Final Thoughts on the 2011 Major League Baseball Season

Allow me by first saying that I wholeheartedly hate the St. Louis Cardinals. As an Astros fan, I'm already been conditioned to can't stand them. The Cardinals have ruined, in a way, four seasons for me (2001, 2004, 2006, and 2011)  However, they have some of the best fans in Major League Baseball and for what it's worth, St. Louis is the quintessential baseball town. But it still doesn't change the hatred I have for the team. Nonetheless, before I hate any team and before I love any team, I am a baseball fan first.

Which is why the 2011 World Series is one of the best World Series ever played, the second best World Series played since 1991 (the only World Series better since then is the 2001 World Series, even though the 2002 Series had its moments). I'm guessing every 10 years or so we are in for a treat. Aside from the Cardinals blowing out the Rangers in Game 3 and an anti-climatic Game 6 where the Rangers could not solve Chris Carpenter in anyway, shape, or form, the remaining five games, including the breathtaking classic slugfest of Game 6, was intense and exciting.

And this World Series is exactly what baseball needed.

This is the highest rated World Series not to include the Boston Red Sox or the New York Yankees since 2002 when the San Francisco Giants lost to the then-Anaheim Angels. It served as the culmination of one of the greatest postseasons in recent memory, as 38 out of 41 possible games were played. The World Series featured two teams -- a Rangers team that was widely seen as one of the most complete teams in all of the Major Leagues and a Cardinals team that had Lady Luck on their side from the conclusion of the regular season to the final fly-out of the World Series. What a story Cardinals fans will be able to tell for generations and this eclipses their improbable championship runs of 1964 and 2006, which I'll write about in a separate post.

I can't stress how badly baseball needed this World Series. The World Series was increasingly becoming an afterthought, especially with the absence of the pop culture phenoms Yankees and Red Sox. This World Series should serve as a reminder as to why baseball, despite the long season and the slow pace of the games, is, was, and always will be the true heart and soul of American sports, no matter how many football fans try to dispute this fact. It's the only game where you'll never be able to rattle off how many hits Sid Bream had in his career, but you'll always remember the slow runner for beating out Barry Bonds throw at Fulton County Stadium with the late, great Atlanta Braves announcer Skip Caray screaming "Braves win! Braves win! Braves win!". It's the only game that you'll never remember how many teams Aaron Boone played for but you'll always remember that moonshot to left against the Boston Red Sox in 2003. The Shot Heard Around The World in 1951. Bill Mazeroski in 1960. Bob Gibson sinking a dynasty in 1964. "We'll see you tomorrow night," says Jack Buck after Kirby Puckett's game winning shot in 1991. The Stolen Base that ended the Yankees season in 2004. And now, one pitcher, one arm, and an 11th World Series title to the one of the most storied franchises in the senior circuit in 2011.

With the 2011 World Series, baseball has showed that it can be in the national conscience without it's two most popular franchises being involved in the final stage. It took timely hitting and breathtaking pitching performances. It took home runs that set the pace. It took too many men being left on base. It took promising seasons ending in heart break. It took one team that was apparently anointed as the chosen team by the baseball gods. It took the Boston Red Sox beating themselves out of a postseason berth. It took Delmon Young bashing the Yankees out of the playoffs. It took Chris Carpenter matching wits and pitches with Roy Halladay. It took a baseball renaissance in Milwaukee. It took the venerable Rangers bullpen against the comeback kids from Tampa Bay and the darlings of a depressed city and state in the Detroit Tigers. It took the Cardinals surviving from being a strike away from oblivion not once, but twice. There were so many great stories about this postseason that led to an amazing World Series that it could not be covered all in this post.


I hate the fact that the Cardinals won, but I guess in a way its poetic justice. Here's a team that was left for dead at the beginning of September and they kept playing. They kept showing up everyday and competing. And from there things seemed to go into their favor, just as they did when they stormed up on the Philadelphia Phillies in 1964 and fended off the Houston Astros in 2006. The Cardinals crashed the party when the Phillies finished off the Braves in the last week of the season. Ironically, they would then rid the Phillies in the Division Series. In the NLCS, they kept the Brewers from doing what they did better than any other team in the National League -- winning at home. And finally, in the World Series, the Cardinals were simply clutch when faced with being one strike away from their season ending.

What a story.

What a World Series.

What a postseason.

What a game baseball is.

More On Occupy Wall Street

If anybody has ever been in sales, then you'll know who Grant Cardone is because either somebody reference his training or forced you to watch it. In the car business, I was only referenced to it. His high-energy, positive motivational work has made him pretty much the prominent speaker for the sales profession, and his entrepreneurial work has been covered by the mass media. In fact, he has his own show, Turnaround King, on National Geographic.

If you're looking for a post for me bashing his contributions for the Church of Scientology, you won't find it in this post. Scientology is a joke and not really worth my time shitting on.

What this post is about, however, is his comments made on a Phoenix television station that he uploaded on this account on YouTube describing the Occupy Wall Street movement as a distraction. Many people continue to dismiss that Occupy Wall Street is nothing more than a movement of lazy, anti-capitalist Americans that want a handout. He also noted that he has never seen anything that looks like the mighty 1% of Americans oppressing the other 99%.

Hmm...

Before I get into that, allow me to digress for a moment.  The "American Dream" has been always romanced into a quasi-rags-to-riches story, as hard work, persistence, and dedication will pay off into comfortable living. That's a reasonable statement, and why not? People, such as Grant Cardone can tell that story. It's his story of making his wealth from dirt by taking a sales job and his reinforcement of the entrepreneurial spirit is what sold him so many damn books in the first place. It's a good story.

Same thing can be said about the late Steve Jobs -- his love of technology, his demand for perfection, and his savvy marketing skills brought him great wealth and reverence as the greatest technology executive ever. He too has a rags-to-riches story, from founding Apple in his parents garage to taking Apple to vanguard status in computing and telecommunications.

However, let's not confine ourselves to idealism. You can give your effort to anything and then still come out with nothing. That happens. Especially in sales. There are more people who don't experience what they deem to be success than those that would consider themselves successful and the unsuccessful/successful discrepancy is massive. Capitalism is a crapshoot, but I didn't tell you that.

I recognize that capitalism is a crapshoot. I've been in sales. I'm still in sales, by way of transitioning into the insurance industry. However, I'm also attempting to get a degree in business so I can head to the energy sector. I'm just like a good chunk of the people down in Wall Street -- broke, balancing school and work, and hoping for a payoff with my degree. I also realize that I have a real chance to fall flat on my face, and there is also a chance that if I do fall on my face, it can be as much my fault as it isn't my fault.

I wrote before that there are winners and losers in capitalism. Someone argued with me that this was a result of a mathematical outcome. I'm inclined to agree with him; its just the result of that said mathematical outcome is what brought thousands of people to Wall Street and as such, it moves past being just a mathematical outcome.

I also came up with the concept of "corporate arielism". Some of you would consider it a far fetched idea -- that corporations and the extremely wealthy want the other 99% or so to accept the fact that they have the income, they run the show, and they're in the driver's seat.
 
What I mean by the driver's seat is that they have the financial means necessary to solve many issues that the vast amount of Americans can't. Those issues can be anything; the financial means could be exercised in anyway -- whether its just throwing money at liabilities, throwing money in to invest, or throwing money to lobby politicians.

What I mean by how they run the show is that for better or for worse, they get called on to spur the economy. That's either through increased consumption, increased investment, or paying more in taxes. The monetarists and the Keynesians and the well off and the dirt poor turn to the 1% for all three reasons (give or take what category you fall into, you either are calling on all three, two of, or one of those things listed above). It's the Gospel of Wealth versus Social Darwinism.

What I mean by having the income is self explanatory. Then again, it is not self explanatory. There's a wide range of topics from commerce to capital gains. I don't count on your attention span to be that wide. It's not me being unable to make a point here; its me basically saying that they have an ability to generate income through the means that they have that most people don't have.

In short, the top 1% represent the "winners" in the economic game of capitalism. That's where Grant Cardone is. Good for him. Makes for a hell of a story to tell. However, his story won't get repeated 310 million times over.

I will have to dispute his notion that government has never fixed an economy. The United States government has fixed an economy before. It's called entering into World War II.

I will dispute his assertion that the Occupy Wall Street movement is a distraction; it's a necessary movement to address the issue that is going to dominate this century -- the income disparity with a corollary addressing financial greed and the corporate state. That's the gripes. In their eyes, its financial greed that wrecked the market place, the corporate state that allowed for it, and now greater income disparity as a result of it. They're pretty much right -- a free market will never truly behave itself, no matter how many times libertarians and conservatives will argue otherwise; Washington will hear big business loudest; and the income disparity, no matter how much people will argue that it is just a mathematical outcome as a result of capitalism, will continue at an increasingly unsustainable pace.

However, its not a political movement. It's a movement to bring awareness and to push for action, for there are those that work hard and still struggle. For there are those that seek to better themselves with education and degrees that are supposed to provide for a better pay day and a better life and still struggle. For there are those that can't afford to take care of themselves or see what issues with their health they may have. For there are those that can't find full time work, not because they don't want to, but because they can't. For there are those that are upset that as they struggle to make ends meet in the wake of the financial system's collapse, those in the driver seats of the financial sector have never been held accountable for the damage done -- in their eyes an injustice.

There are others, like Grant Cardone -- mainly conservative pundits and bloggers who believe in the "American Dream" of work hard brings rewards -- that only want to open their mouths to discredit the whole movement. However, what these pundits and bloggers fail to realize, that every tried and true system has an end game to it. Yet, the end game doesn't have to be doom and gloom, if we just use our heads.

The Confederate Flag

Proposed license plate (Houston Chronicle/Texas Department of Transportation). FAIR USE: I am only using this image for educational purposes only as it has to do with the subject of this post.

I'm writing this in response to a story that I saw posted on the Houston Chronicle's website about local political critics ramping up their campaign against the proposed allowance of a Confederate insignia to be on Texas license plates, which will be voted on by the Texas Department of Transportation next month. The proposal is sponsored by Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson on behalf of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The group plans on using the proceeds from custom license plate purchases to mark Confederate graves and build monuments for Confederate heroes. In turn, they will share the proceeds with the Texas General Land Office.

I went to school with a guy that had a girlfriend who bought him a Texas Confederate belt. The belt did not really offend me because he was not really a racist (even though he tried to act like one) and he did it out of Southern pride and not out of white racial supremacy. Or so I think. I haven't spoke to him in years so I could never really quiz him on his intentions. To tell you the truth, I really could care less. When it comes to racial issues I see it like this -- you're entitled to your opinion, however, if you have an issue with the color of my skin do not allow it to get to a point where you're interfering with my right to my own life. That's when we have problems.

It is indeed understandable as to why the Confederate flag offends the majority of Americans and not just black Americans. The Confederacy's Constitution guaranteed slavery and Southern politicians justified it by invoking a twisted interpretation of the Biblical story of Ham in the Bible. There are indeed those that use the Confederate flag to not only show off their Southern pride, but also as a racial intimidation tactic in support of white supremacy. Yet, at the same time, even the Confederate flag has increasingly began to take an avant-garde meaning to it -- as just a mere display of Southern pride and heritage. It is the avant-garde meaning that the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Land Commissioner Patterson are sticking to in their campaign for the insignia.

It goes back to freedom of speech. You're guaranteed the freedom of speech so as long as you are not putting others lives in danger. If the TxDOT allowed for the Confederate flag to be put on license plates, it would not interfere with others quality of life, however it might affect those that choose to have the Confederate flag on the license plate because they're going to stick out and the judgment calls will roll in. However, the formation and the existence of Confederacy was one of the many markers that was a part of the unfortunate first three centuries of American society, where there was widespread, legalized disenfranchisement based on the color of one's skin. But the Confederate flag manifested itself from being a flag of a nation that institutionalized racism to being a flag of a distinct part of the country with its own culture and distinctive heritage. Now, how much you are willing to accept the latter is up to each and every one of you, but personally I have accepted the "heritage not hate" aspect of the Confederate flag.

On a personal note, I'm not bothered by the Confederate flag. I've seen it flown, I've seen it on window decals, I've seen it on bumper stickers, I've seen it on online profiles -- you get the point. There's no point in oppressing or trying to cover up history, no matter how unpleasant. If you wish to fly the Confederate flag or display it in the name of heritage, fine. If you do so out of racist means, that's fine too, so as long as you do not interfere with my life and my right to live.

The Ron Paul Plan

I spent three days trying to write this, because I kept getting interrupted.

Ron Paul released his plan to "Restore America" which includes cutting $1 trillion in federal government spending during his Paul's first year in office (2013) and is schedule to deliver a balanced budget in 2015. Before I get into that, I want to start with Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

Paul's strict-interpretation view of the United States Constitution is in the vein of Jefferson, who believed in lassiez-faire economics, a limited central government, state rights, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. Like Paul, Jefferson believed that it was the duty of government to ensure the protection of individual liberty -- at least for Paul, augmenting the Bill of Rights with the basic belief that government should just stay out of private lives. This is a generalization, but in fairness it does capture the major premise of Paul's political beliefs in comparison to Jefferson's philosophy on what's proper American democracy.

The unique feature about the American Constitution is how ambiguous it was when it was composed and ratified as to how it should be interpreted, not withstanding the Federalist Papers, whom scholars and jurists use as the source of intent with the Constitution -- something that James Madison, one of the authors, didn't intend. Jefferson, along with primary Constitution author Madison, disliked the idea of a strong national government because, although not explicitly stated, would go against the whole point of fighting for and winning independence from Britain. Their rival, Federalist Party leader Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury in the United States, pushed for a more "loose" interpretation of the Constitution that would provide for a stronger central government, spearheaded by a strong military, the assumption of state debt by the federal government, and a central banking system.

Don't worry: I'm not trying to delve deep into American history so much to the point where you feel like you're sitting in a history class. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because the debate between Jefferson and Hamilton over what's really the proper  of the Constitution is relevant to today because in the wake of exploding federal debt, we're now coming to the point here in the United States where the size of government in proportion to the population is coming in to question. As most of the people that have regularly read my blog know, I've written about this already.

Paul believes that government is too big, that the central bank is the root of all evil, personal responsibility must be promoted, and his budget plan looked to resolve these issues and more. You can view his plan here.

So here's the itemized list, for those that do not want to read:

• The termination of the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Education
• Abolish the Transportation Security Administration
• End corporate subsidies
• Abolish foreign aid
• Ending all foreign wars and entanglements
• Lower the corporate tax rate to 15% and eliminate the death tax
• Repeal of "Obamacare", the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and terminate all "onerous" reforms by Executive Order
• Audit the Federal Reserve and "implement competing currency legislation"
• Cut the Federal workforce by 10%, cut Congressional pay, and take an executive pay cut
• Spending freezes on various departments and agencies including Medicaid, State Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Food Stamps, Child Nutrition, the Department of Justice, Agriculture, Transportation, State, Homeland Security, Food & Drug Administration (FDA), Centers of Disease Control (CDC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

So, here's the score card:

• Generally, most people do not really see the point of any of those five agencies existing. However, that largely comes from an ignorance from what functions they serve and why the departments are seen as useless. The Department of Energy is responsible for nuclear waste, and the focus of the department is cleaning up the mess left behind by the Cold War and has never seen any worthwhile investment in the department until the Obama administration. The Department of the Interior manages all lands owned by the federal government which suffers from severe backlog and has a history of corruption -- who the hell will buy these lands in a privatization move is anybody's guess. The Department of Commerce does a lot -- from administering the Census, to promoting economic growth, to monitoring the weather, to establishing industrial and technological standards; I would assume that most of these duties would move to the private sector, which will produce mixed results. The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides a means for the poor to acquire housing even though the real issue with HUD is the quality of housing.
  
  The Department of Education is a different story because throughout the existence of the Department, its Constitutionality has been debated, with opponents citing the Tenth Amendment and the lack of the mention of education in the Constitution with proponents citing the Commerce Clause. A significant function of the Department of Education is providing collegiate student aid. Other than that, a lot of the functions of the Department of Education are largely symbolic. The only way that the Department of Education would work is if the American educational system would be nationalized to provide for a uniform, mandatory educational system across the States. In other words, the first four would be better served overhauled more so than absent; as for the Department of Education, it either has to go the way of the chopping block like Paul desires or actually become a full blown regulatory body.
• The Transportation Security Administration's failure is in personnel and in training. Some people only consider the TSA to create only a false sense of security, considering the massive undercover failure in 2006 and the harassment controversy of 2010. However, the creation of the TSA was wholly reactionary and it has been cultivated with inefficiencies since its genesis. However, I think an airline security system has a place -- just not the TSA.
• The ending of corporate subsidies and the rollback of the corporate income tax go hand in hand. However, Paul's plan did not make any specific mention of the closing of corporate tax loopholes, which allows most corporations to avoid paying the 30+% corporate income tax. Paul's website noted that the latter should spur domestic American investment by allowing companies to repatriate capital without facing taxation. This is assuming that these corporations find it more lucrative to invest domestically than to put their foot in the door of globalization. Companies use taxation as an excuse, which is fair, but companies are going to go where labor is cheapest and they can make the biggest return on their investment (i.e., Asia).
• Paul aims to get out of the foreign aid and foreign war business, returning the United States to a non-interventionist foreign policy. There's an upside and there's a downside to that -- the upside that it saves money. The downside is that rooted in whether you not you believe in the "Gospel of Wealth That Can Cover My Ass".
• The federal workforce and the political pay cut: it's nice, but it's political grandstanding.
• "ObamaCare's" failure is not doing anything to address exploding health care costs. In cutting Medicaid and Medicare funding, Paul isn't either. In fact, it's putting too much of a gamble into the private sector, which will be overran by additional health care costs, causing the cost of acquiring health care services to skyrocket as insurance companies try to maintain their profits.
• The Dodd-Frank Act was called a disaster by Paul in a recent debate that levied a cost of $1 trillion on Americans. I don't think that much, but the Durbin Amendment is a screw job and it's why I have to pay $60 a year to use my debit card with Bank of America. I don't think the financial markets should go unregulated, but even I think most of the Dodd-Frank act is rooted in garbage.
• The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 does two things: forces companies to use proper accounting purposes while at the same time costing companies a whole hell of a lot of money to be compliant. While some people blame the Sarbanes-Oxley act for a drop in IPOs (Initial Public Offering, or when a company goes offers stock to investors; with a Wall Street editorial recording a low figure for 2008), it dropped below 100 in 2001 (before it was passed), averaged over 200 IPOs a year from 2003-2007, dropped back down to 32 in 2008, increasing to 63 in 2009, and 157 in 2010. However, American firms would be better served if the they were forced to comply with IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards).
• Most of the spending freezes are made with the intent of passing more responsibility to the states and the free market. I hope Paul realizes that the added responsibility to the states would be passed on to the constituencies by way of more taxes. It's inevitable if the States have a desire to remain solvent for that I can assure you that austerity measures really won't fly here in the United States. Not to mention, the free market can't be the solution to everything. 
• He wants to bring back the gold standard. Only issue is that there's more currency than could be supported by gold.

In short, Paul's plan is a wishlist that's partially unrealistic. Any executive order he enforces will come back to bite him as an abuse of power and a violation of his libertarian stance. Most of these dissolution of the departments and federal spending cuts would result in chaos that most consumers and states would not be ready to incur, since most of the resulting burden would be passed on to them. However, I give him credit: at least he came up with a more coherent plan than laughable draconian shit fest of Paul Ryan's budget.

Yes, media, Ron Paul is relevant

Official United States Congressional Photo of Ron Paul (2007)

"We furnish the Presidential race." - Somebody in some media organization that decided that the most compelling presidential race will be the one that is the most salacious.

Maybe there is a point to Ron Paul being somewhat ignored by the mainstream media -- he currently does not lead in any of the major polls for Republican candidates and there's only moderate awareness of him compared to Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry. However, the truth is that the mainstream media shoves Romney, Cain, and Perry down our throats, along with Michelle Bachmann and Chris Christie, despite the fact that Bachmann is not even a relevant candidate and Christie has no intentions in running. Aside from the fact that Paul is the most prominent American libertarian since Barry Goldwater, Paul has very little the media would want to salivate over: he doesn't utter comments in stupidity (Perry), has no controversy surrounding his religion (Romney), and he does not have a catchy tax plan (Cain).

I have to applaud Ron Paul despite the fact that I disagree vehemently with his economic views. He doesn't live for the political sideshow, his views have been largely consistent, and for the most part he practices what he preaches. He never maxes out his Congressional office budget and he has not enrolled in any Congressional pension plan. There's nothing really controversial about him (okay, there was the newsletter issue that he actually handled pretty damn well in my book). Not even his comments about the United States involvement in the Middle East. He doesn't even live for the soundbite. He doesn't have any political feuds. At least Andrew Napolitano gives him face time.

Paul doesn't get any attention in any of the presidential debates, which is something I really don't get. Rick Santorum is a pop conservative, Bachmann uses too much hyperbole, Perry aims for shock value, Jon Huntsman is a narcissist, Gary Johnson is way out in left field, and Romney is actually a moderate who is trying way too hard to appeal to conservatives. Paul offers solutions and political beliefs that can be subject to debate on an intellectual level, which is something that cannot be said about the rest of the Republican candidates (all right, I'll give Romney some credit). As a corollary to that, Paul professes far superior knowledge of the issues and offers said solutions that are far more coherent. Whether or not media outlets such as Fox, CNN, or even Bloomberg are intimidated by Paul or just trying to milk Romney versus ______ so much is up to all of you to decide, though I'll personally vote for the latter.

Overall, besides the media's infatuation with Romney versus ________, the media's real issue with Ron Paul is that he's not really a pop candidate -- as in, a candidate that the media can easily make a generalization about. He's not a party personality or a personality of a movement. Or, in other words, he's Ron Paul, a libertarian, instead of Ron Paul, the GOP superstar or Ron Paul, the darling of the Tea Party. He is truly his own man and his own candidate and he refrains from political grandstanding and pandering so that he can score constituency points through the media. That's what his followers adore about him. Consequently, that's why the media seems bored with him.

Notwithstanding, there's no guarantee that if Paul got even more media exposure that he would be a candidate that would be setting the world on fire. Considering that he is the most coherent Republican presidential candidate, he probably would set the world on fire, at least for the GOP. However, it is clear that if Ron Paul's candidacy is not successful, then it will be largely the fault of the mainstream media, who the American public will turn to be educated about the candidates, that consistently push him to being the candidate for libertarian political underground. When considering that, it is a damn shame that the media is doing a disservice to the American public with the debates: the debates should be more about a forum to get to know where all the candidates stand and not a political grandstanding and pandering showcase.

Yet, while most of the country remains ignorant to Ron Paul, he still continues to raise money at an aggressive pace with a series of successful Internet-based money bombs and donation drives. Paul still has a populist appeal that could resonate with more and more voters as the primary season begins to heat up at the beginning of the 2012 calendar year. Make no mistake about it: despite the fact that he is not a media darling, he is still a relevant candidate. It's my hope, personally in at least for the sake of healthy, sensible American political discourse, that Paul does not remain lost in the shadows of political mainstream media engineering.

Shasta's Awake: The University of Houston

UH Cougar game at Robertson Stadium. (University of Houston Athletics). FAIR USE: I'm only using this photo because it is relevant to the subject that I'm posting about, NOT to obtain profit.

Two and a half years into my collegiate career (counting the years I did dual credit in high school), I started at the University of Houston to major in architecture -- also known as, "that other big school in Texas", "Cougar Fucking High", "the college for students that couldn't afford Texas or Texas A&M", "the largest commuter school in Texas", and other derogatory nicknames that have been uttered ever since the school was founded in 1927. The school at the time was in the middle of transition -- Dr. Renu Khator became Chancellor and thus chief executive of the University of Houston that January with the stated of goal of elevating the University of Houston to tier-one status and developing a national relevant athletic department. Needless to say, it was a campaign that most non-Cougar supporters cared for or even blew off; I don't even have to mention what the vast majority of the alumni did.

For years, and even to some degree now, the University of Houston has not had much of a reputation here locally. Many are going to watch a Longhorns game or an Aggies game before they would watch a Cougar game. Many won't shut up about the glory of attending Texas or Texas A&M, yet, they'll only utter two condescending sentences about the University of Houston. But up to the last few years heading into Khator-era University of Houston, that's the reputation that the school garnered because of decades long  complacency: the University of Houston will provide you a degree because you need one, athletics whenever you are bored, and the opportunity to live at home because you can't afford to live on campus in Austin and College Station, much less anywhere else.

By the time Dr. Khator marks four years being head of the University of Houston, she has managed to be the catalyst for an improvement in the academic system that has put the University of Houston into Carnegie's top 50 national school rankings, finally bringing the school tier-one recognition. I would imagine that US News & World Report's elevation in rankings for the University of Houston will follow in 2012. Athletic director Mack Rhoades, along with Cougars head football coach Kevin Sumlin and head basketball coach James Dickey, have returned Cougar athletics to national conversation for the first time since Bill Yeoman and Guy V. Lewis, respectively. In fact, the University of Houston has even scored at Big East Conference invite. New school buildings are being constructed. It's now fashionable to live on campus. School spirit is contagious. Believe it or not, people are proud that they attend the University of Houston.

Indeed, the University of Houston has a long way to go. Its endowment, across the entire system, only barely squeaks past half a billion, compared to over $14 billion for the University of Texas and $5 billion for Texas A&M University. However, that is expected -- Texas and Texas A&M have a widespread appeal that comes with being founded in 1883 and 1871, respectively, and it undeniably hard and nearly impossible for a school like the University of Houston that's not even a hundred years old to reach. But, at the same time, it is not the University of Houston's intention to be an alternative to Texas and Texas A&M; the school intends to be a school of its own, with its own appeal. The school wants you to attend the University of Houston because it is the University of Houston -- a primary choice instead of a remedial choice.

Dr. Khator's generation of students, and I mean this for the students that were here in 2008 whenever she took over, are going to be the ones that pay the school the most dividends later on. We will be the alumni that will be donating to the school. We will be the ones that will be the boosters for the athletic departments. We will be the ones that will say, with pride, that we attended the University of Houston.

It's nothing short of amazing to see the transformation of this school in such short time. If you are a former University of Houston student and you haven't been on the campus in years, take some time, any time, and just walk through the campus. I promise that you will be in awe. While like I said, the school has a long road ahead to lead it from the abyss of being "just that other big school in Texas", the University of Houston is off to a hell of a start. Count me as one of its biggest supporters and I will be a big supporter, even after I graduate from here.

Dr. Hall, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Not Cry About The Lockout

This post is my attempt to give a shit about the NBA Lockout. Let's see how successful I am.

Bill Simmons is right. Unless you are a die-hard NBA fan, you probably don't care too much about having two weeks of the season already cancelled.

My friend is right as well. Nobody really gives a shit about the NBA until the time period between the Super Bowl and Spring Training, and even then the NBA will play second fiddle to March Madness.

It's a shame. The 2010-2011 NBA season was one of the finest in recent memory in terms of quality of play. My Houston Rockets did not make the postseason, but it was still a fairly enjoyable season for myself -- a mere casual basketball fan. The NBA Playoffs were the most compelling in recent memory. The NBA Finals told one of the greatest sports stories ever -- in fact, probably one of the best stories ever in the history of pop culture period.

So here you have it: two sides at odds over money, a little over $4 billion. Most fans don't really care -- we don't have much of an opportunity to have empathy for those that have seven to eight figures to the left of the decimal point in salary while the vast swath of us have our yearly income stop at five digits. The owners are crying foul that players are taking up too much profits and of course the players are fighting for their money. It's just two sides wanting their fair share of $4 billion.

Michael Wilbon says that the NBA is inviting public ridicule. He's a basketball journalist and I respect his opinion. He's right to a certain extent. The ridicule won't be widespread. It will be widespread in the media and a total inverse outside of it. Because few people care.

The reality is that the NBA does not mean as much as it used to, despite its popularity these days. It's not nearly as popular as it was during the Magic-Bird or Jordan years. Players such as Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Dwight Howard, and others are all well regarded, talented players, yet history will show that they're not going to resonate with fans to the degree that Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, David Robinson, and Hakeem Olajuwon do. I can even throw Shaquille O'Neal and Gary Payton into that camaraderie. NBA players these days are hard to get behind and are even harder to have an enduring adoration for because of the current culture of the league.

When I say current culture, I'm not talking about how the NBA has now become the hip hop culture's sporting arena, or in some pejorative views, a "thug league" -- I'm talking about the NBA's culture of being a talent-diluted sports league with mediocre television coverage. I'm talking about how for a decade one conference was vastly superior to the other. I'm talking about a league that has way too many players playing professional basketball too early. Never mind the D-League -- its not really useful as a developmental league in the degree that NBA teams hope for it to be.

A note about this past season. It was a marvelous season. Yet, as a 23 year old, I can remember back during the 1997-98 season when I was 9 and 10 years old, that the quality of play was better. And for those that just do not understand what I mean by that, find time to watch any game from the 1990s. The players were far more seasoned and fundamentally sound then because the culture of the league back then did not put value on players that left college basketball, the true farm system of basketball, too early. The NBA play of today, while decent, can be at times egregiously sloppy. It's not me trying to be classicist. There will be times that the quality of a NCAA game these days will be as good or even better than a NBA game, while a decade ago it would have been inconceivable to say that.

This is not an NBA that anybody is in love with. It just simply isn't. The NBA is a casual fan's league; the casual fan who would not lose sleep at night if they did not have the NBA to watch this winter. The NFL, as we've seen, was a different story. Same thing with Major League Baseball, albeit to a lesser degree. There's a love affair amongst fans with the NFL, Major League Baseball, and for the tight-knit fan minority, the NHL. It really does not exist with the NBA.

However, this may be a positive for the NBA, at least when the league starts up play again, whenever that will be. The casual fan will easily go back to the NBA. You may think that's preposterous, but look at it this way: the casual fan has a limited or even absent emotional attachment to the league; they won't give two shits about a work stoppage and when play begins again, they'll make time to watch it out of generic, casual interest. The reason being is that they're a fan of the game of basketball itself more so than they are a fan of any individual league or any given franchise. It will work in the NBA's favor.

In the meantime, casual fans, like myself, will observe the NBA being absent, but we're not going to cry rivers about it.

Okay, so attempting to care about the NBA lockout was somewhat successful.

Life Is A Business

Wall Street (Getty Images). FAIR USE: This image is not used for profit. This image is used for metaphorical purposes only in relation to the subject of this post. Plus, it was modified from its original, color form.

Some Spring night during my 8th grade year, I had a conversation that I cannot really remember that had to do with some girl that I liked and I somehow fucked it up. In an attempt to make myself feel better, I declared that life was a business and love was an investment, a la the stock market. A friend of mine was in agreement with me, and for the most part, I carried that philosophy throughout high school even though I drifted away from it as I got older.

Occasionally I went back to it here and there whenever the situation was deemed fit, but by the time I turned 21, I for the most part abandoned it. For the next two years my personal life was a disaster. It was manageable until my professional life followed suit. I was doing anything I could to preserve things that probably shouldn't have been preserved; and when I lost the worthless things that were not worth preserving, I found myself doing anything and everything to make myself feel better.

You can't run a business as a series of patches and fixes for short term stability, put off finding a long term solution later, and run a successful business. Your business will be a disaster, you will be in despair, and you'll be quick to raise the white flag on the prospects of prosperity. It works the same way with life.

Life is a business, but of a different kind. Success is defined by you, whatever it may be that meets your criteria of success. It could be that big house, or that Porsche, or it could be as simple as being able to provide for yourself and family in comfort. The ups and downs of your life cycle -- your personal business cycle -- depends on what emotional or mental state that you're in. They're wide variables. Plug in whatever you want.

There's boom and busts, growth and depressions -- those fucking depressions that get us. There's always being an optimist, being a pessimist, or being a realist. There's being a realistic pessimist until you have a reason to be optimistic. It's similar to various schools of economic thought -- there's something for everyone, from the mixed-economist Keynesians, to the free market Chicago and Austrian schools, to the communal socialists. Fill in your own fucking blanks.

This isn't me being nihilistic, no; this is a corollary to what I mentioned before in the post about the value of living. This life that you life is whatever you make of it. This life is your business, your own fucking business. And just like any business that exists, it's up to those at the genesis of the business to lay the foundation of success. It's up to those that run the business to interpret what happens into positives and negatives and advantages and disadvantages. No, I'm not trying to go Ayn Rand on you. All I'm saying is don't box yourself in, for your life is your business.

The Value of Living

Monterrey Bay, California (Getty Images) FAIR USE: This image is not used for profit. This image is being used as a metaphorical device in relation to the subject of this post. This image has been heavily modified from its original form.

I remember during a sales meeting I was at about two years ago when I still sold cars, my general manager as a motivational tool discussed the concept of legacy. While he went on about how the success of oneself in the car business can tie to their own legacy, I rather write a blog post that is a whole hell of a lot more broad than that.

There's two view points in legacy -- the reflective point of view and then the observed point of view. The reflective point of view is self explanatory -- it's how you view your legacy and how you hope that others view your legacy. I would imagine that most of you want to have a positive legacy (in your judgment), that you did X, Y, and Z and everything in between. I will leave you to fill in the variables.

The observed point of view is also self explanatory -- its how others view your legacy. Others may see that you did X, Y, and Z and everything in between, either positively or negatively. They're going to be the ones that fill in those blanks.

Legacy is tied to what you value in living. While I did start off this post about legacy, legacy only inspired this post, because it is the concept of legacy that can skew someone's point of view about living. This post is about the value of living.

I'm a person that has been unemployed for nearly three months as a result to an acrimonious conclusion to my career in the automobile industry. I hopped from place to place, flaked out on job opportunities, and effectively ran myself out of the business. More or less I could say that I burned myself out, considering my care for, and consequently my success in, the business began a decline that never reversed itself starting in the late summer of 2010. I just recently acquired my life and health insurance license and I'm about to embark on a career in the insurance industry.

My family struggles financially. I'm not ashamed to say that: credit card debt crippled the household. It wasn't my family living beyond their means -- when the cost of living increases affected my grandparents, they turned to credit as alleviation. Unfortunately, it proved to be unsustainable and it snowballed. My mom, would suffer a hemorrhagic stroke that damaged her thalamus in 2010, does what she can with her disability (including still taking care of my grandparents with me acting in a predominantly relief role), but its still an unpleasant situation.

I think I can speak for just about anyone that would say that they rather have their life get easier as they get older than get harder. They do everything that they think they can do to prevent that, but it happens -- my grandparents and my mom have been affected by numerous health issues from strokes, to hypertension, to diabetes, or in my grandfather's case specifically, heart issues and a leg amputation. Needless to say, my house currently does not have the highest morale in the world.

Yet, through all of the shit that is going on, it made me reevaluate the value of living and the value of self, no matter how many times I'd elect to blow my brains out.

I'm not religious. I don't sit and pray to get through the day. That's not me. Nor is it really a criticism of religion or the religious. It's just not me. I'm not really a dreamer either.

Really, I only require three things to make me happy -- the ability to be creative and to act on it, my family, and to be myself.

I have all three. In August I completed Twenty Years, which remains my biggest artistic achievement. I still have the family that I grew up with. And, even with controversy, I'm still myself. It's the last thing that has grown on me, especially with the headaches of the past few years.

The value of living, the true good life, is not about how much materialistic possessions you can accumulate and retain. It's not about how much wealth you can accumulate and retain. It's not about how many people you can get to adore you. It's about day in and day out, you value and you appreciate yourself. I'm not talking about being a narcissist. I'm talking about that no matter what happens over the course of time, you never lose sight on who you are. It is you that's living, it is you that's breathing, and it is you that is making the most of an opportunity that you have been given to exist in this time and place, no matter who you want to give credit to.

I'm talking about not surrendering yourself for short term gain. You'll pay for it in the long run when you ask yourself what the hell happened to you. It's about fighting the good, smart fight when you're struggling; not fighting just for the sake of fighting -- you'll never prosper and when you think you are prospering, you're really not. I'm talking about looking in the mirror and not having to apologize to yourself for who you are, never mind having to apologize to anybody else.

To those that are struggling, keep in mind, fight smart and don't surrender yourself. It's not me trying to be motivating. It's me telling you the truth. Once you surrender yourself, any benefits that you think you may begin to reap are worthless because you will crumble under the house of cards upon the falsehood of self that you built. To those that are prospering, be proud and value your prosperity, but don't forget the fact that you are too, a human being. You're a part of this existence as much as the person that does not know when or where their next meal is going to come from.

I look at those that live in other countries, especially in the third world where the rule of day is poverty. In East Africa, men, women, and children struggle daily and fight for survival, not only out of necessity, but because they do value themselves and their own lives. It's a common theme amongst many that are poor -- while they lack a lot, they still have themselves, and its for themselves and for the ones that they care for is the reason that they keep pushing, even if they want to credit this belief system or that belief system.

Of course, there is the caveat to everything -- the human emotion. That's understandable and not everything I'm writing now is going to work for everyone because there are emotional and mental blocks that render a person defensive, and in cases, helpless. I'm not going to delve into total idealism, however, I will close with one thing.

This life that you live, no matter where you are or where you standing is what you make of it. It is whatever you buy into. It's whatever you accept or reject. Whatever it may be, value the fact that you live, breathe, and the fact that you even exist in this time and place of land and people period. That's what makes your legacy -- how much you truly embraced that.

WWE: No good stories? No good television

I have not watched the WWE on a regular basis ever since the Attitude Era heyday, so it's a bit odd that I'm actually writing a post about professional wrestling. I'm an artist, professional wrestling is performance art, so why the hell not. I have followed it, mainly because I'm curious about the product these days, and at times, I'll check out a WWE Raw, or two. However, I figured I would weigh in about why the WWE is really struggling creatively.

Let's face it: WWE product is horrific. If you thought back in the day it was really cheesy when it was the WWF, cheesy would not begin to define the product of today.

It's scripted entertainment. And like any scripted entertainment, if it's of high quality, you can forget about the fact that it's scripted, you can forget about some of the implausible aspects of the angles (or storylines for those that are not familiar with professional wrestling jargon), and just enjoy it. That's what made the Attitude Era and the couple of years after it so memorable -- not necessarily the content of the angles as so many fans claim, but because the episodes and the angles were well written.

The most successful years in WWE history were from 1999-2001, the peak of the Attitude Era, where nearly 15 million people would view WWF Raw and WWF Smackdown to watch stars such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, and Mick Foley, amongst others. Edgy, well-written, cohesive angles along with seasoned performers provided for an action-packed, dramatic, humorous, and entertaining two hours every Monday and Thursday night that would leave fans buzzing the next day either at school or at work

The key to any story arc -- whether it's professional wrestling or a sitcom or even a movie franchise -- is continuity. A corollary to that is confidence in the story arc to continue on it, following the five parts to the story -- exposition, rising action, climax, denouement (falling action), and finally the resolution. For professional wrestling, every angle needs every element in that order for it to be successful. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Before I continue, I'll use an example with probably the most memorable feud of 2001 -- the angle of The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin leading into the most popular Wrestlemania of all time, Wrestlemania X-Seven (17), which was held here in Houston in April 2001.

• Steve Austin won the Royal Rumble, which put him into the WWF title match at Wrestlemania X-Seven (exposition). The angle became about Steve Austin's quest to regain the WWF title. The Rock would win the WWF title from Kurt Angle at No Way Out, setting up the Wrestlemania title match -- The Rock vs. Stone Cold, whom would headline Wrestlemania for the second time in three years.
• The fact that it was The Rock and Steve Austin added intrigue to the story because of their intense rivalry that has existed between the two ever since late 1997. The rising action during the time would be how the conflict became more and more intense, as Austin showed his desperation to regain the title.
• The climax was the match itself, held at Wrestlemania. In one of the most memorable matches put on by both performers, the story of the match was Austin, no matter what he did, could not put away The Rock. The twist, or really what was supposed to be the heel turn (for those that are familiar with that, when a face, or good guy, becomes a villain), was when WWF chairman Vince McMahon interfered in the no disqualification match on Austin's behalf and assisted Austin in winning the WWF title from The Rock.
• The falling action took place the following night on Raw: The Rock demanded and was given a rematch for the WWF title, that was held in a cage. The Rock was in the cusp of winning until Triple H interfered, leading to a brutal and bloody beat down on the Rock at the hands of Triple H and Austin. This was done to write The Rock off television as he would take time off to go film The Mummy Returns.
• The conclusion was held on Smackdown as Vince McMahon would do an indefinite (scripted) suspension of The Rock as a result of the events on Monday. This concluded the angle between The Rock and Steve Austin

At the time, the head writer was Stephanie McMahon, Vince McMahon's daughter, and it was during that time some fans grumbled about how the continuity of the angles was beginning to suffer, especially in comparison to the quality of the previous year. The year 2000 was so successful because of the late Chris Kreski, who spent most of 2000 as the head writer of the WWF. Kreski would be at the helm for some of the most critically acclaimed mainstream feuds of the year -- Mick Foley and Triple H, The Rock and Triple H, The Rock and Chris Benoit, and Steve Austin and Kurt Angle. The draw of the angles, along with the draw of the performers such as The Rock and Steve Austin, gave the WWF the most mainstream exposure and acceptance since Hulk Hogan did so in the 1980s.

The reason why the angles worked so well was because of the continuity. The storytelling abilities of the performers only made it better. The episodic show format was in full stream with dramatic, promo-oriented segments that would set the tone of the show, always leading to an exciting, pulsating, over-the-top finish. Everything about every show served the angle; every promo that was cut by the performer; every action that was taken in the ring. It was all about advancing the angle and making it as entertaining and captivating as possible. The real secret, however, as to what really made the Kreski-era as head writer successful was his use of storyboards.

For whatever reason, wrestling insiders criticized Kreski for using storyboards. Yet, despite the cold reception, the storyboards worked. Raw was regularly scoring 6.5 to 7.5 ratings. Smackdown was doing a healthy 4.5 to 5.0. Fan interest was maintained and pay-per-views were meaningful.  How do you sell pay-per-views? Especially with a monthly pay-per-view system? To build up a conflict so much, to get people so emotionally involved in it, that people would pay their hard earned money to see it resolved.

If you notice in the past few years, few angles have actually followed that format, and it has been at its worst for the past three to four years. The WWE's last well written angle was way back in 2005 during the Dave Batista / Triple H feud. Observe:

• Disharmony between Dave Batista and Triple H (exposition)
• At a contract signing, Ric Flair and Triple H try to get Dave Batista to go to Smackdown so that Triple H would not have to defend his World Heavyweight Championship; Batista completes the face turn by attacking both Triple H and Flair and going on to face Triple H at Wrestlemania (rising action).
• Batista defeats Triple H in a back-and-forth match at Wrestlemania (climax).
• Batista defends the title against Triple H at Backlash; Batista would come out victorious, but Triple H attacked him with a sledgehammer the following night (falling action / denouement)
• Batista defends the title once again against Triple H, this time in a Hell in a Cell match at Vengeance, coming out victorious and effectively concluding the feud (conclusion).

Note, the contract signing episode for that Raw was the last time Raw garnered a 5.0 rating. At the time, Batista was a stellar performer (despite him being somewhat mediocre in his promos) and he had a relatively fresh character, so it was easy for fans to buy into the well written angle. The Backlash and Vengeance, which at the time were pay per views featuring only performers from WWE Raw, actually did fair numbers, considering both pay per views only featured 6 matches.

There were three angles that concluded in the past two months without any real resolution: the anti-authority CM Punk angle, the Cena-Del Rio feud, and the labor dispute angle. The CM Punk angle came to a close when the WWE had to throw Money in the Bank (and Royal Rumble) winner Alberto Del Rio into the title picture so that Del Rio could be the WWE Champion heading into their upcoming tour of Mexico. The strange thing is that the angle came to a close when the angle was actually at its climax, in the wake of very well performed matches with John Cena. The Cena-Del Rio feud never took off because it never got any foundation for a build up. The labor dispute came to a close this past Monday night when Vince McMahon made a surprise return and put John Laurinitis into the authority figure role. While obviously this was done to set the stage for Survivor Series and the return of The Rock, it serves as examples of how two promising angles (the Cena-Del Rio feud was a mere consequence of the Punk feud coming to an end) were stopped before they went anywhere.

There's a reason why the WWE can no longer hold its weight on Monday nights, even with Monday Night Football. It's not about how the characters develop or what direction this or that performer is going in. All of that is secondary as to how the angles are written. If the angles aren't written properly, then it provides for an undesirable show, both for the audience watching at home and the crowd in attendance. Maybe it would be a good idea for the WWE to start using storyboards again -- they need it. Well, at least that, and not have such a knee-jerk reaction to when angles don't work. While that's a reality because the WWE is a publicly traded company, the WWE shouldn't stray too far from a formula that actually brought the success that was the reason why the WWE went public in the first place.

Occupy Wall Street

Protestors at Occupy Wall Street in New York City on 17 September 2011. (David Shankbone, Wikipedia)

To satisfy my humanities requirement for my degree, I'm taking American Cultures this semester here at the University of Houston. I'm not necessarily going to publicly criticize or make a gratifying statement about the course. It's just a class, I take it online, and I just took the midterm earlier here on campus.

I have to credit this class to introducing me to something that most people are not even anywhere familiar with. Hell, I never even heard of arielism until I read about it a few weeks ago. However, the American interpretation of José Enrique Rodó's 1900 seminal work is rooted in elitism as, Frederick Pike wrote, the American elitist clique believed that the lower class needed to be "liberated" from materialism, which was fed to them by Corporate America. Indeed, Rodó's Ariel does criticize materialism, but also calls on the need for Latin American youth to aspire to not fall into the shadow of the United States. Keep in mind, this was written two years after the Spanish-American War which established the United States as a world power and the cemented the States as the national power of the Western Hemisphere. Whether American arielists misinterpreted that part of Ariel or deliberately ignored it, who knows.

I bring this up because the American elitist gripe of the early 20th century is has similarities with the Occupy Wall Street / We Are the 99 Percent social movement that has sprung up in the past three weeks.

Pike wrote that the American arielists aimed to expose the lower class to higher cultural tastes for they believed that culture should set the tone of society and not economic achievement. He further wrote that these arielists sought to reaffirm what they believed to be their place in the American social hierarchy (of course them being at the top) and basically leave the "lower class" to be happy with their lot in life and accepting of their subordinate position to the cultural elite. Needless to say that something of this sort happened, but not in the way the arielists would hope for it to happen.

A brief history lesson here: as the modern "corporate America" took shape in the late 1880s it gained a fairly shitty reputation, as evidenced by strike after strike by laborers that felt victimized by Corporate America and a federal government that felt that Corporate America represented an obstruction on the American economy. Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt based their presidencies around "trust-busting", which was basically the federal government's fight against cartels (or at the time widely known as "trusts"). However, Corporate America had the same aim as the American arielists albeit in a different way: people of the "lower class" in this class the actual economic lower class and middle class, should be happy with their lot and accept the fact that Corporate America runs the show in the United States. In addition, Corporate America believed (and advertised) that materialism should be where Americans find value.

It brings us to today.

A friend of mine wrote to me on Facebook in response to my post on what should be the size and role of government in the United States that the wealth and income disparity statistics is mainly a product of a mathematical outcome. I did concur that it was a mathematical outcome, however, when considering all points, it comes out to being more than just a mathematical outcome. It's a by product of what I call corporate arielism: that Americans should be accepting of the fact that corporate America provides the hands from which the United States feeds from, whether it is in the form of politics, society, or simple daily life. The value of life, at least in the eyes of Corporate America, should come in the form of how much you are able to participate in materialistic consumerism. It will be Corporate America that allows for opportunities to exist. It will be Corporate America that decides whether or not the opportunity that you think is yours is really yours. Corporate America will be responsible for what it wants to be responsible for. And I could go on and on.

Take that into consideration, and it is obvious to see what the Occupy Wall Street movement is actually about. Those that support movement believe that Corporate America arielism is screwing Americans in many forms from not hiring, to laying off, to not providing enough jobs, to health care, to hijacking the political process, and to securing their financial position at the expense of the American that wants to pursue their dream of living a comfortable, decent life. Whether the logic is flawed is in the eye of the beholder; however, their message shouldn't be ignored.

Like I said before, there are winners and losers in capitalism in the sense that someone gains wealth at the expense of someone else. Is that the reality of the free market? Sure. I'd be absolutely stupid to deny that. However, capitalism, corporate arielism, and Corporate America as we know it now have a bigger question on their hands as middle and lower class discontent begins to grow and spread: sustainability. So few people can control so few of the wealth for so long. Personally, I believe this: if the Occupy Wall Street gains the momentum that their inspiration, the Arab Spring, did, then just maybe we will see a new form of arielism to develop over the course of this century that the majority of Americans will be willing to accept -- the arielism of the middle class, where the middle class runs the show and the upper class will have to be the ones living with it, and the middle class would be free from having to abide by and depend on Corporate America.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Steve Jobs, late founder of Apple, Inc. (Apple.com) FAIR USE: This image is not being included because I want to make money, I'm only including this image for educational purposes only, for he is the subject of this blog post.

Steve Jobs went from a teenager growing up in Silicon Valley with an interest in technology to being the most influential technology executive the world has ever seen because of his vision in the power of technology. He gave Steve Wozniack the idea to sell the original Apple I, recruited Ronald Wayne and Mike Markkula for business expertise for the fledging Apple Computer, Inc., and the rest is history.

Steven Paul Jobs passed away on Wednesday at 56 years of age. He had stepped down from being Apple's CEO in August 2011, a red flag to many of those in the technology world and Jobs fans alike that his health was still an issue, even though he had largely been quiet about it.

You can read obituaries written about him here, here, and here. However, I want to make this blog post about the most important legacy that Jobs left behind -- despite the fact that he will be remembered mainly as an incredible product pitchman and for getting Xerox to lend their computer graphic interface technology to Apple which would lead to creation of the Macintosh in the early 1980s, Jobs never wavered on his philosophy on what technology should truly be about -- to engage the user and to make lives easier. That's why the Mac OS are generally regarded as more user friendly than Windows. It's why the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad are widely revered examples of popularizing the mobility of your personal life. That's why you have a wide array of fonts to express yourself. That's why you have color graphics on your computer to enrich the time that you spend on the computer.

Granted, he was not at the genesis of a lot of these ideas -- the personal computer, an advanced computer graphical user interface, and portable computing devices were already in well matured development by the time Jobs became a Silicon Valley superstar in the mid 1980s. However, what can be attested to Jobs is that he had an uncanny vision to see what would work and what would not. He saw the Macintosh project as a more marketable advanced personal computer than the Lisa project. He saw the need for Apple to back to its visionary, avant-garde roots when he regained control of the company in 1997. His mercurial, demanding nature for perfection which would give developers fits is a clear reason why so many of Apple's products that they have released so far in the 21st century has been met with widespread praise.

In addition, what drove Jobs's popularity (especially amongst the Apple brand's most rabid supporters) is him being seen as the good guy in the technology world; a knowledgeable corporate executive that looked to be more than just a figurehead and furthermore, an antithesis to everything that is wrong about corporate America. His managerial style and his popular presence made it okay to like (and amongst others, adore) Steve Jobs. It's why you could probably look across the blogosphere and the social networking web and see a lot of people down and mourning Steve Jobs as if he personally knew him -- because he was a down to earth, visionary executive that all in all, was of the common man.

Chrysler Reborn

The 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8, the fastest American made SUV. From AutoTribute.com. FAIR USE: This image is not being used for profit, but an educational purpose, because it is one of the subjects of this blog post.

My friend's fiancee just bought a 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee the other day and at long last Chrysler's turn around has finally hit me -- despite the fact that I've seen the latest generation Grand Cherokee on the road for months, along with the new Chrysler 300, the Sebring-successor 200, and the new Dodge Charger.

When the American automotive industry melted down in 2008, Chrysler was on life support, beleaguered by an aging and uninspired line up. Chrysler's mid-size offers, the Chrysler Crossfire and the Dodge Avenger, were far from being legitimate contenders; the Dodge Durango and the Chrysler Aspen were ugly, not quite mid-size nor not quite full-size SUVs that drank more gas than they were worth; and Jeep's ploy to introduce fuel efficient products to compliment their range of rock crawlers fell flat on their face with the Compass and Patriot (two vehicles that probably should have never been made. Steep incentives, such as employee pricing and mind-boggling rebates (which was a practice in use by Ford and GMAC at the time) diluted values, even though dealers exacerbated even more by going full press on liquidating their inventory. Hell, even AutoNation did not want any more to do with Chrysler -- killing off all of their Chrysler dealerships by 2009.

Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that bought 80% of Chrysler from Daimler AG at the end of 2007, was seeing their plan for Chrysler's revival erode thanks to the poor economic climate that was brought about by the collapse of the financial system. Cerberus would be bailed out from being consumed by the Chrysler Sinking Ship by the United States and Canadian governments, and would subsequently give up their controlling interest in Chrysler as a condition of the loan from the United States government. During this time, Chrysler only introduced one new product -- the remarkable 2009 Dodge Ram 1500, that despite its high praises, actually did not make a serious dent in the automotive truck market that remains dominated by the Ford F-Series.

For most of 2009 and 2010 we did not hear a lot of specifics about what would be coming from Chrysler, even in the immediate months after Sergio Marchionne assumed control of the automaker on life support. However, Chrysler finally made heads turn towards the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011.

Jeep debuted a hand new Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango for the 2011 model year, the latter moving to a unibody platform for the first time. While the Grand Cherokee has always maintained its status as one of Chrysler's best products (along with the Dodge Ram and the Jeep Wrangler), the new Grand Cherokee is a testament to the new Chrysler -- products that are the children of thoughtful research and development. The Jeep division complimented the Grand Cherokee by offering a vastly improved Compass (even though I still do think the vehicle should have been never made). The Durango, now on as stated earlier a unibody platform, gained better looks, better handling, and better fuel economy; a true credit to Chrysler for not giving up completely on at least attempting to see if Dodge still has any value as a brand in the SUV market. The Durango has sold fairly well, even if not at the clip of the GM Lambda crossovers or the Ford Explorer.

In addition, Chrysler's mid-size sedan offerings -- the now Chrysler 200 and Dodge Avenger -- are a lot more respectable in looks and the features that they offer. Are they going to make the mid-size heavyweights tremble? No, but at least you are now able to drive around town in them and not necessarily have to put a paper bag over your head in shame.

The Chrysler 300 and the Dodge Charger are remarkable stories in their own right. The refreshed 300 is the first to get Chrysler's new 8 speed automatic transmission, when paired with the 3.6L Pentastar V6 engine, becomes first rear wheel drive American full size sedan to crack 30 miles per gallon highway. The redesigned Charger SRT-8 is a salivating piece of automotive machinery aesthetically. If the Charger gains the 8 speed transmission as rumored to go with its 6.4L V8 engine, then Chrysler may have the most attractive options for an American made performance sedan, considering it would be thousands of dollars less than its nearest rival, the Cadillac CTS-V. Chrysler has not received this much widespread praise in the cars they produced since the Chrysler LHS, Chrysler 300M, and the Dodge Intrepid were selling in respectable numbers in the mid to late 1990s.

Whether Chrysler keeps this momentum remains to be seen, yet the rebirth of the company is undeniable. All four brands -- Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram -- are reporting hefty sales increases along with positive reviews of its products. A competitive Chrysler, is not only good for them, but good for American consumer and good for those that have their livelihoods depend on the American automotive industry.

So What Exactly Should Be The Size and Role of Government in the United States?

What should be the size and role of government?

The current picture of the United States is as follows: the nation as of the 2010 Census is inhabited by 311 million people, with 46 million Americans falling below the poverty line as of 2011 (granted the 14.3% of Americans living in poverty in 2010 is nowhere near the 22% that lived in poverty in 1960), with the top 20% controlling over 80% of the wealth as of 2007 (with the top 1% controlling 40% of it), and with the top 10% of income earners pulling in nearly half the wages paid out in the United States as of 2007. The latter two statistics haven't been seen since World War I.  Middle class wages have largely stagnated and reports have sprung out that they have begun to drop; upper class wages have slightly dropped as well, but middle class erosion is at ten times the velocity of the upper class.

It's not too surprising -- the American ideal is that if you work hard and become successful you should be able to reap the rewards from it. That's a fair argument, however, any rewards that you reap are at the expense of others. Elizabeth Warren is right -- no one in this country got rich by themselves. However, as the rich get richer, they are able to retain more of it and expand on it for that they can weather any increase in the cost of living to a degree that no one in the shrinking middle class can. Besides, the wealthy retains their purchasing power, despite their high tax rate (which remains lower than the peaks of the mid-20th century when it reached as high as 80-90% for millionaires, however, then just like now, despite the heavy taxation they still had more purchasing power than the majority swath of the population).

It is a consequence of the greatest peace time expansion  in history back in the 1990s -- income did increase for Americans in the 1990s, however, cost of living increased faster, causing more and more middle class Americans to rely on credit, which caused more and more Americans to fall into debt when more and more Americans reached their limits in credit. Combine that with the emergence of the global marketplace, new technologies to replace labor, and companies realizing they can retain more earnings by paying less for labor by outsourcing it, ended up slowing down consumption. A downturn in consumption affects the middle class more than anybody because it is these wage and salary earners in the middle class that need the rest of the middle class to keep them employed.

As a consequence, its led to the expansion of the welfare state. Welfare spending has increased by 160%, nominally, in the years between 2001 and 2011; an illustration of an expanding role of government. Of course, the US population over that time period only grew by 10%. Numerous things lead to increased welfare expenditures, all of them well publicized to the point that I don't really need to repeat every single last one of them; but this is going to be continuously the reality of a country with disparity this bad.

Yes, it does seem like I have digressed to what I originally set out to discuss, but I have not -- this has everything to do with the role of government, because as much as middle class American despise and distrust the government, middle class Americans will turn to it because the middle class truly believes the challenges that they are facing currently are bigger than them. Americans don't necessarily want to pay for it, but they'll turn to it. And, as the vast majority of Americans see more and more of their collective wealth erode, they're going to raise their expectations as to how government should conduct themselves, and then react in anger when they do not feel that government is serving its purpose. It's always been like that. With the advent of the Internet and 24 hour news media, we're just a whole hell of a lot more aware of it.

Americans want the government to solve the health care issue. Americans want government to improve infrastructure. Americans want government to come up with a solution to the economy. Americans want government to ensure that when they get old, frail, and can't work, government will be there to provide them their safety net in income. If it was not the case, Americans would advocate for the dissolution of the three major entitlement programs, would not care if roads fell into disrepair or goods would not be able to efficiently move across the country, and Americans would chant for lassiez-faire economics until it makes a Democrat bleed to death from the ears. Americans aren't, no matter how loud the Tea Party is purported to be.

Yet, at the same time, we're debating what should be the size and role of government. What can be agreed on is that government should be there to ensure individual liberty. Believe it or not, that's actually the basic tenet of American liberalism (which, for example, if pop liberals are to truly adhere to true liberal philosophy then they would actually support gun rights). So, in theory, at least in my mind, the size and role of government should be proportional to what is necessary to ensure the individual liberties of 311 million Americans.

Not every American can elevate themselves up the class ladder and escape poverty. Not every American is going to be well enough to take care of themselves. This is a capitalist system: there are bound to be winners and losers, those that make money and those that don't. There will be those that will be self-sufficient and self-inefficient. There will be those that will be stuck depending on the government for an extended period of time because unfortunately they fell through the cracks. Long story short, there are those that cannot help the disadvantaged position that they have put in and in truth, that is the collective truth that makes up the lower middle class and the lower class that waddles in poverty.

But what constitutes individual liberty? The right to health care? The right to own guns? The right for government not to tax the living shit out of you even though taxation is actually necessary? The right to not infringe on your privacy? The right for you as a middle class American not to have your livelihood assaulted by the private sector that has proven not to be able to behave itself? Is it the right to even having a middle class? Do the lower class, especially the ones that cannot help their position, have a right to have a decent life provided to them by the government? And I could go on and on. I could further drivel into government's role in the economy, but I'll save that for another day.

I'm going to get to the whole point of this post: Americans -- from the constituency to the politicians -- have no collective fucking clue about what's the optimal government proportion of size and role to population. That's why you have two different political parties warring over ideology in Washington. It's why you have four predominant schools of political philosophical thought. It's why Sean Hannity has a career. It's why Fox News and MSNBC have regressed themselves into being ideological news outlets. It's why you're pissed at Bush, why you're pissed at Obama, and why we keep debating who's better out of Reagan and Clinton. That's why we have the current political climate and class warfare.

**Note: If you're wondering I didn't go on and on about how the wealthy factor into this it's simple: if there's a 80%/20% in split in wealth held by a 20%/80% split in the population, respectively, with a further 1%/99% split among that 20%, it's obvious that the wealthy are in the driver's seat.