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Galactic Economics 7: Leapfrogging
RoyalRoad First Previous Next I ended up splitting off some of 8 into 9 based on feedback. The story I've thought of will end on 10, and then it's back to the drawing board for me. I'm not sure if I would continue with this universe or come back with another idea, let me know if you have an opinion either way. I'll start posting these onto a site I found called RoyalRoad in addition to reddit. I won't take donations, but it does seem like it has nice utilities to manage all the stories even if the audience is smaller. Any advice on this welcome too. And as always, I'm still a new writer trying to improve. Feedback about the story or my writing are all very welcome, and I read every one of them. Galactic Credits weren't technically a currency yet. They had a lot of GCs in the bank, but as the aliens would say, that's just numbers on a screen. You couldn't pay rent and taxes with GCs, not yet. As some human traders switched to exclusively buying goods from the market, they paid hard earned Dollars in exchange for virtual GC, and that became the revenue stream. This revenue balanced out almost perfectly with sellers who were instantly cashing out. For every Dollar that someone paid GC to convert to credits, only about 95 cents would be asked to be paid out by a seller trying to withdraw their GCs for cash. The transaction fees that GC made on every transaction can be visualized as credits disappearing into an untouched locked account. This was effectively a profit for GC, because it meant less credits that had to be exchanged for $. That 5% margin was a steady Dollar revenue stream that they could safely cash out. But because all the humans needed to pay bills and taxes, they would withdraw their money almost immediately, which meant that they would always be stuck around that 5% margin. Unlike a regular bank, they couldn't make a lot of investments. That's when the universe decided to give them a break. Or rather, their interests had aligned with the self interest of some very rich people who had just started paying attention. At first, the financial systems on Earth did not care much about GCs. They were used in spaceports all around Earth, and space was very exciting, but it was inaccessible to most people and the actual trade volume was a small percentage of total businesses done on Earth. The aliens directly made a few people very, very rich, mostly traders and GC. But what were of more interest to financial institutions were the reverse engineered alien technology products that they predicted were coming shortly. At the same time Sarah and her friends were trying to fix a famine, the human economy was booming. Like GC, banks were in the business of selling gold prospecting equipment, not looking for gold themselves. Naturally, banks started allowing deposits and withdrawal of GC. This wasn't unusual. Banks have no issues holding onto cryptocurrency and non-USD currencies for customers' savings accounts. That was their business, after all. There were some costs, but it was generally a good business: fat transaction fees led to fat profit margins. In the case of GC, banks needed to charge their customers a high transaction fee because GC itself charged a high transaction fee. This was bad for business. Not many people kept their credits in other banks because GC itself was a bank and they kept their money in there just fine without having to pay an even higher transaction fee. They were understandably unhappy about several of their wealthier customers keeping a lot of money in another bank, but not enough to want to choke out GC's business. That would be killing their golden goose that is the booming alien knockoff economy. So when GC decided to raise liquidity, as they would need to do to continue to bankroll a multi-planetary relief mission indefinitely, the banks saw an opportunity. Or rather, VISA did. It was an incredibly generous offer: VISA would treat Galactic Credits like Dollars and allow full convertibility on their own network, in exchange for GC waiving their entire transaction fee for bank transfers. Their lawyers didn't want GC to go ahead and print money without limits, so they put a contingency that allowed them to cut off GC whenever they wanted and clauses that allowed for regular auditing. Sarah and her friends thought about it, but not for very long. Galactic Credit became no longer the only bank that could deal in credits. Credits were now freely transferable between banks. Now, you could pay taxes in credits converted to USD. Which meant people stopped withdrawing their Dollars from GC immediately, and GC could "borrow" that money to pay for supplies, equipment, and then use some to invest in companies on Earth. It was like a limited run of fractional reserve banking. The aid operation to Gak continued. "Isn't this technically a blatant violation of minimum wage laws?" Asked Sarah over the FTL video comms, the crisp and quick quality of which was a testament of how much human infrastructure had been shipped into Gakrek orbit, "doing some quick maths with the average fuel and maintenance costs here… it looks like we're basically paying the space traders only about $10 for every hour of shipping they do for us." Kathleen Bryce, GC's head counsel shifted uncomfortably in a conference room chair 50 light years away, though her immediate reply indicated she had indeed thought the problem through, "Not if anyone asks." She continued, "the short story is nobody has tested the courts to see if aliens working for us in space are subject to California employment and labor regulations, or federal minimum wage laws, or perhaps, even no laws." "What's the long story?" Jen asked, slightly interested. "We're pretty sure they're at most contractors, definitely not employees. Cali Prop 22 took care of that. The spaceport is probably considered international territory, or else the traders would be considered 'illegal aliens' every time they landed," Kathleen did a little chuckle at that most unoriginal pun around the GC legal team watercooler, "In which case, the lower federal minimum wage applies. Or maybe it's not even international territory, maybe it's some new thing. Too many edge cases to descri-" "Ok," Sarah said after a moment, "it'll probably look bad though." "What will?" Jen countered, rolling her eyes, "that they're being asked to voluntarily work just above cost to help save a billion hungry aliens, a problem that, let's not forget, most people in the galaxy think they helped create in the first place? Give me a break. There's fifty thousand Red Cross workers working for free on Gakrek and you're telling me we-" "Ok, ok, we'll save this discussion for later, interesting as the implications are," Stearns interrupted, "until the labor board starts sniffing around, we'll let Legal deal with it. The other item I wanted to get to today is what we're going to do for Gak in the medium and long term." "Right, the immediate crisis is over, but the moment we pull our people out and stop sending food constantly, the Gaks are back to square one in two months," Sarah returned to her presentation, "over the past two weeks, our models keep having to be revised down on the future of Gakrek farming. Their climate system has been dramatically spiraling downwards for decades now. With this disaster: the out of control burning and flooding, the trashed ecosystems, and the Gaks literally selling off their farming tools to squeeze out some more fruits from traders, they added up to one conclusion: traditional subsistence agriculture is no longer viable on Gakrek." Here she put up a chart on screen. There were two lines. There's a straight horizontal line, marking the average calories that healthy Gaks needed, and then there's a quickly plummeting line denoting the drastic decrease of Gak agricultural productivity over time. They crossed about ten years ago. The meaning was clear. "It's increasingly obvious that all Gak food will need to be shipped in from offworld sources until we completely overhaul their agricultural economy," Sarah continued. "What kind of overhaul are we even talking about?" Benny chimed in. He owned a good portion of the company, but rarely came to these executive meetings. Today, he was making an exception for his son Benny Jr, who was on the view screen with the rest of the offworld team on Gakrek. Stearns replied, "in a word: industrialization." "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race," wrote Ted Kaczynski, known more famously as his press nickname, the Unabomber. When this was published in the Washington Post in 1995 in response to a threat, a number of people thought he was making a lot of sense. It made all the headlines, inspired countless hours of political debate, and gave a major boost to anarcho-primitive ideas in the academic sphere. But as many historians knew, his ideas were not wildly original. Industrialization, like every major economic change, created winners and losers. Sometimes there were more of one, and sometimes the other. In human society, previously skilled workers, usually guild craftsmen who made up the upper-middle class of late feudal Europe, became the biggest losers of industrialization as their labor was replaced by machines that could do what they did at hundreds if not thousands of times faster. Without skill, without rest, and without emotion. Some of them were so angry, they even went out and smashed the machines, but mechanization continued anyway. The biggest winners of the Industrial Revolution were the subsistence farmers who made up the vast majority of lower class workers in feudal Europe. They went into cities, to work mind-numbingly boring jobs, doing the same thing day after day, on risky and dangerous assembly lines for excruciatingly long hours. Many got injured. Some died. A few were even children. And yet mostly, they did so willingly. That's not because they were all tricked, under some grand illusion that factory work was comfortable, safe, and enriching. It was because subsistence farming on its worst day was a hecking nightmare. The Gaks were living it. "Why can't we just build a tractor factory there then?" Sarah demanded. In her mind, tractors were synonymous with food. She'd been on a road trip through the American Midwest once, on the way to the Yellowstone. There, she'd seen rows of gigantic tractors plowing fields, endless food from horizon to horizon. To Sarah, the massive scale of the corn fields of America was just how industrialization was done. "Because tractor factories depend on a thousand different parts. Who's gonna make the tires? Who's gonna make the motors? Who's gonna make the onboard computer?" Stearns explained, "and who's gonna bring them gasoline to keep running? And each of those components have a thousand factories to make them, and each have dependencies on thousands of other factories! It would literally be easier to move Los Angeles onto Gak than it would be to help them mass manufacture tractors." Sarah made a facepalming gesture, but Stearns cut her off before she launched into despair, "there actually is a much easier solution to this problem." "On Earth, most economists agree that the most efficient way to send foreign aid to areas that consistently couldn't produce enough food is not to send them food; it's to send them money so they can buy food, or if they have good soil, they can buy some tools to grow their own," said Stearns, leading Sarah to the obvious conclusion. "But they don't use money here, we can't just send them money!" "Exactly. So let's talk about that." Gordorker's family had finally cleaned up his house from the dust storm. The broken roof was re-tiled as best as he could. His children had helped on some of the menial tasks, but that's what children were for. It was nice to have purpose again. The humans had said that their mission would be here for months, maybe years, but Gordorker was not so naive to believe that he wouldn't have to work for food again. He was certainly not so stupid to take this to mean he should be lounging around all day. Winters on Gakrek were not bad in terms of freezing people to death, but the dry winds would not allow crop planting until spring again. Next time, he would have 21 mouths to feed, not including his, and he'd have to get the fields plowed without poor Grunger. He was lucky he had so many children. Traders Only New Thread: Bohor spaceports have just banned bartering! Body: If your friends want to do any business at Bohor, they better get themselves a GC Terminal fast! The Bohor are banning barter at their main port. You will only be able to conduct trades by credits starting in a few days! Comment: Whaaaaat? Are you crazy??? Only two of my friends have Terminals. How is everyone else supposed to make a living?! Comment: Get a Terminal lol Comment: We told you guys last week this was gonna happen if you assholes keep holding up the line with your obnoxious rare fruit peddling. Newsflash, we don't care about how exotic your stuff is on Bohor. Just unload it. We weigh it, read the price list for food items, do the math, you get your credits, and you're out of there in minutes. You want air filters? We've got air filters for 2,800 GCs, no haggling, no bartering. If you don't like it, someone else will take it. Don't waste our time! -- Bohor Spaceport Management Team Comment: Hey Bohor, have you considered maybe getting a Terminal yourself so that everyone else don't all need to get one just to get some fuel? Comment: I'm selling air filters for 3,000 GCs in orbit above Bohor for traders who don't have Terminals. "Our plan for the leasing model for the Terminals is not going to work," Sarah observed. "Yup, the famine crisis on Gakrek is forcing our hand," admitted Stearns, "and we'd expected a much slower rollout to bring the aliens on board over the course of years, not weeks. In hindsight, it was obvious how this was different to how humans popularized credit and debit cards in the 1970s. We were replacing cash, which was just slightly inferior to a card, but with the aliens, we're replacing their entire dumpster fire of an economy. We earned a lot of goodwill with our relief effort and the galaxy is buying in." "So what, we just abandon the original timeline and move to phase two immediately?" Asked Sarah. "Exactly right. When the iron is hot, you gotta strike it," replied Stearns, "we'll give the merchants already with Terminals an option to opt out of their lease and switch to the new devices, but I doubt most will. Our internal data shows that they've universally been getting their money's worth out of those." "Are our manufacturers even ready to handle the inevitable barrage of orders?" Asked Jen, eager to move onto the logistics and technology discussion. They were not. Version two of the offworld trading terminals were actually a downgrade to the original Terminals. The originals were prototypes, modified out of consumer tablets that cost hundreds of dollars to produce. The new ones, branded Mini Terminals, were basic card readers with pin pads and a tiny OLED display, attached to a now mass produced FTL antenna you could get at RadioShack for $3.99. There wasn't even a thermal printer for receipts. The whole device costs no more than $20 to make on a mass production line in Vietnam. GC was going to sell it at cost in credits. Galactic Credit had prepared supply lines to ramp up production, ready to start rolling them out in a couple years. They've made a test batch of tens of thousands of units sitting in storage, but did not expect to need to start actually selling them for a while. Carefully made plans were abandoned, schedules were expedited, employees in SE Asia worked overtime, and the company took on extra cost to push the schedule up. It still wasn't enough. On day one, all reserve units sold out. Some of the well connected human traders, unburdened with a strong conscience or ethics, bought them by the truckload as they were leaving their warehouses. They sold them at a large markup at the spaceport. That was not very cash money of them. GC sent a representative to the spaceport to let traders know that they were out of stock, but more would be made available shortly. Customers should just wait a week for the prices to come down. The scalpers instantly sold out anyway. The alien traders lucky enough to be on the non-relief landing pads filled their cargo with the Mini Terminals. Then, those traders sold them at a markup at other ports. And so on. By the time the Mini Terminals reached average spaceport merchants on the other side of the galaxy, they were being sold for almost half the price of the original tablet Terminals. By the end of the week, the craze died down. These electronics really were cheap and easy for human factories to make, and many of the production lines just needed time to start the machines. Prices returned to normal, and the average merchant could afford them with a bit of honest work and savings. The Gakrek Spacelift was slowing down. The turnaround time had been increased to a leisurely 10 minutes, and the Livermore space traffic controller was occasionally allowing non-relief traders to land at open pads, which Zikzik was doing now. Zikzik needed to refuel, but apparently that was still only allowed for the landing pads that had been designated for relief. He called up the Livermore port manager, pointed to his number one position on the relief pilot leaderboard, but she just shrugged her shoulders and said apologetically, "rules are rules". Oh well, he could always refuel at Olgix on the way. As he landed in Olgix, he realized this was the first time he landed at a non human or Gak port for at least a week. He greeted the Olg who was running a reactor fuel line to his ship with a nod, and asked, "how much fruit to full?" The Olg took one look at the sign on his booth, and said, "you know we also take credits on Olgix now, right?" A little surprised, Zikzik took out his card and terminal and allowed the Olg to swipe his. He'd used his Terminal when doing exchanges with other traders, but this was the first time he'd been to a non-Earth port where goods and services could be paid for using his credits. "That's 295.50 GCs, pleasure doing business with you." Grob was one of the wealthier Gaks in the world. The famine had affected everyone, but he and his wife did not have to go hungry because the spaceport management made sure to keep feeding the people that kept the mobs at bay. Everything else stopped working though. He used to pad his income by making sure that the vendors at the spaceport knew exactly who was protecting their livelihoods. Only very rarely did new ones not cooperate. Grob really wasn't a bad Gak, but he did what everyone else in his position also did. This was just how business was done on Gakrek. You didn't get to survive to become a security guard family if you didn't do that. Another Gak would come along, take your place, and do what you didn't want to do anyway. When the humans arrived, things changed. They started peddling these credits business, which he'd seen some of the traders used. Of course, he didn't think much of it. Instead of getting goods, you just get a card, and use the card to trade for food and items? Seems unnecessarily complicated. He'd heard that they charged a cut just for you to use the card, a concept that he was intimately familiar with and in no hurry to be subjected to. The humans had insisted on giving one to him and setting it up. Which he had to do because they were in charge now, but that was fine by him. Just because he had a card didn't mean he had to use it right? A few days later, when he was on a patrol route at the spaceport, checking off the vendor stands, one of the luxury item vendors asked him if she could pay her next cycle's fee with her card because she had traded away all her wares. "You gotta make sure to save wares for me next time," he'd told her, "but I'll take it this time." He ruffled through his backpack to find the card, handed it to her, and she inserted it into her machine, typed in her code, and showed him that it had deposited 18 GC into his account. Hoping that she didn't stiff him, he went on with his route. "Let me say this again," Zarko said at the edge of his patience limit, "you can trade these credits for food on Earth. Lots of food, shiploads of food. So much food, everywhere." "But I don't have a ship," whined the spare parts vendor at the spaceport, "why don't you just bring food with you next time you want my parts?" "You can exchange credits for food from some of the other traders that come down here too! Some of them have the new Terminals now, look, that guy over there, he takes GC," Zarko was almost shouting while pointing at a fellow Zeepil food merchant who had a I ❤️ GC sign on his booth across the spaceport. This was frustrating. Every time he came across one of these less traveled planets he had to explain himself to these yokels all over again. The vendor looked over skeptically and said, "how do I know that you two aren't working some scam together?" That was it for Zarko. It had been a long day, this guy wasn't making it any shorter, and he had just been accused of being a dishonest trader. It was probably because of his species. Just because he was a Zeepil didn't mean he was a scammer! He internally cursed the unjustified stereotype of his people and blew up at the racist: "Listen to me very carefully. You're going to give me the secondary fuel modulator. You're going to walk over to the food merchant over there. Then you're going to swipe this card over here, on his machine. He's going to give you at least a month's worth of food. And if you don't, I'm going to leave a one star review on your spaceport on Traders Only, and nobody is going to come back here to trade anything with you ever again, got it?" The vendor whined some more under his breath, but eventually relented. The threat had sounded real. He got plenty of food. Whatever scam these Zeepils were running, they didn't rip him off this time at least. Whatever. Zarko was fuming as he took off. Didn't these ignorant primitives know that a liquid currency to facilitate free and fair exchange of goods and services was obviously the bedrock upon which a modern economy needed to be built? When Grob got home from work, he handed his wife the credits card saying, "hey darling, one of the luxury traders gave me her protection share using the card. I trusted her because she normally always pays on time. Did I get scammed?" His wife was a teacher at a nearby school. Ever the practical one, she asked, "oh, how much did she put on it?" "It said 18." She did some math in her head and replied, "yeah that sounds about right," and to his surprise, she pulled out a card and said, "I got one from the humans at the school too, and I used it to buy a new pair of shoes for you!" He tried them on. They weren't very fitting shoes, but neither were his previous pair so he couldn't complain. They did seem very well made even though the little holes in them seemed to be a design choice. Pretty soon, he noticed that the other guards at the spaceport started extracting their share of protection fees using cards too. Oh well, if everyone else was taking fees with a card, he supposed it couldn't hurt if he did it too. It somewhat lightened his load on patrols, which he didn't mind at all. Besides, his blue shoes were really pretty. He was not sure why there was a big check mark on its side though. "They're doing what?!" Sarah asked, her temper threatening to go off. "It's a protection racket. A practice as old as time. The security guards have basically been taking a percentage of the vendors' wares, and recently switched onto using cards to take payment. It's been going on forever and it's probably just how they do things there. Using cards is pretty innovative of them, I'll give them that," Jen said, "but it made it pretty easy for us to track down all of them. Should we revert the transactions?" "No, probably not," Sarah said, calming down and seeing a slight head shake from her head counsel Bryce, "but we need to make it clear to them that they can't be allowed to do that anymore." Grob wasn't sure how to feel about the cards anymore. The humans had found the practice of protection fees distasteful, and they'd warned that anyone caught doing it again would face severe consequences. They made their point pretty clear when one of the other guards was made an example of: her card stopped working. She had to get a new one that didn't have any of her credits in it! On the other hand, the humans also made the spaceport authorities start paying them with credits, which was good because now they were being paid on time and Grob knew he didn't have to worry about not being paid as long as the humans were there. His wife had been buying them new clothes with credits she was getting paid as a teacher too. One of his human friends had giggled when she saw his shirt, which apparently said "2016 NBA Champions Golden State Warriors". He wasn't sure what was so funny about that, but it was a very comfortable shirt. Maybe this whole credits thing wasn't as ridiculous as he thought at first. By the universal inheritance path known as "dibs", Gordorker inherited his neighbors Gyuotin and Gyuovin's farmable land and possessions. They didn't have much. Trinkets, gadgets, and a bunch of junk. It was mostly items that couldn't be traded for food during the worst periods of the shortage. With his immediate food needs taken care of by the relative abundance of food items the humans have brought, Gordorker thought perhaps he should go buy a stasis box with the trinkets he got from his deceased neighbors. When he arrived at the offworld market, he saw a high end luxury merchant proudly displaying some fresh new wares from offworld, including a number of stasis boxes. These were apparently new ones made by humans. These were slightly bigger than the ones he'd have before, but he'd brought his neighbors' life possessions, so he thought maybe he'd be able to trade for one of those with some haggling. Gordorker started laying out his items on the table, but the trader cut him off, hastily saying the weirdest thing he'd ever heard from a trader in his life, "no barter, credits only." The merchant then pointed him towards a human tent. A human volunteer, his nametag said Marco, asked his name and gave him a shiny card, then told him to memorize 6 numbers. "As the head of your household, you have also been given a small stimulus by the GC corporation," he said. Then Marco took him to a junk trader stall, where he gave the trader all his items. Marco showed an increasingly confused Gordorker how to insert his card into a small machine slot to "receive payment". Marco guided him back to the merchant selling stasis boxes. Gordorker was instructed on how to insert his card and enter his pin code, which he mastered with no difficulty. Marco then took him to a farm tools stall, where Gordorker repeated the same process with a steel plow, a small box of "semi-dwarf wheat seeds", a long garden hose, and a hand pump, all loaded onto a brand new wooden wheelbarrow. "BAL: 12.50," the small screen had read. Gordorker was not sure what unnatural ritual he had taken part in, but he was in possession of the most farm tools he had ever been in his life and he had the stasis box he was looking for. "Alright, that should be enough. Make sure to keep the card safe and remember your 6 digit code. Ask a volunteer if you need to know what the tools do.." Gordorker put his card in his stasis box. Then, being the prudent Gak he was, he wrote down his pin code and put it in the box as well. Whatever else it did, he was sure one of his descendants could probably find a use for it in an emergency one day. In hindsight, there were obvious economic side effects for Earth becoming a mass producer of everything from food to cheap consumer electronics, the reverse engineering of millions of years of alien tech, and ripping down the barriers that the barter based economies of the galaxy had erected. A young forward thinking economist wrote a whole journal article about it with a typical economic study title: "Development Osmosis: Capital Outflow, Argentina, and Extreme Poverty in Offworld Economies". Three other economists read the pre-print as part of the peer review, who all sent him an email saying something along the lines of "wow, this gave me a lot to think about. Somebody important should read this!" Nobody else did, for a while. It didn't make the news. The reference to high yield semi-dwarf wheat seeds in the story refers to the research of Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Norman Borlaug. Borlaug noticed that stalks of wheat that are too high yield would bend and then break their stalks, so he solved that problem by breeding these plants with dwarfed plants. Shorter stalk, supports more wheat. His work in improving food security in developing nations is credited with saving the lives of over a billion humans. A real life HFY. The next chapter's working title is: Rising Tide RoyalRoad First Previous Next
Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words, continuing in the footsteps of daprice82. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives. • PREVIOUS • 1987 FUTURE YEARS ARCHIVE: The Complete Observer Rewind Archive by daprice82
The big story this week is WWF has announced a 14-man tournament for Wrestlemania IV. The word going around is that there will be four other matches: a battle royal (which ought to get another dozen guys on the card for the big payday, probably two tag matches (Dave speculates Demolition vs. Strike Force and Bulldogs vs. Islanders) and an Intercontinental title defense for Honkeytonk Man. The leading candidate for challenger there is Brutus Beefcake, so they’ll need to get on top of shooting an angle for that this week if they want to try and get it over. Anyway, the real meat of Wrestlemania is this tournament, and the bracket has already been announced on the syndicated shows.
So looking at this bracket, what are the likely outcomes? Dave thinks there’s really only two possibilities, and there’s only two possibilities for the final match. Hogan vs. DiBiase is the obvious finals if Hogan is to win, and if Hogan’s filming schedule for his upcoming movie (it begins in April) allows for it, this will be the finals. If he can wrestle during the summer, Dave expects him to win, if not he expects DiBiase to win overall since the winner of the tournament needs to be a heel to drop it back to Hogan when the company decides the time is write (Dave thinks the ppv in August looks like that time). If DiBiase wins, Dave thinks it’s going to be Don Muraco he beats in the finals, however. Dave then goes down the bracket and explains who he thinks wins when, ruling out combinations of guys (if Roberts beats Rude, Bravo beats Muraco, so we get Roberts vs. Bravo, for example). Savage doesn’t go out in the first round, obviously, but neither should Steamboat lose to Valentine, so that’s probably our token face vs. face match leading probably to a draw or double elimination. Notice anything weird about this bracket, though? WWF changes plans and redraws the bracket. They swap Roberts/Rude and DiBiase/Duggan’s place so DiBiase is on the same side of the bracket before Wrestlemania, so all this speculation by Dave ultimately goes nowhere because that one shift completely changes the tournament. More on that change when it happens. Dave is definitely right about one thing, though: there are going to be way too many matches on this show, so they're definitely going to have to have some fuck finishes to get the number of matches down in the tournament so things work.
The Main Event’s final rating was a 15.1 and a 25 share, ranking 31st for the week. Dave feels like this has to be a major disappointment for WWF and NBC, as both figured the show would be in the top 10 easily. It won its time slot and the rating was better than the 11.6 average NBC has gotten in that slot with Rags to Riches, but it’s not as big a winner as they hoped. So in the LA Times and USA Today, Dick Ebersole (who co-produced the show with Vince) said that they weren’t interested in a weekly prime-time show because it would hurt live gates. But the reality is they won’t even be offered a slot, because they won’t be able to sustain competitive ratings. Dave was really surprised by the rating, and this show’s rating was the most interested he’s been in something wrestling related for a long time, because it was a test of just how much the general public would bite on wrestling. And what we’ve learned is that to the general public the biggest wrestling match possible, with the biggest hype possible (Andre vs. Hogan) with a month of buildup on all shows and even big news media attention (almost every newspaper ran a feature about the show at some point during the build) only got mediocre mainstream support. Wrestling fans are supremely loyal and will watch no matter the time slot, and the same show on Saturday night at 11:30 pm would have gotten at least a 12 rating), but moving to prime time didn’t get them a big increase in viewers. It renders moot the question of how first-time viewers will take the evil twin angle and such, because few of the viewers were first-time watchers. The audience was the same wrestling audience we’ve always had, and 85% of the general public just ignored the show and hype outright. Nothing wrong with that, people like and dislike what they want to, and WWF can still make loads of money off the 12-15% of people who do have an interest in wrestling.
But this really puts Hulk Hogan and his appeal/drawing power into perspective. To the cult wrestling audience, he’s bigger than any wrestling star has ever been in the U.S. But he’s not mainstream, not really. He can help get wrestling on prime time network television a couple times a year, but they can’t build wrestling on him to make a mainstream appeal. And Hogan, for as over as he is here, clearly falls short of the most over acts to have graced Japan (Inoki in his heyday) and boxing (Larry Holmes, for example). WWF did prove they can be put in a weak time slot during sweeps with a lot of hype behind a special card and win the slot, which is no small thing. We can probably expect another prime time special in the future, but probably no more than one or two a year. You won’t read about wrestling’s resurgence in Time Magazine, and networks won’t discover Crockett’s shows because nobody’s looking at wrestling as a hot item (if the show had cracked the top five, maybe they would). The long and the short of it is, WWF is no worse off than they were two weeks ago, and Wrestlemania will still make a lot of money. And although Vince has gotten WWF to the point where they are making more money off wrestling than any other promotion in history, their “mainstream” interest in this country doesn’t even come close to New Japan’s tv heyday (1982-1985), and Hogan’s ability to draw a rating is probably more than anyone else in the modern era in the U.S., but probably isn’t as strong as Chigusa Nagayo’s ratings drawing power is in Japan.
And you might be wondering if it’s appropriate to compare to Japan, or if the comparison is ridiculous given cultural differences. Dave notes that the U.S. is more tv oriented in Japan, which should put things in greater perspective - Hogan has all the advantages of American television culture and is still behind Nagayo and Inoki in terms of relative mainstream appeal/drawing power in their culture. In short, Dave had a conversation with a WWF employee a couple months ago about wrestling style (serious, hardcore vs. sports entertainment fast food) and if it was the style, being the best run promotion, or how much money they spend that makes WWF number 1. Their conclusion was that they couldn’t figure out a clear answer. No other promotion that offers a traditional product has hundreds in the front office, $250,000 to spend on every tv taping, etc. There’s no way to control for the sheer magnitude of advantages WWF has to be able to tell if they would be beatable, and the only way to know the answer about style would be if there was another promotion that had a traditional style but also had the production values, the front office staff, etc. And on the flip side, would people like Carlos Colon, Riki Choshu, Antonio Inoki, or Chigusa Nagayo be as over as they are if their local markets had a dozen different wrestling promotions on tv?
[Memphis] Financial News Network announced on Tuesday that they’ll start airing CWA Wrestling weekly beginning in April. Dave forgot to write down the time slot, but thinks it’s Saturday nights at 9 pm eastern. ESPN signed a new exclusive deal with AWA for 2 years, which kicks World Class off ESPN. Angelo Savoldi’s ICW in New England got a deal with Tempo cable, so all other wrestling will be dropped from that service.
AWA is “restructuring the company.” No word on what that means other than that their Las Vegas card this Sunday will be their last for about a month before they reopen in late March. Maybe they’ll change some major things about how they run? Dave thinks Verne’s gotten tired of people making decisions that cost him money, so he’ll probably be booker again. From what Dave hears, Curt Hennig will be the only wrestler getting paid during the time off, so expect Verne to fob him off to Memphis for the interim. The Midnight Rockers will probably also work Memphis in that time. No idea about the rest of the roster, but they’ll probably have to find new work in other territories if they can find work in wrestling, or regular jobs if they can’t.
Over in Puerto Rico they sold out on January 30 a big show at Roberto Clemente Coliseum. That’s roughly 32,000 fans to watch Carlos Colon vs. Iron Sheik for the Universal Title, with manager Chicky Starr in a shark cage above the ring. Carlos won, of course, as Sheiky baby is heading back to WWF. Dave talks a bit about Carlos - he’s over like Rover, but the man’s comebacks are dull as hell. It’s a bizarre thing, what gets over with crowds.
Stampede’s February 5 show had what was probably the best match in Calgary in months. Bruce Hart and Brian Pillman defended the International Tag Titles against Great Gama and Jerry Morrow, with three assigned referees (Wayne Hart, heel ref Jurgen Herman, and heel ref for Karachi Vice Akeem Singh). Herman wound up being the main referee, but got knocked down by Gama, and after that when Pillman went up top to do a dive, Akeem threw powder in his eyes and Gama did a cobra hold. When Herman came to, he saw Pillman passed out and awarded the match and titles to the heels and they celebrated with champagne until Wayne Hart told Herman what happened and the decision was reversed.
Les Thornton has been given a promoter’s permit by the Calgary Boxing & Wrestling Commission. He’ll start running shows against Stampede in the spring.
WWF is doing a Wrestling Challenge taping on March 9 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. That’s about 20 miles from Greensboro, so they’re encroaching a bit on Flair country, which means they’re making moves to kill the competition dead.
WWF has a Saturday Night’s Main Event scheduled for March 12, to be taped on the 7th.
Honkeytonk Man was supposed to drop the Intercontinental Title at The Main Event but vetoed the title change. Lots of chaos backstage as a result of it, and the match was also supposed to be shorter than it wound up being. He held out and refused to job and he’s still champion, so in the end he got what he wanted. You might wonder why not just have Savage win anyway and not give in by having him shoot on Honkeytonk, but the key is Honkeytonk realized that Vince wouldn’t want to take a chance of anything bad happening on tv, and you definitely aren’t going to want a match turning into a shoot and getting real violence on live tv. This also probably explains why he’s not in the tournament.
Billy Jack Haynes apparently asked Vince McMahon for help starting a promotion in Oregon to run against Don Owen’s promotion. Vince wasn’t biting, and this ultimately is the real reason he was let go, probably, as those close to him say it wasn’t his health, but that he wanted to get out anyway because he wasn’t being pushed (and neither was Brady Boone).
Jesse Ventura will get to do color commentary this season on some New York Yankees games for local pay-tv. He’s apparently thrilled about this.
Correction: Bam Bam Bigelow didn’t have arthroscopic knee surgery. He just took a week off to rest his knee, and isn’t planning to get surgery until just after Wrestlemania.
Bam Bam also had a drug possession charge dismissed against him in Freehold, New Jersey on the grounds that the evidence was obtained illegally and that state police had no grounds to search his car. They found a small bag of marijuana under his seat and he got a misdemeanor possession charge, but again, no probable cause to search so that’s a 4th amendment violation. They pulled him over and searched his car, apparently, because he waved at the officers. If convicted, he would have been in big trouble because he’s still on probation from a 1986 conviction for threatening to kill a local sex worker (that’s a big yikes right there), so he would have caught a 5 year prison sentence for revocation of probation.
Memphis has a revolving door of talent, as Bill Dundee is leaving and Manny Fernandez, Scott Hall, and several others have disappeared. Dundee is going to the new promotion that will be running out of Knoxville. New to the area this week are the Rock & Roll Express, Tommy Rich, and Samoans Samu and Kokina. Samu is Afa’s son, and Kokina is, from the information Dave has, Sika’s son (he’s Afoa’s son, not Sika’s son). Kokina is impressively large at 400 lbs, but Samu is definitely the more impressive wrestler. Kokina, of course, will later on travel to Japan for a kayfabe sumo career and come back to the WWF as Yokozuna.
[Memphis] Tommy Rich is apparently a babyface, going by his recent interview. He apologized for all the bad things he did and said he was wrong to team with Austin Idol and Paul E. Dangerously, but he said he still hates Jerry Lawler. There’s legit heat between him and Lawler which is why Rich left last year anyway while he was a top heel. So he said he wanted all the fans in Memphis who hated Lawler to come support him. Expect a 50/50 crowd for their february 15 grudge match - although the promotion can’t draw without him, there is a large group of fans who don’t like that he’s constantly on top of the card.
[Memphis] The manager with the preacher gimmick has dropped that gimmick, and the Choir Boys tag team are gone. Too much negative attention in the form of phone calls to the studio last week. The manager, Ernest Angel, now manages CWA Tag champs Max Payne and Gary Young, and his behavior has been toned down and he’s apologized somewhat for his behavior the previous week.
Continental (Alabama) had its last week this week as a unified promotion this week, since the Knoxville office ran its first show this weekend. They drew 7,000 in Knoxville on February 12. Dave’s not sure what the eventual talent split will work out, but known guys going to Knoxville are Johnny Rich, Bill Dundee, Hector Guerrero, Ron Fuller (didn’t he announce his retirement a few weeks ago?), Austin Idol, Lord Humongous, Doug Furnas, Mongolian Stomper, the Armstrongs, and Tracy Smothers.
[Oregon] The Frank Bonema Memorial Show is scheduled for February 16. Boneme was their long-time tv announcer who passed away five years ago. Curt Hennig vs. The Grappler (Hennig as babyface) for the AWA Title is the main event. The show will also have a battle royal for the TV Title, Mike Miller vs. Rip Oliver in a cage, The Assassin vs. Avalanche in a mask vs. headgear match (Avalanche lost his hair in a match and has been wearing headgear like Kurt Angle or Molly Holly to hide it), and a couple more matches.
Steve Estes, a former wrestler local to the Kansas City area, pleaded guilty to a Class B felony. The charge was related to the hold-up of a Mexican restaurant in October. He was charged with a Class A felony, but the charge was reduced on plea bargain. He faces five to fifteen years.
Mean Gene Okerlund’s son Todd is on the U.S. Olympic Ice Hockey team right now. At the time of writing the team will have won their first game, but their fortunes turn south over the rest of the group stage and they don’t qualify to go to the knockout rounds of the tournament.
Mad Dog Vachon is suing the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinic for several million dollars. His claim is that if he had received proper treatment he would never have needed to have his leg amputated. This starts a big series of cases lasting all the way until 1994, and you can read the final case summary here.
There’s a movie in Japan called “The Crazy Family” which includes the family’s 13 year old daughter doing nothing but weightlifting and training and singing so she can be like Chigusa Nagayo. It’s from 1984, so I don’t know why Dave’s only just noticing it now.
Florida has dropped legislation that would have created a state athletic commission that would regulate wrestling. Legislators met with Duke Keomuka and Gerald Briscoe, and were subsequently convinced that wrestling is pure entertainment and not a sport at all.
In Southern California a new group is starting up called the American Women’s Wrestling Federation. They’re running ads for beautiful women who want to be trained as wrestlers. Mando Guerrero and Debbie Pelletier (The Killer Tomato, later Dallas in GLOW) will be training, and Dave remarks that Debbie doesn’t know the first thing about wrestling.
Bruiser Brody is promoting a show in St. Louis at the Fox Theater on March 4. He’ll face Jerry Blackwell in the main event, and Sam Muchnick will be there to raise the winner’s hand. The building is apparently the nicest building within 500 miles of St. Louis and not the sort of place that would ordinarily let wrestling in. Muchnick apparently felt used by the NWA at a recent taping by constantly showing him on camera and making it out like he endorsed the NWA and that they have continuity with the NWA he ran back in the day. So that’s why he’s on board. Crockett’s NWA has a show in St. Louis two days later.
Wrestling fanzine publisher David Leehy promoted a show that drew 200 in Richmond Virginia on February 5 for Virginia Wrestling Association.
Ohio’s state senate passed a bill that would put a 5% tax on all wrestling receipts, with money raised going to the boxing commission. The money would be earmarked for creating a medical advisory board for boxing. No regulation of wrestling is proposed in the bill, and the bill still has to pass the house. Seems a bit unfair.
WCCW drew 3,800 (buy one ticket, get a second for a penny, same deal for concessions) in Dallas on February 12.
Michael Hayes is back in WCCW as a babyface. No surprises there. They’re building to a Hayes concert on March 5 at the Sportatorium, and that’ll probably have a big angle. Somebody’s gotta attack Hayes. Won’t be Terry Gordy, since he’ll be in Japan, but somebody will.
WCCW’s tv show is airing mainly tapes of old matches. That’s fine in the Fort Worth area, since they had no live cards for two weeks, but Dave’s puzzled nonetheless. Maybe they somehow missed a taping?
Ken Mantell has this idea of reopening Wild West and starting their tv back up and having Wild West and World Class feud. Where’s the logic in that? Plus, there are enough promotions that this would only confuse the average fan.
Steve Williams told the press in Japan he’ll be coming to work in World Class. It’s not been announced stateside yet, but he said he’d wrestle in WCCW as UWF champion and defend the belt against the Von Erichs.
AWA is putting all the heat with the recent Hennig/Gagne title match on Stanley Blackburn. They’d billed the match as a title match, Gagne won and was presented with the title, but Stan refused to honor the title change because it was a cage match. Something to talk about in the month they don’t run shows, I guess, but this is what passes for creative in AWA.
AWA will use the University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena as their new home base now that the Minneapolis Auditorium is gone. There’s some concern that the arena’s ban on alcohol will adversely affect ticket sales.
Despite some screw ups, New Japan did fairly good business with their most recent tour and jr. heavyweight tournament. Inoki beat Choshu decisively on February 4 to retain the IWGP Title, which puts a final end to Choshumania and any chance he had of regaining the popularity he’s lost over the past six months. On the final night of the tour, Shiro Koshinaka won the Top of the Super Juniors tournament. Vader and Inoki went to a double countout for the IWGP Title that saw the return of the masked pirate who was attacking Inoki last year.
In bad wrestling stuff in New Japan, Choshu’s performance has noticeably slipped and Buzz Sawyer seems to be trying to sabotage Owen Hart. Choshu just looks like he doesn’t even want to be in the ring anymore. As for Sawyer, he’s been teaming with Owen and when Owen starts up his more flashy offence, Sawyer starts barking, howling, and playing to the crowd to distract them from what Hart’s doing. Buzz Sawyer is a total buzzkill.
New Japan plans to tour Brazil in late March.
Steve Williams gave an interview saying he’s tired of touring all over the U.S. and he wants to spend more time with his wife. He also said the NWA broke a bunch of promises they made to him when they bought out UWF, and he seemed pretty upset that Dusty never followed through with the promised unification match with Flair. He said “I don’t go back to NWA Crockett promotions anymore. I’d like to wrestle for promotions which set a high value on ability. New Japan is good because they use Vader, Buzz Sawyer, Bob Orton and Owen Hart who can do hard wrestling.
All Japan Women is looking pretty healthy right now. They drew 3,500 fans on January 28 for a big grudge match pitting Yumiko Hotta and Hisako Uno against Yumi Ogura and Kazue Nagahori. It was last year on April 27 when Ogura tombstoned Hotta off the middle ropes and broke her neck, and there was worry that Hotta would never wrestle again. The next night they drew 4,500 as Ogura won the AJW Title (their tertiary belt after the “Red Belt” WWWA World Singles Title and the “White Belt” WWWA All Pacific Title) from Bull Nakano via disqualification. Both shows work out to over 100,000 gates given ticket prices in Japan, and AJW’s merch machine is better than anyone else, as they get more money selling merch per capita than any other promotion. Monster Ripper (Rhonda Singh from Stampede, in the future Bertha Faye), is working here now too.
Paul Boesch was elected/appointed to the NWA board of directors, making him the first non-promoter ever on the board. Back in the NWA’s glory days, the board would select the world champion, but that’s probably pretty much up to Jim Crockett now and the board is more or less a figurehead thing. The real value for the NWA here is using Boesch’s name value in the Houston area, and he’ll be starting as they return to Houston on March 4. He’s not on board as the promoter, however, and has no financial stake in the show, so it’s pretty much just a “Hey, remember Paul Boesch? He’s with us” kind of thing.
More details will be forthcoming about the Crockett Cup next week, but Dave has a bit to report right now. The original plan was two sites on two dates: April 9 in Greenville for the first round and April 10 in Greensboro for the finals, but they’re already advertising on tv now that the Cup will take place in Greensboro in late April. No information on if they’ll be filling out the 24 team slots with outside teams, but if they can get World Class and Stampede, maybe even New Japan involved that could help. But with the egos involved it might be impossible.
Crockett’s TBS show this weekend had a balding, blond jobber named Randy Hogan. Subtle.
Shane Douglass is back in Crockett and is using a sleeper hold for his finisher. He seems to be getting a bit of a push, but they don’t seem to know what they’re doing, as Schiavone is calling him the 1986 rookie of the year and Jim Ross is calling him the 1987 rookie of the year.
Road Warrior Animal’s eye injury is legit and he’ll be out of action for a few weeks. He broke his orbital bone when Konga the Barbarian botched a move on him and was nearly blinded (similar injury to what Maeda inflicted on Riki Choshu). They were billing him as returning this past weekend, which had Dave thinking it was a work at first. Dave’s not sure how effective the angle with the weights was in terms of increasing crowd turnout. So far, middling turnout says not very effective.
It’s astonishing how fast Luger’s face run has fizzled. Luger’s the kind of guy you can look at and in a snap decision decide he’s a future top babyface star and begin the push, but when you look at him close you realize he just doesn’t have it. He’s got the body, the good looks, the hair, all the surface level stuff you want in a guy. It almost convinces you he’s over and the future of the business. But having a good body and blond hair is pretty common, and his looks aren’t anything special either. He could still be a big star and almost certainly will be a star at some level in the future, but he just doesn’t have the connection to the audience that will make him the guy. He didn’t have it in Florida (the promotion literally died trying to get him over as a babyface in 1986), and he doesn’t have it now. Sting needs a lot of work on promos, and he’s not got the body Luger has, but he has the connection with the fans and has just eclipsed Luger in their eyes. And it’s super obvious to anyone watching. The crowd comes alive for every little thing Sting does, and they don’t really care about Luger and Windham when they talk. Sting’s look comes across as more cool to the fans too. Dave has this feeling that Crockett will want to keep all three at the same level, ensuring nobody gets over enough to make a difference. And Luger’s not to blame for the crowd reaction. The promotion wasted no time making him just one of the boys after his face turn, and Dave thinks they should have given him a few months of a major singles babyface push rather than just ruining the impact of his face turn by making him a tag team guy.
An anonymous wrestler or referee from Oregon writes in about the latest athletic commission business in Oregon. Short version: Don Owen and the commissioner were arguing over enforcement of certain rules in the combined boxing and wrestling rule book. The commissioner wanted to regulate wrestling exactly the same as boxing. He saw a guy thrown over the top and saw the top rope break during a match, leading to a nasty spill. He told Owen that having four ropes would fix that problem, and he didn’t like seeing heels use foreign objects in front of the referee and would appoint a commission referee if that kind of stuff continued. Three weeks later, he came back with a changed point of view after meeting commissioners from other states. Clearly someone smartened him up about what wrestling actually is, and he changed his mind about the ropes and foreign objects, though he did want drug testing and a ban on blading. He lied in the media that he said what he said about the ropes and referees, but he did say it. In the writer’s opinion, the commission is on the right track now. They check tickets closely, seem concerned for the welfare of fans and wrestlers alike, and have introduced changes that the Northwest has needed for a while. It doesn’t solve the big problem out there, though. And that problem is that Don and Barry Owen run things like it’s the 1940s and are afraid to try new things. They also don’t want to pay well, and with the death of the territories happening, they can get away with it because there aren’t that many places to work. A lot of wrestlers would prefer if Sandy Barr ran things in the region, because he’s been seen as very fair. Finally, unrelated, a paragraph about shoot style and shooting that I think is very interesting as we see things like MMA begin to take nascent form in the next few years:
One other thing I would like to touch upon. That is the people who seem to get off on “shooting style” pro wrestling. Shooting is NOT pro wrestling. In fact it’s the very antithesis of pro wrestling. Why anybody who claims to be a pro wrestling fan would like to see it is beyond me. Pro Wrestling is an art form. Making it look good WITHOUT hurting anyone is what makes you a good worker. Good technique, a light touch and a gift for gab is what constitutes a top-notch pro. Wrestlers who deliberately hurt people in the ring may be feared, but they are not respected. We find many of these asses in Japan, but we have our share in the United States and Canada as well. When you give someone your body, you expect them to take care of it. People pay to see action and drama. Legitimate wrestling matches have never proven to be able to draw any significant following.
Another writer writes in about the Observer yearbook and how a large chunk of it was super professionally done and could be the basis for expansion into a proper book, but there’s also sophomoric and childish stuff (like the nicknames) that hurt it. The writer thinks Dave’s passed the point of just being a fanzine and shouldn’t bog down the quality of his publication with stuff of that sort. Dave, for his part, thanks the writer for his points, but maintains he’s never wanted or claimed the Observer as a professional publication. The Observer is a publication for hardcore wrestling fans and plays on a lot of the inside humor they want to hear.
There’s an entire page devoted to letters about The Main Event. Some folks think Andre should retire with what dignity he still has, because he just shouldn’t be in a ring anymore. Some loved the finish to the title match, others hated it and found it ridiculous. One reports that just before the show started, the local tv announcer pivoted from Wheel of Fortune to the show by saying “Join Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant next for live wrestling comedy.”
Correction on the above about Road Warrior Animal’s injury: He apparently hurt his eye the night before the bench press contest. A move was done wrong, or he took it wrong, but either way, his eye popped out of socket. Major credit to him showing up the next day to do the contest angle before going to the hospital. It explains Ellering’s comments about $50,000 not being worth the price of an eye, which didn’t make sense at the time.
New Japan has changed plans and their big show they were going to have in the Tokyo Dome (capacity 55,000) will now be at a tennis stadium in Tokyo (capacity 10,000) on May 7. Looks like he’ll wrestle Vader, Willem Ruska (a former gold medalist judoka), or Chris Dolman (a sambo wrestling champion), and none of those pairings has the drawing power to fill the Dome. If he really wanted to sell out the Dome he’d need Koji Kitao (who was recently kicked out of sumo) or a big name boxer like Michael Spinks or Larry Holmes, but he couldn’t get them. On Kitao, he recently was contacted by Wajima, which means Baba’s on the hunt for him, although things are so early they haven’t even had preliminary talks yet.
THURSDAY:Clash of the Champions is born, the Wrestlemania lineup has been finalized, Road Warrior Animal update and clarification, and more
[NF] Leaving Las Vegas, Smuggled Grapefruits, Airstream Pancakes
When: 2014 or 15, probably April We roll into Vegas after dark, my friend Jerry driving, I riding shotgun, my then wife rolling around in the back of the ruby red '94 Ford Aerostar on the mattress that replaced the seats. We are dressed in what can only be described as Trailer Park Hippies. Jerry wears sweat pants (he wore a lot of sweat pants back then), a striped shirt, beanie, and square-frame glasses, as he's blind as a bat. My wife is dressed like a bag lady, a tye dye "Workaholics" shirt, ripped jeans, America Hat beanie hat worn ironically over dirty dreadlocks, and I'm wearing a a lot of flannel and sporting a fiery red Leprechaun beard and hair down to my shoulders. We have a stash that would make Hunter S. Thompson shed tears of joy. We're cruising in with a few ounces of weed, a tinfoil wrapper full of hash, a 10-strip of LSD, an eightball of coke, case of lite beer, and a laundry basket full of oranges and grapefruits acquired in Arizona. We had been living off of coke, grapefruits, acid, beer and cigarettes laced with hash. We were young and ready for what Vegas had to offer. Jerry drives past The Flamingo and we keep going on to Fremont Street. That is our destination, and we plan on milking it for all the free drinks we can. We drive around for a minute before noticing a $5-all-night parking lot. Perfect. We figure after we get too wasted and broke, we'll just come back and crash in the back of the van. Jerry, it's always Jerry, cuts up one hit of acid into three little pieces and passes them out. Jerry then keys up bumps of coke for everyone. My wife, DD, rolls a nasty hash cigarette and we roll out of the van and smoke it on our way down to Fremont Street. The thing about taking a little bit of acid is, is you can drink all night. A half hit of acid and you're ready to drink an Irishman under the table. I can't explain how or why it works, but it does. 1/3 of a hit should do the same thing, and we're feeling good. Vegas is your typical Vegas that I had expected. There's a Danny DeVito impersonator here, a Boss Hogg there, big-titted Showgirls lined up ready to take your money for a photo. Street performers, some of them fantastic, some of them sad. There is a nearly naked man waving a sign that reads, "Money Activates Me". I put a dollar in his hat, and he starts jiggling and shaking and making weird beeping noises. I am a little sad. As soon as we arrive on Fremont Street I look up to a giant television prompter on the ceiling with Blue Angels flying across while "America the Beautiful" plays over the loudspeakers. I walk past a large Mexican woman wearing all purple. Jerry tells us that they'll give you free drinks if you play the slot machines. We decide to investigate and pop into the first casino we see. We each slip a dollar into a machine and a waitress comes over and tells us, "make it at least $3, guys". A little saddened, but compliant, we do as we're told. We spend the next few hours like this. Hopping from casino to casino, putting in as little money as possible, getting as many free drinks as possible. After awhile, it gets tiresome and we spot a crowd heading towards the far side of the street and decide to investigate. All night we see this horrible Wook-like creature and he has come up to us and asked us for different drugs at least three times. DD must've taken the biggest 1/3 because her pupils are the size of nickels. The first few times he asked for acid, then he asked for DMT. I had never done DMT at that point, but from what I had heard, it would do him no good here. We think he's a cop. We ignore him. Drinks in hand, we see what the commotion is about, Cheap Trick! is playing a free show. Hell Yes, we think. We push our way to the entrance and are told we cannot bring the drinks in. We each chug our beers and make our way in. The crowd at Cheap Trick! is rude as far as rock concerts go. It's a bunch of people way more sober than us and they won't let us pass. We're standing shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder with a group of angry looking bikers and decide that Cheap Trick! can go fuck themselves. We exit the concert and walk to the other end of Fremont Street. There is another free concert going on, an 80's cover band with the singer dressed like Devo and the bassist wearing stuffed animal pants – that is, Pants covered in stuffed animals. There are only about 20 people in attendance. We're so there. We walk to the front without any problem and begin our own dance circle. They have two vocalists, a hot French-looking chick and a man dressed as dollar store Devo. Jerry thinks French chick is looking at him. The bandplays a rousing rendition of "Blister in the Sun" and during one of "When I go walkin I strut my stuff and I'm so strung out/I'm high as a kite and I just might stop to check you out" parts, Devo guy holds the microphone out to us and we gargle through it. He shouts for the band to stop, wait, hold on. Stop stop stop. "You people are the drunkest people I have ever seen!" Too drunk to be embarrassed, we continue to dance. We dance until they stop playing. The acid at this point has all but run its course and the booze is catching up with us. DD is starting to lose steam. We decide to drink more. Walking into a casino, the overhead television plays "America the Beautiful" again as Blue Angels fly and Purple Pants Mexican lady is walking by us again, singing, "Uh-MARE-i-KUH" and crying profusely. She is having a good time. Unsure of what time it is, we're too fucked to gamble anymore and head to the bar. We attempt to order the cheapest drinks and the bartenders all ignore us. We get our $2 teas, (“Hold on, I have to make three shitty drinks” quoth the bartender) and walk back outside to get some air. Vegas is starting to spook me out. People walk down the street and flick a butt, unnamed janitors come from nowhere and sweep it up like it might never have happened. Vegas is like a physics problem. The cigarette butt is like Schrodinger’s Cat. Without the janitor, it may or not be there. As the night drags on, we see human decency deteriorating. Having made our way somehow to The Flamingo, we scope out a group of guys who we believe are going to date rape some girl who’s had too much to drink. Maybe it’s the acid enhancing our perceptions, or any of the drugs making us ever more paranoid. Maybe those guys really were out to hurt that woman. We followed them all for some time before realizing we were fucked up and it wasn’t our fight. We needed to get back to the van to sleep. We make our way back to the van and roll the door open. DD plops down on the mattress, but Jerry and I are determined to gamble and drink more. I promise her I’ll be good. Just right then two SECURITY dudes on bikes roll by and see the mattress and see the hippie lady sitting upon it. “Y’all can’t sleep here.” I inform them, but sirs, we paid the $5, and we are way, way, WAY too drunk to drive at this point. “That’s fine, sirs” he tells me, “but you can’t sleep here. You’re welcome to gamble in our casinos all night, or get a hotel room.” DD raises her voice to the security dudes and I have to tell her to cool it. We’re out of our element. This is Vegas. We can’t win this one. I tell them, ok, and they ride off. I’m too fucked to drive so I tell Jerry he’s going to have to rally and get us out of here. We all begin chugging water, our eyes rolling around in our heads, brains still slightly dripping from the acid. We’re all yelling at each other that this was a stupid idea. Jerry chugs an adequate amount of water and he climbs into the cockpit. I ride shotgun. We got this. We drive around aimlessly til we find an indoor parking garage that doesn’t charge us a fee on the way in. We drive to a heavily populated area and kill the engine. Jerry and I fly into the backseat and we keep our heads down, trying to find sleep in what’s left of the night. We get two hours of sleep when I decide we have to go. Right now. I think I’m cool to drive, so I start out our journey. The sun is right in my face as I’m leaving and I’m way too hungovestill drunk/fucked up to be doing this. I stop at a gas station for a fill up and on my way in I see a man just grinning at me. I’m in no mood. Who is this asshole just smiling at me at 6 o clock in the morning? Turns out it was a cardboard cutout of Jeff Gordon. Jesus. Christ. I pay for my gas and get back to the car. I tell Jerry he’s driving, and I need to sleep. We drive a few minutes and pull up to an Airstream Diner and decide to fuel up our bellies. The whole night in Vegas we didn’t consume any food, just drugs and booze, and we were in need of nourishment. We sit at the counter and the man with the plan is an older Hispanic man who appears to be running everything by himself. I order an omelette, toast and hashbrowns, and coffee, sweet, merciful coffee. Biscuits and gravy for Jerry, with “grandma coffee” (that is coffee with too much cream and sugar). DD got a stack of pancakes. When our food came, the proprietor asks DD if she would like any syrup? She holds her plate above her head like an offering to the man and says nothing. He laughs and asks again what kind of syrup would she like? Blueberry it was. A little food in us, we begin to feel better. We hit the road, California Bound! I resign to the mattress in back and pass out, Jerry driving, DD his copilot. I awake some time later to the sound of metal grinding on metal. The van is moving against its own will. “What the fuck is going on?!” Jerry is throwing it in reverse and trying to back up but the damage is already done. We are in line waiting to cross into the great state of California. I see a sign for “Fruit Inspection”. I look around the back and there’s grapefruits and oranges and peelings and all kinds of citrus just rolling around. We’re fucked. If not for the coke and hash, then for all the fruit contraband. I try to gather up all the citrus, but when it gets to be our turn to cross, the guards at the window tell us simply to pull through to deal with our accident. What luck. A wagonload of drugs and illegal fruit and we get a pass because some Rent An RV guy decided to rearrange my van’s front end. Sweet. We pull through and pile out of the van. I inspect the damage. It’s mostly cosmetic. The plastic bumper is gone, both headlights are smashed and dangling by wires. The blinkers are fucked. I will be using my arm signals for the rest of my van’s life. I walk up to the RV and pound on the door. An older, Eastern European man, noticeably drunk and shoeless steps out. I ask does he have insurance (I miraculously do). He says yes yes yes, sure sure sure. Why don’t you come into my RV? No, I tell him. Good out here. He disappears inside and comes back a few minutes later with a stack of papers, none of which are insurance. After a few minutes of going nowhere, I decide to call it even. I don’t want to attract any attention to us with the cops and would rather just get down the road, blow and all. The four of us get into our collective vehicles, the Chechen's relatively untouched; ours, a sex crime victim, and we set sail for the promised land - Californ-I-A! I'm trying to assemble a selection of stories. Heart on Sleeve. Don't be too rough. With love, and honesty
Week 48; Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.
The humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico worsened with the inadequate response by the federal government. Amid criticism, Trump threatened to pull out, but later backed off. Although the death count officially stands at 45, reporting revealed possibly hundreds more preventable deaths related to the Hurricane Maria. Trump remains silent on both California’s deadliest wildfires and the deadliest combat incident since he took office. He continues to focus on undoing Obama’s legacy, piece-by-piece. The Mueller investigation hit Trump’s inner-circle, and social media’s role in aiding Russia continues to unfold.
On Saturday night, Richard Spencer led another white supremacist torch-lit rally at University of Virginia. The rally lasted 10 minutes and 40-50 people attended. Spencer vowed, “we will keep coming back.”
On Sunday, Trump attacked former ally Sen. Bob Corker in a series of incendiary tweets, saying “Corker “begged” me to endorse him for re-election” and “wanted to be Secretary of State.” Trump claimed to have said no to both.
Corker responded, tweeting it’s a shame the WH has become an “adult day care center,” and that someone “missed their shift this morning.”
On Sunday, Pence left a Colts game after a protest during the national anthem. Pence later issued a full statement opposing the protests. The Colts were playing the 49ers, a team known to protest.
Before the game, Pence tweeted a photo of him and the Second Lady wearing Colts gear. The photo was one he originally tweeted in 2014.
Shortly after, Trump tweeted he had asked Pence to leave the game “if any players kneeled,” and said he was proud of Pence and the Second Lady.
The pool of journalists covering Pence were not allowed into the stadium, and were told, “there may be an early departure from the game.” ABC estimated Pence’s flight cost taxpayers nearly $250k.
Bowing to pressure from Trump, the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones, after kneeling with players in week 3 of the season, changed course saying any player who “disrespects the flag” by kneeling will not be allowed to play.
On Tuesday, Trump threatened the NFL over protests saying the league is “getting massive tax breaks” and the law should be changed. This claim is false: the NFL gave up its 501(c)(6) tax-exempt status in 2015.
On Tuesday, bowing to pressure from Trump and fans, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who previously had said players had the right to voice their opinions, sided with owners opposed to letting players demonstrate.
On Monday, Pence headlined a fundraiser in CA for Republicans including controversial, Kremlin-ally Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher had a previously undisclosed meeting in Russia with Veselnitskaya described in Week 47.
University of Wisconsin approved a policy which calls for suspending or expelling students who disrupt campus speeches and presentations. The policy mirrors Republican legislation passed by the state Assembly.
On Columbus Day, unlike Obama, Trump celebrated the “arrival of Europeans,” but did not mention of the suffering of Native Americans.
On Sunday, the Trump’s DHS allowed the Jones Act waiver, which helped speed relief to Puerto Rico, to expire. No explanation was given.
Trump’s EPA announced it would repeal the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s signature policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The statement described the regulation as the “so-called Clean Power Plan.”
On Friday, Trump addressed the Value Voters Summit hosted by the Family Research Council, which has been classified by SPLC as an anti-gay hate group. Trump is the first US leader to address the group.
Reuters reported the Trump regime has been quietly cutting support for halfway houses for federal prisoners, severing contracts with as many as 16 facilities, necessitating some inmates stay behind bars longer.
ABC reported the Treasury Dept’s inspector general is looking into allegations reported by BuzzFeed in Week 47 that agency officials have been illegally looking at private financial records of US citizens.
A report compiled by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) at House and Senate Democrats’ request, found the Trump transition team ignored ethics officials and refused to cooperate with the GAO.
Trump named Kathleen Hartnett White to the WH’s Council on Environmental Quality. Hartnett White, a climate science denier, once also said, “fossil fuels dissolved the economic justification for slavery.”
In response to a filing by CREW, Trump’s DOJ told a court in DC that Trump can destroy records without judicial review, including tweets.
Brian Brooks became the second candidate under consideration for deputy Treasury Secretary to withdraw from consideration. Mnuchin said he has no plans to fill the number two slot in his agency.
WAPO reported at the Interior Dept, when Zinke enters the building a staffer takes the elevator to the seventh floor, climbs the stairs to the roof and puts up a special flag. The flag comes down when he leaves.
On Wednesday, NBC reported Tillerson calling Trump a “moron” was provoked by Trump suggesting a tenfold increase in the US nuclear arsenal during a July 20 meeting with the high-ranking national security leaders.
In response to the story which he called “Fake News,” Trump tweeted a threat to revoke the broadcasting licenses of “NBC and the Networks.”
Later that afternoon, at a news conference, Trump again lashed out at the independent news media saying it’s “frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write.”
In a statement Wednesday night, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse asked Trump if he was “recanting” his oath to protect the First Amendment.
Indiana Republican lawmaker Jim Lucas drafted a bill that would require professional journalists to be licensed by state police.
Under pressure to confirm Trump’s judicial nominees, McConnell will no longer allow “blue slips,” used by senators to deny a nominee from their state a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and vote on confirmation.
The Trump regime withdrew from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), citing anti-Israel bias and a being in arrears on a $550 million payment. Israel remains part of UNESCO.
NYT published an interview with Corker in which he said Trump is treating his office like a “reality show” with reckless threats at other country that could put our country “on the path to World War III.”
Corker said he is concerned about Trump, and Trump’s behavior should concern “anyone who cares about our nation.” He added there is no ‘good cop, bad cop’ underway with Tillerson — Trump is undermining diplomacy.
Corker said nearly all Senate Republican share his concerns: “the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here.”
WAPO reported Trump is frustrated by his cabinet and that he is not getting enough credit for his handling of three hurricanes. Trump is lashing out and rupturing alliances with both Republicans and Democrats.
One confidant said Trump is like a whistling teapot, saying when he does not blow off steam, he can turn into a pressure cooker and explode: “I think we are in pressure cooker territory.”
Politico quoted 10 sources current and former WH aides who employed strategies like delays and distractions as “guardrails” in trying to manage Trump’s impulsivity.
Vanity Fair reported sources say Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.” They say the WH is in crisis as advisers struggle to contain Trump who is increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods.
Trump allegedly told his former bodyguard Schiller, “I hate everyone in the White House!” Kelly is allegedly miserable in the job, and is staying on in a sense of duty and to keep Trump from making disastrous decisions.
One former official speculated Kelly and Mattis have discussed what they would do if Trump ordered a nuclear strike — “would they tackle him?”
According to sources, Bannon said the risk to Trump’s presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th Amendment. Bannon thinks Trump has only a 30% chance of making it the full term.
In a column “What Bob Corker Sees in Trump,” conservative columnist Peggy Noonan urged Republicans they have a duty to speak on the record about what they see happening with Trump.
On Thursday, at a signing ceremony for his health care executive order, Trump nearly walked out of the room without signing the order. Pence pulled him back in.
On Tuesday, Trump said in an interview with Forbes that he could beat Tillerson in an IQ test. Trump met with Tillerson later that day at the WH.
On Friday, Corker called out Trump for his effort to disempower Tillerson saying: “You cannot publicly castrate your own secretary of state without giving yourself that binary choice.”
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria said, “It’s very clear now that we essentially have no diplomacy going on in the United States,” adding the way Trump has treated Tillerson is “the most dramatic example of it.”
On CBS’s 60 Minutes, Parscale claimed he fine-tuned ads on Facebook to directly reach voters with the exact messages they cared most about. He also claimed he handpicked Republican Facebook employees to help.
Daily Beast reported the Kremlin recruited two black video bloggers, Williams and Kalvin Johnson, to produce incendiary YouTube videos calling Hillary a racist. The videos were spread on social media platforms.
WAPO reported Google has uncovered evidence about $100k of ads purchased by Russian agents to spread disinformation on across the company’s many products, including YouTube, during the 2016 election.
Google said the ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-linked troll farm that bought ads on Facebook. Some ads touted Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein, while others aimed to fan the flames of divisive issues.
Rep. Devin Nunes, who recused himself as Chair of the House Intel Committee’s Russia probe, unilaterally signed off on subpoenas to Fusion GPS, the research firm that produced the Steele dossier. Democrats were not consulted.
Reuters reported Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is also taking steps to discredit the dossier according to Democrats on the committee.
Carter Page told the Senate Intel Committee that he will not cooperate with any requests to appear before the panel on Russia, and will plead the Fifth.
Daily Beast reported the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is looking at Cambridge Analytica’s work from the Trump campaign as part of its Russian probe.
Cambridge Analytica, which has ownership ties to the Mercers and Bannon, was brought in to help the campaign by Kushner. The company is also under investigation in the UK watchdog for its role in Brexit.
NYT reported Israel caught Kaspersky Lab working with the Russian government to search the world for US secrets, using Kaspersky software to scan for classified words. Kaspersky software is used by 400 million people.
WSJ reported that Russia’s use of the Kaspersky program to spy on the US is broader and more pervasive than the operation against one individual in Week 47. Trump continues to deny Russian meddling in the US election.
Politico reported as part their posture to cooperate, Trump’s attorneys may offer Mueller a meeting with Trump. If Mueller doesn’t ask by Thanksgiving, attorneys may force the issue by volunteering his time.
Legal experts were surprised by Trump’s lawyers strategy noting Trump would be speaking under oath and he routinely distorts facts, and that Trump would be interviewed in connection with a criminal investigation.
CNN reported Russian operatives used YouTube, Tumblr, and even Pokémon Go as part of their effort to interfere in the election, using a campaign titled “Don’t Shoot Us” to spread a divisive message.
NBC reported Manafort had a previously undisclosed $26 million loan from Deripaska through a series of transactions. It is unclear if the $26 million is a loan or an indirect payment from the Russian oligarch.
The loan brings the total financial relationship between Manafort and Deripaska to $60 million over the past decade, according to financial documents filed in Cyprus and the Cayman Islands.
Manafort’s spokesman, Jason Maloni, initially responded to NBC with a statement including: “Mr. Manafort is not indebted to former clients today, nor was he at the time he began working for the Trump campaign.”
Maloni’s statement was later revised and that sentence was removed. Both Manafort and Maloni have received subpoenas to supply documents and testimony in the Mueller probe.
Yahoo reported Andrew Feinberg, former correspondent for Sputnik, provided a guide and emails to FBI investigators looking into possible violations of the law which requires agents of foreign nations to register with the DOJ.
Further, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is investigating RT and Sputnik as possible parts of the Russian state-run propaganda machine in the broader probe into Russia’s election meddling.
On Friday, Mueller’s team interviewed Trump’s former chief of staff, Priebus. Priebus’ lawyer said he voluntarily met with investigators and “was happy to answer all of their questions.”
Priebus was present during Trump’s efforts to limit the Russia probe, and for discussions that led to the firing of Comey. He was also asked to leave the Oval Office before the infamous Trump-Comey conversation.
Politico reported Twitter deleted tweets and other user data of potentially irreplaceable value to investigators in the Russia probe.
Federal investigators believe Twitter was one of Russia’s most potent weapons. Bots and fake accounts launched recurring waves of pro-Trump, anti-Clinton story lines that were either false or greatly exaggerated.
AP reported Twitter has turned over 201 accounts linked to Russian attempts at influencing the 2016 election to Senate investigators. It is unclear if the posts associated with these accounts have been deleted.
CNN reported an attorney for Roger Stone said he has complied with the House Intel Committee request to provide the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks’ Assange.
WSJ reported Congressional investigators are homing in on connections between the Trump campaign, and Facebook, and Twitter. Digital director Parscale was paid $88 million during the campaign, the highest paid vendor.
Every vendor that worked with Parscale on the Trump campaign signed a nondisclosure agreement, and there are no federal disclosure requirements for online ads.
Both Congress and Mueller are investigating the role activity on Facebook and Twitter played in the 2016 election, and whether the Russian social-media activity was in any connected to the Trump campaign.
A Morning Consult poll found Trump’s approval has fallen in every state since he took office. The swings were as high as 30 percentage points in blue-states IL and CA, to 11 points in red-state LA.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll found Trump’s popularity is eroding in small towns and rural communities: in September 47 approve/47 disapprove, down from 55/39 in his first four weeks in office.
WAPO reported as of October 10, Trump’s first 263 days in office, he has made 1,318 false or misleading claims.
The Brookings Institute released a 108-page report which concluded Trump “likely obstructed justice” in his firing of Comey. If Mueller agrees, there are legitimate articles of impeachment that could be drawn up.
In a letter to Mattis, over 100 Democrats are demanding proof that Trump did indeed consult with the Pentagon as he claimed in a tweet, prior to announcing his ban of transgender individuals from military service.
A Kaiser Foundation poll found 62% of Americans say Puerto Ricans aren’t getting the help they need. 76% were aware Puerto Ricans are US citizens.
On Thursday, in a series of tweets, Trump threatened to abandon Puerto Rico’s recovery effort, blaming the island for its infrastructure problems and saying and relief workers would not stay “in P.R. forever.”
The tweets follow harsh criticism from Puerto Rico of the Trump regime’s response to Hurricane Maria. One Puerto Rican said, “He doesn’t think of us as Americans.”
Trump also quoted a Sharyl Attkisson, a television journalist with Sinclair Broadcasting, in saying that while Puerto Rico survived Hurricane Maria, now “a financial crisis looms largely of their own making.”
Later Thursday, the WH issued a statement committing “the full force of the U.S. government” for now, but adding “successful recoveries do not last forever.”
At a House Energy and Commerce hearing about efforts to rebuild the island’s energy grid, Sec. Rick Perry referred to Puerto Rico as a country.
Next day, Trump referred to the Virgin Islands’ governor as a president.
VOX reported although the official death count in Puerto Rico is 45, they found 81 death linked to Hurricane Maria, as well as 450 more reported deaths, most of causes still unknown, and 69 still missing.
Puerto Rico’s governor said four deaths are being investigated as cases of leptospirosis, a disease spread by animals’ urine through contaminated water. A total of ten people have come down with the disease.
Rachel Maddow reported a doctor resigned from the disaster response team in Puerto Rico after seeing medical workers getting manicures and pedicures from residents of the island in medical triage tents.
NYT reported on Puerto Rico’s health care is in dire condition, and continues to suffer from mismanagement. The US Comfort ship with 800 medical personnel which can serve 250, has seen 82 patients in six days.
CNN reported Puerto Ricans are drinking water from a hazardous-waste site, having no other options for water.
A Politico/Morning Consult poll found just 32% of registered voters think the federal government has done enough to help Puerto Rico.
Bloomberg revealed one of its reporters was inadvertently put on the Pentagon’s internal email list which detailed how to spin Hurricane Maria to convince the public that the government response was going well.
On Thursday, Trump also signed an executive order ending Obamacare subsidies for the poor. Not paying the subsidies could boost premiums for millions and send the health insurance exchanges into turmoil.
NPR estimated consumers who earn 400% of the federal poverty level — $48k for individuals or $98.4k for a family of four — will see their the cost of their plans rise by, on average, 20% nationwide.
Doctors, hospitals, insurers, state insurance commissioners and patient advocates denounced Trump’s move. Trump actions puts pressure on Congress to protect consumers from soaring premiums.
WSJ reported if Congress doesn’t succeed, WH aides said Trump “will claim victory” for ending the Iran deal, cutting billions in payments to health insurers, and deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants.
On Friday, a coalition of attorneys general from 18 states and DC filed a lawsuit to block Trump’s halt to subsidy payments under Obamacare.
NYT reported as of Friday, Trump has taken 12 actions which could weaken Obamacare and curtail enrollment, including spreading negative news releases and posting infographics criticizing the health law.
On Saturday, Trump boasted on Twitter that health insurance companies’ stocks “plunged yesterday” after his steps to dismantle Obamacare.
A Kaiser Health poll found 71% of Americans say the Trump regime should work to improve Obamacare, while just 21% say make it fail.
On Friday, Trump slammed Iran as a “menace” and called for “decertification” of the nuclear deal, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA), saying Iran is “not living up to the spirit of the deal.”
Trump sent the deal back to Congress with a 60-day window to address its “many serious flaws” or see it “terminated.”
Top officials on Trump’s national security team, including Mattis and Tillerson, said Iran has technically complied with its restrictions. The International Atomic Energy Association also confirmed compliance.
Daily Beast reported while McMaster also wanted to save the Iran Deal, Trump consulted Fox News’ Sean Hannity and former UN Ambassador John Bolton, two neoconservatives who pushed for decertification.
The leaders of Britain, Germany and France declared their commitment to stand by JCPoA. They deal was the culmination of 16 years of diplomacy.
After being added to Trump’s travel ban, Chad pulled its troops from the fight against Boko Haram in Niger. US officials had warned Trump his decision would have major consequences for the fight against terrorism.
California’s deadliest wildfires charred more than 221,754 acres of land in Northern CA, and left at least 35 dead and hundreds more missing. Trump has yet to publicly comment or tweet about the wildfires.
Nor has Trump publicly commented on the deadliest combat incident since he took office, which took place in Niger last Saturday while Trump was golfing. The ambush by ISIS left four soldiers dead and two wounded.
As the week ended, 24 days after Hurricane Maria, just 64% of Puerto Ricans had access to drinking water, and only 14.6% had electricity.
Trump spent his fourth weekend since Hurricane Maria golfing. On Saturday, he visited Trump National Golf Club in VA, his 72nd day of golf since taking office.
Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Mantain [Part 3][Final]
Part 1Part 2 Thus began Iowa’s third republican era.
From the primer Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Maintain, commissioned in 2662 by Queen Jellia of Iowa for the education of the studious children of Moingona, and especially those children who call Dowling Orphanage their home.
Soon after the expulsion of House Rodman from the Kingdom of Iowa, the Kingdom of Platte followed suit, deposing their queen in favor of a duke from one of House Rodman’s cadet branches. Thus, House Rodman was reduced to only its ancestral domain of the Duchy of the Quad Cities, newly independent as part of a deal to avoid civil war between republican and royalist factions. But while the people and nobility of Platte were sensible and simply traded one dynasty for another, the citizens of the Iowa Republic nevertheless took that as a sign that they had made the right choice in deposing their king. Soon, they expected, republican revolutions would spread like wildfire through the rest of the midwest, and the other catholic states would adopt an identical system to theirs. It behooves the author to offer a brief explanation of their system. First, an explanation of who held the franchise: From nobility: dukes, counts, mayors, marquises, and barons. From the clergy: the Archbishop of Dubuque, the bishops of Iowa, and the priests. From the learned men of the Cyclonic and Hawkeye orders, the Deans, the Departmentals, and the Doctors. (The not quite so learned men of the Order Pantheric also demanded the franchise, but, as always, were ignored.) A three-class, three-tier weighted voting system was established, wherein a six-hundred man congress split evenly in three between the factions was assembled. From that congress, a smaller council of nine, also evenly split across the factions, was elected by their peers. This council, in theory, would behave in much the same way as a king. They appointed members to the imperial bureaucracy, commanded Iowa’s military forces, handled the business of taxation and administering justice, confirmed or vetoed laws passed by congress, and in general managed much of Iowa’s day-to-day business with, admittedly, surprising alacrity. However, they were not a king; they were nine, often fractious people with a bevy of vices and often opposing priorities. For a time, Iowa tolerated their disunity, but eventually the constant squabbling of the council grew to a head. Enter the Winfrey Enterprise. A unique, matrilineal, quasi-feudal corporation with a history stretching from before the event, its Seeyōs claimed descent from America’s so-called ‘shadow queens,’ including both historical figures such as First Ladies Roosevelt and Obama, as well as legendary figures like Oprah the Generous. While the author of this primer is not credulous of their claims, it must nevertheless be admitted that the Winfrey Enterprise prospered for hundreds of years despite its female leadership. But as other, male-led merchant republics rose up and displaced the shops and merchants of the Winfrey Enterprise, they were forced from their traditional economic base in cetic California, gradually migrating east towards the midwest and the Mississippi river basin. After a bargain with the pope in 2489 to convert their cadre of administrators and high-level functionaries to catholicism, the Winfrey Enterprise was given dispensation to peddle their wares across Christendom. The Enterprise chose to entrench itself in Des Moines, both for logistical reasons (as Des Moines lies on a tributary to the Mississippi) and for its strategic position, nestled safely in the middle of Iowa. A mutualistic relationship arose. With the relative stability of Iowa, the Winfrey Enterprise prospered as much as, if not more, than when they had made plied their wares across California and the west coast. Meanwhile, Des Moines grew rich, economically and culturally, as the executives of the Winfrey Enterprise spend their money buying goods in its markets and patronizing artists, painters, sculptures, musicians, and poets. If you are ever in Des Moines’ famous sculpture garden, perhaps because you are a singer in Dowling Orphanage’s choir, look towards the base of each sculpture-- more likely than not, you will find the distinctive logo of the Winfrey Enterprise engraved. Economic ties became political ties in time, however. Patronage was given, more and more, to would-be politicians aiming for a seat in Iowa’s congress. While no Seeyō or administrator ever held a seat in congress, save for the crossdressing Madam Lewin, more and more was power usurped by the coin-counters in the Winfrey Enterprise as they bribed or threatened politicians into compliance. Their goal was, of course, nothing less than to make Iowa a puppet of their economic interests. Now, as merchants, the Winfrey Enterprise was full of opportunists par excellence. While their original plan had simply been to gain a supermajority of Iowa’s congressmen and thus the power to pass whatever legislation they wished, the ever-quarrelsome Council of Nine provided them an opportunity to assume control long ahead of schedule. Taking a step back, the author should mention that the Third Republic of Iowa was prone to scandal. With six hundred congressmen, some politician or another would embarrass the congress on a weekly, or even daily basis. And with all the warring factions who called congress its home, Scandals weren’t handled with discretion and honor, but instead aired out for the entire public to see, so as to drive votes towards or away from one faction or another. Thus, the public opinion of congress had grown worse and worse. The council, however, had always projected a false, but convincing image of being above the petty squabbling of the regular congressmen. But in the year 2601, over a span of three weeks, no less than four major scandals were uncovered, domino-style, concerning the council. The first was comparatively tame-- a councilman elected from among the nobles had skimped on the dowry for his daughter, dishonoring his family. But insulted by the leak of his personal affairs, he revealed that a councilman elected from among the academics had falsified his credentials-- he had graduated not from the Cyclonic Order, but from the far inferior Pantheric Order. Infuriated, and with little to lose after his public shaming, this councilman decided that he would be taking down as many of his other councilmen as possible. Going to the knight-chronicles of the Chivalric Order of the Des Moines Register, he implicated four of his colleagues as members of an incredibly heretical secret society known as the Men in Black. An ironic twist, considering he implicated all three of the priests on the council. Two academics and one noble remained with untarnished reputations. That is, up until the academics where found having affairs with each others’ wives. The only remaining member of the council was a formerly impoverished count squarely in the pocket of the Winrey Enterprise. He owed the Enterprise a favor, and they called it in. In front of the assembled congress, he gave a simple speech that effectively amounted to a simple request-- that he be allowed to resign, and that instead of electing a new council of nine, all three factions would instead use their three candidate slots apiece to elect the same person. That person being, of course, his benefactor Seeyō Ellis Rachelsdaughter. Between the politicians the Winfrey Enterprise had already bought and the remainder that had been fed up with the council’s constant quarreling, the election was a done deal. Using the loophole that technically only the regular seats in congress were specifically barred from being held by women, Seeyō Ellis Rachelsdaughter was elected Ninefold Councilor. And since the council had been envisioned as holding the same function as a king, Councilor Ellis was queen in all but name. Using the vast powers of a council unanimously united in one person, on top of the vast political and economic resources she commanded as Seeyō of the Winfrey Enterprise, she rendered Iowa’s congress into a merely ceremonial organ, there mainly to rubber stamp her decrees. Ellis was canny and sensitive to public opinion, and thus refrained from formally crowning herself. But after her retirement in 2611, her daughter and successor, Seeyō Cami Ellisdaughter, was not so restrained. She wasted no time passing through legislation crowning herself King of Iowa (as she disdained the connotations that the word “Queen” brought), and formally re-renaming the Republic of Iowa to the Kingdom of Iowa. Her requests to be crowned by the Pope or the bishop of the Des Moines diocese were refused, each disdaining to crown a woman ‘King’. So, famously, she crowned herself in front of two thirds of a congress. The clergymen, however, levied a boycott on her coronation. Men of the cloth had always been more resistant to being bought by the Winfrey Enterprise, and over the course of Ninefold Councilor Ellis’s successive terms had distanced themselves from the Winfrey Enterprise due to concerns over its unbridled greed and materialism. The common people were infuriated. And not simply because a woman dared, in her hubris, crown herself king over the protests of holy men. The Winfrey Enterprise had made Des Moines rich, yes. But those riches were unevenly distributed. Beggars laid as the foot of glorious statues, and marble roadways were lined with cripples. Farther from the capital, the rural places of Iowa had been neglected, forced to pay the same taxes as always, but with less military protection from norse and rust cultist raids than ever due to a cost-cutting corporate government. Minor rebellions rose and were put down with some regularity over the next six years. Iowa still stood strong, but to conceal the discontent of the populace at large from the insulated congress of Iowa (who still technically held power over her), King Cami used not her household troops or levies to put down each rebellion, but instead called on the mercenary armies of the Winfrey Enterprise to do her dirty work. But unlike her catholic, Iowan levies, these mercenaries cared only for money, and often were sourced from godless and pagan locales. Therefore, when putting down rebellions, they typically went far past the amount of force necessary to simply pacify rebellions, and instead put entire villages to the sword, looting, raping, and killing without regard for culpability or innocence. Thus, each put down rebellion only made the common people of Iowa more and more likely to rebel in the future. Thus, in 2617, the charismatic Father Ulf of Cannon, formerly a norse raider who had seen the light of God, enticed the people of his parish to rise up. And Father Ulf had something no previous rebellion had had before him: a claimant to the throne. Kim of Cannon had been nothing more than an ordinary man, until Father Ulf had shown up at his humble home, claiming to have seen in a vision that he was in fact the direct heir of the ancient and putatively extinct house of Branstad-Grassley. In this vision, he said, God had revealed that Fen, daughter of the last Branstad-Grassley King, King Louis, had in fact wed secretly and borne a child prior to her execution. That child had been spirited away to northwest Iowa and raised by pious Iowans as their own. Had King Napoleon proven incompetent, that child would have had its dynasty revealed, and presentad as a claimant to the throne. But King Napoleon and his sons were of course famously exceptional, and thus the secret to Kim’s lineage had long since been forgotten. Until now. In Iowa’s hour of need, God had revealed a rightful king: a pious and humble man, an honorable farmer and thus true Iowan capable of dethroning the she-devil Cami and returning the ancient and just system of monarchy to Iowa. Or so it seemed. Ulf’s rebellion only grew stronger as he approached Des Moines. Commoner after commoner rose up and joined his ranks, drawn by his promise of driving the Winfrey Enterprise from Iowa altogether. Meanwhile, the Winfrey Enterprise only grown weaker. Already having spent much of its capital putting down rebellions with mercenary soldiers, it was unable to other merchant republics from slowly working their way into Iowa’s markets. Facing Ulf’s large, zealous force, the remaining mercenary armies on King Cami’s payroll chose to flee instead of engage, taking the gold they had been paid with and disappearing. By the time Ulf’s army reached Des Moines, King Cami had already fled to parts unknown, taking the executives of the Winfrey Enterprise with her. The clergymen of Iowa’s congress already supported Ulf, and the nobles simply had no stake in the fight. Meanwhile, while the academics of Iowa’s congress had a vested interest in maintaining their power, their endemic corruption had bought them no friends, and without the mercenary armies of the Winfrey Enterprise, they had no force with with to defend themselves. Thus, Iowa’s congress agreed to Ulf’s demands, elected Kim King, and then permanently disbanded without fanfare. Father Ulf crowned King Kim II of the house of Branstad-Grassley in front of cheering crowds in 2618, and Iowa settled down in expectation for King Kim’s rule. Except, Kim really was nothing more than a farmer. And while farmers are of course the backbone of Iowa and immensely valuable subjects of the crown, they are not trained from birth, like royalty, to assume their position. And yes, there is the factor of what learned men call the ‘Mendelian Thumbprint.’ That is, the double helix with which God imbues all life with his plan. It transmits the divine right to rule across family lines and therefore the inborn administrative capability of true royals, and if Kim was truly a descendant of the house of Branstad-Grassley, it would have allowed him to rise, at least in some meagre fashion, to the challenge posed by kingship. But Kim was in all likelihood not actually a descendant of the house of Branstad-Grassly, and therefore was not any more endowed with God’s grace than any other farmer. Thus ,with no familial predisposition towards rulership and no training on the subject, Kim was forced to rely almost entirely on his advisors, and in particular Father Ulf, for the business of rule. Father Ulf was an entirely competent administrator-- like all priests, he had been taught the necessary disciplines to tend to his parish, and he had experience leading men, both in his recent rebellion and long before, as a norse raider. But above all, he was a man given to credulity. One dream had lead him to Kim. A second dream lead him to Napoleon Bone. Of course, this primer does not categorically dismiss supernatural intervention in Father Ulf’s dreams. Given his success putting Kim on the throne, and the later actions of Napoleon Bone, it is in fact entirely likely that what Father Ulf saw was not simply the result of seeing God where God wasn’t. But the alternative is not pleasant to contemplate-- that rather than seeing messages from God, Father Ulf fell for the lies of the Devil. Napoleon Bone needed no priest to tell him his lineage. Indeed, he would proclaim to all that would listen that he was the descendant of not just Napoleon II, via an unclaimed bastard, but also a direct male descendant of the legendary Nathan Bone. And to be fair, his claim was not entirely unbelievable. Napoleon II, for all his virtues, is reported to have had a weakness for women. Nathan Bone, meanwhile, was always rumored to have had children, and the simple exponential math of descendants means that much of Iowa likely descends from him. But neither of these claims particularly mattered to anyone. Men had claimed descent from these men for centuries, to no effect. But Father Ulf, credulous as ever, needed only one chance conversation with Nathan Bone over strong drinks (as father Ulf, a former norseman, still kept to some of his old habits) to declare his story true and claim a god-given duty to put the charismatic Nathan Bone on King Kim’s cabinet. Beginning as an undersecretary to an undersecretary, even the slightest taste of power over mens’ lives is said to have driven Nathan Bone mad. He would spend hours pouring over reports, fantasizing about how even the tiniest stroke of black ink could save a man’s life-- or ruin it. That taste of power proved addictive. Using underhanded methods to discredit his superiors, he quickly rose the bureaucratic ranks. He assumed more and more responsibility until he became as necessary to King Kim as Father Ulf. And then one dark night in 2620, Father Ulf drank too much. Or, perhaps, was poisoned. With his body burnt on a pyre by norseman tradition rather than buried according to his new religion, we will never know for sure. King Kim was devastated. His closest friend and advisor, the man who had given him his throne, dead. Napoleon Bone, in a display of false compassion, assumed what few responsibilities the king had performed himself in order to “allow my friend to grieve.” Two weeks later, King Kim’s body was found in the royal quarters, hanging from a noose. Perhaps the rumors are true, and King Kim’s relationship with Father Ulf was improperly close, causing him to go mad and commit suicide. Perhaps he was killed by an assassin, and his suicide staged. But as with much of the events surrounding Napoleon Bone, any records that might have shed some light on the matter have been altered or destroyed, either by Nathan Bone’s allies or his enemies. Barely more than a boy when plucked from his life as a farmer by Father Ulf, King Kim had no wife, and left behind no heirs. But what he did leave behind was a will, possibly doctored but potentially even legitimate, naming Napoleon Bone king in event of his death. Left with no better alternative but civil war, even those nobles who were already aware of Napoleon Bone’s hunger for power had no choice but to crown him king, perhaps hoping that with a crown, his hunger would be sated. Suffice to say, sating his hunger was impossible. I am prohibited by law from writing about the specifics of the reign of Napoleon Bone. As those who suffered the greatest from his depredations, the people of Iowa can only hope that by erasing him as much as possible from history, none will ever seek to emulate him. Suffice to say, the empire he would form-- Transmississipiania-- perpetrated every atrocity and sin known to man across vast portion of the Mississippi River basin. His name is a curse for rust cultists in Ohio and illegal to say in the Republic of Boonslick. Napoleon Bone divested himself of all emotions and desires natural to a man, perverting himself into nothing more than a singular desire for total control. Books were burnt to control what we knew; paintings where burnt to control what we loved, statues were smashed to control what we saw. Aimes was sacked, and the ancient Cyclonic order was reduced to only its satellite campuses. The blood of Iowans fueled a vast and terrible war machine until there was no more blood to spend, and then that war machine stumbled to a halt and fell apart. This primer refers to Napoleon Bone by his name because it must, for clarity, but it encourages you to refer to him only as the “king-without-epithet,” and even then only when you absolutely must. Do not make the mistake of thinking, as some do, that his actions had any trace of glory. An Iowa should feel only shame at our association with him. The collapse of Transmississipiana lead to all-out civil war. Brother fought father and mother fought daughter for sixteen long years of war. The counts of Freeborn broke off to seek their own destiny, and the house of Okableck, counts of Minnehaha, pledged allegiance to the heathen Lakotah, who then invaded southwards to unlawfully seize the counties of Rock and Floyd. But the idea of “Iowa” was not dead. Evey would-be king still declared themselves the “King of All Iowa,” and so we say that even during those terrible times, Iowa still stood, divided and united simultaneously, maintaining our kingdom unbroken from before the event ended the Old world. And so, when the good King Franklin and his band of adventurers marched from the icy north, the people of Iowa could see past his pagan exterior into the warm christian heart that beat within his breast. He was raised with the Norse, yes. But he had come from Iowa, and was taught on the knee of a virtuous christian mother. He was no vulture, here to scavenge from the weak and sickly. He was the man who would reunite Iowa once more under the eagle, tricolor, and banner. He was the man who would shed the trappings of paganism as soon as they were no longer needed, and convert his heathen allies into god-fearing christians with his vast wisdom and skill with rhetoric. He is the man who has ruled us with honor and justice for these past twenty six years, returning us to the prosperity of old. Not so we can conquer and bully our fellow Catholics, but so that Iowa can serve as the bulwark of Catholicism in the north. Strong and independent, forever.
Gumby’s Old School Memories Prelude: ADCC 2005 Greatest Grappling Event Ever
After a writer’s block I’m back! This time I have a whole bunch of stories to share surrounding a particular event: ADCC 2005, which I am going to argue was not only the peak of the event, but the greatest grappling event of all time. Many would consider the winner of the now Biennial event as the “World Champion” of Submission Grapplers and for every serious competitive grappler it is a dream to just compete in this event. The truth is the event is only partially open. While there are qualifiers worldwide for each of the brackets, competitors can also receive a special invite by the ADCC committee to participate as well. Thus an environment was born that was closer to the mysterious tournament of martial arts movies such as “Enter the Dragon” or Bloodsport as real world event could be. The ADCC Submission Grappling event was created by Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who’s efforts have spread Jiu Jitsu not only in the Middle East but in turn world wide. Sheikh Tahnoon was a student in San Diego in the mid nineties and was just an assuming student at Nelson Monteiro’s Gracie Barra School in San Diego. Shortly before returning home to Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Tahnoon revealed his secret identity as royalty and offered his instructor Monteiro an opportunity to come to his homeland to teach. He had a dual plan to not only hold a tournament to showcase the grappling arts, but also to make Jiu Jitsu a national martial art of Abu Dhabi. Note, I have never personally met Sheikh Tahnoon but everyone I have ever talked to has described him as a great guy. Most of the people I have talked to have a keen awareness of both the Sheikh’s stature and his generosity at the very least, he once famously gifted Renzo Gracie a BMW M5 for example. Having worked with the ADCC before I can tell you that the structure of working for a royal family is very different than what I am used to, even compared to the corporate world I once worked in. Still, one thing I found telling as the man who was described as being the Sheikh’s best friend (who I did work with quite a bit) was a small, soft spoken Indian man who actually had no training in Jiu Jitsu or martial arts at all and worked more at seems as a favor (and everyone gave him a wide berth). The first four ADCC events were held in Abu Dhabi from 1998-2001. For sure there were some great matches there and an invitation to these tournaments was highly sought after, if not for the prestige but also for large prize money involved. Divisional winners could expect prizes in the ten thousand dollar range and absolute champion would take 40,000. This figure might not sound like much but keep in mind this was the dark days of MMA and these paydays were larger than any UFC event could pay out at the time. In addition to these prizes, emirates were known to bet on their favorite fighters and offer large sponsorships on the spot. If watch a match from this era and see a competitor wearing a shirt with Arabic writing on it you could be sure they were paid handsomely for the sponsorship. I know of one champion who came home with several hundred thousand dollars in cash on his person. Thus you not only saw the very best competitors in Jiu Jitsu competing at the time both pre and post IBJJF World Champions, such as Renzo and Royler Gracie, Mario Sperry, Jean Jacques Machado, Rigan Machado, Liborio, Bustamante and many others, you also saw big name MMA fighters competing such Tito Ortiz and Matt Hughes (who actually fought each other) and the Smashing Machine Mark Kerr who actually proved to be a dominant champion at Abu Dhabi. With the amount of money being thrown around in the early events, the betting and prizes for things such as “Fastest Submission” there were bound to be problems however. Unfortunately it came to light that many of the matches had pre-determined outcomes. Reviewing the event in hindsight some of those matches are blatant but others were not. Angered, it was my understanding that Sheikh Tahnoon was prepared to simply cancel the who event, but instead he decided to throw the event every other year. Also, the event would now have a revolving location, the next event 2003 being held in Sao Paulo Brazil. Also, behind the scenes the Sheikh was not the full financial supporter of the event (aside from Prize money, these ADCC events are expensive to run and require a large staff); a large measure of financial support came from Dan Lambert, co-founder of American Top Team and quietly among the most generous figures in our sport. ADCC 2003 in Sao Paolo was certainly a momentous tournament and provided us with many significant events and upsets. Eddie Bravo famously triangle choked Royler Gracie in this event (Marc Laimon remarked you could hear a pin drop when that happened). The tournament also saw the rise of Marcelo Garcia who as a last minute replacement (he had lost in the qualifier) famously won his division in dominating fashion. Jon Olav Einimo, a blue belt from Norway, took his title defeating the likes of Roger Gracie, Dean Lister, after being bounced in the second round of his division came back strong the next day to win the absolute championship and Ricardo Arona defeated Mark Kerr in a collision of two of the most dominant competitors in ADCC to that point. The stage was set ADCC 2005 now being brought to the United States. It was sort of the perfect storm in that ADCC was still at it’s peak, and the UFC had not yet hit the heights it was about to, so there was still a lot of MMA fighters looking to enter in. It was also the first tournament that had women’s divisions (largely pushed through by co-promoter Brian Cimins of Grappler’s Quest) And of course, all of the greatest grapplers of that generation were present and this was going to be the tournament that they make their status into legendary. In addition, it was probably the largest audience ADCC had ever had, and being in Southern California the crowd was certainly knowledgeable and animated, really getting into the match. I was working the event in a number of different roles backstage, which turned out to be everything from being consulted on matchmaking and entrants, to literally setting up the mats and cameras, to doing a blog play by play on OntheMat (in 2005 live streaming wasn’t really a possibility) and doing commentary on the later matches. Also, one of my main training partners was actually in the tournament itself (Cameron Earle, who was actually out on bail at that point and is a whole story on it’s own) Suffice to say, I think I had a unique view of the event. • The venue almost had to be changed to Nevada at the last second. “Someone” had tipped off the California State Athletic Commission that there was an illegal prize fighting event going on, and the Commission either threatened to shut it down outright, or was going to spend more time investigating the event to see if everything was in order and schedule a hearing for after the event was supposed to be held. So even through the weigh ins we were faced with the strong possibility that we would have to truck everything over the border to Nevada and obvious this created a lot of chaos. In the end Dan Lambert used his connections (and likely wrote a big donation) to keep in the event in Long Beach. The someone who made the phone call was well known to everyone, but never officially pointed out as this someone was extremely polarizing in the community and potentially litigious, however that person passed away a few years ago as well. • The actual surface were standard Tatame style mats, however there was a thin canvas with logos and sponsors to stretch over the ring areas. This initially created a very slick surface. The brilliant solution? Turn the mats upside down so the honeycomb traction pattern on the bottom would provide grip even with the canvas over them. The effect turned out to be similar to grappling on a cheese grater, more than one competitor was well bloodied up with some of the worst mat burn ever. • I would say that the grappler who probably had the most buzz entering was Marcelo Garcia, who set the grappling world ablaze with his come out of nowhere performance in 2003. But I would argue the next biggest buzz was actually for Diego Sanchez, who had actually just won the inaugural Ultimate Fighter Reality Show, and both the UFC and himself were thrust into a national spotlight neither had been in before. Diego was a regular on the competition scene well before this and got his invite before joining the show. While the UFC would have preferred he had pulled out, he told them there was no way he was missing this opportunity. It seems interesting in retrospect, but Diego had way more star power in this division than another UFC fighter that had entered and competed, George St. Pierre! •One grappler I lobbied for very strongly to be in this tournament was Rafael Lovato Jr. He didn’t actually do the trials so he wasn’t strongly considered for a spot, but I felt at his weight class he was among the top Americans. Still he was there to support his teammates (Saulo and Xande) and also because even attending ADCC was a dream come true for most of us. However, it always pays to be ready, as ADCC are 16 man brackets there are always last second substitutions to be made (which is how Marcelo Garcia got in). Sure enough an opening came up after the weight ins at the 87.9 kilo category and scrambling the promoter (Miguel Itturate) called me and asked if I knew anyone. I certainly did and offered them Lovato. Problem was that Lovato was closer to 99 kilos at that point and they were going to give him only a few hours to make weight. Rafael wasn’t sure what to do as his entry wasn’t a sure thing, but after talking to him we decided that if he tried and made the weight he would have a shot at competing at ADCC, but if he didn’t he would have no shot. So Rafael went about making the weight, dropping nearly twenty pounds that night. He was exhausted, looked gaunt but was proud he did it, when the promoters called me back and said the slot had been filled. Damn, I hated having to deliver the news to Rafael but he took it like a champ and went back to being in spectator mode. Before the first rounds of the tournament started as the audience was filing in the Miguel grabbed me and asked if Lovato was still available. I look up and see Lovato sitting there with a plate of nachos in one hand and a hot dog in the other. I go storming up the bleachers and practically swatted the food out of his mouth saying, telling them they are asking for him. He gets all excited and comes back down with me as we’re figuring out what to do about the weight when Miguel tells him that they need him as an alternate 99 kilos now. Lovato is a trooper but the look on his face when they told him that. Lovato didn’t wind up competing at that event, but was pretty much guaranteed an invite every time after that, I’m going to tease this out a bit over a few posting, covering some more backstage happenings as well as my recollections of the divisions and the most memorable matches. Should keep me occupied for awhile at least. Participation in these threads, including asking questions and vote ups (and a huge thank you to whoever it is that gifts me with Reddit Gold) is hugely motivating, so if you like this type of stuff, let me know and if you have questions, also let me know and I’ll see if I can’t incorporate some answers either here or in future posts.
is it illegal to own a slot machine in california video
Pachislos are Prohibited in Alabama, California, Louisiana, Missouri and Oregon. Real Las Vegas Slots are legal in : Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia. “Pachislo OK” refers to token use only. People ex rel. Lockyer v. Pacific Gaming Technologies, 98 Cal. Rptr.2d 400, 402 (Cal. App. 2 Dist. 2000). California statute makes it illegal to possess a slot machine and California Penal Code § 330b(2) defines a slot machine as any device: New Information: We believe there is a concern over the legalities of these Pachislo machines in the States of Colorado, California, Washington, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota and Oregon. ALABAMA Any Machine PROHIBITED. ALASKA Any Machine LEGAL– Pachislo OK. ARIZONA Any Machine LEGAL–Pachislo OK. Note: State laws are constantly changing -- contact a California criminal attorney or gaming attorney, or conduct your own legal research to verify the state law(s) you are researching. More Information. For more detailed information on gambling in California, you may want to take a look at the California State Library’s report on gambling.For a more general overview of gambling, check out A functioning slot machine is generally illegal to possess, as well as to fix and to transport in the State of California. Look at California Penal Code section 330 and the subsequent paragraphs.. This answer is for guidance only and is not intended nor does it create an attorney-client relationship. More. It is also illegal in California, and many other states, to own a functioning slot machine unless it is at least 25 years old. California Tribal Casinos—that a person pays to play, and that offer anything of value for playing, are illegal devices. Common types of illegal devices include coin pushers, electronic trivia games that include any element of chance, claw machines, traditional slot machines, and slot machines that purport to have a skill element. Who told you that slot machines are illegal in California, there not. The only weird gambling law in California is that craps and roulette must be played with cards rather than dice or the ball bearing but I think that that's some what understandable. See same. As to slot machines, note that being house-banked is not required for a game to be an unlawful slot machine or device. See People v. Grewal (2014), 224 Cal.App.4th 527. California Penal Code 330 PC. See same. California Penal Code 326.5. See same. California Penal Code section 330 PC. See same. Slot machines are illegal to own unless they’re antiques. Antique slot machines must be over 25 years old, and must not be used for real money gambling. Here’s what section 330.7 of the California Law, Regulations, Resource Information says about antique slot machines:
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