Where am I?

Some random thoughts regarding just about everything............

1) Has anyone else noticed how Senator Barack Obama, now that he's the President-Elect, is now delivering comments and speeches in font of a podium which reads "Office of the President Elect"? How %^@!! presumptuous and full of oneself can this guy be? Nobody has ever done anything like this before him. That is just the height of hubris.

2) Robert Malley was supposedly pushed out of the Obama foreign policy team, but that may not be true after all. It seems as though Mr. Malley took a trip to Cairo and Damascus shortly after the election to inform the dictators running those countries that they could expect some changes in U.S. foreign policy once Barack Obama is sworn in as the President: http://reformsyria.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=84:us-european&id=2211:obamas-road-to-damascus&Itemid=201 (translation: He will be more pro-Arab). Well, gee, I am shocked. It's only what I have been saying for months. Now, the groundwork is being laid for it to actually happen. Assuming that it does, every supporter of Israel who voted for him will have a lot of explaining to do.

3) I'm still stuck in a post-Disneyworld rut. No one ever wants a vacation to end, and this one was no exception. It's hard for me to believe that just a week ago today, I was trekking around Disney Hollywood (formerly Disney MGM) Studios. Mrs. BHG and I are already talking about the NEXT Disney vacation, which unfortunately won't be for a while. We'd like to stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge for that one. The oldest of the little BHGs already asked if we can go back next year. I had to break it to him that these vacations aren't exactly cheap.

4) I see that oil prices have dropped nearly 62% from their July high of $147/barrel. They are currently hovering around $56.50/barrel, with some analysts forecasting that they will continue to drop, possibly as low as $40/barrel. I don't know if it will go that low--OPEC will continue to cut production in order to prevent the price from dropping too far. However, while we are all happy about the over 50% decrease in gasoline prices over the last four months, we should also be mindful of the fact that the biggest reason for this decline is decreased demand caused not by the high prices but by the global economic slowdown (and in particular, the one here in the U.S.). If and when the economy picks up, so will the price of oil (and gas). The mantra I was chanting during the price run-up remains just as true now as it did then--We need to get ourselves off the oil addiction, and soon. All we are doing by continuing it is to fund countries who by and large hate us.

5) Amazingly, I got to see something the last week of October that this area of the country hadn't seen in a quarter century, which was a local professional sports franchise get crowned as a champion. The Philadelphia Phillies were deserving winners of the World Series, going 11-3 in the playoffs and losing no more than one game in any series. In the World Series, they throttled the American League Champion, the upstart Tampa Bay Rays. something that the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox had utterly failed to do in the post-season. Here's what I found most impressive about the Phillies' win: They didn't lose a game at home during the playoffs, going 7-0. In Baseball, home field advantage means less than it does in other sports, so that kind of a run is hard to achieve. I may be wrong about this, but I think that the last team not to lose a game at home in the playoffs was the 1998 New York Yankees, a juggernaut that won 114 regular season games (22 more than the 2008 Phillies). That's pretty impressive company. Better yet, on October 31 there was a season-ending celebration at Citizen's Bank Ballpark, where the team plays, and I was able to take the eldest of the little BHGs, who is a sports nut, to it. As I told him, sports champions from this area are all too rare, so he should enjoy this to the fullest.