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In this article I will review in detail the subject of borrowing from Lending Club and then provide perspective from several individuals who have experience investing with Lending Club. Enjoy.
Peer Lending with Lending Club
My personal experience with Lending Club…
Lending Club is a social lending network that brings together investors and credit-worthy borrowers to offer value beyond traditional banks.
Borrowers with good credit can get personal loans from $1,000 to $25,000 at interest rates that are often significantly better than rates from conventional sources.
For lenders, money invested goes immediately to Lending Club's approved borrower members. Most lender members spread their investment across tens or hundreds of qualified borrowers. Notes (that correspond to specific borrower loans) are offered only by means of a prospectus.
Borrower Lending Club Review
Those of you who read DFA on a regular basis know I am on a purpose driven mission to free myself and my family from the bondage of debt. For the last 7 months I have been trimming excess fat from every part of our budget and after making many positive changes have recently shifted my focus on getting a few big wins. That's when I stumbled upon Lending Club…
My debt consolidation broken down…
A while back I had the eye opening experience of calculating my interest amount paid, and ever since have been growing increasingly restless over the high interest rates on my auto loan and 3 remaining credit cards. The rates, already high enough to make a gangster blush… were recently pushed even higher by my big bank lenders. And that was the last straw for me… I was ready for a change.
My loans and their rates:
- Auto Loan – Capital One @ 10.5%
- Credit Card 1 – JP Morgan Chase @ 14% (rate recently increased due to "bad economy")
- Credit Card 2 – Capital One @ 16.25% (rate recently increased due to "bad economy")
- Credit Card 3 – Citigroup @ 19% (rate recently increased due to "bad economy")
I am almost never a proponent of borrowing money, but this is one exception where it is actually quite wise to in more than one way. It did not take much deliberation between me and my wife before drawing the conclusion that it was clearly in our best interest to go ahead and borrow from Lending Club in order to consolidate our high interest debt into one loan at a MUCH LOWER RATE.
Why Borrow with Lending Club?
Let's be honest… nobody wants to borrow money… period. In fact — as I mentioned above — if you have been following my Debt Free Adventure then you know full well how adamant I am about paying off my debt and reaching financial freedom.
So why did I borrow?
I had heard about peer to peer lending, aka social lending, aka p2p lending before but had never really paid much attention or explored if it could be an option for me. Why? Because I am not looking to borrow money!
My idea to consolidate with peer to peer lending…
Since I hate dealing with credit card companies and big banks in general I wondered… could I borrow from Lending Club to consolidate my high interest consumer debt and pay less interest in the process?
Once on the scent of a big win, some obvious questions racing through my head included:
- Who is lending us the money and would we be repaying "regular Joe's" instead of the Big Banks whose practices we have grown to abhor?
- What kind of interest rate could we get?
- Will they approve our loan?
- How long will it take?
- How much are the fees?
- Is this a wise alternative to simple debt repayment of our numerous individual high interest debt accounts?
- Can I prepay the loan early without penalty?
I studied peer to peer lending with Lending Club…
I started poking around on the Lending Club website… studying every inch of it, especially the fine print! All of my questions were answered rather quickly and directly. Here are the answers I found to the above questions:
- Individual investors (regular Joe's like you and me) were lending me the money. As a matter of fact, I ended up getting financed by many other personal finance bloggers I interact with on a daily basis.
- With our credit score we were able to secure a rate of 9.32%.
- Our loan was approved in just a matter of hours.
- An $11,000 loan cost us only $85 in fees.
- Even after adding the $85 fee into the calculation, we stand to save $500+ over the life of the loan.
- There are no prepayment penalties… so I could pay the entire loan off tomorrow if I so desire (although that may not make my investors the happiest campers!)
It was an awesome feeling to think I would be saving over $500 because of a much better rate, then also paying the necessary interest to friends and business associates rather than huge corporate banks in whom I have nothing short of anti-confidence.
While this was the best decision for my situation, make sure you evaluate your own situation strategically before proceeding — every situation is different and each will require careful attention to detail.
You can easily apply to see if you can get a rate that beats your other loans and credit cards balances… and if you can then consolidate your high interest debt through Lending Club is a solid idea.
Investor Lending Club Review
"Our investors join LC for the opportunity to make above-average returns and to diversify their current holdings in the stock market and other traditional investment vehicles. As the economy starts showing signs of recovery, many investors are also moving away from "defensive" assets like CDs and high-yield savings accounts.
With a 9.61% net annualized returns since we opened back in June 2007 (net of fees and defaults, across all credit grades) despite the tough credit market, LC certainly is an attractive option to benefit from a recovery in consumer credit."
— Rob Garcia, Director of Product Strategy at Lending Club
Although I am not currently in a position to invest with Lending Club (after paying off my Lending Club loan, I now invest with Lending Club) the system they have in place is fast becoming one of the best decisions to be made with investment dollars… especially in a down market. The alternatives available to the average investor pale in comparison to the several benefits offered when investing through LC.
Below I will list all the reasons to invest as found on the LC website, then deliver several testimonies from actual investors that I know personally. Several of which are my financial mentors, and all of which I trust.
On their website Lending Club gives us these 7 Lucrative Reasons to Become an Investor:
- You can earn better returns – Since June 2007, LC investors have earned an average net annualized return of over 9%. Read the report by Javelin Research.
- It's straightforward – The money you invest funds loans made to creditworthy borrowers.
- We're selective – Many borrowers apply, but less than one in ten are accepted. LC approves only creditworthy borrowers as members.
- It's easy – We make it easy to build a portfolio based on your criteria. Most lending members spread their investment across tens or hundreds of qualified borrowers.
- We set fair and fixed rates – Our rates are based on historical trends and the current economic climate. Borrowers pay a fixed rate for the 3-year life of the loan.
- You get flexibility – You can reinvest any interest and principal payments each month or withdraw them like an annuity. You can also put your notes up for sale on the Note Trading Platform.
- Do good while doing well – Many of our lender members find it rewarding to help others meet their financial goals. Especially in this economic environment, LC members come through when big banks do not.
Lending Club Investor Testimonials…
Each of the following testimonials are from individuals in my own personal contact list. They are not paid by Lending Club to share their opinion, rather they simply wanted to share their story in an effort to help other investors — seeking stable opportunities — to plug into the lucrative option they have found.
Another great part of LC is the ability to invest in those you trust. Both Nickel and Erica invested in us and helped fund our loan. I believe Pete tried, but our loan was funded so fast that he didn't get the chance!
All of these investors agree that the returns they are making on Lending Club far exceed that which the could be making in a high yield savings account
– Nickel of FiveCentNickel.com
Over the past few months, I've become a fan of investing through Lending Club. Prior to actually trying it out, I'd been pretty skeptical of peer-to-peer lending. After all, the idea of lending money more or less directly to other people is pretty "out there" nowadays. I finally decided to give it whirl with a bit of "fun money," and I haven't look back since.
It's too soon for me to make any grand claims regarding investment performance, but things have been going great so far. LC is very easy to use, and the interest rates are great. The fact that you can invest as little as $25 per loan also means that you can really reduce your risk by spreading your money around.
While we haven't abandoned more traditional investment vehicles, we've been gradually increasing our LC investments as we've become more comfortable with the concept. On top of everything else, it's kind of fun to know that your loans are directly helping real people.
– Erica Douglas of Erica.Biz
I'm a high net worth investor, and I chose to invest through Lending Club over many alternatives. Here's why:
- The stock market is risky and could plummet
- It's easy to get started with as little as $25
- LC handles all the payments, so I don't have to worry about collecting money directly from people
- There aren't any mammoth trading fees that would eat up an entire small investment like mutual funds/the stock market.
- Besides, even a "high-yield" savings accounts is only paying 1% right now. 1% should be pretty easy to beat.
I use LC the way many people would use a CD ladder. I can liquidate my positions easily if needed via their Note Trading Platform. And it has far better returns than a CD ladder would.
– Pete of BibleMoneyMatters.com
Over the past year or so I've heard a lot about the peer to peer lending market, and investing through Lending Club. For quite some time I've been pretty skeptical about the concept, and I just assumed that most of the people borrowing through Lending Club were big credit risks unable to get a loan elsewhere. I also didn't want to be lending money to people for irresponsible reasons. After talking with other lenders and doing a bit of research I've found that while there certainly are some folks on there that are big credit risks, as a lender you're able to choose who you loan your money to, and what you lend for. That allows me to be picky about who I'll lend to, and how much risk I'm willing to take. Add to that the fact that LC registered with the SEC in 2008, and their credibility in my eyes has increased quite a bit. I'm finally taking the plunge because I believe my money can give help to others, and still make me a little bit of money in the process.
– Jacqui Pittenger of Twitter
I signed up in February 2009 through a free $25 referral link on one of my favorite blogs – Dual Income No Kids. I figured there's nothing to lose when you invest free money. I enjoyed the experience so much, I soon added another $500 to my account.
While I would not consider peer to peer lending safe enough for an emergency fund, or even as a primary investment strategy, it's a worthwhile addition to my investment portfolio. My mix of loans skews to the riskier side with rates ranging from 8% to 18%. My current Net Annualized Return is 13.55% and all payments are current (so far at least). Even a few defaults would still leave me with an acceptable return.
The promise of yields far in excess of a savings account or CD is very tempting. But my favorite feature is being able to fund loans to people I want to help – like those digging out of a mountain of medical debt, moving closer to their place of employment, or purchasing a motorcycle to reduce fuel consumption. If I have any doubt about person's ability to repay the loan I move on. There are plenty of applications to choose from, so trust your instincts.
In the spring I signed up to automatically transfer $25 from my checking account to Lending Club each month, though I opted out of their automatic investment plan. I prefer to hand pick my loans each month. Soon I'll reach the point where I can not only invest in a 'new money' loan each month, but will also have a 'repayment reinvestment' every month as well.
Closing Thoughts on Lending Club…
For a long time we have bestowed great confidence upon our financial institutions; but with all the recent bail out money — that seemingly grows on trees — a rapidly increasing number of people, myself included, are turning to social lending providers like Lending Club for simplistic and transparent borrowing and investing. A lot of people are hungry for change, for the power of choice, and for greater control over their own financial destiny! And in my experienced opinion… LC seems to be answering that call quite nicely.
Using Lending Club has indeed been a big win for me and my wife and I do not hesitate to recommend their service.
Is Lending Club and peer to peer lending right for you?
Have you recently borrowed through Lending Club and want to share your experience? Are you an seasoned LC investor with a testimonial of your own? Maybe you simply have an opinion that just has to be voiced. Whatever it is… let us hear it!


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Introduction to Deafness/Hearing Loss
The hearing mechanism consists of 3 parts—outer, middle and inner ear. The outer ear is made up of the external ear and the ear canal. It ends with the tympanic membrane or ear drum. The middle ear is made up of the ear drum and an air filled cavity which contains the 3 tiniest bones in your body, the ossicles. The inner ear is made up of the semicircular canals (that deal with balance), the cochlea (a shell shaped object the size of a pea that perceives sounds at different pitches) and then the auditory nerve that leads to the brain where sound is perceived.
Hearing impairments can take on different forms – either a partial loss of hearing or a total loss of hearing referred to as deafness. Hearing loss is categorized as mild, moderate, severe or profound. All have impact upon communication with others. Individuals who are deaf must learn to read lips or learn sign language or cued speech to communicate. Individuals with hearing loss often use technology to compensate. Technology includes hearing aids, FM systems, and cochlear implants. Environmental aids include vibrating alarms, alerting devices, and support dogs.
There are 3 basic types of hearing loss:
Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants
American Sign Language and Deaf Culture
Do you think you have a hearing loss?
1 "About American Deaf Culture." About American Deaf Culture. Web. 02 July 2015.

subset: commoncrawl


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At here, we specialize in cell phone repair because we don't believe that a shattered screen or broken display should have to ruin your day. Smartphones connect us with the rest of the world and being without this lifeline can be a hassle You need a phone screen repair our professional services, you can always be sure that your device is being handled carefully by the most knowledgeable technicians in the industry
When it comes to Oneplus screen repair in mumbai, then we are your #1 Oneplus service provider. Trust us when we let you know we've seen it all with regards to Oneplus screen repair.
We can repair most Oneplus X gadgets with broken display. This is an indicative service and we will give you a quote for the screen repair before taking out any work. Book now to get your Oneplus X with broken display repaired as you don't have anything to lose.


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Facebook empowers friends to prevent suicide
by Larry Magid
When Anne Collier and I wrote our long out-of-print book, MySpace Unraveled, we pointed out that MySpace was the largest referrer to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. We noted that kids were alive because of the way friends had reached out to save their friends.
Facebook, of course, took MySpace's place in that regard but now Facebook and the Lifeline have teamed up to make it easier to report friends in distress and for people who are suicidal to have a live chat with a prevention specialist.
In a CBS News CNET podast interview, the Lifeline's Lidia Bernik told me that "a lot of people would rather communicate via chat or text, as opposed to calling." To that end, Facebook offers a direct link to a Lifeline page where people can have a live confidential chat with an expert.
In her blog post about the announcement Anne Collier called this the "911 of the social web," adding that friends can be "first responders." She said, "Neither a Web site nor a national hotline can immediately or fully be 'there' for someone if the people on that person's friends list – the people he or she interacts with from day to day – aren't there to notice."
Important development
To me, this is a natural evolution in the long term relationship between Facebook and the Lifeline and it's an important development for anyone who understands how important social media has become in so many people's lives.
The bottom line is that friends need to help friends. And being a friend today means using any means available – including social media — to support each other.
Bernik said that if you see someone who is in distress, the best response is to reach out to that person directly but "if you're not comfortable doing that," you can use the Facebook reporting tool to make sure that Facebook reaches out. Facebook will only pass on information to the Lifeline or authorities in the event of a "life threatening emergency."
The National Suicide Prevent Lifeline can also be reached at (8255).
For more, see the guest post of U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin linked from Facebook's safety page.
Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from Facebook. ConnectSafely also serves on Facebook's Safety Advisory Board and helped organize a meeting last year between Facebook officials and suicide prevention specialists, including Lifeline staff.
This post also appears on Forbes.com.


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DWTS14 Rumor: Bruce Jenner Waiting to "Say Yay Or Nay" To Dancing With The Stars
You know the routine. Take this rumor with a grain of salt being this site hasn't been known to be very reliable in the past. We'll soon see?? From Hollywood Life….
While the official announcement of all the new contestants will be aired on Feb. 28 on ABC, HollywoodLife.com has learned that the show hasn't filled all the slots yet for its upcoming 14th season. Producers are reportedly waiting on the unnaturally tight-faced Jenner to say yay or nay to their offer.
And besides Bruce being part of the Kardashian clan, the show is said to really dig the fact he's a former Olympian.
As much as I wish the producers would pass on having anyone connected to the Kardashians on the show again(and especially so soon after Rob), I'd favor Bruce over Rob's mother or sisters. What do you think and if Bruce did dance, who do you see him paired with? Maybe Kym?


text: Research Proposal At the end of the coursework stage students have to present a detailed research proposal for their Ph.D. thesis. The research proposal has to be accepted by the Ph.D. thesis comittee. In the research proposal, PiF students provide the thesis outline and discuss preliminary results. The proposal has to be presented in a (non-public) colloquium in front of the thesis committee. The proposal will not be graded, but it has to be accepted. Following the acceptance of the research proposal, students are admitted to the research stage.


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We told you last month that it was high time you added watercress to your diet. This must-eat green might reduce your risk of breast cancer, contains plenty of vitamins A and C and boasts an entire day's worth of vitamin K.
But which other healthy-yet-tasty foods do women tend to overlook at the supermarket? We asked registered dieticians Stephanie Clarke and Willow Jarosh, contributing editors at SELF and co-founders of C&J Nutrition, to weigh in with their 3 top picks. Stay tuned: One works for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
This spice enhances the flavor of both sweet and savory dishes -- and it's only 6 calories per teaspoon! Cinnamon also delivers a natural sweetness and can help enhance the sweetness of other foods, meaning you can use less sweetener if you add some cinnamon (great for yogurt and cereal, or anything else that calls for sugar, honey or syrup).
Many people don't know what quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) is, but we think it's about time that everyone learned! This whole grain cooks in just 15 minutes, making it almost as speedy to prepare as instant brown rice. Plus, it's got a great texture; more protein and fiber than brown rice; and can be eaten as part of lunch or dinner or as a delicious breakfast cereal.
Brussels sprouts
Brussels sprouts have a bad reputation for being bitter, but the bitterness usually results from overcooking. Try roasting them with olive oil, salt and pepper until just browned and you'll likely be a convert! Brussels sprouts are also loaded with soluble fiber, the type that can help lower cholesterol.
Thanks for the tips, ladies! We're off to go food shopping now.
Related links:
8 Surprising Ways to Lower Stress
Bonus: Snooki Does 'Whip My Hair' Video


text: Feast your eyes on this: KitchenAid Brazil is offering a classic mixer in a variety of patterns, but none quite as exciting as this Wonder Woman homage. As someone who has taken a serious interest in cooking over the past year and is looking to get into baking next, this seems like the perfect gift! (Hint hint.) For now, these editions are only being sold in Brazil, but if there's really a Santa Claus, hopefully that will change.


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Stryke replied to a comment on the other discussion
Gichin FunakoshiTo search for the old is to understand the new. The old, the new, this is a matter of time. In all things man must have a clear mind. The Way: Who will pass it on straight and well?
continued. . .


text: The Office of Multicultural Health (OMH) is a shared policy office within the Director's Office of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS). The OMH serves as a focal point in both Departments for improved planning and coordination of activities and programs related to racial and ethnic populations in California and a liaison between both Departments and outside stakeholders. The OMH has a 25 member multicultural health advisory council which advises the Departments and Directors on multicultural health issues.


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Starting Sept. 15, Alcoa will drop the water level on High Rock Lake to 14 feet below full over a 45-day period.
Starting Sept. 15, Alcoa will drop the water level on High Rock Lake to 14 feet below full over a 45-day period.
The drop is to accommodate an N.C. Department of Transportation causeway repair project on St. Matthews Church Road in Rowan County. The lake will be returned to normal as quickly as possible after NCDOT completes the repairs, which will be around the second week in November.
Boaters should use caution during the drawdown as debris or obstacles could be close to the surface. Lake residents should make plans to remove watercraft that are being moored to piers to prevent damage and or difficulty in securing them once the water drops. The Buddle Creek Access may be closed during this drawdown, but all other access areas should remain open.
Class reunion set for Oct. 10
The Central Davidson Class of 1974 will celebrate its 40th reunion beginning with a tailgate gathering at the CDHS homecoming game at 6 p.m. Oct. 10. Snacks and sodas will be provided in the parking lot tent behind the goal post. Afterward, the group will sit together during the game.
At 6 p.m. Oct. 11, a covered dish and BYOB dinner will be held at the picnic shelter of the AMVETS Post on Marco Boulevard, next to Yarbrough's restaurant. In case of inclement weather, the dinner will be held indoors. For more information or to RSVP, visit www.facebook.com/CDHS1974 or call 956-1349.
River Rats plan fundraiser
A pancake breakfast is planned for 10 a.m. Sept. 6 at the Allied Veterans Post No 17 on N.C. Highway 8. Pancakes, sausage and coffee or juice will cost $6. Adult breakfast beverages will be available for purchase.
In response to the Alcoa drawdown announcement, Joy Fields is organizing a Big Sweep clean-up.
Fire department board to meet
The Southmont Fire Department will hold its annual board meeting at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the fire station. All community members are invited and encouraged to attend.
School begins
School will begin Monday. Parents, please plan your schedule accordingly. Drivers, be aware of school buses and children waiting for buses.
Southmont memories
With school starting Monday, many memories of the old Southmont Elementary pop up. It may seem odd, but one of my most favorite school activities was lunchtime. I loved sitting down at a table full of friends and eating.
I remember one time in particular when a fellow football team member and friend of mine was watching me eat and commented on my method of soaking up black-eyed pea gravy with a biscuit. He loudly declared to everyone at the table, I was the best at sopping gravy he had ever seen. I politely and proudly informed him that I had a lot of practice. He seemed annoyed as he had hoped to embarrass me.
His angle was that I was so back country that I sopped gravy with a biscuit, and that sopping was not good etiquette. Sopping was and is no embarrassment to me. People who have never sopped most any kind of country gravy on a homemade biscuit have no idea what they are missing.
My dad would open a biscuit on a plate and pour pinto bean gravy or some other kind of gravy all over that biscuit. If sopping was not good, then sausage gravy and biscuits would not be such a popular dish in these parts to this day. So, sop on my country friends. It don't git much better than that.
Send your community news, events or memories to email@example.com.
To report news of Southmont, call Phil Surratt at 242-3268.


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Mortgage Affordability Calculator
Enter your information in the fields below to calculate the total home value you can afford based on your income, monthly expenses, interest rate, term and down payment. All fields are required.
Related topics
Preparing to buy a home
There's a lot to consider before you apply for a mortgage—from evaluating your savings to deciding what you can afford every month.Learn about down payments and mortgage pre-approvals
The mortgage application process
Once you've found the home you want and know how much you can borrow, you're ready to apply for a home loan.Learn about the mortgage application process


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The Mountain Models Clipped Wing Cub was CAD designed to be a lightweight, super easy to fly, laser-cut, scale electric parkflyer.
Interlocking laser-cut balsa and plywood parts make assembling the models as easy and as fast as possible.
The most complete hardware set you've ever wanted is included so the only things you have to add are covering, power system, and radio.
Designed in the thin air at 6000 feet, the cub flies beautifully and has plenty of flying power on a simple 80 watt brushless outrunner. The plane in the pictures weighs a paultry 13.6 ounces ready to fly! (Yes, that does includes everything, even a 2S1200 mAh LiPo) It is still plenty durable and the structure was not compromised to hit this weight. Compare this plane to a Chinese BARF that weighs twice what ours does!
Cost of separate parts: $118.00
Kit Contents:
Tools Needed:
Items Needed to Complete:
The current version of the fuselage manual is 1.0: J-3 Cub Fuselage Manual (1.12 MB)
The current version of the Clipped Wing manual is 1.0: J-3 Clipped Wing Manual (919 KB)


text: New to the community? Start here Home Support Support Forums General WordPress cornelius_butler DEV MAN 1,179 pts: Hero points 10,022 pts: Rep. points LEVEL 28 invoicing plugins for woocommerce Hi, Are there any invoicing plugins that integrate with woocommerce? Fri, 21 Sep 2018 10:47:24 Skip To Replies All: View all topics General WordPress: All Things General WordPress Plugins & Themes: Plugin and Theme Support Multisite: All things WordPress Multisite Features & Feedback: What can we develop for you? The Hub: All things WPMU DEV Hub! Automate, Reports, etc. Hosting: Hosting Support


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Is it bad that it's only Tuesday and I am wishing it was Friday??? This week my son's school decided to hold "pre-season" soccer practices from 6:30AM to 10:30AM EVERYDAY! Now for those of you city people that may not seem like a big deal, however for those of us that live out in the country it really makes for a ruff morning. See his school is 20 minutes away (with no traffic and if road conditions are OK) and they have to be there at 6:20am AND I stop to pick up one of his friends on the way....oh wait, I left out the part where I have to get up at 5:20am to hop in the shower! We leave at 5:45am to pick up his friend, and after I drop them off I have to go all the way back home to get ready for work, THEN drive another half hour to work........ummmmm, I think someone forgot to tell the coaches that a lot of these kids don't drive yet!!!! Needless to say, please be a little lenient if my posts later in the week are a little short and sweet, or if they have a lot of run-on sentences and lots of mis-spelled words!
OK, I'm done complaining. Now on to pie dough. I have to start by saying that I have used the same pie dough recipe for a loooonnng time and it's always been perfect (click here for recipe), and I have never felt the need to look elsewhere. I have never even been tempted to try a different recipe....until recently. This past year I got a subscription to Cook's Illustrated magazine, and in it they talk in length about this pie dough recipe where they use Vodka in it. Intriguing right? I won't get into all the science behind, but the gist of it is that the Vodka allows you to add more liquid without (making it a more tender dough) while not making it tough when it bakes. I will admit that I was skeptical that it would be better than my pie dough, but I had to give it a try....you know, to test out their theory.
Well, as much as it pains me to say it, they were right. The Vodka made a big difference in the dough, and in the end I have to admit it really is better than my recipe. The dough is perfectly tender and flaky all at the same time, and that is not always an easy thing to accomplish. So, hats off to Cook's Illustrated for getting this one right....I just might have to use this as my go to pie dough recipe from now on.
Perfect Pie Dough (by Cook's Illustrated)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 cup vegetable shortening (they said it should be cold, but I didn't bother chilling mine)


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A fined-tuned dry-blend of natural-organic nutrients with multiple strains of beneficial Mycorrhizae plus Humic Acid, all professionally formulated for vigorous vegetative growth for a variety of indoor/outdoor plants. For container plants, apply every 3-4 months. For determinate plants, a single application is the general recommendation. May be used as a premix or applied as a top-dressing Rainbow Mix Grow and Bloom may be used together. *Compatible and may be used in conjunction with Earth Juice "Original Formulas". The "Sure and Easy" way to plants to "Get-Up-And-GROW"!
Item Number: 132343
Universal Product Code: 727644190156
Manufacturer: Hydro-Organics
Brand: Rainbow Mix


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Results of the final Des Moines Register Iowa Poll of likely Republican caucusgoers before the Iowa caucuses will be released at 7 p.m. Saturday at DesMoinesRegister.com.
Comprehensive news coverage and analysis of the results will be published in the Des Moines Sunday Register.
The Des Moines Register's Iowa Poll is closely watched as a barometer of voters' opinions in the leadoff caucus state.
The Iowa Republican caucuses convene at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Iowa Democrats will meet in caucuses that night as well, events largely designed to rally volunteers and support for incumbent President Barack Obama.
This will be the fourth of The Des Moines Register's pre-caucus polls. A different candidate led each previous poll: Mitt Romney in June, Herman Cain in October and Newt Gingrich in late November.
The poll of likely Republican caucusgoers is being conducted Tuesday through Friday by Ann Selzer of Selzer & Co. of Des Moines.
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How Can I Balance My Eating Habits?
Sometimes I'm not hungry for a week to 2 weeks at a time. I eat a little but
not a lot (I barely touch my food). I try to eat but I'm just not hungry. Then other
weeks I'm really hungry all the time, but I try to moderate what I eat so I don't
overeat. But other times I am right in the middle. Is this normal or healthy?
– Joss*
As long as you're maintaining a healthy weight, it's normal to have some fluctuation in appetite from day to day. Several factors contribute to whether we feel hungry or not. On active days, you might find yourself eating more than on days when you are burning fewer calories. Hormonal changes that occur during the menstrual cycle also have an effect on appetite. Stress and other strong emotions can cause some people to either eat more or less than they usually would.
If you're feeling stressed, try to find ways to relax (exercise, talk to a friend, listen to music) and make a conscious effort to watch what you eat. Choose healthy snacks, like fresh fruit and vegetables, and eat regular meals.
Sometimes, being aware of what may be behind the fluctuation in your appetite can help you stay on top of it. But if you're losing weight or gaining more weight than you should, are feeling stressed out or depressed, or are just worried about what's going on with your body, it's a good idea to see your doctor.
*Names have been changed to protect user privacy.


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BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:Greensboro Library, NC Calendar Creator METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20190701T144833 DTSTART:20191024T100000 DTEND:20191024T103000 SUMMARY:I Know My ABCs Storytime at McNairy DESCRIPTION:Parents and care givers can bring toddlers and preschoolers for simple books\, hand rhymes\, felt-board stories and fun-filled learning. \n Today's theme is the alphabet. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:
Parents and care givers can bring toddlers and preschoolers for simple books, hand rhymes, felt-board stories and fun-filled learning.\r\n
Today's theme is the alphabet.LOCATION:Glenn McNairy Branch Library\, 4860 Lake Jeanette Rd. Greensboro\, North Carolina 27455 CLASS:PUBLIC END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR


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The US Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to wade into a dispute over an Oklahoma regulation of the abortion-inducing drug RU-486.
In a brief order, the justices agreed to take up the case, and then asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court to determine whether the disputed state law bars the application of certain drugs used in chemically induced abortions.
The court said that further proceedings in the case would be reserved pending receipt of a response from the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.
The action came in an appeal filed on behalf of the Oklahoma attorney general asking the justices to reinstate an Oklahoma law regulating RU-486 abortions that was struck down by the state high court in December.
The law sought to limit chemically induced abortions to a protocol of procedures that critics said were outdated and would effectively ban the procedure.
In his brief to the court, Oklahoma Solicitor General Patrick Wyrick asked the justices to examine whether the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled correctly when it invalidated the 2011 state law that had mandated that all drug-induced abortions in the state follow a specific protocol.
Under the law, abortion providers were required to follow instructions approved by the Food and Drug Administration back in 2000 when chemically induced abortions were first approved.
The Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice challenged the law, arguing that the 2000 protocol had since become obsolete and had been replaced by newer time-tested procedures and doses that were safer, more effective, and less expensive.
The new procedures allow a woman to self-administer a second drug at home rather than in a clinic. They also extended the effective use of the chemically induced abortion process from 49 days into the pregnancy to 63 days.
Mr. Wyrick said the state legislature was justified in favoring the older protocol because eight otherwise healthy young women have died from bacterial infections following chemically induced abortions using one of the newer protocols. In contrast, he said, no women have died following use of the older protocol.
The state solicitor general said the Oklahoma law merely regulates the manner in which abortion-inducing drugs were administered and does not ban the use of those drugs.
A state court judge struck the statute down, because it was deemed to impose a substantial obstacle to a woman obtaining an abortion.
The judge concluded in part that the state law "is so completely at odds with the standard that governs the practice of medicine that it can serve no purpose other than to prevent women from obtaining abortions, and to punish and discriminate against those who do."
On appeal, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the state law was unconstitutional under the US Supreme Court's abortion precedent, Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey.
Wyrick said the state high court was wrong. "House Bill 1970 does not prohibit any type of abortion," he said in his brief to the court. "It merely requires that abortion inducing drugs be administered in the manner approved by the FDA."
Michelle Movahed, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the Oklahoma Coalition, said in her brief that the Oklahoma law goes too far in restricting access to abortions.
She said the Oklahoma legislature had enacted several laws in recent years seeking to restrict abortions in the state. The state Supreme Court has upheld some, but overturned others as too restrictive.
"The statute at issue here effectively bans all abortions performed using medication (rather than by surgery), no matter how early in the pregnancy," Ms. Movahed wrote in her brief.
"The statute's only practical consequence is to force a woman who wishes to terminate a pregnancy to undergo a surgical procedure even though a safe, effective, non-invasive, and widely used alternative is available," she said.
Movahed said the newer protocols were legal and common. She said nationwide protocols other than FDA approved protocol from 2000 are being used in at least 96 percent of chemically induced abortions.
The case is Terry Cline v. Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice (12-1094).


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Liberty's Probate packet consisted of 30 pages for the estate of Liberty Adams, who died intestate on March 14, 1867 at the age 45. He left behind his widow, Martha Anderson Adams, three children, John A. Adams, Yates A. Adams and Alletta B. Adams (last two under age14). My cousin Claire obtained the probate papers and sent them to me. Important documents were either typed or scanned, and displayed below.
Surrogate's Court.
I, Martha Adams,
Administratrix of the goods, chattels and credits of Liberty Adams late of the town of
Stafford, in the , do render the following account of my proceedings as such Administratrix for the final settlement, allowance and distribution, viz : County of Genesee
On the 29th day of March, 1867, Letters of Administration of the estate of said deceased were issued to me.
On the 10th day of April, 1867, I caused an Inventory of the personal estate of said deceased to be filed in the Surrogate's Office of said County, which personal estate therein set forth amounts by appraisement of Appraisers to the sum of $979.99.
On or about the first day of October, 1867, caused a notice to creditors to present their claims, to be published as required by law, pursuant to the order of the Surrogate. (Below are Schedules A-F.)
|"All moneys paid for funeral and other necessary expenses for said estate."
|Receipt indicating the Burial Lot number for Liberty.
"Contains the names, places of residence of all persons entitled as widow or next of kin, of the said deceased, and if any of them are minors, the ages of such minors, and the names and places of residence of their guardians, if they have guardians.
Amanuensis Monday was begun by John Newmark of the TransylvanianDutch blog. The term means, "a person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another." Many bloggers enjoy doing this because it allows them to freely copy something that has been written.


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I read the newsletter of the Brant County Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society (August 2011 issue) with great interest because it is packed full of news about the Branch.
On the front page is an article by Joan Johnson. She was a War Bride, and writes about her first few years in Brantford in "Arrival in Canada". In "A New Look at an Old Online Resource" is a review of the Archives Database, and Al Adams writes about the "Niagara District Map of Upper Canada".
On page 4 is a short article on "Additional records found in Dumfries Street Presbyterian Church, Paris ON: Baptism for 1858", in which there were names listed that were not part of the previous published article, "Brant Branch OGS #229 Dunfries Street Presbyterian Church, Paris ON Baptisms 1823-1857". Al Adams has another article on the May 2011 meeting in which he talks about Wayne Messecar, who has done research on the Messecar surnane.
If you wish to contact the Brant County, they may be reached at brantogs2bellnet.ca or you can go to http://brantcountybranchogs.ca/.


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The Campaign Against the Daily Planet
A few East Bay individuals are threatening to bankrupt the Berkeley Daily Planet unless it stops publishing criticisms of Israel's policies and actions—opinions and ideas they brand "anti-Semitic."
Some of them have been contacting the paper's advertisers, urging them to cancel their contracts. One has created a website dedicated to attacks on the paper.
The expressed goal, in the words of an April 21 e-mail from one of them to the Planet's executive editor, is to make the Daily Planet "reform, or close, or bleed money until you are forced out of business or die broke."
In today's economic climate, small businesses have enough trouble surviving and promoting their wares without threats from political partisans. And with the media climate every bit as dire, attempts to intimidate advertisers can seriously imperil an independent community newspaper's existence.
Some Daily Planet advertisers, incensed at the threats, have renewed their contracts. Others have fled, at least one prompted by the loss of paying clients.
These partisans even tar fellow Jews with the same broad brush of anti-Semitism if they criticize Israel's policies, or more specifically, the goals of the kind of hard-line Israeli militants frequently identified with the Likud party.
One of these individuals, Jim Sinkinson, has been waging a sophisticated war of letters targeting Daily Planet advertisers, complete with a form to be sent to the paper to cancel ads. He's a professional publicist, and also a director of a well-financed pro-Israel advocacy group, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME).
The backer of the anti-Planet website—and the only one who agreed to be interviewed for this story—is John Gertz, an affable and prominent member of the Berkeley Jewish community who makes his living selling all things Zorro, an inherited brand created by a long-dead writer. He describes himself as "a left-wing Zionist."
A third figure, Dan Spitzer, is more elusive. Planet advertisers report that he has been calling and visiting their businesses, urging them to drop their contracts with the newspaper. He describes himself as a journalist, yet his recent output seems to consist almost entirely of letters to the editors of newspapers, written in support of Israel and condemning those who criticize it.
What links them all is support for the hard-line policies of conservative Israeli politicians towards Palestinians and other Islamic peoples. They might be dubbed Zio-Cons, since they often connect militant ultra-Zionism with the neoconservatives who drove foreign policy during the George W. Bush administration.
(Traditionally Zionism has been a much more inclusive term and embraced a wider range of beliefs.)
Business owners who maintain their ads have reported intimidating visits and abusive calls, but the campaign has gone beyond targeting the newspaper's revenue.
The attacks focus primarily on reader submissions and one paid columnist.
One elderly reader who wrote a commentary for the Planet's opinion pages critical of Israel made a police report about a threatening message delivered to her home after the op-ed was published. The writer, still troubled about the incident, declined an interview for this article, but expressed the belief that the incident resulted from the printed submission.
Opinion policy
The Daily Planet publishes reader contributions in two formats, placed according to length. Shorter pieces run in the letters-to-the-editor column, which begins on the editorial page, while more detailed expositions appear as commentaries, which begin opposite the editorial page, where newspapers have traditionally run opinion pieces, said Becky O'Malley, the paper's executive editor and co-proprietor with her spouse, publisher Michael O'Malley.
The Daily Planet runs most submissions it receives, said the executive editor. The paper avoids printing so-called astroturf submissions, a name given by journalists to form-letters designed by organized campaigns to be submitted under local signatures.
"We look to local origin, or for submissions on subjects of local interest. Sometimes we've declared a moratorium when a subject gets played out or when the discussions boil down to reiterations sent by two small groups who've already said everything they had to say," Becky O'Malley said.
One moratorium temporarily terminated a repetitious debate over AC Transit's Bus Rapid Transit system, while another, imposed at least twice, involved Israel, she said.
The Daily Planet prints a far larger share than most papers of the letters and extended commentaries readers submit, and the paper's page count is often expanded to accommodate them. Reader opinions are not censored for content, except that personal attacks on private individuals are not published in order to avoid libel suits. Local writers are prioritized when space is tight.
The most frequent topics for discussion in the letters and commentary pages are local issues—city government, schools, transportation, development, etc.—but the paper publishes readers' views on national and international topics as well.
However, Israel-Palestine is the most frequent international topic, not counting the Iraq war. Most letters and commentaries about Israel-Palestine received from Berkeley readers are critical of Israeli policies towards Palestinians, according to Justin DeFreitas, the paper's managing editor. (See chart at left.)
The paper itself does not take a stance on Israel-Palestine, and O'Malley, in her signed editorials, has rarely mentioned the subject.
The campaign
To date, Jim Sinkinson has mailed at least two signed letters to most of the Daily Planet's advertisers, warning that customers and clients might object to their support of a paper, "one of whose main purposes seems to be the defamation of Jews and the State of Israel."
His first letter, sent March 7, begins, "I recently became aware of a shocking pattern of anti-Semitism and Israel-bashing in the Berkeley Daily Planet that you might not be aware of."
Jews, he claimed in his letter to advertisers, account for 20 percent of the city's population and 40 percent of the residents of North Berkeley. They and other customers who know the Daily Planet, Sinkinson said, "are logically justified in believing that you support its hateful views."
Sinkinson compared the newspaper to a publication that "dwells on the perceived shortcomings of African-Americans ... or a publication that praises the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan ideology."
He conveniently included in his March 7 missive a "NOTICE OF CANCELLATION" form, personally addressed to Daily Planet Executive Editor Becky O'Malley, and directing her to immediately cancel all the signer's ads.
A second letter, sent March 31, warned advertisers that "many members—likely the vast majority—of the Jewish community find the Daily Planet offensive."
While acknowledging that the paper publishes many Jewish writers, he cited Israeli politician and former Soviet dissident Nathan Sharansky's definition of anti-Semitism to buttress Sinkinson's allegation that the newspaper was guilty of that moral crime.
"It's anti-Semitic, he said, if it a) Demonizes Israel, b) Delegitimizes Israel, or c) applies Double standards to Israel," Sinkinson wrote.
One advertiser, who, like several others, asked not to be identified in print, said that she was initially frightened when a man who refused to give his name walked into her business, handed her a sheet of paper and declared, "I think it's best that you don't advertise in the Daily Planet."
Later, she said, "I thought about it, and I decided their purpose was to get us to call [the Daily Planet.] Now I think it's best just to ignore them."
Houishi Ghaderi, owner of the Vault Café in South Berkeley, said he was approached at his restaurant by an angry man calling himself "Dan Patterson," who thrust a piece of paper at Ghaderi and waved it in his face.
Apparently an unsigned section of an e-mail printout, it read in part (including grammatical errors):
Dear Berkeley Daily Planet advertisers:
You have been requested to cease advertising in this publication whose owner/editor is obsessed with demonizing Israel. Because your ads continue to appear in the paper, you are likely to lose business as about 20% of Berkeley/Rockridge residents are Jewish and most are putoff [sic] by the Daily Planet's continually [sic] attacks upon Israel.
The newsletter listed below is e-mailed to much of the East Bay's Jewish community and it will keep notifying its readers of businesses which continue to advertise in the Daily Planet.
(See sidebar, "Sanne DeWitt and the Israel Action Committee of the East Bay.")
The visitor told Ghaderi to stop advertising in the paper. "If I didn't," Ghaderi said, "he told me I'd be put on a blacklist. He told me, 'You've been warned.'"
Ghaderi said he'd been receiving similar phone calls for more than a year, demanding he stop his ads with the paper:
"They go after your family and your livelihood and make intimidating phone calls. Just because you have a First Amendment right to speak doesn't give you the right to threaten people."
A native of Tehran, Ghaderi came to Berkeley in his teens to attend the university, and after working in another restaurant for several years, opened a cafe on Shattuck Avenue before moving to his current location.
"I went to Jewish school in Tehran," he said, though he isn't Jewish himself. "Many of my customers are Jewish."
Another advertiser who has been questioned by potential customers is Matt Cantor, a home-improvement columnist for the Daily Planet and owner of Cantor Inspections, a home inspection service.
"Any claim that Becky O'Malley is anti-Semitic is ridiculous," said Cantor. "Becky may be many things, but anti-Semitic isn't one of them. And I think I can say that because I'm Jewish."
Matt Cantor cited just one submission three years ago that he himself considered clearly anti-Semitic, an Aug. 8, 2006, reader-submitted commentary that has been repeatedly cited by the paper's three critics in their attacks.
Written by an Iranian student, Kurosh Arianpour, a former East Bay resident then living in India, the essay blamed anti-Semitism on the Jews and "their racist attitude that they are the 'Chosen People.'"
"Becky published it because she believes in free speech," Cantor said.
(For more information, see sidebar, "The Arianpour Affiar, and Other Controversies.")
Bruce Caplan, a former partner in Looking Glass Photo on Telegraph Avenue, said he was contacted shortly after the publication of the Arianpour commentary, by someone who said he was Dan Spitzer, who "told me I should boycott the Planet because it was anti-Israel and anti-Semitic."
In addition to Spitzer, Caplan said he was also "put in contact with Hal Feiger," a real estate broker with Realty Advocates of Oakland, who tried to convince many of his professional colleagues to cancel their ads in the paper.
"They appealed to me, I think, partly because I have a Jewish-sounding name. But I thought that even if the paper has a political bias, that didn't matter nearly as much as the fact that it offered an opportunity for a vigorous political discussion," Caplan, who describes himself as Jewish, said.
"I am in favor of the State of Israel and its way of life," he said. "But just as there are things going on here that I might not like, so there are things happening there I might not like."
"How many community papers are there where we can have discussions like this? That's more important than any single issue.
"What bothers me is that this is censorship. You're not going to get a vigorous discussion of Berkeley and East Bay issues in the [San Francisco] Chronicle or elsewhere. If people are really concerned about what they're reading, they can write their own letters. It's an open community forum. Sometimes the opinions can be pretty obnoxious, but it's a forum, and that's what's important."
The Daily Planet responded to the threats to advertisers in a March 19 editorial.
Jim Sinkinson
Jim Sinkinson makes a comfortable living running Oakland-based Infocom Group, a PR company that uses newsletters, recordings and seminars to advise corporations and interest groups how to influence the media to convey their messages.
His connections with the media run deep, as is reflected in the list of speakers for his "Media Relations Summit 2009," a May 17-19 New York conference for the public relations industry sponsored by Infocom Group's newsletter, the Bulldog Reporter.
Among the speakers listed on the agenda for the annual event were former CBS news anchor Dan Rather, NBC News legal affairs editor Dan Abrams, two editors from the New York Times and editors from the Associated Press, Dow Jones News Service, the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Time magazine, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Family Circle, Self, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, O (the Oprah magazine), Playboy, Forbes, Fortune, Men's Journal, Men's Vogue, Details, Popular Mechanics, Crain's New York Business and Seventeen magazines, the New York Daily News, Village Voice, MarketWatch, CBS Radio, WOR-AM Radio and and WCBS-AM.
But as an advocate for militant ultra- Zionism, Sinkinson also serves as the director of Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME), a well-funded nonprofit that courts Christian fundamentalists and advertises extensively in both liberal and conservative media.
Sinkinson runs FLAME's website from his corporate offices in West Oakland.
While Sinkinson blasts the Daily Planet for having allowed an intemperate reader's opinion about Judaism to be published in the newspaper, FLAME's own website carries many extremely disparaging comments about Islam and its followers, which the organization does not disclaim.
Outrageous as it was, the Arianpour commentary had much in common with—and was, in some ways milder than—comments by FLAME's favorite fundamentalist, John Hagee, a Texas minister initially courted by John McCain in his 2008 presidential run, then spurned after bloggers revealed some of the clergyman's controversial views about Jews.
In his book Jerusalem Countdown, the Texas reverend, like Arianpour, blamed the Jews for creating anti-Semitism, according to Hagee because of their failure "to serve only the one true God, Jehovah." Their rebellion, he said, "birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come."
The same book contained Hagee's description of Hitler as a divinely dispatched "hunter" sent to drive Europe's Jews to Israel in preparation for the apocalypse and the Second Coming of Jesus. (For more on Hagee and FLAME, see sidebar, "Strange Bedfellows."
Sinkinson himself, in a March 17 e-mail to FLAME's supporters, claimed credit for blocking Charles Freeman's appointment by President Barack Obama to be head of the National Intelligence Council.
"Yes!" read the headline on the e-mail. "We were successful in ousting him!" Sinkinson told FLAME supporters. The same e-mail alerted FLAME members to "another enemy of Israel," Amnesty International.
While Sinkinson is listed as FLAME's director on the organization's website and in its e-mails, the director identified on the group's federal tax returns is Daniel Pipes. Though nothing on his own website (www.danielpipes.org) identifies his connection with FLAME, Pipes is internationally known as a harsh foe of academics critical of Israel.
In September 2003, Pipes and Martin Kramer created Campus Watch, an organization which posts online dossiers on faculty deemed hostile to U.S. and Israeli policies.
While it is Sinkinson who has taken the lead role as the public face of FLAME, it is Pipes who has been a lightning rod of criticism in Berkeley. His appearance at the UC Berkeley campus in 2004 provoked a heated national-headline-grabbing confrontation between his supporters and members of the school's Muslim Student Alliance. Sinkinson, Gertz and Spitzer quickly fired off letters attacking the protesters.
When Pipes returned to the campus last October, the event drew a smaller turnout and no protests.
In his campaign against the Daily Planet, Sinkinson employs a classic corporate PR strategy, claiming he writes as a representative of a previously unknown group, "East Bay Citizens for Journalistic Responsibility." He makes no mention of other members, nor his profession, describing himself only as a "businessman."
Sinkinson makes no mention of FLAME in his letter, but directs its recipients to a website, dpwatchdog.com.
John Gertz
The publisher of dpwatchdog.com is John Gertz, owner of Zorro Productions, named for the brand he owns. Zorro, an iconic figure of American fiction, is a Spanish Californio don whom Gertz insists is really a closeted Jew, a Marrano whose ancestors had faked conversion to Catholicism to avoid the Inquisition.
His anti-Planet website is run by a separate corporate entity owned by yet another company, John Gertz Productions, Gertz said in an interview. The operations share the same staff with his Zorro firm, which operates from offices on University Avenue in the Berkeley Marina.
Gertz has taken the most public position of the Daily Planet's critics, launching his website Feb. 23.
His goal, as expressed in an e-mail to Becky O'Malley, is that she and the paper "reform, or close, or bleed money until you are forced out of business or die broke."
While Sinkinson targets Daily Planet advertisers through the mail, Gertz uses his website, posting a list of all the paper's advertisers along with their addresses and telephone number.
He calls on supporters to contact the advertisers and offers three reasons for canceling their ads:
• The paper's "core demographic, aging radicals, is of minimal interest to potential advertisers."
• Advertisers "may not wish to be associated with a newspaper that publishes anti-Semitic canards and rabid anti-Israelism."
• Advertisers "do not wish to be associated with a newspaper whose views are so clearly harmful to business in Berkeley."
His site equates any columns and reader-submitted commentaries critical of Israel's policies with anti-Semitism.
(For more information, see sidebar, "Red Scare: Conn Hallinan.")
Gertz said he may have met Sinkinson socially and had run across FLAME ads. But now, he said, setting up a meeting with the public relations guru "is on my list."
The most civically engaged of the paper's critics, Gertz has served on many nonprofit boards, is a past president of the Berkeley East Bay Jewish Community Center, vice chair of the board of the SETI Institute, an international organization devoted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and has contributed to the political campaigns of Israel supporters in both the Democratic and Republican parties.
His biography on the SETI website says he received a bachelor's degree in comparative mythology and religion from UCLA and Prescott College and an M.A. in psychophysiology from Haifa University in Israel.
Gertz inherited Zorro from his father, Mitchell Gertz, a Hollywood talent agent who had purchased the rights to the character first created in 1919 by pulp fiction scribe and former Police Gazette reporter Johnston McCulley.
The caped masked-man caught the fancy of the public from the start, and McCulley penned a series of novels, big-screen serials (including one starring Clayton Moore, later television's legendary Lone Ranger) and feature films starring Douglas Fairbanks and Tyrone Power.
McCulley sold his rights to the character to Mitchell Gertz in 1950. Five years after Gertz licensed the character to Walt Disney in 1952, the character became the subject of a popular children's series that ran for two years on ABC.
The elder Gertz died in 1961.
His son now runs Zorro Productions, Inc., from a Berkeley office at 125 University Ave., on the Berkeley Marina, overseeing an entertainment empire that includes novels (including a Zorro prequel by Isabel Allende), films, comic books, a comic strip, plays, a video game, swords and more films—including features starring Alain Delon, Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins.
A lavish Zorro stage musical produced with Allende recently closed in London and is scheduled for an October opening in Paris at the Folies Bergère.
In addition to his role as proprietor of the Zorro empire, Gertz is one of the East Bay's most militant Zionists and, like Spitzer, a frequent writer of letters and placer of phone calls to local newspapers whenever he perceives coverage he construes as inimical to Israel.
Gertz's passion even carries over into his perception of the character he inherited from his father. During the July 5, 1999, Oakland premier of the feature film The Mask of Zorro, he told an intern for J, the Jewish news weekly, that the fictional Spaniard created by a writer with a distinctively Scots-Irish name was in fact secretly not a Catholic.
"It's quite obvious Zorro is very Jewish," Gertz told Joshua Schuster.
"His family has escaped to the far reaches of the Spanish empire in California. He is interested in matters of justice. He has a hidden identity. He is clearly a Marrano. He is definitely Jewish and ready to come out of the closet at our premiere."
Marranos were Jews who had ostensibly converted to Christianity to save themselves from persecution.
And just as Gertz is able to find hidden Jews in a pulp fiction work by a Canadian-born writer, he's also able to find anti-Semitism in an equally peculiar place, the writings of Jews who send their commentaries and letters to the Berkeley Daily Planet.
He contends that only religiously observant Jews should have any say about Israel.
In an interview at his office, Gertz said he would like to see a crucial change in the law that grants automatic Israeli citizenship to seculars with Jewish mothers.
Gertz described the Planet as "a font of anti-Semitism," with criticism of Israel serving as a stand-in for the more traditional forms of anti-Jewish prejudice. Once he realized that, he said, "I began to realize the Daily Planet has serious other deficiencies and malfeasances."
Gertz, who said he has never read a book about the Nazi Holocaust, said he hadn't even considered that anti-Semitism existed in California until he read the Daily Planet. Soon the paper had become one of "the three pillars of sin in Berkeley," Gertz said, along with the city's Peace and Justice Commission and KPFA radio.
During the interview, Gertz repeatedly accused Becky O'Malley of publishing "hate speech," all of it directed, until recently, at Israel.
"Until recently, hate speech was only applied to Jews and Israel," but not "gays, blacks and Muslims. Only recently has it been directed against another group, against police officers."
Two advertisers said anonymous callers also told them that the newspaper "advocates the murder of Oakland police officers."
A search of the paper's archives finds no call for killing police in Oakland or anywhere else, though one recent reader submission did express the opinion that many black and brown residents didn't mourn the killing of four Oakland officers because of their long, troubled relationship with the police. (For more information, see sidebar, "'Kill the Cops, Kill the Jews,' and Other Fabricated Quotes.")
Gertz said he has been working with Dan Spitzer, whom he called "a fantastic source of information on the radical left. He used to move in that crowd until he went from the radical left to the reasonable far left. He's my go-to guy when it comes to figuring out who someone is. I really don't believe he would lie to me. I've never found him to be dishonest."
But Spitzer is, he concedes, "an angry guy."
In an e-mail sent to Becky O'Malley before launching his website, Gertz asked O'Malley to review his material (she declined) "before we launch our PR and marketing campaign, which we believe will largely increase our readership."
Gertz said that while he hopes the Daily Planet reforms, it's something he sees as only a remote chance as long as Becky O'Malley heads the paper.
But there's another possibility on the horizon, he said. A wealthy member of Berkeley's Jewish community is talking about starting an online-only news source. Just who, Gertz wouldn't say.
Dan Spitzer
Dan Spitzer (or as he also signs his letters to editors, "Daniel Spitzer," "Daniel C. Spitzer," and "Daniel C. Spitzer, Ph.D.") is the most enigmatic of the Daily Planet's critics.
Though he describes himself as a journalist, the only works that show up under his name on Internet searches are a series of travel books, none of recent vintage—though many articles published in magazines and newspapers before the launch of the Internet are not listed in online databases.
Spitzer's recent output seems to consist almost entirely of letters to the editors of newspapers written in support of Israel and condemning those who criticize it.
(To be fair, Spitzer also wrote other letters —at least one critical of a baseball player and another urging that the government give mandatory contraceptive shots to all teenage schoolgirls to "relieve taxpayers from the expense of supporting their children." Both were published in the San Francisco Chronicle.)
A search of the Amazon.com and Alibris websites reveals that he has written travel books, but none recently and the earliest in the 1970s. Most appear to be out of print.
Spitzer has also written that he had taught journalism at two Bay Area community colleges.
In answer to an East Bay Express reader's challenge to his journalism credentials, Spitzer replied by saying "it's been a while since I've written pieces." He said that "in my later years" he has written or coauthored nine travel books, explaining his e-mail handle "danguide."
But like Sinkinson and Gertz, Spitzer is quick to pounce on anything appearing in print that criticizes Israeli policies, especially those submissions concerning violence towards Palestinians and other Middle Eastern nations.
Spitzer's letters are frequently sharp ad hominem attacks, often scurrilous, O'Malley said, leading her to ban him from the editorial pages.
In one missive to the Daily Planet's executive editor, he called the publication "a very bad joke ... a tiring succession of anti-development and anti-Semitic editorials, op-eds and letters from your Stalinist, Jewish hating pals." O'Malley herself, he wrote, "is as dumb as the proverbial post."
His attacks go further, much further than his claim that she is "an anti-Semitic bigot."
Consider the following, contained in an e-mail of May 18, 2007, which begins with the salutation "Becky Bumpkin." From there it rapidly descends into a final crescendo of vituperation:
"Having seen you, I won't say 'fat' does your corpulence justice. If you ever ran a centerfold spread of yourself in the BDP (now that's truly a disgusting thought) it would surely spread over the paper's pages.
"BTW, I saw you swimming in the Delta the other day. It will surprise no one that you are, par usual, 'lost.' And I must say that your spout is truly prodigious."
That reference was one of several where insults to her person are intermixed with his references to the Daily Planet, which he described in another missive sent last month as "such a bigoted, moronically biased piece of ass-wipe paper."
Not content with writing, Spitzer has called O'Malley repeatedly, leaving mocking messages which she has played back for the paper's staff.
Spitzer refused to be interviewed for this story. (See sidebar, "Two Refusals.")
Spitzer has taken a leading role in calling the newspaper's advertisers, one of whom said she had been "terrified by the call," though she eventually decided to continue placing her organization's advertisements in the paper.
Spitzer has left little by way of a recent paper trail in the public record, save for a 2004 Chapter 7 bankruptcy action filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
Berkeley activist Art Goldberg said he knew Spitzer for several years, ending about nine years ago.
"He seemed like a guy who didn't have much to do," Goldberg said. "We used to go to ball games together, and he'd get very worked up about whatever it was that he was talking about."
Goldberg, who grew up in New York in a Jewish family, said he had little sympathy for the critics. "To me, it's a free speech issue, intimidation by people who put a foreign government's line ahead of what's best for the U.S.," he said.
The irony, he said, is that "you'll find articles in Haaretz , an Israeli paper, that if you published them in the Daily Planet, these guys would go through the roof."
No end in sight
The O'Malleys' goal for the Daily Planet has always been to merely break even. They haven't yet, and the economy isn't helping; many other newspapers are suffering these days. And though the current advertising boycott isn't much help either, the O'Malleys say it hasn't had much effect, if any. In fact, revenue has increased slightly since the campaign against the paper began.
One of the paper's most faithful advertisers, real estate broker Gloria Polanski, said she will continue to support the publication.
Polanski said she had met only one of the paper's critics, John Gertz, when he screened a 1998 premiere of his first Zorro film at a Jack London Square benefit for Jewish charities, including Jewish Family and Children's Services of the East Bay. "I served on the committee," Polanski said, and in that capacity met Gertz and his wife.
"They seemed very nice," she said.
She hasn't met Spitzer or Sinkinson, though she did receive Sinkinson's letters.
Polanski said she will continue to support the newspaper, "because we need it for the local news. It's so useful to the community. There is no one else who is covering the City Council, the Planning Commission and other civic bodies.
"We need it for its investigations of local developers, local ordinances and other institutions. It's an important watchdog for local politics, and an important public service. That's why I support it," she said.
That said, however, Polanski added, "While there should be an open forum for free speech, maybe it's time for a moratorium on the Middle East."
The Arianpour Affair and Other Controversies


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Author: +S.I. Hayes
Publisher: Entice for Booktrope
Cover Design: S.I. Hayes and Ashley Byland
Edited by: Leticia Sidon
Presented By: Dreams and Screams Bookaholics
I will read the first 131 p.of any FICTION work, finished or not, and give a review of the story so far. All this I will do for free. Yes, you read that correctly, FREE. Now do not jump the gun and start slamming me with e-mails. I REPEAT! PLEASE DO NOT JUMP THE GUN AND SLAM ME WITH E-MAIL ATTACHMENTS!I Have Rules. Click Rules now,please.
The In Dreams... Series, The Roads Trilogy, is the accumulation of almost eight years of writing. Begun in 2006 after a D&D campaign
ended S.I.Hayes took the world and created the Unavoidable Road. It took five years as
Shannon spent many months at a time in an undiagnosed Bi-Polar fog.
In 2010, she finally found the help she needed and she has been writing feverishly ever since
The first book wast over 130,000 words, so she decided that it needed to be smaller if only tonot scare readers away form an unknown book that was so thick.
Thus the first trilogy was born.
In between she became the CoAuthor to Awakenings: The Wrath Saga, a Paranormal Drama likened to Big Brother Meets The Real World, of the Preternatural, Several blogs and her own website. S.I.Hayes.com.


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Arthurian Legend Baby Names Meaning:
The name Aballach is an Arthurian Legend Baby Names baby name. In Arthurian Legend Baby Names the meaning of the name Aballach is: Father of Modron.
expression Number: 22
People with this name tend to be a powerful force to all whose lives they touch. They are capable, charismatic leaders who often undertake large endeavors with great success. They value truth, justice, and discipline, and may be quick-tempered with those who do not. If they fail to develop their potential, they may become impractical and rigid.
SoulUrge Number: 3
People with this name have a deep inner desire to create and express themselves, often in public speaking, acting, writing or singing. They also yearn to have beauty around them in their home and work environment.


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Dallas Field Division
Welcome to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Dallas Field Division. Our Division is responsible for ATF criminal enforcement and industry regulatory activities in the Northern half of Texas (Tyler to El Paso), as well as the State of Oklahoma. Our dedicated work force is comprised of special agents, investigators, explosive enforcement officers, canine handlers, auditors, technicians, legal counsel and support staff. Read more about the Dallas Field Division.
Management Team
Jeffrey C. Boshek II
Special Agent in Charge (SAC)
Augustine Lugo
Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC)
Craig W. Saier
Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC)
John E. Wester
Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC)
Krissy Y. Carlson
Director of Industry Operations (DIO)
Meredith K. Davis
Public Information Officer (PIO)
Text the code ATFDAL to 63975 and then follow the link to create a report.
Division Contact Information
1114 Commerce Street, Room 303
Dallas, Texas 75242
Voice: (469) 227-4300
Fax: (469) 227-4302
General: email@example.com
Recruiting/Internship: email@example.com


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The Mail Services Department is responsible for providing the most efficient and economical receipt, sorting and delivery of interoffice and U.S. Postal Service mail while providing the most courteous Mail Service possible to our customers. Best practices are implemented by adhering to U.S. Postal service regulations and guidelines while utilizing a customer focused work team with incremental improvement as a continuous goal.
Mail Services supports UTMB's Clinical, Research, Academic and Business entities. Our primary services are: receipt and delivery of USPS mail, pickup and delivery of campus mail, processing of outbound First Class and Non Profit bulk mailings, distribution of accountable mail and packages, postal box rentals, forwarding service for box holders. In addition we offer assistance with mail piece design ensuring compliance with postal regulations, mail automation for production mail to include folding and insertion of mail into envelopes along with postage metering.
Learn More
Contact us by phone at 409.747.3260
Business Hours
Mail Center
M-F 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Mail Automation
M-F 7:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m.
Holiday Hours
Mail Operations observes the Clinical Enterprise Holiday schedule
Rebecca Sealy Hospital
301 University Blvd
2nd Floor, Room 2.802
Galveston, Texas


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Thursday, December 31, 2015
Uriel Valentin
Franz Kafka
Iron Maiden's mascot, Eddie
Iron Maiden founder and bass player, Steve Harris
Elliott Smith
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Machete, as played by Danny Trejo in the 2010 film, Machete
Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver)
Alex from the 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange as played by Malcolm McDowell
Clint Eastwood as "Dirty Harry"
Fashion designer Jeremy Scott
Kurt Cobain
French musical duo, Air (Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel)
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and his little plush wall
The perpetually shirtless Iggy Pop
"Bub" the zombie from the 1985 film, Day of the Dead
Oscar Wilde
The members of Dinosaur Jr. (L to R: J Mascis, Emmett Jefferson "Murph" Murphy III, and Lou Barlow)
Mr T. from The A-Team)
George Harrison
Frank Sinatra
German electro pioneers Atari Teenage Riot
Jim Jarmusch
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford from the 1962 film, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Hedwig as played by actor James Cameron Mitchell from Hedwig and the Angry Inch)
Elvis Costello
Patti Smith
Daniel Johnston
Charlotte Gainsbourg
David Lynch
The unforgettable bikini girl from Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker" video.
Yoko Ono
Margot Tenenbaum
PJ Harvey
Kurt Vonnegut
Director George Romero
A Baseball Fury from the 1979 film, The Warriors
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As if the disaster of RoundUp resistant superweeds sweeping our farmland weren't enough, Monsanto is now preparing to launch an even greater disaster: a new soybean engineered to be resistant to the older, more toxic weedkiller, dicamba. The seed — which Monsanto plans to market in 2014 if approved — will also come stacked with the company's RoundUp Ready gene, and is designed to be used with Monsanto's proprietary herbicide "premix" of dicamba and glyphosate.
More dicamba-tolerant crops (corn, cotton, canola) are all waiting in the wings. If this new generation of GE crops is approved, then dicamba use will surge, just as it did with RoundUp. And we all know how well that didn't work out.
To the giant pesticide company, this chemical arms race is all part of the plan.
If you're thinking that pouring more chemicals onto already devastated farmland sounds a bit like pouring gasoline on a fire, I'd have to agree with you. So do some hefty farm businesses, as it turns out.
Farm business rejects Monsanto's answer
The Big 6 pesticide companies' pipeline of new herbicide-tolerant crops poses a serious risk to farmers' livelihood and rural economies. Weedkillers like dicamba and 2,4-D drift far and can easily destroy other farmers' crops of tomatoes, grapes, beans, cotton, non-GE soy — just about any broadleaf plant. That's why farmers and some large ag companies are getting worried. As Steve Smith, Director of Agriculture for Red Gold, the largest canned tomato processor in the United States, testified before Congress in 2010:
I am convinced that in all of my years serving the agriculture industry, the widespread use of dicamba herbicide [poses] the single most serious threat to the future of the specialty crop industry in the Midwest.
Smith warns of the damaging surge in dicamba use that would accompany introduction of dicamba-tolerant GE crops — both over more acreage and throughout the season. He predicts widespread crop damage, harm to non-target plants that would result from spray and volatilization drift, and financial loss — not only to growers but also to processing companies like his that would suffer major supply disruption, even conflicts erupting between neighbors eroding the social fabric of rural community life. His testimony concluded:
The introduction of dicamba tolerant soybeans is a classic case of short-sighted enthusiasm over a new technology, blinding us to the reality that is sure to come. Increased dicamba usage, made possible through the introduction of dicamba tolerant soybeans, is poor public policy and should not be allowed.
We can choose to get off the pesticide treadmill
The widespread use of dicamba is incompatible with Midwest agriculture. — Steve Smith, Director of Agriculture, Indiana-based tomato processing company Red Gold
We've just witnessed an incredible victory with the removal of the infamous cancer-causing pesticide methyl iodide from the entire U.S. marketplace. So we know that we can win. And we know that the threat that pesticides pose to farm sustainability, our water and air quality, our communities' and our children's health can be blocked. But we have to be dedicated and smart.
Right now, companies like Monsanto, BASF and Dow are planning to drive up their pesticide sales by introducing a new generation of herbicide-tolerant crops, designed to be used with their proprietary weedkillers. The test case before us —the first of this new generation up for review and currently awaiting USDA approval — is Dow's 2,4-D GE corn ("a very bad idea" as my colleague Margaret Reeves explains). The most effective thing we can do to protect farmers and consumers from dicamba-tolerant crops is to shut down the pipeline of herbicide-tolerant crops — beginning with 2,4-D-resistant corn.
Take Action » Tell USDA that we want off the GE-pesticide treadmill! This dangerous and antiquated herbicide shouldn't be on the market, and we certainly should not be giving Dow license to profit from driving up use. Sign our petition to USDA.
Monsanto is a corporation with deep pockets and friends in places of
power. This coporation is a nemesis we must must fight. We have the right
to healthy, nourishing food.. No corporation or politician should tell us what we
can or cannot eat!
Couldn't agree with you more! Thanks for telling it like it is. I'd add: neither should any corporation be able to dictate to farmers how to manage their farms (as Monsanto essentially does).
Or dictate to gardeners how and why we plant! We've seen reports of Monsanto-owned Seminis vegetable seed packets - such as those widely available in home garden stores - that have fine print on the back (basically a tech agreement) stating that once you open the package, you are forbidden to save that seed or use any of the material for research or for any purpose not specifically allowed by Seminis (i.e. Monsanto). This is what corn/soy/cotton farmers have been dealing with all these years; now Monsanto/Seminis appears ready to go after every home gardener for "patent infringement" as well.
Organic Seed Alliance has copies of the seed packets here: http://blog.seedalliance.org/2010/03/16/organic-vegetable-farmers-warning-you-may-be-engaging-in-contract-agreements-with-monsanto/
If the gardeners out there want to maintain the age-old practice and right of saving and exchanging seed freely, and if you want to AVOID buying Monsanto/Seminis vegetables, here are two links with a list of Seminis Varieties:
1) The Seminis Professional Growers Product page: http://us.seminis.com/products/products.asp
2) The Seminis Home Gardener Product Page: http://us.seminis.com/products/hg_products.asp


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Alex Rodriguez to play for Yankees while he appeals impending MLB suspension
Alex Rodriguez is expected to play for the New York Yankees on Monday despite Major League Baseball's plans to suspend him for more than 200 games earlier in the day, the first joust in what could be a long, drawn-out battle over the beleaguered star's future in the sport, sources told Yahoo! Sports on Sunday night.
Rodriguez plans on appealing MLB's suspension through the 2014 season for his role in the Biogenesis scandal, allowing him to play immediately. After long discussions to suspend Rodriguez using the collective-bargaining agreement, which would have kept the 38-year-old off the field immediately, MLB late Sunday was leaning toward using the joint drug agreement, which permits a stay of the suspension pending appeal. While commissioner Bud Selig would prefer to keep Rodriguez off the field, his use of the CBA as the primary reason could be seen as running afoul of the intentions of the JDA and thus is unlikely to be used.
Rodriguez flew to Chicago on Sunday prepared to play his first game since offseason hip surgery, and Yankees manager Joe Girardi said he expected him in the lineup against the White Sox on Monday night despite the expected 214-game penalty, which would be the longest non-lifetime suspension in baseball history.
MLB will announce Rodriguez's suspension, along with about a dozen others, on Monday afternoon. The MLB Players Association has yet to send plea agreements from most of the players expected to take penalties of 50 games for receiving performance-enhancing drugs from Biogenesis, the south Florida wellness clinic that allegedly served as a doping nerve center for Rodriguez, suspended Milwaukee Brewers star Ryan Braun and other major league starters, including Texas outfielder Nelson Cruz, Detroit shortstop Jhonny Peralta and San Diego shortstop Everth Cabrera.
Despite evidence from Biogenesis owner Anthony Bosch that shows Rodriguez used PEDs consistently over a three-year period, the highest-paid player in American sports refused to strike a deal with MLB, choosing instead to get his suspension overturned or reduced via arbitration. During negotiations, Rodriguez asked to be treated as a first-time offender, which under baseball's drug agreement equals a 50-game suspension. Because MLB gathered evidence of Rodriguez tampering with its investigation into Biogenesis, the league pursued far more severe discipline, arguing that because Rodriguez's violations were non-analytical positives – none of his urine tests triggered positives – they were not subject to typical discipline.
[Related: Alex Rodriguez only concerned about getting his money]
It sets up a fascinating dynamic in which the league could again face an arbitration case against lawyer David Cornwell, who is representing Rodriguez. He was the lead attorney for Braun's case after a test found synthetic testosterone in his urine. The arbitrator, Shyam Das, threw out a 50-game suspension because of chain-of-custody issues in the handling of Braun's sample.
The negotiations between Rodriguez's camp and the league broke down Saturday when MLB refused to meet with Rodriguez a day after he referred obliquely to "people [who] are finding creative ways to cancel [my] contract." According to sources, Rodriguez's camp contacted the players' union Saturday morning in the hopes it could arrange a meeting with MLB officials. Rodriguez's people, according to the same sources, also sought to meet directly with Yankees officials, possibly in an effort to strike a financial settlement.
MLB apparently told the union the time for negotiation had passed and that the league intended to announce discipline for a dozen players on Monday, including some whose names have not been made public.
If the suspension is upheld through arbitration – sources expect the case to be heard sometime within the next month – Rodriguez would lose more than $30 million of the $95 million due him through 2017. Were new arbitrator Frederic Horowitz to uphold the full 214-game penalty, sources said, Rodriguez's penalty would extend into 2015 and lead up to his 40th birthday.
Rodriguez had met previously with MLB investigators and, according to a source, refused to answer their questions. On Friday night in Trenton, where he is rehabbing a quadriceps injury, Rodriguez hit a long home run and then implied he would not give up the fight against MLB or the Yankees. He appeared most concerned with saving as much of his contract as he could, against what he seems to believe is an effort by the Yankees to be rid of him and the largest deal in team sports history.
"I think that's the pink elephant in the room," Rodriguez told reporters in Trenton. "I think we all agree that we want to get rid of PEDs. That's a must. I think all the players feel that way. But when all the stuff is going on in the background and people are finding creative ways to cancel your contract, I think that's concerning for me. It's concerning for present [players] and it should be concerning for future players as well. There is a process. … I'm going to keep fighting."
Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Two Rockies minor leaguers charged with rape
• Must watch: J.B. Shuck's unreal home run theft
• Melky Cabrera on disabled list with 'severe embarrassment'
• Royals haven't lost in the 'Prince George' era


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Joseph Linus "Joe" Barton (born September 15, 1949) is a Republican politician, representing Texas's 6th congressional district (map) in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1985, and a member of the Tea Party Caucus. The district includes Arlington, part of Fort Worth and several rural areas south of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. During a Congressional hearing, Barton apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the White House's investigation of the Gulf oil spill, calling it a "shakedown", which promptly raised controversy.
Barton was born in Waco, Texas, the son of Bess Wynell (née Buice) and Larry Linus Barton. He graduated from Waco High School. He attended Texas A&M University in College Station on a Gifford-Hill Opportunity Award scholarship and received a B.S. in industrial engineering in 1972. An M.Sc. in industrial administration from Purdue University followed in 1973. Following college Barton entered private industry until 1981 when he became a White House Fellow and served under United States Secretary of Energy James B. Edwards. Later, he began consulting for Atlantic Richfield Oil and Gas Co. before being elected to the United States Congress in 1984.
Barton made his first run for elected office in 1984, when he entered the Republican primary for Texas's 6th congressional district after six-term incumbent Phil Gramm left his seat to run for the United States Senate that year. He finished first in the five-candidate field and defeated Max Hoyt in the runoff. He then defeated the Democratic nominee, former state representative Dan Kubiak, in the general election with 56 percent of the vote. He was one of six freshmen Republican congressmen elected from Texas in 1984 known as the Texas Six Pack. He was held to 55.8 percent of the vote in 1986 against Democrat Pete Geren (who would later be elected to Congress from a neighboring district), but hasn't faced another contest nearly that close, usually winning with over 60 percent of the vote. The Democrats didn't even put up a challenger in 1998 or 2000.


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Privacy Policy
SANUS ("SANUS") recognizes and respects the privacy of our online visitors, so we provide you with this Privacy Policy to inform you of our online information practices and the choices available regarding the collection and use of your information. This Privacy Policy applies to all information collected off the www.sanus.com website. SANUS values the trust its customers place in the company. Accordingly, SANUS adheres to the highest ethical standards in gathering, using, and safeguarding customer information that is entrusted to the company.
Website Visitors
Our web server automatically recognizes and stores the visitor's IP address (the Internet address of visitor's computer) of each visitor browsing our website to determine which areas of our site are being visited and the amount of time each visitor has spent there. This information helps us to understand visitors' traffic patterns through our website so that we can enhance the overall usability of our website. Your computer provides this information automatically each time you log on, unless you have activated blocking technology available in some browsers. While we do not generally require that you provide us with individually identifiable information in order to visit and use our website, at times we may ask you to provide us with personal information such as your E-mail address, name, mailing address, telephone number, credit card number, demographic information, or persistent identifier (such as user name and password), which is associated with individually identifiable information to enable you to make a purchase, register a product, correspond with SANUS, enter a sweepstakes, participate in an online survey, subscribe to a mailing list or newsletter, or register for special purchase discounts. If you choose not to provide an identifier for those activities, you may not be able to participate in them.
Personal Information
The information you provide will be kept confidential and used to support your customer relationship with SANUS. Among other things, SANUS wants to use this data to accommodate your experience on our website. Unless you instruct us otherwise, we will send you information about our various product upgrades, special offers, and other new products and services from SANUS that we feel may be of interest to you. Only SANUS (or agents working on behalf of SANUS and under confidentiality agreements) will send you these direct mailings. If you do not want to receive such mailings, see the Opt-Out procedures below.
SANUS will not share your personal information with any outside organization for its use in marketing or solicitation without your consent. Your information may be shared with agents, contractors or distributors of SANUS for the purposes of selling our products or performing our services. For instance, if SANUS needs to ship something to you, they may share your name and address with a shipping company. SANUS provides third party agents with the minimum amount of information needed to complete the requested service or transaction.
SANUS protects the personal information you share with it. At SANUS, access to your personal information is limited to persons who need the information for completion of a requested service or transaction. In addition, it is SANUS's policy to maintain the integrity of any personal information within its possession. To prevent security breaches, SANUS collects and stores all personal information in a separate location from this website, with no connection to the Internet or any other network. You can make changes to your personal information by e-mailing your changes to email@example.com.
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SANUS will NOT knowingly collect online contact information from children under the age of 16. If SANUS learns that we have personal information on a child under the age of 16, we will delete that information from our systems.
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Last update: 11/6/2003.
For any questions or comments regarding SANUS' Privacy Policy or website, please contact us.


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With energy cost concerns on everyone's mind, CATA will join other public transportation systems nationwide to encourage area residents to participate in the ninth annual Dump the Pump Day on Thursday, June 19. Sponsored by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), Dump the Pump Day is an event that encourages people to ride public transportation to help conserve gasoline and to explore alternative, more cost-efficient transportation options.
To enjoy the cost savings and the many other benefits public transportation provides, on Thursday, June 19, leave your car at home, invite a friend or co-worker to join you, climb aboard, and join CATA in participating in national Dump the Pump Day!
For statistics, transportation news, and web-based transit and carbon savings calculators, visit www.publictransportation.org. For more information on the free rides available on Dump the Pump Day or to learn more about CATA's transportation options and how they can save you money on your commute, please call (814) 238-CATA(2282) or visit the CATA website at www.catabus.com.