DATE-6/1/05
Who woulda thunk?
The second in command at the FBI. Nice to know the FBI can keep confidences.
I was deep into the liberal thing during the Nixon years and at the time I thought the man should have been booted out on his ear.
Now, years later and as the scales fall from my eyes, I realize that William Jefferson Clinton and his shenanigans made Nixon look like a piker.
From the Washington Post:
The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was "Deep Throat," the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.
The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt's family and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper's groundbreaking Watergate stories.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ohio Tragedy
What would possess an 18 year old, on the day of his high school graduation party, to kill his grandparents, visiting friends, sister then turn the gun on himself?
The shooter’s sister survived. Soon enough the truth will come out. I think it’s possible this kid was not going to graduate and this was his desperate way to avoid the humiliation of the truth.
It’s only a matter of contacting the school if this is correct so soon enough we’ll know.
FROM NBC:
BELLEFONTAINE, Ohio -- Hours after a party to celebrate his pending high school graduation, an 18-year-old is believed to have shot and killed his grandparents, his mother and two family friends before killing himself, the sheriff said on Monday.
Logan County Sheriff Michael Henry said he did not know if authorities would ever know why Scott Moody committed the shootings early Sunday morning, "but we're going to try."
~~~~~~~~~~
Arthur Andersen’s Weird Accounting Practices Okay by the Supremes
Okay so the supreme court didn’t come out and condone the practice of destroying client documents as practiced by the formerly celebrated accounting firm of Arthua Andersen.
Especially when those documents implicate said client in illegal accounting practices in an attempt to defraud stockholders.
Duh.
Which also means that Arthur Andersen itself knew what was going on at Enron. By the way, Dick Cheney never worked at Enron.
The supremes DID throw out an earlier conviction of the accounting firm for reasons that are not at all clear to me. It’s not clear if prosecutors will re-try Arthur Andersen.
I hope so because I’d like to hire these guys to do my income taxes.
FROM CNN.com:
Andersen officials were convicted in June 2002 of obstruction of justice over the massive document destruction relating to its work for Enron, the energy services giant which a year before was facing a government probe of its complex finances.
The government likened Andersen's actions to "shredding its smoking guns." Deputy Solicitor General David Dreeben told the court, "It is the equivalent of sending someone to a crime scene, and wiping up the evidence before police get there with the yellow tape."
~~~~~
President Bush’s Press Conference
I heard it with my own ears and two things about this rather mundane presidential press conference stand out.
By the way, please note that the congress critters are still on recess while the President is back at work. Remember this next time the Dem nasties point it out when Bush is in Crawford as they caterwaul that the man is always on vacation.
First, a reporter asked a question about the upcoming Egyptian elections and why they are not as honest as Mubarak promised. My ears perked up. For didn’t The Wise I write just such a post about why fair Egyptian elections WOULDN’T happen no mind the promises made to Bush. The Fly on the Wall told me, and he was right!
PART 1-Condi and BUSH HERE
Also, I’m glad Bush bashed that Amnesty International report calling Guantanamo Bay a “Gulag”. Amnesty International is what’s left of the sagging American Communism Party and nothing they say should be listened to.
Hey, if America doesn’t commit a crime, why the thugs of thieves of the world will just frigging make it up.
From the AP:
WASHINGTON - President Bush called a human rights report "absurd" for criticizing the United States' detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said Tuesday the allegations were made by "people who hate America."
"It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," Bush said of the Amnesty International report that compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.
~~~~~~~~~~
The Suits At the Grocery
I knew as soon as I pulled into the grocery store parking lot that something was up.
For there were "suits" everywhere.
I began the shopping expedition already annoyed. The suits, actually human men dressed in, well, suits, were blocking three parking spaces closer to the store than where I was finally able to park the Jeep.
More suits as I grabbed a cart and more suits inside the store.
As for the store, my goodness it was a splendiferous thing! Every orange, apple and banana in the produce section was stacked so neatly and geometrically I thought they were plastic.
There were all sorts of food offerings, combinations and permutations that I'd never seen before in this store although I shopped there faithfully every week.
In produce there were carefully packaged containers of "skewered" fruit. A strawberry, pineapple chunk, perhaps different chunks of melon, were all speared on wooden sticks to make an attractive, already prepared, peeled and prepped, fruit package.
The salad bar featured entries of the most exotic sort that had never before chanced to sit proudly below the plastic salad shield. There was hummus, two kinds of tossed leaf salad, Italian tomatoes and tomatoes with goat cheese and mozzarella. I was, indeed, impressed.
Back in the deli and meat sections, the suits were still in abundance.
I'd deduced, duh, that they were in the store for some sort of headquarters' "checkup". Thus I was required to listen in.
In no time at all I overheard the bakery manager spout proudly that her section bought in $20,000 a month and no one at the store was worried about the new Safeway.
Ah, I thought. Living in this happening and growing area of ocean front Delaware, of course there would be new grocery stores to sit proudly next to the four thousand huge hardware emporiums already built and open to accommodate new homeowner's with lures of no sales tax. Indeed many Merrylanders, only thirty miles down the road, hop up into Delaware for purchases less the 5% Merryland tacks on. But don't tell Nanny Minner as she will have them arrested.
I spend approximately $8,000 a year at the grocers. And this is just for feeding basically two people. Families of any size must spend an even bigger fortune, I surmise.
Is there any other vendor to which we pay such huge amounts of our disposable income as the grocer? I'm not talking banks or loan companies. I speak of vendors out to sell us goods in the competitive market place.
I have always thought that the vendor to which I pay so much during the year should treat me right and not do me dirty.
It was inevitable the one of the suits would come into my immediate surround.
"You should speak to the customers," I whispered.
The suit looked at me with some surprise and alleged that he HAD been speaking to customers.
Actually I gave the grocery a good recommendation because for the most part THIS grocery was, all things considered, a fine one by my experience.
Later on ten thousand little complaints filled my mind. The suit is long gone and next week the grocery will no doubt return to its more normal, but perfectly fine, state.
So I'll list my grocery complaints here.
Why must one have a CPA to purchase the weekly groceries?
For it surely seems that way each week as I traverse the dangerous aisles of the grocer, checking price per unit, coupons in hand both manufacturer and store, sales then upon, and quality of product desired. Then there's the matter of the "bonus points" that all things being equal could be a factor.
After thirty years of shopping for groceries I have discovered that a frequently used item can vary in price that may change by sometimes 300 percent. The key is to figure out how to buy said item at its lowest possible price and purchase enough to last until the next time the product can be purchased at the same reduced price. This with the grocer making it as difficult as possible because, hey, they want to sell it to you at the highest possible price.
Coffee, in my case, is a good example.
First question now is brand loyalty. Which I have none for coffee. For other products, yes. Each consumer must decide if brand loyalty is sufficient to pay a higher price. Often it is. In the case of coffee, no brand loyalty , for me, is required. In the case of coffee I will, however, not reduce the level to the store's brand. The store's brand is almost always of the lowest quality in any product. Unless my purchase required is not an integral part of the recipe, such as canned tomatoes in soup, or not a standalone product for which a brand name is preferred, such as cleaning ammonia, then I avoid store brands at all costs. Besides, one can almost always get a name brand at store brand price by using coupons combined with sales at the most opportune time.
There's fifteen sizes of coffee. Some are on sale. Some merely offer "extra points". The store brand coffee often has a confusing sign warning me, the shopper, that this brand here is the cheapest. The sign offers a series of arithmetic calculations designed to show me how if you buy this store brand at this size that even with the name brand on sale, the store brand coffee is still the best deal.
In my grocery, every item purchased is assigned a certain amount of points. After so many points are accumulated a large cash coupon, honored only by THIS grocer, is awarded. I have received these cash coupons of ten dollars off my next grocery order. It's very nice and the system does garner a certain store loyalty I would think.
If the suit had time and inclination to hear my lament I would have waxed on about how it seems almost a game between seller and buyer as a savvy consumer navigates the aisles, to be bombarded by signs and cajoled by handsome displays.
But then I suppose it is a game of sorts. Those that spend a bit of time studying the system will spend way less than those who tend to just pull it off the shelf.
Since I've always felt that spending more on something is not an honorable act, I dare to try and decipher the system.
I bet none of those suits knows how to beat their own system.
Speaking of Grocery Stores
This web site of the week emulates the hit movie of a similar name. In honor of the Miscellany pst, it seemed a fitting finale to today’s Blog entries.
STORE WARS HERE
Kaitlyn Learns to Think Outside the Box
Baby girl needs to learn one very important fact of life. Indeed it is a fact of life here in America and Kaitlyn is an American child, like the picture says, since birth.
For the ones who succeed, besides those who inherited their wealth which is arguably NOT success, are those with a mind able to see beyond the obvious.
This is how I ended up with Kaitlyn's chair on my head.
It's just a foam affair, a thick piece of that ubiquitous cushiony stuff that can be cut and molded into any shape. Kaitlyn has such a chair, cut artfully from thick foam and covered with a pretty floral cover.
I figured Kaitlyn only saw this small chair as a piece of furniture. Myself thought it would make a fine hat.
Baby blue eyes grew wide and puzzled at the sight of the chair on my head. The chair, small enough for the 18 month old to sit in, was light enough to perch on Grandmother's head in a fine fashion and by me it was a perfect example of thinking outside the box.
A circumspect Kaitlyn stood before me, regarding her chair on my head and considering what to make of this.
She didn't smile, she didn't cry. She just stood and studied her Grandmother who was then wearing Kaitlyn's chair on her head. In due course Kaitlyn demanded that I put the chair on HER head.
Well it was certainly light enough for Kaitlyn to wear as a hat and indeed she did. At first she had difficulty getting the chair to remain stable but soon enough she figured out just how to position the object so that it wouldn't wobble and fall off. With practice she managed to situate the chair just so and soon Kaitlyn was prancing across the room with her chair on her head, an action she considered, in a baby manner, to be way cool.
Now I'm not sure if Kaitlyn learned any lessons from Grandmother's actions. For all I know she might become an obsessed adult who insists on wearing furniture on her head.
But for sure I could see that Baby Girl understood that her chair was in an odd place on Grandmother's head. After awhile the notion intrigued her and hey, it's what thinking outside the box is all about.
