At exactly 8:20 PM about fifteen to twenty shots were fire from somebody standing right across the street on Bay street's 600 block. Right down stairs, and not a word shouted, no running, or chaos, and mostly no police cars, somebody just unloaded a very large automatic weapon, sounded like an AK 47 assault rifle . Lets see if the cops stop here, or maybe the cops were already here and some of those shots were from the cops, but there was no nothing. It was like somebody got out of their car, and fired about three test shots and then a burst of rapid fire. And then left. Weird.

BRING JODI APPLEGATE BACK i liked watching her in the morning before i went to school and i miss her BRING HER BACK

The case  and the verdict against O.J Simpson had an errie similarity to the case and verdict against murderer and racketeer Al Capone. They couldn't convict capone on any murder charge but was able to convict him on a non violent crime of tax evasion. They couldn't convict O.J on a murder charge but was able to convict him on a somewhat non violent crime of robbery with a weapon. I guess it's true what they say ," What goes around comes around," "pay me now or pay me later"

Can anyone help?

   My fiance' and I have been living in an apartment for almost 7 years now. We had a landlord for about 6 years who was fantastic. It is a 2-story home in Brick NJ where he use to run his business out of the downstairs. A little over a year ago, a man bought the building. Little by little, our place started to change for the worst. He began doing construction downstairs without a permit; naturally, he didn't know what he was doing. Several parts of my walls started to cave in, my bedroom wall, our ceiling, our hallway and a shattered window in my bedroom. I tried to leave my home one day and my door was nailed shut! I had to climb out my 2nd story window, slide down the roof and jump. I hit the ground and these non-English speaking men looked at me in surprise, the property owner never informed them that the upstairs was occupied! They were taking out a wall to corner off another section of the bottom half and my front door was about to be sealed off to create a new hallway toward the back of the house. We enter in the front and park in the back where it use to be a yard. The light was taken out from both the front and the back of the house; we can live with parking in the dark however, the concrete front steps are breaking apart, starting to collapse and the railing is falling off as it is. In May, we started asking for simple repairs and a mailbox. Since he bought the place, we started to have to share ONE mailbox with about 14 other names, people we didn't know. Our bills are always late, mail goes missing, so bad that our mail carrier who knows us, tries to hold our mail until I see him.

   The reason for the construction, so we learned, he rented a one room corner of the house to a few illegal immigrants, a few turned out to be 8 Mexican men crammed in a room meant for 2 people MAX! He didn't even have a legal C.O for them to be here.

    Now come the insects. In late June we started getting strange bites all over our bodies but never found any bugs. I got so sick and covered with bloody scabs I had to go to the ER twice and my employer was unhappy with my appearance, who wouldn't be considering I was the company's Client Relations manager. Again we asked for help. We requested an exterminator because it was getting serious. The property owner said he would do it but the summer went by, June, July, August, September and STILL into October. We even offered to pay for the top half if he paid for the bottom, still we were ignored. Finally I stopped paying the rent. In mid August, we found out that the bites were bed bugs! My roommate and I lost our beds, our furniture, most of our clothing and spent over $5,000 treating the issue ourselves. I made some calls to the township of brick and finally got lucky so I thought. The man from the township came here the next day. Our property owner was forced to get an exterminator, evict the people under us and was given several fines for many things. He thought he could be smart and call a "friend" who was an exterminator but it backfired on him. When the exterminator came up to see me he told me that he was asked by his "friend" our landlord to come up here, do a quick "squirt, squirt" to shut us up but the exterminator saw that I had called the township and health dept and anyone who may be able to help. He was also not told about the cornered off room under us. My fiance' went down and kicked open the door that the property owner didn't allow the exterminator to be in "claiming he didn't have a key!" and I saw a small glimpse of what was down there. The exterminator said I shouldn't look or go in but from the doorway, it looked like a murder scene, blood dripping down the walls, blood and roaches and bed bugs literally covered the floor. BEDBUGS only eat/drink blood, nothing else, so every time the illegals saw a BEDBUG, they just smashed it or stepped on it, which is like popping a balloon full of blood! Oh MY GOD! Therefore, the property owner agreed to have 3 treatments done to the entire place. We had to pack everything up as if we were moving, seal all our clothing up for 7 weeks and my fiance, myself and our 3 cats had to stay someplace else for the month of September, the landlord actually expected a check for September, NOT a chance. The exterminator also recommended that he come back once a month to so a small spray and inspection. I called him and he told me that he couldn't come because the property owner never paid them. I took it upon myself to pay the exterminator half of it and they did come back as a courtesy to us to do another inspection and spray again.

   We finally found out how the bugs got up here. We had to pull off the cabinets, the stove, and fridge, just about everything and we couldn't believe what we saw. There is a service hatch behind the fridge that was once sealed had been knocked open while the property owner was building, under the cabinets, the linoleum was peeling up off the floor. Under the linoleum were hard wood floors. In the cracks of the floor were hundreds of maggot like bugs (BegBug Larvae that we had to pull out with tweezers) that grew very large because they couldn't shed their skin to turn into an adult BedBug. The exterminator said in 15 years he has never seen a BedBug infestation in a kitchen but we realized that our kitchen is directly above the room that he made for the 8 Mexican people.

   We have paid to fix the walls, sheet rock, spackle, sealing agents to seal off our section from anyone else’s, bought paint, a mailbox, he has done nothing and still thinks he should be paid! I lost my job because my home life, the bug bites, too many hospital visits and stress was too much for me to handle. I even had to see a psychiatrist who put me on Xanax for the ordeal. We have not been able to find a place that we can afford or we would have been gone. In addition, with everything going on, there is so much to be done I have yet to regain employment. I don't know where to turn. I tried reaching out to the township again and all they can do is keep giving him fines that he won't pay.

  He also just allowed a woman to move in under us again, without a legal C.O and never told her about the bugs. I saw her moving in, again it was someone not well spoken in English but I had to warn her. Please what can I do? Who do I call? We are running out of our savings.  I can hardly eat or sleep. I am finding it hard to function as it is. If there is anything that anyone can do to help, please I am begging you, point me in the right direction, send someone here to see the destruction and the repairs we are paying for, anything...please help me.

 Sincerely,  Amy 

 

 

 

 

 

Michigan's Times Herald reports that state authorities are preparing to install a new ID scanning system at the Blue Water Bridge that could drastically cut down on waiting times at the border.

Over 3,500 vehicles cross over the bridge every day, and customs officials and border guards have to stop each one, scan in their identification and check the data.

The new system will perform an ID scan while each vehicle is still approaching the border terminal by capturing radio frequencies that are given off by modern identification cards and passports. By the time the car gets to the terminal, the customs agent already has all the relevant information on his or her computer screen and can wave the traveler through.

I happen to notice that Dari and Ernie have been matchig their wardrobes all week.  It really caought my eye especially since every louse or jacket that dari was wearing Ernie has the matching tie and/or handkerchief.  They really were coordinated.

 UCSF celebrates 10,000 organ transplants

Thursday, September 25, 2008

(09-24) 19:40 PDT -- A lot of people who aren't particularly attached to
their kidneys got together in Golden Gate Park on Wednesday.

It was a day to celebrate exactly how wonderful life can be without a
kidney, or with someone else's kidney, or with a chunk of some Good
Samaritan's liver.

For 45 years, the surgeons at UC San Francisco have been swapping bad organs
for good ones and, after 10,000 such transplant operations, they figured it
was time to throw a party.

Kidney and liver donors and recipients came from all over to the meadow near
Stow Lake to chow down on free penne pasta and grab a few free "Donate
Life!" ballpoint pens and refrigerator magnets - about the only things from
a hospital that don't cost - and to say "thank you" to the docs.

"We haven't seen you for a few years," said surgeon Dr. John Roberts to
Christopher Van Maarth and his wife, Carol. In 2001, Roberts had put a piece
of Christopher's liver into Carol's abdomen. At the time, the Van Maarths
were lying on adjacent tables at UCSF and in no mood for balloons, ballpoint
pens or pasta.

It was strictly a family affair, as Roberts' wife, Dr. Nancy Ascher, is also
a transplant surgeon who works in tandem with her husband. Nancy was the one
who removed the piece of liver from Christopher before handing it to John,
so he could insert it into Carol. It sounds complicated but, fortunately,
the two couples were able to keep things straight at the time.

Now, seven years later, Ascher said she doesn't remember the details too
well, which, she quickly added, is a fine thing.

"I usually remember if there was trouble," she said. "There must not have
been any trouble."

Roberts and Ascher say they're just like any other couple. They wake up in
the morning, have coffee, talk about the day's liver and drive to work.
Perhaps Roberts got into the liver transplant business as a way of
exorcising a particular demon of his youth.

"My mother used to make liver and bacon," he said. "I really hated it. Yuck.
And now I'm doing this."

At a nearby table sat Ginny Mayer and John Ireland. Mayer gave one of her
kidneys to Ireland, a fellow tennis player whom she met at a Fremont tennis
club two years ago. The couple, figuring they truly had something in common,
started dating and now describe themselves as "sort-of sweethearts."

Mayer said giving away a kidney is no big deal, and she is getting awfully
tired of being called nice things.

"People say you're a saint," she said, gloomily. "I know I'm not a saint."

"Do you want me to stop calling you my saint?" said Ireland, with a smile.
"Should I call you my hero?"

"I think I'd like that better," Mayer replied.

Meanwhile, Ascher stood before the crowd and said, over a loudspeaker, that
it was great to see everyone so hale and hearty. Live people, such as the
partygoers, make much better organ donors than cadavers, she added. That
made Mayer and Ireland look somewhat queasily at their pasta, but they
managed to clean their plates just the same.

Afterward, volunteers passed out organ-donation forms for the donors and
recipients to give their friends, as surgeons need as many kidneys, livers,
hearts, corneas and such stuff as they can get. (Donor forms are also
available at www.donatelifecalifornia.org.)

Donating an organ is free, the docs said, especially postmortem. Receiving
one is not exactly cheap, but the gifts are good for a lifetime and are
rarely returned by the recipient.

Steve Rubenstein, <mailto:srubenstein@sfchronicle.com>  Chronicle Staff
Writer
Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.

 UCSF celebrates 10,000 organ transplants

Thursday, September 25, 2008

(09-24) 19:40 PDT -- A lot of people who aren't particularly attached to
their kidneys got together in Golden Gate Park on Wednesday.

It was a day to celebrate exactly how wonderful life can be without a
kidney, or with someone else's kidney, or with a chunk of some Good
Samaritan's liver.

For 45 years, the surgeons at UC San Francisco have been swapping bad organs
for good ones and, after 10,000 such transplant operations, they figured it
was time to throw a party.

Kidney and liver donors and recipients came from all over to the meadow near
Stow Lake to chow down on free penne pasta and grab a few free "Donate
Life!" ballpoint pens and refrigerator magnets - about the only things from
a hospital that don't cost - and to say "thank you" to the docs.

"We haven't seen you for a few years," said surgeon Dr. John Roberts to
Christopher Van Maarth and his wife, Carol. In 2001, Roberts had put a piece
of Christopher's liver into Carol's abdomen. At the time, the Van Maarths
were lying on adjacent tables at UCSF and in no mood for balloons, ballpoint
pens or pasta.

It was strictly a family affair, as Roberts' wife, Dr. Nancy Ascher, is also
a transplant surgeon who works in tandem with her husband. Nancy was the one
who removed the piece of liver from Christopher before handing it to John,
so he could insert it into Carol. It sounds complicated but, fortunately,
the two couples were able to keep things straight at the time.

Now, seven years later, Ascher said she doesn't remember the details too
well, which, she quickly added, is a fine thing.

"I usually remember if there was trouble," she said. "There must not have
been any trouble."

Roberts and Ascher say they're just like any other couple. They wake up in
the morning, have coffee, talk about the day's liver and drive to work.
Perhaps Roberts got into the liver transplant business as a way of
exorcising a particular demon of his youth.

"My mother used to make liver and bacon," he said. "I really hated it. Yuck.
And now I'm doing this."

At a nearby table sat Ginny Mayer and John Ireland. Mayer gave one of her
kidneys to Ireland, a fellow tennis player whom she met at a Fremont tennis
club two years ago. The couple, figuring they truly had something in common,
started dating and now describe themselves as "sort-of sweethearts."

Mayer said giving away a kidney is no big deal, and she is getting awfully
tired of being called nice things.

"People say you're a saint," she said, gloomily. "I know I'm not a saint."

"Do you want me to stop calling you my saint?" said Ireland, with a smile.
"Should I call you my hero?"

"I think I'd like that better," Mayer replied.

Meanwhile, Ascher stood before the crowd and said, over a loudspeaker, that
it was great to see everyone so hale and hearty. Live people, such as the
partygoers, make much better organ donors than cadavers, she added. That
made Mayer and Ireland look somewhat queasily at their pasta, but they
managed to clean their plates just the same.

Afterward, volunteers passed out organ-donation forms for the donors and
recipients to give their friends, as surgeons need as many kidneys, livers,
hearts, corneas and such stuff as they can get. (Donor forms are also
available at www.donatelifecalifornia.org.)

Donating an organ is free, the docs said, especially postmortem. Receiving
one is not exactly cheap, but the gifts are good for a lifetime and are
rarely returned by the recipient.

Steve Rubenstein, <mailto:srubenstein@sfchronicle.com>  Chronicle Staff
Writer
Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.

Forget about running for mayor. I bet if Bloomberg ran for president right now… with a few weeks to go, he would win.

The country is split on Obama and McCain. Bloomberg could slide in their and give everyone a choice they would feel more comfortable with given the financial crisis.

I’m dead serious about this… I’m not being my usual sarcastic self.

Thoughts?

I couldn't be happier that Jodi Applegate is gone and Rosanna is on the scene!  Jodi was a horrible journalist who as not informative, possessed extreme sarcasm, immaturity and lacked professionalism.  She ran away two good men - Chris Gailus and Ron Corning.  Now a real man is on the scene - Greg Kelly - and she was no match for him and I'm glad Rosanna is working with him now.

Thanks Fox 5 for finally seeing the light and getting rid of Jodi!

How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable

BY TERRY JONES

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 9/24/2008

One of the most frequently asked questions about the subprime market meltdown and housing crisis is: How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?

The answer is: President Clinton wanted it that way.

Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac, (FRE) even into the early 1990s, weren't the juggernauts they'd later be.

While President Carter in 1977 signed the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities, it was Clinton who supercharged the process. After entering office in 1993, he extensively rewrote Fannie's and Freddie's rules.

In so doing, he turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made loans to large Democratic voting blocs and handed favors, jobs and money to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and the Fannie-Freddie collapse.

Despite warnings of trouble at Fannie and Freddie, in 1994 Clinton unveiled his National Homeownership Strategy, which broadened the CRA in ways Congress never intended.

Addressing the National Association of Realtors that year, Clinton bluntly told the group that "more Americans should own their own homes." He meant it.

Clinton saw homeownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class.

Though well-intended, the problem was that Congress was about to change hands, from the Democrats to the Republicans. Rather than submit legislation that the GOP-led Congress was almost sure to reject, Clinton ordered Robert Rubin's Treasury Department to rewrite the rules in 1995.

The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000, "made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder." Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and measures for the level of "diversity" in their loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with another.

Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else.

"Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group and race, to rate banks on performance, " wrote Howard Husock, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute.

But those rules weren't enough.

Clinton got the Department of Housing and Urban Development to double-team the issue. That would later prove disastrous.

Clinton's HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, "made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis," the liberal Village Voice noted. Among those decisions were changes that let Fannie and Freddie get into subprime loan markets in a big way.

Other rule changes gave Fannie and Freddie extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments, vs. 10% for banks.

Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks due to implicit government guarantees for their debt, the government-sponsore d enterprises boomed.

With incentives in place, banks poured billions of dollars of loans into poor communities, often "no doc" and "no income" loans that required no money down and no verification of income.

By 2007, Fannie and Freddie owned or guaranteed nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market — a staggering exposure.

Worse still was the cronyism.

Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of-work politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. An informal survey of their top officials shows a roughly 2-to-1 dominance of Democrats over Republicans.

Then there were the campaign donations. From 1989 to 2008, some 384 politicians got their tip jars filled by Fannie and Freddie.

Over that time, the two GSEs spent $200 million on lobbying and political activities. Their charitable foundations dropped millions more on think tanks and radical community groups.

Did it work? Well, if measured by the goal of putting more poor people into homes, the answer would have to be yes.

From 1995 to 2005, a Harvard study shows, minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners.

The problem is that many of those loans have now gone bad, and minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.

Fannie and Freddie, with their massive loan portfolios stuffed with securitized mortgage-backed paper created from subprime loans, are a failed legacy of the Clinton era.

Story URL:

http://www.investor s.com/ editorial/IBDArticl es.asp? artsec=16&artnum=1&issue= 20080924

 

....please stop with the anchor changes.  I really think Ron and Jodi worked really well together. I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, but they had a way of getting me out of bed.  Rosanna is nice enough but I don't know how on earth Greg made it as anchor.  He is constantly eating, makes remarks that are not witty or funny - basically he's had a few foot in his mouth moments.  Please bring back Ron and Jodi!

Looks like New York Mayor, Mike Bloomberg is planning to seek a third term as Mayor!

I guess our financial situation is a lot worse than we thought, when one of the wealthiest men in the world, wants to hold on to his job!!

  

With the world in the middle of a financial fiasco, software billionaire, Charles Simonyi is planning a second trip into outer space to the International Space Station in 2009, again in a Russian rocket with another Russian crew. 

Sort’a makes you wonder if he Knows something that we don’t. An interspace version of “HOUSE HUNTERS?” 

 

Sharon Stone has lost custody of her son to her ex-husband. It seems that she over reacts to many medical issues. She believed that he had a spinal condition, that turned out to be constipation, and wanted her son to have Botox injections for a foot odor problem. Kinda Weird, huh? 

Here’s some advice from BBB…A Bran muffin once in a while for the first problem.  Dr Scholls foot soap and odor eaters for the feet. Somehow I don’t think getting any medical advice from her is wise, it appears that she has bad “BASIC INSTINTS!” 

 

With the Vice Presidential debate on Oct. 2, between Beiden and Palin.. I’m a little nervous… 

With all those pictures of Sarah Palin holding automatic weapons, a word to Beiden, I hope that he doesn’t stand on any floor pad behind his  podium that has the words "SPRING” written on it! 

 

I hope the Bail Out works, if not our entire country could be contestants on next seasons…

”SURVIVOR!”

 

 

 

The saga continues....

 

New York, we won the battle Monday when The House of Representatives listened to their constituents and crushed the Banker Bailout!

 

 

 

But it's not over.  While our loyal Representatives followed the will of The People, and shot down the Banker Bailout Scam, the ones that still don't get it are trying to ram this bailout though… get this…

 

By changing the name!

 

 

 

Said one prominent senator:

 

"The first thing I would do is say, 'Let's not call it a bailout. Let's call it a rescue....' Americans are frightened right now" and political leaders must give them an immediate solution and a longer-term approach to the problem.

 

 

 

We're not frightened Senator!  We are fed up with you all for giving our money away to every Tom, Dick, and Billionaire Banker that stick their hand out! 

 

 

 

The American People have been writing you at a frantic pace to tell you

 

WE DO NOT WANT THIS BAILOUT!

 

Isn’t that enough? 

 

Well, unfortunately, no.  Those that just don’t get it are going to try again and again until The People just give up.

 

 

 

Said the Senator, “I may fail the second time or the third time, but we'll get the job done.''

 

 

 

This is gonna be a fight, America! 

 

Write or call your Senators and House Representatives and tell them to vote NO to handing out Billions for Bankers!

 

It’s easy!  Go to:

 

www.senate.gov

 

www.house.gov

 

www.whitehouse.gov

 

Enter your zip code to find your representatives and tell your representatives:

 

NO BAILOUT!  NO RESCUE!  NO THANKS!

 

New York City seems to have extremely strict and sound rules when it comes to allowing city workers to take home cars on a full time-basis.

Read the CITY POLICY.

To summarize, you are not supposed to take a city car home on a full-time basis unless:

1. You are required to report on a daily basis from your home to a job in the field.

2. You respond to emergencies frequently on an average of once a week.

3. Mandatory paperwork is required for authorization.

The city's Department of Environmental Protection seems to have forgotten about all of the above.

If you know of any city employee in any agency that seems to be violating the above strict guidelines, please CONTACT FOX 5 ONLINE or call 877-TELL-FOX5.

Read my PREVIOUS BLOG on this story.

Watch PART 1 of my story.

I would like to know what happened too:

Ron Corning & Jody Appledate