Rob's New Book is Available!!- Lessons Learned from Talking to the Dead

I'm excited to tell you that my new book is now available!  - 
Huge thanks to Inspired Ghost Tracking (Margaret and Ronda for editing), and mediums Barb Mallon, Ruth Larkin and Troy Cline.
Rob

Lessons Learned from Talking to the Dead  

by Rob Gutro 

Paperback  List Price: $9.99

**COMING SOON ON E-BOOK** 

In medium Rob Gutro’s second book, you’ll learn about lessons he gathered from communicating with Earth-bound ghosts and Spirits who have crossed into the light. Ghosts and Spirits provide insight into how we can live better on Earth.Follow him on a treasure-hunt-style journey in Virginia as he and others try to explain what appear to be random and obscure words, signs and symbols from a spirit, that all wind up being intensely personal to the spirit.
Explore the science behind how they communicate. Learn how to receive their messages, where they appear, and important messages in how to live your life. Rob takes you into cemeteries, battlefields, and historic places. You’ll see what happens to victims of suicide and murders, and how infants and animals pass messages to the living.

CreateSpace eStore: https://www.createspace.com/3824548  

6" x 9", Black & White, 202 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1475033212  or  ISBN-10: 1475033214

PAPERBACK AVAILABLE: http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Learned-Talking-Dead-Volume/dp/1475033214/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333200559&sr=1-3
**Available soon as an E-book/Kindle/NOOK

In the News: Red States Are The Real Welfare States

Here's an interesting statistic from the "Shock and Awe" Blog, citing an article from the NY Times. 

Red States Are The Real Welfare States

States receiving the most federal funding per tax dollar paid:
1. New Mexico: $2.63
2. West Virginia: $2.57
3. Mississippi: $2.47
4. District of Colombia: $2.41
5. Hawaii: $2.38
6. Alabama: $2.03
7. Alaska: $1.93
8. Montana: $1.92 
9. South Carolina: $1.92
10. Maine: $1.78

Contrary to popular belief, those who make the most noise and complain the most about Federal spending and the programs said spending support, are in fact the same people who collect those Federal dollars and who coincidentally don't want to give up the programs. Their states; the RED ones... receive more per dollar, than they give "As a recent New York Times article documents, even as fiscally conservative lawmakers complain about deficit spending, their constituents don't want to give up the Social Security checks, Medicare benefits, and earned income tax credits that provide a safety net for the struggling middle class."
FULL STORY: http://shockandaweonamerica.blogspot.com/2012/03/red-states-are-real-welfare-states.html

Video- Deadly accident on icy roads

We've noticed that people like to speed excessively and tailgate in our state, and I'm sure they do it everywhere. However, they don't realize how dangerous it is to them and others. Here's a video from the Internet of an SUV speeding on a slush-covered highway, that slides into a truck, bounces into the oncoming traffic lane and is literally obliterated.
 - I don't know where this 34 second  video was taken, but its a lesson to all not to speed.
http://www.rmirror.net/r/videos/comments/q5hu9/car_accident_nsfl/

VIDEO: Visit Baltimore's Cool Federal Hill Neighborhood

If you've never been to the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, you're missing out on a great part of Baltimore. Our friend Jane is the manager of the Main Street association, and works hard to bring businesses and residents together, and arrange all festivals and events. Federal Hill has a lot of great restaurants, shops, and is even dog friendly. Check out this short 3 minute video to get a taste of the "Hill." You'll want to go there (and yes, there is a Dunkin' Donuts there, too.)

Watch the Live Penguin Cam from Sea World

You are watching Penguin Cam: live video of the "Penguin Encounter" at SeaWorld® San Diego. Stay tuned for penguin feedings throughout the day, and don't miss our live Q&A sessions every Monday from noon to 12:30 p.m. ET starting Monday, March 19. - Live through April, 2012.

In celebration of Frozen Planet (from the makers of Planet Earth), premiering Sundays at 8PM e/p,


Live video from your iPhone using Ustream
Penguin Cam will be live 24 hours a day throughout March and April — plenty of time to get to know SeaWorld San Diego's nearly 300 penguins, representing all five Antarctic species: emperors, kings, Adélies, gentoos and macaronis.

Penguin Cam not looking crystal clear? It's very cold in the exhibit (25°F), and penguins will be penguins, so at times the picture won't look perfect. Our cam operators are actively addressing these issues, so if things don't look great right now, please try again later. Also, SeaWorld is constantly monitoring the penguins' health and safety. If a penguin hasn't moved for a while, just sit back, relax and watch it sleep. It'll be up again in no time. 

Against National Healthcare? Now at Supreme Court

   The President's National Health Care law is now being heard in the Supreme Court because of people who oppose making health care mandatory for every U.S. citizen.   

     Parts of the President's National Health Care law is in effect: Beneficial Things like 1) If you have a pre-existing condition like a heart attack or stroke, cancer or diabetes, Insurance companies CANNOT deny to cover you.  2) Children as old as 26 can still be covered under their parent's health plan.

    *Do you know that hospitals who treat people in the ER that don't have health care coverage (like drug addicts, gunshot victims, people in poverty, homeless, etc.) have caused MANY Hospitals to close down?  In the last several years one hospital in Washington, DC closed for that reason. 

- For hospitals still treating uninsured WE are paying for them with higher bills!  Why do you think an ER visit now costs at least $1,000.00?? (I just paid that last year).  We are paying for the people who don't have health care!!

    I have a response for all of those people in the states that voted for politicians who are opposing the National Health care law:  . If you are that foolish, then you don't deserve to get health insurance and should NOT get these benefits. 

        If the law is repealed, what does that mean for people in these states who have cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc.?  It means that you will die a lot more quickly because you will be unable to afford medical care. 

  - If you're against the National Health Plan and you vote conservative to support these states that want to repeal the law, then perhaps you deserve what you get. I certainly don't want to see people suffer, but if  you fight to overturn something that is going to enhance your quality of life, give you medical care, and enable you to live a healthier life - then you deserve the illness and all that comes with it.

  All of the states depicted on this map in blue have filed to repeal the President's Health care law. To all of the people of these states I say, okay, I hope the Supreme court says you don't have to go with the President's plan. Just don't come crying when you develop cancer or have a stroke and fund out that your Health Insurance provider has dropped you and you can't get coverage.    If you don't think it happens, you are so wrong.  - Rob

 

  READ THIS ARTICLE FROM THE NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN - and Tennessee is ONE state who is suing the Federal Government to repeal the law:

Health-care reform is working
Millions more insured; law ending bias, boosting preventive care
   Some benefits are obvious. The fact that young adults can now stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26 has been popular with the 52,000 Tennessee families that now enjoy peace of mind knowing that their kids won’t be thrown off just when they are starting out on their own.
Some are not so obvious. Those same young adults are part of the largest population of uninsured and the least likely to need expensive care. Giving them an affordable path into the risk pool stabilizes health insurance premiums for the rest of us.
The law prioritizes preventive care, eliminating co-pays and deductibles for Medicare and new private plans on things like mammograms, colonoscopies, and Pap tests. This isn’t just common sense for individuals and their physicians, who can catch and treat their conditions earlier; prevention and personal responsibility save money in the entire system.
To help shield families and businesses from unreasonable premium hikes, the law now requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of our premium dollars on actual medical care instead of administrative overhead. If plans don’t meet these standards, they have to pay us rebates. For 3 million Tennesseans with private insurance, it’s high time for that kind of accountability.
Sixty-six thousand, five hundred small businesses in Tennessee that offer insurance to their employees are now eligible for a tax credit. For small employers like Lee in Maryville, who are charged on average 18 percent more for the same plans as large companies, this credit levels the playing field and enables him to compete for the best talent.
Undeniably, the most popular provision of the law is the end of discrimination for pre-existing medical conditions. In Tennessee, 1.2 million people have a medical condition that would be grounds for outright denial of insurance.
FULL STORY: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120323/OPINION03/303230052/Health-care-reform-working

IN THE NEWS- Trinity Broadcasting embroiled in family feud

For anyone that thinks that corruption never enters religious businesses, read this fascinating article from the Nashville Tennessean, about a multi-million dollar Christian  broadcasting empire. 
- Rob

Trinity Broadcasting embroiled in family feud
Allegations of lavish spending, theft fly within Christian media power

Televangelists Paul and Jan Crouch, who transformed the former Twitty City in Hendersonville into the Trinity Music City USA religious entertainment complex, are no strangers to controversy.
The couple, who own the multimillion-dollar Christian media empire Trinity Broadcasting Network, fought an 11-year battle to avoid paying property taxes on the entertainment complex after buying it in the mid-1990s.
As that battle raged, a gay staff member alleged he had an affair with Paul Crouch, and the Crouches ran into conflict with the FCC over rules governing how many television stations they can own.
Now, they are being attacked by members of their own family.
Their granddaughter, Brittany Koper, recently filed court papers in Costa Mesa, Calif., that include allegations of $50 million in financial shenanigans at the world’s largest Christian broadcasting network.
Her suit was followed by another from a Koper in-law, who detailed opulent spending at the network on items such as private jets, mansions in California, Tennessee and Florida and a $100,000 mobile home for Jan Crouch’s dogs.
The network has 78 satellites and more than 18,000 television and cable affiliates and owns seven other networks, as well as its headquarters in Costa Mesa in Orange County and the Holy Land Experience, a Christian amusement park in Orlando, Fla.
FULL STORY: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120323/NEWS01/303230068/Trinity-Broadcasting-embroiled-family-feud?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|News|s

Holy Bad Burrito: Man buried under mound of pinto beans dies

From the Weird News file- this story was in the news this week.  What a weird way to meet your end.
(Reuters) - A 56-year-old man was killed when he was buried under a 20-foot (six-meter) mound of pinto beans at a warehouse in eastern Colorado where he worked, police said.
Raymond Segura Jr. was pronounced dead at the Brush, Colorado, facility of the Kelley Bean Company on Thursday after efforts to reach him alive were unsuccessful, Morgan County Undersheriff Dave Martin said.
"We moved several tons of beans to get to him," Martin said in a telephone interview.
Martin said emergency personnel were summoned to the site at 11:30 a.m. on reports of a worker trapped in a pile of loose pinto beans.
Martin said dozens of rescue workers and even four inmates from the county jail spent an hour digging through a mound of the legumes to get to the trapped worker, but he was dead when crews reached him.
Segura had worked at the warehouse for between 12 and 15 years, Martin said. The cause of the accident, how the victim became trapped and the exact cause of death are under investigation.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Peter Bohan)

Old-time radio and comics heroes burst back onto the scene

 One superhero that has been out of print for many years, and is one of my favorite is the Shadow. He's now back in his own comic book and I'm excited about it! - Rob

USA TODAY - Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? (Hint: The guy dresses up in a cape and runs around at night. And it's not Batman.)

  The Shadow still knows — as do Flash Gordon, the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet and other heroes of 1930s and '40s radio shows, pulp magazines and movie serials.

These good guys are making a comeback, though mainly in comics and feature-length movies. Next month, The Shadow receives a comics reboot courtesy of Dynamite Entertainment, which also publishes ongoing series starring Flash Gordon and Green Hornet plus a new title with pulp hero The Spider that's due in May.

    On the big screen, a masked Seth Rogen stung bad guys in last year's The Green Hornet. And in The Lone Ranger, in production for release in 2013, Armie Hammer rides tall as the title cowboy with Johnny Depp as his sidekick Tonto. Baby Boomers grew up watching the Clayton Moore TV series in the '50s, although the saga began as a 1933 radio show in Detroit. Though these characters may not be as well known as today's comic-book superheroes or the Star Wars and Harry Potter clans, they were the bee's knees for a generation that was decades away from the Internet and iPods.

   Before Batman, there was the alter ego Lamont Cranston donning the shadowy mask and hat while haunting radio waves as The Shadow, voiced by Orson Welles in the late '30s.  And before Superman and Captain America there was Flash Gordon, an all-American space adventurer who tussled with planetary tyrant Ming the Merciless in sci-fi comic strips by Alex Raymond and serial films starring Buster Crabbe.

"The '20s and '30s are seen as a very romantic age, with the criminal underworld of urban America and high adventure of exotic foreign locations providing a bit of an edge," says Garth Ennis, who is writing the new Shadow comic. "The reality, I'm sure, would have been mostly a lot more mundane and occasionally quite grim."

He's crafting The Shadow as a dangerous champion of law and order with a flair for the dramatic, and he is embracing one of the vigilante's oldest and most famous traits: his habit of laughing as he consigns his enemies to their doom.

"I decided to be fairly sparing with it," Ennis says. "If he started howling every timehttp://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/story/2012-03-20/Radio-stars-and-pulp-heroes-return-to-pop-culture/53659158/1?csp=Dailybriefing he threw a punch or fired a shot, it would get old fast. So I decided to preserve the laugh for moments of deep, dark, extreme humor."

His take on The Shadow comic is a bloody affair, where the mysterious figure dispatches bad guys with violent aplomb. More than 70 years ago, though, audiences had to visualize with their imagination what was going on during the radio-show exploits.  FULL STORY:

IN THE NEWS: Boston Archdiocese defends six-figure salaries for top church employees

IN THE NEWS - I found this interesting. I thought people who worked for churches were usually not paid much so the funds would go to helping homeless, poor, uneducated, jobless, and emotionally distraught people. I thought about this, and realized the Evangelicals like the Falwell family also made 6 figure salaries, as friends who live in Lynchburg, Va. (where they live) tell us how they flaunt their sports cars, expensive jewelry, big houses, etc. - So, the Catholic church isn't doing anything the evangelicals have been doing for decades. Regardless, I personally think its wrong. - After all, priests and nuns take vows of poverty! - and I think the Evangelicals need to pay TAXES. Can you imagine the city/town improvements that can be made from taxes on multi-millionaires like the Falwell family??


Spirit of giving?:  Boston Archdiocese defends six-figure salaries for top church employees
James Eng, msnbc.com


The Boston Archdiocese is defending six-figure salaries paid to a growing number of church employees, saying the pay is commensurate with their talents and work duties.


The Boston Herald on Wednesday reported that the archdiocese’s latest annual report lists 17 “senior lay executives” who earned more than $150,000 last year. In 2006, only five employees were paid that much, according to the newspaper.

FULL STORY: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/21/10798101-spirit-of-giving-boston-archdiocese-defends-six-figure-salaries-for-top-church-employees








--------------------------------------------------------------------------------






The Boston Catholic Insider blog reported similar figures for 2011 in a post last month titled “Bloated Payroll” but said just two employees were making $150,000 in 2006.






Topping the 2011 list was Mary Grassa O’Neill, superintendent of the archdiocese’s Catholic schools, whose total compensation topped $351,000, the Herald reported. The top archdiocesan lawyer earned $326,169, while the recently departed chancellor, the archdiocese’s top financial officer, grossed $276,486.


The newspaper noted that the archdiocese has cut 50 staff members since 2006 but payroll costs increased by nearly $1 million.  FULL STORY:
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/21/10798101-spirit-of-giving-boston-archdiocese-defends-six-figure-salaries-for-top-church-employees

3 Big Superhero Movies this Summer!

 I'm (Rob) looking forward to going to the movies this summer! :) 

TRAILER:   http://bcove.me/9r96p1q3 

USA TODAY:   Batman, Spider-Man and the all-star superhero team The Avengers — are duking it out months before their movies hit the big screen in summer.

All three films —The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man from Marvel and Batman saga The Dark Knight Rises from DC — have staged publicity blitzes to gain momentum for a showdown expected to make up for last year's subpar spandex performances.

     Though 2011's crime fighters —The Green Hornet ($99 million), Thor ($181 million), Green Lantern ($117 million) and Captain America: The First Avenger ($177 million) — did solid numbers, they fell short of many expectations and became poster boys for the anemic year at theaters, which saw a 15-year attendance low.

This year marks a return of comics' A-listers, prompting studios to start swinging early:

•Bap! In December, Warner Bros. premiered IMAX footage of The Dark Knight Rises (out July 20) for reporters to drum up support for its trailer, attached to last year's Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.

•Kapow! Last month, Sony touted its reboot of the Spider-Man franchise with extended footage of The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3 in 13 theaters). The campaign included beaming the spider logo onto London's Parliament and Sydney's Opera House.

•Biff!The Avengers (May 4) trumpeted its trailer with a viral campaign that, according to Marvel, set an online trailer viewership record Feb 29. The studio says 13.7 million people viewed the ad, besting The Dark Knight's 12.5 million views in 2008.

Funny Sign in a Grocery Store

This photo was on George Takei's facebook page (yes, he's the actor who played Sulu on Star Trek). He posts funny pics and cartoons that he comes across, or people send him. I'm sure that this Safeway grocery store is in the Washington, D.C. area, given all the spacing errors and mis-spellings we see on signs.