The Washington Post reported yesterday that two-time World Cup Argentinian, Marcelo Gallardo, is set to join the D.C. United. Unfortunately, Gallardo’s joining coincides with the exit for one of my favorite United players, Christian Gomez. Gomez and the United couldn’t come to agreement on the terms of his contract.
It will be great to have someone of Gallardo’s caliber here in DC, but he’s an aging player, so I’m hoping that injuries won’t plague his first season with the Black and Red.
Time will only tell, and given that I’ve joined Barra Brava this year, I should have plenty of time to see what Gallardo will do for our guys.
The New Yorker is one of those publications that I wish I had a lot more time to read. I took the time today to read this great piece about the differences between Senators Clinton and Obama.
While it’s difficult to summarize a seven-page article, here are a few excerpts:
In the recent debate before the Nevada caucus, Obama, who confessed to being disorganized, said that the Presidency has little to do with running an efficient office: “It involves having a vision for where the country needs to go . . . and then being able to mobilize and inspire the American people to get behind that agenda for change.” In reply, Clinton likened the job of President to that of a “chief executive officer” who has “to be able to manage and run the bureaucracy.”
Obama spoke for only twenty-five minutes and took no questions; he had figured out how to leave an audience at the peak of its emotion, craving more. As he was ending, I walked outside and found five hundred people standing on the sidewalk and the front steps of the opera house, listening to his last words in silence, as if news of victory in the Pacific were coming over the loudspeakers. Within minutes, I couldn’t recall a single thing that he had said, and the speech dissolved into pure feeling, which stayed with me for days.
I would highly recommend taking the time to read the whole article. It is a great illustration on two very interesting people.
If you’re wondering, I haven’t made up my mind about a candidate. It doesn’t matter much anyway from my perspective, because I still vote in North Dakota and North Dakota caucuses require a voter to be present to vote.
According to Bloomberg, President Bush is expected to announce tonight in his final State of the Union address (say it with me, “Hooray!”) that:
(he) will issue an executive order tomorrow directing federal agencies to ignore any earmarks included only in committee reports, not in the text of legislation.
Most spending bills passed by Congress contain only a very small percentage of instructions on where the funding should be directed, probably less than 5%. The allocation of the other 95% or so, is up to the discretion of the agency. Should the President issue this executive order, Federal agencies would ignore the instructions attached to the relatively small 5% directed spending.
Unfortunately, President Bush doesn’t seem to understand that it is Congress’ power to control the power of spending, not the President’s. Certainly, there have been abuses of Congressional earmark power, such as the infamous bridge to nowhere. However, many Congressional earmarks are legitimate projects that bring jobs and necessary infrastructure improvements to states.
If the President proceeds, it will open a door to what I suspect will be a Constitutional fight between the Executive and Legislative branches that will be quite interesting.
This is an old story from last week, but I thought I should post about it:
The Center for Public Integrity released a report detailing the false statements that the Bush Administration made leading up to the war in Iraq, with some pretty startling results:
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
Also:
Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.
It is unfortunate that this wasn’t brought to lie more in the media, but these findings are absolutely worth nothing. I guess this sheds a little more truth to the anti-war cry, “Bush lied, people died.”
This past week was one of those less-fun times when one battles a cold. Dana was sick two weeks ago and I managed to stave off catching it until she had recovered. The jury is still out whether that is a good or bad thing. However, it finally caught up to me - fortunately, after I was able to have a really fun weekend (aside from that whole record store closing business).
I’m just now getting over it, and have stopped sneezing so profusely. I’ve watched a lot of movies this week. It was pretty difficult to do much else. My energy levels were pretty minimal all week, and even when I thought I could do something, I would tire quickly. Fortunately, I had all of the major items off my plate at work, and was able to relax relatively stress-free.
I was able to catch some pretty wonderful cat photos:
Here’s a sample of a new record that I am absolutely in love with. The album is Dusker by Kiln. Here’s a sample of “Korsaire [Airplaneshadows Rebuild]:”
I just across a neat piece by Time Magazine that has some good news for fans of vinyl records:
990,000 vinyl albums were sold in 2007, up 15.4% from the 858,000 units bought in 2006.
This 15.4% increase is a notable change in the span of one year. The increase is likely even higher given that these numbers account only for new vinyl that is registered through Nielson’s SoundScan sales tracking system. Some stores like Orpheus don’t have their sales tracked through Nielson, and sales of old vinyl are also not tracked.
It would be naive for anyone to argue that vinyl will overcome CD sales, but this is good news for vinyl geeks. With increasing sales, artists will continue to notice the value of vinyl for their fans, and will hopefully continue to increase the effort they put into vinyl releases.
Dana and I had intended to go to Philadelphia today, but we had to postpone our trip because Dana is sick yet again. It’s just a cold this time, but I’m hoping she’ll recover quickly. She’s had a busy and sick last few weeks.
Now, I’m very happy we didn’t go. Today I received some of the most depressing news I’ve had in a very long time:
Orpheus is my favorite record store. I’ve become very attached to it over the last three years in Washington. The owner is a pretty quirky guy, but he’s very friendly and was always willing to search for new records for me. I went to the store today with the intention of only buying a few records. I saw the sign and knew immediately that limit was out the window.
Fortunately, I walked in the store and it was packed. I waved to the owner, Rick, and let out a deep sigh, knowing it would be one of the last times I saw him. I went and found his employee, Carl, and tried to find out what was happening. He said that their landlord won’t renew their lease, and even if he would, he would more than double their rent. I’m still not sure if that’s legal. There was a slight poetic feeling in the air, as the first song on the stereo when I walked in was “Tiny Dancer” by Billy Joel. It seemed a fitting end.
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