Get Better - Get Paid

Apparently, players in the Women's National Basketball Association are being too hard on one Caitlin Clark, point guard for the league's Indiana Fever. ESPN host Stephen A. Smith wants something done about it, going so far as to suggest that President Trump intercede on Clark's behalf. Mr Smith fails to realize that the MAGA crowd is not exactly enamoured with WNBA basketball - consider it "Kinderspiel" or child's play.  

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Note: Recently, there has been a spate of sex toys (dildos) being thrown onto the WNBA courts while the women are playing. Trump, perhaps wishing to join in on the fun, tossed a dildo from the White House roof onto the grounds below and laughed. Are you sure you want to enlist this guy's help, Stephen A.? 

Just Win, Baby

Smith suggests that other players in the WNBA abuse Clark because they resent her instant and immense celebrity. He calls her a "cash cow"; advises the others that it is Clark's celebrity that promises to enrich them all, so... cool it. 

I bet most, if not all of the women who have taken Clark down, reject Smith's claim of resentment, outright, rather insisting that "...if you put Clark, or any woman in front of me, ehm bustin' her butt!" That is competition. You cannot worry about keeping an opponent upright, no matter what value she might hold. You bust her today, and if she blocks your path to victory, you bust her tomorrow. 

It is the purity of passion that ensures the integrity of the game. It happens in football, hockey; it occurs when a pitcher throws a 95 mph fastball up and inside, just to put a power-hitter on his ass. NFL coach, Herm Edwards, said it best: "We play to win the game!" 

Besides, like all officially-sanctioned sports, Clark is protected by referees, rules, and penalties for flagrant fouls. She has teammates and coaches, as well, to protect her; she has the ability and responsibility to protect herself. This is an athletic competition, not "pitty-pat." 

Ultimately, Smith claims he wants to "see these ladies get paid." He should want to see them get better. The WNBA players are not particularly big, they are not particularly fast, and most of all, they are earthbound; they can't jump.  

We tell our boys in high school: "If you want to get paid for playing ball, you will have to play better." Emotions aside, the same rationale must apply to women, as well. Today, the WNBA players are wearing t-shirts proclaiming to the league: "Pay us what you owe us." No one owes you anything. Play better, and you will get paid. That is the natural order. Smith should know this. 

Time for Mr. Smith to back away from his customary bombast and hyperbole, and get serious. He has a megaphone. That comes with a responsibility to tell the truth: Money is not the measure, man. Excellence is."  

Bully, Bully...

America is twisting arms on the world stage, similar to how school-yard bullies twisted arms to coerce smaller kids into giving up their cookies. It was shameful then when kids did it. It is worse when it is adults. We, Americans, should certainly be ashamed, considering Trump does this arm-twisting in our name. 

He levies crippling tariffs on whomever he chooses, for whatever reason. He forces nations to invest billions into America - countries like the E.U., Japan, South Korea, et al - billions they would rather be investing in their own nations, their own people, except America must be sated, whether those nations want to sate America, or not.

Why do we squeeze so - people who have less than we have? Trump declares: "To make America rich again!" 

Actually, Trump, America is poorer already, for your arm-twisting, and becoming more poor with each ratcheting.  

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On the celebration of America's 250th anniversary, "Smerconish" asked his CNN show if America could endure another 250 years. Many of his respondents said, "No." Smerconish, himself, decided that America could survive if only the people would reconnect. The problem, he says, is our "disconnectedness." 

No, Smerconish. That is just a 2025 word that means little. Our biggest obstacle to survival is greed... and cowardice, and cruelty, and sloth. (And, don't forget immorality, which existed in spades throughout the first 250 years - with the treatment of slaves, Native Americans, Asians, etc.) But, wait, that did not preclude us from seeing that "250" through to this day, where America stands as the preeminent nation on Earth. So...

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The Inca sacrificed children for the sake of the survival of their community. It was considered an honor to be thus sacrificed. The method used: strangulation, being beaten over the head with a blunt object, or being buried alive. 

Just keep thinking: "What a great honor!"

Sledgehammah Mahn

I have written "Sledgehammah Mahn." It is a 120,000-word manuscript that I hope, one day, will become a best-selling novel. For what it is worth, it is 100% AI-free. For me, that is worth more than money. It is worth everything. 

Artificial Intelligence, for all of the hoopla, is just another form of steroids. How can an artist proclaim his work, "My creation!" when he knows it is tainted by AI, whose very intrusion turns all art into mere construction? We reject steroids in sports because their presence taints the excellence of competition; it distorts the final outcome, and leaves us wondering, "Does that count?"  

Nothing is worse in sports than cheating. We abhor it. Yet, is not AI in the arts cheating ourselves? Have at it in business, politics, and the sciences. Build the best dams because of AI; build the best bridges, too. Just, hands off our arts. We got this. 

Imagine if we discovered that Shakespeare kept an A.I. device in his cellar, one that enabled him to generate such eternal lines as, "To be, or not to be..." Imagine the same of Leonardo da Vinci, or Mozart. How deflating that would be. How soon before we lost faith in ourselves?

Artists hope to achieve God's benevolent design in their work - to portray the essence of us and our surroundings until the public sighs and says, "Now I see."

That hope is an intrinsic part of our spiritual makeup. With every musical note, with every stroke of the brush, or flourish of a pen, we seek the ideal God, himself, envisioned. 

When it comes to art, bypass A.I. and go to the source; tap into the divine you. It is there that the makings of your masterpiece await.  

Blood in the Water

There was blood in the water. The sharks were swarming. Then, abruptly, they turned and swam back out to sea. 

The "blood in the water" was Iranian blood. The swarming sharks were Israeli bombers in a feeding frenzy. Having taken out Iran's aerial defenses, they were free to bomb anyone, and anything they choose. They could not have dreamed of such a perfect feast. 

Then, President Trump told Netanyahu, who is "Jaws" personified, to turn his planes around. Netanyahu obeyed. Not since Truman ordered an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima has a singular show of American presidential power been made manifest. 

I am not a Trump fan, but you give the devil his due. 

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Israel will not harm a hair on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's head. He is too useful. Never has Israel faced such an inept adversary, and a coward, to boot.

The Supreme Leader's absolute power over the Iranian people ensures Israel's power over Iran itself... (as long as Trump does not get in its way).

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People are so busy patting Trump on his back for his pinpoint bombing of the Fordow nuclear facility, they seem to have forgotten that such a bombing is contrary to international law. 

Israel and the United States have opened a "can of worms". When bombing nuclear facilities becomes fair game, then what isn't?

Nothing so opens the door to nuclear proliferation as bomb-happy superpowers - i.e., Israel, Russia, the U.S. - bombing any nation they please because those nations do not have nuclear weapons, i.e., Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, et al.  

"Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran..."

Iran has no choice but to continue to retaliate after Israel attacked on 6/12/25. To stop now would be to relinquish control of their country - certainly the country's nuclear and self-defense capabilities - over to Israel, which would be the same as ceasing to exist as an autonomous state. As they dish out punishment, they must accept the prospect of loss. 

Attrition is a tried and true strategy in war; it is terrible, but instructive. The United States once based its very existence upon the concept during its "Cold War" with the USSR. The strategy was emblazoned in the acronym: MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. 

When we engage in existential struggle, we must embrace the prospect of loss; otherwise, we are "fighting scared." There is a word for that, too:  "That dog won't hunt." 

World Order requires consequences for one's actions. You can not slap a man in this world without expecting a slap back. It is that simple expectation that helps establish order. When the world's people hesitate to carry out that human obligation, they concede their timidity, and with it, their position on this planet. They become "nests on the ground." 

Headline:  TRUMP SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER TO PRODUCE MORE NUCLEAR PLANTS IN AMERICA.

Interesting. This from a president who tells Iran (before Israel's attack on June 12, 2025): "You have 100 billion barrels of oil reserves. You do not need nuclear power." This from a president who boasts that the U.S. has larger oil reserves than any other nation on earth, 

How does a world constantly in search of answers digest such twisted logic from the world's leading power, except incredulity?

It costs 3.7 cents to produce a penny. How, they are about to "wind the penny down." What does it matter if it costs a nickel to make a penny when you can use that one penny 10,000 times?  

Holocaust: Deux

The world is witnessing a modern-day holocaust, the likes of which we have not seen since the days of Hitler. It is being wreaked upon a helpless and hapless people trapped in what, for all intents and purposes, is an open-air concentration camp called "Gaza."  To escape the bombing, the Gazans can only flee from the northern barrier to the southern barrier. Like fish in a barrel, they cannot get out. 

We have not seen such purposeful destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and families, except through the lens of the past.  The people sleep on the ground, out in the open. Small babies huddle against their emaciated mothers, who cling to them with barely the strength to give them the solace they need. Thousands fight over scraps of bread while hundreds of food-laden trucks are kept on the other side of the barriers, cruelly out of reach. 

The world witnessing this Gazan Holocaust appears as indifferent to the suffering of these Palestinians as the people, 80 years ago, were indifferent to the plight of the Jews. This time, however, it is the Jews who are wreaking havoc.

The hatred permeating from Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government - hatred toward the people of Gaza - is frightening. Such barbarism is not worthy of the Jewish people and their historic faith. 

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking on Fareed Zakaria's GPS - The Global Public Square (Sunday, June 1), stated: 

        "The damage Israel is doing to itself is far worse than anything anyone else could have             done to them." 

Gaza's entire population is living a dystopian nightmare directly parallel to our American lives. There is no graininess here. We see it, but it doesn't seem to bother us much. Over 55,000 Gazans have been killed; 20,000 of those dead are children. And of the children left alive, many are so traumatized they have descended into a wraith-like silence. Heartbroken? We should be apologetic. 

We are party to this massacre. We give Israel billions of dollars. We furnish the finest bombs to drop upon those scurrying unfortunates in the Gazan fishbowl. (Mr. Olmert must think: "A better friend of Israel would just say 'No' to Netanyahu.")

The American people say little, lest they incur the wrath of Jewish groups whose cries of "anti-semitism" drown out all calls for mercy. Meanwhile, the craven media - practiced in the art of self-preservation - bow down, and bang the drums of capitulation. 

It is our student body that bears the brunt of the caring here in the States. They cry tears of anguish at the inhumanities inflicted upon the Palestinians - inhumanities Ehud Olmert calls "war crimes." And for their pains, our young people are castigated and called "supporters of terrorists," when they should be called "Children of God." 

We worry and hope that our children will achieve money and mansions in their lives. We should be hoping that they care about other people and other things, as they care about themselves. That is our last, best hope.

I believe our children care. Thank God for that. The alternative is Holocaust: Trois

AfterLife

 I filed a civil complaint

    the magistrate rejected

I filed a Leave to Appeal

    I doubt he will allow.

Perhaps the Leave was not compelling

    A matter that occurred to me

        too late to matter... to them 

            only power to punish matters. 

Mad?

    (I shake my head)

To borrow a line from Jesus: 

"They know not what they do."

Plan "B":  Write "Unhinged:

    A Treatise on Corrections Corruptions"

That ought to amount to nothing.

    (Where is Elon now)

    ... as we clang along to eternity?

Obi Wan Kenobi fancied

    as Darth Vader readied to slay him

That Death will imbue us with depth

    and movement

The likes we never imagined?

Is that our hope:  Power over Earth - 

    to fly, to punish...

    Heaven, at last? 

Is this what we expend

    our death wishes on?

Woody Allan put it best when he said,

"Ya gotta admit, it doesn't look promising."