Author: coastcontact

I am a somewhat cranky but mostly optimistic 65 plus who refuses to give up on this maddening world. The purpose of this BLOG is to express my feelings, thoughts.

Cash is Still King in Emergencies

Do you have some cash stashed away for an emergency?

The widespread and ongoing power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy not only left millions of people in the dark but reminded many of us of how useful it can be to have some good, old-fashioned cash on hand for an emergency.

For a few days after the Northridge Earthquake (1994) the power was out.  The local market was open but to purchase anything required cash in small denominations.  ATMs were not operating.  Happily we had some money.

It’s all part of planning for the next emergency.  Every part of the nation is subject to weather or other physical disaster occurrence.

So, before the next big storm, it may make sense to round up a little extra cash. Some advice from money experts:

  • If you want to conceal cash in a safe place at      home, it’s easy enough to make one. For example, put a roll of bills into an empty food can and stow it deep in your pantry or hollow out that copy of “Moby Dick” you know you’ll never read anyhow. Burglars have  seen it all, of course, but they’re usually in too big a hurry to check  every book or canned good you own. If you’re not the do-it-yourself type,  you can buy similar items, such as wall clocks with secret compartments and Pringles tubes with fake bottoms.
  • Consider a home safe. Safes are designed to protect their contents from fire, burglary, water, or some combination of      those perils. So your first step is to decide what risks you’re most concerned about. You can find safes at retailers such as Costco, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Sears, and Target, as well at specialty stores and online. Expect to pay $50 for a small chest suitable for stowing cash or $100 and  up for a safe large enough to accommodate other valuables and important  documents.

What’s your plan?

Vampire’s Arrival Could Help Tourism

An Associated Press story by someone with an unusual name (by American standards), Dusan Stojanovic.

The article is abridged.  Of course using the appropriate font.

Villagers in Zarozje, Serbia aren’t taking any chances now that Serbia’s most  famous vampire, Sava Savanovic, is rumored to be looking for blood

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/vampire-loose-serbia-article-1.1211539#ixzz2DvCHvsB1

ZAROZJE, Serbia – Get your garlic, crosses and stakes ready: a bloodsucking vampire is on the loose. Or so say villagers in the tiny western Serbian hamlet of Zarozje, nestled between lush green mountain slopes and spooky thick forests. They say rumors that a legendary vampire ghost has awakened are spreading fear – and a poten­tial tourist opportunity ­through the remote village.

A local council warned villagers to put garlic in their pock­ets and place wooden crosses in their rooms to ward off vampires, although it appeared designed more to attract visi­tors to the impoverished region bordering Bosnia.

Many of the villagers are aware that Sava Savanovic, Ser­bia’s most famous vampire, is a fairy tale. Still, they say, better to take it seriously than risk succumbing to the vampire’s fangs.

Vampire legends have played a prominent part in the Balkans for centuries – most prominently Dracula from Romania’s Transylvania region. In the 18th century, the legends sometimes triggered mass hysteria and even public executions of those accused of being vampires.

Sava Savanovic, described by the Zarozje villagers as Serbia’s first vampire, reputedly drank the blood of those who came to the small shack in the dense oak tree forest to mill their grain on the clear mountain Rogatica river.

vampire watch

Milka Prokic stands at twilight on Friday with a garland of garlic and a wooden stake, in the village of Zarozje, near the Serbian town of Bajina Basta.

“If Romanians could profit on the Dracula legend with the tourists visiting Transylvania, why can’t we do the same with Sava?”

Richard Sugg, a lecturer in Renaissance Studies at the U.K.’s University of Durham and an expert on the vampire legends, said the fear could be very real. Stress can bring on nightmares, which makes peo­ple’s feelings of dread even worse. “The tourists think it is fun – and the Serbian locals think it’s terrifying,” he said.

Gloat

Why are Democratic pundits gloating over the election results?  Barack Obama did not win by an overwhelming majority.

The final results from the presidential election are impressive when looking at the Electoral College (332 to 206) but not so impressive when looking at the popular vote (65,258,278 or 50.9% to 60,658,920 or 47.3%).  Thus .9% gave the president a win.  Hardly a landslide.

Despite that narrow victory Democratic pundits are gleefully hashing out the mistakes made by Mitt Romney and his campaign election team as if they were utterly incompetent.

Wikipedia lists these landslide victories among the popular vote.  These were wins worth gloating over.

So while I disagreed with Mitt Romney’s opinions on women’s rights (from pay to abortion and contraception), his lack of concern for 47% of the population, his solution to illegal immigration (self deport), and his confrontational views in foreign policy; almost half of all Americans gave him their vote.

Mr. President stop gloating.  You do not have a mandate.

35 Days to Fiscal Cliff Hell

Some of this posting is based upon an article titled, “Fiscal Cliff Could Cost America 277K Jobs in January” posted on this website.

While addressing the House Financial Services Committee in February of this year, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke coined the term “fiscal cliff,” describing, “a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases” scheduled to occur on January 1, 2013.

Just a few days ago President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and minority leaders were all talking as if an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff was a realistic possibility.

Today’s news reports are that little progress has been made.

Should Congress fail to act, allowing the tax cuts to expire and budget cuts to take effect, the results could be drastic, increasing the annual federal tax burden on the average family of four by about $2,200, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The major components of the fiscal cliff are the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts, federal unemployment benefits, and social security payroll tax cuts, on top of automatically triggered spending cuts associated with the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Cuts associated with the Budget Control Act could result in the loss of 277,000 federal jobs, according to a report from the George Mason  University Center for Regional Analysis. The report assesses the impact the Budget Control Act would have on all agencies subject to cutbacks including Agriculture, Commerce, Education, EPA, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, State, NASA, Transportation and Interior. While the cuts would only reduce federal spending from 22.9% of GDP to 22.4% of GDP, according to the CBO, they would cause significant job losses for federal health inspectors, Federal Aviation Administration workers, and FBI agents.

The president does not appear to be willing to write a piece of proposed legislation to avert going over the fiscal cliff.  This was my complaint about his management style throughout his first term.  It was no Barack Obama who wrote the Affordable Care Act.  It was members of the Democratic Party leadership in the houses of Congress.

If the sequestration occurs both political parties deserve blame.  The president should not be campaigning as he did during much of his first term.  He should be negotiating with congress.  His failure to bring this self inflicted event to a satisfactory conclusion will dog his next four year term.

Abraham Lincoln and the Never Ending Civil War

Perhaps the title of this post should be “Is this the and of the United States?”

The American Civil War, also called War Between the States , fratricidal four-year war (1861–65) between the federal government of the United States and 11 Southern states that asserted their right to secede from the Union. The war ended 147 years ago.

After all of these years since the end of the Civil War the South is still re-fighting every battle and every event connected with the confederacy. Steven Spielberg’s new movie simply titled Lincoln says we have not gotten over the war or the events that led up to the war.

The new Steven Spielberg movie is based upon the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It’s an enthralling book. Even someone who is not particularly interested in reading history books will find this biography a compelling read.

The troubling part of this story is that citizens of all 50 states have submitted petitions to secede from the United States and that happened just this year. Seven southern state petitions have collected significant number of signatures. The leading is Texas with over 101,000. Major numbers of petition signers are residence of Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Happily Anti-Secession Petitions are Gaining Clicks, Too! The thought is that those wanting to secede should be stripped of their citizenship and deported. I would agree with that thought. Perhaps Mexico will take them.

One More Reason There is a Federal Government

Those in the path of Hurricane Sandy should be grateful that Mitt Romney was not elected president.  Last year Mr. Romney pledged that if elected he would shrink the deficit by axing FEMA and handing the responsibility of disasters over to the states and local governments.

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA’s cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?”

“Including disaster relief, though?” debate moderator John King asked Romney.

“We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids,” Romney replied. “It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.”

The Los Angeles Times is reporting today that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is planning to ask the federal government to pay 90% of the associated costs.  Those costs are estimated to be in the billions of dollars.  They are already at $20 billion.  New York officials have indicated they will seek more than $30 billion in federal aid.

It is unlikely that any state could handle the costs of devastating climatic or geological occurrence.  Think Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Northridge Earthquake.

If we are the United States we come together to help those in need.  This is just one of the many reasons Americans re-elected Barack Obama.

You don’t have to be Jewish!

You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate this video but it helps.  There are great Jewish delicatessens wherever there is a large Jewish population.  So it’s not just NYC.  Think Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Montreal.

Here in Los Angeles we have Langer’s, Canter’s, Jerry’s Famous, Brent’s, Junior’s, Factor’s, etc.  etc.  etc.   My favorite is Brent’s.

You don’t have to be Jewish to love the food!

Deli Man Trailer from Erik Anjou on Vimeo.