Smartcars at Costco and other stuff

I went to Costco yesterday, and there was a Smartcar in the parking lot. AT COSTCO! Now I'm all for Americans driving smaller, more sensible cars. In fact I think we should have been taxing SUV's for years. But how are you going to fit the booty from a trip to Costco in a Smartcar .....hell, it would fit in one of the shopping carts at Costco!

There has been a lot of economist-bashing in the past few weeks, mostly from the Clinton camp. They are trying to kill the messenger for delivering the bad news that a gas tax holiday is a silly idea. Hillary doesn't seem to think economists are qualified to make decisions about economics, at least not as much as a lifelong politician. Maybe she's right, because if economists ran the world, here is a few crazy things they would do:

• Abolish the wasteful $300 Billion farm subsidy bill now in congress

• Abolish international trade barriers, thus boosting many poor people worldwide out of poverty

• Do a benefit/cost analysis on the war in Iraq, which would likely lead to us getting the hell out of there

• Balance the budget

I could go on and on. Bad politics trumps good economics every time, not the other way around!

Rick Ankiel made an amazing 300 foot throw in Coors Field the other night to kill a Rockies rally. If you follow baseball at all, you know Ankiel was a Cardinals pitching phenom who suddenly lost the ability to throw strikes, and worked his way back to the bigs as an outfielder. So how can a guy who couldn't hit the catcher from 60 feet throw a perfect strike from 300?

The Rocky Mountain News has a Boardroom Sports column every Saturday. Today's column was about the apparent move of the Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City. Seattle refuses to pony up the money for new luxury digs for the rich owners and rich players. Oklahoma City is happy to do that. The authors of the article seem to think fans should understand the cost of keeping a team in their town. I say that this shows that the people in Seattle are just smarter than those in Oklahoma City. No surprise there!