Jaworski out on Monday Night Football

Well, it seems that Jaws was one too many for the MNF booth.

Jaworski will remain at the network and appear on various programs, including "Countdown" and "Matchup."

The longtime ESPN analyst had been in the MNF booth since 2007, replacing Joe Theismann after one season. He was supposed to add a respected football voice to a broadcast that included Tony Kornheiser. He dutifully played that role for two years until Jon Gruden was brought in as Kornheiser's replacement. It was all downhill from there.

I think Jaws sounded too much like Gruden and it was kind of hard to figure out who was talking sometimes. I mean the pitch of their voices were almost exactly the same so it was pretty strange to hear them agreeing with one another. I think a two man booth will be much clearer and easier to listen to.


However NFL Matchup is an awesome show that is one of the best on ESPN. You really get the behind the scenes Xs and Os view of football that many fans do not see. They need to expand the format and maybe bring in Mike Ditka and have it on more often. Maybe have it on right before Monday Night Football to have them break down the game before it starts. 

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5 Treaties the Obama White House Should Not Sign

Well it seems that we are negotiating some seriously flawed treaties that will take away American sovereignty in a big way. The thing that Morris doesn't seem to get though is that these treaties will probably not get halfway through even a Democratically controlled congress in their current form.

This one sounds especially egregious:

Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) has been signed, and the Obama administration � with the aid of RINO Sen. Richard Lugar (Ind.) � will push for its ratification as soon as Lugar�s primary in Indiana is over this year. LOST requires that the United States pay an international body half of its royalties from offshore drilling. The body would then distribute the funds as it sees fit to whichever nations it chooses. The United States would only have one vote out of 160 regarding where the money goes. LOST will also oblige us to hand over our offshore drilling technology to any nation that wants it � for free.

I would be willing to bet even money that Mexico, Brazil, and Nigeria would never sign onto this treaty because it would damage their home grown undersea drilling. The idea that Petrobras would kick back 50% of their profits to some international body would be ludicrous. Also they would never drive away the other drillers (and the money they pay the Brazilian government) that are taking advantage of their huge offshore oil strike.

Also the idea that offshore drilling technology will be handed off is not some terrible thing. Currently much of the drilling technology seems pretty homogeneous and Petrobras is using the same super deep water drilling technology as TransOcean does as far as I can tell. I mean any country or company domiciled anywhere in the world can commission the building of a super deep water rig for whatever billion it costs. I mean this is not nuclear secrets we are talking about.

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For the First Time Since 1978 the US Okays the Building of Nuke Plants

It has been about time the nuclear regulatory agency has gotten off their asses and started to address our power issues.

The newly approved AP1000 reactors for the Vogtle plant � to be made by Westinghouse � have safety features that would give people "days instead of hours" to restore electric power in a Fukushima scenario, McFarlane told InnovationNewsDaily. The Fukushima reactors suffered a meltdown after the lack of electricity knocked out their cooling systems.

In the new models, which Westinghouse already has built for China, "the water needed to cool the reactors is stored inside the containment building rather than outside of containment," explained Robert Buell, a risk analyst at Idaho National Laboratory. "You use physics and natural circulation along the containment walls to cool the reactors instead of relying on mechanical systems."

Wait until we get some closed fuel cycle reactors online and we can forget about the nuclear waste problem and the meltdown problems all at once. I hate how Fukushima damaged the nuclear industry for years to come. It is the only viable energy source that doesn't use coal or the increasingly expensive oil. Only natural gas comes close in price but does not have the efficiency of 3rd generation reactors.

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It Seems Google+ might be a Competitor After All

Well I signed up for Google+ a while back because it was tied to my Gmail and I thought I might as well. It seems they are growing pretty fast so far.

Among social networks, Google + (GOOG) is growing faster than Facebook, just after one year of existence. While it took Facebook nearly a year to reach a million users and more than four years to reach 100 million, it took only Google+ about two weeks to reach 10 million, and less than a year to reach 100 million.

About the only thing Facebook does better than Google+ is that it has more people on it. So you have a better chance to find people you know. But as Google+ builds I can see it actually going head to head with Facebook. So far the only thing I have been doing on Google+ is playing Gardens of Time but once more people I know go on there I can see me spending more time there.

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20 - 30somethings Voted for Obama in Large Numbers and Have Nothing to Show for It

Well, it seems that 20 and 30 somethings are seriously hurting in the Obameconomy.

�The share of young adults 18-24 who are employed has dropped to 54.3 percent, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1948. In the downturn, the employment decline has been steeper for this age group than any other; at the end of 2011, the unemployment rate was 16.3 percent for 18-to-24-year olds and 8.8 percent for adults ages 18-64. After the recession technically ended in mid-2009, the gap in the unemployment rate between those two age groups stretched to the widest on record. 

In other words they aren't getting employed right out of college anymore. The job that usually goes to them instead goes to an older person with tons of experience that was displaced from some other job. This statistic was really nuts I think:

�About 19 percent of men ages 25-34 were idle in the weak job market, neither working nor attending school. That's up from 14 percent in 2007. 

So that is 1 out of 5 men are not looking for work but not going to school either. I guess they are sitting on their couch playing Modern Warfare 3 or something. I really hope they come to their senses and vote for ABO (anyone but Obama) come this November.

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Now Timmy Tebow don't do Anything Un-Christian with Maria Menounos

It seems he may have made a love match at the Super Bowl festivities.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports Tebow was "quite taken" after being introduced to Maria Menounos during his travels around Indianapolis for Super Bowl week. According to the newspaper, Tebow was overheard talking to a friend about the fetching "Extra" host at a Friday party. "Wow!" Tebow reportedly said. "She's not only gorgeous, she's really sweet too." 

The pair was spotted getting "very cozy" at the ESPN Party, according to the Sun-Times. Menounos and Tebow reportedly ran into each other at several other Super Bowl shindigs over the weekend.

Yeah don't do anything with your "Satan parts" that Jesus would not approve of. I mean she does hang out with skeezy-looking director types like Keven Undergaro. (I'm sure he is a nice enough person but he looks like the kind of guy that would pinch a passing Italian woman's butt.)

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When I Wasn't Looking Everyone Turned on the BCS

Wow, I was not keeping up with college football for a few months and suddenly everyone turned on the BCS and are finally talking playoffs. In the words of Jim Mora: PLAYOFFS! PLAYOFFS? Indeed yes.

The Big Ten is open to more than a four-team playoff � expanding access to increase the likelihood a team from the conference makes the field. It also is contemplating a plan to have the semifinals played at campus sites and for the championship game to be open to bid by any city, not just traditional bowl sites. That would include some in the Midwest, particularly Indianapolis, which just flawlessly hosted the Super Bowl.

The idea of the National Championship then the Super Bowl all hosted in one city sounds like a great idea. Just have the various cities bid for it and have it move around the country like the NCAA Final Four. Also the idea of the higher seed having a home field advantage is an outstanding idea as well.

This also would create incredible inter-regional matchups in the game�s best settings: USC playing at Bryant-Denny Stadium? Oklahoma in the Horseshoe? Nebraska in the Swamp? Boise State at LSU�s Death Valley? Texas at Autzen? And so on. And so on.

Or would you prefer the Alamodome?

 
That would be such a a huge incentive to win out in order to get your home playoff game in front of 80,000 of your screaming fans. So this gets rid of the asinine "the regular season wouldn't matter with a playoff in place" argument.

Also it's always good to see national powers square off in games that matter and not just that opening game of the year. It would have been so cool to have seen Hawaii get slaughtered by Georgia at Sanford Stadium "between the hedges" instead of the Super Dome. One of the greatest football games I have seen was at Bryant Denny Stadium when Hawaii played Alabama. Imagine if that game was for the chance to play for the National Title?

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SOPA Dead! Now Congress Take a Break

Well at least someone in Congress decided to stop the destruction of the next Google or Facebook before it was too late.

In the aftermath of the defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, a long list of organizations have sent a letter to Congress asking members to �take a breath� before they trying to push through new piracy legislation.

I have to agree with this group because rights need to be protected but not at the expense of innovation. I think a few hearings with tech giants would be in order to understand exactly what is needed going forward.

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70% Haircut on Greek Debt?

If I were sitting on CDOs on Greek Debt I would just let them default instead of taking 30 cents on the dollar like this.

The person said Monday that the 70 percent loss was produced by cutting the bonds' face value in half, reducing the average interest rate to less than 4 percent and pushing repayment of the bonds decades into the future. 

Also I would be loathe to loan any of the debt-soaked southern European countries one single dollar more if this kind of thing could happen again. I hope whatever compact the Germans impose on the rest of Europe puts in place an automatic expulsion of a nation that gets over a certain debt level. That might have headed off this crisis at the very beginning and let the Greeks inflate their way out of this problem by bringing back the Drachma.

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Market Headed for a "Golden Cross?"

At least it seems that way if we keep going higher.

The �cross� happens when the 50-day moving average rises above the 200-day moving average, signaling a continuing uptrend. 

�As of right now, the 200-day is at 1,257, and the 50-day is at 1,256, so it�s one S&P point away from happening. I think it will come, if you look at what the 50-day looks like,� said Birinyi Associates analyst Kevin Pleines.  

He said his analysis shows that when the 50-day crossed the 200-day in the 26 instances since 1962, the market was higher six months later 81 percent of the time. 

Wow 81% is a pretty good indicator. I am already net long the market and pared down my cash so this bodes well for me if the 50 day holds above the 200 day.

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Amish Project: Interesting But Sad in a Way

This writer cut the digital cord for 90 days and he seems better for the experience.

Were there people who said, "I'm just not going to participate in this. If you can't answer my texts, I don't need to talk to you."

 

Reilly: Yeah, I mean, I definitely just lost complete contact with people that normally would have been part of my life. I mean it's also an interesting metric for your life to see who some of your closest friends are, you know, and who's willing to take the time. I started to feel bad for them, too, because it definitely became a nuisance, but, yeah, it definitely changed the level of, or the number of friends that I had and the level of contact that I had with them. 

I guess he saw who is "friends" were ie Facebook friends and who his real friends were. I mean the idea that people lost complete contact with him because he cut the digital cord says a lot about them. I wonder if these superficial "digital friends" are going to be the norm for 20-somethings going forward?

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Stange Objects Found at the Bottom of the Baltic Sea

Now this is something that needs to be checked out as soon as possible.

Sonar readings show that the mysterious object is about 60 meters across, or, about the size of a jumbo jet. And it's not alone. Nearby on the sea floor is another, smaller object with a similar shape. Even more fascinating, both objects have "drag marks" behind them on the sea floor, stretching back more than 400 feet.

I wonder what they could be? They might be Soviet submarines that had an accident that was not disclosed to the public at large. However a Kursk class sub is only 18 meters across. It might be a Russian Dreadnaught from WWI but even those ships are only about half as wide as these objects at 26.8 meters. About the only thing that is 72 meters across is a Soviet era Carrier. You would figure that the Russians couldn't keep the sinking of a ship that size a secret even during the Cold War.

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It Seems that Buffett Paying a Lower Tax Rate Than His Secretary is Rare

Well it seems that the uber-rich not paying their fair share seems to be a pretty miniscule number of people clocking in at just 236,883 taxpayers who earned more than $1 million in 2009.

The Top 400 tax filers  � the very richest Americans � do pay a lower rate of just 18.11 percent of their total income.  Why?  Many of them are hedge fund managers and people like Buffet � their income is pegged how much their investment fund grows.  For some reason, this income is counted as so-called �carried interest� (even though it is not interest at all; it�s more like a performance bonus) and is taxed at the lower 15 percent capital gains rate.

So if they got rid of the "carried interest" rule then that should solve much of the income inequality that Obama keeps harping on.  Also it seems that middle income Americans are not really paying their fair share at all according to this:

The numbers change a bit if you look at total income before deductions and tax credits (Adjusted Gross Income), according to another non-partisan group, The Tax Foundation. Here�s how the numbers breakdown using IRS data from 2009 on Adjusted Gross Income for the income groups at issue in this discussion:

-           $10 million a year paid 22 percent.

-          $1 million  to $10 million paid 25 percent.

-          $50,000 to $75,000 paid 7 percent.

The middle class pay just 7 percent because of deductions and tax credits that H&R Block get paid big money to uncover. If you go to those making less than $50,000 many of them pay no taxes at all and receive refunds instead. In any case the entire tax code should be overhauled.

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Apple Obliterates Numbers from Orbit!

Who knew selling IPhones and IPads would be so damn lucrative.

The technology giant [AAPL  420.41    -6.999  (-1.64%)   ] delivered fiscal first-quarter earnings excluding items of $13.87 a share, double the $6.43 a share recorded in the year-earlier period.

Revenue jumped 73 percent to $46.3 billion from $26.74 billion a year ago.

Analysts had expected the company to report earnings excluding items of $10.10 per share on revenue of $38.9 billion, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

They had records all around as well:

The company said it sold 37 million iPhones, 15.4 million iPads and 5.2 million Macs during the quarter � all new records and all beating analysts' expectations.

They also hold $97.6 billion in cash just pretty much sitting in some bank somewhere. I think they should use that money to buy 5 Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers (ICarriers?) and 75 F-18 Hornets (IFighters?) and go around solving the worlds problems one sortie at a time. Or maybe they should give shareholders a one time cash dividend or something. Just having it sit around in a large pile is a big waste of resources.

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It Seems a Greek Default Wouldn't be so Bad

I guess since it doesn't come as a surprise and markets are ready for it then it can be dealt with.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association says the total net exposure of market participants who have sold CDS credit protection on Greek sovereign debt was about $3.7 billion as of Oct. 21, 2011. At this point, the group estimates that more than 90 percent of Greek CDSs have been collateralized. In other words, most of the insurance has already been paid. 

Also there seems to be $53 billion in Greek Debt maturing in 2012 which will probably get wiped out. Anything else coming due in the future should be okay since Greece will run a surplus with the new austerity bill in place. Then the EU can move to boot them out of the Union and put some serious debt to GDP ratio laws in place going forward. Maybe if it gets too high they will put them on membership watch.

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