Mild Rants

On our way to Carlsbad we noticed this at the Sam's Club in Roswell,NM. Whoever was responsible for updating the gasoline price signs was either in a big hurry or maybe they wanted passing motorists to take the average of the two prices. The sign facing North declares that one gallon of unleaded gasoline will cost you 3.139 dollars and the one facing East indicates the price per gallon is $3.159. Since the cheaper gas price sign facing North gets many more views, perhaps the "mistake" was intentional to lure more customers into the most popular warehouse store in the United States. We mentioned to some folks at O'Reilly auto parts that you see in the background of picture and they said mistakes like that are common at Sam's partially due to high employee turnover which is common in the Alien City.

We were tickled at this ad in the Roswell,NM newspaper. It advertised a Senior Jubilee at Grace Community CHURCH and promised no preaching at bottom of advertisement! This is certainly a very light rant because events like these are much needed in this city that has many of the characteristics of a retirement community. However, it is rather disconcerting that a place that functions as a Church has to promise no preaching in order to attract attendees! This is sort of like a kid in a school classroom raising their hand and saying "awwww, do we really have to read our assignment?" We are happy our parents have settled in Roswell to enjoy their Golden Years. I am sure they will benefit from the presentations of Beverly Bucklew, Cecilia Acosta, and Larry Lorenzo. Paula and Gary Mitchell will enact what should be a heart warming love story titled Bruno and Alice. Utilizing a Church in this fashion, stressing reservations required and limited seating, reminds one of

Any American can tell you at least two or three things in the Bill of Rights. You know, the right to peacefully assemble, bear arms, etc. I was intrigued by a movement of agriculture interests seeking to have the right to farm codified into law. This is not really a rant, but more of a question. What if the right to farm was added to the Bill of Rights? The reason some powerful agriculture interests want to declare farming a right at the state level is to strengthen the agriculture industry against attacks by animal-welfare activists and opponents of genetically modified crops.  Even if the right to farm was legislatively enacted, cruelty to animals and unsafe genetic changing of crops could be challenged and even legally prosecuted. The right to farm would not change the fact that farmers have to be responsible stewards of the land and resources entrusted to them. If farmers are not growing food in a safe manner, having the right to farm will provide no relief or immunity from

So what if a murderer has a "diminished capacity" when they kill! They may do it again and the victim's family want them executed or locked up for life. Hernandez was coherent enough to strategize the the execution of Odin Lloyd so I am not sure what was actually diminished about his capacity? This reminds me of the lowlife lawyer who got Ethan Couch off for killing three people while driving drunk. Let's assume that Aaron Hernandez has diminished capacity whatever the F---- that means. Then his capacity to feel depressed while locked up for life will also be diminished. So let's just incarcerate him and throw away the key so he won't be able to kill anybody else in his diminished state. The silver haired attorney you see in picture below who is apparently defending the ex New England Patriot has apparently learned how to sleep at night after a career of defending these type of cases.

In case everybody has forgotten, tenure is around to retain underpaid educators from capricious administrators and whiney parents who think their kids deserve a passing grade just for showing up.  The movement to abolish teacher tenure is completely consistent with the entitlement culture that has overwhelmed the United States. Parents who think the government owes them an easy life raise kids who have the same indolent expectations. Campbell Brown, who has a distorted notion of what constitutes educational justice, is the impetus behind an anti-tenure lawsuit in New York. Why would anybody expect a news women who reports sanitized, if not completely false, accounts of current events to have anything insightful to contribute regarding tenure? There are cases where tenured professors need to be terminated for unacceptable performances, but these rare cases are not an argument for discontinuing a policy which is an attempt to retain dedicated and sincere instructors. Read the article

Why would somebody want to sell a profitable business? The ad you see in a local newspaper in south eastern New Mexico is attempting to sell a water softener/reverse osmosis renting and selling business. The ad claims there is very good growth potential and they might be willing to train the right person. Are we to assume the current owner is not the right person? The reader is informed that the asking price of 60K is negotiable. Thank you for giving potential buyers the right to negotiate for business you do NOT want.  The seller does not provide their name but only a (575 area code) phone number and requests that only serious inquiries leave a message stating their interest on an answering machine. Hmmm, does that mean they do not want to talk to you directly over the phone?

Cory Courts who lives in Roswell,NM believes the approximately $43000 dollar error a bank made in his favor was a blessing from God. The problem is that other  Washington Federal Bank customers/depositors are paying for this "blessing from God". Corey appears to work for Frigidaire as you can see in the picture, so one had to be surprised when Corey stated in KOB TV interview that he could not afford air conditioning in his home. Wonder why his fiancé did not convince him to give the money back. One of the two had to be intelligent enough to know banks do audits that catch these kind of mistakes. Corey also stated in the television interview that he called the bank informing them of $43000 error, and whoever answered the phone told him to wait until the bank contacted him. I doubt he did that. Perhaps he wanted to appear to be conscientious on TV. Any bank employee who did not act immediately on such important information would likely be fired. People have ways

Mr Evans trusted Match.com to find his soul mate or at least an authentic date! Much of what follows was reported in Houston newspaper way back in in April of 2004.  A Match employee revealed a deceptive tactic that was executed just before the expiration of a client's subscription. In order to improve customer retention, a Match.com employee would go on "a date" with a subscriber just prior to subscriber's expiration date. Now that is cold! Somebody is paying their hard earned money to meet a future wife and Match is NOT honest enough to let them know they are striking out. They are effectively acting as a legal prostitution ring by sending out one of their employees to date the poor person who does not know he/she is on an inauthentic date.  The "employee date" will know exactly what to say on the date due to information revealed to Match by the subscriber. What the hell happened to that 29 dimensions of compatibility that these online advertisers p

The animated online advertisement was blinking What your car insurance company does not want you to know ! The ad could tell we lived in Hobbs, NM and promised unbelievable savings on our current auto insurance. As you can see from the screenshot below, the ad claims there is a rule specific to New Mexico that our GEICO insurance is not telling us about that would save us much more money. It wanted us to enter our zip code, daily mileage, and whether or not we had been convicted of a DUI. I filled it all out and guess what? The premiums were a little more than what we are currently paying! And I still do not know what the hell the rule was that was supposed to make insurance costs lower in this region. Corporations are so desperate for your business that they are willing to get your attention by duplicitous, if not completely false, advertising ploys. You might be interested to know that my sister in Roswell, who is insured by Liberty Mutual, went through the exact same ordeal

Stopped off at an excellent BBQ place in Ruidoso,NM and used my cash back Visa card. Did not realize til I was almost back to Las Cruces that the friendly attendant did not return my card. We had been swapping stories about how pissed we were that Obama is letting all the people from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador settle in Artesia without having to go through the due process of immigration. She knew mayor Phil Burch from way back and mentioned how it was stressing him out. She just forgot to give me my credit card back and I didn't notice. I decided to report it lost rather than drive all the way back to Ruidoso. This is where the rant begins. I use the card everyday and requested that they get me a new card ASAP. The sweet little Indian sounding phone rep had apparently been programmed to tell customers that a 15 dollar expediting fee would be charged for overnight shipping.  I vociferously complained that all the major credit card behemoths make enough on the unfair

We are asked to feel compassion for Muhammad Sahin after he shot a mother while her toddler was watching. Even though Sahin did not intend for that act of cruelty to transpire, the toddler soon to mature into, hopefully, a responsible adult will have to grow up with the image of his mother being slaughtered in hit ordered by a gang. Muhammad, the murderer, is in a prison that practices restorative justice which brings the victims together with the perpetrator to hopefully advance closure, forgiveness, and rehabilitation. The standard question here is who are you going to trust to declare that the killer is rehabilitated sufficiently to reenter society? For many of his 15 years behind the soaring prison walls here, Muhammad Sahin managed to suppress thinking of his victims’ anguish — even that of the one who haunted him most, a toddler who peeked out from beneath her blankets the night he shot and killed her mother in a gang-ordered hit.

This rant is a true OH MY GOD as it describes two elderly women in Los Angeles who take out life insurance policies on homeless, street people. The two women named Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt exhibit abject sociopathic behavior knowing that homeless people are simple targets and likely have no loved ones that will step to their defense. Michael Ingram, a state insurance executive, stated the two beyond 70 year old women befriended the homeless men, put them up in an apartment, got all the necessary life insurance beneficiary signatures and then staged their deaths as a hit and run accident in an alley where there were no witnesses. In the animal kingdom it is the weakest animals that are attacked and eaten or the strongest males that get to mate with the female. This account of predatory old women is more proof that us humans are animals some of us bound by ethics and morality and others always conspiring to get way with murder if necessary to advance our own financial

The following article about a college president comes to us from a June 2006 article in Houston newspaper. The board of regents at Texas Southern University vote unanimously to terminate the employment of Priscilla Slade.  The alleged infractions included the TSU executive spending circa $650,000 for her personal gain over around a 7 year time interval. Yes, Slade spent your child's tuition dollars for the high-flying lifestyle of a celebrity or somebody else accustomed amenities typically only enjoyed by a privileged few.  What is alarming about this is that Slade just happened to get caught. Makes one wonder how many other big wigs in academia are spending school money to advance their own cause and not that of the institute and community they are serving! Attorney Mike DeGeurin, known for defending people who are clearly guilty, was legal counsel for Mrs Slade who avoided prison with a plea deal. Texas Southern University regents made President Priscilla Slade

Frank Shyong writing for the Los Angeles Times reports only a part of the story regarding the black woman who was wrestled to the ground for being a walking hazard potentially causing many life-threatening accidents if she had been allowed to continue walking very near the I10 Freeway.  Some cars had already braked hard causing minor fender benders and many motorists were swerving to avoid her as she walked way too close to the Interstate Highway. The police officer repeatedly warned her to quit walking near the dense traffic where multiple vehicles were changing lanes to dodge her.   She appeared to yell at the officer and ignored his order. The video, shot by a passing driver, shows the woman walking on the shoulder of the 10 Freeway near the La Brea Avenue exit when a CHP officer on foot catches up with her, spins her around and throws her to the ground. As he struggles to subdue her, the officer can be seen on the video punching the woman at least eight times in the head

Just read some fascinating commentary from two black females that could NOT have been more diametrically opposed on the supercharged issue of rape. The quoted commentary is that of Serena Williams regarding a rape case in Ohio. The enumerated comments regarding Serena's "apology" are the pointed opinions of Eris Zion Venia Dyson writing for theguardian.  Eris, I am sorry if you or someone close to you was raped and certainly sympathize with your sensitivity on this matter but your 7 comments miss the pith of Serena's position substantially. A 16 year old girl in skin tight clothing and drinking at a party knows what she is doing. She is there to get laid like many of the other attendees. If she was truly forced to have sex against her will, e.g. walking home and forced to have sex in a van then that is rape and perp should be harshly punished.  Thank you Serena for advancing a view that many females of your stature would not have the guts to do. "Do y

It is funny how certain remarks stick in your mind endlessly. An old buddy of mine named Andy Hanson was an expert chess player out of Hobbs,NM when I last talked to him. Chess players are typically independent critical thinkers who trust their own reasoning skills. I believe he had read Das Kapital by Marx and lamented how so many of us were wage slaves. Like me, he believed religion was valueless. I remember him examining the inactive ingredient list on a tube of tooth paste and noting that saccharin( a sugar substitute) was in the product to improve the taste. His humorous concern was the likelihood that a sugar substitute in tooth paste promoted the tooth decay the product was advertised to help prevent! You can see in the picture of the Crest toothpaste tube that sodium saccharin is one of the many inactive ingredients in the tooth cleaning product. It turns out that saccharin does not advance tooth decay , at least according to Wikipedia.

I don't know if it is really fair to characterize this as a rant. What follows is the exceptionally contentious issue of the right to bear arms. Does it mean that you carry weapons into WalMart or Target? Target, in Minneapolis, just made their position clear as Kavita Kuman describes in her well written article.  Target Corporation on Wednesday took a stand against customers who bring firearms into its stores. "This is a complicated issue, but it boils down to a simple belief: Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we strive to create," John Mulligan, the company's acting CEO, said in a statement. The gun carrying law in Texas states that permit holders can carry their weapon anywhere unless otherwise forbidden to do so by private entities. Apparently, this law does not hold in Minnesota. So a man from Texas, who believes it is his God given right to have a gun with him anyti

Anne Flaherty's AP article was an eye-opener on many counts. T-Mobile is being prosecuted for charging for services that were not provided or services that were not requested by customer. Some T-Mobile account holders were billed for a horoscope service they never requested and did not even think to look for when their month bill arrived! The real proof in the pudding that T-Mobile is crooked is that 40% of their customer base requested refunds for certain services that were not part of the customer's original contract/agreement.When almost one half of your customers are irate, that is invariably conclusive proof that service sucks or they are being ripped off. The practice is often referred to as "cramming": businesses stuff a customer's bill with bogus charges associated with a third party. In this case, the FTC says T-Mobile should have realized that many of these premium text services were scams because of the high rate of customer complaints. In some c

I have observed that most scam artists and con men are relatively subdued and marginally humble once they know they have been caught and law enforcement is privy to their money stealing ways. Janet Mavis Marcusse of Grand Rapids Michigan was the opposite of this when she was caught ripping off the life savings of many elderly investors. She stole the retirement savings of many of the 577 people she conned and had the effrontery to scream at the judge who was reading her sentence. To make the stolen money hard to track, she put it in bank accounts of fictitious churches she had set up. The ringleader of a scheme that bilked investors out of millions of dollars was sentenced to 25 years in prison Friday, but not before the screaming defendant was removed from the courtroom. Janet Mavis Marcusse was convicted of defrauding 577 people of $12.7 million and laundering the money through bank accounts opened under the names of nonexistent churches. Marcusse, 49, spoke for more tha