Thursday, November 20, 2008
Well, the economy still stinks. Yesterday the stock market fell to its lowest point in 6 years. The drop was fueled by fears of deflation, which is when the costs of goods and services actually go down. Why is deflation bad? It represents the fact that consumers arn’t spending money. Companies will begin to take in less money and react by slowing production and cutting jobs, which causes consumers to scale back spending even more. Deflation is often an indicator of a depression, but you know what else it is an indicator of? BARGAINS! With goods and services costing less, you paycheck (or unemployment checK) will spread further. But what should you spend your money on?
A shopping guide including Gay Marriage, Missouri, Childhood Obesity, Joe the Plumber, and Guns N Roses after the jump.
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Thursday, November 6, 2008
I think it is emblematic of how sick everyone is of the current administration that stories about the historic nature of the election barely lasted a day before pivoting to stories about “The transition.” Every paper leads with stories about who is managing President-Elect Obama’s transition and who might be in his inner circle. Because of the financial crisis, most of the speculation is on who might be named Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Some are worried that Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s pick for Chief of Staff, will be too partisan a figure for an administration that promised to deliver change by bridging the partisan divide. If you are a Republican, you can argue that this pick demonstrates what you have been saying all along: Obama is a fraud. If you are a Democrat, you should point out that over the last 8 years bipartisanship has come to mean “Democrats doing what the Republicans want.”
Apparently, the Washington DC social set is excited that we might have a cool President again. Well, if not cool at least one who goes to bed after 9 pm.
Kenya is going a little nuts. The country, which is where President-elect Obama’s father was from, has declared today a national holiday. Kenyans have taken to calling Obama “our son” and babies being born all over the country are being named Barack and Michelle. It feels pretty good that America is cool again.
One major dark spot for liberals and progressives in Tuesday’s election was the passing of a constitutional amendment in California banning gay marriage. Proposition 8 has halted all same-sex marriages in California, though it will not revoke marriages already performed. Quotes from gay marriage opponents in the story are typically nonsensical. Look to see a reversal of this back on the ballot in a few years.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Your morning news is late today because of last night‘s game. While 2.0somethings is strongly pro-Patriots, we can appreciate that it was actually nice to have a Super Bowl that was an exciting game, and we are honored that… OH who the hell am I kidding. WE LOST TO THE GIANTS. THE GIANTS. How in God’s name did Manning make that pass. HOW. WTF. Brady was sacked 4 times. WHERE WAS OUR OFFENSIVE LINE. Ok, it is out of our system. Mostly.
Man, how about those ads.
All the papers are focused on tomorrow’s Super Tuesday primary. It is the largest primary election event in history. National polls have Senator Barack Obama in a dead heat with Senator. Hillary Clinton. Those same polls show Senator John McCain with a large lead in the Republican race. When the topic comes up at lunch today, sound authoritative by saying that national polls don’t matter because it is not a national election, you need to look at the polling numbers state-by-state. If you do that, it looks like Senator Clinton will pull off some wins tomorrow.
California, with its ungodly (241) number of primary delegates, is one of the biggest prizes in tomorrow’s primary. All of the candidates were there yesterday. The biggest news was that California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, made a surprise endorsement of Senator Obama. Shriver’s husband, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, endorsed Republican Senator John McCain a while ago. Shriver is also a member of the Kennedy family, which gives the endorsement more resonence.
New polls are showing that concern over the economy is at its highest mark in the past decade with most people thinking we are already in a recession. The economy is now considered the number one issue in the Presidential campaign. Don’t let this dissuade you from buying cool stuff we talk about. The poll doesn’t break it down by age, but 18-29 year-olds did represent about 20% of the respondents.
Google finally weighed in on Microsoft’s bid to take control of Yahoo. Google basically said that they fear for the free flow of ideas on the internet. More realistically, Google is organizing its lobbyists and working through back channels to make the deal as unpleasant as possible for Microsoft.
