Let's Talk About New Orleans

I read about a recent Siena College/NY Times poll that showed about 42% of the population approve of the job our leader is doing right now.  To me though the really interesting thing is that about half of that 42% hadn't heard anything about such headline grabbing stories as that dude that got tossed into the El Salvador Concentration Camp, were unaware of stock market fluctuations, and didn't know about the DOGE impact within the govt.  The one thing that was common to them was they all get most of their information on social media.  Yowza.  I remember this dopey woman I worked with that bragged about how she got all her news from TikTok as if this was aspirational behavior.  There is something brilliant about being proudly uninformed yet feeling like you were the only one dialed into what's going on because you knew some new dance.  As opposed to looking at this trend as The Inevitable Decline of Democracy (which it is), let's instead ask ourselves, "How can I personally benefit?".  I'll tell you how.  NFL futures.

The gambling lines are impacted by the volume and size of bets being placed into the market.  These bets are being made by the 92% of people that wager on sports via parlays (the least likely way to win at sports) with the type of information in their heads that enabled them to not be aware of the stock market or an international human rights violation that has been discussed globally for weeks.  When you walk into any mainstream area, look around.  1 out of 4 of those people you see are as smart as a largemouth bass.  That's who you are competing with in these futures markets.  The same people that walk around with devices that they pay a monthly fee to own that contains all of the information in the world in their hand don't know anything.  This is because they aren't smart enough to look at it.  This is who we are competing with in our everyday lives.       

The NFL season win totals are available and the schedule has been released.  Normally my favorite part of the schedule release is to listen to delusional Browns fans click off wins under the assumption that America's Worst Sports Franchise had systematically addressed their problems.  "OK, we'll beat Pittsburgh at home.  They're trash.  They've got no QB.  Minnesota at home.  Win.  On the road to Vegas.  Win.  Road game at Baltimore?  That's 50/50.  Maybe a loss.  OK, we are 3-1 at that point."  Meanwhile anyone with any sense whatsoever looks at the Vegas win line with the Browns having the lowest total at 5.5 and thinks "Damn... where do these guys find a win?".  That's the beauty of the NFL off season.  Fans magically turn optimistic.  "Hey!  We signed a safety the Seahawks just cut loose.  He's going to be amazing here!"  (He's not.)

While the Browns are a natural "under" pick for the simple reason that locals have convinced themselves that the team signing four backup QBs will somehow equate to them finding one starter out of that group, I would like to turn our attention instead to the New Orleans Saints.  The Saints went 5-5 with Derek Carr last year.  Derek Carr was one of those QBs that fell into the "he's better than I thought" guys when you drilled down into his results.  He was never going to be the guy to single handedly win you a Super Bowl, but there's three of those people on the planet.  He was more along the lines of "he ain't bad" guys.  This is backed up by the fact that the team went 0-7 with Carr injured and 5-5 when he started.  

Carr retired with a shoulder injury that was so bad that as soon as he got it word traveled amongst the sports gambling underworld "Carr ain't coming back, bet against New Orleans".  I knew that and I'm just a guy in Ohio.  Why didn't the Saints know that?  Maybe they did and decided to grab a lottery ticket on future bust Tyler Shough from Louisville.  Shough spent seven years in college, something I wish I had done, and got injured in three of those years.  When he played, he was... OK.  If you think a guy that moved around so he could start and played decent football at Oregon, Texas Tech and Louisville is going to step in a win a bunch of NFL games on a team with a C level roster, I'm concerned about your ability to reason.  TikTok dances might be for you!  

One of my associates has become focused with a raw burning rage at backup QBs in the NFL.  His theory, which I admit has some traction, is that if you've never been awarded "Conference QB of the year", how can you be expected to be a good player at the very top level of the sport?  Tyler Shough's biggest award appears to be "Comeback Player Of The Year" because he keeps breaking bones.  If you look around the NFL there's all kinds of backup QBs that you know will always be incapable of winning in the NFL, but there they are making $2M a year wearing a visor and tossing the ball around at practice.  Great gig as long as you don't have to get out on the field and play.  I'm talking to you Cooper Rush, Nick Mullens, Bailey Zappe, and Kyle Allen.  Unfortunately, I'm also talking about New Orleans Saints QBs Spencer Rattler and Jake Haener. 

Yes, the New Orleans Saints, who went 0-7 with Rattler/Haener are about to roll into the 2025 season with those guys AND Tyler Shough.  I am not optimistic about their chances.  Let's toss another few items into the mix.  Due to the unbalanced schedule of a 17 game season, this year the Saints get 8 home games and 9 away games.  They have one of the best home fields in the NFL, so that doesn't help.  Oh, and due to a quirk in the scheduling, the Saints get to play an NFL leading 3 games this year against a team that is coming off a bye week.  Well... that's rather concerning.  Let's discuss another organizational angle though...

The 2024 draft was considered to be weak at QB.  There's a reason teams that desperately need QBs like the Browns, Giants and Saints all waited until the 3rd round to take a flier on a QB this year.  Essentially, if you aren't drafted in the first round, you're not going to be an NFL starter.  Sure, there's exceptions, but it's rare that all 32 teams misjudge a college player's potential to be a starter in the league.  If a team drafts a QB in round 3 they are hoping he can be a cheap serviceable backup that they can pay 25% of what they's have to pay somebody like Mitch Trubisky.  The belief in the NFL is that the 2025 draft has some legit QB prospects that can become franchise starters, one with the last name of Manning.  So if you're the Saints, on the wrong side of the salary cap, do you use 2025 to see if your later round lottery ticket comes in and maybe lose your way right into Arch Manning?  Oh, I don't know... Maybe bringing the namesake of one of your all-time legendary players into the franchise might be good for the bottom line.  What if you suck, but not as bad as the Browns?  Well, then you'd have to take the #2 prospect, that Garrett Nussmeier fella from LSU.  It can't be bad to take an LSU starting QB when you're the New Orleans Saints, right?  The fans would love that.  What does Garrett Nussmeirer's father do for a living?  Oh, he's the offensive coordinator for the New Orleans Saints.  Hmmmm.  I think the Saints are a disaster but no one working there will care.  The same Saints team that won 5 games last year is now going to lose their veteran QB and roll out with two proven ineffective QBs and a lowly regarded rookie to win 7?  How did this line even get out there?  Treat yourself.

New Orleans Saints Under 6.5 wins.             

A Stranger Remembers

 

The older woman sat next to me on the flight from Madrid.  She was very courteous and respectful of our confined community space.  On my flight to Portugal a week earlier I had sat between a large couple, "upgraded" to the middle seat in "Economy Plus Premium" from my preferred aisle seat in "Economy Plus".  They were both so big that I couldn't extend my arms away from my sides during the flight, trapping all my body heat inside my armpits and making turning the pages in my book an odd "wrists only" exercise.  It had been a long, long eight hours.

On this flight the woman quietly read her book and we maintained a shared non-imperialism of the arm rest, a good show of border respect.  About 45 minutes away from landing, after lengthy (and now expected) United Airlines delays, we spoke about our likely missed connections.  It was then I made a mistake and asked her if she was returning home, or visiting the States.  I then got a monotone response that was a run on sentence that triumphed over all run on sentences I've ever heard.  It reminded me of when this mentally ill woman that Leo had been dating would start talking and allow the contents of her mind to spill out onto the floor in front of you.

She spoke in a manner without any inflection which suggested enthusiasm or emotion of any kind.  "My parents had moved from the Plattsburg area at that point and my mother had begun to volunteer at St. Joseph's which had just added the senior center after Father McAuley had become pastor after Father Rollins had retired shortly after the parts plant had shut down which was about the same time my niece had become sick which they first thought was a virus but later turned out to be a cyst which they tried to remove surgically but required chemo afterwards about the same time her son David had all that trouble with his Uncle Michael who had quite a temper which had led to all the trouble from court that Spring."

I had no idea where any of this was going.  It seemed like she had just went into her mind and started flipping the pages of her personal history and dictated to me what she saw as she went.  During this pause I said, "Uh huh" to be polite, but that was unnecessary as she had momentum and wasn't really talking to me at the point.  She stared at the headrest in front of her and kept going.

"David had just come back from back East after all the trouble he had with Maria and had moved back in with my sister which was fine as he was able to help around the house especially after that Spring storm which had done all the damage which was when they added onto St. Joseph's after the fund raising drive where we had a series of potlucks every Thursday night which had me cooking late into the night on Wednesdays which had always been my book club night which got moved to Tuesday but only during that time before the Fall of that year which was unusually cold and wet like it had been in 1973 when my father had bought our house on second street next to the grocery store which had been sold to the Berras after they left their village when their father died."

The plane banked slowly left.  Pressure in my ear confirmed our drop in altitude.  She kept going on like that as the tiny specks of houses gradually grew larger and larger as we got lower and lower towards the runway.  "Prepare yourselves for landing" came over the loudspeaker.  She stopped talking and never changed expression.  Three bumps in the cabin and engine back blast announced out arrival.  The woman sat expressionlessly to my left staring straight ahead at nothing as we taxied to our gate.  

A Glass of Gran Reserva

 

The woman was curled up in the modern style furniture like a teenager, one leg folded underneath her on the chair.  Jet black hair at first obscured the fact that she was older than she first appeared.  Her legs were skinny.  Too skinny.  One platform soled designer athletic shoe pistoned up and down on the carpet with manic energy.  She looked at me from the corner of her eyes, pretending to be absorbed in the paperback book she was manhandling.  The spine of the book strained as she folded back the cover.  The waiter brought me a glass of Marques de Riscal Gran Reserva and artfully presented little dishes of olives and vegetable chips.  I asked if they had grown the olives on the property.  "No sir, but they are local.  Many of the area farmers grow olives in places where they do not grow grapes."  I had just come over from Portugal where the leading port producers had diversified into premium olive oils with luxury packaging and prices to match.  The woman paused until the waiter left and popped her head up.  "They have wonderful olives here.  They don't make the olive oil.  They don't."  

It is important to note that this was the vinotec of the Marques de Riscal luxury hotel.  I had walked onto the property and checked in at the gift shop to see if I could taste the wines.  The woman at the counter had told me that all tours were fully booked.  It would be impossible to have a look around.  I noticed a sign pointing to the hotel, a luxury hotel designed by Frank Gehry, a modernist architect with a flair for the dramatic.  I just wanted to see the building.  I walked out "authorized personnel only" door.  The woman at the counter yelled out at me.  "Sir!"  I waved and said, "It's OK.  I'm staying at the hotel."  

I wasn't.  

"Sir!"  I gave her a wave as the door shut behind me.  I could have been staying there.  There was a room available for $845.  I checked the rate online out of curiosity.  It should also be noted that I was wearing a cowboy shirt with a snake handler design, jeans and a pair of beaten up boots.  In theory I could have been one of those Cali tech bros, and I think that's the reason the woman at the desk decided not to pursue me as I walked onto the grounds.  I mean, if you're working there and you see some upper middle aged guy in a fucking cowboy shirt confidently walking though a security door like he owns the place, do you want to risk upsetting him if he actually is a guest?  Who needs that hassle?  I walked up the hill to see if there was a bar to try the wines.  As you see how things developed, there was, and I was treated quite nicely by the employees who assumed I belonged there.

So, I'm sitting there with my Gran Reserva, biting into an olive, and the woman was looking at me very intensely after giving me the lay of the land on the olive situation.  She had an untouched glass of white Rioja.  Her brows were furrowed by her nose, the crease lines suggesting a lifetime spent in mild disapproval.  I assessed the olives.  "Yes, these are quite nice."  She gave me a little snort.  I asked her, "Are you staying here at the hotel?".  I knew goddamn well she was staying there.  I also knew that just by me suggesting that she wasn't staying there would ruffle her.  She was American.  I didn't know from where exactly, but there was a solid LA vibe. "Yes... I am."  I said, "It seems very nice."  She looked down at the predominantly burnt red carpet as she pursed her lips.  "It's quite... red.  I mean, I understand the reasoning but...  It's quite red."  

She looked at me for a moment and then lowered her eyebrows again into a disapproving look.  It was just the two of us in the lounge.  It was completely silent.  I had specifically chosen one of the seats a comfortable distance from her so as to not freak her out.  There was so much energetic suspicion coming off of her, I didn't want any misunderstanding.  She was in the best seat by the huge windows overlooking the small village.  I took the small table two back as a buffer, but due to the arrangement of the chairs, we inhabited the same basic space.  She went back to manhandling her book pretending to read it.  She was about my age but had that SoCal dress code and dye job going that made her look like she was in her twenties at a passing glance.  Her foot nervously twitched again, clearly concerned I was going to ask her to go up to her room and perform depraved sex acts on her malnourished body.  I had engaged with her initial conversation after all.  I could see her chastising herself for putting down her armor.  Her foot kept bobbing.  I sat looking out at the village, slowly drinking my Rioja, eating olives.         

The Joy Of Interesting Times

 

In quiet little Avon Lake, hundreds (the Avon Lake cops said “thousands”) of ordinary people stood on the side of the road by a Walgreens and a duck pond waving signs and protesting the turns of events in the country.  What was especially noteworthy to me was the demographic makeup.  This wasn’t some lefty multi colored hair crowd.  It was grandmas, moms and daughters, conservative looking old men, and kids in wagons.  It seemed like everyone had their own particular issue that had brought them to a tipping point to stand around in the rain in a sleepy little suburb.  Take your pick… tariffs, cratering 401K accounts, Ukraine, illegal deportations, civil liberties, Elon Musk, Trump, you name it.  People were fed up and it’s week 12 of Taking America Back.

I’m thinking there were about 700 people, but I might be low.  They stretched along what is an entire city block while drivers coming through honked their horns in support (or counter protest).  Young men, high school boys I think, drove pick-up trucks and Mustangs with growling exhaust systems with oversized Trump flags attached like they were members of a radicalized Muslim extremist group (which you can effectively argue that they are).   The sneering boys had the jacked up confrontational energy of rabid college football fans, the kind of boys that played varsity football and swaggered around school thinking they have all the answers but don’t realize they don’t even understand the questions and they’ve already peaked.  

I drove south on Route 83 behind a red F-150 with two giant Trump flags flapping from plastic posts attached to the back of the bed.  Watching traffic coming at him in the other lane, a steady stream of people flipping the truck off was interrupted by the occasional guy that looked just like the driver giving them a thumbs up.  “Yeah Bro!”.  The chance of any of the flag guys being able to explain what a tariff is, what the CDC does, or understand how their heroes they worship like a pro football team on gameday were just grifters positioning them to be their low paid worker drones forever.  What are you going to do?  The country is really, really fucked up right now.  

What struck me most about today was the ordinary look of the protesters.  These aren’t the dreaded “outside agitators” the conservative media will rush in to claim took part in these events.  It’s retired teachers, stay-at-home moms, Dads pulling wagons.  I’ll bet 85% of these people never protested a thing in their lives.  While the hillbillies and dipshits drove by threateningly in their macho vehicles it only pointed out the irrefutable fact that there are a lot more normal people than teenage bullies and angry hillbillies.  The flag waving dipshits feel like they’re in a special club, but they can’t get around the fact that the real people that make the country run are looking at this shitshow and saying “Hold on a minute here, this is bullshit”.  

I don’t know if the protest movement can gain momentum, or if it will even do anything against what is increasingly looking like monsters that are intent to topple over all our societal norms to benefit themselves.  They aren’t going to pay attention to the legal system, and Congress isn’t going to do anything either.  It’s going to be up to the Moms, grandmas and Dads pulling wagons to try and prevent the country they grew up in from further slipping into an autocratic nightmare you’ll never wake up from.    

I spent the week in Portugal with an international group of MW students and Portuguese producers.  Off of the top of my head, there were people from England, Ireland, Greece, Canada, Austria, Germany, China, Netherlands, Poland, and Spain.  It was NOT easy being the American there.  Anyone with an education knows what is going on in the USA is self-destructive and utterly without long term logical planning.  It’s not even a debate over here.  It's other nations openly laughing about how inept and rudderless our leadership is in the country.  It’s like how adults laugh at children.  The downside for them is that until they disentangle themselves from the US, they are in for a ride as well.  As the minute-to-minute whims of our de-facto King changed, they laughed at the absurdity of it all and asked me to make sense of it.  Hey man, I don’t know what to tell you either.  

I was at a winery in Rioja Spain yesterday.  Rioja wines famously use American oak barrels, abandoning the use of French barrels after a tariff placed on the barrels by France over 100 years ago.  As a result of that tax, the Spanish moved to the alternative option coming from America and then never went back.  100+ years of lost business for the French who assumed at the time, “they can’t buy around us”.  Well, it looks like they did.  After this Tariff Show has shaken the world’s confidence in our economy, I think we are going to find out that people can buy around us too.    

Ah, the joy of living in “interesting times”… 

Jack Ruby and The Brewers

 

I knew this guy named Rick that used to spend a lot of time talking about how he wanted to become famous by assassinating Willie Nelson.  He had a real focused idea about it, sort of a Jack Ruby style move with a gut shot via a snub nosed .38 caliber pistol.  I don't think he had a beef with Willie Nelson.  It was more about being able to take away something that gave others joy that appealed to him.  I remember trying to explain to him the difference between "famous" and "infamous", but Rick didn't quite grasp that.  He had this vision where people would have some sort of begrudging respect that he had done something so "big".  The good news is that I think he forgot about that and seemed to put his focus on crypto currency valuations.  I think I speak for all of us when I say that if he decided to assassinate the Hawk Tuah girl after she did that crypto scam the vast majority of the population would at the most be ambivalent about his actions.  I still don't think the population would be supportive.  I don't think he ever bought that .38 anyway.  Well, at least I don't think he did.  I scan the headlines most mornings to see if anyone pulled a Jack Ruby on anyone of note. Back when we had Federal employees, some crime fighting agency probably had a file on that dude.  I wonder if they do now?  Hmmm.

There are a lot of people out there with ideas.  Big ideas.  I think the downside to a huge swath of the populations living very internalized lives on their devices is a detachment from reality where schemes like assassinating Willie Nelson (or say the CEO of United Health) start to seem like a good idea.  People that don't have any sense of community can get real out there, real fast.  I can think of a decent number of acquaintances of mine I have seen transform over the last five years from being sorta dopey salt of the earth guys into fascist/racist idea spewing machines that their old selves wouldn't recognize.  A guy I knew from radio that now lives a self imposed hermit with his mother is a hate filled monster that spends his days regurgitating Russian disinformation on social media.  What the hell happened to that guy?  Or the 20 something kid that loved animation that now seems like he's flirting with joining some militia kooks?  The amount of real time radicalization happening from the device people pay a monthly fee to poison their mind is not the Great Future Of Information we were expecting.

Here's some recent US survey results for you to consider.  Despite having all of the accumulated current information in the world at our fingertips,

* 10% of US citizens believe the world is flat 

*   9% of US citizens believe that covid vaccinations implanted microchips in people for tracking purposes

* 12% don't think NASA landed on the moon and 17% are unsure

* 17% don't think the earth revolves around the sun

The numbers increase as you get younger, meaning that 28% of Gen Z doesn't believe NASA landed on the moon for example.  Is this a result of poor education?  Is it embracing conspiracy theories to try and gain control over too much chaos from a never ending firehouse of data being poured over them?  I don't know.  I think it has something to do with embracing the idea that nothing is a fact now.  I don't listen to Joe Rogan very often because I generally don't care about what a standup comedian that was the host of Fear Factor and loves MMA has to say about much of anything.  It's also because most Joe Rogan episodes go like this...  "Today we have on some guy with a website that says American city water is the cause of all diseases.  So tell me about this..."  Well, I don't know if you know this but most tap water is rife with bacterial agents which are responsible for 300,000 deaths in America each year.  "Really?  I hadn't heard that."  Yes, and NASA is putting mind control poisons like terracyclocide in the water supply that can only be counteracted by eating alfalfa.  "Wow.  I didn't know that."  Now let's go to our other guest, the noted authority on bacterial infections from Harvard, Dr. John Doe.  John, do you care to debate these allegations made by our other equally esteemed guest?".  

From a media point I understand the idea of creating debate to keep people listening.  However, maybe the greater good can be served by not putting blatant kooks and grifters on what appear to be vetted programming?  "Coming up next, we debate the law of gravity!"  The idea that all facts are up for debate is not a great development in our society.  When I sold advertising I would often have people tell me "advertising doesn't work".  Really?  About 30% of Americans think that the 2020 election was "stolen" from Trump despite the Trump camp losing 60 court cases and never producing credible evidence to back this repeated claim up.  Yet, by repeating a lie over and over, you've got 30% of the population believing that lie.  THAT is how advertising works my friend.

It's a drag to live in what will undoubtedly be referred to as The End Of The American Empire, and it's an even bigger drag to find that society's undoing is being caused by dorks like Zuckerberg, Elon, a ex-Reality TV show host, Rupert Murdoch and various cable tv hosts.  At least when Germany went through this kind of thing in the 1930s, they had an amazing cast of super villains.  Those guys were legitimate monsters and we've got a bunch of snake oil hucksters.  Disappointing really.  It would be great to debate some of the valid problems we have in the country, but most of us aren't even in the same reality thanks to our mobile devices.  I'm going to continue to concentrate on what really matters, baseball win totals.

Last year I backed the OVER on both the Oakland A's (winner) and Cleveland Guardians (winner).  I found it was an outstanding way to have a vested interest in an otherwise meaningless A's v Rockies game on a Tuesday night.  I don't feel great about the totals on either the As or Cleveland this year (70.5 and 82.5).  My beloved Giants decided to not spend the money they'd need to push Arizona so it looks grim there.  I decided to hunt for a team that might be undervalued.  After nosing around for a month, I have settled on the Milwaukee Brewers.  Like you, I knew almost nothing about the Brewers before reading up on them.  They are sitting at 83 games on their win total.  Their starting pitching is mediocre in a C+ sorta way.  The bullpen looks decent.  Their offense is OK.  There isn't much to look at and say "God damn these guys are lights out".  You know what though?  They always find a way.  They haven't gone below 83 wins in 7 years.  They look like a team built like Cleveland, better than the sum of their parts.  Nobody else in the NL Central is a juggernaut either.  Why not the Brewers?  You want to bet on the Pirates?  The Reds?  I can't do it.  I found a book that has a slanted juice for Milwaukee OVER 82.5 that I moved on.  I bought a Brewers cap, and I'm ready for some mediocre NL baseball this summer.  Get on board with The Brew Crew!           

 

 

Ramblings Of The Unemployed and Over 79

 

I had worked in the same job for 18 years.  Some people came and went.  Some circumstances changed.  However, it was basically doing the same job at the same place the same way for 18 years.  It's odd how a job can come to define and outline the parameters of your happiness/unhappiness.  For most people, you sort of fall into whatever it is that you do.  A few years pass, and you become whatever your title is at that job.  "Greg?  He's a TV guy."  At no point did I lay out a plan when I was 19 years old that said, "With some luck, when I'm in my fifties I can sell weather sponsorships in the 4p news to a window company for a dysfunctional TV station in Cleveland."  You just sort of get there somehow.

The problem with these jobs is that once you get trapped into a life you have constructed where you need a minimum of X dollars a month to make sure that the people from Mastercard don't come to your house and beat you with sticks, you become trapped.  Now you are stuck in a microcosm where the 10-15 people of your department is your entire world.  You figure you've got 65 hours a week tied up into that alternate reality with a 830a-530p Monday though Friday plus commutes and prep time for going in to your workplace.  If you sleep 8 hours a night, that gives you 15 free hours during the week and 32 hours on the weekend for 47 hours of your time.  You're looking at 60% of your life defined by your work environment.  More than half of your life is spent with a collection of people and a social strata in which you have very little control.  

Every workplace I have ever been has that lie they perpetuate about being "like a family".  I would agree to that if "like a family" you meant having an emotionally abusive mother, pathologically lying father, promiscuous sister, brother on the spectrum and an uncle with anger management issues, but I'm not sure if that's what they meant.  The thing is though you spend so much time there that it all slowly becomes normal.  People that might be clinically found to be sociopaths are directly impacting your quality of life and it just is the way that it is. They are your leader because they randomly got a job and you accept being the submissive.  When you think about some of the people you have had to maintain your composure around when they lie to your face because they are an "assistant regional manager" and you are a lowly "associate leadership specialist", it's crazy.  Yet, we all have agreed to operate under this social contract.  I've had people managing me that I wouldn't put in charge to go get a pizza if I handed them a $20 and a map to the pizza place, yet I tried to nod my head thoughtfully when they drone on about the most harebrained self-serving idea I've ever heard.  "Sounds good Bob."  You ever work at a place with a "seagull manager"?  That's one that flies in, shits all over the place and then flies away.  

I haven't been to my old job in a couple months now.  It's amazing how little I think about it.  I worked with people that had their hair fall out and developed stomach ulcers because of the low rent Court of Versailles that was that work environment.  There were people there that think a slightly modified newscast will save their doomed industry and I haven't even turned that channel on in 2025.  All these jobs are like that.  You can't see the forest because of the trees.  When you are freaking the fuck out at your job, please remember this.  No one cares.  Whatever you are doing, it probably doesn't matter.  The boss that is bullying you?  They are getting dominated by their spouse at home and take it out on you.  That all powerful regional manager that comes in quarterly to "shake it up"?  They are referred to by their neighbor as "that dipshit next door" when they fuck up garbage day again.  These people that assume outsized importance in our lives are little people doing little things that don't matter.  Forget about them.  The job will continue when you leave but more importantly, you'll continue after you leave the job.

The great news is I am now able to focus on the only three things that matter as we approach Spring 2025.  Wine exams, the new Whiskey Daredevils record, and MLB baseball win totals.  As I have discussed, I have taken a position on the White Sox.  I do feel a need to be connected to the local Guardians franchise.  Last year on my birthday I received a custom Guardians jersey from Krusty.  The number was 79.  The name on the back was "Over".  Yes, I had bet on the Guardians to win more than 79 games last year, an easy winner.  With the Guardians win total sitting at 82.5 this season, that makes the shirt null and void.  Well, until I realized I could just shift the win total down to 79 and bet the over at -165!  Suddenly I'm wearing my Guardians jersey again! 

I'll be honest with you.  I don't know that much about the Guardians.  They have a couple good hitters, some OK starters and last year an amazing bullpen.  Typically bullpens have great variance, and I think Clase is going to return to Earth which will cost them some games.  The rotation has a bunch of versions of "If he gets healthy" and "if he can keep progressing" guys, which is a great concern.  But, this is what I think of as "A Team Of Guys".  It's a collection of a bunch of OK to pretty good players.  Those are the teams that tend to finish around .500.  Are they going to win the World Series?  Absolutely not.  Are they good enough to win half the time?  I think so.  We're not looking for much here.  I can win with an 80-82 record.  Why not?  Let's get to 80 wins.  For my shirt.  Guardians Over 79 wins -165.        

It's All About The White Sox Now

As we slide into our new WWE flavored intellectually stunted post reality authoritarian age, I keep going back and forth between "I knew this was coming and it was going to be bad, but this is worse than I thought." and "Well, this is what you assholes wanted.  Here you go.".   I drove past one of those creepy Trump shack houses yesterday, those ones that have a car on blocks, crumbling foundation and a shrine of proudly flapping Trump flags.  Enjoy your greatness.  You are going to lose your Medicaid coverage because the Top 1% of earners wanted another $60,000 a year back in taxes.  Granted, as the flag wavers watched Fox or got whatever fantasy news update via social media, they had no idea.  Their Leader was telling them he wouldn't cut Medicaid even as the Republican budget plan that was simultaneously being submitted had an $880 Billion cut to Medicaid.  I dunno.  I'm sorta feeling "that's what you get" as I pass that Trump Shrine Shack House.  They'll never know what happened but Fox will give them some kind of scapegoat I'm sure.  Tough to blame the Mexicans or out of office politicians for that, but they'll find a way.    

The current grift that is going to get rubber stamped will make the 2017 Tax Cut permanent.  Remember how that was going to "trickle down" untold wealth on the entire population?  Shockingly, that's not what happened.  Administration officials claimed their centerpiece corporate tax rate cut would “very conservatively” lead to a $4,000 boost in household income.  All evidence not floated out from Baghdad Bob showed that workers who earned less than about $114,000 on average in 2016 saw “no change in earnings” from the corporate tax rate cut, while top executive salaries increased sharply.  Every sales job I ever had where Corporate would trot out a murky new commission structure that was "going to be good for you", it made me work 20% harder to just to try and make what I was making before as they lifted up their own bonuses.  I do know that our CEO paid himself $5M in annual bonuses as he systematically lost 80% of the company stock value over the last eight years.  He's "on brand" as they say in the industry.  

To pay for these Corporate Tax Cuts for the super rich, the government will have to somehow drum up enough money to keep at least some of our infrastructure running.  You can't cut Social Security or Medicare or the old folks will riot.  Assuming we ever have something that is close to a real election again (odds +135), all those people that get tied to that decision will get voted out.  You gotta cut something.  How about Medicaid?  Those are poor people with small voices and medical conditions, a perfect victim.  Here's some math for you.  The top 1% of earners make $787,712 a year.  So those people can get an extra $60,000 a year (average tax cut for these 1%ers), that means that the bottom 20% of the population can't pay for health care.  Here's another quick fact... The richest 1% of Ohioans make almost as much as the complete bottom half.  You know what that top 1% needs?  You guessed it!  To pay less taxes.  Take that $60,000 and get a down payment on a place in Naples.  The bad news?  Even after cutting all the poor people's medical coverage, you still have an 80% shortfall of money.  Where does that go?  Pump it right into The Deficit.  

As the healthcare problem will get punted back to the States, Ohio will have an unbelievable shortfall of revenue to deal with this.  I guess you could just refuse to treat people and let them die in the street, but that seems a bit too Dark Ages even for 2025.  There will be some unreal shortfall of cash, so you know what I was thinking we should do?  Yep!  Spend $1.2B to build a football stadium we don't want or need out by the airport!  That way the guy that just got a massive personal income and corporate tax cut won't have any economic stress as he charges inflated seat license fees to people that can't afford health care to come watch his football team lose 12-15 games while slugging back $15 draft beers.  It's really too much to deal with.  I'm diving into playing music, learning everything about wine, and baseball.  What else is left?  

I have found a way to get at that White Sox bet.  On Draft Kings, they have a bet on which team has the worst record with the White Sox at -140.  Look, on win totals Chicago is at 53 and the next closest team is the Rockies at 59.5.  I get a 6.5 game buffer on a team I don't think will win 53 for -140?  Yeah, I like that better than sweating out an otherwise meaningless late September White Sox v Royals game to hope they don't win game 54, a full 6 games worse than the next team.  Besides the Rockies, the only other team I might have to sweat is the Marlins, but we'd be talking about a team that usually finds SOME good young players really shitting the bed.  The White Sox got nuthin.  I'm not saying the Colorado Rockies with such luminaries as 35 year old catcher Jacob Stallings, Giants castoff second baseman Thairo Estrada ("the worst hitter in MLB"-Rotowire), 3rd baseman Kris Bryant who has missed 1 out of every 3 games in the last 3 years, and consistently injured German Marquez is their #1 starter.  Still, they have at least a few players that will do something at the plate.  Give me the White Sox Worst Record -140.