I know many will find this hard to believe but I spend a lot of time in church. Many different churches actually. From small churches out in the country, the kind that still have the tote board in the lobby that keeps track of attendance and donations, to big churches that take up a half a city block and in which I've actually gotten lost before. Most churches have security and/or fire systems in varying degrees of depth. Fire systems because jurisdictions require them in buildings where people gather and security due to the fact that some churches have sound and recording equipment that a lot of musicians would die for.     This week I had a call to make at a Freewill Baptist that, as Freewill Baptist churches go, is pretty big. When I called the Pastor to let him know I was on the way he said he would meet me there to unlock the door and my reaction was, cool, he's going to let me in to do my thing and I'll have an empty building with no impediments to get my work do

    First off, a tip of the cap to the County Board of  Elections and the polling workers there. Great set up and very friendly folks. I highly recommend it. Plus it's a great place to see what 50,000 political signs look like on 1,000 sq. ft. of grassy space. Mind blowing.    I try my best to look at policy when voting and this year was tough, so little of it is getting through the noise. So the first thing was to throw out all the noise, starting with the womanizing and misogyny crap. First off if you were shocked by Donald Trumps leaked tape, welcome back from that rock you've been living under. I used to be a big Howard Stern fan and Donald was a frequent guest on the show. Back then I was a little shocked at some of the things he said, with my usual reaction being, "what a dick". I'm not surprised at the women coming forward because it's exactly what he talked about doing on Stern. But seriously, can we just move on.     Trumps' counter attack on Bi

    Who will be the next President?     When I look at polling one of the first ones that I cast out is a general election poll. They don't matter one iota because we use an electoral college to select our president. You can carry the popular vote and still lose, as we've witnessed before.     Using the Fox News interactive as of today Hillary has 205 electoral votes to Donalds 164 with 12 states undecided and 270 needed to win. The 12 undecided they have are Nev, Col, Ari, Iowa, Wisc, Mich, Ohio, Pa, Va, NC, Ga, and Fla.    538.com lists Wisc, Mich, Pa, and Vir as better than 80% to vote Hillary and Ga, Ari, Iowa are probably Trumps. That puts us at 264 to 197 leaving 5 states Nev, Ohio ,Fla, NC, and Col. All Hillary has to do is win one of those states. Even if it's just Nev and their 6 votes, it puts her at 270.

    Well now he's gone and done it. Could this be the straw that breaks the camels back?     I would think that most historians would agree that the last thing a presidential candidate should be doing is sitting in front of a computer at five in morning telling the world to check out this kickass new sex tape he just came across. That by itself might turn off a couple likely supporters but that's not what made so many other people upset. What Donald ultimately did is unforgivable to many, me included.     Americans take their celebrity sex tapes very seriously and he directed us to a lame ass tape taken from a reality TV show. How bogus is that? Hell, most people don't even think it's really sex and was just a stunt to draw viewers. Americans are used to top-of-line sex tapes, it's one of things we do best. You had half the adults in the country googling away for the next Pam and Tommy Lee but all they found was a frisky Ozzie and Harriott.That's not gonna win

    Well trump finally came out and said it. No, it's not his birther statement, I'll get to that in a moment. This is about how he's sees the media.      While trying to explain away his man crush on Vladamir Putin last Monday Trump stated, "They said he's killed reporters. And I don't like that. I'm totally against that. And by the way, I hate some of these people. But I would never kill them. I hate them," he said. "These people — honestly, I'll be honest, I'll be honest — I would never kill them. I would never do that."     If you're wondering why there wasn't footage of journalists dancing in the streets after that statement it's because they know that 70% of what comes out of his mouth is bullshit. (Actually it's 71.4% but my affinity for even numbers works in his favor this time.) Still, that's somewhat good news. Personally I've always wanted to believe he wouldn't kill journalists but there w

    I want to give a big shout-out to the women who get paraded on TV as Donald Trump spokespersons. Thank you for making my job much more enjoyable because yours really sucks. Trying to explain away an ever changing Donald Trump political landscape has to be exhausting. I hope Donald is paying you extremely well. (Up front of coarse, there is a track record of nonpayment of services.)     Scottie Nell Hughes started out being the go to woman for the campaign and she actually did a pretty good job............at providing skits for SNL. She had to take a back seat eventually and was replaced by "resting bitch face" Katrina Pierson. (Seriously, here she is watching her favorite cartoons.) Katrina does a good job also, it's almost as if she was born to be a shill. It can't be easy to go on TV and have a laughing news person ask "WTF are you talking about?" on an almost daily basis.      But this weekend Donald had to bring out the big gun and sent out hi

    “We have a wonderful OPPORTUNITY here folks, that may never come again, at the RIGHT time. Donald Trump’s campaign statements, if nothing else, have SHOWN that ‘our views’ are NOT so ‘unpopular’ as the Political Correctness crowd have told everyone they are!”  Rocky Suhayda, Chairman of the American Nazi Party (and obvious caps-lock lover)                                                                           *******     "Do you think Trump voters are your voters?"     "Well, of course they are! Because I represent the ideas of preserving this country and the heritage of this country, and I think Trump represents that as well."  David Duke, antisemitic, holocaust denier, convicted felon and former Grand Wizard of the KKK.                                                                         ********     “White men in America and across the planet are partying like it’s 1999 following Trump’s decisive victory over the evil enemies of our race.&quo

    I've been wanting to write about The Donald for a few weeks now, but quite frankly, I can't keep up. Before I turn the computer on after work each day I wonder to myself , who did he verbally attack today? Or, I wonder what he whined about or lied about. Well, yesterday he hit the trifecta and lucky me it's a Sunday and I have a little time on my hands.     Right out of the gate he couldn't help but disparage a grieving mother. Sure the Khans called him out Thurs. when they asked what sacrifices he's made for the country and he could have stuck to his original response which was, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve done― I’ve had― I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.” (Wow, I never looked at going to work every day to feed and house myself as a sacrifice. Thanks Donald, please pity poor me and everybody else who d

    The Cincinnati Prosecutor has scheduled a big news conference on Monday to announce his decision on whether charges, if any, will be filed against the parents of the boy who fell in the gorilla cage. I hate to say it, but I kind of chuckled and just shook my head when I heard that. Charge them with what? Child endangerment? Not likely. Taking your child to the zoo isn't necessarily dangerous. Negligence? A possibility, but again not likely. What really qualifies as negligence?                                                                           +++++++     Two-year-old Kiyan Shelton found his mother's handgun in her purse and discharged it, hitting himself in the shoulder. He was taken to a local hospital and died hours later. Indianapolis Police announced that his mother, who had a license for the handgun, would not face charges.      While at home with his mom, three-year-old Christopher Griffith found his father's .357-caliber handgun and discharged it,

    History is an odd creature. Although it you can't change it, it is none the less a living and breathing thing. What has happened has actually happened, that much we know, but history can provide the how and the why. And it also provides a means of looking into the aftermath of a historical event.     Take President Clinton and his tryst with an intern. It was an extremely egregious act and he let down many of his supporters, but to be fair, history has shown us that at least 7 presidents before him had their own little escapades and one even made a baby in his trysts. They never had to stand before a judiciary committee and lie about it though, thus we had an impeachment process.     In an impeachment the House acts as a prosecutor and the Senate acts as the jury. The prosecution was led by the House Speaker at the time, Newt Gingrich, who history has shown was at the time cheating on his own wife, the woman who he cheated with while he was married to his first wife. (The one

    Poor Cleveland. Once again they try to rise above above the stigma as an ugly city and end up getting the long end of the shit stick.     It's not often that a city gets to showcase itself on the national stage, let alone on an international stage, and it was their hope that the GOP convention would do just that. Now their moment to shine is losing it's luster on an almost daily basis. It's a damned shame really. I've always had a good time on every visit to Cleveland, whether it was for concerts or football. The people are friendly, they have great working class bars and it's pretty easy to get around. The GOP convention doesn't deserve Cleveland. And Cleveland definitely doesn't deserve the crap headed it's way.     With the convention comes some Federal money for crowd control equipment and Cleveland saw this as a great opportunity for some much needed things they could use well past the convention. Congress approved $50 million for such things

    Our Governor loves to tout HIS job creation in Ohio, but some, no a lot, of HIS jobs can be traced back to central Ohio and the policies our local government put in place well before he became Governor. Make no mistake our state unemployment has fallen during his tenure but so has the nation and two of our border states, Indiana and Michigan, have done even better.     Our current state unemployment stands at 4.9%, not too shabby and it mirrors the national rate, but at the county level the numbers seem a bit skewed. There are 88 counties in Ohio but only 19 are below that 4.9% threshold. Some basic math would say there's no way you can have 69 counties out of 88 over the average to arrive at that number. To make it even more interesting there are 5 counties with over 10% unemployment and 35 of our 88 counties have an unemployment rate over 7%. It sure helps even the numbers when the county with the largest work force stands at 4.4% with job creation so strong that it bleeds o

    A quick look at how the new North Carolina Freedom to Discriminate bill is working out for their state.     Over 100 CEOs signed a letter calling for the repeal of the bill. It's a who's who of businesses, including the largest in the state, Bank of America. http://hrc-assets.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com//files/assets/resources/NC_CEO_Letter_%283%29.pdf     Four states have banned nonessential  travel, New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Washington. NYC, San Francisco and Chicago have also, and many more are considering it.     Film and TV production companies. are either having second thoughts or, in at least one case, moved their production to Canada. A&E network;  "Production on 'Six' is already under way, however we will not consider North Carolina for any new productions."     High Point Market is a furniture trade show organizer and the states largest economic event. It brings in $5.8 billion and generates 600,000 visitor hours. They rel

    $469 million, That's what been spent by candidates vying to be our next President, and that's just the money spent by the also-rans. The losers have spent nearly a half billion dollars and the only people who don't see a problem with this are the people blowing through the cash. Total in all the candidates and it sits at $889M, and that's just through Feb.     Campaign money comes from two sources generally, the campaign committee fund and pacs/superpacs and trust me , they don't want the general public to understand how these work. There are four different kinds of pacs, connected, non-connected, leadership and super, each with their own set of rules that are rarely followed b/c no one really gives a shit. When the rich want to influence an election they'll find the ways to get it done. A superpac is supposed to be independent of a candidate it's usually people hired by the campaign to run it. While most pac donations must say who the money comes from

    While Congress sits on their hands and does absolutely not a damned thing except the occasional naming of a Post Office (and even that's not without controversy, nine House members voted against naming one after Maya Angelou on March 2nd, calling her a communist sympathizer) the state legislatures have been quite busy, although generally not in the best interests of its citizenry. . Alabama    Alabama is the 47th poorest state in the US. For every dollar it pays into the federal government it takes $2.46 out. It has no minimum wage law so it's residents have to abide by the governments $7.25 statue. A person earning min. wage will bring home about $290 per week, minus taxes puts a paycheck at around $200. net. That's $800 a month for rent, utilities and food. Heaven forbid you have kids    The largest city, Birmingham, said enough is enough. We can't survive as a city unless our citizens are paid a fair wage. They decided that a minimum wage of $10.10 would not

  Although my GOP bracket went to hell in a hand basket, and rather quickly, there were some things I got right.     When I put Ben Carson on the list of  candidates who were "in it for the money" I couldn't have hit the nail more squarely, in fact, I greatly underestimated his prowess as a grifter.     Ben raised about $58M for his campaign, $27M in the last quarter alone and by the end of Feb. he was broke. While running a campaign can be expensive most of Bens money never made it onto the campaign trail. He never opened offices in Iowa or New Hampshire and simply relied on his appearances. Sure he bought some hats and t-shirts( ($600,000) and spent some some money on travel and lodging (about $2M). He even bought some balloons ($50) and a couple of books $74.25)     His biggest expenditures? Digital media and web services ($10M), printing and postage ($7M), and fundraising phone calls ($2.4M). While fundraising is important, most campaigns spend about 10% of their

    First off let me get the sarcasm out of the way. Thank you to the GOP for contributing your best and brightest to be the leader of the free world. Your donation of a semi-fascist, a religious ideologue and a yes-man toady who's clearly not ready for prime time anything has created a scenario that's somewhat frightening but, oddly enough, sometimes humorous in a WTF sort of way.     I've never been a fan the GOP, mostly over social issues. From the fight against global warming to the staunch opposition of equal rights for my gay friends, family and neighbors. Every time they lose a battle it would be on to another, always using fear and hatred as the catalyst. And now? Now their worst nightmare has come true, someone has come along and exposed a large part of their electorate that they wanted to keep hidden. The mainstream members of the party see this as a death knell but it's not as if Trump has an opposing view of the world, everyone on the stage last Thurs said