After a 7-year drought against the Georgia Bulldogs, my beloved Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets have emerged victorious over the Clarke County Correctional Squad.

Here’s what makes this so sweet:

• Exactly ZERO people would have predicted Tech could beat Georgia this year (except for maybe Coach Paul Johnson)
• Virtually NOBODY predicted Georgia Tech would win more than 5 or 6 games - and certainly not end the regular season with a 9-3 record and prospects for a major bowl game
• The triple option - the new offense installed by 1st year head coach (and GENIUS) Paul Johnson - was criticized as being a “high school offensive scheme that would never work in major college football” - yet we averaged 41.5 points per game against SEC opponents - supposedly the toughest conference in football
• Our team is VERY young - if my stats are right, only 4 of our defensive starters are seniors.  Virtually the entire offensive unit are freshmen or sophomores.
• The incredibly arrogant Georgia running back Knowshon Moreno had 94 yards of rushing and one touchdown - yet he was only the 3rd most productive back on the field today, despite his showboating.  Georgia Tech’s Roddy Jones had 214 yards and 2 touchdowns and Tech’s Jonathan Dwyer ran for 144 yards and two scores.

Lest I be criticized for being a poor sport like the Clark County Correctional Squad, allow me to say for the record:  Well done on the offensive side of the ball, bulldogs.

But let’s all be clear about something:  There’s a new day dawning where Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football is concerned.  It’s all about Coach Paul Johnson, and the attitude that he’s put into this team.

And he’s done it in his FIRST YEAR as a head coach at Georgia Tech!  The thing that’s so special and so unique about this team is that they just won’t quit! That’s not the style that former coach Chan Gailey pursued.  That guy didn’t give a damn about winning.  He was clearly happy with 7 win seasons, because that’s all he ever got with the exception of one year.  And our teams under him were not FIGHTERS…

…Not so with Coach Johnson.  This guy has put the heart of a fighter in our team.  Remember Rocky III and the song “The Eye of the Tiger”?  It’s as if Coach Johnson has created the football version of “The Eye of the Tiger” in the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

Wow.

Congratulations Yellow Jackets.  Congratulations Coach Johnson.  Very good things to come.

My Fantasy Goddess (aka “wife”) Carole and I visited Savannah over the weekend on business but took some of our spare moments to enjoy some of the local flavor.

And what flavor there is in Savannah!

My two recommendations from this visit are:

• Huey’s - this is a really great seafood restaurant on River Street.  The shrimp and grits and the seafood omelet are both to die for!
• Savannah Smiles - this is a dueling piano bar on Williamson near River Street.  Carole and I went there to watch the Georgia Bulldogs get DESTROYED by the Alabama Crimson Tide (which thrilled me and made Carole very unhappy) and got to enjoy a really great show and lively atmosphere.

The only disappointment was that we didn’t have time to do a “pub crawl” like we did once before.  If you’ve never done it, you really must.  The way it works in Savannah is like this:  You join an organized group at some restaurant, and you then follow that group (who has a specific leader familiar with the area) from pub to pub at which two things happen:

1. The leader tells a ghost story about the history of the particular building you’re visiting (since Savannah is of course the “most haunted city in America”) and
2. You get a drink at each pub

As you can imagine, as the evening wears on, the quality of the ghost stories become less and less important, and the social environment among fellow pub crawlers grows ever more cordial.

All in all, a really good trip.  I’m thankful to be married to Carole.

Let’s be clear:  The evidence is overwhelmingly abundant that Barack Obama’s only skill is in reading from a teleprompter.  I’m no fan of his, and I think the man is the worst news for our country in years.

But even so, I felt a sympathy pain for the guy when I saw the ad below.  Not because he deserves sympathy.  But because the content of this ad is so powerful that it can’t help but shed more light on Obama’s radical anti-life policies.

Here’s the ad:

I don’t know anything about this group called BornAliveTruth.org.  They may be wackos, or they may be good salt-of-the-earth people.  Either way, if the statement of Gianna Jessen in that video is true - and I have no reason to doubt it - then Obama has just taken another serious body blow.

Being a privacy-conscious person, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Big mistake.

Here I am, six years later, and I need to transfer those domains to another registrar.  No problem.  I click the “Privacy” options in my control panel to turn off the privacy featured (required to transfer a domain), and am informed I have to log into my account at Domains By Proxy, GoDaddy’s privacy service, and turn off the feature within that account.

No problem.  Only, it’s been six years and I no longer have the login information.  So they ask me to enter a bunch of information EXACTLY (like an address)… only I don’t know which address or have failed to enter it EXACTLY as they want.

No problem.  I can have the login information reset by printing out a form they provide and faxing them a copy of my driver’s license.

I’m getting annoyed by this point, but hey - they’re being careful.  So I do that.

Next I receive an email from them saying that the copy of my license is illegible and they need me to scan it and email it to them.  (The copy of my license that was faxed to them was PERFECTLY legible, by the way.)  Furthermore, they need one of several different types of documentation about the COMPANY listed as the “current account holder”.

So I checked my account.  My account shows no company name, it shows only my name.  So maybe they are referring to the name of the company I was using when I originally registered the domain.  No problem - I’ll go find out what that company is and find documentation for it.

Except - that information is protected by the PRIVACY feature, and even I can not see it, even though the domain clearly belongs to me.  So there’s no way I can find out which of the several companies I’ve been involved with may still show on the registration record.

Here’s the kicker:  These people are happy to take my money to extend the registration of the domain names.  They’ve done it for years.  But they absolutely, positively refuse to unlock these domains so that I can have access to them myself and transfer them to another registrar.

I used to be a reseller for GoDaddy, and my clients have registered hundreds of domains through them.  So have I.  But never again.

I use NameCheap.com now.  As far as I’m concerned, the only value of GoDaddy is the hot women in their TV commercials.  Because GoDaddy’s domain registration service SUCKS.

I don’t blame you for your bitterness, Pam.  At one time you were described as “America’s National Fantasy”.  But now the next Vice President of the United States happens to be quite a bit hotter than you.

It’s ok, Pam.  We all understand your insecurity.

The immediate purpose of this report is to give documentation to the notion that fundamental supply and demand had nothing to do with the price variation.  The medium-term purpose of this report is to provide basis for enabling the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission) to regulate the trading of oil futures.

My friend, this is a power grab by the government, pure and simple.  And it’s based on second-grade logic.

So for the benefit of you morons in the government, I’ll make it easy for you:  If an oil futures contract is available to be sold and someone wants to buy it, there’s both supply and demand.  In that scenario, prices are likely to remain stable.

(For those of you who have a brain, please be patient.  This is for the benefit of those who never studied 7th grade economics.)

If there’s a sudden influx of buyers who all want to buy oil futures contracts, that creates excess demand.  This makes the price go up.  That’s what has happened for the last several years.

The problem here for the government isn’t that “supply and demand” aren’t in control of oil prices.  Clearly, there was significant demand from those evil, nasty speculators.  The government’s objection is the SOURCE of the demand.

This is just another class envy play the government is using to try to expand its own power, and it is absolutely disgusting.  After all - those oil speculators are certainly very wealthy.  And in this country, Congress likes to take aim at those who are successful so that underachievers will feel better about their lack of accomplishment.  It’s a way for the government to act like they’re doing something about the oil price increases, while actually doing nothing helpful at all.

Allow me to further explain why the idiots in Congress are doing this country a disservice on this issue.

If this report is correct (it’s not) and speculators are entirely to blame for the rise of oil prices, this leads to three conclusions:

1. Speculators are also responsible for the deflation of the market, as their money is being removed and/or applied to short-side oil trades
2. Speculators are not more powerful than supply and demand, because the timing of their “exit” from the market coincided directly with President Bush signing an executive order allowing offshore oil drilling, which would increase future supply and therefore potentially diminish the value of the oil futures purchased by the speculators.
3. Speculators assisted in and were subject to the larger supply-and-demand equation, because this oil price run up has directly resulted in a major public outcry about the price of oil, prompting both government action to increase oil exploration and significant changes in the driving habits of the American public.

All in all, we should be thanking speculators for taking action that will ultimately push forward the energy independence of the United States.  Without their involvement, the U.S. public never would have reached a “tipping point” for oil.  But that point has been reached, and it appears highly probable that changes are on the way.

Interesting.  By that standard, Barrack Obama may actually have one qualification.

But let’s focus on the issue at hand.  There are two angles to consider here:  (1) The factual accuracy of the statement and (2) the political ramifications.

Factual Accuracy - On that basis, Carol Fowler is clearly an idiot.  Ms. Fowler may not like that Palin is the governor of Alaska.  Ms. Fowler probably disapproves of the fact that Sarah Palin has a very clear history on the issues that are important to the Republican base.  And Ms. Fowler may even dislike the fact that Sarah Palin is a fantastic communicator who has even managed to command the respect of many who oppose her.  But Ms. Fowler’s preferences don’t make fact.  The facts make Ms. Fowler wrong

Political Ramifications - The public isn’t responding well to factually inaccurate statements and false negative innuendo about Sarah Palin.  Witness the results experienced by the magazine US Weekly when they ran a cover story about Ms. Palin titled “Babies, Lies and Scandle”: While the publishers clung to the notion that the word “lies” referred to untruths told about Palin rather than by her, the cover of their magazine clearly made a different statement.  And the result was that, according to MSNBC, US Weekly has had more than 5,000 subscription cancellations within a few days of publication.

So, Carole Fowler:  Please continue your winning ways.  You’re displaying great judgment, if one makes evaluates on the basis of benefits to the Republican party.

I love Georgia Tech football.  It’s in my blood and I was a big fan of Georgia Tech football even before I attended GT as a student.

I’m so excited about the future for our football program, and it’s centered around one person:  Coach Paul Johnson.

Coach Johnson is a winner, pure and simple.  Wherever he goes, he wins.  His grit and determination remind me of another Atlanta sports hero, John Smoltz of the Atlanta Braves.

The recent win at Boston College was extremely encouraging - and not just because the scoreboard was in our favor at the end of the game.  There were three big keys to the victory on Saturday

• Played As A Team - I haven’t seen Georgia Tech football teams actually behave as a “team” for a very long time.  That was definitely in evidence on Saturday.
• Defense Rocked! We’ve been accustomed to great defense at Georgia Tech due to the presence of John Tenuta for the past several years.  And the greatness of past defenses led to a lot of concern about the results we could expect this year.  So far, Coach Wommack has done an outstanding job.
• The Team Improved Each Quarter.  Georgia Tech has not traditionally been a fourth quarter or even a second half type of team.  Particularly under Chan Gailey, the Jackets seemed to give up about 10 minutes before the game was over.  But this team truly got better and looked sharper with each successive quarter.  I’ve never seen that with GT football, and it’s really exciting.

All in all, it was a truly great day for the Georgia Tech football team and athletic program.  Congratulations, Coach Johnson and team - and many more!

Check out my post and a bunch of comments about it over on Bryan Ellis’ Free Real Estate Training.

This is a sad day.  It shows clearly that the current administration does not believe in free market principles.  It shows that the Bush administration feels that the laws that apply to other failing companies - primarily bankruptcy laws - should be ignored in favor of special handling for Government Sponsored Entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The stock market will almost certainly rally today in a really big way in response to this action.  But don’t believe it.  Stock market rallies created by government action are false rallies.  That’s what happened in the late 90’s as the government constantly cut interest rates and ran up the stock market more and more.  And what do we have in response?  The mortgage crisis.

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When John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate and she became an instant celebrity, she also instantly became the perfect guest for Oprah Winfrey.  It’s impossible to deny that.

However, Oprah won’t invite Sarah Palin on her show until after the election.  Why?  The reason is clear:  Barack Obama is Oprah Winfrey’s preferred candidate, and she understands the promotional power of her own show.

The hypocrisy is found in Oprah Winfrey’s statement in response to the reporting of this news on Drudge Report:

The item in today’s Drudge Report is categorically untrue. There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show. At the beginning of this Presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates. I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over.

Oprah has already hosted Barrack Obama on her show, and has campaigned quite directly for him.  She is taking a position in this election, and it’s clear which side she’s on.  Yet she’s claiming that her show is free of support for any particular platform.

Oprah Winfrey is a liar.

And Oprah Winfrey is completely within her rights to do whatever she wants.

To be clear, I wish that she would have Sarah Palin on her show.  It would be an incredible opportunity for the McCain-Palin ticket to connect with female voters all over America, and the results would almost certainly be positive for the Republican party.  Furthermore, it would be a huge win for Oprah, as ratings for such an interview would certainly be stratospherically high.

Oprah knows this, and has no interest in anything that will promote the Republican party.  And while “freedom of speech” is the law in the United States, Oprah is running a private business that is not subject to such Constitutional requirements.

The end result?  Oprah is biased.  Oprah is a liar.  And Oprah is totally within her right to be those things.