JFK, Ted, Joe, and Mitch

You have to love how awards are given out in the United States. Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans has been announced as the winner of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. The Kennedy Library Foundation gives this award to honor people who demonstrate courage like those Senators in the Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles In Courage.

Let's start with the easy part. John F. Kennedy wrote very little, if any, of that book. Ted Sorensen was the actual writer. So Kennedy accepted an award for work that he had not done.

The book was not on the list of finalists that the selection committee had sent to the Pulitzer board. JFK's father, Joe, pushed a friend of his to get others on the board to vote for the book. So it won.

Mitch Landrieu received this award for removing Confederate statues from New Orleans. He did this to appease a majority of the residents in New Orleans. We are rewriting history to buy votes in this nation. We are renaming parks, schools, and highways in an attempt to deny the Civil War. When this kind of things happens in other countries, the United States condemns those actions. When it happens here, we give those responsible for those actions some kind of  award.

So Mitch is getting an award based on a book not written by the author from the family of the man who got an award for writing a book that someone else wrote. I guess "credibility" has lost its meaning..

Polls??

Polls?

The Gallup poll has announced that once again Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the woman and man "anywhere in the world" most admired by Americans.

First, i cannot believe that after the election of 2016, anyone still pays attention to polls. 

Second, just in case you are still a believer, here's some more info from Gallup.

Obama won with 17% picking him. Clinton won with 9% picking her. Gallup tells us that 25% of Americans did not pick anyone. Furthermore, 9% picked a friend or relative as the man most admired. This means that Obama got less than twice the votes of your cousin or dad. Those surveyed picked a relative as most admired woman 13% of the time. This means that Hillary got less votes than your relatives.

The bottom line, which does not appear anywhere in the Gallup article, is that 83% of Americans picked someone other then Obama and 91% picked someone other than Clinton. 

Polls have lost their accuracy and relevancy. POLL THIS!!!!

Incest, Fraud and more

I need to stop reading the news!! From Fox News comes the story that a woman in Oklahoma has pleaded guilty in an incest case for marrying her mother. Her mother lost custody of her children years ago and her name was removed from their birth certificates. Stop perverts!! Before you get the idea that this was all about sex, it wasn't. The detective who questioned them said that it was actually part of a scheme to defraud the government and get more health care benefits. I will bet $100 that the Supreme Court didn't see this one coming when they upheld Obamacare and then legalized gay marriage. What kind of legal defense goes, "It's not really about sex. We are just trying to cheat the government on health benefits"??

This was not the mother's first marriage causing legal problems. In 2008, she married a son. The marriage was annulled a couple of year later because of incest. Really??

Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall at their family reunion?? They must have fascinating conversations. I can't believe that this hasn't been made into a mini-series. Maybe there are some topics the networks won't touch?? I have read some pretty strange news in my life, but this is the leader in pure perversion. I used to think that you had to go a long way to offend me, but these people have done it.

Fake News R Us

A story in the News & Record of Greensboro this morning is headlined  "HPU Poll: Wealthy will benefit from Trump Tax Plan".

In a moment of stupidity, I took the bait and read the story. I posted the comment below after reading the story on the N&R site.

"This is journalism at its worst. If you read the polling data, they polled 352 people. First, they didn't ask what people knew about the plan, they asked what they had "heard". 49 % had heard "little", 27% had heard "not much". Only 23% claimed to have heard "a lot". At this point, they should have stopped, they did not. Also, it is not just the HPU poll, it is the HPU/News & Record poll. So in a poll that involves a group where 76% has little or no knowledge of the subject, 60% think the wealthy will benefit the most. This is just crap!! This is more than "fake news", this is a total lack of responsibility on the part of the newspaper. With your "freedom of the press" comes a responsibility to report the facts. There are none worth reporting in this story."

The News & Record proudly posted a headline from a poll of people who knew little or nothing about the subject. Do they have any standards?? No!!! They are all so excited that a Democrat won in Virginia yesterday that they will print anything. By the way, Virginia voted for Hillary a year ago, so who could be surprised that they would vote for another Democrat?

Does headlining the results of a poll where the respondents know little about the subject qualify as "Fake news"? I think so.

In local elections, the N&R did point out that 8 of the 9 City Council members are now women and that there are "no white males" on the Council. I missed their outrage over a group (white males) not being represented on the City Council.

It is back to NOT reading the News & Record for me.

Happy Halloween!!

This is for  my Leto High School  friends who attended Alexander Elementary with me. Halloween is the anniversary of my first concussion. At Alexander, we used to make paper hats in class and have a "Hat Parade" around the school for Halloween. In 1963, I was in Miss Waterhouse's class in the fifth grade.

When our class walked out of the room to join the parade, I was one of the last people out the door. As we started down the walkway, a class of sixth graders came out of their room behind us. There were several boys in the front of their group. A couple of boys in the group yelled something. I paid no attention, as "bullying" did not exist before millennials were born. Someone came up and pushed me into one of the steel poles that supported the roof over the walkway. How hard did they push me? There is still a small chip out of my skull beneath the scar. Anyway, with my head lacerated, I stumbled into the first open class room door. I remember seeing a female teacher, who apparently had never seen a boy with blood all over his face, and she started screaming.

When I awoke, I was on a couch in the school office with Mr. Raines, the principal, and my mother looking down at me. After a few minutes, she took me to the hospital where they stitched up my head and told her that I had a concussion. That's a tough way to get an extra three days off from school.

What's the moral of the story? The first is that the guy who I think pushed me died several years ago.

That took one shot off my "bucket list". The second is that I never did another Halloween parade.

Happy Halloween!!

Thoughts on the NFL

1. I have spent my life in the restaurant business. We don't allow our employees to do something that will anger our customers. If you are doing something wrong, you get counseled and if it continues, you get terminated. The NFL tells their customers that they need to understand the employees. Raise your hand if you think that this will work.

2. NFL players work about seven months a year and minimum wage is more than $400,00 a year. Is this the social in...justice.in question?

3. Blacks account for less than 15% of the population in this country. They account for about 70% of the players in the NFL. Tell me again about social injustice.

4. Lots of people oppose the proposed merger of AT&T and Time-Warner on antitrust grounds. They fear a monopoly and are asking the federal government to prevent this merger. Please give me the names of the other professional football leagues in this country other than the NFL. Monopoly can be spelled with 3 letters, NFL.

5. The NFL keeps telling us that players have a right to express their opinions and to protest. I want to see a player carrying a Confederate battle flag on the sideline and see what the NFL does. You can bet your ass, they won't tell you he has a right to protest.

6. AT&T announced that "customers" can cancel their Direct TV NFL packages if they desire during this time. Why are doing this? They don't want to lose customers. The NFL doesn't understand that their fans are also customers. If you have a customer who buys a $100 ticket, pays $20 to park, and buys a $6 hot dog and chases that with an $8 beer, you better be working to keep him happy!!

7. More than 40 years ago, I worked for Quick Foods, at the time the largest Waffle House franchisee. Our VP was talking about customer service at a meeting one day. He told us, "You don't need a survey to find out if your customers are satisfied. They will vote with their feet. Their feet will take them to somewhere other than our doors." If only Mr. Criss were here to talk to the NFL owners.

8. I could annoy liberals and point out that the basis for the entire protest is without factual support. But, why argue with an idiot late on Sunday?

9. If the NFL ratings continue to drop at their current rate, by Week 12 the NFL will be paying PBS to broadcast their games!! There go the Sunday afternoon cooking shows on UNC-TV.

Still true, after all these years!!

P.T. Barnum is credited with saying "There's a sucker born every minute." That's an old saying that I have been known to use frequently. Sometimes, I wonder if that is still correct today. Let's face it, given the ease of access to information and the increased educational level of the American public, you would think that quote has lost some validity.

Fear not!! Just when things look the darkest for that quote, you realize that there really is still one born every minute. I just saw a news article about Hillary Clinton having a staff member deliver pizza to people camping out to wait for her book signing on Tuesday. Camping out in New York City for a Hillary Clinton book signing?? Are you serious??

Don't worry PT, it is still true. I can see now why you loved New York and did so well there!!