Friday, March 28, 2014

Quick Walk Around The News

     & my opinions

Walmart has launched a lawsuit against VISA for $5 billion, accusing the credit and debit card network of excessively high card swipe fees-- Go for it. I'm ticked because I always have paid off my balance every month for over 10 years and never been charged for interest. Since January I've been hit with a new "minimum interest FEE". This FEE has worked out to about 22% interest per year. I've never felt guilty because VISA charges retailers a fee for using their network. Swipe fees and interchange fees. In some cases for the equipment too. So it isn't like they aren't making money every time I use it. Needless to say I've switched over to my ATT Mastercard for all my online and POS purchases until VISA wises up!

Right now there are about 3,700 man made satellites orbiting Earth -- If there were any kind of sanity makers would install rockets to propel them harmlessly towards the sun when they no longer work. Instead they're allowed to orbit until either they crash into the ISS, one another or on top of us. Same ole same ole.. when man no longer has a use for his garbage he leaves it lay in the ground, the oceans or in this case in orbit until there's no room left jeopardizing future generations.

You think the Allentown School District is in trouble with it's $10.6 million deficit, take a look at the Philly school's $320 million!-- Same ole crap. (1) Everybody points fingers. (2) Ask for more. Agree take less of an increase to taxes from homeowners. (3) Tax payers get it put to them. . Mix stir repeat.. year after year.

A million jars of perfectly fine peanut butter worth about $2.6 million will end up in the dump-- Here's another example of a company going bankrupt and walking away with consumers and investors ending up footing the bill. Face it, this is all about not giving it away or selling it really cheap. Otherwise about 25 tons of peanut butter wouldn't be bought by consumers at full price or fed to the hungry. In the end we'd rather put it in the dump then do the right thing.

Obnoxious websites. The last straw for me was when even 'mail.com' has now started loading several animated gifs and video rolls with their accompanying audio tracks when I'm trying to read an article. I've now installed 'Adblock Plus. It's free and it works!-- Trust me, I'm not being compensated in any way. I have no problem with sites monetizing themselves, but after they've become so obnoxious that I could scream, I had to do something. I held off as long as what could be considered reasonable. I could no longer tolerate the advertisements for things I will never buy nor stand waiting for these to load for up to two minutes. I've taken every measure including and up to avoiding these sites altogether. Now that almost everyone's gotten into the act.. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ALREADY! Give it a shot. See if it works for you. If not just uninstall it.

Try as I may to be fair when comes to so-called liberals versus conservatives when it comes to talking dumb, conservatives have it hands down. Here's 50 of the dumbest things ring-wingers said in 2013-- A few examples: "Just because the Supreme Court rules on something doesn't necessarily mean that that's constitutional."- Oklahoma Rep. Jim Bridenstine. "President Obama can't wait to get Americans addicted to the crack cocaine of dependency."- Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann on Obamacare. "There's a movement to normalize pedophilia . . . What is their objective? They want us to all think that pedophilia is just another sexual orientation. You know who's gonna fall right in line is college kids, just like they have on gay marriage."- Rush Limbaugh. "Yeah, I would."- Nevada assemblyman Jim Wheeler, when asked if he would vote to reinstate slavery if his constituents wanted it. To name a few.


About This Blog-- Time For A Change?
I've posted two items today. The first concerning my early days trying to learn how to play the organ. A somewhat personal, entertaining and light hearted commentary. The other, this one.

I'm curious to see which will garner more views. If it be the earlier one (which I'm kind of hoping it will be) I will post less often. Quite frankly the value of posting things of the nature of this post has become less and less of an interest to me. Especially considering two things. (1) They change nothing. (2) Posts of this kind only has value if people engage in a further discussion of them.

I'm Evolving:
Bloviating about things in the news has become rather monotonous and meaningless not only here on this blog but on others around here locally as well. Perhaps the time has come to speak less frequently, but in a more meaningful, insightful way and of things that have more of a informational value. Things that are of more personal in nature to me. I'll check out the stats between both posts and how they go. But right now I'm leaning towards the kind of future posts that inform and express more about my personal experiences over that of how I or others feel about current issues.

Candidly speaking, I've grown quite tired of futilely speaking towards or reading about knucklehead politicians, people in the news or issues that will never be resolved either on blogs, city hall, Harrisburg, Washington D.C. nor elsewhere throughout the world for that matter.

Going forward most likely the posts you will see here will be less frequent, but with a greater accent on personal, entertainment and informational content over that of opinionated material regarding news items like this one.


UPDATED
(03/30/2014)

Hands down far more people viewed this my views about the news over that of my organ lessons.
About three times as many.


2 comments:

  1. Do what you feels right for you when it comes to your blog. Personally, I like your style and subject matter. Don't get discouraged if few comment. I rarely allow comments on my site. Most are trolls, anyway.
    You kind of hamstrung yourself with your domain name. Hard to remember, let alone type correctly. See if Blogger provides a "favorite" button you can install (I use Wordpress, so don't know what Blogger offers) or suggest people add your site to their favorites list at the end of each of your posts.

    Blog to vent. Beats climbing a tower with a high powered rifle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "See if Blogger provides a "favorite" button you can install."

      I'm not sure what more I can add to the bottom that's not there already at the bottom of each. There's already buttons for emailing, blog this, twitter, Facebook, Pintrest & Google +

      I did add a "Share It" list for Facebook & Twitter to the right hand bar in addition to the subscribe via email & subscription options that were already there since you brought it up.

      But anyway appreciate your comments and actually at this point (from what I'm seeing at other blogs) I appreciate the fact I have a lot of readers who don't comment. Comments take time to respond to properly. Time I can otherwise spend on composing a post.

      I'm no discouraged at this point in any way. It's more like what I said about evolving. That and having lesser time with the upcoming warmer weather.

      Thanks Again,
      LVCI

      Delete

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