Thrown for a Loss: Las Vegas Raiders football coach John Gruden has resigned after the revelation of hateful, racist, and just plain ignorant emails he had sent back when he was a color commentator for ESPN on “Monday Night Football.”

  The emails were discovered by the NFL in an investigation into sexual harassment in the Washington front office and leaked to The NY Times. 

  Gruden was five games into the fourth season of a 10-year, $100 million contract with the franchise. It was his second tour as the Raiders head coach.

  In the emails, Gruden called the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, a “faggot” and a “clueless anti football pussy.” He said that Goodell should not have pressured Jeff Fisher, then the coach of the Rams, to draft “queers,” referring to a gay player chosen in 2014.

  Gruden also wrote about DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the NFL Players Association, who is black, that “Dumboriss Smith has lips the size of michellin tires.” In his defense, Gruden said he doesn’t have a “a blade of racism” in him.

  Starting in 2011, and running for seven years, Gruden also criticized the league’s efforts to reduce concussions. He had said that the league’s emphasis on safety was scaring parents away from letting their kids play football.

  Gruden said in a statement released last night,” I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone.”

Last Stand at the Alamo: In the continuing Republican politicization of the fight against the pandemic, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order banning all state entities and private employers from enforcing vaccine mandates against Covid-19. His order says that “no entity in Texas” can force vaccination on anyone who objects “for any reason of personal conscience, based on a religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19.” 

  Abbott’s order goes on to say, “The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, and our best defense against the virus, but should remain voluntary and never forced.”

  In the past week 77 people a day have died of Covid-19 in Texas and intensive care beds are 91 percent occupied, about a third of them with Covid patients.

The Shipping News: With stores already putting up displays for the Christmas push, there’s some question whether they’ll have the goods to sell.

  A backlog of cargo ships is anchored off the coast of Southern California waiting to be unloaded. And the The NY Times reports that  80,000 shipping containers are stacked at the Port of Savannah, waiting to be picked up or loaded on ships for departure. As many as 700 of the containers have been waiting a month or more. 

   The reason is only in part because of the Christmas traffic surge. The crunch is compounded by  a pandemic labor shortages and other COVID-19 related issues.

  Another reason given by experts in commerce is that many people have shifted their spending from services to goods during the pandemic. They’re buying more stuff. The ports in Southern California in particular are handling record numbers of containers, and they can’t keep up.

Grounded: Southwest Airlines, which has been cancelling flights by the dozens, dropped hundreds more flights yesterday.

  Southwest says the trouble started Friday with bad weather cancellations, leaving planes and crews out of place for Saturday, leading to a cascade of troubles through yesterday.

  The airline is fighting claims by some leading republican politicians, Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin that Southwest’s vaccine mandate led to a pilot shortage.

  Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told The NY Times that Southwest’s crew assignment and routing system is “unsustainable” when dealing with technological issues and bad weather.

You Don’t Need a Weatherman:  So far this year, the US has experienced 18 separate weather and climate disasters that have cost at least $1 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information. With less than three months to go, 2021 trails 2020, which had 22 billion dollar events.

  At least 85 percent of the global population has experienced weather events intensified by climate change, according to research published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

   Researchers used computers to analyze and map more than 100,000 studies of events that could be linked to global warming. The study focused on events like crop failures, floods, and heat waves. 

The Spin Rack: A small plane crashed into a San Diego neighborhood, killing two people, and burning two homes to the ground. The pilot died and a UPS driver was killed when wreckage hit his truck. — Famous mobster Al Capone’s favorite handgun, a Colt .45 with a stag handle, sold at auction for $860,000.    

Out of Jeopardy: Contestant Matt Amodio, a Yale doctoral student who until last night was the reigning  champion on the game show “Jeopardy!” lost his 39th game. He departs with $1.5 million and leaves the record of Ken Jennings intact at #1 with 74 wins.

  The final clue was: “Nazi Germany annexed this nation and divided it into regions of the Alps & the Danube; the Allies later divided it into 4 sectors.” The two other contestants correctly answered Austria. Amodio guessed Poland.

-30-