Mc and Vicki?

I'd give them the benefit of the doubt except that there's a Wa Po article that says Vicki went from a secretary to a partner in a few years. And it looks like she bragged about her connection to McCain in dealing with clients.

The financial state of our country. eeek!

First a city

Then a state
I'm thinking about the fundementals of budgets here. Whether it be a city,a county, a state, or even your budget they all seem to work the same. Now consider where the income comes from in a city or state. Taxes ofcourse, but then consider where those taxes were generated. Corporations and individuals and some income on investments fills the coffers. The main drain on the economy came at the top. A national debt that will take years/decades to pay. Add to that the insane lending practices by banks and the resulting subprime mess and the "perfect storm" is brewing. And don't listen to those who say we can borrow our way out of debt. It's much like someone saying I can eat myself skinny. It just doesn't work. So stop for a minute and consider where the income from your city or state originates. Is it from manufacturing, farming, or a service industry? I don't see many bright spots here. The bulk of manufacturing is tied to housing and automotive in some way or other. Housing is taking a beating at the moment as did automotive just last year. The service industry will be taking a hit soon as other industries tighten their belts. Farming may fair better as we all have to eat, but farmers will get dinged with rising fuel costs, tighter lending practices and cuts in subsities.
The stock market has been trying to kid itself back to a bull market but the underlying aspects of the economy say otherwise. Far be it from me to pee on somebodys parade but how could anyone expect us to get out of this mess when the government has cranked up the presses, lowered interest rates and dumped more money (albeit borrowed) into this economy than any time in history. Don't believe me take a look in the back of your 1040 book and notice how we're borrowing 9% to pay off an 8% debt. If that doesn't say something about our situation I don't know what would.

Oy!

I did my refresher course for Haz Mat. The good news was that I got 100 on the test. No biggy I've been doing this so long I could give you the answers off the top of my head. The bad news was that our monkey in chief refused to reauthorize CERCLA which is the act that pays for most of the clean ups at large toxic waste sites. That in it's self would be bad enough but as part of the haz mat class we saw a video about a mine clean up over in Colorado. So, while I was perusing the web on articles about Shrub not resigning the Superfund reauthorization I came upon this article about what I had just seen in the video.
Bushwacked again
So it looks like the mine will not be cleaned up until we get a new president in the white house and it can't be a republican.

I guess you can't trust Wikipedia anymore

A California judge has put an injunction against Wikileak a website that posts whistleblowers documents as evidence on corporate and governemnt possible wrong doings. They requested that Wikileak remove all info from the server leaving a blank page. While digging further into the story I came upon a BBC story about how the CIA has been caught changing Wikipedia pages.

Wiki wacki

Site taken offline

The only problem is that the site (Wikileak) is still online and there are still backdoor links and mirror sites out there. This is going to be a real embarresment to the Swiss as that's the origin of the company in question exposed by Wikilink.
Another thought comes to mind "A doilly for your mind". Thank you Tommy and Dick.

Food prices

This is a bit of concerning news.
A while back fellow blogger mentioned that wheat prices had gone up to nearly $20 a bushel. I've checked other market prices and noticed that investers are boosting the price of just about every food stuff. The real kicker comes in about 12 to 18 months when there is a shift in production mainly from the increased use of corn for ethenol. Add to that the effect of investers and we can expect a bumpy ride in prices. This has been a real killer for beef prices as the combination of increased feed costs and several recalls have raised those prices as well. Bottom line might be a $10 box of cereal and beef at $15 a lb. I've already seen cereal at over $5 and beef at $10. My only hope in all of this is that it's a short lived problem.
For a real overall picture check the following info:
Comodities

Government here to help again.

One of the largest beef recalls in recent years 143 million lbs. and the Agriculture Dept. is now making it official. Only one problem most of the meat has already been consumed!
Beef
The schools in our state stopped serving beef last month after this info came to light. I don't know if another supplier has been found yet, I would assume so.
I'll let you know about other wonderful news items after an upcomming recert class. The instructor of that class has the pleasure of having people from several states send him under reprorted news stories.

Friday night

This is just too wierd. No other comment necessary