Mitt Romney has been conspicuously quiet. No comments on the debt ceiling?
Doesn’t Mitt Romney look like a president?
It is interesting to note how Mitt Romney has stayed clear of everything going on in Washington. Little exposure. Few comments.
Right or wrong – Michelle Bachmann will continue to speak in her extreme ideas and will be picked apart by the media and Democrats
Right or wrong – Sarah Palin has the flaky, media-exaggerated, reputation, and will “probably” not be taken seriously.
Right or wrong – Tim Pawlenty is a long shot and is now “playing games” with Michelle Bachmann.
Right or wrong – Newt Gingrich is too extreme and has no shot at the nomination.
Right or wrong – Herman Cain has some interesting points but is way behind.
Right or wrong – Rick Perry. Although Texas is probably the most successful economic state, unfortunately Texas = George W. Bush.
And Right or wrong – President Obama has broken his promises of transparency and the country “may be” worse off than when he took office. There is little indication we are headed in the right direction. For how many years can George W. Bush be blamed. We all acknowledge Bush was not a good president but it’s Obama’s job, without blaming others, to improve our country.
If Romney clearly gets the word out in a simple, logical manner, he won’t be attacked by Democrats or Republicans. He needs to stand clear of the noise. It may simply be the case that he could win the Republican nomination because there is no other front runner. And he could win the presidential election because the country is disgusted with Washington DC and the direction of the country.
But then again, things can change quickly. Twelve months before the previous election, we all thought Hillary Clinton was going to be president.
You have been spending most of your time trying to resolve the debt ceiling and deficit issue. We appreciate your effort and realize our great country has never been so polarized as it is today.
We also realize with every move, you take into consideration your reelection campaign. That’s politics. All politicians do it.
Have you read this OP-ED in the New York Times? Obama Should Raise the Debt Ceiling on His Own. This piece was co-written by a Harvard Law Professor. And it was published by a liberal paper; the New York Times. Your constituency reads it.
If you act now, and take it upon yourself to raise the debt ceiling, you look like a hero. And at least for the time-being, you have saved our economy.
It still does not solve the real issue of spending more than we bring in. But at least it gets us by this deadline and the deadlock in Congress.
My buddy “PC” made a comment recently about Mark Jackson getting the Golden State coaching job. He commented that point guards tend to make good coaches. They are forced to really know the game and get everyone into the flow of the game. It made sense but I decided to look for myself.
I looked at the NBA coaches with 300 and more wins. I looked at what position they played in college or professionally. I broke it out by guards, forwards, and centers, I did not get more specific like point guard, shooting guard, power forward, etc… There may be errors and I welcome all corrections.
I was not able to identify the appropriate information on all the coaches.
In the chart below, if there is a ‘?’, I simply did not know the answer. If there is an ‘x’, I believe they did not play college or pro hoops.
There are 84 NBA Coaches who have 300 or more wins.
46 of them played guard. Please note, if someone played both forward and guard, they were counted for both positions.
(xx) 27 coaches either (a) did not play basketball, or (b) I could not determine the position he played.
84 coaches minus the 27 (xx above) leaves us with 57 coaches to use in this exercise.
So 46 of the 57 coaches played the guard position in college or professional basketball.
80% of these NBA coaches played guard.
That’s an amazing statistic; more than I would have expected.
(Note: I am sure the stats on these coaches are incomplete or inaccurate. Even if I’m off by 10%, that’s still pretty amazing.)
A few weeks ago, an article popped up on Yahoo regarding relaxing the underwriting standards of lenders.
Haven’t we learned from our mistakes?
Let’s take a look back…
House Financial Services Committee hearing, Sept. 25, 2003: (See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122290574391296381.html)
Rep. Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing. . . . More..
Rep. Frank (D. Mass) contributed to banks lending to people unqualified to pay back their loans…. and the resulting mess.
Take a quick peek at this short video. He couldn’t have been more off base.
And we all know this contributed to crash of our economy… Unqualified people getting mortgages. NOW we’re asking banks to loosen lending standards… Again?
From Yahoo and Investors Business Daily ( Friday July 8, 2011, 6:51 pm EDT)
In what could be a repeat of the easy-lending cycle that led to the housing crisis, the Justice Department has asked several banks to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination, according to court documents reviewed by IBD.More…
Wow. I hope I am missing something here. Relax the underwriting standards? That’s one of the ways we got in trouble last time, right?
Thank you to all the wonderful people out there who have ruined our healthcare system. Thank you to the insurance companies. Thank you to the drug companies. Thank you to the doctors. Thank you to the ambulance-chasing attorneys.
And thank you to our government for shoving through a 1300-page bill, that nobody could have possibly read, and contributing to the downfall of our ever-worsening healthcare system (Obamacare.)
This 4 day supply of ear drops costs $126.99. Why?
No I did not watch the Major League Baseball Home Run Hitting Contest (All Star Break)…. I had better things to do.
This morning on ESPN Sports Center, I see that Robinson Cano of the NY Yankees won the contest. Being a Yankee fan I immediately thought “Oh no. He is going to have a bad second half of the year.” He probably messed up his swing trying to yank everything out of the ballpark.
“Damn.”
Then I get to the office and I voiced my concern to one of the guys (let’s call him Buck). He passionately said “That’s not true. The winners of the home run hitting contests don’t necessary have bad second halves. You’re beginning to sound like Bert” (Where Bert is the name of someone in our accounting area.)
So I decided to look for the stats and see if the All Star Home Run Kings tended to have poor second halves.
For each winner, I compared their total home runs for that year, the home runs hit before and after the All Star break, and calculated the percentage hit after the All Star break. I also entered their total number of At Bats to make sure they played the entire year. Note: I only had the stats since 2000. Everyone had over 500 At Bats.
Regular Season Home Runs
MLB Home Run Derby Winner and Year
Total HR for Year
PreAll Star
PostAll Star
% PostAll Star
AB
2010: David Ortiz
32
18
14
44%
518
2009: Prince Fielder
46
22
24
52%
591
2008: Justin Morneau
23
14
9
39%
623
2007: Vladimir Guerrero
27
14
13
48%
574
2006: Ryan Howard
58
28
30
52%
581
2005: Bobby Abreu
24
18
6
25%
588
2004: Miguel Tejada
34
15
19
56%
653
2003: Garret Anderson
29
22
7
24%
638
2002: Jason Giambi
41
22
19
46%
560
2001: Luis Gonzalez
35
23
12
34%
609
2000: Sammy Sosa
50
23
27
54%
604
Based upon these numbers, 4 of the 11 years, the winner had significantly less home runs the second half of the year. I wish I had more data but it is interesting to think about.
My conclusion? It does happen enough times to think about it.
Go Robinson! Here’s to a great second half of 2011.
The only person who can get away with that is Paris Hilton. (Just insert “Raise my allowance” where it says “Raise the ceiling”.)
Perhaps President Obama should bring in Charles Grodin to help with the budget.
It’s a good thing we are not a part of a common currency, like the Euro. If we were, we wouldn’t have the ability to print more money… the answer to everything!
So we’re contemplating raising the ceiling.
Unemployment is at 9.2%. Under-employment must bring that number up to an estimated 17%
We are spending billions of dollars fighting wars all over the world. (Libya? Libya?)
And we are still sending billions of dollars of aid to countries all over the world. How about we tell all these countries that we are only giving them 50% of the aid we had previously given to them. Let’s apply that saved money domestically and help ourselves!
And President Obama is now focused on his reelection campaign!
What happened to this great country of ours? The left is far left. The right is far right. All they care about is keeping their jobs and getting re-elected.
