Weekly Mail July 12, 2020

Hey Everyone:

Hope everyone had a great July 4th. We took last week off to celebrate and get a little R&R. It was nice, some back yard grilling and the like. Then back to the grind on Monday.


WAR: Russians and the Taliban

The New York Times reported that Russian Military Intelligence Units paid bounties to the Taliban to kill coalition troops in Afghanistan. President Trump claims he was never informed of this. Both the Times and AP have sources that say that the intelligence was included in the daily briefing that the President gets everyday, outlining threats to the nation.

So I realize I'm going out on a limb here, but from where I'm sitting, Trump either did one of two things... either he didn't read the briefing, or he ignored it.

We can argue all the live long day about him, but I'd like to think the one thing we can all agree on is that the President's number one job is to keep us safe. Especially from foreign enemies. I won't get into how he didn't keep us safe from viruses, (again) but let's look at this matter of Russians helping out the Taliban.

The BEST case scenario here is that he didn't read the briefing. I'm not saying it's good that he didn't read it, indeed that's as clear a case of dereliction of duty as you're gonna get. But the alternative is that he knew about it and did nothing.

I know many people who voted for Trump because they thought they were getting a foreign policy hawk. Someone who would not hesitate to take out any and all of our enemies. I remember watching the beginning of a CNN Republican Debate on foreign policy, and they played clips of each of the candidates during speeches or interviews talking about something related to foreign policy. Most of the candidates (Rubio, Cruz, Kasich, Bush et al) said things like We'll give out troops all the tools they need" or "Our safety is my number one priority." When it came to Trump they played a clip pf him saying "I will bomb the $hit out of them!"  This was still around the time the thought of him as the President was beyond believable.

But now that we have him, he's either not reading the most important document he gets regarding our safety or he's not taking it seriously. And this would be disturbing enough but for the fact that he has several times in the past taken the word of the Russians over the words of our own intelligence. That's why I can't even buy his explanation that there wasn't enough evidence. Maybe there wasn't but at this point who am I supposed to believe?

This just burns me. The cyber attacks and meddling in the elections are bad enough, but if they are paying people to actually kill our troops, that's disgusting. And I'd call out Obama, Bush, Hillary, or anybody who allowed this to happen.

Thing is, they wouldn't.



HOCKEY: I should be happy but....

So on Friday the NHL released their playoff schedule. We are now (hopefully) three weeks away from seeing regular season baseball, and post season hockey and basketball. With the Knicks out of it I have no horses in that race, but my Rangers are in the qualifying round against the Hurricanes.

But of course I have a beef.

Not a night goes by where I don't hope and pray that we never go through a pandemic again, and there are a million reasons why before we get to anything that has to do with sports. But since this is where we are, I was looking forward to watching the Rangers play the first week of August.

Especially the 5th.

My birthday is usually a quiet one on the sports calendar, my usual hope is that the Mets are doing well enough to matter. One time, the Jets played an exhibition game on that day, but mostly it's baseball.

Now again I pray we never have another NHL playoff game in August, but Game 1 of Rangers-Caines is Saturday August 1, Game 2 Monday August 3. So it would stand to reason that Game 3 would follow the pattern and be played on Wednesday the 5th, with the Blueshirts up 2 games and about to deliver a birthday present for yours truly.

But no! Game 3 is the day before,. Tuesday the 4th. Game 4 if necessary on the 6th.

It's almost like Gary Bettman heard all the icky things I've said about him and decided to screw me again.

I also have to eat some crow as I not only predicted that the two hub cities would be Columbus and Vegas, I also said there was no way they would play in Canada. Wrong on both counts, the hub cities are Toronto and Edmonton. I didn't think Canadian Prime Minister  Justin Trudeau would ease the quarantine order for those coming up north from the US, but he made an exception for the NHL, so that's what happened there.  I also errred when I said that the Eastern Conference teams would play in the Western Hub and vice-versa. The Eastern Teams will play in Toronto and the West teams will play in Edmonton.

All will be forgiven if my guys are still playing on my sister's birthday (September 27). They're targeting the SCF to start on September 22.



CRIME: Knuckleheads in the News

Kid: Are you a cop?

Fletch: As far as you know

Kid: Are you gonna take me to jail for car theft?

Fletch: Why? Did you steal the car?

Kid: I sure did!

Fletch: Well I'm not even sure that's a crime anymore.

From Fletch 1985

Randy Lee Cooper a 27 year old Oregon resident was being chased by the cops for stealing a Land Rover. Said Land Rover crashed into a Buick Regal that as luck would have it was being driven by Kristin Begue, herself having stolen the Regal.

That cop must have thought he won the lottery, two separate collars in one accident. Not only that, Begue was drunk and high on speed, so that's two collars for grand theft auto, one for evading the police and one for DUI. I think you can just give that cop the officer of the month award right now.



Live Aid was 35 years ago this weekend. Just like this past Saturday, a hot cloudy sticky day.

I must have been so into the baseball season, that I don't remember hearing anything about the concert beforehand. I just happened t turn on the TV around noon that day and saw the beginning of the show from JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

I'm not sure any of the show from London was broadcast here in the States, I'm sure someone reading this can give me some feedback on that. A couple of weeks ago, I was reading some clickbait about Live Aid, and then I was reading the FB comments. One guy commented that he didn't remember Queen's epic performance being buzzed about the way it has been made out to be. Honestly, I don't remember that either. Though now having watched Bohemian Rhapsody (historical errors, poetic license and all) and all the You Tube clips I can find, it really was a legendary performance.

The performance that I do remember folks talking about was Mick Jagger and Tina Turner. And watching it again, the two of them, both past 40, still heating up the stage, was amazing.

I was talking about this on-line with some of my old friends and one of them talked about hanging out at the park down the block from my house, listening on boom boxes. It made me smile. Simpler times.

That's all we got this week folks

Stay Safe

and Have a Great Week