Minnesota Vikings 2024 – 2025 Recap

Let’s consider two realities. 

The first is that sports aficionados exist  who worship – deeply revere - excellence. This excellence can best be measured over the grind, the ordeal and demands encountered in a full season of play.   They will forever fume that a baseball team that wins 100 games or more can be deprived of a World Series appearance.  They are equally disgusted that the team that wins the Presidents Cup in the NHL does not automatically qualify to play in the finals for the Stanley Cup; and on, and on, and on.  This incessant and never-ending effort to devalue the regular season is viewed as nothing more than a putrid money grab. 

Secondly, some of these aficionados learned years ago to never allow team marketing and the media (primarily designed to sell tickets) to influence their level of enthusiasm.  They learned to remain objective and evaluate the existence of excellence on performance only.  Which brings us to the Minnesota Vikings. 

There is a 76-year-old lifetime resident of the Twin Cities who meets this description.  Sometime after the Vikings golden era under Bud Grant he stopped caring if the Vikings won a game.  He watches more out of curiosity than interest to learn if there exists even a spark of excellence.  None has occurred for years until this season's December 29^th game against the Green Bay Packers at the “Darth Vader Memorial Mausoleum” in Downtown Minneapolis.   

The reason for the passion came from realizing that if the Vikes could beat the Packers they would qualify them to play for the best record and thus the top seed in the National Conference. They would once again be playing to establish a level of excellence.  After winning the Packer game, that resident of the Twin Cities knew it was time to revert to no longer caring about the outcome.  When all was said and done, only two teams in the NFL compiled a better regular season record than the Vikes.  That is too darn close to excellent to ignore and, for sure, the best any Vikings fan could have hoped for. 

So, C-O-N-G-R-A-U-L-A-T-I-O-N-S !!! to the Minnesota Vikings on a superb season. 

So now you might inquire; what else is new with the Vikings? 

Answer:  Nothing – ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  

 

Lessons From Los Angeles

I have asked myself, long before the Los Angels fires, how we could end or, at least, curtail the misery of the seemingly unending natural disasters that are continuing to plaque the American people. 

This consideration is particularly apropos as we are currently living in an age of American “me first,” cold indifference toward one another.  There is no effort to end spree shootings and mass killings by limiting guns and their God-awful scrouge on our society.  No effort to end the suffering and needless deaths by creating a national health care system that every other industrialized nation has instituted.  No concern over the growing level of poverty and all the human and economic misery it perpetuates upon us.  

Now add to all this pain and suffering the reality that insurance companies, one of the greediest and richest enterprises in America, can no longer afford relief to those in real need.  In recent years they have concocted ways to refuse coverage to the victims of natural disasters and are refusing to provide coverage for natural disasters in future policies.  In many cases insurance companies are justified.  Los Angeles has needed an additional 62 fire stations to meet just average daily demand for years and no action was taken.  When firefighters tapped fire hydrants during the current fire travesties there was no water available. 

Best Report-PBS Video–“Was Not Unpredictable”-Causes and The Future

https://www.pbs.org/video/california-fires-tape-stephanie-dis-1736544154/ 

As history has taught us, the only real solution to situations like this has come from the federal government.  We have reached the point where national casualty insurance is the only effective means for victim relief.  Naturally, such coverage would impose restrictions on property located where the greatest risk for destruction exists.  Now the question arises as to how this could possibly be enacted.  America has tried for decades to enact national health care insurance with no success.  We are perfectly content to spend trillions of American dollars on wars raging all over the globe.  We see no problem in spending additional trillions on erecting athletic venues and enterprises, not to mention, billions more on oil subsidies. 

This is all so very sad.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  America has more than enough resources to do what must be done.  And the saddest commentary of all is that there is no relief in sight.