If Michigan wins the game by any margin, or loses by no more than 2 points, BTD is a winner. A Michigan loss by 2 points is a push (gets his money back). A Michigan loss by more than 2 points and BTD takes a hit to the wallet?

But what does the "1/2" add to the equation?  Can't be who gets the first 2 pointer    Free throws?  Fouls?  Flops?  

For me, speaking for me only, Chavez had a greater impact on the better aspects of the person I have become than did Jesus. My first political affiliation taken by me without my parents' influence was to work with the local United Farm Workers group in my hometown.

Although the grape boycott began in the fall of 1965, my participation did not begin until two years later when, as a 15 year old high school student, I learned about the boycott and the Farm Workers. I have not eaten a table grape since. (Yes, I know the boycott ended. I just never got in the habit again.)

Through high school and college and after part of my regular routine involved going to local grocery stores and asking in the produce department to see the packing boxes with the Farm Workers label. If the store did not buy Union picked produce I then proceeded to talk with the produce manager about why he (it was always a man) should choose to buy Union-picked produce.

This kind of one-on-one activism is very different than taking part in a big march. I am a painfully shy person, during my teen years it was much worse, so talking face-to-face with these adults was hard for me. I stuck it out because I knew what I was doing mattered. As a result, I learned how to present my case concisely, the importance of knowing my facts, and how to politely stand my ground with someone who was skeptical or dismissive or condescending or hostile or all of the above.

I grew up with New Deal Democrats for parents. My father was a union man. I had a good grounding in the Democratic Party politics of the day. Working with the UFW was a revelation for me. My eyes were opened to the way things really work in this world. The basic political belief that I formed in those early high school years remains my core political belief to this day.

I believe, and have never seen anything that would change my mind, that the basic political battle is always a battle of economic class. The haves and the have-nots. And the haves will go to quite some extreme to keep the have-nots out.

Unless the judge, Victor Marrero, rejects the settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and SAC, which was announced a couple of weeks ago, Cohen will be free to go about his business, which has long been clouded by suspicions of insider trading, once he writes a check of six hundred and sixteen million dollars to the Securities and Exchange Commission. There will be no further sanctions and no admission of wrongdoing. And in fact, Cohen already appears to be celebrating. According to a report in the Times, he has just purchased a Picasso painting, "Le Rêve," for a hundred and fifty-five million dollars, and an ocean-front mansion in East Hampton, for sixty million dollars.