It is about that time people..............

While sitting at a local South Tampa bar last week, my bank Sun Trust walked by and asked "how is you bank account?" my reply was "he's on his way out." To which Sun Trust replied "we all are, act accordingly" to which I then replied "college and NFL football season is upon us, fret not my capitalist friends, because if I have my druthers you will be in for a day of reckoning for which you will not live long enough to never forget. Write that down" Check back next week as I will post my first winners of the new seasy!!

State of the Economy

I'm back after a long absence, some of us had to go to Drill Sergeant school, try it sometime; nevermind don't because you won't make it. Anyways, I have made my transition back to civilian life and continued my record length of time spent unemployed. Which brings me to the topic of this blog, I keep reading about all these "Economists" who are forecasting that the economy will rebound near the end of 2009, 90% of all these Economists say that, the other 10% say the first quater of 2010. I say BULLSHIT to both, from the numbers I have seen and went through myself (believe me I have alot of time on my hands right now, oh yeah and thanks alot President Obama for passing the law making busineses "hire more veterans" mmmmm, that worked out fucking great didn't it? But lets keep affirmative action, uh I mean reverse racism going though.) According to my calculations the Economy won't get better until at least 2011, go ahead and thank your local realtor, mortgage broker, banker, trader, speculator and financial advisor. The Department of Labor (who recently turned me down for a job I applied for) manipulates the employment rate, by overstating the amount of "employed" people, alot of these "employed" people are underemployed or only working part time. In Economics, statistics can be manipulated to say whatever they want the data to say, just add a variable here, subtract one there, make the sample size bigger or smaller. I can manipulate data to show that I am dating Maggie Gyllenhall, doesn't mean its true. In order for a country to have a strong economy, it has to have solid manufacturing, which we don't have. Also we need to start taxing every currency specualtion made by "investors" as well as any stock purchase, mutual fund purchase, etc, you wanna be the hot shot day trader on your laptop at Starbucks with a semester of junior college under your belt, good you can pay a tax on your pre-investment purchase, while your sipping your fucking mocha venti and churning your etrade account...............I'll give you a second to look up what "churning your account" means, they probably didn't teach you that before you became academically ineligible at Devry University. Also, why has no one started punishing U.S. companies for shipping jobs overseas still? WTF with this shit already............ simple solution, every 10 jobs you send overseas you pay 10% more in taxes, 70 people making shoes at the Nike factory in India, you pay 70% too easy. Also on the opposite end of the spectrum companies that hire and keep workers jobs in the U.S. receive tax credits, the more workers you have the less tax you pay as a company, more workers means more people to buy consumer goods and pay sales tax, more workers getting paychecks means more FICA the government can get its hands on so in the end the tax revenue would even out. Good thing I'm the unemployed one though.

Ticketmaster...........the new mafia?

I'm on the soapbox again my friends, this time I dust off my hatred of ticketmaster. I was under the assumption that monopolies in this country were illegal, don't bring up MLB or the NFL, NHL or NBA, while all of these have extremely high barriers to entry they are not necessarily monopolies. Take the AFL it was at one time its own entity was bought by the NFL because the NFL recognized it as a competitor. Pont being if you have the money to create a professional sports league, there is nothing stopping you. That brings me to Ticketmaster who is now in the process of merging with Live Nation, which will give them unilateral control over the entire concert process. Recently tickets for a Bruce Springsteen sold out in 1 minute, consumers were refered to Ticketnow, which is a 2nd hand ticket seller, much like Stubhub. Now let me put this in a real world example, I took my at the time girlfriend to a Yankee game in the Bronx in May of 2007, as we came up out of the subway there was a black kid being lead away in handcuffs, his crime was "scalping two tickets" and I highly doubt the prices on them were that high, the Yankees were playing the Mariners. So how is it Ticketmaster is allowed to drop 10,000 thousand tickets onto a second hand scalping site with no ramifications? Two words. Rich. Whitey. Its a disgusting process, If you are lets say a dad looking to buy 4 tickets to a baseball game to take the kids and the old lady to, you are going to shell out big money for the tickets and money for "convienience fee" how is that convienient for me when I don't have a choice in the matter. I think the government should step in, maybe take sometime off from chasing Bonds and Tejada and help the American consumer. Here is my system for combating this plague of corporate greed. Have two sets of numbers on the tickets, available only to a ticketholder, similar to the serial number used on our currency. Regulate the scalping sights so that if the ticket broker/ seller charges more than 3% above the face value of the ticket the ticket will become null and void, also close delivery charges to no more than $10 to close any possible loop holes. This will force brokers off the ineternet and onto the stadium grounds at which point buying huge lots of tickets will become economically inefficient, because the tickets being available at the stadium by a large number of brokers would create an inelastic price system where the consumer would be in charge. Also we can blame this phenomenom on corporate America, a large buyer of tickets to sporting events, capitalism at it's best, screw the consumer on tickets to see sporting events even though they are the one's paying for the new stadiums with their tax dollars. Shameful. Before you go to bed tonight say your prayers that I don't get accepted to law shool rich whitey, becasue I'm going to come after you like a wolverine with a crack problem.

A-Rod admits to steroid use.............

Let's get it straight folks, A-Rod took steroids, several years ago, before substances were "banned". Before you call into ESPN to bash the A-Rod's, Giambi's, Petit's and others who admitted to using steroids. let's look at a different angle. Could they possibly have become products of their environment's? I think so, take A-Rod for example, if I go out tomorrow and take steroids I still won't be able to hit a Papelbon fastball or a Halladay change-up, let alone hit it 400 feet consistently, for years. I played baseball for 20 years and never hit a home run. So lets quit making federal cases out of these "disgraced" baseball players and focus on the real culprit, which is capitalism. To quote my Dad "no one is going to pay $75.00 a ticket to watch me take inventory at Publix" that was in response to someone saying professional athletes salaries are way too high. MLB is a marketable commodity which generates $17 billion a year, players are under pressure from owners, fans, espn, sports writers and even baseball memorabilia compaines to include jersey's and baseball cards. When I go to see a baseball game I am comfortable with the fact that the worst guy on the field is 6 milllion times better than me. So when there is that kind of pressure players look for an "edge" to stay on top of their game, is steroids the answer probably not. At the same time none of these guys are commiting crimes against society, they are under intense pressure to perform day in and day out or risk getting put out to pasture at 25 with no marketable skills. If ESPN were around when Ruth or Chamberlain played do you think they would talk about their womanizing for 24 hours a day? Under today's microscope people are bound to screw up and makes mistakes, "OMG A-rod took steroids, OMG Phelps is a pothead" Get a job people, this is entertainment not life or death, so take off your white wig and get off your high horse, if you want to be pissed off at someone stand outside your local bank and throw needles at the branch manager when he walks out to his $200,000 Benz that we are paying taxes for him to drive or go to a church and throw small dildo's at the catholic priests when they walk out of their tax shelter/ house of "God". Gimme a break and find a better outlet for your pent up hostilities. Thank you.

Superbowl Write up and thoughts.......

Well, I hit my spread bet of the Cardinals +7 and won my 3 prop bests. Total profits were 77 units, that makes me happy. However, the officiating made me unhappy. I have not seen so many phantom calls since the Steelers-Seahawks Superbowl 2 years ago. The Cardinals had I believe 11 penalties for 116 yards?? Are you serious right now? I will test my hypothesis that referee Terry Macauley had indeed taken the Steelers Money Line. It seemed that everytime the Cardinals had a 3rd down play it was brought back by a phantom hold or "personal foul". Ironically Santonio Holmes was not called for unsportsmanlike conduct after his touchdown celebration. That penalty would have marched off 15 yards in the Cards favor after the kickoff with 35 seconds left. At this point Terry Macualey was sweating bullets getting ready to wash down his cianide pills with some gatorade. Then they don't review the Kurt Warner "fumble"?? It sure looked to me like an incomplete pass. Did anyone else notice Kurt Warner's wife has become attractive? Maybe I had to many freshies but she has had some work done. So it's official now, I dislike the Steelers more than any other team. Also I guess John Madden had the superbowl script with him in the booth as he called the Warner endzone pick right before he threw it, coincidence? Even a professional handicapper like myself couldn't have hit that prop bet. After going all in on my Bodog account I settled down at Gator's Dockside with some friends, and fielded their questions about sports gambling. Some of the questions I had were "I don't understand what does the +7 mean?" "What happens if you lose? Do I need to drive you to an ATM to pay a bookie?" I said you do know what a bookie does right? "Yeah, they pay you" was their response. Other questions I fielded were "Is Billy Vegas really in jail for illegal bookmaking?" Yes. He is. Vegas also has him on probabtion. "Why do you keep saying bye bye money and slamming your beer down as well as your phone?" I always find it amusing watching football with "normies" which is a person who doesn't bet on football, that's OK not everyone likes money!! I liked the Bruce Springsteen halftime show, Springsteen still put on the best concert I have seen to date in my life. Those of you who don't like Springsteen should throw out your Fall Out Boy CD's and board a plane for Baghdad sans IBA. See you next season readers when I will continue my quest of digging into Vegas's coffers!!

President Obama's Inaugaration

I woke up this morning expecting to see a nice ceremony. I have to say I was disapointed. It was disturbing for me to see people celebrating President Obama's African American roots instead of celebrating a new direction and new hope for our country. Lest we forget people that President Obama was raised by his white mother and his white grandmother, however, there was no mention of that. Also, college educated white voters (like myself) put up huge numbers at the polls in support of President Obama. The whole thing left me feeling disenfranchised and questioning my vote, perhaps I should have voted for Senator Mccain. The reverend that spoke the envocation added to my dismay. I get the civil rights deal. I don't want it jammed down my throat all day long, then to add insult to injury I have to listen to Jesse Jackson and Russell Simmons give their two cents. I felt the race card was played too much, at this point in our nations history we should be uniting as one, not bringing up issues from the past.

NFC and AFC championship covers

After going 3-1 (thanks Chargers) last week, I'm looking for 2-0 this week, let's get right to my picks.

Cardinals +4 vs Eagles: I don't see how the Eagles can win this game, Philly likes to win outright when they are dogs but hates covering spreads and winning when they are favored (Redskins, Bengals). I know that the Eagles milk cartoned Arizona on Thanksgiving, but this is a different Cardinals team. Arizona is 7-2 at home this year and have been playing out of their minds in the playoffs, Warner has pass protection, they are running the ball, and they are defending the pass well. The Eagles ground game is in bad shape with Westbrook hurting, so Mcnabb will have to do most of it through the air. I like the Cardinals to win this one outright by 1 to 3 points.

Ravens +6 @ Steelers: Big Ben burned me last week and now he owes me money. The Steelers won the regular season meeting 13-9 on a last minute "touchdown". If Ben throws deep they might be able hurt the Ravens here, as I see the deep ball as their one weakness, but then again Ed Reed could come away with a couple of pics as well. The Chargers put zero pressure on Rothlisberger, something the Ravens will be able to do all game long, let's not forget the Steelers O-line is not the best in the league. Flacco continues to play well, what a steal that guy has become. Flacco has not thrown a pic or been sacked in the playoffs. This game will be tight, but in the end I think they Steelers will fail to pull this one out of their rear end. Ravens win by 1.