The KSTP Eye in the Sky followed Brett Fahhhhrvuh in a black Cadillac Escalade from St. Paul’s downtown airport to Viking headquarters in Eden Prairie yesterday in an OJ-esque media frenzy, followed later by the official contract-signing announcement later in the day.

Meanwhile ungrateful Packers fans have put a bounty on Fayver, belying the fact that they actually had the pleasure of seeing Favreau play in his prime – unlike Vikings fans who are snapping up tickets just as Ziggy hoped.

The Vikings have sold more than 3,000 season tickets since news broke that Brett Favre was coming to Minnesota. That’s in approximately a 24-hour span.

Chief marketing officer Steve LaCroix says the team has sold about 10,000 single-game tickets during that time as fans clamor over the arrival of the veteran quarterback.

Seats for the game against Green Bay on Oct. 5 are only available through a season ticket. There are roughly 7,000 season tickets remaining. The Vikings had to race to beat the blackout deadline for several games last season.

Merchandise is also moving. LaCroix said several hundred pre-orders for Favre jerseys were placed online Tuesday. The purple No. 4s were to show up in stores on Wednesday.

Brett Favre’s signing is the Ziggy administration’s Stimulus Package.

Costly, of short-lived benefit at best, and leaving the team worse off in the end.

You think a Packers/Vikings game was a family-un-friendly cesspool of vulgarity, projectile vomit, urine and feces before?

Just wait until the Vikes/Packers games this year – assuming Favre makes it that far.

Packers fans will be leaping from the cheap seats when they see him in Purple.

Personally, I think Jon Favreau would make a better quarterback.

…at least he knows how to pronounce his name. Cheaper too.

$12M for one year? Ziggy really should have gone with the month-to-month plan.

America stepped up and took the wind out of the sails of the Obama administration’s plan to socialize America’s health care system.

It was not Republicans nor Blue Dog Democrats that derailed Jimmy II’s grand plan – credit this one to vociferous citizens exercising their rights, rescuing America from the brink of yet another irreversible government entitlement, and indicating a potential mid-term rout of Democratic ranks nationwide if they didn’t reverse course.

Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama’s administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.

It was never intended to be an option.

Meanwhile, Obama gets off the gas and on the back-pedal.

“All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in Grand Junction, Colo. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.”

I think he said that just as he spied a cream pie with his name on it in the crowd.

No matter how liberal Dems spin this, it is a sound and stinging defeat in the wake of a Democratic super-majority.

The plan now may be to create a member-run non-profit option to compete with private insurers.

…but that may be moot. It may be more over than Obama is willing to concede at this juncture.

On the same day that a Cabinet member signaled the administration’s willingness to forego inclusion of a public health insurance option in the final version of health care reform legislation, a Texas Democrat who is also a registered nurse suggested that the public option might be a deal breaker for at least some House Democrats.

So much for Change^®.

More to come…

I was biking on a Three Rivers bike trail in and around my home in Hennepin County today and came upon some young workers building a little area of stairs onto the biking/walking trail from a park.

They had arrived in an official Hennepin County van, so I would have to assume that they were county workers.

Posted proudly near their little project was a sign:

“Your Stimulus Dollars at Work”

Government workers, working on government land, on a government project. Dare I say an unnecessary one at that.
Riddle me this: Just exactly what stimulus was this project providing?

How many sustainable private sector jobs, the only source of true economic growth, were created?

…and makes the case for privatizing health care.

The House’s request to the pentagon to purchase new private jets fell victim to criticisms by citizens and politicians and was dropped this week.

U.S. House leaders have dropped plans to spend $550 million in the Air Force budget on passenger jets used by lawmakers and senior government officials, officials said on Monday.

The House of Representatives reversed the move to upgrade the executive jet fleet after public criticism, opposition from other lawmakers and the Defense Department had said it did not need more planes that it had requested.

So we saved $550 Million right?

Dropping the proposal doesn’t save money, as the total funding provided by the bill remains unchanged. It means the money that would have been used to pay for the extra planes will go to other purposes.

“Other purposes.” Read: we’re going to piss the money away either way.

These are the same people telling us that government-run health care will save money.

It good to know I’m not the only one drawing this conclusion these days….

What we’re seeing in Washington these days is beginning to look like Jimmy Carter II.

Carter, like Barack Obama, started out with the idea of stimulating the economy.

His plan was to give every taxpayer $50, then throw in a few billion for tax cuts and public works programs. Simple, right? Wrong: In Washington, this soon became very complicated. Within a month, the package grew from $20 billion to more than $31 billion — a significant amount in the 1970s.

Ah, those were the days. Elitist liberal miscreants like Obama pissed away mere billions instead of trillions.

Obama is losing momentum and spending political capital as fast as stimulus dollars. Will he change course?

In April of his first year in office, Carter finally threw up his hands and scrapped the whole idea. He had dithered for four months. He had nothing to show for the effort. By then he was fatally diminished, his authority substantially eroded.

With the Obama administration, a similar unraveling is well under way and gathering momentum. Voters are increasingly restive. The country is souring on Obama’s gargantuan policy ambitions. The sense is growing that he has grossly overplayed his hand.

Regrettably, I think Obama is more committed than Carter was to government engorgement of the private sector. Let’s not underestimate of the damage Obama, Reid, Pelosi and their posse are prepared to perpetrate on America.

Like Carter, Obama looks increasingly like a president out of step with the times. Like Carter, there is a large gap between what voters expected based on the measured and moderate tone of his campaign and what began unfolding after his inauguration. Obama ran as a centrist, but he is governing from the left.

Surprise! (not)

In an NPR poll, a plurality of Americans opposed Obama’s health care efforts. In a recent Rasmussen poll, those who strongly disapproved of the president’s performance outnumbered those who strongly supported him by 11 percentage points.

Immaterial. Obama is smarter than we are and knows what’s best for us. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

Many legitimately fear that if not stopped, Obama and the Democratic Congress will take this country well beyond the point where the public sector starts to “squeeze the life” out of the economy.

Too late. I believe we’re calling it the Great Recession.

It’s not too late for Obama to make a major adjustment. Bill Clinton’s initial months were equally turbulent. He was savvy enough to make a mid-course correction — but it came only after the election of a Republican Congress. On his present course, Obama is making that eventuality increasingly likely.

Then again, Bill Clinton was a fiscal conservative, compared to Obama and Bush.

Obama and his ilk are selling the July economic numbers, telling us the stimulus is working, the recession is ending and the economy is on the mend.

Businesses shed “just” 247,000 jobs in July, far fewer than the 330,000 most economists and Wall Street analysts were looking for. As bad as that still sounds, July’s toll was only two-thirds the monthly average since December 2007, when the recession began.

So your carotid is still gushing blood, but it’s coming out more slowly now.

It’s not that there isn’t good news to be had, it’s that politicians are connecting dots that shouldn’t be connected.

Americans are desperate for some good news, and this recession will someday be behind us, but our recovery will have nothing to do with wasteful government borrowing and spending. A recovery will come from small businesses and free enterprise, finding ways to succeed despite the government’s increased burden in the form of inflation and ultimately, higher taxes on everyone.

As such, we’re bracing for the inevitable self-congratulatory back pats from the White House and Congress, lauding their own economic stewardship for pulling us back from the abyss. On Friday, President Obama said his policies “rescued our economy from catastrophe” while building “a new foundation for growth.”

Don’t believe it. Claims that higher taxes and a total of $2 trillion in stimulus, TARP and bailout spending this year have turned the economy around are unconvincing. Indeed, they’re farcical.

As economist Casey Mulligan noted on the New York Times blog after dissecting second-quarter GDP data, total stimulus at the state and federal levels amounted to about $12 per person. That’s stimulus?

Suggesting that government is responsible for what looks to be a rather weak recovery is an insult to all the small private companies and millions of laid-off workers who bore the brunt of bad government policies over the past two years.

I will put my party hat on when banks start lending, businesses start hiring and consumers start spending. On that day we’ll have a true recovery. At the same time, I will be watching the beach for the inflation title wave that will be the unavoidable result of “Stimulus,” “Cash for Clunkers,” corporate bailouts and “pedal to the metal” fed monetary policy.

In the mean time, whatever Obama says about the economy from now on, you can pretty much disregard.

Tim Pawlenty ripped the federal CARS “Cash for Clunkers” program this week.

It makes no sense, he said on his weekly radio show, for the federal government to bail out a company such as General Motors and then give consumers as much as $4,500 to buy a car from GM.

“It makes everybody feel good,” Pawlenty said, “but because we own GM, we’re just paying ourselves back. It seems a little odd.”

Car dealers respond predictably…

“I think the governor’s comments are unfortunate and maybe ill-informed,” said Scott Lambert, executive director of the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association. “This program has clear benefits to it. The only downside is that it’s using taxpayer money

We wouldn’t want to nit-pick where the money’s coming from.

…but it’s stimulus money that’s working. It’s promoting some of the biggest economic activity the state has seen all summer.”

Maybe so, but what happens when the program stops?

It’s akin to Billy Mays endorsing cocaine.

…and apparently failed out as well.

Ten Democrats, including our own embarrassment, Al Franken, are flirting with the idea of turning a near global economic collapse into a full economic collapse. In the name of what? An ever-evolving political land-grab called Global Warming Cooling Climate Change.

The Chinese have already grown in both their skepticism of our solvency as well as their ability to wreak havoc on a US economy that has only recently been moved from the ICU.

Ten Senate Democrats whose votes are pivotal to the success of climate legislation urged the Obama administration on Thursday to support levying tariffs on goods from countries that don’t limit their greenhouse-gas emissions.

…Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Carl Levin of Michigan, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Al Franken of Minnesota.

From a friend, mentor and founder of a successful money management firm, Peter R.:

“Let’s collect a carbon tariff on imports so we don’ t offshore our carbon production. I’m sure that a trade war with China won’t affect their desire to finance our deficits.”

Those deficits being the bi-products of the failed Bush/Obama “Stimulus” packages and the recently resuscitated CARS fiasco, among a myriad of other unfunded, wasteful and ineffective government expenditures.

The wars of the future may be fought on the internet and in the currency markets. We have allowed the Chinese to gain the upper hand via decades of arrant government fiscal policies. We have found ourselves in the unenviable position of relying on their goodwill.

This is no time to hug a tree.

“…or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people.”

John Hughes, who produced one of my all-time favorite movies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, died today at age 59.

Planes Trains and Automobiles (“Those aren’t pillows!”) is one of the few movies that makes you cry almost as hard as you laughed – same as Home Alone and Uncle Buck.

Hughes didn’t just make movies in the 80’s. He made the 80’s.

I would have liked to see what he and John Candy would be doing now.

It’s not exactly what The White House said:

White House: ‘War on terrorism’ is over

…but it is the headline that Americans (and GOP strategists) will remember when the next terrorist attack occurs, here or abroad.

“The President does not describe this as a ‘war on terrorism,'” said John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office, who outlined a “new way of seeing” the fight against terrorism.

So its not the end of the war, just the end of calling it a war…on terrorism.

Are we trading in semantics here, or are these people really that effected by Academentia^®?

What a beautiful setup for a campaign slogan – for the other guys: “Remember back in 2009 when the Obama administration said the War on Terrorism is over?”

I shan’t be surprised.

After all, this is an era when borrowing more money to fix a crisis caused by excessive borrowing can be called a “Stimulus Package” and where Success!!! is declared in the wake of a mismanaged program, using yet more borrowed monies to subsidize the purchase of new cars, mostly foreign, for rather marginal improvements in economy and emissions.

Mr. Brennan’s speech was aimed at outlining ways in which the Obama administration intends to undermine the “upstream” factors that create an environment in which terrorists are bred.

Translation: We intend to give them free health care.

As for the “war on terrorism,” Mr. Brennan said the administration is not going to say that “because ‘terrorism’ is but a tactic — a means to an end, which in al Qaedas case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate.”

“You can never fully defeat a tactic like terrorism any more than you can defeat the tactic of war itself,” Mr. Brennan said.

…and yet we can “defeat” the equally abstruse Global Climate Change?

*Title courtesy of The Hives

“All of a sudden all the lights went out and I turned around, he started firing. I turned around and I saw him holding a gun,” she said. She ran out of the room and into the parking lot, bolting into a restaurant where she told the workers to call 911.

Will this event serve as a call for more restrictions on gun ownership?

Robert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp might be losing it.

Chairman Rupert Murdoch said Wednesday that the company intends to charge for all of its news Web sites. “Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting,” Murdoch said.

First off, it’s a long time since I’ve heard anyone say “quality” and “journalism” in the same sentence with a straight face. Second, News Corp doesn’t “give” anything away. Murdoch has built an empire by attracting viewers to content tailored for a target demo, and selling their attention to advertisers.

It’s a decades-old formula premised on the fact that you can’t possibly charge viewers, readers or surfers enough to pay for the content and make a profit.

Unless Murdoch is able to effect some sort of collusion among media conglomerates to form a near monopoly, I don’t see how he can decommoditize news content.

Then again, News Corp owns half the media industry on their own:

All the “Fox” Channels including Fox Sports, FX, Fox Business Network, Fox Movie Channel, Fox News Channel, Fox College Sports, etc.

Print Media and Publishing including The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, Barons, The Sun, Dow Jones, and Harper Collins.

Entertainment and Web properties including American Idol, AskMen, hulu.com, MySpace, Rotten Tomatoes and 20th Century Fox.

Still, each property has a direct and equally viable competitor.

Assuming each News Corp property carries News Corp news content (with some exceptions, for example the movie studios), charging for the content will put each at a disadvantage as most consumers of news content don’t care so much about the quality and/or have long since discounted the media as a source of truth or truly useful information.

Case in point: ever noticed traffic and weather reports are never accurate or useful?

People won’t pay for what is essentially a diversion from the rigors of daily life. Shaving in silence is out of fashion. People read the news on their Blackberry because they can. Quantity of information trumps quality.

If News Corp starts charging a fee, clients will find what they need elsewhere. That cat’s been out of the bag a long time.

What say you?

Chavez, shown here with some of his friends.

More than a dozen of 34 radio stations ordered shut by the Venezuelan government went off the air on Saturday, part of President Hugo Chavez’s drive to extend his socialist revolution to the media.

Chavez defended the closures, calling them part of the government’s effort to democratize the airwaves.

President Obama’s reaction, or lack thereof will be quite telling over the next few days.

You’re welcome then.

Drive like a sheep, and you get stuck. Break some rules here and there for the good of traffic flow, and everyone benefits. A new traffic study by physicists at Sweden’s Umea University found that while we’re all taught to obey the traffic rules no matter what, doing so just makes for bottlenecks. Mix in some maverick drivers, however, and suddenly, logjams begin to ease as the percentage of drivers willing to pass on the right or zip past a pack of trundling cars on a two-lane actually help to keep the traffic flowing smoothly.

So those middle fingers are a solute to my service to road goers after all.

I just wanted to use my new “Beer” post tag again.

Anyone have a problem with that?

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Congress allocated close to $1 billion for the Cash for Clunkers program. That’s billion with nine zeros. And all that money might be gone by midnight tonight.

On one hand, a lot of cars, both foreign and domestic were sold. On the other, it’s already over. On one hand, the industry was stimulated, if even for only a couple weeks. On the other, we borrowed the money to do it.

Dan Rather proposes the media should not only be in the pocket of the Obama administration but should now be digging into the pockets of the American taxpayer.

As if the relationship between the Obama Administration and the news media weren’t cozy enough already, former “CBS Evening News” anchor Dan Rather is calling on President Obama to “make recommendations” for the media on how to survive the economic downturn.

The media outlets that are failing financially are failing to be relevant.

According to the story, Rather said “corporate and political influence” on newsrooms had damaged the industry and was cause for concern.

…and a government bailout from the government will have no strings attached, right Dan?

PS Since when did Dan Rather get his credibility back?

One controversy after another dogs El Presidente as he pours a cold one with his new-found beer buddies.

Earlier this week the White House indicated each man would drink the beer of their choice — Bud Light for President Obama, Blue Moon for the police officer, and perhaps Red Stripe or Beck’s for Gates.

But one Massachusetts congressman thinks another beer entirely should be served: Boston’s own Sam Adams.

In a letter to Obama dated Wednesday, Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal strongly urges the president not to drink Budweiser, now owned by a Belgian company. Nor should the White House consider serving Miller or Coors, Neal writes, both owned by a United Kingdom conglomerate.

These are weighty issues. This is behavior unbecoming the leader of the free world. I think the President should just resign.

(I glad that I created our new “Beer” tag because it appears to be well positioned for heavy use in the immediate future)

But in the mean time and in light of Congressman Neal’s push to elevate one’s choice of beer to the national stage, we can speak up, be heard, and tell our President what beer we think he should drink for the betterment of our nation (these are all real beers).

Posted by Johnny Roosh in Beer, President Obama| 17 Comments »