If You Vote For Trump

The death of Justice Ginsburg and the battle over her seat has the Schloss-Blog thinking about the consequences of a vote for Donald Trump. With this being National Voting Registration Week...

...If you vote for Donald Trump...

...you are voting to support a belief that the coronavirus is affecting almost no one.

Almost no one. He said that. Think about it.

If you vote for Donald Trump...

...you are voting to support racism.

Trump has said it right out loud; Blacks will move into your neighborhood if you don't for him. I spent my life going to school in Brooklyn, in Albany, in DeKalb, Illinois, with Blacks. I've had minorities on either side of me all my life. I'm not too worried.

If you vote for Donald Trump...

...you will be voting for someone who stole money from the U.S. Military budget and dedicated it to building his wall, the one Mexico was supposed to pay for.

By the way, he has hardly built any new wall at all. He replaced existing wall, but hardly built anew. He's lying.

Shocker, right?

If you vote for Donald Trump...

...you are voting for the coronavirus to disappear magically.

Magically.

If you vote for Donald Trump...

....you are voting for someone who prescribes hydroxychloroquine and household bleach to be put into your bloodstream, outright.

And that will kill you even sooner than the coronavirus.

If you vote for Donald Trump...

...You are voting for your grandmother's death. He's already said so. It's a virus for old people.

He's 74.vote  

If you for Donald Trump...

...and depend on the Post Office for delivery of your prescription medicines, you're likely not getting them on time, are you? In other words, he doesn't care if you die.

If you vote for Donald Trump...

...you vote not to wear masks nor maintain social distancing. In other words, you vote to die.

If you vote for Donald Trump...

...you vote for deliberate delays in the delivery of your mail, perhaps your prescriptions, your support checks, your birthday cards from your grandchildren and your S.I. Swimsuit issue.

If you vote for Donald Trump...

...you believe like he does that your children and grandchildren are immune to the coronavirus.

Yeah, the ones who throw super-spreader parties at the University of Alabama, or whatever your favorite university is.

And will bring the virus home to Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, brother, sister...neighborhood.

If you vote for Donald Trump...

...you are voting for someone who doesn't care that more than 200,000 of your fellow Americans have been killed by the virus.

And lastly, if you vote for Donald Trump...

...you are voting for someone who is, through his disdainful disregard of protective measures against the virus, sanctioning the deaths of some 200,000 more by the end of the year.

But he says it hardly affects anyone.

Hopefully, none of your loved ones.

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

More on my Sunday night show on Radio Free Phoenix.  

Doesn't Make Sense...

The Schloss-Blog is watching some things that just don't make sense.

Like in the U.S. Open golf tournament, why do these incredibly talented pros take 3-5 minutes to size up a shot, examine their notebooks, consult with their caddies, study their lies (of the ball, that is), measure up every angle of their putt from every which side of it, and then ...

...put the ball in a sand trap, in the water, 20 feet past the hole on a putt, on a slope on which it is impossible to keep the ball from rolling all way to Cleveland, or just plain leave it in a place where it is impossible to hit it anywhere near the hole.

I take not even a quarter of that time and do the same thing, which makes me feel not so bad about my game.

Why do so many politicians lie (speaking of lies) in their campaign ads? Outright lie. In Arizona, Martha McSally keeps saying she is all in favor of protecting patients with pre-existing conditions. In reality, she voted for legislation that would've eliminated such protection. Eight times.

Eight times.

Yet, a lot of people are going to vote for her because she worships at the temple of Trump. Interesting, because she didn't even attend his super-spreader rally in Arizona, mostly because she didn't want to be in an audience where masks are the exception, not the rule, and social distancing is nonexistent.

She about deserves to be in the U.S. Senate as much I do.

It doesn't make sense to me that the Big Ten conference announced the cancellation of its fall sports and now has reinstated them. Why?

As I always said t my students in class, IT'S ALWAYS THE MONEY and the conference has more than $700 million in TV revenue on the line, or about $55 million per member school.

Did anyone really think they'd walk away from that?

The players, by the way, the student-athletes, get none of that. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

However, the SEC, the ACC and the Big 12 had already decided they'd play and collect their fare share of TV revenue and the PAC-12 is considering it.

As renowned USA Today sports columnist and commentator Christine Brennan put it, the Big 10's decision was the day it became the SEC.

Student health matters not. Concussions? Meh. Sprains? Tape 'em up. Bruises? Rub some dirt on 'em.

COVID-19? Good luck. Ten percent positivity rates are OK. The World Health Organization says 5 percent is the acceptable rate for any community, region, state, school district, college, etc.

The sad part of that is the schools have allotted remarkable resources to be able to test athletes multiple times per week, with same-day turnaround.

Meanwhile, the student body at so many of these schools will not only be barred from attending the games, they're home, learning remotely, electronically, and paying full tuition for it.

Paying for the COVID-19 tests their fellow "student-students" are able to get, daily, if need be.

But back to golf. Tiger Woods stunk up the course at the U.S. Open. So many great golfers have not made the cut.

Heck, I could've done that. In half the time.

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

Six Months Ago...

Six months ago, the Schloss-Blog was in another life, virtually.

This week, as President Trump heads into Phoenix for the umpteenth time this campaign season, he does so on the heels of the Arizona Cardinals not only scoring their big, opening-day upset over the 49ers, but after the Cardinals did not take the field for the National Anthem.

Fire those S.O.B.'s, Donald, and all the other athletes who continue to take a knee during the anthem or before the opening kickoff, or not go on the field for it at all. All of sports has told you to stick it. And got away with it.

Six months ago, I never thought I'd see an American President encourage people to commit a felony to try to vote twice.

Not anymore. 

Six months ago, I never thought the United States Post Office would see to it that my absentee ballot might not get there on time. Deliberately.

Not anymore.

Meanwhile, six months ago, I would go to giant Woodfield Mall once a month near my suburban Chicago home.

Not anymore.

Six months ago, I went out to eat every Saturday night at a nice, local restaurant, often with friends.

Not anymore.

Six months ago, I thought there would be a legitimate Major League Baseball season.

Not anymore. Now there are 7-inning games and guys on second base in extra innings in a 60-game season. No legitimacy.

Six months ago, I thought the MLB commissioner might actually do something punitive to the Astros and Red Sox, who cheated their respective ways to the World Series titles in 2017 and 2018. 

Not anymore. Now, none of them have been punished, suspended nor fined, and the only player punished was a pitcher for the Dodgers, who lost both of those World Series.

Six months ago, I thought I'd be spending more time in my adopted home in Arizona than my primary residence in Illinois.

Not anymore.

Six months ago, I thought the NHL and NBA seasons would end in June and start up again in the fall.

Not anymore. Now they've played through makeshift bubble playoffs, will finish in October, maybe, and start up again in December.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Maybe.

Six months ago, I thought high school football, which I've covered for 40 years, would start in August.

Not anymore. In some states, it's not starting at all.

Six months ago, I thought me and three of my fraternity brothers would be planning a reunion for 2021 for us all.

Not anymore.

Six months ago, my wife traveled virtually every week to her hospital and healthcare clients, for whom she designs award-winning facilities.

Not anymore. She's strictly working from home all that time. 

Six months ago, if you'd have told me that in our 30 years of marriage, we'd have spent the most amount of continuous time together that we ever have and still be talking to each other, I'd have told you, not anymore.

Boy, was I wrong.

Six months ago, I thought my wife and I would be on our 30th anniversary honeymoon trip to Paris.

Not anymore, obviously.

Six months from now, I hope we're on a new course, with a new president and the coronavirus on its way to be out of sight.

And that I never have to say "not anymore," anymore.

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

Happy News Year ... And All That

The Schloss-Blog is watching the convergence of so many things and trying to stay upbeat.

However, the only thing worse than the president lying all along about the obvious severity of the coronavirus is that he is continuing to lie about lying about it. At the expense of nearly 200,000 lives now.

But sports is my thing, so I tried watching a couple of college football games, but with so many schools and conferences not playing, and the FCS  schools (D-1AA or 1-A, as you prefer) having already canceled their postseason championship tournament, it's hard to be excited when I know my alma mater schools - Northern Illinois (FBS) and UAlbany (FBS playoffs last year), aren't playing or aren't playing for anything meaningful this season.

The season has lost all legitimacy anyway. Virginia and Virginia Tech, two great ACC rivals, postponed their opener because of COVID concerns. The Ivy League canceled all sports until 2021, if then. Other schools, other games, have canceled.

I just don't care as much as I once did about college football for the first time in a long time. It has no purpose, no direction, no saving grace, a lot of angry parents from Nebraska who think they and their lawyer are the most important thing about the game and there's just no legitimacy.

What will the Big 10 presidents do though? We'll see by nightfall.

I'd love to see them all playing but have seen no guarantees that players and fans can be kept safe. Not reasonably safe but outright safe. I have to cover high school games starting Oct. 2 and I will put on my mask and go, stay socially distanced from the field instead of walking the sideline like I have done for 40 years and videotape postgame interviews from a distance.

But unlike cowards like Clay Travis, who hide in their basements and criticize sportswriters whom he says want to see the virus cancel sports, I'll be there, braving the elements of virus and crowds and people who don't believe they'll ever get the virus because President Trump says so. Ever notice, he never lets anyone within 6 feet of him Any. One.

Even with the virus hitting close to home, striking his Republican colleagues and crippling the Secret Service, Donald Trump doesn't care. Maybe if he got it he'd learn. He'd disappear, only be heard from on Twitter for two weeks, at minimum, his staff lying about why he's been invisible (in secret negotiations to take our troops out of Syria so the Kurds can get slaughtered or put troops in Portland so they can slaughter fellow Americans - no, wait...).

Did I mention my daughter got married last week. My ex, who hasn't spoken to me for 30 years, actually hugged me after the ceremony. I was very grateful for that, actually.

My daughter could not have looked more beautiful and it was her facial expression more than anything else that made the day. Instead of 200 people in a classy ballroom and a ceremony under the stars, a farm field and 25 people tucked into an open-air garage felt just right. Jordan was the classy ring-bearer. Kudos to Mike's parents for facilitating.

If only the college football season generated such enthusiasm. If only the football parents at Nebraska had the same pride to know how to do the right thing for everyone instead of just for themselves.

But they don't. They're just like Clay "I'm All About Myself" Travis. Clay says all sportswriters rooted against sports and for the virus to cancel everything. Then all the sportswriters showed up to cover everything and he stayed in his basement and didn't. What a coward.

Bite me, Clay.

Stay safe everyone. Vote early, no matter how you vote, vote early. If you vote by mail, btw, and show up to vote in person, you will be turned away. Even in North Carolina. 

For the first time in years, I'm going to be watching pro football more than college. The pros are keeping themselves covered while the college campuses are keeping themselves COVID-ered.

Good night Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you Mrs. Robinson. And Daniel Jones, hold on to the damn football this year.

More on my show Sunday night on radiofreephoenix.com.

I'm Baaaaaaack ... In Arizona Again

Picking up where we left off last week, the Schloss-Blog has some more musings about life in the age of COVID. It's not all pleasant.

But some of it is (my daughter is getting married today).

Sports fan, and reporter, that I am, I'm watching some great NHL playoff games (Islanders-Flyers and Canucks-Avalanche are intense series), but am noticing that some of the broadcast play-by-play team is in studio, either in New York or Toronto or even at home (Eddie Olczyk). I guess it works but I guess I'll never get accustomed to it. I like to feel like I'm at the game when I watch it on TV or at least that the announcer's perspective in-arena gives him an advantage in analyzing for me what is going on. Technology has evened that up though, in every sport.

NFL, NBA, MLS and MLB are all broadcasting games that way, with at least one analyst not at the stadium.

What's heartening to me is that the NBA (Doris Burke), NHL (U.S. National-Teamer A.J. Mleczko) and MLB (Jessica Mendoza) have female analysts just as good as any guy, especially Burke and Mleczko, where Mendoza has a conflict, being employed by the Mets.

Not as much fighting in NHL games either now, as players realize that major misconduct penalties are not something their teams can afford to suffer in critical playoff games.

But back to lifestyles in general (my daughter is getting married today).

Me, I have gotten even more dependent on my electronic life than ever in the age of COVID, in my shopping, my dining, my friendships, my family relations, my information gathering and even my socializing.

Catherine Wolf, I miss our monthly dinners, our traditional BBQ and then soft-serve dessert. Emily Capdevielle, I miss our monthly beverages, whether they be blended by a barista or a bartender.

But I am enjoying my monthly Zoom calls with dozens of my fraternity brothers, from San Francisco to Boston, North Carolina to Oklahoma, Minnesota to Louisiana. It would still be better in person, but that's a reunion we can't schedule.

Yet. (My daughter is getting married today,)

I am enjoying discovering through renewed communication that Betsy Buenzow Petrie, about whom I once wrote an award-winning profile about her life as a track star/rock star in college, has had a successful, professional career and a handsome family.

I am enjoying that my Radio Free Phoenix compadre Jane Snyder Pecorella was someone who I probably bumped into once or twice at now-closed Nathan's on Long Island, when, in high school, my friends and I would go cruising for Long Island girls to pick up. Nathan's was the place to go. I admire her memory of that revered pickup hot spot.

(My daughter is getting married today.)

But I'm not enjoying some other things. Going into stores and locations in Wisconsin and Arizona where not everyone wears facemasks or socially distances. Not even close.

Not enjoying hearing that so many colleges are closing down no sooner than they opened up. We'll see how their football teams hold up.

I'm hoping that all the coaches who petitioned their high school and college administrations, respectively, really can keep their players COVID free. I wonder if those schools that are playing will finish their seasons. I'm hoping yes, and yes, but fearing no, and no.

I'm disgusted that Donald Trump is using the Post Office and the threat of minorities moving into the suburbs as political campaign tools. Slowing the mail only hurts veterans and shut-ins who depend on the mail for their medications. His racist taunts are his trademark. If you vote for him, you support racism, period.

He is so afraid of losing and being indicted, as he will be, that he'll do anything, promise a vaccine by election day, albeit not fully vetted, authenticated nor proven, let alone that it would be rejected outright by even his own supporters who are diehard "anti-vaxxers" who will jeopardize the country's chances of gaining full immunization against this devastating virus.

(My daughter is getting married today.)

I'm sad that I couldn't attend my beloved cousin's funeral in New Jersey, couldn't hold my best friend's granddaughter at a small gathering to send his daughter off to her new, very lucrative-looking career outpost, even if it is in Green Bay.

I'm sad whenever Trump says men clad in black boarded a plane to reap destruction on Washington and then reversed himself and said they were leaving Washington to do that, which means he must have dispatched them. Even Trump cheerleader Laura Ingraham didn't comprehend that one.

I'm sad Trump publicly encouraged people to vote twice, a felony.

And I'm sad I couldn't give my daughter the wedding she deserved, in a big ballroom with the family all around after a twilight ceremony under the stars and cocktails too.

But she's getting married today, in front of 25 people on a grassy field in Wisconsin, and I couldn't be happier for her.

I'd love to be able to say that my next Schloss-Blog post will see you on the other side of COVID, but we all know that won't happen, not even by Election Day, regardless of what Trump says or what he tells the CDC to say.

Sorry, Dr. Trump, we know better.

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

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

The More Things Change, The More...WTF

The Schloss-Blog has been thinking about life in general.

How much has yours changed since the pandemic hit, since Trump let it run wild? Because what I'm heard come out of the Republican National Convention was not even close to the reality of life in the age of COVID.

Me, though, for the most part, I'm pretty much doing the same things I've done all along, just with a mask on and staying 6-feet apart from anyone else.

I still go to the grocery store once a week. I go through the Starbucks drive-thru a few times a week. I play socially-distanced golf once a week with the same group I've been playing with for years.

But everything else has changed.

Dinner on Saturday night, always a night out for me and my wife or sometimes with another couple, is gone. We bring dinner in now from our favorite restaurants.

Shopping? I can't remember the last time I went to a mall. Any mall. Banana Republic, Gap, Nordstrom, Macy's and all other places where I was a semi-regular, they haven't seen me since February, if then.

Vacations? We were supposed to be celebrating our 30th anniversary in Paris (France, not Texas). Had the trip booked. Not this year. Who knows when? Well, everyone knows '31' is the biggie, right?

Gatherings? We've been to three, all to celebrate someone's important occasion, birth of a baby, farewell to someone moving out of state or something like that. All small, all socially distanced, painstakingly, I might add, with no handshakes, hugs or any other physical exchanges of affection beyond elbow bumps. With a mask on.

Thanks to Trump's mishandling of COVID, who knows what's next and WTF?

My daughter, I'm so happy to say, is getting married next weekend in a small field in Wisconsin, in front of 25 people, instead of in a big hotel ballroom with a ceremony under the stars in front of some 200 people. I'm sorry we can't do more, sweetie, because I'd love to. So would our whole fam, who reside coast to coast - they all adore you.

Life in the age of COVID.

My fraternity brothers, a dwindling group at our ages, are trying to plan a reunion next year, in Albany, New York, where we attended college and because a close-knit group of New York State resident teenage blowhards, us guys, banded together somehow back in the day, originating everywhere from Buffalo to Brooklyn, to form a group of jocks, academics and drunks who somehow all got along famously.

Now, thanks to Trump's mishandling of COVID, who knows when we'll meet up again and WTF?

Travel, that doesn't exist anymore. We would go to New Jersey, Texas and Missouri to visit our respective families a total of six or seven trips a year. Now, I can't remember the last time we were in New Jersey nor think of the next time we'll be to any of the aforementioned. Couldn't even attend my beloved cousin's funeral.

As to planning events, no one knows when COVID will be conquered, even though Larry Kudlow talked about it Tuesday night during the Republican National Convention like it was a thing of the past. Uh, Larry, it has killed more than 180,000 of your fellow Americans and will have killed 250,000 by Election Day. It is not, Larry, a thing of the past.

Either is Trump's golf game, at which he's spent a third of his time as president. WTF?

Sports, my love, I miss. Those of you who know me also know how much I love covering prep sports.  I still cover high school football and basketball on a freelance basis. But not now. It's all been postponed, canceled or rescheduled until sometime next year.

Maybe.

In the age of Trump and COVID, WTF?

Much more on this next week and on my rock 'n' roll show on Sunday on Radio Free Phoenix.

Until then, goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, and here's to you Mrs. Robinson.

WTF?