Halloween Pumpkins 2008

Here are the pumpkin carvings for 2008!!!

Here are my 2 Pumpkins for Change (The before)


After

YES! Barak Obama came out better than I could have imagined!

Matt's Witch (Meghan's Brother)


Matt's Ohio State Pumkin


Matt's Scary Tomb


Nikki's Owl (Matt's Girlfriend)


Molly's Spider (Meghan's Sister)


Scott's Smiley Face (Meghan's Cousin)


Sean's Skull (Meghan's Cousin)



Last but not least - Meghan's Witch!

Meghan's pumpkin earned her the "Most Improved Pumpkin Award"

Let's take a stroll down memory lane....

Meghan's 2007 Pumpkin Attempt (I'm not sure what it was)


Don't forget to revisit the entire 2007 Collection HERE!

Cat Mania

Cat update! OK - so our 10 month old kittens are 14 lbs on their way to a full grown 25 lbs. They are basically small tigers and they are a blast! They are so cute and have awesome personalities! I am so glad we got 2 cats at the same time, they love playing with each other and are never alone!

Some cat pics:

Cats on the Counter


Cats on the Coffee Table


Cats to Scale (10 month old kitten = 1/2 person)


Manny Eating Breakfast


Brady in a Bag


Manny Sleeping on the Floor


Walk like an Egyptian with Brady


Manny can drink out of the toilet with his paws still on the floor!

Poor use of statistics: Voter Turn Out edition

From an article about the high voter turn out expected this year:

McDonald said early voting is often a good prediction of the level of turnout on Election Day, and heavy early voting indicates that the turnout this year undoubtedly would exceed the 60 percent turnout in the 2004 election.

"We have a very good chance of beating the 64 percent turnout in the 1960 election," McDonald said. "We really could be looking at a historic election in modern American history."

That race saw the highest level of turnout in American history, save for the 66 percent in the 1908 presidential election.

Which bring up the point, why not just refer to the 1908 election as the record?

PS - I am the Home Run King in baseball - except for anyone who hit more home runs than me.

PPS - This is going to be a record positive year for the S&P 500 except for all of the years that actually were positive, and then exclude all of the "less negative years"

The most powerful force in ANY election

"Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for president. One hopes it is the same half!" - Gore Vidal

We would like to think that as Americans we are intelligent enough to chose our own president. We believe we "know" what America needs and we understand the issues and where we want our country to go. I submit to you that the American Voting Public is a bunch of idiots. As you may recall from my previous blog - we continuously vote for people who will cut taxes when it is borderline immoral to do so and pass the expense of our national debt continuously on to future generations like a credit card we plan to pay off "someday".

So how will I prove that the American voting public is a bunch of idiots? I submit to you a thought experiment that regardless of the issues of the economy or a politicians stance on foreign affairs or how to win the war on terror - that the single most powerful force in ANY election is this hat.

This Seemingly innocent hat has more power than either political party, the "liberal media" or any number of swift-boat attacks. This hat can make the majority of the voting public change their stances on politicians.

I submit to you that regardless of the character of the politicians, their record, or their stance on the issues, whoever wears this hat for an entire campaign will lose. Every time. Let's look at the evidence. Would you vote for either of these two men?

Now this is a race even Nader could win (assuming he didn't wear the hat). It's a joke - really that our entire opinion of a politician could be based on such a superficial thing like a hat.

Now to get even deeper on you - maybe it's not a hat. Maybe the metaphorical hat is an African American (or bi-racial) candidate. Maybe the hat is a "strange" name like Barak. Or maybe the hat is a Catholic (JFK). Or maybe the hat is someone who is "an Arab" as that women at the McCain rally mentioned as to why she was so afraid of Obama. I think it is great that our country is almost at the point where we could have our first black (or bi-racial) president. Wouldn't it be an even greater testament to have a Muslim President soon as Campbell Brown discusses in her Commentary "So what if Obama were a Muslim or an Arab?"

So what? It scares me that ignorance has enough of a voice to make silly things like this an issue. And - in my humble opinion - for John McCain and Sarah Palin to even suggest that a US Senator such as Barak Obama is in any way a terrorist or sympathizes with terrorists is just fear mongering at it's worst. What's the implication? Does anyone really believe that once Barak Obama becomes President he will hand over America to terrorists? It's more than just irrational it's idiotic. Almost as idiotic as saying that if Sarah Palin became the VP, on her 1st day in office she would announce that her Husband is now the President of the independant country of Alaska (see Palin's Attack On Obama's Patriotism Legitimizes Questions About The Palins' Association With Group Founded By America-Hating Secessionist).

Depressing Headline of the Week

From Yahoo! Finance:

"Dow Soars to 9,000"

:(

Statler & Waldorf

These muppet show critics epitomized the sarcasm of Gen X.
Here's my favorite quote from them, even though it is on YouTube it is audio only.

How to charge the mound

If you are a batter and you are hit by a pitch, often the cather will prevent you from charging the mound. Enter Izzy Alcántara who is most remembered for an incident while he was playing with the Pawtucket Red Sox, Boston's AAA affiliate of the International League. On July 3, 2001, after being brushed back by Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons pitcher Blas Cedeño, Alcántara turned around, kicking catcher Jeremy Salazar, karate-style, in the mask before charging the mound, throwing a punch at Cedeño and missing before turning around and looking for other players to fight and being tackled by Kevin Orie. The incident cost Alcántara a six-game suspension and his spot on the International League's All Star squad

Red Sox: How far we have come

Nothing can sum up the Red Sox recent run quite like an article from ESPN.com

"The Boston Red Sox brushed aside the 100-win Angels in four games, dismissing their best-in-baseball regular season as last month's news.

When it turns to October, no one dominates like Boston."

Whoa. We've come a LONG way from a team that used to keep you guessing by how they'd break your heart in October. I know some Cubs fans are crying about their 100 year quest, but let's not forget the Red Sox were not a team of lovable losers, they were a team that were (right or wrong) regularly expected to compete for a WS title. This is a team that during it's 86 year drought lost 4 game sevens in the World Series. It's mind boggling. And to me that is where the curse lived, in the fact that they were a team with so much post season success only to come up short so many times.

But now - in a short decade the Red Sox have become a team that (according to ESPN) "dominates October".

After beating the Yankees when down 3 games to none and beating Cleveland while down 3 games to 1, I have seen a lot of late.

The intention of this blog was to point out just how far we have come.

How I would fix the Economy without a Bailout

I think we need to all agree the bailout is a bad idea. Whether you believe Ron Paul for saying it provides a false bottom to an economy while not growing demand to match it, or whether you believe it sets a bad precedent that wall street can run business irresponsibly while fleecing money from main street with no repercussions because the government will bail you out. Fundamentally it is flawed to let business run in the ground by poor management to continue to be in business on the tax payer's dime.

So why the bail out? "The core of the bill allows the Treasury Department to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage assets from banks, to be held and eventually sold off if and when the market improves. Ideally, with cleaner balance sheets, banks would start lending to each other again, loosening up the nearly frozen credit markets."

Here's my solution. I believe rather than continue you follow the failed trickle down economics with a penchant for deregulation that got us here in the first place and hope the $700 billion dollars "ideally encourages banks to start lending again" - I say let the banks run themselves into the ground and have the government resolve the credit crunch by DIRECTLY LENDING MONEY TO THE MARKET.

Yes. I am proposing that rather than buy up all the "toxic loans" to relieve the banks their burden and free up their cash to be lent out again - have the government instead profit by making home loans, car loans, business loans etc directly to the market. In fact - if you want to stimulate the economy the government could loan money at lower interest rates than we have ever seen (think about a 3-4% home loan). And instead of the tax payers bailing out a cool $700 billion, have the tax payers turn a profit from this governmental lending.

BUT THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! The government shouldn't be in business it would ruin an entire industry! Well - the financial industry did that all on their own, I say let them crash and burn but keep the economy stable through my plan. Additionally - I also propose that the natural progression of my plan should be for NEW banks to be created - and run responsibly, and slowly over time the government should reduce it's role in lending until the whole thing shakes out with a completely new crew of banks and the government is out of the industry all together.

Rather than wasting tax payer dollars on businesses who are fundamentally flawed, use the resources of the government to directly stabilize the economy for a period and make money for the tax payers in the process instead.

Just my two cents...