Monthly Archives: September 2008

Thoughts on the Economy and Bailout

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Okay, I’m going to exercise my little pea brain here and hope I don’t hurt myself in the process.

I’ve never claimed to be a mental giant when it comes to the economy.  I was a political scientist through school and I don’t think I ever really took a business class, so my understanding of the economy and all its nuance isn’t what you would call extensive.  That being said, I feel like I’ve always been pretty good with money and I make an effort to read up on economic happenings and understand them the best I can.

So here’s my questions:

As I understand it, the big problem with the economy right now is that banks don’t feel like they have the cash on hand to lend each other, which is a common activity and a critical element of our economy.  I don’t quite understand the whole lending money back and forth between banks thing, but I’m sure there is a good reason for it, and obviously its needed for how our economy works.  If I understand correctly, the lack of cash on hand is, at least in part, a result of the huge increase of people defaulting on their mortgages, which is keeping money out of the hands of the banks.

So if what I just laid out is accurrate, and if its not someone please enlighten me, why does the bailout plan not address that aspect of the problem.  It sounds like the government just wants to give a crap-ton (technical term) of money to companies that screwed things up in the first place, hoping they’ll do better next time.  That sounds like we’d be acting like an enabler around a recovering alcoholic.

Perhaps I’m way out of my league on this, but I just think if we don’t address the whole mortgage crises aspect its not going to fully correct the the problem, its just going to delay a continued decline.  If someone can help me better understand it, I’d be in your debt.

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College Football Weekend Review

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What an unbelievable weekend of college football; full of ups and downs for me.  I already talked about Thursday, which made me incredibly happy.  Today was full of some welcome surprises, one small disappointment, and one huge one.

I’ll say it again just because it makes me happy.  USC lost to Oregon St. on Thursday night and they’ll be surrendering the number one spot to Oklahoma, as things stand right now.

It’ll be Oklahoma because my Dawgs depressed me this weekend by getting handled by Alabama.  They got shelled in the first half and just couldn’t make it back.  We dfeinitely didn’t do ourselves any favors with the number of dropped balls we had and a number of key injuries.  I’ll also give credit to the huge freakin offensive line Alabama has, which did everything it needed to do to allow Alabama to run the ball and score points.

That was the first disappointment.  The second was my terrible performance in College Pick’Em this weekend.  All the games aren’t over yet, but I’ve already missed two games and I’m almost certain to miss two more.  All of those games had big point values assigned to them.

Now let’s go to the happy stuff.  As a FSU and UGA fan, I’m morally obligated to hate Florida and Miami.  I’m quite pleased to say that both of those teams lost today.  Florida lost to Ole Miss, which makes me laugh, and Miami lost to a UNC team that appears to be on the rise.  I didn’t think UNC was going to be good enough to beat the Canes yet, but I’m a Tarheel fan this weekend.

I also want to give a big salute to the Duke Blue Devils.  Duke won for the first time in the ACC in 25 games.  My hats off to you, you Dukies.  As a side note, USC’s win over Virginia looks even less impressive since they lost to Duke today.

And finally, my Seminoles figured out how to win a game today by beating Colorado in Jacksonville.  Another very solid performance by the FSU defense, though they didn’t keep it as tight as I would have liked in the second half.  The offense was a little up and down, but I think I’d have to say a little more up than down.  The thing I liked the most was that we had a pretty good deal of success running the ball today.  Antone Smith did a very good job and broke a couple of big runs for touchdowns.

Christian Ponder was a little less than impressive, but he didn’t lose it for us and there is something to be said for that.  Turnovers and inconsistency in our quarterbacks are some of the biggest problems we’ve had the last several years.  Ponder did have one interception, but that was on a freak play where he almost caught a batted ball himself than ended up in the hands of a defensive lineman.

Next weekend is a huge one for FSU with a trip down to Miami to face the hated Canes.  Let’s hope that we can take a little momentum down there with us, and they aren’t looking to take out their loss to UNC on us.

All in all this was a bit of a crazy weekend for college football.  Its going to be very interesting to see the rankings Monday when the dust settles, considering three of the top four teams lost and a number of other teams lost to much lower ranked or unranked opponents.

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The New Guy and Monty Python

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Allow myself to introduce my…self. I’m Erik’s brother, Todd. He has been gracious enough to allow me to join his little space on the interwebs here at ThePresentTense.net and hopefully I’ll keep up the standard he has already set.

I thought I would kick off my posting with an “aside” that I’m sure he will enjoy. He has always been a big fan of Monty Python and their comedic stylings and I found this little clip on the web while surfing:

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New Things at ThePresentTense

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Just a quick post to let my three readers that we’re going to try a couple of new things out here on the blog.

First, I say we’re b/c of a new presence on the blog.  My brother, Todd, has seen the fame and fortune I’ve gained from my worldwide blogging exploits and he wanted a piece of the action.  The rich stay rich by keeping it in the family, so I’m going to share the spoils and I’ve set him up as a contributor to the blog.  I don’t know how often he’ll post, so you’ll probably still have to put up with me more often than not.

The second thing I’d like to try out are what I think of as quick hits, but are known as “asides” in some circles of blogging parlance.  Basically, these will be barebones posts where I will usually share a link to an article or video I’ve found with a very quick desciption of what I’m sending you to.  These will be things that I’d like to share, but I don’t have or want to take the time to go into an in depth comment of the article.

After some of these asides get put up, I’d definitely appreciate some feedback on if you guys appreciate them or if you find them uninteresting.

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Presidential Debate Initial Thoughts

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I just have to throw out some initial thoughts on CNN’s coverage of the presidential debates.

- The audience reaction line graph on the bottom of the page is mesmerizing.  I don’t know how it works and how its measuring reaction, but its mesmerizing.
- I understand the scoring of the CNN pundits about as well as I understand the scoring during the Olympics boxing tournament.  (If this is a little obscure for some of you, Olympic boxing is notorious for curiously inconsistent scoring that doesn’t make sense to even the experts announcing the bouts)
- God bless Jim Lehrer for trying to turn this exercise into an actual debate.  He’s already asked McCain and Obama to direct their comments directly to each other, with little success.  I tip my hat to him b/c I think we’d all like to see a more direct conversation between them as opposed to a choreographed stump speech dance.

    I’m surprised I’ve made it this far into the debate.  There have been a whole lot of words spoken, without much said.

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    College Football: USC vs. Oregon State

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    This isn’t a review of this game since the 3rd quarter just started, but I had to throw out that USC is losing 21-0 right now.  Oregon St. is bad.  Oregon St. lost to Stanford, who is also bad, and they got crushed by Penn St.

    The point that I’m trying to make is that if USC doesn’t drop in the polls after this weekend, I’ll be heading to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to pick up the wedding gift for the marriage between the media/analysts and the Trojans.  Even if USC comes back to win this game, they were down 21 points to a bad team.  You don’t deserve to be #1 in the country if you can’t handle bad teams with no problem.

    If USC ends up losing this game, I, my friends, will do a happy dance a-la Bruce Willis at the end of The Last Boy Scout.  It gives me great pleasure when teams like USC get beat by teams they shouldn’t lose to, like Stanford last year.

    I also thought I’d share that I’m sending a mental health professional to Pete Carroll’s house after this quote in ESPN’s article about USC’s super-duper hard schedule, when he was asked how he gets his team to take their PAC-10 schedule seriously.

    “What would we address about that? We have a ridiculously difficult schedule going through the conference. We don’t address where they are ranked or anything.”

    He just insulted every team in the Big 12 and the SEC and half the teams in the BIG 10.  Maybe he means its hard to deal with the schedule b/c its difficult for him to keep his team from getting bored to the point they consider changing sports.

    Well, its 21-7 now and I fear a comeback is on its way.  I still think if they maintain their #1ranking a spotlight will be shown on the fact that USC is the media/analyst darling in college football right now.  If they win this game, they will have beaten a less than impressive Ohio St. team, a really bad Virginia team, and will have had to come back against a bad Oregon St. team.  Not exactly the resume for the best team in the country.  I guess if USC ends up crushing Oregon St. in the second half they’ll have an argument, but you’ll still have a tough time convincing me.

    I’ll probably have some more thoughts tomorrow when I find out what the final score is.

    UPDATE: Oregon St. wins 27-21.  And now we do the happy dance.  Now the question that has to be asked;  How much does USC fall after losing to an unranked team?

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    The End of a College Football Era

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    The voice of UGA football for the last…well, forever, announced that he was retiring today.  Anyone who is a fan of college football in the South knows about Larry Munson.  He became the voice of UGA football in 1966 and finally decided to hang up his microphone today due to failing health.

    I can’t provide a better tribute than Chris Low at ESPN did, but I feel inspired to share one of my favorite college football memories, which Larry Munson was a big part of.

    I have to admit that I wasn’t one of the diehards that would listen to Larry on the radio instead of the TV announcers while watching UGA games, but the times I did hear him on the radio were usually memorable.  The last time I heard a Larry Munson broadcast turned out to be one of his most famous calls, of which he had many.

    While I was in grad school at UGA, my brother was living and working on Atlanta.  If I remember correctly, I had gone to my brother’s for a party he was having at his house on Friday night one random weekend.  Driving back to Athens that Saturday, I turned on the Bulldog Network to her the call of the UGA-Tennessee game.  The game was a pretty close one and it went down to the wire.

    Time was starting to run down in the forth quarter as I was getting back into Athens and Georgia was down 24-20.  Georgia got the ball back for one final drive as I pulled into my neighborhood, and I thought if I hurried I could make it inside to watch the end of the game on the TV.  I pulled into my drive and just as I was about to turn off the car something stopped me from cutting the engine and I just sat and listened to the last couple of plays on the radio.  The video below has the audio for what I heard over the video from the broadcast that day.

    The “hobnail boot” line is one that I don’t think I’ll ever forget.  I wasn’t exactly sure what Larry was talking about, and I’m not sure he did either, but it seemed like the perfect descriptor for the occasion.  I don’t have as many memories listening to Larry Munson as I would like, but this one will always be filed away in my list of college football favorites.

    And to Larry, hunker down and Godspeed.

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    Wake Forest 12-3 Florida State

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    What a nightmare of a game.  Apparently, the Seminoles of old being back only lasted two games against really, really crappy opponents.  The FSU defense definitely did their best to keep us in the game and played well for the most part.  They got us some turnovers when we needed them most and held strong as much as they could.  I also have to say that Wake Forest did everything they could to help us out and keep us in the game.  Sam Swank, one of the most reliable kickers in the game, missed three field goals, I think.  They also gave us some very opportune turnovers when they were knocking on the door of scoring again.

    The most frustrating thing about watching the game was our offensive ineptitude.  For two quarterbacks who have showed so much promise in previous games, Christian Ponder and D’Vontrey Richardson were just bad.  I really would like to point to some stuff they did well, but there really isn’t much to point to.  I guess, they did a decent job of scrambling or getting yards with their legs when they needed to, but that’s about it.  The problem is, more times than not, when we tried to do something through the air, it ended up in an interception.  Overthrown balls and misread coverages were bountiful.

    I think we clearly proved that our top 25 ranking was a joke, which I pretty much thought from the second I heard we were ranked.  The only future positive that I hope I can take from this game is that Wake has been picked as the team to win the ACC this year.  Perhaps other games in the ACC will prove to be a little less painful.  I’m not going to hold my breath though.

    Next week we play Colorado in Jacksonville.  They’re 3-0 so far this year but I’m not sure how their opponents stack up in the greater scheme of things.  I can only hope that we find some offensive rhythm before next week or its going to be another really, really long season.

    For what its worth, Georgia got a solid win over Arizona St. before they start their brutal SEC schedule.  Knowshon Moreno had another really solid game with 149 yards rushing and two touchdowns.  Maybe if my Seminoles can’t put together a respectable season, my Bulldogs can contend for a national title.

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    Awesome Fedex Commercial

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    In this day and age of TiVo and DVRs I don’t see commercials all that often.  On this rare occasion, I’m glad I saw this one.

    The video quality isn’t the greatest, but its too good not to share.  So you can understand a little better what’s going on, the guy is holding a golf scorecard when he walks into the Fedex.

    If I’m ever lucky enough to get a hole-in-one, I’d like to think I’d do something this funny.  I do know that whatever I do, as many people as I can tell about it are going to know.  I may just go walking around a mall or store telling strangers that I got a hole-in-one.

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