China contaminating our children. Again.

The cadmium jewelry for kids. Available at WalMart.
Don't buy Chinese & don't go to WalMart.
It's that simple, to be patriotic.
And safe.

Bad dog!! Greyhound bus lines=highway robbers

Today I discovered it'll cost ya to give someone a bus ticket. And not just the price of the fare.

There will be an extra fee for your generosity, if you charge someone else's ticket on your credit card.

The Gift Ticket Fee.* If the traveler is NOT the card holder, the card holder gets to pay that fee too, on top of the fare.

My round trip = 250 miles each way.

Total cost $58, advance purchase.

Except for that Gift Fee. That'll be ANOTHER $18, please.

My witty friend Lynn says it's highway robbery. Whoa! Yes, exactly where the stick-up happens.

People who take the bus are largely poor, rural, or otherwise disadvantaged. Perhaps they have no alternative but travel by bus, no other way to get from here to there.

Bad dog, Greyhound! For sticking it to your captive customers.

*From the link to the fine-print details:

A non-refundable gift ticket fee is applied to each Will Call transaction where the credit card holder purchasing tickets is not traveling on that trip.

$ for war, $ for health . . . high dollars

WAR.
We broke the 4-minute million. As in dollars. I clocked it twice.
About every 3:56 minutes we waste $1,000,000 on war.
At 4pm CDT today we'd squandered
$908,653,700,000 in 8 years of war
Stop the killing, start the healing!

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
HEALTH.
$484,000,000,000 in estimated benefit payments for 2009 Medicare
. (from the July-Aug 2009 issue, AARP bulletin, pg 9)

Can't afford both now.
Shall we keep on killing people 8 time zones away?
Or shall we take care of the elders who took care of us, right here?

2 stories about Mexicans and drugs

One is stupid. One is horrific.

1. El estúpido. This belongs in the dictionary to illustrate "racial profiling", starring los pendejos del Servicio Forestal.

Ya know how the Forest Service wants us to be their eyes and ears and nose out in the forest? It's the Smokey Bear* thing, "Only you can prevent forest fires." Good deal. My family has a house in a national forest, and I always appreciate watchfulness. But not this kind.

US Forest Service warning linking tortillas and Tecate to armed pot growers called profiling

STEVEN K. PAULSON Associated Press Writer

August 28, 2009 | 3:17 p.m.

DENVER (AP) — A federal warning to beware of campers in national forests who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music because they could be armed marijuana growers is racial profiling, an advocate for Hispanic rights said Friday. . . .

. . . The U.S. Forest Service quickly retracted the warning. . .

. . . Michael Skinner, a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado, said warning signs of possible drug trafficking include "tortilla packaging, beer cans, Spam, Tuna, Tecate beer cans," and campers who play Spanish music. He said the warning includes people speaking Spanish. . . . [and] this may or may not represent criminal activity, but are indicators, and he urged any campers who encounter long-term campers meeting the profile to "hike out quickly" and call police.

OK. So now Smokey says, "Only you can become a brownshirt." And indulge yourself in racist paranoia and rat out your brown brothers (can I get an 'amen' for the brown-brown irony there?), the ones that you find in the forest.

You know, the ones saying, "Guey, más espam, por favor."

Gimme a break! Sure, the megazillion-dollar-deadly-serious-way-too-successful drug cartels are going to stash a couple campesinos on a Colorado mountain.
With a case of Spam, some cervezas and a copy of Jerry Garcia's wife's book.

Oh yeah, and a boom box to play their reggaeton music.
Real loud.

(note: click on the book,
then click 'Quick American Archives',
see a big list of books of related topics.
Far out, man.)

Excuse me, but I think you can probably grow pot anywhere from Vail to Veracruz, most of which is mountains in Mexico, and the Forest Service wants us to stake out Colorado mountains for them? Huh?

Nope, those drug cartels are way way too organized and industrial for that stuff. They are fatally serious agribusiness with a real lucrative crop.

To catch the people hiding in the forest growing dope, they should be profiling guys named Mountainsong Peace Herb, 50-something, long long grey beard, silly grin, white skin, red eyes. Listening to "Strawberry Fields" on the boombox.
Hey, you could follow him back from Burning Man!
Whoa. It's happening tonight!!!
Y'all should follow everyone home from Burning Man.

2. El horrible. This one from yesterday, on the border where I grew up.
This is how the drug cartels work, on a massive scale. Right out in the open, in your face, gun you down. Import weed by the ton. Et cetera.

Juárez in shock: Attack considered city's worst multiple shooting

By Stephanie Sanchez and Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times

Posted: 09/04/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT

The brutality of a massacre at Juárez drug rehabilitation center in which 18 people were killed shocked a city already plagued with record-breaking violence.

A motive for the attack was under investigation, but it appeared to be linked to feuding drug trafficking groups.

The sad part:

Chihuahua state public safety secretary Victor Valencia said such drug centers are sometimes fronts for criminal gangs and one narcotics expert said the slayings are unlikely [to] make much of a difference in the overall balance of power in the drug war. [emphasis added]

They lined up 19 "men ranging in age from 17 to 51" against a wall and shot them with AK-47s. It's cartel-on-cartel violence. La Linea vs La Familia. Juarez vs Sinaloa.
Some victims may have been Aztecas gang members. They coincidentally run drug-treatment centers. (Did you know we have gang members in the Army? Oh, that's another story.)

Go ahead, read this story of violence in Juarez. Learn that Sinaloa Familia bring religion into their drug gang cult.
Click here. Look at the raw video footage from the carnage. No audio, only the street sounds of Juarez at night as gurneys load slowly into ambulances.

Death, big and bloody.
It's what's happening on the supply side of our demand for drugs.
Think about it, particularly if you use the kind we can't grow domestically. The high-dollar kind that people in Mexico are fighting a war to supply you with.
Check into the Betty Ford Center.
You probably won't get gunned down there.
-------------------------------------------------

*footnote re Smokey:
He was a real bear cub found after a fire in the national forest where my family has a home. Marketing made him a legend and made babyboomers aware of fire safety in the wilderness. Smokey is buried at his museum 165 miles north of Juarez in Capitan NM.

Texas PUC stooges stick it to us

From left, head robber-baron henchman Barry T. Smitherman, Chairman Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC), with commissioners Donna L. Nelson and Kenneth W. Anderson, Jr.
Lawyer, lawyer, lawyer. Governor crony? Token woman? Mars inhabitant?

Go ahead, click the links, read their bios.

At left, the more likeable Stooges,
although Donna up there seems like a nice woman, from her bio.

Our three Texas stooges are turning our electricity provider Oncor into thugs by rewarding bad behavior.
Nutshell situation:

• Electric meters mandated for updating. Good idea.
• Oncor rushes out and buys some meters. Wrong move.
• PUC sets standards for new "smart" meters. Big ooops.
• Oncor whines about bad business decision. Suck it up, y'all.
• PUC says poor baby wasted money on meters, you need a rate boost. Huh?

When every every thing is trending down, like oh...
natural gas prices,
consumption of goods,
consumption of services,
employment,
natural gas prices, did I mention those?
I meant the natural gas they use to generate electricity.
That natural gas. It's cheaper now.

Yeah, with prices slashed everywhere, yesterday our PUC stooges gave our electric provider a raise!
A raise of $115,000,000 a year.
Was that because it costs less, LESS to make electricity now? So they should charge MORE?
Well yes, that, plus they wasted all that money on the wrong new meters.
Who made them king?

It should have been the other way around. The real worker-bees, the PUC staff, said rates should be cut. So did 148 cities full of ratepayers. Their lawyer called for a cutback of $175,000,000. State Rep Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, agreed.

Me, too. When you are a giga-mega-million-dollar utility company you do not get to have buyer's remorse. You do get to fire the buyer, maybe even the whole procurement department. And you do get to suck it up and go on. Take your lumps. Forgo obscene outrageous profits for a few quarters. A few years.

Because it's for ELEVEN years you want to tack a few cents on our bills each month to pay for YOUR mistake.
Sorry. I have all I can handle paying for my own mistakes.

PS. Dear Oncor, If I have a new, wrong meter that needs replacement, let me have it when you remove it. I bet I can sell it somewhere like China or Arkansas and get some of my money back. Do ya think y'all could do the same?

Get real.

conflating business models

The pricey convenience-store chain, 7-Eleven, gave a big waaaaaaah today. They whined about the cost of doing business, namely the fee they pay Visa & MasterCard when they make a charge-card sale.

And they want you to sign their petition about those "unfair" fees so they can take it to Congress and show how we want them to fix it for poor lil ol' 7-Eleven. Who do they think they are? MoveOn.org?


Yeah, I'm gonna sign their petition right after I drop in at MoveOn, gas up the car and give 'em 5 bucks for a gallon of milk. Hello, 7-Eleven? You are a CONVENIENCE STORE. You sell overpriced crap and make your price point because you are SELLING CONVENIENCE.

Here, let them explain it themselves. (from the "about us" page of their website)

. . . Of the more than 5,700 stores the company operates and franchises in the United States, some 4,200 are franchised. . . .*

A World-Class Organization

At 7-Eleven Our Mission is: To consistently serve the changing needs of customers for their convenience.

Our Vision is: To be the best retailer of convenience.

Those fees aren't "fair" or "unfair", they simply are what they are. Somewhere between say 2% and 5% depending on whom you negotiate with to handle your merchant account.

Those people have to pay their people, come on, dontcha get it 7-Eleven? Convenience ain't cheap. Credit cards are convenient. Uh, what was your vision again?

Go talk to your bean counters, let them 'splain it to you Lucy that it's called a selling expense. That's how I booked it when I owned an import wholesale company.

Really I am not making this up. Go check the AP story (byline Candice Choi). Or even their document with FAQs about the petition.

Oh you gotta read the last one in which they ask themselves if this means they'd lower prices and they can't even say "yes" or "no".

Well, we know the answer is "no". Pity they didn't have the strength or the honesty to say so.

Notes:
*that's 1500 stores outta 5700, or 26% owned by corporate
D&B estimates 7-Eleven sales at $15,471,100,000 (oh my, that's about the cost of an Iraq-month)
Hoover's says the average convenience store grosses $2,000,000 in sales annually
7-Eleven is whining about an average of $28,000 in fees annually
Hmm. That's 1.25% of sales. Do you feel their pain yet?

For another credit card story, check Fred's blog: Your interest rates will increase and your credit limits will decline if you are not shopping like you used to shop with them.... in which he advises they even look at where you shop to see if you might be on hard times.

all dead

Reading the Bernie Madoff story on yahoo just now. Also watched the ABC video of folks who "lost" their never-gotten gains. For Madoff, the cash he kept would be considered ill-gotten gains?

The other folks are suffering because their greed didn't work out right. Madoff will suffer in the fed pen for his greed.

Then I did a little Madoff math to entertain myself. I love a puzzle like that--there's no way that everybody lost everything. Anybody that cashed out before the end did just fine. Madoff lived the high life. But there's nothing he could have bought to account for the money he took in.

$171,000,000,000

being all gone now. Some of that $171 billion must be laying around liquid somewhere.

...but that's not what this post is about.

So I scrolled back up, and noticed the top yahoo searches right now:

billy mays .. michael jackson .. neverland ranch .. gale storm

They're all dead. Even the ranch. Bernie might as well be; he'll die in prison.

Rest in peace, y'all.

And the rest of you all should get a little bit of life while you can. Look up something that's still alive. Do something.