endlesschatter

Before I wonder if the answer to all our problems is with the Government, I have to ask… did the bailout actually do anything? I mean (and this is only ½ rhetorical), if the bailout didn’t get passed would the wallstreet numbers have been worse? Instead, the points have dropped and it seems all the big bucks executives had a grand party on the taxpayers tab because of it.
CNNMoney.com Market Report – Oct. 9, 2008

Dow tumbles 7%
Dow falls below 8,600 for first time since 2003 – on the 1-year anniversary of its all-time high.

By Alexandra Twin, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Last Updated: October 9, 2008: 6:58 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Markets tanked Thursday – with the Dow falling nearly 700 points during the session – as panicked investors dumped stocks across the board.

Bank lending remained tight as nervous institutions continued to hoard cash. Treasury prices fell, raising their corresponding yields. The dollar gained versus the euro and the yen. Oil, gas and gold prices fell.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 679 points, or 7.3%, closing at its lowest point since May 21, 2003. It was the Dow’s third biggest one-day point-loss ever.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) index lost 7.6% and closed at its lowest point since April 28, 2003. The Nasdaq composite (COMP) lost 5.5% and closed at its lowest point since June 30, 2003.

A key measure of investor fear hit an all-time high: The CBOE Volatility (VIX) index, or the VIX, hit nearly 64.

Over the last seven sessions, the Dow has lost 2,271 points, or 20.1%. Since hitting an all-time high of 14,164.53 one year ago today, the Dow has lost 39.4%.

“We are in a free fall right now and fundamentals have been thrown out the window,” said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors.

Stocks have tumbled despite a series of efforts on the part of the government to unfreeze the credit markets and get money flowing through the system again.

So for the tens of millions of people that don’t dabble in the stock market they have to pay for those that do…? A quick analogy;
I go to a casino and place 100 bucks on black… it hits… I double my money, it’s mine I can walk out the door. I took a chance and could have lost it, but I didn’t… I won. So I leave my (now) 200 dollars on black and watch the wheel go round and round… if it doesn’t hit black this time, I want a bailout and not to lose my money… in fact, I want those not in the casino to pay for it if I don’t win. How about the lady working 2 jobs to make ends meet… yeah, she can make sure I don’t lose my money…

On Thursday, the Treasury said it was looking to buy stakes in some banks as part of the $700 billion bank bailout law enacted last week. The main focus of the bailout remains buying bad assets from banks.

The Fed and Treasury have done many things right, but the markets realize that these programs won’t have an impact on the market until six to nine months out, Orlando said.

“[Third quarter] earnings will still be poor, [third-quarter] GDP will be a disaster,” he said. “Investors are trying to price in the depth of the recession now.”

One year ago today, the S&P 500 hit an all-time high of 1565.15. As of Thursday’s close, it was down 41.9%.

The Nasdaq has never come close to its record of 5,048.62 hit on March 10, 2000, at the end of the tech bubble. But after hitting a six-year high of 2,859.12 last Halloween, the Nasdaq had slipped 42.5%, as of Thursday’s close.

Stocks had slumped throughout the year, but the selling accelerated in September following a series of bank failures and mergers.

“The Lehman bankruptcy was really the failure that triggered this waterfall event we’ve been going through,” said John Merrill, chief investment officer at Tanglewood Wealth Management.

So socialism has come to the US. For years and years (decades actually) the men in black thought it would be Castro who would have pushed us into thinking of the Government being the holder of the leash… that or Russia and the whole “cold war” issue… I won’t even bring up RED China since they own a bunch of the US already. No instead were going to the socialist way by our own Government already in power.

I wonder how many pieces of silver they took…

October 10th, 2008 | Tags: Government and Politics, politics, Rants | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Well after pouting for a month I’ve finally decided to start up a new website. My last site on this domain, crashed and burned terribly. Literally hundreds of posts and comments down the drain after the backup system failed to work on a new installation of this software.

September 23rd, 2008 | Tags: idiots, Rants | Category: Open | Leave a comment

I find it pretty hard to believe that the government who tells it’s people it is here to protect them would go out of it’s way to do things it knows is wrong.

This waterboarding issue is just one of these things that is stretching the way the rest of the world looks at the U.S. as being evil or thinks itself as self-righteous. If waterboarding is ok, is it fine for our police force to use the technique for it’s integration of suspects? I mean our government wouldn’t be doing things that the rest of us can do would it?

Ashcroft defends waterboarding before House panel – CNN.com

Waterboarding is a technique designed to simulate drowning. The agency has acknowledged using it on terror suspects. Some critics regard it as torture; others say it is a harsh interrogation technique, and proponents say it is a useful tool in the war on terror.

Ashcroft, who stated his opposition to torture, said the Justice Department has determined that waterboarding — as defined and described by the CIA — doesn’t constitute torture.

“I believe a report of waterboarding would be serious, but I do not believe it would define torture,” Ashcroft said, responding to questions from Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California.

Let’s get the image of this non-torture correct. The person depicted here (to the right) isn’t being tortured. They are not struggling or hoping the person thats trying to drown then are professionals.

He added, “the Department of Justice has on a consistent basis over the last half-dozen years or so, over and over again in its evaluations, come to the conclusion that under the law in existence during my time as attorney general, waterboarding did not constitute torture.”

Waters asked Ashcroft whether such techniques would be regarded as “totally unacceptable and even criminal” if they were used on American soldiers.

“Well, my subscription to these memos, and my belief that the law provides the basis for these memos persisted even in the presence of my son serving two tours of duty overseas in the Gulf area as a member of our armed forces,” Ashcroft said.

Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, asked Ashcroft how many times waterboarding had been performed. Ashcroft said that it’s his “understanding it has been done three times” as part of an “interrogation process.” He said he thinks the subjects of the interrogations “would be labeled as high-valued detainees.”

The House of Representatives failed to muster the two-thirds majority it needed this year to override President Bush’s veto of a bill that would have banned certain CIA interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.

The White House applauded the vote, saying an override “would have diminished the intelligence community’s ability to protect our nation.”

The bill was an effort to curtail the CIA’s ability to use harsh interrogation techniques that the military and other law enforcement agencies ban. It would have restricted U.S. interrogators to techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual.

The White House said the restriction “would have eliminated the legal alternative procedures in place in the CIA program to question the world’s most dangerous and violent terrorists.”

July 19th, 2008 | Tags: idiots, politics, Rants, stupid people | Category: Featured, Government and Politics | Leave a comment

To me this is pretty crazy. It sounds like this was all done without the public legal system getting involved and the “church” taking care of it… and the people involved already dead…. why? If they were found guilty before they died they wouldn’t go to heaven?

Denver Archdiocese settles priest abuse cases | Reuters

DENVER (Reuters) – The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver will pay $5.5 million to settle 16 lawsuits filed by victims of sexual abuse by priests, both sides said on Tuesday.

“I’ve expressed an apology on behalf of myself, our clergy, and the whole Catholic community,” Archbishop Charles Chaput said in a statement announcing the settlement.

The cases involved three now-deceased priests who worked in the archdiocese between 1954 and 1981. Most of the cases involved the Rev. Harold White, who was shuffled around to various parishes despite complaints about him going back to 1960.

“The settlement … is an acknowledgment that a grave injustice was committed by representatives of the Archdiocese of Denver,” said Jeffrey Herman, the attorney for three of White’s victims.

The U.S. Catholic Church has been roiled by claims of sexual abuse by priests in the past several years. The scandal erupted in Boston in 2002 and has spread to nearly every U.S. diocese, triggering suits and settlements.

In 2004, a study commissioned by the U.S. bishops revealed that 10,667 people had accused priests of sexual misconduct between 1950 and 2002.

In July 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid $660 million to settle claims with some 500 sex-abuse victims, the largest settlement of its kind.

July 10th, 2008 | Tags: politics, Rants, stupid people | Category: Open | Leave a comment

I haven’t had a good rant for a while, at least not a really good rant… okay. I had one about 2 weeks ago, but hey… that was TWO weeks, and in a way, this is just a continuation of the same rant. Since I never wrote about this, I give an overview of how this pimple came to a head.

I work in a area that allows some people to sit at computers and work or sit at long desks and shuffle paperwork. There are also positions that stand and run large commercial scanners. The area I work is basically a combination of all of these positions, I shuffle papers and scan various things into files using a small scanner and work a computer. All the while I work I am required to stand, basically in a stationary position for hours and hours at a time. Now if this was an occasional thing, the standing, it wouldn’t be too bad, but day in and day out, it does get tedious. Did I mention that the business incorporated computer stands to ensure the workers stand? When asked about the why we had to stand for the whole time I was told by the area “lead” that it was the policy.
Did I mention that there are stools purchased for these work areas? I digress.

For a while now I’ve been basically in charge in the work area. The “lead” went to a different department and I in all intents and purposes stepped in to fill his shoes and put out fires.

So I told the people that are working with me basically, if they are strictly working the computers… like the upstairs people are working their computers, they can sit on their stools, when they finish doing computer operations go back to standing. I also went on to tell them if they needed to work paperwork in preparation for scanning, and this work was going to perceivably take 30 or 40 minutes, they could also sit on the corners of their stools… yeah I know, I’m a slave driver. So what happens?

The evening supervisor comes over one night and tells me that “my” people need to be standing, at no time should they be sitting down and at no time should they be using the stools. Now I’m not the disrespectful type, but I did tell this person that I had told them when they were doing the same job as those in the computer department was doing I let them do what the computer department did. I in turn was told I needed to talk to the work coordinator the next day and ensure I understood the department policy, I ensured this person that as soon as I came in the next day I surely would , I then informed the people in the workspace they needed to stand the rest of the evening until I found out what was going on.

The next day I come in and prior to even clocking in I find an email informing me to see the plant manager. With no if ands or buts I am told that the people in the department I work in will stand… they will not sit… they will not squat… they will not lean, until the policy changes, the department I work in is a standing department.

It seems that the evening supervisor sent out emails after talking to me the previous night, they didn’t give me the opportunity to go to the work site coordinator and inquire about the policy and handle the situation at the lowest level, but immediately pointed fingers in my direction as an instigator out to cause trouble in the company by allowing 4 hard working people to rest their feet from hauling 40 and 50 pound boxes back and forth from pallets to computer carts.

A couple of days later I had the opportunity to ask the work site coordinator about the standing policy and was told that they were the one that had instituted the policy from the start, they felt if the people sat down, they couldn’t work as well when needed to move boxes. So I asked “how about when they are strictly doing computer operations…?” and was informed that he had someone looking into it. Encouraged I thought maybe I could get some relief for myself and worker bees

Well I and everybody in the company that works a computer did get an answer to the standing question. It sounded comically official in its attempt to sound justified. Basically it stated that my department would stand… the big commercial scanner people had to stand so why should people working computers be different, as to justify that we needed to stand neither the company safety officer and OSHA have any laws or regulations requiring the company to allow us to sit.

I mean its the pot calling the kettle black. A intelligent persons simple retort would be that there are no OSHA regulations stating you need to sit either… how I would gladly volunteer one of my off days to remove all the computer operators little desks and chairs… they can stand. How about the work site coordinators table and chair… he can stand. Lets be honest here… I was told that he did stand for a couple of days…. once, but at that time he didn’t stand all the time, he sat during his short tenure in the department when he wanted to, then made the policy of having to stand when he left the department and didn’t have to follow its hardships.

What a lame slap in the face… “you have to stand because there is no regulations in OSHA to say you need to sit”, instead of working with the hard working people in the department and making their working environment hospitable , you go and force feed a line of reasoning that has nothing to do with the question at hand. And the upper hierarchy wonders why the department often has workers requesting transfer.

I know, I know… it really seems if I’m going off about a silly little thing, but nightly now I come home feeling as a waitress does, dying to get off my feet. And anyway… thats what a rant is all about isn’t it?

February 7th, 2008 | Tags: idiots, Rants, stupid people | Category: Rants | Leave a comment

Controlling the media and the ability to stop information (whether good or bad) from reaching people to make a decision about something that may possibly save their life, just doesn’t seem right to me.

The Blotter: Walgreens Wants Gag Order in Prescription Error Wrongful Death Suit

Walgreens Wants Gag Order in Prescription Error Wrongful Death Suit

August 06, 2007 12:18 PM

Dana Hughes Reports:

Walgreenswants_mn Walgreens has asked a state court judge to place a gag order on the family and attorney representing a mother of three who died following a misfilled prescription at a Florida Walgreens.

Beth Hippely suffered a massive stroke after being given the wrong dosage of a powerful blood thinning medication which crippled her and forced her to stop her needed chemotherapy. She died earlier this year.

Citing an interview given by the Hippelys’ attorney, Karen Terry, in an ABC News “20/20″ story investigating pharmaceutical errors last spring, Walgreens claims that Terry’s actions “had the effect of generating pre-trial publicity prejudicing Walgreens, which has a constitutional right to a non-tainted jury pool.” The company is “requesting an order prohibiting the parties and their attorneys from engaging in pre-trial publicity prior to jury selection, and during the trial of this case.”

Maybe everyone should be made not to talk about bad things so people won’t be warned about them…?

August 6th, 2007 | Tags: idiots, Rants | Category: Open | Leave a comment

This is one of the of news articles that is in the headlines right now, but what gets me is some of the information that is really suspect…

Do they have the suspect van? | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA

Do they have the suspect van?
Case of missing girl heats up

SEAN ROBINSON; The News Tribune
Published: July 11th, 2007 06:22 AM

A sex offender whose home and van were searched Sunday and Monday hasn’t been eliminated as a suspect in the July Fourth disappearance of 12-year-old Zina Linnik, Tacoma police said Tuesday.

“We can’t say that he’s the one,” said police spokesman Mark Fulghum. “But we still haven’t been able to eliminate him from any involvement.”

Fulghum wouldn’t say whether the man was connected to a tip that led police to the Tiger Mountain area in Issaquah on Tuesday.

The search of the Parkland home where the 42-year-old man was staying yielded “girl’s undergarments,” among other items, according to search warrant records.

The article goes on to say the person changed out the van plates from what the police were looking for and the person is held for immigration problems…. IMMIGRATION PROBLEMS? Lets look at this from the perspective of a community with problems from within it’s own boundaries. I don’t mean to say there is something wrong with the actual community per say, but, like the case of the drunk driver killing the girls in Georgia, whom was a person who shouldn’t of been in our country, if this person also falls into that category and the powers that be in the community knew about it, then that is a community problem.

July 11th, 2007 | Tags: idiots, police, Rants | Category: Featured, Open | Comments (1)

Why was this person out running around in the first place?
MyFox Tampa Bay | Sex offender arrested after police find teen in his bed

Sex offender arrested after police find teen in his bed
Last Edited: Monday, 02 Jul 2007, 4:49 PM EDT
Created: Monday, 02 Jul 2007, 12:19 PM EDT
Raymond Gomez

TAMPA – When Officer Felicia Pecora knocked on 42-year-old Raymond Gomez’ door Sunday night – conducting a routine patrol check – she immediately became suspicious. Pecora says it was Gomez’ look that gave him away.

“When he answered the door, he kind of hid behind it, and his eyes were just big as saucers,” Pecora recalled. “He just didn’t expect to see us. He looked like when people are naked and you catch them.”

This looser should have been locked up with the key tossed away instead he’s out corrupting other young people

July 3rd, 2007 | Tags: police, Rants, stupid people | Category: Rants | Leave a comment

After all the stupid rulings you here from the court system, one finally comes out as it should…
FOXNews.com – Judge Rules in Favor of Dry Cleaner in $54 Million Lawsuit Over Lost Pants – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

WASHINGTON — A judge ruled Monday in favor of a dry cleaner that was sued for $54 million over a missing pair of pants.

The owners of Custom Cleaners did not violate the city’s consumer protection law by failing to live up to Roy L. Pearson’s expectations of the “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign once displayed in the store window, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled.

“A reasonable consumer would not interpret ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer’s unreasonable demands” or to agree to demands that the merchant would have reasonable grounds for disputing, the judge wrote.

Too many times it seems the courts rule in favor of those in power or those that will make an unpleasant situation go away with as little “trouble” for the Judge ruling. It matters not that the people attempting to defend themselves do or don’t have money, what matters is that justice finally looked from under the blindfold to do something proper.

June 25th, 2007 | Tags: idiots, Rants, stupid people | Category: Featured, Open | Leave a comment