Archive for 2010

I hope you haven’t eaten those SpaghettiOs you bought back in late 2008 or 2009.

Campbell Soup Co. is recalling 15 million pounds of SpaghettiOs with meatballs after a cooker malfunctioned at one of the company’s plants in Texas and left the meat undercooked.

The Agriculture Department announced the recall late Thursday. Campbell spokesman Anthony Sanzio said the company is recalling certain lots of the product manufactured since December 2008 “out of an abundance of caution” because officials don’t know exactly when the cooker at the Paris, Texas, plant malfunctioned. Officials believe it happened recently but aren’t sure, he said.

The meatballs that went through the cooker did not get the requisite amount of heat, according to the company.

YUM!

It’s funny watching someone who has been completely negligent in his response to the oil spill call the company responsible as reckless.

Vowing to “make BP pay,” President Barack Obama accused the oil giant of “recklessness” in his first address to thenation from the Oval Office Tuesday night, eight weeks to the day after the catastrophic oil spill began destroying waterways, wildlife and a prized Gulf Coast way of life.

They have had to revise their estimates not once, not twice, but three times now.

Researchers studying the flow of oil from the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico said Thursday that as much as twice the amount of oil than previously thought may have been spewing into the sea since an oil rig exploded nearly two months ago.

It is the third — and perhaps not last — time the federal government has had to increase its estimate of how much oil is gushing.

Twice as much oil? That’s no ’slight miscalculation’ is it?

Investors pummeled shares of oil drillers and BP on Tuesday, after President Obama talked tough about dealing with the worst oil spill in the nation’s history.

Analysts added fuel to the sell-off by cutting their earnings outlooks on companies that figure to be hurt by the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf or the temporary delay in issuing permits for drilling in shallow water.

Don’t you find it interesting that investors are ‘fleeing‘, but within 3-6 months they will be “returning’ because they can’t resist those huge profits.

A handful of economic reports released Thursday raised hopes for an improving job market with fewer layoffs and more hiring.

Productivity slowed more than initially estimated in the first quarter of the year, a sign that employers are struggling to squeeze more work out of leaner staffs. The lower figure was expected after the government last week revised its growth estimate for the first quarter.

The number of people filing first-time jobless claims dipped for the second consecutive week but remains elevated for the year.

The number of people filing claims dropped, but the number of people out of work is still higher than it’s ever been. Great news huh?

Google employees are slamming Microsoft’s Windows operating system, claiming security vulnerabilities in the OS left the company open to Chinese hackers in January 2010, a new report says. According to the Financial Times, Google will ditch the internal use of Windows in exchange for alternative operating systems including the Mac OS, Linux, and Google’s own forthcoming Chrome OS operating system.

The May 31 Financial Times article quotes only anonymous Google sources, identifying them as several of Google’s 10,000 employees. FT reporters David Gelles and Richard Waters write: “Employees wanting to stay on Windows required clearance from ‘quite senior levels’, one employee said. ‘Getting a new Windows machine now requires CIO approval,’ said another employee.”

It could be worse. They could be demanding the use of Blackberries.

With lines about to form for the new iPhone 4G, America’s largest retailer is the first to try to liquidate its stock of older models, knocking $100 off the cost of a 16GB iPhone 3GS handset as of Tuesday.

At $97 with a two-year AT&T contract, that may be the lowest price around for an iPhone. Apple sells its eight-gigabyte iPhone 3G for $99 online. The catch is you’ll have to go into a Wal-Mart store to take advantage of the $97 deal. Likely hoping shoppers will spend more money once they are lured to the chain’s sprawling shelves, the company isn’t offering the deal online.

The question is, get a 3GS now, or get a 4G in a month or so? Hmmmm.

You can thank President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid for this…

A record-low 41.9 percent of Americans’ personal income came from paychecks from private businesses in the first quarter of 2010, a new study by USA Today finds. Meanwhile, government benefits such as food stamps and unemployment insurance rose to a record-high 17.9 percent of Americans’ income.

Nanny State here we come.

China raised its massive US government debt holdings for the first time in six months in March amid soaring foreign bond purchases on the back of European debt concerns, official data showed Monday.

The Chinese government, the top holder of US government debt, raised its long-term Treasury holdings to 895.2 billion dollars, up 17.7 billion dollars from February, the Treasury Department said in its latest monthly report on global capital flows in the world’s largest economy.

Yay! We owe even more to China now!

Are they kidding? The oil spill occurred because someone screwed up. There, I just saved our government MILLIONS of dollars.

U.S. President Barack Obama will create a presidential commission to investigate the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and study industry practices and the role of government oversight, an administration official said on Monday.

The panel, which the president will establish with an executive order, will be similar to those created to look into the 1986 space shuttle Challenger explosion and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, the official said.

Yeah, and we got truthful, honest answers from those investigations as well, didn’t we?