Entertainer Ed McMahon, who will turn 86 next week, has been hospitalized with pneumonia and other undisclosed ailments for almost a month, according to a spokesperson for McMahon. He’s currently in the intensive care unit at an undisclosed hospital, and seems to only be taking a turn for the worse.
McMahon, who was sidekick to Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” for thirty years and hosted “Star Search” has also been reported to have bone cancer, although those reports have not been confirmed as of yet. McMahon has claimed that he and his wife become sick due to toxic mold in their house that also killed their dog, Muffin. He also suffered a broken neck from a fall a couple of years ago, which left him unable to work and with two spine surgeries under his belt.
Ed McMahon has become well-known in recent years as the spokesperson for Publishers Clearing House and a pitch person for Budweiser Beer, among other companies. He was also the long-time co-host of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon for muscular dystrophy.
Howard Bragman, the Hollywood publicist, will not confirm which hospital is treating Ed McMahon, only that it is not the Cedars- Sinai Medical Center.
The following policy and regulatory changes that Christopher Cox, the SEC, and other regulatory agencies made and implemented from 2004 through 2007 need to be reversed after January 20th, 2009 or immediately. These policy and regulatory changes have destroyed the integrity and reliability of and confidence in our financial markets. The money sitting on the sidelines (approximately $13 trillion) in Money Market and Cash Accounts will not be re-invested back into the markets until these changes have been reversed and the proposed changes below implemented. I am recommending that all of the following policy and regulatory changes be made and implemented immediately by the new Administration:
1. The "Uptick Rule" on all securities (i.e., equities, ETFs, options, futures, and commodities) needs to be reinstated and implemented on all domestic and global exchanges and financial markets. Without the “Uptick Rule” in place, it creates an unfair and imbalanced playing field that favors the short sellers. This gives short sellers the ability to drive stock prices down to nothing. The exchanges are just as guilty and responsible for this problem as all others. The markets/exchanges were not meant to be casinos. New laws, oversight, regulation, and technology needs to be implemented and changed in order to solve these serious problems and abuses and restore integrity and order back to the markets. Get the "Uptick Rule" back in place and the markets will stop crashing. This one item is destroying good, healthy corporations.
2. The new SEC Chairwoman, Mary Schapiro needs to dump or get rid of the Mark-to-market accounting rule now. At the worst possible moment we as a nation chose to alter the way financial assets were evaluated -- through something called FAS 157. We required financial institutions to mark holdings to forced trades in illiquid assets -- mark-to-market accounting. The most powerful critic of this approach was William Isaac, the former head of the FDIC. His viewpoint is that the entire financial crisis -- the destruction of major financial firms, the huge bailouts, the destruction of retirement accounts, and the socialization of private companies -- all could have been avoided with a more measured approach to the needed reduction in leverage. This rule could have been changed by Christopher Cox, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, or even by the president.
3. The SEC under Christopher Cox’s tenure and the exchanges relaxed the dynamic circuit breaker thresholds on all major securities, options, and futures exchanges to levels that are too high and therefore ineffective under current market conditions and volatility levels. The current three dynamic circuit breaker thresholds of Level One (10%), Level Two (20%), and Level Three (30%) should be reversed and reset back to the previous circuit breaker thresholds of Level One (2.5%), Level Two (5%), and Level Three (10%) for all exchanges and markets.
4. All ETFs should have the same SEC/FINRA/CFTC/NYSE/NASD reporting, filing, and regulatory requirements as Mutual Funds. ETFs will need to comply with all of the Rules and Regulations of the Investment Company Act(s) of 1933, 1940, and all their later amendments.
5. All ETFs should be converted back to Closed-End Funds. This means that you can no longer buy/sell/write options, derivatives, and/or short sales on ETFs.
6. All Ultra Short ETFs should be abolished or banned. These products do not perform as specified and their claims are fraudulent. They promote negative price fluctuations and volatility on the underlying securities and indices and perpetuate a disorderly and unreliable marketplace.
7. All of the additional changes made to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) between 2000 and 2004 need to be reversed. The legislation provided the certainty that products offered by banking institutions would not be regulated as financial futures contracts. It also allowed for the deregulation of financial derivative products (i.e., CDS, CDOs, etc.), which have been destructive to our financial markets.
8. The SEC from 2002 – 2004 relaxed net capital requirements and leverage restrictions for banks to a destructive level. The events leading up to the SEC's decision to relax its net capital rule for the largest investment banks began in 2002. In 2004, the SEC waived its leverage rules. Previously, broker/dealer net-capital rules limited firms to a maximum debt-to-net-capital ratio of 12 to 1. This 2004 exemption allowed them to exceed this leverage rule. Only five firms — Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley — were granted this exemption; they promptly levered up 20, 30 and even 40 to 1. SEC's Consolidated Supervised Entity ("CSE") program, which was established by the SEC in 2004 for only the largest investment banks. Indeed, these five investment banks were the only free-standing investment banks permitted by the SEC to enter the CSE program. A key attraction of the CSE program was that it permitted its members to escape the SEC's traditional net capital rule, which placed a maximum ceiling on their debt to equity ratios of 12-to-1, and instead elect into a more relaxed "alternative net capital rule" that contained no similar limitation. The result was predictable: all five of these major investment banks increased their debt-to-equity leverage ratios significantly in the period following their entry into the CSE program. That higher leverage, coupled with a high concentration of their assets in subprime mortgages and related real estate assets, left them exposed and vulnerable when market conditions soured in 2007-2008. For example, at the time of its insolvency, Bear Stearns' gross leverage ratio had hit 33 to 1, and press reports placed Merrill Lynch's debt/equity ratio at the time of its merger at 40 to 1. The following new net capital rule requirements should be instituted immediately: a). Insurance companies 2 to 1; b). Commercial Banks, mortgage companies, and all other similar entities 5 to 1; and c). Broker/Dealers, investment banks, and other companies in similar lines of business 10 to 1.
9. Credit Default Swaps (CDS), Credit Default Obligations (CDOs), and other similar financial derivatives should be abolished and ruled to be invalid and deemed worthless products/securities and unenforceable legal contracts by the Supreme Court. This would absolve and save all of our traditional banks, insurance companies, and other legitimate financial institutions from the financial obligations/debts they have on their books/financial statements for these unregistered products. The counterparties are domestic and global Hedge Funds, Private Money Managers/Investment Managers, Investment Banking Firms, Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Barclays, and more who are seeking payments for these CDS and CDOs, which they own and created, and our government is bailing them out by paying them for these unregistered products/obligations. All that the Administration needs to do is have the Supreme Court rule that these products/obligations are invalid, worthless, and unenforceable legal contracts, and then have Goldman Sachs and all the other similar firms take a “big” loss and write them off their books as worthless. That is, they should take ownership and responsibility for their creation and mess and bear the costs. They made a lot of money in commissions selling, exchanging, modifying, and trading them domestically and globally for years.
10. All of these products are defined as securities--notes, stocks, preferred stocks, treasury stocks, bonds, debentures, options, investment contracts, certificates of deposit, warrants, rights, variable annuities, and collateral trust certificates—and are therefore required to be registered with the SEC. However, currently--fixed insurance policies, fixed annuities, futures/commodities contracts, financial derivatives, precious metals, Credit Default Swaps (CDS), Credit Default Obligations (CDOs), Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), and Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs)--are not considered to be securities by the Supreme Court’s “Howey Decision”, therefore, they do not need to be registered with the SEC or anyone. This is a loophole that is open to abuse and needs to be closed immediately. All of these products definitely meet the criteria to be considered securities and therefore should be required to register with the SEC. There should be no exceptions. All of these products should have to be registered with the SEC as securities.
11. All Hedge Funds and Private Money Management firms doing business within the United States of America (USA) should have to be registered with the SEC and FINRA as a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) and Fiduciary with no exceptions.
12. You need to reduce the highest total individual and corporate income tax rates from 35% (2nd highest rate in the World) to 25% to allow U.S. Corporations and Individuals to compete against other workers, companies, and countries around the globe. The three new tax rates on earned income would be 5% ($1 - $50,000), 15% ($50,001 - $200,000), and 25% ($200,001 or more). All dividend and capital gains income would be taxed at 10%. This will have the greatest impact on job creation, lowering the unemployment rate, stimulating the economy, and sustaining growth in the near and long-term.
13. The “Claw Back” law needs to be reinstituted immediately for all US corporations/companies and their Board of Directors, CEO’s, CIO’s, CFO’s, Senior Management, and all employees going back to the date that it was taken off or dropped. This “Claw Back” law should be retroactively applied to all cases and incidences from the date that it was dropped.
All of these key changes need to be made in order to bring order and integrity back to the markets, protect investors, and restore confidence in our financial system. These changes are immediate “hits” with huge positive impacts for your Administration, the economy, the markets, investors, companies, and economic recovery. Also, they require no multi-billion dollar bailout packages or additional funds to implement, simply, just smart policy and regulatory changes that can be implemented immediately with little effort or time. What we need now is solid, simple, and substantive solutions and that is exactly what I am proposing. If the above thirteen changes are made (i.e., action not words), you will see the markets and the economy rally beyond belief and confidence/hope return.
The internet is abuzz with chatter about organizing protests around the country to put an end to this madness on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. But I’ve talked to many people out there who have never organized a protest, and so they don’t have a clue where to begin. Here are 10 simple steps that you can follow to organize a protest in your own community. If you want more help, just send me an email at bsteinhauser @freedomworks.org and I’ll work with you one on one to help make your protest a success.
1. Pick a location, date and time in your town. I’d suggest main street at an intersection with lots of traffic.
2. Tell your friends, family, co-workers and everyone else you know about the protest. Build an rsvp email list so that you can provide quick updates if something changes. You should also create a facebook group so that the group can communicate with one another.
3. Make 5-10 signs with legible slogans that send a clear message to the public and the media. Write in BIG LETTERS.
4. Call your local talk radio hosts and ask them to announce the location, date and time on the air for a few days leading up to the protest. Send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper announcing the protest. Email the bloggers in your area and ask them to post a notice about the protest.
5. Write a press release and email, mail and fax copies to the local tv stations, radio stations and newspapers. Call the reporters that cover local events or politics and leave messages on their voice mail.
6. On the day of your protest, show up with your group, be loud, visible, happy and engage the public. Wave your signs, make lots of noise and move around to get attention. If reporters interview you, give them some good sound bytes for their stories. Stay on message and keep your answers short and coherent.
7. Bring sign-in sheets to capture the names, emails and phone numbers of everyone who attends the protest and/or says that they support what you are doing. You will then have a big list of people that can plan the next, much bigger and louder, event. Also bring handouts with one page of quick facts about why you are protesting in the first place.
8. Add your pictures, video and an after-action report to your facebook group, and send this stuff to the bloggers and reporters that you originally contacted. Ask them to post the photos, story and video.
9. Thank everyone who attended via email and phone, and set up a meeting to plan your next event. Now you have a list of people in your community that can help make the next protest huge. Encourage everyone to commit to bring at least one friend to the next protest.
10. Organize a carpool and go find a friend in your neighboring town or county and help them organize a protest there. You and your people are now veterans and should be able to keep the momentum going around your area.
Son of a prominent Boston abolitionist family, Robert Shaw was serving as a captain in the 2nd Massachusetts when he was tapped by Massachusetts Governor John Andrew for a special assignment. Shaw was to raise and command the first regiment of black troops organized in a Northern state.
All the previous 11 colored" regiments had been raised principally from freed slaves in occupied areas. Shaw went about the organization of his command, recruiting free blacks from all over New England and some from beyond. The regiment was mustered into service on May 13, 1863, with Shaw as its colonel, and was sent to the South Carolina coast to take part in the operations against the cradle of secession, Charleston. After leading the regiment in smaller actions on James Island, at Legaresville on July 13, and Secessionville on July 16, Shaw moved the regiment over to Morris Island.
On July 18, 1863, he led the 54th, in conjunction with two brigades of white troops, in an assault on Confederate Battery Wagner. In the unsuccessful charge, the black troops proved themselves to be fully capable of standing up to enemy fire but lost about one quarter of their men, including Colonel Shaw. The rebels in the battery were so outraged by the Union commanders arming blacks that they decided to insult the white officer by burying him in a common grave with his black enlisted men. But Shaw's parents, when they heard of it, were pleased and believed that was the way their son would have wanted it.
Source: Burchard, Peter, One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment "Who Was Who In The Civil War" by Stewart Sifakis
Supposedly there’s going to be an arrest in the Chandra Levy murder case. Law enforcement officials said an arrest warrant will be issued for Ingmar Guandique, who is currently in prison in California.
Officials said Guandique will be served papers there and likely then flown to Washington, D.C., to hear the charges against him.
Guandique is reportedly in jail for assaulting two women in Rock Creek Park, the same park where Levy's remains were found a year after she vanished, according to WRC-TV in Washington.
Another inmate told investigators that Guandique confessed to Levy's murder, according to the station. But Guandique changed his story when speaking to investigators. He allegedly told police that he saw Levy several times in the park, but played no part in her death.
Gary Condit wasn’t involved? Just a random killing by a local bad guy?
You can read much detail about Guandique in this Washington Post article. What jumps out at me is that he’s an illegal Salvadoran immigrant. We need to put a stop to illegal immigration.
Charging the same individual who was cleared in the initial investigation of Levy's murder smacks of a cover up. Particularly when you discover the threat her inside information represented to highly placed government officials. Check out the excerpt below that details why Ingmar Guandique was ruled out as a suspect following the discovery of Levy's body in Rock Creek Park.
There was a genuinely farcical attempt to pin the Levy murder on a minor criminal, Ingmar Guandique, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who had been known to assault joggers in the area. After he passed a lie detector test, and the complete lack of any possible similarity between his crimes and the known facts of the Levy case, they had to drop it. It took more than a year after she was found for her remains to be returned to her family, which is very unusual. During that time several independent expert forensic doctors came foreward and offered to examine her remains in order to help solve the case, but were REFUSED PERMISSION, despite their efforts being widely publicized.
There's no doubt about this champion. The Wrestler, the tale of a grappler trying for one last comeback, defeated all comers at the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards, earning a win for Best Feature and garnering unlikely comeback kid Mickey Rourke the Best Male lead nod.
"I didn't realize how many closet Mickey Rourke fans there were in this world," director Darren Aronofsky said backstage. "That's been the best part of this whole trip -- watching people come out of everywhere."
Mickey Rourke, clearly making the most of his unexpected comeback after spending years in the acting wilderness, proved the clear crowd favorite, with a six-minute off-the-cuff acceptance speech, very little of which can be printed in a family newspaper.
He started off by urging that producers find work for his buddy, actor Eric Roberts, whose career has gone decidedly cold. "Whatever he did 15 for 20 years ago, he deserves to be forgiven," Rourke said, to considerable laughter and an embarrassed shout-out from Roberts, who was in the audience. And he finished with a profane, though hilarious, litany of advice for down-on-their-luck actors.
Still, no one took more delight in winning a Spirit than Melissa Leo, who bested fellow Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married) to win for Female Lead. Near tears, she thanked just about everyone who had anything to do with the film, including her fellow cast members, director Courtney Hunt, the residents of Plattsburgh, N.Y. (where the film was shot), even the journalists and entertainment writers "who really gave Frozen River a chance."
"Hooray independents," an emotional Leo shouted as she left the stage
Other Spirit winners included Tom McCarthy, Best Director for The Visitor; Woody Allen, Best Screenplay, for Vicky Cristina Barcelona; and Penelope Cruz, Best Supporting Female, also for Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
James Marsh's Man on Wire won for Best Documentary.
Milk, Gus Van Sant's biopic of the murdered gay rights crusader and San Francisco assemblyman, took the day's first two awards, with James Franco winning for Best Supporting Male and Dustin Lance Black taking the Best First Screenplay prize.
Both men sounded hopeful notes backstage, saying they hoped the film marked a new chapter in the country's acceptance of gays and lesbians. "I do believe that America loves gay and lesbian people," Black said. "They just may not have met us yet."
Although the Spirits like to present themselves as Oscar's feistier cousin, the line between Oscar-worthy and Spirit-worthy films has been blurring steadily over the past several years.
Among the most prominent names among this year's Spirit-nominated films were Milk, The Wrestler, Rachel Getting Married and Frozen River, all of which were nominated for multiple Oscars as well.
Still, the Spirits reveled in their -- to borrow a word that doubtless will be heard repeatedly at Sunday's Oscars -- slumdog status. Host Steve Coogan's opening monologue was liberally sprinkled with words that George Carlin once proclaimed could never be said on TV. Several of the acceptance speeches were proudly off-color. And on his way into the awards ceremony, a smiling Rourke dropped the f-word repeatedly into every interview, and even displayed his middle finger delightedly -- and was applauded for doing so.
"As a fan of Mickey's," The Wrestler co-producer Scott Franklin said as the ceremonies ended, "I can't wait to see what he does next."
I’m a subscriber to Netflix’s one-out-at-a-time, unlimited plan ($8.99/month) to keep costs down, yet still receive a physical DVD every week and have unlimited access to the Netflix online video streaming. Some who use the Roku or Xbox 360 might wonder why there isn’t a streaming-only plan for a little less money. According to an interview with Bloomberg News, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is considering that very thing.
Hastings didn’t reveal how much they might charge for a streaming-only subscription with Netflix, but he did say that this type of play could arrive “late this year” or in 2010. The question then would be: How much are customers willing to pay for such a service? They have definitely upgraded their streaming movie collection, but it’s still full of older movies and TV shows. If Netflix offered a “premium” streaming service with newer movies and a larger collection, I’d be willing to pay more. Would you pay for an online-streaming-only service from Netflix?
Check one item off our GM bailout checklist: With no rescue from Sweden, Saab Automobile AB filed for bankruptcy on Friday. As General Motors Corp. lobbied for more money from Washington, it presented a massive restructuring plan that severed its ties with the unit.
In a statement, Saab said the Swedish court process is to reorganize Saab into a fully independent business, aiming to bring resources back to Sweden. It also has three new models ready to be launched over the next year and a half. And as it turns out, the Swedish government could still provide loan guarantees to Saab following a restructuring, a senior official told Reuters.
Of the restructuring, Saab managing director Jan Ake Jonsson said, "We explored and will continue to explore all available options for funding and/or selling Saab and it was determined a formal reorganization would be the best way to create a truly independent entity that is ready for investment."
As noted by a Bloomberg article, Sweden has ruled out taking over Saab, saying taxpayers' money shouldn't be pumped into a company that's been unprofitable for 19 of the last 20 years. Saab is seeking funds from both public and private sources.
Code 1301 means there's a delay in processing the return. With the economic collapse worsening by the day, the delays in processing federal tax refunds are increasing anxiety levels throughout the country.
Here's an enlightening exchange on the popular GodlikeProductions internet forum . . .
Somebody must know why the IRS is delaying returns. Mine has said 1301 for 2 weeks. Yahoo Answers is also deleting some questions reguarding 1301. If I owed them money, they would want it like yesterday plus interest and more taxes. Anyone else having problems?
Last spring I remember an internal memo that came from the USPS HQ [I'm a postal employee] that said around 17% of Americans do not file taxes... and it urged us good, loyal federal employess to do so because if we didn't it inspired a lack of voluntary participation and confidence in the tax system. I found those words to be very odd... and posted a thread here on GLP at the time as I interpreted them to mean that we really WEREN'T required to pay taxes and that it IS voluntary after all. And, I was a little surprised at that high 17% figure!
There was a discussion on this a long time ago. Apparently there is no law saying we need to pay taxes and it is voluntary. The problem, I think, is that they do have laws on the books saying they can prosecute if certain tax codes are violated. (But not for actually paying the tax in the first place - only if you omit something on reporting.) Sort of a catch-22. It's like paying the mob. There is no law saying you have to, but it you don't, you run the risk of having your knee caps broken in an unfortunate "accident".
President Barack Obama made generational change and young people, together, the very centerpiece of his campaign. Now his Administration must find ways to continue to engage those millions of young Americans who participated at unprecedented levels this election cycle. No substantive method yet exists, but Scoop44 fills this void.
Scoop44 follows the same innovative Web-based model of its predecessor, Scoop08, to report on the Obama administration, national politics, and public policy from a fresh generational lens. The Website is uniquely poised to address the surge in political activism and interest among young people.
Hailing from colleges and high schools across America, from Harvard and the University of Chicago to Ohio University, Arizona State, and Washington University in St. Louis to public and private secondary schools nationwide, Scoop44’s staff will venture into territory traditionally left ignored and unreported.
With writers on a myriad of specialty beats, including all facets of Washington, the heartland, race in America, academia, and new media and technology, Scoop44 will deliver substantive stories through multiple mediums and engaging new platforms, including feature-length articles, blog updates, email alerts, editorial digests, video reports, and live online chats with reporters.
Scoop44’s journalism will reveal the new political, cultural, and societal phenomena of 2009, unearthing underreported, even undiscovered, news. We are poised to follow this generation and to usher in a new age of political reporting for readers young and old, inside and outside of the beltway.
Unlike any existing media outlet, Scoop44 will probe particularly into how new policies relate to and affect the nation’s future and young Americans holding accountable this young administration. By drawing on the resources of incisive young minds — and by focusing concertedly on the new administration, its policies, and its impact on a rising generation — we will venture into territory that neither the mainstream media nor any other outlet can explore with equal vigor.
The election of President Obama, a demographic and an electoral sea-change, coupled with the rise of the Internet, a vehicle whose power is being harnessed with the greatest innovation by young people, means that more and more politicians recognize the importance of connecting online to this new generation of Americans. The interest generated already by the 44th President and his new administration is extraordinary — and the media in turn has provided early and aggressive reporting on this watershed moment in American history. But with enormous concerns facing the new President, mainstream outlets are stretched thin.
Meanwhile, there is a demographic more energized and with more at stake in the next four, if not eight, years: America’s young people. Thanks to the opportunities presented by the Internet — online journalism, blogs, networking websites — a new generation, for the first time ever, has the chance to band together for the common purpose of reporting in-depth on the administration.
Our mission is to channel our energy — and to use it for good.
An uproar is brewing about an editorial cartoon in today's New York Post that appears to tie President Obama to a rampaging chimpanzee killed by police.
The cartoon, by Sean Delonas, shows a chimp splayed on the ground in a pool of blood. Two police officers stand over the body, one holding a smoking gun, and the second saying, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."
Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus bill on Tuesday. The cartoon appears to refer to Travis, the pet chimpanzee and TV star who was shot to death by police in Stamford, Conn. on Monday after it mauled a friend of its owner.
The Rev. Al Sharpton told the Associated Press that the cartoon is "troubling at best."
Sharpton notes that Obama is the nation's first black president and that African Americans have been depicted as monkeys by racists through history.
"Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama and has become synonymous with him, it is not a reach to wonder are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?" he asked, according to press accounts.
Sam Stein at The Huffington Post says it seems "rife with racial and political sensitivities."
The Post is standing by the cartoon, and questioning Sharpton's motives.
"The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut," editor-in-chief Col Allan said in a statement. "It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist."
original post by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor for The Boston Globe
This morning in Phoenix, President Barack Obama announced the third part of his economic recovery package, the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, which will address the housing market and is particularly targeted at 7 to 9 million families facing foreclosure (there were 2.3 million foreclosures last year). Interestingly, the $200 billion in funding for the plan comes from the Housing and Economic Recovery Act passed last August, not TARP or the Financial Stability Plan.
Here are the main points:
There will be refinancing options for 4 to 5 million families whose mortgages are owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Falling home prices have made many ineligible to refinance, but now even homeowners who own less than 20 percent of their home will be able to see lower interest rates and more manageable monthly payments.
Use $75 billion to do loan modifications in the private market for 3 to 4 million at-risk homeowners. This looks to require tax payers to share some costs with lenders, who will be responsible for lowering interest rates on mortgages to a certain level (38 percent of the homeowner's income) and then costs will be matched with the government down to 31 percent. The government will also split the costs of a reduction in principal -- essentially, a write-down of the home's value. There are also incentive fees to mortgage servicers and holders for taking these write-downs, and a $10 billion insurance fund to encourage them to to modify their loans sooner rather than continuing to wait for prices to fall.
The loan modification procedures will be standardized across all government mortgage holding agencies and all financial institutions participating in the program, preventing anyone from seizing a more advantageous deal.
The administration will support the legislation that will allow judges to modify primary home loans during bankruptcy proceedings.
Treasury is buying another $100 billion in preferred stock in both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in an attempt to increase confidence; the two government mortgage giants will also be increasing their loan portfolios "by $50 billion to $900 billion," which seems like a hell of a range of possibilities.
The difficulty of foreclosure prevention has always been that someone has to take a financial hit. The previous effort at dealing with the problem, HOPE for Homeowners, came out of last summer's housing legislation and failed because the program was entirely voluntary for mortgage lenders. The new plan obviously offers cost-sharing incentives for lenders (who will still face some initial loss) but also some coercive measures: One is the willingness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to expand their market share and refinance their loans, which will affect the housing market across the board. The second is the administration's support for bankruptcy loan modification. Now the government is essentially presenting a choice for mortgage lenders: take our deal, which is standardized across the entire industry, or let a bankruptcy judge modify the loan however he or she sees fit.
The president was also careful to present his plan in terms of the overall economic good, since many are still leery about bailing out homeowners who are defaulting on their loans, even if in many cases they were responsible and made their payments. The president stressed that foreclosures result in a drop in surrounding home value, and his fact sheet claims that "the average homeowner could see his or her home value stabilized against declines in price by as much as $6,000." So really, it's a rescue for everyone. Right?
"Once they get inspired and fired up like that... it's very difficult to calm them down!" said Terry Wolf, Wildlife Director at Lion Country Safari.
After hearing about the brutal attack by Travis the chimpanzee, the experts at Lion Country Safari, in West Palm Beach, were quick to emphasize what they have been saying for years...
"There's a terrific lack of respect for this endangered species, by the way... chimpanzees are endangered" said Wolf.
Endangered... and not meant to be pets!
Folks like Terry Wolf, Wildlife Director at Lion Country, have been begging the movie and TV industries for years not to portray chimpanzees as cute and cuddly... they are in fact, wild and powerful animals.
"A 200 pound chimpanzee has the equivalent strength of the Miami Dolphins offensive line... so if you can hold off five Miami Dolphins offensive linemen... you can hold off that chimp." said Wolf.
Terry explains that chimps share ninety-nine percent of the same DNA as humans and when they are babies (like the ones you usually see in commercials) they are much more well behaved... but as they get older they are more and more likely to get into trouble.
Because chimps don't talk it's hard to say why one might attack... but it could be something very simple that we humans do everyday.
"It could be the slightest thing, like a look. A look to a chimpanzee if everything, since they don't vocalize things... you can't rationalize with them, by explaining things to them.. but if you look straight in the eye... to them that's aggression... you might as well of poked them with a stick." said Wolf.
Experts say the bottom line is that, although they look and act like us, it is a much more humane and safer existence for them to be with their own kind.
"They can be positively reinforced, they do understand what love is... but they very definitely understand what dominance is... and when we come into their space... we're a threat." said Wolf.
Today is Presidents Day and although it's not the birthday of any president that I know of, President Barack Obama (born Aug. 4, 1961) certainly received a nice present from Congress.
Lawmakers late Friday night tied the bow on a $787 billion, 1,071-page stimulus bill that was supported by no Republican House members and only 3 GOP senators.
Maybe they were wary in the wake of the $350 billion bank bailout pushed through in the final days of the Bush administration. That money has apparently evaporated without leaving so much as a drop on the troubled mortgage-holders it was designed to help.
In any case it was a big win for the neophyte Obama presidency and represents a pretty big risk for the minority party. If the bill works as Democrats say, it will save or create 3.5 million jobs and restart the stalled economy. That would leave minority leader John Boehner and the GOP looking like petulant obstructionists.
But if the bill turns out to be good money after bad and the slide continues or, heaven forbid, worsens, Republicans will go into mid-term elections in 2010 with the political life raft they need to rescue their flagging fortunes.
That's the political reality of Washington -- even when they all agree that something needs to be done they can't seem to separate themselves from partisan posturing. That goes for both parties.
According to Sen. Patrick Leahy's office, Vermont will receive:
$130 million for infrastructure repair;
$60 million in education funding;
more than $100 million to preserve public safety, education and other government programs;
$250 million over two years to help address the Medicaid shortfall;
$190 million in operating loans to farmers;
Page=002 Column=002 OK,0003.00 more than $34 million in food stamp services;
$56 million for environmental safety and weatherization programs;
$11 million for law enforcement and more.
Is this what Vermont needs to ease the crisis of mounting job losses? Or will it simply defer tough budget-cutting choices for the Vermont Legislature?
I certainly hope the Republicans are wrong and this is not another pork-packed, business-as-usual Capitol Hill exercise in self-interest. Your job, my job and your neighbors' jobs are riding on the success of this historic measure.
How did the mortgage industry destroy itself and set off an economic collapse that ruined the finances of millions of Americans? Executives tend to hold themselves blameless, saying that no one could have seen the disaster coming.
Well, judge for yourself after you hear the story of Paul Bishop, who worked at the nation's second largest savings and loan. World Savings Bank was among the industry's most admired mortgage lenders. But Bishop says the kind of lending practices he saw were leading to a world of trouble that would ultimately result in billions in losses and a federal investigation.
What does Paul Bishop say he told executives at World Savings, three years before the crash?
"We're breaking the law, okay? We're breaking the law. You know we're breaking the law. I know we're breaking the law. What the hell do you think is going on here? You know, you're granting too many people loans who simply can't qualify," Bishop told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley.
Bishop's story is a rare inside look at forces that tore the economy apart, as seen by a plain-spoken loan salesman who is now suing World Savings, claiming that he was fired for telling executives what they didn't want to hear.
"I definitely talked to him about Enron. I said, 'We're sitting on an Enron.' This is…bigger than Enron. I mean, we’re doing four billion a month in loans. If housing drops, housing value drops, people start to default, you know? This is a nightmare. These people will not survive it," Bishop told Pelley.
Bishop was a mortgage salesman at World Savings San Francisco Loan Origination Center. He'd been a top salesman at IBM and spent years as a stock broker. Most everywhere he went, he had a reputation for speaking his mind and ruffling feathers. He joined World in 2002, in part, because of its history.
Bishop says the owners were Herb and Marion Sandler.
"And their reputation at the time was what?" Pelley asked.
"It was flawless, near as I could tell," Bishop said.
In fact, Herb and Marion Sandler were legendary. In 1963, they started Golden West Financial and grew to 285 branches under the name World Savings. The Sandlers' were known for careful, conservative lending. They've given away millions of dollars to charity and started an advocacy group for low income borrowers called the Center for Responsible Lending.
In 2006, just before the housing crash, the Sandlers sold their bank to Wachovia and pocketed $2.3 billion.
Trouble is, some of their money came from people like Betty Townes, who is financially ruined after being sold a series of World Savings mortgages she couldn't afford.
Asked how many times she refinanced, Townes said, "Well we refinanced practically every year."
World salesmen convinced Betty to refinance her mortgage four times in four years. She got about $20,000 each time. "Well, all I know that they told me this loan was best for me," she told Pelley.
But how could it be best when Betty's pension couldn't qualify her for the loans?
"They told me that they would go by my husband's payroll," she said.
"Even though he'd been laid off from the shipyard?" Pelley asked.
"No, he'd passed away," Townes replied.
Her husband, Ronnie Townes, was dead. World Savings noted that in her papers. But his former income was used to qualify Betty.
Maeve-Elyse Brown, a lawyer for a non-profit group working to save homeowners from foreclosure, says Betty Townes' actual income was about $1,875, but that the income written on her loan application was over $4,000.
Asked who did that, Brown told Pelley, "The interviewer that's listed is a staff person for World, for World Savings, according to the loan documents."
"What does that tell you?" Pelley asked.
"Looks like whoever typed up this document put in the number that they thought was the right number to get the loan approved," Brown said.
"The term was 'packaged.' It had to be packaged correctly when it got to the underwriter," Bishop told Pelley.
Bishop says a story like Betty's was common at his former office.
He says facts were manipulated on some loan documents to get past company underwriters who approved the loans. "You know, let's not say this. Let's delete these items that they're probably not gonna check on. Let's add this. Let's just move it around."
"Packaging the loan meant modifying [the loan]…to make sure it would pass the underwriters' inspection?" Pelley asked.
"Correct. It was one grand wink-wink, nod-nod," Bishop said.
One person you won't see in this story is Herb Sandler. For months, 60 Minutes invited him to sit down for an interview. But instead, he sent these letters. He says it is "categorically false to suggest that we trained or permitted employees to falsify a borrower’s income." Sander called it "totally unacceptable in our culture."
But Paul Bishop says he watched the bank famous for quality begin to emphasize quantity. World relied on outside mortgage brokers to bring in 60 percent of its customers. The more loans that were approved, the more the brokers, and World Savings, made in fees.
"We would have these instant underwriting events in an office where we would assemble five underwriters right there," Bishop told Pelley.
Asked how many loans would be covered in a single day, Bishop said, "80, 90, we would keep track of it. 80, 90, 100 would be reviewed, yeah. Oh, yeah."
By 2005, 38% of World's clients had subprime credit scores. And customers were shown fliers that told them their income would not be checked by the bank.
"So I don't really need to know what you make. I don't need proof. You tell me you make $200,000 a year? You make $200,000 a year," Bishop said.
"No verification?" Pelley asked.
"Not gonna check," Bishop replied.
Herb Sandler told 60 Minutes if there was no income verification, the bank still checked credit reports and appraisals. But 60 Minutes spoke to two former World salesmen and a former executive who made similar allegations to Bishop's. One said, "It was all about volume, quantity over quality."
To understand what was happening in the mortgage industry, 60 Minutes went to Bob Simpson, whose company, IMARC, investigates failed mortgages.
"When one lender dropped standards, another lender felt that they had to do the same," Simpson told Pelley.
Simpson says World and other lenders were in a ruinous competition for customers. "There are people inside of every institution that have been screaming for years about these terrible loans. Don't fund these. These are horrible loans. And they were routinely ignored inside of their own institutions."
Asked why they were ignored, Simpson said, "Because there's no money in common sense. There's no money in stopping a loan. There's only a payday when that loan closes."
The loan World was selling was potentially risky. It's called an option ARM, but at World it went by the cheerful name "Pick-A-Payment." The monthly statement offered four different payment amounts that the homeowner could actually choose from. But, the lowest payment didn't even cover the interest on the loan. Deferred interest would add up month after month, leaving the homeowner farther and farther behind.
That's what happened to Betty Townes. World sold her four Pick-A-Payment loans, racking up $40,000 in fees and deferred interest for the bank. Now her full payment is larger than her monthly income.
"Hard to think of Betty without a home," Pelley noted.
"It’s horrifying to think of her without a home. It’s just unacceptable," Maeve-Elyse Brown said.
And she's not alone. Between 2003 and 2006, the total amount of deferred interest from World borrowers, choosing that lowest payment, jumped from $21 million to $1.2 billion.
"That’s the borrower saying to you 'I can’t make my payment' or 'I’m not making my payment.’ Now that was increasing at $100-million a month," Bishop said.
And that, he says, is when he began complaining to his bosses. "And basically it was characterized as, 'Look, you're a malcontent. I mean, you're not happy here. You don't like it here. You don't like the way we do business here.' I said, 'You know, it's all true. You know, it's all true. But, you know, you can't continue to do this.'"
Then in the summer of 2005, Bishop saw an article in the Wall Street Journal which Herb Sandler boasted about the soundness of the bank's loans.
Bishop told Pelley he complained, saying to a senior manager: "I think we have crossed the line. And there's no question in my mind that the chairman of the board, the founder of this bank, has no clue what's going on. Or he's indicating that in the press."
"Did you use the term 'predatory lending' with him?" Pelley asked.
"I'm sure I did. 'Fraud' for sure I used," Bishop said.
"And he said what?" Pelley asked.
"He said, 'Well, you know, I'm not aware of that,'" Bishop replied.
After that, Bishop got into a heated argument with a fellow employee and the bank threatened to fire him. He says it was retaliation for his complaints. So he talked to Tim Wilson, the corporate head of sales.
Bishop says he told Wilson: "’This is somebody's home. This is a home they can't afford. Okay? We are complicit in this, okay? You’re granting too many people loans who simply can’t qualify.’ He said, 'I don't have any instance of that.' I said, 'Come down to Vicente Street. Pull 100 loans, any 100…down at my office.' I said, 'I don't have the ability to do that or I'd do it. Come down to the office. Pull 100 loans. You're gonna be stunned at what you see.'"
Asked if Wilson did that, Bishop said "No."
Wilson did write a memo about their conversation, saying Bishop could not point to "any specific examples of employees or loans that do not conform to company policy" and he noted that "random audits are done weekly all over the country."
In his letter to 60 Minutes, former bank owner Herb Sandler said there are hundreds of former World employees who would "dispute Mr. Bishop’s claims and speak to the company’s focus on quality lending." He makes a point of saying his bank kept its loans on its own books rather than selling the risk to Wall Street, which "created a strong incentive to ensure that our loans were based on sound underwriting." Still, since the market collapsed, World's portfolio has lost billions.
Bob Simpson asks, "What, in a managerial sense, failed? Your leaders either knew those loans were terrible, or they didn't know. And either answer is bad for World Savings.”
"And when the Sandlers say 'We didn't know?'" Pelley asked.
"Shame on them. They should have," Simpson replied.
"What went wrong?" Pelley asked Bishop.
"Well we ran out of borrowers," he replied. "Everybody that could qualify, anybody that could fog a mirror, anybody that could just breathe, you know, and qualify at any level had basically been refinanced once, twice, three, sometimes four times."
Herb Sandler told 60 Minutes World approved only about 60% of its applications. He says his "high quality loans" wouldn't have failed "had the economic crisis not caused…housing prices to drop by 50%."
In May 2006, before the housing crash, Sandler announced he was selling World to Wachovia for $25 billion.
For Bishop it was the last straw. He says he told a manager he planned to warn Wachovia and days later, he was fired. Bishop says a lawyer told him to think twice before getting in the way of the merger.
"Did anyone at World ever specify why you were fired?" Pelley asked.
"To this day they have not," Bishop said.
Asked why he thinks he was fired, Bishop said, "I think I was right in the middle of $25 and a half billion dollars."
"Did you call Wachovia?" Pelley asked.
"I did not," Bishop said.
Asked if he regrets not making that call, Bishop said, "I'll always regret it. I'll always regret it."
The losses from the Pick-A-Payment portfolio are now estimated at $36 billion. Wachovia was so badly wounded, it was acquired by Wells Fargo with the help of a taxpayer bailout.
"We have talked to some former executives of the bank who tell us that they listened to your complaints, they investigated your complaints, and they found that there was nothing to them," Pelley told Bishop.
"Are they employed today?" Bishop asked.
"No," Pelley said.
"Surprise. They lost their job. The bank went bust. They took down the fourth largest bank in the country with them. But there was no problem," Bishop replied.
It was early Friday afternoon at the Sheraton Downtown, and the national media was waiting for the NBA's Eastern Conference All-Stars.
The Western All-Stars were just wrapping up. Kobe Bryant of the Lakers -- the league's biggest star not named LeBron -- and Phoenix's Amare Stoudemire -- the hottest commodity on the market less than a week before the trade deadline -- had drawn the largest crowds around their small tables spread out through the ballroom.
That's when Pistons guard Allen Iverson, voted by fans to start in tonight's 58th All-Star Game, made his entrance.
Wearing a cap with the initials "A.I.," he plopped down in his seat and began fielding questions on topics ranging from Alex Rodriguez to whether Iverson had done enough to ascend to the pearly gates when he died.
At first there were maybe three or four reporters. By the end of the nearly 1-hour interview session, the crowd around Iverson's table had grown to eclipse all the others except LeBron James, Bryant and Stoudemire.
That's despite a career-low 18.2 scoring average, and near career lows of 42.1% shooting, 5.1 assists and 1.6 steals.
That's despite his team -- after six straight trips to the Eastern Conference finals -- hovering around .500.
That's despite the criticism his All-Star selection received from national analysts.
Because when it comes to Iverson, there is only one answer: No matter what he does on the court or how his teams fare, the 13-year veteran with the ubiquitous initials and nickname always has star power.
His four scoring titles, his 10 All-Star starts, his two MVP awards in those games and his 2001 regular-season MVP season -- when he carried Philadelphia to the NBA Finals -- have helped create one of the league's icons. His jersey annually ranks among the league's best-sellers.
"My fans know who I am," Iverson said. "My fans watch me play. They understand what's going on."
But his status hasn't helped the Pistons, 27-24 overall and 23-23 with him in the lineup since the trade with Denver for popular point guard Chauncey Billups. (Billups will be a reserve for the West tonight.) At the All-Star break, it's fair to ask whether Pistons president Joe Dumars acquired a superstar who is valuable only because his $22-million contract expires this summer, freeing the team to chase much-needed youth in the frontcourt.
Can Iverson prove the doubters wrong? Can he turn back the clock -- one he doesn't acknowledge, even at 33 -- to help the Pistons save their season?
And there's a more immediate question: Might tonight's All-Star Game be the final one of a career bound for the Hall of Fame?
Whispers abound.
From the streets of Hampton, Va., with a quick stop at Georgetown, Iverson has scored more than 23,000 points -- 16th on the NBA's all-time list, just ahead of Charles Barkley -- with amazing dribbling ability, quickness and an uncanny knack for getting into the paint to draw fouls. His 27.2-point scoring average ranks fourth, behind Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor.
He compensates for an erratic jump shot with a toughness that allows a 6-foot, 180-pound man to attack the basket and get smacked by men more than 100 pounds heavier and a foot taller.
But Iverson is showing signs of wear (if you're a fan) or age (if you're a critic). One NBA scout, who requested anonymity because it's against the code to criticize players publicly, said of Iverson: "His first step is not quite as explosive."
Also, if you watch many Pistons games -- and the scout agreed -- you know Iverson misses lay-ups.
These aren't the lay-ups when you're out in the driveway messing around. In the NBA, more often than not, there is contact in the lane when you try to make a shot. Iverson used to finish through the contact or explode to the basket so fast the only thing a defender could do was foul him.
These days, defenders also can keep him out of the paint a little easier than before.
That's a tell-tale sign that his legs, the base for finishing around the basket, aren't what they were.
Iverson disagrees with that assessment.
"I don't see too much of a difference," he said. "Everything in my career has been the same until this year.
"As far as my production on the court, this is the lowest it's been. The only way I can answer that this season is being in a different system and a system I'm not totally used to as far as me being dominant on the offensive end."
Is it the system?
While Iverson might not be as explosive as he once was, he is still plenty quick. He is still a No. 1 scoring option.
He openly has questioned his role in the Pistons' system, which is predicated on getting everyone involved and not counting on a primary scorer.
Iverson hasn't been a selfish teammate. He realizes the Pistons are the most talented team he has played for.
But he said the whispers didn't start until this season.
"These questions didn't come up until right now because of what I'm doing as far as statistics-wise," Iverson said. "When you look at it last year and the year before, I've been in the top three in scoring basically every year of my career."
But he realizes the bull's-eye is squarely on his back. Many fans and analysts insist everything was fine and dandy in the D until Iverson showed up.
"If the ball is in my hands or not, it's going to go on me and it's going to go on Joe for making the trade," Iverson said.
There's one guy who agrees with Iverson:
"A.I. is great player, and he still can average 30 points if he wanted to," Billups said. "But that's not what that system calls for, so it's really not fair to him.
"It's not about what he does. I feel bad for him because it's not fair."
Pistons coach Michael Curry admits he has watched old tapes of Iverson in an effort to figure out ways to better utilize his talents. But Detroit's version of A.I. remain a work in progress.
At first, the games of Iverson and Richard Hamilton clearly clashed. Lately, there are signs that Hamilton, recently made the team's first scoring option off the bench, and Iverson are starting to understand playing together.
Second-year guard Arron Afflalo, another reserve, has played well with Iverson from the outset; that's understandable because he doesn't need the ball to be effective.
"I'm a second-year guy, and when you have Allen on the court, I'm probably going to be the guy that people are leaving to go help," Afflalo said. "He does a good job of getting in the paint and finding me in some open spots a lot of times."
Even if Dumars lets Thursday's trade deadline pass without a major shake-up, Iverson is still keeping the faith that the Pistons, tied for sixth in the Eastern Conference playoff chase, will be a tough out.
"I understand that we have high expectations," Iverson said. "People expect a lot better things from us, and it hasn't been real positive for us. But when we get into that second season ... that's the only thing that matters."
And if things don't go well then, the whispers are certain to get louder.
The Daytona 500 debut of 18-year old Middletown native Joey Logano ended in an abbreviated fashion with his team left loading a wrecked car back into the hauler well before the end of the race.
Logano, in his first Sprint Cup Series points event in the No. 20 Home Depot sponsored Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, crashed on lap 80 of the 200-lap Daytona 500.
Logano's day ended with the front end of his car crashed after a hard crash into the inside retaining just before pit road.
"I don't think I should say what I'm feeling inside," Logano said. "I'm not very happy. We were just getting going. We got a few pit stops under our belt and started to come to the front a little bit. We had to make a few adjustments to make the car better. We just didn't get there in time."
Logano ended up in last place of the 43 cars in the field. Matt Kenseth won when the race was called because of rain after 152 laps, 48 short of the scheduled distance. Kevin Harvick was second and A.J. Allmendinger was third.
Logano started 9th in the race but spent most of his time on the track outside of the top-20.
He was running around 27th when initial contact with fellow rookie Scott Speed and subsequent contact from Greg Biffle sent him sliding sideways off the track coming off turn 4 and into the wall at the 2.5-mile speedway.
"It just looked like [Scott Speed] kept getting loose in front of me so I jumped down below him in the middle of the corner just to try to get some air on my car because it was tight and as he kept [slowing down] I ended up next to him on the corner," Logano said. "It was either I was going to dump him or hopefully not do anything at all. [Greg Biffle] just came up and got us. It's a racing deal, but it's a bummer for all the Home Depot crew here. This is not the way we wanted to finish the [Daytona] 500."
Logano, who replaced Tony Stewart in the No. 20 car, was the youngest driver ever to start the event.
It was the end of what was at times a frustrating 10 days in Daytona for Logano. His team struggled much of the week to get a consistent handle on his car.
"I think overall he was alright," team president J.D. Gibbs said. "This place takes a while to figure out. I think doing what he did, the ARCA stuff, the Nationwide stuff, he'll be fine. It was just 'Hey, just finish it.' That's all he was trying to do. A lot of stuff happens here out of your control. He just kind of got tapped.
"It's a lot for anybody here, I don't care if you're 50 or 18. If you're new to it, this place takes a while. He did a good job learning and working with [teammates Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin] to get their input. He'll be fine. We've taken a lot of good cars here before and didn't finish. It's frustrating but that's part of Daytona."
Nascar viewers are going to get to know the Ray clan intimately. Beginning with the racing season's start at Daytona on Sunday, Ask.com will launch 36 new ads featuring this "colorful Nascar family."
Meant to play out like a sitcom, the ads feature slices of life as the Ray family enjoys race season together. A new ad will break each week for 36 weeks.
Ask.com became the official search engine of Nascar last month. In addition to becoming the home of Nascar racing in terms of the in-depth information it can provide, it will power Nascar.com and sponsor a car in the Sprint Cup Series. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Ask.com is currently the fifth most-popular search engine, accounting for slightly less than 2 percent of all U.S. searches in January, per Nielsen Online. No. 1 Google was used for 62.8 percent of all searches, followed by Yahoo! (16.2 percent), MSN (11.2 percent) and AOL (4 percent).
The search engine hopes its ubiquitous ad campaign will turn 75 million-plus loyal Nascar fans into regular users. “Nascar is our No. 1 most queried sport. People are emotionally connected with it,” said Ask.com CEO Jim Safka. “We’ve rallied the entire company around the sport. [But], we don’t just want to win [users] over in terms of questions they’ve got about Nascar, we want to become their search engine.”
Spots will air approximately five times during each race. In one, Karen Ray (mom) ogles driver Bobby Labonte through a pair of binoculars. Her husband Billy Ray asks: "Why don't you keep that north of the Mason-Dixon line, alright?" Karen Ray responds: "Do they wear anything under those suits honey?" The Ask.com search box then appears with the question: "What do Nascar drivers wear under their suits?"
Other ads ask: "What kind of car does Bobby Labonte drive when he's not on the track?" and "What is the fastest time a pit crew has ever changed a tire?"
“A lot of companies do their obligatory spot to say we’re involved with Nascar,” said Doug Raboy, managing partner/creative director at Hanft Raboy & Partners, which created the campaign. “We know they watch it every week. We wanted to give them something new to watch and learn about [Ask.com] every week. We’re not just some carpetbaggers.”
The length of the deal moving forward will depend on how many fans begin using the site, said Safka. However, the association has already produced one unexpected offshoot in the form of interest in a TV series based on the Rays. “It could turn into something much bigger,” Safka said of the ad push.
The search engine's robust TV schedule comes after a quiet 2008 when it spent only $6 million on traditional media for the first 11 months of the year, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. In 2007, however, it spent almost $50 million. Safka would not quantify this year's investment.
Tony Stewart held off a late charge from Kyle Busch to win the Nationwide Series Camping World 300 Saturday at Daytona International Speedway.
It was the first career victory for Stewart in a Hendrick Motorsports car and the second consecutive year he has won the Nationwide Series opener.
"I'm ecstatic about it," Stewart said. "Just an unbelievable run. I never really got to run with a huge pack [in practice on Friday]. I wasn't quite sure exactly what we were going to have. It was a great start to the race and we were able to stay up in the lead pack."
Eighteen year old Middletown native Joey Logano proved a non-factor in his final on track activity before his Daytona 500 debut Sunday, finishing 20th.
Busch got on Stewart's bumper coming off turn 2 on the final lap and stayed on Stewart down the backstretch and through the final two corners. Busch finally backed off coming out of turn 4 and ended up losing a podium finish as Carl Edwards passed him for second and Clint Bowyer got him for third coming to the checkered.
"Kyle got to our bumper right after we got off [turn] 2 and onto the backstretch [on the final lap]," Stewart said. "I thought we were going to be able to pull away from the field further than that. Normally you get two cars hooked up like that, we've seen it at Talladega where two of them get the bumpers locked and drive away from everybody. We didn't get as big a gap as I thought we would. I was hoping that he would turn loose of me before we got down in the corner. And I was surprised that we were able to chase it as far as we did. He never turned loose. We drove halfway up the racetrack with him still glued to my bumper instead of staying on the line and trying to go around me. I wasn't going to lift because I knew if I lifted I was going to get wrecked for sure. I definitely needed all the real estate I had."
Logano started eighth in the race and briefly made an appearance in the top-5. but he spent much of the race at the back end of the top-10.
Contact late in the race sent him back through the pack. He was 22nd on the final restart of the day on lap 114 of the 120 lap event and worked his way up to 15th in the closing laps but ending up crossing the line 20th.
"We were just sitting there on the high side with a few to go, 25 or 30 to go or so and [David Ragan] gets loose and he started coming up so I straightened up for a second and tried to get back the wheel and just never grabbed a hold in time and just got the fence and that knocked in the fender," Logano said. "It is what it is. I learned a lot if nothing else. It's just kind of a shame, we had a better car than that."
Feathers will fly at this fun, flash-mob type event. Leave it to a place like San Francisco to host the most visible incarnation of the Pillow Fight's flash-mob-esque gathering, and subsequent public pillow fight. I would say that a safe thousand people were milling around Justin Herman Plaza at Embarcadero and Market Streets in Downtown San Francisco.
This is a very dark sports movie. It's about fanaticism, the great weight of importance certain people place on sports. Sports fans often regard their teams as extensions of themselves. In "Friday Night Lights," the entire town of Odessa, Texas collectively puts their town's reputation on the shoulders of a high school football team. It's basically the same exact plot as "Varsity Blues," except a serious version of high school football in small town Texas.
One thing the movie does extremely well is taking hackneyed plots of the individual players (because it's all been done before) and putting them all in the background. So the plots play out not in a cheesy, inspirational, in-your-face way. Instead, they are just there with only as much attention as the viewer wants to put on them. The great aspects of sports are enough to keep us interested and makes the movie incredibly real.
The only character whose plot is really focused on is Boobie, the cocky running back who is injured and tries to defy his own injury. This is a plot in sports movies that has been focused on somewhat - the injured player. But never before has the pain been so real and so powerful.
This movie is heart-wrenching. Sports movies usually have so many moments of redemption and cheesy happiness that often feel false. This movie only has one such moment and it is incredibly powerful. Nothing about this movie is Hollywood. Billy Bob Thorton gives a great, understated performance as the coach, a man who is simply internal, who can do nothing but sit back and watch events unfold, knowing full well the impact that each game has on himself and his family. All the actors playing the football players do a good job, especially the guy who plays Boobie.
Don't expect this movie to uplift you. But it will show you an interesting side of sports you may have never considered. And, in the end, it shows exactly what is great about sports, and it has nothing to do with winning or making a career out of the game. It's about giving all you have for a teammate.
Benjamin Barry is an advertising executive competing with two female co-workers for a major campaign for a diamond merchant. He cuts a deal with his competitors that the account is his if he can make a woman of their choice fall in love with him in 10 days. In comes Andie Anderson who, in turn, is writing a story on how to lose a guy in 10 days as a bet with her boss to be allowed to write more substantial stories. With a hidden agenda in each camp, will either party be able to complete their mission?
Armstrong isn't expected to be the best, but he headlines the Amgen Tour of California, which includes two-time champion Levi Leipheimer, Floyd Landis, George Hincapie and Fabian Cancellara.
"Lance Armstrong Rides Again." That's the banner on the website for the Amgen Tour of California, which begins today with a 2.4-mile prologue around the state capitol building and ends Feb. 22 with a climb over Mount Palomar and a ride into Escondido.
For the first time, the Tour of California is being broadcast internationally. Last year, 651 media credentials were issued. So far this year it is 1,000, with more requests daily.
Veteran cycling broadcasters Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen both said this is the strongest cycling field assembled in the United States outside the 1986 World Championships in Boulder, Colo.
And if someone wants to argue that 400 journalists who packed a hotel ball room Thursday really wanted to speak to Amgen representative Phyllis Piano or race director Jim Birrell or even two-time defending champion Levi Leipheimer it would be a losing argument.
"We understand why all the attention is here," said Bob Stapleton, a Riverside native and part-owner of the Columbia-Highroad team that is based in San Luis Obispo. "It's come with Lance. We're just hoping our team and the sport can get a niche this year, make a small impression off in the corner and keep the momentum going."
Armstrong, the record-setting cyclist who won seven consecutive Tour de France races before retiring in 2005, is making a comeback he says is based both on wanting to win and to bring more money and awareness to the cause of curing cancer. Armstrong is a cancer survivor whose Lance Armstrong Foundation and its Livestrong slogan began the tradition of using rubber bracelets -- yellow for Armstrong, in honor of the color jersey worn by Tour de France leaders -- in fund-raising.
Sacramento mayor and former NBA star Kevin Johnson made sure he attended Thursday's news conference of 14 riders, team directors and race officials, then offered to exchange one of his "Kevin Johnson for Mayor" bracelets with Armstrong's.
Armstrong didn't grab for Johnson's bracelet.
Johnson sounded almost awe-struck as he said that Sacramento, as host to the opening stage, had sold an average of 2,500 hotel rooms for five nights.
"We're generating $8.5 million," Johnson said. "Last year that was $3.6 million."
Then Johnson looked around the crowded room, squinted into the flash of dozens of cameras and said, "I played in the NBA Finals in 1993 and I've never seen more reporters in a room than today. Thanks, Lance."
Along with Armstrong participating in his first competitive road race in the U.S. since 2005, the Tour of California will offer an extra day of racing this year -- eight stages and the prologue -- and travel 750 miles down the state. It will reach its highest point when the riders climb over 5,000 feet up to Mount Palomar on Feb. 22.
And scheduled to be in the field today are two former Tour de France champions -- Armstrong and 2008 winner Carlos Sastre of Spain -- 10 world champions, eight Olympic medalists and 25 past or current national champions.
Armstrong says he doesn't expect to win the race and that his team, Astana, will be riding in support of two-time defending champion Levi Leipheimer. Armstrong also listed 2006 Tour of California winner Floyd Landis, his former teammate George Hincapie from Columbia Highroad, and defending Olympic time trial champion Fabian Cancellara of Saxo Bank as overall threats.
But many of the other riders here understand the focus from both fans and media is on Armstrong.
Tyler Hamilton, who is riding for Rock Racing and who has won an Olympic gold medal and a Tour de France stage before serving a two-year doping suspension that ended in 2007, said everyone is aware of Armstrong's appeal.
"He's raced once, at the Tour Down Under, and already you can see the excitement," Hamilton said. "We all know the economy is going through a little bit of a rough patch. A lot of sponsors scratch their heads, wonder about supporting cycling because of the recession, and to have Lance Armstrong back, we're fortunate to have him.
"Nothing about him surprises me. He's an amazing talent, an amazing personality, an amazing presence."
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