ToneHall

Super Bowl Sunday Recipe: Best and Easiest Dip

So simple, a lineman could make it.

What's Super Bowl Sunday without food, drinks, friends and ads.  Oh - and the game, of course.

I got this recipe from my Aunt Lois years ago.  No matter when I serve it, it's a huge hit.  The bowl is always empty mid-way through the party - be forewarned!

Here it is:

1 can of chili
1 brick of cream cheese, 8 oz.

Heat the can of chili (any type will do)
Add the brick of cream cheese (light, if you're trying to save calories)
Warm for about 10 minutes over a moderate heat so that the cream cheese is totally melted into the chili.  Stir frequently. 
Pour into a bowl and serve with corn chips, Tostitos, Fritos or whatever.  Even Ruffles will work.

People will love it - the taste is sublime!

Cool Tools: The Ideal Gift Book for Bernard Madoff

He may be in his penthouse now, but it looks like sooner rather than later he'll be in the jailhouse.

My take?  Bernie needs some help.  It's my guess that his friends in Manhattan aren't exactly the same as the gentlemen he'll be meeting when he checks in to the Big House.

The solution is Behind Bars.  You've seen Survivor - this book tells you how to survive in prison, not the wilds of Australia.  Bernie will learn what the entire prison process is - from arrest to trial and, finally, incarceration.

Help him understand what to do next as he navigates our prison system.  The authors, a criminologist and a former jailbird with 11 years under his belt, know their stuff.

See excerpts here.

New York Times: Obscene Bonuses Raked In by Wall Street Fat Cats

I feel guilty that the bonuses for workers on Wall Street were so meager this year. 

I've let the investment bankers, derivatives brokers and others down.  I've been trying to drown my sorrows in a glass of water, but who can afford the glass - let alone the water - anymore?

Here's a NYT graphic that shows the damage we've done to these innocents:

This 44% drop is shameful and it's our fault, people.  Couldn't you have told your child they'd have to give up their milk so an investment banker could continue to get his Bentley detailed every month?  What about your aged mother - did she really need that chemo?  And maybe your wife could have taken the bus to work instead of driving.

I hope President Obama rallies the Republicans around this cause.  These people are about to lose their homes in Aspen, their treasured spa trips to Switzerland, and that special pied a terre in Paris they purchased with 1% of their last bonus check. 

Protect a vanishing species - Save Wall Street Bankers!  Read more here, then do your bit to help!

New York Times: Ford's Year Stinks, but They Won't Take Fed Money

Ford has integrity with regard to the TARP bailout.

Facing a loss of more than $14 billion, the company still won't take a Federal handout.

What is it that makes Ford so different from GM and Chrysler?  Is the ghost of Henry Ford terrorizing Alan R. Mulally at night?

In Q4, the company dumped $5.9 billion.  And if you'll note, we're all getting used to the billion thing.  It used to be that hearing the term 'billion' would occasion a slight intake of breath.  No more.  The numbers are so big we don't really take them in.

Here's to Ford.  I once owned a Mercury Sable, and got good performance, great value.  I'd now say Ford is the only American automaker I'd ever think of buying.

The story's here.

NYT: BBQAddicts.com - Bacon Explosion Recipe, Pix and Article

If you're the one person in the U.S. whose physician has prescribed more fatty foods, you've met your match.

Who'd have thunk that there would be a mad genius who'd develop sausage and bacon into the height of the current 'bacomania?'  Cholesterol?  What's the problem with that?

Searching for the key to more blog hits, the guys at BBQAddicts.com came up with this artery-clogging recipe - and now the NYT is showcasing them, their blog and the secret formula just in time for everyone who's planning a Super Bowl party. 

Bacon, sausage, and more bacon.  Have your cardiologist's number handy before you take a bite!

Read the entire piece, with photos, here.

Bloomberg: Corporate Zombie AIG Feeds $450M in Retention Bonuses to Employees

Just when you thought the economic crisis couldn't get any worse, along come the piggy employees of AIG, bellying up to the bar to slurp down $450M in TARP taxpayer dollars.

That sound outside your window?  It's the outrage of taxpayers everywhere whose money is now going to - wait for it - RETAIN the idiots that drove AIG into the ground.

Hard to believe, but management - and I use that term loosely when referring to AIG because it's looking a lot like a ship with no one at the helm - is insisting that these fine executives be kept on board what appears to be the Titanic.

As reported by Bloomberg, "About 400 workers at the financial products unit may get the money in two installments, said the people, who declined to be named because details of the payments were confidential. The business was responsible for about $34 billion in writedowns since 2007 as the market value of swaps AIG sold to banks plunged amid the subprime mortgage market collapse."

My bold in the quote - their bold in thinking they'd be able to pull this off.  Looks like I'm wrong, though - it's done.

It would be impossible to make up a more insane plotline for a Hollywood film.  The annals of business history are littered with people who have done incredibly stupid things - 'Chainsaw' Al Dunlap, Mr. Ponzi, Bernard Madoff...well, you get the picture.  Somehow, we always think that's in the past.  But the AIG bonus gambit is an example in our time of the behavior that drove the French to the barricades during their revolution. 

AIG's management is looking an awful lot like Marie Antoinette.

Have your air sickness bag at hand, then click here to read the entire story and get extremely angry.

Jeffrey Scharf in Everybody's Business: Corporate Zombies are Killing our Financial System

Not yet a week after Obama's inaug and the good feelings continue.  But not for Jeffrey Scharf who thinks corporate zombies are sucking the life from our financial system.

What's a zombie?  Try Bank of America, Citigroup and AIG for starters.

Is Scharf just being a meanie, or is there really something to this.  As he puts it, "At the corporate level, the government is shoveling money to stupid instutions as fast as it can.  Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG and others lost tens of billions of dollars through foolish lending or improvident acquisitions or both.  Instead of letting these companies go bankrupt, the government keeps them alive, in many cases with the same incompetents in charge.  Like zombies, these walking dead retain customers who would otherwise go to healthy, better-run competitors.  Success is punished, failure rewarded."

Fighting words, until you get to the part where he rips GM and Chrysler.  His take is that there would be scant job loss if they disappeared.  Scharf feels workers would be picked up by Toyota and Honda - and they'd be needed because there would be increased demand for their higher quality products.

His last paragraph ices the topic:  "If personal responsibility means anything, it has to mean that failure is an option.  The sooner the zombies are buried, the sooner confidence will return and the rest of us will thrive.

What do you think?