unclevlad

There were a few occasions where channel-surfing brought up his reality show, and of course, ad blurbs were unavoidable. Pretty much, it felt not only that he loved bullying, but going the extra mile to humiliate. When he was President, his pattern and practice of firing anyone who disagreed with him, and didn't do exactly what he wanted, is that of a bully, not a negotiator. When he gave in on things...like FINALLY responding to Covid...he didn't do it gracefully, that I can recall.

I don't remember seeing Beau THAT ANGRY in a video before. And yeah, someone pointed it out not long ago. Trump could've done this a WHOLE lot easier. Oh, and who is Paul Whelan? Yeah, he served in Iraq. AND got booted out of the Marines. From Snopes.com: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-whelan-discharge/ So those trumpeting "oh we're abandoning one of our heroes!!!"...you be the judge whether that term applies.

That setup is worse than my high school gym...back in the early 70s. The organizers are going to have a very hard time lining up any more events in the future...but so is the Mirage. This is terrible PR for them. Vegas has several venues that regularly host basketball, including conference championship tournaments; you can figure the Mirage probably won't be one any time soon.

Brittney Griner arriving in Texas. Thankfully, it's a long shot and the press has been kept at arm's length for now, it appears. Good. In DC, Sinema bailing has to make the Herschel Walker failure, and the broader failure of the Trump extremists, *extremely* painful.

In the interests of promoting the Doctrine of Maximal Sports Chaos, I approve this message.

Should this loss cost Josh McDaniels his job? WILL this loss cost his job? Will it happen this weekend??? How can you lose to a team whose QB has had NO time with the offense? And a team banged up in many other ways? As horrifically bad as Denver has played, for those reasons, this IMO is the absolute worst loss of the season.

The Broncos haven't been steamrolled yet; only Carolina would've covered that spread. Oh my, I just put the Raiders-Rams on...just in time to watch most of the drive where Baker Mayfield moves the Rams 98 (!!!!) yards to score the go-ahead TD (if they make the extra point here) with 10 seconds left!!! Hello Hollywood. Also, in typical Raider fashion, a pass interference and totally, utterly ridiculous unsportsmanlike conduct penalty GAVE the Rams 27 of those yards. Back to Mr. P...it's also in Denver. I'd take KC and give the points, but it's not what I'd consider a lock. The O/U is also 43.5; I'd take the under. I can see maybe 28-10? That'd be KC, giving, and the under. Not super fond of an under bet with a large spread, but this is the Broncos.

Elizabeth Whelan, sister of detainee Marine Paul Whelan, on the criticism that her brother's release could not also be arranged, from CNN:

You know what they say. No good deed goes unpunished.

Ouch, biggest line I've noted in quite a while, admittedly not surprising. Dallas -17.5 over Houston. C'mon Texans, you can do it!!!

USPS update. <sigh> Dec 08 5:50 am Departed USPS Regional Facility SAN ANTONIO TX DISTRIBUTION CENTER Dec 07 11:54 pm Arrived at USPS Regional Facility SAN ANTONIO TX DISTRIBUTION CENTER Dec 07 11:29 pm Departed USPS Regional Facility SAN ANTONIO TX DISTRIBUTION CENTER ANNEX Dec 07 1:20 pm Arrived at USPS Regional Facility SAN ANTONIO TX DISTRIBUTION CENTER ANNEX So...what, get onto the truck, start heading out, head right back...and BACK OF THE LINE, NO CUTTING!!! <sigh> It finally reached El Paso at 3 this afternoon; that's obviously much too late to get up here today. Had it left the first time? It might've been close. With all the extra handling, and travel...makes you wonder just how much money it's costing the USPS to actually get it to me. It *should* get delivered tomorrow; all that's left is whether they deliver it to the right address. (That is an ongoing problem here.)

And of course, some Republicans in Congress are ripping Biden because he couldn't also get Paul Whelan released. And the status of the guy they had to trade. ALL the leverage is with the active side...Russia here. Especially since they have no rule of law, they can go through their mockery of a trial and do whatever the <bleep> they want, and there's really nothing the US can do but negociate for release. And the Russians bloody well know it, so they're going to squeeze that stone until blood does come out.

My, my. The times, they are a'changing... Who would've believed? Both Spain and Germany can their team managers, within days of each other.

There's no major rules changes overall. You may need to adjust here and there, but it shouldn't be a big deal. A personal dimension is simply Another Dimension. 6E2 190. Nice thing is, the dimensional movement needed is only the baseline: single dimension, one location. As noted, the conditions inside are whatever you like. If you want them to be changeable, so as to mimic another dimension from time to time, then yeah, CE would be the way to go. But if the conditions are unchangeable after the fact, you don't need CE. Note that "unchangeable" doesn't mean "unchanging." A great example is the pocket dimension of Littleton in Marion Harmon's Wearing the Cape. It's set up to have perfect Midwest weather...warm and sunny to cool. Complete 4 season climate. The forecast's 100% accurate...down pretty much to the minute, for example, for when the rain starts. The fact that the device which anchors/maintains the pocket dimension happens to be located on the Marine station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is largely irrelevant; I believe it follows the day/night cycle, but that's a matter of convenience. I was in Alaska for a week at one time, for work reasons. It was June, and while still south of the Arctic Circle, it never got fully dark. Civil twilight at most. But the light around, say, 10 PM to 4 AM was striking and unique. If you wanted that light level all the time? Fine. EDIT: going back to EDM UAA, this is basically like Teleport UAA. BIG TIME STOP power because it's inherently abusive. The entire UOO advantage gets one, but here, it's just pretty insane. There's no defense against them. Notionally, UAA is against an unwilling person, so the user has complete control of the power...no escape clause. I think my second most favorite method for completely, irrevocably (short of a Wish) making sure someone was DEAD!!! in 3rd Ed D&D was to plane shift with them into either the Positive or Negative Material Plane. Positive? They overload and basically blow up after a while. Negative? Their life gets sucked out. Both planes make searching all but impossible. In Hero, we can't be quite as absolute, because powers aren't necessarily static...someone could develop some godlike location power. But an XDM shift into Nothing, then abandoning them? That's a death sentence, pretty much. Or just slap them into a dimensional oubliette...the classic oubliette is a deep, smooth hole, usually covered. Too deep to jump/crawl out. A dimensional oubliette might be, say, a featureless 10m radius sphere. Take the prisoner out when and where it's safe to do so.

As was noted, 'common' might be tricky. It plays to the QAnon crowd, or the various anti-government anarchic elements. I think the most common thing the believers feel is paranoia.

You realize of course, that the critical error was checking bags. I think I flew up at Christmas to visit my mom...a few times, I'm not sure how many. Flying at Christmas is THE WORST. Flying into Denver...bleah!! Busy, busy, busy with snowbirds. Along with the holiday traffic. EVERYONE seemingly had 9 bajillion boxes, bags, and what-have-you's to give, or that they got, going home, so overhead space was non-existent. It says a lot that the last several times I did it, I drove...650-700 miles, in winter, cutting through or along mountains for much of the trip. And I don't like driving particularly. I probably checked bags on a few occasions. I think I only had baggage issues when I got *home*...fortunately. Pretty sure I've flown twice since 9/11. Once to Vegas, once to Denver. The rules, the scheduling issues, the *cost* just got too high. Anyone got any Evils Of Holiday Travels tales to share? Don't be shy, we'll laugh with you. 🙄

A downside to this time of year is when something gets mailed to you, it can have....issues.... First expected delivery date was yesterday, the 6th, and had it traveled properly? It would've. The side trip to Missouri??? Impossible, NO clue where that came from. The circuit from Denver to Illinois, back to Denver, is barely possible, if a palette was incorrectly routed onto a flight, then recognized and returned on the same plane. But Colorado Springs to Denver to Aurora...huh? And Dallas to San Antonio...why? In most cases it'll just go straight from Dallas to El Paso. Dec 07 1:20 pm Arrived at USPS Regional Facility SAN ANTONIO TX DISTRIBUTION CENTER ANNEX Dec 06 11:42 pm Arrived at USPS Regional Facility DALLAS TX LOGISTICS CENTER Dec 06 9:59 am Departed USPS Facility AURORA,CO 80018 Dec 06 9:48 am Arrived at USPS Regional Facility ST LOUIS MO PACKAGE SORTING CENTER Dec 06 9:00 am Arrived at USPS Facility AURORA,CO 80018 Dec 06 8:29 am Departed USPS Regional Facility DENVER CO DISTRIBUTION CENTER Dec 06 6:21 am Departed USPS Regional Facility CHAMPAIGN IL DISTRIBUTION CENTER Dec 06 4:22 am Departed USPS Regional Facility DENVER CO DISTRIBUTION CENTER Dec 05 3:15 pm Arrived at USPS Regional Facility DENVER CO DISTRIBUTION CENTER Dec 05 3:10 am Arrived at USPS Regional Facility COLORADO SPRINGS CO DISTRIBUTION CENTER Dec 04 In Transit to Next Facility Dec 03 8:32 pm Arrived at USPS Regional Origin Facility KANSAS CITY KS NETWORK DISTRIBUTION CENTER Dec 03 4:13 pm USPS in possession of item OLATHE,KS 66061

That's exactly it. Couple days ago, Sean Lewis left Kent State's head coaching job...a Group of 5 school...to be OC at Colorado, nominally a Power 5. (Proving that labels can be grossly misleading.) Here, you've got FCS to what will be Power 5. Massive increase in visibility. It opens 2 doors...HC for Power 5 or Group of 5, or OC for a more-visible Power 5...think SEC or Big 10 for starters. Hill is 47, so while he's got time left and apparently something of a name to move up to an FBS HC...this could work out faster.

That didn't arise, but something else came up at one point that was fairly similar. We were all state employees, working at a federal site, under various federal contracts. They'd put together a Thanksgiving lunch for everyone...free food, no argument there. OK. So this one year, HR people were also there...and said, ok everyone, since we have you all here, let's do a team building exercise!!! Yeah, right. I was crusty even then. Nope, not interested. I ignored it. Got some dirty looks from the HR people, but the heck with them. Did. Not. Care. Far as I was concerned, it was coercive (we came from multiple sites, in our group's case...from about 8-9 miles away, so leaving was Not an Option) and the whole lunch became false pretenses for whatever they wanted from us now. Good news is, firing a state employee is generally harder...and I'm pretty sure my boss at the time was like...well, whatever man.

His Orangeness' people said, we've turned over all the classified docs. Federal judge is skeptical, and says "look harder." Guess what??? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-lawyers-tower-bedminister-search-b2240675.html

Sure, if one is operating in an open and above-board manner...but if you sank $1M into things, don't you think you could find ways around any issues? Flight plan...depart from it in mid-air, over international waters. Landing..arrange with friendly state. Airport security...bribe. Or something. The Secret Service detail would be an issue, but the bigger one to me is that this'd take some time and planning. It's not spur of the moment. Trump won't concede the need to do it, before it's too late.

No argument they're incompetent, but that doesn't necessarily matter. IIRC, every election challenge was pretty much laughed out of court, and the Trump lawyers were rebuked rather firmly on more than one occasion. It still held things off. And look at the special master thing, with the records from Mar-a-Lago. A nice, what, month's delay there. Helps there was an idiot judge whose continued presence on the bench is dubious, considering, but the court and trial systems have so many ways to impede the orderly flow of business that competence isn't required. EDIT: look how long Alex Jones has dragged things out by doing, literally, NOTHING. And now he's got his business entity and personal money tied up in bankruptcy hearings. You know, I know, the judge will know, it's nothing but a stall tactic...but it doesn't matter.

Duuuuuuuuude.....................if he does this, it's NOT like he's gonna...you know...warn anyone! Nor would sequestering his passport make a bloody SHRED of difference. He'll hop a company plane...refuel somewhere, that might be a logistical problem if he's fleeing...and land in Russia. The only reason why I don't worry about it that much is, I don't think it's in his personality. First, it'd admit guilt and wrongdoing. He'll never admit *to himself* he's ever done anything wrong, and everything he's done was legal, Because He Was The President. Second, as I said before, this'd only happen if he really, truly thought he could get thrown in jail. His self-delusion won't allow that. Last reason: if there *are* logistical problems? Do you think he *can* work them out? Do you think his self-delusion will let him?

No chance. It won't happen. Something else will get flexed to that slot; there was some talk about more flexing taking place than in the past, potentially even Monday night games. TNF's Raiders-Rams is one of the reasons, but the Broncos' dismal season, along with the Rams...and they both have had a fair number of premium slots...just goes to show that you can't predict marquee teams now. Only the most demented masochists will watch this one. Week 13, CBS had the doubleheader. This is week 16; pretty sure they alternate weeks, so it's a CBS single on Saturday. Fine...flex this mangy cur into the afternoon CBS Saturday slot, where it'll only be inflicted on Denver and LA, slap Washington and the Niners into a national slot unless that game becomes much less relevant. (Then again, if it's Loser Is Probably Eliminated, that's noteworthy.) And that's because of the Jimmy G injury; without that, it'd make for a good national game. The other option would be Bengals-Pats, but it is in New England. The CBS national slot is the late slot; they don't often force the East Coast teams into that slot. Oh, I take that back. Someone in the front offices of Seattle and Detroit will likely watch, to hope the right team loses. Or just as good? Another tie! That'd keep both of them behind all the 4-win teams.

AP calls Georgia...Warnock. YAY!!!!! EDIT: this calls for a splash of cognac later on, to celebrate.