1. Fashion designers don’t want Snooki, of Jersey Shore fame, to be associated with their brands. So, they are sending their competitor’s bags [...]]]> While trying to recover from yesterday’s House Boat party, I came across a number of interesting economic articles that probably will make good water cooler talk with your coworkers this week.

1. Fashion designers don’t want Snooki, of Jersey Shore fame, to be associated with their brands. So, they are sending their competitor’s bags to her (Thanks for the heads up on this, Chelsea). And in case you can’t get enough of your Jersey Shore fix, check out the new carnival game found in Seaside Heights, New Jersey: “Shoot the Guido” (Thanks to Joey Yanks for the heads up on this).

2. Wall Street analysts are using daily satellite images of Wal-Mart parking lots to forecast sales revenue numbers:

“UBS proprietary satellite parking lot fill rate analysis points to an interesting cadence intra-quarter and potential upside to our view,” the report read.

UBS analyst Neil Currie had been looking at satellite data on Wal-Mart during each month of 2010, and he’d concluded that there was enough correlation between what he was seeing in the satellite pictures of Wal-Mart’s parking lots to the big-box chain’s quarterly earnings, that he was ready to incorporate that data into UBS’ report on Wal-Mart…”

3. Chinese Bench Torture:

Park officials in China have found a way to stop people from hogging their benches for too long – by fitting steel spikes on a coin-operated timer.

If visitors at the Yantai Park in Shangdong province, eastern China, linger too long without feeding the meter, dozens of sharp spikes shoot through the seat.

The spikes are too short to cause any serious harm – but long enough to prevent people from sitting on them comfortably.

Gotta love the Commies.

4. Looking for an exciting new restaurant to try out? Try Dinner in the Sky.

In the states, you have to travel to NYC, Miami, or Vegas. Not cheap, either. But quite the experience, I imagine.

5. Up to 30% of the traffic in central business districts is from drivers looking for curb parking. Curb parking rates are, on average, just 20% of parking garages, so it gives drivers incentive to drive around looking for a spot. I know I do. The cumulative impact?

Over the course of a year, the search for curb parking in this 15-block district [in Los Angeles] created about 950,000 excess vehicle miles of travel — equivalent to 38 trips around the earth, or four trips to the moon. And here’s another inconvenient truth about underpriced curb parking: cruising those 950,000 miles wastes 47,000 gallons of gas and produces 730 tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

That’s just for LA. Now multiply that out for every urban district across the country and world. Adds up to be quite a bit.

San Francisco is trying an interesting new experiment to help combat the problem: Demand-driven curb parking meters. Rates generally range from $0.50 to $6 an hour. For special events, rates could go as high as $18 hour. The “goal” is to have around 85% of the spots occupied. Enough revenue for the city. Enough chance of finding a spot. If this is successful, I imagine other cities will start adopting this en masse. $25 million to put in the meters into a select number of SF neighborhoods. But they got a $20 million federal grant to help pay for the project. Thanks, Obama.

Jobs, please.

I have nothing against women in politics. Just Palin. I think she knows nothing and couldn’t be more unfit to lead anything, especially the most powerful country in [...]]]> It’s been too long since I’ve harassed Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and their conservative nutjob friends. Today is the day I make up for that:

I have nothing against women in politics. Just Palin. I think she knows nothing and couldn’t be more unfit to lead anything, especially the most powerful country in the world.

Maybe they can make a doll for Sarah around this like they did for the Hillary Clinton nutcracker I got my father for Christmas a couple of years ago.

Speaking of dicks in politics, as I was Googling for the link for the nutcracker site, I now learned that they also now offer a Bill Clinton corkscrew complete with the quote “I did not have sexual relations with that cabernet.” Real classy. Check it out.

Now get out there enjoy your universal health care after you’ve had a good laugh.

Thank you for taking a few moments out of your day to view my story. My name is Terri Carlson. I am 45 and was born with a genetic immune disorder C-4 complement deficiency. I am currently on cobra [...]]]> Citizens of the leading country of the free world shouldn’t be having issues like this:

Thank you for taking a few moments out of your day to view my story. My name is Terri Carlson. I am 45 and was born with a genetic immune disorder C-4 complement deficiency. I am currently on cobra health insurance (from my divorce, 2 years ago) but it runs out in a year. And now my current situation is that I can’t buy health insurance because of my pre- existing condition.

It is not easy living with my disease and now that I have the genetic answer for my health issues, every insurance company uses the information to deny me insurance coverage. You know, I am not happy I was delt this deck of cards in my life. However, if I don’t fight for myself nobody will. While the goverment fights over healthcare reform people like me suffer. I will continue on this crusade for healthcare reform.

And yes, as drastic as it sounds, I will marry for health insurance!!!

Please help my cause.

You can see it all here: Will Marry for Health Insurance!!

Now that football season is almost over, The Great Wahl is going to be struggling for regular content. I guess that means I will have to revert back to my pre-NFL blogging about politics, economics, and random nonsense (like a hamster on a guitar eating popcorn).

But for now, I’ll start in the [...]]]>

Now that football season is almost over, The Great Wahl is going to be struggling for regular content. I guess that means I will have to revert back to my pre-NFL blogging about politics, economics, and random nonsense (like a hamster on a guitar eating popcorn).

But for now, I’ll start in the political realm. As Obama is set to give his State of the Union speech tonight (which is going to get dominated by iTablet discussion), keep in my that it’s almost impossible to govern these days because of the new ‘tradition’ of needing a 60-vote supermajority just to get past a filibuster. Krugman has an interesting lead in and some good links to some good articles. Enjoy:

Here’s how democracy works: political parties that make an effective appeal to voters get the right to govern and implement new policies.

Here’s how the United States government works: political parties that make an effective appeal to voters get seated — but can’t govern unless they have 60 Senators.

The past year has been a spectacular demonstration of the crippling effect of the filibuster on America’s ability to deal with, well, anything.

You can read the rest here: The Curse Of The Supermajority

As the Senate gets into its second week of debate on health care, the protesters plan to turn the chamber’s offices and hallways into “government waiting rooms,” pretending to be sick patients waiting for treatment. As the day wears on, their “untreated illnesses” will get [...]]]> Lots of crazy political stories in the news today:

As the Senate gets into its second week of debate on health care, the protesters plan to turn the chamber’s offices and hallways into “government waiting rooms,” pretending to be sick patients waiting for treatment. As the day wears on, their “untreated illnesses” will get worse, and some will “die.” Yet, even in death, some corpses only plan to leave by force.

I’m all for a healthy debate on Obama’s Death Panels, but do people really get to hang out in the Senate chambers all day? Isn’t there some sort of security issue to have a ton of people just laying around pretending to die? I think you should make them do it outside in the cold. Then we’ll see how dedicated they really are to the cause.

“We must remind them that our steadfast opposition to a government takeover of health care is as strong now as it has been all along,” Mark Meckler, an organizer, wrote on the Web site Tea Party Tax Day.

Mr. Meckler appeals to his Tea Party kindred to make the Christmastime “sacrifice” to come out and feign sickness and death, noting that “throughout history American Patriots have made far greater sacrifices than this to protect our liberty.”

Oh, the bloodshed of Patriots…

From the New York Times: Protesters to ‘Die’ in the Senate

WTF? At first I thought this one some sort of SNL skit, but it’s not. [...]]]> I don’t know who put this little ad together, but I imagine it’s probably someone not that far from Sarah Palin’s branch on the Republican Crazy Tree.

WTF? At first I thought this one some sort of SNL skit, but it’s not. Ridiculous.

If you’re looking for a job right now, your prospects are terrible. There are six times as many Americans seeking work as there are job openings, and the average duration of unemployment — the time the average job-seeker has spent looking for work [...]]]> From Paul Krugman at the New York Times: The Jobs Imperative

If you’re looking for a job right now, your prospects are terrible. There are six times as many Americans seeking work as there are job openings, and the average duration of unemployment — the time the average job-seeker has spent looking for work — is more than six months, the highest level since the 1930s.

You might think, then, that doing something about the employment situation would be a top policy priority. But now that total financial collapse has been averted, all the urgency seems to have vanished from policy discussion, replaced by a strange passivity. There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.

This is wrong and unacceptable.

Yes, the recession is probably over in a technical sense, but that doesn’t mean that full employment is just around the corner. Historically, financial crises have typically been followed not just by severe recessions but by anemic recoveries; it’s usually years before unemployment declines to anything like normal levels. And all indications are that the aftermath of the latest financial crisis is following the usual script. The Federal Reserve, for example, expects unemployment, currently 10.2 percent, to stay above 8 percent — a number that would have been considered disastrous not long ago — until sometime in 2012.

And the damage from sustained high unemployment will last much longer. The long-term unemployed can lose their skills, and even when the economy recovers they tend to have difficulty finding a job, because they’re regarded as poor risks by potential employers. Meanwhile, students who graduate into a poor labor market start their careers at a huge disadvantage — and pay a price in lower earnings for their whole working lives. Failure to act on unemployment isn’t just cruel, it’s short-sighted.

So it’s time for an emergency jobs program…

You can read the rest of his Op Ed piece and his plan for job creation here.