Fun and Glum Trivia

Three tidbits of trivia to amaze friends and family over the weekend or for idle cocktail party chatter.

Which NCAA Division 1 basketball roster this past season had the highest average height?

Syracuse University, which is in the Final Four, has the second tallest roster with an average height of 6-6.  However, the tallest roster was a surprise to me.  Princeton University's team not only towers over everyone else in height but most everyone else in brain power as well.

Credit: Princeton University

The Tigers average 6-6-3/4.  They only have one player under 6-2.  They actually could put five guys on the floor with the following heights-6-10, 6-11, 6-11, 6-11 and 7-1.

Baseball season opened up this week and do you realize that the total payroll of the Houston Astros at  $22.1 million is below what the New York Yankees will pay Alex Rodriquez ($29 million) alone?  The total Yankees payroll is $228 million.  That makes Houston's player payroll only 10% of the Yankees.  Now that is what I call income disparity!

$29 million

$22 Million

That is enough fun. It is time to get back to reality.  Yes, Barack Obama is still the President of the United States and things are not getting much better.  Remember how horrible we heard everything was with George W. Bush?  The terrible economy.  The poverty among children. The hatred for the United States in Muslim countries. All that we needed was a little hope and change with Barack Obama to fix things.  How has that worked out?

Do you realize that even if you doubled actual GDP growth under President Obama, it would still be the worst record of any President in the last 60 years.

This is an except from a column by Peter Ferrara in American Spectator.

Bush’s second term suffered the Great Recession for more than a full year, or more than 25% of Bush’s entire second term, while the recession covered only the first 5 months of Obama’s first term. Prior to Obama, Bush’s second term suffered the worst real GDP growth of any full Presidential term since the Depression, with an average of just 1.9%. But average annual real GDP growth during Obama’s entire first term was less than half as much at a pitiful 0.8%.

Indeed, not only was economic growth during Bush’s awful second term more than twice as high as during Obama’s entire first term. Even Jimmy Carter produced 4 times as much economic growth during his one term as Obama did during his entire first term. In fact, real GDP growth under Obama has been the worst of any President in the last 60 years, as observed by Jeffrey H. Anderson, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, in Investor’s Business Daily on January 13.

But it’s even worse than that. As Anderson further observes, Obama’s real GDP growth has actually been less than half as much as the worst of any President in the last 60 years. In other words, even if you doubled actual GDP growth under President Obama, it would still be the worst record of any President in the last 60 years!

Do you realize that there are now more people in poverty than at any time since the 1960's?

The U.S. Census Bureau puts the number of Americans in poverty at levels not seen since the mid-1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the federal government’s so-called War on Poverty. As President Barack Obama began his second term in January, nearly 50 million Americans — one in six — were living below the income line that defines poverty, according to the bureau. A family of four that earns less than $23,021 a year is listed as living in poverty. The bureau said 20 percent of the country’s children are poor.

Do you realize that the United States has less support today in most Middle Eastern countries than when George W. Bush had when he left office?

According to the latest survey by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, confidence in Obama in Muslim countries dropped from 33% to 24% in his first term. Approval of Obama's policies declined even further, from 34% to 15%. And support for the United States in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan is lower today than it was in 2008 in the closing year of George W. Bush's administration.

Only 19% of Egyptians have a favorable view of the United States, for Turkey it is 15% and in Jordan and Pakistan a mere 12% now have positive views about the country of which Barack Obama is President.

Here is the foreign aid that we provide each of these countries and their overall rank based on what we provide other countries.  It does seem ironic that Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan are all in the top 6 countries that receive our aid but the people really do not have a favorable opinion of us. 

Pakistan          $2.1    billion      #3     
Egypt              $1.6    billion      #5 
Jordan             $ .7     billion     #6
Turkey           * less than $5 million

That is enough to make me glum.  Have a great weekend.