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This is a rough draft of my Rants for the week of August 5, 2007

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1. Josh Coggelshall who lives in Port Clyde is a smart man. He is also a thrifty man. Josh has a Mercedes that runs on the used cooking oil he gets from Yakavenko who runs the famous Dip Net restaurant on the dock in Port Clyde. Last week a man who was driving to Rockland turned to his wife and said, “Josh must be ahead of us. I smell Dip Net monkfish nuggets.”

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2. You have heard me say that I am remortgaging my home. I am doing this to release 80 or so acres of woodland from the bank so I may give it to Marsha’s oldest granddaughter and put that woodland into conservation so it can never be broken up and sold off as house lots. I am one of those people who believe that too much of the forest land on the coast of Maine is being broken up into house lots. Woodland is being sold off for short term gain by a few individuals to the permanent long term detriment of all the people who live in the town. Although I could sell off my valuable land and spend the remaining days of my life in idle luxury, wintering in southern Italy, for some inexplicable reason I consider that as being immoral and irresponsible. I’m not saying that it is wrong for you and my other friends to do it. I’m just saying that I can’t do it myself. I have a mortgage today because I bought an 8 or 9 house development contiguous to my property and shut the so-called “development” down. I turned it back into the woodland that it had been since the last ice age. Yes. To do this I had to borrow $100,000.

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3. I don’t know how it happened, but I have around $100,000 in available credit with four separate credit card accounts. For years they have begged me to borrow up to $35,000 at 1.99 percent interest for 9 or so months. So instead of paying the banks 6 or 8 percent for that $100,000 I borrowed to buy the "development," I’ve been paying 1.99 percent on four different credit cards. When the 9 or so months runs out and they are all set to slap me with 22 percent interest, I borrow the balance from another credit card at 1.99 percent interest and pay off the first one. Of course, every month the amount I owe goes down. But now, because I’m 71 and might not live the four or five years that it will take me to pay off the balance of that money I borrowed to save that land for future generations, I’ve asked my favorite bank to remortgage my house so I can pay off those credit cards. Yes, I will be paying 4 or so percent more on that money now that I’m taking it out of credit cards and putting the entire amount in one mortgage with one bank. But that is the price I’m going to have to pay for being old. I’m talking about this today because I want to tell you about a paper I just got from the bank. It is called a Score Disclosure.

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4. I’m trying to remortgage my house. If I were younger, I wouldn’t do it, because I’ll be paying 4 or so percent more for this mortgage than I’m presently paying on my present debt. This is because about $50,000 of the money I owe on the "development" is in unsecured loans from credit card companies. For years I paid those credit card companies around 2 percent interest on $50,000. The remaining $20,000 I owe on this farm is a bank mortgage that costs me 7 percent interest. I want to put 80 or so acres of my farm into conservation and the only way I know how to do it is to remorgage my house and free up all the acreage from liens and mortgages. I’m talking about this today because of a credit report I just got from the bank. I don’t really understand it and if you do I hope you’ll explain it to me. It says, “Proportion of balances to credit limits too high on revolving accounts.” “High Score = Low Risk” That’s what the credit report says. But I’m pretty sure that I have one credit card that is good for $30,000 in cash. I don’t owe a cent on it, and I keep it that way. I shuffle this debt back and forth between credit cards just because they keep baiting me with a juicy offer of 1.99 percent for 8 or 9 months. Here’s another part of that credit report that says, “Too many accounts recently opened.” That makes me sound financially irresponsible, doesn’t it? Do you know why someone like me gets a lot of credit cards? Let me tell you how that happens.

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5. We’re talking about credit reports and borrowing money today. I just got a credit report and in one place it says, “Too many accounts recently opened.” That makes me sound financially irresponsible, doesn’t it? I didn’t know that getting more credit cards was a bad thing to do, did you? Let me tell you why people open up new credit card accounts. I think I’ve cancelled two credit cards within the past year. One I’d had for years but got rid of it because it no longer suited my needs. The other one I was forced to open. Have you ever collected sky miles? When you ride a certain amount of miles on an airplane, the airline gives you a free ticket. Good luck cashing it in, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Within the past year I got a letter from the airline company saying that I hadn’t used my free ticket and they were going to take it away from me. Unless --- I sent them $50 or so --- or --- unless I signed up for one of their credit cards. See how it happens? I was forced to apply for one of their credit cards just to save my free airplane ticket. As soon as they told me I’d saved my free ticket, I cancelled the credit card. I’m sorry, but they invented the rules to this game. I only did what I did to save my free ticket. I’m playing by their rules. But, from what can understand from the credit report, doing this kind of thing makes me financially irresponsible.

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6. We’re talking about credit reports and borrowing money today. I just got a credit report and in one place it says, “Too many accounts recently opened.” That makes me sound financially irresponsible, doesn’t it? I didn’t know that opening up a lot of credit card accounts was a bad thing to do, did you? Here’s how it happens. I wanted to buy a new shower for our cellar. Years ago I found the old shower stall behind my brother’s barn and set it up in our cellar. But I’m getting rid of it and putting a new one because the old one is hard to keep clean. When I went into Home Depot to buy a new shower stall, my good friend of many years who works in there told me that if I’d apply for a Home Depot credit card, they’d deduct $30 off the price of the shower stall. On top of that, by getting me to sign up for this credit card, my friend would be eligible for all kinds of prizes and awards. I got $30 off the price of that shower just for signing up for a Home Depot credit card.

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7. Why do people sign up for credit cards? Within the past year I had to get one to preserve a free plane ticket I’d earned by flying 50,000 or so miles with one airline. I just got another one at Home Depot because Home Depot gave me $30 off the price of a shower stall to sign up for their credit card. I don’t know about you, but $30 is a lot of money and I can sign paper all day if each paper pays me $30. By the way, I already paid off the $200 or so on that credit card that shower stall cost me, so now I have a zero balance on that Home Depot credit card. If I hadn’t paid it off, of course they would have whomped me with --- I don’t know --- 20 percent or so interest on the unpaid balance. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be able to loan out money at 20 percent interest. Do you think that begging people to save money by getting a credit card sounds like a conspiracy to keep stupid people poor?

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8. I just bought a shower stall from Home Depot. I got $30 off the price of that shower stall for signing up for a Home Depot credit card. The other day I got the bill for that shower stall. Of course I immediately paid it off in full. If I hadn’t, that $30 I saved would have been soon eaten in interest charges. Does that tell you what kind of person I am? Please listen closely. A month or so ago I bought a shower stall at Home Depot. A few weeks later I got a bill from Home Depot which I immediately paid in full. The shower stall is in my cellar. I still haven’t gotten around to throw out the old shower stall and install this new one. Does this tell you what kind of person I am? If it doesn’t, ask my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman who wants everything done yesterday, and she will wring her hands and gnash her teeth and tell you that this is, indeed, the kind of person I am.

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9. You know that we have a Bed & Breakfast here on the coast of Maine. And because of this Bed & Breakfast we have made many new friends. We were recently visited by some friends, father, mother and 17-year-old daughter. If you have taken the time to look at young girls lately, you know that some of them either mutilate their bodies in manners too sickening to describe here or wear their hair in a style that can best be described as a stork’s nest. Some do both. But --- one still occasionally sees a very pretty young girl who has obviously never been influenced by the horror, known as teen fashion, touted on television or in magazines. And one can’t help but think how refreshing --- how nice this is --- as long as one stops thinking about them there. But this morning I got to thinking about my experiences with unmutilated 17-year-old girls. When I was in the 6th grade, they were the big kids. When I was 13 and 14 they were still the big kids, but somewhere about this time, when a gang of us would go swimming together and towels would “accidentally” drop, I became aware that these people were older girls. And then, when I was 17, I was plagued and teased by these people, who were, even then, somewhat strange and distant. And now, almost 60 years later I can still remember many of the things these 17-year-old paragons of virtue said and did. Seventeen year old girls are still strange and distant, but wouldn’t they be shocked if they looked at this tottering old man and realized that he knows exactly what they think and what they do.

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10. http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/stories/MYSA080207.03E.Dubai.2a3bc62.html

My friend has a car with a magic microscopic chip in the motor. The people who made that car can, from their office a thousand miles away, look at a screen and tell you exactly where that car is. The people who made that car can push a button and the motor in that car stops dead. You might have read that a global aerospace corporation based in Dubai has just bought a company named Standard Aero Holdings Inc. If this is true, it means that a company based in the United Arab Emirates owns a company that provides maintenance and overhaul of U.S. military and business aircraft. Let me say that again slowly because you might not believe what you just heard. I read that a company based in the United Arab Emirates now owns a company that provides maintenance and overhaul of U.S. military and business aircraft. Think about this. Have you been on an airplane lately? Your government won’t let you carry a bottle of soda onto an airplane because they say they are trying to protect you. Did you know that you can’t go into the bus station in Rockland, Maine and buy a ticket to Boston unless your papers are in order? Did you know that you can’t go into the bus station in Rockland and buy a bus ticket to Boston for your wife unless she is standing beside you --- and has her papers in order? The folks who are running this country today will tell you that these shades-of-1934-Germany regulations are necessary to protect you. But --- money talks -- --- you’ve heard of the “Texas Connection” --- and now we read that a company based in the United Arab Emirates owns a company --- in Texas --- that provides maintenance and overhaul of U. S. military and business aircraft.

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11. You might have heard that the U.S. government cannot account for some 190,000 weapons issued to Iraq’s security forces. That’s what it said on the news. Of course, missing weapons is nothing new. Human nature hasn’t changed in thousands of years. Think about this. No matter what product you make, it is to your advantage to get that product into as many hands as possible. If your business is making potato chips, does it really matter to you who is eating them? If your business is making guns, does it really matter to you who is shooting them? Only someone who profits by the manufacture of guns would go into another country and hand out product samples to people who promise to join forces with you and fight your common enemy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that before you can turn your back, those guns are very likely to be pointed at you and your own people. But this doesn’t concern you because your business is making and selling guns. This has happened over and over for years and years in countless situations. The people who make guns and their friends, the kings and presidents and dictators who invade other countries, know this. You can read about it. There is a vast literature on the topic. So are your surprised to hear someone on television say that these weapons that the US government brought to Iraq are now being turned against US personnel in Iraq? If you’ve been listening to my show for a long time, you know that over the past 29 years I’ve talked about this very situation several times. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know about these things.

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12. For the last few years of his life, my buddy Bill, my wife’s father, lived with us. Bill had a rare form of muscular dystrophy called Barbeau's disease or Oculopharyngeal Dystrophy. We never knew he had a rare congenital form of muscular dystrophy until it was finally diagnosed in his daughter a few years after he died. Bill had a struggle walking up stairs and he had a struggle swallowing. If the doctors knew that he had muscular dystrophy, they never told us about it. I finally had to feed him through a tube that the doctors installed in his stomach. I’d hook a syringe up to him and pump him full of life-sustaining liquid. I might be like you in that I didn’t think I could ever do anything like that, but you can do a lot of things if you have to. We were always after Bill to exercise. I figured his legs gave out just because he so seldom used them. And the other day Marsha was talking about her father and the fact that we were always after him to exercise more, not knowing, of course, that he had muscular dystrophy. And Marsha sighed and said, “I wish I hadn’t been so hard on him.” And I said, “It’s not too late to not be so hard on me.”

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13. You probably heard that Vice President Dick Cheney assumed the role of President of the United States, while George W. Bush underwent a routine colonoscopy. This raises a couple of interesting questions. First and foremost, if Bush were unable to perform the duties of his office, how would anyone be able to tell? And the question that came to your mind when you first heard of this was, of course, how does one perform a colonoscopy on a sitting president?

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