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[Gary And bonnie cravish <lvnvgc AT embarqmail.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: homestead-request AT lists.ibiblio.org
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Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 8:43:51 AM (GMT-0600) America/Chicago
Subject: Homestead Digest, Vol 53, Issue 280

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Today's Topics:

   1. Our t*x money for country club memberships & other fun (bobf)
   2. Cold,cold weather (bobf)
   3. Strangest Children's Christmas Gift (bobf)
   4. Re: Cold,cold weather (bobf)
   5. Re: Cold,cold weather (william Eggers)


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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 04:59:28 -0800 (PST)
From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
Subject: [Homestead] Our t*x money for country club memberships &
        other fun
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <501545.64573.qm AT web53901.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

After my earlier post, I ran across this article outlining where some 
billions of the bail-out packages are going.  This is a reflection of the 
imbecilic , corrupt congress that pretends to represent us.  If the damn 
unions weren't as corrupt as the politicians and bankers, they could really 
build up strength with news like this.........

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Economy Stock Markets Earnings Opinion Personal Finance Press Releases 
Marketplace  AP study finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs


Banks that have their hands out in Washington this year were handing out 
multimillion-dollar rewards to their executives last year.

The 116 banks that so far have received taxpayer dollars to boost them 
through the economic crisis gave their top tier of executives nearly $1.6 
billion in salaries, bonuses and other benefits in 2007, an Associated Press 
analysis found.

That amount, spread among the 600 highest paid bank executives, would cover 
the bailout money given to 53 of the banks that have shared the $188 billion 
that Washington has doled out in rescue packages so far.

Some banks trimmed their executive compensation in the face of faltering 
performance that foreshadowed the current economic crisis, but they still 
granted multimillion-dollar packages. Benefits included cash bonuses, stock 
options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country 
club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal 
securities documents found.

Such bonuses amount to a bribe for executives "to get them to do the jobs for 
which they are well paid in the first place," said Rep. Barney Frank, the 
Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services committee.

"Most of us sign on to do jobs, and we do them best we can," said Frank. 
"We're told that some of the most highly paid people in executive positions 
are different. They need extra money to be motivated!"

The AP review of annual reports that the banks file with the Securities and 
Exchange Commission found that the average paid to each of the banks' top 
executives was $2.6 million in salary, bonuses and benefits.

Among other findings:

? Lloyd Blankfein, president and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, took home 
nearly $54 million in compensation last year. The company's top five 
executives received a total of $242 million.

This year, Goldman's seven top-paid executives will work for their base 
salaries of $600,000, with no stock or cash bonuses, the company said. Last 
spring, before Wall Street's staggering losses and layoffs mushroomed, 
Goldman described its pay plan as essential to retain and motivate executives 
"whose efforts and judgments are vital to our continued success, by setting 
their compensation at appropriate and competitive levels." Goldman spokesman 
Ed Canaday declined to comment beyond that written report.

The New York-based company, after gains last year, on Dec. 16 reported its 
first quarterly loss since it went public in 1999. It received $10 billion in 
taxpayer money on Oct. 28.

? Even where banks cut back on pay, some executives were left with seven- or 
eight-figure compensation that most people can only dream about. Richard D. 
Fairbank, the chairman of Capital One Financial Corp., took a $1 million hit 
in compensation after his company had a disappointing year, but still got $17 
million in stock options. The McLean, Va.-based company received $3.56 
billion in bailout money on Nov. 14.

? John A. Thain, chief executive of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank 
bosses with $83 million in earnings last year. Thain, a former chief 
operating officer for Goldman Sachs, came to Merrill Lynch in December 2007, 
avoiding the blame for a year in which Merrill lost $7.8 billion. Since he 
began work late in the year, he earned $57,692 in salary, a $15 million 
signing bonus and an additional $68 million in stock options.

Like Goldman, Merrill tapped taxpayers for $10 billion on Oct. 28.

The AP review comes amid sharp questions about the banks' commitment to the 
goals of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, a law designed to buy bad 
mortgages and other troubled assets. Last month, the Bush administration 
changed the program's goals, instructing the Treasury Department to pump tax 
dollars directly into banks to prevent wide economic collapse.

The program set restrictions on some executive compensation for participating 
banks, but did not limit salaries and bonuses unless they had the effect of 
encouraging excessive risk to the institution. Banks were barred from giving 
golden parachutes to departing executives and deducting some executive pay 
for tax purposes. Some banks are forgoing bonuses and restricting other 
compensation.

The records detailing last year's pay packages show that personal financial 
advice was among the executive perks. Wells Fargo of San Francisco, which 
took $25 billion in taxpayer bailout money, gave its top executives up to 
$20,000 each to pay financial planners.

At Bank of New York Mellon Corp., chief executive Robert P. Kelly's stipend 
for financial planning services came to $66,748, on top of his $975,000 
salary and $7.5 million bonus. His car and driver cost $178,879. Kelly also 
received $846,000 in relocation expenses, including help selling his home in 
Pittsburgh and purchasing one in Manhattan, the company said. 

Goldman Sachs, paying as much as $233,000 for an executive's car and driver, 
told its shareholders that financial counseling and chauffeurs were needed so 
executives would have more time to focus on their jobs. 

JPMorgan Chase chairman James Dimon ran up a $211,182 tab for private jet 
travel last year when his family lived in Chicago and he was commuting to New 
York. The company received $25 billion in bailout funds. 

Banks cite security to justify personal use of company aircraft for some 
executives. But Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., questioned that rationale, 
saying executives visit many locations more vulnerable than the nation's 
security-conscious commercial air terminals. 

Sherman, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said pay 
excesses undermine development of good bank economic policies and promote an 
escalating pay spiral among competing financial institutions ? something 
particularly hard to take when banks then ask for rescue money. 

He wants them to come before Congress, like the automakers did, and spell out 
their spending plans for bailout funds. 

"The tougher we are on the executives that come to Washington, the fewer will 
come for a bailout," he said. 



      


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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:09:54 -0800 (PST)
From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
Subject: [Homestead] Cold,cold weather
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <902030.14942.qm AT web53901.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Rain is heading our way, so the sky will be overcast.  The high today is only 
supposed to be 66 degrees. Brrrrr.  I know ,this am ,what it must be like for 
Susan Jane or Marie..............................

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


      


------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:38:36 -0800 (PST)
From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
Subject: [Homestead] Strangest Children's Christmas Gift
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <236057.41391.qm AT web53907.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I just saw this article in the Washington post.  According to this article, 
this gift is a huge seller and is being heavily advertised, but I had never 
seen or heard of it until just now.

Now, I do not have small children and only vaguely remember what it was like 
to be a child.  I also do not give gifts for any holiday or day of 
celebration -- othet than my marriage anniversary.  I am culturally 
Christian; that is to say, I was raised Christian so I am comfortable with 
the holidays.  Years ago, I use to buy my brother's children many gifts and 
go to a lot of trouble to wrap and ship all of those gifts across country.  
Then I switched to gift certificates and cash.  A few years back, along my 
anti-consumerist; anti-materialistic journey; I opted to no longer 
acknowledge or celebtate holidays at all--'just became disgusted with the 
crass commercialism and gaudiness of it all.  

So, I don't give gifts and I don't have small children, so maybe I'm a person 
without the proper understanding of something like this, but I find this gift 
of questionable taste and merit and another 'possible' indicator of cultural 
decline ........  maybe I'm wrong and don't understand........

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Baby Dolls Raise a Stink In More Ways Than One
  
Corrine Vigna, 4, of Alexandria, left, whispers to her mother, Nancy Vigna, 
about her No. 1. Christmas wish: Baby Alive Learns to Potty, above. 

The doll talks, eats and answers nature's call. Mistakes can happen, though: 
"Uh, oh, I had an accident" is in her repertoire of programmed phrases, along 
with "I'm hungry," "Mmm good," and "I made a stinky." Critics of such 
realistic toys wonder if some things are best left to the imagination. (By 
Dominic Bracco Ii For The Washington Post) 
     

By Brigid Schulte

Washington Post Staff Writer 

Monday, December 22, 2008; Page A01 

So long, Betsy Wetsy. Baby dolls just got a whole lot more real. 

Put her on her little pink plastic toilet. Press the purple bracelet on Baby 
Alive Learns to Potty. "Sniff sniff," she chirps in a singsong voice. "I made 
a stinky!" 

This season's animatronic Baby Alive -- which retails for $59.99 -- comes 
with special "green beans" and "bananas" that, once fed to the doll, 
actually, well, come out the other end. "Be careful," reads the doll's 
promotional literature, "just like real life, sometimes she can hold it until 
she gets to the 'potty' and sometimes she can't!" (A warning on the back of 
the box reads: "May stain some surfaces.") 

The mess made by the $39.95 Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Gotta Go Doll, 
("Over 60 phrases and fun sounds!") is more hypothetical. Once she is placed 
on her little toilet, a magnet triggers a presto, change-o in the plastic 
bowl: "The 'water' in the toilet disappears, with the expected 'potty waste' 
appearing in its place," says manufacturer Mattel. "Your child can then flush 
the toilet. The 'water' will reappear, while the toilet makes a very 
realistic flushing sound!" And then comes the applause. 

The dolls, which are being heavily advertised on television, are expected to 
be the season's big sellers. Since the dolls were introduced to stores this 
fall, managers at Wal-Mart, Target and Toys R Us have reported trouble 
keeping them in stock. And Baby Alive, listed as one of the Hot Toys of 2008 
by Hottoys2008.com, was sold out at Wal-Mart, eToys.com and the AOL shopping 
site a week before Christmas. 

But not everyone thinks dolls need to be this real. Some things, they argue, 
are better left to the imagination. This battle over whether pooping dolls 
are an appropriate toy is only the latest skirmish in a long war between 
child development experts and toymakers. Psychologists say the best toys 
encourage children to pretend and use make-believe (witness the fact that 
children often love the boxes their expensive toys come in more than the toy 
itself). But toymakers want to use the latest technology to make and sell 
ever-more realistic toys. (Baby Alive's movements are the result of 
sophisticated robotics controlled by the same kind of microprocessor that 
navigates satellites and runs nuclear power plants.) 

"Retailers have bought heavily into these dolls," said Reyne Rice, trend 
specialist with the Toy Industry Association. "They feel that these are some 
of the more popular items for girls this year." Although most baby dolls are 
sold in the last six weeks of the year and firm sales figures won't be 
available until early next year, Rice said indicators look good for big 
Christmas sales. 


The buzz is on parent online discussion groups across the country. As with 
the Tickle Me Elmo and Cabbage Patch Kids crazes of Christmases past, one 
mother was so distraught that the pooping dolls were sold out online just 
after Thanksgiving that she prepared to rise at 5 a.m. to scour stores in a 
100-mile radius of her house. 

At a Toys R Us in Northern Virginia last week, Salma Bangoura filled her 
shopping cart with stainless steel pots and pans for her 7-year-old 
daughter's play kitchen. Her daughter desperately wants the Baby Alive, she 
said, and Bangoura is considering buying it for her for Christmas. "She wants 
the toilet," she said, shrugging. "It's so interesting. It comes with its own 
food. It's not gross, as long as it's not real." 

But at a Target not far away, Gay Hee Lee, shopping for her 2-year-old niece, 
picked the Baby Alive box off the shelf only to quickly put it back. "That," 
she said, "is just so wrong." 

Perhaps here is where one needs to ask a question: Does a toilet -- and what 
one uses it for -- make a good toy? 

And, given the boundaries of good taste, is it even a good idea? 



Clearly, to toymakers, the answer is yes. 

"For us, the peeing and pooping is pretty magical," said Kathleen Harrington, 
senior brand manager for Hasbro's Baby Alive dolls. "As adults, we might be a 
little grossed out. But it's so magical and so funny and so silly for these 
girls. This little doll is coming to life, so the little girl doesn't believe 
it's just a doll. It's her baby." Harrington calls it part of the doll's 
"Wow!" factor. 

But to some child development experts, the answer is a resounding no. 

With 5,000 toys introduced into the market every year, "what happens is that 
there's huge competition to get noticed. And what that means to toys is that 
they get more and more and more and more outrageous," said Susan Linn, 
professor of child psychology at Harvard and director of the Campaign for a 
Commercial-Free Childhood. "This toy is shocking enough that it's going to be 
noticed. But at best, this toy is unnecessary. At worst, it's really gross." 

But Jim Silver, editor of Time to Play, a Web magazine that reviews toys, 
says children want reality. 

"By the time they're 5 or 6, they don't want a play cellphone, they want a 
real cellphone," Silver said. "A baby doll is all about nurturing. So what 
Mom went through with them, they want to go through with their dolls. And how 
do you do real potty training without pooping?" Silver said he laughed when 
he first saw the pooping dolls and wondered if they were necessary. Although 
he said he has been sworn to secrecy about next year's new toys, an early 
peek shows reality is only going to get more real. "You're going to see the 
envelope pushed to make baby dolls as real as possible without being 
offensive in any way. 

And, he said, it's not as if the toymakers don't know what they're doing. 
Mattel's Little Mommy dolls, he said, are the biggest-selling baby dolls on 
the market, with annual sales upwards of $50 million. Baby Alive dolls, which 
debuted in 1973 and were retooled and reintroduced to the market a couple of 
years ago after a decade-long hiatus, are the No. 2 seller. 

It's the kind of trend that makes Linn angry enough to write books, such as 
her recent "The Case for Make Believe." 

"This is part of a greater trend to create toys that do everything," she 
said. "And in the process of marketing those toys to children and flooding 
the market with those toys, what we're doing is depriving children of 
opportunities for creative play. And that's the foundation of learning, of 
critical thinking, of creativity, of developing the capacity to wrestle with 
life, to make meaning of it. It's essential to their human development. 
What's happening is that toymakers are designing these toys that look great 
in ads but in fact really add nothing to children's inner life or their 
creative play." 


High on Linn's Christmas toy shopping list: crayons, paper, blocks, stuffed 
animals and dolls that don't talk or move, much less say "Hurry, hurry" when 
they're about to mess their pants. "A really, really good toy is 90 percent 
child and 10 percent toy," she said. "But those are not the bestsellers." 

What both sides of the play wars agree on is that children at the age of 
playing with baby dolls, generally ages 3 or 4 to 7, are endlessly fascinated 
by bodily functions, thus the popularity of such books as "Walter the Farting 
Dog," booger-green slime and squishy, squeezable, see-through toys that allow 
children to feel animals' guts, on shelves now. And potty training -- either 
because children are going through it or because they remember what it was 
like -- is a big, big deal. 

That, manufacturers say, is why they're creating realistic dolls. 

"Potty training is an important developmental milestone for nearly every 
child," Michael Shore, vice president of World Wide Consumer Insights for 
Mattel, wrote in an e-mail. "At around the age of two, many kids are 
demonstrating signs of readiness which include key motor skills, language 
skills, the ability to follow directions, etc. At this age, research has 
proven that dolls serve as effective tools to teach by imitation rather than 
relying entirely on a potty training child's limited language skills." 

Shore goes on to explain that the Little Mommy Gotta Go Doll was "uniquely 
designed with innovative features to model both types of potty training 
behaviors: 'poop and pee' " and that these "unique actions" help encourage 
"successful potty training." 

Indeed, potty training dolls have become all the rage since 2006, when writer 
Teri Crane (the self-proclaimed "Potty Pro") published her book "Potty Train 
Your Child in Just One Day," and her doll-using method was endorsed by TV's 
Dr. Phil McGraw. Now, the market is saturated with dolls like Potty Patty, 
Potty Scotty and anatomically correct, vanilla-scented Emma and Paul dolls. 

Child development experts, not surprisingly, are again on the opposite side 
of market forces in the potty wars. Claire Lerner is director of parenting 
resources at Zero to Three, a nonprofit organization that promotes the health 
and development of infants and toddlers. She said that such claims of instant 
potty training are "unfair and exploitive" and that whether a child uses a 
doll, potty training, as it has for centuries, takes the time that it takes. 

"Toilet training in this country has taken on a life of its own and become so 
much more complex than it really needs to be," she said. "And parent anxiety 
about it has just, unfortunately for everybody, often made it much more 
stressful. Toymakers are clever. They tune into what's on the minds of 
parents." In her view, children don't need a doll to learn how to use a 
toilet. And they don't need a doll that poops to have fun. "You just don't 
need to go that far," she said. 

That's something Alexandria mom Nancy Vigna, a military planner, thinks. But 
the pooping Baby Alive is the only thing her 4-year-old daughter, Corinne, 
really wants for Christmas, Vigna said. (That and a Barbie cash register.) 
"The last thing she needs is another doll," Vigna said. Her daughter is so 
enamored with diapering that she pines to change her younger brother and 
plasters her baby dolls' behinds so thoroughly that they look like they're 
wearing cocoons. "This is the baby doll she's been waiting for. It makes a 
real mess," Vigna said, sighing. "I'm not looking forward to it." 


Then Vigna had to excuse herself. Her 21-month-old son, like Baby Alive, had 
just made a stinky in the bathtub, and she had to go. 


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/21/AR2008122102397.html?nav=hcmodule











      


------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:41:41 -0800 (PST)
From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Homestead] Cold,cold weather
To: wce1482 AT yahoo.com, homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <397866.35577.qm AT web53904.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Well , Bill you cheered me up  :-) .  I don't understand, though, how you get 
your dog to go outside and do her business.  Mine hesitates and tries to go 
back inside if it is below 60 degrees :-)............

----------------------------------------------------------------------


--- On Mon, 12/22/08, william Eggers <wce1482 AT yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: william Eggers <wce1482 AT yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Homestead] Cold,cold weather
> To: bobford79 AT yahoo.com
> Date: Monday, December 22, 2008, 7:37 AM
> Our low here was 15 below.? It is 13 below now (8:30).?
> Suppose to get to 10 above, but I doubt if it makes it.?
> However when it warms up on Tuesday, it is suppose to snow
> some more.? 66 would be great.
> ?
> Bill - froze in Iowa
> 
> --- On Mon, 12/22/08, bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> 
> From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Homestead] Cold,cold weather
> To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Monday, December 22, 2008, 8:09 AM
> 
> Rain is heading our way, so the sky will be overcast.  The
> high today is only
> supposed to be 66 degrees. Brrrrr.  I know ,this am ,what
> it must be like for
> Susan Jane or Marie..............................
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
>       
> _______________________________________________
> Homestead list and subscription:
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> Change your homestead list member options:
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------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:43:49 -0800 (PST)
From: william Eggers <wce1482 AT yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Homestead] Cold,cold weather
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <123015.35042.qm AT web38708.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

I think I sent the last message to the wrong place.? It was 15 below here 
last night and at 8:30 this morning, it is still 13 below.? Suppose to get up 
to 10 above today, but I don't think it will make it.? Suppose to warm up 
tomarrow to 20, but then it will snow.
?
Bill - froze in Iowa

--- On Mon, 12/22/08, bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com> wrote:

From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
Subject: [Homestead] Cold,cold weather
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Monday, December 22, 2008, 8:09 AM

Rain is heading our way, so the sky will be overcast.  The high today is only
supposed to be 66 degrees. Brrrrr.  I know ,this am ,what it must be like for
Susan Jane or Marie..............................

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


      
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End of Homestead Digest, Vol 53, Issue 280
******************************************