A Quick Update on Covid-19 Vaccination

 

I finally got my first COVID-19 vaccine.  But, in order to do so I had to drive half way across the state to get it.  The event I went to was well run by the National Guard and the professionals doing the injections were kind and compassionate.  I am scheduled to get the second one on April 2nd at the same place.

I don't mean to sound like an ingrate, but in order to get both shots I will end up driving roughly 500 miles (2 round trips per injection) and burn up a tank and a half of gasoline.  And if you haven't noticed, the price of gasoline has gone up sharply in the past several weeks.

Still, I am thankful to see light at the end of the tunnel.  I am told it will take two weeks after the second injection before I am fully covered against the coronavirus.  I am ready to get on with my life.

Happy New Year!

 

The first thing that comes to mind as we greet a new year is may 2021 be a far site better than 2020.

My thoughts of 2020 will include a world ravaged and terrorized by a pandemic and in the United States a government that was feckless at times.  The year also brings back memories of many selfish people who would rather not wear a mask than help protect their fellow man.

The inconsistencies of governments also struck me as bizarre when dealing with the COVID-19 virus which did not discriminate by imaginary lines drawn on the ground.  One county in the state where I live would have all local restaurants and bars closed for safety, while you could go to the other side of the street and restaurants and bars would be wide open.  Many "leaders" of our state and local governments showed their true colors when failing to protect the general public.

But, the COVID virus wasn't the only issue we heard about repeatedly in 2020.  The presidential election in the United States was bizarre at times.  Former Vice President Joe Biden unseated incumbent Donald Trump fairly easily.  But, the post election drama was strange as Trump and his legal teams proceeded to claim the election had been stolen from them.  No court where litigation was filed ever sided with the Trump campaign but that didn't stop it from trying to have the public's decision overturned repeatedly.

Racism is still alive and well in the United States as evidenced by the death of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis murdered in late May at the hands of white police officers.  For several weeks protesters and rioters across the United States used it as an excuse to riot and loot in minority neighborhoods.  Not too far from where I live, it was described as a war zone with gunfire, fires being set deliberately and helicopters flying over the combatants.  It is something that I as a white American am not proud.

I hope 2021 is a whole lot better than 2020, but in reality unless a vaccine is rolled out quickly to everyone in the world I don't think the year will be much different than last year.  I pray this changes.

MLB Completes Its "Regular" Season

The COVID-19 regular season of Major League Baseball has stumbled to the finish line.  Most of the season was less than what we have come to expect in quality.  For starters, the team rosters expanded up and down as needed, a lot of the pitchers on double header days were Triple A players who frankly weren't ready for the show.  And to top it off the doubleheader games were only 7 innings.  Again, not what one would expect from MLB baseball.

The season was only 60 games long for most teams, less for others.  But, with the use of a host of made up as you go tiebreakers, MLB now has 16 teams that qualified for post season play.  And outside of the first round playoffs which are best of three affairs, the division and league championship series will be played at neutral sites.  Why?  Because baseball could have a hard time getting games played on time in cities such as Minneapolis, Buffalo (home of the Toronto Blue Jays this year) and Denver.  So, in its great wisdom MLB will play in "bubble" sites in four warm weather cities.  This way the games will be finished by the end of October and MLB will get a giant paycheck from its television partners.  Which is why MLB has pushed this sham for the past two months.
 

I don't really care who wins the World Series this year, because whoever the team is will be a joke.  Sure, I've been a long time St. Louis Cardinal fan, but this year I just don't care if it wins or not.  Ultimately, every record from this season should have an asterisk placed next to it so future generations know the season was a scam.

Just Shut It Down and be Done with It

Major League Baseball continues to make up the rules for 2020 as it goes along.  The latest is arbitrarily postponing ten percent of the Miami Marlins season.  Granted the Marlins are a very ill team.  About half of the players have tested positive for the coronavirus.  But, why the "powers that be" at MLB chose to postpone the team's next six games rather than three or nine, I have no idea.  A person who tests positive for the Covid virus is to be quarantined for 14 days not six.  So, why then does baseball pick to postpone the Marlins next six games through Sunday?  (And keep in mind that is ten percent of the team's scheduled games.  It definitely puts Miami behind the eight ball, and is unfair to the teams that were scheduled to play them this week.  Now all of the teams involved, the Marlins, Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals will have to play make up games in an already tight schedule.  But, given baseball's track record this doesn't come as a surprise.

The last thing I wrote in my previous post is Rob Manfred is an idiot.  As commissioner, Manfred should be looking out for the best interests of the game.  But, he's not.  Manfred is more concerned about making sure his band of billionaire brothers (the owners), make as much money as they possibly can in this pandemic shortened season.  Manfred and his gang of greed have also impacted the season of the Phillies and Yankees.  The Phillies played the Marlins last weekend when the news of the virus hitting the Marlins was released.  Now to be safe MLB has postponed the four games scheduled this week between the Yanks and Phils.  That means those teams will have to make up four games down the stretch on open dates.

 This is crazy.  The schedules are not fair, and the owners are placing their earnings ahead of the players' health.  If the owners won't shut it down, maybe the players will.  This week's postponements are just the tip of the iceberg.  Please, shut it all down now!

Opening Day for MLB...Why Bother?

It's been over 200 days since America last saw Major League Baseball played before the pandemic shut things down.  And the way MLB is going they should have stayed shut down.

Normally, I count down the days to the start of the regular season. But, this year I could care less.  Here are some random thoughts on the state of the game as it opened today.

-MLB and its players approved expanded playoffs this year.  In a money grab to expand the number of games available for ESPN and Fox Sports, both sides approved expanding the playoffs to 16 teams.  That means more than half of the teams in MLB will be in the playoffs. Which raises the question why bother playing a regular season.  Expanded playoffs cheapen the regular season and reduces the talent pool in the playoffs.  What's even worse is once playoffs are expanded they never contract.

-I've been watching baseball for over 60 years and the thought of a designated hitter makes me want to puke.  The addition of a DH to the National League creates an uneven playing field for NL teams that have not cultivated the spot in the lineup as have their junior circuit cousins for the past 40 plus years.  It's been a gimmick since it was implemented and it still is.

-The 60 game season is a joke.  Why is a third of the season being spent playing teams that aren't even in the same league.  Yet, those games will count as much as any division game.  I am a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and agree playing two thirds of the season against its division rivals is a good idea.  But, why the heck are the Cardinals playing the Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox?  They are bad baseball teams.  It's another gimmick that MLB has forced on the public.  And MLB hasn't publicized it yet, but all teams will be playing the same other league division they are playing this year again next year.  What does that tell you?  ESPN AND Fox want to match up major market teams on the East coast to inflate ratings.  Hopefully, this will backfire and MLB, ESPN and Fox will lose their ass as the public sees through yet another worthless gimmick.

-One final thought;  if commissioner Rob Manfred is involved, you can be assured he will do the wrong thing and piss off the fans who support the game.  But, what does Manfred and his owner buddies care?  They're making money hand over fist without a single person in any stadium.

I guess I will continue to watch the Big Bang Theory and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives rather than this bastardization of the American past time until the NHL starts its playoffs in a week and a half.

Rob Manfred, you're an idiot.

-

Liasson Should be Fired

Mara Liasson - Image courtesy NPR

National Public Radio (NPR) has always allowed its reporters a lot of leeway when reporting on their beats.  As a journalist I have a problem with this.  If a reporter is doing their job they should not be allowed to add their personal opinion to the piece.  Or, the rhetoric must be labelled commentary.  But NPR has allowed this many times over the years and yesterday morning, one of it's national political correspondents used the forum of Weekend Edition Sunday to attack the President and states' rights.

Mara Liasson has attacked President Donald Trump previously with no action on her employers part.  NPR, which portrays itself as balanced in national news coverage, should have by now disciplined Liasson for editorializing while she is reporting.  Yesterday under the guise of reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms. Liasson attacked Trump's policies on self quarantine in the coronavirus era.  She also used the same editorial to criticize states for not allowing the federal government to dictate policy to them.  The host of the Weekend Edition Sunday Program, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, never attempted to question Liasson on her lengthy editorial and the network never used the word commentary on Liasson's rant.

This is not the first time Ms. Liasson has been criticized for her editorializing during a so called news story.  Liasson was criticized severely in 2013 by liberals when she started working at Fox News.  At the time NPR looked into it and instead of censuring Liasson, praised her.

Were I the managing editor of NPR, Mara Liasson would no longer be working there.  Her actions are  unprofessional and unacceptable and she is an embarrassment to the rest of the network's reporters.  It's time for Ms. Liasson to go back to local radio reporting and not be permitted 
a national forum such as NPR.

More Lame COVID-19 Media Coverage

Image courtesy Hillerich & Bradsby Company - Louisville Slugger

If you follow this blog regularly, you know I'm a big baseball fan.  Not just of "The Show" but of all levels down including minor league baseball, college baseball, high school and little league baseball.  I like watching them all.  (Just don't ask me to sit through a T-ball game.  I have sit through more than my share of them and will never willingly go to another one again regardless of what little ones are playing),

Without any MLB baseball, the MLB app has decided to show "daily highlights".  How can there be daily highlights when all of the players are in a COVID-19 quarantine you ask?  The answer is there are no highlights.  MLB Network has taken to showing big league athletes playing video games on their devices and then taking highlights from that player's game against a computer.

Desperate times call for desperate measures especially when you have time and space to fill.  But, no matter how you cut this, it is lame!

Just Turn off the "News"

One thing I've observed since the start of this pandemic is the news media wants to cover the outbreak, but it has no clue what its doing.  I have heard conflicting reports on local TV and radio stations and reporters who apparently have no idea how a virus is transmitted.

All they are doing is stirring up a frenzy and scaring the people who are watching and listening to them.  And it's not just the local stations.  The TV broadcast networks are doing it too, and at times I wonder if their editors are all home sick with the virus.

My advice to you is change the station when the talking heads start to give you "breaking news" on the virus.  (How can this be breaking news when the first cases were reported in Wuhan, China in late December.)

Either change the station or turn off your TV or radio.  You will be much happier than if you let these fools drive you nuts with every little aspect of the virus or more accuratly speculation about it.

Find yourself a couple of solid reliable news sources you trust and listen to them once a day.  If all you want is statistics go to the Johns Hopkins University dashboard that keeps track of cases, deaths and patients who've recovered.

Finally, I saw a feature last Friday night on NBC Nightly News comparing the fight against COVID-19 to the sacrifices and fight against the Axis forces in World War II.  The reporter was trying to show there are similarities.  But, I got to tell you, there'snot much the two have in common.  The people that served in World War II were getting shot at with live ammunition by the Nazis and Japanese.  I dont think there are too many millennials who would hunker down in a foxhill and put their butt on the line today.to stop a virus, let alone take the shelling and being shot at by people wanting to kill them.