Congrats on your AMZN 100-bagger, Susie B. If you’re not there this morning, you’re darn close.

by John Walters

Zoombie Apocalypse

Was there an easier Pandemic Portfolio (can we trademark that?) pick than Zoom (ZM)? There’s no company that went from “Never heard of it” to “I’ll send you an invite link” more swiftly in the past six months and so, yesterday, after the market closed, Zoom announced its quarterly earnings report.

Turns out the company did more in revenue in the most recent quarter than it did in all of 2019. Shares of the stock, which were up more than 8% yesterday, soared more than 40% after hours and in pre-market trading.

You could have bought a share of Zoom for around $115 in April. Today the price of a share will open around $445. It’s the wild, wild West here in portfolio land.

A Pad-Rays World Series?

The hottest team in the American League? The Tampa Bay Rays, who have, with last night’s win at Yankee Stadium, have taken 7 of 8 from the Yankees this season. Tampa Bay has the A.L.’s best record at 25-11?

In the N.L., the Dodgers still have the best overall record (26-10) but down the coast, the San Diego Padres (22-15) are baseball’s most fun team. And they just added Cleveland Indians ace Mike Clevinger before the deadline (the Indians are in first place, so Clevinger must have been some kind of clubhouse cancer for the Tribe to dispose of him).

Second-year Padres shortstop Fernando Tatis, Jr., is tied for the MLB lead in home runs (13) and lead baseball in RBI. The Padres have long been baseball’s most forgettable club, at least west of Miami. Not this season.

A Murder In Portland

From what we’ve seen in Kenosha, and now with this NY Times story containing footage footage of the man being shot to death on the street in Portland, a common theme emerges: all three victims were being aggressors in situations that ultimately led to their deaths.

This is not to say that any of the men “deserved” to die. But when you add warm summer nights, male testosterone, dueling narratives of “justice” versus “law and order,” and then spend an evening mixing that cocktail, what do you expect to happen?

Joseph Rosenbaum, the 36 year-old first victim of Kyle Rittenhouse (we’d say “alleged” but he actually is heard saying, “I shot somebody”), was reaching for the barrel of Rittenhouse’s gun when he was shot five times. Anthony Huber, 26, ran after Rittenhouse in the street as people yelled, “Get that dude!” and “He shot him.” Rittenhouse tripped and fell, Huber awkwardly swung at his head with his skateboard while lunging for his gun, and he too was fatally shot.

In Portland, Aaron Danielson apparently sprayed mace at his assailant before he was shot and killed (the alleged gun man, tall and in a white T-shirt, has yet to be identified or captured).

There’s nothing cinematic about these deaths. People are shot and they fall rather quickly. And they don’t move again. They’re gone. Meanwhile, the president keeps stoking the hatred because exploiting the racial and cultural divide stokes fear in white suburban moms, which is exactly what Trump wants.

We loved this explanation of it all from Trevor Noah, and if you think a late-night comic is in over his head commenting on this, then we suggest you go read Noah’s memoir, Born A Crime. He’s got more life insight into what’s happening than any cable news pundit.

Noah basically says that while no one wants to live in a world of violence, of stores being burned, of looting, that what too many white people fail to understand is that too many of the police (and your president) have broken the social contract. They are no longer “protect and serve” officers. They are “control and dominate” officers (my quotes). And that while no one wants to see looting of stores, too many cops have for too long been looting the bodies of black men.

Finally, Noah makes the excellent point that folks on the right point out that George Floyd had committed crimes. That he was no saint. True, And Floyd had paid for those crimes with jail time. The cop who ended his life had been written up 18 times for his bad behavior but had never paid for any of it. And so if you want to claim that George Floyd’s past led him to that moment, what about Derek Chauvin’s?

Sweet Evolution, Alabama

In Tuscaloosa, Alabama coach Nick Saban leads a march of Crimson Tide football players to protest social injustice. Egads! What will the SEC ball cap bros who faithfully read OutClick The Coverage each morning think?!?

The symbolic March of the loafer-clad Saban and dozens of his players, some clad in “Black Lives Matter” t-shirts, proceeded a short distance from the school’s athletic dorms to Foster Hall, where 57 years ago then-governor George Wallace stood at the door in an attempt to block the entry of two black students.

As far as political tidal shifts go, this may be far more profound than anything Joe Biden said yesterday in Pittsburgh. When you lose the Crimson Tide football team, what do you have left? Jim Harbaugh? Dabo?

Up

What is this, in Taiwan? Is it the filming of a prequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Do we have the wrong Asian country and was that terribly insensitive of us?

Anyway, there was a kite festival in Taiwan and this three year-old exceeded lofty expectations. Nobody died so it’s all in good fun.