shelby7vdy

Monday, January 10, 2011

Making Easy Money

Harry How/Getty Images

While the Cincinnati Bengals don’t have much more to play for, the San Diego Chargers' postseason destiny already seems sealed, as they are one game behind Kansas City in the division and a wild-card berth is unlikely, as they are two games behind both Baltimore and the New York Jets.

Our latest NFL odds have the Chargers as -7.5 in this one with an over/under of 44 points.

Still, the Bolts will come to play behind standout QB Philip Rivers, who has the second best passing offense in the NFL and has thrown for 4,141 yards and 29 touchdowns with just 11 INTs.

The Bolts sure turned things around after starting the year 2-5 and went on a tear including a stretch of six wins and a single loss to the Raiders in Week 13. However, that loss to Oakland can be labeled as the one that ended their hopes of clinching the club's fifth straight AFC West title, as well as knocked them out of playoff contention.

The Chargers have played masterfully at times, and besides Rivers’ golden arm, they have also been able to nurture their rushing attack back from extinction. Running back Mike Tolbert leads the charge with 737 yards and 11 touchdowns, while Ryan Mathews is looking to have a bright future after several early season setback and rookie mistakes.

As good as the offense is, the defense has been that much better and ranks third against the pass and 11th against the run. Shaun Phillips leads the Bolts' pass rush with 11 sacks, while Antoine Cason has snatched a team-high four of the Chargers' 14 interceptions for the year.

That could play a huge role in cutting off the Bengals' passing attack in this one, as QB Carson Palmer has thrown 18 interceptions so far this season. Offensively, the Bengals have been dreadful, with many of Carson’s 3,396 passing yards and 21 touchdowns coning in garbage time.

The season has been a huge disappointment for Cincinnati, as they went from first to worst in the AFC North in just a single season and have one of the worst records in the entire NFL this season.

Running back Cedric Benson has gained 1,006 yards and seven touchdowns on the ground, but he too has continued to perform a little too late.

Flashy and sometimes controversial wide receiver Terrell Owens leads the Bengals in receiving but will miss the remainder of the year, leaving Chad Ochocinco as Carson’s main target.

Defensively, the Bengals have not been kittens, holding the opposition to just 25.9 points per game. With plenty of young talent, this could be the core strength of the team heading into next season.

Free Prediction: San Diego -7.5

I expect the Chargers to win this one outright and against the spread with their ability to move the ball and their stingy defense.

Interested in making some money this NFL season? Check out what our expert NFL handicappers have to offer in their weekly NFL picks.

Matt Schneider wrote “As intelligently noted at Hot Air, defaulting on one’s debts is not exactly “fiscally conservative,” not to mention the wisdom of following this advice is doubtful given that a Republican-induced economic collapse…”

A few questions for Matt: can you please elaborate on how not extending the debt ceiling is “defaulting on one’s debts?” More specifically, on what partifular debts will be be unable to *avoid default* if the debt ceiling is not raised? For example, if we commence bringing the troops home right now and close a bunch of overseas bases, will that save enough money such that we don’t need to increase the debt ceiling in April (I believe that is when it is expected to be reached). How about if we abolish the Departments of Education, Energy, HUD, etc.? If we make drastic cuts to such government entities, are we STILL going to default on anything? Or is the threat of default simply a concept to hide behind for those who want to continue unsustainable spending?

Take a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget

Using 2010 as a baseline, we brought in 200 billion more in revenue than what is described here as “mandatory” spending. That suggests after mandatory spending, we could use the remaining 200 billion to operate the Federal Government. Further, I bet a bunch of what is listed as Mandatory Spending in the Wikipedia link is not really that. There’s about 600 billion of unspecified “other mandatory spending” in there, much of which is probably hooey. And commencing the restructuring of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid would similarly provide more headroom. So, the Dept of Education disappears? So what? The Dept of Ed we have totday didn’t exist before 1979. Did the country collapse without it? No. (In fact, Education was both better and cheaper.) Same with the Dept of Energy. Will the country collapse without the Dept of Energy? No. They don’t produce any energy. Same goes for 90% of our bloated government. We need courts. We need defense. (Though we’d be fine with a fraction of what we spend on defense now.)

Hard cuts are just that. HARD. Does not mean they don’t need to be made.

If the approach to a “debt ceiling” is to raise it every time it is reached, it’s not a debt ceiling at all. It’s a fat guy who gets fatter every day, with a legal commitment in writing to start a diet tomorrow. Always tomorrow.

What is more evil? Making hard cuts while we (perhaps) still can? Or kicking the can down the road to GUARANTEED PAINFUL, GUARANTEED COLLAPSE?

When two laws conflict, how are they reconciled? If we have a law that obligates us to spend, and a law that says we can’t spend any more, why is your default resolution that the “don’t spend any more” law is the one that must yield?

Curious to hear what you think.

Regards,

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

News Corporation (News Corp) is the world's second-largest media conglomerate (behind The Walt Disney Company) as of 2008 and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009. The company's Chairman, Chief Executive. ...

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

This might actually be a smart move - the audience is exactly what "wtfinator" described. The news team there is often called out for leaning left in the comments on any stories posted on aol.com. Plays to their core. ...

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

PHOENIX -- A 22-year-old man described as a social outcast with wild beliefs steeped in mistrust faces a federal court hearing on charges he tried to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in a Tucson shooting rampage that left six people ...

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

Arizona Shooting News (LIVE UPDATES)

Friday, January 7, 2011

Free Making Money

As we get ready for John Boehner to take the gavel from Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, I find myself thinking back to the last time a Republican speaker took control of the House from a Democrat -- and reflecting on how far down the wrong road we have traveled since then.

It was January 1995, and Newt Gingrich, now considered a right-wing bomb thrower, was taking the gavel from Tom Foley. After taking the oath of office, he delivered a speech that praised FDR as "the greatest president of the 20th century" and presented concern for the least among us as a shared national objective. "The balanced budget is the right thing to do," he said. "But it does not in my mind have the moral urgency of coming to grips with what is happening to the poorest Americans."

For the incoming Republican speaker, reducing poverty and lifting the poor into the middle class was a moral imperative beyond the left vs. right battlefield -- not just the purview of lefties, socialists, and community organizers:

I say to those Republicans who believe in total privatization, you cannot believe in the Good Samaritan and explain that as long as business is making money we can walk by a fellow American who is hurt and not do something.... If you cannot afford to leave the public housing project, you are not free. If you do not know how to find a job and do not know how to create a job, you are not free. If you cannot find a place that will educate you, you are not free. If you are afraid to walk to the store because you could get killed, you are not free.

So now, with poverty higher than it was 16 years ago, with greater income inequality, and with the middle class struggling to hold on, what will Speaker Boehner make his number one priority? According to the Washington Post, it's "cutting spending," followed by repealing the healthcare law, and "helping get our economy moving" (no specifics on how he plans to do that).

Yet we saw on 60 Minutes that he's very aware of how fragile the American Dream has become, telling Lesley Stahl, "I can't go to a school anymore. I used to go to a lot of schools. And you see all these little kids running around. Can't talk about it." And he choked up when he did try to talk about "making sure these kids have a shot at the American Dream, like I did. It's important."

Interestingly, in his first speech as speaker, Gingrich also talked about being moved by the woes of school kids.

"I have seldom been more shaken," he said, "than I was after the election when I had breakfast with two members of the Black Caucus. One of them said to me, 'Can you imagine what it is like to visit a first-grade class and realize that every fourth or fifth young boy in that class may be dead or in jail within 15 years? And they are your constituents and you are helpless to change it?' For some reason, I do not know why, maybe because I visit a lot of schools, that got through. I mean, that personalized it. That made it real, not just statistics, but real people."

But the trajectory of our political discourse over the last decade and a half has meant that taking on poverty has gone from a moral imperative and shared national objective to an afterthought -- or no thought at all.

The question is, is there anything that can be done to help Boehner make the connection between the policies he supports and the effect those policies have on the kids who bring him to tears?

Newt Gingrich failed to follow through on the moral imperative he identified in his first speech as speaker, trading in his moral vision and replacing it 15 months later with an announcement that the Republican agenda could be reduced to six words: "Earn more, keep more, do more."

Will Boehner's take be "Earn more, keep more, cut more"? Or is there a chance he will surprise us? Maybe it's because it's close enough to Christmas that I still believe in miracles, but wouldn't it be great if the John Boehner who takes the gavel on Wednesday is the one who weeps at the thought of kids denied a shot at the American Dream?

If Pettitte does decide to retire, it's been rumored that the Yankees might make an aggressive pursuit for Soriano to create a lock-down bullpen, one that the Yankees haven't had since the days of Rivera and John Wetteland in 1996.

If the Yankees were to get Soriano, they would have to surrender a first-round draft pick to the Rays, but the Yankees also can be compensated with a draft pick due to Javier Vazquez signing with the Marlins.

As of right now, the Yankees don't have an imminent heir to Rivera's closer job if he retires anytime soon, and they don't have a main setup man after Kerry Wood turned down more money to return to the Cubs this winter.

The Yankees could consider Joba Chamberlain and David Robertson for the setup role, but both have had their struggles in the past, so Soriano would be an instant upgrade to the bullpen and a much better option to follow in Rivera's footsteps.

The White Sox are said to be interested in Soriano after letting Bobby Jenks go, and the Angels have expressed interest after losing out on Adrian Beltre and Carl Crawford this winter as well. But the Angels also signed Scott Downs to a three-year deal, plus already have Fernando Rodney as their current closer.

Although Soriano is a solid closer and could easily get a closing job this winter, he has said he would be a setup man for only one team, meaning the Yankees.

free rental agreement forms

BMI.com | News | Nielsen Signs Off on Radio Ratings

Though Nielsen declined to elaborate on its decision to exit the U.S. radio-ratings business, the news came just days after the Arbitron-Clear Channel deal was announced — hardly a coincidence, suggested some media observers. ...

Star Wars Complete Saga Blu-ray news: release in September, 30 ...

This might not be the 'most impressive' Star Wars announcement you were looking for. Not that it's a bad thing the complete saga will be.

Susan Roberts Named New Eyewitness News Anchor | WPRI.com

CBS News correspondent Susan Roberts named new Eyewitness News anchor,

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Moms Making Money

@MikeBulger Read this article in French

The Health Benefits Of Raw Milk

From Grass-Fed Animals

By Ron Schmid, ND

In 1970, I went to live on the island of Martha's Vineyard. I was quite ill with gastrointestinal problems. I began living mostly on seafood, fresh vegetables and salads, and raw milk and eggs purchased from a local farmer, with a little meat and whole grain bread. My health problems, which had been intractable for years, disappeared.

Raw milk remained a mainstay of my diet. Since 1981 I have strongly recommended raw milk to thousands of people who have seen me in my practice as a naturopathic physician. I practice in Connecticut, where we enjoy the right to purchase certified raw milk throughout the state (with the exception of the town of Fairfield, where a fascist local health board has instituted an unchallenged-for-lack-of-funds town ordinance prohibiting the sale of raw milk.)

The raw milk available in the part of Connecticut where I live is from Debra Tyler's farm in Cornwall Bridge, called "Local Farm." Debra has nine cows on fourteen acres. Eight health food stores in central and northern Connecticut pick up milk regularly at Local Farm. There are about a dozen other certified raw milk dairies among Connecticut's 210 dairy farms.

Debra has Jersey cows. Most farms have Holsteins, which provide large quantities of milk, but milk that is lower in protein, fat and calcium. Jerseys were originally bred by the French to produce milk for ...read more

The movie, Race to Nowhere, has brought new attention to education and student motivation. I hope that this film inspires dialogue about what school could become.

As Seth Godin says in his 2010 book, Linchpin, Are you Indispensible?, the sign outside school could read, “We teach people to take initiative and become remarkable artists, to question the status quo and to interact with transparency. And our graduates understand that consumption is not the answer to social problems.”

I want to work at a school like that! What child does not want to go to a school as Godin describes: “What they should teach in school: Only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems. 2. Lead.”

Kierkegaard once said, “We create ourselves by our choices.” Our children and our students are making choices based on our examples.

In Terry McMillan's 2010 sequel to Waiting to Exhale called Getting to Happy, 15 ½-year-old Sparrow tells her mom, “Most of the kids at my school get their meds from their parents’ and grandparents’ medicine cabinet."

We are aware that some children are doing homework until late in the night and taking pills to stay up. How big of a problem is it? Another character, 14-year-old Taylor says, “I looked in your side table and I saw your little pharmacy ....all of [my mom’s] scripts were on display in the medicine cabinet. This is where most of my friends get their stash to sell at school for spending money.”

Jason McDonald, an instructional designer, and academic researcher states that "for high school and college there is evidence that the race we've entered our kids in is damaging them in important ways."   For college student information, he recommends reading My Freshman Year, the report of an anthropologist who went "native" as a college freshman and recorded her experiences.

Continued on the next page

surface encounters noblesville surface encounters noblesville

Helen Thomas Joins Falls Church News-Press | ARLnow.com

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to write a column for the Falls Church News-Press. Thomas was a.

Scripting News: Everything is dead

But programmers don't think this way, and I guess most programmers aren't news junkies. Because it was impossible to get through to them. No matter, the market eventually decided. A lot of wasted time, which sucks, but hardly the end of ...