top 1%: watch your heads: the guillotine may become fashionable again

I want to warn the top-1% to watch out that -- from my viewpoint -- the guillotine may make a come-back!

I just heard that employees of the CBOT dumped a load of McDonnald's job applications on their OWS protesters. Oh gee that is so funny -- if you are a juvenile or want to instigate a riot.

FOX news proclaims that the OWS crowd is disorganized and don't have a consistent message. Keep turning your backs on the growing discontent, my dear morons.

What did Louis XIV's queen say about "the rabble" in their day? Anyone care to quote? Or just continue to munch on your Starbucks pain au chocolate.

We should look back over history when there has been a terrible imbalance in power and wealth, and extreme poverty has struck due to drought or other disaster. England, France, Russia, etc. More or less, the same thing happens again and again to people "at the top of the mountain.

There is probably some statistics not only about the distribution of wealth, but historical distributions that trigger unsettled behavior amongst the masses. Are the masses now only confined to the poor? What about college students who -- not as lucky as me -- are saddled with a debt load that guarantees their lack of success as a whole. What about those who are chronically out of work; those who had down-shifted in position and salary so many times that they are hoping for those fast food job applications?

If you don't share enough with the "have nots" -- no matter what you think about their deservedness -- you will find adequate security wanting or so expensive that you'd wish you had passed out those shiny dimes when you had the chance. It is not wealth redistribution; it is the basic math of your survival. But first the super-rich must be moved beyond denial.

I am merely in the top 10%. Perhaps the top 5%. I am ready to pay more because I am no fool. Civilization is partly about getting over whining and selfishness and not wanting to contribute (I hate contributing to the building of nukes, for example, but not to roads or schools to keep those pesky children from turning to crime). Civilization is about moving forward and shouldering part of the pain.

the "War On Drugs" is really "Right Wing Ongoing Disaster"

Regarding the recent Washington Post article on El Senior (Guzman):
‘El Chapo,’ wanted drug lord, grows stronger in Mexico’s Sierra Madre

Having visited Juarez mexico is safer times (1970's) as a college studen buying inexpensive alcohol, it is haunting to see what the combined US/Mexico drug "industry" has wrought.

I recently read "Murder City": a bit of an incoherent rambling, but heart-breaking in its core message. skim it for yourself.

I am in my 50's. It will probably take another generation before any acceptable solution is found for this "war on drugs" and the "drug wars". thanks to progressive liberals like me, there will be recreational drug users like me. thanks to conservative fundamentalists, there will be no progress on drug laws to legalize, tax, and under-cut the organized criminals engaged in this industry.

so the "War On Drugs" -- which should be renamed to "status quo disaster" -- will continue to recruit young people looking to maximize their incomes and have them end up murdered. Nancy Regan told us to "just say no". I tell you: "just demand progress, and not more of the same unworkable tactics". Then people like El Senior Guzman will just fade away, and the tombstones will stop piling up.

I may not see this solution in my lifetime. Us old "sticks in the mud" must first die off to allow younger minds to bury us and make progress. Good luck kids; keep your minds open and thinking about alternate solutions. They say insanity is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome". There is the "War On Drugs"; over and over and over....

A case for a corporate tax holiday

Our nation needs more revenue flow to create more jobs. With a very sick real estate market causing people to feel poor and spend less, the jumper cables are still not working and the battery is running low. Our FED is pushing on a string, and our country's leadership are just pushing on one other.

A "Tax Holiday" for corporate profit repatriation seems unethical and unnecessary. A reliable study of a past program says that such a holiday did not create jobs; that $1/$1 went to stock share buy-backs (increase of share price) and to special dividends. In other words, all the money got distributed to stock-holder investors.

Corporations will not repatriate unless they get a break, and so this money won't ever come back on shore unless something is done.

How about some "tax judo" to get jobs going? I think we should do two things with a tax holiday. Allow it to happen, but not make it free. Instead of a tax holiday, make it a "tax discount-day".

First, do not make repatriation tax-free. Make it tax-reduced. I'm not an expert to even list a percent. It is currently 35%. Don't make it zero percent. Some of this repatriation belongs to The People of the United States, who sweated to make this country free for corporations to become great.

I can argue that this should trigger another tax holiday: a tax holiday on middle-class wage earners, who are perfectly matched to trigger the exact kind of economic activities (shopping!) that will trigger job growth. For for every tax dollar in repatriation, reduce wage earner taxes temporarily by this amount.

The holiday also does not start until we get tax reform: eliminate the "Bush-era tax vacation" on the wealthy, so that when they get their corporate dividend and special distributions from repatriated profits, they have to give some of this to The People of the United States, again in the form of reduced taxes on the type of people whose activities create more jobs for their peers.

Let's get that off-shore money working for us. And let's not let that off-shore money just pass over our heads and get reshuffled.

latest Windows 7 update (sept 2011, Malicious Software Removal) has disabled some important vendor software

Last night i installed the latest automatic update from microsoft (Malicious Software Removal of September 2011). it appears to have removes some iTunes components so that they no longer work (Apple Application Support). also the iTuners uninstaller got "stuck" so have cancelled. i am reinstalling iTunes. caution!

NOTE: I have re-installed all 3 components. this makes me want to switch to an iMAC !

(this "Malicious Software Removal" Tool has also uninstalled my CanoScan 9000f scanner driver. who knows what else!)

Norton 360 File Restore kicked me in the shorts.

I use Norton 360, and there is some avoidable evil to this product that one should be cautious of.

I set up Norton 360 about 18 months ago to back up my Windows machine, where is have several user accounts under C:\Users. I instructed it to “Back up all file in C:”

Recently I my disk drive was a bit flakey (took several tries to reboot), so I was hyper vigilant in using backups. Dell had sent me a replacement drive gratis per warranty: good support.

I installed my new drive and ran “restore all”. For all users except one, all files were restored, including file edited earlier this week.

For one user (unfortunately most important user and files, like projects for work and income tax files), backups were not being taken since November 2010. So for this user, only some 80% of files where restored.

Norton support was dreadful. It was I who discovered all the clues about what was restored and from when. In fact for user INCOMPLETE, the dates in the files that were restored, all had the restore date and not the create/edit date.

The first support person could not wait for the restore that was going to take at least an hour. The second support person stated that I should be satisfied with the partial restore. When I asked (chat) the second support person if he would depend on a product that restored 90% of this files, he said “yes and I do”. Seriously? What about you, the reader?

I then got a call from their support, asking if I was satisfied. The person just kept repeating “to back up files, you must specify which files to back up”. She said this three times, so I thanked her and said it was time to terminate the call.

I need to recover work that was done for the company I contract for; I hope I don't need to do too much unpaid redo work I cannot afford to do this.

I need to redo my income taxes, or get a transcript of my filings, so I can pick up again next year. I have no hard copy should I get audited. I will try to contact Turbo tax to see if they have a copy from my efile.

I have lost my recent history of financial portfolio history, where I was keeping recent updates to measure performance.

I will see what I can do with Quicken and recovering this years trades for next years income tax.

Yes: all of these are example of why one should do backups. I was doing backups. I was depending on a product called Norton 360 to do these backups.

I wish I had a copy of the chat session. It was quite unbelievable. A perfect demonstration of out-sourcing to the lowest bidder (and least competent). I guess I get what I paid for when I only paid $100 or so for a backup product?

Here is one lesson. Do not trust your backup software, no matter who the company is. Perhaps even I did something to the config to cause backups for one user to cease. (I wish someone could explain).

Do the following task to check up on your backups. Set up a reminder every six months (or whatever you are willing to dare). Rename an important file and try to restore the original file name.