A Cold Wind's A-Blowin'

It's time we break the ugly cycle of Super Bowls being played in moderate to warm climates. It's no wonder that the game has taken a backseat to festivities and capitalism when hordes of well-to-do socialites can leisurely gather and not have to worry about one of their precious appendages freezing over. There is a direct correlation between weather conditions and excitement level. An added element of survival makes the crowd an active participant rather than a mere spectator. A short list of examples, "Tuck Rule Game," "Ice Bowl," all games Favre played at Lambeau below 32 degrees and all games Elway played at Mile High during blizzard conditions.

This season's Super Bowl will be held in Tampa Bay and next year's will be in Miami. There have been 12 Super Bowls played in these two sunny cities over the years. I'm sure many in attendance appreciated their experience, but how can we be sure? It's time we reward the warrior fans in Pittsburgh, Philly, Denver, Chicago, Kansas City and (only for the sake of trying to maintain some objectivity in this post) Boston. I respect the gesture of the two Detroit, one Minneapolis and the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowls, but the fans deserve better than a dome.

Listen up Goodie Proctor! If you end this nonesense and give the Super Bowl to one of the fine cities above, I may start to forget about your role in creating the NFL Network.

Frankenstein

Uncontrollable forces are creating a monster. By bringing Palin into the national spotlight, McCain paved the way for the latest underqualified, overambitious, neo-conservative candidate. Over the course of five weeks she has jumpstarted the McCain campaign to a lead in the polls, became the butt of the nation's jokes and then, despite conventional wisdom, gave confidence to the party by avoiding catastrophe in the VP debate. Slate Magazine summed up the debate by saying, "Biden wins. Palin wins. McCain loses." She's looking forward to filling the power vaccuum after 11/4.

3rd Term

I just watched John Stewart interview Bill Clinton on the Daily Show. Clinton brought up the idea that if the huge Wall Street gains of the late 90's were invested into green technology rather than the housing market, much of our current economic problems could have been avoided. This goes along with what Friedman said about how the railroad bubble of the 19th century and the IT bubble of the 90's both came to a painful end, but in the long run, left us with vastly improved transportation and techonological capabilities. Similarly, if there was a green technology bubble, we'd suffer short term losses when that bubble burst, but be left with much more efficient ways of producing energy for our country. As Friedman said, the only thing were left with now is bad debt and empty condos in Florida.

When a President Cries Wolf

A laundry list of potential disasters have been spewed from Washington for the past seven years. The nation soaked it in. Bush had a long way to fall from his popularity after 9/11. The fall started with the rising violence in Iraq and Katrina at home. A real live disaster which inspired no real response from Bush. People saw incompetence from the leaders who led the war in Iraq and were supposed to protect us at home. The disaster came, but it wasn't what we were told to expect.

Now, the biggest disaster to our economy since the Great Depression has arrived and there is 0 trust in Washington to get us out. Overwhelmingly, Americans called their elected officials to say we'd rather risk the fate of the markets than put our financial future in the hands of the Bush administration. Lack of trust is so blatant that only 1/3 of Requblicans and 60% of Democrats voted for the bill. The Dow fell 777 points or 7% by the end of the day. Biggest single day point loss ever.

As Paul Krugman said, "So what we now have is non-functional government in the face of a major crisis, because Congress includes a quorum of crazies and nobody trusts the White House an inch." "We're a banana republic with nukes."