Posts
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Hopeful Redskins Cheerleader Ends Up With Neurological Condition After Vaccine
Desiree Jennings thought it would be a good idea to get the seasonal flu shot. Her job offered incentives for it, and she didn’t want to get sick.
Ten days after she got the shot at a Reston Safeway, she did get sick.
“I got flu-like symptoms — nausea, vomiting, body aches, fever — then was lethargic for a week and started blacking out,” said Jennings, an AOL employee and Washington Redskins ambassador hoping to one day be a cheerleader for the team, the Loudoun Times-Mirror reported.
Doctors couldn’t figure out why her ability to speak and walk were so adversely affected. She saw neurologists, physical therapists and psychologists.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Awwww when we were babies....
In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly.
If you abuse yourself very badly, you can even tolerate someone who beats you up, humiliates you, and treats you like dirt. Why? Because in your belief system you say, “I deserve it. This person is doing me a favor by being with me. I’m not worthy of love and respect. I’m not good enough.”
We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be prefect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are!
Friday, May 15, 2009
"The Worst Is Yet to Come"
Aaron Task
Yahoo Finance
May 15, 2009
The green shoots story took a bit of hit this week between data on April retail sales, weekly jobless claims and foreclosures. But the whole concept of the economy finding its footing was "preposterous" to begin with, says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates.
"We're in a complete mess and the consumer is smart enough to know it," says Davidowitz, whose firm does consulting for the retail industry. "If the consumer isn't petrified, he or she is a damn fool."
"We're in a complete mess and the consumer is smart enough to know it," says Davidowitz, whose firm does consulting for the retail industry. "If the consumer isn't petrified, he or she is a damn fool."
Davidowitz, who is nothing if not opinionated (and colorful), paints a very grim picture: "The worst is yet to come with consumers and banks," he says. "This country is going into a 10-year decline. Living standards will never be the same."
This outlook is based on the following main points:
With the unemployment rate rising into double digits - and that's not counting the millions of "underemployed" Americans - consumers are hitting the breaks, which is having a huge impact, given consumer spending accounts for about 70% of economic activity.
Rising unemployment and the $8 trillion negative wealth effect of housing mean more Americans will default on not just mortgages but student loans and auto loans and credit card debt.
More consumer loan defaults will hit banks, which are also threatened by what Davidowitz calls a "depression" in commercial real estate, noting the recent bankruptcy of General Growth Properties and distressed sales by Developers Diversified and other REITs.
As for all the hullabaloo about the stress tests, he says they were a sham and part of a "con game to get private money to finance these institutions because [Treasury] can't get more money from Congress. It's the ‘greater fool' theory."
"We're now in Barack Obama's world where money goes into the most inefficient parts of the economy and we're bailing everyone out," says Daviowitz, who opposes bailouts for financials and automakers alike. "The bailout money is in the sewer and gone."
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Young Gay Men in Atlanta. "WHAT"
I was leaving the community farmers market this morning when I came upon 4 gay guys walking and talking. The traffic was moving slow from some reason. (Oh that's right I live in Atlanta) One of the young cats from the side walk says Hey, Hey do you eat booty. He and his crew then walked off laughing. My first reaction was to do what Andre 3000 said you should do on the Aquemini album “Grab them by the neck, throw him against the wall say bitch don’t you every disrespect me never not at all. This didn’t apply because I was in the car. However, “My Belief” I’m not one who believes you are born gay I believe it’s a choice and more so, a DEMONIC spirit men and women have to fight and not give into. I’m also one who believes we are losing our male & female youth to this CHOICE lifestyle because we as Christians don’t speak up “not beat up or bash up” when the moment presents itself. Today for the sake of these 4 youngsters and me it presented itself. At the next light I caught up with the guys again and asked The Comedian “he had to be joking” if he knew me. He smiled and said NO in his neck breaking style! I said the following:
The way you greeted me a few moments ago was neither cool nor appropriate. I don’t know where you’re from or how you were raised, but those types of comments can get you seriously hurt when addressing a MAN. (They all stop smiling after this comment) Your lifestyle is your choice, but don’t you think for one minute that I’m going to sit idly by and let you disgrace our gender! Do we have an understanding? (He says, thank you. Peace and Hair Grease)
Ladies and Gentlemen we’ve got to do better by the kids in our community. We’ve allowed the media, our Government and Schools to tell us how to raise our kids. We’ve stopped being responsible elders to our youth and become fulltime slaves to our jobs. We’ve giving someone else the power to rock the cradle and the hand that rocks the cradle rules the nation. We say we can’t be there, because we have to work. But when the fruit turns out crazy we don’t want to look at the source or the “TREE” that produced the fruit. The next time you see a child out of order and you don’t say anything, know you are as much at fault as their parent.
“Semper Fi”
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Scientists see this flu strain as relatively mild
April 30, 2009
As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza — at least in its current form — isn’t shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.
In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.
“Let’s not lose track of the fact that the normal seasonal influenza is a huge public health problem that kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S. alone and hundreds of thousands around the world,” said Dr. Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist who studies swine flu at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine in Madison.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Housing Bubble Smackdown: Bigger Crash Ahead
Due to the lifting of the foreclosure moratorium at the end of March, the downward slide in housing is gaining speed. The moratorium was initiated in January to give Obama’s anti-foreclosure program—which is a combination of mortgage modifications and refinancing—a chance to succeed. The goal of the plan was to keep up to 9 million struggling homeowners in their homes, but it’s clear now that the program will fall well-short of its objective.
Another 20 percent carved off the aggregate value of US housing means another $4 trillion loss to homeowners. In March, housing prices accelerated on the downside indicating bigger adjustments dead-ahead. Trend-lines are steeper now than ever before–nearly perpendicular. Housing prices are not falling, they’re crashing and crashing hard. Now that the foreclosure moratorium has ended, Notices of Default (NOD) have spiked to an all-time high. These Notices will turn into foreclosures in 4 to 5 months time creating another cascade of foreclosures. Market analysts predict there will be 5 MILLION MORE FORECLOSURES BETWEEN NOW AND 2011. It’s a disaster bigger than Katrina. Soaring unemployment and rising foreclosures ensure that hundreds of banks and financial institutions will be forced into bankruptcy. 40 percent of delinquent homeowners have already vacated their homes. There’s nothing Obama can do to make them stay. Worse still, only 30 percent of foreclosures have been relisted for sale suggesting more hanky-panky at the banks. Where have the houses gone? Have they simply vanished?
600,000 "DISAPPEARED HOMES?"
Here’s a excerpt from the SF Gate explaining the mystery:"Lenders nationwide are sitting on hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes that they have not resold or listed for sale, according to numerous data sources. And foreclosures, which banks unload at fire-sale prices, are a major factor driving home values down."We believe there are in the neighborhood of 600,000 properties nationwide that banks have repossessed but not put on the market," said Rick Sharga, vice president of RealtyTrac, which compiles nationwide statistics on foreclosures. "California probably represents 80,000 of those homes. It could be disastrous if the banks suddenly flooded the market with those distressed properties. You’d have further depreciation and carnage."
In a recent study, RealtyTrac compared its database of bank-repossessed homes to MLS listings of for-sale homes in four states, including California. It found a significant disparity - only 30 percent of the foreclosures were listed for sale in the Multiple Listing Service. The remainder is known in the industry as "shadow inventory." ("Banks aren’t Selling Many Foreclosed Homes" SF Gate)
If regulators were deployed to the banks that are keeping foreclosed homes off the market, they would probably find that the banks are actually servicing the mortgages on a monthly basis to conceal the extent of their losses. They’d also find that the banks are trying to keep housing prices artificially high to avoid heftier losses that would put them out of business. One thing is certain, 600,000 "disappeared" homes means that housing prices have a lot farther to fall and that an even larger segment of the banking system is underwater.
Here is more on the story from Mr. Mortgage "California Foreclosures About to Soar…Again""Are you ready to see the future? Ten’s of thousands of foreclosures are only 1-5 months away from hitting that will take total foreclosure counts back to all-time highs. This will flood an already beaten-bloody real estate market with even more supply just in time for the Spring/Summer home selling season…Foreclosure start (NOD) and Trustee Sale (NTS) notices are going out at levels not seen since mid 2008. Once an NTS goes out, the property is taken to the courthouse and auctioned within 21-45 days….The bottom line is that there is a massive wave of actual foreclosures that will hit beginning in April that can’t be stopped without a national moratorium."
JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Fannie Mae have all stepped up their foreclosure activity in recent weeks. Delinquencies have skyrocketed foreshadowing more price-slashing into the foreseeable future. According to the Wall Street Journal:
"Ronald Temple, co-director of research at Lazard Asset Management, expects home prices to fall 22% to 27% from their January levels. More than 2.1 million homes will be lost this year because borrowers can’t meet their loan payments, up from about 1.7 million in 2008." (Ruth Simon, "The housing crisis is about to take center stage once again" Wall Street Journal)
Another 20 percent carved off the aggregate value of US housing means another $4 trillion loss to homeowners. That means smaller retirement savings, less discretionary spending, and lower living standards. The next leg down in housing will be excruciating; every sector will feel the pain. Obama’s $75 billion mortgage rescue plan is a mere pittance; it won’t reduce the principle on mortgages and it won’t stop the bleeding. Policymakers have decided they’ve done enough and are refusing to help. They don’t see the tsunami looming in front of them plain as day. The housing market is going under and it’s going to drag a good part of the broader economy along with it. Stocks, too.
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