I'm sure everyone on Daily Kos is aware of the change of venue for Obama's acceptance speech in Denver: Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium.  I personally have no doubts that they will be able to find 75,000 people to jampack the stadium for a raucous good time.  I've been there for a couple college football games (Colorado State vs. U of Colorado...and by the way, go Rams!) and it can be deafening in there.  

But let's look at the history of Invesco.  A small sales tax was used to fund the building of that stadium.  And the vote for the tax came after two Denver Bronco superbowl wins.  (If I remember correctly).  John Elway happened to donate to Rudy Guiliani.

Although this particular subject is far from the enormity of importance that such topics as Peak Oil and Climate Crisis carry, an article on the front page of Vancouver BC's The Province newspaper has got me a little riled up.  As we all know, the recording and movie industry has been waging a rather futile war against perceived copyright violations for a number of years, usually resorting to suing little old ladies whose 12 year old kids download a handful of songs.  Canada, which has been a bit of a safe haven for P2P sharing, is thinking of taking draconian measures to protect the entertainment industry.

Next time you visit Canada, your iPod may be confiscated if a border guard decides you have illegally obtained material on it.

After months of anticipation and mass mailings by the IRS to inform everyone that they, too, can waste paper with the best of them, my tax rebate showed up via direct deposit.  I don't qualify for the big ones, but I got a nice little sum that is sure to help out a bit.  

As the hype goes, this economic "stimulus package" is somehow supposed to help our economy out and solve all our problems.  After all, we're all going to spend it on consumer goods, which is the surefire solution to everything?

On caveat: I live in Canada now.  I'm going to spend all the money here.

It was merely a few weeks ago that oil hit the mythical $100 a barrel threshold, which was sort of a psychological barrier for many who want to keep thinking of oil as an endless, cheap form of energy, not something that is going to become vastly more expensive in the near future.

Today oil hit $108 a barrel, and gas prices are sure to rise accordingly in the coming days.

For the record, I missed 2 picks out of 10 playoff games.  And this diary is for those who want to avoid another candidate diary or economic doom diary (we'll have plenty of those and heck, tomorrow, I may add to the economic doom list).

And then there were two.

Ever since probably week 3 or 4 of the season, it was almost a given that the New England Patriots would represent the AFC in the superbowl this season.  The main suspense would be whether they lost a game along the way or if they'd have another showdown with Indianapolis along the way.  The former has come to pass while San Diego dispatched the Colts to annoint themselves as the new big rival of the Patriots.  Meanwhile, most people probably wrote off the Giants multiple times throughout the season, particularly when they lost to Minnesota on a day where Eli Manning seemed to think throwing touchdown passes had something to do with the men in purple.  But at the end of the season, ironically in a loss to New England in Week 17, the G-men found themselves and went on a playoff riproaring rampage, knocking off at least two teams that were favored to be the possible NFC representative.

So who will win the rematch of Week 17's best game?  Stay tuned...

Maybe this has happened to you.  You innocently go into a store but you are accosted by something tiny, furry and purry.

And you walk out with a brand new kitten.  Yes, this happened to me today.  I had no intention of getting a kitten, but here's what came home with me:

The buzzword for 2008 is going to be Recession.  A search on google-news finds dozens of recent articles on whether or not we're going to have a recession (while no doubt many people, feeling financial crunch due to higher energy and food costs, already feel there is a recession and has been for some time).  And with oil finally hitting the $100 a barrel benchmark, it is evident that we're sailing into uncharted waters.  Unfortunately, there is most likely going to be a grand effort to continue living as we have for the past fifty or sixty years.  The new reality is that energy shortfalls may quickly reestablish our priorities and refocus people on how they choose to live.

Peak Oil and Suburbia writer James Kunstler wrote in his blog yesterday: "The dark tunnel that the US economy has entered began to look more and more like a black hole last week...Events are now moving ahead of anything that personalities can do to control them."

Yup, despite the fact that the United States may be facing a recession in 2008 and the globe is warming up AND oil is getting more expensive AND Sarah Connor is facing that darned swarm of mean ol' terminators yet again, I'm going to waste precious Dkos time with my weekly NFL picks.  Don't worry, soon the season will be over and your time can be wasted in other ways (like NHL playoffs in April).  

Last week I was 4 out of 4 in my picks.  I just had that feeling that San Diego and New York could pull off road upsets and they vindicated me in a couple fantastic games. In fact, if you think you like football and didn't like this weekend's game, you actually like curling instead.  

It's been quite an interesting week all around for politicians and players.  Obama stepped up, Eli Manning looked good and we all know the connection between them (hint: they both live in the United States).  The Iowa caucus gave people plenty to chew on, while the NFL playoff weekend was quite enjoyable with four entertaining games...well, Tampa Bay looked kind pathetic, but that was to be expected.  

That leads us up to round two of Predictions!  I blew one pick in the NFL last weekend (I really thought Seattle would be overcome, but that just shows what I know).  And I didn't bother picking Iowa cuz their system is too weird for my widdle brain to figure out.

We all love to make predictions and there's tons going on this week alone to predict, particularly in Iowa.  There's tons of diaries regarding the subject.  But I guarantee more than a few Dkos folks are anxiously awaiting this weekend, when the NFL playoffs finally get underway.

We’re finally at the point where the games are for real. Now, as a public service to NFL players, fans and owners, I am going to predict the winners throughout the playoffs so that the losers can save themselves the trouble of bothering to show up. They can ground their chartered flights and improve their carbon footprint on the atmosphere and fans of the losers can find something better to do with their weekends, including reading to the elderly, volunteering at an animal shelter or simply stop domestically violencing their spouses.

As we enter the Christmas shopping season (I heard a rumor once there was a religious basis for December 25th, but darn it if I can see beyond the plastic lawn Santas to know for sure), we face a lot of uncertainty in the markets.  It is also safe to assume that the average person may be facing enough shortages either in the checking account or credit card max to really go all out this season.  Many businesses are depending on a robust shopping season to get into the black on the ledgers this year, but how much "wealth" is evaporating in this country?  My favorite curmudgeon, James Kunstler, has a particularly bleak outlook for the month of December in his weekly column:

The great debate among those of us on the Economy Deathwatch seems to be whether the debacle we observe around us will resolve as a crash or a slow-motion financial train wreck. It seems to me that at every layer of the system, we're susceptible to both -- in tradable paper, institutional legitimacy, individual solvency, productive activity, real employment, "consumer" behavior, and energy resources. Some things are crashing as I write.

The glimpse is this: Colorado Ski season off to a slow start.  The bigger picture, however, shows that many places around the world are facing severe droughts: Australia, Atlanta, Ankara, Moldova, Morocco, Mexico's Tehuacán Valley, and the Southern California region all faces water shortages.  Atlanta, for instance, has been well documented in the media for the problems it current faces in light of what is turning into the most severe drought in their history.

Colorado's slow start to the winter is ominous.  The Colorado Rockies' spring melt feeds the Colorado River and fills various reservoirs downstream, including Lake Mead and Lake Powell.  Major metropolitan areas depend on that water, such as Phoenix, Las Vegas and Southern California.  What contigency plans are there if rain and snow doesn't come this winter?

If you were to query any average American (or Canadian, for that matter) about what concerns them the next decade, chances are they'd hit on the typical points of healthcare, education, jobs, and economy.  However, I'd also suspect that just about every last one of them would expect that in 2017, the Miami Dolphins would still be flying up to Boston to battle the New England Patriots (perhaps by then the Dolphins will have finally found a decent starting quarterback), Southern California commuters will still be driving 50 miles one way to work, and if you really want to see Paris, you could just hop onto a flight and be there in short order.  Although the world has undergone a massive change, coinciding with the age of oil that began and subsequently fueled the rapid development of technology and industry in the 20th century, it would seem people have certain expectations that progess will always exist, with a specific upward trajectory that will continue until Star Trek has become a reality (although the Dolphins might still have not found a replacement for Dan Marino).

No doubt many Dkos readers are familiar with author James Howard Kunstler, who has discussed city planning and surburbia in depth in his books, The City in Mind and Home From Nowhere.  He is most likely better known for his 2005 eye opening book on Peak Oil, The Long Emergency.  Kunstler is possibly one of the more prominent gloomy gusses regarding our near future in terms of being able to get past the looming oil shortages with ease.  While some refer to him as a gloom'n'doomer, Kunstler has a certain necessary pragmatism regarding many of the obstacles we face in the very near future.  Peak Oil very well may be occurring at this exact moment in time, with some figuring it began within the past two years and that we're currently going through the plateau of M. King Hubbert's curve.  Kunstler writes a weekly blog charmingly called Clusterfuck Nation which has been detailing peak oil, financial problems and surburban lifestyle issues all tied into the energy crisis.  I haven't seen his blog referred to much on Dkos so I will attempt to illuminate Kunstler's cynical yet often amusing take on our current state of affairs.

I've actually only been dutifully watching the NFL for the last month, as I was on tour in Europe for the first four weeks of the season.  However, I kept up via the internet and sports stories on tour and have spent the last month on the couch every Sunday watching whatever the Canadian networks deem relevant for us to watch.  

I made some preseason predictions about how each division would shake out.  I'm looking at them now for the first time and have some observations about either how dead on or dead stupid I was in August.

The first number will be my predicted division finish and the team's actual standing as of today.

That's it!  I am leaving this site and not looking back!  You fools can choke on my dust, cuz that's just how I roll.

For a month.

Then I'll be back.  

From Reuters Canada

MIAMI (Reuters) - Hurricane Dean knocked out power, triggered landslides and ripped the roof off a hospital in St. Lucia on Friday as it raced into the Caribbean on a path toward the oil and gas rigs of the Gulf of Mexico, officials said.

Dean's sustained winds rose to 105 mph (170 kph) as the Category 2 storm passed the French island of Martinique, just across the narrow St. Lucia Channel where the eye of the hurricane crossed from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea.

I think we're unfortunately entering the part of summer that keeps Florida and Gulf Coast residents on permanent anxiety and alert for the remainder of the season.  Hurricane Dean could be one of several hurricanes to threaten the region (although I for one refuse to make any predictions, since I'm essentially a roadie for a punk band, not a meteorologist).

Wild and wacky weather dominates worldwide headlines and we have Congress abdicating their responsibilities to uphold the Constitution against a president who has performed a power grab unknown to our nation's history.

So let's talk about sports instead.

The NFL preseason has kicked off so it's time to try to predict who will come out of nowhere to contend in the playoffs and who will be the dogs come January.