WHO DAT? Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for their victory over the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl 44! In the meantime, I am counting down the days to beautiful warm weather and baseball season (Geaux Yankees!)  At least, the Washington Capitals and Maryland Terrapins won today…at least, my day is not spoiled.

In honor of Super Bowl commercials, here is my favorite one from 2009.

This is why I am bringing back a segment that used to be on CCC, but with a new name. When I first started CCC, I had a segment called Rock On that featured what was running on my mp3 player. Now, it is called Saturday Tuneage, as I want to highlight my wide array of music tastes.

Saturday Tuneage is devoted to a Indie rock group called Iron & Wine. My friend recommended this group to me in December, after she went to see them play a live show. One thing that I was most impressed about was the acoustics and vocal arrangement. Iron & Wine also covered the song, “Such Great Heights,” which is far more beautiful sounding than The Postal Service’s version. However, I think you’ll love their acoustic sound most in their song, “Love and Some Verses.”

Two weeks ago President Obama delivered his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.  In his speech the President called for fiscal discipline and specifically addressed the need to reduce wasteful spending from the federal budget.  However, earlier this week the President sent a $3.8 trillion budget proposal to Congress, which spends too much, taxes too much and borrows way too much.

This fiscally irresponsible proposal will significantly increase the tax burden on American families and small businesses to pay for new wasteful government spending while heaping trillions of dollars of debt on future generations.  Facing a slowing economy and an increased cost of living, Americans have to tighten their belts and carefully budget their hard-earned money.  The federal government must do the same.

Under the President’s budget, the federal government will run up a record budget deficit of $1.6 trillion in fiscal year 2011.  This is the largest deficit as a share of the economy since World War II.  The national debt would double over five years and triple by FY2019 from FY2008 levels.  Paying the interest on this debt would set American taxpayers back roughly $6 trillion over the next decade.  In fact, Senator Kent Conrad, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, described the federal budget as “unsustainable.”

Additionally, the President’s budget includes more than $2 trillion in tax hikes, with a nearly 20 percent jump in the first year alone.  This includes tax increases on small businesses, investors, and families.  The last thing American families and small businesses need right now are new taxes that make it harder to save, invest, and hire.

Finally, during the President’s State of the Union Address he proposed a spending freeze.  Unfortunately, the truth is that the President’s proposed freeze only covers 1/8th of the federal budget and will not start until next year.

In these challenging economic times it is even more important for government to control spending. The federal government must work to both eliminate every cent of waste and squeeze every cent of value out of each dollar our citizens entrust to it.  Regrettably, the President’s budget will lead to record spending, record deficits and record debt.  In stark contrast to these reckless fiscal policies, I have consistently voted for the tightest budgets possible each year.

Families and small businesses all across our nation understand what it means to make tough decisions each day about what they can and cannot afford, and Congress cannot be allowed to ignore these tough decisions when creating spending policies for the federal government.  I continue to urge the leadership of the House to work in good faith to pass a responsible budget that reins in government spending and puts our nation’s families first.

To contact me about this or any other matter, please visit my website at www.goodlatte.house.gov.

So much for global warming…heh? Global warming is now 24 inches of snow with more to come.

Otherwise, the snow is allowing me to catch up on the much needed sleep, baking, and watching several hilarious SNL episodes on Hulu and lots of TBS. I have a feeling cabin fever will infect me shortly, so it will begin looking like this.

So, in the meantime, I will allow you to have a glance of what winter is really like outside the above ground bunker in lovely Fairfax County.

Went grocery shopping at our neighborhood Giant…no bread (case in point, my pic), no cake mix, no chicken, no frozen pizza!

Bread…well, it’s slim pickings!

No Frozen Pizza…the World’s gonna end!

Forget about the chicken! Who needs it???

Yes, the snow has provided simple beauty. This would include the Caps win against the Thrashers tonight for win #13.

Moody’s Investors Service fired off a warning on Wednesday that the triple A sovereign credit rating of the US would come under pressure unless economic growth was more robust than expected or tougher actions were taken to tackle the country’s budget deficit.In a move that follows intensifying concern among investors over the US deficit, Moody’s said the country faced a trajectory of debt growth that was “clearly continuously upward”.

So far, the United States calls Moody’s bluff, with Moody’s backing down with nothing more than a stiff rebuke.  Moody’s fears are no longer abated by the refrain: “Obama inherited a bad economy from Bush.”  Apparently, the monstrosity of a budget presented by the Obama administration has spurred Moody’s to think aloud regarding the United States credit rating.  Hey,… but we’re spending our way back into prosperity?  Not so, according to Moody’s credit officer, Steven Hess:

…the deficits projected in the budget outlook presented by the Obama administration outlook this week did not stabilise debt levels in relation to gross domestic product.

Damn.  But it’s getting better.  The Dow is still over 10,000.  We’re told there’s still growth.  Look at the green shoots.   Right now, Dow Jones says that unemployment is down:

The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly declined in January, but the economy continued to shed jobs and revisions painted a bleaker picture for 2009, casting doubt over the labor market’s strength.The unemployment rate, calculated using a household survey, fell to 9.7% last month from an unrevised 10% in December, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast the jobless rate would edge higher to 10.1%.

Hopefully, the Fed will be able to screw around with interest rates in order to fix all this.  The only question after that is for whom will the Fed fix it for?  Enough 0f that pessimism!  Think positive.  Think about U.S. federal government continuing to tax and spend invest in a future recovery.  When will that be?  Tomorrow, it’s always tomorrow.

On other economic fronts, the Euro continues its rapid fluctuation.  Last Thanksgiving (2009), the Euro traded at about $1.50 and today, it has gone slightly below $1.37.  Apparently there is trouble in paradise as the Wall Street Journal reports:

Concerns are growing that the world hasn’t seen the last of the economic crisis.

Jitters about the U.S. economy and signs that Greece’s debt woes are spreading across Europe roiled markets on Thursday, driving the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly below the 10000 mark.

…

Behind the turmoil are worries that a collection of European countries including Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, known derisively as PIGS, won’t be able to finance budget deficits that have ballooned to around 10% of gross domestic product. That has sparked fears that Europe’s decade-old monetary union could unravel.

This sentiment spilled over into markets on Thursday. Although the European Commission had signed off on Greece’s budget plans the day before, confidence was shaken at the same time by a stumble in a Portuguese bond sale and Spain’s raising of its budget-deficit forecasts.

The cost of insuring against the default of sovereign debt from Greece, Portugal and Spain soared to new highs, and the euro slid to an eight-month low against the dollar and lost 3% of its value against the Japanese yen.

Many are beginning to worry that Greece could be the next “subprime”—referring to a debt situation that appears initially to be contained but that quickly spreads. It also focuses attention on the massive amounts of debt racked up by governments around the globe, including the U.S.

Apparently, the combination of Japan’s aging population coupled with out-of-control deficit spending has not convinced die-hard European Keynesians to consider alternative economic policies.  They have no fear of the bust after the spending-fueled boom.  Still,we have cause for hope since

expectations are that countries like Greece will ultimately not default and instead be bailed out by Germany and other healthier economies in the European Union, the decline in the euro reflects that investors are electing to take what they see as the less risky route.  They pulled money out of Europe and parked it in the relative safety of the dollar, yen and short-term government debt in Japan and the U.S., putting downward pressure on the euro.

At least there are still plenty of safe harbors.

…

places like Belgium and Austria also came under pressure, traders say. In addition, European banks, which are major holders of government debt, saw their share prices take big hits.”We’ve definitely entered the stage where the European debt crisis is becoming systemic,” says Barry Knapp, equity market strategist at Barclays Capital in New York.

Officials at the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve have been watching developments in Greece closely, and have seen the problems largely as a regional issue that European governments can handle. If markets continue to sink globally, that could shift the thinking….

Praise Allah for all those incomprehensibly smart financiers watching out for us.  As long as it’s only a regional problem in Europe, there shouldn’t be any problems for the United States.

In the past, the countries could respond to such crises by devaluing their currencies—an option not on the table for members of the 16-member euro zone.

The austerity measures that the governments are being forced to pursue will likely only worsen their already high unemployment and thwart economic growth in the medium term.

Moreover, as the problem spreads, it becomes that much more difficult to manage. Spain, for example, is the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy and nearly twice as big as Greece, Portugal and Ireland combined. That likely makes it simply too big to undertake the kind of bailout that Germany and other euro-zone countries have privately been contemplating for Greece.

By “manage” do we mean cover-up by reorganize?  Didn’t that kind of fancy accounting mess up Enron?   Wait, what?  Oh, different rules apply to sovereigns.    Still, isn’t there a limit to how far a government can go in devaluing its currency?  Maybe, but after a while, the unemployment numbers go down when those workers just drop off the grid.  So on paper, it’s a recovery,…they call it a “European-style” recovery.  Those Old Worlders are just so trendy but at least the U.S. is starting to catch on to that trend.  It’s just a matter of waiting it out.  Just make sure you can provide sustenance for those former workers.  The net positive is that there’s job creation in expanding the bureaucracy to take care of those people!

Even in crisis, there are opportunities.  Credit Default swaps, anyone?

Thursday’s frenzy was whipped up in part by big moves in the credit-default swap markets, where traders can take big bets on the likelihood of a country defaulting.

As credit-default swaps on debt of Greece and Portugal soared, indicating more worries about a default, investors became more alarmed. That often sets off a cycle of more CDS buying. Prices of government bonds issued by Spain and Portugal sank along with their stock markets, while the cost to insure these bonds against default using credit-default swaps soared.

In a worrisome sign, concerns about the fiscal woes of European governments are starting to infect corners of the credit markets that European banks and companies rely on to raise money.

Prices of credit-default swaps tied to European companies with stronger credit ratings, including banks, also rose on Thursday, with the cost of insuring the debt of Spanish and Portuguese banks jumping in particular.

Even banks like the U.K.’s Barclays PLC and Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG saw their debt-default insurance costs rise.

As if the $1 quadrillion “Planet X” swirling around the financial planet Earth couldn’t get any bigger.  Oh, well…it’s time to turn to simpler pleasures.  Gearing up to deliver a hard smackdown on my wife, this Sunday, I have one question: Saints or Colts?

First and foremost, Jake is a moron…plain and simple. You have a guy who selects the blondes (not that I am complaining, as I am a blonde. Blonde power!), and he selects the psycho bitch, who (surprise!) he thinks is the one. After having an all-out scream fest on Monday at the end of the episode, I realize that the pilot is truly desperate to find a woman, who wants his landing gear. Who needs love…when you can have the landing gear, right?

Let’s take a look at the females who are fighting for Jake. Thus far, the psycho bitch is (drum roll puh-leeze) Vienna. She is Dr. Evil’s daughter, who causes more drama than Brangelina biting the head off of some Cabbage Patch Kid. Everyone in the house hates her, and Monday evening’s episode just gave glimpse into her attention seeking ways. During the group date with Jake, Vienna tried to destroy Gia’s chance of keeping Jake’s attention, and she decided to sneak into Jake’s bed, scantily clothed with two glasses of wine for seduction purposes. Wow! Desperation is at an all-time high, and Jake made a wrong choice by not sending her home. I would have much rather seen Roslyn (the one who slept with someone who worked for the show) stay.

Then, there is Gia. Gia is the swimsuit model, who is a sweet person. If I had to predict the winner, I would say Jake is still picking a blonde, but she will be the first runner-up (and the next Bachelorette). Gia seems to have a lot of chemistry with Jake and judging the makeout sessions…she’s falling for him.

Another one who will be a strong competitor is Tenley. Tenley is the girl next door, who has the most chemistry with Jake. She is also very sweet and compassionate. This girl is the winner (hands down…unless that conniving Vienna has her way).

Ali is the last competitor to focus on. She has had many issues with Vienna and tried several times unsuccessfully to warn Jake of Vienna’s ways. Last week, Ali showed Jake around San Francisco on a solo date. This was her chance to shine and prove to Jake why she could be the one, and for some odd reason, she did not seem to make the moment work. Normally, I would contribute this to nerves, but if you can’t convince the guy that you are wife material, then perhaps it is not meant to be…just sayin’.

Overall, I am not impressed with the final four. Fingers are crossed that Vienna will be sent home without a ring. This show is a big let down this season, and there is no doubt that this will be another Bachelor without Mrs. Right.