Well, it's been a while - hello there! It's been crazy at work, and I am finally getting over the "Big D" I acquired from my trip to Mexico. Yesterday, I finally had my first solid bowel movement in about 10 days.
Some random thoughts:
1) First of all, if you haven't heard, Layup is fine after the earthquake in CA. I would say something calling him a wimp since he was scared over a measly 5.7 quake - but then, this spring in Ohio we felt a 3.1 quake and it was the lead story on our local news for 4 days with plenty of old women calling in "reporting" the quake. I love local news.
2) Mexico: it was very enjoyable to watch the home run derby in Spanish rather than put up with Mr. Blowhard, Chris Berman.
3) The Browns will take the field for a preseason game in 9 days. Wow. Football is almost here.
4) Why do I hate Jim Nantz? Well, this should be the only exhibit I need. Fourth quarter play, week 11, Cleveland - Pittsburgh. Watch and listen to the call. He just sucks the life out of any excitement on the field. Can you imagine if Dick Enberg was on the call? Gus Johnson? Joe Buck? Dick Stockton? Ian Eagle? Sam Rosen? All would be much much better than this.
What if Nantz called our gambling action in Vegas? He'd put us to sleep. If Gus was there, he'd be egging Kermit to get up and slug Wiz after doubling on 6....
5) Speaking of Sam Rosen, I still submit he is the most underrated play-by-play voice out there doing the NFL. He's on FOX, and there's no chance of him doing a Browns game this year. (The only two games that FOX would carry are week 1, when Dallas comes in - a game undoubtedly called by Joe "That's Outrageous" Buck and Mr. Cowboy himself, Troy Aikman), and the NYG game - but that's a MNF game). It's too bad. His call of the Seattle game last year was superb.
(that's the game no one else saw, since it was on at the same time as the NE-Ind game).
6) Coming soon: my opinion of each NFL head referee! A sneak preview: Ron Winter is not as bad as you think he is, while I cringe if Mike Carey is doing my game.
7) Golf week 08 starts Saturday, with the defense of my club championship crown and then the Ohio Publinx, this year at Cook's Creek. Monday's traditional practice round have all 4 participants confirmed, as Dad and I will square off against Steve and Kermit.
I feel like I'm playing the best golf of the year, which is not saying much at all. Expectations are low.
Jul 29, 2008
Jul 13, 2008
Oil
Ok, I promise that my next post will be something non political related. I don't have a good bathroom story, so I guess you all are stuck with this, but after reading Eric's and Laura's comments about gas I wanted to make some comments of my own. 
First, I tend to agree with Laura and $4+ gas is actually good. I do agree that this does push people to conserve more (I carpool 3 days a week) and provides an incentive to the private sector to push for alternative fuels. Just today I saw "Go Nuclear" sign in someones yard in Dana Point. You wouldn't see that with $2 gas. The problem starts though with the thought that gas would stay around $4. It won't. Currently as of this morning, gas in Southern CA is $4.69. Why would anyone think that gas wouldn't be even higher in a couple of months. There is no indication that oil would go in the other direction with the weak dollar, Iran War on the horizon, and no drilling allowed.
When will it stop? When will enough be enough. You would be naive to think that gas would stay in the $4-$5 range. Carol and I are planning on gas being in the $7-$8 range since Congress and the President won't do anything. Just like Social Security and Health Care, I'm up for every option.
- Alaska Drilling- Let's go folks. What will it take for people who have never been to Alaska to say, "Let's go".
- Off shore Drilling- I had a nice chat with Richie last week and I asked him how his dad was doing. He chuckled and said that he is so pissed right now at Arnold because he won't drill off the coast of CA. Ha!
- Nuclear Plants- Why are people scared? Because of Chernobyl? Um, that nuclear plant was run by idiot Russians. We have one right on the ocean down the road from us and there are no complaints.
- Strengthen the dollar- We need a balanced budget to get the dollar stronger.
- Alternative fuels- Well I'm for it. I'm for tax breaks, government incentives, or whatever else is needed. I know that Arnold just gave some very large incentives to Tesla Motors who has a electric car with a 200 mile range.
- Conserve- Here is the problem though about conserving. California is thinking about raising the gas tax since consumption is down 3% and they are losing out on all of the revenue. Seriously? Really?
- Speculation- Leave it be. For people that have no idea on why it was created and how much it provides some normalcy to the market, just shut up.
- Taxes- Help me understand how taxing the Oil companies help us with this situation. If people can, then I would be for it, but it just seems to me that it is spiteful and serves no purpose.
Now, I would think that I'm the only one here that can truely bitch about gas prices and truth be told, my budget has not gone up for gas. I used to have an Infiniti that used premium gas which I got rid of last August. I now carpool with people from work, so despite gas prices increasing at a fast rate, I have held my budget the same. So it works for now, but jack prices up again to $6 and then we are going to be in some trouble.
Quick Comments
Obama came out today and stated that there is "little doubt we've moved into recession." Really Obama? As Eric pointed out to me several months back, there is an equation to figure out if we are in a recession or not. It is 2 qtrs of negative growth. Not an opinion.
Just imagine if I walked around my offices telling everyone that we won't hit our results, despite the results not being in yet. Not hitting the results would mean that nobody would get a raise. Sure would create a wonderful atmosphere.
Obama, you are not a political hack, you are a presidential candidate. I was actually thinking about voting for you, but comments like this indicate that you are nothing more than a typical politician playing into the fears of voters. And yes, the Republicans have done the same, but with different topics.
Just imagine if I walked around my offices telling everyone that we won't hit our results, despite the results not being in yet. Not hitting the results would mean that nobody would get a raise. Sure would create a wonderful atmosphere.
Obama, you are not a political hack, you are a presidential candidate. I was actually thinking about voting for you, but comments like this indicate that you are nothing more than a typical politician playing into the fears of voters. And yes, the Republicans have done the same, but with different topics.
Good morning
With some conversation starting on gas prices and such, here is a great article in the Journal a couple of weeks ago on some very interesting economic topics. Enjoy.
Robert Mundell isn't in the habit of making fruitless policy recommendations, though some take a long time ripening. Nearly four decades passed between his early work on optimal currency areas and the birth of the euro in 1999 – the same year he received the Nobel Prize for economics.
So when Mr. Mundell says that rescinding the Bush tax cuts "would be devastating to the world economy," that oil prices are "not so far off track," that Asia needs its own multilateral currency, or that the ham sandwiches sitting before us could use some mustard, one is inclined to pay attention – and, except in the case of lunch, to think long term.
Back in America, there's an election going on. There's also been a spate of financial problems, not the least of which is a weak dollar. But Mr. Mundell says "the big issue economically . . . is what's going to happen to taxes."
Democratic nominee Barack Obama regularly professes disdain for the Bush tax cuts, suggesting that those growth-spurring measures may be scrapped. "If that happens," Mr. Mundell predicts, "the U.S. will go into a big recession, a nosedive."
One of the original "supply-side" economists, he has long preached the link between tax rates and economic growth. "It's a lethal thing to suddenly raise taxes," he explains. "This would be devastating to the world economy, to the United States, and it would be, I think, political suicide" in a general election.
Should taxes instead be cut again, I ask him, to stimulate the sluggish economy? Mr. Mundell replies that he favors a ceiling of 30% on marginal rates (the current top rate is 35%). He recounts how the past century experienced a titanic struggle over whether tax rates are too high or too low: from a 3% income tax in 1913; up to 60% during World War I; down to 25% before Congress and President Herbert Hoover raised taxes back to 60% in 1932 and "sealed the fate of our economy for a long, long time"; all the way up to 92.5% during World War II before falling in three steps, reaching 28% under President Ronald Reagan; and back to nearly 40% under Bill Clinton before George W. Bush lowered them to their current level.
In light of this fiscal roller coaster, Mr. Mundell says, "the most important thing that could be done with respect to tax rates now is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Eliminating that uncertainty would be more important than pushing for a further cut – in the income tax rates, anyway."
One tax that he would cut, to 25%, is the corporate tax rate. "It could be even lower," he says, "but I think it would be a big step to lower it to 25% . . . I made that proposal back in the 1970s."
A long-haired Mr. Mundell spent that decade not only arguing for the euro, but laying the intellectual groundwork for the Reagan tax-cut revolution. Mr. Mundell says those tax cuts remain "as important to the United States as the creation of the euro was to Europe – a fundamental change." Combined with Paul Volcker's tight-money policy at the Fed, which Mr. Mundell also championed, supply-side economics killed off stagflation.
Or at least it killed it off at the time. With prices again rising as growth slows, some economists are worried that stagflation could be making a comeback. Not Mr. Mundell – not yet.
He draws a comparison with the situation in 1979-1980. Start with the dollar price of oil, which he calls "one of the two most important prices in the world" (the other being the dollar-euro exchange rate, which we'll get to in a moment)."If you look at the price level since 1980," he begins, "oil prices would naturally double by the year 2000. So from $34 a barrel in 1980 to $68 a barrel. And then . . . because the inflation rate's about 3.5%, it would double again by 2020. So the natural price . . . would be something like $136 in 2020.
"Now, we [already] got to $130-something, but . . . I really think the price is going to settle down, probably below $100, if not below $90. What I'm saying is we're not so far off track."
American motorists still shocked by $4-a-gallon gasoline might think we're rather more off track than Mr. Mundell suggests. Bolstering his case, he immediately moves on to another commodity often invoked to demonstrate inflation: gold. "The price of gold in 1980 was $850 an ounce. And the price of gold today is about the same. It's astonishing," he says. "It's true, gold did go up" to more than $1,000 an ounce earlier this year, "but the public doesn't believe that there is inflation. If there was big inflation coming, then you'd see the price of gold going up to $1,500 an ounce very quickly, and that hasn't happened."
In any case, don't expect to hear Barack Obama or John McCain talk about the weak dollar's contributions to any problem. "As [journalist] Robert Novak once put it, it's like cleaning ladies who come in and say 'I don't do ironing.' [Politicians] say, 'I don't do exchange rates,'" Mr. Mundell chuckles. "They think they can only lose by talking about exchange rates, because they don't know enough about it, and it's hard to predict anyway, for anyone."
If Mr. Mundell had his way, there wouldn't be anything for politicians to say about exchange rates. They would be fixed – as they were under the Bretton Woods arrangement after World War II until 1971, when President Nixon took the U.S. off the postwar gold standard and effectively launched the era of floating exchange rates."It's a very poor and a dangerous system," Mr. Mundell says of the floating regime, "because it creates exaggerated swings in the exchange rate." Case in point is the dollar-euro rate. From a low of about 82 cents in 2000, Europe's common currency has risen fairly steadily and has been valued at more than $1.50 since late February, even breaking the $1.60 barrier once.
"What people have to realize is there's been a fundamental change in the way markets work in the past 20 years," Mr. Mundell says. "Now, exchange rates are driven not so much by trade but by capital accounts and capital movements, and the huge amount of liquidity that's sloshing around the world."
Central banks world-wide, he notes, are trying to reach an equilibrium between dollars and euros in their $6.5 trillion worth of foreign reserves. Roughly two-thirds of these reserves are kept in dollars now, so they have about $1 trillion left to move into euros.
"If you did a hundred billion dollars" annually, Mr. Mundell points out, "you'd need 10 years to build that up, and that amount of capital movement has a tremendous effect in keeping the euro overvalued. It's not good for Europe and . . . ultimately it would cause more inflation in the United States."
But this continuing shift doesn't mean that the dollar's status as the world's dominant currency is in danger, at least not in the short run. Countries like Iran may be pushing for the pricing of oil in another currency, "but it wouldn't happen unless Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states moved in that direction, and I don't see any way in which they would do this," Mr. Mundell says. "It would be very damaging to the relations between the United States and the Gulf countries. There's an implicit defense alliance between those, and that's what overrides as a top priority."
Nor is there a macroeconomic argument for demoting the dollar. "Remember, the growth prospects for the United States are probably stronger than that of Europe, because you've got continued and substantial population growth in the United States, and zero population growth in Europe," Mr. Mundell says. "Quite apart from the fact that the U.S. economy is innovating more rapidly, and the population is younger and not getting old as rapidly, so they pick up new technology faster. So I look upon the United States still as the main sparkplug of economic growth in the world."
As for the euro's overvalued status, he forecasts deflation in Europe, along with a slowdown and an end to its housing boom. The answer, he suggests, is for the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank to cooperate in putting a floor and a ceiling on both the euro and the dollar. "You have to grope" to the appropriate range, he maintains, but a good starting point would be to keep the euro between 90 cents and $1.30.
Even better, in his mind – and now we're really talking long term – would be to have a global currency. This could take the form of a new money or a dominant existing one to which all others are fixed – probably the dollar. "As Paul Volcker says," Mr. Mundell relates, "the global economy needs a global currency."
To get there, he proposes holding a new, Bretton Woods-type meeting in 2010 at the Shanghai World's Fair. Mr. Mundell, who has been spending "a lot of time" in China advising the government, says reviving an international system of fixed exchange rates would be a tremendous help to Beijing as it tries to fend off demands from U.S. and European politicians that it appreciate or float its currency.
Here, he recalls Washington's similar "bashing" of the Japanese yen in the 1980s, and its ultimately disastrous effects: "Japan got stuck with an overvalued currency for a decade, and suffered from a perpetual deflation in its housing market from 1990 until just a couple of years ago. And China doesn't want to have the same problem."
Another part of his solution is for Asian countries to form their own currency bloc. If they did so, he says, "it'd be comparable in size to the European and the American bloc. And then it would not be so much the question of . . . the U.S. and Europe bashing China" or other rising economies.
These three currency blocs, he predicts, would be large enough to weather wide swings in their exchange rates. But the swings would still do economic damage, so "the best thing you could do is to stabilize them, and that's where the global currency comes in."
Could it happen? Mr. Mundell allows that three decades may pass, but predicts that like the euro and the Reagan revolution before it, the global currency's time, too, will come. Any skeptics might want to review the last few decades before betting against him.
Robert Mundell isn't in the habit of making fruitless policy recommendations, though some take a long time ripening. Nearly four decades passed between his early work on optimal currency areas and the birth of the euro in 1999 – the same year he received the Nobel Prize for economics.
So when Mr. Mundell says that rescinding the Bush tax cuts "would be devastating to the world economy," that oil prices are "not so far off track," that Asia needs its own multilateral currency, or that the ham sandwiches sitting before us could use some mustard, one is inclined to pay attention – and, except in the case of lunch, to think long term.
Back in America, there's an election going on. There's also been a spate of financial problems, not the least of which is a weak dollar. But Mr. Mundell says "the big issue economically . . . is what's going to happen to taxes."
Democratic nominee Barack Obama regularly professes disdain for the Bush tax cuts, suggesting that those growth-spurring measures may be scrapped. "If that happens," Mr. Mundell predicts, "the U.S. will go into a big recession, a nosedive."
One of the original "supply-side" economists, he has long preached the link between tax rates and economic growth. "It's a lethal thing to suddenly raise taxes," he explains. "This would be devastating to the world economy, to the United States, and it would be, I think, political suicide" in a general election.
Should taxes instead be cut again, I ask him, to stimulate the sluggish economy? Mr. Mundell replies that he favors a ceiling of 30% on marginal rates (the current top rate is 35%). He recounts how the past century experienced a titanic struggle over whether tax rates are too high or too low: from a 3% income tax in 1913; up to 60% during World War I; down to 25% before Congress and President Herbert Hoover raised taxes back to 60% in 1932 and "sealed the fate of our economy for a long, long time"; all the way up to 92.5% during World War II before falling in three steps, reaching 28% under President Ronald Reagan; and back to nearly 40% under Bill Clinton before George W. Bush lowered them to their current level.
In light of this fiscal roller coaster, Mr. Mundell says, "the most important thing that could be done with respect to tax rates now is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Eliminating that uncertainty would be more important than pushing for a further cut – in the income tax rates, anyway."
One tax that he would cut, to 25%, is the corporate tax rate. "It could be even lower," he says, "but I think it would be a big step to lower it to 25% . . . I made that proposal back in the 1970s."
A long-haired Mr. Mundell spent that decade not only arguing for the euro, but laying the intellectual groundwork for the Reagan tax-cut revolution. Mr. Mundell says those tax cuts remain "as important to the United States as the creation of the euro was to Europe – a fundamental change." Combined with Paul Volcker's tight-money policy at the Fed, which Mr. Mundell also championed, supply-side economics killed off stagflation.
Or at least it killed it off at the time. With prices again rising as growth slows, some economists are worried that stagflation could be making a comeback. Not Mr. Mundell – not yet.
He draws a comparison with the situation in 1979-1980. Start with the dollar price of oil, which he calls "one of the two most important prices in the world" (the other being the dollar-euro exchange rate, which we'll get to in a moment)."If you look at the price level since 1980," he begins, "oil prices would naturally double by the year 2000. So from $34 a barrel in 1980 to $68 a barrel. And then . . . because the inflation rate's about 3.5%, it would double again by 2020. So the natural price . . . would be something like $136 in 2020.
"Now, we [already] got to $130-something, but . . . I really think the price is going to settle down, probably below $100, if not below $90. What I'm saying is we're not so far off track."
American motorists still shocked by $4-a-gallon gasoline might think we're rather more off track than Mr. Mundell suggests. Bolstering his case, he immediately moves on to another commodity often invoked to demonstrate inflation: gold. "The price of gold in 1980 was $850 an ounce. And the price of gold today is about the same. It's astonishing," he says. "It's true, gold did go up" to more than $1,000 an ounce earlier this year, "but the public doesn't believe that there is inflation. If there was big inflation coming, then you'd see the price of gold going up to $1,500 an ounce very quickly, and that hasn't happened."
In any case, don't expect to hear Barack Obama or John McCain talk about the weak dollar's contributions to any problem. "As [journalist] Robert Novak once put it, it's like cleaning ladies who come in and say 'I don't do ironing.' [Politicians] say, 'I don't do exchange rates,'" Mr. Mundell chuckles. "They think they can only lose by talking about exchange rates, because they don't know enough about it, and it's hard to predict anyway, for anyone."
If Mr. Mundell had his way, there wouldn't be anything for politicians to say about exchange rates. They would be fixed – as they were under the Bretton Woods arrangement after World War II until 1971, when President Nixon took the U.S. off the postwar gold standard and effectively launched the era of floating exchange rates."It's a very poor and a dangerous system," Mr. Mundell says of the floating regime, "because it creates exaggerated swings in the exchange rate." Case in point is the dollar-euro rate. From a low of about 82 cents in 2000, Europe's common currency has risen fairly steadily and has been valued at more than $1.50 since late February, even breaking the $1.60 barrier once.
"What people have to realize is there's been a fundamental change in the way markets work in the past 20 years," Mr. Mundell says. "Now, exchange rates are driven not so much by trade but by capital accounts and capital movements, and the huge amount of liquidity that's sloshing around the world."
Central banks world-wide, he notes, are trying to reach an equilibrium between dollars and euros in their $6.5 trillion worth of foreign reserves. Roughly two-thirds of these reserves are kept in dollars now, so they have about $1 trillion left to move into euros.
"If you did a hundred billion dollars" annually, Mr. Mundell points out, "you'd need 10 years to build that up, and that amount of capital movement has a tremendous effect in keeping the euro overvalued. It's not good for Europe and . . . ultimately it would cause more inflation in the United States."
But this continuing shift doesn't mean that the dollar's status as the world's dominant currency is in danger, at least not in the short run. Countries like Iran may be pushing for the pricing of oil in another currency, "but it wouldn't happen unless Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states moved in that direction, and I don't see any way in which they would do this," Mr. Mundell says. "It would be very damaging to the relations between the United States and the Gulf countries. There's an implicit defense alliance between those, and that's what overrides as a top priority."
Nor is there a macroeconomic argument for demoting the dollar. "Remember, the growth prospects for the United States are probably stronger than that of Europe, because you've got continued and substantial population growth in the United States, and zero population growth in Europe," Mr. Mundell says. "Quite apart from the fact that the U.S. economy is innovating more rapidly, and the population is younger and not getting old as rapidly, so they pick up new technology faster. So I look upon the United States still as the main sparkplug of economic growth in the world."
As for the euro's overvalued status, he forecasts deflation in Europe, along with a slowdown and an end to its housing boom. The answer, he suggests, is for the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank to cooperate in putting a floor and a ceiling on both the euro and the dollar. "You have to grope" to the appropriate range, he maintains, but a good starting point would be to keep the euro between 90 cents and $1.30.
Even better, in his mind – and now we're really talking long term – would be to have a global currency. This could take the form of a new money or a dominant existing one to which all others are fixed – probably the dollar. "As Paul Volcker says," Mr. Mundell relates, "the global economy needs a global currency."
To get there, he proposes holding a new, Bretton Woods-type meeting in 2010 at the Shanghai World's Fair. Mr. Mundell, who has been spending "a lot of time" in China advising the government, says reviving an international system of fixed exchange rates would be a tremendous help to Beijing as it tries to fend off demands from U.S. and European politicians that it appreciate or float its currency.
Here, he recalls Washington's similar "bashing" of the Japanese yen in the 1980s, and its ultimately disastrous effects: "Japan got stuck with an overvalued currency for a decade, and suffered from a perpetual deflation in its housing market from 1990 until just a couple of years ago. And China doesn't want to have the same problem."
Another part of his solution is for Asian countries to form their own currency bloc. If they did so, he says, "it'd be comparable in size to the European and the American bloc. And then it would not be so much the question of . . . the U.S. and Europe bashing China" or other rising economies.
These three currency blocs, he predicts, would be large enough to weather wide swings in their exchange rates. But the swings would still do economic damage, so "the best thing you could do is to stabilize them, and that's where the global currency comes in."
Could it happen? Mr. Mundell allows that three decades may pass, but predicts that like the euro and the Reagan revolution before it, the global currency's time, too, will come. Any skeptics might want to review the last few decades before betting against him.
Jul 9, 2008
Random Thoughts
- The C C trade doesn't bother me too much. What else were we going to do? We are in last place, and it's most likely we weren't going to sign him anyway. Let's just hope that we obtained the outfield bat we so desperately need for this lineup. Having light hitters like Francisco, Gutierrez and such isn't going to cut it for the future.
- The Indians season may be over, but....15 days until training camp!
- Had another good craps in Iowa this past week, based on pressing up one unit. The strategy:
a. point with double odds
b. 6 and 8 for $12 each
c. first hit on the 6/8: same bet
d. second hit on the number: press up one unit to $18
e. third hit on the number: press two units to $30
And then keep the same bet and hope for the $35 payouts.
I also finally had a "double horn"; when I start winning, I throw a $5 horn high ace-deuce on the come out. I won the first on a 2 - paying $26; I then pressed it to $10. The roll came 3.
What does a horn-high ace-deuce for $10 pay on a 3? I finally found out! $54.
- My golf game is in such shambles that:
a. I needed to birdie 18 (and have Layup bogey it) just to tie Layup;
b. Random strangers are now offering me golf tips - and they are working!
- I need to stop snacking late at night. The actual thought in my head at 11:20 pm on Monday night:
1. "Hey! there's some Swedish fish left in the bag!"
2. "Ooooo....Burger King Zesty Onion Ring Sauce...."
3. "I wonder how it would taste if I dipped the Swedish Fish candy in that sauce....."
Next trial: Oreo cookies in Open Pit.
- I see that a song called "I kissed a Girl" is #1 on the charts. Is this a remake of the early 90's song? Does anyone remember that? I remember watching Beavis and Butthead comment on this video during the B&B heydays. It was being in Steve's basement, playing gin for hours watching "Beavis and Butthead" marathons. I think the episode with the "I Kissed A Girl" video was the same episode as Henry Rollins' "Liar". Also may have been a forgotten video featuring a woman with a gardening tool:
Beavis: " Is that a hoe?"
Butthead: "Yeah, but what is she carrying with her?"
Ah, memories.
- The Indians season may be over, but....15 days until training camp!
- Had another good craps in Iowa this past week, based on pressing up one unit. The strategy:
a. point with double odds
b. 6 and 8 for $12 each
c. first hit on the 6/8: same bet
d. second hit on the number: press up one unit to $18
e. third hit on the number: press two units to $30
And then keep the same bet and hope for the $35 payouts.
I also finally had a "double horn"; when I start winning, I throw a $5 horn high ace-deuce on the come out. I won the first on a 2 - paying $26; I then pressed it to $10. The roll came 3.
What does a horn-high ace-deuce for $10 pay on a 3? I finally found out! $54.
- My golf game is in such shambles that:
a. I needed to birdie 18 (and have Layup bogey it) just to tie Layup;
b. Random strangers are now offering me golf tips - and they are working!
- I need to stop snacking late at night. The actual thought in my head at 11:20 pm on Monday night:
1. "Hey! there's some Swedish fish left in the bag!"
2. "Ooooo....Burger King Zesty Onion Ring Sauce...."
3. "I wonder how it would taste if I dipped the Swedish Fish candy in that sauce....."
Next trial: Oreo cookies in Open Pit.
- I see that a song called "I kissed a Girl" is #1 on the charts. Is this a remake of the early 90's song? Does anyone remember that? I remember watching Beavis and Butthead comment on this video during the B&B heydays. It was being in Steve's basement, playing gin for hours watching "Beavis and Butthead" marathons. I think the episode with the "I Kissed A Girl" video was the same episode as Henry Rollins' "Liar". Also may have been a forgotten video featuring a woman with a gardening tool:
Beavis: " Is that a hoe?"
Butthead: "Yeah, but what is she carrying with her?"
Ah, memories.
Why I should listen to Rush more....
Rush Limbaugh, yesterday:
This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category." Now, amidst all of this, with a 9% approval rating, an all-time low, the media template is still what? That the Democrats are going to pick up all these seats in the House and they're going to pick up all these seats in the Senate. It's a foregone conclusion. Now, if people are this upset with Congress, and the president's numbers are higher — you know, this is a risky thing to try to analyze. You have to ask how many Americans understand that Congress is now run by Democrats? How many of them think that Congress is just an extension of the White House and are blaming it on Republicans? Well, you don't know. But I think one of the keys here in every call I get, and every comment I get from people talking about this, whether it's here on the program or in my highly focused personal and private life, it's the gasoline price. The gasoline price is the root of everything because that affects the cost of food, the cost of leisure time activity, the cost of entertainment, and it's a gold mine. It is simply a golden opportunity for the Republican Party here to really make some big hay.
I wholehearedly agree with the idea here.
This is what frustrates me about the Republicans.
1) FACT: Democrats control Congress.
2) FACT: Approval of Congress is even lower than approval for Bush (9% this month).
3) MY OPINION: I think that if you poll a random person in the street and ask him/her who controls Congress, half of them would say the Republicans.
McCain is starting to put together an energy plan to help offset the gas price increase, and he's starting to call Obama "Dr. No" because Obama is against any of those proposals(increased drilling, nuclear options, incentives for battery development, gas tax holiday, etc.).
But it's not enough. Every single Republican out there should hammer these themes over the next 4 months:
1) Gas prices have skyrocketed - hurting everyone's pocketbook
2) The Democratic controlled congress has done NOTHING to help you
3) Here is our 4 point plan (mirroring McCain's plan)
4) Democrats - including Obama - have opposed every point of our plan
5) In fact, Democrats - including Obama - don't have a plan to decrease prices (as evidenced by ZERO action in Congress)
6) So who are you voting for? A party with new ideas on tackling skyrocketing prices, or the party who opposed any and all solutions?
That can be a winner. Why the Republican party - and Bush - doesn't embrace this chain of thought is beyond me.
I still have vivid memories of Bill Clinton HAMMERING Newt and the Republican Congress every single day from 1995-2000. Every Single Day. Clinton never stopped reminding people who was behind the congressional policies he opposed. For instance, the budget shutdown - Clinton successfully turned the tables and blamed Congress for the shutdown. Classic politics in action.
Why the Republicans aren't doing the same and placing a lot of the political blame of higher gas prices on Pelosi and company is beyond me.
This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category." Now, amidst all of this, with a 9% approval rating, an all-time low, the media template is still what? That the Democrats are going to pick up all these seats in the House and they're going to pick up all these seats in the Senate. It's a foregone conclusion. Now, if people are this upset with Congress, and the president's numbers are higher — you know, this is a risky thing to try to analyze. You have to ask how many Americans understand that Congress is now run by Democrats? How many of them think that Congress is just an extension of the White House and are blaming it on Republicans? Well, you don't know. But I think one of the keys here in every call I get, and every comment I get from people talking about this, whether it's here on the program or in my highly focused personal and private life, it's the gasoline price. The gasoline price is the root of everything because that affects the cost of food, the cost of leisure time activity, the cost of entertainment, and it's a gold mine. It is simply a golden opportunity for the Republican Party here to really make some big hay.
I wholehearedly agree with the idea here.
This is what frustrates me about the Republicans.
1) FACT: Democrats control Congress.
2) FACT: Approval of Congress is even lower than approval for Bush (9% this month).
3) MY OPINION: I think that if you poll a random person in the street and ask him/her who controls Congress, half of them would say the Republicans.
McCain is starting to put together an energy plan to help offset the gas price increase, and he's starting to call Obama "Dr. No" because Obama is against any of those proposals(increased drilling, nuclear options, incentives for battery development, gas tax holiday, etc.).
But it's not enough. Every single Republican out there should hammer these themes over the next 4 months:
1) Gas prices have skyrocketed - hurting everyone's pocketbook
2) The Democratic controlled congress has done NOTHING to help you
3) Here is our 4 point plan (mirroring McCain's plan)
4) Democrats - including Obama - have opposed every point of our plan
5) In fact, Democrats - including Obama - don't have a plan to decrease prices (as evidenced by ZERO action in Congress)
6) So who are you voting for? A party with new ideas on tackling skyrocketing prices, or the party who opposed any and all solutions?
That can be a winner. Why the Republican party - and Bush - doesn't embrace this chain of thought is beyond me.
I still have vivid memories of Bill Clinton HAMMERING Newt and the Republican Congress every single day from 1995-2000. Every Single Day. Clinton never stopped reminding people who was behind the congressional policies he opposed. For instance, the budget shutdown - Clinton successfully turned the tables and blamed Congress for the shutdown. Classic politics in action.
Why the Republicans aren't doing the same and placing a lot of the political blame of higher gas prices on Pelosi and company is beyond me.
Jul 3, 2008
The only article you need to read...
...about the 2008 election.
If this article doesn't propel you to vote for McCain, then nothing - and I mean nothing - will.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1819898-1,00.html
Dammit, I wish I was one of McCain's aides....
If this article doesn't propel you to vote for McCain, then nothing - and I mean nothing - will.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1819898-1,00.html
Dammit, I wish I was one of McCain's aides....
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