Financial crisis leads to violence

An out-of-work money manager in California loses a fortune and wipes out his family in a murder-suicide. A 90-year-old Ohio widow shoots herself in the chest as authorities arrive to evict her from the modest house she called home for 38 years.

In Massachusetts, a housewife who had hidden her family's mounting financial crisis from her husband sends a note to the mortgage company warning: "By the time you foreclose on my house, I'll be dead."

Then Carlene Balderrama shot herself to death, leaving an insurance policy and a suicide note on a table.

Across the country, authorities are becoming concerned that the nation's financial woes could turn increasingly violent, and they are urging people to get help. In some places, mental-health hot lines are jammed, counseling services are in high demand and domestic-violence shelters are full.

"I've had a number of people say that this is the thing most reminiscent of 9/11 that's happened here since then," said the Rev. Canon Ann Malonee, vicar at Trinity Church in the heart of New York's financial district. "It's that sense of having the rug pulled out from under them."

With nowhere else to turn, many people are calling suicide-prevention hot lines. The Samaritans of New York have seen calls rise more than 16 percent in the past year, many of them money-related. The Switchboard of Miami has recorded more than 500 foreclosure-related calls this year.

"A lot of people are telling us they are losing everything. They're losing their homes, they're going into foreclosure, they've lost their jobs," said Virginia Cervasio, executive director of a suicide resource enter in southwest Florida's Lee County.

But tragedies keep mounting:

_ In Los Angeles last week, a former money manager fatally shot his wife, three sons and his mother-in-law before killing himself.

Karthik Rajaram, 45, left a suicide note saying he was in financial trouble and contemplated killing just himself. But he said he decided to kill his entire family because that was more honorable, police said.

Rajaram once worked for a major accounting firm and for Sony Pictures, and he had been part-owner of a financial holding company. But he had been out of work for several months, police said.

After the murder-suicide, police and mental-health officials in Los Angeles took the unusual step of urging people to seek help for themselves or loved ones if they feel overwhelmed by grim financial news. They said they were specifically afraid of the "copycat phenomenon."

"This is a perfect American family behind me that has absolutely been destroyed, apparently because of a man who just got stuck in a rabbit hole, if you will, of absolute despair," Deputy Police Chief Michel Moore said. "It is critical to step up and recognize we are in some pretty troubled times."

_ In Tennessee, a woman fatally shot herself last week as sheriff's deputies went to evict her from her foreclosed home.

Pamela Ross, 57, and her husband were fighting foreclosure on their home when sheriff's deputies in Sevierville came to serve an eviction notice. They were across the street when they heard a gunshot and found Ross dead from a wound to the chest. The case was even more tragic because the couple had recently been granted an extra 10 days to appeal.

_ In Akron, Ohio, the 90-year-old widow who shot herself on Oct. 1 is recovering. A congressman told Addie Polk's story on the House floor before lawmakers voted to approve a $700 billion financial rescue package. Mortgage finance company Fannie Mae dropped the foreclosure, forgave her mortgage and said she could remain in the home.

_ In Ocala, Fla., Roland Gore shot his wife and dog in March and then set fire to the couple's home, which had been in foreclosure, before killing himself. His case was one of several in which people killed spouses or pets, destroyed property or attacked police before taking their own lives.

"The financial stress builds up to the point the person feels they can't go on, and the person believes their family is better off dead than left without a financial support," said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Washington D.C.-based Violence Policy Center.

Dr. Edward Charlesworth, a clinical psychologist in Houston, said the current crisis is breeding a sense of chronic anxiety among people who feel helpless and panic-stricken, as well as angry that their government has let them down.

"They feel like in this great society that we live in we should have more protection for the individuals rather than just the corporation," he said.

It's not yet clear there is a statistical link between suicides and the financial downturn since there is generally a two-year lag in national suicide figures. But historically, suicides increase in times of economic hardship. And the current financial crisis is already being called the worst since the Great Depression.

Rising mortgage defaults and falling home values are at the heart of it. More than 4 million Americans were at least one month behind on their mortgages at the end of June, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

A record 500,000 had entered the foreclosure process. And that trend is expected to continue through next year, despite the current programs from the government and the lending industry to refinance delinquent homeowners into more affordable loans.

Counselors at Catholic Charities USA report seeing a "significant increase" in the need for housing counseling.

One counselor said half of her clients were on some form of antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication. The agency has seen a decrease in overall funding, but it has expanded foreclosure counseling and received nearly $2 million for such services in late 2007.

Adding to financially tense households is an air of secrecy. Experts said it's common for one spouse to blame the other for their financial mess or to hide it entirely, as Balderrama did.

After falling 3 1/2 years behind in payments, the Taunton, Mass., housewife had been intercepting letters from the mortgage company and shredding them before her husband saw them. She tried to refinance but was declined.

In July, on the day the house was to be auctioned, she faxed the note to the mortgage company. Then the 52-year-old walked outside, shot her three beloved cats and then herself with her husband's rifle.

Notes left on the table revealed months of planning. She'd picked out her funeral home, laid out the insurance policy and left a note saying, "pay off the house with the insurance money."

"She put in her suicide note that it got overwhelming for her," said her husband, John Balderrama. "Apparently she didn't have anyone to talk to. She didn't come to me. I don't know why. There's gotta be some help out there for people that are hurting, (something better) than to see somebody lose a life over a stupid house."

*****

It is going to get worse before it gets better, folks, and my garden next year will be bigger!

At 9% satisfaction is at an all-time low

With these numbers is it any wonder there is talk of a "perfect storm" politically building to sweep out the repugicans and usher in the Democrats into control of the government.

And not like the last year and a half when the repugicans stalled, filibustered and just ceased government function ... just so they could have the 'do nothing Democrats' rally cry in the election because the Democrats did not have enough seats in congress to prevent them from doing nothing and trying to blame them.

Trouble is ... the repugicans didn't count on the rest of us to be smart enough to figure out that was what they were doing.

So, sorry. I have a brain and I use it and as the repugicans are finding out so do the majority of Americans.

The rats are abandoning ship Cap'n

Vote for Obama:McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is simply a disgrace.

By Christopher Hitchens

McCain Loses His Head

By George F. Will

Dennis Hopper praying for Obama victory

From The AFP and a related piece in the LA Times

To read the editorials whose headlines appear above click on the author's or source name.

Kindly note that the phrase 'the rats are abandoning ship' refers to those knowing the ship is sinking or going to sink and therefore leaving it before they go down with it and not to any particular person ... that is all.

Second out-of-state teen abanonded at a Nebraska hospital

Nebraska officials say another teenager from outside the state has been left at an Omaha hospital under the state's safe haven law.

Todd Landry with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services says a 13-year-old Michigan boy was left at Creighton University Medical Center Monday morning.

This is the second time since law went into effect in July that a child from outside the state has been left at a hospital in Nebraska.

To date, 18 children between the ages of 1 and 17 have been abandoned.Last week, a 14-year-old girl from Iowa was left at an Omaha hospital by her grandparents.

She has since been returned to her family.

Nebraska's unique safe-haven law allows children as old as 18 to be abandoned without fear of prosecution.

*****

OK, I understand the intent here but I fail to see where the next step in logic wasn't taken by those that enacted this law.
The intent was and is noble, however, the failure to dot all "I's" and cross all "T's" is allowing abuse to spread rapidly.

Dealing with a 'rebellious teen' is a part of life so get over it and on with it.
Dropping them off at a Nebraska hospital isn't an option no matter what the 'law' in Nebraska says.

Nude Photo Of Sarah Palin Found!

Finally!
All the "Nude Sarah Palin" photo searches have not been in vain!
One has been found and it reveals Sarah as she truly is ...

We are better than this ...

David B Nava writes this over on his blog on October 8, 2008:

We are better than this and we deserve better than McCain-Palin offers us.

By David B. Nava

This is a much better country than the one offered by The Manchurian Candidate and Sarah Barracuda and this nation deserves leadership, not hate-mongering. The GOP vision for America is the Triumph of the Ignoramus, deriding the educated, attacking minorities. It is a Khmer Rouge nightmare of zombies committed to a rigid uniformity reveling in their own ignorance. It is not the America in which I grew up.

I am sick unto the death of uneducated, shoot-from-the-hip, anti-intellectual Know-Nothings occupying vital positions in our governments, state, local and national. This is no time for stupid people to be in charge of affairs, no time for the rest of us to be forced to suffer fools lightly.

(Corrected for spelling: To read the rest as originally written follow the link above)

Rednecks for Obama

When Barack Obama's campaign bus made a swing through Missouri in July, the unlikeliest of supporters were waiting for him -- or rather two of them, holding the banner: "Rednecks for Obama."

In backing the first African-American nominee of a major party for the US presidency, the pair are on a grassroots mission to bridge a cultural gap in the United States and help usher their preferred candidate into the White House.

Tony Viessman, 74, and Les Spencer, 60, got politically active last year when it occurred to them there must be other lower income, rural, beer-drinking, gun-loving, NASCAR race enthusiasts fed up with business as usual in Washington.

Viessman had a red, white and blue "Rednecks for Obama" banner made, and began causing a stir in Missouri, which has emerged as a key battleground in the run-up to the November 4 presidential election.

"I didn't expect it would get as much steam and attention as it's gotten," Spencer told AFP on the campus of Washington University in Saint Louis, the state's biggest city and site of last week's vice-presidential debate.

"We believe in him. He's the best person for the job," Viessman, a former state trooper from Rolla, said of Obama, who met the pair briefly on that July day in Union, Missouri.

The candidate bounded off his bus and jogged back towards a roadside crowd to shake hands with the men holding the banner.

"He said 'This is incredible'," Spencer recalled.

It's been an unexpectedly gratifying run, Viessman said.

Rednecks4obama.com claims more than 800,000 online visits. In Denver, Colorado, Viessman and Spencer drew crowds at the Democratic convention, and at Washington University last Thursday they were two of the most popular senior citizens on campus.

"I'm shocked, actually, but excited" that such a demographic would be organizing support for Obama, said student Naia Ferguson, 18, said after hamming it up for pictures behind the banner.

"When most people think 'redneck,' they think conservatives, anti-change, even anti-integration," she said. "But America's changing, breaking stereotypes."

A southern comedian, Jeff Foxworthy, defines the stereotype as a "glorious lack of sophistication".

Philistines or not, he said, most rural southerners are no longer proponents of the Old South's most abhorrent ideology -- racism -- and that workaday issues such as the economy are dominating this year's election.

"We need to build the economy from the bottom up, none of this trickle down business," Spencer said. "Just because you're white and southern don't mean you have to vote republican."

To an important degree, however, race is still the elephant in the polling booth, experts say, and according to a recent Stanford University poll, Obama could lose six points on election day due to his color.

Racism "has softened up some, but it's still there," Viessman acknowledged from Belmont University, site of Tuesday's McCain-Obama debate in Nashville, Tennessee.

Despite representing the heartland state of Illinois, and having a more working-class upbringing than his Republican rival John McCain, Obama has struggled to shoot down the impression that he is an arugula-eating elitist.

Surely he alienated many rural voters earlier this year when the Harvard-educated senator told a fundraiser that some blue-collar voters "cling to guns or religion".

But Viessman, who says he owns a dozen guns, said Obama "ain't gonna take your guns away."

The South traditionally votes Republican -- victories for southerners Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were exceptions -- but with less than a month to election day, four states in or bordering the South are considered toss-ups: Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia.

Viessman says he'd like to think his grassroots movement could sway enough people in small-town America to make a difference.

"There's lots of other rednecks for Obama too," he said. "And the ones that's not, we're trying our best to convince them."

The bomb that healed

The bombing of a prominent Atlanta synagogue in 1958 claimed no lives, but the community outrage that it prompted helped galvanize the city's nervous Jewish community to embrace the civil rights movement.

Members of The Temple gathered Sunday for the blast's 50th anniversary, recalling its terrifying aftermath and the way it changed their congregation's mission to promote racial equality.

"What could have been a terribly tragic event had the effect of making the congregation more confident, and more willing to get involved in controversial events," said Ellen Rafshoon, who curated an exhibit on the bombing at Emory University's rare manuscripts library.

The Reform congregation, housed in a handsome cluster of buildings on one of Atlanta's busiest streets, had for years discouraged conflicts with Atlanta's dominant Christian community. But the synagogue's message changed when it hired Rabbi Jacob Rothschild to lead the congregation in 1946.

Sermons encouraging racial equality soon became an annual tradition on Jewish holidays, and the rabbi slowly pushed his congregants to work for integration.

"He suspected all along that he was endangering the congregation and his family," said Rothschild's widow, Janice Rothschild Blumberg, who remarried after the rabbi's death in 1973. "But he felt he had to do it, that this was his duty - as a rabbi and a human being."

On the early morning of Oct. 12, 1958, some 50 sticks of dynamite exploded in the synagogue's entryway, destroying a part of the building. At least six other synagogues around the nation had been targeted by bombs in the previous year.

But it was a particular shock for congregants who believed Atlanta - whose leaders fostered a reputation as a bustling, progressive city - was immune from the hate crimes spreading across other parts of the South.

"We were so naive at the time," said Jill Shapiro Thornton, a Temple member and a ninth-grade student at the time of the bombing.

The city's Jewish community worried the bombing would be met with a halfhearted response, as had happened in the aftermath of the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Temple member who was killed by a white mob. Instead, the Temple was flooded with letters and donations, messages of support from Girl Scout troops, concerned clergy - even a white citizens council in Alabama.

Atlanta Mayor William Hartsfield visited the Temple and quickly went on television to condemn the bombers and the politicians who he said should share the blame.

"Whether they like it or not, every political rabble-rouser is the godfather of these cross burners and dynamiters who sneak about in the dark and give a bad name to the South," he said. "It is high time the decent people of the South rise and take charge."

Dozens of city, state and federal investigators fanned out across the area, arresting five suspects with ties to anti-Semitic groups. One suspect, George Bright, was acquitted in a high-profile trial, and charges against the other four co-defendants were dropped.

Rothschild, meanwhile, continued to urge his flock to embrace racial equality. Among his proudest accomplishments was co-hosting an integrated dinner after Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel prize in 1964. Some 20 percent of the event's donors were Jewish, Rafshoon said.

"Jews had become complacent and afraid, reluctant to stick their necks out," said Rafshoon. "The rabbi had pushed the congregation to take a stand, to support the civil rights movement. After the bombing, the big hug that came their way made Jews in Atlanta feel they could have the confidence to move forward on this controversial issue."

Congregants on Sunday mingled with residents who came to pay respects in a new building near the site of the explosion. Some recalled it as a terrifying introduction to racism. Some said it cemented the Jewish community's role in Atlanta.

To Blumberg, it was an act of violence that ultimately proved to be positive. "I felt it was like lancing a boil, like a surgeon opening a wound that didn't heal right," she said.

That helps explain the surprising name she coined for the blast that shook Atlanta: "The bomb that healed."

Nobel in Economics

Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton university and an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic science on Monday.

“It’s been an extremely weird day, but weird in a positive way,” Mr. Krugman said.

read more NYTimes Economics

also, The Peking Duck wonders...

"The Democrats about to win in a landslide. Krugman winning the nobel prize. Is our faith in humanity actually about to be restored?"

*****
Been wondering that myself the last few days.

Good Point

Jim Yeager posted this over at Skippy the bush kangaroo ... and it really is a Good Point.

By Jim Yeager

Good Point...

Robert Parry thinks that if anyone ought to be angry these days, it's not those McCain-Palin supporters who seem all too itching to get their lynch mob on, it's the people who voted for Al Gore eight years ago:

...many of those Americans not only had their vote effectively nullified -- and their political judgment ignored -- but they have suffered real economic damage. some are out of work while others are opening statements on their retirement funds this month to find they have lost much of their life savings.

Yet, these Americans have been relatively restrained. They aren't going to rallies and shouting death threats about the republican ticket. nor are Barack Obama and Joe Biden whipping up crowds with accusations that their opponents are disloyal.

No, the anger is disproportionately among the republicans. Mccain and Palin have turned their rallies -- starting with the republican national convention through joint appearances this past week -- into anti-Obama hate-fests, leading to taunts of "terrorist," "socialist," "traitor" -- as well as racial epithets, the repeated invocation of his middle name "Hussein," and suggestions on how to eliminate him...

There's just nothing anyone can do about the way these people "think" (and those quote marks really do have to be there). their kind has been among us since the puritans reached Plymouth, and they always will be among us. Had the republican party not started making overtures to them forty-odd years ago, maybe they'd still be on the fringes of our society, where they belong, today, or their baser instincts would remain largely subdued.

Of course, it didn't help any that the gop went out of its way to tear apart our manufacturing base at the same time -- a lot of these hysterics and numbskulls at those McCain rallies might have had decent-paying jobs today, and be that less inclined to act like rabid animals in public.

But these are republicans. For decades, if something has smacked of progress, then the republicans have tried to stand in its way. You name it, they've tried to obstruct it -- Social Security, Medicare, clean food and water, people who aren't white being allowed to vote, environmental protection, corporate regulation, and so on. so what better allies in their quest for power could they have asked for than the most reactionary elements in our country?

Tactically, it was a brilliant move, no question. we wouldn't have had to endure eight years of Reagan and later eight more of awol without it.
Trouble for the gop is, a majority of Americans planning to vote in a few weeks seem to have figured that out. Maybe the ongoing economic meltdown has much to do with it, too.

Or maybe... maybe... most of us are just tired of -- and just capable enough of grasping reason to be tired of -- hearing republicans falsely cry wolf over and over again year after year when we've got serious concerns to attend to. Maybe...

Grave of 1st Ellis Island immigrant gets marker

The grave of an Irish woman who was the first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island has been marked with a Celtic cross.

Clergy members joined Annie Moore's descendants and admirers Saturday in a Queens Cemetery. She died 80 years ago, but her unmarked grave was discovered only two years ago.

Moore was 17 when she arrived in New York from County Cork in 1892. The Irish consul general in New York says she is a symbol for the hundreds of thousands of Irish who settled in New York.

Ellis Island was the gateway to America for more than 12 million immigrants. As many as 5,000 people a day passed through the processing center at its peak in the early 1900s.

He's just a big, hairy Cinderella

When Beau came to Polkton, he could hardly stand up. Now he's a handsome, lovable champion.

In this story, Cinderella is a boy.

His name is Beau and he is an Estrela mountain dog who came to North Carolina a year and a half ago, sick and starving.

His Fairy Godmother, you might say, is Robin Eatman, who runs a chicken farm outside Polkton in Union County.

Eatman, who is 51, had been looking for a dog after the favorite of her three dogs, a beagle named Petie, died at Christmas 2006. She researched dogs and decided on an Estrela mountain dog, a rare breed from Portugal used by shepherds in the Estrela Mountains to keep wild animals from their sheep.

Not long afterward, in June 2007, she said she heard that Beau was being abused in Missouri and needed rescuing.

“There's a quote in the movie ‘Seabiscuit' about not putting down a horse because it can't race any more,” Eatman said. “And you don't deny a dog a chance to live.”

Janet Stanton, who lives in Iowa and whose daughter runs an animal transport service, helped drive Beau to North Carolina. She said she was horrified at how skinny and sick he was, and telephoned Eatman to warn her.

“He was the sweetest thing,” Stanton said. “We didn't know what was wrong with him. We just knew he was in terrible shape.”

He was a year old, a big, hairy dog, and to look at him, you might not have realized how skinny he was. But when Eatman patted his head, it was as if she could feel every bone. His muscles were atrophied, she said, and his legs wobbled. He was so weak, she said, he leaned against her legs to walk.

She fed him, took him to vets, gave him medicine and weight-gain pills. Beau slowly got better.

“What took us all by storm was his temperament,” Eatman said. “After all he had been put through, he was so gentle and trusting. He did all we asked of him.”

In the beginning, Eatman walked him about 50 yards every day. As he became stronger, she rode an ATV around her Misty Mountain Farm and Beau ran alongside, working up to a couple of miles a day.

His body filled out, his coat turned silky and shiny.

A beautiful friend

Eatman was able to locate Beau's breeder, and got his pedigree papers. His father, she discovered, was Portuguese; his mother, French.

She took a course on how to show dogs, and last December, only six months after he arrived in such pitiful shape, Beau championed at his first show. He has been to four other shows since then, and has won 22 ribbons including Champion and Best of Breed.

Now she has bigger plans for him. Last week she flew to Portugal hoping to find another Estrela to be Beau's mate.

He has more than lived up to his full name, Meu Beau Ami, a combination of Portuguese and French that translates to:

My Beautiful Friend.

It keeps growing ...

Carolina Naturally is read in 130 countries.
Not bad, not bad at all.
Must be doing something right.

Thanks.