Random reflections and contemplative thoughts, spiritual insights and humorous anecdotes, fickle film reviews and rambling music musings, occasional (okay, more than occasional) societal and political rants, and a whole lot more... all from the point of view of a humble, constitutional, common sense, conservative, Catholic, work-in-progress kinda guy who never gives up hope, because to be without hope is to become selfish.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Bombs Away... (Weekend @ Times Square)
Friday, April 30, 2010
GDP drops, and The One sat on Health Care info...
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Greece, Portugal, Spain... the U.S.?
Friday, April 23, 2010
Uh oh!!!... (hehehe)
The blacked-out portions of a subpoena request filed by lawyers for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- which were revealed through a simple computer trick -- suggest President Obama may have played a role in finding his own Senate replacement.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Tax Day Revolt 2.0 - Tea Party Time!!!
FORE!!!.......
In March alone, there were 1,919 foreclosure filings in the county, a 71 percent spike from February and an almost 14 percent increase from a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac. Last month’s filings included 769 default notices, 871 auction sale notices and 279 bank repossessions.
Foreclosures are going to be a problem the rest of the year, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
“We’re climbing out of a basement of a very, very significant downturn,” Kyser said. “We are still losing jobs.”
Experts are mixed on whether the foreclosure fiasco is coming to an end. Some predict another big wave during the summer, when a slew of adjustable rate mortgages are due to reset."
It continues:
The state [of California] accounted for 23 percent of the nation’s total foreclosure activity in the first quarter — more than 216,000 homeowners received foreclosure notices.
Areas hardest hit by foreclosures include Riverside, San Bernardino, San Joaquin and Kern counties.
Among states, Nevada continued to post the nation’s highest foreclosure rate, followed by Arizona and Florida.
UPDATE #2: Okay, maybe not so much good news for potential first-time homebuyers:
A quaint Camarillo three-bedroom house priced at $310,000 sold recently after fetching 11 offers. The winning bid came from an investor who offered $10,000 below asking price. The bank selling the home rejected several solid offers, including one that was $45,000 more than the asking price, with 20 percent down.
The catch? The investor had cash, and the bank wanted a quick close.
Traditional homebuyers are finding it hard to compete as banks try to minimize challenges by going for cash offers, said Kay Wilson-Bolton, a broker for Century 21 Buena Vista.
UPDATE #3: More bad news for the "sand states" here:
Cities in the "Sand States" of Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada, where overbuilding was rampant, are also in trouble, claiming nine of the top 10 spots in our list of cities in free fall. In Las Vegas, Riverside, Calif., and Phoenix, median home prices have fallen 50%, 44% and 37% from their respective peaks. Jobs are vanishing. Though country-wide, employers added 162,00 jobs last month, Riverside gained 13% fewer jobs in February 2010 (the latest numbers available by metro) than it did the same month three years earlier. Tampa, Fla., saw a 10% drop, and Los Angeles added 9% fewer jobs over the same time period.
These cities are also slow to absorb their glut of unsold foreclosed homes, keeping recovery at bay.
"These were highly speculative housing markets," says Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a Manhattan-based real estate appraisal firm. "In the markets that have unloaded a lot of foreclosed housing stock there's still a lot more coming."...
... "In California, so many jobs were concentrated in construction," says Michael Fratantoni, vice president of research at the Mortgage Bankers Association, the professional association for real estate financiers. "Jobs building single family homes wound up not being sustainable, and there were a lot of job losses."
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
URGENT PRAYERS AGAIN, PLEASE!!!
Oops!... HAHAHAHA!!!
Thursday, April 08, 2010
One Day, Two Day, Red Face, Blue Face...
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Monday, April 05, 2010
Obama Edits Jesus Christ Out of Easter Message...
President Obama literally edited Christ out of his "holiday greeting" today when he excerpted a sermon given by a military chaplain on Iwo Jima on Easter Sunday 1945.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Urgent prayers needed...
Monday, March 22, 2010
Welcome Socialized Medicine, Double-Dip Recession, and Tax-Payer Funded Abortions...
March Madness Run Amok...
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Thursday, March 04, 2010
A Spending Limit Amendment?...
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Reid & Pelosi sitting in a tree... and the branch is cracking...
"...Voter unhappiness with Congress has reached the highest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports as 71% now say the legislature is doing a poor job.
That’s up ten points from the previous high of 61% reached a month ago.
Only 10% of voters say Congress is doing a good or excellent job..."
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Iraq... what needed to be said...
"I am not naive. I understand that there are individuals who opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning and I believe their passion, although misguided at times, is rooted in a deep desire for peace. What always baffled me was the reaction they had to pro-victory veterans when we came home. As if we were some robotic arm of the Bush White House. It was foreign for them to understand why winning in Iraq was so important.
Our friends died in this cause. There is no honor in their death unless we complete the mission they died fighting.
Everyone is exposed to the death of someone close to them at least one time in their lives. Cancer, accidents, sometimes it is sudden or violent. Rarely do we see it. But when we do our lives are affected forever because of it. We live in a culture where there must be a reason for everything that goes wrong. Obama is responsible for job loss. Bush ruined the housing market. The tires that blew out on my car that I was driving was a manufacturing error and not due to the fact that I was driving on the sidewalk.
Someone is responsible for everything that goes wrong in America. It makes us feel better to know it wasn’t our fault.
The war in Iraq was no different. While many scurried to blame Donald Rumsfeld, General Franks or President Bush for losing the war in Iraq, they bet against the American fighting men and women to turn the tide of the war. “The mission” in Iraq was evil...
I don’t begrudge these people. They simply will never get it. They are the type of people you need to protect in a society. They are innocent and naive.
It is the job of the warrior to hide them under the bed and tell them it will be okay, before we run off to combat the threat.
The ones that hold my contempt are those who, even today, know of the sacrifice made, the incredible progress gained and still will not acknowledge what was won on the ground in Iraq. They cheapen the sacrifice of how it was earned..."
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Sacre Bleu!!! (or maybe that should be "Sacre Rouge"?)
"French wine-makers and dealers were convicted Wednesday of selling millions of bottles of fake Pinot Noir to the US firm E&J Gallo in one of the biggest scams ever to rattle the world of wine.
A court handed out suspended jail terms and hefty fines to 12 people for selling 18 million bottles (135,334 hectolitres) of wine they said was Pinot Noir but which was in fact made from far cheaper grape varieties.
The convicted included executives from wine estates, cooperatives, a broker, wine merchant Ducasse and the conglomerate Sieur d'Arques."
Thursday, February 11, 2010
2/11/10
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
SnowJobbed (aka, "Why I no longer live in Philly")...
Monday, February 08, 2010
Post #800... What Might Happen on Feb 11, 2010?
Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iran is set to deliver a "punch" that will stun world powers during this week's 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution, AFP reported.
"The Iranian nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman, February 11, in a way that will leave them stunned," Khamenei, who is also Iran's commander-in-chief, told a gathering of air force personnel according to AFP.
The country's top cleric was marking the occasion when Iran's air force gave its support to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a key event which led to the toppling of the U.S.-backed shah on February 11, 1979.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Mahony Balony to Change Soon, Too???
Pope Benedict XVI will soon appoint a coadjutor archbishop of Los Angeles, according to an American Catholic blogger. Writing on the Catholic Vote Action blog, and citing “reliable authority,” Thomas Peters says that Cardinal Roger Mahony has approved the coadjutor, and an announcement is imminent. The coadjutor would succeed Cardinal Mahony when he retires.
Cardinal Mahony has enjoyed a remarkably long tenure as Archbishop of Los Angeles, having taken that post in 1985. However he is still well short of the normative retirement age-- he will not turn 75 until February 2011—and although bishops are obliged to submit their resignations at that age, the Pope frequently delays the appointment of a successor.
However, Cardinal Mahony, who has faced controversy frequently in the nation’s most populous archdiocese—particularly over his handling of sex-abuse complaints—has indicated that he neither expects nor wants to extend his tenure.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Buyer's Remorse Redux... I told you so 14 months ago
I placed a comment on a RWN post asking when people will start realizing they might have made a mistake in electing The Obamessiah:Buyers Remorse will begin to kick in after about 6 months, with it hitting full effect one year into his administration. Just like the Clintons, he's going to try to ram a bunch of socialist policies down our throats early, and people will balk (just like they did in 1994).
A Case of Buyer's Remorse
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
HOPE AND CHANGE!!!
Friday, January 01, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
War??? What war???
Thursday, December 24, 2009
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Monday, November 30, 2009
ClimateGate...
Not-So-Black Friday and Oiled Again...
The gap between what drivers are paying for gasoline compared with a year ago is widening and figures to get worse between now and the end of the year. Prices at the pump were $2.629 a gallon on Monday, 80.4 cents more a gallon than a year ago, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Services. That is about $40 more a month for a typical motorist.
The government releases its survey on retail prices late Monday. Gasoline prices bottomed near $1.61 during the last few days of 2008 as the recession took hold, demand for fuel crumbled and the stock markets tumbled. Consumers now are paying about $1 billion a day for gasoline, about $300 million more a day for gasoline than they did a year ago.
And in December, for the first time in about 10 years, oil prices are expected to be twice what they were a year ago, says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for OPIS. Crude prices have been trading between $75 and $82 a barrel for the past month or so. Prices hit $33.87 a barrel on Dec. 19.
The rapid rise in prices is worse for consumers this time, however. Before prices doubled in early 2000, a barrel of crude cost about $10.
More consumers went shopping over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, yet spent less than last year as they hunted for bargains on toys and electronics, according to the National Retail Federation.
Spending at stores and on Web sites from Nov. 26 to Nov. 29 rose 0.5% to an estimated $41.2 billion from $41 billion a year earlier, the Washington-based trade group said Nov. 29, citing a survey conducted by polling firm BIGresearch. The higher turnout and lower average spending were in line with expectations, the NRF said. The group is sticking to a forecast for a 1% drop in spending this holiday season.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Dang, that tree is full of dropping ACORNs...
Friday, November 20, 2009
Ft. Hood & KSM... so, what about it?
More Nuts Fallin' Outta That Tree, I See...
What's That Chill I Feel?...
Friday, November 06, 2009
Wine Blogs...
Hoodwinked...
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Clunk... Clunk... and Clunk again...
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sounding His Barbaric YAWP...
On the big screen, the leader of theDead Poets Society at an all-boys prep school was an inspirational teacher played by Robin Williams. In real life, it's a balding amateur poet who drives around in his "Poemobile," visiting and documenting the graves of dead poets and calling attention to their works.
Walter Skold, founder of the Dead Poets Society of America, just finished a three-month road trip in which he visited the graves of 150 poets in 23 states. Skold boasts that he set a literary land speed record of 1.66 gpd (graves per day) over the course of his 15,000-mile journey...
"It's not really a morbid project but rather a way to honor our literary forebearers and to historically resurrect their works," Skold said...
Skold, 49, of Freeport, founded Dead Poets Society of America a year ago, leaving his job as a public school technology teacher to pursue his passions of poetry and photography. For his trip, he bought a used cargo van with a rack for cameras and supplies, shelves for books and a desk that, in a pinch, doubles as a bed.
Over the course of his 90-day journey, Skold visited the gravesites of giants of the poetry world including Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as well as lesser-known poets like Dudley Randall, whose Broadside Press published many leading African-American writers.
He's making a film documentary called "Finding Frost: Digging Up America's Dead Poets." Next year, he hopes to scout out America's dead poets buried in Europe...
"So many of these individual poets have such interesting stories and such interesting lives that I really feel it's a shame that they've been lost to our literary imagination or our literary history," he said. "I'm trying to bring back people's works and lives who have value and who have been forgotten for one reason or another."
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Random links a-comin'...
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Friday, October 09, 2009
Prizeless!!!
The best part is that the votes were in by February 1st which means that Obama was in office less than two weeks when the Peace Prize committee voted... Essentially, the only thing President Obama did before the vote was taken was he reversed the Mexico City Policy to allow the funding to international abortion providers. Does funding the death of babies from other countries merit a peace prize?
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
The Cross of Honor is bestowed upon Mother Angelica...
Thursday, October 01, 2009
"Let the sunshine in..." Part II
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Ten for '10
- A taxpayer bill of rights
- End taxpayer funded abortions
- Secure and defend the border
- Support a strong dollar
- Empower American businesses
- Defend America
- End Statism
- End generational theft
- Restore justice
- Make America energy independent



