Lebron James

When Lebron James first turned pro in 2003 I thought there was too much hype surrounding him. Sure he was a great high school player and could one day be a star in the pros but I honestly thought he was overrated at the time. I knew there were some players such as Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett who came straight to the pros out of high school and became stars, but for them it took 3-5 years before they really became impact players. Then other players such as 2001 draft #1 pick Kwame Brown who came out straight out of high school turned out to be somewhat of a bust. So I though it would take Lebron time to develop into a star player like it did many other players who turned pro at such a young age. Well, it turns out that Lebron James is definitely worth the hype. He's been huge in the playoffs (despite the Cavs losing their series today to the Pistons) and regular season. I don't know if he will become the greatest basketball player ever, but he's probably the best 21 year old to ever play the game.

bush immigration speech

I watched most of Bush’s immigration speech last night, and it was probably the best speech I’ve seen him make. He was very balanced, full of comprised ideas, and not overly one sided. If he acted close to this on other issues especially Iraq he would have had a more successfully presidency (at least in my eyes). With Iraq the attitude was basically the administrations way or the highway. It didn’t matter what some people in congress said, members of his fathers administration said, pretty much every other country in the world cautioned, the administration was determined to invade Iraq during March 2003 no matter what.

As for the immigration problem, I don’t what the best solution is, maybe the White Houses will be good, maybe not, but at least it seems well thought out which is a step in the right direction. The basic issue is really globalization. Just like many service jobs are getting outsourced to other countries such as India due to lower labor costs there, many jobs in the US are getting taken by lower wage workers to save on labor cost. If a company can get a worker to do a job for $8 an hour why would they want to hire somebody for $16 an hour, it’s just basic economics. Short term solutions like a fence or temporary worker programs don’t address the root cause of the problem which is issue of globalization and multinational corporations being able to get cheaper labor from poorer countries. The best (and probably most difficult) way to solve the problem is to improve Mexico’s economy so workers there have a higher salary and have less reason to sneak into the US to work.

Broad St. 10 mile run

This Sunday I ran the Broad Street 10 mile run. (www.broadstreetrun.com) It was a great experience, I got to see 10 miles of Philly on foot. I had never run in a race with thousands of people before, and I definitely want to do it again sometime. I had ran track in high school and had been running basically for the last 5 years but usually only a few miles maybe a couple times a week. For this race I upped my training and had to run longer distances in the weeks prior to the race. 10 miles was definitely a record for me in terms of distance. The race was actually easier then I thought probably because the weather was perfect, the course is actually downhill and it's always easier to run when there are lots of people because you seemed to get pushed more to run harder. I broke 100 minutes which was my goal but my roomate beat me so now he has bragging righs until we run in a race again.