SoFlo: AIRWAVES (2#) -

In the noble American TV tradition of Queen for a Day and Let's Make a Deal, it pays to make a cameo appearance on TV in a Prez Press Conference.

Nick Bogert notes in his Blog:

"Julio Osegueda became the most famous burger-flipper in the land - for this news cycle, anyway - as he described to Mr. Obama how he’d been stuck working at McDonald’s for 4 1/2 years now."

It was subsequently announced on the NBC6 News that Osegueda received two job offers (!) as a result of his televised appearance at the Presser. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an article about the offers on their website when I looked this afternoon.

I saw much of the President's First Press Conference and thought he did quite well. He even fielded a question from Helen Thomas, who always seems to be able to pack some poisonous barb into her questions. I thought Prez Obama handled her quite adroitly. He was poised and nimble and articulate throughout.

So, I was very puzzled by Wall St's seemingly negative response - until someone pointed out that the new financial stimulus includes some new safeguards to protect against fatcats siphoning off some bonuses for themselves. Maybe the new safeguards are what soured the deal for some in the financial realm.

# Closer to home, we've had a pervasive smell of Fire in the air around here. I smelled it the other night and was mystified because I didn't remember hearing any fire engines in my neighborhood. It turned out to be a brush fire in an inaccessible niche at the Anne Kolb Nature Center which was burning for three days. They couldn't get any fire engines or equipment into the area and had to let it burn off by itself while they monitored it. But I thought it was odd that I hadn't heard anything about it on the TV News. And I didn't see anything about it until yesterday when I spotted a Sentinel article explaining the mystery - after it had been burning for three days!

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