Welcome to another week of The Runback. Have you been enjoying The Duckpin? Do you have comments or suggestions? Do you want to write for us? Let me know at theduckpin@gmail.com. And please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Thanks in advance.
Podcast Episode #12
This week we talk with Maria Sofia, Chairman of the Maryland Young Republicans, about the 2020 Election, youth outreach, and the future of the GOP.
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News and Politics
Maryland Republican Party Fall Convention Preview and Predictions: Another unusual convention brings another election.
Culture
The Toy Story In All Of Us: 25 years ago at Thanksgiving a new kind of animated movie appeared.
Sports
Unexpected Sweetness vs. Caramel Onions: Which teams have given their fans the best and worst surprises in college football?
Did you see this week’s NFL Preview? Take a look at how the picks went down and be sure to tune in Friday to this week’s picks.
Let's Have a Real Playoff, Week 14: See what changed once we switched to the College Football Playoff Poll, and predict what might change this week.
Programming Note
Shameless Plugs
In my latest column for The Capital I talk bout how unrealistic expectations and hypocritical politicians are helping fuel COVID fatigue.
The Monday Thought
I’m in a writing rut.
For those of you who have known me for a bit, you know that I’m rarely a loss for words, either through writing or by speaking. I struggled greatly to figure out what I was gonna write about even for last Friday’s Capital column.
I think it’s understandable at this point.
Advent is here, as we approach the time for Christmas. But it does not feel like a normal Christmas with the cancellation of events and parties and such.
Baseball, the world’s greatest sport, is in the offseason. Thanks to COVID, we don’t even get the fun and excitement of the Winter Meetings this year (at least in their normal way).
It’s still football season, but the Ravens have played like crap for six weeks and seem rather disinterested in even making the playoffs.
We’re in the transition period between Presidential Administrations, except one Administration (primarily the occupant of the Oval Office) doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.
Republicans should be planning on how to overcome a Presidential election defeat, but many are still bending the knee to a defeated President.
So yeah, there’s not a lot of fun things to talk about. This column was pretty close to 2500 words about BattleBots, the BYU-Coastal Carolina game and last night’s War Games match (including Pat McAfee’s moonsault).
It’s almost to the point of declaring “No News Today” as the BBC did one day in 1930.
I think that may be my biggest frustration right now. Is that when it comes to writing about anything right now, it seems like we are just rehashing the same things over and over again. To whit how often do we get the following:
President Trump makes another unsubstantiated claim about election fraud;
Trump campaign lawyers lose another court battle;
Republican elected official says something bonkers;
Social media full of self-proclaimed “experts” who “know” that the election was “fraudulent” or how “the vaccine is a conspiracy” or some such;
Bad Ravens football;
A poorly booked Monday Night Raw.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Remind you of anything?
If you don’t get it, ask Scott Shaffer.
We have 24 days left this year. Soon it will be baseball season, legislatures will convene, it will be postseason football, and one day closer to a return to something resembling normalcy. But we’re not there yet. Let’s hope we get a change of pace, get focused on the upcoming Christmas Holiday, and I have something fun to write about…..
……or else next week’s version of The Runback is gonna be nothing but gifs.