Want a Shot? In The Arm, Or Outside of Nats' Park?

The Schloss-Blog can't believe we're still writing about this sh-t - uh, shots - but we are.

Shots in the arm. And shots outside of Nationals' ballpark in D.C. Shots that help avoid a resurgence of COVID and shots that kill people and make them scramble for cover at what should otherwise be a safe venue at which to enjoy a Major League Baseball game.

Would rather be writing about shots of J.D. or Jim Beam, but, maybe another time.

***

There were all kinds of shots fired in the last week. Some of my favorites were in one of the new books about the last days of Trump, just published. In "Only I Can Fix It,"  by Washington Post award-winning reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, it is revealed that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, told us how he really feels about Donald Trump, comparing him to Hitler having a Reichstag moment and living by the "gospel of the Fuhrer."

And those were his nice words.

Yes, Donald Trump was every bit the schmuck you thought he was, and beyond. A desperate man, much smaller than his 6-foot-3, 243-pound (ahem!) frame, fearing the investigations closing in on him and the ones to come.

Milley, for his part, was hell bent on not allowing the military be Trump's vehicle to elude all that, commander-in-chief be damned.

***

But if you're a baseball fan, a sports fan, it appeared to not be so safe to go to a game last week.

At Nationals' Park in D.C., shots rang out, clearly audible in the stadium with a game in progress.

Cool, huh?

People scrambled for cover, for safety.

What would you have done? Hid on the ground in your aisle? Run for the concourse, not knowing if that was safe? Remained calm and figured out where the shots were coming from and then decided where to seek shelter?

Even the ballplayers didn't know what to do for sure as they scrambled for the clubhouse and even ushered some fans in seats close behind the dugouts along with them.

What if you were there? What if you had your kids or grandkids with you? Can you even imagine that happening? Would you know what to do? Is there an instruction manual for this, a set of guidelines to follow for "shots at the ballpark?"

No, there isn't.

So good luck.

Especially next time you're at a game in one of those shooting-gallery war zones, otherwise known as Chicago, New York or - anywhere.

***

Speaking of shots, as we are this week, there's one (or two) we all should be getting, but we aren't.

Those who aren't are paying the price. You've heard the numbers: 99 percent of all COVID-related deaths now are those who have not been vaccinated.

About 83 percent of all new COVIDiot cases are the new, highly transmissible Delta variant and it's spreading like wildfire across southern (i.e., Red) states. And something like 97 percent of all those hospitalized now with COVIDiot infections are - you guessed it - unvaccinated.

Nice, huh? A percentage of your fellow Americans don't care if they die, apparently. They don't request the injection until it's too late - until they've been hooked up to a ventilator and pretty much left for dead.

Can you imagine, unable to gasp for air with machine assistance, begging for a shot (pun intended) at life and being tended to by a physician who knows you're beyond the pale.

Too many stories about doctors having COVIDiot patients ask them for the shot, only to have to tell them, it's too late.

By now, so many of us know or know of someone in our families, among our friends and co-workers or just in our lives who were too late.

They live in that other America, where the vaccine is not proven, they believe, where those who have had COVID believe the antibody will help them stave it off in the future, where politicians have doubted the efficacy of the serum. 

But it works. I know that. You know that. Your friends and families know that.

Everyone else is at risk, perhaps of dying.

In that other America.

***

To borrow from the old public service ad campaign, friends don't let friends go unvaccinated. Don't let your friends. Don't let your family members.

There is plenty of vaccine available now. You can get vaccinated by walking into a CVS.

Or as the old ad campaign goes: don't let your friends be COVIDiots.

***

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

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

Are We Still Talking About This?

The Schloss-Blog today is revisiting some old topics and some themes that remain relevant in, let's say, new stuff, from Afghanistan to Mar-a-Lago to Red states where Delta could run wild.

The Delta variant of the coronavirus, that is.

***

The first thing to fly out of this mosh pit of items I have has to be the damn coronavirus' Delta variant.

Did you know it now officially more than half of all new cases in the United States? Did you know, in some states, some hospitals are tapping out on ICU beds dedicated to the coronavirus? Did you know, most of those states are so-called Red states, run by a Republican governor and/or Republican-majority legislatures?

Mostly in the South.

Those Republican governors (we're looking at you, Greg Abbott), are going to get everyone sick or killed. Or, as Gov. Jim Justice (R-West Virginia) was quoted as saying in The Hill: "...those who are still unvaccinated against COVID-19 will be pushed to get the shot only by a 'catastrophe' in which 'an awful lot of people die.'” 

The coronavirus has already been a catastrophe. Now, it night be another one and make no mistake, in states like Mississippi (Red, Republican, Southern), which has the lowest vaccination in the country, the catastrophe is coming.

The legacy of Donald Trump.

***
In case you missed it, Donald Trump is suing Twitter and Facebook, claiming they are discriminating against and censoring him.

He's even suing CEO's Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, respectively, and YouTube as well.

Don't count on him winning. The social-media platforms have regularly won such suits brought against them in the past and Twitter defended its permanent ban of Trump on its platform because of the threat of more Jan. 6-like attacks.

Trump likes to sue people and entities he doesn't like. He usually doesn't follow the suits through to the end, using them as an intimidating bully pulpit instead, He has lost when they've gone the route. And when he did win, suing the NFL as part of the ownership group in the USFL's anti-trust suit, the USFL won.

And got a $1 in damages. Trebled, by law to $3.

Expect more from the suits just filed. Unless Trump himself is indicted on unrelated charges.

***

The tax-evasion and fraud charges against Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, carry as much as a 15-year prison sentence.

Fifteen years.

Allen Weisselberg is 73. If convicted and if receiving the max sentence, he'd be close to 90 when he got out.

Do you think Weisselberg, who has said he'll never turn on Trump, is willing to serve prison time until he's almost 90?

I don't either. And if Trump were reelected (or reinstated?), he couldn't pardon Weisselberg or commute his sentence.

Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney and alleged "fixer," said he'd never turn on Trump either.

Until he did.

And here we are, still talking about Trump, taxes and fraud.

***

There are nine (10) Senate seats where one party or the other is considered vulnerable in 2022 elections.

Seven of them are Republican.

Join me in praying that Democrats flip them and hold on to the ones they won in 2016 and 2020 special elections.

If Republicans get the Senate, we're f-cked.

***

Quick takes:

The United States is pulling out of Afghanistan. Mission accomplished?

Teachers in 'Red' states could be in trouble, break the law, if they teach what is being called 'critical race theory,' or, succinctly, the truth about the history of racism The nation's largest teachers union says it will defend any teachers that do. What do you think - should it be taught?

I took a little heat over my comments about youthful Olivia Moultrie and Avery Zweig, 15 and 14, respectively, playing with the pros. I have no problem with them doing this. I have a problem if either becomes the next Jennifer Capriatti. Or Freddy Adu.

I'm sorry, but the officiating in the NBA playoffs, the NHL playoffs and the UEFA Euro 'futbol' tournament, respectively, has been Gawd awful.

Worse than that, we have to listen to those damn British play-by-play announcers say, "Italy are through" to the next round. No, the Italians are through. Italy are a country.

***

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

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

The Right Wants to Stick It Up The Left's Anus

The Schloss-Blog is monitoring all kinds of right-wing antics. And they are threateningly scary.

For instance, Fox News has spent months delegitimizing the Derek Chauvin conviction for murdering George Floyd.

He murdered George Floyd. We all watched it. But when it came to sentencing him, a Fox News personality wanted to know what number of years, what "magical" number for his sentence was acceptable to the #BLM left and the Fox News-loving right.

I'll tell you what number: the maximum, which he didn't get. Happy now, Fox News? Chauvin could be out after serving 15 of his 22-and-a-half-year sentence.

Is that justice? Is George Floyd's life worth more or less than that? 

At Fox News, it's a "magical" question to be batted about.

***

Meanwhile, the "Fraudit" continues in Arizona, in some refrigerated, remote location now that the "Frauditors" have run through their lease at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix.

Their legions of "Frauditors" have included sitting Arizona state Republican legislators. Leading the way is the Cyber Ninja chief, totally inexperienced in election audits, who also appears in the right-wing, QAnon-inspired documentary, "The Deep Rig," proclaiming that the election, was, indeed, stolen from Trump in a deep fix.

Yes, the guy overseeing the "Fraudit" is on record as to the election, long-ago verified,' being stolen from Trump.

In case you're wondering what the "Frauditors" are going to find, after running the Maricopa County ballots through UV lights and testing them for bamboo (bamboo, because they were run through China - really?), rest easy. They're going to claim a deliberate miscount, caused by anything from deliberate miscounting to voting machines deliberately "changing votes" from Trump to Biden.

Just wondering, if indeed the voting machines changed the count from Trump to Biden, why didn't they change all the Trump votes instead of just enough for Biden to win? And why didn't a hand recount reveal this supposed discrepancy, which it should've and would've, but didn't?

Because there wasn't one.

***

Speaking of the right wing, why isn't Michael Flynn, the former National Security Adviser to Trump, for a whole month, under arrest for proclaiming publicly, that there's no reason an armed coup couldn't happen here and throw Biden out of office, subsequently reinstating Trump.

Flynn is a traitor.

Period. He belongs in prison. Alongside Chauvin.

***

Meanwhile, ongoing, Indiana University students have filed a lawsuit saying they want to show up for school this fall, vaccine free, and it's their rite not to get a vaccine for COVID, even though the college is mandating it.

Looks like there are COVIDiots everywhere, aren't there? Even among our university elite being trained to be America's future leaders.

If this ever gets in front of the Supreme Court, remember, that body just ruled that Arizona's restrictive-voting legislation is legitimate and can discriminate against minority voters. If they're going to go that route, they'll likely allow the coronavirus back on campus and the COVIDiots who threaten to bring it.

Just remember, these same COVIDiots got to Indiana in the first place, having been administered school-mandated vaccinations for everything from measles to chickenpox to meningitis.

But now, who cares about those, right? Their motto would appear to be, we don't need no stinkin' COVID vaccinations.

Until they do.

***

One more thing: do you know Olivia Moultrie? How about Avery Zweig?

Moultrie, from Oregon, is 15.

Fifteen!

She signed a three-year contract to play for ... wait for it ...the Portland Thorns of the National Women's Soccer League. She had signed for professional representation when she was 13.

Would you want your kid or grandkid to being playing professional soccer at 15? The money is sure there for her. But is she the Michelle Wie of soccer or the next Mia Hamm?

Zweig, meanwhile, is 14. She played this weekend in the LPGA's VOA Classic in Texas. 

And now, like Texas counterpart Jordan Spieth of the PGA Tour, she'll skyrocket up the LPGA rankings, in all likelihood.

Junior high? Who needs junior high when you're the top-ranked female junior golfer?

If, in fact, they're the future banner carriers for their sports in the United States, then you go, girls! Serena is getting older. And Coco Gauff is only a bit older than you both. Women's sports definitely need you.

***

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

Next week, back to Weisselberg.

Meanwhile, more Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.

And Casey and Katie, congrats on your marriage.