More About Hochuli

Steven, only you and I read this blog anymore. That's probably good since you are probably the only other person that has a poor enough sense of humor to love The Hoch Blog. It's basically a composition of quotations from the NFL's best referee.

"Just rented You’ve Got Mail again. It made me cry so hard my basement flooded. I had to throw my house out into the desert. I’ll go pick it up when it’s dry."

Awesome.

Finance's 9/11

I'm pretty convinced the system doesn't work any more. The $700 billion bailout deal had the blessing of the current president, leaders of both houses of Congress in both parties, and both presidential candidates and it still got voted down. Then the Dow dropped like 800 points and my 401k looks about as healthy as Papa Combs. Nobody likes giving that much money to Wall Street, but it seems like it is probably necessary. After all, if nobody loans money to anyone, economic growth is impossible. Lawmakers in D.C. obviously read my blog entry and put in some reasonable additions that would give taxpayers a stake in the firms they save, more oversight, and executive pay additions, but House Republicans voted it down. Yes, the same group who believed that Velociraptors were chasing Noah around 4,000 years ago may have just thrown us into a huge recession. As for the Democrats that voted for the bill, I can only assume they are the coal miner Democrats from stupid states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Look at the roll call for people who voted for and against the measure. Most of the representatives who are universally thought of to be awful (Sheila Jackson-Lee, John Culbersen, McCaul, Grand Dragon Barton, Kucinich, Ron Paul) voted against it, probably because they can't read. The ones universally thought of to be awesome (Chet Edwards, Susan Davis, All 3 Congressmen with the last name Moore) voted for it. The ones with hilarious names all voted for it too ("Tobacco" John Boehner, "Tobacco/Marijuana" Roy Blunt, Rep. Boozman, Rep. Dicks, Rep. Weiner). Anyways, Washington sucks.

Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005

This is the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 as introduced by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel cosponsored by Senator John McCain. This bill was killed in committee a party-line vote by the Democratic Party, led by ranking member Senator Chris Dodd.

I find it laughable that many on both sides are trying to win points here. Obama said this to NBC's Matt Lauer, "the fact that somebody like John McCain who for 26 years has been an advocate for deregulation, for 26 years has said the market is king and then starts going out there suggesting somehow that he's a populist who's been railing against Wall Street and regulation -- that's what drives people crazy about politics."

To be honest, that crap he just said, drives me crazy about politics.

I'm certain that the bill that came up in 2005 wouldn't have alleviated all these problems and that if passed, there would still be a huge mess on our hands. I'm also sure it had its usual Republican flaws. McCain and his supporters are sure to claim that this would have solved all of our problems and made us all millionairs a la Barack Obama. However, I do believe, though that it might have helped and I know that Democrats firmly opposed while McCain was a cosponsor. I also know that Obama has received more money from employees and PACs of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae than any other Senator, except of course, Chris Dodd.

Wilford Brimley

I have a coworker who is a dead ringer for Wilford Brimley, who as I was discussing with Craig earlier, has the funniest IMDB mini bio ever. I mean they look exactly the same. I kind of like him because he sucks at selling even worse than I do. I mean way worse. Like I have sold about 20 times more than he has, and I am only a decent salesman at best. Anyways, this goes out to him.

Poor investments

I don't know about you, but I am really uncomfortable with the government's proposed 700 billion dollar bailout plan. From what I understand, this proposal gives the treasury the authority to spend up to 700 billion to purchase illiquid assets from failing financial institutions, giving these companies a life raft when say, their debt gets downgraded or they can't cover their obligations. The point is to save these financial institutions so that their failures don't take down the entire economy. AIG insured all sorts of corporate debt out there, having them fail could potentially create some real chaos in the markets. Whatever. Its true that government
action is probably needed. But here is what upsets me about the plan.

1) Hank Paulson - The man deciding who gets bailed out and who doesn't is Hank Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs. So the former head of one of head of one of the firms that got us into this mess is going to get us out of it. I'm sure that the former leader of a giant investment bank can objectively decide who gets Uncle Sam to buy their bad investments and who doesn't. Sounds kind of shady to me.

2) It rewards companies that suck at what they do - Oh, you thought it was a good idea to buy all those mortgage backed securities? Oh well, everyone makes mistakes. Have a cookie!

3) These suck-ass Wall Street CEOs are making out like bandits -AIGs CEO Martin Sullivan ran the company into the ground, and got paid $47 million when he was kicked out. Are the taxpayers going to reward that? I think if a Wall Street firm sells us their bad debt, they should agree not to give their managers ridiculous severance packages when they eventually get fired. Its the least they can do for us taxpayers to buy their terrible assets.

4) Where is the money coming from? - For the last 7 years, George Bush has cut taxes and increased spending. Now we are going to spend a bunch of money to help the economy recover. 700 billion is a lot of money. The total budget is 2.9 trillion. The war in Iraq is like 180 billion. How are we going to get that money? Are we going to raise taxes? Are we going to make any meaningful cuts in spending? Really? None of that? Nice plan.

The Dems in Congress want a the government to not kick people out of the houses of the mortgages the governement will eventually buy, shares of the companies of the companies they help out, more regulation on who gets bailed out, and executive pay reforms. All of those sound pretty reasonable to me. After all, its my money they are giving out.

Sarah Palin Name Generator

What would your name be if Sarah Palin was your mom? According to this website, my name would be Pie Gallon Palin. I would also be pregnant and believe dinosaurs existed 4,000 years ago. Okay, maybe not, but I would probably own a more expensive pair of glasses. What are you names?

Decline of a Manbeast

If NFL referees are known as Zebras, Ed Hochuli must be like some sort of striped Centaur or something. The dude is definitely on roids or something. But Hochuli has definitely manned up after making one of the worst calls in NFL history last Sunday. After Hochuli somehow blew his whistle after Denver's Jay "The $5 Hair-"Cutler dropped the ball on the biggest play of the San Diego-Denver game, he became the most hated man in San Diego. Hochuli has gotten hundreds of hate emails from angry Charger fans, and has personally answered each one with an apology. I have to respect that. Now if only Dick Bavetta and David Stern would apologize for Game 6 of the 2002 Kings-Lakers Western Conference Finals.

Down to Earth

As a young 3rd string linebacker at Katy High School, I was trained to hate Vince Young. As a Texas A&M student who was subjected to watching him destroying the Aggies for 3 years and propel Texas to their first national championship since before the forward pass was invented or whatever, I hated him even more. When he was drafted by the franchise I despise more than any other, my hatred hit a frenzy. But even I feel bad watching him fall apart right now. Here is a good article about what is going down with him. Vince may not be able to spell cat if you spotted him the C and the T, but a lot of successful quarterbacks were like that. I think it is just a classic case of everybody telling him he could do no wrong his entire life, and then he didn't know how to deal with it when he struggled. All I can say is thank God for Mario Williams.

Do smarter presidents make better presidents?

One of the biggest arguments for the candidacy of Barack Obama made by his supporters (including myself) is that he is an extremely smart guy. Obama's brainiac credentials are hard to dispute. He was born into a poor family, though he eventually moved in with his working class grandparents, and then made it to Columbia and Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he was the first black person to ever be made editor of the Harvard Law Review. He was a law professor for 11 years. He wrote two best selling books without the help of any ghostwriters, a feat which very few politicians can claim. So basically this Obama guy is pretty damn smart. Probably a genius. But do smart presidents neccesarily make good presidents?

Here is Wikipedias list of the best president's of all time according to historians. The most recent one was done in 2005 by the Wall Street Journal, who seem to give a little more points to Reagan than the rest of them. But here is their rankings:
1) Washington
2) Lincoln
3) FDR
All the polls have these three guys at the top in some order. Hard to argue with those guys, though I would put Lincoln at the top. The list goes on:
4)Jefferson
5) The Teddy
All the polls seem to agree that these guys are 4 and 5 in some order. Now to the controversy:
6) Reagan
7) Truman
8) Eisenhower
9) Polk
10) Andrew Jackson

Two of these guys are considered extraordinarily intelligent: Jefferson and Lincoln. Some of them are considered (by me, granted) to be extremely smart: Washington, FDR, Teddy, Eisenhower (IQ: 122). Three of them are average: Reagan, Truman, and Polk. And one is half retarded: Jackson (though he was awesome at dueling, historians claim he successfully dueled with between 25 and 133 men).

Anyways, most of our great presidents are extremely smart. John McCain, though no G.W. Bush, is not extremely smart. He graduated 894 of 899 from the Naval Academy, and is old, and old people get dumber with age. You know why Marty Schottenhiemer doesn't have a job in the NFL anymore? Because he is old. But McCain does have courage, and like Jackson, Reagan, and Truman, he might be able to make up for the fact that he is not the sharpest guy in the Senate. Who knows. My bet is on the genius though.