Here’s what some Hollywood actors have to say in defense of those pitiful corporate victims of possible competition in todays health care market… Enjoy!

Useful link:
New health care plan and your wallet

For those of us on the short end of the recent and ongoing mass looting of the economy by the kind of ant-populist robber barons who make Jesse and Frank James seem like do-gooders The Hardy Boys, there is now a historical record of the Fortune 500 CEO Hall of Shame in what could be printable trading cards outlining the shameful accomplishments of the Worst of the Worst.

Check out the card for Lehman Brothers’ Richard Fuld, whose stats list a total loss of $29 billion, while his personal take for the efforts comes in at a cool $71.9 million. Look at that punum… does he look suspiciously like a lizard? Then there’s Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo, with a face only a mother (or a Sicilian Don) could love. Stats: in the loss column, a total of $22 billion. It’s the personal take that’s truly impressive – $225.7 million. This guy was good at being bad!

So if you’re overdue for an out-loud chuckle in the midst of economic meltdown designed to do the most amount of serious harm to the most number of honest, hard-working citizens, don’t miss this offering by BusinessPundit. It’s well worth the waste of card stock and color toner.

And while you’re busy surfing for news, giggles and brain-novocaine, go on over to CNNMoney to get the previews of the upcoming Super Bowl Ads, if for no other reason than to have them pre-listed and ready for votes at your Super Bowl Party this year. To be honest, that E*Trade talking baby gets me every time, even if it sometimes seems a little creepy what they make him say. Is this the CEO’s kid, or just some baby from central casting whose stage mom doesn’t mind his gratuitous sexualization?

Oh… and if you want a good conversation-starter for game night when both the game and the commercials get boring, check out GameJabs’ post about The 15 Most Controversial Superbowl Ads of All Time. Some of these aired and some of them didn’t, see how many of your football watching buddies remember the worst of ‘em.

Finally, if you’ve still got a job, at least one credit card, and are serious this time about getting your financial life in order, you may learn some useful strategies from Credit Card Matcher’s Plan for Paying Off Holiday Credit Card Debt. This site also offers reviews for the best card offerings for things like travel rewards and gas rewards to make traveling for fun and business a little cheaper.

Finally (last but certainly not least), if you or someone you know is planning to take the lemons of a tanking economy to make lemonade by starting a new business, you’ll definitely want to check out Brainz’s article offering 33 Ways to Fund Your Startup Business. Some of the traditional sources are drying up, but even as that’s happening some non-traditional, more creative methods of raising money are increasingly viable.

Links:

Fortune 500 CEO Hall of Shame
Super Bowl Ads: From Clydesdales to koalas
Travel Rewards Cards
Gas Rewards Cards
33 Ways to Fund Your Startup Business

It’s true, and should come as no surprise that modern day pirates are responsible for the current mass chaos in the markets. I mean, this is just the sort of things pirates do, isn’t it? Or, so says Peter Hayes, Senior Lecturer in politics at the University of Sunderland.

In Dr. Hayes’ latest paper, ‘Pirates, Privateers and the contract theories of Hobbes and Locke’, the argument is developed and interesting. Not only did pirates practically invent participatory democracy by electing their captain, voting on major decisions and distributing the booty in fairly equal shares, but they were often backed by financiers in distant countries. Which, according to Hayes, makes your average pirate ship roughly equivalent to a modern corporation.

“Pirates had a democratic structure, and relative equality, but they were doing all this to violate the rights of other people,” Hayes says. “The idea of a social contract is that it protects human rights. But what if you create a social contract to say that we’ll observe rights toward each other, but we won’t observe rights for outsiders?”

Hmmm… Maybe Hayes has a point. Or maybe pirates themselves were an expression of the basic xenophobia that has existed ever since early tribal society. But pirates are a more popular romantic icon these days than simple hunter-gatherers, so Hayes can use them as a selling point. Somehow, the robber barons of today don’t elicit the kind of romantic idol-worship or secret sympathies from the vast amount of us in the out-group they’re busy hijacking day to day.

For the most part, they’re disgusting. Which is why when AIG and other failed brokers and bankers take $70 billion of a trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout to pad the top privateers’ junkets and golden parachutes, the taxpayers aren’t very happy with it. Off with their heads, I say!

Mere days after causing a regular knee-slapping laugh riot with his claim that the average middle class American probably brings home something around $2.5 million a year (by way of being “rich” if you make $5 million a year), Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain told Politico that he’s not sure how many houses he owns. “I’ll have my staff get to you,” he said, since some of those houses are condos, and all condos look alike apparently. The correct answer, by the way, is at least seven, maybe ten.

By the way, if you’re feeling a little low because of that foreclosure notice you just got in the mail, here’s a slide show of McCain’s home (the one pictured above) from Architectural Digest, 2005. They may have sold it by now, but I don’t think it’s because they couldn’t afford the payments plus jet fuel for ‘getting around Arizona’ at the same time.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s campaign jumped on the gaffe to highlight just how out of touch with regular Americans his rival is. True to form, the McCain campaign came back with charges of elitism because Obama vacationed in his home state of Hawaii instead of just going to Myrtle Beach like everybody else does.

Meanwhile, out here in the real world where the vast majority of Americans don’t bring home $50 thousand a year and millions are losing their one and only home – and increasingly, their jobs – in a devastated economy, market analysts are beginning to notice that the foreclosure crisis could be hiding even worse conditions in the general housing situation nationwide. Turns out, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Nishu Sood, that half or more of “distressed” (foreclosed) properties aren’t being added to MLS listings.

Shares of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freedie Mac have lost 40% of their value since Monday (August 18) and are now trading at 20-year lows. Having lost a combined $3.1 billion between April and June, losses will only grow – because foreclosures are just getting started. Still, if you’re a fool with some money, you can pick up a share of Fannie Mae for under $5.

It occurs to me that at least one of the men running for President this year has no clue about what it’s like for most Americans just trying to get by day to day in this country. We’re just “whiners,” after all. Luckily, there is one fun recreational activity that most of us can engage in that doesn’t cost a dime. It’s called voting, and if enough people do it we just might keep OUR house – the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in DC – from becoming just another house McCain can add to his others.

For Heaven’s sake! Is it too much to ask that our wannabe leaders actually take a moment out of their jet-set lives to find out what’s real on the ground here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.?

Links:

AD: Slide show of McCain’s home
Foreclosures likely skewing housing indicator
Politico: Interview with John McCain

As the economy continues to slide ever deeper into recession – dragging the entire civilized world along with it in one spectacular leap into the great oil scam abyss – we get the mainstream media’s too-cute economic pundits telling us things designed to make us laugh out loud. Which could actually be semi-useful, considering how many neurosciencey-type researchers keep telling us how much humor can help us conquer stress and depression and other unavoidable side-effects of living in interesting times. But only if you actually read their sage advice *as* comedy, meant to lighten your mood.

For instance, the jokers over at CNN Money have some real thigh-slappers on what we regular people should do ‘just in case’ the worst happens (the whole house of cards comes tumbling down). We need to beef up our “emergency funds,” we’re told, as if we had more cash to stash in zip lock bags in the freezer than the two to three weeks’ worth (which we’d still have to scrimp to save up) advised in the post Hold On: The Ride’s Just Starting.

We are told that in the face of bank failures, job losses and investment wipeouts that the “standard advice” is to keep at least three months’ worth of living expenses ‘socked away’ if there are two wage earners in the family, six months’ worth if there’s just one breadwinner. Surely it can’t be that difficult to just take ten or twenty thousand dollars out of your bank or investment portfolio in small bills and find a safe place in the house to hide it from the teenagers, right? Hahahaha. That’s a good one.

Of course, in a recession such as the one the deputy campaign manager and financial advisor for Republican candidate John McCain told us was “all in our heads,” a year’s income is a better idea, particularly if you’re fairly close to retirement. I mean, that money’s not exactly going to grow any time soon, and will more likely melt away into nothing instead. They say buy a money market account or put it into your savings account, but what good is that going to do when the fund goes bankrupt and the bank shuts its doors? Hmmm… I guess at that point we’ll be really glad we’ve got that week or two’s worth of expenses in the zip lock bag in the freezer. True clowns.

But fear not! Those of us who don’t have big investment portfolios or maxed-out savings accounts and CDs are, according to CNN Money, still demonstrating a strong reluctance to give up everyday pleasures. But the truth is that Americans are eating out less, not spending a lot at movie theaters, cutting back on buying clothes and taking exotic vacations, and not driving nearly as much as they used to.

Americans are, not surprisingly in view of inflation and cutting back elsewhere, shelling out for HD and flat-panel televisions and are not dropping their expensive cable or satellite subscriptions. There are also inexpensive ways to travel or take nice family vacations close to home. More and more people are learning about the thrill of thrifting and seeking things they need secondhand or even free. Even better – for everyone’s health given recent salmonella outbreaks across the country due to fresh produce imported from Mexico – people are flooding local farmer’s markets and buying food produced closer to home.

While not exactly a joke, it’s nice to find ourselves ahead of the curve on advice now being given to the wealthy on how they can possibly survive the coming depression. When it gets bad, they may look around and see that not everyone is lining up to jump out of 7th story windows, but are instead living life just fine without a lot of money.

The Beauty and Style site List Maven has posted a linky article entitled…

35 Accessories Made From Recycled Materials

It’s truly imaginative. I particularly like the crocheted plastic grocery bag necklace, though I use my plastic grocery bags as trash basket liners if I forget to take my many forever re-usable canvas bags to the store with me. And I’ll definitely have to make my grandson those computer key cuff links for the prom, since he’s determined to win the Duck brand Scholarship for best Duct Tape tuxedo…

During this 2007 holiday season, it seems the children are all nestled asleep in their beds, with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads… oh, wait. You say the “children” are all teenagers now, terminally bored with Christmas and expecting a 10-gig iPod loaded with every album too objectionable to be played in public, plus keys to your a car and $400 worth of “Prison Chic” pants that hang somewhere around the thighs and show off their underwear?

Did the fudge never set, so you had to run to the store to buy enough ice cream to disguise the un-set fudge as super chocolate syrup? Were those tollhouse cookies hard as a rock, breaking grandpa’s dentures with the first bite? Did cousin Jim finish off the entire bottle of rum you’d brought for eggnog before passing out under the tree? Did the dog eat that perfect glazed ham before you could get it into the oven to heat? Did it snow during the night and hide all the firewood you’d stacked somewhere in the yard for the Christmas Eve fire? Are the in-laws insisting on watching Enemy of the State as a “Christmas Movie” instead of It’s a Wonderful Life for the 16th time?

Be of good cheer, enjoy yourself anyway, and…

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Deborah over at Simply Thrifty blog offered a great humorous post not long ago entitled 6 Uses for Your Old Bathtub, which speaks creatively for the wonderful world of recycling. Having remodeled and expanded our bathroom not too many years ago and installing a low-flow toilet, it occurs to me that some ideas for recycling your old toilet and sink are in order.

You could make a tub sofa or a nice fish and lily pond for your garden or patio, or just do what we did with our old clawfoot tub – we put it out at the edge of the back yard’s campfire, barbecue, campground and horseshoe area to serve as the 9th hole for the top-nine of our disc golf course. It does double duty for icing down kegs, sodas and juice during our annual extended family gatherings.

Toilets are a little trickier to recycle as yard art without upsetting the neighbors (we don’t have any neighbors, so the old toilet that serves as the 11th and 17th hole of the bottom nine doesn’t cause any uproar), but it can be done tastefully. Depending, of course, on your taste and your neighbors’ appreciation thereof.

Of course, some clever toilet art can spur some great opportunities to plot minor rebellion and civil disobedience with like-minded neighbors, just for the fun of it. The notorious Anderson Township Toilet Planter Protest managed to get just a bit out of hand when people weren’t satisfied just putting plastic flowers in the bowls and political bumper stickers on the tanks, but started planting their toilet brushes too. The teenagers enjoyed it and the protest enjoyed some lively press coverage.

It’s an idea that seems to be catching on in other places too. The BBC recently reported on the infamous Italian Toilet Art Row, and the Eugene [Oregon] Weekly reports about toilets being The Jewels of Junk.

Of course, you could make a nice combination planter-birdbath as a centerpiece to your yard, or just a plain planter as part of a nicely arranged living still life. You could even recycle the old toilet inside the house with a nifty new invention for a Hydroponic Planter Box…

The invention provides a hydroponic planter which doubles as a cover for a common toilet tank. The planter includes reservoir for holding plants supported in a hydroponic growth medium. The reservoir has several openings through which wicks extend to bring water from the toilet tank to the interior of the reservoir. The openings are arranged so that the wicks do not interfere with the flush mechanism of the toilet tank.

Clever, eh? Alternet has a fun list of nifty uses for used toilets in When Good Toilets Do Bad Things. What interesting, clever, artsy or in-your-face things have you done with your old toilets? I’d sure love to hear some ideas, so submit away!

Links:

Hydroponic Planter Box

Protest fence made from toilets (and toilet brushes)

Anderson Township Toilet Planter Protest

When Good Toilets Do Bad Things