This Just In - A Second Chance

Sandra Jamie Olson, 67, was freed from the Central California Women's Facility shortly after midnight and will be allowed to serve her yearlong parole in Minnesota, the state she adopted during a 26-year flight from justice.

When asked what she was going to do with her time, Olson responded, "Oh, I just want to get back to my knitting and live in peace. I’m an old woman. I’m not here to make waves with the good people in this town. I’m ready to give back to the community."

Olson served seven years - half her sentence - after pleading guilty to helping place pipe bombs under Los Angeles Police Department patrol cars and participating in the deadly robbery of a bank in a Sacramento suburb in August 1975.

Olson continues, "I look forward to collecting flowers from my garden each morning. I’ve made so many terrible choices in life, but I’ve been given a second chance. My days are filled with God. I'm so sorry for what I've done."

Olson successfully completed the 5-year rehabilitation program at the correctional facility at the top of her class. Everybody has high hopes for her and wish her well.

"I just hope people can forgive me and understand that my troubled past is behind me." she goes on, "but some people still bother me. If it keeps up, I’m going to get really pissed off and start blowing fucking shit up! You mutherfuckers! Fuck you! I hate you all so much! Oh, if I had a pipe right now… whore… fu… blow… [unintelligible]… bombdy, bombdy, bom…[unintelligible]."

Department spokeswoman Terry Scott said parole decisions are intended to give former prisoners the best chance of reintegrating into society and avoiding re-arrest.

"Being with their family increases the chances that they will succeed on parole," she said, "Sandra is going to do great. Our rehabilitation program is the best in the world."

Folks, this is Johnny Newsmaker signing off. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming… "Breaking News - Dog has puppies, more at 11!" only on Ranting-TV…

From the Morning Desk - I'm Into M&A!

When we start to see mergers and acquisitions getting done, that is another sign that this bear market may be getting long in the tooth. It’s easy to forget that underneath stocks are real, living (living-dead zombies in the case of AIG), companies. They have employees and product or service lines and they produce stuff.

When deals start getting put together, it usually means two things are starting to work. The first is that although credit is still very tight, it is showing signs of life and that’s going to be important to finance these multi-billion dollar deals. The second is that it makes good fiscal sense to acquire companies on the cheap. And as dire as the economy is right now, companies are getting optimistic and are starting to think about the business two, five or ten years out. And when they can buy their competitor for half or a third of the price of 2007, they are finally beginning to pull the trigger.

Look around. We are seeing major M&A in biotech. And today we saw IBM making a bid for Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion. That’s a good deal. JAVA alone is worth at least $6 billion and Solaris UNIX would fit in at IBM perfectly. Let’s watch to see what HP or Dell is going to do. Technology deals make sense as these companies actually have a lot of free cash sitting on their books.

Oh and remember to follow the money trail. Who’s going to finance these deals? Take a wild guess.

I know Mr. Popular, Nouriel Roubini, who is obviously the genius de jour, may not agree with these ideas, but folks we keep watching the same movie over and over again. I don’t want to stick my neck out and say that this is a new bull market. But if you watch closely, you can see that there are things going on this time that nobody is paying attention to. And they are all good things.

Folks, this is Johnny Newsmaker signing off. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming… "When Black Swans Attack!" only on Ranting-TV…