Did you ever notice how the faces in the crowds are mostly retirees who are the benefactors of the biggest government entitlements ever: Social Security and Medicare?

 
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The robots.txt for the Bush White House website was nearly 2,400 lines and included things like:

Disallow: /omb/search
Disallow: /expectmore/search
Disallow: /911/heroes/text

On and on for nearly 2,400 lines.

Obama’s robots.txt in its entirety:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

Thats it, thats the whole thing.

Who is enriched? Follow a simplified money trail.  Your tax dollars … to the government … to banks in the form of a bailout … to ad agencies … to TV … to the NCAA … to the coffers of rich college athletic programs.

In a WSJ article “The Bailout Bowl: Big-Game Sponsors Scored Billions,” we get some numbers and great quotes.

Citigroup: sponsor of the “Rose Bowl Game Presented by Citi,” recipient of $25 billion capital plus another $25 billion investment in bailout money. (Also purchaser of naming rights to the Mets’ new stadium, Citi Field.)

Bank of America: sponsor of the Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl, recipient of $15 billion from TARP.

U.S. Bancorp: sponsor of the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl

Eagle Bancorp: sponsor of the EagleBank Bowl, recipient of $38.2 million from TARP

GMAC: sponsor of the GMAC Bowl

Capital One: sponsor of the Capital One Bowl

Some great quotes:

“Some of the advertising folks at these firms might think it’s important to put their corporate brand on public events, but taxpayers might think they’re being taken for a ride,” said Pete Sepp, vice president for policy and communications at the National Taxpayers Union.

Rep. Scott Garrett (R., N.J.) ,,, questioned why banks — which reportedly aren’t using federal funds to lend to consumers as intended — need to sponsor nationally televised sporting events. “The irony is these guys aren’t lending to people, so what are they advertising for?” Mr. Garrett said.

“There’s interestingly zero sense of shame” from banks paying for vanity advertising, said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

There has always been big money in college sports (in recent history at least), mainly for the top men’s major sports programs, primarily football and basketball. The big money part is not new.

Federal funding of college bowl games is the new twist. Hopefully, a backlash of consumer sentiment will cause these recipeients of bailout money to spend less on advertising and more on lending and shoring up their businesses.

Rove and Bush had a contest of sorts to see who could read the most books.  For 2006, Rove writes:

At year’s end, I defeated the president, 110 books to 95. 

Fifty-eight of the books he (Bush) read that year were nonfiction. Nearly half of his 2006 reading was history and biography, with another eight volumes on current events (mostly the Mideast) and six on sports.

In 2007, Rove won, 76 books to 51.  Thus far in 2008, it’s Rove 64, Bush 40.

We all have 24 hours in a day. Bush does not have to do laundry, cook, drive to the office, do the grocery shopping, etc. so, granted, he does have some discretionary time that most of us regular folks do not. But, my word! That’s a lot of time spent curled up with a book.

Imagine a world where Bush read “only” half the 110 books.

In 2006, that means he still would have read 55 books. Instead of reading 55, imagine he used that time to read briefings.  Briefings on defense issues. On financial, economic issues. Domestic issues such as our educational system, unemployment, technology, et al. 

Now let’s take those 55 books we let him read in 2006 and sprinkle in a few highly relevant books about financial markets.  

Here is a proposed reading list. Imagine if Bush had read some of these relevant books (mouse over for a photo of the book cover and more info):

• The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
• The Bill from the China Shop: How Asia’s Savings Glut Threatens the World Economy
• The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures , Revised and Updated
• Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks
• Anatomy of the Bear: Lessons from Wall Street’s Four Great Bottoms
• Tomorrow’s Gold: Asia’s age of discovery

With the remaining time left, let’s suppose Bush pondered. That is, just thought about things. Thought them through. Think about it.

I really don’t want to hear how Obama is the first “African-American President” or listen to any talk of the significance of his race. Let’s just welcome him as our new president. Quit parading around the race card and get on with things.

My son is 4 years old and as far as he is concerned, race, color, creed is irrelevant and meaningless. Let’s keep it that way.

During her first months in office, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin kept a relatively light schedule on her workdays in Juneau, making ceremonial appearances at sports events and funerals, meeting with state lawmakers, and conducting interviews with Alaska magazines, radio stations and newspapers.

But this spring, Palin’s official calendar chronicles an extraordinary rise to national prominence. A fresh face in Republican politics, she was discovered by the national news media at least in part because of a determined effort by a state agency to position her as an oil and gas expert who could tout Alaska’s determined effort to construct a natural gas pipeline.

An outside public relations expert hired under a $31,000 contract with the state Department of Natural Resources pitched the “upstart governor” as a crusader against Big Oil, a story line that Palin has adopted in her campaign as Sen. John McCain’s running mate. The contract was the only time the Palin administration hired an outside consultant to set up media interviews, a function performed in many states by government employees.

McCain rally with bank ad no, mortgage company, no, campaign slogan as backdrop.

Not the best of times to look like, or look like you are sponsored by, a bankor mortgage company. 

The good news is that the financial crisis has been solved.  Captain America has announced that all is good in the nation’s capital and he will resume his campaign and be at the debate.  Bless his heart, we are lucky to have great heroes like Captain America in this time of crisis.  Seriously, he did us a favor by blowing up the deal. He saved us all a lot of money.  Sometimes unintended consequences are your friend.  We need some luck and we got some yesterday.  One day at a time.