Summer Cash will draw every Wednesday between July 9 and August 27, 2008. The gas prizes are based on $50 per week and the gas for life prize can be paid over a minimum of 20 years or the winner’s lifetime. Either prize will be paid by gas card unless you choose the cash optionYou do have the option to choose the minimum value of this prize instead which would be $52,000.

Hotels, resorts, airlines, car dealerships and a host of other businesses are offering free gas incentives to recession weary consumers to induce us to spend money. The Hyatt Regency in Chesapeake, MD for example, is offering a gas card if you stay there and an additional $50 car if you are driving a hybrid. While ResortQuest, a company that rents vacation condos is offering their SUMMER GAS SAVINGS– Book a July or August vacation with them and receive… $50 in gift cards for stays of 3 or 4 nights, $75 in gift cards for stays of 5 or 6 nights and $100 in gift cards for stays of 7 nights or more!

So many of the San Diego area hotels are offering gas card deals, that the San Diego Visitor Information site has page listing them all. Best Western Beach View Lodge, Paradise Point Resort & Spa and Hilton San Diego-Del Mar are only a few of the hotels offering to pay to refill your gas tank for free if you stay at their facilities. Free gas! What a concept.

Wind energy is a stable supply of energy, renewable, clean and eco-friendly. Mesa Power, one of the companies Pickens owns is investing $2 billion in a multibillion-dollar plan to build a wind farm in Pampa, Texas which is being billed as the world’s largest wind farm.

The plan calls for companies to take advantage of the “wind corridor,” that stretches from the Canadian border to West Texas, harnessing energy from wind turbines built in this corridor.
T. Boone Pickens, a billionaire from Texas, thinks his plan could be implemented in 10 years with approval from Congress and private investors footing the bill.

The power harvested from the wind turbines could then be used to supply the power plants in large cities. In turn the natural gas that the power plants would normally use could then be used to power cars, cutting down on the amount of foreign oil Americans would be consuming.

The wind turbine plan is to create a 4,000-megawatt wind farm in Pampa. Mesa Power has already bought the turbines for the first 1,000 megawatts and start construction in the summer of 2010.

Ironically Pickens made his billions in the oil industry.

If it will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and not become even more expensive than what we are dealing with now with the current price of oil, we should go for it! Most Americans agree at this point that renewable, alternative energy is the way for us to go and everyone has jumped on the “go green” bandwagon. Let’s see how soon this billionaire can get a productive wind farm up and the energy harnessed from the wind turbines to reduce our oil dependency! The challenge and expense will be the distribution of the wind power for our consumption in my humble opinion.

Just Price Solutions (JPS) underwriting system is automated. It performs prequalification evaluations of many products and a variety of funding sources, generates online approvals, and validates eligibility requirements of the borrower.

First-time homebuyers and even existing homeowners are matched to a all available public subsidies, grants, down payment assistance programs, private purchase and refinance loan products.

In some cities like Washington, D.C., a pilot mortgage program designed to make 30-year fixed-rate mortgages available to eligible District of Columbia residents with little or no credit history was launched. It’s called R-Home mortgage program and Just Price Solutions is one of the companies making this happen by using their streamlined way of evaluating and verifying the borrowers’ creditworthiness using alternative forms of
payment history like rent, utilities and child care payments. This in turn will provide increased access to stable 30-year fixed-rate mortgages for consumers without traditional credit histories.

CitiMortgage is the exclusive servicer of R-Home mortgage loans.
Jackson C. Cosey, Jr., Managing Director of Strategic
Markets Business at Citi’s Consumer Lending Group said:

“This is an important market that deserves the opportunity to have access to stable, fixed-rate mortgages. We understand that just because potential borrowers do not have FICO(R) scores, it does not mean they are not creditworthy. As with everything we do, this program will have very high standards and is intended for individuals with proven track records of payment for other types of obligations. That is why, not only are we proud to be a part of the R-Home
alliance, we also believe it makes good, responsible business sense.”

Everyone who has lived in NYC remembers Jim McKay. He was eloquent, classy and fun to watch. Jim McKay also covered 12 Olympics, won 12 Emmy awards. McKay was the first on-air television broadcaster seen in Baltimore and the first sportscaster to win an Emmy Award.

Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports is Jim McKay’s son. he says:

“Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t come up to me and say how much they admired my father.”

George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports said

“He meant so much to so many people. He was a founding father of sports television, one of the most respected commentators in the history of broadcasting and journalism.”

One French scuba diver said the group tried to struggle against the current for at least 9 hours, but stopped after a while in order to conserve their energy. Then they saw land in the distance. Little did the scuba diving group know that the land they saw was inhabited only by komodo dragons.

“We were exhausted. Everyone had cramps.” says Laurent Pinel. The diving group made it to the island of Rinca where they were later found by fishermen on Rinca’s southern coast. Rinca is inhabited by Komodo dragons, carnivores who are known to attack humans.
Laurent Pinel said they had to pelt one persistent komodo dragon with rocks to keep it from attacking the group. They couldn’t sleep and survived off “some kind of mussels scraped from the rocks.”

Rinca Island is part of the Komodo National Park, where the Indian and Pacific oceans meet.
This diving ground is recommended only for experienced divers because of strong currents and whirlpools which often pull divers downwards. At least 3 of the 5 divers were themselves dive masters who instruct others so they were experienced.

Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) are the largest living species of lizard. They grow anywhere from 6.5–10 ft long and can weigh up to about 150 pounds. They are protected under Indonesian law.

It was an exciting primary season…first woman…first bi-racial man. But the Clintons really pissed many people off when their camp starting making it about race and then blaming the Obama camp for “playing the race card”. I think the former president lost the respect of many in the black community with his behavior, his off the wall comments and accusations and his frequent temper tantrums. IMHO, it was a mistake to have him stumping on her behalf.

Tuesday’s speech by Mrs. Clinton was a great speech, if a little bizaare. She had just gotten her azz whumped and was introduced as “the next president of the United States” as she came out to give a speech that sounded like a campaign speech when she should have been conceding that her opponent won.

I truly believe if the New York contingent had not talked some sense into her during a conference call on Wednesday, she would have been happy to blow the party into 2 fractions all in the name of going towards her goal of becoming president. According to news reports, the NY contingent urged her to endorse her opponent.

Representative Charles Rangel, D-New York, said,

“the New York congressional delegation are with her to the end, and we thought the end was the end.”

Now it seems her backers are trying to strong arm Barack Obama into choosing her as his running mate. Of course there are pros and cons to that. But can the man revel in his win for a few days before people like Bob Johnson start sending letters to the Congressional Black Caucus demanding that they have Barack choose Hillary as running mate.

Donna Brazile, a member of the Democratic National Committe, said:

“There’s a lot of healing to be done,” .[Obama] wants to do everything possible to ensure Sen. Clinton, her supporters, her donors, the voters who went to the polls to cast their ballots, that he will champion their cause, he will fight for their issues, and, of course, he will earn their support,”

The divers were in the waters of Komodo National Park, exploring this area of unspoilt coral reefs and marine life. The park is a tropical paradise and is more than 300 miles east for the nearest city, Denpasar, capital of Bali. Komodo island is famous as the exclusive natural habitat of the Komodo dragon

Kathleen Mitchinson’s husband Ernest Lewandowsk, is also a dive master at their dive company Reefseekers. He said the search is hampered by lack of aircraft fuel in the remote area.
This is the saddest thing. Imagine wanting to go search for your wife and her party, willing and able to do so, but not having the tools you need to get it done!

One diver who has experienced the currents in the Komodo National Park waters told the BBC recently that “the currents in the area can be ferocious”. He told BBC News:

“I certainly remember thinking at the time when I was diving there that these were some of the strongest currents I’d ever dived in anywhere in the world. “The nature of the currents is that they can take you completely by surprise. You can be diving along thinking ‘this is a perfectly normal dive’ and then turn a corner and all of a sudden you’re being whisked off at what seems like 100mph.”

The search will be back on tomorrow but the outlook is quite grim. I don’t think I’d be scuba diving in an area notorious for strong currents ever, no matter how pristine the waters or how beautiful the coral are. I hope this man finds his wife and the other divers tomorrow.

Everyone on the panel fell out laughing and I was tickled to watch the usually unflappable Mr. 360, Anderson Cooper blush like a school boy. Donna Brazile said she’d better wait until they were off-air.
Which is a shame because I would have loved to hear her comeback to his request. Donna, I think Anderson would make a great boo. Imagine the power house couple you’d become! Not to mention, you’d be called that cougar, Donna Brazile

Looks like Anderson isn’t the only one who was not familiar with the term. People have been searching “boo slang”, “anderson cooper boo”, “what does boo mean”, and “you’re not my boo” all day long on Google!

People, boo is slang word that came from the French word “beau”. Boo is used in most urban areas to refer to one’s sweetheart–girlfriend or boyfriend.

So anyway, Donna Brazile, political strategist, author, professor, political pundit, can I add “anderson cooper’s boo” to the list of descriptors? And Anderson Cooper, don’t worry, if Donna Brazile doesn’t take you up on your offer, you can be my boo any day!

This was my first time dealing with a flat tire in almost tweny years of driving and of course I never learned how to change my tires. I popped the trunk anyway and got out my little donut tire and the jack that came with the car. Except, the car jack was in the trunk but the crank was missing. Now what? I decided it would be faster to call AAA than call home for someone to come help, after all this was a time when i could use some emergency roadside assistance. Triple A took 2 hours from the time I called them to finally show up but the technician changed that tire in less than 10 minutes flat. In hindsight, I should have called home!

Anyway, next day I shopped around for cheap tires but the local prices are quite high for my tire type so I’m looking online for cheap auto tires. Any store that sells major brands of tire online will be fine, even better if they offer free shipping!

This was my wake up call to make sure I get my car emergency kit up to date, get myself a new, fancy auto jack and learn how to change my own tire. Paying for emergency roadside assistance from AAA was a smart move on my part, I just wish they would respond a lot faster than they do here in Virginia.

I think buying cheap tires online is the only way to save some money.

Two helicopters, at least 200 county firefighters and studio firefighters tried to keep the blaze from spreading and completely destroying the Universal Studios film vault. Fire Inspector Darryl Jacobs says no one was injured. Jacobs estimates that at least 3 blocks of movie sets have been damaged by the fire.

The flames were shooting up more than 100 feet through the roof. Within 30 minutes one sound stage and several other buildings were gutted including the King Kong exhibit building, courthouse square from “Back to the Future, and a streetscape they use when filming NY scenes. Universal Studios is next door to the Sheraton Universal Hotel and other Universal Studios hotels but none of these hotels had to be evacuated.

40,000 to 50,000 videos and reels were kept in the Universal Studios vault, and many may have been damaged though firefighters recovered hundreds of reels. Stored in the vault was every film and television series’ footage that Universal has ever made, including Miami Vice and I Love Lucy. But NBC Universal President and COO, Ron Meyer says there are duplicates stored in a different locations. That’s a good thing or a lot of Hollywood history would have been lost today as a result of this Universal Studios Hollywood fire.

I don’t know what’s going on with all these fires lately. First Shaniqua Tompkins house goes up in smoke suspiciously and now this.