Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Charles Barkley dunks Roy Moore.

So while everybody is complaining about their property taxes going up (we went up $300 but are still over $1000 below 5 year ago) something happened down south that drew my attention.

We all know by now that while Trump is somehow claiming victory (no he really is) Roy Moore lost.  I'm giving Charles Barkley a big high five as I believe he was a huge deciding factor.  When The Round Mound of Rebound came out and told his fellow black community members to  "Stop looking like idiots" it had to help as they came out in huge numbers even with the voter suppression.

DJ and I laughed when we saw the two campaign headquarters.  Jones had younger people of all colors celebrating and the Moore camp was literally nothing but old white people sitting glumly.

So Trump has now backed 3 candidates in 3 months and has lost every one. But the BIG loser besides Moore is Steve Bannon.  Bannon lost this for the Republicans, clear and simple. He and Trump were the ONLY ones that wanted Moore to win.

Yesterday I was looking at Twitter because Strat-o-matic is putting out fielding ratings for next year (more on this later) and I saw Chuck Todd tweet something interesting in the afternoon.

He said if the Alabama race was an NFL football game Moore would be a -3 point favorite only because he has home field advantage. This means that Jones would be a +3 underdog and the SMART money would be all over Jones.  This was my first indication that Jones actually had a chance although I was still pessimistic.

ANYWAY - America did not change when Trump was elected.  America was exposed but not fundamentally changed.

OH - last night DJ and I decided we needed to celebrate and open a beer.  Gus decided to celebrate by going to the cat box and munching on some cat poop.  We all have our own way of celebrating  I guess.

OH2 - remember the seat Jones won was held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

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Trumps Department of Labor is trying to pass a bill that will allow restaurants to take wait staff tips and redistribute them to the non-wait staff. This will allow restaurants to take the tips from servers and redistribute them among un-tipped staff such as dishwashers. But it doesn’t require that those tips be redistributed among un-tipped staff — so legally, as long as the tipped employees are paid minimum wage, the restaurants can just keep the confiscated money.

Seems fair doesn't it.  Is this anti-trickle down?

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People, even I, do not understand fully what it's like to be poor.  Elwood has had a track phone with limited minutes for the last decade. His sister would up his minutes every month.  I think he would he 1 hour of talk time.

Big deal right?  Well, we put him on OUR family plan and purchased him a new flip phone. WELL, his elation is significant.  I never realize how much he would appreciate unlimited minutes.

He said he has friends he can finally talk too because he is not worried about minutes.  How can you have a nice conversation knowing that every minute of talking is taking away future minutes you might REALLY need.

Small things like pens.  He asked if I had any extra pens.  REALLY?  I have BOXES of pens.  But the poor literally have no money to buy a pen and they don't go banks for a free pen or dentists offices for free pens.  All the places with free pens, poor people do not go too.

It's funny and sad when I hear "rich" people like you and me say "just take a bus and get an ID" when buses cost money. If you can't justify buying a pen because it takes away from food money . . . . . think how expensive an extra bus ride is

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We have heard of the fatbergs that are crippling the water distribution systems in the UK.  We have that problem in Columbus which is costing the city a pretty penny but the REAL problem is baby wipes.

93% of the clogs are from baby wipes  - PLEASE PLEASE - do not flush ANYTHING down the toilet that is not poop or toilet paper.

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So some fielding ratings came out and Ryan Braun is listed as a 3e4 in the outfield (LF I presume) which is average range and good glove.  Errors are really meaningless in the whole scope of things in fielding as range factor is much more important.  You can make 1 error a year if you never get to a ball.  So Braun being average (one of his best ratings ever) is a good thing.  Now where will they play him next year.

Remember Jean Segura former Brewer SS?   He is rated as a 4e27 which is literally one of the worst fielding SS's in the Majors.

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Seems our DIRECT TV was a Genie issue.  Our mini Genies were upgraded but the software in them did not really talk to the software in the old Genie (the main box), so they gave us a new main box.

Seems DIRECT TV is having huge issues with ATT especially their help centers.

The sad thing is we lost everything on the DVR including 31 episodes of Outlander.  DIRECT TV wants to have everything in the DVR on the cloud but the FCC does not allow it.

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I've been trying to download the Uber app just so I have it. Seems Columbus has two Uber drivers and I was curious. 

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Everyone hates Prince Charles but knowing the whole story I feel a little sad for him.  He never really wanted to merry Princess Diana. His one true love has always been Camilla Parker Bowles
 but he was not allowed to marry her because of rules and the issues of Prince Edward VIII who abdicated.  The royal family did not want ANOTHER abdication and disallowed any marriage.

So after years and years of looking and with the brutal murder of his best friend Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and the rest of his family by the IRA he was sort of lost and floundering.

FINALLY he HAD to merry SOMEBODY and Diana stumbled into his life.  Diana was very very immature and star struck and compassionate to his depression and they sort of hit it off.  He never really loved her but was sort of forced to merry.

Long story short and less boring - it was FUBR on all sides. He was put in a horrible situation by the Royal Family but it was not totally the Royal Family's fault.