Summertime Gas Prices upon us

The sun is out, the flowers are in full bloom, the sap is starting to fall on your car from the trees ….. and we are all waiting for that one last sign that signifies the start of summer – skyrocketing gas prices.

It has showed already, even faster than expected, but … in articles like the one seen in USA Today (Click Here to read) by Julie Schmit, it is being reported that prices will level off because consumer confidence may not be as high as expected and global economic recovery is not happening as quickly as expected.

HOW DARE THEY!!!!

There are three things the summer is known for:

• Outdoor cookouts of burgers and hot dogs
• Outdoor drinking of beer and margaritas
• Complaining about gasoline prices

If you take away complaining about gasoline prices in the summer, the only thing your are going to have by process of elimination is a bunch of fat drunks. How do you thinks this will help the economy ?!?!?!

Think about it – if we become a bunch of overweight carnivorous eating slobs that can’t fit out the front door – who’s going to buy gasoline? … our pets??? How dare the oil companies stop raising gasoline prices in the summer … it’s our God-given right to be gouged when the sun comes out!

-SWB

PS – For the clueless … we were being sarcastic in this post. If you still don’t get it, have a friend explain.

NYC Photo Op Fly By

So what do you to to push NYC residents already on edge when a plane flies lower than 30,000 feet?

You fly one very large plane below 2000 feet with an Air Force fighter in tow – and you only tell a few people, excluding the mayor (he’s not that important), and the actual residents of NYC.

It doesn’t take much common sense to figure out that even thought it has been over five years, New Yorkers are still going to be a little touchy when they see a low flying plane, even if it is Air Force One. Not telling the people of New York risked their safety by possibly triggering a mass exodus by the residents and workers. Why would you even chance that? In more one news report it was stated that the people that were informed were told to not notify the residents of NYC. I’m thinking Mr. Louis Caldera may not be having a job soon.

Anyway … Mr. Caldera gets the latest “Clueless” award, and Click Here to read The Oval’s take on it.

-SWB

PS – It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s and idiot doing a photo-op.

Earth Day Links and an SWB Earth Day Challenge

Free Clip art from Kaboose.com … click image to go to their site. It’s Earth Day, so there are allot of articles out there SWB doesn’t want you to miss.

They range from stories about the “lunatic” natural farmer to Wal-Mart upping it’s solar initiative. The are a few that show what can get worse if we don’t get to fixing things. BTW … SWB challenges you to replace at least three light bulbs in your house with CFL Bulbs.

Here is the list:

• The History Of Earth Day from Wilderness.org
• Natural Farming article by Joshua Hatch of USA Today
• Wal-Mart Solar Initiative article by Paul Davidson of USA Today
• Rodale’s Organic Garden article by Janice Lloyd of USA Today
• Rivers Drying Up article by Matt McGrath of BBC News
• MTS Allstream reduces environmental impact in simple ways
• Earth Day 2009 Links on Envirolink.com
• Crafts from recycling at Kaboose.com
• NASA’s Earth Day website page
• Green Kitchen Article by Debbie Snook of the Plain Dealer
• Free Earth Day Clip-Art from Kaboose.com (as features for our article icon)
• Earth Day art and posters from Cafe’ Press

We’ll add more when and if we get them – feel free to post comments with Earth Day site links in them.

-SWB

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).

—————–

-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

Domino’s Delivers More …

…or a least a few employees do.

I wasn’t going to write about this, simply because I rolled my eyes when I saw the clip about it on the news and just said under my breath, “stupid teens”. Talk about being wrong.

First thing … some kudos need to go out to domino’s for how they are handling the situation.

Second thing …. the employees that did this were in their early 30s.

Although most people start growing up around 25 (I remember people in my parents generation were starting to own homes and be respected in their jobs around that age range), this unfortunately highlights how badly some people in this country have regressed. Common sense says “you stop doing this stuff when you are out of high school”. Common sense says “you are most likely going to get fired for doing something like this – especially with all the news on other food poisoning issues”. Common sense says “a company may seek to have you brought up on charges for doing something illegal in their restaurant”. Common sense “if you are really going to do something that stupid, you don’t film it”. Common sense didn’t prevail here.

For those fighting against the use of social media monitoring by employers – you can thank the two idiot Domino’s employees for giving companies and even bigger reason to do that. The act of monitoring an employee’s presence on the Internet is still controversial, but those two just gave “the man” more fire power. Domino’s has rightly (and thankfully) fired the two employees. The authorities have warrants for their arrest. I wonder if they will enter a “not guilty” plea.

SWB is usually in practice of defending the little guy, but in this case, as a company, Domino’s should not have to defend itself because to clueless idiots exist in this world. Do people not learn basic courtesies and manners these days, or are they just not taught because parents and families members don’t want to make the younger generation feel bad about themselves when then are corrected? I think the root cause of the Domino’s issue is a generation and a half of “feel gooders” instead of hard workers.

So, the newest recipients of a “clueless trophy” are the two employees that caused a legitimate company a PR nightmare. They also got the “utter nonsense and such” listing. Getting both from SWB takes much hard work. Most likely this will cost Domino’s more than the two dolts will earn in their lifetimes combined to do damage control for this incident. Personally I’ll still order from Domino’s when they are located close to where I am at. I don’t believe a company should suffer through the actions of employees without brains.

Click Here for a good reference article on the issue from Bruce Horovits of USA Today.

-SWB

PS – If you even wanted to know what the secret ingredients are in specialty items – you know now.

The New American Slave

Occasionally I wake up in the morning and turn on the TV and there is an infomercial on. This morning it was something like “Debt Cures they don’t want you to know about”, a book they were trying to sell. It basically looked like the set of Desperate Housewives. Normally I switch channels right away, but a comment the author made really put the current situation with banks in the spotlight. They are creating The New American Slave.

Corporate Investigations Inc did a mini-post highlighting that some banks have started paying back there TARP money (Click Here to read that). You do have to give credit where credit is due, but some are asking if the banks just found a better place to get the additional money to bail themselves out. That may be the bigger truth.

That author selling his book this morning on that semi-annoying infomercial may actually know something. As Gomer Pyle would have said “Surprise! Surprise!”. He mentioned that the banks are “on record” as saying their “bread and butter” is the low income, uneducated, and mostly minority population. That is because they pay the biggest portion a banks income on higher interest rates, charges, fees, etc. They are also the first to get increases whenever they are dishes out.

Most of those people described are slowly reigned in the being an indentured servant by the banking increasing their rates, fees, etc to a level where their debt can never be repaid. Does this sound any different that a person paying the way to bring someone into a country, but holding a debt so high over their heads they can never repay it effectively making them a lifetime servant? It isn’t, and now the banks are branching out. They reaching out and lassoing in the lower middle class. So they look good by paying back some TARP money and profit by gaining a few thousand new American Slaves.

Reference Links:

• Debt Cures – I believe this is the infomercial that was on this morning.
• Bank credit card fees keep going up – USA Today article by Kathy Chu.
• Hard times make credit card industry tighter with a buck – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article by Tim Grant.
• Bailout banks raising rates and fees – Washington Post article by William Ehart.

Slavery never went away – the banks just bought out the previous owners and added some color. This is a very good example of quickly they forgot that the TARP money originally comes from the people of American.

-SWB

PS – This article is not defending those that over spent on their cards, it’s about the people the banks truly take advantage of.

Kudos to the Navy Seals

Kudos out the The Navy Seals … along with a load of thanks.  these guys go through training rigorous enough that most athletic people would consider pure inhumane torture.  They do this to make sure they have the ability to save people that others find humanly impossible to save. If you have every read about the training they go through, you will find out that sometimes they even put their lives on the line during training. It’s just that tough.  You know your friend that holds up the end of your car with his bare hands while you change your tire? He probably wouldn’t make it through Navy Seal training.

This is a call-out too …. they are looking for about another 1000 to be trained by 2014. Click Here for their website if you are interested.  If you are not familiar with them, these are the guys that saved the Captain of the Maersk Alabama from Somalian Pirates.

If you don’t want to join … and you know a SEAL – thank them profusely, for if you are ever traveling internationally and needs rescued you will surely meet one.  They give up three years or more of their lives for pure basic training to protect you.

Click Here for a reference article from USA Today by Tom Vanden Brook and Oren Dorell on the Navhy Seals sniper training.  This gives you a really good summary on what these guys go through to finally get to the advance sniper training.

-SWB

PS – I hear these guys make good club bouncers.

A New Season Of Storms

Thunderheads over SSW in 2005 – www.imagesbylawrence.us

Tis that time of year in Pittsburgh for strong storms to start popping up. We only have a few shingles left on our two car shed, so it would be the right time for them to be *really* strong – as Mother Nature has an abundance of humor.

It looks like this year will be fairly interesting also, according to the current National Forecast from Weather.com. I’m sure that the midwest will get some two and three cow tornados (the cow rating is an official measuring method used by Richard Kane and Pittsburgh area SkyWarn members derived from the movie “Twisters”). In addition to tornados I’m sure rivers will over-flow, gardens will flood, cars will float, and potholes will be filled (temporarily).

Hmmm ….. Pittsburgh hasn’t had a tornado in a while (and I really do miss that last one I saw in the rear view mirror of my car while trying to negotiate going down Sycamore St at a high rate of speed without crashing into anything to get away from it). Ahhh ….. weather experience memories. I’m actually quite happy that none of them for me included things like shovels, sump pumps, and the cleanup of human excrement that was once in my sewer.

Oh well, I guess how strong they will be depends on how successfully we irritate God and Mother Nature.

*Update – Click Here for a current (03/25/09) article on the flooding issues with the Missouri River by Andrea Stone from USA Today.

-SWB

PS – Stay away from the lightning ….. unless you are a golfer – then hold that big metal rod *real* high and help with the slow elimination of a really boring sport.

Regional population dropping at a slower rate

According to this article in the Post-Gazette, the population in The Pittsburgh Metro area is still dropping, but at a slower rate. This may possibly signal a turn around in the yearly mass exodus for our region. Keep in mind this is happening during one of the worst economic downturns in out history – so, maybe people are looking toward Pittsburgh again as their home.

Personally, SWB thinks it’s just because the pierogies have gotten better.

Update: Here is an article from USA Today that details a little about the trends affecting cities like Pittsburgh.

-SWB

PS – OK, maybe people just miss Parma Sausage too.

Terrorist Watch List – it’s getting big!

…. and just hit one million entries, according to USA Today … this makes me feel safe. Considering that this is also with them removing tens of thousands of entries from the list … hmmm … I feel even more safe.

I feel very happy that our government deems it important to watch over our safety, but the question is: are they doing anything about it? It seems that they are taking so much time collecting the data, and so much of it – it brings up the question: With so much information, can they effectively use the data they have collected?

This gets on the SWB “we told ya so” list simply because paranoia drives lists and databases.

-SWB

PS – Watch out … there’s one behind you.

BTW – did the government ever think that running the country in such a way (not outsourcing, etc) that more effectively allows people to have a chance at a decent life and a decent job would be the most efficient way of combating terrorism? Wait … that would make sense … skip it.

Childhood Lead Exposure

As seen in USA Today

Now I’m not 100% disputing the scientific evidence in this article, but it seems more and more like society is looking for scientific reasoning for human actions so people come up with excuses like “Killing mommy wasn’t my fault ….. how did I know licking the paint off of my tricycle when I was 9 would make me hate her so much.”

Somehow I can see a special interest group forming here:  “Lead Kids”.

Now lead will kill your memory and bring on high impulsivity … true.  On the other side ….. remember how science boasted that we could “re-train our brains”?  So much for that idea.  Now the consensus is that lead is an indicator of whether your child will get a criminal record as a juvenile.

I’m not against knowing what causes issues … but it seemed when I grew up and everyone was clueless, they tended to do a much better job of raising children who were productive parts of society and had the ability to overcome their issues.  Sometimes knowing too much is worse than knowing everything.

Maybe if we just go back to teaching our children the basics of right and wrong?

Hmmmmmm ….. that could work.