girl costumes hannah montana jack sparrow costume little mermaid costume Mens Costume nun costumepirate costume pirate wench costume pretty witch costume princess costume snake eyes costume snow white costume supergirl costume super mario costume witch costume wolverine costumeWomens Costume wonder woman costume

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

KH