Daily archives: January 23rd, 2010

Oakland A’s Prospect Grant Desme Leaving Baseball For Call Of Priesthood

From Yahoo! Sports:

Well, here’s a story you don’t see every day.

Grant Desme, a 23-year-old minor league outfielder in Oakland’s system, is retiring from baseball to follow a calling into the Catholic priesthood.

The story was first reported by Fox Sports’ Jon Paul Morosi — perhaps appropriately with that first name of his — and this isn’t a case of a struggling player going through an early-life crisis. Desme was ranked the A’s eighth-best prospect by Baseball America after hitting .288 with 31 home runs and 89 RBIs in A ball in 2009 and he was just named MVP of the Arizona Fall League.

No, this is not something you don’t see every day.

Best of luck to Grant.

More here.


Weekly Address: President Obama Addresses This Week’s Supreme Court Decision (Video and Text)

Washington, D.C.–January 23, 2010.

One of the reasons I ran for President was because I believed so strongly that the voices of everyday Americans, hardworking folks doing everything they can to stay afloat, just weren’t being heard over the powerful voices of the special interests in Washington. And the result was a national agenda too often skewed in favor of those with the power to tilt the tables.

In my first year in office, we pushed back on that power by implementing historic reforms to get rid of the influence of those special interests. On my first day in office, we closed the revolving door between lobbying firms and the government so that no one in my administration would make decisions based on the interests of former or future employers. We barred gifts from federal lobbyists to executive branch officials. We imposed tough restrictions to prevent funds for our recovery from lining the pockets of the well-connected, instead of creating jobs for Americans. And for the first time in history, we have publicly disclosed the names of lobbyists and non-lobbyists alike who visit the White House every day, so that you know what’s going on in the White House – the people’s house.

We’ve been making steady progress. But this week, the United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence. This ruling strikes at our democracy itself. By a 5-4 vote, the Court overturned more than a century of law – including a bipartisan campaign finance law written by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold that had barred corporations from using their financial clout to directly interfere with elections by running advertisements for or against candidates in the crucial closing weeks.

This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy. It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way – or to punish those who don’t. That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests and stand up for the American people can find himself or herself under assault come election time. Even foreign corporations may now get into the act.

I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.

All of us, regardless of party, should be worried that it will be that much harder to get fair, common-sense financial reforms, or close unwarranted tax loopholes that reward corporations from sheltering their income or shipping American jobs off-shore.

It will make it more difficult to pass commonsense laws to promote energy independence because even foreign entities would be allowed to mix in our elections.

It would give the health insurance industry even more leverage to fend off reforms that would protect patients.

We don’t need to give any more voice to the powerful interests that already drown out the voices of everyday Americans.

And we don’t intend to. When this ruling came down, I instructed my administration to get to work immediately with Members of Congress willing to fight for the American people to develop a forceful, bipartisan response to this decision. We have begun that work, and it will be a priority for us until we repair the damage that has been done.

A hundred years ago, one of the great Republican Presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, fought to limit special interest spending and influence over American political campaigns and warned of the impact of unbridled, corporate spending. His message rings as true as ever today, in this age of mass communications, when the decks are too often stacked against ordinary Americans. And as long as I’m your President, I’ll never stop fighting to make sure that the most powerful voice in Washington belongs to you.

Source: whitehouse.gov


Google’s Fourth-Quarter Profit Nears $2 Billion

Google is on fire.

From the Washington Post:

Google Inc. appears to have regained its financial stride after wobbling through most of 2009.

The Internet search leader strutted its stuff in the fourth quarter, producing a profit that blew past analyst estimates while revenue growth accelerated from a leisurely stroll to a quickening gallop.

The results released late Thursday were driven by an upturn in Internet advertising, the main source of Google’s income. More marketing generally coincides with an improving economy, or at least a feeling that things are getting better.

Google also is benefiting from media trends that are shifting more advertising from newspapers and broadcasters to the Internet.

“We are clearly not in a recession right now, but the pace of recovery is different in different markets,” Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer, said in a Thursday interview.

The United States so far appears to be bouncing back from the recession quicker than Europe, Pichette said.

I hope that’s true. We’re not seeing the jobs yet, at least not in the Chicagoland area.

Here’s to all those who are still out of work…

Kudos to Google.


Maddow: Can Obama Wrest Control From Corporations?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Barry got his groove back. The president is back in campaign mode, taking on the bankers, for real.

And that’s a good thing.

Look…

The value of the stock of some of the biggest banks took a dive this week. You know what that means?

The value of their collective stocks was just another bubble. It wasn’t real. They’re not really worth that much. And that’s okay. That’s a good thing.

None of the financial institutions of this country should be "too big to fail." No bank should be more important to our economy than pork bellies, or any other bellies.