The Schloss-Blog is noting some trends - car buyers are paying more for their cars; the United States is trading more with Mexico and baseball is seeing its fewest errors ever. So far.
What else could go wrong? Or has it?
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Inflation may have cooled but car payments apparently have not.
Not everywhere.
In Texas, the Houston Chronicle reports, car buyers are financing their purchases at an average monthly payment of more than $1,000.
One. Thousand.
Only Wyoming, according to the report, ranks at that level for new-car buyers.
What's going on?
It's a combination of post-COVID prices being high, demand for new cars being up as we continue to be in a post-pandemic world, and interest rates being as high as they are in the wake of the Fed raising them to mitigate against inflation.
Why in Wyoming and Texas?
Other than those states are overrun with baskets of deplorables, who knows? OK, that wasn't fair.
Yes, it was.
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It's true, Mexico has taken the lead.
No, not as the leading source of migrants at the border.
As the leading country with which the United States trades, surpassing ... China!
What's going on? Why should it matter to you?
(Full disclosure - basic tenet of teaching journalism for 23 years, as I did at the college level: tell people why it matters to them.)
So, it all started with Trump (who else and why isn't he on trial for this?). When he commenced his famous tariff war with China, things started to sour between us and them. Today, we impose more than a 19% tariff on Chinese goods while they impose, in retaliation, more than a 21% tariff on us.
This is not good. It's so not good that the Biden administration left it in place. Hmm...
Anyway, one shot-down balloon and a lot of nasty words later, Mexico has ascended to the top spot.
It's easier to trade with Mexico. No tariff restrictions. Easy proximity. And even most illegal drugs come through the main portals anyway (not through the wall that Trump never built and Mexico never paid for not building).
Of course, if Trump gets re-elected, he'll re-establish trade and relations with China by raising tariffs even more and waving around classified documents in front of visiting Chinese diplomats.
And serving them that incredible, beautiful chocolate cake.
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It's easier than ever to watch to Major League Baseball.
Games are quicker thanks to the pitch clock. Fewer pitching changes, less time between pitches and keeping hitters in the batters box all go a long way toward our enjoyment of the game.
But how do you feel when you watch one of your favorite players on your favorite team boot an easy ball hit right at him?
A costly error, right?
Not these days. Official scorers are ringing up fewer errors than ever. Plays that look routine and you know your grandmother could've made still get booted and are being scored more than ever as - hits.
What's going on? (I read that somewhere before in this blog post.)
Official scorers are grading more and more balls as hits and fewer and fewer as errors, at a pace that will leave MLB with fewer errors committed than ever before.
Why?
Are media members who double as official scorers courting player favor? Are pitchers clamoring for more errors to be made to protect their earned run averages? And how would you like to be the teammate of a pitcher who is clamoring for more errors to be declared.
It's a conundrum: pitchers' ERA's versus position players' fielding percentages.
Which should win?
To me, if they can get their hands on it, they should catch it. Period.
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What's a galette?
The NY Times referenced making one in a recent article. It was carmelized. It had cracked black pepper and gruyere.
But what is it?
I read the article and I'm still not sure. Someone help me out. Before I go to France next year.
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Robbie Robertson is dead and the music world has lost a legend. He reportedly had prostate cancer.
He was 80.
Lil Tay is dead and Hip Hop and the world of influencers has lost an emerging legend.
She was 14.
No one knows what took her life.
Will we ever?
What's with Hip Hop? Great music and great artists, but we know as much about Lil Tay's death as we know about who shot Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac.
Maybe, as B.I.G. said, violent death is as inevitable, as - "...the black talons loaded in the clip, so I can rip through the ligaments, put the f'ers in a bad prediciment..."
He didn't say "f'ers."
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If Trump doesn't lie, John Lauro lies for him.
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Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.
More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.
And welcome aboard at RFP. Mike McCoy. Shazam!
David Hughes, all the best. You'll be missed.
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