But the reality is wall street is who? on page 36 and 37 it gives you a really big hint. boomers. every single one. old, rich, and careless. why careless. they sold generations in to bondage and economic slavery. i work very very hard to make a buck. or not to. now that 1 trillion dollars of our tax money is going to bail out the fuckers who got us here. and it rests on the shoulders of one man. he has more power than the president. sec. of treasury henry paulson.

unfucking believable. don’t presume my expletives are a display of my inability to express my anguish. they are not. but haven’t we heard it before.

mccain a 26 year dc republican insider. obama an inexperienced senator in the machine. AARP ALONE spent 90million lobbying congress. how much did lehman brothers spend or the NYSE?

very little regulation. and just when we needed him, spitzer a younger boomer does the stupid. what an upper class overeducated self righteous idiot!

it’s like jesus spitting on the cross, or ghandi masturbating in public. tough words kids. tough times.

you have no idea. these are the good times. i took a phone call today from a sales group in asia today. 8 dollars an hour. 8 an hour. that’s mcdonalds pay for hard fought white collar sales exec work.

2.2million pounds of fish are used to create 800k pounds of farm raised salmon. Al queda bombed the Yemin USA embassy. glaciers are melting.

new oil rigs are dropping in the gulf of texas as hurricane ike creates 60 billion in oil industry related damages. ON THE COAST. not to mention the delays in 10 gallon limits and gas at 4.19!

kids you are asleep. fucking asleep. again tough words. sure the American Association of Young People can pander to the soft middle and fester inaction, but unless someone is held responsible ie the ruling class of aging baby boomers you will be strapped with their excess, their degeneration, and fiscal depravity and ignorance for 50 years and wake up asking your foreign landlords how they like their cappacino.

you have been sold into bondage and slavery. 10 Trillion dollars worth.

the good news. there are examples of young mavericks like TerraCycle and myspace founders who turn convention on it’s head and rather than running out, redeploying kindness and social equity into America’s infrastructure, tomorrow’s young leaders.

Never before has a generation been given the tools to exercise American rights. You truly can leverage your brain power to earn more, see farther, and multiply your efforts toward affecting positive social change.

OIL IS OVER. let boomers have the oil industry. they’ll need it for their artificial hearts. focus on smaller community based prosperity initiatives where enough is enough. give me neither poverty nor riches. ask amy winehouse what money has done for her?

Greed IS GONE. aston martins are hot. diamonds are sexy. or so were told. but so are rose gardens. unfortunately, 63% of you will end up divorced splitting those diamonds and 401ks in half. if you know that now, you won’t rush to buy them and feed the greed machine.

VOTE for ISSUES not presidents. politics happens in the grass. USA presidential politics are a function of global economics and celebrity. focus on the house of representatives. the NC pig farmer that avoided building appropriate waste containment barriers to afford another house in some foreign country to avoid paying taxes who takes his alma matter buddies out for pheasant hunting to ensure their victory in the elections and his not having to do a damn fucking thing about the 400 million in clean up in pig shit in NC rivers.

Young Americans should be PISSED. You are getting spit in the face, kicked in the nuts, and taking it with ears stuffed with white bulbs blasing TRL and Pandora. (just like Bradbury predicted in F451.

Come on kids. Get up. Awake. Swarm. Imagine a New World. A world run by intelligence and sophistication, by design and longetivity minded purpose. Not by Starbucks fueled industry funded politics.

Young Americans you spend over 1 Trillion dollars a year. They will listen to you. First the corporations, then the politicians. one dollar at a time. First get the money, then get the power, then get the change.

Together,

Matt

I just sent this to a couple of my friends and wanting to blog it as well. I just watched the video of the much-talked about Gates speech on Creative Capitalism on Friday at Davos. For me, it was one of the most inspiring and influential speeches I have ever heard. Though Gates is not the best speaker in the world, his message is right on. The WSJ article on the speech is here and the video of the speech is here.

I especially enjoyed the Adam Smith quote Gates references:

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”

Here’s an excerpt from the speech transcript:

In many crucial areas, the world is getting better.

These improvements have been triggered by advances in science, technology, and medicine. They have brought us to a high point in human welfare. We’re really just at the becoming of this technology-driven revolution in what people can do for one another. In the coming decades, we’ll have astonishing new abilities: better software, better diagnosis for illness, better cures, better education, better opportunities and more brilliant minds coming up with ideas that solve tough problems.

This is how I see the world, and it should make one thing clear: I am an optimist.

But I am an impatient optimist. The world is getting better, but it’s not getting better fast enough, and it’s not getting better for everyone.

The great advances in the world have often aggravated the inequities in the world. The least needy see the most improvement, and the most needy get the least — in particular the billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.

There are roughly a billion people in the world who don’t get enough food, who don’t have clean drinking water, who don’t have electricity, the things that we take for granted.

Diseases like malaria that kill over a million people a year get far less attention than drugs to help with baldness.

So, the bottom billion misses the benefits of the global economy, and yet they’ll suffer from the negative effects of economic growth they missed out on. Climate change will have the biggest effect on people who have done the least to cause it.

Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their need? Well, market incentives make that happen.

In a system of capitalism, as people’s wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero. We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

The genius of capitalism lies in its ability to make self-interest serve the wider interest. The potential of a big financial return for innovation unleashes a broad set of talented people in pursuit of many different discoveries. This system, driven by self-interest, is responsible for the incredible innovations that have improved so many lives.

But to harness this power so it benefits everyone, we need to refine the system.

As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way, but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can’t pay. But to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.

Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives of those who don’t fully benefit from today’s market forces. For sustainability we need to use profit incentives wherever we can. At the same time, profits are not always possible when business tries to serve the very poor. In such cases there needs to be another incentive, and that incentive is recognition. Recognition enhances a company’s reputation and appeals to customers; above all, it attracts good people to an organization. As such, recognition triggers a market-based reward for good behavior. In markets where profits are not possible, recognition is a proxy; where profits are possible, recognition is an added incentive.

This week’s Economist had a section on corporate responsibility, and it put the problem very nicely. It said it’s the interaction between a company’s principles and its commercial competence that shape the kind of business it will be.

The challenge here is to design a system where market incentives, including profits and recognition, drive those principles to do more for the poor.

I like to call this idea creative capitalism, an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world’s inequities.

Some people might object to this kind of market-based social change, arguing that if we combine sentiment with self-interest, we will not expand the reach of the market, but reduce it. Yet Adam Smith, the very father of capitalism and the author of “Wealth of Nations,” who believed strongly in the value of self-interest for society, opened his first book with the following lines:

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”

“Calling for the unification of retirees, “50+” is an uplifting and inspirational rallying cry for Americans age 50 and over by the head of the AARP. Abridged. 4 CDs.
 
Annotation:
In this call to arms to a key American demographic, Bill Novelli, who is the CEO of the AARP, states that the over-50 generation is well-positioned to significantly change the social fabric of a troubled American society. The aging Boomers represent a substantial voting bloc, and they have the energy and smarts to make a difference in things like health care, political reform, consumer action, community involvement, and change in general. Novelli tells the Boomers to defer those couches and clickers, crank it up, and kick out the jams!”

sure you gave us a lot of good things, like the LCD, birth control, the 60s but um didn’t the greatest generation and their boomer kids INVENT america. gave us clogged superhighways, modern education, modern social security, modern taxes, modern inflation, modern oil prices, modern “diplomacy”, the rust belt, polluted seas, melting ice caps, and barely passable air quality, lead in toys, processed cheese, nuclear weapons, and more.  

no thanks bill. you guys had your turn! there should be a book entitled under 50, how not to let 50+ keep the reigns.

move over bill.

Miss Teen South Carolina was asked a particularly daunting question on The Today Show. When she realized that the segment wasn’t going well, she did what anyone would do. She asked for a do-over:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DEBNMhziqc]

but anya’s dectractors are not entirely off base in the huffington post comments. young americans can’t blame absentee parents or market conditions are lack of public education or rich geezers but themselves. as thomas friedman said we are the quiet generation, going about engagement on our own. connected only socially and barely civicly in these weak covalent bonds that do nothing but the occasional 4 year all time voter turn out! slap slap slap.

let’s engage fiscally! like a costco or home shopping network that says hey folks we have 11m members, is that the best you can sell an ipod for? a car? a house? health insurance? 4 year degree? cuz if it is we’re taking our young ass to your competitor and they’ll get a focused piece of 3 trillion in annual spending while you get the unconnected left overs. those companies don’t mind discounting or throwing cash at us cuz they make it up in volume!

why don’t we all get together and pool our financial spending power and ask the cute little store owner in upsate newyork for a 10-20% discount b/c we belong to the American Association of Young People. and we’ll tell other American Association of Young People members about her little shop and that will mean 11m American Association of Young People members know that when they are in upstate new york to stretch their mental and physical limits rock climbing they’ll get a discount at the little deli (which we should always buy local and according to doug on weeds avoid completely nasty chain restaurants!) now how about the little hotel or chain anya spent the night or weekend? 20% off anyone. westin, hampton, choice, marriott they give other groups discounts, why not us?

so while we are budgeting, riding bikes, getting hand crank radios b/c evidently the rice was too expensive and we can’t pay the electric bill to charge our thinnovation apple air laptops to charge our ipods we need to aggregate. like a buyer at costco, or walmart or sam’s club and say hey nation of manufacturers, grocery stores, cinemas, clothing stores, gas companies give us a &^$&^%**()_&)(_T(*(* break or we are taking our 3 trillion in annual spending to other shareholders!!!

they’ll get it. then you’ll get it. deeper savings, your “young buck” strecthed farther. do you need it. um hell yes you need it. 225k jobs just got cut this quarter. the world is in recession. 100 year old banks in london fold, american banks are on their knees caught with their pants down asking foreign governments for money to pay their bills. gas is at 100+ dollars a barrel. you have no insurance. you have a job that can be immediately outsourced or automated. and you can’t take road trips to rock climb in upstate new york.

churchill (winston) said a fanatic is someone who talks incessently and doesn’t change the subject. it’s not going to get any prettier for awhile kids. let’s join together and make our financial voice heard. haven’t the boomers been in charge long enough? given you irag, depleted oceans, melting ice caps, broken social security (they sure as hell wont’ change it now gawd dammit they’re about to retire!) ridiculous labor laws, broken homes, and 7 trillion in debt.

here’s a little cow poetry that says it best.

rolling green pastures

ice cold streams.

rolling green pastures.

blue cold streams.

damn the electric fence.

damn the electric fence.

join the American Association of Young People swarm conference washington dc aug 22-24.

I spent the last few months traveling raising support amongst college campuses, student groups, and just regular (none of them were regular) young Americans. What I found is an exuberant but a little mislead in how the whole thing works. Politics is a distant satisfaction. Take Donnivan M. for example. 19 bright, economics major at a private college in California. His LA bleach white hat tipped perfectly on his head. Doesn’t’ drink, doesn’t smoke, and probably loves his mother. But when pressed about his choice McCain he felt McCain was a better choice for the health of the economy, and for global policy that protected his way of life.

Donnivan is second generation mexican.

And then there is Blake. Creative, small business person who couldn’t contain his exuberance for Obama. A new leader he said of Obama. With the face of a mixed generation that disdained politics as racially charged and that had the greater good-although Blake didn’t seem to know what that is.

I say young Americans unite on a different platform. On a platform that works and will ring the ears of local and nationally leaders more than our vote. yes more than our vote. What is that? I say we ring the cash registers-or not- of major corporations. We continue the American Association of Young People’s efforts to aggregate the Trillions in buying power that spend each year. That’s a lot of money. How much do you spend on music, clothes, electronics-hell your cell phone bill!

Chris Broderick our Exec. Director just had his ACL repaired. At 25, the world is his oyster. But volunteering and between clients he has no affordable insurance. He told the surgeon “I’m not trying to spend another night in this hospital at $500 bucks a night.”

What would happen if 400,000 young Americans went to Aetna and said we have $50 dollars a month. Create an affordable health plan that covers major surgery, birth control, including maternity, and we’ll pay $20 bucks copay. They’d be stupid not to pursue such a immediate demographic.

How bout student aid and the rising cost of education in the USA in the face of the access foreign students have to socialized and highly advanced education. China is minting 3 times the amount of engineers that the USA has currently working! India mints 160,000 MBA’s a year.

I met students who were working two jobs in retail (retail minions unite) to afford middle level schools in hopes of finishing their degree, paying off theirs student debt, and getting into the workforce so they can pay higher taxes, bigger prices at the pump, and shoulder the ridiculous mess that is social security for people they don’t even know.

Don’t believe us? Take a spin on Anya Kamenetz’s blog.

The Freakonomics Blog - Run by the co-authors of the bestselling book, they cover a lot of interesting subject matter on a lot of issues. They are also *generally* responsive to emails.

Anya Kamenetz, author of Generation Debt has an excellent blog that covers issues of young Americans.

Dan Pink, author of Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind has interesting blog material, similar in content to that of the Freakonomics blog.

Scott Burns, co-author of The Coming Generational Storm has a blog/column that gives very excellent and savvy financial advice.

Cool People Care. The name says it all.

If you know of any other great blogs, please post them here under ‘comments.’

GET YOUR BLOG ON!

I have finally found a computer that allows me to plug in my memory
card and send pics, so I’ve attached a couple of my favorite. First is
the view from our campsite in Innsbruck, Austria (absolutely amazing -
wish you could see it in person), then the boys and I at the Berlin
wall (our tour guide suggested we take a photo of the three of us at
the wall - showing the East side and the West side - of course we
found the cheesiness of it to be brilliant), the last is of the three
of us at a windmill in Brugge, Belgium. Only a teeny tiny taste of all
the photos and the places we have been — you would not believe the
speed of travel we have been going — I have definitely gotten my
money’s worth with the Eurail pass! So far I have already seen 7
countries in 3 weeks. The boys are leaving soon, so things will slow
dramatically, but it has been a blast so far!

To keep in line with my theme, I’ll try to come up with my next
acronym…(I only have 14 minutes left - forgive my lack of
creativity)

B - Beer festival. Oktoberfest has been my latest adventure, which is
why I chose Bratwurst as my acronymical (made up word, obviously)
description. As the largest folk festival in the world (fact) that
boasts a sale of over 5.1 million liters of beer (fact, again), it was
clearly one of the more ridiculous events I have attended. There were
more beers, brats (think sausage, not children), and boobs
(traditional Dutch-wear for the women = boobs up to the chin) than I
would care to see in a day. QUITE the experience…

R - Rain. Now, this isn’t exactly something that we planned for, but
for about 4 days in northern Europe it was rain, rain, and more
rain…not the pouring kind, but the nastier, just enough misting to
be annoying. Of course, we made the best of things, and survived the
kink in our weather plan with a door to door shopping/eating/pubbing.
Despite the rain, we loved Belgium and Denmark (me because it was
quiet, quaint, and the home of my motherland — the boys because it
was filled with blondes and big dark beers).

A - Alps. We’ve spent a few days in Austria now (a country that I’ve
never thought to myself “Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to Austria,”
despite growing up with a Kindergarten Cop sort of love for Arnold
(please pronounce Ahh-nald)) and it is definitely the most beautiful
place I’ve ever been. I mean, what did I expect? Why else would they
hold the winter olympics in Innsbruck so often? Because it is
ammmazing! I’ll probably take up bob-sledding when I get home.

T - Trains. I have learned to love trains… really, I have. Where I
once had a fondness for the speed and efficiency of flying places, I
have now decided that training across the country is a fabulous thing.
We have met tons of people, taken some great naps, and seen lots of
country side that we ordinarily wouldn’t have seen if we were
thousands of miles above the ground. Not to mention that we can bring
our own food and beer, and not have to worry about going through tons
of security (a great way to save time now that Jeff made a recent
purchase of a wrought-iron antique pig. why you ask? well, great
question.)

W - World War can really do wonders for a city. Berlin is one of those
cities. After seeing three major wars and tons of devastation, the
country has been rebuilt to have amazing architecture, clean streets,
and few people. Probably my favorite city that we have seen, the
history filled capital was modern, yet preserved, with a fun and funky
liberal feel to it - way cooler than I ever expected.

U - Underestimating the power of guided tours will really screw you
over. We have taken four guided tours now and I guarantee you that I
have learned more in those tours than I have ever learned in a history
class in my life. Granted, there is a little something different about
someone saying “This exact spot is where Hitler was standing when he
and Eva shot themselves” that makes your ears perk up a little more
than in 8th grade history class…

R - Running out of time - 2 minutes left on internet and cleverness is
running out…R is the last letter I have left, but my brain doesn’t
work this fast, so I’m going to have to leave this one for the next
time

S - Switzerland. My next destination…lets just say I’m looking
forward to laundry, familiar faces, conversations with a girl friend,
and catching up with some of you on skype. Not looking forward to
trying to practice my horrendous French. Only words I know: cabernet
sauvignon and crepes (still not sure on either pronunciation…will
work on this), ohh, and of course french fries, french toast, and
french kiss (I’m nearly fluent in all these)

T - “Thanks, but we’re not homeless, we promise”…One morning we had
a really early layover in a small German town on our way to Amsterdam.
Jeff and I had curled up on the floor against a wall with our packs to
catch some extra sleep while Peter journaled in a cafe. We both had on
jackets with hoods over our heads and were rolled up in balls against
our stuff. Jeff was passed out, but I was kind of watching people pass
by, each one giving us odd stares…apparently people sleeping on the
ground isn’t common in this part of Germany? So this much older couple
passed us and I see them watching us. The women sets down her bags and
asks her husband to stay there. I watch her inch to the cafe and come
out with a hot chocolate and sandwich, then inch her way over to us.
At first I was confused, until I realized that she thought we were
homeless and she was bringing us food…It was a really sweet gesture
and she will definitely have good karma for that. And now that I look
back on it, we did look pretty rough — “that was the first time I’ve
ever been mistaken as someone in need” -Jeff

Hope you enjoy my acronym and photos — email me to let me know how you all are.
Love you miss you
Meg xx

Good Monday morning, matt,

Folks, if you had to do the last presentation of your life, what would it look like? This past week, Jeff Zaslow of the Wall Street Journal wrote about Professor Randy Paush’s last lecture and it’s worth quoting in full…

Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer-science professor, was about to give a lecture Tuesday afternoon, but before he said a word, he received a standing ovation from 400 students and colleagues.

He motioned to them to sit down. “Make me earn it,” he said.

They had come to see him give what was billed as his “last lecture.” This is a common title for talks on college campuses today. Schools such as Stanford and the University of Alabama have mounted “Last Lecture Series,” in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?

It can be an intriguing hour, watching healthy professors consider their demise and ruminate over subjects dear to them. At the University of Northern Iowa, instructor Penny O’Connor recently titled her lecture “Get Over Yourself.” At Cornell, Ellis Hanson, who teaches a course titled “Desire,” spoke about sex and technology.

At Carnegie Mellon, however, Dr. Pausch’s speech was more than just an academic exercise. The 46-year-old father of three has pancreatic cancer and expects to live for just a few months. His lecture, using images on a giant screen, turned out to be a rollicking and riveting journey through the lessons of his life.

He began by showing his CT scans, revealing 10 tumors on his liver. But after that, he talked about living. If anyone expected him to be morose, he said, “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” He then dropped to the floor and did one-handed pushups.

Clicking through photos of himself as a boy, he talked about his childhood dreams: to win giant stuffed animals at carnivals, to walk in zero gravity, to design Disney rides, to write a World Book entry. By adulthood, he had achieved each goal. As proof, he had students carry out all the huge stuffed animals he’d won in his life, which he gave to audience members. After all, he doesn’t need them anymore.

He paid tribute to his techie background. “I’ve experienced a deathbed conversion,” he said, smiling. “I just bought a Macintosh.” Flashing his rejection letters on the screen, he talked about setbacks in his career, repeating: “Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things.” He encouraged us to be patient with others. “Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you.” After showing photos of his childhood bedroom, decorated with mathematical notations he’d drawn on the walls, he said: “If your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favor to me, let ‘em do it.”

While displaying photos of his bosses and students over the years, he said that helping others fulfill their dreams is even more fun than achieving your own. He talked of requiring his students to create videogames without sex and violence. “You’d be surprised how many 19-year-old boys run out of ideas when you take those possibilities away,” he said, but they all rose to the challenge.

He also saluted his parents, who let him make his childhood bedroom his domain, even if his wall etchings hurt the home’s resale value. He knew his mom was proud of him when he got his Ph.D, he said, despite how she’d introduce him: “This is my son. He’s a doctor, but not the kind who helps people.”

He then spoke about his legacy. Considered one of the nation’s foremost teachers of videogame and virtual-reality technology, he helped develop “Alice,” a Carnegie Mellon software project that allows people to easily create 3-D animations. It had one million downloads in the past year, and usage is expected to soar.

“Like Moses, I get to see the Promised Land, but I don’t get to step foot in it,” Dr. Pausch said. “That’s OK. I will live on in Alice.”

Many people have given last speeches without realizing it. The day before he was killed, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke prophetically: “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place.” He talked of how he had seen the Promised Land, even though “I may not get there with you.”

Dr. Pausch’s lecture, in the same way, became a call to his colleagues and students to go on without him and do great things. But he was also addressing those closer to his heart.

Near the end of his talk, he had a cake brought out for his wife, whose birthday was the day before. As she cried and they embraced on stage, the audience sang “Happy Birthday,” many wiping away their own tears.

Dr. Pausch’s speech was taped so his children, ages 5, 2 and 1, can watch it when they’re older. His last words in his last lecture were simple: “This was for my kids.” Then those of us in the audience rose for one last standing ovation.

Now, folks, if Randy Pausch can face his last lecture with such grace, humility and good cheer, don’t you think you can make it through this job hunt you’re going through with at least as much optimism?

You’ve got the opportunity to do something great with your life, and we’ve got the tools, the jobs and the recruiters to help get you there.

Go out and make it a great week, folks.

Earn it.

Warmest Regards,

Marc Cenedella
Founder & CEO
TheLadders.com, Inc.

###

I actually had to take a few hours to let this post digest because it made me so sick to my stomach, I didn’t want to post in pure anger. First off, he referred to Wonder Bread as wholesome fare and also blames people who over pay for organic apples and eat healthy as reasons to the demise of Twinkies. Point A) that is one of the most uneducated forms of reasoning ever, point B) Its actually the thousands of new products on the market yearly; made of almost completely sugar that are creating clutter and hence toughening the junk food market.

With the $5 organic apple comment I laughed, thats hilarious, because the reason we pay so much for healthy produce is because our government does such a poor job funding the agriculture industry that produces healthy food for our consumption. Let me stress this isn’t just a soap box issue because I believe in healthy eating for my own health…instead its for the wellbeing of my wallet in the next 70 years as I look to lead a long healthy life.

Let me explain, healthcare is actually one of the biggest threats to our nations pending deficit. I’m glad some people want to live life to its fullest by eating whatever they want (I prefer activity, like running marathons…etc) but it’s that philosophy that is leading to heart disease, type II diabetes, and other treatable yet painful scenarios. How are these treatable?…because I pay taxes going to the doctor bills and pharmaceuticals for the millions of Americans year after year that have been feeding themselves fast food, bad fats, processed foods like…cough, cough, twinkies. To educate yourselves check out a Peter Jennings report from 2004.

Then Mr. Berr goes on to discuss and put a negative spin on our school system that is driving out sugary sodas from the schools and are cracking down on childhood obesity. Wow, is that a bad thing, news to me? He then relates twinkies to a valuable introduction to children in the world of investing, based on their trading the plastic dessert in the lunch room. Honestly I don’t even know how to respond to that because it is so ridiculous. Don’t worry Berr, I’m sure the elementary school kids can start trading cigarettes like a prison cafeteria, because in reality its just as poisonous to their growing bodies.

Even worse, this article was one degree of separation from AOL news’ main page, and the comments posted insult to injury. The 60 ish comments were 90% supportive or Berr’s beliefs. Some even went as far as relating Twinkies to Baseball and Elvis as part of the American Landscape. FYI, cigarette and cigarette commercials painted our past and are a part of Americana at its finest…and we all know our stance on those products today. Its the same thing.

Check out Comment 2o that states, “I loved Twinkies. So what if they make you fat! I rather die young having eaten food that tastes yummy rather than live to 100 eating rabbit food. “– Good for you chunk, and to you sir enjoy lying on a death bed with four nurses trying to hoist your fat carcass into your coffin. Oh and I won’t be upset for the fact that my hard earned salary has percentages going to the very bills it takes to pay for the crane to put you in your larger than normal resting place.

On a closing note I have been doing some research on presidential candidates, and I think one would be well informed to give a look to some of Ron Paul’s healthcare and tax agendas.

And I’m spent.