Sunday Roundup: Veterans Day, Johnny Football, The Fiscal Cliff, and More...

I had guests in town this weekend, and they brought with them their well behaved young boys, 15 and 10 years old.

As we were watching football down in the 5 Hour Energy Dome, one of them saw the Blu-Ray of "Black Hawk Down" and started begging us to watch it.

I deferred to their father, who said, okay sure, let 'em watch.

It's about the 5th time I've seen the movie, and it simply never disappoints. One the one level, the helicopter scenes and the pure war-movie action is second to none in Hollywood history.

But on a deeper level, the lessons of service, sacrifice, courage and honor are timeless.

On this Veterans Day 2012, I can only say thanks yet again, for all of those men and women who have served our nation in war, and in peace. I hope those two boys who watched with me gain a greater appreciation as well.

The above photo was widely circulated after Hurricane Sandy, pretending to be current to the most recent hurricane. It wasn't. That does not mean it's not an awesome photo.

It is.

Thank you, Veterans. More than us civilians can ever truly express.

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Family guests John Goettler and son Henry helped get the Shield logo down this weekend.

The afternoon on Saturday was spent prepping the backyard football field for some impromptu 4 on 4 action on a pristine 68 degree fall day. This field is getting a bit nuts, I suppose. Cars are now stopping on our adjacent country road to stop and stare. I watch them from my window and just beam with pride.

"Yup. That's my football field. Like it?"

I still need to get the rest of the numbers painted, but when I do, I'll schedule a full photo shoot for the finshed product.

And don't tell me "you forgot to paint the end zones."

Until I get a professional field striper, I don't have enough 12 oz. spray cans of marking paint to do a whole endzone, much less two!

Heck, the NFL logo alone took 10 cans and 6 kids helping. We almost passed out from the fumes!

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I missed most of the Texas A&M upset of Alabama because we got done playing football outside as the first half was winding down. Then we all went out for a birthday dinner with the two families after that.

Was I watching on Slingbox during the 20 minute car ride?

Hell yeah!

But once there, it would have been a bit much to just plop the ol' iPhone 5 on my appetizer plate and zone in on the slow motion stunner going down in Tuscaloosa. I believe my wife would have given me the Kobe Death Stare, followed by the dreaded marital "Vote of Confidence."

Besides, the bar in our restaurant had the game on, just out of view. And given the slight lag in Slingbox working it's magic, you could hear the place erupting with every spectacular play down the stretch.

The two boys and their dad excused themselves to see the final few minutes. I got reports from them.

Incredible game. Incredible.

Sorry I missed it live, but that' how college football season often goes as a fan, right?

You get "up" for the big ones like Alabama-LSU and Oregon-Stanford last week (I made sure to "clear the decks" of any commitments last Saturday) and then you kind of sleep on the others, like A&M dropping a big fat "welcome" turd to the SEC on 'Bama's doorstep.

Johnny Manziel is something else, ain't he, kids?

Now his family is working to secure the rights to the knickname "Johnny Football". Ohhhhkay. Makes me think I really AM sitting on a gold mine with the rights to www.harryhighschool.com.

The move by A&M to the SEC simply could NOT be working out any better.

Texas is saddled with a Longhorn Network that nobody can clear on their cable systems, and one that head coach Mack Brown says is actually HURTING their team due to over-exposure and time requirements to feed the beast.

Their conference doesn't have enough teams for a title game, and they now don't even get a chance to beat the Aggies in a blood rivalry game at the end of the year. (Not that they would, likely, do so this year).

A&M now has stunned Alabama on the road, in perhaps the Game of the Year, they have the most exciting young QB in the nation, and they have only had ONE full season to recruit with the vaunted S-E-C letterhead.

Hard to imagine a better time to be an Aggie in the last 40 years, than right now.

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Or a WORSE time to be an Auburn fan, or Gene Chizik.

What kind of number is a pissed off 1-loss Alabama team going to post on Auburn in a few weeks? 76-0?



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The election is over, but America's problems still exist.

In case you did not know, WE ARE BROKE!

I would yell that louder, but last Tuesday proved that the public is too stupid to understand, or just don't care. Even my own mother, was indifferent to this as I watched the returns with my father and proceeded to plow through half a bottle of Kraken rum.

(I woke up Wednesday, picked up the bottle by it's cute little tentacle handles, and wondered "Man, did I drink all that myself?)

All my mom seemed to care about, while voting again for our magnificent Golfing Teleprompter King, was that Prop 7 passed in Maryland so she would have a new casino to visit just across the river in Maryland.

You want hopeless? That'll give you hopeless.

I can't even flip my own mother, with a PERSONAL appeal to remember her lovely grandchildren and their bleak and imminent future.

From the above link...

The good news is that reality (to use a quaint expression) doesn’t need to swing a couple of thousand soccer moms in northern Virginia. Reality doesn’t need to crack 270 in the Electoral College. Reality can get 1.3 percent of the popular vote and still trump everything else. In the course of his first term, Obama increased the federal debt by just shy of $6 trillion and in return grew the economy by $905 billion. So, as Lance Roberts at Street Talk Live pointed out, in order to generate every dollar of economic growth the United States had to borrow about five dollars and 60 cents. 

There’s no one out there on the planet — whether it’s “the rich” or the Chinese — who can afford to carry on bankrolling that rate of return. According to one CBO analysis, U.S.-government spending is sustainable as long as the rest of the world is prepared to sink 19 percent of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt. 

We already know the answer to that: In order to avoid the public humiliation of a failed bond auction, the U.S. Treasury sells 70 percent of the debt it issues to the Federal Reserve — which is to say the left hand of the U.S. government is borrowing money from the right hand of the U.S. government. It’s government as a Nigerian e-mail scam, with Ben Bernanke playing the role of the dictator’s widow with $4 trillion under her bed that she’s willing to wire to Timmy Geithner as soon as he sends her his bank-account details.

If that’s all a bit too technical, here’s the gist: There’s nothing holding the joint up.