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This is the gimmick the GOP does for two reasons: First to hold onto the Old White Voter Base. They have to initially keep them on SS/Medicare. Second to divide and conquer then turn those who have been cut off against those who still have SS/Medicare. Everyone under the cut off line will instantly become voters who will want to take away the benefits of those who have a better government deal than their own vouchers. It's brilliant evil politics. Mostly evil, but brilliant because people are too stupid to see the set up. And also too stupid to see that SS can be "fixed" easily: eliminate the cap (i.e. only the first roughly $108K of income is taxed), extend "payroll taxes" to Investment Income, and if needed increase the rate from 4.5 to 4.6 or 4.7 or 4.8. And of course lower the age back to 65. I'm at 67 or 69 as far as the age I have to wait to take SS to get the max. I'd be more than willing to pay 5% rather than 4.5% if it meant I could get the max at 65 and SS was fixed. But the obvious fixes are off the table, and instead folks want to destroy it. Frankly the easiest thing to fix... we can look at Northern Euro countries to make it work better than we do.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/28/1...le-for-Medicare Adding Medicare to SS, giving her opponent lots of room to attack on. She's completely fucked now. John

Dylan is correct: WCW in 1991 was a national promotion. Just one that did pretty shitty business. But it was far from a regional promotion. http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/wcw91.htm

From earlier this year: http://rajah.com/base/node/27328 Ric just looks creepy old in that picture. Her kids with Ric very recently posted on her FB page: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=101...e=3&theater Given Ric's track record with women/wives, and that she has young kids... you sort of pray that the trainwreck that is Ric doesn't screw up her life something fierce. John

Good stuff. You're putting a lot of thought into it.

I'm guessing the part about the GOP holding the Gov's office from 1995-2010, a similar statewide race, flew by in that post. John

Linda McMahon Proposed Social Security "Sunset" At Tea Party Forum Not good for her. John

I'm trying to think of how draws are handled in futbol. It's possible that a draw against Brasil means more than beating East Timor. In other words, a draw against Cena may mean more than a win over the lowest ranked person of the WWE roster. This sounds about right. Going back historically, say to the 80s, there would be differences there: * PPV/Closed Circiut Obviously the biggest of the big. One might, though, give special credit to different PPV: 1. Mania 2. Summer Slam 3. Survivor Series 4. Misc Mania is worth more than Slam which is worth more than Survivor, while the rare other ones are of marginal worth. * SNME Obviously a biggy. * Successful Major Stadium Shows There are very few of these. But something like The Big Event and the Wrestlefest 1988 are rather huge. I wouldn't give the shows they ran at the Silverdome or the Super Dome that didn't draw huge a bonus. They essentially were house shows. But The Big Event... that was major. * Major Arenas - Taped (MSG/Philly/Boston/LA) * Other "Prime Time Level" Taped Matches PrimeTime was the national show that aired a lot of arena matches. The majority of the non-syndication stuff came from the major arena tapings. Some of it came from dark matches at syndication tapings, like a Tito-Reed if I recall. I would weight them similar. Perhaps a pre-1984 bonus to MSG as it was the primary building of the WWF. After 1984, I would level them all out. The reason for it is that the WWF didn't run every major feud at MSG anymore. We've talked about that when looking at the Hogan-Orndorff feud in 1986. It *did* run in the New York City market, but just not at MSG other than a tag match. In turn, it did run at Philly. I don't think Hogan-Savage in MSG warrants more points than Hogan-Orndorff in Philly just because the Savage feud got to run in MSG while Hogan-Paul was used to pack Nassau rather than MSG. * Colosseum Home Video Things like Hogan-Schultz that were taped and released on CHV are worth of a bonus over a standard house show. There are a number of matches that don't fit into the areas above that ended up on CHV, usually extra matches taped at TV tapings. * TV tapings Would toss out all non-jobber matches, unless you're already figuring those out. There probably should be some cut off where, say, a Jim Powers / SD Jones does/does not count, while everyone clear below that level doesn't going for ELO and everyone above does. That cut off line would probably be usefully determined by who is regularly working house shows. If Barry Horowitz work 100 house show matches in a year (or reaching an X matches level per Y months over a Z period) , that he's a JTTS who is worth counting. If he works as little as the Mulkeys, then he's just a TV jobber. But Steamboat vs Savage from a TV taping... that should count. * Other Non-Taped House Shows / Completely Dark Matches from Taping never seen And that's the bottom. It probably is worth while to have a "bleeding" factor for inactivity. Also should have a minimum level of needing work work to get ranked. Rock has been out for years. He came back and pinned Cena. He hasn't worked since. Can't really rank someone based on that. A returning Brock needs to work X amount before getting ranked. He was out so long that he restarts with 0. What is a reasonable period of inactivity where you get to 0? I would think *at most* 2 years. It's arguable that it should be less time. How quickly should ranking be bled due to inactivity? I would think that most of it would bleed away within a year of being inactive, which means a hell of a lot would bleed off in six months. Title matches should be worth more, and dependent on the title. The World Cup is worth more than a Friendly. The World Cup is worth more than the Euro Championship, which in turn is worth more than the Asia Cup. That said... I would probably give a PPV Main Event Bonus. Rock-Cena > WWE/World Titles at Mania. If the WWE Title is the Main Event, it gets just the PPV Main Event Bonus, not both added together. This does make a judgement call on what the Main Event (or Main Events) are. It's not the last match on the card, but the big draw/push. At times there may be a double main event where both warrant credit. But 2002 with Rock-Hogan while HHH-Jericho went on last... we all knew Rock-Hogan was the real main event. It should get the bonus while the HHH-Jericho gets the WWF Title bonus. Pin/Submission >>> DQ/COR > Draw/DDQ/DCOR > Loss by DQ/COR >>> Loss by Pin/Submission Again, look back at the 80s. Hogan would lose by DQ and COR. In 1984-89, he lost by pin or submission just once in the WWF. DQ/COR & Draw/DDQ/DCOR & Loss by DQ/COR were all very close to the same thing in terms of screwiness. Loss by Pin/Submission & Pin/Submission were where the real nuts and bolts of how people ranked were determined. This sadly skews things to a lot of Faces since the WWF didn't have some of them do a lot of jobs, while heels without belts might job all over the place. Yeah, I would say that there's a clear problem in the system given those rankings. Possibly because it's just started rather than going back to 1996 or earlier. But any time you have a system where RVD and Billy Gunn are 1-2, there's a problem. In soccer that would be like Colombia and Sweeden being 1-2 in an ELO Soccer ranking right now.

Not insanely to Dems. They had the Governors office from 1995-2010, which is a very impressive run. The Senate was Dodd for ages in one seat, with Lying Lien in the other and thank god he'll be gone now. The House is slightly lean Dem over time, though it when full Dem in the 2006 & 2008 waves. In the 80's & 90s it was made up of: 1st: Kennelly (D) 2nd: Gejdenson (D) 3rd: Democratic (D) / DeLauro (D) 4th: McKinney ® / Shays ® 5th: Ratchford (D) / Rowland ® / Franks ® / Maloney (D) 6th: Johnson ® The 5th District split this way: 1980-85 Ratchford (D) 1985-91 Rowland ® 1991-97 Franks ® 1997-99 Maloney (D) Slightly more to the GOP (effectively 1985-96) than Dem (1980-84 & 1997-99), but something of a toss up. The 6th went out in redistricting as CT lost a House seat. Johnson held that until the 2002 elections when it vannished, then ran in the 5th and knocked off Maloney 54-43. The 00's line up: 1st: Larson (D) 2nd: Gejdenson (D) / Simmons (R 2001-07) / Courtney (D) 3rd: DeLauro (D) 4th: Shays (R 1987-2009) / Himes (D) 5th: Maloney (D) / Johnson (R 2003-07) / Murphy (D) And you can see the wave: 2006: 50.02-49.98 Courtney over Simmons to take the 2nd (Simmons won 54-46 in 2004) 2006: 56-44 Murphy over Johnson to take the 5th (Johnson won 60-38 in 2004) 2008: 48.4-47.6 Himes over Shays to take the 4th (Shays won 51-48 in 2006 against the wave) The 4th and 5th were extremely tight in the 2010 GOP wave. The GOP can win state wide, as the long run of GOP Govs just ending reflects.

I'm guessing the botched the finish somehow? The cut away from the finishing move for a shot of the announcers was odd. John

So, the real life sports drama trumped the scripted show drama? SHOCKER! Dude, seriously? Are you channeling your inner Alverez? Why would you even compare the two? Because the MNF end run was amazing in a mind bending way. When I saw the end run of Raw getting pimped as Great! after seeing something that was mind bending, I was expecting the finish to be really high end WWE stuff. Instead, the Raw end run was pretty standard fair. Punk + Cena in the ring doing a long mic spot? Seen it, and there was nothing terribly amazing in it. Lead Pipe? Eh. Backstage? Eh. Seeing a heel "scared" of a juiced out monster who was breathing heavily... I've only seen that a few hundred times. It was passable for a moment, then the heavy breathing was enough to drop it down to suck for me. It's been out there in circulation for ages. I think Barnett had a copy in the K-Tapes. Ginnetty had it in the first World Pro set. In fact, I think some of us pointed this out to you when you were looking for it 3.5 years ago: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=8403 John

After seeing the end of Raw pimped up, I flipped over to USA just in time to catch them coming out of commercial for the final segment. Ummm... after the "final segment" of Monday Night football, gotta say the final segment of Monday Night Raw sucked. Really came across as nothing more than a typical WWE final segment while MNF was a once in a lifetime final segment. John

I forgot about Cyndi Lauper. Two albums that got to #4, and a 2-1-3-5-27-10-1-3-12 run of singles at her peak across those albums. It does show (i) just how insanely over Madonna was, and (ii) how dominant men were in that era that Lauper's massively successful albums only topped out at #4. John

Yep: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=12441 One of the greatest wrestling message board posts of all-time. John, not even going to get into our Looney Tunes discussion...

Only here on Prowrestlingonly, folks. Hell, didn't Loss do a great piece on Madonna once?

How many Madonna's did we have in the 80s? I'm drawing a blank. Janet didn't hit until 1986, released just two hit albums, and 5 of the 7 singles off the second album didn't get release until 1990. Not really Madonna relative to the 80s. Well crap... let's make this easier and look for the women who had #1 albums in the 80s: Donna Summer - On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes 1 & 2 (1980) Barbra Streisand - Guilty (1980) Kim Carnes - Mistaken Identity (1981) Pat Benatar - Precious Time (1981) Stevie Nicks - Bella Donna (1981) The Go-Go's - Beauty and the Beat (1982) Something kind of interesting happens. The Go-Gos were #1 from 3/6/82 to 4/10/82. There wouldn't be another woman to top the charts for nearly three years until 2/9/85... Madonna - Like a Virgin (1985) Bingo. Then it was something of a flood: Heart - Heart (1985) Barbra Streisand - The Broadway Album (1986) Sade - Promise (1986) Whitney Houston - Whitney Houston (1986) Janet Jackson - Control (1986) Patti LaBelle - Winner in You (1986) Madonna - True Blue (1986) Whitney Houston - Whitney (1987) Tiffany - Tiffany (1988) Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman (1988) Anita Baker - Giving You the Best That I Got (1988) Debbie Gibson - Electric Youth (1989) Madonna - Like a Prayer (1989) Paula Abdul - Forever Your Girl (1989) Janet Jackson - Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989) So who are the potential Madonna candidates? Whitney is a different beast: a songstress that appealed to folks in their 40s as much as girl teeny boppers. She was really big, though. Janet? Perhaps, eventually... but again, her second album had 5/7ths of its singles chart heavy lifting done in 1990. There really was only one Madonna in this country in the 80s. It's a bit like there was only one Michael Jackson. Prince was a different beast.

We've already dealt with that for years watching Heyman win polls like that. John

I would worry about even having him around. He only worked in that setting with McMahon, and for a short period of time. McMahon was/is a dictator, and doesn't have to worry about anyone stabbing him in the back. In a more normal booking/creative situation where one would try to argue that Russo could be of value to a booking team, there's no way in hell if I were the head of a booking team that I'd want him around. He'd try to worm his way over my head to the boss, stab myself and others in creative in the back, and work to get on the side of various people in the locker room against others in the creative/booking team. Would I want him actually in a booking room and having to listen to his bullshit? No. Would he be of value to watch the show at home and offer advise? I don't think so, certainly less so than say Heyman or Cornette would in the same role earlier in their careers. Russo's claim to fame was to be involved in the creative process during the boom. Sometimes "success" like that offers a warped view of how good someone really is. George Seifert went 98-30 (.766) with the 49ers from 1989-1996, winning two Super Bowls. Just how good of a head coach was he, and how much was on the talent, the front office and the organization? Steve Mariucci came in and went 25-7 (.781) the first two seasons after Seifert was shown the door. Then Young's career was finished, others in the dynasty aged, and the team fell off for two seasons. They bounced back to go 22-10 (.688) his last two season, then he was shown the door... so 47-17 (.734) in the four "good" seasons that bookended the two poor seasons where Young's injury sent them off the cliff and into mini-rebuild/reload. Seifert and Mariucci went a combined 145-47 (.755) across 12 seasons setting aside that 1999-2000 blip. 11 trips to the post season, those two Super Bowl win and could be reasonably called the second best team in the NFL in 1990, 1992, 1993. Does anyone think that Seifert and Mariucci are great coaches, let alone geniuses? Wait... does anyone think they're actually "good" coaches in general? Or were they just decent enough coaches in a setting that was near-perfect for them? Who in turn when put in other settings they came up quite short? Russo strikes me as a Mariucci... and that's probably insulting to Mariucci since at least he had to deal with Young going out and being able to tinker their offense around to work with Jeff Garcia eventually. John

I think his biggest problem is that he has very little talent, isn't very smart and isn't truly creative but instead poorly derivative. Russo's ego is only a problem because rather than knowing he isn't talented, he deludes himself into thinking he's a genius. John

Tiffany would be too small: one massive hit that launched her, the follow up also went #1, another Top 10 off that album and then a Top 10 off her second album. The first album went #1 and sold a ton, while the second album was effectively a bomb. Gibson was effectively a two album star. The first did well going To 10, sold a lot, spawned four Top 10 singles of which was #1. There was strong enough depth of hits off the first that the second album went #1 and the lead single did as well. But it was quickly down hill after the: the follow on singles where hits that just missed the Top 10, and then she was dead when the third album came out the following year. I would have to see the chart positions of Chiggy / Crush Girls in the 80s. Madonna on the charts? From 1984-89: Singles: 16-4-10-1-2-1-5-5-1-1-3-1-4-1-2-1-2-2-20 Albums: 8-1-1-1 Soundtrack Album: 7 That's just the 80s, with the Like a Prayer album released shortly before Chiggy retired so it lines up pretty well. I tend to think folks forget how big Madonna was, and how consistently she was churning out hits. From 1984 through 1990 she was tossing out multiple big hits left and right every year with the exception of 1988 which she took off. They weren't minor hits: seven #1, four #2 and five other top 5 hits.

My point was to agree with the earlier poster that Russo is actually shit in storytelling by pointing to a movie most famous for its High Spots that actually has excellent story structure underneath those High Spots. Russo would only see the High Spots, and want to replicate them. He wouldn't see the storyline nor the structure. As far as choosing Godfather, it's not about using it to set a bar for Pro Wrestling. It's because it's famous and can be used as an example. It's so famous that even though I didn't use the High Spots, the scenes / quotes that I referenced are actually ones that a viewer of the movie would remember if I cited them. In turn, calling it a movie with big High Spots also would be something that people get. John

Wait... what the fuck? Chigusa was a popular in Japan in 1984-89 as Madonna was in the US? I'd really need to see that well documented to not view that as massively hitting the bong. John

This is wrong. What Russo lacks is understanding of the basic fundamentals of narrative. It's not because he isn't especially a wrestling fan, he just has no grasp of how stories on the whole are supposed to function or why. He is a man who has never thought about, say, a movie or a book in a structural sense because he thinks the spectacle is the draw and that spectacle is something that occurs naturally when you shake up the bag of marbles often enough -- and therefore something he is capable of creating (as opposed to the reality that he was a mere lucky witness when Rock, Austin, and Foley got their moment to shine.) This. Russo only thinks of the high spots in storylines, not how to structure and layout the stories in full. Could Russo come up with the scene in Godfather where Sonny is shot at the tool booth? Possibly, especially if he saw it in another movie and ripped it off. Could he come up with the totality of Godfather, especially the primary story arc: * "That's my family, Kay. It's not me." * "It was Michael who killed Sollozzo." [The Don, markedly upset and angry, gestures that they leave him alone.] * "But I never... I never wanted this for you." * "Is it true? Is it?" "No." And finally: http://www.thegodfathertrilogy.com/gf1/tra...transcript.html Could Russo write a storyline like that with the arc where not only is Michael becomes not only what he claimed he didn't want to be at the beginning, but also what his father didn't want him to become (ironically his own true heir)? Of course not. Or he'd get it done with in the first act, and have the rest of the movie devoted to cool killings. Russo's a shitty writer, and always has been. He comes across to some as a good bullshitter because he's spreads his bullshit in a fashion that people almost makes sense... in a way, it's the pro wrestling equiv of Stephen Colbert's "Truthiness". But really... it's bullshit. As a writer, he spun out bullshit. McMahon did a good job of shifting through the bullshit and using some of it. And also had the luck that Austin, Rock and Foley came along.

At the very best for Linda, it simply washes out with Murphy's "past-due" issues. That's the very best they can hope for, and they can move on from there. But the problem is that Murphy made good on his past-due issues, while Linda's festered out there as she & Vince made hundreds of millions of $$$. That's a bad optic. A worse one when Romney is out there on the top of the ticket bring a spotlight on Rich Folks Who Don't Give A Fuck about folks below them. Linda not gets tied to Romney, even as she was trying to distance herself from him... and CT just isn't a state where Romney is going to do well. Worse: it's so widely known he isn't going to do well that the GOP turnout might not be very inspired, and it's not like Linda is very inspirational down ballot. In turn, even though Obama is a lock to win, the voters who really like him strongly (or are simply just strong "we always vote Dems" like myself) are likely to turn out. 2012 was always going to be an uphill general election ballot for Linda to run on. The top of the ticket imploding doesn't help, and Obama again proving to be a reasonably good campaigner doesn't help. This story, so close to the election... it really helps refocus on defining Linda. John