Notes from around the Human Experience…
LEADING OFF: Usually this feature focuses on one item for the first half, before diving in with your treasured On This Date, Trivia and Quotebook features. Today though, we have a few things to cover.
ITEM NUMBER ONE: For the third time the GOP-controlled United States Senate tried to muster the votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). For the third time, they failed.
Good. The spite and disregard that went into these attempts – not to mention the GOP’s utter lack of anything else to offer – was shameful. Led by a president whose only real talent is drawing attention to himself, they are completely unable to govern and every member should be hanging their head in shame.
ITEM NUMBER TWO: Joel Ward, who plays for the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, said he might take a knee during the national anthem at an upcoming game. He would be the first NHL player to do do.
Ward is black, one of 30 or so blacks that will play in the NHL this season and we are on record as supporting high profile black athletes want to use the only podium they have to protest some of the many things America has worth protesting. Knock yourselves out.
Fly In The Ointment: Ward, however, is also Canadian and this is not his lookout. American players do not take a knee during O Canada to protest the fact your football fields have two 50-yard lines, so please don’t protest during national anthem.
ITEM NUMBER THREE: The only real surprise was that Tuesday’s indictments and arrests of ten people in a college basketball bribery scandal didn’t happen sooner. NCAA revenue sports have been a cesspool for an awfully long time.
None of this should be surprised that coaches and shoe company officials are charged with bribing families so their kids would go to certain schools and coaches are alleged to have taken bribes to steer players towards certain agents, financial advisors and – get this – tailors.
Tailors!
This, of course, is not going to be the end of it. There will be more because the investigation is being conducted by, among others, the FBI and not the hapless oafs at the NCAA. That sound you hear is basketball coaches and shoe executives from sea to shining sea holding their breaths waiting for the other indictment to drop. Because it will.
ITEM NUMBER FOUR: NFL television ratings continue to slide, with 2017’s numbers down eleven from percent so far from 2016’s numbers. And 2016’s numbers were down eight percent from 2015. All of this means that in 2017 about two million fewer people are watching an average NFL game than in 2015.
Hut, Hut, Hike: We’ve said this before: between kids no longer playing football and fans no longer watching it, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the National Football League.
ITEM NUMBER FIVE: Pope Francis was recently accused of heresy. In a letter delivered to the pope in August, several dozen Roman Catholics – ranging from priests to theologians to other rather dull academics – advised Francis they found him guilty of promulgating seven heretical positions, mostly concerning marriage.
It was the first time a pope had been so corrected since Pope John XXII in 1333. Not even regular readers of this crap my know that Pope John XXII had had the nerve to say the dead see heaven – known as the beatic vision – on Judgement Day and not before. This was in variance to the then-current view that the saved saw heaven before judgment day. John apparently held this view as a theologian, so it wasn’t official papal doctrine, and he later recanted this view, allowing mankind to live in a state of grace ever since. Further research into this matter did not interest us all that much.
Dry, Technical Matter: We’re more or less heathens here at The Daily Dose but we did have 13 years of rather pleasant Lutheran schooling and we’re of the opinion that once you die Judgement Day would happen immediately because there is no sense of time when you’re dead.
TOKEN ON THIS DATE ACTION: Lancaster, Pennsylvania is the capital of the United States on this date in 1777, meeting in the courthouse there after the Second Continental Congress had hightailed it out of Philadelphia because of the invading British army.
We Are Outta Here: Some research shows that Congress last met in Philadelphia on Thursday, September 18. Their journal states that after conducting the day’s business and adjourning for the day, Congress had received a letter from an aide to General George Washington advising of:
…the necessity of Congress removing immediately from Philadelphia.
As it turned out, Lancaster wasn’t even safe. Congress would flee the following day and next meeting in York, Pennsylvania on September 30, where it would stay until the following June.
Quotebook: I work harder than anyone who has ever lived. I am not well and worn out with this stupendous labor, and yet I am patient to achieve the desired end. – Michelangelo, Letter to Brother, while painting Sistine Chapel
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Howard K Smith was the moderator of the first Nixon/Kennedy presidential debate. It was held in Chicago on September 26, 1960.
Today’s Stumper: From the First Continental Congress through today, how many capital cities has the United States had? – Answer next time!
