Please Christmas don't be late

With Christmas just about nine hours away, I am definitely getting into the Holiday spirit. The temperature has warmed up to about twenty degrees. There is a fresh layer of snow on the lawn. The Christmas tree is up. I'm ready. What do all of you do in terms of Christmas tradition? For me, Christmas Eve consists of going out to eat with my family, and then going to one of the night Christmas church services. Christmas morning, I wake up, do the presents things, and then normally I head to Wisconsin to celebrate with my Dad's side of the family. This year will not be any different except I will be baby-sitting my Grandma's animals for the next week. I love the collie and I tolerate the cat.

1. Aaron and I cheered on the undefeated Gopher basketball team to another win last night. Everything was going well... until Aaron pointed out that the Iowa State Cyclones lost at home to South Dakota State. SDSU, by the way, is only in their FIRST year of being a division one team. This is an absolutely humiliating defeat.

2. What is wrong with people? There is this short video from sportsillustrated.com about a girl who was in an accident and her two legs were amputated and instead of prosthetic legs, she has a basketball. Now she is training to be a swimmer. Just check out the video: http://sportsrubbish.blogspot.com/2008/12/video-chinese-girl-has-basketball-for.html

3. Please tell me all of your have seen Jack Black's proposition 8 video: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c0cf508ff8/prop-8-the-musical-starring-jack-black-john-c-reilly-and-many-more-from-fod-team-jack-black-craig-robinson-john-c-reilly-and-rashida-jones

4. I see the New York Yankees just signed Mark Teixera to a whopping eight year, 180 million dollar payroll. The Yankees have the four highest paid players on their roster. This off season, the three highest paid free agents (C.C. Sabathia, AJ Burnett, and Teixera) all wound up as Yankees. The lack of a salary cap is the sole reason why baseball continues to drop in popularity.

5. According to bloggingstocks.com, Economist Peter Dawson said it seems almost unfathomable that the American people and Congress would be willing to ship $100 per barrel (or more) in oil revenue to foreign governments, and not to its own government, but that is precisely the case."This is another case where the 'free market' philosophy leads to public policy idiocy," Dawson said. "The oil lobby is so strong in the U.S., it's able to defeat almost any oil tax. As a result, because we import more than 40% of our oil, Americans pay hundreds of billions of dollars in oil costs to foreign governments. So in effect, we won't pay for our public policies, but we'll pay for other countries' public policies, which makes no sense." What would make more sense, in Dawson's interpretation? Pass a federal, $10 per barrel oil tax, and restrict the money's use to alternative / renewable energy resources research, and energy efficiency, including development of next-generation cars, engines, and heating/cooling systems. A $10 tax on oil would generate $70-100 billion per year in federal revenue, Dawson said. What do you guys think about that? As I have mentioned before, I am not opposed to paying taxes as long as I know exactly where the money is going and I agree with its mission. Of course another way to save a lot of money is to end the war in Iraq... I'm just saying.