American companies hitting it out of the ball park on profitability

Watching the baseball world series – even if it’s not your team – is fun. There’s something exciting about watching a home run.

For two straight years American companies have been hitting it out of the ball park on profitability even as the economy has struggled to grow and create jobs faster. Profits being reported for the three months ended Sept. 31 (according to Standard & Poor’s index) are expected to show another home run: double digit earnings growth.

That’s hard to reconcile when I look around this country and watch the 99%ers growing protest against Wall Street and banks greed. Like baseball, there’s two teams: the Have’s and the Have Nots.

As I watch the Rangers and the Tigers go at it in Game 3 tonight, I’m going to be wondering about how those other teams series is going to end. Play ball!

Shades of ‘Rocky,’ NBA cancels first 2 weeks of season, and vision problems follow 'stealth recall' of contact lenses

                    Good Morning Humboldt County!

Help yourself to a cup of steaming coffee and pull up a chair and relax for a bit. I’ve got an eclectic mix of stories for your viewing pleasure today. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

Exonerated of murder, boxer makes his debut at 52

The television crew had him up at dawn doing the Rocky fandango, dashing up the 72 stone steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and dancing around in triumph like another over-the-hill, underdog pugilist who had made it big.

Cliché or not, it is hard not to imagine the familiar trumpet score along with the thwock, thwock, thwock of fists on punching bags as Dewey Bozella trains for one of the least likely boxing matches in history.

After 26 years in New York State prisons, and two years after he was exonerated of murder, Mr. Bozella will make his professional boxing debut on Saturday in Los Angeles, at age 52, on the undercard of the light-heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins. (A mere 46 himself, Mr. Hopkins became the oldest fighter to win a major world championship this May.)

Some very good games lost to lockout. Thanks a lot, guys.

With the cancellation of the first two weeks of the season, 100 NBA games went down the drain.

Hang an asterisk on this season — these are games commissioner David Stern said are gone. He said there is no chance of making them up. But what games are we now going to miss?

How about a great opening-night doubleheader — the Chicago Bulls heading into Dallas on the night the Mavericks raised the banner. Then a battle of generations as the Oklahoma City Thunder faced the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers’ second game was to have Chris Paul come in and test Kobe Bryant. Not any more. How about the Miami Heat vs. the New York Knicks? Gone. The Orlando Magic taking on the Heat? Gone.The Bulls start their annual circus trip Nov. 13 — when the circus comes to the United Center and the Bulls are kicked out of the arena for weeks. Which means that if the owners and players figure this out in the next couple weeks and the season starts Nov. 15, the Bulls will be on the road for the first chunk of it.

The more likely scenario is that more games will get canceled and the entire trip will get wiped out. The league is going to do it in two-week increments — it’s more painful for fans that way. And this is going to be a lot more painful before it ends. - Kurt Helin Oct 11, 2011, 9:23 AM EDT.

Torn corneas, vision problems follow 'stealth recall' of contact lenses

Amid growing reports of eye problems ranging from blurry vision to torn corneas, federal health officials are threatening to issue a public warning about recalled contact lenses manufactured by CooperVision Inc. and sold widely at stores such as Costco, Wal-Mart and LensCrafters.

The Fairport, N.Y., firm has yet to heed a request from the federal Food and Drug Administration to broaden notification of problems with certain lots of its Avaira Toric contact lenses, which were recalled quietly in August because of unidentified “residue.” “Absent prompt and adequate communication by CooperVision, the FDA may independently share its concerns about Avaira Toric contact lenses,” FDA spokeswoman Morgan Liscinsky said in an e-mail.

But for at least a dozen consumers who indicated to msnbc.com they have suffered impaired vision, excruciating pain or landed in emergency rooms after wearing the contacts launched in April and recalled in August, such notice is long overdue. “It is very frustrating that they’re not more vocal about it and that the FDA hasn’t warned more people,” said Mellisa Cotton, 40, of Atlanta, who said she suffered two corneal abrasions this summer after wearing Avaira Toric contact lenses.

Time to walk on down the road…

What Happened to Columbus Day?

In Manhattan this morning, it was 70 degrees and sunny, and a fresh breeze rustled the elm trees in the park as the Explainer hustled to the office. It’s bad enough having to work on a perfect autumn day. But it’s downright galling when that perfect day also happens to be a federal holiday. When did Columbus Day become just another Monday?

In the early 1990s when Congress planned a “Quincentennial Jubilee” in 1992 to celebrate the 500^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ Oct. 12 landing on the Bahamas. The festivities were to have sent a replica Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria sailing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in a fatuous re-enactment of the Italian explorer’s “discovery of America,” but Native American leaders joined with liberals and environmentalists to protest the celebration.

Corporate sponsors never materialized, and the voyage was canceled. The same year, Berkeley, Calif., renamed the holiday “Indigenous People’s Day” in recognition of the civilizations that were nearly wiped out in the centuries following Columbus’ arrival. In most other places, Columbus Day simply withered over the years, with the political controversy serving as cover for employers to deny workers a paid vacation day.                             

Perhaps the holiday’s lowest moment since 1992 came in 2009, at the height of the recession. That’s the year Baltimore and Philadelphia canceled their long-running Columbus Day parades and California dropped the holiday as a paid day off for government workers—citing budget woes, not ethical misgivings.

Federal workers and the employees of 24 states still get the holiday, but they’re now in the minority. Even the Explainer's parents, school administrators in Ohio’s capital city, are at work today. When a place called Columbus stops celebrating Columbus Day, it’s clear the holiday is out of favor.

Those who chafe at being required to work on one of the nation’s 10 federal holidays can take some solace knowing that it didn’t even exist until 1907. That’s when Italian-Americans in Denver convinced the state of Colorado to declare Columbus Day a holiday, partly in celebration of their heritage. The Knights of Columbus successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt to make it a federal holiday in the 1930s.

Today, Italian-American groups still hold Columbus Day marches in several cities, including Denver, where they are routinely attended by angry protesters.

First ran in Slate             image source

Special stupid robbers collection for a Monday morning

            Good Morning Humboldt County!

It’s a little wet outside this morning and I’ll bet a cup of hot coffee will warm you up. Grab a cup and join me this morning in this special Robber Fail collection of stories:

   Police say man robbed bank, then went for pizza

Arizona authorities say they have arrested a man who robbed a Yuma bank then went and spent some of the stolen money on beer and pizza at a nearby restaurant. Yuma police say 56-year-old Henry Elmer has been booked into county jail on a variety of robbery and theft-related charges.

Officers responded to a robbery call at the main branch of the Wells Fargo Bank across from the Yuma Police Station around 1:30 p.m. Saturday. A man reportedly entered the bank, produced a box-cutter knife and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Police say Elmer then went to a nearby restaurant, ordered beer and a couple of slices of pizza and paid with some of the bank's money. Police say they located Elmer before the meal was served. It's unclear whether he has a lawyer, yet.

       Minn. woman accused of robbing home to buy porn

Authorities say an 18-year-old Minnesota woman admitted to investigators that she broke into a neighbor's home three times looking for items she could fence to feed her porn addiction.

Anoka County sheriff's investigators say the neighbor called to report he had surveillance footage of Amanda Rose Owens sneaking into his East Bethel home through a dog door.The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports (http://bit.ly/oXEskf ) that the neighbor set up the camera after $300 and several items were stolen.

Investigators say Owens admitted she had broken in three times. She said she need money so she could pay for 20 to 30 pornographic DVDs she bought. Owens was charged Wednesday with second-degree burglary. She does not have a listed phone number and it wasn't clear Saturday if she had an attorney.

Some crimes sound a little too dumb to be true. Like, something from a Disney Channel show. Except criminal activity involves prisons and money instead of hideous outfits and even worse acting….

Robber leaves bribe bucket and comes back for it

According to Local 12, one man in Cincinnati isn’t exactly main character material.  He broke into a potato chip plant, and proceeded to steal a computer disk, vehicle titles, a whole book of payroll checks, and other business papers. He then left a note for the company president demanding that $22,000 be left in a bucket for him, or else he would “expose personal matters of employees” and burn everything he had stolen. The president called the police, of course, who set up a bucket filled with convincingly fake cash, as well as surveillance material. They spotted the crook dragging the bucket away with a fishing pole…and arrested him in the forest, all tangled up in the fishing line. Aaaand…scene!

Time to walk on down the road…

As It Stands– ‘American Uprising’ – an ongoing demonstration for equality

                    
    “There’s something happinin here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”
   Lyrics from “Stop Hey What’s that Sound” by Buffalo Springfield.

    By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard
   Trees across America change colors as Autumn settles in and winds of discontent swirl down Wall Street. They carry the voices of an ever-increasing number of protestors camped out at Zuccotti Park and on sidewalks.
   Over 700 protestors were arrested for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge last weekend. People chanted, “We are the 99 percent!” Thousands of protestors gathered at Foley Square midweek and were joined by union activists in a march to Zuccotti Park.
   Their signs condemned the corporations, the banks, the speculators, the government, the wars, and the wealthy minority who rule like robber barons of old. They shouted epithets and chanted “F*** the Fed!” Signs proclaimed, "Tax Wall Street" and "Make Jobs Not Cuts."

   This ongoing demonstration has become known on Twitter (and recently by the mainstream media) as #OccupyWallStreet. It began in July with the launch of a simple campaign website calling for a march and a sit-in at the New York Stock Exchange.
   The call to protest came from anti-consumerist magazine AdBusters on September 17th, and people haven’t stopped coming. Over the past three weeks, demonstrations have addressed various issues, including police brutality, union busting and the economy.
   Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this protest - which has extended to other states - is the lack of a central leadership. We’re witnessing a true grass roots movement. I’ve read  where protestors said they were inspired by the so-called “Arab Uprising.”
   The Wall Street Journal reported similar protests sprouting up across the country in cities including Chicago, Pittsburg and Los Angeles. Over 60 smaller cities throughout the country have had turnouts supporting the movement. Students at Humboldt State University, in Arcata, joined other students throughout California in voicing their concerns.

  Several hundred people marched around the financial district in San Francisco, their angry voices joining the New York protestors, "They got bailed out, we got sold out" and "Join our ranks, stop the banks."
   I hope the politicians are paying attention because no amount of rhetoric will satisfy the millions of Americans suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
  The majority of Americans are angry with our government and the power of the wealthy minority. This blacklash has no leaders, but the overall message is clear; things have to change. People can’t stand the inequalities in our system of government any longer.
   The mainstream media has reluctantly reported the Wall Street protests, and others that are springing up everywhere thanks to social medias like FaceBook and Twitter. I’ve followed this “American Uprising” from the start, and the thing that impresses me is the unity among strangers.
   I can’t help thinking about the sixties when protestors spoke out against the Vietnam War and a corrupt government. They made a difference. They showed if the majority of Americans banded together and let their voices be heard, they could make a difference.

   If the Republicans and the Democrats have any brains at all, they better pay heed to what’s happening in the streets. The winds of discontent are blowing and show no signs of letting up.

   The protests have been peaceful for the most part. People are arrested and ticketed. It’s important to look at who the protestors are. The core of our democracy - the middle class. Of course the poor are protesting too. They always have by virtue of their position in life. Their voices are seldom heard. There’s no Super PACs (Political Action Committees) for the poor.
   A fire has been started by the people. Not by a PAC (financed by the wealthy) and claiming to be for the people like the Tea Party. No, this a very real uprising among common Americans fed up with the powers that be. It’ll be impossible for the mainstream media to vilify any one person and call them responsible for the rebellion that is sweeping the cities.

   Despite that, expect negative reports about the protestors. Expect stories about liberals gone wild and lazy hippies having a heyday. Expect conservative attacks that revile those protesting Americans on Wall Street and Main Street USA. Above all, expect the demonstrators to continue to gather in growing numbers.
   More than the color of the leaves is changing this autumn. Common Americans are finding their voice. The working class. The people who bear the brunt of taxes while the corporations and the wealthy cheat. Everyday people. People who work long hours for low pay and practically no benefits.
  Common people who have a dream of equality. Who think all Americans should have health care and seniors shouldn’t have to fear for their social security benefits or be used as pawns in politics.
   The politicians who don’t respond to this groundswell of discontent will harvest what they sow when they come up for re-election. This is a campaign year. This is also the year the people have decided to fight back.       
   As the bitter winds of autumn carry the protests, they threaten sleet and snow as the protests grow. Angry voices ride the winds of change, unafraid of the establishment that has failed them so miserably. Their ranks continue to swell.
    As It Stands, can you hear them? The voices ringing out across the land?

Things people say: Ordinary people can be drop dead funny

Human speech is directly responsible for almost every thought and emotion we have throughout life's journey. The complexity of language and the complex messages we use it to communicate leave the possibilities wide open for just about anything. Among other things, people can say things that are funny. We pay good money to see comedians say funny things, and a lot of them come through. But due to the nature of the human comic sense, the deliberateness of a comedian can dilute the potential for humor.The humor here is, for the most part, unrehearsed and unintentional:

Accident Reports - Accident insurance claim forms ask for a brief statement about how the accident happened. The combination of the finger pointing instinct and the small spaces provided on the forms can lead to some curiously phrased explanations:

• "A pedestrian hit me and went under my car."
• "The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention."
• "I had been learning to drive with power steering. I turned the wheel to what I thought was enough and found myself in a different direction going the opposite way."
• "Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have."
• "I thought my window was down; but found it was up when I put my hand through it."
• "No one was to blame for the accident, but it never would have happened if the other driver had been alert."
• "The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran over him."
• "I saw the slow-moving, sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car."
• "I had been driving for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident."
• "I was taking my canary to the hospital. It got loose in the car and flew out the window. The next thing I saw was his rear end, and there was a crash."
• "I was backing my car out of the driveway in the usual manner when it was struck by the other car in the same place where it had been struck several times before."
• "The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth."

More Slips and Gaffes -

• Excuse Letters -- Letters from parents to teachers, excusing their children from school.
• Courtroom Quotations -- Lawyers take ridiculous steps to be thorough.
• Resume Quotations -- Unwise statements made on resumes and cover letters.
• Patient Charts -- Doctors' remarks on patient charts.
• Church Bulletins -- Unfortunately phrased announcements in church bulletins.
• Classified Ads -- Classified ads that don't necessarily say what they were intended to.
• News Reports -- Newspapers, radio, and television garble news reports.
• Restaurants -- Blundered lines, signs, and menus at restaurants.
• Spoonerisms -- Quotes with words with sitched swounds.
• Words Without Thought -- Bungling the English language.
• The Language Barrier -- When learning English, sometimes being close is still very far away.
• Fortune Cookies -- Bizarre lines taken from actual fortune cookies.

Things Kids Say -

• Kids' Ideas About Love -- 5 to 10 year olds expound on love and marriage.
• Kids' Ideas About Science -- 5th and 6th graders illustrate scientific principles for the layman.
• Kid Quotes -- Young children make hilarious observations.
• Exams and Papers -- 7th through 12th graders give creative wrong answers to exams.
• Classroom Discussion -- Quotes from college kids, spoken during classroom discussions.

Can’t get enough? Go here for Questions, Suggestions, and Complaints – Stupidity - Famous People

World Zombie Day, a ‘fantastical exoskeleton,’ and Dutch coffee shops face curbs on cannabis

Good Morning Humboldt County!

Another day in paradise! It’s beautiful out there so don’t spend too much time reading my offerings this morning. Grab a quick cup of coffee and check out what’s happening in this crazy world we live in:

Join the shambling masses for World Zombie Day

Think zombies milling around Wall Street are a weird, one-time anomaly?

Think again: With World Zombie Day on Saturday, legions of the undead will moan, march and munch on brains in cities across the country. The event was founded in 2008 by Mark Menold, who knows his way around the creepy side of life as Professor Emcee Square, the host (and producer) of “The It’s Alive! Show,” a horror-themed TV program on WGBN in Pittsburgh.

The 'fantastical' exoskeleton that could help patients walk again

A breakthrough study involving monkeys could one day help quadriplegics move and feel again. Here's a quick guide

It might sound like science fiction, but a new experiment very much rooted in reality may help quadriplegics move on their own again — with the aid of robotic exoskeletons. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center attached electrodes to the brains of two monkeys, and trained them to move objects on a computer screen by commanding a virtual arm simply with their minds. Plus, electric sensations could be sent back through the electrodes, convincing the monkeys' brains that they "felt" different textures. The findings, reported in Nature, may have repercussions for people crippled by paralysis.

Dutch coffee shops face new curbs on cannabis sale

- Coffee shops in the Netherlands were left wondering on Saturday how to comply with restrictions announced by the Dutch government on the sale of "strong" cannabis, saying enforcement would be difficult given the laws on production.

The Netherlands is famous for its liberal soft drugs policies. A Dutch citizen can grow a maximum of five cannabis plants at home for personal use but large-scale production and transport is a crime.

On Friday, the coalition government said it would seek to ban what it considered to be highly potent forms of cannabis -- known as "skunk" -- placing them in the same category as hard drugs such as heroin or cocaine. But the industry said the guidelines were not clear enough.

Time to walk on down the road…

Biggest ID theft in history revealed as more than 100 charged

Bank tellers, restaurant workers and other service employees in New York lifted credit card data from residents and foreign tourists as part of an identity theft ring that stretched to China, Europe and the Middle East and victimized thousands, authorities said Friday.

In total, 111 people were charged and 86 are in custody; the others are still being sought. Five separate criminal enterprises operating out of Queens were dismantled. They were hit with hundreds of charges, said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, calling it the "largest identity theft takedown in U.S. history."

Repugnant backlash over the growing protests across America

I honestly wonder how some of these Republicans are able to sleep at night. They’re already attacking the people who are protesting the inequality of taxes and corporate power in politics. Cantor says he's concerned by 'mobs' at 'Occupy Wall Street'.

Mitt Romney accused the protesters of engaging in "class warfare." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called them the "Obama demonstrations.” The only honest Republican, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, encouraged the protests.

Representative Paul Broun (R-GA) accused the Occupy Wall Street protestors of attacking businesses and freedom. Broun said the protestors “don’t know why they’re there. They’re just mad,” and that “I see people angry in my district too. But this attack upon business, attack upon industry, attack upon freedom and I think that’s what this is all about.”

Mr. Broun really needs to learn exactly what the word attack means because if peaceful protests can be misconstrued as attacks, then this nation is in worse shape than it appears.

This growing movement is class warfare brought on by the oppression of the wealthy few. So let the Republicans call it whatever they want. They just don’t get it anyway. The majority of Americans are angry and tired of being marginalized by the power of a corrupt federal government and the puppet-master corporations.

Medical marijuana supporters protest at Federal Courthouse in Sac

Medical marijuana supporters are rallying to protest the Obama administration's crackdown on medical cannabis dispensaries outside a press conference by U.S. Attorneys at the Sacramento Federal Court House today from 10 AM to 1 PM.

"The federal government has no business dictating local zoning issues.," says California NORML Director Dale Gieringer. "This is government over-regulation run amok."

The DOJ forfeiture threats are the latest in an escalating series of federal attacks on medical marijuana by the Obama administration:

• The IRS has assessed crippling penalties on tax-paying dispensaries by denying standard expense deductions.

• The Department of Treasury has browbeaten banks into closing accounts of medical marijuana collectives.

• The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms has warned firearms dealers not to sell drugs to medical marijuana users.

• The DEA has blocked a 9-year old petition to reschedule marijuana for medical use, ignoring extensive scientific evidence of its medical efficacy.

            • NIDA has blocked proposed research on medical marijuana to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

California NORML estimates that the state's medical marijuana industry generates $1.5 - $4.5 billion in business, over $100 million in taxes, and tens of thousands of jobs in the state: www.canorml.org

With the federal budget on empty, the economy in disarray, our prisons overflowing, and prohibition-related violence raging across the border, it's an outrageous misuse of federal resources to wage war on marijuana dispensaries," says California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer.  "Federal  anti-drug bureaucrats are afraid because the dispensaries are proving that it's possible for marijuana to become a safe, legal, tax-paying industry and so expose their own last-century policies as  bankrupt and obsolete."

Supporters are urged to call on the President to respect state marijuana laws - White House Hotline: 202 -456-1111. A bill to let states regulate medical marijuana legally, H.R. 1983, has been introduced by Rep. Barney Frank.

Release by Dale Gieringer, Director, California NORML

dale@canorml.org - (510) 540-1066

Invasive Starlings, Signs of the Times, and ‘Text Neck’ from Mobile Phones

   Good Morning Humboldt County!

The birds are singing outside (not starlings however) and the sun is slowly stretching over the horizon. Another day in paradise. Don’t worry if you didn’t bring your coffee cup, I have extras and a hot pot of steaming joe ready to go. Are you ready to read?

The Invasive Species We Can Blame On Shakespeare

If you live in North America, you probably recognize European starlings, those little black birds with white polka dots that chirp and chatter and, in the winter, hang out in flocks of thousands. There are 200 million of these birds on the continent, and they can be found as far north as Alaska and as far south as Mexico. Numerous though they are, starlings are actually non-native invasive species. And we can blame Shakespeare for their arrival in America. Steven Marche explains in How Shakespeare Changed Everything:

On March 6, 1890, a New York pharmaceutical manufacturer name Eugene Schieffelin brought natural disaster into the heart of [New York City] completely without meaning to. Through the morning snow, which congealed at times to sleet, sixty starlings, imported at great expense from Europe, accompanied Schieffelin on the ride from his country house into Central Park—the noisy, dirty fulfillment of his plan to introduce every bird mentioned by Shakespeare into North America. Schieffelin loved Shakespeare and he loved birds….The American Acclimatization Society, to which he belonged, had released other avian species found in Shakespeare—the nightingales and skylarks more commonly mentioned in his plays and poems—but none had survived. There was no reason to believe that starlings would fare any better. Schieffelin opened the cages and released the birds into the new world, without the smallest notion of what he was unleashing.

      Signs of the Times

This is one of the most powerful images I've seen emerge from #occupywallstreet.

Not for the drama of the image, but for the devastating truths contained within this sign and the brave Marine holding it.

 

            Mobile phone users suffering from 'text neck'

A new condition dubbed "text neck" is on the rise due to the amount of time people spend hunched over their mobile phone and tablet computer screens, chiropractors have warned. The affliction, caused by flexing the neck for extended periods of time, can be a forerunner of permanent arthritic damage if it goes without treatment. Cases of the repetitive strain injury are on the rise as smart phones and tablet computers such as the iPad become increasingly popular, experts said.

In severe cases the muscles can eventually adapt to fit the flexed position, making it painful to straighten the neck out properly. One chiropractor said her company had treated thousands of patients for the condition, which can also result in headaches and shoulder, arm and wrist pain. Rachael Lancaster, of Freedom Back Clinics in Leeds, said: "Text neck is caused by the neck being flexed for a prolonged period of time.

Time to walk on down the road…