Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Supercommittee won!

November 30, 2011
BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND
The news as I see it and the views as I want them.
November 30 is … Stay At Home Because You're Well Day

Just take the day off although we have several holidays on the horizon. Perhaps taking today off could be to prepare for the next few days off.

Last week the ‘Supercommittee’ agreed on one thing. They greed they could not agree. All of the members had an office in the same building, many just across the hall from one another yet the ‘Super committee’ did not meet in November.

One other thing they all agreed on, at least the members of the Congressional Supercommittee finally came to an agreement on something: That they wouldn't be able to reach an agreement. In a joint statement, co-chairs Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told the press that, while they couldn't bridge their ideological divide, they agreed something clearly needed to be done about the economy. But all was not lost: The 12 members increased their average daily fundraising, money that often comes from powerful lobbyists, by $2,720 per person. In other words, while they couldn't agree on budget cuts, they unanimously supported accepting checks from groups that would have been affected by the cuts.

Herman Cain is starting to see the writing on the wall. The quicker he gets close enough to read what it says, the better the Republican Party and his wife and family will be.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain told his staff Tuesday morning that he is reassessing his candidacy and will make the decision whether to remain in the race in "the next several days."
Cain's campaign has been plagued by sexual harassment allegations, and Monday a woman came forward alleging a 13-year affair with the candidate.

The Des Moines Register has more quotes from the Tuesday morning conference call. Cain reportedly told about 90 staff that the latest affair story might create “too much of a cloud” around his campaign.
"If a decision is made, different than we should plow ahead, you all will be the first to know,” he said. "Now with this latest one we have to do an assessment as to whether or not this is going to create too much of a cloud in some peoples' minds as to whether or not they should support us going forward."

He went on to deny the woman's story as he did Monday when it broke. NRO has the full transcript of the five-minute call.

Cain's Iowa campaign chairman, Steve Grubbs, told the AP that the allegations have hurt Cain's fundraising and taken a toll on his family. Still, Cain will continue his campaign for now and deliver a foreign policy speech in Michigan on Tuesday.

Top Republicans have called for Cain to drop out of the race, as HuffPost's Sam Stein reported:

"Cain is irrelevant, and the quicker he gets out of the race the better it will be," said Ed Rollins, a longtime Republican strategist. "My fear is that he marches to the beat of his own drum and he may try to drag it on and deny and deny and deny. And my sense is that will likely be the pattern here. But there is no way he can be the nominee of our party. The quicker he gets out, the better for him and for us."

Cain indicated Monday that he intended to remain in the race as long as he had the support of his wife, Gloria.

Tuesday the The Draft Herman Cain PAC, the Super PAC backing the candidate, abandoned him and changed its name to Beat Obama PAC.
Ginger White, the Atlanta businesswoman who claims she had a 13-year consensual relationship with Cain, has described the alleged affair as "very inappropriate," "fun" and "exciting

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.
BRUCE A. BRENNAN
DEKALB, IL 60115
COPYRIGHT 2011

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.
Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)
www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

Public EneMe?


"Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer


Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Strike two against the Vatican; you only get three.

November 29, 2011
BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND
The news as I see it and the views as I want them.
November 29 is … Square Dance Day

Grab your partner, dose doe; swing her all around, dose doe!

I wrote about the changes the Roman Catholic Church made in the 1960s as a result of the Second Vatican Council. They have not worked well. Several months ago I wrote about changes coming to the Mass that were to take effect in November. Well, they are here.

English-speaking Roman Catholics who haven't been paying close attention to their church bulletins might notice something a little different during services this Sunday. For decades at the very beginning of Mass, the priest has greeted the congregation by saying "The Lord be with you" and congregants responded: "And also with you." Starting this Saturday and Sunday in the English-speaking world, the response will be: "And with your spirit."

And that's not all: Familiar prayers, both spoken and chanted, have changed and new words like "consubstantial" and "incarnate" now appear. In the Nicene Creed, the affirmation "We believe" has been replaced with "I believe."

The changes are the result of a years-long process to produce an English translation that is closer to the original Latin of the Roman Missal, which the text of prayers and instructions for celebrating Mass. It's the most significant change to the regular worship for Anglophone believers since the upheavals that followed the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

"It's human nature that we're resistant to change," said Monsignor Michael Clay, pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church in Clayton, about 40 miles southeast of Raleigh. "I'm old enough to remember when we went from Latin to English, and that was just a huge change." Clay likes the new translation, finding it closer to the Latin text that is still the church's official language. But some priests and parishioners have been less enthusiastic, criticizing the new version as too ponderous or distant, and in some cases circulating petitions asking for a delay in introducing the new missal. The Vatican never admits it is wrong although they have admitted to being short on right once in a while.

The roots of the new translation go back to that epochal council held at the Vatican in the 1960s, which allowed Mass in languages other than Latin. An English-language missal was produced by 1973, but that was intended to be temporary while improvements were made.

In 2001, the Vatican office that oversees worship issued a directive requiring translation of the English missal that would be closer to the Latin rather than to more familiar vernacular speech. Numerous revisions and bishops' meetings eventually produced agreement on the translation being used Sunday.

Do you think the fact every Catholic and every Church will have to purchase new missals to replace the now outdated books. I am sure the Vatican Press publishes the new books and gets a piece of the action from other publishers interested in selling to the English speaking Catholics around the world.

The Roman Catholic Church should consider making going to Mass enjoyable and easier, not work and embarrassing.

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.
BRUCE A. BRENNAN
DEKALB, IL 60115
COPYRIGHT 2011

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.
Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)
www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

Public EneMe?


"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."  Helen Keller

Monday, November 28, 2011

It just is not worth having $50 million any more.

November 28, 2011
BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND
The news as I see it and the views as I want them.
November 28 is … Make Your Own Head Day

Why leave the house?

The burdens of having 50 million dollars in the bank can be annoying. After reading this, answer the question; what are banks for?

Bank of New York Mellon Corp, which was derided for a plan to charge some of its large corporate and investment management clients for holding their deposits, appears to have flinched.

The bank has not assessed a penny since warning clients about the possible deposit fee in early August, officials told Reuters, although it remains burdened by cash that it cannot profitably redeploy at rock-bottom interest rates. Not a bad burden to go through life with. Even if you screw up, the United States government will not let you fail, they will just tell you to take a smaller bonus this year but will not force the issue.

The fee of 0.13 percent was to have taken effect on August 8 for accounts with more than $50 million that had soared well above their monthly averages as clients fled short-term investments for the safety of U.S. banks. "My guess is that the backlash was pretty stringent and they decided not to do it," said William Gerber, chief financial officer of TD Ameritrade Holding Corp, a cash-management client of Bank of New York. "I can see their problem but I'm not that empathetic considering all the fees we've been waiving."

He was referring to hundreds of millions of dollars of money-market mutual fund fees that financial companies have waived over the past two years lest investors realize negative returns on their fund holdings. Unlike Bank of America, which was shamed into withdrawing a plan to charge its customers $5 for debit card transactions after a torrent of articles ridiculing the proposal, Bank of New York said that its super-sized version of its deposit fee is not dead.

"We haven't charged any clients to date, and the policy remains in place as markets remain unsettled and interest rates remain at historic lows," BNY Mellon spokesman Ron Sommer wrote in an email. The fee, he added, was aimed at "a small number of clients with extraordinarily high and volatile deposit levels." In its August letter, the bank urged clients to consider cash investment options "to minimize any effect" of the mooted fee.

The plan was prompted by a flood of deposits from companies, money-market funds and other clients fleeing short-term investments that exposed them in late July to the then-unfolding Greek financial crisis and from U.S. government securities amid a Congressional impasse over raising the U.S. debt ceiling. A source said Bank of New York's deposits swelled about 39 percent in a period of two weeks in late July and early August to about $250 billion, underscoring the fragility of the global financial system at any sign of panic and creating balance-sheet management challenges for the bank.

At the end of September, deposits were 45 percent higher than a year earlier, Chief Financial Officer Todd Gibbons said in discussing third-quarter earnings, though he said the influx had stabilized since earlier in the quarter. Sommer declined to discuss the deposit levels. Bank of New York continues to attract a heavy flow of cash since it has higher ratings from Moody's Investor Services than trust bank competitors such as State Street Corp and Northern Trust Corp, another official said. Those banks did not match Bank of New York's deposit fee announcement, although some commercial banks with larger lending businesses that fund loans with deposits have been passing FDIC fees to some of their small-business customers.

The policy was initiated under former Bank of New York Chief Executive Robert Kelly, who was ousted in early September and replaced by Gerald Hassell, a 30-plus-year veteran of Bank of New York who some insiders said was more sensitive to client relationships. Kelly took the top role when the New York bank combined in 2007 with Pittsburgh-based Mellon Financial Corp, which he led. "I believe they are backing away from the strategy, Gerard Cassidy, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in an email. "Not certain if it is customer backlash or a rethinking of strategy under new CEO."
Custody banks make most of their money from holding securities and other assets for clients worldwide and ensuring that they are properly accounted for and exchanged when clients demand.

Bank of New York swapped its 338 retail branches and small business banking businesses in 2006 for JPMorgan Chase & Co's corporate trust business and $150 million in cash. The deal helped Bank of New York avoid some of the credit problems that continue to depress earnings of more traditional banks, but deprives it of the ability to negotiate on loans and other businesses in return for winning custody activities. Because rates are so low, many custody banks today are less eager to attract new business or are more aggressive about insisting that clients offset the low-return deposit business by using other services, said Anthony Carfang, head of Treasury Strategies, a Chicago-based consulting firm.

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.
BRUCE A. BRENNAN
DEKALB, IL 60115
COPYRIGHT 2011

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.
Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)
www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

Public EneMe?


"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend." - Charles Caleb Colton