Archive - 2008

KrAZyKatT HERE WISHING ALL SWAMPBUBBLERS A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR. MAY IT BRING YOU THE VERY BEST DURING DIFFICULT TIMES.

There's still time to vote for Dickipedia's Dick of the Year.  (JtP is currently 8th)

Ohio was well-represented in The Nation's Most Valuable Progressives of 2008.

MOST VALUABLE HOUSE MEMBER: Marcy Kaptur

Since 2000, the United States' standing has deteriorated in all parts of the world, and anti-Americanism has grown intense. The 2008 Pew Global Attitudes survey reveals that in the past eight years, favorable views of the United States fell from 78 percent to 30 percent in Germany, 50 percent to 22 percent in Argentina and 75 percent to 37 percent in Indonesia. Yet as bad as this looks, America's image problem can still be healed—if the next administration correctly diagnoses the problem.

Hilarious. The same Palin family that screamed 'invasion of personal privacy' when the pregnancy was disclosed and discussed during the campaign will now TAKE MONEY from the same media for the baby shots?

I have read somewhere that there are “business cycles”.  Perhaps we are at the bottom of a cycle.  I sure hope so.  I have to wonder what it would have been like now if lenders had not lent to people who could not pay the inflated ARMs that were in the agreements they signed a year before.  Unless this was the lendee's first property (because they were living with their parents) they must have had shelter somewhere.  Maybe the lendee thought of his new house as a glorified rental that he would walk away from when he could not pay the inflated ARM.

More than three years after a scandal that rocked the Ohio Republican Party, current and former officeholders have been hit with hefty fines from the Federal Elections Commission - all for helping Tom Noe gain prominence in Washington.

A current Toledo city councilman, a former Lucas County commissioner, and a former Toledo mayor are among seven "Noe conduits" who were fined thousands of dollars for contributing money to the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign. The contributions had been given to them by Noe.

I guess I really haven't been paying attention or something because I was totally surprised when channel 13 did a story on the new trash pick up schedule.

On December 10, Standard and Poor's downgraded  its outlook on Block Communications from "Stable" to "Negative" as a result of the mounting newspaper loses. S & P said that the newspaper segment continues to drag down a healthy cable business.

You can read more at:

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/portal/site/sp/en/us/page.topic/ratings...

and http://www.alacrastore.com/storecontent/spcred/689024

Sorry I don't have anything more specific than this (that is free).

Dear Friend,

We recently launched a new feature on Change.gov called Open for Questions. Thousands of you responded, asking 10,000 questions and voting nearly a million times on questions from others.

Now that we've answered some of the most popular ones from the last round, we are open for questions again. Ask whatever you like, and vote up or down on the other questions to let us know which ones you most want the Transition to answer.

I think I recall hearing of the University of Toledo Clean & Alternative Energy Incubator before:

Reston, Va.-based SuGanit Systems Inc. was awarded a $999,900 grant from the Ohio Third Frontier Advanced Energy Program, an Ohio Department of Development fund, to scale up its cellulosic ethanol biomass pretreatment and fermentation processes. SuGanit Systems operates a research and development center at the University of Toledo Clean & Alternative Energy Incubator in Toledo, Ohio.

Read the rest at:

The Postal Service is another entity in trouble-  mail volume is down

 With a nearly $3 billion loss in fiscal '08, and a projected deficit of up to $5 billion in the current year, the USPS is "close to not being able to sustain a national postal-service system to the public," Burrus said.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20081229_Forget_dead_letters__worry_about_a_dead_USPS.html

I was saddened to read that an attempt to organize a kickball league in Toledo was not successful this year. How about next year?

The World Adult Kickball Association has big plans. Executives are confident that the game will spread outside the Washington era by next spring. Two cities _ Toledo, Ohio and San Francisco _ made efforts to organize this year but fell short number-wise.

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/39521

If you see a problem or have any comments, please let me know. Some of the most visible changes are the updated html editor. I like how this one functions over the horsey other one. If you want to embed movies, just press the source button and embed it. When you are done, you can turn it off. You can also disable the rich text editor at the bottom of the page. A good number of the updates were made in the background.

Much of what has been lost in 2008 will not be recovered: enterprises, personal fortunes, chattels, reputations. By May of 2009, the stock markets will resume crashing with the ultimate destination of a Dow 4000 before the end of the year.

Still working hard! Please bear with us.

Twas two days after Christmas and I had just settled down for a jaunt on the Internet
at 9:50 PM out on the street there arose such a clatter
I sprang from the sofa to see what was the matter
Away to the window I flew like a flash
I Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash
The moon on the breast of the over month old leaves
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a Toledo trash crew
With a driver and two helpers, not so lively and quick

One day -- I'll never forget it -- my former "Palestinian" student-neighbors purposely showed me a newsletter from the Islamic Center in Perrysburg, Ohio that had a story from the Haddith -- sayings attributed to Mohammad -- that spoke of a war in the last days between Jews and Muslims, and how Jews would hide behind trees and the trees would say, "There's a Jew behind me, kill him!" except for one tree that would shelter the Jews.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSLR1342320081227?feedType=RSS&...

With a little more than three weeks left in the Bush Administration, this presents Obama with another critical situation to deal with. Interesting timing by the Israelis?

Suffering Ohio begs for a federal lifeline. ***"Ohio, which has shed 100,000 jobs in the past year, Gov. Ted Strickland and his budget team spend a lot of time delivering bad news to constituents and plotting ways to wring money from the federal government. In the meantime, Lucas County Health honcho David Grossman continues to target smokers and has eliminated rat control.

For you football fans out there the Wall Street Journal has a great article on Ohio Football coaches.
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Ohio is a state in a deep recession, laid low by the decline of manufacturing. And yet, the Buckeye state is to college football coaching what Silicon Valley is to technology: It's where the brightest minds come from.

If Swampbubles has had previous problems with the Net phenomenon known as sock puppetry, I am unfamiliar with its history. However, recently I began to suspect that a new site visitor is engaging in this idiotic behavior.