Not a Schloss-Blog

In North Dakota, people on their deathbeds are telling the healthcare workers caring for them that they don't believe it's COVID taking their last breaths, instead of issuing their final, heartfelt good-byes to their loved ones.

It doesn't exist, they say as they expire.. It's not real. The president told them so, they say.

That's where we are, America. Those same people believe the presidential election was rigged and that Biden was elected by cheating.

In fact, 70 percent of Republicans believe that. No, really, they do. Google it.

We are in a sad place, America. The majority of Republicans believe COVID is not as bad as we know it is, even when they die from it, and they don't believe Trump lost the election.

It's as if Trump will set up an alternate governing body and run the country from Mar-a-Lago in Florida, except he'll be in court in New York, fighting off charges that will send him to jail involving his taxes and his over-valuing and/or under-valuing his properties, depending upon whether he was applying those values to his taxes or applying for a loan from Russian oligarch-controlled Deutsche Bank

Trump is leaving a true mess for the incoming Biden administration, with dead bodies piling up across the country, bodies in denial of the virus that killed them.

And while the majority of spineless, chickenshit Republican senators continue to enable the president's charges via their silence, the president's loyalists continue to lose case after case in court they have brought to try to overturn battleground state-after-battleground state outcome. Gives new meaning to most of OMG/WTF (Ohio/Michigan/Georgia and Wisconsin/Texas/Florida).

Trump will leave the White House, sometime before Jan. 20, when Biden is sworn in. But he won't go away. His Twitter account will remain in his banana republic state, except he can't tweet from a courtroom in New York City, where he will be fighting for his life to stay out of prison.

Hey Donald. Martha Stewart called. She said, give it up.

I Also Miss

The Schloss-Blog is here this Thanksgiving to tell ya'  that he misses his family.

Y'know, the family I can't Thanksgiving dinner with.

All of it. All of them.

My grandson is the light of my life. He's perky, a sports maven (just ask him about the Bears), aggressive yet chill, smart and observant. So proud of him. Excelling in first grade.

When this is over, I hope to get to see him more than four times a year.

My daughter has found a good man. They make each other happy. That's all I need to know.

Except that I'd like to see them more than four times a year when this is over.

My cousins, and their kids, are precious. We hardly get to see each other as it is, scattered all over the country as we are, and we had to pass on two occasions to get together this year.

Yet, we have a bond that we all adhere to - any occasion, any wedding, any bar mitzvah, any bat mitzvah, any funeral - we all saddle up and go.

Not this year. We had to shed tears silently, thousands of miles apart, when one cousin passed away and we were all unable to attend the funeral.

And we had to skip the party that never happened when another cousin's grandson celebrated his bar mitzvah.

As a family, we live for those opportunities to express joy with each or offer a shoulder for each other.

And at the one funeral none of us were able to attend, I missed the opportunity to visit my parents' gravesites, remind them how much I miss and love them and drop a few pebbles at the foot of their sites.

In tribute. In a message to let 'em know I was there, we were there.

Every Christmas, we visit my wife's family in Texas, no matter what. For 30 years. 

Not this year.

I miss them. They are loving, caring, generous and warm.

It would've been difficult enough to see my mother-in-law, in the home where she's living now, what with the restrictions they have on visitors.

And my father-in-law, alone in a big house in Missouri, needs our help and we want to give our support. 

Difficult to do this year.

The trip to Texas was always important enough to me that even though I had a basketball game to cover on the 26th virtually every year, I went to Texas for Christmas anyway and took a 5:30 a.m. flight home the day after.

I'm no hero. Just did what I had to do to see the people so important to me. It was, always is worth it.

I wanted to include this as part of the "things I miss" blog I posted four days ago, but that would've been the longest blog post in history.

To everyone struggling with a family visit this Thanksgiving that they couldn't do, my heart goes out to you. This Christmas too.

And with that, good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.

More on my Radio Free Phoenix show on Sunday night.

Have a good Thanksgiving, no matter how much smaller than usual it has to be. Wish it could be with everyone.

But not this year.

Hey, cousin, hands off that drumstick. It's always mine.

But I'll end this the same way I've ended every phone call I've ever had with my brother since we both reached adulthood (according to our mother, never) and started living hundreds if not thousands of  miles apart ever since: So long, bro. Love you.

I Miss...

I promised the next Schloss-Blog would be about thing I miss. So, special midweek edition, here goes.

I miss having a real president. But that's a whole 'nother Schloss-Blog.

I miss my friends.

The ones we ate out with every Saturday night.

The ones we worked out with at the gym.

Where we can only go by appointment now.

The ones with whom we celebrated holidays and exchanged gifts.

Every year.

Haven't seen some in almost a year now.

The ones I play golf with. I love astonishing them with the occasional great shot.

The ones I went to college with.

My fraternity brothers - my college family.

Our reunion plans are at best on a bubble.

The ones I grew up with in Brooklyn.

They're either scattered all over the country.

Or gone.

Forever.

We're at a point now where we all likely know someone afflicted with COVID-19. Or - God forbid - taken from us by it.

I'm typing this and welling up as I compose it.

Really.

I miss watching football games with packed houses on hand, influencing the outcome, so to speak.

I miss teams from schools that have canceled games altogether anyway.

I miss the atmosphere on Friday nights when I go cover a game.

There's nobody there, relatively speaking.

I miss the NY Giants being a "real, competitive" football team.

But that might not even happen again in my lifetime.

Daniel Jones. Really? With the 6th pick in the draft. Really? Really?

And you wonder why I'm welling up as I write this.

I miss Lev, Beatle, Coach, Cool Guy (and Ellen), Rev, R.T., Hick, Rod, Dox, Tool, Matos, Corky, 'Spo, 'Slay, Whale, Broadway, Lush, Who (Hoo?), Downunda, Dienda, Trees, Butch, Monk (sorry, no Sundance), PK, Frick and Frack, Boobs, Hoe (not really), Big O (A?), and guys with real names like Mike and David.

And Nibs, Dero, Sap, Kwiz and Rhino.

I miss Keith and Gary, my two favorite receivers on East 2nd Street, Albemarle Road or at the schoolyard.

I miss my cousins, who relish in making fun of me.

I miss a lot of things. I'll bet your list of what you miss is similar.

Stay well.

My friends.

What's left of you.

Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.

More on my show Sunday night on Radio Free Phoenix.

I Know I Promised But...

The Schloss-Blog is well aware that it promised after Election Day and Trump's embarrassment that we would not write about this garbage anymore.

Wrong.

Donald Trump has every right, as John King on CNN keeps reminding me, to go to court and sue for this and that in the way of election irregularities.

He doesn't have the right to be a presidential petulant child. Which is exactly what he is.

With multiple lawsuits and indictments facing him once he's is out of office, not even a presidential pardon will shield him from all of them. And so he's worried.

That he'll be indicted.

That he'll go to jail.

That he'll be broke (he is).

So, he's running around like the tantrum-crazed child that he is, screaming foul and asking his lawyers to invest any charges they can think of to undo his election loss.

Ballots were changed.

Dead people voted (he can see dead people - he's one of them).

Votes were still being counted in states where he was ahead, allowing Biden to catch up and pass him.

Votes weren't being counted in states where he trailed Biden so he couldn't catch up.

Count the votes.

Don't count the votes.

Depending on if you're in Michigan or Georgia, Wisconsin or Nevada.

OMG and WTF now stand for Ohio-Michigan-Georgia and Wisconsin-Texas-Florida.

On top of all that, petulant child that he is, he's refusing to share his toys with the president-elect, or Fox News' "guy who got more votes."

For now.

What Trump is really doing is looking for a way out without having to say that he's looking for a way out.

Without losing.

Trump is that guy you grew up with who, when you chose up a game of touch football in your neighborhood and he didn't like the team he was on, he took his football and went home. Or when you played 3-on-3 basketball at your local schoolyard, he was the guy who said he got fouled every time he got the ball.

Our national security is threatened because he won't share presidential daily intelligence briefings with the guy who will read them thoroughly once he's sworn in as president.

I swear, Trump just might have to be physically removed from the White House on Jan. 20.

And put in a New York courtroom.

Where he belongs.

Good night Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.

More on Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix show.

Next week, we switch gears - things I miss.

Like, my friends.

Welcome Back...

Schloss-Blog is thinking about America...

We're saying good-bye to a president who doesn't know the words to "God Bless America." He had to fake mouthing them at an FBS championship game and at a White House ceremony.

We're saying good-bye to a man who thinks that immigrants come from "shithole" countries.

We're saying good-bye to a man who said the coronavirus would magically disappear while it continued to ravage the country, infecting more than 9 million people and killing another quarter-million.

We're saying good-bye to a man who encouraged states to drop restrictions that were succeeding in mitigating the virus and scolded states when they didn't drop the restrictions.

We're saying good-bye to a man whose disrespect for women is exceeded only by his hatred of and disrespect for Mexicans and Muslims.

(Maybe I shouldn't have written that - I mean, MS-13 could come looking for me now.)

We're saying good-bye to a man whose insistence on having super-spreader rallies infected at least 30,000 people and killed another 700.

We're saying good-bye to a man who spent his mornings at the White House watching Fox & Friends, tweeting about it, calling in to it and skipping his presidential daily briefings from our intelligence community.

We're saying good-bye to a man who believes Vladimir Putin outright more than the careful research and cautions of our top-flight intelligence community.

We're saying good-bye to a man who spent almost one-third of his time in office playing golf.

We're saying good-bye to a man who used the presidency to try to enrich himself. Instead, he failed to have the British Open relocated to his Scotland property and had the PGA abandon his club to opt for a tournament in Mexico. And the LPGA has abandoned any tournaments at any Trump properties.

We're saying good-bye to a man who claims to have built 380-plus miles of wall along the Mexican border, but it's really less than 10 miles. The rest was repair and replace.

Y'know what that wall can't keep out? An airborne virus.

We're saying good-bye to a man who also said Mexico would pay for the wall.

Not.

We're saying good-bye to a man who tried to raid the Pentagon budget for funding to build the wall, but was denied by the courts.

We're saying good-bye to a man who wants immigrants to come from Norway instead of from "shithole" countries.

When you think about it, we're not saying good-bye to a "man" at all. We're saying good-bye to the murderer of 250,000 Americans, to whom he offered hydroxychloroquine and household cleansers as fixes for coronavirus.

Prediction here is he will do what men who are chickens do: step down before Jan. 20 and be pardoned for any and all crimes federal by President Pence.

But Cy Vance and Letitia James are going to throw his ass in jail.

Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you indeed, Mrs. Robinson.

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix show.