Methane Gas Leaking

They have found an area in Russia where the Permafrost is subsiding and Methane (aka Natural Gas) is leaking into the atmosphere. Why is this a problem? Well, Natural Gas is 20 times stronger as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Here is the good news though, we could just set all that methane on fire and let it combust to carbon dioxide. Problem solved. Well sort of. Hey where is my Nobel Prize?

Big Al's Call to Arms

Well the Peace Prize winning Al Gore has finally made a call for people to use "Civil Disobedience" against coal fired power plants. Actually just the new ones, that will replace old inefficient coal burning and reduce the amount of other harmful gas (i.e. NOx and SOx) emissions. Tell you what Al, come around here to where the coal miners are and the coal fired power plants and tell them you want to shut them down using "civil disobedience" and let's see how long that synthetic hair stays attached to your head. I really wish that Democrats in this area would realize that their party has been high jacked by Environmentalisticly (oh yeah check that word out) minded liberals who don't care about coal, coal fired power plants or even really union workers. It has become really blatant in the last 5 or 10 years that the democrats no longer hold close the ideals of the democrats of the 60's and before. Oh they still like social programs, health care for everyone and what not, but they don't really care about working class people anymore. If you aren't on welfare or didn't come here illegally they don't care about you. On a federal level the democrats are controlled by people like Nancy Pelosi from San Fran, the Clintons from New York, and Obama to some extent. Do any of these people really have the best interest of the Ohio Valley in their heart, Doubtful. And by sending more democrats to Washington we are just giving the left leaning side of the party more voting power. Yesterday Charlie Wilson voted for the Bail out plan. No Thanks, Charlie. I'm not sure who is running against you, but they are definitely getting my vote. That bail out plan is not going to help any individual, it will only help banks be able to give out more money. That's it. They still aren't held accountable for their actions and their poor decision making isn't even stopped. It would just be replacing bad loans that the gov't buys with more bad loans. I fail to see how that helps anyone. Well this post went all over the place, but the point is Al Gore should fight Charlie Wilson in a vat of coal and whoever loses gets set on fire. No wait that would produce to much CO2, how bout just shoving a piece a coal in each of their mouths. Wow I'm angry about this stuff. I'm going to go calm down now.

Range of Emotions

Fantasy hits real life as I wrestle with the emotions of the end of the season. Oh sure its over, but I mean the way it ended was heart breaking. I have appealed to the commish, but Stevie says, "no sense crying over spilt milk". Well this is not spilt milk my friends, this is milk that never got put into the dang on cup. After the end of season debacle I don't know if want to play anymore, but at the same time I have learned so much and now I really want to just crush the tar out of him next year. We'll see what my young nephew commish says, then I'll decide. To play or not to play that is the question.... No I'm gonna play and I'm gonna kick the buttkickers butt.

Made in the USA - #300

Well it has been a long journey to get here and it is nice to know some things are still made here in America. I made a special effort to find some boots for work that were made in the USA and the only ones I could find were Red Wings. But even some of the Red Wings are being made over seas now so you really have to look at the label to make sure. The total cost was close to $150, but I thought the statement was worth it, plus I get a really good pair of boots. I hate seeing stuff not being made here in America and I really want to try and make a difference so that my kids have something. Not that I really have any problems with stuff made over seas or south of the border but I would rather see us do well. You see we got to the point we are at by making our own stuff and buying our stuff and now the other countries are starting to grow and eventually they will catch up and be buying their own goods and won't need to sell to us. Then the price will sky rocket and we won't have the infrastructure to support ourselves or our kids won't have it. So I think we need to support what we have to keep it from going away and let those companies know that we like stuff made in the USA and if you give us an option we'll buy the USA stuff. Also I will not be buying Hanes because they are shipping jobs out of North Carolina and into other regions. Right now I'm not sure what other garment makers are doing, but I do know that this moves makes me sick. Sorry Hanes you just lost a customer.

"Eagle Eye" the movie - A Review

It was an Okay movie, but I'd save my money, well if I were you I'd save your money, mine is already gone. It is kind of like a cross between 'I, Robot" and "The Matrix". The action scenes though were the worst I have ever seen for a picture of this magnitude. They were the hand held variety and they were cut together really fast. Usually I would say this was to make a scene look like it was really chaotic, but was done cheaply because the movie was a crap fest, but I thought this movie was probably pretty expensive to make so it just made an expensive movie into a crap fest. Enough about the cinematography, it was just really disappointing because it was a Spielberg fim, the rest of the story was kind of like a 1984 big brother deal where big brother takes over and starts getting civilians to do its bidding. I won't ruin the movie for you just in case, but I thought the acting was average at best. I really like Shia Lebouf, though, he has an everyman quality about him and tends to "act" like a regular person would if these things happened to them, but he is funny at his core. Basically his twin brother dies at the beginning and he was a military guy who was good at everything he did, and Jerry (Shia) was not. Then Jerry gets a ton of cash deposited in his account and all kinds of explosive goodies show up at his door which is a red flag for the FBI and they come and arrest him. Well he has no idea why this is happening and an unknown voice is directing him on what to do to get out of stuff. So the next hour is watching him and his love interest follow the direction of the voice and the FBI trying to catch them. As the movie goes on you learn who the voice is and why Jerry is needed. The whole thing comes to a head in the capitol building during a State of the Union address (who said those things were boring). Anyway it is a decent movie, but definitely not worth seeing in the theatre.

Rating 3 out of 5, wait to rent. Also Sophie said she gets to pick the next movie and where to eat since I got to pick both. But there was no way we could make the movie waiting at Olive Garden for a half hour. So I suggested Bob Evans and went with the Bob-B-Q pulled pork knife and fork sandwich, which is awesome. I was going to do the Philly one, but the peppers on the mashed potatoes just didn't look right.

The End of Fantasy Baseball

Fantasy baseball is finally over, and like any good fantasy game this season ends with a bit of controversy. You see the lazy programmers over at Yahoo have neglected to keep up with what the other fantasy leagues were doing. On ESPN and Fox Sports the leagues counted the make-up games being held on Monday the 29th, but not Yahoo. No big deal, you say, the season is already decided and nothing can be made up on the last day. Not so fast my friends. As it turns out I had one last bullet in the chamber with Gavin Floyd. He started today and won the game which would move me into a tie win 80 wins, because I would pick up 0.5 points in the standings, but he also only gave up 1 run in 6 innings so he lowered my ERA to 3.70 which gives me another 0.5 points and puts me into 3rd place by myself. But there were no stipulations about games being played after the "final" Sunday and due to the restrictions in moves and games played at each position, you gotta give me something here. So Stevie won the league but I should at least get third. Yahoo may only remember me as 4th, but I'll know better. I almost wish Floyd would have laid an egg instead, but now he will always be on one of my teams thanks to the performance today. What ended up costing me the league was the injury situation in the last month and a half with Carlos Lee going out, Wagner getting hurt, and Figgans, Upton and Taveras not playing although they were never officially put on the DL. I also spent too much time and too many moves on catchers. Next time I would like to see about a 60 move limit. That way you can still manage around injuries and maybe do some crazy things down the stretch if you still have moves, but you can't do crazy stuff the whole season because you can run out of moves. We'll see, I'll have to wait and see what the commissioners ruling is on this season. I should at least get a freebie in next year, right?

Brown Out

Sophie had been plotting on her brother Ricco for some time. She had a plan to go down and decorate his house with some Browns' stuff before they played the Bengals. So she got her other brother Hans and his girl friend Alicia to come and help. We took pictures and video of the event and can only imagine what the reaction was when he got home. Well the Browns actually won so we may have to do this ritualistically now. But Hans came up to Ricco's to watch the game and was wearing a Bengals jersey. Say What!?! Maybe his house will be next....



Yeah that is Sampson as the human torch.

Getting madder about the "boring" financial crisis

The more I learn about this crisis and the strategy to fix it the madder I get. The Dow has lost about 26% in a little less than a year, in 1987 the Dow drop about 36% in less than 3 months. Different from what happened before, not as drastic and yet there was no drastic bail out before. Do you remember Reagan trying to force through legislation for billions of dollars in the wake of the 1987 crash. Me neither. Of course I wasn't really paying attention at the time I was 10. Anyway I actually agree with the congress right now in not just passing this stuff blindly. I don't know that this is going to send the right message. It is going to be a real high level bail out where at risk mortgages are purchased from institutions in order to improve their liquidity so that they will feel like giving out more credit. Which when you think about it, is that really a good idea? These institutions are the ones that made the bad decisions to give credit to people who couldn't handle it anyway. It is like giving someone matches and watching them burn down their house and then hurrying up and getting them a new house... on me and you. I mean these people need to learn a lesson and if the federal gov't steps in and saves them then what lesson did they learn. They took really high risk mortgages and thought they could make money on it, and if they would have made money do you think they were going to share the money with us tax paying folk? Heck no! That's their money, but since they made extremely poor decisions, now they are going to show huge losses and it is up to us to bail them out. Well not this time. I say bring on the consequences for everyone, because it is going to happen eventually anyway. The next president is probably going to deal with double digit inflation or at least needs to in order to genuinely turn the economy around. This is sink or swim time. Eventually people have to be responsible for themselves and their decisions. It just isn't right that people try to follow the rules and do the right thing and then end up footing the bill for the people that either can't or don't care to be responsible. The problem still goes back to the banks and part of the answer going forward needs to be stopping where people can get a house with only 5% down. Move it back to 20%. The only thing here is if people wanted to put enough effort into it they could put the 5% down at one bank to get a loan for 20% of the house and then take that money and put in down at another bank. So that is why people can't be allowed to take out house loans for more than a total of 80% of the house. There needs to be transparency so that other banks have easy access to credit records so someone can't back door them and if a bank circumvents the rules then they assume the entire liability and the loans can't be insured. With the 20% minimum PMI is eliminated and the AIG problem goes away. And most of the bad loans will go away because it will be more difficult for people who can't handle to get the initial down payment. Hey I know I benefited from it, but there are just way too many stupid people out there that are screwing it up. This is where we need an actual leader to step in and say we'll take a look at a case by case basis, but make $700 billion available seems like a huge mistake to me, or at least drastic overkill.

Have you seen Stevie?

If you are in the desert in Iraq and you see a taller guy with like a beard and longer hair wondering around going,'I should have played Ronnie Brown, oh why didn't I play Ronnie Brown. I could have won, but instead I lost by 20 points'. That is Stevie, if you could bring him back in and get him some water or something that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Kirk

HESCAR

Oh also all I got when I gave blood was a Greg Biffle key chain. I know what you're thinking 'but he won the last two races'. So what, he can't win a championship his name isn't Johnson, Edwards or Earnhardt and those are the only guys that HESCAR is going to let win. That is my new name for NASCAR and any reference to NASCAR from here on out will be in the form of HESCAR (Hendrick Earnhardt [or Edwards] Stock Car Auto Racing). Since all HESCAR wants to do is throw fantasy caution flags late in a race so that Jimmy can stay out front or take power away from Toyota, even though it is obvious that they have spent the most time on the new car and have made the most improvements. I will continue to root for Tony Stewart this year, common baby just one more win, and Greg, and the other Gibbs drivers, but that is it. And if HESCAR lets me down, well I could be done watching for good. Then I will focus all of my energy on competitive Cornhole.

Busy Monday

Today was typical, somewhat, of what our days have become. I left work a little early, about 4:00 PM (only 9 hours today) to go give blood and then go get Sampson at Football practice. In the mean time Sophie took Sampson to school picked him up and took Peach to "butterfly" school. Got home about 7:30 ate, got Sampson his bath, watched some TV and blogged a little bit. Sampson has his first game on Saturday, so I have to get some stuff done this week during the week so I can film the game on Saturday. Well I gotta watch Heroes.

Fantasy Football Week 2

Well Stevie took a butt whooping, but he could have won, Hah Hah Hah. It turns out that Ronnie Brown had one of the best days in Fantasy history, over 40 points by himself and Stevie had him on the bench. This is so funny. So he he ended up losing by 20. Ha ha ha.

And in baseball the Ninja Frogs are back to within 6 points or so of the baseball lead. Alas I'm down to my final 4 days at 3rd base and utility with about 7 games left. It is probably too much to overcome and Stevie will win the baseball prize. But we'll always have football. The day when Stevie took the big defeat.

Fantasy Update - the last week

I made a bunch of crazy moves in Stevie's other leagues because all of the pitching was used up. I got about two more tricks to try, but I think a couple of the leagues are out of reach. The Ninja Frogs are in second, 6.5 points out of first. Stevie is out of moves and feeling the pressure. I would have had a decent chance to catch him I think, but Figgans and Upton have been hurt for the last week. On the Football front the Dream Wreckers are in second, but are 1-0 and face a weak team in week two. It is actually Stevie's team and their name is 'Mom's 2nd fav son'. He did change it to 'Mom's fav son' but that isn't how it was set up. Either way he's going down.

Sampson's home remedies

Got an itchy butt, try tooth paste. This is a good reason to learn to read. Sampson finished his bath and I let him dry off, well he decided he wanted to do some self medicating, but instead of grabbing the A&D ointment he grabbed Sophie's tooth paste. Sophie noticed that the cap was off and the tube was squeezed into a funny shape later that night. She asked him what happened and he confessed putting the medicine on. Needless to say the tube was thrown in the trash, also his butt didn't feel any better, but it was minty fresh.

The "boring" financial crisis

This week the federal government bailed out some financial institutions. First it started with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which where already tied in with the government so no big deal, other than the complete lack of leadership and control exhibited by those companies. Lehman Brothers then went bankrupt, but the gov't didn't do anything then AIG went down and the gov't stepped in and bailed 'em out with tax payer money. So where did the problem start. I think if you back to 9/11, we lost 210 floors of business and over 3,000 hard working intelligent people directly tied to financial institutions. This wasn't the problem though the answer to the attack was the problem. Right after the attack the fed lowered the interest rate. Seems like a harmless move, but then President Bush wanted to make the attack on terrorism more personal so to speak. And what says freedom like owning your own house. So while the gov't made a move to make it easier to get a house. Well actually they made it easier to get your hands on money that you could use to buy a house. Banks started handing out money with little to no down payments now, (this is how the Helfen's came into home ownership with a 80/15/5 piggyback loan done avoid PMI). But I think the rush to get people into houses without having to have down payments and good credit actually lead to more problems than solutions. Before people wouldn't even think of getting a house without 20% to put down and banks wouldn't even consider a loan. I have heard many talk about waiting 10 years or long to scratch and save enough to get a house and now that was wiped out. It actually happened before 9/11, because we got our house in August, but I think the flood gates really opened after that and people where willing to take on massive amounts of debt in order to live in the 'now'. Unfortunately, 'now' is over and people are paying tomorrow prices for stuff they got yesterday (that may not make any sense, but it sure is fun to say). Anyway when the gates where opened the restrictions were lowered and all kinds of people could now get homes. Even people that had bad credit and unstable jobs. Good for them, bad for the banks. There is a reason some people are called 'high risk' and with the low interest rates even when the banks tacked on a extra percent or two it was still worth the risk. The problem is when the defaulted instead of default on 80% or less of the house now, they were defaulting on 95%, which is essentially an extra 15% the banks had to eat. I believe there was a lot of corruption on wall street and now the risk is being assumed by the tax payers which isn't really right, but I think we have back ourselves into such a corner that it has to be done. It really isn't fair when someone plays by the rules and tries to take care of their bills and then has to bail out people that have no business being allowed to get their hands on that much credit. The thing to do now is kind of roll back the legislation or rules that made it super easy to get housing credit, 20% down no exceptions, unless you've already owned a home or something, and keep the interest up. 1980 inflation is coming.... Also I think the crisis is closer to the collapse of 1987 or the economics of the late 70's. I don't think it is like the great depression the unemployment was in the 30% range and we are around 6%, plus wall street rebounded this week. So the dynamic are different here. Whoever inherits the white house likely will get a recession, funny how that happens ever 8 years.

Random Thought #7

A wise man will admit that he knows nothing.

The "Experiment" at 6 weeks

I still have some pain in the ankle especially like the last 4 or 5 days. I finally mowed yesterday. I was really lucky/blessed that I didn't have to mow for 6 weeks at the end of summer.

Fantasy Update

The new obsession continues to grow. We drafted our fantasy football teams on Saturday, and my team looks pretty decent. I had to draft in the middle of the rounds and I didn't care for that very much. Other than that it was pretty neat. Well see how I do, scoring starts next week.

On the baseball front the Ninja Frogs have climbed all the way to second and remain about 4 to 6 points out of 1st. I am completely out of moves and 1st place Stevie is down to his last move. His best player got hurt last week too. It could get close down the stretch, but Randy Johnson missed a start today and I could see the wheels coming off the pitching bus late here in the season. Just hold together a little longer... please.

Big Week

Sophie and I have a big week this week. Peach starts "butterfly" school, or dancing school as it is called in some circles, and Sampson starts flag football. It should be fun, but I have a feeling it is going to be busy, very busy. The blog may not get an update for a while. Just to fore warn.

Bad Weekend for Sports

First the OU debacle, then the Browns lose their opener in spectacular fashion to the Dallas Simpsons, the P-towners won, and Tony Stewart finished 2nd to Jimmy. He could have wrecked out and still made the chase, so finishing second was pointless. Every once in awhile a good sports weekend happens, but I think it is really hard for that to happen for me because of the teams I root for. It does make those good weekends extra special though. There's always next weekend.

Buying Palin

Right now Palin is still looking like a really good as a VP pick. She passed her first test in delivering a pretty awesome speech at the convention. And afterward depending on what pole you look at the candidates are pretty much even. What I liked about the speech is that she really came after the democrats and put her experience of being a governor up against the experience of her and McCain's opponents. She also took shots at the media who are challenging her ability to be VP and a Mom, but would never dare ask a man if he thought he could be a good Dad and also be VP. Kind of double standard. I loved how she was saying all this stuff and CBS and NBC and CNN had to broadcast it. That was great. I have looked at some of the differences between Ferraro and Palin and so far it looks like Ferraro was a representative only for about 6 years, before becoming the VP candidate. Right after the nomination Mondale and Ferraro pulled even with Reagan, but it was pretty steady downhill until the election. The press or the Republicans locked on to some shady dealings that she had done to finance her initial run for congress. What came out of it is that her husband wouldn't release his tax returns until it was too late, and it ended up being a good tactic because finances are fairly gender neutral. They ended up losing in every state except for Mondale's Minnesota.

The next tests that Palin has to pass is some type of interview with a major media network, and the VP debate. She also has to keep from dropping the ball by making some YouTube statement or having something come out. So far the best the media can muster is that her 17 year old daughter is pregnant. That could actually back fire if they try to villainize (I may have made this word up) her for being a supportive Mom and trying to help her daughter do the right thing. Don't forget these people are from Alaska and it gets cold up there. I think the state motto is "Alaska, too cold to pull out". They really should look at changing that.

OU Almost makes History

It would have been great to see OU beat OSu on Saturday, but the officiating or lack there of, finally caught up to the Bobcats as they fell 26-14. OU was up 14-12 going into the fourth qtr, but an untimely fumble on a punt gave the ball away on Ohio's 30 yard line. The ensuing drive saw the suckeyes pass the ball inside the 10, but it looked like a hold as one of the Bobcat lineman was tackled to the ground. No call. OSwho goes on to score. It was Ohio fault though, the only two touchdown drives the other team had where because the defense was on the field in back-to-back possessions. First they recovered the fumble in the end zone, and then on the botched punt. The last touchdown resulted from a punt return from the other team, in which in looked like there was a pretty blatant block in the back. No Call. Even the coach of the other team said in the press conference after the game that it looked like they got away with a block in the back. Fantastic. I hope they lose by about 40 next week. I blame the loss squarely on Hans, who was watching the game, but then "had" to go be an usher in a wedding. People need to work on their priorities. Also the next time the teams play, lets do it in Athens. Just for fun, see if our referees can do any better. Sophie has stated that due to the arrogance of the OSwho fans (and I would rate the percent at about 99.9% that have no humility and make the game completely unenjoyable) and the terrible refereeing she would root for their opponents exclusively through the end of the season including a Michigan team that earlier she had refused to support.