The Cost of Freedom

It was reported a couple days ago that the NSA was depositing cookies in people's web browser as they visited the Agency's website. These cookies were set expire in the year 2035! If this doesn't raise a red flag with anyone, I don't know what will.

Now, I've always lived a good an wholesome life; I've never been arrested (although there was that time where my friends and I were pulled over and we had an eight ball in the car), but I've always figured that there the odds were pretty good that at one time or another some low level staffer at the NSA decided to listen in on one of my phone calls or look at a couple email messages that I happened to send to my friends. Personally, not a big deal.

But folks, this is about principle. The fact that our government is illegally spying us is a huge problem. Not only are we losing our discretion, but we're losing our Freedom. Of courese, our goverment is telling us that they are doing this in the name of Freedom, Justice and every other abstract word that you want to through out there. I understand that we're fighting a war, but that doesn't allow the government to take away our God-given rights. It doesn't give the president (whomever he may be) the right to initiate secret spying programs on his country's citizens, nor does it give the right to an Agency who's job it is to help defend our Country from the very nefarious characters we are fighting a war against, to track the Web surfing habits of its citizens.

Now, you'll notice from the title of the article that I linked to, it says the NSA 'inadvertantly' used the cookies. Let's not kid ourselves; there was nothing inadvertant about it. You don't inadvertantly deposit a cookie into a users browser (trust me, I'm semi-skilled in how online marketing works and when you deposit a cookie into a user's browser, it's anything but inadvertant).

Finally, I know this blog has taken more of a political subject matter; probably more than I have ever intended. But the fact remains, there are certain things that I, and several million other people fervently believe in. And sometimes it's nice to get those thoughts on paper.

Are we due for a Recession?

Nobody likes, everybody hates it; it's the R-word. Everybody, the stock markets included, freaked out today when long term interest rates dropped below short term interest rates. This is called an inverted Yield Curve. The repurcussions of this (the majority times that it happens) is a recession. Most recently, this occurred in 2000 (of course the election of one Mr. George W. Bush and the 9/11 attacks helped perpetuate it) and in 1989.

Are we in for another one? In my opinion, probably not, but then again you never know. Interest rates are a funny thing, and I'll do you all a favor and spare you the finance lesson on why Interest Rates and bond prices are inversely related, but whenever rates go down, bond prices go up, thus making them more expensive to investors. What do we have to worry about? A couple things:

-Housing Bubble: If this things bursts, you can bet your sorry little ass that this country will plunge into a recession. This bubble bursting will make the stock market drop of early 2000-2001 seem like a walk in the park.

-Another Terrorist Strike: The fact of the matter is, is our country is woefully unprepared for another terrorist strike, let alone one that would cause mass casualties (i.e. an atomic or dirty bomb). This was evidenced earlier this year by Hurricane Katrina.

-Another War: Hey, with Bush in the White House, anything is possible!

The bottom line here is that another recession would be devestating for this country. Our trade deficit is currently at a record high, and with this administrations lack of desire to cut taxes, we would be left with few options, other than adding to the deficit, should a recession strike our nation again.

Housing Bubble

MSNBC is reporting that new home sales took a tumble in November, further perpetuating my belief that the housing market across the country is in for a major slump. This is exactly the reason why I haven't purchased a home yet.

Where I live, thousands of people have used those psuedo-mortgage products like ARM's to buy their first homes and second homes. However, these people are in for a major shock as interest rates start climbing higher. It's becoming vastly apparrent that these people are having more and more difficulty with affording their monthly mortgage note. Case in point: I live on street that's very busy. This street has lots of 'dead space' on it (i.e. space where people can park their cars). Currently, everybody has decided to use this 'dead space' as a space to park their car that they have for sale. I'm looking out my window right now see literally 20 cars all lined up on the street with 'For Sale' signs on them. Interstingly enough, most of these vehicles are Audi's, BMW's, and Mercedes.

To me, this is a very strong correlation that people are having a difficult time of making their mortgage note. More on this as the housing bubble continues to burst.

Damon Defects to the Dark Side??

ESPN.com is reporting that Johnny Damon has reportedly accepted the Yankees contract offer of $52 Million over 4 years. This is starting to get ridiculous! The first rant I have about this is Johnny should supposedly 'know' about the bitterness that currently exists between the Yankees and the Red Sox, but yet, after the years of loyalty the Red Sox have shown him, he shoves it in their face and signs a contract with their most heated rival.

I understand that this is a business, however, I'm voicing my right as a fan to complain. The Red Sox have been very loyal to Johnny even though they had every right to trade his ass when he was going through his slump. I'm very, very disappointed in this decision.

But this brings up another question-why didn't the Red Sox pursue Damon? He was a consistant (for the most part) hitter, he had an incredible OBP, and is a decent Centerfielder (stupid errors aside). I'm kind of reminded of the winter of '03-'04 when the Red Sox lost out on trading for A-Rod and George Steinbrenner dropped this nugget: "We understand John Henry must be embarrassed, frustrated, and disappointed by his failure in [trading for A-Rod]. Unlike the Yankees, he chose not to go the extra distance for his fans in Boston. It is understandable, but wrong that he would try to deflect the accountability for his mistakes on to others and to a system for which he voted in favor. It is time to get on with life and forget the sour grapes." Ouch. Something tells me that something similar could be coming in a press release from him if this trade ends up going through.

All of this Red Sox talk has me thinking about one of my favorite writers. He's known as the Sports Guy and writes for ESPN.com. He also has a book out about what it's like to be a Red Sox Fan.

Interesting Notes From Today...

As many of you have noticed, the name of my blog is called "My Daily Dime". This means I will be posting my opinion of things. Many people refer to their opinion as their two cents, however, because I value my opinion I have determined that it is worth ten cents, and therefore, my blog is being called a Dime. In any case, on to today's stories and my comments:

In a story that I've been following pretty closely, the Co-CEO of RIMM (the company that makes your blackberry work) announced that his company was close to a deal with patent holder NTP. For those of you who haven't been following the story very closely, A U.S. Court determined that RIMM was infringing on NTP's patent for its blackberry software. This in turn could have caused RIMM to shut down. Fortunately, for all 'crack'-berry users out there, it looks like a settlement will finally get finalized. My thoughts on this: how the hell does RIMM not do there research and resolve this before it gets to this point? I know if I were running a business, there's no WAY that I would be so blind as to not know if the product or service I was providing was already patented.

In the ongoing struggle at the White House, President Bush vigorously defended his Domestic Spying. This is so ridiculous, I'm not sure what to say. How does one bilaterally decide that it's within his rights to start spying on the Country that he is supposedly the President of? Wasn't Saddam Hussein doing the exact same thing? At least Saddam was smart enough to get away with it. According to Newsweek, Bush allegedly summoned the editor and the publisher of the New York Times to his office on December 6 to discuss the publishing of the article. I would've loved to be a fly on the wall during that meeting. Next thing I see coming from Bush & Co. is a massive PR campaign something along the lines of "Reading the New York Times is equivilant to supporting Terror!"

Finally, in sports news, it looks like Noomaahhh finally decided to sign with the Dodgers. He signed a one year contract worth a reported $6 Million Dollars with the opportunity to earn $4 Million more in performance incentives. In case you're wondering what the single thought was going through Nomar's head as he was signing the contract, I'll tell you: "Suckas!" How the Dodgers were duped into this one, I'll never know. It looks like Grady Little followed up his leaving Pedro in one inning too long move with the "Hey guys, let's pay a guy $6 Million and hope we get 100 games out of him this year!"

In my next post, I'll try and stick to a single subject, but for now, you're getting multiple subjects in a single post, because, I just don't have that much time to write during the day.

Congrats Chargers!

The Chargers just pulled an amazing upset by defeating the now 13-1 Colts! Drew Brees led the way for the Chargers by going 22/33 for 255 yards, with one touchdown and two pics. LT had 24 carries for 76 yards and 0 TD's, while Keenan McCardell had 3 receptions for 88 yards and a Touchdown. Congrats to the team from my adopted hometown!

A Confession

Okay, so we all have our secret fantasies: Some of us actually like watching NASCAR. Some of us enjoy the burning dog shit on our neighbors porch. Some of us stay up late at night, just to catch the latest episode of Laguna Beach. I have my own little fetish that I think it's okay for me to come clean on: I'm obsessed with Nick and Jessica. You all know who I'm talking about.

I remember when they first got married. It wasn't really a big deal to me then. Just another couple tying the knot, blah blah blah. I remember in the fall of 2002 when they first started showing their infamous reality show on MTV, seemed like a stupid idea. But then one afternoon, MTV had a marathon of the first season; I watched the first show and suddenly the remote control just stopped working. I was hooked. Jessica's dumb ideas, Nick's contstant "Did I really marry this girl" look on his face. This was a classic television show in the making. Each week brought a new adventure and as all of us who watched the show saw, it was bringing to pass, yet again, another doomed hollywood couple.

I'm not claiming that I know this couple more than anybody else does who watched their show, but anybody who knows anything about relationships knows that this couple was doomed from the start. Both Nick and Jessica needed each other for vastly different reasons. And unfortunately, it only took them three years to realize that those reasons were less than true love.

Nick's a cool guy, which is part of the reason why I enjoyed watching the show so much. He's exactly the type of guy I would hang around with. He likes sports, likes drinking beer, and enjoys nice cars.

Jessica is exactly the type of girl that I dated in high school: Very attractive, incredible body, talented, but lacking on the intellectual skills.

As everybody knows by now, their relationship is over. Yesterday, Jessica officially sealed the deal by filing for divorce. Both of them are clearly heading in opposite directions. Jessica's career has flourished ever since the couple's reality show took the country by storm. She recently starred in blockbuster films and can get work at the snap of a finger.

Yet Nick's career has floundered. He occasionally has received guest appearances credit on some low-level sitcoms, his appearances on ESPN have been atrocious, and his CD SoulO makes my dog howl in pain. However, because the ever gullible Jessica was NOT properly advised to sign a prenup by her ever-manacing business manager, and creepy father Joe Simpson, it looks like Nick could end up getting $15 Million in a divorce settlement. Hopefully he'll be a lot smarter than his soon to be ex-wife when he gets the money.

Comments on recent news articles

There are a couple of news articles that I would like to say a few words about:

Upon further review, it appears that Ford will be reinstating their advertisements of Jaguar and Land Rover in gay magazines. This coming a week after deciding to pull the ads from gay magazine. To the VP of Advertising at Ford: duh! Now, I'm no expert in the content or quality of gay magazines, however, when Ford decides that they want to pull ads from a magazine that includes the market that they (or any other company) would desperately want to have in there demographic, that's probably the wrong decision to make. Kudos to Ford for turning on their instant replay monitors and realizing that this was a bad decision to begin with. I would only begin to suspect that Jaguar and Land Rover is exactly the type of brand that one would want to market in a magazine that is dedicated, and read by households pulling in dual incomes (very high dual incomes, I might add).

Good luck to all my friends living in the NYC this week and for the rest of the Holiday Season. With the impending Transit Strike, the Holidays should be just Merry!

In sports news, sounds like Nomaaaah is having a difficult time about making up his mind about which team to join this offseason. He hasn't been this confused since Mia Hamm gave him the ultimatum of marrying her or continuing his journey to becoming the best shortstop to play the game (p.s. if you can't tell I'm a Red Sox fan after reading that last sentance, it's probably time to stop perusing blogs and go back to work). That's it for today. I'll have more tomorrow!

Why Am I Blogging?

I'm going to be blogging for a variety of reasons. The main reason that I will be blogging is because I've finally caught wind of it, and actually believe that it's the 'wave of the future'. Many of you are now asking yourself what I will be blogging about. The answer to that question is simple: I will be blogging about a number of things. From politics, to movies, to product reviews and lots of sports. I'll occassionally have blogs about my personal life, but you won't hear too much of about it because I want my life to remain personal! As a side note, I was browsing the web tonight and found this article regarding celebrities and prenups quite amusing. Also, I'm currently reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I'll have plenty of things to say about that after I finish reading it.

Trying to keep everyone updated

Sorry I have posted in like six months. I know a lot of you have been emailing me and bugging me that I haven't posted in awhile so I'll try and post more regularly to let you know what is going on.