Entire cast of Real Housewives of DC at Hume, VA winery « Warren …
The Sherando Times has learned that Michaele and Tareq Salahi of Oasis Winery in Hume, VA are slated to star in the upcoming Real Housewives of DC, the latest installment of a reality series that has developed a cult following on the …

White House State Dinner Crashers Tareq & Michaele Salahi Named In …
“Even before their brush with reality TV fame, the couple had gained some notoriety for a long-running feud with Tareqs parents, Dirgham and Corinne Salahi, over control of the familys Oasis Winery in Hume, Va. …

Entire cast of Real Housewives of DC at Hume, VA winery – Warren …
Entire cast of Real Housewives of DC at Hume, VA winery Warren County Report Newspaper Michaele Salahi , in red, chats with fellow cast members at Oasis Winery…

Couple slips though security to crash state dinner – Democratic …
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=VA”la… Contributor Candidate or PAC Amount Date FEC Filing SALAHI, TAREQ HUME, VA 22639. OASIS VINEYARDS ALLEN, GEORGE (R) Senate – VA FRIENDS OF GEORGE ALLEN $600 general 07/17/00 …

DAVE DUBROW NEWS TICKER: SECRET SERVICE SAYS COUPLE CRASHED STATE …
The couple reportedly is involved in a long-running ownership dispute with Tareq Salahis parents over the Oasis Winery in Hume, Va., which has filed for bankruptcy. Salahi took his mothers attorney to court last year after accusing …

Rumored “Real Housewife of D.C.” Talks Life and Love in the …
Your husband, Tareq Salahi, founded Oasis Winery, located outside of D.C. in the beautiful hunt country of Hume, Va. Is that also where you reside? Yes, we live in Hume and absolutely love it. We also have a farm house in the Shenandoah …

El Mon de la Politica i altres consideracions.: Hume i Rousseau …
Lamentablement, Hume va malinterpretar el seu galanteig. Quan lambaixador, Lord Hertford, va ser reemplacat, l estada de Hume en el paradis va arribar a la seva fi. Mme. de Boufflers li va demanar que ajudes a Rousseau a aconseguir …

El Taller de Creativitat de Jacob: Al fons de la bota
Lil·lustrat escoces va carregar amb vehemencia contra els canons i, en certa manera, va ser el pare, el rebesavi, del tot shi val. Hume va ser un tenac enemic de la metafisica i, es clar, no es poden llencar els deus a la foguera …

Spheres, Shifts & Societal Transformation: Preaching this Sunday …
Manassas, VA 20110. The message I will be preaching will be titled, *CHRIST OUR REFUGE OF HOPE*. As of right now I believe my text will be from Psalm 62:5-8. v.5 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. … Brian Francis Hume: United States: I do consider myself a man of fierce passions—including, but not limited to: pursuing the Lord; loving my beautiful wife, Aneta; reading (spiritual, leadership, cultural, business, etc.) and writing; fathering the …

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Post Office, Cabezon by Evangeline Chavez

The village was started in the 1870’s and was originally called Posta, (the post),  It was the focal point for farming and raising sheep. It was also a stage stop between Santa Fe and the military outpost at Fort Wingate. It quickly grew with the mandatory saloons, blacksmith shop, stores.  Richard Heller ran the Heller Store and post office for a good many years.  Cabezon flourished  until the 1940’s. Mr. Heller died in 1947, and the Rio Puerco dried up. The post office officially closed in 1949

Angel Miguel Perez

Charleston, SC- If you are a mother or about to be a mother, I really hope you read this article. If you are a mother then you know how tempting it is to think “I’m just going to run in and do this, it will only take a second” and leave your baby resting in his carseat. It makes things so much more convenient for us and the baby won’t be interrupted from his blissful slumber. But while we are thinking these thoughts, somehow we fail to think about in those seconds the many things that can go wrong.

In the case of Angel Miguel Perez, something did go horribly wrong. Is started out pretty normal for Angel’s mother on Monday. She did all the normal stuff all us mothers do, such as doctors appointments, shopping, etc. She had one more stop to make before she would be finished. She needed to run in the post office to buy some stamps. She decided to leave little Angel in the car and left the car running all the doors were locked except the driver’s door. When she came out of the post office, little Angel was missing.

A witness reported seeing a heavyset black woman, believed to be in her mid 20’s “that was sort of running across the parking lot of the post office to a nearby church parking lot with a child in hand”. The witness described the suspects car as a silver or grey four door compact car with a rear spoiler. The suspect is being described as 5′1″ tall and about 175 pounds, wearing a blue and white striped shirt.

Source

Today a member of Post Office staff practically accused me of lying about the measurements of a box – twice!

The boxes that we send our balloons out in are pretty big but are within the PO limits on size.

I am used to PO counter staff saying “That box looks too big” then turning to their colleague and saying “Does that look too big to you?” before I explain that the boxes are bought specially for their size blah blah blah.

Today that wasn’t enough, nor was telling the member of staff the exact measurements and quoting the PO size limitations to prove that I knew what the max size of the box could be. She made it very clear that she thought I was lying to her, twice.

Now it won’t be long before we are sending too many deliveries to make a trip to the PO practical, Royal Mail will need to collect and the local POs won’t get their cut anymore but after today’s experience I am thinking about bringing that day forward.

When POs are closing all the time it is such a shame that a local business who spends a small fortune on postage every month is thinking of paying for that postage online or in another way to avoid going to the PO anymore.

Trouble is I’m sure I am not the only one.

I’m desperate.

And no I’m not desperate in the dating sense.  I’m desperate to get a new phone.  It will have been 21 days since I returned my Samsung Behold to T-Mobile on Thanksgiving.  I’m just as upset with T-Mobile as I am with the United States Parcel/Postal Service. 

I just don’t understand why it takes up to 30 days to return a cell phone.  I mean honestly…and I know my luck they are going to say they never received the phone and then I’ll have to file an insurance claim.  I don’t want to have to file an insurance claim.  Dang T-Mobile, and dang Post Office.

It looks like the new year will ring in without big increases in Postage rates.

There will be no changes to the following classes of mail:
First-Class Mail®, Standard Mail®, periodicals and single-piece

Courtesy of Pitney Bowes here are the rates changes for Shipping
New prices for shipping services take effect January.
On USPS competitive products, including Express Mail®, Priority Mail®, Parcel Return Service, new prices have been announced. These rates take effect January 4, 2010.

USPS Service / Average Price Increase

Express Mail® 4.5%
Priority Mail® 3.3%
Parcel Select® 4.7%
Parcel Return Services 3.0%
International Shipping Services 3.3%

Not all prices have increased. The retail price for Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelopes, for example, will be reduced from $4.95 to $4.90. Complete prices are available at pe.usps.com

We’ll post the rate chart from USPS as soon as the official guide becomes available.

Historic views of Montreal’s trams in the early 20th century (5/12)

This is a vintage postcard of the Montreal Post Office and the Bank of Montreal in the first decade of the twentieth century. It was established in 1817 as Canada’s first bank and initially served the British territory of Upper and Lower Canada. At the time Toronto – which is now Canada’s financial capital – was called York, and Montreal was the most important city in Canada. One of the first things they did was to introduce a local currency. After Canadian confederation in 1867 and the gradual addition of new provinces, the Bank of Montreal grew to include branches cross-Canada.

Enlarged Detail of Tram and horse-drawn carriage.

Related Posts:

Montreal In The Time Of Tramways | Introduction

Windsor Station – Traditional Transportation Making A Comeback?

Further Reading:

Bank of Montreal – Quebec History at Marianopolis College

Bank of Montreal Today at Images Montreal

The shades of character that neighborhoods, streets, blocks, or even particular corners take on has always intrigued me. There are a few places downtown that have traditionally been “dodgy” (as Hugh Grant says it in Love Actually), where I have been aware that I’m slightly more aware of the people around me — like the hair on my neck is trying to act as antennae for potential trouble from the panhandlers, the crazy yelling people, or the groups of angry young men or even young women that make moving about in the city so invigorating. But one block over, or a block or two away down the same avenue, things are completely different. I’m always watching to see how and why these pockets of dubious character form, take hold, maintain themselves, and maybe finally get replaced by a different character.

Give me First Avenue any day. Real local shops, human scale, a well-peopled way.

When I was growing up, if we mentioned Seattle’s First Avenue we snickered, because it’s where ladies of ill repute plied the oldest trade (supposedly — I never saw any of that trade’s practitioners and I had to cross First at Marion to get onto the ferry as a teenager to visit my friend Cam on Bainbridge Island). The street’s name was synonymous with harlotry and sleezy businesses. There are still one or two businesses that hark back to that time but in the main First Avenue is now  upscale, clean, and reputable. Because I pay attention to the built environment and the social environments that it either nurtures or discourages, First Avenue is my path of choice if I have to walk on a North-South axis. There are lots of coffee shops and cafes and restaurants and retail stores, a great stationer, and enough older brick and stone buildings to retain a human scale.

Second Avenue through the main part of downtown (say Marion through Stewart) is boring — made up now of the empty concrete “plazas” and courts at the bases of skyscrapers, interchangeable burrito joints hidden in their deep shadows. (There are some exceptions to the monotony, which I’ll treat of in other posts someday). At five oclock these areas become deserted. Even the disenfranchised prefer places with more human energy. It’s not run down. It’s just lifeless. As long as I’ve been walking around downtown Second has been a safe street you could walk down without being bothered — except for the intersection at Pike. 

Second and Pike seemed to me like a drug-deal corner for ages, and in truth the two blocks of Pike Street from Third to First (where Pike meets its market) remain the corrider for people you don’t want to bump into very rudely. A few years ago, the police would ensconce themselves daily at the parking lot on the southeast corner of Second and Pike, and even ran a needle exchange program there for a while to help reduce the spread of AIDS. The grocery or tobacco shop just east of this parking lot was secured behind a drop-down metal gate at night. I was always nervous around there. Still, seventy yards further east and you were on the other side of Third, and that was a “nice” area. Tables with crisp white linens were set out on the sidewalk in front of cafes. A block from the needle exchange.

The Maximus Minimus truck now sells pork sandwiches where the pusherman used to sell drugs. Photo taken earlier this year.

The Newmark Cinema went in at Second and Union (one block south of Pike) during the late ’80s or early ’90s as the anchoring tenant of a large new building there, but the theater failed because — in my opinion — it was too close to Second and Pike. People didn’t like to walk around there. As I mentioned, Second Avenue through most of downtown doesn’t have enough sidewalk life to feel inviting, but then when you get closer to Pike, the kind of sidewalk life you encounter is the kind you want to pass through quickly, not queue up for a movie and pull out your wallet in.

In recent years, however, the block of Pike between Third and Second has come up, and I think it is part of a revitalization of Third Avenue. Because of the presence of the world famous Farmer’s Market at the west end of Pike (a chaotic place friendly to the dodgy element), I think the blocks immediately eastward on Pike will always be a little greasy. But between Second and Third the police cars come less frequently and the needle exchange vans are gone. The old grocery/tobacco place was replaced two years ago by a second installment of Mae Phim Thai, a lunchtime institution that is still line-out-the-door every day down on Columbia below First. Soon after Mae Phim opened its new restaurant there, a gourmet popcorn joint went in right next to it.

Because of the many nice shops and restaurants nestled among the towers of finance on those streets, if you walk along Fourth or Fifth Avenue you will share the sidewalk mostly with business people and retail shoppers during the day and with a few theatergoers, happy-hour revelers and shoppers in the evenings. If you walk along Second, two short blocks toward the bay, you will encounter business people during the day and no one at all in the evening, because there aren’t any nice restaurants and there aren’t any shops. But between these two avenues, Third is this unusual blend. It has the Post Office, which until recently has been the third ugliest building in town and which sits directly across from Benaroya Hall, our symphony’s home. There is a fine restaurant called Wild Ginger at the same intersection (University), and there is a McDonald’s on Third and Pine. Because of this mix and because Third is the main bus corridor, both daytime and evening traffic consists of the upper class element threading their way among other people with considerably less to lose, and late at night Third Avenue is virtually an avenue of urban decay, gangs of youths yelling and strutting across the street in front of buses and clustering into an impenetrable wall in front of McDonald’s.

Bruno's single-handedly held down the west side of Third Avenue for years. Now the sign for the IGA supermarket is visible to the north. Photo taken earlier this year.

Third has some exceptional old buildings like the Arctic Hotel, the Dexter Horton Building, the Telephone Building and the Northern Life Tower. Some other time I’ll talk about some of these, along with the ugliest two buildings in the downtown core, which are also on Third. But Third has two particular blocks, the blocks between University and Union and the one between Union and Pike, that have been problematic until now. The old Woolworths building, now a Ross budget clothing store, takes up half the block between Union and Pike but only has windows at the corner. The rest is a bare wall without awnings, so it bakes in the summer sun and offers no relief from the drizzle during the rest of the year. That side of the block also contains a Bartell’s Drugs, which is handy but attracts trouble. While I was talking with Ben Gant at his newsstand the other day three men came running out of the Bartell’s. The one in front was brought down to the sidewalk by the two chasing him, who turned out to be store detectives. In the low buildings on the other side of the street there were mainly empty or not-often-occupied spaces, with the exception of Bruno’s Pizzeria, which has been there a long time. South a block, between University and Union, the Post Office and the symphony hall face off over the heads of hundreds of bus patrons. The Third and Union bus stops create throngs on both sides of the street. The Post Office, with its cheerless facade and offensive parking garage, had the audacity to replace the old neo-Classical Post Office and the Pantages Theater, which in turn had the audacity to replace the neo-Gothic First Presbyterian church. Along this side there are again no awnings and until recently only a few windows to break the dread monotony of this thoughtless architecture. The Benaroya, while inside a paragon of high culture,  is outside a block-long refuge from the rain and sun for people wanting to light up a cigarette while waiting for the bus. One of our greatest architechtural treasures is a building I can’t stand walking in front of.

The bright facing and new faux windows are long overdue, but it's still a depressing stretch of sidewalk. Photo taken earlier this year.

All this combined with the McDonalds a block north, in my opinion, has kept this section of Third in the doldrums. But a few developments have begun to make things look brighter for the neighborhood. I’ve already blogged about the resurrection of Ben Gant’s newsstand, which is the only spot of life along the wall of the Woolworths building. The aforementioned Thai and gourmet popcorn places appeared on Pike around the corner, and the addition of a Starbucks directly on this corner gave them a reliable friend nextdoor. Last year, in the wasteland between Wild Ginger and the Starbucks, a new upscale Kress IGA grocery went in next to Bruno’s, which for a number of years had to hold down the entire block by itself. The opening of a supermarket on this long-forsaken block surprised me, but a moment’s reflection reminded me that the regentrification of Belltown a few blocks north provides a sufficient customer base for a large store.  Lastly, as if finally realizing that it was sharing the block with greatness across the street, the Post Office got a face-lift last winter and spring. Now it has some fake windows (I assume they’re fake — I don’t think they cut holes in the building for this) that do wonders for the upper floors.

Of course I’m in favor of the new shops going in, and I especially like the Post Office’s makeover. It all helps create a sense of place. However, I still prefer the sense of place two blocks west on First. A lot of people are crazy there, but they aren’t all standing in a line to form a gauntlet of cigarette smoke. 

617 // November 20, 2009

I love when I find great examples of usage for unnecessary quotations. Wait, maybe that is an oxymoron.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen, them please visit this hilarious site: The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

As if the US Postal Service didn’t have  enough problems,   it has now killed one of its most popular programs at  the North Pole.

UPDATE:  Good news!  Letters to Santa will not go unanswered,  as the  USPS changes its mind.

One of the highlights of my day is checking the mail (yes, I’m a nerd) – going to my favorite Post Office in Ballard is an adventure. -It is always great to see Bill who sells Real Change out front, I seem to always run into friends, clients or entertaining people while I’m there AND occasionally I get something fun in the PO Box (like stickers, brownies, love letters I gotta say snail mail is the COOLEST and that’s a fact).

TODAY was a huge highlight!!  In the p.o box was a key to one of the bigger boxes #28…  A PACKAGE!!  (yesssss!)  Then when I saw that sweet pink & green swirly logo and knew it was going to be something fun!   I rushed home and HERE IT IS!!! THE BOOK WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!!   “Planning your wedding” by Blair deLaubenfels, Christy Weber, & Kim Bamberg (the fabulous ladies of Junebug Weddings) it is on sale at Amazon.com & Barnesandnoble.com and will be available soon at bookstores near you!

In this book you will find tips, tricks, resources, information, etiquette  & LOTS of photos…. (a few of them by YOURS TRULY!) I reccommend it HIGHLY to all brides & grooms to be as well as us industry folks.  (its cool to have a great book on hand to show clients!)

posted by Toby Houle

First published in McGill’s VEG magazine 2009 WINTER issue.  My back-pages editorial.

Charles Bukowski, Accidental Feminist.

“Oh, I just can’t read Bukowski, I find he’s a bit of a chauvinist.” “Bukowski doesn’t write real women: they’re all mothers or whores.[1]” “He’s a misogynist and I don’t like him.”  Ladies and gentlemen, the jury cannot still be out on Charles Bukowski.  He’s not blood sausage.  There is no question about the chuckling raconteur’s sensitivity or talent.  Yet his work is still dismissed or ignored on the ground of gender politics, by apparently ungenerous readers who have probably not read enough of it to see the range of feeling.  I admit that before I had read any, I believed everyone who called him a boor, a simpleton, a middling writer.  How silly I feel now to have listened to all those U3 literary critics.

Let us examine together the most prevalent allegations in this (too-short) survey.

I wonder if any word is bandied about college campuses more with the same misguided and self-satisfied ease as the damning “misogynist”[2]?  Good Ole Oxford defines misogyny as “hatred of women.” And “to hate” as “to feel intense dislike for someone/something.”  In popular parlance, any retrograde male or underfeminized womanizer can be called a “misogynist.”  Empty rhetoric.  It is one thing to be confused and selfish, quite another to act out hatred upon a female.  Men who do that typically end up in jail.  Which is to say that institutional sexism (terrible, and, thankfully, apparently on the wane) must be kept separate from individual sexism, and both must be kept separate from the actual rare cases of pure misogyny[3].

The word chauvinism, which Oxford defines as, “extreme or aggressive support for one’s own country or group,[4]” and in the 70s, came to refer, with the word male, to the belief that traditional gender roles are the best.  Which itself is a symptom of gynophobia, or the fear of women’s innate power.  Otherwise said, male chauvinism was a result of a man’s fear of being considered by women to be unneeded, unattractive, or irrelevant.  The doctrine of hysterical sheep, not healthy wolves.  And none of the aforementioned applies to Ole BillyGoat Himself.

Indeed look here or there, and the women in Bukowski’s fiction are independent, and fully vested with agency.  They know what they want from life, and have learned how to get it.  The entire semi-autobiographical Henry Chinaski saga, a shelf’s worth of stories and novels, is a pseudo-picaresque epic full of such lovers and friends.

If you have any doubts about Bukowski’s ability or his politics, pick up Tales of Ordinary Madness (City Lights re-issue 1983) and read “A .45 to Pay the Rent.” Then read it again, carefully.  It’s got Mag, a self-possessed and smart woman who’s also a fallible human being.  It’s got her convenience-store-robber husband Duke, who says to their daughter, Lala, “that’s what an avocado is: frozen sun. we eat it and walk around feeling warm” (p.2).  Or no, pick the women at random.  Mary, who in “Purple as an Iris” comes to find him for casual sex (p.170). Carol, from the beautiful erotic story “Animal Crackers in My Soup,” described thusly, “her hair was as it was in the sunlight – the red showing through the brown.  It was like fire inside.  She was like fire inside.” (p.211).

From the novel Post Office (BlackSparrow Press 1971), consider the rich and mentally unsettled Joyce, or the lazy and smug writer Fay with whom he has a daughter.  The con artist Mary Lou who picks up Chinaski at the racetrack to  kill and rob him of his winnings (p.138).  The mentally unwell women who taunt and tease the despairing Chinaski as he makes the rounds for the U.S. Postal Service.  From the collection Hot Water Music,(BlackSparrow Press 1983) the executive ladies from “A Couple of Gigoloes,” or the successful con artist Victoria from “Fooling Marie.”  Or how about in “How to Get Published,” when he writes, “No man…can ever call a woman his own.  We never own ‘em, we only borrow ‘em for a little while.” (p. 150).

Bukowski’s real crime is his unflinching honesty.  Which lets his fans see all people, everywhere, in his fiction.  But, to his detractors, provides ammunition for attacking.  Is anyone actually surprised that men like to look at a nice ass[5]?  But what’s fresh is that Bukowski also depicts women who look at and judge and enjoy a well-built man.  AND that they, like all people, have objectives which might involve limiting the whole person of the man they’re chasing so as to satisfy their needs first, even if they pretend, from a position of smug superiority, to be above such objectifying[6].  This, friends, is where he gets himself into trouble.  I don’t think women want to be found out for being as base and hypocritical and domineering as men, albeit perhaps in their own ways.  It would endanger the rhetoric they learn and parrot and enjoy, and the double-talk which has tied up the ears of any man who’s ever been in a relationship.  Of which, it must be said, men have their own variety!  Because we’re all the same!  And tied-up together in the muck.  That’s the cruel joke Bukowski tells a thousand ways.

You see, if Bukowski can be compared to anything else, it would be Arlecchino from the old-school Italian Commedia dell’arte public theatre.  Like the busy trickster, who followed his base urges and turned the world upside down with his wit, Bukowski thumbs his nose at and exposes for satiric contemplation the oblivious pedant Dottore, the miserly hypocrite Pantalone, the blustering authority of Il Capitano[7].  And like the clown, he is most happy with the lusty rascal servant Colombina – who acts of her own will, and in the service of her own wit and desires, just like all the women who fascinate Chinaski – not the calculating and grotesque Signoras of the world.

Robert Kroetsch’s Old Man poems.  The Coyote Myths of American Indians.   Felix the cat of The Twisted Tales.  Huckleyberry Finn.  The Fool in King Lear.  Bugs Bunny.  Jim Carrey’s The Mask.  Sut Lovingood of the old Tennessee tall tales.  Norm MacDonald. Brer Rabbit.  If Odysseus had been a shepherd.  Bukowski can only be comprehended in the company of such wise fools, whose real target is always hypocrisy.

Because, with all the evidence considered: the not-being-a-woman-hater, the tremendous social conscience, the sheer warehouses of characters and events in his fiction, the sparkling humour and imagination; it appears Charles Bukowski could not be defined as something so vague and provincial as a chauvinist, but is in fact one of world history’s great stock of Humanist Writers.  He’s one of America’s great – and hopefully enduring – humourists.  A humanist humourist, who makes me hunger for more of the salt and wine of this short life.

[2] Perhaps “slut.” Or poet.

[3] Which closely resembles misanthropy, of Nietzche’s sort.  And is usually reserved for people with dripping venereal conditions, which indicates that their hate is, in fact, a mix of regret and self-hatred.

[4] After Nicolas Chauvin, veteran of Napoleon’s army, who long retained his admiration for Old Boney.

[5] And those who pretend not to, or won’t admit to it, make the rest of us look bad.

[6] How often have we all heard a woman talk about her plans with a new man, regardless of what he might think about suddenly being a boyfriend?  Or how he might not know he’s about to be humped and dumped?

[7] Whose archetypal natures are rendered in Bukowski’s entire constellation of pedants and poor poets; crippled dangerous perverts; and bosses and policemen.

The latest financial results for the U.S. Postal Service are in, and they’re a continuation of the same old story line: Tons of red ink and fingers pointing in every direction.

The USPS posted a net loss of $3.9 billion for FY 2009, “only” $1.1 billion worse than the previous year. And that’s even after receiving a $4 billion deferment on paying an annual $5.4 million obligation to pre-fund healthcare premiums for its retirees.

Not surprisingly, total postal revenues were down about 10% to ~$68 billion, not only because of the economic downturn but also because of the continuing shift to digital communications. Total physical mail volume declined ~13% to around 177 billion pieces.

Given the sorry financial stats, one would assume that the USPS would be moving forward in all haste with its plans to shutter as many as 10% of its post offices and branches around the country.

But if you thought that … you would be wrong. What started out as a potential closure listing of ~3,200 stations (the impressively named Station & Branch Optimization Initiative) quickly became ~700 stations and branches that were actually slated to close. Then that figure was trimmed to just over 400. And now we have word that the closure figure is down to ~370.

Given more time, the number of closures may well slip even further … and at some point the whole exercise becomes completely meaningless as cost-cutting endeavor.

And then there are the persistent rumors that mail delivery will be cut back to five days from six. But that never seems to be anything more than just an idle threat.

Welcome to the wonderful world of government agencies: Stultifying bureaucratic procedures that are near-Byzantine in their complexity, coupled with reacting to every conceivable interest group while being too timid to make any hard choices at all when it comes to managing their operations like any business in private industry must do.

Anyone for government-managed healthcare?

Line O’ the Day:

There is an entire generation or two of people that are so anesthetized that they condone the invasion and destruction of sovereign third-world countries that couldn’t possibly pose a threat to our national security whatsoever and the killing of innocent men, women, children in the process: Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan and yet practically bring the country to a standstill for the death of 13 U.S. soldiers in Texas. When did we go to war with Pakistan?

We are a society of people who have gone down the rabbit hole with the Mad Hatter and March Hare and believe that somehow contrary to basic mathematical laws like one plus one equals two the economy can be improved by taking money from one person and giving it to another or by dropping it from a helicopter. Given their drunken social state, it makes perfect sense to them.

We live in a society where one’s celebrity equates to ability; where a pretty face, gender or ethnic background means more than character, integrity, ability and courage; where a political man, morally, professionally and personally disgraced, can lecture at Harvard’s school of ethics and a political woman known for lying during campaign trips and elsewhere can be appointed to one of our countries highest posts: secretary of state.

A society in which a man wins an international peace award, not for his peace efforts, but rather for a PowerPoint presentation about a theoretical and controversial environmental condition or by a man who, not only didn’t exhibit any of the required characteristics of the award, but in fact exhibited exactly the opposite by sending American men and women into war zones to do his dirty work. It will be a glorious day when “leaders” have to fight their own battles. I wonder how quick they would be to go to war then.

We live in a society of political figures who are so insecure with who they are that they use fake Las Vegas–type names in an attempt to seem more potent than they really are. Names like: John McCain the maverick, Ted Kennedy the Lion, Sarah Palin the rogue. The rogue? Can anyone think of a word that describes Palin any less? Well considering the “rogue” quit her elected position in order to promote her own celebrity I’d like to describe her with the word quitter. Now that’s a woman we want leading a nation; a woman who exhibits such loyalty and perseverance. What’s going to happen if she breaks a nail as president? Will she invade Thailand? Of course like everyone who is stoned, some might get emotional about my description of the Alaskan mutant, but that’s to be expected from those whose mental state is altered.

- Rabbit Hole, Don Cooper [LRC]

Best of the Best:

• Area Man Passionate Defender of What He Imagines the Constitution to Be [The Onion]
• U.S. Post Office Reports Loss, May Cut Saturday Service [CNN Money]
• Origins of the Federal Reserve [Murray Rothbard via LRC]
• 2009 Best of What’s New [Popular Science]
• Inflation is Worse than You Thought [Mike Rozeff via LRC]
• A-Hole Coach Digest: “Fifty Hot Ones, Comin at Ya!” [Deadspin]
• Fun with…Bill Simmons? [Big Daddy Drew via KSK]

Remains:

• Donating this Year?  Uncle Sam Needs Your Help [CNN Money]
• Aspiring Rabbi Wins Piece of 154 Title [Yahoo!]
• Gates Blocks Abuse Photos Release (Ed. – TRANSPARENCY! CHANGE!) [BBC]
• Adjusting to Life after Death Row [BBC]
• Govt: Medicare Paid $47 Billion in Suspect Claims [Yahoo!]
• Le Fric, C’est Moi: Does Islamic Banking Threaten the French National Identity? [Reason]
• Gun Sales Shoot Amid America’s Fear of Rising Crime and Terrorism [Times Online]
• A Morally Bankrupt Military: When Soldiers and Their Families Become Expendable [Truthout]
• 1o Tales of Pornstar and Celebrity Hookups [Gunaxin]
• Angelina Jolie Photo Gallery (Ed. – Yes, please) [Funtasticus]
• The Best of Disaster Porn: Historical Landmarks Blown to Bits for Our Viewing Pleasure [Moviefone]
• Camden Waterfront-and it’s Woes [Philly.com]
• Is a Bailout for the FHA in the Works? [Fox News Blogs]
• 7 Things “Good Parents” Do (That Screw Kids Up) [Cracked]
• Leviathan’s Orphans [ProLibertate]
• Isiah Thomas Can’t Even Lose Properly [Deadspin]
• Belichick was Right [Deadspin]
• Why Pirates Fans are the Luckiest Fans in the World [Deadspin]
• Some Sports Test for Steroids; Some Only Care if You’re Dealing [Deadspin]
• New York Times: More Douche on TV than Ever Before [Warming Glow]
• Maoist in the White House [Mises Institute]
• Space Hotel Says It’s on Schedule to Open in 2012 [Yahoo!]
• Supernatural Collective Nouns [Wondermark]
• The Unromantic Truth of Why We Kiss–to Spread Germs [Mail Online]
• Monsters from the Old Testament that Want to Eat Your Kishkes [io9]
• A Black Hole that Could Power a Spaceship [io9]
• The Real Psychic Behind the Men Who Stare at Goats [io9]
• The Darko Mythos [io9]
• How Everything Goes to Hell in a Zombie Apocalypse [Oatmeal]
• Money Well Spent [Warming Glow]
• GIANTS SACK!  GIANTS SACK!  GIANTS FACKING SACK! [Big Daddy Drew via KSK]
• I Work the Angles, Sharp and Precise: the KSK Fantasy Football/Sex Mailbag [KSK]
• The Ultimate Space Porn: a 648 Megapixel Image of Our Universe [io9]

BLUE AND WHITE BIRD WAS 3.8 BILLION IN RED LAST YEAR

According to Washington post  the Postal Service reported a loss of $3.8 billion last year, despite a reduction of 40,000 full-time positions and other cost-cutting measures.

The loss was $1 billion more than the year before despite job cuts and other efforts designed to save billions of dollars, postal officials said Monday.

“Our 2009 fiscal year proved to be one of the most challenging in the history of the Postal Service,” Chief Financial Officer Joseph Corbett said.

“The deep economic recession, and to a lesser extent the ongoing migration of mail to electronic alternatives, significantly affected all mail products, creating a large imbalance between revenues and costs,” he said.

The post office has been struggling to cope with a decline in mail volume caused by the shift to the Internet as well as the recession that resulted in a drop in advertising and other mail. Total mail volume was 177.1 billion pieces, compared to 202.7 billion pieces in 2008, a decline of almost 13 percent.

For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 the agency had income of $68.1 billion, $6.8 billion less than in 2008. Expenditures were down $5.9 billion to $71.8 billion.

Postmaster General John Potter is seeking permission from Congress to reduce mail delivery from six days a week to five, a move that could save the agency $3.5 billion annually.

Potter has said the post office does not plan to raise rates next year on the items most commonly used by the public such as first-class mail.

“We realize our customers are facing the same economic challenges,” said Potter.

In addition the agency is consolidating mail facilities, looking to close some offices and looking for new sources of income.

The post office is required to make an annual contribution of about $5 billion to pay in advance for medical benefits for future retirees. Congress reduced that by $4 billion for 2009, but that change was for one year only.

The agency’s independent auditor, Ernst & Young, questioned whether the post office would have enough money to make the next payment on Sept. 30, 2010, when $5.5 billion will be due.

For the current fiscal year, the post office estimated it will have a further decline in income of $2.2 billion and a net loss of $7.8 billion even with expected cost reductions of more than $3.5 billion. It expects a reduction in mail volume of another 11 billion pieces.

While there are signs of economic recovery, Corbett said the post office tends to lag two quarters behind the economy. In addition, he said, economists say the recovery is likely to be slow to add jobs and mail volume generally rises when more people are working.

Chipping away at public services one item at the time….

As government is unable to expand credit markets and as most tax revenue is going towards debt service despite the lowest interest rates in history, public service must be curtailed.

Curtail enough public services (police, fire fighting, refuse disposal… health care…… pensions) in an environment where unemployment is rising at the same time that the power and business elites are implicated in scandal after scandal and you got yourself the ideal conditions for civil unrest.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/16/news/companies/US_postal_service/index.htm

Civil unrest means government will fall.

I know that. Some other people know that. Some politicians may know it too and of those that don’t know it, they can feel the winds of change bearing down on their little fiefdoms.

How do you prevent a total loss of power of the incumbents? You engineer a war of course and, at this rate, the next war will be a real war where Western society will be packed off to the front, civilian industry will be turned into war industry and food and energy will be rationed.

You may think I am off my rocker.

If I am right and, so far, empirical evidence tells me I am because:

The gargantuan amount of money that has been created in the past year alone has so far failed to work it’s multiplier magic on the overall economy

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And since the gargantuan sums that have been handed over to banks are just sitting there

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And because we still have significant overcapacity

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… and because of this…

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… and because of this…

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… and finally, in an economy that is 80% consumer based, because of this…

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… if I am right (and the above data says I am) and we have entered a cyclical deflationary era, government won’t be able to expand credit markets no matter what it does and monetization of the debt issued by the treasury is not going to help if not to destroy the currency thus the economy.

Incidentally, considering that the Bank of International Settlements estimates global financial obligations to be worth at a minimum US$500Trillion and that world GDP was at one point hovering around US$50Trillion and that the majority of these derivatives are held by US and EU banks (and only four banks hold the lion share of the lot)… major global currencies are not going to take kindly to the moment in time when these obligations must be satisfied…

Can a Western government declare bankruptcy and, in one fell swoop, admit that, in fact, we are no better than your garden variety Mugabe?

I think not.

If any of the above indicators don’t start trending in the opposite direction we’ll have us a war by 2013/2015 latest.

Hubby and I have been doing the annual how much health care can we afford calculations.  Nothing hammers home that you are a grown up more than health care.  I hate having to do this every year.  Every year it costs more and we get less.  We don’t go to the doctor all that much but I am on some rather heavy-duty drugs (too bad none of them are the fun ones)  and need more knee surgery.  I keep putting it off, I have noticed the more I work out the better if feels to a point.  Then it just goes down hill quickly.  It is like a switch is flipped.  Another reason I have encouraged my girls to join the military.  They never have to worry about it. 

Hubby and I went to the post office today.  Debbie who works there is always so helpful.  We really appreciate her helping us with customs forms.  Did you know that when you send a box to someone on a military base out of country (which is considered US soil) you have to fill out a customs form?  What is up with that?  We will have to do it for Navy Girl too, even though it will be going to a ship at sea.  I think I know why the post office is losing money, printing forms for stupid stuff like that.  Oh did I tell you that the forms are not just triplicate but 6 pages thick.  So if you are sending packages to someone out of the country on US soil press hard when filling out the forms.  And use lots of tape on the boxes.

Happy thoughts for a happy day!

Imagine a feral child in torn rags, eying you hungrily from the curb (no food stamps, not its fault, parents out of work) grunting inarticulately (no public schools) while gnawing on a senior citizens bones (no SSA and Medicare) while you look out for bandits (no public police) in the decaying ‘hood which used to be so nice (no public firefighters). Now get into your solar-electric  golf cart (you’re presumed to be one of the lucky at this point)one hand on the wheel and one on your gun and drive away on the pockmarked broken road (no public upkeep) looking out for potholes, bandits, dead bodies and feral kids (did I mention…). Now turn on your GPS (no one replacing the torn-down street signage) hoping the few remaining satellites (no NASA) are enough signal to get by this day. You get to work, where you eke out enough to eat and not much else (no minimum wage or monopolistic oversight to make sure Corporations don’t conspire to keep wages low). Now for the hunt for food, (groceries are much scarcer now due to lack of food stamp spending). Finally after zig-zagging across town you find a store, heavily-guarded by private security (an industry doing fairly well in this brave new world) and you enter after being rudely frisked and scanned. You look at the poor selection, sighing as you realize highwaymen have probably been at it again, robbing supply trucks (no public highway patrol). You pick up a poor excuse of a head of lettuce (shaking your head) and remind yourself to really clean it this time, with clean water (as if that would help with the public Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agencies gutted by conservatives), that last bout of salmonella nearly killed you (no health care insurance and the conservatives managed to close down the use of emergency rooms without insurance and proof of citizenship). You leave, parting with $50. (moneys dropped big time) for the lettuce and a pound of meat of dubious origin (no gov’t inspections). You’d like to find a better job, but where? There are far more people than jobs now. You think about picking up your mail and chide yourself for the Nth time for forgetting there is no public postal service anymore. You figure it’s just a matter of time before the Corporation replaces you with an alien (no public border guards). Oh well, tomorrow is another day ! You can always go into security, you’re responsible for your own future. No handouts for you, “Welfare,”, you spit out, as if tasting something bad, “for losers”. Hard to believe people use to use the word in sentences like, “looking out for the welfare of one another”. Left-wing propaganda!  Opportunities abound for a smart man you think as you drive into your fortified hovel, locking the doors behind you and turning the radio on to listen to President Becks nightly address.

Here is a beautiful old building in Newcastle – Custom’s House. Across the road from the Newcastle Railway Station, this wonderful building is a landmark in it’s own right. Sadly, another old building in Newcastle that could be considered beautiful has been run into the ground so to speak – the Post Office.

Custom’s House is now occupied by a restaurant and what a beautiful location – right on the foreshore of Newcastle’s picturesque parkland area.

Whenever I catch a bus to Newcastle – I spend a bit of time here in the park in front of Custom’s House. The bus stop for the return trip (and the arrival stop) is right next to the train station and opposite this magnificent building and parkland area. It is a great little spot to pass the time while waiting for the bus.

Headed out to Post after school and met up with the crew.  Everyone was shredding and we got some sick trains goin!  Shawn Spomer was out there shooting so I’m sure you’ll see a sick vid from him on VitalMTB soon!
For now, a sick shot Devin snapped!

Strangely enough, for our first post we have decided to talk about post. In this case the infamous Royal Mail. Now, being a music fan I enjoy buying vinyl. Whether you love or hate the format doesn’t really matter because I am using records as an example of something that more often than not gets delivered through the post. Why is this? Because there’s no bloody record shops anymore. If there was, I might not be writing this article.

There have been more than a few postal strikes this year which most of us can deal with but the fact is whenever there is a postal strike, it seems like an excuse for parcels to go ‘missing’.  During September, I ordered a newly released album from a reliable Ebay seller. At the time there were postal strikes going on in the London area but the seller who was based in the capital assured me the record would be sent straightaway. It never turned up and luckily I got my money back (a refund from the seller, not the Royal Mail).

This month, feeling a bit flush, I decided to buy 8 new records. All were ordered between 28th-30th October 2009. All were posted by the relevant party around that time. Only half of them have since arrived at my house – it is now 12th November, nearly 2 weeks since I had confirmation from the sellers that the items had been posted.

I understand strikes cause a backlog, but I have heard that these are easily cleared within a day or two especially as the Royal Mail hired temporary workers during the strikes. I do not understand how items can go ‘missing’ during these periods. Realisically they can only be in one of a few places – the Post Office, Sorting Office or in a Van/Postman’s bag. In my opinion, the only way an item can get lost is if it ended up somewhere that it shouldn’t have or if someone has deliberately stolen it – using the strike as an excuse to go on the proverbial rob. From the point of view of a corrupt postal worker it’s a perfect alibi, strike = potential for a few things to go missing. However, this is not a case of a few letters going astray, I have a feeling my 4 parcels are only the tip of the iceberg. If I have lost parcels then surely millions of others have too, which in my opinion points to some kind of organised crime. There can be few other explanations, where else could they be?!  Proping up a staff room table in Kent? Now, I’m not accusing the entire Royal Mail workforce of being tea leaves, but there’s always  going to be bad eggs in any organisation and it seems apparent that our ‘great’ postal service has more of a problem in this area than most.

This brings me on to another problem with the Royal Mail, the postman who is too lazy to take parcels back to the sorting office. Back in the day postmen arrived at the house at 7am before everyone went to work. Now they arrive about 1pm when everyone is at work. Genius. If this is how the Royal Mail want to operate then fine but the consequence is there will be a lot of undelivered items heading back to the sorting office in town. My postman however, doesn’t seem to like taking parcels back to the sorting office. He likes to leave them laying around. In the past he has left packages on the doorstep to get soaked by the rain, in the recycling bin among the baked bean tins and occasionally against the outside wall. Now I live in your typical English residential area, not Mayfair -  if I left a paperclip on the driveway it would be nicked within 5 minutes. What chance does a parcel have? This is all despite leaving notices taped to the front door stating ‘DO NOT LEAVE PARCELS OUTSIDE!’. Is it really that difficult? I’m quite happy to collect my parcels from town on a Saturday, thank you very much. I should add to that handwritten note that’s sellotaped to my door, please remember to fill out a red card and post it through my letterbox to LET ME KNOW I have a parcel to pick up – yes me, the person who pays for this shabby service, and it would be nice if when I go to pick up my item I’m not treated like scourge by the woman behind the desk.

Deep breath.

Sadly there’s no real resolution or happy ending to this story, I just hope the Royal Mail and it’s poor attitude and service is replaced by something better. Every other country in the world manages to get it right. It’s not a difficult process really…is it?