by John Walters

We’ll be taking a few days off next week. Not going on vacation. Not sick. Just that we’ve got a big project due and we’ll be putting aside all scribbling projects except for that until it’s completed. Adjust your schedule accordingly.

Starting Five

How To Overcome A Financial Crisis In One Bold Stroke

Anyone notice whom the president appears to be directing most of his hostility towards this week, besides female correspondents? That’s right, it’s GYNA!

“Why don’t you ask GYNA?” to a reporter on Monday and then more tweets later in the week. Yesterday on Fox Business News he told his old gal pal in the media Maria Bartiromo, after blaming the entire crisis on China, “There are many things we could do…we could cut off the whole relationship [with China]. Now if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500 billion.”

Not exactly sure on Trump’s math, but that’s not really the point. He needs to serve up red meat to his base (and they may not be seeing red meat in the coming days) and so why not pick on China? Certainly, the Chinese are clandestine, not rules-abiding and duplicitous (all the traits Trump usually admires in a person or institution), but not when he’s on the other end of their game.

Yesterday I was texting back and forth with some (smarter) friends. One who has made GONZO amounts of money in the stock market. I asked him how all of these bad financial numbers stop. And he wrote, “World War II rescued us from the Great Depression… just sayin’.”

Will We Meat Again?

This campaign may not have worked, but our bovine buddies are about to be in the clear, at least for the time being, thanks to Covid-19. Hear me now and listen to me later: there’s about to be a massive shortage in beef and pork. Massive.

If you like red meat, suggest you buy some today at your local market. Or go on to kansascitysteaks.com. I’d be more concerned about ginning up a run on beef if this site had more readers. But since it does not, I don’t think this warning, here, will incite mass hysteria. But I’m telling you, trust me on this one, beef and pork is about to become scarce as meat processing plants close down. For the time being, at least, chicken will remain plentiful.

It may finally be time for crickets to become the meat of choice, no?

Last night, and this is independent of MH’s info, Gov. Andrew Cuomo appeared on Rachel Maddow and tackled this because New York state has a meat processing plant or two that’s experiencing mass infections. Cuomo said, and I’m paraphrasing, “It’s not a meat issue. It has nothing to do with the meat itself. It’s a density issue. It’s how closely people are working together. One person infected in one of those plants becomes a ‘super spreader,‘ which is another term I never knew and that I wish I didn’t know.”

Here’s another reason we love Cuomo: Maddow asked him if and when there’s a second wave of the virus, if he thinks the federal government will respond differently. Cuomo flatly said No. “They’ve established their gameplan,” he said (again, paraphrasing).

Cuomo didn’t offer false hope, at least in terms of a federal response. Remember in the early days of this (back when I was on Twitter) when you’d be chided for not being hopeful, for not being optimistic, as if that would have any effect on the virus? What dopes. All any elected official owes any of us now (or any time) is the truth. What’s so difficult about that?

On this same show, by the way, Maddow showed charts that demonstrated that New York’s curve has a serious downslope (that’s good) the past two weeks and that today New York is opening up ONLY if certain distinct regions have met each of seven conditions that are all fact- or data-based. And New York is not opening up as a whole but each of 10 distinct regions must meet EACH of those criteria.

Meanwhile, Maddow also showed how other states, Trump states, are simply opening up as if it’s Black Friday but how each of their coronavirus curves (e.g. Texas and Mississippi and South Dakota and Arizona) are in the midst of a massive climb.

Keep praying to your devout Christian God while actually worshipping the Almighty Dollar and Donald Trump, folks. It’s only the lives of your fellow citizens that you’re squandering. How many deaths in your state is it going to take, I wonder?

Covid M*A*S*H-up

You may have already seen this, but the producers of M*A*S*H had this entire coronavirus deal explained nearly 50 years ago.

Mexicoronavirus

We check worldometers.info daily and find it to be the easiest source for checking up on basic coronavirus statistics (cases, deaths, and both by country). And what we’ve noticed in the past week is that one country whose numbers are really jumping is Mexico (Brazil, too, by the way).

Mexico reported 257 dead yesterday—the most of any nation by a factor of nearly two.

Miercoles: 294 deaths.

Martes: 108 deaths.

Lunes: 112 deaths

Dia de la Madre: 193 deaths.

There are some other Iberian-influenced nations in the New World dealing with similar spikes. On Mother’s Day, Brazil reported 467 deaths and Eduador reported 422 deaths. Not sure if that was a bookkeeping issue catching up with past cases being re-categorized.

Another stat to note is that this truly is a pandemic. Madagascar, an island off the east coast of Africa, has cases and deaths. Andorra, the tiniest little country located in the Pyrenees pinched between Spain and France, has cases. Montenegro has cases. Nepal. San Marino, which is not a gated community in Orange County but rather a minuscule and mountainous principality within Italy, San Marino has cases.

It’s everywhere. And no one has more cases than the good ol’ USA. No one else comes close.

Sports Year 1893

On April 8, the first college basketball game is played in Beaver Falls, Pa., between Geneva College and New Brighton YMCA. Seven minutes in Dickie V. yells, “Better get a T.O., baby!” Geneva wins.

***

Alabama and Auburn, on February 22, play football for the first time. They meet at Lakeview Baseball Park in Birmingham. The Tide lose 40-16, thus finishing their second season with an 0-4 record. Soon after the Alabama athletic department puts out a press release declaring the school national champions.

***

In baseball, the distance from pitcher’s mound to home plate increases from 55 feet to 60 feet, 6 inches. The rubber is also implanted. With only one league now, the National League, the annual champion is simply the team with the best record at season’s end. The Boston Beaneaters are champs. I’m not sure why Susie B. thinks “Beaneaters” is any better a name than “Infants,” but we may never find out since she never reads this far down.

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Jack McAuliffe, who fought out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, retires as Lightweight champion of the world undefeated. The “Napoleon of the Ring” was born in Cork, Ireland and stood 5’6″. He exited the ring 29-0-10 and married two stage actresses, setting a trend in boxing that has never ended. The pug and the dame.

****

Lottie Dod wins her fourth and final Wimbledon singles championship. She is 21.

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The Preakness, which was held in the Bronx in 1890, is not run for the third consecutive year, making it quite impossible to win the Triple Crown (which no one has yet done). It will be staged in New York, in Coney Island, between 1894-1908 before returning to Pimlico.

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Also in baseball, Piggy Ward of the Baltimore Orioles reaches base safely 17 consecutive times, a mark that will stand until Earl Averill of the Angels ties it in 1962.. Bill Hawke, also of the Orioles, pitches the first no-hitter from the modern mound distance.

***

Using the revolutionary “safety bicycle” (both wheels the same size), Albert Schock rides 1,600 miles in one week and blows the doors off all entrants in a six-day race. The modern bicycle is finally here.