Energy

We need an energy policy – yes.  We need a sustainable way to provide power for future generations.  I tend to agree with T. Boone Pickens, in that our reliance on foreign oil is more of a national security problem than a economic problem, but it’s most certainly both.  I’m curious why Obama didn’t use some stimulus money to build nuclear power plants or wind farms, instead helping cities like Dallas build fancy government-run hotels.

Health care

No question health care is a burden to many families. Hey, I just had a baby and my family’s healthcare costs are increasing 1,000%.  Trust me, when I learned that, you better believe I said “bring on socialism!”.  In all seriousness, health care is a real problem we need to confront, particularly medicare and medicaid.  Cutting-edge technology and treatment options aren’t getting cheaper, so the bottom line is the government will have to take more money. I don’t see any other way around that.

Education

We’re falling behind – no doubt. I’m not sure that it’s because we don’t invest enough, I think it may be more attributable to a culture that is becoming more lazy. Japanese, Indian, Chinese – they are all more driven than ever, while the American student is less driven and feels more of a sense of entitlement. I’m not sure that spending a ton of money on education will reverse that trend, unfortunately.

The budget and the future

If I’m reading Obama’s budget properly, he makes some pretty presumptuous assumptions and even with those the debt is staggering in 5 and 10 years.  I applaud him for including all spending, including military operational spending, in the budgets – definitely should have happened with GWB.  But this budget…it’s like he’s going “all-in” with the USA. If something unexpected happens (terrorist attack, natural disaster,  pandemic, etc.) in the next ten years, we have no emergency fund. Our emergency fund so far has been the Chinese, and their patience is waning.

The president enjoys lambasting the investors and speculators who took huge risks and helped cripple the economy, but I’m really struggling to see how this kind of government spending is not equally as risky.

Please…chime in with your thoughts below.

Earlier this week Orszag spoke before a congressional panel about the Obama budget, claiming it will save $2 trillion over the next ten years.  Wow – sign me up!  Luckily somebody asked him to explain those numbers in a little bit more detail, and here’s what he conceded: We will save $1.6 trillion in the next tens years by not sustaining the troop surge for the next decade.  Uh…OK, but who was going to do that!?  Had anybody even considered keeping surge troop levels in Iraq for ten more years?  Uh…no.  I just went and told my wife our family was going to save $1.5 million by not buying a private jet – she was equally confused.

A few days later on CNN, Orszag argued that the Obama administration had no power to change the omnibus spending bill which is loading with almost $8 billion in earmarks.  Come on…gimme a break.  I think it would be easy, try this line:

“Congress, this bill is filled with earmarks and I told you we were going to be different. Take out the earmarks and I will sign it.  The America people voted for change, and change is what they are going to get.”

See, that even sounds campaign-ish so I’m sure Obama could pull it off.

So I’ve finished my brown-bag lunch and have been watching Twitter comments on Palin…here are some of my favorite lines so far:

@badbanana: “As a young mother, Palin will be a huge help to McCain. Food doesn’t cut itself into tiny pieces, people.”

@hodgman: “Palin will almost certainly woo away all of Hillary Clinton supporters who are pro-life and pro-gun.”

@cschweitzer: “If Obama supporters say he should be elected because he TALKS pretty, I say Palin should because she IS.”

@ctp: “I didn’t know Michael Palin could be the vice president, but it’s cool that he’s running. I’m excited.”

@MtnMom: “Palin: sounds like she has kicked some corrupt fossilized Republical rear end in Alaska. Gonna be interesting to this one play out.”

@kevinbinversie:  “Little Known Fact: Sarah Palin was the original “Deadliest Catch.”"

@triciamckinney: “Am I the only one who sees the Sarah Palin/Tina Fey resemblance? Will Tina make a guest appearance on SNL?”

@everysandwich: “Today in pot-kettle. Obama camp sez Gov. Palin doesn’t have the experience. Thousands flee glass houses.”

@way2busymom: “He picked Palin? When I mentioned that to my spouse, he asked wait…the Monty Python guy???”

I don’t know about you, but this happens to me about once a year and never really surprises me anymore. It’s relatively easy to deal with, and only a minor inconvenience (not even a fraction of trouble compared to identity fraud). Furthermore, I’m always thankful that guidelines are in place that protect the account holder and encourage banks and merchants to be alert and vigilant.

Anyways, after 10 minutes on the phone this morning I’m back to my regular routine. While reading through the headlines, I saw this story from the NY Times. Timely, eh? Maybe I should reconsider my accounts with Bank of America…

………………..

Whew…with a side of McNamee (sounds like fast food). 

………………..

Roger Clemens is barreling through, making clear his intentions for anyone in his way: GET UNDER MY BUS!

…………………

Well, it’s over and here’s how I see it.  Clemens was a good witness, but still couldn’t escape or explain some obvious inconsistencies and improbabilities in his testimony. McNamee looked bad and got caught in some lies of his own, but he has much less to lose and so he probably wasn’t as prepared to answer the hard questions. 

Andy (and Laura) Pettitte provided the most incriminating testimony, one which Roger could not explain away.  As a congressman pointed out early in the hearing, if Andy spoke with Roger about HGH in 2000 and Debbie Clemens didn’t take HGH until 2003, it would have been impossible for Andy to have mistaken Clemens for his wife in their first conversation in 2000 as Clemens suggests.  Were Ms. Vito there, she would have loudly pronounced that the defense’s case does not hold water.  (Incidentally, it seems unlikely that Debbie Clemens would have considered taking HGH without first talking to her husband.)

Secondly, prior to the hearing, the Clemens camp paraded the fact that Clemens was not at the Conseco party as remembered by McNamee.  McNamee was able to provide very specific detail about specific individuals at the party, including Clemens young child and nanny.  As the hearing proceeded, the possibility arose that Clemens did in fact stop by the Conseco house late after a morning golf game.  Furthermore, it hurt Clemens case that he tried to speak with his former nanny before turning over her contact information to Congress.

In the end, there may or may not be a perjury case brought by DoJ. I happen to believe that many people are so burned out on Barry Bonds and Marion Jones and such that these cases and getting old and uninteresting.

As for my personal opinion, if this were a court of law and I were a juror, I say Clemens is convicted under the balance of probabilities standard, but not beyond a shadow or a doubt.  That basically means Clemens is O.J. 2.0. 

Let’s look at some of the assets MS would be acquiring:

1. The Yahoo brand (arguably the strongest online brand ever)
2. The #1 trafficked news site
3. Top social site Yahoo Answers
4. Top photo site Flickr
5. #1 web mail product
6. Yahoo Music
7. del.icio.us
8. Yahoo Shopping / Stores
9. Hotjobs
10. A legitimate search engine and PPC network

Whew…

I’ll try to post more later, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on this deal.

I’m trying to restrain from passing judgment, but many it’s hard! We’ve become so jaded because so many other atheletes have denied and denied and denied and denied, writing books of denial and telling all kinds of believable tales – then we almost always find out they were lying.

I have to again mention Guillermo Mota of the New York Mets for being the gold-standard for me. I guess it’s sad that he’s the exception to the rule.

Stossel uses the example of Whole Foods grocery chain, who switched to HSA’s five years ago for all its employees. Not only did company expenses go down, but some employees have racked up thousands of dollars in savings. Furthermore, the company has seen behavior change with regard to personal health care. “[Employees] may not want to go to the emergency room if they wake up with a hangnail in the middle of the night. They may schedule an appointment now.”

In fact, studies have shown that people who have high-deductible health insurance take better care of themselves. Stossel notes that when consumers have to pay for health care out of pocket, they are more inclined to shop around, ask about prices, comparison shop, which in turn drives down costs for everybody.

Makes sense to me…

First, let’s just take a simple look at the home page of each newspaper. C’mon, which one would you rather hang out at?

DallasNews.com: OK, first off, I accidently clicked somewhere on the page and a stupid popup was launched. Arggh. OK, closed that window…now I’m looking for the news. OK, I think I found some stories among the 1, 2, 3, 4 different ad spots all showing above the fold. Wow! You are giving me traffic and weather at the top-middle, so that’s nice.

Chron.com: First thing I notice: no ads above the fold! Are you kidding me? I’ve got ten news stories front and center. Scrolling down, I see a nice ordered list of stories in each section, complete with RSS links. That’s handy! OK, now I see your ads. Two small text links you’ve labeled “CHRONLINKS”. That’s cool…easily avoided and non-intrusive.

The Chronicle takes the cake for home page design. It’s not even close. Let’s take a look at a main category now. Sports, of course!

DallasNews.com: Another popup? Are you serious? I guess so. OK, back to the main page. It seems a bit cluttered, but I think I’ve found everything. DHTML tab box is sorta cool. I see your videos on the right side, and some blogs down in the center column.

Chron.com: Sometimes I get interstitial ads when clicking on sports, but not today. Usually they are very easy to close, though. Now, I see the top story with a large picture and related links at the top, some highlights below and then two long columns of news. On the right side, archived chat sessions (Chron.com chats are cool) are at the top, followed by a blogs, both from staff and fan blogs.

These pages are equally usable. I would pick Chron.com simply because of familiarity, but I think it could be argued either way. Toss up! Finally, let’s take a look at a traditional news story, say from the front page.

DallasNews.com: OK, I click on a story about young adults without health insurance. Looks like a 3-column, with ads down the left and right side. Story in the middle, along with picture and related links. Read the story, not bad. Another banner ad at the bottom with some old guy yacking at me. No problem, though. I guess that’s a basic story on a basic web page.

Chron.com: Now I’m reading a story about toll-road fee increases. 2-column layout, with ads and more stories in the right column. Reading through the story, I see the Chronicle has partnered up with our friends down in Austin at Pluck to bring interactive commenting to every story on the site. Cool! Love reading user comments, especially the ones from people that think they know everything and then mispell half the words in the comment! But from a strategic perspective, if someone leaves a comment how likely are they to return to the story? Yes, very likely. I mean, you have to see if anyone just blasted you and your radical center-wing agenda, right?

Gotta give the crown to the Chron.com here, just for being forward-thinking and inviting Pluck to help with staying relevant. DallasNews.com…I’m sorry, man. You just seem to be a few years behind. Get with it!

To further illustrate how Chron.com is out on the cutting edge of online newspapers, consider this statistic: Henk van Ess, an investigative journalist from the Netherlands, revealed the top sources of stories that appear on Google News. Not surprisingly, the New York Times had the most stories posted. What was surprising was Chron.com in second place with 4066 stories so far in 2007! The Houston paper beat out larger papers like the LA Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune. While the Dallas and Houston papers have similar circulation numbers, the DallasNews.com website delivered only 157 stories to Google news, placing it #203 in the list. Ouch!

Why does all this matter? Well, just out of curiousity, let’s take a look at the Alexa traffic stats for each fo these papers for the last 5 years. (Yes, I know Alexa data is crap, but I can’t afford Hitwise, OK.) Looks like both papers were neck-and-neck back in 2003, but the past 5 years haven’t been good for DallasNews.com.

So…c’mon Dallas. I expected you to be the high-tech cutting edge paper, but H-Town has shown up the Big D in this study. (And hopefully the Houston Astros can beat up on the Texas Rangers this weekend – go ‘stros!)