Kansas City finished first in the Cactus League, spring training. They won two-thirds of their games.
Shall we translate that into regular season success? Dunno. They start with a home game today, April 1, in Kansas City against Texas.
We'll see whether you will be bombarded by baseball stuff this year.
Well, that weather stuff got out of hand, didn't it? Cold, freezing rain, power outages, water main breaks causing boil orders, no internet, no gasoline and shortages in the stores.
Texans bounced back. The boil order was lifted this morning (Saturday, a week later) and there are no significant power outages. Let the finger-pointing begin.
My opinion, that's what this blog is about, right?, is that the power issue goes back to Three Mile Island. In writing to Jerry this morning, it dawned on me that it happened in 1979, right at the beginning of the 24-hour news cycle. They jumped on that wagon. The longitudinal health effects study was discontinued after it was discovered there were no health problems caused by TMI. Likewise, the lawsuit was thrown out of court in Harrisburg, PA. Meanwhile, the American nuclear industry died. We are so far behind France and Japan that it may take forever to catch up.
Another meanwhile--Germany is negotiating with France to get some of its (France's) nuclear-generated power because their solar panels are coated with snow. The US Navy has been operating nuclear-powered vessels for 60 years without a nuclear accident although the Soviets have had plenty.
C'mon man, to quote our linguistically and cognitively challenged President. Are we such sissies about a bit of cold weather? A term that we have been throwing around a lot, "first world problems."
Let's launch off into the land of energy managed by politicians. Yeah, that's the ticket.
It is midnight in Corpus Christi, Texas where we have had the most ideal weather you could ask for over the last couple of months, but right now it is 25 degrees with a north wind of 25 miles per hour (25 squared?) and rain, freezing rain and snow.
OK, not much snow, not the kind of wind and cold we had in Nebraska/Iowa/South Dakota, but a miserable night for man or beast.
Here's the rest of the news--it isn't going to get any better for a while. We are pretty spoiled in the winter down here, it will be cold until next weekend when we are expected to be back to low 70's.
Yep, Corpus Christi is pretty miserable from the heat for a lot of months, but the winter is good.
Other places:
Lone Tree, CO negative 6
Dakota Dunes, SD negative 15 (headed for negative 24 by morning)
Omaha, negative 11 pretty steady the rest of the night (Note the difference 90 miles makes!)
St. Edward, NE negative 14, headed for negative 22, light wind.
Prescott, AZ 32 degrees, no more snow, light winds.
Neptune City, NJ 35 with wind from the north at 10 and rain.
Fredericksburg, TX 6 degrees, snow (1 to 4 inches) northwest wind of 10. Bundle up our elephants!
Yep, it's winter in the US of A.
The New York Times has published an analysis that “proves” that Democratic presidents are better because “Virtually any reasonable look at the data shows a big Democratic advantage.” They base this on data around the GDP and jobs.
Not surprisingly, Trump is at the bottom of the list of 14 presidents dating back to Roosevelt, it is the NYT after all. The one that caught my eye, however, was Carter. Jimmy Carter was president from 1977 to 1981 and he is touted by the NYT as number 6 on the list of 14, surpassed by only one Republican, Reagan, and well ahead of Eisenhower at number 9. Well, I lived through those times, and I want to assure you that Carter deserved a one-term presidency. Interest rates at 20% plus, hyper-inflation (think of what those two do to your “data”) plus the Iran hostage situation with military failures.
There is a value to statistics, but when evaluating Presidents, a simplistic approach such as this is nearly criminal. No, Roosevelt’s “reign” wasn’t the greatest ever, it was a mixed bag of a horrible, long Depression, 1939 was 6 years into his terms and the country was worse than ever. Without World War II, no telling what his Presidency would be remembered for. How about his promise that Social Security payments would “never” be taxed?
Another slanted, biased and untrue “analysis” from the NYT.
Wait until future historians assess the huge deficits piling up now. There are only three ways to deal with that—push the deficits onto future generations and hope that the Fed has the power to control interest rates; increase productivity in the economy which the US has done quite nicely; and, inflation. Which one will it be?
Claudine Longet was a mediocre French pop singer married to Andy Williams, a TV and recording personality for many years and then divorced. All this happened before 1975, the era of ridiculously “soft” love songs and she fit right in, bossa nova and such. Details because this happened when my kids were either very young or not born. And the name is "lon jay".
After her divorce, she shot and killed America’s most famous skier, “Spider” Sabich. She was convicted of a watered-down charge and now lives at the age of 78 in Las Vegas.
I was a fan of Saturday Night Live in the 1970’s, not at all now. One of the 1976 skits I thought was hilarious then and still do now was banned later. It showed stock footage of skiers falling overdubbed with gunshots. The skit was titled “The Claudine Longet Invitational.”
So
sue me for having a bad sense of humor.
December 2, a full month after the election, the last Congressional race in California has been called.
There were 8 of the 53 Congressional seats not called by the day after the election, all where Republicans led. Some by a wide margin. ALL of those 8 have now been won by the Republican. Does it seem fishy that only the races where Republicans led were still in doubt? Waiting for a truck to back up with some "found" ballots like in 2018 in the 21st District?
Leave that behind for a moment--why isn't any news outlet "discovering" the wacky de la Fuente family who run in multiple races in multiple states? The Dems should be a bit miffed at Ricky for taking at least 7,000 votes that could have gone to the loser in the 21st District.
What are their motives? Just to become millionaires like the others who get elected to Congress?
Don't hold your breath waiting for the "media" to consider them.
Why is the media/AP/NYT so reluctant to call an election outcome in favor of a Republican? For some of us, that isn't difficult to figure out.
District 21 has just been "called" by the AP with 97% of the 170,000 votes counted and the Republican candidate ahead by 1 full percentage point. Kind of a dangerous call given that two years ago, the Republican candidate, this year's winner, was "called" soon after the polls closed leading by about 6,000 votes out of the nearly 175,000 votes that could potentially be counted.
Again, it is November 28 and they are still counting. In 2018, the votes that came in late, some of them "harvested" (and if you don't know what that is, look it up), which were nearly all for the Democratic challenger. Then, the Democrat, Cox, won by 862 votes.
Seems like there should have been an investigation, but since the Democrat "won" in California, that was not going to happen.
This time, "harvesting" was not supposed to happen. Valadao, the Republican, was ahead by 52.1% on November 8. Now, he is ahead by 50.5% to 49.5%. Well, this is a bit misleading as Ricardo (Ricky) de la Fuente received 7,309 votes as of November 4, or a bit more than 4% of the current vote total. I was unable to find any reference to Ricky recently.
You might know of Ricky or his dad, Roque (Rocky). Ricky ran in a bunch of primaries, and in three Congressional races--The aforementioned California 21st District which is in the agricultural Central Valley around Fresno despite his birth and residence in San Diego; in Florida's 24th Congressional District (he was defeated in that primary); and in the Texas 27th District where he lost in the November election. We live in the 27th District, and he received 35% of the vote despite...well, despite!!
Rocky ran in a whole bunch of primaries, several Congressional races and for President He received about 60,000 votes for President from the voters in California.
There were eight Congressional elections in California (out of the 53 seats) that were not "called" on election night or soon after. All eight were where Republicans led. Eventually, seven of the eight have been called for the Republican. The eighth seat is very close...
Back to Ricky and Rocky. Why are they running? I wonder if it is because of deep affection for the people of Texas, California (and elsewhere) that they want to serve? Or, is it because they saw that someone could graduate near the bottom of his law school class, start as a Representative in a very small state, like Delaware, move up to the Senate and serve for 47 years, becoming a multi-millionaire in the process? I wonder if they saw Congress as a ticket to millionaire status?
Anyway, despite the reluctance to call any election in California for a Republican, the Republicans flipped 11 seats in Congress nationally, three of those in California with another Republican leading.
Most states have some sort of residency requirement to run for these kinds of offices. Texas does not. Apparently, Florida does not. Wondering if that might be something to fix?
