My Friend Kristen

She writes a great blog about the Washington Nationals. The baseball team. In Washington DC. One day they'll be good. Right now, they are not. But she's an excellent writer and covers a bunch of topics connected to baseball. Read this:

http://wevegotheart.com/2009/02/05/women-in-baseball-jane-heller/

Until soon.

BD

Bailout

Today's paper had a one page abstract of what the bailout includes. 435 Representatives in the House. 100 Member of the Senate. 15 Cabinet Members. 7 Cabinet Level positions in the White House. The President of the United State. If each of these, conservatively, has a staff of 10, that is 6,138 people that have been working on this stimulus package. And it takes one 25 year old barely college educated business owner in a farm town in CT 4 minutes to read it in the poorly written local daily newpaper to tell you that it is a waste of $880,000,000,000.00.

Throughout his campaign, Obama spoke about how small businesses are the heartbeat of this country's economy, and that his support of small business owners will be what drags us out of this recession (depression?). Amount allocated to small business: $1billion. Amount allocated to the Parks Department: $18billion. At least the jobless will have nice parks to sit in.

The investment in the energy grid is minimal. There is heavy focus on transpotation infrastructure improvement, which is probably necessay, unless there is a fuel crisis and no one can drive on our newly improved highways.

I genuinely think our political leaders have zero concept of what it is to live in the real world. This package makes no sense. The old package that went to Wall St has disappeared almost without a trace, except for the billions that went to absurd employee bonuses. But don't worry, it created some senior level jobs to help turn things around. Americans right? **BUZZER NOISE** Wrongo. They hire a majority of foreigners. We borrowed $700billion from the Chinese only to hire, who? Some Chinese People!

If you are reading this blog, there's a chance you're an educated American, probably in their 20's and obviously with an interest in politics and current events. So I ask you, have you ever written a letter to your Senator/State Rep? Why? Why not put together a well-written e-mail and blast it off so that at least your opinion is heard.

Senator's info found here.
House of Reps found here.

Until Soon...

BD

Phil the Groundhog

Phil the Groundhog saw his shadow this morning, and according to tradition, scurried back into his hole to prep for 6 more weeks of winter. This may similar to the spin wheel that meteorologists use to predict the weather on a daily basis. And can't they name the replacement groundhog something new when he dies? Why is it always Phil? At least make it Phil XIV so there is a distinguishing factor.

In other news, Matt Lauer is obsessed with Blackberry, and Barack Obama says "look" a lot. But, he pointed out that Jessica Simpson's fat ass beat him out on the cover of US Weekly, so I'll get past it.

This week could be very telling for how the presidency is going to go. The stimulus bill heads to the Senate, where history would suggest it will be shredded until it definitely won't work and then be passed. But Obama swears that Change is now. This bill could tell whether he can pull it off.

Until soon.

BD

Banks and Twitter

I just joined twitter, per a blog that Davey wrote. I don't fully understand it yet. At all. But Dave is not the first person this week who has told me to join Twitter. He's actually the 5th person. But for some strange reason, I trust David's social networking skills. Mostly because his skills have gotten him far. I don't know if I'll ever understand why. But I'm proud of him nonetheless. He also frightened me a little, because when I asked him personally if I should join, he simply responded "probably not. you'll run into a lot of people you would probably rather forget." He knows me well. Which brings me to the People You May Know tool on the more popular Facebook. Why does that exist? And why does it haunt me with people that I do know, but wished that I didn't? (As I'm typing this, I received this email: maggie shea is now following you on twitter. I love Maggie, and I'm afraid. The day that the overweight girl that used to work at Fordham's Student Activities desk, but struggled working the telephone and a stapler at the same time, "follows" me, is the day that I will remove myself from Twitter.)

On a less personal note, the AP had an article on the front page of my local newspaper this morning where they interviewed a mom that was laid off from Bank of America and is worried about losing her house. She was a human resources coordinator. For those of you who have had the good fortune to have never participated in corporate America, coordinator is 2 steps above the mail room. Shecan't figure out why the CEO of BOA and all of the other greed mongers who are too important to answer their own phones have not had to answer for any of this turmoil. And she's right. I can't find a web version of the article, but you get the idea. How is no one in upper management being held responsible for the downfall of banking. Just hand them 700billion and hope for the best while they blame the Human Resources Coordinators.

Until soon.

BD

Caylee

So this is fucked 6 ways from Sunday:

http://www.cayleedoll.com/

A company is actually making a profit selling these dolls. 18" tall, press the stomach and it sings you are my sunshine. Audio taken from the tape of Caylee singing the song. They're selling the dolls for $29.99 each. But don't feel bad, $3 will be donated to charity. Which charity? To Be Determined. Ya, ok. Psychos. I genuinely hope one actually purchases one. I'm already questioning society enough, if people actually make a living off of this, I swear to god I'll move. Feel free to send these lunatics a hate ridden e-mail.

UPDATE: Sales suspended. Apparently I'm not the only who thinks this is ridiculous. Thank God. There is hope.

Until Soon.

BD

Clean Air

Here's a NY Times article on Obama smacking George W. again. This time, the subject matter is clean air, specifically emissions and fuel efficiency. It doesn't take a lot of work to make Bush look like an a-hole, but Obama is doing an excellent job of doing so in the first week of his Presidency. Everything that he has done in week one has come with the subtext "Reversing Bush Policies." Not saying its a bad thing by any means;our former President, although I truly believe his intentions were good, wasn't very good at his job. And on Barack's part, it shows, if nothing else, he's trying hard to do good for us, more than our previous administration can say. The Bush admin still stands by time revealing that his presidency was no where near as bad as we make it out to be. But until time proves us all wrong, Obama is taking every step he can to prove us right. I love politics.

Also, here's an Obama Timeline, creatively labeled the "Obameter" keeping track of over 500 campaign promises and their status. Pretty cool to look at from time to time and see how he's doing...

Until soon.

BD

No More Gitmo

Big news today is Obama closing down Guantanamo Bay's terrorist torturing facility. My only commentary on this is, I wonder what Bush and Cheney are feeling? Do they look back and say, man, we really were fucked up for 8 years. Or do the arrogant bastards still think their ways are the only ways to keep America safe. I guess only time will be able to tell us for sure, but still, I wonder what they are thinking right now...

That's it for today. Until soon.

BD