Quick Hits: July 28, 2009

I appreciate the political ticker, but did CNN really need to edit the ticker and headline it on their website just because President Obama decided to drink beer with guests? I don't care about the President's beer choice anymore than I care about the endless number of people on Twitter telling me they need caffeine in the morning.

As a Laker fan, I just don't understand Lamar Odom. Coming off a $63 million dollar contract, meaning he isn't running low on money, he can't seem to decide where to play basketball next year. The Miami Heat are reportedly offering him $34 million over 5 years (just under $7 million a year) and the Lakers have offered him $30 million over 3 years (10 million a year) or $36 million over 4 years (9 million a year). In both cases, Odom gets more than two million a year more, with future contracts to sign to increase the value. What's worse, his high school friend, Ron Artest, came to play on the Lakers partially for a title but also partially to play with Odom. What's Lamar thinking about?

For the life of me, I still don't understand what the difference is between a "health savings account" and saying "go put money in your savings for some future health care problem instead of buying that house or car." For people like my 34 year old brother in law who has had to have 3 MRIs in the last two months and still hasn't been fully diagnosed, the idea of a health savings account really wouldn't have covered his full diagnosis, much less whatever the treatment starts to be. I just wonder what kind of quality solutions Republicans could have had if they spent as much time on finding solutions as they do on trying to come up with these cute names for saying "save for a rainy day."