- I think of Fitch Ratings as #3 in the financial ratings business behind Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s. So it’s no surprise to me that when Fitch maintained its rating of United States debt at AAA, it made a lot less news than when Standard and Poor’s dropped it a notch.
- President Obama’s bus tour: perhaps he’s planning to become a country singer rather than run for reelection.
- If he’s not embarking on a career in country music, I think the President’s bus tour is wholly political. I have read, however that it’s being billed to the taxpayers as an official government function.
- Even though I’m on the federal no-call list, I keep getting calls from a company that identifies itself over the phone as “Card Member Services.” All I know about the company is that it wants information I wouldn’t give over the phone to anyone who calls me cold (beginning with my outstanding credit card balance), it cares nothing for the federal no-call list and there are lots of websites carrying complaints about them calling despite being told not to. Those things taken together make it sound suspicious to me. Today I told their representative who identified himself as Sean not to call me again. I also made a list starting with today of the date and time of the call and beginning with that notice, I’m going to complain to the Federal Trade Commission every time they do call. If you wish to do the same about this company or any other, the link is:
- https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx
- I don’t have any stock, but I do have more CD titles in my house than Best Buy does at my nearest store. Of course, CD’s are nearly obsolete by now, so that’s almost like saying I have more vinyl titles than Best Buy does, which is also true.
- Unsolicited email must be an effective marketing tool, and I know it costs hardly anything. I can tell both of those things because of the huge quantity of unsolicited email I receive every day. It just annoys me. Case in point: I bought a couple of good-quality faucets from an online retailer. I get a lot of email from them. I have five faucets in my home. All of them are good quality and relatively new. I doubt if I’ll ever buy another faucet as long as I live here. People who sell faucets probably don’t do a lot of repeat business, except with plumbers and contractors. Those emails don’t convince me to do anything but delete them.
- If I ever get a kitten, I believe I’ll name it Caboodle.
- I mentioned a while ago that we got some strawberry ice cream that had strawberry swirl in it rather than whole strawberries or chunks of strawberry. I have an ice cream maker so I looked up some recipes for strawberry (sans swirl) ice cream. Lots of them recommend that you puree the strawberries and refrain from putting chunks of fruit in the ice cream because the berries will freeze and the texture will be unpleasant. Having been raised on Breyer’s strawberry ice cream, I like the chunks. But I thought strawberries must be getting expensive, and I was right. The Breyer’s strawberry ice cream we had last week had almost no chunks of fruit in it. My solution to strawberry ice cream with no pieces of strawberry in it is to have the ice cream with slices of fresh strawberries on top of it. That works nicely, trust me.
