Young entrepeneur

Occasionally when you accidentally click on one of your saved favorites and a page loads you have one of those articles in front of you that makes you just scream WTF????

Well, just so you get the same experience, Click Here and read the article from The Associated Press as it appears in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, pretending you accidentally clicked on one of your saved favorites then ask yourself the following questions:

• Was this kid trying to promote enough business to get a new Escalade?
• Is he smart enough to NOT buy the new Lexus?
• WFT where the parents?
• WFT where the parents?
• WFT where the parents? Oh yeah, probably out looking at new Escalades.

-SWB

PS – After reading that article, anyone still have issues with required classes before you are allowed to procreate???

BTW – I’m thinking with what was stamped on the bags, either mommy or daddy has a job selling loaded used cars.

Yep, you guessed it …  TWO clueless trophies for the parents of this kid.

WHO declares Swine Flu pandemic

… and will probably damage the economy further with the panic is will create.

Now, the main excuse of WHO is to increase the production of treatments available, increase funds, and kick governments into high gear to contain the virus.  The are declaring it as “unstoppable” ….. along with saying “oh, it’s just of moderate danger”.

OK … When people think of something being called a “global pandemic”, they totally ignore the part of the WHO stating “it’s just of moderate danger”.  People will freak, closing schools, camps, businesses, etc hurting the economy. SWB thinks that Dr. Margaret Chan needs to use brain before declaring a global pandemic possibly hurting the economy when it’s just getting ready to recover.  SWB thinks Chan is thinking more about Chan staying in the news than helping people deal with the virus.

Anyways …. Click Here for the Associated Press article by Maria Cheng and Frank Jordans as it appears on Yahoo!

-SWB

PS – Somehow I can see a Steven King movie coming out of this …

School Doesn’t Want Blacks

Don’t you just love it when you put on some oldies orsee a vintage car ion the summer and it transports you back to a simpler time in the 50s and 60s that just makes you feel happy?

Then there are claims like this (Click Here to read the article by The Associated Press as appearing on WPXI.com) that happen around the summer time transporting you back to a bitter time in the 50s and 60s … and make you say “What the heck were they thinking???”. It also let’s you know racism is still around.   The deal is that Kiski School let go it’s basketball coach because a black basketball team was not “within it’s mission”.  Slightly embarrassing for the coach, don’t you think?  Now, even more embarrassing for the school.  Keep in mind these are still “alleged” claims, but even at that can destroy an establishments reputation quickly.

Temporarily, we’ll award The Kiski School a tentative “Clueless Award” until the rest of the story comes out in the wash.

-SWB

PS – As a preparatory school, you’d thunk they’d be able to think before they speak.

National Archives – Oops They Did It Again!

You guessed it! You were right!  The dudes and dudettes  in the government that spank us when they find little issues with a company’s security lost ANOTHER hard drive that will compromise national security and a whole lot of people’s identities.

Somehow, SWB figures that no longer are people the least bit surprised – when you let important places and things be watched by incompetent people, things happen.  People now expect issues like this. Sad.

The figured they lost the hard drive somewhere in a five month period when they were working on data conversions.  It was left on a shelf unsecured and unchecked according to this report from the Washington AP as seen on KDKA.com. If I left sensitive data unsecured in my job – I would be immediately fired.  If not, the organizations tht regulate them would shut them down.

So, since the government now does this on a regular basis, we’ll give them an Utter Nonsense honorable mention, until we find out how bad they really screwed up with this issue. We have a feeling we will be revisiting this again.

———————-

-SWB

PS – I try not cut down our government, but when they stand in front of you with a bat and say, “Sir, please hit me with this” … you just gotta.

The Generous IRS, giving more than it should

Now, I know you won’t believe this, but the IRS has messed up again. Try to not laugh uncontrollably when you read that.

How did that happen? For some people (Click Here to read the article by Stephen Ohlmacher of the Associated Press as it appears on Yahoo!), the new tax tables made to allow for the tax credit to appear on your paycheck are not correct. You may end up getting hundreds more than you are supposed to get.

Unfortunately the IRS isn’t that generous, so they are going to want it back next April. Start planning on how to save the money or ask your employer to take a little extra our per month to get you ready. Basically, if you already get a decent sized return, it may mean that you just see a small one next year. If you cut it close, you may end up cutting a check next year.

Does and did the IRS know about this? Yes. Did they bother to tell the tax payers? No. Considering this mainly hits couples, and retirees … they may want to step up getting the word out.

-SWB

PS – Besides being a weather person, setting IRS policy has to be the best job you can make serious mistakes on and still keep your job.

Alert – Swine Flu Scams

Like they say – “When opportunity knocks with sickness and despair, scam as many as you can”.

The Swine Flu came in quick, and the scammers will be right behind in preying on those that are scared and easily taken advantage of. Sadly, you no longer even have to wait for the headlines in the news media to know that the sick and twisted people that make up the scamming society will jump to full force in the situation the world is now experiencing with the outbreak.

Egypt had ordered all pigs slaughters, and other countries are taking anything from normal to extreme measures to protect themselves also.  That means there is going to be enough hurt going on give everyone a fill … and sadly the scammers will do their best to add more to it. So, take a few minutes to tell your elderly friends, parents, family members to be on the watch for fake scams concerning the Swine Flu.

Click Here for a good reference article as seen on WPXI Pittsburgh on the warning that the BBB has issued on the oncoming scams.  Click Here for a reference article from the Associated Press medical writer Lauran Neergaard as it appears on Yahoo!.

-SWB

PS – It’s amazing the resilience that scammers have … if business in general had half that resilience failure would probably never happen. Of course, then again you’d have to give up ethics, morals, etc … oh, wait .. I think that’s happening anyway.  Be careful, scammers have no worries as to who they hurt.

The Micro and Mini Car Dilemna

First they praise them as the answer to our fuel issues, then they chastise them as the biggest safety issue of the day – the is the mini car.

It’s not the change of mind that amazes SWB … it’s the timing. Just when GM and Chrysler are headed for bankruptcy … very fuel efficient micro and mini cars (not to mention space efficient) now become unsafe. Who says they are unsafe? The media, not the labs testing the cars in crashes. The labs just provide base data. You can determine that by looking at what car companies advertise where, who is saying what about the safety, and when that opinion changed. And, yes … this time SWB is accusing the media of selling out. I own one of these cars – the Honda Fit. I also have owned since 1999 the predecessor of that model – the Honda Civic CX hatchback. I’ve been involved in minor wrecks to both the front and back of my 1997 Honda Civic CX hatchback. A friend of mine is an insurance adjuster, so I ask him to estimate the speed in any wreck I am involved in just as a second opinion in case the insurance company tries to prove otherwise. The front end hit to my car as at 11 mph, the hit to the back was at about 10 mph. Both cars that my small Honda made contact with were mid-sized American cars. Both of the American mid-sized cars had thousands more in damage than my Honda did – and they were supposed to be safer because of their size and weight. My Honda required no repairs other than touch-up paint.

Here is what is comes down to. If you do a crash test where you take a mid-sized vehicle slam it into a mini car at 100 mph you will total the mini car car. If you take a touring sized car and slam it into a mid-sized at 100 mph you will total the mid-sized car. If you take a one ton Econoline van and slam it into a touring sized car at 100 mph you will total the touring sized car. With that basic logic , the only reason to really push the un-safeness of the mini cars and not push the benefits of minimal fuel usage is to get readers and viewers to go back to buying the mid-sized cars. Consider that on average they make 50% more profit on mid-sized cars than the mini cars, thus helping the media’s advertising customers sell their mid sized cars that are sitting on lots due to their lower fuel economy environment issues. It’s a little obvious when you first praise something, then you chastise it … you are doing it for reason. Against the popular belief of the media’s P.R. people – Americans are not that clueless.

If you want additional safety on the road, you push for more people to buy mini cars. Therefore if you have more mini cars on the road, then the results of accidents are less due to them being mini car to mini car. You don’t try to present a false negative safety rating by presenting very skewed crash tests.

Here are a few articles on the crash tests (please look up more to determine the validity of them yourself):

• Click Here for an article on Yahoo!Finance from before the mid-sized car makers were going to have to proceed on to possible bankruptcy.

Here are ones from after:

• Click Here for an Associated Press article by Ken Thomas as seen on WPXI.com
• Click Here for article from MSN Money with video
• Click Here for an article from USA Today by James R Healey.

Note: These example article are just picked from search engine results to be fair. They were not picked in any way to accused their specific publishers of selling out to their paaying advertisers. SWB does encourage you to see who does advertise in the media that is publishing a review (on a crash test or and item) before taking that review as black and white. If that review is skewed, like the mini car crash tests, you need to do additional research.

We are going to give the media a minor clueless award for “selling out” to the mid-sized car vendors to keep advertising income, but not a full one for having their hearts in an attempt to save an American industry (along with themselves).

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-SWB

PS – Crash test are valuable information for deciding on a vehicle to buy, but they need to be viewed along side other pertinent information. If not, they only serve two benefits:

1. To sell cars for a specific industry and the oil companies
2. To give the insurance companies reason to raise your rates

It’s Time To Pay That Money Back

We paid them bailout money, and now they are showing better than expected profits (and some record profits).

That either means the bailout packages to the banks works, or they pulled the wool over the eyes or they pulled the wool over the eyes or American. SWB thinks it’s both. Some are coming good like Goldman Sachs, but we’re still waiting to see if others like Citi, etc are going to make good also. You know, the ones raising rates to get more money of the American people along with million they already acquired in the bailout?

Click Here for an article by Malen Read from the Associated Press as it appears in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

-SWB

PS – I wonder if the banks will take on their customers habits of defaulting on loans. Wouldn’t that be a little irony?

BTW – WTAE news touched on the fact that some banks said that the bailout money was supposedly set aside, used as an “Insurance Policy” and really wasn’t needed anymore.  Hmmmmm.

Murtha gets away with offending the military

Now, I was trying to stay away from military postings to make sure SWB didn’t look like it was turning into one direction for the blog … but John Murtha just happened no be on my TV screen this morning courtesy of WPXI.  Murtha, like everyone else has a right to his opinion. To SWB calling a Marine a cold blooded killer before being proven so, and using his official position to avoid a lawsuit basically where he slandered a solder without proven cause is disgusting … even if it is his opinion.  We have rights in place in this country to make us better, not to allow us to abuse others.  Murtha’s story is something I would expect to hear out of China, not the United States.

So, John ….. we send out the latest Clueless Award to you (with a temptation to actually spend the money on getting one made and send it to you) for being such a clueless jerk – and since we said that while “reporting” on the issues, I guess that means we can use our “press immunity” if you ever try to sue us.

Even though you won the court case, you could have still apologized at the same level you lashed out on the Marine.

The sad thing is, Murtha does give free speech a bad name … something many a Marine has died for.

Click Here for the last story by Nedra Pickler from The Associated Press as it appeared on WPXI Pittsburgh about the John Murtha case.

-SWB

PS – Mr. Murtha … China is calling … we know your heart is really there.