In this Wall Street Journal article we get a much more complete look at the real unemployment situation in this country. And it’s real important to know this information. It’s non-partisan and informative.
Mortimer Zuckerman: Those Jobless Numbers Are Even Worse Than They Look – WSJ.com.
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Another NFL season begins tonight with the country’s most powerful league bowing to the President of the United States and the Democratic National Convention and moving their annual Thursday night opener to Wednesday. The Cowboys and the Giants will kick things off from Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ at 5:30pm Pacific time. The Cowboys are over rated as usual and are not likely to make much noise this season. The Giants are the defending Super Bowl Champs and likely to be formidable again as quarterback Eli Manning is really only now entering his prime.
In Renton (not Seattle) my beloved Seahawks gear up for a highly anticipated season in which it’s expected they can have a winning record for the first time since 2007, the year before we all went sailing off the Seattle Sports Cliff that was 2008. You remember 2008 don’t you? Ooooo! Make’s me shutter just thinking about it.
The Seahawks were 7-9 last year for the second straight year. But unlike 2010 had no playoff appearance and subsequently no playoff win. But they did have a strong second half of the season, going 5-3. Those three losses coming by a combined 11 points.
Seattle opens against the Arizona Cardinals in Phoenix. They do so with their third starting quarterback in as many seasons. This time it’s rookie Russell Wilson getting the call over free agent acquisition Matt Flynn. I couldn’t disagree with Pete Carroll’s decision to start the 3rd Round Draft pick more strongly. Flynn doesn’t have much playing experience in his 4 seasons as league MVP Aaron Roger’s backup. But shouldn’t his evaluation in two regular season games carry more weight than Russell’s in 3 exhibition games? I think so. And Flynn’s production in those two games was phenomenal. His production during THIS preseason wasn’t bad either. He was a few Terrell Owens dropped passes away from matching every statistic Wilson piled up.
Still we open with a very talented rookie who will make mistakes. Hopefully they’ll be limited and something the team can overcome. We’re still better off with Wilson and Flynn backing up than we were with Tavares Jackson with Charlie Whitehurst backing up; which we all suffered through last year.
And overall I’m very encouraged for the coming year. Seattle’s defense looks really, really good. They ranked 9th in the league in 2011 while inserting lots of new players. Having a year under their belt, playing together, and getting used to Carroll’s system can only help. Adding 1st round draft pick Bruce Irvin from West Virginia should improve the defenses only weak spot from 2011, the pass rush. They ranked 19th in the league in sacks last year. And while Irvin didn’t show much this pre-season he has so much speed that if he learns how to best utilize it he could put on quite the show. More importantly, Seattle’s secondary of Cam Chancellor, Earl Thomas, Brandon Browner, and Richard Sherman could be the best in the league. Thomas and Browner have already made the Pro Bowl; and I think Sherman is a better corner than Browner. But Sherman didn’t get into the starting lineup until half-way through his rookie year.
Seattle has a tough schedule. Don’t they always seem too? But they’re fortunately playing division rivals St. Louis and Arizona 4 times, which I count as four wins. And I believe they’ll split with defending division champ San Francisco, like they almost did last year losing 19-17 in large part because Jackson is one of the all time worst 2:00 minute quarterbacks. Unfortunately from a win-loss standpoint and fortunately from a fan viewing standpoint the Hawks host both New England and Green Bay this year. Both are Super Bowl favorites, and both I’m expecting to be losses.
So I’ve mentioned 8 games and predicted a 5-3 record from those games. Of the eight remaining only three are at home against the Cowboys, Vikings and Jets. They are all wins. The five remaining road games will determine the season for Seattle. Three are east-coast games and only Miami looks winnable. Buffalo in mid-December ought to be a treat. NOT! Carolina October 7, Detroit October 28, and Chicago December 2 I’m counting as losses too.
That’s a 9-7 record. And I’m being conservative. I think 10-6 is very realistic, and 11-5 isn’t completely out of the question…especially if a switch to Matt Flynn occurs early in the season.
Go Hawks!
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Let’s face it, speeches are over rated in the political world. To confirm this assertion all you need do is look at our President. Barack Obama is an exciting and dynamic speech maker. He inspired lots of people in 2008. He’s also proven to be a bad President.
Mitt Romney‘s speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida last night was not a stem-winder. But it was good, or at least good enough.
I sincerely hope Democrats and undecided voters will take the time to watch the speech and help yourself better know this very good man.
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It’s back-to-school time. Time to get new clothes for the kids, pencils, binders, paper, and on and on. The way school funding is going we’ll be sending kids to school with their own desks and chairs in years to come. Shhhh…don’t let that idea get out. Some legislator might think its a good idea
My wife finally twisted my arm enough to get a cell phone for my 13-year-old daughter. She received it yesterday and screamed so loud I’m sure the fire department was put on ready alert.
I’m really happy my sweet girl is happy. But I wish I hadn’t been put in position to need to get this phone for her. I blame YOU. YOU, all the parents who bought their adolescents cell phones to play with and talk on and ignore other live human beings and discourteously interrupt live in-person conversations in order to respond to a text or a call. It’s an annoyance I will now have to tolerate.
I never wanted to get my 8th grader a cell phone because she seldom goes anywhere and I didn’t feel she had a need. My thinking is she could have one by the time she was in high school and more frequently away from our home and school than she is now. And since there wasn’t a need I didn’t wish to receive the additional expense on our household budget.
My lovely and thoughtful wife has lobbied for our daughter to have this phone for more than a year. She feels it’s a security issue and makes reaching her easier. I dismissed this argument by correctly pointing out that our still-little girl spends 98% of her time at home or at school. And when at school if she ever needs to reach Mom or Dad she need only borrow the cell phone of any other kid, since they ALL have one. THIS is the argument that my wife used against me. I was repeatedly urged to give in because of the peer pressure exerted on a teen by their contemporaries who all have phones. I was told not having a phone made my daughter an outcast or an odd-ball who would be subject of teasing and that she might be ostracized. When she was in 6th and 7th grade and 12-13 years old I didn’t worry about THAT too much. But I had to admit as she got older my wife’s argument turned my thoughts.
As we all know teens can be cruel. Teasing and bullying have always existed and have always made the teen years tough. I honestly never understood those who referred to the “teen years” as “the best years of your life”. They were the worst years of my life. So insecure; so unsure of the direction of my life. Even if I could magically go back and live those years again with the knowledge I have now I wouldn’t do it.
So my daughter has a cell phone and we have an added, and in large part unnecessary, household expense because society has been sold a bill-of-goods in believing everyone, even kids, need the little hand-held device that dehumanize so many of us. I hope you’re proud of yourself.
OK…truth be told my wife’s final offer that convinced me to get our daughter a phone came down to a trade. She agreed with me to cancel our home land-line phone service in exchange for getting the cell phone. The home phone line is used only by my wife when talking to her Mom, and by my daughter. Now we won’t have the home phone and it’s $60 per month expense. But between my 20-year-old son, wife, 13-year-old, and my home office we still have 5 phone lines coming into our home. I think we’re covered.
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Sitting in the hot tub Sunday morning with my wife we often talk of our three kids and what we can do to help them…and what they’ve done to…shall we say…make us scratch our heads.
The Author at Snoqualmie Falls
We often talk about our business, Total Broadcasting Service. She has only surface knowledge of the business, the customer names, the many appointments I have, etc. She has limited knowledge about the company’s finances; not because I keep that information from her. In fact the opposite. I tell her so much, so often I think she’s stopped listening. She doesn’t know much about how I spend my time during a typical work day, or why. Which is why she asked a question, that really sounded more like a statement, “I don’t know why you spend so much time blogging.”
Ah-ha! I knew she’d been harboring that concern. Every time I ask her to read one of my blogs I sensed a degree of irritation. She almost never reads them on her own. And she only placates me by reading them if I tell her to read one of them. She doesn’t like them. She doesn’t like that I write nasty things, otherwise known as THE TRUTH, about President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. She doesn’t like that I reveal too much personal and private events in my life. And she could care less about my sports blogs because she hears all of that anyway, when I’m watching a game. But mostly, she wants us to make more money and live more comfortably and securely. She believes I’m wasting time writing blogs all the time.
Am I? Am I just a frustrated writer getting my views out to a circle of friends who may or may not care what I think or feel?
The answer is definitely, positively…I hope not. But…I don’t think I am wasting my time.
There is not one Search Engine Optimization, SEO, expert or Social Media expert, or Marketing Expert I have read, or visited with personally who thinks blogging is a waste of time. The exception to this would be the infrequently, inconsistent blogger. More on that in a moment.
As Master SEO Trainer Thomas Petty writes in his article Why Blogging is Vitally Important for Business- Three Reasons You Should Blog Now blogging is vitally important. His three reasons include the engaging of online customers, people will buy into you before they’ll buy from you; its great for link building and every business owner should know the more links to your website or social media business pages that you have out there the more search engines are likely to steer people your direction; and quality content is another thing search engines like. A static website or web page is very uninteresting to search engines. So the more blogs you write the more content you create the high up in the search engine (read Google) rankings you or your business will be.
This blog in the Search Engine Journal is more extensive and talks about building branding, presenting yourself as an expert, and the fact that it’s a proven business model used time and again to form and grow businesses.
SEO experts are near universal in endorsing blogs. I’ve actually never found one who is against blogging, but I assume there may be one. My experience tells me the greatest problem with blogs is they tend to ignore human nature. Most people are not writers, and most people aren’t very good writers. The result of this is that even the most well-intentioned blogger finds it difficult to post 4-5 times per week, which is necessary to grow a consistent following and grow your business. SEO experts also site videos as a very valuable tool in growing your online presence, and subsequently your business. That’s what we do for all types of small business, especially realtors, and auto shops.
But as I explained to my wife I blog because I like writing and those who know more than me tell me its a good thing to do for business. I also like writing (and even I have difficulty writing more than 2-3 blogs per week). Fellow bloggers and I would do better if we could consistently remember to post videos and articles from other sources, thereby reducing time invested in maintaining a good blog.
Here on M Schuett Blah Blah Blah I am intentionally provocative, especially with my blogs on political subjects. Those who would label me an extreme right-winger (and some have) aren’t paying attention. I am nowhere near being an extremist in any way except in persistence, frequency, and volume. That’s where I might tend to be extreme. I am so middle of the road on so many subjects. But I don’t write about the things to which I’m “middle of the road”. Why? By definition such subjects are average or boring. I want to generate interest.
My blogging on sports is just a “love” thing. I’m a sports fan.
Business blogs are also a love. But a different kind of love. I am interested in helping small business owners, like myself, achieve success. Here’s hoping these blogs help someone somewhere.
Since establishing this blog page in November 2011, 8 months, we have nearly 6000 views. That’s not a lot for some. It’s a helluva lot for others. Well… we’re working on it.
Some day I expect this blog to reach many many more people. And when it does I’ll have grown past the hope level of “Why I Blog” and instead get into the “Why don’t You Blog?” category. And I’ll have answered my wife’s concerns. That may take a while.
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