|
|
| |
Greetings, Quotaholics:
The economy is recovering – maybe. The unemployment numbers are fluctuating
with some months looking better than others. The recession hit hard and
there is still a way to go to truly recover from the devastating effects.
And then it gets worse.
Americans live with credit and are accustomed to certain credit facts
of life. Many people carry a monthly balance on credit cards as well as
having a mortgage and car loans. Then there are student loans as well.
All these different loans carry interest rates. This is how you pay the
lending institution for being nice enough to lend you the money in the
first place.
Lending rates or interest rates are based on your credit score. The lower
your score, the higher a lending risk you carry. The higher risk means
you pay a higher interest rate. A higher score means you are a lower risk.
You have successfully carried debt and paid off that debt without incurring
the wrath of the lending institutions.
However, according to USA
Today, there is more bad news to come. With this current recession,
more people are incurring the wrath of the lending institutions. Their
credit scores are dropping as they find it difficult to meet their obligations.
If you are late or miss a payment on your debt, your credit score takes
a hit. The next time you want to borrow money, you have a lower credit
score and get a higher interest rate, making it more expensive to borrow
money.
FICO scores range from 300 (really bad) to 850 (really great) with anyone
over 750 qualifying for the lowest interest rates. From 2006 to 2009,
the people with "deep subprime" or really horrible credit scores
rose from 34.4 million Americans to 39.8 million. Even after the recession
is a thing of the past, these people will be paying more for their money
and staying in poverty situations longer.
"Superprime" consumers, those with the best scores, are becoming
scarcer. The newest problem stems from lending institutions lowering even
low risk, high credit score consumers’ credit line by cutting their credit
limit, something that can lower a FICO score even if the borrower had
never been late or missed any payments.
The lenders say they realize this can adversely affect the FICO score,
but they are protecting their resources in troubling economic times. They
aren’t trying to lower the FICO score, but only to limit the debt ratio
possibilities. They claim they aren’t responsible for the methods used
to formulate the scores themselves.
Lawyers for lenders say their clients aren’t trying to lower scores and
make it more difficult to obtain loans. The banks need people to borrow
money, in order to get the interest payments. However, consumer advocates
are asking regulators and Congress to look into the matter since it will
have long term effects on anyone whose credit line was dropped regardless
of anything the consumers have done.
The article states, "Surprisingly, those who pay their bills on time
and don’t go over their limits are experiencing the bulk of lenders’ reductions,
industry research shows." Perhaps it is my cynicism or paranoia,
but this looks like the people who aren’t paying late fees or other penalties
are being punished so they can be charged a higher interest rate.
While the article refers to the American banking system, other countries
are experiencing the same economic downturn and the associated credit
crunch.
Has your credit score changed since the recession hit? Are you able to
keep your head above water and find this type of monetary shenanigans
too much to understand or worry about? Do you know how much more things
would cost with a higher interest rate or does it not bother you?
Should banks be trying to hurt their customer base or is this a way to
increase fees? Should government control put a stop to usurious fees?
When you are already having difficulty paying your debt off, does it make
sense to increase the interest rates even further? Will this lead to even
more people having to file for bankruptcy?
Fiscally,
Comment
On This Article
|
| |
|
| Isn’t
it worth $1 a month to you to keep RGQ going? Please click the
link and direct your contribution to keep RGQ going.
|
| |
“||||||||//////__ __ __ __ __ The domino effect at work.” - Anonymous
“I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get nervous and give
the wrong answers.” - Fry and Laurie
|
| |
The Waitress
[Thanks Bonnie]
A customer wanted
to ask his attractive waitress for a date. but couldn’t get her attention.
When he was able to catch her eye, she quickly looked away.
Finally he followed her into the kitchen and blurted out his invitation.
To his amazement she readily consented.
He said, “Why have you been avoiding me all this time? You wouldn’t
even make eye contact.”
“Oh,” replied the waitress,” I thought you wanted more coffee, and
it’s too close to shift change to make another pot.”
|
|
| |
“A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for
life the feeling of a conqueror.”
“America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I
am afraid, it is not going to be a success.”
“Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through
this primary hostility of men towards one another.” - all from Sigmund
Freud who died on this day in 1939
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
| |
| |
|
| |
|
Speak right up!
|
| |
Immunity
When I was a kid, we were sent outside to play and we stayed out all
day. We got dirty. We got filthy. We had so much dirt on us, we created
our own gravity.
Children today are kept in a sanitary, and sterile world. Antimicrobial,
antibacterial, and antiseptic are words touted on many products meant
to provide protection from infection and illness. Although homes are
not kept spotlessly clean, children are protected as well as possible
from contacting potential illness.
Pharmaceutical companies now offer an array of products to help deal
with almost every illness known to man, plus a few that I think they
made up just so they could sell their wares. Attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD) has been a diagnosis for any child that seemingly has
more energy than their parents. Of course a medication was derived to
deal with this epidemic.
It isn’t only overprotective parents or money hungry pill makers that
have changed. Technology has provided entertainment devices small enough
for a shirt pocket. Games, music, email, text, photos, and more are
available on a single device we used to know as a phone. Children spend
more time indoors, seemingly sequestered from life interacting with
video games or computers instead of playing outside with other kids.
Kids do not get to experience cuts, scrapes & bruises any more.
I’m not a doctor, although I play one every chance I get, but it seems
all the allergies, susceptibilities, and propensities are the result
of them not developing a healthy immune system. Much like obese kids
resulting from lack of exercise, the immune system needs to react to
invasion and build itself up as well. The panic we are having now over
the "hiney virus" (H1N1 - ok my warped mind saw "hini")
is a product of all this. Nobody wants to get sick, but sometimes it
is the healthy immune system that prevents that illness by having developed
a "memory" of past invasions and knowing how to react.
Here’s your quiz:
Did you get to play "king of the hill" with 6 other boisterous
boys on a rock pile?
Did you ride a bicycle without elbow & knee pads and helmet?
Was having something round and a stick an occasion to get the neighborhood
kids together?
Immunity
- Mother Nature Knows How
Cliff (the High-Tech Redneck who doesn’t rate a fancy ’signature pic’)
|
| |
|
|
Email Kirsten
“Justice
denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr. ~
I’m so angry I could spit. I mean that quite literally. If the objects
of my anger were right here in front of me, I think I would actually
spit at them. This is not a normal expression of anger. You have to
be really mad at someone in order to spit at them.
What, I hear you ask, has gotten me all riled up? Well, it’s a story
in the news. Fortunately, I don’t personally know anyone who would
make me this angry. The story isn’t even a new one. It relates to
an extremely tragic chain of events that culminated in the death of
a child back in 1998. I followed the story of the trial, which happened
in 2002, and I was haunted by the details of neglect and abuse that
came to light.
Randal Dooley was just eleven years old when his father and his stepmother
called 911 to report an accident. According to what they told the
911 dispatcher, Randal had fallen from the upper level of a bunk bed
and was unresponsive. By the time paramedics arrived on the scene,
Randal was dead. He weighed only forty pounds, and he was covered
in scars and bruises.
As bad as it was, the way Randal looked on the outside was nothing
compared to the internal damage uncovered in the autopsy. At the time
of his death, he had thirteen broken ribs, his liver was practically
shredded, and there was a tooth in his stomach. Witnesses reported
that prolonged abuse had left Randal incontinent and unable to keep
food down. There were chilling tales of Randal’s stepmother beating
him to within an inch of his life while his father stood by and allowed
it to happen.
Randal’s father and stepmother were convicted of second-degree murder
and sentenced to life. Dad would become eligible for parole after
thirteen years; Step-Mom would have to wait for eighteen years. At
the time of sentencing, the judge declared that this was the worst
case of child abuse in Canadian history.
And now they are appealing their conviction. According to the lawyer
representing the stepmother, “The repugnant evidence of prior abuse…could
only have aroused the jury’s emotions, thereby potentially deflecting
them from a dispassionate and rational assessment of the evidence
without meaningful guidance as to its relevance in the context of
the case.” To me, that’s a fancy way of saying that presenting evidence
of the abuse to the jury was unfair and irrelevant. Which is preposterous,
especially since the autopsy showed that Randal had died not from
falling, but from someone hitting him on the head.
I’m not a lawyer, but I know some of the readers here are, so maybe
someone can help me out here. If evidence shows that Person A killed
Person B during an episode of abuse, wouldn’t it be entirely relevant
for the jury to know about the history of abuse on the part of Person
A against Person B? And isn’t it OK for the jury’s emotions to be
aroused, as long as the testimony was honest and the jury was impartial
at the time they were selected? I mean, the jurors are not machines,
they are people. One would think that they would be affected by graphic
images and descriptions as much as the rest of us. Or does being a
juror mean you are denied your right to be human?
I am angry that these two are appealing their sentences, and the fact
that they have the right to appeal does nothing to diminish my anger.
I am angry that there is a lawyer who would actually want to defend
these people (contrary to all of the jokes, I do believe that most
lawyers are good people, but there are exceptions to every rule, and
maybe - just maybe - this is one). Above all, I am angry that the
legal system might actually allow these two to go free. I sincerely
hope that doesn’t happen.
As this chapter of this terrible story unfolds, I choose to have faith
that true justice will prevail.
Kaleidoscopically yours,
Kirsten
Comment
On This Article
|
| |
Dear Tim: Help! I have been trying to install Panda on my laptop (Dell
XPS M1330 running Vista). I have downloaded it but when I attempt
to install, I get a message saying that I must first uninstall Norton
Antivirus. When I attempt to uninstall Norton through the control
panel, I get a message saying that I need an uninstall password. This
was probably done by a friend who is a tech at the university where
I work, as I can get a lot of software and such through the university
and I believe he installed and set up the Symantec antivirus programs.
They all pooh-pooh me on the Panda Cloud program and tell me I’m crazy
– I’ve sent them copies of your columns but they basically ignore
me. In the meantime, I’m quite certain I have an infection of some
kind on my computer and it’s getting worse. Help me, help me!!!! —
Marsha in Michigan
Dear Marsha: Your college has every right to demand you run their
anti-virus if you are connecting to their network. We put in a password
so our students can’t uninstall it. But is this your laptop, or theirs?
If it’s yours and you don’t connect to their network, you can demand
they remove it. But I doubt you really want to start a fight like
that.
Fortunately, I wouldn’t mind. I won’t, but I want to. Some IT guys
have been known to offer a reduced level of service to those who complain.
Not me, but some people.
Do you have Malwarebytes
installed? Can you update and scan? I’d try that first.
If that doesn’t clean it, how’s your battery doing? Can it survive
a drive into work? Try Panda’s Activescan.
Let it run overnight while you’re sleeping and the laptop is plugged
in, then take it in and show them the results. Don’t turn off or close
the laptop, it will lose the results.
Or you can tell them to try SafeCD,
but it sounds like your IT department would have a hard time burning
the CD. Perhaps you can download the Norton
Removal Tool from your university’s IT web page. (link changed
to Norton’s site) — Tim
Marsha wrote back:
This is my own personal laptop, so yes, I can demand they remove
it. It wouldn’t be a fight, just a pain in the ass while they tell
me how stupid I am.
Norton Removal Tool was expired, got the update from their website…..but
after going through all the rigamarole, it ended up saying I had to
uninstall my Norton product before the Removal Tool would work. Which
makes no sense to me at all.
I WAS able, however, to download Malwarebytes, which found 18
spyware thingies all from one stupid game site I visited. Yay!!
When you have them remove Norton, have them take a look at the Malwarebytes
log. And make sure you install Cloud
AV in front of them. I want you to see their faces when it starts
cleaning the rest of the crap off your computer.
Tim a’Musing
Having a Ball with ID-10-Ts
E-mail Dear Tim
Comment
on this article
|
| |
Miscellaneous Tips
Lettuce keeps better if you store in refrigerator without washing
first so that the leaves are dry. Wash the day you are going to use.
|
| |
Good turnout, I wish I had another line that good!
Sounds like all of you have had way too much experience with rum.
"Welcome to the Carribean luv!"
Next opening line…
There are things that go bump in the night…
Hints:
Here’s a great new rhyming/composition tool. http://www.writerhymes.com/
There’s also a great rhyming dictionary at http://www.rhymezone.com/
Limerick rules. http://freespace.virgin.net/merrick.sheldon/limerickrules.htm
Submit
Opening Line
Submit
Limerick
I
purchased a drink made of rum
To fill a big hole in my tum
But the spirit was raw
And ripped up my craw
then burnt out the ring of my bum - John in Oz
|
I
purchased a drink made of rum…..
A little better than some…..
The next day my head…..
Made me wish I was dead…..
But the grim reaper just wouldn’t come. - Skeeter |
I purchased
a drink made of rum…..
I couldn’t stop with just one…..
They went down real easy…..
Then my head got quite queasy…..
Now everything’s gone numb. - Skeeter |
I purchased
a drink made of rum…..
Now I feel kinda dumb…..
‘Cause inhibitions went south…..
I got popped in the mouth…..
And bit off half my tongue. - Skeeter |
I purchased
a drink made of rum
I drank ’til I started to hum
Bursting into full song
I could do no wrong
Until I tripped and fell on my bum. - Bonnie |
I purchased
a drink made of rum
A sip caused an approving hum
All of the barflies
Let out some loud sighs
Then hailed the bartender for one!
Maria in Illinois |
I purchased
a drink made of rum
But barkeep told me something ho-hum.
‘Stead of cane sugar
That dark thick liquor
Was made from a substance called sorghum. - E. Cole Aye
|
I purchased
a drink made of rum
Which I must admit was just dumb
When I was at the rave
For cash I could save
If I had bought it by the drum. - E. Cole Aye |
I purchased
a drink made of rum—
it was just as good as they come—
except when I drank it
the music, I cranked it
and danced the whole night with a bum. - Cassandra in New York |
A virile
young god, name of Zeus
Many ladies he did seduce
He would take them by force
If they did not agree, of course
And little godlets they did produce. - Bonnie |
|
| |
Re: Juvenile detention
Some would say that the Missouri youth detention program will reduce
profits and employment in the prison industry, but perhaps those folks
could just go through the program and find a more useful line of work.
I think that the main flaw in the system is that good kids might not
get as much help in realizing their potential.
- Bob of the North
I’m moving to Missouri. Not really. One bar exam is enough for one
life time. However, that model would work for adult prisons, and is
an improvement over Indiana’s juvenile system. There are people who
will whine "the tax payers shouldn’t have to support criminals
in a country club", but if you give a person a little privacy,
respect and opportunity, you may be rehabilitating a citizen rather
than training a criminal. This is especially true in an atmosphere
that gives the state all of the power, and sentencing is way out of
proportion to the crime committed. Instead of telling people there
is a better way to live, we show them that their world view of hatred
and fear is not only justified, but not nearly harsh enough. - Lucille
Re: Tim and Dell
Don’t get me started on Dell support! Where I used to work we had
Suns and Dells. We paid for the big bucks - most expensive support
contracts with both companies.
With
Sun, you’d just call em up and say "I have a bad stick of RAM
- can you send another. It’d be overnighted and there the next day.
They never argued with you or made you jump through hoops.
With Dell,
you’d call them up and say you have a bad stick of memory. They would
insist you open the production server, pull it out and reseat it,
and let it run again. Same @&*(*#^& with drives. Hundreds
of people were using these servers 24×7 - downtime was typically only
available on holidays and such. Yet they wanted us to frigging shut
it down TWICE - one to just jiggle the memory stick and the second
to later replace it?
And we
were paying well over a hundred grand a year to Dell for support contracts,
plus way more than that on all the new servers. And they’re making
us jump through hoops to get a fricking stick of memory?
I hate
Dell with a passion! (And my new job had 2 small desktops as main
machines - Windows had issues and we wanted to reinstall - Dells own
"recovery disks" and Windows install disks won’t boot on
them! The ones that came with the machine! It wouldn’t recognize the
RAIDed hard drives!) Erg… - Wendy
Re: Pot
“Man made alcohol. God made
marijuana. Who do you trust?” - John in Oz
Reader
Request
Does anyone
happen to have a copy of The Bobbsey Twins’ Adventure in the Country?
I need to get a scan of pages 11-12. Thanks. - Noella
|
| |
Disclaimer- All quotes printed in this publication are believed to be
accurately attributed, but no guarantees are made that some incorrectly
attributed, or even outright false quotes won’t get in here from time
to time. I assure readers that I will do my best to weed out incorrect
quotes, and will print a retraction as soon as I become aware of any errors.
|
Click here to see the archives of past issues, or go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/reallygoodquotes/messages.
If you run across something really outstanding when perusing the archives,
I’d appreciate it if you’d mail me at TheBestOfRGQ@yahoo.com
and point it out to me. I’m in the process of compiling an e-book
called, not surprisingly, The Best of RGQ, and I’d like to hear from you
which pieces impacted you the most. |
| Questions?
Comments? Want to contribute a joke or a quote or an image? Feel free
to e-mail
at reallygoodquotes@gmail.com.
We’d love to hear from you! We’ll even publish your comments, if they
make any sense! 
If
you’d like to receive RGQ by email, please send a blank e-mail
to reallygoodquotes-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
We
can’t imagine why you’d want to, but if you choose to unsubscribe, please
send a blank e-mail to reallygoodquotes-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com.
Should you choose to unsubscribe, please e-mail
us and tell us why. We listen to what people say, even if they’re
leaving us.
|
