I'm old. Let's get that out of the way. I've been that way for a while. It doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon either. But there are times that I forget that I'm old. Like the time when a bunch of us poker buddies from a bar league were taking a break from poker. I'm probably 35-40 years older than they are. We go outside and one sparks up a j and passes it to his left. He takes a hit and passes it to his left, which happened to be me. He then grunts in that hold-your-breath-and-squeek voice, "Oh, sorry," and was about to pass it to my left (like I was incapable of doing that myself) when I snagged it, took a hit and passed it to my left. Incredulous looks were passed all around until I broke the awkward silence. "What? You guys think you invented this ****? Ever heard of the 60s? 70s?" Coughing laughs all around. Yeah, I forget that I'm old sometimes. WTF, does being old mean I don't enjoy things like I used to? Maybe not as often, but yeah old guys like drinking beer, dirty jokes, pretty girls, bitching about work, pretty much anything you young guys do. Except your music. Turn that goddamn **** down!

So anyway, that being said, I had a thought.

Heh, bet you thought I had lapsed into one of those "old man with the thousand yard stare" episodes, didn't you? That was for dramatic effect. Actually I had more of a revelation than a thought. See us old guys have a way of processing information that goes beyond thought. That's why you think we're bat**** crazy. We've seen things that we can put together with what we see now to guide us and warn us. This is my revelation.

I have been married to my wife for 38 years. Damn that's a long time. I have always known that she's, well, different. Yeah, she's female. I don't mean that, smartass. I mean different; like she doesn't understand things that other people seem to know instinctually. Like, for instance, when one speaks out loud when someone else is present it's called a conversation. Not so. Don't ask me what it is, but when she speaks it's just that. She speaks. Maybe it's to me, maybe it's to the mother ship, I don't know.

Lately she's had a condition. Her skin has broken out all over her body and she has these wierd swellings around her eyes. The doctors are stumped and I'm just wondering what the **** is going on. I now understand what is occurring. My wife is growing out of the pupal state and will soon be forming a crysalis. Soon she'llmake a button of silk which she uses to fasten her body to a leaf or a twig. Then the her skin comes off for the final time. Under this old skin is a hard skin called a chrysalis. That should give me enough time to gather up my **** and the tv remote and get the **** out of here before she comes out as a giant wasp and sucks out all my vital juices, goes on a rampage and destroys all of Colorado and Japan before buzzing off to the mother ship.

That or she's really allergic to something.

I mentioned Colorado in my last post. Yes, I live in Colorado near Denver. People ask me at the casinos if it's really legal to smoke pot here. I'll do a FAQ. Yes it is legal to smoke marijuana in Colorado if you have a medical pot license. No I do not have one. Not everyone here does. It has to be medically necessary and prescribed by a licensed physician. Medically necessary (apparently) means something like you wrenched your knee skiing a couple of years ago and it hurts sometimes. It is not legal to fire up just anywhere. Where can you? Not right here, but I'm not a narc and I don't care if you do. Yes I'd like some. Recreational pot will be legal on January 1. No you won't be able to buy it at Safeway or the liquor store, only at licensed shops. Around here (the casino)? Well there's a medical dispensary a mile and a half down the road. There's going to be a rec shop a mile up the road in Central City. I don't know how much it costs.

I'm out of work. I have been since the end of June. I got a pretty good severance deal, so I'm ok so far. Thanks for asking. It's funny how looking for a job has changed. Companies don't want you to just show up at their door with resume in hand. That's how it used to be done. You got dressed up and went door to door filling out apps and handing out resumes. Now you sit on your ass in your underwear and go from website to website. You apply by copying and pasting all your info into a database. Then some HR drone checks the database with a query that the salesman of the database company gave her/him. When the hiring manager asks if anyone has applied for the job he needs to fill, she/he says "no one that's qualified," like she/he would actually know what the the quals really are. Or how to properly query them. Or how to spell whatever the search terms are. This way really sucks.

It's really cold here. Like it only got to about +8 today, headed to 10 below tonight. I heard that in Phoenix it only got to 32 degrees today. Maybe we should take up a collection for them or something. Oh well, by the time this really cold **** gets to New York it'll be all over the network news like it never happened before. "OMG homeless people HERE in New York are freezing to death." Well your homeless people must be pussies. When was the last time you in Gotham have heard about the homeless in Denver freezing to death? Didn't think so.

It's now Friday the 13th. Some people are bothered by that. Even though I'm a bit superstitious, it doesn't bother me. I was born on Friday the 13th. I usually remind people at the poker table that it's an unlucky day for them, unless they're with me. But since they're playing against me, they're pretty much ****ed. Nobody ever seems to care though.

My wife is feeling much better now and she's getting restless for some slot degen. Maybe we'll head up tomorrow. I'd like to get my gambool on too. Since it's my "lucky" day, maybe I'll talk her into it. We both have some bankroll, so why not?

Lately I've been noticing how starting salaries are going down. I guess I've noticed it because I've been looking for work. Here's the thing that gets me; workers are getting less while management is getting more. It's been steadily getting more divergent since the 80's. And they wonder why the economy can't get rolling. It's because the trickle down lie hasn't borne it's promise. It's as if the upper echelon has plugged the trickle and scooped what was supposed to flow. I'll quote a stat that I've seen quite often. The top 5% make 26% of all wages. And yet who cries the loudest about taxes? The 5%. I'm not part of the Occupy movement. But I do feel that if businesses don't pay attention to the wage gap, there will be more than protests at McD's. Then we get to hear Stuart Varney on Fox News say that the Pope (THE POPE!) is wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_Kbpeqb0cc Skip to 6:09 if you don't want to watch the whole thing, but definitely watch through to at least 6:45. Jon Stewart really lays it on the line there. "You're telling the Pope how to do his job? The Pope doesn't come over to where you work and slap Jamie Dimon's d**k out of your mouth."

Where it's gone wrong in the past 30+ years is in the tax system. If corporations can pay so little to the rank and file yet so much to upper management, there is obviously too much money being hoarded. So, the difference should be taxed to the corporations. Notice I didn't say to the upper management; I said the corps should pay the additional taxes. Or they could equalize it somehow and pay that money to the rank and file, the valuable "team members." Then they can avoid the tax. They avoid taxes quite well. Let the Jamie Dimons of the world have their lavish existence while paying a lesser share of their income in taxes than the rank and file. Whoa! The company can't afford both. So what's it going to be? Bankrupt the company by forcing it to pay taxes, or maybe take a lesser salary by a few hundred million?

Nah, congress hasn't the balls to propose what once actually worked.

Howcumizit? ...

People from Texas name their kids after their cities, which are named after dead guys? I've known people named Austin, Houston, even Travis. Girls are even given those names by people who don't even live there any more. Ever met someone from Alberta named Winnipeg? Or someone from Missouri named Chillicothe? No. Maybe it's because they in Texas think their son will become the big shot quarterback if they name him Houston Hightower Bulltrader or something. Maybe it's the only name they can spell, and they only figured it out by looking at their learner's permit.

Every time I change channels to see what's on there's a commercial playing. I get that networks run shows for 18 minutes and then go to commercials. It's pretty standard. But if I change channels after 10 minutes, sure as ****, there's a ****ing commercial. I'm sorry if you were watching Saved By the Bell and I switched to that channel, because I know they stuck a commercial in just as it got to the only punch line. It was because I just tuned in. I'm sorry. I didn't know. I just wanted to see what was on. Sheesh.

In basketball a slam dunk is two points. That makes no damn sense. There's a line arc on the floor 23 feet nine inches out that marks where shots made from behind the line are three points, because they're harder. There's a line fifteen feet from the basket that you have to stand behind to shoot the ball to get just one point, because that's easier. Yet you can stand directly under the basket and get two points for shoving a shot directly downward through the hoop. How thrilling. What skill. Should only be 1/2 a point at most. AT MOST. They must have made that rule up in Texas. Fractions are just too complicated for those folks.

Phil Simms has a job broadcasting football games. Wow, that's like stealing money. Oh sure, he was a pro bowl quarterback and won a Super Bowl, he knows about being a pro quarterback. So does Doug Williams. I'm sure old Doug wouldn't punt the ball away to New England on 4th and 5 at the 45 yard line down by 4 with under 2 minutes to play. I doubt if that jackass (Simms, not Williams - try to keep up here) knows whether the ball is filled with air or stuffed with feathers*. Just listening to that dolt makes me curse more on a Sunday than Phil Helmuth in a turbo sit-n-go.





*I stole this from his coach, Bill Parcells. At least I learned something from the Tuna.

Good stuff. Keep it coming.

Thanks, Dom. I'll comment more later. I've begun to keep a notepad next to me to remind myself about stuff. At least it was next to me earlier. Where was I when I had it?

By the way, Parcells made the remark about the ball being stuffed with feathers when he was asked by a reporter about what his wife thinks. I didn't mean to insult Mrs. Parcells by comparing her to Phil Simms. I'm sorry, Mrs. P. What I meant to say was that Phil wouldn't know which is heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers.

This just in: Phil Simms has been hospitalized for a broken foot. We take you now live to Don Criqui reporting from Phil Simms's hometown of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Don-



This is Don Criqui reporting to you live from the high school field down the street from Bud Grant Hospital in Albert Lea, Minnesota, where officials here deny that Phil Simms is or has been treated for a broken foot or any other injury. I will report on more as the story breaks. Back to you.

This is Bob Trumpy with a cardboard cutout of Marv Albert. I found Billy Sims in Norman Oklahoma in front of Billy Sims Barbeque with one of his fans. Lets see what he has to say:



Uh, no my foot's fine. Boomer! Sooner!

We are in front of the residence of Phil Simms where we are joined by Fort Lee, New Jersey fire chief, Red Ruffansore. Chief, what happened here?

"Well Mr. Simms, the Giants quarterback not the Lions running back, he was kicking a football filled with lead, and he broke his foot, so we took him to the hospital there. It was a funny thing. There were feathers allover the yard there. I don't know what was going on, but he says he kicked a ball that was full of lead. So he broke his foot there, and we took him to the hospital there."

Thank you Chief Ruffansore. We take you -

"Yeah some guy named Trump or Tumple or something like that called and said it was a former running back with the Lions, but I don't think he lives around here."

Thank you, Chief -

"Damndest thing! He smashes his foot on a lead ball. What kind of idiot does something like that?"

Thank you, Chief. And now a word from a guy who writes about stuff.

"He was laying there crying and saying something about Coach Parcells"

Thanks, back to you, writer guy.

lol

Hi wetdog

Hi, Bob, thanks for stopping by.

Affluenza

“At its core, affluenza was a poorly chosen catchphrase that obfuscated the important underlying point: that, rich or poor, this was another child who, according to an expert qualified by the court, suffered from the same lack of supervision and guidance that plagues millions of American children, irrespective of class. That's all,” writes criminal defense attorney Danny Cevallos on CNN.com.

“Many are offended at this idea because the child comes from a wealthy family,” Mr. Cevallos writes. “But being so offended reflects a belief that children of wealth can never have any developmental problems, or be neglected in a way that affects their adolescent judgment.”

No, but I would expect nothing less coming from a defense attorney trolling for media to drop quotes into, some free publicity. Kids of all social strata have had ****ty parenting. The ones without money go to prison. That is what makes the sentencing so horrendous and inequitable. Privilege needs to be earned. Ethan Couch did nothing to earn the privilege of living in a cushy country club rehab facility followed by 10 years of being good and living where he chooses. This was the sentencing for the manslaughter charges only. How many kids coming from poverty and neglect would get the same sentence, or even a similar one? I don't have the time, resources or inclination to look it up, but I would bet my bankroll on zero. By the way, there were also intoxication assault charges to which he pleaded guilty. The judge declined to sentence Couch for those. Probably because the rehab facility already serves ice cream. I did imply decreased mental acuity in Texas in a previous post.

Something completely different

WWE Raw is on the USA Network on Monday nights. Some people like that stuff. Here in Denver it's on for three hours from 6 PM to 9 PM. Sorry, that's a lie. It's on to 9 ish. Yeah it runs over five or 20 minutes or so. Every rasslin move, every word, every fake slap is scripted.
"I'll kick your ass!"
"I'll kick your ass!"
"I'll break your arms!"
"I'll break your legs!"
"I'll break your neck!"
"I'll break your head!"
"I'll break your - uh, I'll kick your ass!"
"Again with my ass! What is wrong with you?"

Every bit is scripted. Yet they fail to get all their stomping, throwing and close body drill done within 3 hours? Couldn't they do without the threats and get the faux mayhem done so that the people who want to watch what's next will know when next is? WTF baseball games are decided in 3 hours for the most part. Just cut out some of the posing. ( Wait a minute, I've just been threatened with banning if I advocate cutting out AJ Lee. No problem there. Probably the only plus ev time in the whole show.)

I used to watch Verne Gagne's American Wrestling Association years ago. The show always ended on time. Mean Gene Okerlund was one of the announcers. I watched it for the lols. Mad Dog Vachon, Da Crusher, those guys were entertaining.

Just wanted to say that I am enjoying your writing.

Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't think that Jennifer Lawrence is the cutest thing ever? I saw her on Conan the other night. I even liked her short hair, just because it's hers. I wouldn't be surprised if she picks up a half dozen abandoned puppies a day. I hope she robs a poor box at a church or something soon just so the world can get over it. I don't mean any harm to her, really I don't. I just think we need a break from ... OMG SHE'S SO CUTE.

I've started posting in forums I've never posted in before. Maybe it's because I have so much more time on my hands. So now I have to remember which ones they are and what I said and what I was responding to. I suppose I could make up a gimmick account, but then I guess I'd have to remember to sign in with that password. Or (brilliant unoriginal thought) I could use a different browser and have it remember the password. I could use a host of browsers and start a forum of my own! I could rule 2+2! Or I could just use my time more wisely, get a job and get my wife off my ass. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Tomorrow.

I was just made aware of ZBoard today. How cool! For those whole are not yet as hip as I am, it's an electric motorized skateboard. Just stand there and go 17 miles an hour for under $1000. I wonder how far you could go if you constantly recharged it with a solar charger. What if you set up a bunch of chargers to run in parallel? I know you can't go fast enough to keep up with the earth's rotation to always be in the sun (and you have those ****ing oceans and international border guards to deal with. Bastards!), but what if eh?

Now that a federal judge Utah has decriminalized polygamy and another federal judge has struck down Utah's same-sex marriage ban, will there be polygamous same sex marriages in Utah? I don't think Brigham Young saw that one coming. Well at least they won't be drinking alcohol and coffee or gambling.

Winter arrives officially at 12:11 PM eastern time tomorrow. I guess you can adjust that for whatever time zone you're in, but does it really matter? What I really need to know is, if a clown is on fire should you put him out or get closer to him for the heat?

Happy Festivus, everyone! In honor of all my readers I have donated 350,000 Sklansky Bucks to The Human Fund.

I'm not going to wait until midnight. It' like sending a card. You're only going to open it whenever.

Merry Christmas. I hope you all get underwear.

The sky is falling!

There's a zillion asteroids out there. Maybe as many as a bazillion. And they aren't all tucked into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Up until about 6 years ago I thought, wrongly (*gasp* inorite?), that's where they were. But NOOOOOOOOOO. They're all over the place. And to add to my chagrin, I found out they aren't all circling the Sun on roughly the same plane as the planets. Some have an inclination of 45-50 degrees to the ecliptic plane. And so they just go buzzing around the solar system mostly ruled by gravity from the Sun and shepherded by Jupiter's gravity in orbits that range from mostly circular to long parabolas that cross planet orbits.

A while back I found this site run by the Jet Propulsion Lab of NASA. Go ahead, right click on it. Just come right back, ok? The objects listed are asteroids that just passed by Earth or will pass by in the next 3 months. I just noticed that on December 23rd one (2013 YB) came within about 16,800 miles of Earth. Hey that was a close one. Don't worry, it was just about 1.5 - 3 meters wide. If it hit us it would have just made a loud boom high in the atmosphere, not like the one that blew up over Russia which was 10 times larger. There wasn't any warning like there was back in February when 2012 DA14 flew by which was half again the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor, probably because 2013 YB was a small one. 2013 YB was discovered just as it was shooting by.

Something you may notice as you look at the list of incoming objects is the names given to them. The first part of the name is the year they were discovered. See how many were discovered just this year? They are adding new ones all the time. There may be one that's bearing down on your ass right now that they don't know about. They started tracking these in earnest in 1995, but there are several that were known previously.

2062 Aten gets within 1.358 million miles of us on January 8, 2014. It's a big sonofabitch at 1.1 km wide, but it's orbit is wierd in that when it crosses earth's orbit it is either way above or way below because of it's 12% inclination. That's a good thing, because if one that size should hit us, well we're pretty much all ****ed. We know it's orbit pretty well though since it's discovery in 1977.

2013 YC was just discovered four days ago. They think the orbit goes out nearly to Jupiter and then back in close to the sun every four years. How long has this been going on? They don't know, they just found it four days ago as it zipped by 6.47 million miles away twelve days ago. They think. Well, they think a lot better than I do so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

They have cataloged over ten thousand Near Earth Objects (NEOs) so far. NEOs are asteroids and comets that can approach the Earth's orbital distance to within about 28 million miles (45 million kilometers). Of those, only 1448 are Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. Only 1448. Those are the ones who will come within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) of Earth with a minimum diameter of 110 m - 240 m. Yeah that'll **** a lot of **** up, considering it's 5.5 - 12 times the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor. The one they just found four days ago was just that size. I haven't found any listings of really really (yeah doublereally) close NEOs that are smaller than that. Probably because knowing that will cause all of us to lose our collective **** and go all tuff_fish.

As for me, if the Broncos win the Super Bowl and the Avalanche win the Stanley Cup this year, I might be ready.

Hi, Tyler, thanks for the kind words. I really enjoy your blog too. Quite the interesting life you've led.

Stuff I saw today:

It seems that you can't do significant business in China unless you pay somebody off by hiring their kids. In America there are laws against that. Apparently in other parts of the world it's acceptable, or maybe they just don't care. Obviously the way around it is to just leave the US. I wonder what the Chinese kids did on their "job."

Folks in Virginia are pissed off because they can't bring guns into Toby Keith's bar. Yeah, guys, I guess you haven't noticed that testosterone + alcohol + emotion = fight. Nobody's ever seen male behavior in a bar before? I'm far from a teatotaler. I throw a few back with the best of them. I have also seen some awesome bar fights, mostly over stupid ****. So let's toss a couple of Sig Sauers into the mix and see if we can't get some bystanders bloodied as well. Wyatt Earp had it figured out. The really smart people back east apparently don't read memos that they themselves didn't write, if they could write.

I mentioned before that recreational pot will be legal in Colorado. Well, if you plan on flying in, buying up a bunch and flying out, don't. Denver International Airport has banned possession. IDK if they have trained a pack of dope sniffing weasels or the machines that feel you up have been programmed to scent weed, but you have to know that given any amount of power the TSA will find a way to abuse it. I have also heard that cops in surrounding states will be pulling over random cars looking for pot tourists carrying out illicit bud. Urban legend has it that vehicles with Colorado license plates have already been targeted. So, if you come to get high and have any left over when it's time to leave (heh, that'll happen) you are welcome to drop off any leftovers at the Dog House (PM for directions).

You know how when you come home at night and you can't see the door lock to put your key into? Well suffer no more. Just whip out your glow in the dark pig. Instant illumination and breakfast bacon.

Another reason to think the French are dumb (as if there aren't enough already). Car services like Uber and limo companies have to wait 15 minutes before picking up their fares. It's probably still +EV over waiting for a snooty cab driver who hates you for driving the Nazis out of their country.

Tim Tebow finally got a job. He says it won't alter his plans to make an NFL roster. I have a plan for that. I saw that Cleveland fired it's coach and may consider Josh McDaniel as the replacement. That's the bonehead that drafted Timmy in the first round for the Broncos. Maybe Timmy can play for Joshie. Wait, since the Browns are ruined anyway there's no sense in Belichick sending his boy to Cleveland to run off/trade any players that have any semblance of ability or passion for the game, only to return to daddy like he did in Denver. Any owners or GMs in the AFC who don't see that coming would be idiots.

Thank dog they quit ****ing with my Cheerios. No more genetically modified corn starch and beet sugar. But of course the genetically modified organisms are perfectly safe for humans, children, the environment (except for plant eating pests and critters that eat them), and profits for 20 years. The government DMV-style food safety agencies say they're safe. So says the General Mills "vice president of global communications," aka paid liar spokesman.

I don't trust much of anything that comes out of government research when it could affect the profits of any zillion dollar business.

So it's now winter and, as sure as there's a media to scream about it, it's cold and snowy in the east.
O
M
F
G
That's news. It's so newsworthy that The Weather Channel has named this bit of weather "Hercules." That kind of puts "Sandy" to shame, doesn't it? I can't wait for the next bit of normal weather to hit. I really don't have any name suggestions. Apparently the more severe the storm, the less fearsome the name should be. Stay tuned. The vice president of global communications will probably have a statement.

I'm not going to buy my donkey meat from Wal-Mart any more. No siree, that crappy fox meat gets thrown in just to extend it for an extra buck. That's what happens when Wal-Mart squeezes its suppliers' profit margins so tight. They start to throw in fox parts. Kinda makes you wonder what is in that tube of hamburger meat, doesn't it? Pass the possum burgers willya, Martha.

Apparently they've been getting used to mystery meat in China, thanks to a product called “Fish-Smell Removal King.” I'm checking the country of origin of all the food I buy any more. The Chicken-of-the-Sea might just be civet for all I know.

As long as I'm bashing China (don't get too comfortable, Wal-Mart, I'll be back for you later), why do we have to waive laws so we can buy $2 magnets from China? I understand they're made from "rare" earths that China has by the gigaton. Those same magnets are made right here in the US of A. "Officials" (those paid liars again) at Northrop, Honeywell and Lockheed declined to comment on the issue.

Not China but right next door, they have a new death chamber. A naked condemned guy gets thrown to 120 starving dogs. We've known for a while that this guy is nuts, but holy **** that is beyond, uh what is the word, I don't know but it's beyond it. And that was his uncle. What if Dennis Rodman would have pissed him off? How could he not have?

Oh Crap

I am a craps degen. I have recently developed the discipline to pass by a table without exposing my bankroll to that chip eating monster, but when I give in I can say goodbye to a couple of poker table buyins. I can lose those pretty easily on the poker table. Just deal me aces or kings. I have had some good craps days, like the time a couple of female marines hit point after point with some inside numbers thrown in, or the last time I was in Reno when a guy from Pueblo held the dice for 40 minutes and I turned $50 into $1500 on a 3-4-5 table, but usually it's point-7out. I even went to a school to learn how to deal craps (which was fun and tax deductible) the last time I was unemployed. I never got a job dealing (one audition, I did lousy), but I became a fan of Frank Scoblete who teaches dice control, but mostly for his amusing writing.

Which brings me to this. I don't doubt that the animal kingdom has the same sexual diversity as the human species, and it makes me wonder if this also happens in the plant world. Well just a little. Maybe Frank ought to just separate the gaygups from the rest just to keep the boygups on task chasing girlgups and the gaygups can do whatever guppies do when they aren't procreating, which is probably eating and getting ready to die.

Frank teaches classes in dice control. He claims that it's a skill that can be learned. I suppose that's true. It would take hundreds maybe thousands of hour of practice to keep the dice on plane with no yaw or forward roll, land in a precise spot on the table next to the wall and hit it without hitting the diamonds. He says that he knew a couple of Atlantic City veteran dice pitchers (now dead) who could shoot for 100 or more or more rolls at a time. They would have to try to be anonymous in order to be able to pull this off very many times without being backed off. I've read trip reports where Frank and friends shoot on cruises. It rarely comes out very well for them so IDK. I've seen videos and websites of how it's done, but having tried it myself I know it takes gigatons of practice. I still try it and rarely get much flack from boxmen when I set the dice, but it doesn't seem to work. I do it anyway because it makes me feel like I know wtf I'm doing even though I know better. I have had good nights where I've shot for 10-15 minutes, so who knows?

Well, his stories are amusing anyway.

Some random stuff I found.

In 1994 the Denver Grizzlies, in their inaugural year in the International Hockey League, won the Turner Cup, the official championship of the IHL. They then relocated to Salt Lake City when the Quebec Nordiques relocated to Denver to become the Colorado Avalanche. After some financial difficulties, the franchise suspended in 2005 to seek a buyer, which they found in May 2006. Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert moved the team to Cleveland and in the 2007-2008 season they took the ice as the Lake Erie Monsters. They became the primary NHL affiliate of ... The Colorado Avalanche. Their first team captain was Mark Rycroft, now a TV studio analyst for Avalanche games.

The current Utah Grizzlies were formerly the Lexington (KY) Men O'War which was previously the (I can't make this up) Macon Whoopee.

CAUTION; POLITARDING AHEAD

I've tried to avoid it, but now it's beyond my powers to resist. I'm going to politard my blog. It's my ****ing blog and I'll tard it if I want to. You should tard too because it's also happening to you.

Lately I've been obsessing over income inequality. No, it's not that I'm jealous of the rich; if you earned all that money all by yourself then godbless. What's gotten under my hide is that the US economy is not expanding as it should be doing in a "recovery" from the Great Recession. If we were in a real recovery we would be adding 250,000 jobs a month. The reality is we are adding half that in a "good" month. We need a quarter million to absorb all the people who were laid off as well as all those new to the labor market.

Stimuli like handing out cash doesn't work any more. They tried that in '08 and they said nothing happened. Something did happen. People caught up with bills that were overdue. Oops, they were supposed to spend that money! What were they thinking? Murikins are supposed to be irresponsible with found money. No, the money went toward deleveraging. It seems that all the borrowing which funded the pre-crash expansion found the hilt where the no further plunging could occur. So the consumer, who is responsible for 70% of GNP can't consume any more.

So we have to step up to Keynes and have the government borrow more and allocate it as transfers to the economy via poverty programs, job training, corporate tax expenditures (another way of calling tax credits), except the government won't come up with any more dough. Well some in government will, but some won't so that game is over too. Besides, how much debt can we really hang on our next generations?

We need more tax revenues to spread around, but the guys who don't want to borrow the money don't want tax revenues to go up either. So we're stuck. The only ones spending the money are the ones who have the money. But who are they?

I found out that the Social Security Administration has statistics of all compensation subject to Federal income taxes and how many are within each classification going back to 1990. Bear in mind that the compensation levels are after deductions and before credits. You can change the year in the top left to track changes from year to year if you want.

What I found is that any income (after deductions, or AD hereinafter) over $60K is in the top 20% I thought it was way more than that, like 100K. The bottom 20% is somewhere between 5-10%. So that puts the broad middle class (as the Congressional Budgeting Office likes to call it) at 7.5K-60K. That's pretty broad. It's also pretty sick that 7500 bucks AD is "middle class." But it's the stats that tells the story. You're "rich" if you make 60K AD. I admit you ain't hurting, but wow that's a stretch. The raw average wage is around 42.5 and the median (50% higher, 50% lower) is around 27.5. Now there's a lot of ground between 27.5 and 60. What all that means to me is that the guys waaaaaaaaaaaaayyy up at the top are skewing the curve. I'd like to see what that would have looked like 50 years ago, or even 40 years ago. But alas, the SSA doesn't have those.

But there is research close to that. I'll share some of that next.

POLITARD part 2

I haven't yet begun to politard. But when I do, it won't be pretty. (But really, when is politarding pretty?)

I said above that there's income inequality, but what is it? Well, if you're a bank teller at Chase making $30K (I don't know but I think it's close) and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase) is making $20 million or 667 times what you make, wouldn't you call that excessive? If you manage a Gap store for (I'll keep it the same as the bank teller) 30K and Glenn Murphy makes 24.6 million, don't you wonder how that range is so wide? Here's more CEO pay: James A. Skinner - McDonald's 27.7 million, Muhtar Kent - Coca Cola 30.4 million, R. W. Tillerson - Exxon Mobil 40.2 million, and let's shoot the moon here Larry Ellison - Oracle 96.1 million. Compare those salaries with the rank and file employees and you see what a gap there is. Find your boss here. Those are just the 100 highest paid CEOs of public companies. That' just the CEOs, and doesn't include the other guys on the C-suite like the CFO, CIO, chief in house lawyer, head of HR who's paid a ton to keep her mouth shut about what everyone else makes.

Section 953(b) of Dodd Frank would have companies report what the average salary of their employees is and the ratio of CEO pay to average pay is. This would be reported in SEC filings which can be accessed by anyone. To no one's surprise this has been wailed over by wall street and easy street because it would be too difficult or expensive to do, as if their HR departments don't know how to use Excel LOL.

WTF can those guys spend that money on? Do they buy 667 times as many groceries, clothes (well maybe), hair cuts and all the other things as we do? Yeah they buy luxury handbags or yachts or cars but does that filter through the economy like your purchase of a sandwich or a beer? And to where does that money flow?

Money spent somewhere goes onto an accounting ledger in a category called sales. Out of that is taken the costs of business (including salaries paid) and the result is net profit. The net profit is owned by the owners of the company or it's stockholders if it's a corporation. Now if the net profit is really good, the CEO is given a really good salary. If the CEO wants to keep the net profit looking good, he squeezes the employees salary so he makes more. The employee who actually carried out the operations of the company is the one who actually made the profit, but who cares! The CEO is the hero and **** everyone else. Let's have a big dividend!

Eventually all that will dry up when there is no more to be spent at the store for Coca Cola, or the Exxon station, or at the Gap. The consumer is also the employee and the consumer is squeezed. There is no more "extra" money from consumer borrowing or government stimuli.

I lied last time (what's politics without a lie?). The research isn't in this post. I'll try to get that in next. I have to get charts and stuff into imgur and I don't have time now. Next time.

I got some charts and stuff from some places and want to share them, but I spent most of today finding them and putting them into imgur so I don't have time today to write about them. So I won't. And I am going to be busy the next few days, so I won't be able to do it until maybe Monday.

But I am going to watch tv tonight, so I looked on Comcast's cool interactive site to see what's on. Hoo boy. What a waste **** pile tv is.

America's Funniest Home Videos - An hour of guys getting whacked in the nuts. Man that sounds like fun.

The Olympics - That could be cool. It's topical and has drama. Women's figure skating, women's freestyle (halfpipe), men's freestyle skiin... (that's all it says). That's a strong candidate. Let's see what else is on.

Music TV- Ridiculousness. That's the name of a show. Somebody breaks down some viral videos. Jerks With Cameras. Another show. No wonder it's now called MTV. M as in Meh.

Nickelodeon - Two hours of Full House followed by two hours of Friends. Not worth the nickel to play it.

ABC Family has the 700 Club. I remember the first time I turned it on I thought it was a bowling show. Yeah I thought they talked about some guys that shot 700 series that week.

History Channel - Let me repeat that, the HISTORY CHANNEL has had Pawn Stars on all day. What. The. ****. <---(I capitalized that last one. You can't see it.) That's what passes for history now. It used to be the Hitler Channel before. Maybe they'll make a bigger offer to Honey Booboo and become the Honey Booboo Channel.

TLC (The Learning Channel) - The LEARNING CHANNEL has *gah* Here Comes Honey ****ing Booboo. The LEARNING CHANNEL!

A&E (Arts & Entertainment) - Doesn't have either. Never mind.

Golf - OMG it actually has golf!

NBCSN (Sports Network) - The network that has the Olympics is broadcasting the Mecum Auto Auction. In light of everything else I've seen, why not.

Fox Sports - NASCAR! Oh boy. Some guys (and maybe a gal, who knows) go really fast in cars and turn left. I'm surprised that Fox allows anything to turn left on its network. I was really into that once. Then I turned eight.

Spike - Wrestling. Or more correctly Wrasslin. What I watched when I was eight.