Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Would you give an alcoholic just one more drink for the road? No. So explain this to me a little more clearly, please?

2) I am convinced that Sarah Palin has a little string in her back that, if you pulled it, would make her say "Math is hard!"

3) File this under "Not Exactly Surprising", however, it should concern ALL of us that banks seem to be consolidating. Look at what has happened to our information "banking" system: four companies control what you see on TV, hear on the radio and watch in the movie theatres. Do you really want that kind of control over your money, too?

4) File this under "Even Less Surprising". If only we had a President who could work both sides of the aisle, eh?

5) Despite this, expect the stock market to plummet, at least through the morning. Me, I think I'm cashing out today, and buying back in sometime this winter. I just wish I had been bright enough to buy gold.

6) Meet Android. Jason Perlow is an idiot if he thinks that quasi-open source hardware/software is the way to go in the mobile phone market, where people will actually store and utilize their most personal of information in ways he's not even pondering (but the Finns already have in place). Did you want to buy a soda from a machine, only to have some hacker decrypt your information and steal your 401(k)? I didn't think so!

7) Here's one change Barack Obama has already managed to pass.

8) Pity poor John McCain: even the meeting he was riding into like a white knight on a charger turned ugly on him. Not only that, but it was Obama who came away as the consensus builder! Tough week, man. "Country First" is a noble idea, so long as you have your ducks in a row, I guess.

9) Shea Stadium, as I noted last week, closes this weekend (barring a miracle playoff run), to be replaced by Citifield. To put the Treasury bailout into perspective, $700 billion could buy 13 new Citifields...for each and every county in New York State!

10) Or braces for everyone in Great Britain.....and France, or all 32 NFL teams - 27 times, or 2 cups of Starbucks every day for a year for every person in Brazil, or gasoline for a year for every adult in America. (175 billion gallons of gas), or you could literally buy the world a Coke. One 2-liter bottle per week for a year, or a 60-inch HDTV for every man, woman and child in the U.S., or 10 Monopoly games for each of the 6.7 billion human beings on planet earth, or 7 Mac laptops for every school-age child in U.S., or buy 1 Rolex watch for every woman in the U.S., or everyone in America 2200 McDonalds apple pies, or 18 (3-day) passes to Disney for the entire U.S. population, or 202 T-mobile G1 mobile phones for every resident of New York state, or 373 basketballs for every child in the U.S., or a brand new Hummer for each of the 11 million people on the island of Cuba, or 2 mountain bikes for everyone in China, or every winner of the MTV Video Music Awards 10,000 Lear Jets, or 438 pounds of rice for every single person in Africa, or 200 four-packs or Play-Doh for every child under 14 on the planet, or 400 trees for every one of the 7 million homes in the state of Florida, or a Caribbean Island for every single person in the state of South Dakota, or 1.5 million lightbulbs for every person in Alaska, or 604 rounds of golf on Bethpage's Black Course for everyone in New York. You choose!

11) If you have one, USE IT! I do, always.

12) This ought to be interesting. And I'm biting back hard on making jokes about take out orders...

13) Finally, President Who, now? has any sitting lame duck president ever been this lame that he can't keep his own party quiet?