Trending...

The Schloss-Blog has noticed a trend.

While Democrats were passing legislation that enabled attacking and soon defeating, outright, hopefully, the coronavirus...

...Republicans were griping about the election results and claiming massive voter fraud.

While the Democrats' bill enabled the injection of more than 2 million vaccinations a day...

...Republicans in Arizona were scanning, screening and testing 2.1 million ballots in the name of an audit to invalidate the results.

While Democrats were passing legislation that now has vaccinations within 5 miles of every American...

...Republicans were paying homage to COVID-denier-in-chief Donald Trump

While Democrats are sponsoring legislation, badly needed, to put millions of Americans back to work...

...Republicans were trying to put their colleague, Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), out of work.

While Democrats are sponsoring legislation that will rebuild every aspect of American infrastructure, including the bridge on I-40 over the Mississippi River...

...Republicans are vowing to block every piece of legislation and policy coming out of the Biden Administration. Because they're Republicans...

While Democrats are pushing to extend unemployment benefits...

...Republicans are planning to prevent it.

While Democrats are pushing to ensure the integrity of American elections through the For the People Act...

...Republicans in Texas, Georgia, Arizona and nationwide for that matter, are passing or sponsoring legislation in their respective states to limit the ability of minorities in particular to vote.

While Democrats are trying to maintain your health, your voting rights, your ability to stay COVID-free, your economic prosperity and your pocketbooks...

...Republicans are denying the severity of the insurrection and griping about the election results.

...Matt Gaetz is being investigated.

...Donald Trump is looking at 29 lawsuits and/or investigations.

...Rudy Giuliani is being investigated.

...and the election results remain intact.

Thank God.

Enjoy Memorial Day weekend. The Schloss-Blog is going to take the weekend off.

To see his grandson.

Among other things.

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

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show. 

Short and Chip

The Schloss-Blog this week is concerned about being short.

On everything.

Water. Babies. Cleaning products. Gas and oil. Chlorine. Employees in hospitality. Used Cars. Houses. And arms in which to stick COVID vaccinations.

So we did a little research on the shortage legacy of the Trump administration's COVID policies.

Did you know used car prices are up 21 percent? A COVID-driven microchip shortage is hampering production of new cars and that is driving up the price for and demand for used cars.

And when you do find that special used baby, good luck finding affordable gas to put in it. Gas and oil production remains fine. But drivers for the tankers to deliver gas and oil to market are in short supply. Right now, 20-25% of all gas tankers are sitting idle, compared to 10% this time last year.

It seems people stopped driving during COVID 2020 and that put tanker drivers out of work. Now, burned, many don't want to come back, and training new ones, well, that requires a special certificate. If you can find prospective trainees, that is.

So, where'd they go? 

Not to the hospitality industry. Restaurants and hotels are hurting for employees. Those laid off and furloughed in 2020 are not eager to come back when some are collecting more in relief and unemployment than they ever made as an industry employee. The pandemic, in essence, became a sabbatical for them from an industry notorious for underpaying.

Yet, so many people are out there trying to buy houses. And why not? Interest rates are at historic lows, but housing prices are skyrocketing, depending on where you live.

Right now, as you read this, the U.S. market is 3.8 million homes short of what people are willing to buy, that is, people who can get financing. But this isn't entirely a COVID-caused problem. The market has reportedly been underbuilt for 10 years, or about since we came out of the housing bust fueled by the recession that started in 2008 and last for years.

To top it off, a COVID-related shortage of lumber production has slowed housing construction. Lumber production is way off and lumber futures (OK, you gotta' watch MSNBC) are off 7 times what they were a year ago.

In other words, don't sell your house just yet before you know you've closed on a deal for that new one you've been wanting.

You wouldn't want your babies left out in the cold. What babies, though? Birth rates in this country have declined for a sixth year in a row. That has an impact. Down the road, fewer people are available to feed the payroll tax that maintains Social Security, something everyone is going to need eventually.

By the way, this year's birth rate was the lowest in the U.S. population since 1979 (Google it).

Oh, by the way, when you clean your house, it's going to cost more, your new one or the existing one. Availability of household cleaning products is way down due to so many more people scrubbing their houses thoroughly in the wake of the pandemic.

And you might want to stockpile drinking water, or any water. A severe water shortage is projected, emergency projection, especially in the U.S. West and Southwest. Seems Lake Mead and Lake Powell, two of the Southwest's primary water supplies, are below sufficient levels to sustain a growing population in many southwestern states.

Blame it on climate change (or, like Trump, on the weather), blame it on whatever you want, but your water bill is about to go up and your water availability is about to decline.

Finally, we have a shortage of arms, and I don't mean pitchers for your favorite baseball team. We need more arms to get vaccinations so we can achieve herd immunity and finally get past this pandemic the same way we get past the flu every year. But the anti-vaxxers, who helped bring back polio and measles this millennium, are helping maintain the COVID threat.

Did I call them anti-vaxxers? I meant COVIDiots. You know, like Donald Trump (who did get vaccinated - he's the ultimate germaphobe) and the COVIDiots at @Outkick the Coverage.

OK, I guess I went pretty long here for someone who wanted to talk about being short, although I'm not short on love for my darling Jocelyn, whose birthday is next week.

See you soon, Chicago. See you soon, Jordan.

Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.

Getting Away Scott Free ... Among Other Things

Today's Schloss-Blog is dedicated to Uncle Tim.

Uncle Tim says Joe Biden seems to be a good man.

He's right. His popularity numbers prove it.

And 57 percent of Americans agree, how about that!

Uncle Tim says Republicans are trying to bring Americans together by passing restrictive voting laws across the country.

In Georgia, for instance, that law eliminates Sunday voting, or "souls to the polls," a Black tradition.

That law reduces the required number of drop boxes for absentee and mail-in ballots to one (ONE!) per county (PER COUNTY!) and makes them accessible only in the county clerk's office during scheduled voting hours.

Biden, meanwhile, ahem - Uncle Tim, has signed an order promoting access to voting rights and he did it on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday massacre.

And in Congress, a bill you, Uncle Tim, oppose, would enable those opposing all those restrictive state voting laws to ensure everyone's ability to vote in a fair and expeditious manner.

Meanwhile, Uncle Tim, you say America is not a racist nation.

You're right.

However, as Joy Behar of "The View" points out about you, you're a Black man, raised by a single mom in South Carolina, who doesn't "understand the difference between a racist country and systemic racism."

Who doesn't understand why Derek Chauvin was convicted.

Who doesn't understand that Officer Kim Potter killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, mistaking her pistol for her taser.

Heck, I do that all the time. Don't you, Uncle Tim?

And Uncle Tim, where you said Republicans did so much to get vaccines to the American people, they left a mess of a distribution system behind, or no distribution system, for that matter, while more than 550,000 Americans died of COVID on your watch.

Biden, on the other hand, got 2 million people a day vaccinated and now has more than 100 million Americans fully vaccinated.

Trump was on his way to killing that many of the former and infecting that many of the latter. Trump, and you Republicans.

Your speech, Uncle Tim, was written to portray all the failures Biden was supposed to have had thanks to the filibuster and blocking of progressive legislation by Republicans.

Republicans don't care if Americans die. Especially in Blue States.

But Biden is a president for all the people. 

Now, Uncle Tim, as you shut down the Underground Railroad, please get out there and tell Americans to get vaccinated so we can achieve herd immunity, by July 4, as Biden is hopeful of doing.

So far, he's done everything he said he would do.

All you've done is complain about it.

Which is, I suppose, what you said you'd do. Congratulations.

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

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.