by John Walters

Security camera footage captures the moment an explosion rocked the city of Nashville, Tennessee on Christmas Day. https://t.co/CONYaefYmG pic.twitter.com/bXq5PLPvZi

— ABC News (@ABC) December 28, 2020

Bomblastic

You know when suicide bombers in a major American city, detonating themselves on Christmas day, do not induce enough concern in our federal government to evoke even the slightest reaction from the President of the United States?

When they look like this guy.

I know what you’re thinking: Why would Huey Lewis wanna end it all? I dunno.

Fitzmagic

If the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, has a rotunda, this should be painted on the ceiling. That’s backup QB Ryan Fitzpatrick of the Dolphins completing a 34-yard pass with less than :19 left and Miami trailing by 2 as Las Vegas’ defensive lineman Arden Key facemasks him….tacking on another 15 yards.

Miami kicks the game-winning field goal… after Las Oakland had eschewed a TD in favor of killing more clock and kicking the go-ahead field goal. And now the Fish may just make the postseason.

It’s complicated as five different AFC squads have 10-5 records. By our assessment, three of them will qualify for the playoffs.

The Plague Year

Just released: The New Yorker, which only a few times in its 95-year existence has devoted an entire issue to a single subject, is here with a full-issue, 30,000-word piece on the pandemic by Lawrence Wright. At its age, the esteemed publication is in a very high risk group in terms of fatality from the pandemic, and yet here it is looking all robust and full of life.

We could very well, thanks to an utterly apathetic president, achieve 400,000 COVID-19 deaths by the time the 46th president is sworn in less than one month from today. We’re already at more than 1 death per 1,000 Americans. Imagine if your chances of winning the lottery were that good. Well, now they are: the Death Lottery.

On The Flipside

And yet, on the same weekend, The New York Times publishes a story titled “Market Edges Toward Euphoria, Despite Pandemic’s Toll.” Because let’s face it, as bad a year as it’s been for public health globally—the worst in a century—it’s been a wildly prolific year in the stock market. And those two phenomena are related, though I’m not sure exactly how.

So maybe I should read the entire story.

We remember reading in one of Jim Cramer’s books (so sue me) how his first wife, Karen Backfisch, who was also a securities guru, would advise him when the market was plunging that it was never time to buy until the bear market was so awful that it was an above-the-fold story in The New York Times. Conversely, maybe it’s time to begin selling once the bull market is making this kind of news in the NYT?

https://twitter.com/sacca/status/1341783258191675394?s=20

We dunno. We just know that the market is doing cartwheels at the moment and, oh by the way, Susie B., check out Bitcoin-related stocks GBTC and RIOT.

GBTC on Dec. 1: $18.50….GBTC on Dec. 28: $30.94

RIOT on Nov. 27: $6.15….. RIOT on Dec. 28: $16.02

We’re only here to report. You decide (and Chris Sacca is right).

An Elephant Never Forgets To Protect Its Young

Here it is: Nature in full force. You’ve got birth but also Darwinism. Look how swiftly the rest of the herd wander over and form a protective barrier to shield the newborn from predators. As a species, we should attempt to emulate elephants, no?

(Is this going to cause a flurry of anti-abortion comments on my site? Uh oh).