News from the homeowner front. That is, news from the housing crash:

Tue May 27 2008
Sleazy Flipper Changes House’s Address To Fool Buyers (patrick.net)
Tracking Realtor Spin (njrereport.com)
“We realtors remain part of the problem” (pressofatlanticcity.com)
Realtard of the month (housing-kaboom.blogspot.com)
Calif. house prices fall 32% from April ‘07 levels (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
California House Prices Drop 32% Amid Foreclosures (bloomberg.com)
House prices down and unsold listings way up (businessweek.com)
Four reasons house inventories buildup is ominous (marketwatch.com)
Why Its a Bad Time to Buy a House (finance.yahoo.com)
Housing bailout bill creates national fingerprint registry! (news.cnet.com)
Unprecedented House Equity Loan Losses (occ.treas.gov)
In favor of bubble-free prosperity (articles.moneycentral.msn.com)
Economist challenges government data (sfgate.com)
Why Wall Street Socialism Will Fail (huffingtonpost.com)
2007 Is Worst-Ever Vintage for US Subprime, Alt-A RMBS (researchrecap.com)
I bought. What the hell was I thinking? (salon.com)
Oil costs up, house prices down - good news! (timesonline.co.uk)
World gasoline usage and pricing (en.wikipedia.org)
Pioneers show Americans how to live off-grid (reuters.com)
House For Sale Promises “New Pain” (sfbay.craigslist.org)

—(patrick.net)

There’s still a long way to go, readers. The American lifestyle of monstrosity is just beginning to topple. The only practical solution to restore the American people’s sense of elegant frugality and modesty is to relearn them through a significant downturn in the economy. Hence, the Depression of 2009.

Another odd Salisbury area billboard was spotted in southern Wicomico County and a faithful reader, Mrs. Louetta Toadvine, sent in a picture she snapped while driving past it. (Click here for first billboard)

Clear Channel Communications, Inc., the owner of the billboard advertising space, cited client privacy concerns when John Overmeier of the Buffalo Springs Daily, special news reporter for outragedrichard.com, requested the name of the ad purchaser.

Appealing to larger persons visiting Salisbury, the billboard displays local weight challenged political residents, and occasional side show participants, Rick Pollitt and Shanie Shields.

The Salisbury Area Chamber of Commerce and the Wicomico County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau could not be reached for comment.

Thank you, Mrs. Toadvine!

American Indians wasting away forgotten somewhere in the tundra may find fault here with a Memorial Day remembering only U.S. soldiers killed in war. Nonetheless, and there is much, open your ears to Mr. Holmes, Jr speaking on Memorial Day, May 30, 1884, at Keene, NH, before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic:

Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other-not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth–but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.

So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no trouble. The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeavors. I have heard more than one of those who had been gallant and distinguished officers on the Confederate side say that they had had no such feeling. I know that I and those whom I knew best had not. We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable; we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. The experience of battle soon taught its lesson even to those who came into the field more bitterly disposed. You could not stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten, without getting at least something of the same brotherhood for the enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south–each working in an opposite sense to the other, but each unable to get along without the other. As it was then , it is now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can join in commemorating a soldier’s death with feelings not different in kind, whether he fell toward them or by their side.

But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for those who do not share our memories. When men have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will be found that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too large to be dependent upon associations alone. The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer should think of rejoicing like children that we have escaped from an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our national but our moral independence and know it far too profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gives rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.

So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiam and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory…. (virginia.edu)

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935)

Bad argument of the day: “Jesus never once isolated anyone, denounced them or denied them, and therefore he was accepting and loved all [homosexuals] who came to him”

No, you should not love a person for their Sin, you should love them out of their Sin.

In other words, you should not love a person and accept them as they are with all of their problems, but you should love them for who they should be.

If an alcoholic pedophile came to Jesus, Jesus would not of sat down with him and exchanged pedophile stories over a bottle of booze and then gone together to the nearest park to leer at little children.

If he would have, then he was a fraud. Rather, from what we know of Jesus, he would not have:

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

—Matthew 18:6

Many of the same arguments that are used to justify homosexuality can justify polygamy, pedophilia, bestiality, and worse.

Nay, Jesus’ love is a corrective love.

It may not seem like much, but you can save $1 to $5 on a typical gas tank fill up by checking gas prices online.

Local news internet sites occasionally list the latest gas prices in the vicinity, but to find cheap gas when traveling you have to look beyond your worthless local rag.

There are several national gas price finding sites, though many of them are rarely updated and difficult to use. At the top of the heap is gasbuddy.com, a user updated online database that displays gas prices directly on a Google map which when clicked reveal station details.

If your vehicle is the typical road trophy gas guzzler that graces the charming roadways of the United States, then your gas savings may be significant.

Obnoxious size and sounding Greyhound-type recreational vehicles, lauding gas tanks from 50 to 150 gallons, will save enough money to stuff the whole family with Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese® and McShakes® at the McDonald’s adjacent to the gas station.

Someday, Allah willing, gasoline will become so expensive that America’s roadways will be a pleasure to drive along once the Suburbans and RVs and Big-Rigs have been banished by economics to the metal scrap yard. The value of that future driving reality would be worth more than the trip’s gasoline.

In the meantime, readers, pinch pennies at the gasoline pump while it is still moderately affordable and the bank hasn’t seized your over leveraged vehicle.

Enough is enough! The world is turning into a giant fireball, all because we humans are spewing out loads of carbon dioxide!

Wake up! Get with the program!

Calculate your carbon usage by clicking on the below "carbon calculator" and start saving the planet.

Send in your cash money and these environmentally aware folks will earmark it for one of their carbon-reducing projects, after a reasonable deduction for overhead.

Somewhere in the world a traditional light bulb will get replaced with a GE compact fluorescent, or a seedling will be planted where its 300 year old predecessor was chopped down to make furniture for Pier 1 Imports®.

Not sure which project to support? Then rest assured that credits will be purchased in your name at the Chicago Climate Exchange, North America’s largest carbon trading market.

Don’t stop at your individual carbon footprint, there are auto, airline, and wedding carbon calculators at carbonfund.org.

Have a zero-carbon wedding!

You’ve seen them drive slowly, swerving, then gunning it, or stopped in the middle of the street, oblivious, distracted, with one hand on the wheel and the other clapped to the side of the head.

They are drivers talking on cell phones, another driving hazard that motor vehicle administrations inflict on responsible drivers.

Outside of vehicles, cell phones become merely obnoxious. Yacking on the phone in restaurants, at the library, in the grocery check out line, and while walking down the street, along with their exasperating ringtones—the cell phone user has no presence of mind or empathy for others.

Recently, to add to their many annoyances, a study found a sickly link between cell phone use by pregnant mothers and their children.

The bottom line is that mothers who use cell phones get A.D.D. kids who exhibit anti-social behavior.

The scientists were surprised that holding a powerful radiation emitting device near a developing fetus could harm it, but further study strengthened the debilitating link.

They add that there might be other possible explanations that they did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently might pay less attention to their children – and stress that the results “should be interpreted with caution” and checked by further studies. But they conclude that “if they are real they would have major public health implications”.

Whether cell phones or inattentive mothers are to blame, mothers yacking on cell phones are not a healthful and proper way to raise children. Cell phones near human bodies are probably not a good idea either:

The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection says that use of the phones by both pregnant women and children should be “limited”. It concludes that children who talk on the handsets are likely to suffer from “disruption of memory, decline of attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased irritability” in the short term, and that longer-term hazards include “depressive syndrome” and “degeneration of the nervous structures of the brain”. (independent.co.uk)