Catch A Falling Star

What a year of contrasts some creatures can have.

In January, Plaxico Burress caught the winning pass in the Super Bowl for the New York Giants. Then, in an epic display worthy of a mighty fallen subject of a Greek tragedy, Plaxico did a face plant to rock bottom last night, when he managed to shoot himself in the thigh - with his own gun - at a Manhattan nightclub.

It doesn't get much dumber than that.

Ball Bearings That Paid Off

I pause from my meanderings through mid-life as a hard charging member of corporate America, to throw major props to the Spungen family of Waukegan, Illinois.

Laurence and Florence Spunger were third generation owners of Peer Bearing Co., a ball bearing manufacturer. They recently sold their family owned company to a Swedish corporation, making this Thanksgiving a bittersweet one for the 230 employees of Peer Bearing.

Maintaining tradition, each employee received a turkey from the Spungens for their final Thanksgiving together. They also got a little stuffing with their bird.

6.6 million dollars.

The Spungen family chose to share their windfall of the company sale with their employees as a final sendoff of gratitude. Bonuses were determined by tenure with the company, yielding veteran laborers well in excess of $30,000.

Such a gesture is entirely unheard of in our current world of Wall Street corporate merge and acquisition, where loyalty given to the company is rarely recognized or returned.

Black Friday

Black Friday has arrived and our nation full of insufficient funds and over-extended credit are finding a way to consume and drive our fledgling economy.

Or at least kick a few tires.

It's a common misnomer the media feeds us that today is the busiest shopping day of the year. Today is, in fact, historically not even in the top four shopping days of the year.

The biggest rush of retail excess is the last Saturday before Christmas. When the calendar delivers Christmas on a weekend, then the rush is on December 23rd.

That's when I'll be doing my shopping. Along with a slew of other frenzied fathers and husbands.

It's retails Procrastination Day.

Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude and humility are never exclusive to each other. It's shown in both spirit and deed. Make a plan to share a bit of yourself and fill the emotional bank accounts of those that surround you.

Enjoy the day.

Iowa Cougar Caught In Metrodome Bathroom

A curious subplot was buried deep in the headlines of the University of Minnesota's 55-0 gridiron drubbing at the hands of the Iowa Hawkeyes last Saturday.

While the Hawkeyes were manhandling the Golden Gophers, an Iowa cougar was pouncing on her prey.

Lois K. Feldman, 38, married mother of three, and Ross M. Walsh, 26, unsuspecting former Abercrombie model (just a profiled guess on my part), were arrested for having relations in the handicap stall of a Metrodome men's restroom, with a cheering gaggle of onlookers rootin' them on.

This marks a new low in Golden Gopher football. The game on the field is now ancillary to the rough-and-tumble action goings on in the bathroom stalls.

Ricky Ricardo comes to mind, in both word and dialect.

"Lois, shew got sum 'splainin to do!"

Wall Street Thinks That Yes, We Can

The Dow has surged in recent trading, posting its largest two day percentage gain since October of 1987. All indications are that today will be another big day for bulls on Wall Street, as the markets are off and running in early trading.

This market confidence comes on the heels of President-Elect Obama beginning to take charge early by naming key members of his economic team. Of course, the weekend announcement of the government bailout of Citigroup contributed to the rally as well.

This is also a welcome respite for news readers. With every positive day in the trading pit, we're spared more pictures of anguished traders burying their head in their hands with full mellow-dramatic despair. Sadly, those images now render little emotional impact because they're so common and cliche.

It's nice to see Obama stepping up with authority. Watching President Bush take a knee with two months to go has been a pretty pathetic sight to witness.

Hanninsanity And Colmes Break Up

Fox News' BFF's Sean Hanninsanity and Alan "Sleestack" Colmes are parting ways, marking the end of a steamy - yet grossly contrived - romance after twelve years.

Apparently it took Colmes over a decade to realize that he was only on board with Fox so the network could lay claim to being fair and balanced.

Ever the easy mark, Colmes was routinely a passive observer on the program and was often seen as a muttering and inarticulate debater, or fool, as it were. He came off as a weak milquetoast next to the hyper-kinetic mania of Hanninsanity.

Don't look for Fox to replace Colmes with another liberal puppet any time soon. Nobody else would want the job of punchline to Hanninsanity.

Well, Rosie might.

Daily Irony; Joe Lieberman On Meet The Press

I've finally picked my jaw off the floor after hearing something Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman told Tom Brokaw on Meet The Press this morning.

Lieberman told Brokaw, with an entirely straight face, that he informed the Democratic Senate Caucus that he supports President-Elect Barack Obama because he feels that Obama is committed to "putting country first".

Now that's one short memory at the political crossroads of irony and hypocrisy.

Forty-Five Years Ago Today

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on this day in 1963. Here are his final public words, spoken at a breakfast meeting for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce on the morning of that dark day in our nations history.

...I am confident, as I look to the future, that our chances for security, our chances for peace, are better than they have been in the past. And the reason is because we are stronger. And with that strength is a determination to not only maintain the peace, but also the vital interests of the United States. To that great cause, Texas and the United States are committed. Thank you.

Less than five hours later, our President was gone.

Daily Irony; Fargo's Slaughterhouse

Alaska Governor Sarah Fargo is the gift that just keeps on giving.

In the annual politicians photo-op of a Thanksgiving turkey pardoning, Fargo issued her sparing of the apocalypse to one lucky bird at the same time another turkey was being slaughtered in the background of the television interview she was giving.

Delicious irony served with mashed potatoes and yam.

Speaking of turkey pardoning; still no word out of Washington whether or not President Bush will pardon Dick Cheney.

Or himself, for that matter.

Gobble.

Daily Irony; Perception Is Reality

Big three auto industry CEO's scrambled to Washington yesterday with arms fully extended, begging for a handout.

They arrived separately on private jets.

In Miami, a teenage girl lived without a heart for four months while she and her cardiology team waited for a biologically compatible donor heart to surface.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney endures with a Pacemaker that may never run out of batteries.

God, help us.

Cheney And A-Gon Gangstah

A Texas judge has issued a Friday arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and several other nare-do-wells named in indictments that accuse them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a federal detention center.

The only irony from the musings is that this news is not the least bit shocking.

Darth Vader, prepare for your final act.

Lieberman Should Be A Happy Hound

Barack Obama appears to be forging ahead with sounds of a changed Capital Hill tenor that has spilled over from his campaign. He issued his first let the word go forth that the torch has been passed moment, by keeping the mighty Beltway negative political axe buried to save Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman's Democratic soul.

It was widely anticipated that the Democratic leadership would strip Lieberman of his position as head of the Homeland Security Committee, as punishment for say-it-ain't-so-Joe's enthusiastic and very public endorsement of John McCain for President.

Mumblings from the hill were that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were ready to bend Joe over and spank the independence out of him.

The consequence for Lieberman, however, was a quiet no-harm-no-foul dismissal. This direction was ordered by the President-Elect.

Who knew there was a high road in D.C.?

Bailout? Take A Number And Stand In Line

I'm hard pressed to think of many major business industries that aren't asking to be bailed out by the government these days.

Banks, insurance companies and automakers are the ones at the top of the list.

Who's next?

College Football Is A Joke

There was some exciting college football played this weekend. We're well into the November rivalry games from coast-to-coast, where storied border battles are settled on the gridiron with a winner-take-the-weird-trophy competitive spirit.

In Madison, Wisconsin, the Badgers rallied from a two touchdown deficit to beat Minnesota for bragging rights of Paul Bunyan's axe.

It sure would be nice if the NCAA would let their championship be decided by implementing a playoff structure where teams would actually play each other to determine the best team in the country at seasons end.

Half of every Saturday we witness high-def rhetorical speculation over the national rankings of college football, where teams are - via sports writers opinions, coaches feelings and a stats geeks computer program - ranked from one to twenty-five in a fight to be one of the top two ranked teams at seasons and win the lottery of subjective opinion to play in the national championship game.

What a joke.

It's time to implement a college football playoff system so we can finally determine a champion on the field.

Detractors of a playoff format continue to drone about preserving the integrity of the bowl system. Talk about irony. Where's the integrity in not letting the players decide which two teams can play for the title?

We can still maintain our tradition of nursing a new year hangover while watching bowl games with holiday dietary regret. It's simple, actually.

Let's take the top eight teams from the existing rankings system and match them in a seeding format in the current Bowl Championship Series (BCS, or BS in its current form). These teams will play in four bowl games on January 1st; The Rose Bowl, The Sugar Bowl, The Orange Bowl and The Fiesta Bowl. The results of those games will determine the final four teams that will play for college footballs championship.

The following weekend (with a minimum seven days to rest and prepare for the next game) the semi-finals will be played, amounting to a football fans crack binge by having the games coincide with the NFL conference championship games.

The ensuing weekend (after the semi-final games) will be college footballs championship game. The game would be played during the weekend before the Super Bowl.

All of this adds two weeks to the existing college football season and doesn't detract from the student athletes (huh, what's that?) class schedule, as the majority of BCS schools are adjourned for winter break until spring semester begins.

What I describe will never happen though, as logic and common sense are nearly always lost on the NCAA.

Until things do change though, both players and fans of college football will continue to be screwed.

I've Got No Game

My game is officially lost and my rhetorical mojo is toast. Any free flowing and carefree conversation I've ever had with a girl is now long forgotten, along with my confidence to do so.

You see, I have a 14-year-old daughter. I have never, ever (ever!) felt so uncool, nor have I been reminded just how monumentally uncool I am, than when I'm with my baby girl.

Friends tell me that this will all succumb to the law of Shakespeare; this too shall pass.

Not soon enough, I can assure you.

Let the word go forth to the god of gender irony that I am eternally humbled.

Government Bails Out Santa Claus

The news arrived amid a thick pile of bills and junk mail. My tax rebate check - err, my economic stimulus payment - came late for me because I had filed an extension on my 2007 tax filing.

Thanks to this redistribution of wealth, the government has bailed out the Fischer family Christmas (I do celebrate Christmas, despite what my less than subtle Jewish name suggests).

Fah-la-la-la-la.

Daily Perspective; Wealth Redistribution

The presidential election is now well in our collective rear view mirror and the resulting Obama mandate still fuels ample conservative cries and fears over the prospect of wealth redistribution.

Ironically, the entire premise of societal redistribution of wealth is nothing new and, in fact, was prominent in validating capitalism during the industrial revolution.

President Teddy Roosevelt was a staunch proponent of an accelerated tax structure, where the wealthiest pay a higher percentage of their gross earnings towards tax to keep the economy churning.

More recently, President Reagan endorsed a revised version of the earned income tax credit (EITC) that Congress originally passed in 1975, which rewards the poorest of Americans a heady tax refund for failing to earn a certain amount of money throughout the previous tax year.

History has proven that wealth redistribution plays an important role in advancing the viability of free market structures of capitalism.

Daily Irony; From Oppressed To The Oppressor

The election of Barack Obama as our next President signaled an end - albeit symbolic - to a large degree of African-American oppression.

During the same election, 70% of African-American voters in California voted in favor of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to ban same sex marriage.

Proposition 8 passed and individual liberty took another bruising.

Veterans Day Pause

Today is the day we commemorate our ardent desire for peace, on behalf of the many that have answered the call to sacrifice themselves for our country.

232 years and counting, for freedom and liberty in the making.

Happy Veterans Day, Grandpa. Your white marker shines brighter than ever.

Welcome To The House That Slaves Built

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children,
black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God
Almighty, we are free at last!

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Lazy Republican Voter Turnout Doomed McCain

The demographic numbers of voter turnout are in and the outcome may surprise you. Real Clear Politics (RCP) reports that the Republican voter rolls were downright anemic on Tuesday, a fact that should concern both Democrats and Republicans.

You see, in the aftermath of Tuesdays can of Obama whoop-ass, Democrats were ecstatic over anecdotal claims that the youth and black vote swept President elect Obama towards easy victory. This assertion is entirely without merit.

The only voting demographic that reported a measured increase in voting percentage over 2004 was the Latino vote, which turned out in massive droves to support Barack Obama (see Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico results). The vaunted youth vote increased by about one percentage and the black vote stayed the same.

One state where the black vote increased with some significance was North Carolina, which, along with a better than 90% polling support for Obama, painted North Carolina blue for the first time since 1976.

It's beyond me why Democrats put so much time and energy into the youth vote with such fervor. This 18-29 group of shout-out-louds continually fail to show up at the polls in the large numbers one would expect.

The Republican drubbing at the polls is really attributed to the hum-drum and lackadaisical yawn from their most ardent supporters. Voting numbers show that a large percentage of them took their ball and went home without even bothering to go to the polls and vote.

She'll Take Geography For No-Hundred, Alex

The McCain post mortem election carnage dissection is revealing even more mind numbing idiocy from Sarah Fargo.

According to an aide close to McCain, Fox News reported that Fargo had no idea that Africa was a continent, but rather a country in and of itself.

Now that's news to activate the gag reflex and make you barf a little bit in the back of your throat.

In addition, during Veep debate preparations, Fargo sought aides to learn which countries participated in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The answer? All three.

Fargo then pressed for further clarification.

All three, Sarah. Mexico, Canada and the United States of America.

Wow. I only wish I was making this up.

Happy Birthday, Reverend

Reverend Billy Graham is 90 today.

Graham stands alone as an evangelical leader that consistently practiced what he preached, while always staying high above our polarizing political fray.

Along his way, decades worth of indignant Christian hypocrites have weaved their preaching hate into the political fabric; Jim Baaker, Jerry Falwell, Ted Haggard and James Dobson are a small sampling of names that have cultivated what we know politically as the Christian Right, or flawed base of the Republican party.

Reverend Graham remains a living embodiment and answer to the rhetorical question posed on countless bumper stickers and t-shirts;

What would Jesus do?

I imagine whatever Billy would do.

Campaign Hangover

It suddenly occurs to me that I have no idea what to write about after months of election musings. Politicians make it way too easy to lampoon with their steady flow of irony inducing hypocrisy.

One day of writers block doesn't a blogger make.

Heck, maybe it does.

Yes, We Can?

It's all over but the mopping of sorrowful tears in Phoenix and joyful weepings in Chicago. As I type, John McCain is driving to Nebraska to abandon Sarah Fargo at an Omaha hospital, in accordance with the cornhusker states' safe-haven law.

What lies ahead is a heady agenda for Barack Obama.

President-Elect Barack Obama. A little kinder and more accurate title for a man that has been called many things during the past year.

First, he was naive and too inexperienced. When that bumper sticker failed to adhere, things took a decided turn towards the nasty.

He was called a radical Muslim.

He was dismissed as a celebrity.

He was called a terrorist.

He was called a Communist with Marxist leanings.

He was called a Socialist.

None of these monikers stuck, and along the way his campaign message was succinct, consistent and delivered in an assertive, smooth and confident fashion.

Barack Obama was called lots of things. In a few short months though, we can all agree on one thing to call him.

Mr. President.

Don't Stop Thinkin' About Tomorrow

The polling doors opened at 6:00 this morning at my desert oasis precinct, and my vote has now been cast.

The only voting irregularity I have to report is the massive overdose of cologne that the dude in front of me bathed in before heading to the polls. My guess is that such excess could only seethe from a McCain voter.

Predictably, my vote went for youth, inexperience, hope and the kind of smooth cool that combines both Sammy Davis, Jr. and Don Draper.

All of this after the other side exerted their best get out the fear effort on my journey to the voting booth, with emphatic assertions that my vote will purge me into a 50% tax level, Marxism will be taught in schools and women will nearly be forced into having abortions.

I only wish I was exaggerating in such ridiculous measures.

Hey, I guess my vote makes me a maverick.

Irony is delicious.

Early Indicators Will Come From Indiana

One more day to go and it's clear that this race is Barack Obama's to lose. Final polls show a Sunday surge in battleground states for Obama and his lead over John McCain in Pennsylvania holds steady at seven points.

We'll know early if Obama is going to win when the first returns are reported from Indiana. Polls in the Hoosier state close at 6:00PM and if Obama wins Indiana it will likely be a long night of blue waves crashing on the Republican party. Indiana is currently a toss up state that McCain leads and is polling at a two point advantage.

If McCain wins Indiana in a squeaker, we'll turn our attention to Virginia. If Obama wins Virginia, McCain would need a miracle of Our Lady of Palinesque proportions to pull off victory.

Let's say, my friends, that McCain fulfills his campaign promise of the Mac being back and wins Virginia. It will then come down to McCain needing to sweep six toss-up states, including Pennsylvania, in order to come out victorious.

Yes, polls have been wrong before. However, not in my lifetime have I witnessed a reversal of such a consistent polling advantage like Obama has.

Then again, we've only had white guys running for president in the past. With that said, all bets are off.

One Man That Can Elect John McCain

If John McCain wins this election by earning victory in Pennsylvania, one man can take full credit for ushering the Arizona Senator into the White House.

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter is the original Republican maverick. Specter has been keeping busy of late, canvassing Pennsylvaina to stump for his friend, John McCain.

Specter is an extremely popular political figure in Pennsylvania. Widely lamented as a RINO by the national Republican evangelical base for his moderate stance on social issues, Specter has maintained his heady grip of power in Washington as the 16th most senior member of the Senate by bringing results to his constituents since first being elected in 1980.

The tightening of poll numbers in Pennsylvania are not entirely the making of John McCain moving into the state three weeks ago, but rather it's attributed more to the steady barrage of Specter appearances in the state on McCain's behalf.

If McCain wins, Specter is likely to be offered a cabinet position in a McCain administration. My guess, however, is that he has too much gratitude towards his state and will continue to remain a force in the Republican minority Senate.

Auntie Is Illegal: That's All You've Got?

Well it appears our Shocktober campaign surprise has arrived one day late with a resounding and anti-climactic thud.

The AP reports that Senator Barack Obama's Kenyan Aunt has been living in Boston illegally. Obama quickly commented with a clarification that he was unaware of this.

This is the best October surprise that Obama opponents could come up with, and it is entirely irrelevant.

Ronald Reagan was elected for two terms with an openly gay son and the religious right didn't seem to mind.

Bill Clinton had a little brother that wore the most god-awful mullet and voters north of the Mason-Dixon line happily looked the other way.

Try as they may - and boy oh boy have they tried hard - Obama detractors simply can't penetrate the personal character and integrity of Barack Obama.