| Well hello again, Dolly
Top-heavy on slim legs, clad in canary yellow and gold, Dolly Parton darts around the stage like a bling apostrophe. This is her first full European tour since the Seventies; you can't help thinking that this fluttering, wisecracking woman has viewed her return as a kind of Marshall Plan studded with rhinestones. The consensus in the queue for the ladies' during the interval is that, in her seventh decade, Parton is getting a bit long in the tooth to pass this way again. And yet tonight, the Smoky Mountain Songbird displays all the pertness and suppleness of joint of a woman far younger than her 61 allotted years. A mere slip of a thing, she has the Napoleonic presence of a showbiz veteran, a serial hitmaker and an astute businesswoman. She is a major employer in otherwise dirt-poor East Tennessee, thanks to her Dollywood theme park and Dixieland Stampede restaurant chain.
Credit Card Climate Change May Come Too Late
There's a saying among professional money managers that goes something like this: "Managing what you owe is just as important as managing what you own." To that I would add "because if you don't, you're liable to end up not owning anything at all." This also happens to be the theme of a controversial new film called "Maxed Out," a documentary that has been creating a lot of buzz lately, similar to last year's "An Inconvenient Truth." Instead of global warming, the threat this time involves a spending-addicted middle class America getting buried under a mountain of credit card debt. Entertainment Weekly called it "the scariest horror film of the season." The movie portrays banks and credit-card companies as financial predators who prey on middle- and low-income Americans, luring them with cash-back rewards, frequent flyer points, and low initial interest rates, and then sucking them dry once those low come-on interest rates rocket into the kind of double digits only a loan shark can love.
Jackson Hewitt(R) Reminds Taxpayers About Commonly Overlooked ...
PARSIPPANY, N.J., March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Year after year, taxpayers often overlook many pre-existing or newly introduced credits and deductions that may benefit them. Jackson Hewitt Tax Service(R), a leader in the tax preparation industry, notes several categories of consideration taxpayers should be aware of as they head out to have their 2006 tax return prepared and filed. "Not taking full advantage of the many deductions and credits available to most taxpayers will cause many to end up 'leaving money on the table'," said Mark Steber, Vice President of Tax Resources, Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc. "Besides the new tax benefits that arise each year, there are many more that are available year after year that taxpayers may continually overlook. A recent life-stage change often opens up credits and deductions that taxpayers are not aware of when preparing their return." Tax Issues Relevant to Life's Changes When you have a significant change in your life - such as getting married, having a baby, or buying a home - taxes are often the last thing in mind, but each of these can trigger new credits and deductions.
What would Jesus do at the Capitol?
It was Texas Pastors' Day in Austin a couple of weeks back. The signup table in the Capitol touted how the ministers would hear from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Well and good. Religion and politics mix. Each is about values like justice and mercy. But these forces can conflict sharply, especially if Christians are true to the message they will hear this Easter Sunday. Jesus was not some cherubic teacher who went around spouting niceties. Some of us who don't quite know what to do with Jesus can see him that way, looking at him through the rear view mirror much like we often do with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Gee, Dr. King must have been a great guy with all those wonderful words about love, even though his beliefs cost him his life. Jesus, too, was a divisive figure who challenged the order of his day, particularly the religious establishment.
Disaster Meeting
Today Senator Kent Conrad is meeting with farmers and ranchers from the area to discuss his disaster aid bill that passed the house and senate. The details of the bill call for about four-point-two billion dollars in disaster relief. About two hundred million dollars of this will be coming to North Dakota. Senator Conrad says one compromise made in the bill is that farmers and ranchers will have to choose to take relief for either 2005 or 2006.(Sen. Kent Conrad/ D-ND)"It's gonna make a big difference. This is not a Cadillac plan it's more of a chevrolet plan but it's going to make a meaningful difference to an awful lot of people in North Dakota." This news comes at the right time for many of these farmers and ranchers. This is when they are beginning to prepare for the upcoming growing season.
Students, tech make fitness a reality
The wheels started turning in the early hours of the morning while Ammar Al-Kuwaiti was up watching fitness infomercials on the television. Al-Kuwaiti was 35 pounds overweight and unhappy with his body image. That night, as he sat on his couch, he began wondering who actually bought the products being offered on TV. Al-Kuwaiti went looking on the Internet to get information on weight loss and nutrition, but was disappointed with what he found. I was watching the infomercial at 3 a.m. thinking, Who buys this stuff? This is so cheesy, says the third-year continuing education student. I thought its time people got a reality check. Al-Kuwaiti says there are a lot of companies that offer quick fixes and few that are straight up with their clients. And all these people know these products are B.S, want to get into shape, but just dont know how.
MAKE YOUR HOME GREEN
Everywhere you turn these days, there go those buzzwords again: green, eco, organic, sustainable, renewable, alternative, recycled, reused. And it's not just Al Gore and Whole Foods Market and Mother Earth News and a bunch of long-haired, tofu-loving guys wearing Birkenstocks and obsessed with Armageddon doing the talking. The conversation now has entered bastions of Middle America -- places such as Target, The Home Depot and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., all of which are making a major green push. Add to that an ever-growing buzz over global warming, carbon footprints, China's thirst for oil, a nuclear renaissance and the plight of the polar bear. But what's the average homeowner to do to make any sort of difference? The idea and the prospect of living in a more environmentally conscious way have, indeed, gone mainstream in the United States.
MAKE YOUR HOME GREEN
Everywhere you turn these days, there go those buzzwords again: green, eco, organic, sustainable, renewable, alternative, recycled, reused. And it's not just Al Gore and Whole Foods Market and Mother Earth News and a bunch of long-haired, tofu-loving guys wearing Birkenstocks and obsessed with Armageddon doing the talking. The conversation now has entered bastions of Middle America -- places such as Target, The Home Depot and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., all of which are making a major green push. Add to that an ever-growing buzz over global warming, carbon footprints, China's thirst for oil, a nuclear renaissance and the plight of the polar bear. But what's the average homeowner to do to make any sort of difference? The idea and the prospect of living in a more environmentally conscious way have, indeed, gone mainstream in the United States.
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