Sunday Morning Coming Down

Yu Darvish was the Cubs best pitcher last season.  Maybe the Cubs paid too much for him but maybe he has a good year left and a good pitcher is hard to find.  The Cubs outfield may be the next area for reconstruction.  Will Cub fans accept going on the cheap disguised and sold as "rebuilding". Last year's 60 game season is in the books.  The "long version" of baseball in 2021 will be different.  The NL and AL Central Divisions will continue to be competitive and the AL Western Division and AL Eastern Division may get shuffled at the top.  The Dodgers and  Braves will most likely win their divisions. Seven inning doubleheaders, man on second in extra inning games, universal dh all made sense last year and efforts to speed up and hopefully they will continue.  I'm just a fan, I listen to baseball on the radio, I've had good moments with the Miami Marlins and look forward to seeing a game in person soon, and having spent my formative baseball years i...

 The junior senator from Missouri wants to question the 2020 election results. From USA Today: " Hawley's move will put some conservatives in an uncomfortable position to either back the president's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud or vote to defy Trump and certify Biden's win. It will be particularly hard for senators who are up for re-election in 2022 and those eying a potential 2024 presidential run who are fearful of both angering the president and his base of supporters — a key reason McConnell has cautioned his conference against supporting the doomed effort. Who will write the republican version of a book ostensibly written by President John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage. Is the democratic process only valid and important when your side "wins". At this point in which politics has been decoupled from policies and having someone who lost an election stay in office is more important than the results of an election, you might question what moral...

Operation Warp Speed is just getting off the ground.  The bureaucrat in me is just relieved that the vaccine seems to work and it is getting out there.   Projections of how many folks were to have been vaccinated by the end of the year may have been off but that doesn't mean much.  Even if twenty million people had been vaccinated I doubt that things would have been "normal" since things have been at best abnormal for almost the entire 2020. It is kind of hard to change gears.  For too long a time we have been living with a leader that seems to operate as follows:   If wishes were horses then beggars would ride, If turnips were swords I’d have one by my side. If ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots and pans There would be no need for tinker’s hands! There have been about 200,000 new cases a day and there are states where hospitals and staffs are reaching full capacity.  The supply and distribution logistics are being worked on and getting the health care workers...

  ‘Game changer’: Officials praise horse racing safety bill By STEPHEN WHYNO yesterday FILE - John Velazquez rides Authentic, left, as they head to turn one in the 146th running of the Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., in this, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2020, file photo.Horse racing officials and activists hailed the passage and signing of a safety and integrity bill that should revolutionize the handling and oversight of medication by providing oversight the industry has never had. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File) "Horse racing officials and industry activists are hailing the passage and signing of a safety and integrity bill that will standardize medication and doping rules in an effort to make the sport safer and fairer." Until this bill was passed you had 38 different states passing their own rules about medication of race horses.  If a state does not agree to the uniform standards that will be developed they will not be able to participate in inters...

 Gamblers usually lose their bankroll and have to go home, go to work and rebuild their bankrolls and the process starts once again.  The casino, race track, card rooms or state run lotteries can bust out a person and cause problems related to families, marriages and health. This COVID 19 Pandemic has made an awful lot of people gamblers and they never went crazy and got the easy money fever that a lot of real gamblers suffer from.  Jobs gone, whole industries in shambles and public health warnings that have placed millions out of work through no fault of their own. This money which should be targeted to those most in need of cash because they will spend the money and it will circulate through the economy as rent or mortgage payments, food purchases, holiday gifts, utility bills, health care, car payments, gasoline, take out meals, insurance bills and cable bills.  Some of it will be pissed away but getting it spent now and sooner rather than later will keep more peo...

In the way back machine of Spring 2020 it wasn't certain that there would be football games as we knew them in 2019.  Maybe there shouldn't have been college football games or professional football games this fall in the war against COVID 19 with a ditto for Major League Baseball and NHL hockey. In spite of all the doubts there were football games on the high school, college, and professional levels. This weekend the Big 10, ACC, PAC 12, Big  12, and the SEC play their respective conference championships to pretty much determine who will continue to the four team playoff which will determine the NCAA College National Champion. The favorites to participate in the College Football playoffs after winning their conference championships are Ohio State, Clemson, and Alabama.  Notre Dame or Florida will probably complete the field if they don't get blown out this afternoon.  The vaccine is on its way.  Socially distanced football has been better than no football. ...

This morning I drove a friend to a Doctor's appointment in Hialeah.  The office didn't allow folks without appointments to hang around so I went home. The office is near Hialeah Park, there were police on East 4th Avenue, North 32nd Street and all along Palm Avenue which surround the race track and parking lot for the casino.  In the good old days I remember the police directing traffic for the race track patrons. Today starting at 8:00 a.m. the City of Hialeah was distributing $250.00 food gift cards for 5,000 Hialeah Residents who have faced financial hardship due to COVID 19.  One per household, Driver's License or State Id and a notarized statement regarding hardship(s). There were long lines at 8:30 a.m.  According to the latest reports almost 3,000 gift cards had been distributed by noon and the lines were moving along pretty well. The cynic in me wondered whether the gift cards would go to those most in need or whether there would a secondary market where they...

  STATEMENT BY U.S. SECRETARY OF LABOR EUGENE SCALIA ON THE NOVEMBER JOBS REPORT WASHINGTON, DC –  U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia issued the following statement regarding the November 2020 Employment Situation Report: “The economy continued to add jobs in November, with a 344,000 increase in private sector payrolls and labor demand continuing to grow in most sectors. However, jobs were lost in retail and food and beverage establishments in November, and a number of workers pulled away from the labor force amid rising coronavirus cases. We know from State-by-State data released two weeks ago that the employment situation varies significantly by State: in October, half the States were at 6% unemployment or lower, but two of the largest states—California and New York—were substantially above 9% that month. At 6.7%, the unemployment rate is lower than it was for the first five years of the last Administration following the Great Recession.”

The Electoral College has spoken.  And probably just as importantly so has the senior senator from Kentucky finally and not surprisingly the current short term occupant of the White House has turned on the senate majority leader. You really don't need an advanced degree in political science to determine who won the election for President of the United States of America in 2020. But it might be timely for a review of how the three branches of our federal government have been twisted in ways never anticipated by the writers of the Constitution.  The traditional media and the internet's social media also need a review.  What it means to be a citizen would also be an interesting discussion. A determined, monied and reckless person can undermine the law and political norms through a combination of a lack of oversight, misuse of the power of making appointments, and through conscious misstatements and outright lies while in office. George Will, a conservative columnist writes a...

The new Biden took a step forward on Friday as the Supreme Court of the United State threw out a Texas lawsuit regarding the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.  Texas, a state that has its own election laws was effectively challenging the election laws of the four states that flipped from republican to democratic in the 2020 Presidential Election. Amazingly 17 states signed on to the Texas lawsuit and over 120 members of the House of Representatives voiced some level of support for the lawsuit.  The lawsuit was more about political support for President Trump than voter fraud or large spread irregularities.  The split in this country has become increasingly urban voters versus rural voters and socially conservative versus more more socially liberal and response to rapidly changing demographics along with immigration stirring the pot. In some ways this another replay of the battle regarding Confederate Monuments spread along the I-35 corrid...

Texas wants the Supreme Court to throw out votes and challenge the results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia's AG's all signed an amicus brief to show support for Texas in its lawsuit. I live in Florida and I wonder what earthly good Florida AG  Ashley Moody is doing for her legal reputation by aligning with something which is at best paying political homage to a one term republican president who may be able to raise money but may possibly rank as the worst president ever.

When the "basket of deplorables" overflows with people who don't want to "defund the police" and the algorithm adds those tired of wearing a mask, tired of being told to stay at home, tired of home schooling and in general having "cabin fever",  just about everybody has their reasons to be pissed off, disappointed and confused . On top of all the social issues, there are a lot who have lost their jobs and incomes in the hospitality and restaurant industries for a while longer if not forever. And on the climate change front you can be forgiven if you are a little depressed about longer hurricane seasons, bigger wildfires, rising sea levels and one hundred year floods becoming annual events. This is a good time to hit the reset button.  The last four years have had some bright moments of what a good economy and technology can do and must continue to do, but there have also been dystopian moments as well. Being "woke" and the execution of being ...