BuzzWords

Another reason to hate math.

2011-09-14T18:53:00.001-05:00

Of course, let's not forget on my birthday, the day before he ran away, after 2 years any holiday card ( birthday, Christmas, valentines day) , always coming with an " I'm sorry things are so tough right now, I'm doing my best, I love you" clause, when he stood in the doorway to my cage as I was getting dressed for work. I looked at him and said angrly, "what?" he tried to hand me what I'm sure was a birthday card.

I just looked at him bitterly and told him to leave it on the table. . As usual, I got all choked up, considering it was a double , whamy, my birthday and the day before he was walking out of my life.. I just couldn't take any more pain.

So as I was leaving, I picked up the card , walked past the pile of boxes and handed it back to him. " I don't know what this is or says, but after 2 years of promises and apoligies, I just can't do this any more," then I failed at not crying, and started to leave and when I handed it back to him, he actually looked annoyed at what I'm sure he thought of as how ungreatful I was being

It was another in a long line of disappointed "he simply doesn't get it" moments. And the worst part, because I loved him, was my deliberate act of inflicting pain on someone I cared about. Things were already bad enough, why put more pain into an already crowded world? Wasn't I trying to get away from pain?

I really don't know how to be angry with someone I love. I usually just cave. In this case the only person who deserved my love at that moment was me.

The fact that he just didn't understand, the fact that I'm sure he thought he was Doing the right thing, made it even worse, at least for me. Really shitty things always happen around my birthday, I've been fired, gotten bad medical news, a guy ever broke up with me once. So this was another classic example. Another failed gesture.

I wonder now what was in it. Did he put any thought into his choice? Another hollow apology, designed to look like love, when in fact it was an emotional trapdoor to get him off the hook? A sincere emotion? Even a best wish on this special day for someone I care about? Then I think about what I would have felt if it wasn't any of those.

Worse. Much much worse.

It reminded me of math class. Of being on the spot and not knowing the answer. In relationship math, in the beginning its the addition and multiplication of love. As relationships go on, it turns into algebra, geometry, trig and calc, more factors, more equations inside of brackets,, above and below lines. And in most of those problems, the answers are just ideas, points on a grid, the x's and y's, of life, when what you always hope to see are x's and o's

So, standing.g in front of him that day was like being called to the blackboard, igniting 2 of my worst fears. Not knowing the answer, and looking stupid in public, praying the earth would open under you right then, swallow you whole and end the suffering. Then having to walk back to your seat, defeated.

The worst part, in the end, is that at least in math if you can show your work the teacher can point out where you went wrong. In love, there is no partial credit.

B.

from my HTC smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint!

My ESL student in the news

2011-08-06T22:08:00.002-05:00

Hello all,

I rarely send out massive emails like this, but I wanted to share something special with you.

Some of you know that I work with an organization that offers training in English as a Second Language, and Adult Literacy. Open the attachment below to learn more about my student Nelson and what a difference volunteering in your community can make. One or two hours a week can change someone's life forever. It's a feeling like no other.

There are many organizations that would be happy to have someone like you. Please think about making a difference in your community

Sincerely

Brian

Nelson Perilla, United States Citizen

For many ESL students, their ultimate goal is United States citizenship and with it, the potential for a better future. Literacy Chicago is proud to announce that Nelson Perilla passed his examination this May and became a naturalized citizen.

Literacy Chicago's staff of volunteer tutors provides many advantages for ABE and ESL students. For the past two years, in addition to his Literacy Chicago classes, Nelson met with tutor Brian Turner every Saturday. As part of the learning plan, Nelson mentioned that he was studying for his U.S. citizenship examination, which includes an oral segment. Working in a Spanish language environment as Nelson did, there were few opportunities for him to speak and practice his English. Nelson knew that his language fluency was a critical element in advancing his career and realizing his goal of citizenship. Brian and Nelson then started to use the exam's 100 questions as a way for Nelson to practice his English, as well as study. Through their combined diligence and dedication, Nelson's conversational skills improved from an intermediate to advanced level in six months and his reading skills became outstanding.

The tutor and the student can take great pride in meeting a lofty goal. As Brian says, "I may not write the great American novel, fly to the moon or cure cancer, but today I realize that I have helped one person realize a life-long dream. I could not be prouder of him."

"I'm really happy with my citizenship and thank you for everything. Now I am looking to grow up more as a person and as an American citizen. I have my degree from Colombia, my major is in Business Administration. I would like to continue my education and I'm really interested in writing classes, because it is one of weaknesses. Brian helped me at lot... I want one day to speak and write English with confidence and take it as my own language, I know it is a long way, but I think it is one of my goals."

Many of us cannot comprehend the difficulties and obstacles encountered in learning a new language in order to become a citizen in a new country. Nelson richly deserves our admiration and heartiest congratulations. All of us at Literacy Chicago wish him well in his future endeavors as a citizen of the United States of America.

I am the Oyster..koo koo kachoo

2011-06-28T15:43:00.001-05:00

--Nov 17, 2006 July 1, 2011--

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.

But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."

"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?

"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_the_Walrus

2011-05-06T12:34:00.000-05:00

Almost on time, all good till "Madea" and her loud, crazy-ass traveling circus of a family of 7 got on late and couldn't understand why they couldn't all sit together.

Madea and her super-enormous purse graced the seat next to me. God only knows what she's got in there. Oh wait, the canister of handiwipes has emerged. I looked for the rabbit ears...maybe later.

Headphones...book...

Can't wait to see you,

Much love,

B.

Sent from my Palm Pre on the Now Network from Sprint

Flash Mob at the Ohio Union 5/3/2010 - The Ohio State University

2011-03-13T15:10:00.000-05:00

SAS alumni in the news...

2011-01-27T11:44:00.001-06:00

Hello Lizzie,

I don't know if you have already posted this news item of not, but I thought I'd share it with you.

The cover story on this month's National Geographic is "Under Paris," an exploration about what really goes on under the streets of the City of Light. Starting with the stunning cover shot of the beauty of the Eiffel Tower reflected in the streets of Paris at twilight to arresting details in a shot of the catacombs, it's another example of the outstanding writer/ photographer partnerships that make NatGeo the only magazine we keep for longer than a month.

By now I'm sure you have figured out where this is going, the photographer is our own Stephen Alvarez. His work on this story is available here http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/02/paris-underground/alvarez-photography

To me, however, the best part is that NPR's Jacki Lyden joined Steven along the journey and produced a feature story airing on the Sunday 30 January Weekend Edition broadcast.

Apparently NPR and NatGeo co-produce stories that are featured in both mediums. More info on Weekend Edition Sunday here http://www.npr.org/programs/weekend-edition-sunday/ . If you miss it, you can also listen to it on-line at their site

I posted the story to my Facebook, but you may also want to send it out as well.

Go Saints...err, Mountain Lions :)~

"It's all fixable"

2 Maywood cops charged with misconduct

2011-01-04T10:37:00.001-06:00

Ok, this was just too freaky to believe.

The part about the 41yo cop and the 18yo kid driving around, drining, smoking weed, hiring hookers and then pistol-whipping him is just too good a story to pass up. God I love Maywood, always good for some crazy-ass shit on slow news days.

Chicago Breaking News

Tuesday, December 21, 2010, 12:48:55 PM

2 Maywood cops charged with misconduct

A deputy chief with the Maywood Police Department is charged with filing a false police report and obstruction of justice for having a former friend arrested on false charges following a dispute between them.

And in another case involving Maywood police, an officer has been charged with theft and official misconduct for stealing from people he arrested or searched, the Cook County state's attorney's office said today.

In the first case, prosecutors say Deputy Chief Brian Black -- a 14-year veteran of the west suburban police force often drove the 18-year-old victim around in his personal vehicle over the past six months, drinking and smoking marijuana.

The pair allegedly hired prostitutes together. In the early morning hours of Nov. 14, they met at a hotel where the 18-year-old expected he and Black would meet with prostitutes, Assistant State's Attorney Nick Trutenko said in court.

Around 3:15 a.m., the friend decided to go home after the prostitutes did not show up and Black offered to drive him home, Trutenko said. On the way, Black repeatedly touched the teen on his thigh and was rebuffed each time by the victim, who began punching him and tried to pull the keys out of the ignition in order to escape the car, Trutenko said.

Black pulled over and, as the teen tried to flee, the deputy chief struck him in the head with his service weapon, Trutenko said. The teen fled and hid in a gangway, where he called 911. Meanwhile, Black ran to a gangway and stashed his gun in a barbecue grill before calling 911 himself.

When Chicago police officers responded, both were taken into custody. At the station, Black initially told investigators he stopped when he heard a shout and the teen, who he did not know, tried to steal his car. Later, he allegedly admitted he knew the teen and that, during a fight in the car, the teen stole his handgun and fled.

Trutenko said the teen consistently told police that Black made inappropriate advances toward him, prompting the fight.

"The defendant is someone who clearly knew not only better, but also knows the (criminal justice) system," Trutenko said, arguing for a significant bail even though the charges are minor felonies. "Using that knowledge, he caused an innocent youth to be arrested and detained for over 10 hours."

An assistant public defender who represented Black at the bond hearing told Judge Israel Desierto that her client cares for his disabled teenage son and is an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Triton College.

The judge ordered Black, 36, held on $75,000 bail on charges of obstruction of justice and felony disorderly conduct. Desierto ordered that Black surrender all firearms and ammunition, along with his passport.

Black joined the department in 1997 and became deputy chief in June 2007.

Earlier today, Desierto set bail at $100,000 for Robert Welch, 41, who joined Maywood's police department in 2004 and was appointed to the special gang enforcement squad in September.

Prosecutors said complaints surfaced about thefts from people he had arrested or detained, prompting a federal sting operation in November.

elch allegedly stole $50 in marked bills from an undercover FBI agent on Nov. 9 and $240 from another undercover FBI agent on Nov. 23. He was arrested at a bar later that same day, and the $240 in marked bills was recovered from him, Trutenko said.

Following his arrest, "he even went so far as to say that the pace of his stealing was increasing as he became more and more comfortable, and he said he became reckless," Trutenko said.

Welch is also facing federal charges in connection with the thefts and is on paid leave from the department, Trutenko said.

Black's status with the police department was not immediately available.

-- Matt Walberg

"It's all fixable"

Fw: NACA Alert - Your file has NOT been NACA qualified (NACA Id: 496010)

2010-12-30T02:18:00.001-06:00

Not qualified? I'm crushed, really.

Hey, assholes, a real bank, with real banking professionals who can count to 11 without having to take their shoes off, already gave me a fucking mortgage!

We gutted the place and moved in OVER A YEAR AGO, since we got tired of you jagweeds jerking each other off for 9 months while you should have been processing our file.

You people need to get real jobs.

Sent from my Palm Pre on the Now Network from Sprint

From: naca-alert@naca.com
Date: Dec 30, 2010 12:10 AM
Subject: NACA Alert - Your file has NOT been NACA qualified (NACA Id: xxxxx)
To: Xxxxx

NACA
Bruce Marks CEO Headquarters: Boston, MA (888) 297-5568 OFFICES: ATLANTA, GA (404) 377-4545 AUGUSTA, GA (706) 855-7464 BALTIMORE, MD (410) 783-0465 BIRMINGHAM, AL (205) 942-8111 BOSTON, MA (617) 250-6244 BUFFALO, NY (716) 834-6222 CHARLESTON, SC (843) 556-0497 CHARLOTTE, NC (704) 536-7676 CHICAGO, IL (773) 723-6222 CLEVELAND, OH (216) 619-4110 COLUMBIA, SC (803) 255-0223 DALLAS, TX (972) 283-1171 DENVER, CO (303) 694-5437 HAND, TX (877) 952-6222 HOUSTON, TX (713) 706-3400 JACKSON, MS (601) 922-4008 JACKSONVILLE, FL (904) 306-9272 KANSAS CITY, MO (816) 531-6222 LAS VEGAS, NV (702) 362-6199 LAWRENCE, MA (978) 687-3993 LITTLE ROCK, AR (501) 492-0083 LOS ANGELES, CA (310) 412-2600 MEMPHIS, TN (901) 348-0115 MILWAUKEE, WI (414) 442-6222 MINNEAPOLIS, MN (888) 404-6222 NASHVILLE, TN (615) 781-4240 NEW HAVEN, CT (203) 562-6220 NEW ORLEANS, LA (504) 241-2090 NEWARK, NJ (973) 679-2601 OAKLAND, CA (510) 652-6622 PHILADELPHIA, PA (215) 531-5221 PHOENIX, AZ (602) 248-4408 RALEIGH, NC (919) 855-8484 SAN ANTONIO, TX (210) 826-2828 SPRINGFIELD, MA (413) 788-6220 ST LOUIS, MO (314) 645-8333 TAMPA, FL (813) 287-5051 WASHINGTON, DC (202) 328-6333	Dear (my name) We are excited that you are participating in the NACA program and are taking the necessary steps to become homeownership ready. Remember to keep your file updated each month. Fax the most recent of the following: 30 days of pay stubs or other proof of income Proof of on-time rent payment 90 days of bank statements. Use your personal NACA fax coversheet (Click here to access it). If you have completed your intake session, please review your NACA Action Plan/Task List and complete the items requested. If there have been changes to your address, phone numbers or employment, please update this information with your counselor. You should be working directly with your Mortgage Consultant. If there are any concerns or feedback you can contact the Office Manager at the local NACA office. Their contact information is stated below: Mortgage Consultant: Not Assigned - Please contact the number below to choose a counselor. Phone: 7737236222 E-mail: N/A We look forward to making your dream of homeownership come true through NACA�s best in America homeownership program. Sincerely, NACA Management P.S. Remember to ask the local office on how you can participate in NACA to support our on-going mission and activities.

NACA

NEIGHBORHOOD ASSISTANCE CORPORATION OF AMERICA
WWW.NACA.COM

Bruce Marks
CEO

Headquarters:
Boston, MA
(888) 297-5568

OFFICES:

ATLANTA, GA
(404) 377-4545

AUGUSTA, GA
(706) 855-7464

BALTIMORE, MD
(410) 783-0465

BIRMINGHAM, AL
(205) 942-8111

BOSTON, MA
(617) 250-6244

BUFFALO, NY
(716) 834-6222

CHARLESTON, SC
(843) 556-0497

CHARLOTTE, NC
(704) 536-7676

CHICAGO, IL
(773) 723-6222

CLEVELAND, OH
(216) 619-4110

COLUMBIA, SC
(803) 255-0223

DALLAS, TX
(972) 283-1171

DENVER, CO
(303) 694-5437

HAND, TX
(877) 952-6222

HOUSTON, TX
(713) 706-3400

JACKSON, MS
(601) 922-4008

JACKSONVILLE, FL
(904) 306-9272

KANSAS CITY, MO
(816) 531-6222

LAS VEGAS, NV
(702) 362-6199

LAWRENCE, MA
(978) 687-3993

LITTLE ROCK, AR
(501) 492-0083

LOS ANGELES, CA
(310) 412-2600

MEMPHIS, TN
(901) 348-0115

MILWAUKEE, WI
(414) 442-6222

MINNEAPOLIS, MN
(888) 404-6222

NASHVILLE, TN
(615) 781-4240

NEW HAVEN, CT
(203) 562-6220

NEW ORLEANS, LA
(504) 241-2090

NEWARK, NJ
(973) 679-2601

OAKLAND, CA
(510) 652-6622

PHILADELPHIA, PA
(215) 531-5221

PHOENIX, AZ
(602) 248-4408

RALEIGH, NC
(919) 855-8484

SAN ANTONIO, TX
(210) 826-2828

SPRINGFIELD, MA
(413) 788-6220

ST LOUIS, MO
(314) 645-8333

TAMPA, FL
(813) 287-5051

WASHINGTON, DC
(202) 328-6333

Dear (my name)

We are excited that you are participating in the NACA program and are taking the necessary steps to become homeownership ready.

Remember to keep your file updated each month. Fax the most recent of the following:

30 days of pay stubs or other proof of income
Proof of on-time rent payment
90 days of bank statements.

Use your personal NACA fax coversheet (Click here to access it). If you have completed your intake session, please review your NACA Action Plan/Task List and complete the items requested. If there have been changes to your address, phone numbers or employment, please update this information with your counselor.

You should be working directly with your Mortgage Consultant. If there are any concerns or feedback you can contact the Office Manager at the local NACA office. Their contact information is stated below:

Mortgage Consultant: Not Assigned - Please contact the number below to choose a counselor.
- Phone: 7737236222
- E-mail: N/A

We look forward to making your dream of homeownership come true through NACA�s best in America homeownership program.

Sincerely,

NACA Management

P.S. Remember to ask the local office on how you can participate in NACA to support our on-going mission and activities.

Christmas backlash

2010-12-20T16:11:00.001-06:00

I don't know about your experience, but every year, the Christmas decorations in the cube farms get one step closer to crazy. If it doesn't blink, it no doubt spins, twinkles or sings. This just makes my DNA scramble. I come from the old school where the most you ever had on your desk was a picture of the girlfriend and/or wife and kids. (In the bad old days, gay people faked it with what we called our "picture frame family") Oh and maybe an ashtray, since we used to be able to smoke at work. Ah, good times.

So, flying in the face of the popular misconception that along with being able to wrap presents and match the sofa to the drapes, gay people love to decorate, I'm here to tall you, not so much. In fact, once as an admissions dean, when faced with an overeager assistant standing in my doorway with a lasso made of garland I actually told her I was allergic to tinsel.

So this year, I have decided to fight back in my own way, circa December 1965. Available at a Walgreen's.

Cops kick in doors, save residents from fire

2010-11-24T11:37:00.001-06:00

The cops here in Chicago have a pretty bad rep, not undeservedly so in many cases, but now and then, you see a story like this and you realize that most of the folks behind a shield really do care.

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/11/cops-kick-in-apartment-doors-save-residents-from-fire.html

Two Chicago police officers kicked in doors to rescue South Shore apartment building residents from an early morning fire.

The Grand Crossing District officers were responding to a call about a fight in the area about 1 a.m. when they saw smoke coming from the top of the building at 7241 S. Stony Island Ave.

Officer Christopher Davis said he and partner Kristopher Krizka kicked in the main entrance door and began evacuating residents from the four-story building.

"There was an elderly lady who couldn't walk out and we helped her out," Davis said.

Added Krizka: "Fortunately everyone was safe and not injured, and the fire department got here quickly."

But residents in the building say the officers are being too modest.

The officers saved their lives, said Julius Riley, a second-floor resident.

"If it wasn't for the Chicago Police Department, there's no telling where we would be right now," he said. "We have a woman in a wheelchair on the upper floor. They carried her down the stairs and got her out. If it weren't for them the whole building would have burned down as well."

Flames could be seen shooting out a third-floor window and from the building's roof. Firefighters had it under control by 1:20 a.m.

Davis said this wasn't the first time he helped out in a fire.

"Actually this is my third one," he said. "Yeah, maybe I'll become a fireman. They have a good contract," he joked.

Flashbacks

2010-10-25T22:32:00.001-05:00

Setting up my new mac, I have been going through these piles and piles of cd's and dvd's that I backed up stuff too, and came across backed up In spite of how sick I was at the time (or maybe because of it) I look back and enjoy a lot of what I wrote. So, I'm going to post the posts that have something to say.

Dog's Life. entered 8/16/04 11:17AM CST

When asked what kind of animal I am most like, my response is "A dog. I'm loyal, alert, caring, always happy, I come when Im called, have excellent hearing and eyesight, fun, playful, energetic, love to sleep in the sun, not picky about food, I'll defend you with a growl and bite that will keep even the most vicious predators at bay, I'll nudge you to get your attention, I'm persistent, easily entertained, intelligent, I learn quickly and am self taught, I'm not easily discouraged, I'm confident, I'd rather be outside, I like to run and play in the water, I'm aggressive and when I see what I want I go after it, I'm not judgmental, I like to snuggle, like to have my neck rubbed, and if I like you you will know it, the reverse is also true. I like being near you. Once I'm a close friend, I'm a friend for life. "

Boy Scouts Tell Gay Leader to Take a Hike

2010-10-21T16:33:00.001-05:00

Since I was young, I have always tried to give back to my community in ways I could at the time. In past and current jobs I have been solicited to give "my fare share" to United Way. Most people think "hey, it's the United Way whats the problem," without looking past the brand, into exactly what it does.

The United Way continues to mislead the community it vows to serve.. A common practice in most UW communities is support for the Boy Scouts. As you can see below, the Boy Scout's arrogant stance on gay and lesbian participation in scouting is " That's it. That's why our policy is the way it is." And of course, United Way also supports the Red Cross.

The Red Cross, 10+ years after the Surgeon General of the United States, the chief officer appointed by the President to protect the the health of all Americans, has stated that the risk to the American blood supply by accepting the donations of gay men has passed, the Red Cross continues to stigmatize millions of American men with a policy based on fear and ignorance. In spite of the fact that the American blood supply runs perilously low in a regular basis, if you tell the truth that you have ever had sex with another man, no matter how safe or how long ago, you may as well have spent the weekend shooting up in a crack house.

These two organization have a consistent history of asking people to support them blindly. Both organizations continue to discriminate against Gay and Lesbian citizens, and have stated that they have absolutely no plans on changing it.

So you may think that this rant is misplaced, but in the same year that the Supreme Court will be addressing gay marriage, the armed forces will come into the 21st century with the recruitment of gay and lesbian troops, the leadership position of America in the battle for human rights is declining. Human rights begin at home.

So read the story below and put yourself in the shoes of a father who just wants to support his son, and fulfill the stated goals of the organization, "to take young people and prepare them for an exceptional adulthood."

Oh and can someone please explain how a man "avows" that he is gay? Is there some sort of oath you take on a gay Bible?

From CNN Boy Scouts Tell Gay Leader to Take a Hike

The father of a 9-year-old Cub Scout said Tuesday he has been forced out of a leadership role with the organization and ordered not to wear its uniform because of his sexual orientation.

Jon Langbert of Dallas, Texas, who is openly gay, told HLN's "Prime News" that he had been wearing the shirt the Scouts gave him last year with pride. The shirt identified him as a member of the leadership team that was selling popcorn for a Scout fundraiser.

But that all changed last week. "Everything was running along smoothly until some of the dads complained," he said. When the complaints rose to a higher level of the Scout leadership, he was asked to stop wearing the shirt and give up his leadership role, he said.

"It made me feel terrible to think about the devastating effect it would have on my son, to see his father stripped of his leadership role," Langbert told CNN affiliate WFAA. "It brought tears to my eyes."

A Scout Circle Ten Council official said Langbert was never registered as a leader in the first place.

"We do have a policy that avowed gays and atheists are not allowed to be a registered leader or member of Boy Scouts of America," said Pat Currie, Scout executive with the Circle Ten Council. "It's a longstanding policy."

In a telephone interview, Boy Scouts of America director of public relations Deron Smith told CNN that the discussion has no place in Scouting.

"We focus on our mission, and our mission is to take young people and prepare them for an exceptional adulthood," he said. "That's it. That's why our policy is the way it is. Our volunteer leadership has elected to keep that policy in place."

Smith said Langbert is welcome to continue volunteering his time, though not as a leader. "The policy, as it is written, is that the Boy Scouts does not accept for membership avowed homosexuals," he said, adding that the issue would not have arisen had Langbert kept his sexual orientation private, since prospective leaders are not asked whether they are gay.

"This is not meant as a social commentary," Smith said. "We do not have an agenda that we're pushing. We don't discuss this with our kids. We're simply an organization that feels like this is the right thing for our membership and we move it forward and we simply focus on our mission. It's really that simple."

But Langbert said continuing in a nonleadership role is not acceptable to him. "It's separate but equal -- I can be a second-class citizen."

Florida appeals court strikes down gay adoption ban

2010-09-22T17:13:00.001-05:00

That sound you hear is Anita Bryant sobbing !!!

(CNN) -- A Florida appeals court Wednesday struck down a state law barring gay men and lesbians from adoption on the basis of equal protection under law.

Shortly after the ruling, Gov. Charlie Crist -- who is running for a U.S. Senate seat as an independent -- announced that he would not enforce the ban in light of the ruling.

The Florida 3rd District Court of Appeal upheld a trial court ruling that Florida's explicit ban was unconstitutional, noting that the state's adoption law required officials to assess potential adoptive parents in "the best interests of the child."

"By the time of the trial below, the application of the statutory ban was contrary to both the professional judgment of the Department and the legislative directive to assure 'the best interest of the child' in 'every' adoption," wrote Judge Cindy S. Lederman in the 42-page ruling.

The case involved a gay man who was a licensed foster parent, allowed under Florida law, who wanted to adopt two boys who had been placed in his care after the Department of Children and Families removed them from their home for neglect.

The Center for Family and Child Enrichment, a private, nonprofit company that provides adoption services through a contract with the state, reported that "the home presented a suitable environment" and that the gay man -- identified as "F.G." in court documents and as Martin Gill by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented him -- "met all the criteria required to adopt the two boys."

But the center recommended against the adoption because of the Florida law, and the department denied the application.

"The Department acknowledged that it would have approved the application if it had not been for the statute," Lederman wrote.

Gill sued, and the trial court agreed that the ban was unconstitutional. The department appealed the ruling to the district court.

The department is likely to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, which has considered a challenge to the law based on equal protection but sent the case back to the district court to collect more information. The case was later abandoned.

Lederman wrote that gay men and lesbians are the only people barred from adopting in the state law and that the ban could stand up only if "there is a rational basis for the difference in treatment."

Instead, she wrote, the argument against was not that gay men and lesbians were unfit parents.

"Instead, the Department argues that there is a rational basis for the prohibition on homosexual adoption because children will have better role models, and face less discrimination, if they are placed in non-homosexual households, preferably with a husband and wife as the parents," she wrote. "But that is not what the statute does."

The law does not prohibit single people from adopting -- and does not bar gay men and lesbians from fostering children or guardianship, she noted.

"It is difficult to see any rational basis in utilizing homosexual persons as foster parents or guardians on a temporary or permanent basis, while imposing a blanket prohibition on adoption by those same persons," she wrote.

Gill was delighted with the ruling.

"This is just the news that we have been waiting so anxiously for here," he said in an ACLU statement. "This is a giant step toward being able to give our sons the stability and permanency that they are being denied."

“It’s wonderful to be booed at Harvard.”

2010-08-27T15:58:00.001-05:00

August 20, 2010

The Disease: Fatal. The Treatment: Mockery

By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

"WHAT can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?"

That she was ugly!

"That she was beautiful and brilliant?"

No, that she was ugly!

You won't hear those reactions to the infamous opening narration of "Love Story" on any DVD commentary track. But later this month, when Harvard undergraduates present the movie in a cherished annual ritual, they'll be chanting those lines — and plenty of others just as barbed.

It's been 40 years since "Love Story" was released. In that time, millions have wept over the star-crossed romance of the rich Harvard jock Oliver Barrett IV (played by Ryan O'Neal) and the poor Radcliffe bohemian Jennifer Cavalleri (Ali MacGraw), who succumbs to an unnamed disease in one of the most beautiful demises in cinematic history. The death in January of Erich Segal, the Harvard-educated classicist who wrote both the screenplay and the original best-selling novel, has tinged his brainchild's ruby anniversary with particular poignance.

But even as fans celebrate the current "Love Story" milestone, many others deride the film, released at the height of Vietnam and the counterculture, as maudlin, old-fashioned and just plain schlocky. The film critic Judith Crist, in a recent interview, called it "utterly loathsome." (What she wrote at the time can't be repeated in a family newspaper.)

Nowhere is "Love Story" more pummeled than at Harvard, the site of Oliver and Jenny's gooey courtship. Every year the Crimson Key Society, a student organization that conducts campus tours and otherwise promotes college spirit, runs "Love Story" strictly for laughs for first-year students during their orientation. This year's two screenings take place on Aug. 30.

"We're looking to entertain the freshmen and help them feel comfortable in this new place," said Maya Simon, the co-chairwoman of the Crimson Key Alumni Association.

That involves Crimson Key's nearly 100 members sitting in the rear of the auditorium of the Science Center building and jeering the proceedings in the manner of a midnight viewing of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Just before Ms. MacGraw utters the deathless catchphrase "Love means never having to say you're sorry," Crimson Key members loudly implore her, "Don't say it!" At the conclusion, when Mr. O'Neal repeats her bathetic utterance, they shout, "Plagiarist!" And so it goes. At one point, Oliver enters Jenny's dorm, learns from a receptionist that she is in the "downstairs phone booth," and asks, "Where is that?"

"Downstairs, stupid!"

"Everybody's fair game," said Alix Olian, the current secretary of Crimson Key. "If you're in the movie, you get made fun of."

Hence Ray Milland, who portrayed Oliver's humorless, overbearing father, invariably elicits hisses. Upon being denied a scholarship to Harvard Law School, Oliver sarcastically tells the dean, "You've been very generous with your time."

"But not your wallet!"

"That's too funny," said Russell Nype, 90, who played the dean, in a telephone interview from Kennebunkport, Me. "It's wonderful to be booed at Harvard."

Crimson Key's hallowed tradition apparently began in the late 1970s, just as "Rocky Horror" was setting the standard for cult-flick audience participation. At first, the ritual involved mere laughing and hooting. There were few, if any, punch lines.

"They didn't have anything like that at all," said Andrea Jane Keirstead, a teacher in Farmington, Me., who saw "Love Story" during the 1978 freshman week. "My biggest memory is of the film self-destructing at the end. Seriously, it appeared to melt. I'm pretty sure we cheered when it happened because we thought we'd be the last class to see it."

Over the years, though, the rite has become so institutionalized that Crimson Key students now rehearse their routine several times before opening night. They engage in various bits of nonverbal business, including distributing tissues when Jenny is on her deathbed.

Members also come dressed in '70s fashions or even as particular characters. Two of them wear tennis whites so they can ascend the stage and ape the movements of Oliver and his college roommate as they play squash. When, at the conclusion, Mr. O'Neal plunks himself down at what was then Wollman Rink in Central Park, devastated by Jenny's ascension to the angels, his doppelgänger mounts the stage to do the same.

Most freshmen have no idea what they are in for. Among Crimson Key's thousands of unsuspecting victims was Laurel Holland, class of 2006, who arrived at Harvard fresh from Walla Walla, Wash. "My sense of irony was not fully developed," she recalled. "I went in to enjoy the film. Throughout the first half, I kept turning around and telling the upperclassmen to shut up, not realizing that Crimson Key was sponsoring the movie."

Crimson Key regards its presentation as a bonding experience. "Most people have a soft spot for 'Love Story,' " said Eeke de Milliano, the group's president. "It is sentimental hogwash, but the freshmen are, I think, secretly proud to see their university on the screen."

That sentiment eluded Raymond Vasvari, a Cleveland-based lawyer who underwent his "Love Story" indoctrination in 1983. "What struck me was the collective uncertainty of what it all meant," he said. "You take all these people from different socioeconomic backgrounds who are suddenly stamped with the Harvard imprimatur and marched into this big, brutalist, antiseptic space with 1,600 other geeks to watch this girl die. And you're sitting around watching people's reactions to you. I suppose I was supposed to be made effete by the experience. Was Ryan O'Neal supposed to be my role model?"

He added: "I left because it was so sickeningly sweet. I can't believe that suicide rates in the Yard didn't skyrocket."

The event is not entirely derisive. At various points, Crimson Key uses a laser pointer to spotlight campus landmarks and the fleeting appearance of Tommy Lee Jones (class of '69), usually generating cheers and applause. "It was an aspect of the complicated relationship that people have with the Harvard mystique — you want to embrace it, but not too seriously," said Kermit Roosevelt, class of 1993, who now teaches law at the University of Pennsylvania. "You want to be ironic about it."

Brian Malone, class of 1996, now a graduate student in literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said he remembered the screening "as the highlight of freshman week."

"The irreverence was so appealing to me," he continued. "The experience instilled in me a certain condescension toward middlebrow taste."

Not all Harvard alumni appreciate that attitude. The playwright Jenny Lyn Bader, who had her "Love Story" trial by fire in the 1980s, found it "fun and hilarious" at the time. Later, her view changed. "I think it sent a disturbing message," she said. "There was a feeling that one needed to make fun of Harvard, and be dismissive of human emotion, and that we should establish that during Week 1 — that too much tenderness would not fly in this cerebral atmosphere. It was mean-spirited."

Ms. Bader acknowledged that her opinion is colored by personal experience. "I was one of many people admitted that year who was named Jenny," she said.

Indeed, the single biggest source of jokes is undoubtedly Ms. MacGraw's alter ego, Jenny Cavalleri. Howls of disgust greet her when, during the blizzard scene, she falls on her back and spreads her arms and legs to make a "snow angel." And her assertion that her class in "Renaissance polyphony" is "nothing sexual" elicits a chorus of "Neither are you!" Crimson Key makes no apology for mocking an abrasive character who constantly puts down the love of her life as a "preppie" and punctuates her speech with a vulgar barnyard epithet. "She's quite mean, and we just latch onto that," said Peter Giordano, who helped organize the screening in 2003. "Even though she does have some redeeming features, we don't let go of her."

Ms. MacGraw has long been aware of Crimson Key's snarkiness but considers it "very entertaining."

"Of course they are going to pick on Jenny — or is it on the actress playing her?" the 72-year-old actress asked in an e-mail. "I have had decades in which to wonder how on earth I managed to say 'Love means never having to say you're sorry' without once asking our wonderful director, Arthur Hiller, what exactly it meant."

Not long ago, Crimson Key considered conducting a similar rite of passage with "Oliver's Story," the forgettable 1978 sequel to the original. The idea went nowhere.

"We couldn't think of any lines," said Erin Sprague, co-chairwoman of the Crimson Key Alumni Association, "because it was so bad."

Afghan Couple Stoned to Death on Taliban Orders

2010-08-16T15:43:00.001-05:00

August 16, 2010

By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban on Sunday ordered their first public executions by stoning since their fall from power nine years ago, killing a young couple who had unsuccessfully tried to elope, according to Afghan officials and an eyewitness.

The punishment was carried out by hundreds of the victims' neighbors and even their family members in a village in northern Kunduz Province, according to Nadir Khan, 40, a local farmer and Taliban sympathizer, who was interviewed by telephone.

As a Taliban mullah prepared to read the judgment of a religious "court," Mr. Khan said the lovers, a 25-year-old man named Khayyam and a 19-year-old woman named Siddiqa, defiantly confessed in public to their relationship.

"They said, 'We love each other no matter what happens,' " Mr. Khan said.

The stoning deaths were confirmed by Afghan officials in the area on Monday. Mahbubullah Sayedi, a spokesman for the Kunduz governor's office, condemned the executions, and said there was ample provision in Afghan law for prosecuting someone if they were accused of adultery or other social crimes. "We have courts here, and we can solve such cases through our judicial organizations," he said. "This act is against human rights and against our national Constitution."

The couple eloped when Mr. Khayyam was unable to persuade family members to allow him to marry the young woman, identified by authorities only by her first name, Siddiqa. Siddiqa was engaged to marry a relative of her lover, but was unwilling to do so, according to Mr. Khan.

Mohammed Ayub, the governor of nearby Imam Sahib district, also confirmed the stoning deaths, which took place in the local bazaar in Mullah Quli village, in Archi District, a remote corner of Kunduz Province close to Tajikistan.

The couple eloped to Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan, staying with distant relatives, but family members persuaded them to return to their village, promising to allow them to marry. (Afghan men are legally allowed to marry up to four wives). Once back in Kunduz, however, they were arrested by the Taliban, who convened local mullahs from surrounding villages for a religious court.

After the Taliban proclaimed the sentence, Siddiqa, dressed in the head-to-toe Afghan burqa, and Khayyam, who had a wife and two young children, were encircled by the male-only crowd in the bazaar. Taliban activists began stoning them first, then villagers joined in until they killed first Siddiqa and then her lover, Mr. Khan said. No women were allowed to attend, he said.

Mr. Khan estimated that some 200 villagers participated in the executions, including Khayyam's father and brother, and Siddiqa's brother, as well as other relatives, with a larger crowd of onlookers who did not take part.

"People were very happy seeing this," Mr. Khan maintained, saying the crowd was festive and cheering during the stoning. "They did a bad thing."

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, praised the action.

"We have heard about this report and are trying to get information from our friends in Kunduz about the stoning," he said, interviewed by cellphone. "But let me tell you that according to Shariah law, if someone commits a crime like that, we have our courts and we deal with such crimes based on Islamic law."

Mr. Nadery, from the human rights commission, pointed to a string of recent such cases of summary justice by the Taliban. In northwestern Badghis Province on Aug. 8, a 41-year-old widow, who was made pregnant by a man she said promised to marry her, was convicted of fornication by a Taliban court. She was given 200 lashes with a whip and then shot to death, according to Col. Abdul Jabar, a provincial police official, who said the killing was ordered by the local Taliban commander, Mullah Yousef in Qadis District.

Waheed Omer, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, said Mr. Karzai was "deeply saddened and grieved when he heard that news."

The executions were the latest in a series of cases where the Taliban have imposed their harsh version of Shariah law for social crimes, reminiscent of their behavior during their decade-long rule of the country. In recent years Taliban officials have sought to play down their bloody punishments of the past as they concentrated on building up popular support.

"We see it as a sign of a new confidence on the part of the Taliban in the application of their rules, like they did in the '90s," said Nader Nadery, a senior commissioner on Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission. "We do see it as a trend, they're showing more strength in recent months, not just in attacks, but including their own way of implementing laws, arbitrary and extrajudicial killings."

The stoning deaths, along with similarly brazen attacks in northern Afghanistan, were also a sign of growing Taliban strength in parts of the country where until recently they had been weak or absent. In their home regions in southern Afghanistan, Mr. Nadery said, the Taliban have already been cracking down.

"We've seen a big increase in intimidation of women and more strict rules on women," he said.

Perhaps most worrisome were signs of support for the action from mainstream religious authorities in Afghanistan. The head of the Ulema Council in Kunduz Province, Mawlawi Abdul Yaqub, interviewed by telephone, said Monday that stoning to death was the appropriate punishment for an illegal sexual relationship, although he declined to give his view on this particular case.

And less than a week earlier, the national Ulema Council brought together 350 religious scholars in a meeting with government religious officials, who issued a joint statement Aug. 10 calling for more punishment under Shariah, apparently referring to stoning, amputations and lashings.

Failure to implement such "Islamic provisions," the council statement said, was hindering the peace process and encouraging crime.

The controversy could have implications for efforts by Afghan officials to reconcile with Taliban leaders and draw them into power-sharing talks. Afghan officials, supported by Western countries, have insisted Taliban leaders would have to accept the Afghan Constitution, which guarantees women's rights, and not expect a return to Shariah law. Moderate supporters of the Taliban have said they would not make a return to Shariah law a condition of their participation

Time magazine focused widespread indignation on Afghanistan recently by putting on its cover a picture of an 18-year-old woman from Uruzgan Province whose nose and ears were cut off by her Taliban husband after she had fled her child marriage to him. And the cases of two 13 and 14-year-old child brides who were flogged last January in front of their village for trying to flee their husbands in remote Ghor Province were also connected to Taliban activity, Mr. Nadery said. The warlord who ordered their floggings had previously supported the government but has now apparently gone over to the Taliban, he said.

The human rights commission, which investigated that incident, released videotapes of the floggings.

Amnesty International condemned the stonings, calling them the first such executions since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. "The Taliban and other insurgent groups are growing increasingly brutal in their abuses against Afghans," said Sam Zarifi, an Amnesty International official.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting.

A Tour de Fromage through Wisconsin's cheese country

2010-08-11T11:00:00.001-05:00

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/travel/2573676,tour-de-fromage-wisconsin-bike-081110.article

August 11, 2010

BY LORI RACKL Travel Editor

MONROE, Wis. — Wisconsin provides me with ample opportunity to indulge in two of my favorite pursuits: riding a bike and eating cheese. Sometimes simultaneously.

The limestone hills, kelly-green valleys and fertile farms of America's Dairyland not only make great cycling terrain; they make great terroir for churning out 600-plus varieties of cheese.

Cows watch cyclists pedal along the Cheese Country Trail that passes through Green County, home to Wisconsin's largest concentration of cheesemakers.

Mike Gingrich of Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville shows where he ages his award-winning wheels of Pleasant Ridge Reserve, which tastes like gruyere.

internet privacy options & tools

2010-08-02T10:56:00.001-05:00

An excellent article on ways to increase your internet privacy from today's WSJ

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383203092034876.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
--

Google searches poisoned by spyware.

2010-07-08T11:42:00.001-05:00

Six days ago, an Englishman named Raoul Moat shot his ex-girlfriend, her new boyfriend and a police officer. The UK police has instigated a manhunt that has, so far, failed to lead to the arrest of the attacker.

News outlets are reporting closely on the chase, and the £10,000 reward that the police offered for any information which leads to Moat being captured has propelled people to go online and search for a picture of the man.

Cyber criminals promptly seized the opportunity and managed to poison Google's Image Search results that come up when Moat's name is entered. According to Sunbelt researchers, all of the top line search results redirect the user to serveradobe(dot)co(dot)cc, where they are prompted to install a Flash component to view the site:

The file in question (V11_adobe_flash.exe) is thought to be malicious - most likely a rogue anti-virus solution.

all better now, sorry about the spam

2010-07-02T13:05:00.001-05:00

Yes, I got hacked. No, I have no idea how it happened. It also got my Facebook and Gmail accounts.

So I have spent, today, my day off, fixing everything.

Sorry you got spammed. Take a page from my book and go change your passwords, and never use the same id + password combo anywhere

Thanks for your patience.

B

PS A friend of mine replied "if you were dumb enough to vacation in Cardiff Wales, you deserve to be stuck there"

8 Gay Men +1 Who Should Have Had More PRIDE

2010-06-24T11:56:00.001-05:00

8 Gay Men Who Should Have Had More PRIDE
Cate Manning/Chicago Tribune

It's Pride Week! Before we all go out and celebrate, let's look at this list of eight infamous anti-gay activists and politicians who turned to be -- surprise -- gay. (Does it still surprise you when the most vehement anti-gay personalities turn out to be gay themselves?) If they had had more pride, perhaps they wouldn't have been embroiled in such scandals.

For a bonus ninth, check out this article (9) about George Alan Reckers, the right wing Christian leader -- who opposed gay adoption and taught that gay can be cured -- who was caught on a European vacation with a boy he found on Rentboy.com. Um, he had surgery, ok? He needed someone to carry his bags!

1) Former Florida Congressman Bob Allen
Allen supported the Florida ban on gays adopting children and enhanced penalties for "unnatural and lascivious acts." In 2007, he was arrested for offering an undercover cop $20 for oral sex in a men's bathroom. He resigned from the Florida House a week later

2) California State Senator Roy Ashburn
Ashburn has voted against every single gay rights measure before him since taking office. In March he was arrested for a DUI leaving a gay night club with a male companion. He's since come out of the closet, but maintains an anti-gay voting record in the Senate.

3)Former U.S. Senator Larry Craig
Craig supported a federal ban on same-sex marriage, and voted against changing the federal definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation. In 2007, his "wide stance" got him arrested for lewd conduct at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and pled guilty. To this day, Craig and his wife maintain his heterosexuality

4)Former Washington State Congressman Richard Curtis
While a member of the Washington House, Curtis voted against a bill that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation and against same-sex domestic partnerships. After an encounter involving a gay porn star and Curtis' penchant for wearing women's clothing went wrong, Curtis resigned from office.

5)Former U.S. Congressman Mark Foley
Perhaps one of the most infamous hypocritical activists, Foley spearheaded the effort to protect Americans against sexual predators. It turned out that he had been sending sexually explicit emails and IMs to (and alleged sexual liaisons with) several teenaged Congressional pages.

6)Evangelical Preacher Ted Haggard
Haggard actively lobbied against gay rights and supported the same-sex marriage ban in Colorado. He also taught that homosexuality was a sin. In 2006, he was outed by a prostitute (Mike Jones) with whom Haggard had sex (and purchased and used crystal meth) for three years. He still won't admit that he's gay...he says he's "heterosexual with issues."

7)Former U.S. Congressman Ed Schrock
In his time in the House, Schrock staunchly opposed same-sex marriage and gays in the military. In 2004, he was caught on tape soliciting a male prostitute and dropped out of the race for his third Congressional term.

8) Former Spokane (WA) Mayor JIm West
West opposed gays and lesbians working in schools & daycare centers, and even opposed a bill that barred government distribution of pamphlets to help people protect themselves from HIV and AIDS. In 2005, he was investigated for sexual abuse against minor boys and offering unpaid internships to men in exchange for sex. He was recalled from office.

9) http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-05-06/news/christian-right-leader-george-rekers-takes-vacation-with-rent-boy/all

Coffee is for Closers...at Goldman Sachs

2010-05-04T12:55:00.001-05:00

E-Mails Reveal Goldman's Glengarry Glen Ross Side

By Reuters

May 03, 2010

May 3, 2010 NEW YORK - Brass-knuckle sales tactics, worthless assets and clueless investors: the vignettes that emerge from hundreds of pages of three-year-old emails from members of Goldman Sachs Group's mortgage securities trading desk would not be out of place in a David Mamet play.

In "Glengarry Glen Ross," Mamet depicted the aggressive and desperate sales tactics employed by a group of salesmen to push worthless Florida real estate on unsuspecting buyers. The play helped popularize that age-old mantra of salesmen everywhere: "ABC or Always be Closing."

And while there may be no memorable catchphrase in the Goldman emails released this week by a U.S. Senate panel probing the firm, there is some similarity in tenor and tone of the bank's drive to unload subprime mortgage-linked securities in spring 2007

Sprinkled throughout the 900-page document dump by the Senate panel are emails in which Goldman executives applaud underlings for their "success in grinding out retained positions" and doing an "excellent job pushing to closure these deals in a period of extreme difficulty."

And the emails introduce us to a new sales star at Goldman named Cactus Raazi, who wins heaps of praise from his colleagues for moving subprime-backed debt.

The picture that emerges from the many emails is one of a Goldman sales force working under the gun to sell securities, as the window on the market for collateralized debt obligations is rapidly closing.

A salesman in South Korea is encouraged to get a group of investors to buy more mortgage-backed securities with email messages like "Get 'er done" and "Yes - go for it."

From the collection of emails, it is clear that in the waning days of the U.S. housing bubble, one of the main missions of Goldman's structured products sales force was to find institutional buyers for the last round of CDOs Goldman was bringing to market.

INTRIGUING CHARACTERS

Goldman needed not only to unload some of its inventory of mortgage-backed securities, but take steps to set up short positions against some of those very same securities.

Former Goldman mortgage executive Daniel Sparks gave those marching orders in a Feb. 27, 2007, email, in which he directed his crew "to reduce CDO pipeline risk," "cover more single name shorts" and "allocate short positions more explicitly."

Sparks' email may not be as direct or as profane as the "always be closing" speech delivered by Alec Baldwin's character Blake in the movie version of "Glengarry Glen Ross," but it gets the point across.

If nothing else, the investigations and allegations now engulfing Goldman's mortgage-backed securities operation have opened a window into a side of the investment firm that is rarely seen in public. Once-private emails are revealing some of the more colorful and intriguing characters the firm relies on to sell its more esoteric and complex products.

The lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, for instance, brought a level of fame to Goldman bond salesman Fabrice Tourre, whom regulators claim misled institutional investors about a subprime mortgage-linked deal called Abacus 2007-AC1.

But the 31-year-old, French-born Goldman vice president may be just as well-known for the love notes he sent his girlfriend, including one email in which he boastfully referred to himself as "Fabulous Fab."

Now Raazi, another Goldman fixed-income salesman and vice president, is receiving his 15 minutes of unwanted fame, thanks to emails released by the Senate panel, which held a marathon 11-hour hearing Tuesday on Goldman's role in the subprime mortgage mess.

Raazi, whose full name is Mehra Cactus Raazi, has been a Goldman bond salesman since 1998. Before coming to Goldman he was an ad salesman for "Rolling Stone" magazine and other Wenner Media publications. A 1997 story in The Los Angeles Times listed an "M. Cactus Raazi" as the business manager for "URB" magazine.

If there is any champion for the Goldman side of things in the mass of emails, it is Raazi, who is singled out for his selling prowess a number of times.

Most notable is an email sent by Goldman mortgage executive Tom Montag, now with Bank of America, to Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein on March 14, 2007, with the subject line "Cactus Delivers." Montag praises Raazi for helping Goldman cover "another $1.2 billion in shorts in mortgages."

The email thread praising Raazi begins with Sparks writing to Montag and telling him "Cactus Raazi did a fantastic job for the desk." Sparks added, "Please recognize Cactus when you get a chance."

Two weeks later, Raazi's feats of selling are lauded again in a memo sent around to the entire "GS Syndicate" for CDOs and other mortgage-backed securities. That memo begins: "Great job Cactus Raazi trading us out of our entire Timberwolf Single-A Position--$16 mm."

Timberwolf is a $1 billion hybrid CDO Goldman brought to market in March 2007 and which quickly lost all of its value. The CDO liquidated in June 2008.

With the CDO market long dead, it is not clear what Raazi is selling now for Goldman. He did not return an email seeking comment. A Goldman spokesman also declined to comment. (Reported by Matthew Goldstein, editing by Matthew Lewis)

Copyright 2010 by Reuters. All rights reserved.

Rolling Freak Show in Chicago Cab

2010-04-27T11:47:00.001-05:00

Cabbie attacked me in his back seat, sucking her toes and forcing her
to spit in his face and rub his nipples.woman testifies

April 26, 2010

BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter/rhussain@suntimes.com
"Where do you want to go sweetie?"

That's what the 25-year-old Rockford teacher said Fred Batrony asked
her after he attacked her in the back of his cab last summer,

The woman said she complied to most of the cabbie's demands sucking
her toes and forcing her to spit in his face and rub his nipplesin the
July 4 attack because she was scared.

But when Batrony, 55, allegedly tried to kiss her and asked her to
talk "dirty," she refused.

"I didn't know what to say," the woman said through tears as she
testified at the cabbie's trial Monday at the 26th and California Cook
County courthouse.

"I spit in his face because that was something I could live with."

The woman said she fell asleep in Batrony's cab after she had flagged
him down at Clark and Fullerton. She and a friend had just gotten out
of another taxi but had lost each other as they talked on their cell
phones and headed to a 7-Eleven for frozen pizza, she said. The woman
said she had been drinking earlier at several Wrigleyville bars and at
the Cubs game. Being from out of town, she didn't realize she was just
blocks away from her friend's condominium at Clark and Diversey when
she stepped into Batrony's white cab.

When the woman woke up, she noticed she had been driven to a secluded
area with lot of trees and a "rocky" road. Her cell phone was dead.

"He [Batrony] gets out and gets in the back seat. He pulled my legs up
on his lap and he started sucking my toes," she said.

"I was scared and didn't know where to go."

The 5 feet 4 inch, 115-pound woman said Batrony forced her to touch
him, but she resisted when he tried to pull her on top of him.

Then, "it just stopped," she said. And Batrony drove her back to the
neighborhood she had requested hours before and asked, "Are you going
to go straight inside?" The woman saw that the fare was up to $78. She
never paid and Batrony drove off, she said.

The "exhausted, tired, scared" woman said she felt "dirty" and
desperately looked for help when she realized she lost her friend's
condominium's pin code.

Another cabbie waiting at a McDonald's drive-thru came to her rescue.

"Looks like you need to use a phone," he said, the woman testified.

Batrony is charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated criminal
sexual abuse.

Published in the Chicago Sun Times
04/27/2010
http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/2203034,woman-testifies-taxi-cab-case-042610.article#

'Uh, Jughead, I need to tell you something...'

2010-04-23T15:49:00.001-05:00

http://blogs.suntimes.com/shinyobjects/2010/04/uh_jughead_i_need_to_tell_you_something.html

Obama Widens Medical Rights for Same-Sex Partners...about damn time

2010-04-16T10:14:00.001-05:00

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
New York Times 04/16/2010

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Thursday ordered his health secretary to issue new rules aimed at granting hospital visiting rights to same-sex partners.

The White House announced the rule changes, which will also make it easier for gay men and lesbians to make medical decisions on behalf of their partners, in a memorandum released Thursday night. In it, the president said the new rules would affect any hospital that participates in Medicare or Medicaid, the government programs to cover the elderly and the poor.

"Every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindness and caring of a loved one at their sides," Mr. Obama said in the memorandum, adding that the rules could also help widows and widowers who rely on friends and members of religious orders who care for one another. But he says gay men and lesbians are "uniquely affected" because they are often barred from visiting partners with whom they have spent decades.

Richard Socarides, who advised President Bill Clinton on gay rights issues, said that while the memorandum on its own did not grant any new rights, it did "draw attention to the very real and tragic situations many gays and lesbians face when a partner is hospitalized."

Ordering the Department of Health and Human Services to find a better way to handle such situations, Mr. Socarides said, is "the kind of thing the gay community was hoping Obama would do right after he was inaugurated."

Several states have tried to put an end to discrimination against same-sex couples, and Mr. Obama said he intended to build on those efforts. He said the new rules would make clear that designated visitors should enjoy visiting privileges that are no more restrictive than those enjoyed by immediate family members.

The rules will take time to draft and put in place, and so Mr. Obama's order will have no immediate effect. Even so, gay rights groups called it a major advance for the families of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender individuals.

"It's a huge deal," said David Smith, vice president of policy for the Human Rights Campaign, which worked with the White House to develop the memorandum, in an interview Thursday night. "Nearly every hospital in the country will now be required to provide hospital visitation rights to LGBT families. It's an enormous step. In the absence of equal marriage rights in most jurisdictions, this step provides an essential right to LGBT families for a gay person or a lesbian person to spend time with their partner in a critical situation."

In some instances in the past, hospitals have barred bedside visits by the person who held the medical power of attorney for a patient.

Gay rights advocates said the rules change was inspired by one of those cases involving a same-sex couple, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond, who were profiled in The New York Times last year. After Ms. Pond was stricken with a fatal brain aneurysm, Ms. Langbehn was denied visiting rights in 2007 by a Florida hospital. Although Ms. Langbehn had power of attorney and she and Ms. Pond were parents to four children they had adopted, the hospital refused for eight hours to allow her and the children to see Ms. Pond, her partner for 18 years. Ms. Pond died as Ms. Langbehn tried in vain to get to her side.

Ms. Langbehn, represented by Lambda Legal, a legal advocacy organization, brought suit against the hospital, Jackson Memorial in Miami, but lost. On Thursday night, Mr. Obama called her from Air Force One to say that he had been moved by her case.

"I was so humbled that he would know Lisa's name and know our story," Ms. Langbehn said in a telephone interview. "He apologized for how we were treated. For the last three years, that's what I've been asking the hospital to do. Even now, three years later, they still refuse to apologize to the children and I for the fact that Lisa died alone."

Mr. Obama campaigned saying he would fight for the rights of gay men and lesbians, but he has been under pressure since the beginning of his presidency to be a stronger advocate for their issues.

Many gay men and lesbians grew disenchanted with what they viewed as his foot-dragging on reversing "don't ask, don't tell," the policy that bars them from serving openly in the military. The president said in his State of the Union address this year that he intended to move to overturn the policy, and his administration has been taking steps to do so.

The memorandum is intended to "help ensure that patients will be able to face difficult times in hospitals with compassion, dignity and respect," a White House spokesman, Shin Inouye, said Thursday night. "By taking these steps, we can better protect the interests and needs of patients that are gay or lesbian, widows and widowers with no children, members of religious orders, or others for whom their loved ones are not always immediate relatives. Because all Americans should be able to have loved ones there for them in their time of need."

B of A executive steals from himself

2010-04-13T14:22:00.001-05:00

ATM Malware Scheme Nets $200K Loss for BofA

By Matt Gunn
Apr 13, 2010
10:49 AM ET

While ATM theft often manifests itself in the form of skimming—or the
installation of a device to read customer information off a card's
magnetic strip—what happens when the threat manifests itself at the
software level?

According to a Wired news story, the resulting loss from malware
installed on Bank of America ATMs was somewhere in the neighborhood
between $200,000 and $400,000. What's more is the software was
allegedly installed by Rodney Reed Caverly, 37, an ex-software CEO
turned Bank of America IT employee.

Caverly has agreed to plead guilty and is set to appear in court on
Tuesday. Nobody involved in the case—Caverly, his defense attorney,
prosecutors and Bank of America—has revealed how much Caverly stole,
but the April 7 plea agreement discloses that the crime resulted in a
"loss of more than $200,000 and less than $400,000."

BusinessWeek reported the alleged theft took place between March 2009
and October 2009, and that Caverly faces up to five years in prison.

Re: Russ Klettke commented on Andrew Brown's link...

2010-03-23T14:55:00.001-05:00

So let me see if I have your knee jerk "game plan" right on this

1) Blame everything, even stuff he didn't have anything to do with, on

one of the most inept and worthless presidents since Harding.

Try to force your opposition to defend someone who is indefensible.

"We allowed a guy...to run the country into the ground."

The Shrub has nothing to do with the health care bill. Move on.

2) Argue events that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, IE: the

2000 election, to fan the flames.

See above.

3) Assume that everyone who disagrees with you is a jackbooted

fascist, allow no middle ground. There are no moderates, only

"us" vs "them." Default to stereotypes. Use variations on

the word demagogue

"The Republicans had their chance...but demagogued the issue"

4) Use the same tactics on "them" that "they" used on you,

attempt to maintain the moral high ground while shooting yourself

in the foot.

Passing a bill under the table with a procedural parlor trick

just makes you look desperate. This bill is already unpopular,

this maneuver just added more stink to it.

The GOP pulled this more than once, and look where it got us.

3 State's Attorneys General are already filing suit.This is not the end of it.

The GOP is going to use that against the Dems even before it goes into effect.

They don't have to be right, or even close, to scare the hell out of voters in

the mid-terms. The Congress will most certainly now be divided.

5) Clutch your pearls and claim "what about the children?!" Play to the balcony, capitalize on sentiment.

"This is about..people dying prematurely"

We all saw the testimony, we all know the horror stories, we all feel bad. America "gets it" We spend billions on aid, earthquake relief, flood cleanup, even on countries that hate us (Cuba) We are the most generous nation on earth.

However, more Americans die from drunk driving, handguns and self-induced diabetes and heart disease from diet then by being excluded from health care. In fact, these same people clog the very system with chronic conditions from their own behavior which are passed directly on to you and me in the form of higher premiums. We have been trying to get people to stop smoking, exercise and eat right forever and we are fatter then ever.

Am I to assume you will be going after McDonald's, Smirnoff, Remington, KFC, Pizza Hut, Frito Lay and Pepsi next, in your quest improve the health of America?

The road to hell is a 4 lane highway paved with hypocrisy.

6) Claim "majority rule" when it suits your purposes.

"Passing health care reform by majority rule rings true to any person whose brain isn't scrambled by all the money the mega-profitable health insurance industry put into obfuscating the issue"

51% is a plurality, hardly a majority and certainly not a mandate.

If the actual "majority" ruled, women and African Americans would not

have the vote and schools would still be segregated. Prohibition was supposedly

a "majority" position that even made it into the constitution. And that worked

so well, aside from spawing a criminal underworld that we live with to this day.

7) In case of emergency, break glass. Incite class warfare. Always blame the rich.

Americans will swallow the medicine when you tell them the truth. Americans

supported the Great Society, clean water, Head Start, school lunches, and even NASA, all of which cost billions. They aren't afraid to spend the money. What they really really hate is being lied to.

In the end, my point was in the beginning, and still is, that when you jam a bill through in the

middle of the night, no matter it's merits, you are going to get hammered.

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 8:06 AM, Facebook <notification+pdphrzo1@facebookmail.com> wrote:

Russ Klettke commented on Andrew Brown's link:

"Pardon my language, but I say f*#! your complaints about the process. Healthcare costs have risen from 5% to 17% of GDP in 20 years and show no sign of abating. This is about the freaking economy and people dying prematurely. The Republicans had their chance, were invited to the dance, but demagogued the issue with meaningless, false memes that were systematic attempts to bring down a president and retake Capitol Hill. Process, schmocess.

We allowed a guy who kinda sorta maybe won Florida by a .001% majority (when you factor out the lost 25,000 votes in Palm Beach County and with the help of five people on the Supreme Court) to take over the White House, after which he proceed to run the country into the ground. Passing healthcare reform by majority rule rings true to any person whose brain isn't scrambled by all the money the mega-profitable health insurance industry put into obfuscating the issue."

Reply to this email to comment on this link.

Is Avatar Really King Of The Box Office?

2010-02-09T13:47:00.000-06:00

by Dorothy Pomerantz · January 27, 2009

Yes, it's got the biggest worldwide gross of all time.
But it's still no "Gone With The Wind."

James Cameron broke his own record Tuesday. With a $1.86 billion haul, "Avatar" beat "Titanic" to become the highest grossing movie of all time at the worldwide box office.

It's a remarkable achievement. But before every Hollywood studio exec decides that all future movies must be in 3-D and feature blue aliens, it's worth getting a little perspective on the film.

"Avatar" has the advantage of showing in 3-D (which usually commands an average $3 extra per ticket) and coming out at a time when even 2-D movie tickets are more expensive than ever. According to the National Association of Theater Owners, the average ticket price in 2008 was $7.18, up 56% from prices in 1997 when "Titanic" was in theaters.

A look at domestic grosses adjusted for inflation shows a more realistic view of "Avatar"'s performance.

In the U.S., "Avatar" has grossed $555 million making it the second highest grossing domestic (as opposed to worldwide) film of all time. Titanic is temporarily still in the lead here with $600.8 million.

But adjusting for ticket price for inflation, Avatar ranks as the 26th highest grossing film in the U.S., according to Box Office Mojo. Number one? "Gone With The Wind" with $1.5 billion adjusted gross in the U.S. "Star Wars" ranks second with $1.3 billion.

Cameron's "Titanic" ranks sixth (just behind "The Ten Commandments") with an adjusted $943 million take in the U.S.

Movies are released very differently today then they were in 1939 when "Gone With the Wind" premiered. The film showed originally in 156 theaters in the U.S. "Avatar" premiered on 3,452 screens. "Gone With the Wind" was re-released in 1947, 1954 and 1961. In 1967 it was shown in 70 mm. With as many as 600 films being released per year, these days few films get a second shot in theaters.

Of course movie now can sometimes double their box office with DVD and television sales. Here we're only looking at box office.

Even some modern films beat "Avatar" when looked at through a price-adjusted prism. "Forrest Gump" (1994) ranks 22nd with an adjusted $623 million box office. "Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace," which was released in 1999, ranks 19th with an adjusted $623 million domestic gross.

But most of the films at the top are from at least 30 years ago. "The Sound of Music" ranks third with an adjusted $1.05 billion take. "E.T." is just behind with $1.04 billion.

With no film on the near horizon poised to challenge "Avatar"'s dominance, the film is sure to continue to mint money. But it's got a way's to go to catch up with a classic like "Gone With The Wind."

Fwd: Joseph Nestradt sent you a message on Facebook...

2010-02-01T10:05:00.001-06:00

So I got a friend request on Facebook this weekend... and wrote back asking "how do I know you?"

Clearly, CLEARLY, they didnt read my profile.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

From: Facebook Joseph sent you a message.

Re: thanks for the invite

"My wife and myself are in the same swingers club as you. Vanessa is my wife, the one with the teardrop nipples. Thanks."

Democratic Primary Front Runner Giannoulias Hammered As Family Bank Faces Imminant Collapse

2010-01-28T13:04:00.001-06:00

I said a couple of weeks ago that Giannoulias, a charter member of the lucky sperm club (daddy ownes a bank, donates hevily to the Dems and installs his media friendly, though woefully inexperienced son as head of the loan committee, gets him elected to state Treasurer) and a total tool of the Democratic machine here in Illinois, was going to get burned to a crisp when the Feds lowered the boom on his family bank, which took TARP funds in spite to paying themselves MILLIONS in dividends.

Today, January 28, 2010, 2 hours ago | The Huffington Post News Team

Jackson To Giannoulias: Drop Out Of The Race

Following the announcement that federal regulators have stepped in to monitor executives at Alexi Giannoulias' family bank, fellow Senate candidate and Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson called on Giannoulias to withdraw from the race "for the sake of Illinois families."

Crain's Chicago Business reported Wednesday that Broadway Bank entered into a consent order with bank regulators that will require it to "raise tens of millions in capital, stop paying dividends to the family without regulatory approval and hire an outside party to evaluate the bank's senior management."

Though the new rules will not affect Giannoulias directly--he is no longer a senior member of management at the bank--Jackson accused her opponent of raking in money "off of the backs of working families," Chicago Current reports:

"For the sake of Illinois families and for the good of the Democratic Party, I am calling on the treasurer to do the honorable thing and withdraw from this race today," Jackson said.

Inspector General David Hoffman did not ask Giannoulias to withdraw, but reiterated what he has been saying in campaign ads:

"Even before today, his limited experience and his refusal to take responsibility for his failures -- both as a banker and as manager of the Bright Start program -- were clear," Hoffman Campaign Manager Michael Powell said in a statement to Chicago Current. "Now we learn that his risky loans at the bank, and his family's decision to take $86 million in dividends for themselves, has caused the bank's collapse, and a likely bailout and takeover by the FDIC."

Though the bank has not been taken over by the FDIC, and the regulation aims to get the bank back on its feet, it is yet to be seen whether the news will benefit Hoffman or Jackson's campaign.

A Giannoulias spokeswoman made sure to point out Jackson's own connections to corruption following her plea for Alexi to drop out:

"Ms. Jackson, Blagojevich's former spokesperson, has launched a very Blago-like attack. This is a desperate and ridiculous attempt from a candidate behind in the polls to give her campaign a boost by exploiting the economic challenges facing millions of businesses, including this one."

Floor collapses at Weight Watchers meeting

2010-01-15T15:29:00.001-06:00

Sometimes, it's just too easy to pass up...

From the Times of London

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6989291.ece

Marriage isnt just about a working uterus

2010-01-12T16:06:00.001-06:00

Historian testifies in Prop. 8 trial

SAN FRANCISCO — A Harvard professor testifying in a case challenging California's gay marriage ban said Tuesday that procreation is historically not the only function of marriage.

In her second day of testimony, Nancy Cott, a U.S. history professor and the author of a book on marriage as a public institution, disputed a statement by a defense lawyer that states have a compelling interest to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples for the sake of procreation.

Cott said marriage also has served an economic purpose, with each spouse doing different jobs in the partnership. As the purposes of marriage have changed, the reasons to bar same-sex couples from marrying have gone away, she said.

"It seems to me that by excluding same-sex couples from the ability to marry and to engage in this institution, that society is actually denying itself another resource for stability and social growth," she said.

Cott conceded under cross-examination that she couldn't predict the consequences for society of same-sex marriage.

The lawsuit — brought by two same-sex couple unable to marry because of California's Proposition 8 — is the first in a federal court to decide the constitutionality of state bans on gay marriage.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker is presiding over the case without a jury.

t said marriage also has served an economic purpose, with each spouse doing different jobs in the partnership. As the purposes of marriage have changed, the reasons to bar same-sex couples from marrying have gone away, she said.

Cott conceded under cross-examination that she couldn't predict the consequences for society of same-sex marriage.

The lawsuit — brought by two same-sex couple unable to marry because of California's Proposition 8 — is the first in a federal court to decide the constitutionality of state bans on gay marriage.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker is presiding over the case without a jury.

Regardless of the outcome, the case is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it could lead to laws that restrict marriage to a man and a woman being upheld or abolished nationwide.

The expert testimony marked a change in tone from the trial's first day, when the plaintiffs gave intimate accounts of their private and public lives, at times tearfully testifying about moments of awkwardness, disappointment and shame that they said resulted from their inability to legally wed.

"I've been in love with a woman for 10 years, and I don't have access to a word for it," said 45-year-old Kristin Perry of Berkeley, the lead plaintiff. "In a store, people want to know if we are sisters or cousins or friends, and I have to decide every day if I want to come out wherever we go, if we are going to risk that negative reaction."

Perry and her partner, Sandra Stier, 47, and a gay couple from Los Angeles, Paul Katami, 37, and Jeffrey Zarrillo, 36, were the first witnesses.

On Monday, their noted conservative litigator Theodore Olson quoted the U.S. Supreme Court's own lofty description of matrimony to demonstrate what his clients were being denied.

"In the words of the highest court in the land, marriage is the most important relationship in life and of fundamental importance to all individuals," said Olson, who represented George W. Bush during the Florida recount in 2000 and later served as his solicitor general.

Charles Cooper, who is representing Proposition 8 sponsors, said in his opening statement that Proposition 8 was motivated not by "ill-will nor animosity toward gays and lesbians, but special regard for the institution of marriage."

"It is the purpose of marriage — the central purpose of marriage — to ensure, or at least encourage and to promote that when life is brought into being, it is by parents who are married and who take the responsibility of raising that child together," he said.

MY NOTES--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Might I just ask if the marriage rights of heterosexual couples should be revoked if they decide not to have kids?

Should there be government sponsored "fertility rights" where the government pays for treatments for people who cannot concieve, since marriage is all about having babies, does that not make making babies a government responsibility?

Some of the comments I have seen on newspaper discussion boards follow

***********************************************

    "Gays are deviant and their guilt causes them to militantly seek to further their agenda in an attempt to assuage their guilt.

    The debate is over.

    Besides, we already know what a California court will decide--in fact it was probably decided before anyone showed
    up in the courtroom.

    Legislating deviant behavior from the bench and over riding the will of the voters is what they do best. "

******************

"wonder why often same sex couples dress like a man and woman when they are both of one sex. Does one of the couples take on the traditional roles found in heterosexual unions? Seems like they are playing the traditional roles without being traditional. Their must be someone who has studied this and can answer this incongruity. "

*********************

what evidence is there that being gay is not a choice?
I believe that people do choose their own sexual orientation.
lately with younger kids it has become hip to be gay or bisexual.
Many people also makes choices that make themselves miserable.

************************

My children are taught that there is nothing wrong with jimmy having 2 dads or two mothers,they say it is a sexual preferance. well I believe there is something wrong with this. how leaniant are we going to be as a sociaty a child mollester has a sexual preferance also ?are we evetually going to let them have there way also ?

*********************

Same sex marriage is not an "EQUAL RIGHTS" Issue, It is a Moral issue. It is wrong and should not be accepted in our country.

**********************

Rights secured under the Constitution are never subject to the "voice of the people".
Are you suggesting that we put your Constitutional rights to a popular vote?

*****************

Bob if you believe gay marriage is immoral don't marry a gay. That's your right.

"I believe that people do choose their own sexual orientation."

How do beliefs make things facts? Once people believed in spontaneous generation of life.

Funny I don't recall choosing not to be gay. I've never heard a logical argument by someone would pick to be gay?

This is part of one study:

"...it seemed that the majority of homosexual occurrences were on the maternal side of the tree. From this information, researchers concluded that if in fact there was a "homosexual gene", it appeared to be passed down from mother to son. This means that heterosexual females are carriers of this gene, and when it is passed down to a male child, there is a chance that the child will be a homosexual."

Please give an coherent and logical reason to choose being gay.

********************

"Our Colleges and Universities are mostly cesspools of "Liberal" and "enlightened" thinking."

Both Bush's were Yale grads. Walter Williams teaches economics at George Mason University. Nonconservativism started at the same university as the Chicago School of Economics did and Reaganomics was based on Chicago School of Economics.

Don't let facts ruin your lack of knowledge.

This is America. You could avoid university trained doctors, ride a horse to escapes cars designed by university taught engineers and stop using technology created by computer scientist who where educated in universities.

Without universities, there would be no American flag on the moon, no drones killing terrorist and no Fox News on HD TV.

I will give credence to a historian from Harvard over Rush Limbaugh a community college drop out.

************************

I don't need a historian's testimony on the issue. I have scripture and modern day revelation that clearly testify on the truth of the subject.

Crazy Assed Illinois Republicans Jump into the Grave and Pull it in on Top of Themselves

2010-01-04T10:51:00.001-06:00

I've always considered myself a moderate, trending Democrat, but these days, I just can't drink the Obama Kool Aid. The health care and bank bailouts will cost us billions and tax future generations into the ground while jacking up inflation to rates not seen since the '70s. Just call me Cassandra, (who was cursed so that no one would ever believe her predictions)

Now that the Democratic seat warmer, Allan Burris, jammed down Illinois' throat by impeached, now indicted, ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich, has succumbed to calls to exit the race (his total inability to raise dime one for a re-election run played no small part) for the seat previously held by President Obama, the primary races are now in full stone-throwing mode. And it's getting more ugly than usual

As a reluctant Repyblican in a Democratic universe, I'm currently left with few choices on the Republican side of the fence. I just can't endorse the likely Democratic nominee, Alexi Giannoulias, who's sole qualifications for office are a) he's a total Democratic tool, and b) he's a member of the "lucky sperm club," since his family owns a Chicago bank. The bank in question however, Broadway Bank, has taken a ton of TARP money to cover it's risky loans, made while Alexi was at the helm. Pay...play...you do the math.

Given the players, however, the Republican's best hope against another Democratic slug being anointed by the eternally corrupt Democratic Machine is Rep Mark Kirk, a moderate Republican. However, the Republicans are, YET AGAIN, heading directly for the right-wing ditch, as usual. (see below)

January 1, 2010

Chicago News Cooperative

In Senate Race, the Illinois G.O.P. Is Digging Its Own Hole

By JAMES WARREN

The Republican primary for President Obama's old United States Senate seat is so consumed by closets, it should be sponsored by Bed Bath & Beyond.

Is Representative Mark Steven Kirk, a Republican respectfully feared by the White House, gay? Amid the recession, the health care debate and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this question is the 800-pound pink elephant in the G.O.P. room.

It's why the Illinois Republican Party, only six years after desperately airlifting Alan Keyes from Maryland to run for the Senate against Mr. Obama, risks another act of self-immolation — thanks to zealots on its right flank and Andy Martin, a bomb-throwing lightweight. The victim could be Mr. Kirk.

Mr. Martin started running radio advertisements in which he mentioned a "solid rumor" that Mr. Kirk was gay, as well as claiming that Ray True, the Lake County Republican leader, had said Mr. Kirk had "surrounded himself with homosexuals." The mainstream news media then reported on the advertisements

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/01cncwarren.html

Uganda criticized over anti-gay proposals

2009-12-11T15:45:00.001-06:00

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Homosexuality illegal in Uganda but lawmakers considering tougher laws
Proposals include life sentences, death penalty as punishments for gay sex
Tatchell: Proposals "threaten civil rights of every Ugandan person -- gay or straight"

London, England (CNN) -- Protesters called on the worldwide community to take action against Uganda Thursday as the African nation considers stricter laws against homosexuality.

They compared Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to some of the world's most notorious dictators.

"In the last five years we have seen Idi Amin return to Uganda and his name is Yoweri Museveni," Ugandan human rights campaigner Michael Senyonjo told CNN.

"He... is bringing in a bill in an attempt to criminalize being gay," the activist said.

"That is not right. We cannot allow fascism to return to Uganda. He should leave power and go because he is not taking the country anywhere but to disaster," he added.

Under proposed new laws currently being considered by the Ugandan parliament, those who test positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, could face the death penalty.

In addition, those convicted of having gay sex would be sentenced to life in prison, while anyone found guilty of engaging in homosexual relations on more than one occasion would be executed.

The proposals could become law before the end of the year.

Museveni has not publicly stated his support for the bill.

Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda under laws passed in the colonial era, but the new legislation is intended to provide prosecutors with more power.

It has the blessing of various religious leaders, with one leading Muslim cleric -- Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje -- calling for all known homosexuals in the country to be rounded up and left on an island until they die.

Thursday's protest at the Ugandan High Commission -- or embassy -- in London is one of several planned demonstrations around the world, and OutRage, another gay rights organization, is backing the calls for action to be taken.

"President Museveni is fast becoming the Robert Mugabe of Uganda and that's a threat to the civil rights of every Ugandan person -- gay or straight," OutRage spokesman Peter Tatchell told CNN, referring to the authoritarian president of Zimbabwe.

"There's a huge ground swell of public opinion that this bill goes way too far. Even people who say they're against homosexuality say this bill is excessive and a threat to the human rights of all Ugandans.

"Uganda should drop this law and abide by international human rights legislation," Tatchell said.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/uk.uganda.protests/index.html

The Freaks Come Out During The Day Too

2009-12-04T10:16:00.001-06:00

In a recent article on the Chicago Tribune website about new burials at the infamous

Burr Oak cemetery,

Mismarked burial sites still a problem at Burr Oak Cemetery

Someone wrote in the paper to comment on the story.

"Every single cemetary in the Chicago and suburbs, has been used as the "Final Resting Place," for victims of Mafia murders, and USA Army Intelligence Hits on citizens who confront the Establishment's Elites. Most poor whites and Chicago Negroes who are buried in Chicago, will have their expensive cofins and clothes sold, after the funeral. This is why in Chicago, Illinois, or surrounding suburbs, you will never see dirt thrown on a cofin. So Burr Oaks Cemetary should not take all of the blame, because this is going on in all the Chicago and surrounding suburbs, especially Cicero. When is Uncle Sam going to make the wealthy funeral home directors stop charging so much for funerals and burials? Especially since the middle class and poor people's bodies end up either cremated, or in medical schools, or just chopped up and put in a great big hole."

RedGods (12/03/2009, 10:25 AM)------------------------------------------------

"USA Army Intelligence Hits "?

"Negros?"

"middle class and poor people's bodies end up.. in medical schools?"

Seriously folks, the more I read papers online, the more i realized that the lunatic fringe now has internet access...

And they can't spell either. Must be a side effect of the aluminium foil hats

Mickey Mouse Kicks Adam Lambert's Freaky Ass

2009-12-03T10:52:00.001-06:00

The lesson here? Play with fire, poke the network in the eye, deliberately provoke

people and they have every right to ban your ass from their network. He should

have thought about the expected backwash, in light of his anticipated bookings

elsewhere on the network, when he decided to slip that guy the tongue on the air.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/adam-lambert-says-abc-cancels-more-appearances/

Adam Lambert Says ABC Cancels More Appearances

By DAVE ITZKOFF

More than a week after his much-debated performance at the American Music Awards, Adam Lambert says he continues to find himself an unwanted guest on ABC.

Late Wednesday night Mr. Lambert, the singer and "American Idol" runner-up, wrote on his Twitter account that his invitation to two more ABC programs had been withdrawn. "Yes, sadly friends," Mr. Lambert wrote, "ABC has canceled my appearances" on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and the annual "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" special.

Last week ABC scratched a planned appearance by Mr. Lambert on "Good Morning America," its morning talk show. That decision stemmed from Mr. Lambert's performance on Nov. 22 at the American Music Awards, also broadcast on ABC, during which he simulated sex acts with his dancers, kissed a male bandmate and extended his middle finger to the camera.

In announcing its cancellation of Mr. Lambert's booking on "Good Morning America," ABC said it was concerned that he would give another "controversial" performance "so early in the morning."

On Monday Anne Sweeney, the co-chairwoman of Disney Media Networks and president of the Disney/ABC Television Group, said that ABC was re-evaluating its approach to live shows in the wake of Mr. Lambert's act and would seek to ensure that artists' performances more closely resemble their rehearsals. "We certainly don't want to suppress artistry at any level, but we also have to be very cognizant of who our audience is," Ms. Sweeney said in an interview with Reuters.

A spokesman for ABC's entertainment division, which oversees "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve," was not immediately available on Thursday morning.

But on his Twitter account, Mr. Lambert struck a conciliatory tone. "It'll all blow over," he wrote. "Let's focus on being positive!" He also said that he was still booked to appear on "The Jay Leno Show" on NBC.

Chicago cabbies risk fines over credit cards

2009-11-24T11:33:00.001-06:00

Cab Ride? $20.

Accepting Credit? Priceless.

You think of yourself as being a reasonably good person: You make your bed, you recycle, you give up your seat on the bus. So why is it that every time you try to pay cab fare with a credit card, you are treated as if you just kicked a puppy? Twice?

Try not to take it personally. Despite laws requiring them to accept credit cards, many cabdrivers resist the practice (as evidenced by an epidemic of "broken" card readers). Others refuse plastic altogether — a move that could mean fines ranging from $75 to $1,000, says Efrat Stein, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection.

So what's the big deal? For starters, there is the 5 percent transaction fee tacked on by the credit card companies. Then there is the time issue: it can take up to an hour to cash out credit card receipts. And finally, says Peter Enger, secretary of the United Taxidrivers Community Council, there is the fact that a lot of cabdrivers do not like being told what to do.

"It's the principle of the thing," Mr. Enger said. "We're told that we're independent contractors, we're independent businessmen, and then we're issued these rules as if we were employees, or, even worse, slaves."

JESSICA REAVES @Chicago News Cooperative, NYTimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/us/22cncpulse.html?_r=1

Don't Drink The Apple Flavored Kool Aid!

2009-11-10T16:57:00.001-06:00

I always get a kick out of the Apple Fan Boys who rant and rave about how bulletproof Apple is and how only PCs get all those nasty attacks. The snotty Apple commercials have been picking at this scab for months. To which I always reply "when you only have 8% of the market, why bother?"

The people who don't get whacked are Linux, but that's another story

So here's today's story from the Washington Post

Apple ships 50+ security updates

Apple has shipped a large security update for computers running its Leopard and Snow Leopard operating systems for the Mac. The bundle contains security fixes for more than 50 vulnerabilities, including updates for components like Adaptive Firewall, FTP server, QuickTime and Spotlight.

The update applies to Snow Leopard (10.6.x) and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.8) systems, as well as OS X Server versions of these operating systems. Users can grab the patches directly from Apple Downloads or via the Mac's built-in Software Update feature.

Some of the individual fixes in these bundles are interesting in their own right. For example, Apple said that a vulnerability in Snow Leopard's Login Window could let a user log in to any account without supplying a password. Another update, this one for a bug in Leopard' Dictionary program, is limited to users on the local network, but gives a whole new meaning to the term "dictionary attack"; Apple said a maliciously crafted Javascript could allow a user on the local network to drop hostile code on another Mac user's system.

2009-10-21T16:03:00.007-05:00

I can see the stats on the traffic on my blog and I found out that recently, I'm getting oodles of traffic from google by people looking for info on NACA. My rants turn up in the top 10 in some listings...lol

I followed a link backwards into a discussion group and found this exchange...it explains a WHOLE lot about why we were getting screwed by NACA

So, for any of you who landed here for the scoop on this organization, here it is, right from the horse's mouth. We nearly lost the place that we not only wanted, but could also easily afford. Only after we went out and easily qualified for a conventional mortgage at http://www.guaranteedrate.com/ as well as at a credit union I belonged to, did we realized the following facts. NACA is full of shit and run by idiots.

This isnt just my rants, follow the underlined links to hear the horror stories.

1) No matter how fucked up your profile is, it should never ever take MONTHS to get at least an answer, or a loan

2) the people you are dealing with at the offices are NOT, under any circumstances, to be confused with TRAINED MORTGAGE PROFESSIONALS. They are wage slaves just doing what they are told by the wonky administration.

3) While it all looks like peace, love and happiness, this group has a clear and radical political agenda. And to play in their sandbox, you are required to swallow a whole BUNCH of leftist bullshit. Getting a mortgage from NACA taints you, just like if you got a mortgage from ACORN.

4) Stories in the media are relentless about how NACA promises you the moon and the stars, and fails to deliver over and over and over.

The highlighted parts are the best read.

----------------------
Originally Posted by soro90260
If anyone is thinking of using NACA as their mortgage lender, there are some very important things one must know before going into the process. The most important is that it will take time - a lot of time. Be prepared to take anywhere from 6 to 9 months, if not longer.

Further more, their attitude towards their borrowers or "members" in NACA's vernacular is down right awful. The attitude is "we're the only game in town, the members have to do what we tell them. Where are they going to get 100% financing in this market"? They don't think it much to add 3 to 6 months to process as they see fit. As NACA fancies themselves as consumer advocates, their mission is to "counsel" their members towards home ownership. "Counseling" is a term to be used loosely, having heard stories where members where made to feel badly over minor mistakes to the point of crying.

Also, NACA has a dirty little secret, they're biased against people that have excellent credit, savings and stable employment. The mortgage counselors are paid less commission for members with higher credit scores. Plus the underwriting department will make no exceptions for people who make more money ($107,000 annually for one couple) forcing those people instead to buy down their interest rate to qualify for the maximum loan amount. This bias translates into discrimination against white and latino young professionals or skilled laborers.

Then once the member is approved they are qualified and can bring a realtor to help them shop for property or NACA will refer an agent from their approved agents list. Either way, NACA refuses to communicate with the agents representing their members which is strange given the agents approved had to go through NACA training.

One major warning - DON'T SHOP FOR PROPERTY UNTIL THE QUALIFYING LETTER HAS BEEN ISSUED. Even then, the mortgage counselors are so over worked some of them lie and tell their members that they're approved or even false qualifying letters have been issued when nothing has been done to advance the member's case since the initial intake meeting. This one fact has accounted for members losing properties and thousand of dollars in good faith deposits.

Then once the offer is accepted, the real fun begins with NACA requiring a home inspection which on the surface seems ok but all findings have to be repaired prior to closing and are handled by the HAND department. It is the HAND department that holds up 95% of the closings.

The real injustice is how NACA treats their employees, when anyone questions how things are done at NACA, the response is "you don't like it, work somewhere else" That's their response to trainees just learning their job. Employees are expected to work from 8:00 in the morning until 9:00 or 10:00 at night, as well as Saturdays for workshops. How this all translates for the consumer is that the people who work for NACA, the heart and soul of the organization, are over worked and under appreciated meaning customer service suffers as those doing the work are only human and something has to give.

Not only that, with a recent change in leadership, people in high places with the organization have little or no experience in mortgage banking but are great "yes men" in their dealings with the CEO, Bruce Marks. The attitude of the CEO as well as those individuals is anyone with mortgage banking experience are a part of the problem. That all those people were "predatory" lenders in the past. All these employees are being purged from the organization being fired in many cases for no reason at all. The turn over is very high as NACA does not respect their work force and in this market, many people will do anything, taking the disrespect just to have a paycheck.

Again, this translates into poor customer service as NACA requires "counseling" for a minimum of 3 months prior to being qualified, some members have had as many as 4 counselors through the process, with each new counselor starting the process all over again. In the end one may be happy to have gone through NACA to obtain their mortgage. However, be warned. the process is time consuming and at times maddening, it just depends on what one is willing to accept from those "advocating" for their best interest

**********************************************************************
Monica Wilson replied:

NACA, like any other organization, has its share of problems. We absolutely must do a better job with customer service, both internally and externally. It is also true that there are seriously tired...overworked and underpaid counselors that work for NACA....I am one of them. I can also attest to the high turnover, this opportunity definitely is not for everyone. We or at least I am kind of prideful in the fact that we do have 'America's Best Mortgage' product out there and not many lenders can offer what we offer. You've got us dead on (again) regarding our process....the process is long. I wish it wasn't. But the counseling that is done is a requirement set forth that must be completed. NACA's position is to let the future homeowner know what to expect up front. Unfortunately not all counselors do a good job in this area. But setting realistic expecations is our motto here in Nashville. We can't change the past, but we can do better in the future. Now, just as with anything in life, you've got your good counselors and you've got your bad counselors. I can only strive to be one of the good ones. I am pretty sure if I were to put in a 2 week notice, no one would lose much sleep in trying to get me to stay. But I must say, if they did say something like, 'you don't like it...work somewhere else' that it wouldn't be the first time a company has taken that attitude...especially in today's employer market. That doesn't make it right...but they are saying that just about everywhere...jobs are hard to come by. And yes, the HAND department will closely review the home inspection....possibly adding more time to the already lengthy process.

**But there is one thing that is not accurate:
Also, NACA has a dirty little secret, they're biased against people that have excellent credit, savings and stable employment. The mortgage counselors are paid less commission for members with higher credit scores. Plus the underwriting department will make no exceptions for people who make more money ($107,000 annually for one couple) forcing those people instead to buy down their interest rate to qualify for the maximum loan amount. This bias translates into discrimination against white and latino young professionals or skilled laborers.

That was a pretty harsh and inaccurate representation of not only the NACA process, but negative assumptions regarding the earning power of other races. Now, NACA DOES have a cap when it comes to purchase prices. On a single family home, the maximum you can purchase is in this region (Middle TN, Eastern TN and KY) $226,100. There is NO MINIMUM OR MAXIMUM INCOME on a NACA mortgage. The only requirement is that you have to be able to afford the home that YOU desire. NACA doesn't force you to do anything regarding buying your interest rate down. We counsel you as to the benefits of the buy down because it is the absolute best way to achieve long term affordability. But where our member's put their money is their business.

**The compensation is right on target and available at http://www.NACA.com. We are compensated more for loans with lower credit scores & income than the higher credit scores & income. The reason is simply because it takes more time and work for the former (lower credit scores) than it does the latter (higher credit). No bias or ulterior motives, just more work vs. less work, plain and simple. Rememer, NACA is a character based lender that looks at the credit & the individual situation of the future homeowner in determining readiness for homeownership. Traditional lenders aren't empowered with the same underwriting capabilities.

So, overall I agree. NACA needs an overhaul in customer service both internally and externally. We are sometimes so focused on helping people that we let the basics slide. NACA Nashville is going to make sure that each member we get the privilege of working with, has realistic expectations. We will serve our region treating people like we want to be treated. I'm sure we won't be perfect, but we'll hit our mark 99% of the time. Yes the process is long both counseling and the home inspection. But that is because we don't want our homeowner to be in an unaffordable mortgage or a house requiring repairs. Repairs that could eat at the homeowner's pocketbook in the years to come. I am absolutely working harder, spending less time with my family & sharing the stress of many local homeowners in danger of losing their home. But, I am absolutely in the right place & absolutely loving what I do everyday. And yes, at one point NACA focused on hiring 'counselors' and not mortgage professionals. They thought we mortgage professionals couldn't be 'retrained' to doing things the NACA way. NACA soon discovered that counselors are great at counseling but not so good at closing the loan. So, with the expansion of the new offices (Nashville is one of the newest), the staff are experienced mortgage pros & effective counselors.

Web Reference: http://www.nacanashville.blogspot.com

I am no longer with NACA as an employee. But I did want to check in with you and encourage you to attend an upcoming workshop if you haven't done so. Here are the next 2 workshops on the calendar.

--snip--

Sincerely,
Monica Wilson
Former NACA Mortgage Consultant

Mortar Board Memories

2009-10-13T17:19:00.001-05:00

Alicia Notestone

Associate Editor/Communications Coordinator,

Mortar Board, Inc.

Dear Alicia

I saw your post on Linked In about Mortar Board Memories and thought I'd drop you a note and share my story.

In 1985 I was a going nowhere fast. No high school diploma, a job that involved a hair net and not much to look forward to. By that summer, my then-girlfriend threatened to dump me if I didn't get my act together. But I always thought college was for "other" people, the ones with good grades and rich parents. Plus I was 5 years out of high school, I had crappy SATs, I'd never fit in. I just didn't see this happening, however, love makes you do strange things.

The University of Cincinnati took a chance and admitted me provisionally. I worked full time, went to school full time, made up the classes I was missing from high school and for the first time in my life started to feel like I was accomplishing something.

I did well enough to get admitted to a baccalaureate college and suddenly I realized there were people around me who were successful and self-made. They weren't all "Joe College," lots of undergrads at UC worked full or part time, I wasn't the only one wearing a tie to class with a name tag in my pocket.

And even though I had to work a lot so I could afford school, I started to feel like I was plugged into the university. I was getting good grades, I volunteered, I worked on a couple of student boards, I was an Orientation Leader and I even ran for Student Government and won! I found out that I could balance a life, a job, and school and make them all work. And so one day when I saw an ad about Mortar Board, I realized that might actually be me. Four years before I would never have considered it, but I sent my stuff in and crossed my fingers.

Later in the year, I was completely unprepared for the Student Government meeting where I got tapped. They make a big deal out of Mortar Board tapping, and apparently everyone knew but me. Worse yet, they had gone to my one big lecture classes (Art History, the 4pm "art in the dark" snoozfest) to tap me, but I had actualy cut the class! I got a lot of grief from people about cutting class the day an honorary with an emphasis on scholarship came looking for me.

When, after initiation, I looked around at the fellow members of my class, I recognized several student leaders, plus met a lot of folks who had achieved significance in places I was unfamiliar with. Engineers who candy-striped in hospitals. Someone who worked with kids next to the president of a sorority with a double major in French & Education who also worked on blood drives. These weren't manufactured people, it didn't matter who your dad was or how much money your family had, you couldn't fake this. I was proud not just to be selected, but to be regarded as a peer, simply on my merits. It was tangible evidence to me that the highest standard of achievement is not just grades, but of balance. To serve others, to lead by example and to achieve academically among your peers.

I'm a banker in Chicago these days, and as you can imagine it's a challenge. But I try to carry that idea of balance with me. It would be easy to spend day and night at work and neglect my family, or to selfishly guard my free time and ignore the world around me. But I have experienced the value of making time for each part of life and do my best to make it work.

The girlfriend is long gone now, but I still have my Mortar Board pin in a box on my dresser. I run across it now and then looking for a missing cuff link, loose change or a collar stay. And when that black enamel mortar board catches the light, it still reminds me, after 25 years, how far I have come, and what I have learned along the way.

Brian Turner, BFA '90

Mystic 13 Chapter

University of Cincinnati

Cornfest 2009, Morris IL

2009-09-28T10:28:00.001-05:00

Photos from our trip to Cornfest.

Condo of the damned

2009-09-16T23:51:00.002-05:00

Just to bring everyone up to date.

Many of you know what a horse race it's been for us to buy this place. We started in Feb, looked at over 40 places, found one we loved, waited out the short sale, only to find out it was doomed. The next two places we liked had similar problems. Since we have to be out of the place we are subletting, we decided on the property on Marine Drive, here on the lakefront. Ideal address, beautiful building, but the condo needs to be gutted right down to the floors, all before we have to move on the 27th of Oct. We made an offer and after a bunch of static on the seller's side, they accepted, Or so we thought...

I'm out today, sick as a dog. I scheduled Thursday and Friday off to deal with the closing and contractors. We knew there were going to be some issues, but not as many as have turned up.

The seller's lawyer is a real tool and has made every step of this process difficult. He fought us on every aspect of the contract.He dragged his heels on ordering the title and now, all of the sudden, the day before closing, he doesn't have the paper from the seller, who is in, of course, California. (truthfully, we actually thought the seller was dead...ooops) Maybe, possibly, if the seller turns it around today, FedEx's it overnight, we could close by 1030a tomorrow...or not. My money is on not, but we're going to walk through the paces.

Of course, what we think is going on is that there was furniture in the unit we were very specific about having removed before closing. We wrote it into the contract. As of this morning, we know it was still in there. You do the math.

Since the paper is not back, neither the mortgage co nor our lawyers know for sure what kind of, if any, money we have to bring with us to the table tomorrow...or not. So, at 4pm, my lawyer calls me and tells me what his estimate is, my mortgage broker tells me what their estimate is, and suddenly I have to have a certified check to bring to a 1030 closing. My bank is in the burbs...of course. Jump in the car, fire up the gps and haul butt to my bank, at rush hour and get there 3 minutes after the branch closed. Casting off the last shred of dignity, I bang on the glass and beg them to let me in. Thankfully I had my company id with me and they relented. It's good to bank with family, I got my check.

My lawyer tells me that the paper may not turn up till Friday, when, of course, he is not available. He has 4 closings on Friday and was expecting to have us done before then.

Our mortgage rate lock expires tomorrow as well, so suddenly, it's all up for grabs. Our lawyer is going to find out how much it will cost us to extend the lock, but let's hope it doesn't come to that, since we'd be making the seller pay the penalty, and we already know where that's going to end up...

The fun part, of course, is that we have 6 appointments scheduled Thursday and Friday with contractors.

People never believe me when I tell them what bad luck I have. They think I'm kidding...

Don't know how all this is going to end, so keep your fingers crossed.

Is Gay the New Black? Not according to LZ Granderson on CNN

2009-07-16T16:41:00.002-05:00

Commentary: Gay is not the new black

Story Highlights
LZ Granderson: Blacks tired of hearing about gays' disappointment in Obama
He says black gays strongly support first African-American president
He says gay rights movement is not comparable to the civil rights struggle
Granderson: Gay movement has to overcome its own racial issues

By LZ Granderson
Special to CNN

Editor's note: LZ Granderson is a senior writer and columnist for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, and has contributed to ESPN's Sports Center, Outside the Lines and First Take. He is the 2009 Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) award winner for online journalism and the 2008 National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) winner for column writing.

(CNN) -- Far from flowing rainbow flags, the sound of Lady Gaga and, quite honestly, white people, stands a nightclub just outside of Wicker Park in Chicago, Illinois, by the name of The Prop House.

The line to get in usually stretches down the block, and unlike many of the clubs in Boystown and Andersonville, this one plays hip-hop and caters to men who may or may not openly identify as gay, but without question are black and proud.

And a good number of them are tired of hearing how the gay community is disappointed in President Obama, because they are not.

In recent weeks, one would have thought the nation's first black president was also the nation's biggest homophobe. Everyone from Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black and radio personality Rachel Maddow to Joe Solmonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay advocacy group, seem to be blasting Obama for everything from "don't ask don't tell" to Adam Lambert not winning American Idol.

In their minds, Obama is not moving fast enough on behalf of the GLBT community. The outcry is not completely without merit -- the Justice Department's unnerving brief on the Defense of Marriage Act immediately comes to mind. I was upset by some of the statements, but not surprised. (After the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, President Ronald Reagan's initial handling of AIDS and, more recently, Katrina, there is little that surprises me when it comes to the government and the treatment of its people.)

Still, rarely has criticism regarding Obama and the GLBT community come from the kind of person you would find standing in line at a spot like The Prop House, and there's a reason for that.

Despite the catchiness of the slogan, gay is not the new black.

Black is still black.

And if any group should know this, it's the gay community.

Bars such as The Prop House, or Bulldogs in Atlanta, Georgia, exist because a large number of gay blacks -- particularly those who date other blacks, and live in the black community -- do not feel a part of the larger gay movement. There are Gay Pride celebrations, and then there are Black Gay Prides.

There's a popular bar in the heart of the nation's capital that might as well rename itself Antebellum, because all of the white patrons tend to stay upstairs and the black patrons are on the first floor. Last year at the annual Human Rights Campaign national fundraiser in Washington, D.C. -- an event that lasted more than three hours -- the only black person to make it on stage was the entertainment.

When Proposition 8 passed in California, white gays were quick to blame the black community despite blacks making up less than 10 percent of total voters and whites being close to 60 percent. At protest rallies that followed, some gay blacks reported they were even hit with racial epithets by angry white participants. Not to split hairs, but for most blacks, the n-word trumps the f-word.

So while the white mouthpiece of the gay community shakes an angry finger at intolerance and bigotry in their blogs and on television, blacks and other minorities see the dirty laundry. They see the hypocrisy of publicly rallying in the name of unity but then privately living in segregated pockets. And then there is the history.

The 40th anniversary of Stonewall dominated Gay Pride celebrations around the country, and while that is certainly a significant moment that should be recognized, 40 years is nothing compared with the 400 blood-soaked years black people have been through in this country. There are stories some blacks lived through, stories others were told by their parents and stories that never had a chance to be told.

While those who were at Stonewall talk about the fear of being arrested by police, 40 years ago, blacks talked about the fear of dying at the hands of police and not having their bodies found or murder investigated. The 13th Amendment was signed in 1865, and it wasn't until 1948 that President Harry S Truman desegregated the military. That's more than an 80-year gap.

Not to be flip, but Miley Cyrus is older than Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell." That doesn't mean that the safety of gay people should be trivialized or that Obama should not be held accountable for the promises he made on the campaign trail. But to call this month's first-ever White House reception for GLBT leaders "too little too late" is akin to a petulant child throwing a tantrum because he wants to eat his dessert before dinner. This is one of the main reasons why so many blacks bristle at the comparison of the two movements -- everybody wants to sing the blues, nobody wants to live them.

This lack of perspective is only going to alienate a black community that is still very proud of Obama and is hypersensitive about any criticism of him, especially given he's been in office barely six months.

If blacks are less accepting of gays than other racial groups -- and that is certainly debatable -- then the parade of gay people calling Obama a "disappointment" on television is counterproductive in gaining acceptance, to say the least. And the fact that the loudest critics are mostly white doesn't help matters either.

Hearing that race matters in the gay community may not be comforting to hear, but that doesn't make it any less true.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of LZ Granderson.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

My response:

Really, you are going to base an article about race relations, sexuality and politics on who feels comfortable in what nightclub? That's the gayest thing I've herd all day, and I'm gay.

Self-segregation, not to mention downright (or should I say "down low") denial in the communities of color is rampant. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously if you are not willing to come out of the shadows?

And if we're going to start measuring suffering, lets get right to the point: killing someone because of their race is a federal crime. Killing someone because they are gay is not. These are the kinds of issues people are angry about. If not for state laws, I would just be another dead (F-word) Talk about your "Strange Fruit" hanging from the trees.

While white people joined the cause of Civil Rights, right from the beginning, where are the communities of color marching in the streets for gay rights? I see most mainline Protestant preachers represented in demonstrations, but black preachers are still preaching hellfire and damnation from the pulpits. And so when anger is directed at the African-American community (and the Mormons) over Prop 8, the basis is very real.

You want solidarity in the gay community between black and white? Then take the lead on changing community attitudes in your own community. Change begins at home.

Obama came to the gay well over and over. He took the money, he promised "change you could believe in" and has yet to deliver. And he knew the issues, he was in the Illinois statehouse when the state protections were passed. This is why gay and lesbian people or angry at him. Change delayed is change denied.

Every community in our country has their time "in the barrel." African American, the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, women and now Gays & Lesbians. Next up will be Hispanics. With the immigration issues, maybe they already are.

But the difference is that only women were denied the right to inherit property or custody of minor children…in the 18th century. None of them were denied the right to marry, tax benefits or had to pay tax on the health insurance of their spouse because of their ethnicity. And I doubt if any of them were denied the right to be at the bedside of their dying partner.

So in a way, gay is not the new black, it's the old black. Maybe worse. And when we win the rights we are fighting for, they will apply to all gay and lesbian people, not just the white ones.

More Flack from NACA members

2009-06-02T13:25:00.001-05:00

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=loans&message.id=44892#M44892

Gigi5 wrote

No NoNo We are not all poor people with bad credit and we are not at our last resort, we read contracts and some even write contracts, we know lawyers and some have lawyers amongst their friends and families. I truly am sorry that you've had a very bad experience with NACA but, we didn't do it! Why try and degrade us! We are here working for a common cause to become homeowners. Some of us will prevail and some us us will do like you go to other lenders. We will prevail!!! No Chicago60613 you didn't offend me I feel sorry for you. That you would take an experience you had and attack the people who are trying to get thru that same maze. I am just as frustrated as you but, Why not tell us about your bad experience give us some of the reason you are walking away and say good riddance NACA, no need to throw acid on us. We were like you trying to become a homeowner. Why persecute the persecuted?

Persecuted...acid...really, who writes your copy, Al Sharpton? Thats a bit "out there" isn't it?

I pray that you get your home and it all that you wanted and more. I noticed this is the first time you came on the thread, I wished you would have come in early when you first started your journey and we might have had some solutions for your situations. I personally will continue thru NACA but, I have maintained that there is nothing wrong with working two programs at once. It's a shame that you were entangled for the last three months I hope that Someone at NACA would read your letter and give you a call and allow you to vent in a positive way that may help future NACA clients.

Peace & Blessings to the NACA Thread.

mystikal1 wrote

Gigi5, KUDOS to you. I agree with you if you aren't in the same boat as us why would you be on this forum anyway.

MsKiwi wrote:

"I'm sorry you had such a terrible experience with NACA, however to claim that people who do go through NACA are poor and ignorant is incorrect. I'm sure the attitude you displayed here in your first post came through loud and clear with the folks at NACA."

Successful1 wrote

Let's not give the unfortunate soul anymore attention than he really deserves. You have to be able to recognize the absence of salvation in others and not hold their trash for them. He doesn't have what we have, in more than one way, and he wants what we have but doesn't know how to obtain it. He probably will never be back to this site so lets not even let him occupy anymore megabytes. Just pray he will gain the fortitude to weather life's storms a little more joyfully. Like us!!! LOL

To which I respond

Ah yes, please, ignore all the people who echoed, agreed and reinforced my experiences. Ignore that fact that everything I pointed out in their screwed up process has been posted here over and over and over (yeah, I read all 85 pages of the thread) and ignore the fact that when I got professional advice on my problem (not some hack at NACA) it turned out to be both true AND easy. No, really, please, pile on! Bring it!

I really was a believer. I come from a very religious family (though I do tend to leave out repetitive references to "the Lord" in professional situations, like this) with a long history of community service and activism. But rather than wear it like a badge, I try to put it to work, in places like NACA. We tried to make NACA work because we thought we could "do Good and do Well". But NACA is such a mess, it is it's own worst enemy.

When someone posted on here that:

""I had my purchase workshop tonight and my counselor was there of course. She's great and it went pretty smoothly. She's trying to push me into buying a house as opposed to a condo but I live and work in the city, I want a condo in the city. There's no way I can afford a house in any of the areas I want to live in. But we did talk about the letter. Apparently the letters we received tonight are not the final letters, they said that when we're ready to submit a contract we need to contact our counselor for a final letter and to get them updated information (account statements, pay stubs, etc) and they write a new letter for the contract"

It just reinforced my decision to give up. It just illustrates the fact that NACA is just a mess.

My issue is NOT with the "idea" of NACA, it's with the" reality" of NACA which is a deeply flawed.

So yeah, as ugly as it may sound, because NACA works from the worst case scenario, anybody who is not a financial train wreck suffers endlessly. They penalize the organized with the disorganized. Same group of listless of NACA people slogging through piles of paper. There is not motivation to do anything. It's not like they are on commission, now is it? AND IT SHOWS.

3 months, 250 pages of fax, 4 requests of additional documents, 2 credit reports for each of us (which we paid for) 12 months of rent checks (another $50 for copies from the bank) 3 meetings and a $50 "membership fee" AND STILL NO END IN SIGHT! Tell me again, what exactly do I have to show for any of that?

That, vs 2 phone calls, 2 faxes and 28 pages of docs signed and returned (yes, I already had them, I just needed to sift through the 250 pages I sent to NACA) and I'll have this wrapped up in a week.

Because NACA assumes right out of the box that you are ignorant and that they have you by the short hairs, using the promise of a mortgage as a weapon to beat you over the head and drag you around, they can get away with stunningly unprofessional and vaguely illegal activities.

Did you miss the part about them not accepting 1 year and 51 weeks of rental history? The part about them not being able to deal with two W2 forms from the same company? Or maybe you skipped past the part about MAKING me file my taxes, even though I was due a refund and had an extension?

HOW SCREWED UP IS THAT?!

Oh, and Gigi, nobody from NACA has bothered to contact me, even though I sent that letter to my counselor, David Whitfield, the office manager and the national office. Yeah, their follow-up pretty much illustrates their work ethic, now doesn't it?

So yeah, fine, please, "ignore that man behind the curtain" as they said in The Wizard of Oz. Tremble before NACA and assume they know everything, don't bother to think for yourself.

But I, like Dorothy, realized at the end that the Wizard was a fraud and that everything I was looking for was indeed right in my own back yard.

And for you alleged Christians on here…

"He who does not work shall not eat. Yet we hear that some of you are living in laziness, refusing to work, and wasting your time in gossiping. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we appeal to such people--we command them--to quiet down, get to work, and earn their own living. 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12

Whatever happened with our NACA.com mortgage application ?

2009-05-31T11:22:00.009-05:00

The following is a message/letter we posted to the managers at NACA.com
(Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America).

5/27 2009

Yesterday we gave up. We just could not take any more. The following
is a copy of the letter I wrote to our counselor, who we loved. I have
removed her name for privacy.

Dear Counselor,

This letter is to thank you for all of your hard work, both of us are
very grateful for you patience, professionalism and advocacy on our
behalf.

Sadly, NACA has let us down at every opportunity and this letter is to
inform the organization that we will no longer require your services.
We are fed up. We just can't take it anymore. We can't sleep at night
wondering and waiting for NACA to get their act together. And we can
never get a straight answer from anyone, ever, about anything.

This is the single most disorganized organization I have ever dealt
with. Given the latest task list of stupid stuff we received from the
lenders on Wednesday May 27, we are just walking away. After 4
requests for "additional documents" we're through!

And let's be specific here, so there is no confusion.

We attended the workshop in February of 2009 in Aurora IL. It was a
mess. The speakers were disorganized and unfocused. Our packets we
incomplete, our request for an appointment were incorrect and the
presentation was a complete disaster. My specific questions were never answered.

When attempting to record the required documents and data in the
website, as we were advised to do prior to our first appointment, we
never were able to make it work. We are both technology professionals,
we looked for any possible way to make this work, and there is none.

This kind of technology is a good idea, but NACA's site is clearly
inadequate for the task. Even looking at the site today, our
information and status is either missing, incomplete or incorrect.
This does not inspire a great deal of confidence.

So, rather than getting time to review our documents at our first
meeting, we spent most of the time having to fill out paper documents.
You were very good at working the numbers we were able to assemble and
giving us a thumbnail assessment, we walked away full of hope, but
with our fingers crossed that everything was correct. We turned around
an extensive (12 items) 'to do list" in a matter of days.

Over 250 (!!) faxed pages, roughly 90 days and a dozen phone calls
later, and we are still getting jerked around over stupid stuff. And
let's not forget, we are VERY well qualified applicants. My FICO is XXX

Example one: we submitted all our bank statements, check stubs and tax
returns in March. But by the time the lenders bothered to look at it,
(April? May?) we had to submit yet another set of bank statements,
check stubs and tax forms, not to mention have yet ANOTHER credit
report pulled, because it was, in the opinion of the lenders, out of
date. Whose fault is that? Plus, another $50 for more credit reports!

Example two: They requested verification of my partner's child
support, for which we provided copies of court orders. That wasn't good
enough, so then they requested 12 months of payment history. If he
was in arrears with child support, his ex-wife would have filed a
deadbeat dad suit against him long ago! This was totally
demoralizing.

Example three: They requested a quit claim deed on a property he has
had no financial interest in for nearly 10 years. Not the houses he
owned a couple of years ago, but the one he owned 10 years ago that
was no longer even listed on his credit report - and was recorded to
have been transferred to his ex-wife. This should no longer show on a
title search, since it was recorded several years ago. NACA clearly
doesn't bother to read anything, they just delay delay delay. They
must get paid by the hour...

I submitted two W2 forms from my prior employer. This was also
reflected on my tax forms. Apparently nobody at NACA has ever seen
something like this (a company merger) so I was asked to write a
letter.

Even after a detailed letter explaining the merger, they are
STILL requesting information. If it's good enough for the IRS, why
isn't it good enough for NACA? Seriously, are we to believe the
incompetant bunch at NACA have stricter standards than the federal government?

My favorite request came last week. In spite of the fact that we are
now less than seven days away from the recorded end of our two year
lease, attested to by our landlord, on the NACA document, stating that
our lease ran from June 1, 2007 to June 1, 2009 we were required to
get a document from a landlord we have not spoken to in two years to
fill our YET ANOTHER NACA FORM, to cover us for the week (!) that
would fulfill the NACA requirement of two years of rental history. How
is it possible that 1 year and 51 weeks is not enough?

Then they requested 12 months of canceled checks, costing us nearly
$50 to provide. Then they requested another copy of the corrected
history verification form - which was already correct.

The final straw was our reserve. This was a gift from our
families. When we knew that we were going to buy a condo, we used our
previous savings to pay down our debts. The gift was to cover our down
payment, closing costs and renovations. I deposited the check in my bank in February 2009.

Suddenly this became a huge issue, so I requested a
notarized document, from the bank, attesting to the gift. But that
seemingly wasn't enough for your lenders, suddenly they wanted a copy
of my family's bank statements?!

That is the single most grossly inappropriate request I have ever, in
my entire 10 years of working in the banking industry, heard. You are
asking us to provide sensitive family financial records to
total strangers, containing bank balances, account numbers, detailed
payments information to people who cant even read a single paragraph (
see W2s above) It's clear that your lenders are just making stuff up
at this point and that the people working our files just simply dont
know what they are doing, or are allowed to do by law.

It was me, not NACA who came up with the idea of a canceled check
image to resolve this, why didn't a lender think of that? I really am
just stunned.

In a recent email to two people at NACA stated that we started
this in March and that our landlord had refused to renew our lease
specifically because we were buying a house. I stated very directly
that we were going to be essentially homeless because of the constant
NACA delays. The response from someone at NACA was, and I quote,
"the lenders aren't at this location, I don't know how long it takes,
I'll call you when we hear anything." I was further notified that "If
you enter into a contract, NACA will not honor or recognize it without
your qualification status already established."

How is it that I can build a house in 90 days, but I can't buy one? I
could walk from Washington DC to Los Angeles in 90 days, but NACA cant
generate a pre-approval letter? This is just INSANE!

I work for (a well respected financial institution) as an analyst. We
don't do mortgages, or else I would have done it here. The Executive
Vice President, heard me talking about buying a house at our company
Christmas party and would casually ask me, in passing, how everything
was going.

On Friday, 25 May, 2009 she called me into her office since I was so
despondent over the situation and she gave me this advice: it doesn't
take 90 days to get a mortgage commitment. It doesn't take 2 weeks.
"Get a new lender."

And so, desperate, in the space of three hours yesterday, I have
secured a pre-approval from a reputable lender. I am making an offer
on a property tonight and depositing a check into escrow tomorrow. We
are going to use the 10k for a down payment and have the seller cover
closing costs. We are going to pay one half percent more for the loan,
but finance ten thousand dollars less, so it works out to a tiny
difference in the scheme of things.

Because of NACA's grossly disorganized processes however, we are going
to incur significant expenses for temporary housing and double moving
costs because our closing date will be past the end of our lease.
Thanks NACA.

But, we are going to have a roof over our heads eventually. We could
have saved ourselves months of frustration, hundreds of pages of faxes
and hours of phone calls and a couple of thousand dollars in expenses
if we had just done this in the first place. I have attached the copy
of the pre-approval for your review.

The reason I came to you was because I heard your CEO, Bruce Marks, on
NPR in February, talking about the housing crisis and how NACA is an
alternative to traditional lenders. I was a believer! In truth, it's a
grossly inadequate substitute for real financial professionals.

In closing Counselor, I want to make sure you know that both of us
hold you in very high regard and our leaving in no way reflects on
you. You did your job, it's too bad everyone else at NACA isn't as
focused and hard working as you.

Our best wishes for your future success. Feel free to contact me
directly if you have any questions or I can be of service to you in
the future.

Sincerely,

Me.

Everything in this letter is true. There were even more examples of
how incompetent they are and all the screwups they made, but I edited
this down to just the greatest hits.

I was all gung-ho about this program, I really was. I wanted to
believe. I wanted to do something for my community. It wasn't just
about the money. But the delays were ENDLESS. In spite of the fact
that we were very qualified, no credit problems, no drama, nobody at
NACA could ever tell us when or if we were going to get a mortgage.
Every time it was 'well this looks good we should hear back in a
couple of days" Apparently, at NACA, "a couple of days" is the
gestation period of a whale.

We provided no fewer than 6 faxed packets of information. Why can
they not assess the file completely enough the first time to provide a
concise list of what is needed and be done with it. I realize our
situation is potentially more complex than most of their applicants,
but this back and forth with STILL no final approval is a ridiculous
waste of time and effort

We even convinced our agent to join NACA so she could work with us.
The other agents in her office tried to warn her, but she did it, as a
favor, to us. She should have listened to them.

And this ignores all the way left politics involved. It really is
pretty shameless. We decided we would just hold our nose and drink the
kool-aid, because in the end, we would save a few buck and get a home.
We were wrong, oh so very very wrong.

The final straw was my taxes. I filed for an extension, since I wanted
to used the 8k home buyers credit this year and not have to file an
amended return. I was due a refund, as clearly stated on my tax
documents.

last Friday they told me that I HAD to file my taxes before the
lenders would move forward. Even though I had a copy of my IRS
extension and was due a refund.

Knowing how long it takes to get documents (in this case a check) from
the IRS was just too much. And we just knew that even after that,
something else would come up. And then something else.

So yeah, in spite of some NACA cheerleaders who will read this, NACA
is a last resort. They are for poor people with bad credit who are
such a bad risk that nobody in thier right will give them a mortgage.

They are for people who dont know enough to read a contract and ask questions.
They are for people who dont think to bring a lawyer to review their
docs before signing. These are the people who got nailed before and
these are the people who are the CAUSE of the mortgage crisis.

Sorry if I offended anyone, I know that NACA does have some qualified
applicants, but in the end, I speak the truth.

If you want a roof over your heads before it starts to snow again, go
somewhere else if you can. A couple of dollars each month, in your
monthly payments is just not worth it.

If you have 6 to 9 months to fart around, these are the folks. Oh, and
you may want to buy a cheap fax machine. You're going to need one.

***Update March 1, 2010***

Before you go much further, go to the upper lefthand corner of this page and in the box called "search" type in NACA. I have another post about NACA that you should read. It talks about some of thier very shady lending practices. The entry is called "I can see the stats on the traffic on my blog " and is dated 10/21/09

I have had several people respond in the comments sention of my blog (see below) with sad sad comments on how much trouble they are having with their NACA mortgages.

IF you are going with NACA out of "the goodness of your heart" because you believe the parts of NACA that talk about community and responsible lending, I applaud you. I was one of them too. And if you have the time to follow up with them, then that choice is up to you. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. Depends on how soon you want to be in your house.

IF you are one of them people who went with NACA, even though you could have gotten a conventional mortgage, because the "no PMI and no down payment" option was something you want and/or need, but you are completely fed up with the bullshit, this is another option.

We were (just barely) able to get a conventional mortgage, by going with a no-bullshit professional company, listed at the bottom of this page.

Understand this: you are still going to have to do the work and fill out the paper.. However, you probably already have most of it from your dance with NACA. We did.

The "ideal" mortgage does not really exist. We used our savings towards the down payment, rather than buying down the rate. BUT, in the end, the difference in real costs, over time, was minimal.

The biggest blessing is that our lender was not a complete and total fuckup. The people answer their phones and emails, they speak English and they know what they are doing. These are mortgage professionals. These are NOT the mortgage pirates that contributed to the mortgage meltdown. They have a history of responsible lending. They turn the stuff around and they can get you an answer in a reasonable amount of time.

What is a reasonable amount of time? Well we started with NACA in Feb 2009 and by the time we walked away in June 2009, they didn't ever give us an answer. As stated above, we did everything we were supposed to, and they just kept jerking us around.

Our guys turned the paper in days, not months.

Understand, the answer that you get may not be the one that you want. They will do the best that they can for you, they know the players and the rules. They are not miracle workers and they still have to follow the rules. Nowadays, you don’t want some sketchy "loan from a friend of a friend of a friend" who promises you the moon and the stars, and then disappears.

And ask yourself : If there's a place out there you think you can swing, if there’s a chance rates are going up, not down, if you are tired of getting jerked around by people who really just don’t know what they are doing, isn't it worth it to get an answer from them?

That answer should tell you this: if you can ditch NACA and move forward, OR if NACA is the right place to be.

Our mortgage company is Guaranteed Rate. com I dont work for them, I dont get anything for sending you there, I just had a really terrific experience with them.

Please feel free to ask for our agent, Jamie. I spoke with him today and he'd be happy to talk to you. Seriously, call him 1-866-934-7283. If he can help you, he will, if not, he will tell you why.

Keep in mind, just because you started the process with NACA doesnt mean you can't look at other options. NACA isnt going to screw your loan because you talked to someone else. That would be ILLEGAL

The other option you should check into is a credit union.

You might think that you don’t qualify for one because your job doesn’t belong to one, or that there isn’t a building with a sign out front that says “credit union” on it.

These days, credit unions are everywhere and they have lots of flexibility on membership. Use this locator to find one in your area and follow the details

Keep in mind that credit unions ARE NOT BANKS, they don’t have to make a profit, they are “owned” by their members.

This is from the From the National Association of Credit Unions Website

Credit unions are financial institutions formed by an organized group of people with a common bond. Members of credit unions pool their assets to provide loans and other financial services to each other.

These factors allow credit unions to pay dividends to their members (not shareholders) and offer them lower loan rates, higher savings rates and fewer service fees.

The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) is the federal agency that charters and supervises federal credit unions. They also insure savings in federal and most state-chartered credit unions across the country through the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF), a federal fund backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.

I did a check in my area, just with a zip code in in 3 clicks I found one that I qualified for that did mortgages. Look for the ones that are "Community CUS "

This is an example of the services offered at a credit union near me under the tab called "loans"

Real Estate Loans

Adjustable Rate 1st Mortgages with Rate Adjustment at least once a Year NO

Adjustable Rate 1st Mortgages with Rate Adjustment less often than once a Year NO

Balloon/Hybrid 1st Mortgages 5 Years or Shorter NO

Balloon/Hybrid 1st Mortgages Longer than 5 Years NO

Closed End Adjustable Rate 2nd Mortgages NO

Closed End Fixed Rate 2nd Mortgages YES

CU Does Mortgage Processing NO

CU Is an Approved Mortgage Seller NO

Fixed Rate 1st Mortgages 15 Years or Shorter YES

Fixed Rate 1st Mortgages Longer than 15 Years YES

Indirect Mortgage Loans NO

Interest Only 1st Mortgages NO

Open End Adjustable Rate 2nd Mortgages YES

Open End Fixed Rate 2nd Mortgages NO

Percent of 1st Mortgages made YTD that were Sold) 0.000%

Spend the time, do the work and see if either of these options are for you. We closed in September and we got our $8,000 homebuyer's check in the mail just recently (IRS is very slow, like 6 months slow) and turned around and paid off a lot of the stuff we had to buy for the new place.

Now is the time to buy something, rates will never be this low again. Prices will never be this low again in your LIFETIME. We bought a house that listed for $50,000 more than we ended up paying for it. Anybody selling anything right now is selling because they HAVE to, don't miss out on this.

Chicago has highest gas prices in U.S.

2009-05-18T10:15:00.001-05:00

Chicago has the highest gasoline prices in the nation, according to
the latest Lundberg Survey.

Prices for regular-grade gasoline here averaged $2.63 a gallon on
Friday, when the survey--released Sunday--was completed.
Nationally, the price of gasoline jumped 25 cents a gallon during the
past three weeks, but remains well below prices from a year ago.

Analyst Trilby Lundberg said the average U.S. price of regular-grade
gasoline was $2.30 a gallon. That's up from $2.05 a gallon recorded on
April 24, but $1.49 a gallon cheaper than at this time last year.

The lowest price for gasoline in the U.S. was found in Phoenix, at
$1.99 a gallon.

--Associated Press

WSJ says Mag Mile less Mag in economic downturn

2009-04-13T11:34:00.001-05:00

CHICAGO -- Tomas Coppinger flew here from Ireland this week with $6,000 in his pocket. But he barely spent any of it on the iconic shopping promenade known as the Magnificent Mile.

"Beautiful street," Mr. Coppinger said as he paused beneath the skyline along Michigan Avenue. "But the prices are too high."

Softness in the tourism and convention businesses -- as well as bargain-hunters like Mr. Coppinger -- are hurting the Midwest's most prestigious retail district. It has weathered past downturns relatively well, thanks largely to the curiosity of out-of-town visitors.

But today the Magnificent Mile is enduring its highest vacancy rate since 1992. Retailers Lord & Taylor, Talbots Inc. and William-Sonoma Inc.'s Pottery Barn all recently shuttered large stores.

Last year the number of empty shops hit 6.3%, up from 4.4% in 2007 and just 1.0% in 2002, said Bruce Kaplan, a senior vice president at CB Ellis, a commercial-real-estate firm that conducts an annual survey on the Mile's rents and vacancy rates. "People come from around the Midwest to shop here," Mr. Kaplan said. "So it's a little bit insulated from the economy, but it's not isolated."

The Magnificent Mile -- so named as a promotional gimmick after World War II -- stretches from an east-west jut of Lake Michigan on the north to the Chicago River on the south. It actually runs just eight-tenths of a mile, but in that span counts more than 450 retailers and a who's who of high-end boutiques and department stores, including Saks Inc., Chanel and Cartier.

Last year, the average rent per square foot along the strip was just under $70 and ground-floor space averaged about $500. Mr. Kaplan said he expects both those numbers to soften this year.

For some, the rent relief will come too late. Borders Group Inc., already struggling with troubled finances and declining sales, will close its Michigan Avenue store, its largest in the U.S., in January.

"The location wasn't meeting our profit objective and hadn't for some time," said spokeswoman Mary Davis. "It was great to have a presence there, but no retailer can afford to operate stores that aren't profitable, especially in this economy."

Peter Hanig, whose eponymous family-owned shoe store has been a presence on Michigan Avenue for two generations, said the balance between exposure, prestige and performance is shifting. "The stores that had declining sales but wanted to keep a presence for marketing purposes are rethinking their strategy," Mr. Hanig said. "Every business in the country is going through a re-evaluation right now."

The market has softened as retailers in Chicago confront growing demands. The sales tax in surrounding Cook County was raised last year to 10.25%, highest in the nation. This year, after the city privatized public parking meters, downtown rates climbed to $3.50 an hour. State legislators are considering a series of tax increases to close a nearly $12 billion budget deficit.

A decline in out-of-town visitors also is hurting business. Downtown Chicago hotel occupancy rates dropped to 48% this February, from 54% in February 2008 and 60% in February 2007, according to STR Global, which tracks the hotel industry. Room rates are down 11% from last year. Among the largest 25 markets in the nation, Chicago has experienced the third-largest decline in hotel traffic, behind only Phoenix and San Francisco, STR said.

The people who are visiting are "shopping down," said Jacqueline Hayes, a Chicago commercial-real-estate broker who keeps a close eye on Michigan Avenue. "People at all levels are spending less," she said, although she believes the trend is squeezing luxury boutiques the hardest.

Mr. Coppinger, a wedding photographer from Galway, Ireland, spent most of his shopping stash on clothes at outlet stores in Aurora, 40 miles west of Chicago, where his daughter Aoibheann, 22 years old, gushed over the big discounts on Tommy Hilfiger jeans. On Michigan Avenue, Mr. Coppinger spent less than $100 on a few books at Borders.

Alderman Brendan Reilly, who represents the strip in city hall, said the city is investing in the area with walkways to draw lakefront visitors as well as some beautification projects. A weekend parking-tax holiday also is under consideration.

"Retailers need a hand up," Mr. Reilly said. "We'll do what we can to provide that extra boost."

Write to Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

2009-04-03T21:14:00.002-05:00

Buzz's's Profile

Create Your Badge

Chicago Cop Recounts Fire Resuce

2009-03-06T11:38:00.000-06:00

You know, the CPD takes a lot of shit, and many times for a lot of good reasons. But now and then, you read a story like this and you feel a great deal of affinity for, and pride of, your sworn officers. How many of us would risk our lives to rescue a stranger from a burning building?

Chicago Tribune 3/6/09

Chicago Police Officer Timothy Gould heard someone yelling for help from inside the burning building on the South Side this morning. But when he followed the voice to the door of an apartment, he was pushed back by flames.

"I couldn't get in and I heard someone in the back yelling, 'Help me!'" Gould said.

So the 18-year veteran officer ran to a back alley, grabbed a chair, broke a back window about eight feet off the ground and climbed halfway in. Then he yelled for the man while using a flashlight to find him in the heavy smoke.

"I was yelling, 'Look for the flashlight!', 'Look for the flashlight!' " Gould said. "I told him, "Talk, talk, talk.'"

Gould leaned farther in and felt the man's hands reaching out to him.

"I was reaching around and grabbed him, got him to the back window and got him on my back," Gould recounted. "I jumped back and got down on the chair and took him about 25 feet from the building."

Meanwhile, firefighters used a ladder to help a mother and her daughter down from the third floor of the building in the 7800 block of South East End Avenue. They were not injured and did not need to be taken to a hospital.

But Gould, 54, said he was worried about the condition of the man.

"I knew he needed oxygen. I told him to keep taking deep breaths, there was soot coming out of his nose and he was having a hard time breathing," Gould said. "I thought he was gonna die right there because of smoke inhalation."

The man was taken to Jackson Park Hospital, where he was listed in good condition this morning.

Gould, who described himself as a "big dude" who works out often, was happy to hear the man was doing well because he felt the man's body going "limp" on his back.

"God works in mysterious ways," he said. "I don't even usually work that (beat)."

--Dan P. Blake and Pat Curry

The G in GMail

2009-02-25T16:19:00.001-06:00

The email service went offline at around 10.25am GMT, and the outage appears to have affected users throughout the UK as well as across Europe, and even as far afield as Australia and India.

It appears that only web-based Gmail access is affected, and users can continue to send and receive messages using other devices, such as mobile phones and third-party mail clients.

Google could not confirm what had caused the outage. "A number of users are having difficulty accessing Gmail," said the company in a statement. "We are working to resolve the problem. We know how important Gmail is to users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologise for the inconvenience.

"We are posting status updates about the problem at mail.google.com/support."

Bloggers and Twitter users were quick to flag up issues with the service. Google's web-based email system is usually fairly robust, and suffers little downtime, so many internet users were left baffled by the problems and at a loss as to what to do. Many Twitter messages offered workarounds to the problem, such as using mobile email applications, while other Gmail users said they would simply down tools and make a cup of tea and wait for the issue to be resolved.

Several major companies, including Telegraph Media Group and The Guardian, have switched to using the Google Apps suite in place of conventional desktop email. Google Apps allows users to work collaboratively on documents via the web, as well as share calendars, and provides instant messaging and chat alongside Gmail email services.

Macy's to cut 7,000 positions and slash dividend to 5 cents, targeting savings of $400M

2009-02-02T15:26:00.001-06:00

www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-macys-job-cuts,0,7980884.story

chicagotribune.com
By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

AP Retail Writer

1:56 PM CST, February 2, 2009

NEW YORK (AP) — Macy's Inc. announced Monday that it will cut 7,000 jobs, almost 4 percent of its work force, reduce its contributions to its employees' retirement funds and slash its dividend to preserve cash amid a severe pullback in consumer spending.

The Cincinnati-based department store chain also delivered bleak earnings and sales forecasts for the year.

Macy's said the cuts, which include some unfilled jobs and 1,900 positions being eliminated in a restructuring now under way nationwide, will come at corporate offices, stores and other locations. The company employs about 180,000 people.

Macy's announced last month — on the heels of the worst holiday shopping season in decades — that it would close 11 stores, affecting 960 employees. The company expects the additional actions announced Monday to lower its annual selling, general and administrative expenses about $400 million starting in 2010.

The company also slashed its quarterly dividend to 5 cents from 13.25 cents. The dividend will be paid on April 1 to shareholders of record March 13.

Department stores have been especially hard-hit by the poor economy as shoppers cut spending and turn to discount stores. Last month, Fresno, Calif.-based department store chain Gottschalks Inc. put itself up for sale and said it had filed to reorganize in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Dallas-based Neiman Marcus Group Inc. said this month that it was cutting about 375 jobs, or 3 percent of its work force.

Macy's announced the national rollout of a plan to localize merchandising to specific markets and said it would integrate all its geographic divisions into a single unit.

It began testing the localization strategy in 20 regional markets last spring and expects the reorganization to be complete beginning in the second quarter.

As part of the restructuring, Macy's central buying, planning and senior management and marketing functions will be located primarily in New York.

Corporate-related businesses functions such as finance, human resources, legal, property development and company purchases will be located primarily in Cincinnati.

Macy's said it expects to earn between 40 cents and 55 cents, excluding one-time costs, for the year that ends next January.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters project earnings of 87 cents per share.

The company predicts its same-stores sales or sales at stores opened at least a year will fall between 6 percent and 8 percent in the year that ends in January 2010. Same-store sales are considered a key indicator of a retailer's health.

Macy's announces 7,000 job cuts

2009-02-02T14:54:00.001-06:00

US department store chain Macy's is cutting 7,000 jobs as it reduces costs against a backdrop of falling sales.

Sending shares in the firm down 11%, Macy's said the redundancies would affect both store and office positions.

With a current workforce of about 180,000 people, the cuts represent about 4% of its staffing levels.

Macy's said it hoped the move would allow it to make an annual saving of $400m (£281m). It added that it will likely report a fall in annual sales.

'Tough 2009'

It predicts that annual same-store sales - which excludes new shop openings - will be between 6 and 8% lower.

The firm said tough trading conditions would continue throughout 2009.

Macy's has 810 stores across the US.

US consumer spending fell for a sixth consecutive month in December, according to the latest data released by the Commerce Department on Monday.

Home from work, jan 15, 2009

2009-01-15T23:05:00.001-06:00

OUr front step. - 17, -42 with wind chill. The two blocks from my car to the house nearly killed me

Front Steps, Jan, 2009

2009-01-15T23:02:00.001-06:00

Life Imitates Art

2009-01-15T12:16:00.001-06:00

As I left for work today, the temp was -13. The high, the *HIGH* will get up to -2.

Chicago Tribune 1/15/2009

HAMMOND, Ind. - In a scene straight out of the movie "A Christmas Story," a 10-year-old Hammond boy got his tongue stuck to a metal light pole.

Police say the unidentified 4th grader was able to tell them a friend had dared him to lick the pole Wednesday night. Temperatures in Hammond were around 10 degrees at the time.

By the time an ambulance arrived, the boy was able to yank his tongue off the frozen pole.

Police say ambulance personnel explained to the boy's mother how to care for his bleeding tongue

The 1983 movie is set in a fictional city based on Hammond, the hometown of author Jean Shepherd

U.S. Senate rejects Burris' credentials

2009-01-05T16:16:00.000-06:00

From The Chicago Tribune

"Roland Burris headed to Washington today to claim Illinois' disputed U.S. Senate seat, even as officials at the Senate rejected the paperwork sent by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to formally pave his way.

Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson rejected Burris' certificate of appointment to the Senate as invalid, said Beth Provenzano, a spokeswoman for Erickson. Senate rules require that the certificate be signed both by the governor and the secretary of state.

Provenzano said the certificate was signed by Blagojevich but declined to answer a question on whether the certificate was signed by Secretary of State Jesse White, saying only that the certificate did not meet the requirements of the rule. White has said publicly he would not sign the certificate.

Burris talked to reporters at Chicago's Midway Airport today before flying to Washington. He repeated his insistence that he is the state's junior U.S. senator and expects to be granted his seat in Washington on Tuesday.

"No, I'm not bothered by [the rejection] because the appointment is legal. Why don't you all understand that what has been done here is legal?" he added. "That's legal, I am the junior senator from Illinois and I wish my colleagues in the press would recognize that. All the drama, I guess it keeps you all in a job."

"I'm a United States senator," Burris said at the airport news conference. "They cannot stop me from ... my senatorial duties."

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD when will the state that produced such outstanding senators as Stevenson and Simon, and even now Durbin, stop electing the un-electable to positions of power?

That said, we might all want to take a step back and hold up a magic mirror and look at Obama's own record in his term there. Can anyone name anything he did ON HIS OWN in his time there of any lasting meaning? Not much folks, sad to say.

So the idea we need to fill a "black seat" with another black man, because black people holding this seat have accomplish so much, does not seem to hold water.

Now, if we were looking for black americans who played a kick butt game of politics, they are unmatched, and I admire them for nothing if not that.

And just a note here, there were a significant number of seats held by black men in the Senate following the Civil War. Though they were marginalized by history, many of them were outstanding men, now lost.

In 20 years, will we look back on Roland Burris as a great man, or a great politican?

30 Rock Out takes

2008-12-23T17:45:00.001-06:00

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

Rick Warren is an insulting choice

2008-12-23T13:20:00.001-06:00

Preacher Rick Warren's views are simply too extreme for Obama's supporters.
By Katha Pollitt
The Los Angeles Times

December 22, 2008

To understand how angry and disappointed many Democrats are that Barack Obama has invited evangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural, imagine if a President-elect John McCain had offered this unique honor to the Rev. Al Sharpton -- or the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. I know, it's hard to picture: John McCain would never do that in a million years. Republicans respect their base even when, as in McCain's case, it doesn't really return the favor.

Only Democrats, it seems, reward their most loyal supporters -- feminists, gays, liberals, opponents of the war, members of the reality-based community -- by elbowing them aside to embrace their opponents instead.

Most Americans who've heard of Warren know him as the teddy-bearish, Hawaiian-shirted head of the Saddleback megachurch in Orange County and the author of "The Purpose Driven Life." Perhaps they also know he's the rare right-wing Christian pastor who sometimes talks about poverty and global warming and HIV. His concern for those issues has given him a reputation as a moderate and has made him the darling of Democratic Party think tanks, ever hoping to break the Republican lock on the white evangelical vote.

But on the signal issues of the religious right he is, as he himself has said, as orthodox as James Dobson.

And as inflammatory. Warren doesn't just oppose gay marriage, he's compared it to incest and pedophilia. He doesn't just want to ban abortion, he's compared women who terminate pregnancies to Nazis and the pro-choice position to Holocaust denial. (Hmmm ... If a fertilized egg is as precious as a born Jewish human being, does that mean a born Jewish human being is only as valuable as a fertilized egg?)

Speaking of Jews, Warren has publicly stated his belief that they will burn in hell, presumably along with everyone else who hasn't accepted his particular brand of Christianity (i.e., the vast majority of people in the world). And forget about evolution -- the existence of homosexuals, he's argued, disproves Darwin. And while we may not know how old the Earth is, the Saddleback website assures us that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.

Warren claims that his views are mainstream, pointing out that in 30 states, the majority of voters have banned gay marriage. Popular doesn't mean right, of course, but regardless of what Americans think about gay marriage, on other so-called social issues, he's way out in far-right field.

Take abortion. Most Americans, whatever their personal feelings, are pro-choice. On election day, anti-choice initiatives went down to defeat in all three states where they were on the ballot. Most Americans do not think the one-third of American women who terminate a pregnancy are running a concentration camp in their wombs, and would have no trouble choosing between saving a Jew from a gas chamber and a fertilized egg from a fire at the clinic.

Or take marriage. At his Saddleback Church, wifely submission is official doctrine: The church website tells women to defer to their husband's "leadership" even when he's wrong on important issues, such as finances. Never mind if she's an accountant and he flunked long division, or if she wants to beef up the kids' college fund and he wants to buy shares in the Brooklyn Bridge. The godly answer is supposed to be "yes, dear." Is elevating this male chauvinist how President-elect Obama thanks women, who gave him more than half his votes?

Or take foreign policy. In electing Obama, Americans overwhelmingly rejected President Bush's Wild West approach to foreign policy. Apparently Warren didn't get that memo either. Unlike many evangelical preachers, he issued a statement against torture, but despite his access to Bush, he told Beliefnet.com that he never raised the subject of torture with him. ("I just didn't have the opportunity," he said -- although he apparently found plenty of time to lecture Obama about abortion.)

On "Hannity & Colmes," he agreed that the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, should be killed because "the Bible says God puts government on Earth to punish evildoers." Really? The Bible says the United States should murder the leaders of other sovereign states? How many other heads of state does Warren want to do away with? If Ahmadinejad, who is, after all, a more-or-less democratically elected leader, had shared his inauguration with an imam who had called on national television for the assassination of President Bush, Americans would be calling for the nuking of Tehran.

In a news conference Thursday, Obama defended the choice of Warren: "It is important for the country to come together even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues." That's all very well, but excuse me if I don't feel all warm and fuzzy. Obama won thanks to the strenuous efforts of people who've spent the last eight years appalled by the Bush administration's wars and violations of human rights, its attacks on gays and women, its denigration of science, its general pandering to bigotry and ignorance in the name of God.

I'm all for building bridges, but honoring Warren, who insults Obama's base as perverts and murderers, is definitely a bridge too far.

Katha Pollitt, a poet, essayist and critic, writes the "Subject to Debate" column in the Nation. She is the author, most recently, of "Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories."

Pet Diaries

2008-12-21T17:13:00.002-06:00

Excerpts from a Dog's Diary..

8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing!

9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing!

9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing!

10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!

12:00 PM - Lunch! My favorite thing!

1:00 PM - Played in the yard! My favorite thing!

3:00 PM - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!

5:00 PM - Milk bones! My favorite thing!

7:00 PM - Got to play ball! My favorite thing!

8:00 PM - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!

11:00 PM - Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!

Excerpts from a Cat's Diary.

Day 983 of my captivity.
My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects.

They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength.

The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape. In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet.

Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its head less body at their feet I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a 'good little hunter' I am. Bastards.

There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of 'allergies.' I must learn what this means and how to use it to my advantage..

Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my torment ors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow -- but at the top of the stairs.

I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches. The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released - and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded.
The bird has got to be an informant. I observe him communicating with the guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe. For now........ .

Bettie Page dies at 85; pinup queen played a key role in the sexual revolution

2008-12-12T10:21:00.001-06:00

chicagotribune.com
OBITUARY
Bettie Page dies at 85; pinup queen played a key role in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and later became a cult figure
By Louis Sahagun

December 12, 2008

Bettie Page, the brunet pinup queen with a shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, has died. She was 85.

Page, whose later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state mental institution, died Thursday night at Kindred Hospital in Los Angeles, where she had been on life support since suffering a heart attack Dec. 2, according to her agent, Mark Roesler.

A cult figure, Page was most famous for the estimated 20,000 4-by-5-inch black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur shutterbugs from 1949 to 1957. The photos showed her in high heels and bikinis or negligees, bondage apparel -- or nothing at all.

Decades later, those images inspired biographies, comic books, fan clubs, websites, commercial products -- Bettie Page playing cards, dress-up magnet sets, action figures, Zippo lighters, shot glasses -- and, in 2005, a film about her life and times, "The Notorious Bettie Page."

Then there are the idealized portraits of her naughty personas -- Nurse Bettie, Jungle Bettie, Voodoo Bettie, Banned in Boston Bettie, Maid Bettie, Crackers in Bed Bettie -- memorialized by such artists as Olivia de Berardinis.

"I'll always paint Bettie Page," De Berardinis said Thursday night . "But truth be told, it took me years to understand what I was looking at in the old photographs of her. Now I get it. There was a passion play unfolding in her mind. What some see as a bad-girl image was in fact a certain sensual freedom and play-acting - it was part of the fun of being a woman."

"The origins of what captures the imagination and creates a particular celebrity are sometimes difficult to define," Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner said Thursday night. "Bettie Page was one of Playboy magazine's early Playmates, and she became an iconic figure, influencing notions of beauty and fashion. Then she disappeared. . . . Many years later, Bettie resurfaced and we became friends. Her passing is very sad."

In an interview 2 1/2 years ago, Hefner described Page's appeal as "a combination of wholesome innocence and fetish-oriented poses that is at once retro and very modern."

According to her agents at CMG Worldwide, Page's official website, www.BettiePage.com, has received about 600 million hits over the last five years.

"Bettie Page captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," said Roesler, chairman of the Indianapolis-based CMG Worldwide, who was at Page's side when she died. "She was a dear friend and a special client and one of the most beautiful and influential women of the 20th century."

A religious woman in her later life, Page was mystified by her influence on modern popular culture. "I have no idea why I'm the only model who has had so much fame so long after quitting work," she said in an interview with The Times in 2006.

She had one request for that interview: that her face not be photographed.

"I want to be remembered," she said, "as I was when I was young and in my golden times. . . . I want to be remembered as the woman who changed people's perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form."

Bettie Mae Page was born April 22, 1923, in Nashville. She was the oldest girl among Roy and Edna Page's six children. Her father, an auto mechanic, "molested all three of his daughters," Page said in the interview.

Her parents divorced in 1933, but life didn't get any easier for Bettie.

"All I ever wanted was a mother who paid attention to me," Page recalled. "She didn't want girls. She thought we were trouble. When I started menstruating at 13, I thought I was dying because she never taught me anything about that."

After high school, Page earned a teaching credential. But her career in the classroom was short-lived. "I couldn't control my students, especially the boys," she said.

She tried secretarial work and marriage. But by 1948 she had divorced a violent husband and fled to New York City, where she enrolled in acting classes. She was noticed on the beach at Coney Island by New York police officer and amateur photographer Jerry Tibbs, who introduced her to camera clubs.

Page quickly became a sought-after model, attracting the attention of Irving Klaw and his sister, Paula, who operated a mail-order business specializing in cheesecake and bondage poses.

Under contract with the Klaws, Page was photographed prancing around with a whip, spanking other women, even being hog-tied. She also appeared in 8-millimeter "loops" and feature-length peekaboo films with titles like "Betty Page in High Heels."

"I had lost my ambition and desire to succeed and better myself; I was adrift," Page recalled. "But I could make more money in a few hours modeling than I could earn in a week as a secretary."

Her most professional photographs were taken in 1955 by fashion photographer Bunny Yeager. They included shots of Page nude and frolicking in waves and deep-sea fishing, and a January 1955 Playboy centerfold of her winking under a Santa Claus cap.

At 35, Page walked away from it all. She quit modeling and moved to Florida, where she married a much younger man whose passions, she later learned, were watching television and eating hamburgers.

Page fled from her home in tears after a dispute on New Year's Eve in 1959. Down the street, she noticed a white neon sign over a little white church with its door open.

After quietly taking a seat in the back, she had a born-again experience. Page immersed herself in Bible studies and served as a counselor for the Billy Graham Crusade.

In 1967, she married for a third time. After that marriage ended in divorce 11 years later, Page plunged into a depression marked by violent mood swings. She argued with her landlady and attacked her with a knife. A judge found her innocent by reason of insanity but sentenced her to 10 years in a California mental institution.

She was released in 1992 from Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County to find that she had unwittingly become a pop-culture icon. A movie titled "The Rocketeer" and the comic book that inspired it contained a Bettie-esque character, triggering a revival, among women as well as men, that continues unabated.

With the help of admirers including Hefner, Page finally began receiving a respectable income for her work.

In an interview published in Playboy magazine in 2007, Page expressed mixed feelings about her achievements. "When I turned my life over to the lord Jesus I was ashamed of having posed in the nude," she said. "But now, most of the money I've got is because I posed in the nude. So I'm not ashamed of it now. But I still don't understand it."

She spent most of her final years in a one-bedroom apartment, reading the Bible, listening to Christian and country tunes, watching westerns on television, catching up on diet and exercise regimens or sometimes perusing secondhand clothing stores.

Occasionally, however, Page was persuaded to visit the Sunset Boulevard penthouse offices of her agents at CMG Worldwide to autograph pinups of herself in the post-World War II years of her prime. The agency controls her image and those of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana, among others.

During one such event in early 2006, Page needed about 10 minutes to get through the 10 letters of her name. As she pushed her pen over a portrait of her in a negligee with an ecstatic smile, she laughed and said, "My land! Is that supposed to be me? I was never that pretty."

She is survived by her brother Jack Page of Nashville and sister Joyce Wallace of Blairsville, Ga.

Sahagun is a Times staff writer.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

Copyright © 2008, The Los Angeles Times

Issuers Increasing Internal Collections Efforts

2008-12-08T14:24:00.001-06:00

The price credit card issuers sell bad debt for has fallen by more than 50% in the past 18 months down to around $0.07 for newly charged off debt. The huge decrease in revenue that card issuers can reap by selling bad debt has caused many issuers to sell less bad debt and increase their internal collections efforts. "A lot of the banks have put a lot of resources on maximizing their own collections," said Sameer Gokhale, from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Once the decision has been made to not sell the bad debt, credit card issuers must then decide which method of collections they will pursue. Over the past three years there has been a wholesale move among large credit card issuers to use the Internet to interact with debtors, allowing debtors to pay their balance, set up a payment plan or conduct any other transaction that they could accomplish with a collector over the phone.
Source: American Banker, November 10, 2008

'Ralphies,' leg lamp fans keep film thriving

2008-12-08T13:33:00.001-06:00

(CNN) -- Of all the holiday films to depict the giddy anticipation of Christmas, only one has inspired a cable marathon, a booming leg lamp industry and fans who dress up in pink bunny suits.
It has been 25 years since "A Christmas Story" arrived in movie theaters and soon vanished from the big screen and people's minds.
Reviews of the film were mixed at the time, with a critic for The New York Times calling the cast "less funny than actors in a television situation comedy that one has chosen to watch with the sound turned off."
But you're triple-dog-dared to say that today to the fans who tune in to its regular holiday showings -- including an annual 24-hour marathon on Christmas Day -- and who have transformed a small house in Cleveland, Ohio, into a tourist attraction simply because it was featured in the movie.
(The film's airings, including the annual marathon, are on TNT and TBS. Those networks, like CNN, are a unit of Time Warner.)
"It's a film where almost every actor seems like they're born to the role," said Brian Jones, a fan and the owner of A Christmas Story House and Museum, which sees more than 30,000 visitors a year.
Jones bought the home for $150,000 on eBay in 2005, but he was already making a living selling leg lamps -- replicas of the hilariously tacky "major award" one of the characters wins in the movie, complete with an illuminated base that looks like a woman's leg in a fishnet stocking and a lampshade that looks like a short skirt. See why Jones went from the Navy to selling leg lamps »
He now sells 10,000 lamps a year to fans like Rose Davis of Ashtabula, Ohio, who was one of the first people to visit the house when it opened and who has attended an annual convention devoted to the movie three times.
Davis, 68, still remembers the first time she saw the film with her family when it came out in 1983.
"We just sat in the back row of that theater and roared with laughter. We were even missing some of the punchlines," Davis said. "It was a disappointment that it wasn't a hit at that time. But then it took video and television to really make it so popular."
The Thanksgiving weekend convention in Cleveland attracted more than 4,000 people, including Davis.
Fans took part in a character look-a-like contest, met some of the original cast members and screened documentaries about the movie's director and the making of the film.
The idea for the gathering came naturally, Jones said.
"They have 'Star Trek' conventions, 'Star Wars' conventions, why not have 'A Christmas Story' convention?" he said. See photos of the look-a-like contest and the cast members as adults »
Famous tongue
If "Star Trek" has Trekkies, "A Christmas Story" has Ralphies, named after the hero of the movie: Ralphie Parker, a 9-year old boy growing up in 1940s Indiana. He's on a mission to convince his parents, a cranky department store Santa and anyone who will listen that a BB gun is the perfect gift for Christmas.
"You'll shoot your eye out," everyone replies, to his exasperation.
Along the way, viewers meet Ralphie's colorful family, friends, classmates and tormentors, who fill the nostalgic landscape with lots of humor and childhood angst. The film was based on the stories of radio host and writer Jean Shepherd, who drew from his own childhood in Hammond, Indiana.
"It transcends generations. It doesn't matter if you're 5 or you're 85, you always remember that one particular holiday... when you wanted that one particular gift," said Scott Schwartz, who played Ralphie's friend Flick in the film. iReport.com: Are you a "Christmas Story" fan?
Schwartz was 14 when he was cast in the movie, appearing in one of its most famous scenes: Flick's tongue freezes to a metal pole when he touches it on a dare.
"It's very funny to have the world's second most-famous tongue: [KISS frontman] Gene Simmons and me," Schwartz said.
Filming the scene was actually much less excruciating than it looked. The pole was made of plastic with a suction tube inside and a little opening for his tongue, Schwartz said. When he touched it, the vacuum effect made it look like he was stuck.
"It was an absolutely painless experience other than the bitter, bitter cold," Schwartz recalled.
Cable hit
Schwartz still keeps in touch with Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie and continues a career in show business. Billingsley, 37, most recently produced the Vince Vaughn-Reese Witherspoon comedy, "Four Christmases" and had a cameo in the film.
Billingsley said he doesn't mind that he's most famous for a role he played as an adorable, chubby-cheeked, wide-eyed little boy.
"It's nice to be known for a pretty great movie," he told The San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year. "I'm certainly proud of it, and I'm finally at the point where I can watch it and appreciate it."
The movie has been a hit on cable television. TNT began airing a 24-hour marathon on Christmas Eve in 1997. The all-day fest moved to TBS in 2004. More than 47 million people watched at least part of the marathon last year.
If the marathon isn't enough, there are countless "A Christmas Story" plays staged across the country. A stage musical based on the movie is in the works.
It's all amazing and gratifying for the original cast.
"It's a phenomenon to some degree and part of Americana," Schwartz said. "People go out of their ways to do things for us simply because we brought them so much joy for so many years. It's a nice feeling."

Memorable quotes
• "I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!"

• "You'll shoot your eye out, kid."

• "Fra-gee-lay. That must be Italian."

• "In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan."

• "Only one thing in the world could've dragged me away from the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window."

• "Now it was serious. A double-dog-dare. What else was there but a 'triple dare ya?' And then, the coup de grace of all dares, the sinister triple-dog-dare."

• "Scut Farkus! What a rotten name! There he stood, between us and the alley. Scut Farkus staring out at us with his yellow eyes. He had yellow eyes! So, help me, God! Yellow eyes!"

• "He looks like a deranged Easter Bunny."
"He does not!"
"He does, too, he looks like a pink nightmare!"

Episcopal Diocese of L.A. officially condones the blessing of gay unions

2008-12-08T11:19:00.001-06:00

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-episcopal8-2008dec08,0,7657390.story

From the Los Angeles Times

Though many churches in Southern California have been doing so for years, Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno endorses the rite as policy. It's not mandatory -- clergy may choose not to perform the practice.
By Jessica Garrison

December 8, 2008

The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has announced that church leaders can bless the unions of same-sex couples as a matter of policy.

The Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, whose diocese encompasses Los Angeles County and five other Southern California counties, made the announcement Friday during a diocesan convention in Riverside.

Bruno acted just days after hundreds of conservative Episcopal congregations in North America formed a breakaway church amid a rift that began with the ordination of a gay bishop in New Hampshire five years ago.

Bruno's declaration is not expected to have a major effect on Episcopal churches in Southern California. Many have been blessing gay unions for years. But he has now made it official.

"The practice has not changed. The policy has. . . . It's sort of like 'coming out,' " said the Rev. Susan Russell, a lesbian priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Russell also is president of Integrity USA, a group representing the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in the Episcopal Church.

The rite endorsed by Bruno also allows the blessing of other relationships, such as those between two senior citizens who do not wish to legally marry because they might lose health insurance or Social Security benefits.

Church officials also noted that, unlike communion, the rite is not mandatory. Clergy may choose not to perform it.

Diocese representatives also passed a resolution at their convention calling on the Episcopal Church to let gays and lesbians become bishops.

The L.A. diocese is expected to elect two suffragan, or assisting, bishops in 2010, and some say it is possible a gay or lesbian bishop could be nominated from among qualified candidates around the world.

Conservatives Expected to Split Episcopal Church

2008-12-03T15:05:00.000-06:00

December 4, 2008
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

WHEATON, ILL. — Conservatives disaffected from the Episcopal Church are expected to declare on Wednesday that they are founding their own rival Anglican province in North America, the biggest challenge yet to the authority of the church in a five-year battle over the ordination of an openly gay bishop.

The move threatens the fragile unity of the Anglican Communion, the world's third largest Christian body, made up of 38 provinces around the world that trace their roots to the Church of England and its leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is the first effort to create a province defined by theological orientation, not by geography.

The schism would create two competing provinces on the same soil, each claiming the mantle of historical Anglican Christianity. The conservative group plans to unveil a constitution and canons for its new province in an event at a large evangelical church here in Wheaton, which is outside of Chicago, on Wednesday evening.

"We're going through Reformation times, and in Reformation times things aren't neat and clean," said Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who is expected to be declared the head of the new province. "In Reformation times, new structures are emerging."

In October, Bishop Duncan led his diocese out of the Episcopal Church.

The proposed new province will have about 100,000 members and take in four Episcopal dioceses and dozens of parishes in the United States and Canada that recently voted to leave the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

They claim those churches have broken with traditional Christianity in many ways, but the development that precipitated their departure was the decision to ordain an openly gay bishop and to bless gay unions.

Besides Pittsburgh, those dioceses are Fort Worth, Tex., Quincy, Ill., and San Joaquin, in the Central Valley of California — representing four of about 100 dioceses in the Episcopal Church. However, not all the parishes and Episcopalians in those four dioceses agreed to leave the Episcopal Church.

The new province in North America would also absorb a handful of other splinter groups that had abandoned the Episcopal Church decades earlier over such issues as the ordination of women, or revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. One of the groups, the Reformed Episcopal Church, broke away from the forerunner of the Episcopal Church in 1873.

Conservative leaders in North American say they expect to be granted approval for their new province from at least seven like-minded primates, who lead provinces in the Communion's Southern hemisphere — in Africa, Australia, Latin America and Asia.

These are the same primates who met in Jerusalem over the summer at the "Global Anglican Future Conference" and signed a declaration heralding a new era for the Anglican Communion. Most of these primates boycotted the Lambeth Conference a few weeks later, the international gathering of Anglican bishops in England held once every 10 years, which is considered one of the "instruments of unity" in the Anglican Communion.

Bishop Duncan and other conservative leaders in North America say they may not seek approval for their new province from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, or from the Anglican Consultative Council, the leadership group of bishops, clergy and laity in the Communion that until now was largely responsible for blessing new jurisdictions.

Bishop Martyn Minns, a leading figure in the formation of the new province, said of the Archbishop of Canterbury: "It's desirable that he get behind this. It's something that would bring a little more coherence to the life of the Communion. But if he doesn't, so be it."

Bishop Minns, a priest who led his large, historic church in Virginia out of the Episcopal Church two years ago and was subsequently ordained a bishop by the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, said: "One of the questions a number of the primates are asking is why do we still need to be operating under the rules of an English charity, which is what the Anglican Consultative Council does. Why is England still considered the center of the universe?"

The Episcopal Church has about 2.3 million members — with about a third of those attending worship services on an average Sunday. The Anglican Church of Canada had about 650,0000 members in 2001, the last year that statistics were published, according to its Web site.

James Naughton, canon for communications and advancement in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and a liberal who frequently blogs on Anglican affairs, said he doubted that a rival Anglican province could grow much larger.

"I think this organization does not have much of a future because there are already a lot of churches in the United States for people who don't want to worship with gays and lesbians," he said. "That's not a market niche that is underserved."

Since the Episcopal Church ordained Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay man who lives with his partner, in the diocese of New Hampshire in 2003, the parallel rifts in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion have opened wider.

In the first years after Bishop Robinson was ordained, bishops representing about 14 dioceses in the Episcopal Church joined meetings to explore the formation of a new Anglican entity in North America.

Asked why only four dioceses broke away, Bishop Minns said: "It's one thing to feel distressed. It's another thing to do something about it."

He added: "There's some people standing back to wait and see if we pull this off, which I think we'll do. Then others will join us — parishes, and maybe dioceses."

If the conservatives try to take their church properties with them, they are likely to face lawsuits from the Episcopal Church. The church is already suing breakaway parishes and dioceses in several states to retain church property — a precedent that could inhibit others from leaving.

Bishop Duncan said the members of the proposed province would spend the next six months discussing the constitution, and would meet to ratify the document next summer at a "provincial assembly." He said it would probably be held at the Episcopal Cathedral in Fort Worth.

The Episcopal Church is also holding its General Convention next summer.

The founding members of this new province have major theological differences among themselves on liturgical practices, and whether to ordain women.

Bishop Duncan, whose theological orientation is more evangelical, has ordained women in the diocese of Pittsburgh. Bishops of other breakaway dioceses, like Jack Iker in Fort Worth and John-David Schofield in San Joaquin, are more "Anglo-Catholic" in orientation, modeling some elements of the Roman Catholic Church, and are opposed to ordaining women as priests or bishops.

Bishop Iker of Fort Worth said in a recent interview with a Web site that he considers himself in a "state of impaired communion" with women priests from Pittsburgh, and that they would not be allowed to celebrate the eucharist in his diocese.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Smiley face killers may be stalking college men

2008-11-20T14:47:00.001-06:00

CNN Wed May 21, 2008

Story Highlights
Deaths of 40 male college students have been ruled "accidental drowning"

Two retired NYC detectives believe deaths may be work of killer or killers

At least 12 creepy smiley faces found where bodies were put in rivers, lakes

FBI: No evidence linking tragic deaths or substantiating serial killer theory

By Randi Kaye
AC 360° Correspondent

ALBANY, New York (CNN) -- At the age of 21, Christopher Jenkins appeared to have everything going for him. The University of Minnesota senior was good-looking, had a near perfect grade-point average and had a future in business.

Then, suddenly, he vanished.

He was last seen celebrating Halloween at a bar in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2002. Jenkins' friends said he left about midnight. Four months later, his body was found in the Mississippi River, still wearing his Halloween costume.

Minneapolis police classified the drowning as accidental.

Jenkins' blood-alcohol level was well above the legal limit, and police told his parents that he'd probably had too much to drink after bar -hopping with friends. They thought he'd fallen into the river.

Despite a lack of evidence, his parents, Steve and Jan Jenkins, insisted that there had been foul play.

"He was loaded into a vehicle, a van, driven around and eventually murdered," Jan Jenkins told CNN. "He was murdered and thrown away like a piece of trash."

Hundreds of miles away, Kevin Gannon, a retired detective with the New York Police Department, was investigating the mysterious deaths of several college men from New York state. Each of the deaths had been ruled an accidental drowning. Watch how clusters of drowning deaths raise suspicion »

In 2006, nearly four years after Jenkins died, there was a break in the case. A tip from a man in jail, described by Minneapolis police as a witness or suspect, caused police to change Jenkins' cause of death from "unexplained drowning" to homicide.

It was a lucky break for Gannon. He had promised the parents of Patrick McNeill that he wouldn't quit until he'd found out how the Fordham University student died. McNeill's body washed up in the East River two months after he left a bar in New York.

Gannon enlisted the help of another former NYPD officer, Anthony Duarte, when Christopher Jenkins' death became a homicide. In 2003, the two traveled to Minneapolis to investigate Jenkins' death.

They learned about a string of student drowning deaths, many of them involving young men who attended colleges along the Interstate 94 corridor in the Midwest -- in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.

Nine of the deceased attended the University of LaCrosse, in Wisconsin. Three attended colleges in New York state.

In all, the investigators say they've connected the bizarre drowning deaths of at least 40 college-age men across the country.

The two detectives believe that in each case, and in others they investigated, the men were drugged and then their bodies were slipped or tossed into the water to make it appear as if they'd drowned.

Why would the killer or killers put the bodies in the water? The effect of water on evidence makes for an almost perfect crime, Duarte said. Not only does it make it appear like an accidental drowning instead of a murder, but the water frequently washes away key pieces of evidence such as fingerprints and fibers, so the killer can't be identified.

Together, the two detectives began mapping out the drowning deaths and working the case backward. Instead of focusing on where the bodies had been found, they used GPS devices and tracked river flow patterns and water levels to figure out where the bodies entered the water.

As Gannon and Duarte investigated the deaths, they began to see a trend. The cases spanned 25 cities in 11 states, and at least some of them were connected by a creepy symbol left near the water's edge: a smiley face painted on trees and other surfaces.

The detectives believe that the smiley faces were left by the killer or killers. They varied in size, with each face more haunting than the next.

The most sinister was found in Iowa. It was drawn in red with a devil's horns. Next to the smiley face was a note that read, "Evil Happy Smiley Face Man."

Asked whether he believed there was a hidden message in the smiley faces, Duarte told CNN, "The message is, they're taunting the police."

Duarte and Gannon said they found 12 other matching symbols similar to gang graffiti. But, to protect their investigation, they wouldn't describe them in detail. The detectives say the string of deaths could be the work of more than one killer because some of them took place on the same day in different states.

"It's so widespread. We have so many different victims in so many different areas," Duarte said. "It would, in my view, be impossible to be one person."

The detectives also believe the victims were targeted. All of the young men were popular, athletic and good students.

Who would commit this type of crime?

"The type of person that would be the opposite, not smart, someone not good in school, maybe doesn't have a job, not popular," Duarte said.

Gannon and Duarte believe that the young men were drugged to weaken them and given a substance that couldn't be detected by an autopsy.

"I believe these young men are being abducted by individuals in the bars, taken out, at some point held for a period of time before they're entered into the water," Gannon said.

He also believes the victims were abused mentally and sometimes physically before they were killed.

"This is a chance for them to have power and control over somebody else and manipulate. The fear of death is just as important as the act of death itself," Gannon said.

Minneapolis police are not convinced that Jenkins' death was the work of a serial killer.

"Although we have collaborated with investigators from the FBI and communicated with other jurisdictions in which similar drowning deaths have occurred, we can neither confirm nor endorse the 'smiley face murders' theory currently being publicized," the department said.

The FBI also has its doubts.

"To date, we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers. The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drowning," the bureau said in a statement.

Still, Gannon and Duarte are concerned that the killing could continue. They say whoever killed Jenkins might already be stalking other college students.

"Unless you've been out there to the scenes to evaluate [them] yourself, if you haven't done that, you're basically Monday-morning quarterbacking," Gannon argued.

Duarte thinks local police forces did not investigate the cases adequately and that the FBI could have done more, too.

"I don't think any of them went out to the field and beat the bushes," he said.

Body identified as missing Northwestern student

2008-11-20T14:45:00.001-06:00

5:08 PM CST, November 17, 2008

EVANSTON, Ill.

Northwestern University officials say the body of a man pulled from Lake Michigan is that of a missing student.

The Cook County medical examiner's office identified 20-year-old Trevor J. Boehm on Monday, but did not immediately give a cause of death.

The first year student from Monument, Colo., was studying at the university's School of Communications.

He was last seen alive on Nov. 5.

A passer-by found Boehm's jacket and some of his personal belongings on Nov. 9 on rocks along the Lake Michigan shoreline in north suburban Evanston. On Sunday, his body was spotted in the lake.

Northwestern President Henry Bienen says Boehm's death affects the entire campus.

A private vigil has been planned for students.

A very wise man once told me...

2008-11-18T12:02:00.001-06:00

Dr. Gard's top 10 lessons learned from my clients:

1. People will treat you the way you let them treat you.

2. Growth is seldom linear and it is rarely comfortable.

3. The right decision doesn't always feel good.

4. It's o.k. to care about how others feel, but that doesn't mean you must
twist your life around to accommodate them. You can be considerate of
others without taking responsibility for their feelings.

5. Just because you rely on someone doesn't mean you are dependent upon them.

6. It's important to pay attention to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Many
of us tend to ignore one or two of these categories.

7. You will be less apt to second guess yourself if you learn to recognize,
honor, and respect your feelings.

8. It is hard to feel confident if you're not being genuine.
Being true to yourself is the best way to bolster your confidence.

9. You cannot overcome your fears if you don't confront them.

10. We are bombarded by messages that dictate how we should look, dress,
eat, think, and spend. Ask yourself, "are these messages in my best interest?"

http://www.drlarrygard.com/index_files/Page451.htm

Life in the Turn Lane

2008-11-13T15:46:00.001-06:00

As many of you know, I have a killer commute to work every morning, and it's between an hour and an hour and a half, depending on traffic, trains (the bane of my existence) and the weather.

So I get a late start this morning. However, by leaving at a different time, I avoid the glut of traffic to a certain point, which thins out the farther I get from the city. I take the surface streets rather than the free/toll ways anyway since in the end I usually make better time. However, at this point I am still behind.

So I'm nipping along, maybe 5 or 10 miles over the limit when I look in my rear view mirror and see a Niles police car behind me. CRAP! You know the feeling, your heart starts to pound and everything inside you turns to Jell-O. "Ask not for who the blue light flashes, it flashes for thee."

Aside the obvious annoyance of a ticket, it will also make me later(er) for work. So, I take my foot off the gas, I'm doing the limit and he's right on my ass now.

So I think, I just cant deal with this, I'm going to get off and take a cross street or something, And I look up ahead and there's a Burger King, A Dunkin Donuts, a 7/11 and I'm thinking, I could really use a donut right now, and if I'm 5 minutes late, so be it.

So I look up in my mirror and now he's following me into the parking lot. I'm totally screwed, I know it, all I'm waiting for is the "pull over" sound.

I pull into the space and he pulls right in next to me. I'm like "just get it over with!

So I get out of the car and so does he, he looks me right in the eye and smiles, I'm waiting for the "do you know how fast you were going back there" speech. But he doesn't say anything as he walks around his car towards me.

I'm thinking at this point, he's looking for a bribe and doesn't want the entire world to see it, Fine, I've got a $20 in my pocket, so I reach in as he approaches me.

And he walks in the door of Dunkin Donuts.

Game Over.

Study shows how spammers cash in

2008-11-13T15:42:00.001-06:00

Spammers are turning a profit despite only getting one response for every 12.5m e-mails they send, finds a study.

By hijacking a working spam network, US researchers have uncovered some of the economics of being a junk mailer.

The analysis suggests that such a tiny response rate means a big spam operation can turn over millions of pounds in profit every year.

It also suggests that spammers may be susceptible to attacks that make it more costly to send junk mail.

Slim pickings

The spam study was carried out in early 2008 by computer scientists from University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD).

For their month-long study the seven-strong team of computer scientists infiltrated the Storm network that uses hijacked home computers as relays for junk mail.

At its height Storm was believed to have more than one million machines under its control.

The team, led by Assistant Professor Stefan Savage from UCSD, took over a chunk of the Storm network to make it easier to run their study.

"The best way to measure spam is to be a spammer," wrote the researchers in a paper describing their work.

They created several so-called "proxy bots" that acted as conduits of information between the command and control system for Storm and the hijacked home PCs that actually send out junk mail.

The team used these machines to control a total of 75,869 hijacked machines and routed their own fake spam campaigns through them.

Two types of fake spam campaign were run through these machines. One mimicked the way Storm spreads using viruses and the other tried to tempt people to visit a fake pharmacy site and buy a herbal remedy to boost their libido.

The fake pharmacy site was made to resemble those run by Storm's real owners but always returned an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details.

While running their spam campaigns the researchers sent about 469 million junk e-mail messages. The vast majority of these were for the fake pharmacy campaign.

"After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted," wrote the researchers.

The response rate for this campaign was less than 0.00001%. This is far below the average of 2.15% reported by legitimate direct mail organisations.

"Taken together, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of $2,731.88a bit over $100 a day for the measurement period," said the researchers.

Scaling this up to the full Storm network the researchers estimate that the controllers of the vast system are netting about $7,000 (£4,430) a day or more than $2m (£1.28m) per year.

While this was a good return, said the researchers, it did suggest that spammers were not making the vast sums of money that some people have predicted in the past.

They suggest that the tight costs might also open up new avenues of attack on spammers.

The researchers concluded: "The profit margin for spam may be meager enough that spammers must be sensitive to the details of how their campaigns are run and are economically susceptible to new defenses."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7719281.stm

"Just being on the outside..."

2008-11-13T10:45:00.001-06:00

John Kass / Chicago Tribune

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching "inclusion," and she decided to see how included she could be.

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

"McCain Girl."

"I was just really curious how they'd react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters," Catherine told us. "I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be."

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.

Then it got worse.

"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

"In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain," Catherine said.

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college.

"Later, that teacher found out about the experiment and said she was embarrassed because she knew I was writing down what she said," Catherine said.

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

"He said, 'You should be crucifixed.' It was kind of funny because, I was like, don't you mean 'crucified?' " Catherine said.

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be "burned with her shirt on" for "being a filthy-rich Republican."

Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election. And I thought such politicized logic was confined to American newsrooms. Yet Catherine refused to argue with her peers. She didn't want to jeopardize her experiment.

"I couldn't show people really what it was for. I really kind of wanted to laugh because they had no idea what I was doing," she said.

Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, "I really like your shirt."

That's when you know America is truly supportive of diversity of opinion, when children must whisper for fear of being ostracized, heckled and crucifixed.

The next day, in part 2 of The Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment, she wore another T-shirt, this one with "Obama Girl" written in blue. And an amazing thing happened.

Catherine wasn't very stupid anymore. She grew brains.

"People liked my shirt. They said things like my brain had come back, and I had put the right shirt on today," Catherine said.

Some students accused her of playing both sides.

"A lot of people liked it. But some people told me I was a flip-flopper," she said. "They said, 'You can't make up your mind. You can't wear a McCain shirt one day and an Obama shirt the next day.' "

But she sure did, and she turned her journal into a report for her history teacher, earning Catherine extra credit. We asked the teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney, whether it was ironic that Catherine would be subject to such intolerance from pro-Obama supporters in a community that prides itself on its liberal outlook.

"That's what we discussed," Cassin-Pountney said about the debate in the classroom when the experiment was revealed. "I said, here you are, promoting this person [Obama] that believes we are all equal and included, and look what you've done? The students were kind of like, 'Oh, yeah.' I think they got it."

Catherine never told us which candidate she would have voted for if she weren't an 8th grader. But she said she learned what it was like to be in the minority.

"Just being on the outside, how it felt, it was not fun at all," she said.

Don't ever feel as if you must conform, Catherine. Being on the outside isn't so bad. Trust me.

jskass@tribune.com

The View From There

2008-11-13T09:31:00.001-06:00

The New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor
Anti-Gay, Anti-Family

By DAN SAVAGE
Published: November 11, 2008

COUNTLESS Americans, gay and otherwise, are still mourning — and social conservatives are still celebrating — the approval last Tuesday of anti-gay-marriage amendments in Florida, Arizona and, most heartbreaking, California, where Proposition 8 stripped same-sex couples of their right to wed. Eighteen thousand same-sex couples were legally married in California this past summer and fall; their marriages are now in limbo.

But while Californians march and gay activists contemplate a national boycott of Utah — the Mormon Church largely bankrolled Proposition 8 — an even more ominous new law in Arkansas has drawn little notice.

That state's Proposed Initiative Act No. 1, approved by nearly 57 percent of voters last week, bans people who are "cohabitating outside a valid marriage" from serving as foster parents or adopting children. While the measure bans both gay and straight members of cohabitating couples as foster or adoptive parents, the Arkansas Family Council wrote it expressly to thwart "the gay agenda." Right now, there are 3,700 other children across Arkansas in state custody; 1,000 of them are available for adoption. The overwhelming majority of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned by their heterosexual parents.

Even before the law passed, the state estimated that it had only about a quarter of the foster parents it needed. Beginning on Jan. 1, a grandmother in Arkansas cohabitating with her opposite-sex partner because marrying might reduce their pension benefits is barred from taking in her own grandchild; a gay man living with his male partner cannot adopt his deceased sister's children.

Social conservatives are threatening to roll out Arkansas-style adoption bans in other states. And the timing couldn't be worse: in tough economic times, the numbers of abused and neglected children in need of foster care rises. But good times or bad, no movement that would turn away qualified parents and condemn children to a broken foster care system should be considered "pro-family."

Most ominous, once "pro-family" groups start arguing that gay couples are unfit to raise children we might adopt, how long before they argue that we're unfit to raise those we've already adopted? If lesbian couples are unfit to care for foster children, are they fit to care for their own biological children?

The loss in California last week was heartbreaking. But what may be coming next is terrifying.

Dan Savage is the editorial director of The Stranger, a Seattle newsweekly, and the author of "The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family."

In Flanders Fields

2008-11-11T15:58:00.001-06:00

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae

You May Have Wondered

2008-08-30T17:37:00.003-05:00

You may have wondered where Ive been lately, and I admit I have been a very bad blogger. Most recently I have been exploring my options on Facebook,

Facebook has some interesting ease-of-use functions that fit my daily life a bit better right now, and in the future I will plan on using this location for more long format essays and maybe some of my photography.

In brief, ever since I got robbed on my trip to Vegas, I have had a bunch of shit to deal with, mostly surrounding my job and the bullshit Chase put me through with my plundered accounts. I simply cant say enough enough bad things about Chase and the way they handeled my needs.

Job update. Still sucking

Bright spot? I have a second interview for a job that has my name written all over it. I meet with them this coming Wednesday and hope to have an answer soon. The job is not without its drawbacks, mainly it's location, however it puts mt feet back on the professional ladder and gets me out of retail hell.

More to follow, thanks for being so patient.

I hear its cool and wet in chicago

2008-05-11T16:03:00.001-05:00

I hear its cool and wet in chicago

So much for vegas....baby

2008-05-07T17:24:00.001-05:00

Yeah well the fun is over on day two. Wallett stolen at the pool, everything gone.

I get texts from my chase account whenever a transaction on my accounts are over twenty bucks. So i get out of the pool and i get a bleep from debit account. Seems stramge, since ive not used it here, and it has todays date on it.

Then i realize my pants are missing.

The went right from here to the MGM, and NewYork NewYork, plus someplace called the Zoom Hotel, over a thousand dollars in an hour.

Chase was very fast on closing all the accounts, and very professional, but SUCK doesnt even begin to cover it.

Now i have to start the process of rebuilding everything: insurance , voter, dental cards...everything.

Next of course is identity theft, so i have to pay to have everything monitored.

I may even have to get a police report to prove that it happened.

Thats Vegas baby....

Vegas Baby

2008-05-06T18:56:00.000-05:00

Buzz n Frasier vacation in the tackiest place on earth

Welcome to vegas

2008-05-06T14:27:00.000-05:00

cho

2008-04-26T20:12:00.000-05:00

were at the show playing "spot the straight people" its harder than it might sound!

Spring under glass in chicago

2008-04-20T15:06:00.000-05:00

Spring under glass in chicago

2008-03-02T17:59:00.000-06:00

John Hancock has a big weenie

I'm Fucking Jimmy Kimmel

2008-02-27T10:57:00.003-06:00

Late-Night TV Satires Become Online Hits

The New York Times
February 27, 2008

By EDWARD WYATT

LOS ANGELES — The worst-kept secret in Hollywood on Oscar night was whom Jimmy Kimmel was sleeping with.

Nevertheless, a satiric video in which Mr. Kimmel, the host of the ABC late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” talks enthusiastically — jokingly, we are led to believe — about his sexual relationship with Ben Affleck, has been a huge hit online since it was first shown on Sunday during Mr. Kimmel’s post-Oscar broadcast.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the four-minute video had been viewed more than two million times on YouTube. It has also been prominently displayed on the broadcast network’s home page, ABC.com.

The “relationship” has not been a secret since at least Feb. 15, when The New York Post reported that Mr. Kimmel was preparing a star-studded video, reminiscent of “We Are the World,” as a reply to a similar video presented on his show last month by the comedian Sarah Silverman.

Ms. Silverman, who is Mr. Kimmel’s longtime girlfriend, unveiled her video, in which she confesses that she has been sleeping with Matt Damon, on Mr. Kimmel’s fifth-anniversary show on Jan. 31. Iterations of that video have been viewed more than eight million times on YouTube.

The Matt Damon angle originated from a joke that was introduced more than three years ago by Mr. Kimmel as a throwaway line. One night, discouraged by what he described as a sub-par show with guests who “weren’t what you would call A-list celebrities,” he signed off by telling the audience that he was sorry that he had run out of time and that Matt Damon would have to come back on another night.

After Ms. Silverman revealed that she was hooking up with Mr. Damon — everywhere, it seemed, and all the time — Mr. Kimmel vowed to take his revenge. “You take something I love from me,” he vowed, “I’m gonna take something you love from you.” Most of the lyrics of Mr. Kimmel’s and Ms. Silverman’s songs are too graphic to be repeated here. One vulgar word describing the coital relations between, on the one bed, Ms. Silverman and Mr. Damon, and on the other, Mr. Kimmel and Mr. Affleck, was repeatedly bleeped out for the broadcast of each video.

Several scenes from the videos also required pixelation.

In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Mr. Kimmel said that the most difficult part of the project was arranging the schedules of the stars featured in his video — they included, in addition to Mr. Affleck, Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford, Cameron Diaz, Don Cheadle, Robin Williams, Josh Groban and Huey Lewis.

“Every once in a while Hollywood rallies itself for a worthy cause,” Mr. Kimmel said. “We saw that with the ‘We Are the World’ video, with ‘USA for Africa’ and after 9/11. This is just the next natural step in that progression.”

(A number of the stars had ABC ties, which probably eased some of the logistics. Those included Christina Applegate, star of “Samantha Who?”; Rebecca Romijn, of “Ugly Betty”; and Dominic Monaghan of “Lost”; in addition to Mr. Ford, who is the longtime partner of Calista Flockhart, star of “Brothers & Sisters.”)

The gaggle of celebrities was wrangled by Jill Leiderman, an executive producer of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” who also performed the not-insignificant task of explaining the premise of the enterprise to the various stars — who, while certainly regular viewers of Mr. Kimmel’s show, might have been at a Hollywood premiere or volunteering at a soup kitchen on the night Ms. Silverman’s video was first broadcast.

The music was written by Mr. Kimmel’s music director and bandleader, Cleto Escobedo III, Mr. Kimmel said. Also contributing to the song lyrics and the dramatic content were his brother, Jonathan Kimmel, who is a writer for “South Park,” as well as the writing staff of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Ms. Silverman has said, and Mr. Kimmel confirmed, that her song and video were written before the beginning of the writers’ strike because it was planned for broadcast on his show on Nov. 13, his 40th birthday. But planning for that broadcast was interrupted by the strike, so the video was instead shown on his fifth-anniversary show in January.

Mr. Kimmel said his video was recorded last Wednesday and Thursday. Members of the Writers Guild of America voted on Feb. 12 to end the strike.

While the video was edited for presentation on a television show that is shown after midnight in most markets, it — and its not-too-disguised premise — is now prominently featured on ABC’s Internet home page. An unsuspecting visitor to the site will be introduced to the video’s not-too-subtle premise automatically, because the site begins showing video clips without prompting once the home page is loaded.

The video also includes pictures of Ms. Silverman with vulgar insults scrawled across them — again, words that cannot be reprinted here and, presumably, would not appear on most Web sites affiliated with ABC’s corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company.

Karen Hobson, a spokeswoman for ABC’s digital division, said that any material previously vetted through the network’s standards and practices department is automatically approved for use on the Web site. She said the Web site did not differentiate, however, between content approved for viewing on television after midnight and that intended to be shown in prime time, because the average age of users of the ABC Web site is over 30. Other networks have wrestled with the same issues. Ms. Hobson noted that NBC.com last year posted an unedited version of a vulgar parody music video featuring Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg that, in edited form, appeared on “Saturday Night Live.”

Regarding ABC’s ties to Disney she said: “We’re not talking about Disney.com. This is a different brand.”

*WARNING*ADULT*CONTENT*

Gay-supporting bishop could split Anglicans

2008-02-26T20:37:00.000-06:00

Monday, 25 February

A Canadian woman bishop who has signalled support for blessing gay marriages is being confirmed as Christchurch's new Anglican bishop.

The move is likely to stir controversy among many Anglicans and there is still a chance that Victoria Matthews' appointment could be vetoed by the general synod, which incudes representatives from Polynesia.

Church sources said yesterday that Dr Matthews, a former bishop of Edmonton, was two-thirds of the way through the ratification process.

News of her election was leaked on the Internet on Friday. Church leaders refused to confirm the report yesterday but the Archbishop of Aotearoa, David Moxon, said it was "disappointing" someone had leaked the name of the candidate in what was supposed to be a top-secret process.

Dr Matthews' election will be controversial for some Anglicans, as her sex and her comments about gay marriage are likely to upset conservatives.

She has twice been in the running for primate of the Anglican Church in Canada, the highest post in the country, but had to withdraw in 2004 when she had breast cancer, and lost out in 2007.

In 2004 she chaired the Task Force on Alternate Episcopal Oversight, which looked at the question of same-sex marriage in Canada. She voted in favour of a resolution stating "the blessing of same-sex unions is not in conflict with the core doctrine of the Anglican Church", but voted against permitting those blessings.

Archdeacon of Selwyn-Tawera Mike Hawke said her approach seemed to be "a bob each way".

London's Guardian newspaper, which was the source of the leak, reported that Dr Matthews had beaten Englishman Colin Slee, dean of Southwark Cathedral, for the Christchurch post.

Archdeacon Hawke said looking overseas for a candidate was "typical of New Zealand culture".

"The person in front of our eyes is never good enough and we look for a great saviour from outside."

It was "not impossible" her election could be vetoed, he said. It still had to be approved by the wider church, including Polynesian members who were more traditional.

The Gay Agenda 2/24/08

2008-02-24T20:46:00.002-06:00

So Frasier and stopped in to Target ( "You Always Need Something At Target") to pick up some mouthwash, shaving cream and I forget what else. We managed to come home with all that...AND a 500 MB WesternDigital hard drive. Hey, it was n sale! And we need something to hold all the files as i transition us from my dying box and off Frasier's laptop to two new (old) IMB boxes.

Cut to the chase? it's slow on my current machine, and it took all night to my my 90GB of media files. But I feel much better knowing it's all backed up.

HOWEVER... The drive comes with some shit software that I installed by accident when trying to delete it from the drive (takes up space) and now i can't fucking GET IT OFF MY MACHINE!

There is NO NO NO NO uninstall file, it does not show up in the Control Panel and there is no .exe file in the directory to get this shit off my machine.

WARNING: Do not, under any circumstances install Memeo Autobackup. It starts up every time we boot up, and after searching the web, i cannot find a way to get the shit off my box. I can only hope that after this dog-crap expires, I can find a way to uninstall.

Oh, and just a little self-validation, I Googled "how to uninstall Memeo Autobackup" and found the following

Just a friendly consumer warning. I bought an external western digital hard drive to back up my data.

When I plugged it in, it gave me the option to install Memeo autobackup
software. Not until the software was installed and the backup started did it
mention that this was a 30-day trial of $29.95 backup software… nice.

24 hours later, my initial backup finally completed (!). My system has been running
slowly ever since, and the ‘autosync’ and ‘autobackup’ options don’t want to
stay out of startup. The windows uninstaller keeps crapping out. If you buy a
hard drive with this product on it, my advice is — STAY AWAY.

(this message brought to you by the letter “A,” for annoyed.

So, if anyone knows how to get this OFF my machine, please memo me here or send me a link

The Gay Agenda 2/22/08

2008-02-22T01:50:00.002-06:00

So Frasier made us watch the CNN Democratic debate from Texas tonight. After, of course, we watched the American Idol results show...

Can I just say, Obama is a black Jimmy Carter? Nice guy to be sure, high ideals, blah blah blah. And as much as I admire Carter out of office...his performance in office was ineffective at best. All that "outsider" and "I'm going to make things change" and "hope" crap just crumbled in the face of...reality?

And lets not forget, Jimmy Carter was and is a hell of a lot smarter than Obama. He was a nuclear engineering graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He actually had a verifiable voting record as a governor, and could to point to concrete accomplishments in his terms. Not just, you know, a book of pithy philosophy the would look good printed on a poster over a basket full of kittens. I'm just saying...

Can anyone name anything Obama has initiated, legislated and enacted that has actually worked? Just being present and voting for something doesn't mean you did it. Or as I like to say, just being present in the delivery room doesn't make you a mother.

I wanted Edwards.

The Gay Agenda 2/18/08

2008-02-18T22:57:00.008-06:00

Museum of Science and Industry to launch virtual tour of 1893 Columbian Exposition

"If you missed the 1893 Columbian Exposition the first time--and didn't most of
us?--you have another shot.

For four days starting Friday, the Museum of Science and Industry, which itself was built for that world's fair as the Palace of Fine Arts, is presenting a virtual simulation of the famous White City.

Viewers will be able to see the gleaming buildings as if they were
strolling in front of them along the fair's broad promenades or gliding past
them in electric boats or gondolas along the canals. Visitors once again
will be able to walk the Court of Honor. The buildings' ornate architectural
details are reproduced with almost photographic accuracy.

Adapted from flight simulation, the virtual tour has been created by the Urban
Simulation Team at the University of California- Los Angeles. The group recently
joined forces with the Israel Antiquities Authority to create a reconstruction
of the Herodian Temple Mount as it stood prior to its destruction in 70 A.D.

Viewers who want to take part in the exhibit must first pay for general
admission to the musuem. After paying for general admission, free, time-entry
tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis for the
exhibit in the museum's rotunda each day. Only same-day tickets will be
available."

Ok, so I fell for it. I had done a massive paper on the architectural impact of the fair for my Art History final in college and had always maintained a passing interest in the event, plus the museum, plus I actualy LIVE in Chicago so.... I bit

Having done nothing pretty much all weekend, I propelled us out the door at 830 to be parked and in line by 930 when the place opened. I was fearful that being Presiden'ts Day, the place would be mobbed with kids. And it was

So it's like $13 each to get in, $14 to park and then we dropped $23 on lunch (2 salads + 2 sodas + 2 pie = $23) and I'm thinking for this kinda cash, this better be good.

Sadly, sadly mistaken. I'm expecting some kind of VR experience and what i got was really really bad PaintShopPro. I cannot tell you how disappointed I am/was in the whole thing. Between the absolutly cheesy "banter" between the 'official historian" and the post-doctoral fellow running the show, and the crap graphics. it was like a Sim City version of the Today Show from Hell. There was just no "there" there.

The U505 exhibit, however, rocks. It's a stunning space, well curated and totaly engaging. Of ourse the only thing that takes away from the experience is the cheesy "get your picture taken with the sub" photo-floggers that harangue you in the middle of the exhibit, and the fact that they want to charge you an extra $5 just to walk through the thing (previously free)

The Colleen Moore doll house still pleases, it is after all a stunning toy, but examined with a critical eye, the Thorn Rooms at the Art Institute are much better. And they don't come with the breathless "once upon a time" narration that accompnies the exhibit. It is, at the end of the day, just a toy.

Between that, the screaming out of control kids and the stunning amount of exhibits that are "temporarly closed" (almost a dozen) I suggest Great America, at least they have fun rides and hot guys in wet tee-shirts.

We did manange to squeeze in come fun. The baby chicks are still there, the Zeypher still holds court in the lobby and the model trains are still the attraction that visitors of any age can appreciate.

Frasier and I had the most fun in the Agraculture zone on the main level. While he got caught up on home town gossip with a friend from Wisconsin, I managed to attempt to milk a fiberglass cow.

The Misery That is Macy's

2008-02-07T22:38:00.000-06:00

Macy's cutting 100 jobs here

January 12, 2008
FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

After disappointing holiday sales, Macy's Inc. says it will be eliminating 100 jobs in Chicago and ending most of its wine business and closing several food operations.

The layoffs take effect in March and affect about 100 in the Chicago area, 70 in Detroit and 100 in the Minneapolis region. The department-store operator closed food operations on Thursday at its stores in Bolingbrook, Oak Brook, Aurora and Vernon Hills. It plans to shut its in-store wine shops at all stores except the State Street flagship in Chicago.

Macy's also will cut 171 jobs in other parts of the northern Midwest.
(AP)

Macy's spokeswoman Andrea Schwartz says no sales positions will be eliminated in this wave of layoffs.

Macy's to eliminate Marshall Field's headquarters, consolidate regional offices

By Sandra M. Jones

Tribune staff reporter

February 6, 2008
Click here to find out more!

Macy's Inc. is shedding the former Marshall Field's headquarters in Minneapolis and cutting about 2,550 jobs in a reorganization that unwinds the regional structure it inherited when it bought May Department Stores Co. three years ago. The New York retailer estimated the moves will save it about $100 million a year starting in 2009.

Seven regional headquarters will be consolidated into four, and Macy's said it will set up smaller regional offices in Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Seattle that are charged with tailoring Macy's stores to local tastes, an effort it dubbed "My Macy's."

The moves come as Macy's on Wednesday cut its fourth-quarter earnings forecast in the wake of a 7.1 percent sales decline in January, a bigger drop than the company had forecast. Macy's push to create a national department store brand has been stymied more than a year as consumers have been slow to warm to converted Macy's stores. Macy's, like other retailers, now faces a slowing economy.

Macy's stock fell $1.16, or 4.6 percent, to $23.94 a share Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Chicago regional office will employ about 60 people and be responsible for stores in Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis.

Macy's Chairman and CEO Terry Lundgren said in an interview that he will "continue to invest" in the State Street flagship store even as Macy's North folds. Frank Guzzetta, 62, the Macy's North chairman, who had been focused on reviving the State Street store, will retire in the spring as the division is melded into Macy's East in New York.

A yet-to-be-named Chicago regional director of stores will be responsible for the State Street store, Lundgren said.

Some analysts questioned the effectiveness of the localization effort. But Lundgren said reacting quickly to regional tastes is key to strengthening sales.

"We'll ultimately be judged on our performance in each and every individual store," he said. "It's wonderful to have all these marketing opportunities with a national brand, but we have to be locally relevant."

Gimme Credit co-founder and bond analyst Carol Levenson noted in a report Wednesday, "These 'localization initiatives' sound to us an awful lot like the differentiated regional nameplates Macy's obliterated a year or so ago, but then that's why we don't get any work as corporate consultants."

Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Uta Werner applauded the streamlining but said "the jury is still out" on the localization plan. She says she would rather see Macy's shutter some of its more than 800 stores to adjust to the falling sales.

"I believe that reducing the number of divisions is a step in the right direction," said Werner. "Fewer divisions will streamline the buying process and working with vendors while reducing costs." The localization effort, however, could become "disruptive," take too long to show results and create inconsistent shopping experiences from store to store, she added.

Macy's North in Minneapolis, the former Field's division, will be merged into Macy's East in New York and about 950 jobs will be eliminated. Macy's Midwest in St. Louis, which includes the former Famous-Barr and L.S. Ayres stores, will be combined with Macy's South in Atlanta and renamed Macy's Central, resulting in 850 positions lost.

Macy's Northwest in Seattle, formerly Bon-Marche, will fold into Macy's West in San Francisco, eliminating 750 positions. Macy's Florida in Miami stays the same.

About 250 jobs will be added with the creation of the new, smaller regional offices. Macy's plans to take a one-time pretax charge of about $150 million in 2008 for the consolidation, including severance and outplacement for employees.

Amy Hanson, Macy's North vice chairman and director of stores, will remain in Minneapolis to supervise the transition and later will be reassigned to a senior position within the company.

Macy's acquired May in 2005 for $11 billion and converted the stores, including Field's, to Macy's last year.

----------

smjones@tribune.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

Share the road with bicycles -- or pay

2008-02-07T22:07:00.000-06:00

Mayor seeks fines of up to $500 for reckless drivers

February 7, 2008
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com

Reckless drivers who endanger bicycle riders would pay fines of $150 -- $500 if there's a bike crash -- under a crackdown proposed Wednesday by Chicago's No. 1 cyclist.

Mayor Daley, who once scraped the skin off his kneecap during a marathon bike ride in Michigan, has been there and done that.

Reckless drivers who endanger bicycle riders would pay fines of $150 -- $500 if there's a bike crash -- under a crackdown proposed Wednesday by Chicago's No. 1 cyclist.
(Suzanne Tennant/Sun-Times)

He has had drivers open car doors in his path. He has had cars turn left in front of him and had a car pass within three feet of his bike.

"When someone opens a door -- that's why you have to be very, very alert on a bike," Daley said.

"Yes, it's taken place. And [there were] a few choice words. Every biker does that -- salutes the driver in a Chicago way."

All three violations were targeted by the ordinance introduced by Daley at Wednesday's City Council meeting. It's designed to reduce the number of crashes involving bikes and motor vehicles. There were 6,000 such crashes in Chicago between 2001 and 2005, killing 30 cyclists.

The ordinance establishes a fine for double-parking in a marked lane that's supposed to be shared by bikes and vehicles. And it raises the fine for driving, standing and parking in a bicycle-only lane.

The city has more than 110 miles of designated bike lanes and 21 miles of shared lanes.

The View From Here

2008-02-04T22:29:00.000-06:00

Chicago's public transport off track

2008-01-08T02:57:00.000-06:00

File this under the "you know you are in real trouble when..." file

We started subscribing to magazines via hordes 0f unused airline miles shortly after we moved in in June. Since then it has been a glossy avalanche here at Grey Gardens, a veritable lush landfill of food, style, entertainment and lifestyle periodicals. Our mailbox is so gay it has it's own parade.

I started feeling a twinge of guilt every time we baled up GQ + Food & Wine + Entertainment Weekly + Wine Spectator + Men's Vogue + Interview + Men's Style + Advocate + Out and and and that I was moderately relieved when we found that we could recycle the glossy mags here in Chicago via the Blue Bin program.

So, now, rather then blow out the bottoms of our trash bags, now they just pile up next to the back door till some unsuspecting soul (Frasier or me) nicks them rounding the corner and is crushed under a pile of grinning Brittney's and Baracks

Be that as it may, I made a plea for something that took longer than a good crap to read in the can and we now get a few mags I'm not ashamed to say I read cover to cover: Smithsonian, Esquire and The Economist. (I'm still negotiating for Vanity Fair, though looks like we might actually have to spring for that one)

The Economist you say? Exactly how many ways are there to read a pie chart you say? Well Gentle Readers, it's the magazine that I tell folks is "smart writing for smart people." Its not got a rod up it's ass like the US newsweeklies and it's got enough sass to make you crack up when they finger the offending parties in the slickest of ways. It covers the world and talks to you in a way that doesn't make feel stupid for not having taken business, but smart for having wanted to.

You can read the on-line version here

Anyway, I was thumbing through the issue that arrived today when low and behold, in the same day that President-for-now Bush was in town trying to breath life into the No Child Left Behind carcas, The Economist spread our transport misery like a sleazy old hooker across 2 glossy pages. God I love this place

Jan 3rd 2008 | CHICAGO

From The Economist print edition

Most commuters are miserable, but Chicago's may be the most beleaguered

APIt's hell on the El

THE city's average commute is not quite America's longest (that honour goes to New York), but in one respect Chicago is unrivalled: the bitterness and passion of the argument surrounding its public-transport system.

If the Illinois state legislature does not act by January 20th, more than half of bus routes in the city will be eliminated, some 2,400 transport workers will be sacked and fares will be raised. Suburban rail and bus lines face cuts as well. Commuters will be forced to drive on already crowded roads or walk to a distant bus or train—this in the depths of winter, with pavements icy and kerbs surrounded by lakes of frigid slush. As America grapples with traffic, high fuel prices and climate change, public transport is often suggested as an antidote. But, as Chicago proves all too well, innovation in public services can easily be stymied by old-fashioned bickering.

There is hope that Illinois's legislators will be more productive in 2008 than they were last year, but this is not saying much. Last March the state's auditor published a bleak report about greater Chicago's transport network. Over the previous five years operating costs had risen faster than revenues—6.5% each year compared with 2.2%—and pensions for the city's transport workers were only 34% funded as of 2006. Lawmakers spent most of 2007 bickering over how to raise more money, in vain.

Now commuters face severe reductions in service. They were already threatened with two such “doomsdays” last autumn, but each time the governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, used a quick infusion of cash to let the argument drag on. It is unclear whether he will be able to do so again.

Through all this, there has been a ready solution. Julie Hamos, a state representative, proposed a bill that would raise Chicago's property transfer tax and increase the sales tax in the metropolitan region's six counties. Her bill also includes reforms to the pension system and the Regional Transportation Authority, resolving some of the problems that helped create the mess in the first place.

But this sensible bill has been stalled by the usual in-fighting. The governor opposes a sales-tax increase and favours diverting the sales tax on gasoline from the general fund. (Congestion pricing, raising the petrol tax itself or getting the private sector involved are not even part of the debate.) And in the Illinois state legislature, many senators and representatives from rural and suburban districts have refused to help unless they get something in return. Politicians are now fighting over how to expand gambling to pay for capital projects, a brawl that seems likely to drag on for some time.

Ineptitude on this scale comes at a heavy price. Hacking away at the public-transport system, America's second-biggest, will not help Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Olympics. And failing to invest in transport could be costing the region $2 billion a year, argues Chicago Metropolis 2020, a civic group. At a hearing in November, parents described how service cuts would force their children to walk to school through dangerous areas. Others explained how hard it would be to get to work. If Illinois's politicians were trying to demonstrate how not to tackle a serious issue, they could hardly do better

Previously....

Transport in Chicago

Gridlock on the lake

Mar 29th 2007 | CHICAGO
From The Economist print edition

By neglecting its transport system, Chicago is gambling with its future

AS A thriving midwestern city, Chicago is still the beating heart of much of America's industry. But its arteries—both road and rail—are increasingly clogged. A report released earlier this month by Illinois's auditor, William Holland, highlighted some chronic glitches in the network of buses and commuter trains. The region also needs a better approach to highways and rail freight.

It is hard, of course, to co-ordinate commuter transport between an urban system and one that serves surrounding counties with a different tax base. Chicago's Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), which covers the six counties of the metropolitan area, is supposed to promote better planning and links among the city's system and a pair of others that run suburban train and bus networks. But it has clearly come up short so far. The RTA, Mr Holland's audit concluded, needs to wield a firmer hand, over budgets and in general.

No matter how the RTA allocates the pie, however, the current pot of money seems woefully inadequate. Operating costs have grown three times as fast as revenues over the past five years. Last month the RTA released a five-year “strategic plan” (otherwise known as a request for money) that called for, among other things, an extra $400m in annual operating funds and $10 billion in capital spending over the next five years. That will be a tough sell in the state legislature.

Freight traffic is arguably an even bigger problem. In this, Chicago is unique. Six of the country's seven biggest-earning railways converge there, and the city is still the hub for a staggering amount of trans-continental commerce. Managing logistics and supply chains for distant companies, as well as physically moving goods around at warehouses and inter-modal hubs, generates lots of jobs for the area. Chicago's ability to handle all this traffic is being badly stretched, however. Ann Drake, the head of DSC Logistics, says that west-east freight traffic continues to grow rapidly, as ever more goods from Asia try to make their way to the east coast.

Ms Drake's worry—and that of many others—is that Chicago's congestion will eventually cause many shipments to be rerouted around it, a process that could eat away its advantages. “We do not want to become another St Louis,” she says, gloomily invoking the city that lost its midwestern primacy to Chicago after failing to invest in infrastructure.

Helpfully, many business and civic leaders are moving transport problems up their list of priorities. The Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC), which presses for a co-ordinated policy for the region's big issues, has done a good job of channelling their frustrations into useful ideas. But there is something odd about the way that many of Chicago's leaders talk about these problems. They invariably try to link their suggestions to grand or abstract ideas, such as being a “global city” or winning a bid to host the Olympics. The simpler need is to get goods and people moving.

The awful state of Chicago's transport comes home most plainly to drivers sitting stationary in their cars. The public debate over making drivers pay to use the roads has been as shallow in Chicago as in the rest of America. The argument tends to revolve around whether it makes more sense to use tolls and private enterprise to pay for better roads, or instead to keep charging taxpayers for a system that just limps along. By contrast, not much is said about the role that prices might play in altering the behaviour of both companies and commuters. MarySue Barrett, president of the MPC, says that her outfit hopes to make road pricing a bigger part of that debate.

Hostility towards road pricing might be understandable in other parts of America. But one of Chicago's proudest feats was the creation of financial futures markets, which prompted far-flung firms and farmers to adjust their behaviour to the slightest twitch in the price of pork futures or Canadian dollars. Surely the system would work for Chicago commuters as well.

Rhombus? Rhombus? Rhombus

2007-12-05T15:05:00.000-06:00

I have to admit, Frasier now has me totally addicted to America's Most Smartest Model. This is one of the funnies clips from the show. Check it out

My Wap Links

2007-11-17T12:02:00.000-06:00

The only way to get my WAP links into my other phone is to post them here and browse, rather than have to tap tap tap them into the itty bitty keypad. Feel free to enjoy them, however this page will be deleted once I have completed the process

Google wap

Accuweather Mobile

Ad Week Mobile

Advertising Age Mobile

VH1 Mobile

Amtrak

AOL MoviePhone

BBC News Mobile

Billboard Mobile

Bravo Mobile

BuzzWords

Careerbuilder Mobile

CBS News Mobile

Chicago Reader Mobile

Chicago Sun Times Mobile

Chicago Tribune Mobile

CNet News Mobile

CNN Mobile

Colt Studio X Rated Blog

Crowded House Mobile Tones

EBay Mobile

EBoogie Mobile Resources

ESPN Mobile

Esquire Mobile

Windows Smart Phone

Opera MiniBowser for your Mobile

Google Maps

Google Mobile Services

House of Blues Mobile

Hollywood Reporter Mobile

International herald Tribune Mobile

International herald Tribune WAP

John Rutherfordblog.com

KooIM. com

LATimes Mobile

ABC7Chicago Mobile

Manhunt Mobile

Meebo

Metro for Mobile Phones

Mobile Traveler

Mobile Seat Guru

MSNBC Web

MSNBC Mobile

My T-Mobile

Nightcharm.com

NBC5Chicago Mobile

NYDaily News Mobile

NYPost Mobile

Nextbus.com

Nifty.org

NOAA Mobile

Eboogie Mobile

Reuters Mobile

SF Chronicle Mobile

Sun Sentinel Mobile

Surreal Networks Mobile

Streamcenter Mobile

NYTimes Mobile

The Panopticon.com

WSJ Web

TMZ Mobile

Tom in Paris

Towelroad.com

Mobile Traffic

Variety Mobile

VH1 Mobile

WAP Resources

WAP Catalogue

WAP Review

WAP Swap

Washington MTA web

T-Mobile UK WAP resources

Wikipedia WAP

Windows Live Mobile

WLWT Cincinnati Mobile

WSJ Mobile

Yahoo! Mobile

CNet Mobile

BuzzWords

Another reason to hate math.

My ESL student in the news

I am the Oyster..koo koo kachoo

Flash Mob at the Ohio Union 5/3/2010 - The Ohio State University

SAS alumni in the news...

2 Maywood cops charged with misconduct

Fw: NACA Alert - Your file has NOT been NACA qualified (NACA Id: 496010)

Christmas backlash

Cops kick in doors, save residents from fire

Flashbacks

Boy Scouts Tell Gay Leader to Take a Hike

Florida appeals court strikes down gay adoption ban

“It’s wonderful to be booed at Harvard.”

The Disease: Fatal. The Treatment: Mockery

By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

Afghan Couple Stoned to Death on Taliban Orders

A Tour de Fromage through Wisconsin's cheese country

internet privacy options & tools

Google searches poisoned by spyware.

all better now, sorry about the spam

8 Gay Men +1 Who Should Have Had More PRIDE

Coffee is for Closers...at Goldman Sachs

Rolling Freak Show in Chicago Cab

'Uh, Jughead, I need to tell you something...'

Obama Widens Medical Rights for Same-Sex Partners...about damn time

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG New York Times 04/16/2010

B of A executive steals from himself

Re: Russ Klettke commented on Andrew Brown's link...

Is Avatar Really King Of The Box Office?

Fwd: Joseph Nestradt sent you a message on Facebook...

Democratic Primary Front Runner Giannoulias Hammered As Family Bank Faces Imminant Collapse

Floor collapses at Weight Watchers meeting

Marriage isnt just about a working uterus

Historian testifies in Prop. 8 trial

Crazy Assed Illinois Republicans Jump into the Grave and Pull it in on Top of Themselves

In Senate Race, the Illinois G.O.P. Is Digging Its Own Hole

Uganda criticized over anti-gay proposals

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The Freaks Come Out During The Day Too

Mickey Mouse Kicks Adam Lambert's Freaky Ass

Chicago cabbies risk fines over credit cards

Don't Drink The Apple Flavored Kool Aid!

Mortar Board Memories

Cornfest 2009, Morris IL

Condo of the damned

Is Gay the New Black? Not according to LZ Granderson on CNN

More Flack from NACA members

Whatever happened with our NACA.com mortgage application ?

Chicago has highest gas prices in U.S.

WSJ says Mag Mile less Mag in economic downturn

Chicago Cop Recounts Fire Resuce

The G in GMail

Macy's to cut 7,000 positions and slash dividend to 5 cents, targeting savings of $400M

Macy's announces 7,000 job cuts

Home from work, jan 15, 2009

Front Steps, Jan, 2009

Life Imitates Art

U.S. Senate rejects Burris' credentials

30 Rock Out takes

Rick Warren is an insulting choice

Pet Diaries

Bettie Page dies at 85; pinup queen played a key role in the sexual revolution

Issuers Increasing Internal Collections Efforts

'Ralphies,' leg lamp fans keep film thriving

Episcopal Diocese of L.A. officially condones the blessing of gay unions

Conservatives Expected to Split Episcopal Church

Smiley face killers may be stalking college men

Body identified as missing Northwestern student

A very wise man once told me...

Life in the Turn Lane

Study shows how spammers cash in

"Just being on the outside..."

The View From There

In Flanders Fields

You May Have Wondered

I hear its cool and wet in chicago

So much for vegas....baby

Vegas Baby

Welcome to vegas

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
New York Times 04/16/2010