Stay Positive: Rebooted Premier League Season

The pandemic has been horrible in myriad ways. That's for sure. 

However, I am enjoying the rebooted Premier League season because football is on TV almost every day instead of mainly just Saturdays and Sundays. 

As weird as this may sound, I find watching football/soccer comforting. For fans, it's usually a roller coaster of emotions, which I get because I have certain teams I root heartily for. 

This afternoon I took in the Brighton-Manchester United match that did not have a good outcome from my point of view since MU is similar to the Yankees in the Premier League and I root for teams below them in the table. 

I want the Spurs to qualify for the Champions League, but they have a difficult schedule and a few teams ahead of them. But they have Kane, Son, Sissoko back, so they have a fighting chance. Also, Bergwijn has been an inspiration in recent games.

The other team I like a lot, the Wolves, is doing well and might have a stronger shot for qualifying if one looks at it objectively by points at this juncture. 

We'll see. 

I'm also rooting for Leeds United to come back into the Premier League because I like that area of Britain, and I got seduced by the Amazon series Take Us Home: Leeds United. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I featured a Mother Jones article in my recent Stay Positive post, but here's another one that takes a somewhat deep dive into comparing Trump's impeachment to drunk-ass, racist, corrupt Andrew Johnson: "Trump's Not Richard Nixon. He's Andrew Johnson: Betrayal, Paranoia, Cowardice. We've Been Here Before." 

Via Forbes, those crazy leftists at Goldman Sachs say "A National Mask Mandate Could Save the U.S. Economy $1 Trillion." 

In Biden's address today, he intimated similar points, but he focused more on caring about one another and protecting each other. What a concept.  

Currently Americans are banned from traveling to the European Union. 

Before this whole thing hit, we had planned on traveling to Mexico during the week of Thanksgiving for a family vacation. I don't think that'll be happening. 

Stay Positive: Solutions for Climate Change

In an old issue of Mother Jones, Kevin Drum has an excellent, clear-eyed article about what we need to do to seriously address climate change. The article is "We Need a Massive Climate Effort--Now." 

As he states early on, "The real issue is this: Only large-scale government action can significantly reduce carbon emissions." 

The other main point he has in the article is that we have to invest in major Research & Development, which often has happy inventions and discoveries like M&Ms during WWII.

The latter section provides information about these solutions:

• Renewable Energy
• Nuclear Power
• Energy Storage
• Land Use
• Carbon Capture
• Concrete
• Adaptation
• Biofuels
• Less Meat, Mostly Plants
• Fusion Energy
• Geoengineering

Read the article. 

Music Friday: "Work Release"

The band High on Stress started following me on Twitter, so I decided to give them a listen, and I bought their most recent album, Hold Me In. 

"Work Release" is the first song on that album. The album reminds me of the later music from The Replacements. 

Musing of the Moment: The Thin Blue Line American Flag

The Marshall Project has a good read about the Thin Blue Line flag entitled "The Short, Fraught History of the Think Blue Line Flag." 

I get that being a police officer, if done correctly, is one hell of a tough profession. I understand. 

But to deny that there is systemic racism is happening is ridiculous. The first real viral video is the one of Rodney King getting hit fifty times while scads of LA cops sit around and watch the four officers beat the hell out of him. 

The past few weeks' events have created an awakening about systemic racism. That's good. 

But I have no respect or need for a doctored flag that has the stars and stripes in black and white with a thin blue line. 

To my mind, it's being used as a new Confederate flag.

Music Friday: "This Land"

I'm pretty sure I have featured this song before, but it seems appropriate to share it again. 

Music Friday: "Everything's Ruined"

Angel Dust by Faith No More is an overlooked album from the early 90s. It's a stronger album than The Real Thing, the album that broke open the band's good fortune. 

Here's "Everything's Ruined." 

Random Notes from a Crank

Because I watched The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, I learned about Emmanuel Acho's YouTube series "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man." Here's the first episode, and I hope there will be many more. 




An email recently notified me that my three-pack of Vikings masks will ship soon. I think my favorite is the top one. 

I hope the Vikings sign Kaepernick to be the back-up to Cousins. 

Tim Scott leading the GOP effort to reduce police brutality is like making Franklin solve everything wrong in the Peanuts world. 

Music Friday: "Valentine"

The Replacements were the first real band I saw in concert. Pleased to Meet Me is one of my favorite albums, and this is one of my favorite songs from that album. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I'm not surprised by the report that Jake Fromm texted folks that guns should be expensive and only "elite white people" should have them: "Jake Fromm Apologizes..."

I would imagine the reaction of police officers would be quite different if the groups protesting over George Floyd were packing handguns and rifles like the protesters who went to statehouses over two weeks ago at Moscow Don's egging on. 

Some people think the 2nd Amendment only applies to certain people. 

Regardless, those folks are not a "well-regulated militia," a key phrase in one of the most poorly worded sentences in the English language. The early Republic relied on militias because the founders were wary of large standing armies. Militias were also used to quell slave rebellions. 

As we've seen via social media, how can people still be upset over people taking knees during the national anthem? 

Read "Colin Kaepernick Was Right, and Pro Athletes Won't Stand Down." 

Stay Positive: Kareem's Opinion Piece

One of the better op-ed pieces about the current civil unrest I've read is one from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: "Don't Understand the Protests? What You're Seeing Is People Pushed to the Edge"

Here are some significant snippets from the column.

"You start to wonder if it should be all black people who wear body cams, not the cops."

"You're not wrong - but you're not right, either. The black community is used to the institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness - write articulate and insightful pieces in The Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change - the needle hardly budges." 

"Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible - even if you're choking on it - until you let the sun in. The you see it's everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it's always still in the air. 

"What you should see when you see black protesters in the age of Trump and coronavirus is people pushed to the edge, not because they want bars and nail salons open, but because they want to live. To breathe."