Saw the Oscar show last night at a party.  Usually I don't watch the whole show, maybe the opening when Billy Crystal is hosting.  But since this was an Oscar viewing party, I watched the whole thing.  I thought that Seth MacFarlane did a very good job.  I think he was certainly way better than Ann Hathway and James France were a couple of years ago.  I think only Crystal has been better among the recent hosts.  But for some reason the reviews were mixed.  It seems that MacFarlane offended some people. I don't see it.  I thought he was funny and his singing and dancing were pretty good.  I think the best performer was Shirley Bassey of James Bond fame.  She must be near 80 years old but she looks much younger and her voice is still tremendous!  I finished an amazing 2nd place among the party guests in predicting the winners.  This is amazing because I have only watched one of the movies nominated!  Unfortunately, first place went to my wife who had only watched the same movie I did!

It appears that no deal will be made before March 1st and the sequestration will occur.  As I said before, let it happen.  Both sides think that it will be to their advantage, so neither side is going to compromise.  So let's see who blinks first.  I don't think that the cuts will mean poor people dying in the streets or our national defense become number two in the world.  The stock market will fall for a while and the economic growth will slow down.  But I don't think those two things will last long.  We will not go back to a recession as a result of this.

The justice department is suing S@P for not downgrading banks in the subprime mortgage debacle that greatly contributed to the downturn of the economy.  I say:  It is about time.  Except for one South Asian guy, no big shot in Wall Street or in the banking industry have been charged criminally.  I understand that the burden of proof in a criminal case is great.  But only one person after all the wrong doings?  In civil cases the burden of proof is much lower.  So I would think the feds and the states would try to get a large sum of money out of these guys.  I don't know how hard it is to evaluate banks and financial institutions.  But giving someone about to go bankrupt a AAA rating?  I find it hard to believe that S@P and others were not sleeping on the job.  So yes, I think S@P should pay big time.

Michigan escaped tonight with an OT victory over OSU.  I think OSU got robbed at the end, not getting a foul call.  But that is the case with home court advantage.  I would say that if a road team loses by less than 6 points, it probably outplayed the home team.  Well, at least Michigan held serve and will see if they can grind one out against Wisconsin this weekend. 

I don't know why Obama decided to release a picture of him shooting skeets.  It really would not change the mind of the NRA supporters.  As expected they express doubt about the authenticity of the picture.  I don't know what is the big deal about presidents able to use a gun.  Clinton also made sure that people knew that he hunted when he was president.  It is not macho.  Anybody can fire a gun.  Six year olds have done it and to tragic results.  So who cares if the president have shot before?  Now, if any president can hunt using bow and arrow, that would be impressive.

As I predicted, by predicting SF would win I have given them the kiss of death.  From almost a blow out to an exciting finish was great.  If SF had won, future Super Bowl coaches will be so paranoid of a power outage stopping their momentum that they will bring their own generators to insure no stoppage!

I am not surprised by Indiana beating Michigan at home.  But now Michigan must beat OSU at home or they will be in real trouble.

Saw some of the highlights of the inaugural speech and pagentries of the day.  It was a nice speech and some of the music were great.  But I don't think we need to spend all that money to have an inaugural when it is the same president.   I think the inaugural is a great reminder of our democracy working smoothly when there is change of power from one president to another.  In many countries of the world this is not a given.  But when there is no change in power, I think we should skip all the ceremonies.  This will save a good chunk of money.  Even when there are corporate sponsorships of many of the events, it is not a good idea.  We do not need anyone getting more influence on the president with contributions to a inaugural ball. 

So it is on to the Harbaugh Bowl.  This could have been the U-M quarterback Bowl.  But unfortunately it is not to be.  I will have to conceit defeat to LBOAYM.  Now about that conspiracy theory....

There is an article in CNN written by the head of the school district of Harrold, Texas in which he defended his schools arming certain teachers.  He says the teachers will be well trained and their identity won't be revealed so that a bad guy would not know who to shoot at first.  Also it will be more unlikely for someone to steal the guns since he won't know who has them.  Chances are that in this small rural school district nothing will happen as a result of teachers carrying guns to school.  Chances are also good that nothing will happen in this small school district if nobody carries guns to school.  I will bet, however, if teachers all over the country are carrying guns then the chances of accidental shooting or a teacher going rogue and shooting somebody will be greater than a teacher stopping some gunman with a gun.

This is one step beyond the NRA's idea that every school has armed guards.  Never mind that Columbine had an armed guard and that didn't stop  the tragedy there.  In fact I would bet that a school heavily armed will be a target for someone who wants to go out firing.  In that guy's mind, shooting it out with armed guards and killing will be a final boost to his demented ego.  But beside that, the NRA thinks that to stop bad guys is to arm good guys.  Who decides who is the good guy?  A person may be good today but his mental status may change.  A divorce, problems at work etc can change a person.  Overwhelming percentage of teachers are good people.  But it is not unheard of that a teacher is a criminal.  For example a teacher who had sex with a student may be blackmailed.  If he is facing losing his job and going to jail, he becomes possibly dangerous with a gun.  A few years ago we had a teacher in our area who was convicted of having sex with students and went to prison.  He was considered a very good teacher before this revelation.  I certainly would not want him to be carrying a gun when the police came to his classroom.

The answer to gun violence is not more guns.  Are we going to arm all postal workers to prevent someone going postal?  Some will say that we arm pilots.  I am not sure that will stop hijacks but I am not worry about a crazy pilot using his gun on the plane.  If he wants to kill, he can just crash the plane.  Giving a gun does not make him more dangerous than before.   Ultimately, you have to ask:  when everybody had guns back in the wild west, were we safer than today.  If you think so, you should have ask the Hatfields and the McCoys.

On a lighter note, New England is still alive but GB is out for me.  I will give Jim Harbaugh credit.  It would have been easy to stick with Alex Smith, who had done a good job.  But it took a lot of guts to play Kaepernick instead.  I don't think they would have beat GB without Kaepernick.  So there is a chance for the Harbaugh bowl.  But I think New England will keep that from happening.  New England to win the Super Bowl over SF.

Michigan lost its chance for #1 ranking by  losing to OSU.  But I am not upset.  Michigan came all the way back from a 21 point deficit on the road against a very good team even though their top 4 scorers shot a combine less than 30%.  The comeback is a good sign for the future.  This is a good wake up call and I think in particular the two freshmen, Robinson and Slauskas will play much better next time under hostile conditions.

I think Chuck Hagel is a very good choice for sec. of defense.  I know it will be a tough confirmation fight and I don't know given all the financial battles coming up that Obama should fight this one.  But he is well qualified and brings bipartisanship.  Will see how the hearings go.

Alabama crushed ND which was expected.  As I said before I believe Oregon would give Alabama the toughest game.  Sometimes you have to be lucky just to get to the finals.  ND was certainly lucky this season.  In fact you can make a case that Alabama was lucky this last two seasons, getting in with 1 loss each season.  But you have to tip your hat to them as I believe that ultimately the best team won both seasons.  Given the parity we have now, I predict that neither Alabama nor ND will return to the championship game next year!

I am writing this blog on my new ipad, given to me by my kids for Chrismas. I am now almost up to date with the technological world!  I predict that they will avoid the fiscal cliff by kicking the can down the road further.

My predictions for the Big Ten stay intact with MSU's come back victory.  A good win for them after all those close losses this year.

Happy new year!

When is it going to be enough?  How many more innocent lives have to be lost before we ban all assault weapons and magazines that carry more than 10 bullets at a time.  What are these weapons for except to attack other people?  This is a national security issue.  This is domestic terrorism.  I don't think the freedom to own these assault weapons trumps our freedom from being wire-tapped.  Yet after 9/11 the government can wire-tap citizens.  We kill 4 times more of our fellow citizen each year than 9/11 but we can't give up the freedom of owning assault weapons?

The argument that if good guys can't buy weapons then they can't protect themselves from bad guys is absurd.  It is much more likely that guns owned by ordinary citizen will kill someone innocent, kill someone during an argument, or kill someone accidentally than to have stopped a criminal.  Certainly the guy in Florida who shot the black kid in a struggle would not have even approached the kid if he did not have a gun.  He would have simply called and waited for the police to show up. 

I think we should ban all manufacturing of assault weapons except for those to be purchased by the military and law enforcement.  It is not a right to make these weapons.  After all, I am sure one cannot legally build an atomic bomb.   The line has to be drawn now.

It is time for my yearly Big Ten bowl predictions.  There are 7 teams from the Big Ten in bowl games this year.  It would have been 9 if Penn State and Ohio State were eligible.  Since those two beat Wisconsin, the Big Ten champs, this means everyone plays a higher bowl than they would have otherwise.  So it is not likely the Big Ten will do very well.  This explains why Big Ten teams are all underdogs in their games.  I am going to predict that Michigan State, Michigan and Northwestern are going to win, for a total of 3 victories for the conference.  These three are from 2-4 points underdogs but I think they can come through.  The others have no chance at all will possibly exception of Wisconsin which showed some life against Nebraska.  Still I don't think they can beat Stanford.

Four weeks to go before the fiscal cliff occurs.  I believe that a last second deal will be made to avoid the cliff because both sides are scared of the consequences.  Frankly I don't know why people are afraid of this so called cliff.  I say bring it on.  I think we will survive it and will gain some knowledge of how the economy really works.

The predictions are that if the tax increases and spending cuts occur as scheduled on Jan. 2, 2013, we will lose about 4% of GDP, putting us back into recession.  I am no economist so I don't have any idea if these calculations are accurate.  But this law was passed so that if the so called super committee can't find a way to reduce the deficit then the tax increases and spending cut to be implemented will reduce our deficit by 1.2 trillion dollars.  Now throughout the last few years all I have heard is that we have to reduce the deficit as if not doing so will be the death of our economy.  So now with less than a month we are saying that by reducing the deficit we are going to kill our economy?  So I say let us go over the cliff.  If we go into recession, then I guess reducing the deficit is not the cure all that we heard about in recent years.  But if we don't go into recession then may be we will be more brave about cutting more of our deficit in the future.

The extreme right wants to reduce the deficit by cutting spending only.  The extreme left wants to cut the deficit by raising taxes only.  But most people think that both need to be done.  This cliff forces us to do both just as most people want.  I think initially the stock market will be spooked.  There will also be less spending by consumers.  But after a while maybe we will see that we don't need to spend more money on our military as the next ten nations combined.  Maybe we see that a little cut on medicare do not lead to deaths to our seniors.  Maybe our millionaires will see that losing a few thousand dollars a year in tax should not change their strategy in expanding their businesses.  But if the recession lasts longer than I think it will, well, then maybe we won't be so vocal about drastically reducing the deficits next time.