I'm more broke than the government will be once they run out of paper for printing new money, but I am Constitutionally allowed to have an opinion, and here it is:

1. The "Stimulus" plan being debated in the Senate is full of largesse, pork and cash for projects unrelated to the problem. It should go back to the House and be rewritten to delete most of those entitlements and to concentrate on the stimulus we should have. Most of the problems are traceable right back to Nancy pelosi's deals made in order to get the bill passed.

2. The real problems are A. The plummet of real estate values that precipitated the mortgage crisis, and B. the resulting loss of jobs and markets due to the shutdown of the credit system. The oil prices and commodity prices were caused by speculation, and the speculators are still trying to figure out how much money they lost. Good! They should be losers, and most of them are. The same thing happened when speculators jacked up real estate prices back in the 1998-2005 years. The were "flipping" houses and condos, and a large number of them got stung, holding million-dollar condos that nobody could afford. Good. They deserved to get stung.

3. There is no such thing as a company being "too large to fail." The companies that are in trouble are in trouble because they are too large in the first place. Take the banks... The banks are part of the speculation that got us in trouble. They loaned sub-prime mortgages to people who couldn't afford to pay the loans.

The banks are a major part of all this trouble. Instead of bailing out the banks with taxpayer cash, the government should let them fail by seizing them. The Fed seized IndyMac Bank last year, for instance. IndyMac customers got their money (if they had less than the FDIC maximum in their accounts.)

The same thing should have gone for the investment banks, otherwise known as stock brokerages. Merrill Lynch should have gone bust instead of the taxpayers handing Bank of America the cash to buy Merrill. Instead, we had to bail out a poorly-run company whose CEO spent millions on decorating his office.

Let the banks and brokerages go bust! They are too big. They are wastrels who thrive on sucking from the government tit.

We need smaller firms. Smaller regional and local banks don't do stupid things like loaning hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone who doesn't have a job.

Nobody is too big to fail.

I'm not even going to get started on the auto companies.

Nobody.

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Christian Bale pretty much screwed himself out of being considered for an Academy Award when he had the furious blow-up on a set because a sound technician walked into the scene by accident. The people who vote for the awards are not just actors and directors. They are also sound techs, art directors, camera people, etc.

Bad boy, Batman (besides, I liked Michael Keaton better!)

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TNT's "Trust Me" is a damn good show. I watched it's pilot and the first show Monday night. It reminds me of my years in the advertising agency biz. The acting is bang on and the situations are typical - both tense and humorous. I loved it and will tune in next week. HOUSE is now on Mondays, so that night is my TV evening now.

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I think that when the mother of the octuplets gets paid for appearances on Leno, Letterman, Oprah, etc., she should have to pay Kaiser Permanente for the enormous medical bill she caused. If one cent of California tax dollars were spent on her behalf, they should also get their money back.

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I'm not against football. I love football. I'm not dissing the NFL. I love the NFL.

I just got tired of the hype. Thank God it is over!

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Speaking of sport: Manny Ramirez, who began his career as a power-hitting outfielder (baseball folks) as a Cleveland Indian, went at the end of his original six-year contract to the Boston Red Sox for a record-setting amount of money. Then he opted to go to the LA Dodgers, where he spent last year. His deal was for a single year, and now Manny is shopping again. He just turned-down a one-year offer of 25 million from the Dodgers. His agent says that Manny wants a three or four-year deal for the same amount per year.

Poor Manny. He actually thinks that he is worth it!

Three-to-one he won't get the deal from anyone, except maybe Steinbrenner (Yankees), who still has boatloads of cash.

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Nothing against pot, but Michael Phelps must be a moron.