Saturday, January 21, 2012

Junior Orange Bowl Creative Writing Awards - Second Place Winner - Yael Rosenberg

Yael Rosenberg reads her second place winning entry at the 2011-2012 Junior Orange Bowl Creative Writing Competition Awards Ceremony at Books & Books in Coral Gables

Congratulations to my dear niece Yael. Keep up the great work and we all are so proud of you. Love uncle Ben


Friday, January 20, 2012

Jewish Newspaper Suggests That Israel Should Assassinate Barack Obama

When I first read this BS I thought it was one of those phony web stories cranks like to circulate on the internet. But upon confirmation that this was a legitimate story, I thought WTF (sorry mom).

Read On:

The owner of a Jewish newspaper in Atlanta has said he deeply regrets writing a column suggesting that Israel consider "a hit" on Barack Obama if he stands in the way of the Jewish state defending itself.
Andrew Adler told the Guardian he wrote the column in the weeklyAtlanta Jewish Times "to get a reaction" from the paper's readers.
"The headline for the column was: 'What would you do?' That's what I wanted to see," he said. "It's got like a Dr Phil reaction: what were you thinking? I feel really bad it did that."
The column asks readers to imagine that they are the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, confronting the threat posed by Hezbollah and Iran's nuclear programme while also under pressure from a US president with an "Alice in Wonderland" belief in diplomacy over force.
Adler lays out what he says are the three options available to Netanyahu: attack Hezbollah and Hamas; defy the US – which is willing to let "Israel take a lethal bullet" – by striking against Iran's nuclear facilities; or a third option.
"Three, give the go-ahead for US-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice-president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States' policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies," Adler wrote in a column that appeared in print by not online.
"Yes, you read "three" correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel's existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don't you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel's most inner circles?"
Adler went on to ask: "How far would you go to save a nation comprised of 7 million lives – Jews, Christians and Arabs alike? You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table."source
I truly hope this paper and gentleman receives a visit from the Secret Service. His diatribe raises several troubling issues: 
  1. Is there a US based Mossad in our country and what are they doing?
  2. Does he believe the Mossad has a right to conduct covert activity on USA soil?
  3. Is he suggesting that a foreign government hatching a plan to assassinate President Obama is in the best interest of Israel? 
  4. Does he believe the foreign policy of USA should be dictated by Israeli President Binyamin Netanyahu?
In any event, his threats (hypothetical or not) are very disturbing and un-American. Can you image the justifiable outrage and negative feedback any American or Arab newspaper would receive if they published comments or opinions calling for the assassination of President Netanyahu? Someone would and should be fired!


President Rutherford Hayes' 19th century warning about the 1% controlling wealth

Rutherford Hayes, our 19th president - 1877 to 1881 - on the danger of wealth being concentrated in so few hands:

"In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many. It is not yet time to debate about the remedy. The previous question is as to the danger—the evil. Let the people be fully informed and convinced as to the evil. Let them earnestly seek the remedy and it will be found. Fully to know the evil is the first step towards reaching its eradication. Henry George is strong when he portrays the rottenness of the present system. We are, to say the least, not yet ready for his remedy. We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, descents of property, wills, trusts, taxation, and a host of other important interests, not omitting lands and other property."[


Did he envision today's Occupy Wall Street movement?

Southern Strategy: Alive & Kicking...

Newt's lecture to Black folks
GOP and the genesis of the Southern Strategy:

The GOP, of course, was created to resist the forward march of slavery; after the Civil War, Republicans fought heroically to make former slaves at least partially whole. But all that ended along with reconstruction following the presidential election of 1876. Rutherford Hayes, a Republican, turned his back on the fight for equality; and the party leadership essentially sanctioned segregation and Jim Crow. 


The modern Republican Party has only the most tenuous links to the party of Lincoln; it is really the party of Richard Nixon, who made a deal with the devil in the 1970s. Nixon ceded the black vote to Democrats, leaving Republicans to cater to white resentments. That decision worked well for decades; it even gave rise to the notion of a permanent Republican governing majority. But a political party can only run in a different direction than the country for so long. And America was changing, not only in its demographics—which were increasingly ethnic and “minority”—but in its attitudes, which were increasingly inclusive. source

Ken Mehlman - former Republican National Committee Chairperson - on the Southern Strategy:

In 2005, then RNC chair Ken Mehlman apologized for the so-called Southern strategy. “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong,” said Mehlman at the national convention of the NAACP.  source

Alas, old habits die hard for the GOP. In order to resurrect his floundering campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich rediscovered the effectiveness of pandering to white fears:

Newt Gingrich looks to be winning the race-baiting competition this Republican primary season. Fueled by a new version of his well honed attacks on the safety net, Gingrich celebrated Martin Luther King Day on Monday by restating what has become a staple of his stump speeches, calling President Obama the “best food stamp president in American history.”
The remark came, this time, after debate moderator Juan Williams asked if Gingrich’s campaign-trail suggestion that poor students be given jobs as janitors might me “viewed at a minimum insulting to all Americans, but as particularly to African Americans?” “The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barrack Obama than any president in American history,” Gingrich said before an audience that erupted into vociferous applause.
Gingrich argues that the reason so many people are on food stamps is not that the economy has thrown millions into poverty, but rather that lazy black families are getting on the dole and don’t want to work. Earlier this month, Gingrich told an audience in New Hampshire, “If the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”
Gingrich’s attack on the food stamp program is not surprising; it’s the kind of politics that he’s been helping to perfect for over 30 years. He’s been waging the conservative counterrevolution against economic justice for a generation, using whatever Southern Strategy relics he can get his hands on. source
The exuberant embrace of this evilly shrewd strategy by working class white folks (a theme I frequently write about) is the number one hindrance to economic fairness in our country - without a doubt. Their fears, bigotry, resentment and ignorance is pimped by the powers to be on the right for the purpose of installing the draconian unfair Supply Side economics.
And to add insult to injury, after 30 years of the Supply Side economics decimating the American middle-class, the GOP conveniently blames Democrats and minorities for the economic woes of Main Street USA. Ponder the irony, a thief continues to steal your wallet for decades and all he has to say to divert your attention from his crimes is: The Nigger did it.
Wake up middle America!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Gregory Gee's Super Bowl picks: Conspiracy Theories Aside - written with bharv

NFL Comish Roger Godell: Super Bowl Conspirator
Let's have a little fun with our NFL Conference Championship and Super Bowl predictions folks - tongue-in-cheek, of course.

First, I digress, conspiracy theorists were abuzz when the Denver Broncos high school offense led by Tim Tebow defeated the number one defense (Pittsburgh Steelers) 29-23 in Tebow's first NFL playoff game. Here's a cyberspace sample of conspiracy in the works:

I believe the reason behind Tim Tebow's success is due to the NFL's marketing. Everyone everywhere is talking about Tebow and the NFL is cashing in. Top selling jersey, the networks are fighting over game coverage, and their now putting him on the cover of their inaugural NFL magazine......Which means that most of these games has to be fixed for him to win. Take notice on all of his game winning drives, he's making his plays due to missed defensive reads or blown coverages. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Just look at his TD's his receivers are W I D E open. source

So, in the spirit of Conspiracies Gone Wild, here are my real and conspiracy predictions for the remainder of the NFL playoffs - including the Super Bowl.

AFC CHAMPIONSHIP

REAL PREDICTION: I'm sticking with what I wrote two weeks ago:

Many NFL experts/analysts/pundits see this as the year that a high powered offense can win it all without a good defense. I am not on that bandwagon (reference my Saints prediction).

So, the Ravens - with a mediocre offense - will go into Foxborough and defeat the high octane New England Patriot offense. The Tom Brady led offense has rescued their poor defense (31st ranked) all season by scoring a ton of points. However, Brady will not be able to do that against the Ravens. The Ravens defense knows him too well and they have beaten the Pats before in Foxborough.
Ravens win 23-20.

CONSPIRACY PICK: This a league that wants what is best for it's image, brand and pockets: Therefore, Captain America...errr...I meanTom Brady and the Patriots will win; and Bill Belechick's 5th Super Bowl  appearance will cement his position on the Mt. Rushmore of NFL coaches.
Patriots wins 27-24.

NFC CHAMPIONSHIP

REAL PREDICTION: The New York Giants vs San Francisco 49ers should be a fun game to watch for defensive minded people like me. Both defenses are fundamentally sound and very physical. This will be the season's best playoff tackling game  - not a lot of yards after the catch because both teams pursue and wrap well. The 49ers are the most complete team but the Giants will win. Huh?

The Giants pass rush (game changer) will make Alex Smith get rid of the ball quickly but his receivers will not be open. Big Blue will play tight coverage and be physical with the 49ers receivers (New Orleans allowed Niners receivers free release) which leads to sacks, turnovers and a overall bad day for Smith. Eli Manning is proving to be money on playoff road games. And I'll take that experience over Smith. Giants win 31-14.

CONSPIRACY PICK: How did a rookie head coach - with a condensed pre-season and a seven season under-achieving QB (Alex Smith) finish 13-3 - get to host the NFC championship game? Hmmm..."someone" is looking out for Jim and John (Raven's head coach) Harbaugh - maybe the league wants to market a Super-Baugh  with Jim's Niners vs. brother John's Ravens. Anywho: 49ers win a thriller 29-27.

SUPER BOWL

Did I say the Giants/49ers game would feature the best tackling exhibition in the playoffs? Well, the two week Super Bowl layoff will allow players to rest and rejuvenate. As a result, the Super Bowl will feature even more sharp tackling. Players, well rested, will be reved up and defensively hungry(think caged animal). Again, it will come down to which QB will make the most big plays. Once again, my money is on former Super Bowl champion Eli Manning  Giants win 23-10.


CONSPIRACY PICK: The Patriots/Ravens ("backed by league") will easily win against the 49ers - no score predictions - but look at the bright side, a revitalized San Francisco franchise is good geographical business for the NFL.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The Roots: Are Undun

The Philly based hip-hop band The Roots have long been a favorite of true hip hop heads who desire substance, integrity and art in their music. The organic musicology of The Roots band is legendary - starting with front man and MC Black Thought, who doesn't rhyme for the sake of riddlin; and with the peerless hip hop drummer ?uestlove,  The Roots have a devoted and eclectic following that is rarely disappointed.

Thirteen albums deep into the game, The Roots, on the track Undun have taken their art form to a new genre and level - visual artistry (not to say their video archive is not artistic). Just check out the raw force, stark truth and power of this video/short film.  

I must add, The Roots being called a Hip Hop band is both a honor and misnomer. The doorway is hip hop (and they represent like no other), but the house is full of jazz, rock, R&B, funk, blues and spoken word.

And as as ?uestlove says

“Undun is the story of this kid who becomes criminal, but he wasn’t born criminal. He’s not the nouveau exotic primitive bug-eyed gunrunner like Tupac’s character Bishop in Juice… he’s actually thoughtful and is neither victim nor hero. Just some kid who begins to order his world in a way that makes the most sense to him at a given moment… At the end of the day… isn’t that what we all do?”

Monday, January 16, 2012

Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

In my humble opinion, the following Newsweek cover story by Andrew Sullivan is equivalent to a walk off home-run. He bravely takes on the political purists from the left (think Matt Damon and Tavis Smiley) and the right (just line up the usual suspects) to eloquently make the point on how both political polar opposites severely under-estimate (thank you W. Bush) the outstanding success, accomplishments and farsight of President Obama in his first term:

He writes about the right:


The right calls him a socialist, the left says he sucks up to Wall Street, and independents think he's a wimp. Andrew Sullivan on how the president may just end up outsmarting them all.


You hear it everywhere. Democrats are disappointed in the president. Independents have soured even more. Republicans have worked themselves up into an apocalyptic fervor. And, yes, this is not exactly unusual.


A president in the last year of his first term will always get attacked mercilessly by his partisan opponents, and also, often, by the feistier members of his base. And when unemployment is at remarkably high levels, and with the national debt setting records, the criticism will—and should be—even fiercer. But this time, with this president, something different has happened. It’s not that I don’t understand the critiques of Barack Obama from the enraged right and the demoralized left. It’s that I don’t even recognize their description of Obama’s first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong.


The right’s core case is that Obama has governed as a radical leftist attempting a “fundamental transformation” of the American way of life. Mitt Romney accuses the president of making the recession worse, of wanting to turn America into a European welfare state, of not believing in opportunity or free enterprise, of having no understanding of the real economy, and of apologizing for America and appeasing our enemies. According to Romney, Obama is a mortal threat to “the soul” of America and an empty suit who couldn’t run a business, let alone a country.



The right’s core case is that Obama has governed as a radical leftist attempting a “fundamental transformation” of the American way of life. Mitt Romney accuses the president of making the recession worse, of wanting to turn America into a European welfare state, of not believing in opportunity or free enterprise, of having no understanding of the real economy, and of apologizing for America and appeasing our enemies. According to Romney, Obama is a mortal threat to “the soul” of America and an empty suit who couldn’t run a business, let alone a country.

Leave aside the internal incoherence—how could such an incompetent be a threat to anyone? None of this is even faintly connected to reality—and the record proves it. On the economy, the facts are these. When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course.

But Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion.

All these decisions deserve scrutiny. And in retrospect, they were far more successful than anyone has yet fully given Obama the credit for. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) To listen to current Republican rhetoric about Obama’s big-government socialist ways, you would imagine that the reverse was true. It isn’t.
The right claims the stimulus failed because it didn’t bring unemployment down to 8 percent in its first year, as predicted by Obama’s transition economic team. Instead, it peaked at 10.2 percent. But the 8 percent prediction was made before Obama took office and was wrong solely because it relied on statistics that guessed the economy was only shrinking by around 4 percent, not 9. Remove that statistical miscalculation (made by government and private-sector economists alike) and the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.
On foreign policy, the right-wing critiques have been the most unhinged. Romney accuses the president of apologizing for America, and others all but accuse him of treason and appeasement. Instead, Obama reversed Bush’s policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his capture and death. And when the moment for decision came, the president overruled both his secretary of state and vice president in ordering the riskiest—but most ambitious—plan on the table. He even personally ordered the extra helicopters that saved the mission. It was a triumph, not only in killing America’s primary global enemy, but in getting a massive trove of intelligence to undermine al Qaeda even further. If George Bush had taken out bin Laden, wiped out al Qaeda’s leadership, and gathered a treasure trove of real intelligence by a daring raid, he’d be on Mount Rushmore by now. But where Bush talked tough and acted counterproductively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war. Since he took office, al Qaeda’s popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted.
And the left:
But the right isn’t alone in getting Obama wrong. While the left is less unhinged in its critique, it is just as likely to miss the screen for the pixels. From the start, liberals projected onto Obama absurd notions of what a president can actually do in a polarized country, where anything requires 60 Senate votes even to stand a chance of making it into law. They have described him as a hapless tool of Wall Street, a continuation of Bush in civil liberties, a cloistered elitist unable to grasp the populist moment that is his historic opportunity. They rail against his attempts to reach a Grand Bargain on entitlement reform. They decry his too-small stimulus, his too-weak financial reform, and his too-cautious approach to gay civil rights. They despair that he reacts to rabid Republican assaults with lofty appeals to unity and compromise.

They miss, it seems to me, two vital things. The first is the simple scale of what has been accomplished on issues liberals say they care about. A depression was averted. The bail-out of the auto industry was—amazingly—successful. Even the bank bailouts have been repaid to a great extent by a recovering banking sector. The Iraq War—the issue that made Obama the nominee—has been ended on time and, vitally, with no troops left behind. Defense is being cut steadily, even as Obama has moved his own party away from a Pelosi-style reflexive defense of all federal entitlements. Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact of American life. Gays now openly serve in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act is dying in the courts, undefended by the Obama Justice Department. Vast government money has been poured into noncarbon energy investments, via the stimulus. Fuel-emission standards have been drastically increased. Torture was ended. Two moderately liberal women replaced men on the Supreme Court. Oh, yes, and the liberal holy grail that eluded Johnson and Carter and Clinton, nearly universal health care, has been set into law. Politifact recently noted that of 508 specific promises, a third had been fulfilled and only two have not had some action taken on them. To have done all this while simultaneously battling an economic hurricane makes Obama about as honest a follow-through artist as anyone can expect from a politician.

What liberals have never understood about Obama is that he practices a show-don’t-tell, long-game form of domestic politics. What matters to him is what he can get done, not what he can immediately take credit for. And so I railed against him for the better part of two years for dragging his feet on gay issues. But what he was doing was getting his Republican defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to move before he did. The man who made the case for repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” was, in the end, Adm. Mike Mullen. This took time—as did his painstaking change in the rule barring HIV-positive immigrants and tourists—but the slow and deliberate and unprovocative manner in which it was accomplished made the changes more durable. Not for the first time, I realized that to understand Obama, you have to take the long view. Because he does. 


This is where the left is truly deluded. By misunderstanding Obama’s strategy and temperament and persistence, by grandstanding on one issue after another, by projecting unrealistic fantasies onto a candidate who never pledged a liberal revolution, they have failed to notice that from the very beginning, Obama was playing a long game. He did this with his own party over health-care reform. He has done it with the Republicans over the debt. He has done it with the Israeli government over stopping the settlements on the West Bank—and with the Iranian regime, by not playing into their hands during the Green Revolution, even as they gunned innocents down in the streets. Nothing in his first term—including the complicated multiyear rollout of universal health care—can be understood if you do not realize that Obama was always planning for eight years, not four. And if he is reelected, he will have won a battle more important than 2008: for it will be a mandate for an eight-year shift away from the excesses of inequality, overreach abroad, and reckless deficit spending of the last three decades. It will recapitalize him to entrench what he has done already and make it irreversible.

If I sound biased, that’s because I am. Biased toward the actual record, not the spin; biased toward a president who has conducted himself with grace and calm under incredible pressure, who has had to manage crises not seen since the Second World War and the Depression, and who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name. “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” George Orwell once wrote. What I see in front of my nose is a president whose character, record, and promise remain as grotesquely underappreciated now as they were absurdly hyped in 2008. And I feel confident that sooner rather than later, the American people will come to see his first term from the same calm, sane perspective. And decide to finish what they started. read entire article
Just some highlights, please read the entire article(the emphasis is mine).

FOX banned in Canada: It is illegal to broadcast false and misleading news in Canada

Independent research/studies have clearly pointed out the obvious: Not only does watching FOX News makes you less informed than other news watchers; watching FOX News makes you less informed than those people who watch no news at all.

A new Fairleigh Dickinson PublicMind Poll finds that the Sunday morning political shows on television "do the most to help people learn about current events, while some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who they don't watch any news at all."  source

In my opinion, the number one purpose of FOX is to keep working class whites ignorant and loyal to a political, economic, social and environmental agenda that favors billionaires and corporate robber barons.

To many folks the above research confirms our common knowledge. But how many of us know that FOX is banned by our brothers/sisters North of the border. That's right, FOX is banned in Canada because of a law that forbids lying on broadcast news...

s America's middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades - against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News - fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of the Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canadian regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada's right-wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.

Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast ... any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right-wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage, including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the US airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish the anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non-partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper's proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right-wing network, "Sun TV News" which Canadians call "Fox News North."

Harper, often referred to as "George W. Bush's Mini Me," is known for having mounted a Bush-like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity

Harper's attempts to make lying legal on Canadian television are a stark admission that right-wing political ideology can only dominate national debate through dishonest propaganda. Since corporate profit-taking is not an attractive vessel for populism, a political party or broadcast network that makes itself the tool of corporate and financial elites must lie to make its agenda popular with the public. In the Unites States, Fox News and talk radio, the sock puppets of billionaires and corporate robber barons, have become the masters of propaganda and distortion on the public airwaves. Fox News' notoriously biased and dishonest coverage of the Wisconsin's protests is a prime example of the brand of news coverage Canada has smartly avoided  source



Sunday, January 15, 2012

Poll: Saving $50 Beats Diets, Love & Time by Frugal Duchess

If you had a choice between saving an extra $50 a week or gaining an extra hour daily, what would you do? I vote for the extra hour, (seven hours a week). But more money beat out diet, time and sex, according to this recent survey fromallyou.com/Shortcuts.com. Here is a snippet from the full survey results:

- Over half (57%) of those surveyed would rather save $50 an extra week

- vs. 31 % who would rather lose one clothing size

- or 6% who would opt for more sex

- or 6 % who would rather have an extra 60 minutes each day.

The Real Bonus

My choice:
 Please give me another hour every day! With an extra seven hours a week, I would use 33 % of the extra time to earn more money, 33% of the bonus time would be spent relaxing, and I would spend the remaining time with my children.

Here's another nugget from the poll:

"More women (45%) feel better when they’re cutting grocery costs vs. sticking to an exercise regimen (24%)."

Once again, I disagree with that allocation of time. A commitment to an exercise program can yield both long-term savings and better health. Preventive medicine and exercise represent savvy investments of time and money. Consider the cost of obesity.

The Power of Coupon Clipping

"Consumers are changing their spending habits, but not drastically. The survey, conducted by DMS Research with 5,877 respondents (5,250 females and 627 males), uncovered that small changes such as clipping more coupons, are taking precedence over large lifestyle adjustments like driving less or cancelling gym memberships.

Across all categories of spending, more women tend to be tightening their belts than men, cutting back on vacation, spending, and dining out.

The survey revealed:
Almost three-quarters of respondents (71%) are now clipping coupons;

Four in ten respondents (41%) consider treating themselves to something under $49 to be a splurge;

Even in a tough economy, just over one-quarter (28%) of respondents won’t give up purchasing quality items and 17% won’t give up buying their favorite beauty product

'We know how important saving money and saving time are these days, so we aren’t surprised with the findings that something as simple as using coupons – and increasingly, electronic coupons – is on the rise,' said Tara Trocki, director, AOL’s Shortcuts.com. 'This is a testament that using a free, simple service can lead to significant financial savings without having to make a major lifestyle adjustment.' "