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In local news from Phoenix, Arizona some rather ingenious rebels have taken to fighting traffic cameras.

Well, no one’s cutting the heads off the stationary cameras DPS (Department of Public Safety) has rigged around the state to catch you going 10mph over the speed limit or more, but someone is sabotaging these sinister speed traps in a most ingenious way — by blocking the window in front of the camera with yellow Post-it notes.

I am rather amused by this protest in some ways.  As a guy who drives the speed limit because he believes in following the law and someone who lost way to many friends to traffic accidents, the notion of speeding pisses me off.  Stupid law or not the speed limit isn’t a mere suggestion for drivers it is the law. When we as citizens won’t follow the law, we have very little right to get pissed off at politicians who don’t either.  Frankly I would much rather going the speed limit than give up my righteous anger at W for ass fucking  America the last eight years.

DPS flack Lt. James Warriner, and he confirmed that Post-it note ninjas are at work in the Valley, with at least five incidents having occurred over the last few days on SR 51, I-10, and the Loop 101. Warriner says DPS has an investigator assigned to catch the plucky roadside rebels, though DPS isn’t exactly sure what the Post-it note perps would be prosecuted for, if and when they’re nabbed.

There are probably plenty of charges that could be leveled, but finding the right one is always a good idea before going forward with these sorts of things.  While I don’t like Big Brother anymore than any other Liberal the feds no doubt have an interest in keeping an eye on, I actually like traffic cameras.  That could be because I don’t speed and have good driving habits.

Warriner related that DPS may have to stake out the cameras’ locations, which are listed on DPS’ Web site, here. Perhaps even install hidden cameras to watch the devices. That’s right, cameras to watch the cameras.

This notion however, I don’t like.  It is a little too Big Brother for me.  Who is watching the watchmen?  A camera that catches someone for speeding is one thing.  Those cameras provide scientifically measured data and a photo of a scene where sticking a human being in a cruiser would be dangerous and disruptive.  Placing a camera to watch what can likely be watched by a human seems to devalue the notion we need police officers in the field.

Update:

I saw a really cool idea that might actually make people like traffic cameras a bit more.  What if good drivers were paid an incentive, out of the fines bad drivers pay.  It couldn’t be the entire fine, but what if you received a discount on your car registration or drivers license fee, or if the DMV sent a voucher that could be redeemed by your insurance carrier, for say $25.00 to $50.00 towards your payment.  Better yet what if good drivers were randomly sent $20.00 checks paid for by 60% of the fines.

Gangs have become part of the American pop culture From LA to New York, from Lodi outside of Stock to Lebanon outside of Dayton, in what can be called an old school viral marketing program.  Books, music, and television all worked to make gangs and gang life cool, while inoculating us against the harsher realities of both the gangs and the stereotypical lifestyle.

Daniel Thigpen

Record Staff Writer
December 01, 2008 6:00 AM

LODI - After recovering from his gunshot wounds, Michael Hutto went to prison on drug charges in San Bernardino County. He decided he was through with gangs.

That stint ended his troubled youth of drugs and violence. During more than six years behind bars, he said, he got his high school diploma, sought religion and lined up a job in anticipation of his parole in 2005.

Now 34, Hutto lives in Woodbridge and works two jobs. And he is among a small group of Lodi-area residents trying to form an organization that would keep the city’s youth from adopting the criminal lifestyle that Hutto lived for so many years.

I respect what he is doing and maybe their is something to it for your community too, but that is not why I wanted to bring light to this story.

The importance of this story and the subsequent actions behind it have a message that could be spread far more on larger gangs and their members which we often refer to as rogue nations and terrorists.  While I am not holding my breath for a reformed terrorist to start praising the American way, Mom and Apple Pie, the methodology is still valid.

What America needs to do is stop telling people how to act first and foremost.  Whether you see it as being a school yard bully or as some sort of parental discipline, it needs to stop, because it doesn’t work.  We need to show these people why America is good by turning them into Americans.  I am not talking about invading a country and establishing democracy either.

We don’t want these countries to have a democracy they didn’t create for themselves first and foremost. Every time we give a country democracy they usually vote us the bad guy and make life difficult.  We need to change these countries by letting anyone who wants to leave them for the promised land where you can choose between Coke and Pepsi, McDonalds and Burger King, or Obama and McCain and not have to worry about being killed for making a choice different than your neighbor, a way out.

We need to make people more American, by making them real Americans.  We need to teach them the language so they too might appreciate John Stuart, let them experience the dollar menu so they too can feel the value of hard earned money and heartburn, we need to show them that most people are decent to one another no matter how they pray.  We need to let them tell those they left behind America is a good place and the American way springs from kids who at their heart are all the same, because they all love Elmo.

We need to raise these people up to say choice is good and you to can choose to become a child of America.  Living by example is not only an easier way to change the hearts and minds of those we call enemies, but considerably cheaper than full scale war.

There often times seems to be little new in the way of educational thinking but one Arkansas town, Searcy, has gone to great lengths to put something new into action, even if I question the timing.  Late November seems like the wrong time of year to be starting an outdoor education program even for states and southerly as Arkansas.

Outdoor classroom offered to students

By Betsy Bailey
Saturday, November 29, 2008 9:34 PM CST

Westside Elementary School has added a classroom to its campus, but it won’t be found within the walls of the school. The school, with the assistance of the Parent/Teacher Organization, developed an outdoor classroom on the grounds of the school building.

The "Wildlife EDventure Garden" as it was dubbed by the third grader, Victoria Brown of Mrs Wilson’s class, in the naming contest, will provide an excellent educational opportunity for students of Westside Elementary.

Not only do I like the notion of the garden using all native Arkansas plants, but I really like the notion creative ideas not being dead in academia.  Too often we stick with tradition simply for the sake of tradition.  That old guard system was bucked by a new idea in Arkansas and as benign as this new idea sounds, any new idea is a full scale rebellion against the academic institution.

At first I was about to ignore this story thinking it was just one more story about Crazy Alaskans and their religions, but the more I read the more I felt I needed to address the situation.

Church dispute ends up in superior court

AT ISSUE IS FIRED PASTOR: Hearing scheduled Feb. 27.

The Associated Press

Published: November 30th, 2008 10:08 PM
Last Modified: November 30th, 2008 10:35 PM

FAIRBANKS — A dispute at a Baptist church in Fairbanks between the pastor, church leaders and members of the congregation has ended up in court.

Members of the Corinthian Baptist Church were in Fairbanks Superior Court last week. At issue is whether a vote earlier this month by church leaders to remove Pastor S. Anthony Justice was legitimate.

Some members of the congregation also say the locks have been changed and they are being kept out of the church building.

Justice, 30, had been at the church for 15 months. During his tenure, he was credited with boosting the congregation, particularly with younger members. But in August, church leaders met and decided Justice’s performance was lacking.

They suggested some areas for improvement, according to Gregory Silvey, the Anchorage lawyer representing members of the church’s board of trustees.

Three months later, four trustees and a deacon voted to dismiss the pastor. Two trustees dissented.

At first glance this looks like a simple matter of an employer and employee dispute. The church’s board, who is responsible for staffing, seems to have a clear cut case of being the employer simply firing an employee it no longer wished to retain. Alaska isn’t known for being on the side of working stiffs, even if Sarah Palin says Wasilla Main Street is all about the people. On second look though I am not sure this is simply a matter of employment disputes.

About two dozen members of the church and at least one trustee took the matter to court, saying the church leaders did not follow church bylaws when they fired the pastor. They asked Superior Court Judge Paul Lyle to reinstate Justice. “This is some church members trying to stop other church members from hijacking the church,” said John Franich, the attorney for those in favor of keeping Justice as pastor.

After having talked to a friend in Fairbanks who knows a bit more about the story (see guest post coming soon) this seems like just the sort of case that needs to be in the courts. The pastor had a softer gentler view of the world than the fire and brimstone old guard wanted to hear being preached. To me this seems like the church board, most of who may or may not be pastors in their own right hired a man to minister to the flock.

They decided this man of god’s views, actions and by extension conscience and wasn’t the sort of hate mongering bigotry they wanted after the fact. This screams to me of an employer trying to force and employee to say something against their conscience to further the goals of the employer. This isn’t something I am sure they have legal ground to require. If they don’t have that sort of standing it might be sufficient grounds not only for reinstatement, but for a wrongful termination lawsuit.

It was just a few years ago that most medicare recipients believed that they would never have a prescription drug plan offered as part of official Medicare. Now though many Medicare Part D recipients have that coverage, but are clueless about which plan provider to choose. This is the case coast to coast. You can find many local programs, like the one in Jackson County, Alabama, where trained professionals will help you sort out what is what and pick a plan based on your needs.

Choosing the best option

By Chasity Brown
The Daily Sentinel

Published November 25, 2008

Medicare’s open-enrollment for Part D began Nov. 15, and local seniors will have several opportunities to meet with trained personnel who can help them decide on their best option.
The Jackson County Council on Aging staff has been trying to help those who have come into their offices seeking assistance individually, but making an appointment is better.

In the end, those of us on Medicare for one reason or another should be grateful that we have this coverage. After Katy has gotten a steady job I will no doubt lose my medicade coverage, but this will remain for me. With any luck one day I will be able to get coverage for all the things that I need and find my mental stability again. of course how sane are any of us when their is a new baby in the house…

The time to buy a house if you are lucky enough to have available credit may be right now. I keep cringing when I see how steeply home prices are falling and even more so when I see foreclosures going for a pittance of their current value, much less what they will in a few years. If you have the means I would suggest you start looking at current mortgage rates and your local listings. Do you want to know how low some of these properties are going for? Let me give you a few examples I have seen recently. I looked at renting a house fourteen months ago and said forget it, because as nice as it was it was priced to cover their ballooning mortgage. They wanted $1100.00 a month and that got me a pool and hot tub which I had to cover an additional $100 monthly maintenance fee on. That wasn’t a huge deal, but the houses on either side which were just as big were renting for $800 and $900 a month. The house I would say valued at nearly $175k when I looked at it. It sold two weeks ago for $90k. I could have made the payment on a $90k home over thirty years even with a steep fixed interest rate. Another home I looked at buying nearly five years had five bedrooms, pool, hot tub, and two outbuildings with utilities sat on two acres in town and had a price tag of $300k. It was foreclosed on and sold at a sheriffs sale a month ago for just over $60k. The deals are out there and I wish I was in a better position, because even with higher interest rates the current homes on the market are way under valued. Be it for yourself or as an investment, now looks like a good time to buy if you can.

Alright folks we all know what time of year it is.  That is right it is buy your husband new underwear season.  You know you are going to do it, ladies.  However it isn’t that simple.  We will nod and smile when we get them but frankly most women are as clueless about buying mens underwear underwear as most guys are about buying bra’s.  I know you are saying what could be so difficult about buying us underwear, if you really feel that way, let us buy your everyday wear to work and out in public bras.  I am sure some of you wouldn’t mind the leather and lace push-up bras that were a cup size or two too big, because we didn’t want to admit our favorite pair of toys weren’t double d’s or bigger.  Some of you might luck out though and get just the right size, of course it might be edible and fruit flavored or inedible and made of chain mail.  You should really be thankful that they don’t come with matching John Deere caps.

If you can promise to ask us what kind we want, then you can probably get at least some of us to ask you for undergarment recommendations.

When times are uncertain people often times finding themselves looking inward rather than outward.  After 9/11 we found anyone who had money was making every move possible to insulate their homes with not just provisions and duct tape but to make it pretty with Curtains, couches and comforters.  Nesting they trend was called.  I think that trend may well be about to begin again.

I can foresee in the near future the government handing out cash to Americans and this trend beginning again.  Given a few grand what would I buy, probably something for the home for sure.  It isn’t often I get a few grand put in my lap for doing anything.  That said I would most likely use it to make the house more energy efficient and their is only so much you can do to a rental property.

• Window shades, plantation shutters, Kitchen curtains, bamboo shades and country curtains make good blinds and plantation shutters. New shades would reduce my summer AC bill.
• I think I would replace a my TV with an LCD which is not only more energy efficient, it puts out considerably less heat.  While I don’t mind the living room being five degrees warmer in the winter, in the summer it rather sucks when I am trying to run the AC and can’t get the living room cool.
• I would replace my old clunky fans with some new small fans to use at my desk or by the bed when I don’t want to run the AC
• The fridge came with the house, but there is nothing that says I have to use it.  I could easily put it out in the garage and let it sit while using a more energy efficient one I can take with me.

In the end if you are going to nest think not just about the comforts of your home, but how you can also make it more environmentally friendly and energy efficient.  Saving money and the environment shouldn’t be thought of as something only for other people.  We each take up space on the planet and each of us can do something to make the most of the space we use.

Getting credit cards is not going to be an easy thing to do for the foreseeable future unless you are one of those no credit history college students that seem to still being offered credit hand over fist.  That simply isn’t a practice I can fathom or condone really.  It would serve any of the companies pandering to the vanity and lack of experience college freshman often have to have the debts declared null and void.  That however wouldn’t teach any better lesson to these irresponsible kids than bailing out Wall Street teaches irresponsible corporate executives.

That said credit is still available even if the market is shrinking.  Even if you don’t have the best credit, you can still get a credit card, but you will likely pay through the nose for it and that may end up leaving you worse off than your were.  Credit Cards however are a must for many things right now and even those with bad credit will need them if they want to get by.  I am not talking about debit cards for your checking account or prepaid cards either.  I tried to rent a car after I started having problem and found not only would they not take my debit card which was backed by five times what I was trying to spend I had a prepaid credit card with an equal amount of cash.  There wasn’t a car rental company that would take either one.   In fact they wanted nearly a thousand dollar down payment to rent me a $49.00 a day car on top of prepayment for the two days I needed the car and another twenty bucks to pay for their required insurance package.  In the end I took the$1118.00 they want me to pony up for a two day car and bought a cheap car that lasted eight months.  All of this could have been avoided by having a real credit card.

In the end I know who was responsible for my credit even if getting hurt at work wasn’t my fault.  Bad things happen to good people all the time and they have no control over it, but they still have to hold themselves accountable for the choices that were theirs to make.  Get yourself the credit you need but be very careful how you use it.

At the moment one of the biggest risks to a college students financial well being isn’t the type of degree they get or how much they had to take out in student loans. Today’s biggest threat is the credit industry.  As adults with some experience in life we should know enough to tell our kids about the dangers of credit, but to often parents don’t seem to take any more responsibility for their credit debt than the major financial institutions the government is bailing out hand over fist.

I would like to point the Credit Card Blog out to both students and parents at the moment as a prime resource for credit card information.  Despite the fact that the credit industry is tightening its belt everywhere, they are still after new college students to get their first credit card and be truly independent.  Not only that thy are actually starting to make pitches to high school students who neither have income or the brains to be responsible in the first place.

If there is one thing you can teach your kids about credit with any sort of real world example it would be to show them the financial bailout for Wall Street.  The government cares about their contributing cronies as much as they know they have to keep those banks from failing.  What can be shown from this is that the government doesn’t however care about any credit debtor other than the really big ones and won’t be their to bail out your student if they run into problems.  Speaking from experience, bankruptcy is no picnic and I can’t imagine how much it would screw up the financial life of a new college student.

In the grand world of blogging and online marketing the term SEO gets bandied about quite a bit and most people have no clue what those three little letters mean, much less what SEO actually is.   This isn’t unusual.  Most buzz words are simply that, something for uniformed people to buzz about.  I want to put this out there for you to better understand.

The best place to start is by explain what SEO does.  it optimizes your site for search engines, both making it easy for them to look at your content and for searchers to access the information on your page. when they see the search engine results results pages or SERPs.  Many bloggers either do nothing in the way of SEO or the rely on fairly useless plugins like the All in One SEO Pack.  This plugin is the worst thing most bloggers can really do as it fills in what should be custom crafted fields with pitiful auto generated crap.

In the end there are things bloggers can do if they are serious about there blog as a long term business opportunity.  First is make good use of keywords in page titles, post titles and page descriptions.  Every blogger should do these things.  Secondly is make sure you are using good tags and meta keywords.  I personally turn all my tags into meta keywords through a script in my blog template.  If it is good enough to tag it with, it is good enough to make it a keyword.  Next is use your categories wisely, and more importantly is to turn the category into part of your permalink.  The next big step is to take out the useless words in your permalink. This makes them shorter and more friendly to search engines, and to make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck on keywords.  Last but not least is your linking strategy.  Posts should be linked to one another internally and where ever possible have an RSS feed for everything.

I know one of your thoughts is it is fine for Brad to bandy about all this advice, but it doesn’t look like he is doing it himself.  Well you have a point, this blog isn’t doing everything I have suggested at the moment.  If you look to some of my newer blogs they started off doing everything right, so I am not just talking out my arse.  It takes time to integrate these features into existing blogs, but I am slowly working on it both from a theme stand point and from the content side and one of these days it will be finished and totally online for everyone to see.

For those considering bankruptcy you might want to take a moment and step back from the situation.  If you are jobless, unemployed, downsized, outsourced or only have your crappy barely better than minimum wage job, you can probably go ahead with bankruptcy and be no worse off.  However if you have managed to maintain your credit keep your job, and have no serious prospects of losing your job you might consider a Debt Consolidation Loan.

What a debt consolidation loan does is consolidate all or most of your credit bills into a single loan.  This loan can come in many, many forms.  The reasoning for making sure you will have a steady income to pay a debt consolidation loan off is you are often times putting up equity to secure the loan.  That equity is often times your home.  This isn’t something to undertake lightly.  Lose your job with an equity loan against your house and you could find yourself not only jobless, but homeless as well.

As with any financial product you should seek the advice of a professional and ask them all the questions you might have after having done the preliminary research.  My advice is is just that, advice and should be taken for what it is worth.

List five political reasons you have to be thankful for this season.

1) Barack Obama is the President Elect.  Like him or not, which I do, I am thankful America has grown to a point where someone other than a good ol’ white boy can become president.  yes there are those who are still racists and there always will be, but this does show a change in America’s attitude towards race just since I became a voting adult back in 1992.

2) We are at the end of era for Republicans.  Republicans, or as they are more properly rethuglicans, are no longer going to be able to push America around like mob bosses preying on the weak using fear and intimidation to push through their own machinations.

3) The economy is finally showing its true self now that the Bush lie machine is breaking down.

4) Our local School Levy passed.  No matter comes down from on high in regards to education local school levies are the most important indicator of how much support a district has from its community.  When the people no longer see any value in the local schools it is time to start looking elsewhere for your family.

5) There is an end to all the damned political commercials.

The Digg Story you are most thankful to see this morning:

• http://digg.com/politics/Florida_s_Gay_Adoption_Ban_Overturned

• Judge over turns Florida’s Gay adoption ban

Random act of SEO kindness: Link to 4 blog posts of people you don’t know.

• The Mormon Cult
• The 6 Things Meme
• Bush Filling Science Slots With Unqualified People
• A Science Fiction Thanksgiving

This Meme was submitted to Memes For Blogs and was published on 11-27-08

In the start of a new series at Local News and Newspapers I am offering a daily Twitter tip.  Today’s is a double fold tip.  First if you are a serious blogger who wants to learn to expand their blogging horizons through Twitter or just a casual Twitter user like I was check out Darren Rowse’s new blog Twitip.  This is a split from his thorough Blog about blogging ProBlogger, and solely about Twitter but there is a lot of Twitter information on ProBlogger.

The second Twitter Tip of the day is exclusively for Wordpress users.  The Twit This plugin is fabulous.  If you ever see a message that says so and so is reading this or that article then you have seen the after effects of the plugin.  This is a good way to get your posts even more attention.

I am not much of a car buff these days, and frankly would love a car that would just run at the moment.  I digress though.  I was linked to the LandRover Freelander

today and frankly know what sort of toy I would like Santa to bring me for Christmas. The Freelander is just totally cool.  It looks good and I want one.  Having owned an hard used LandRover for a while I have a personal affinity for them.  I have always thought owning one of the six wheeled versions would be ‘da bomb’.  I would however settle for and be quite happy with a four wheeled Freelander.

It might not look as cool as a six wheeled LandRover but on the other hand the Freelander looks like it would be just as at home off road as it would on road, which is far more important to me with a new baby in the house right now.

If you have the money and want a care most of your friends aren’t going to have look for the Freelander.  If you have the extra dough to play with remember your buddy Brad who told you about it and get him one too.

Those of you who know me already know my fascination with the American Civil War. What I have found today is new look at the Civil War collection that I hadn’t ever seen before.

Just Released Old Time Radio Collection by Nostalgia Ventures features fully dramatized shows highlighting the events of the Civil War. Originally aired in the late 1940′’s and 1950′’s, this is great Radio Entertainment from a bygone era.

The Civil War - Classic Radio on CD has a pretty nice price of $29.98 as well fir the eight compact disk set.  I would personally like it cheaper and downloadable to my iPod, but if wishes were horses then I would be set to win the Visa Triple Crown ever year for the rest of my life.  Regardless of the packaging this interesting collection of material will make for several hours of very enjoyable reading and I can’t wait.

In our continuing series of educational opportunities I present you with another interesting opportunity for fashion buyers. This is not what some would consider a high end job, until you figure every chain that sells clothes needs buyers.   it might not be the easiest field to get into or have the highest rate of new openings, but there do seem to be plenty of them for those with the right sort of training.

So what does a fashion buyer do?  Basically a fashion buyer is much like the buyer for any other sort of department be it technology or other industrial equipment.  These are the people who seek out new inventory providers or are sought out buy vendors.  They cultivate relationships with these vendors to pick the right sort of clothing lines for their chain store or in many cases several brand chains under a larger company.  These are the people who decide what clothing store sells which clothes.

It is a fine opportunity for a student not sure what they want to do as a career, but needs to be looked at with all the discretion any degree does with a focus on finding a job afterwards.

Much can be said for the state of New Jersey, and depending on who you ask it might be good or it might not be so good.  Whenever I hear anyone say New Jersey is the greatest place in the world I immediately ask myself why does the Statue of Liberty face the other way ?  All jokes aside I actually think of Bruce Springsteen when I hear New Jersey.  My wife, Katy, on the other hand simply glared at me when she saw I put that down, so I must add when she hears New Jersey it is all about Bon Jovi.

Real Estate New Jersey is not something that usually comes to mind when you think about The Garden State, unless you are convince Jimmy Hoffa is buried on some piece of New Jersey real estate.  However New Jersey Real Estate is still one of the hottest markets for real estate in the country, despite hard economic times.  The last couple of years alone has seen a nearly four percent growth in its population.

That said New Jersey was already the most densely populated states in the country and the second most wealthy per capita.  It owes both of those factors do to its proximity to New York City and Philadelphia.  With both large cities of its own and commuter towns servicing even larger cities, there is going to remain a growing real estate market in the state for some time to come.  If you are looking to move the Garden State you are most certainly going to need help from a good local realtor to get the best deal possible.

In this time of uncertainty during the holidays getting another credit card might be the furthest thing from your mind. Then again you maybe looking at the job that is about to be no more and know when it does your credit score will be trashed regardless of what you do, so why not make Christmas as good as you can. I have been there.

If you decide to go forward with getting a credit card, you need to be smart about where you decide to apply for it. Credit Card Applications are easy to fill out online and even easier to do it en masse now, but if you aren’t careful about where or who you are filling them out with you could be in serious trouble that goes well beyond the damage done to defaulted credit cards.

I am talking about identity theft.  As someone who has been through the wringer on this and had people commit crimes while using my identity I can tell you that this is no picnic.  I am still trying to recover from it more than a dozen years after it happened and will probably be paying for it for the rest of my life.  So research where you give your information out before you do it, or you could have more problems than bankruptcy on your hands.

If you are looking for a fast paced exciting time in the world of investing Forex Currency Trading.  Forex or Foreign Exchange Currency trading is where currency trading takes place. Forex transactions typically involve you buying a set quantity of one currency and then pay for it with another.

This is a pretty good opportunity when it works, but when things go wrong as they always do when you play the markets they can go seriously wrong.  The way things work in the forex market is pretty simple to explain and it will look easy to make money.  You start out with say ten thousand dollars US and buy another currency say and hope it moves higher against the dollar.  The more you invest the less it has to move to make a profit.

The down side of that is the more you invest the more you stand to lose.  You will have a hard time making anything o