What to do about this financial situation?

The Dow suffered its worst one-day point loss ever on Monday after the House of Representatives failed to pass a $700 billion financial bailout plan aimed at rescuing Wall Street from the most serious credit crisis since the Great Depression. The dramatic day on Wall Street also saw Citigroup take over Wachovia's banking operations in a government-assisted deal, and the second-largest percentage drop in crude oil since April 2003.

1 - If you own stocks, mutual funds or bonds, sell them and take what you can, buy gold, foreign currency or just plain buy the things you will need the next couple years.
2 - If your kids need shoes, find a sale TODAY and buy two pairs (anything that is on sale, get two).
3 - Don't let the drop in oil prices fool you, gas is not going down, what has happened is speculators are backing off and that is not a good sign. Save as much gas as you can, stop the unnecessary driving folks!
4 - After doing the above, invest in God's Kingdom! It's the only thing that will give a GURANTEED return!

George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi?

Are GWB and San Fran Gram Nan in "bed" together?
I am SICK at this whole "bail out" business.
This is the United States of America and we are a free enterprise system.
Yes this is the biggest financial story since the Great Depression, but saddling the taxpayers with $700billion in debt is UNFORGIVABLE. Any Republican that votes for this bailout better beware come election time.

Stupid people bought homes, cars, boats, rv's etc., with money they didn't have and I am supposed to bail them out?
Greedy jerk bank managers knowingly made BAD loans and then took their money and ran, and I am supposed to bail them out?
Financial institutes, caving into the "politically correct" movement in America made loans to minorities who should not have been given those loans out of fear of being "racist" in their lending practices.
Now it all comes crashing down and I am supposed to bail it out?
NO!
I am sorry if you are losing your home, you probably should have thought it out better instead of taking advantage of the market and biting off more than you could chew.
Mr. Bank, sorry you made really STUPID loans, so, close down and go on to something else.
This is not the average tax paying AMERICAN'S FAULT!
Currently according to MSNBC polls of incoming emails and calls, the legislator's are hearing 100-1 that Americans don't want this bailout!
They better listen!
Anything that brings Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and George W. Bush together, can't be a good thing.
GWB is a traitor to Conservatives everywhere. I am ashamed!

Obama be in my bathroom!

Yes friends, Barack Hussein Obama, in his ever widening attempt to get more votes, showed up in MY BATHROOM last night!!

What's next? Sarah Palin?............well that would be different...

OK, Who's Kid Is This Anyway????

I submit to you below evidence that the POST blood is thicker than that blood with which our family mixes.
Yes that fine chiseled facial good looks runs rampant in the
male side of the POST family.
You want proof? I got PROOF!

Photo #1 Joshua O'Meara Photo#2 Billy Post




















As you can plainly see, although separated by 47 years, these two young men are POSTS.
Look closely at the steely eyes, the firm chins, the stout cheeks, and those finely muscled hands.
I ask the reader, is there any doubt that these two fine young men are cut from the same cloth?

ps: this is my nephew Joshua, my youngest sister's son. The lad on the right is an upstanding member of the Salem-Keizer community.

OHHH My Aching Back!!

HELP!!

My back has always been a little bit tender but last night as I put my right leg through my pants, I heard a "pop" in my back and now I can't tie my own shoes. Sitting in a chair is misery, I am standing like an 80 year old man and I shuffle around the radio station this morning like one of those patients in "One Flew Over the Cuckoos's Nest"!

Anyone know a good Chiropractor?

I had a bad experience with one years ago. The guy was into all that "holistic healing" crap and was one of those chiropractors who believes you should get "adjusted" forever like once a week.

I don't want that!!

I just want to be fixed RIGHT NOW!!!

Feel free to leave your suggestions as I can hardly walk. Thank you kindly for your patronage.

Barack Obama inflates his resume!

It has been noted by Charles Krauthammer and others that very few people have stepped forward to vouch for Barack Obama.

Indeed, there would seem to be an especially conspicuous absence of witnesses to the years after graduated from Columbia and before he moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer.

Well, it turns out that one of his co-workers has in fact written about Mr. Obama during those days. And while he is an admitted fan of Obama’s, he claims that he has inflated his resume considerably.

Others who worked with Obama at Business International have subsequently chimed in.

First, Mr. Obama’s version as presented in from Dreams From My Father, pp 55-6:

CHAPTER SEVEN

"… And so, in the months leading up to graduation, I wrote to every civil rights organization I could think of, to any black elected official in the country with a progressive agenda, to neighborhood councils and tenant rights groups. When no one wrote back, I wasn’t discouraged. I decided to find more conventional work for a year, to pay off my student loans and maybe even save a little bit. I would need the money later, I told myself. Organizers didn’t make any money; their poverty was proof of their integrity.

Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company’s secretarial pool. They treated me like a son, those black ladies; they told me how they expected me to run the company one day…

Nevertheless, as the months passed, I felt the idea of becoming an organizer slipping away from me. The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary, money in the bank. Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors-see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand-and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve.

Then one day, as I sat down at my computer to write an article on interest-rate swaps, something unexpected happened. Auma called. I had never met this half sister; we had written only intermittently…
[A] few months after Auma called, I turned in my resignation at the consulting firm and began looking in earnest for an organizing job…"

We are supposed to believe that “something happened” and the rest is history.

Here, however, is a somewhat different perspective on Obama’s halcyon days as a “spy behind enemy lines,” from a site called Analyze This:

Barack Obama Embellishes His Resume
July 9th, 2005
Dan Armstrong

Don’t get me wrong - I’m a big fan of Barack Obama, the Illinois freshman senator and hot young Democratic Party star. But after reading his autobiography, I have to say that Barack engages in some serious exaggeration when he describes a job that he held in the mid-1980s.

I know because I sat down the hall from him, in the same department, and worked closely with his boss. I can’t say I was particularly close to Barack - he was reserved and distant towards all of his co-workers - but I was probably as close to him as anyone. I certainly know what he did there, and it bears only a loose resemblance to what he wrote in his book.
Here’s Barack’s account:

"Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company’s secretarial pool."

First, it wasn’t a consulting house; it was a small company that published newsletters on international business. Like most newsletter publishers, it was a bit of a sweatshop. I’m sure we all wished that we were high-priced consultants to multinational corporations. But we also enjoyed coming in at ten, wearing jeans to work, flirting with our co-workers, partying when we stayed late, and bonding over the low salaries and heavy workload.

Barack worked on one of the company’s reference publications. Each month customers got a new set of pages on business conditions in a particular country, punched to fit into a three-ring binder. Barack’s job was to get copy from the country correspondents and edit it so that it fit into a standard outline. There was probably some research involved as well, since correspondents usually don’t send exactly what you ask for, and you can’t always decipher their copy. But essentially the job was copyediting.

It’s also not true that Barack was the only black man in the company. He was the only black professional man. Fred was an African-American who worked in the mailroom with his son. My boss and I used to join them on Friday afternoons to drink beer behind the stacks of office supplies. That’s not the kind of thing that Barack would do. Like I said, he was somewhat aloof.

"… as the months passed, I felt the idea of becoming an organizer slipping away from me. The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary; money in the bank. Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors—see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand—and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve."

If Barack was promoted, his new job responsibilities were more of the same - rewriting other people’s copy. As far as I know, he always had a small office, and the idea that he had a secretary is laughable. Only the company president had a secretary. Barack never left the office, never wore a tie, and had neither reason nor opportunity to interview Japanese financiers or German bond traders.

"Then one day, as I sat down at my computer to write an article on interest-rate swaps, something unexpected happened…. I had never met this half sister; we had written only intermittently. …[several pages on his suffering half-sister] …a few months after Auma called, I turned in my resignation at the consulting firm and began looking in earnest for an organizing job."

What Barack means here is that he got copy from a correspondent who didn’t understand interest rate swaps, and he was trying to make sense out of it.

All of Barack’s embellishment serves a larger narrative purpose: to retell the story of the Christ’s temptation. The young, idealistic, would-be community organizer gets a nice suit, joins a consulting house, starts hanging out with investment bankers, and barely escapes moving into the big mansion with the white folks. Luckily, an angel calls, awakens his conscience, and helps him choose instead to fight for the people.

Like I said, I’m a fan. His famous keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention moved me to tears. The Democrats - not to mention America - need a mixed-race spokesperson who can connect to both urban blacks and rural whites, who has the credibility to challenge the status quo on issues ranging from misogynistic rap to unfair school funding.

And yet I’m disappointed. Barack’s story may be true, but many of the facts are not. His larger narrative purpose requires him to embellish his role. I don’t buy it. Just as I can’t be inspired by Steve Jobs now that I know how dishonest he is, I can’t listen uncritically to Barack Obama now that I know he’s willing to bend the facts to his purpose.

Once, when I applied for a marketing job at a big accounting firm, my then-supervisor called HR to say that I had exaggerated something on my resume. I didn’t agree, but I also didn’t get the job. But when Barack Obama invents facts in a book ranked No. 8 on the NY Times nonfiction list, it not only fails to be noticed but it helps elevate him into the national political pantheon.

As Mr. Armstrong suggests, if Obama would exaggerate about such things as this, what else has he exaggerated or made up out of whole cloth?

The comments to this post are also quite intriguing:
Comment from Bill Millar
Time: October 30, 2007, 8:17 am

The thing is, I worked next to Barack nearly every day he was at Business International–on many days angling for possession of the best Wang word processing terminal.

I had MANY discussions with Barack.

I can tell you this: even though I was an assistant editor (big doings at this “consulting firm”) and he was, well, he was doing something there, he certainly treated me like something less than an equal.
Funny thing… A journalism/political science major… Writing about finance… Pretending in his book to be an expert on interest rate swaps.
I remember trying to explain the nuance of these instruments to him in the cramped three Wang terminal space we called the bull pen. In contrast to his his liberal arts background, I had a degree in finance and Wall Street experience, so I knew what I was talking about.
But rather than learn from a City College kid, the Ivy Leaguer just sort of rolled his eyes. Condescendingly. I’ll never forget it. God forbid he leave the impression that a mere editor like myself knew more about something than did Barack.
He was like that…
But know what? I can forgive him for being immature–which is probably all that was at the time. Don’t we all believe we know everything at just around that age?
That said…he was a lot older when he wrote his book. Mature enough by this time to realize that his account of his time at Business International could be described as embellishment…

By the way, there should be no doubt as to Mr. Armstrong’s bona fides on this subject. Even the New York Times has

cited him as an authority for an article on this period of Mr. Obama’s storied life.

Oregon: Blue or Red State?

The question has been posed to me, "isn't Oregon a Blue state?"
My answer was and is, "no". Only 3 or 4 counties are, but the vast majority of Oregon is staunch Republican.
Unfortunately most of those counties are rural, but they count just the same. So, outside of Portland and Eugene, the ENTIRE FREAKING STATE is Republican.
Yes, I know, the POPULATION base is in those counties, but look at the House and Senate. All led by Republicans, so, are we red or blue? You decide.
This has always been a rural, conservative, logging, fishing, hunting, outdoors state, only since the late 1960's when the hippies from San Francisco stumbled north to Eugene and Portland did our politics change and that is shown out by the county by county vote. The old hippies, don't live in the rural areas which is of course very funny and ironic. They come here to "get away from it all and get one with nature" then move to the two biggest cities in the state! Goofs. Same thing happening to Montana, so there is nowhere to escape to now.

Salem-Keizer Volcanoes Win Again!!

There I am with Manager Tom Treblehorn of the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes. Once again we have won the Western Division of the Northwest League and head on to the Championship series starting Thursday.

No other team has won back to back to back Division championships nor League championships.

This could be an outstanding story. Keep watching.

As Public Address Announcer for all of these years, it is exciting to be a part of the team in my small way.

I have found the "kids" (the players) to be a great bunch this year as they are every year. Since this is Single A professional baseball, these guys are young and hungry to get to "The Show" and they are very kind and approachable people. Bring your kids to the ballpark this weekend and let them meet really nice gentlemen.

Go Volcano's!

Ducks 1 - Politics 0 GO DUCKS!!

Ok, so I am getting bored with the politics for the moment as it is FOOTBALL SEASON BABY!!
To start off, The University of Oregon DUCKS blow out the doggies of the University of Washington to get Pac-10 play underway on Saturday and there above is a shot from our seats.
44-10 was not what I predicted, I had thought the UW defense was better than that and had ON THE AIR predicted 35-7 Ducks, so what can I say?

Now, this Friday night the SA Crusaders play Valley Catholic and start their new season under new head coach Robby Robinson and his "veer offense". It should be exciting. Kai is the starting noseguard and will play center on offense and is the back up Quarterback, although coach also uses him at running back and wide receiver. His best friend Skyler is one of the two rotating quarterbacks that coach uses.
His other very good friend Ryan is starting at linebacker. So this is a ton of fun!

Then on Saturday it's Duck football again as the Utah State Aggies visit the House of Pain, Autzen Stadium. Poor little aggies....

Finally, the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE gets underway on Thursday night with the full schedule on Sunday.
So, how can one be TOO interested in politics when there is football and baseball (God's chosen sport) still going on with the Dodgers (God's chosen team) still fighting for a pennant?
I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR!!!