To Buy, or To Bully

With President Trump, it is "buy or bully." That might work with lesser nations, like the Arab states, or the Europeans. But China is big, and as rich as the U.S.  It will neither be bought nor bullied. 

Americans, then, are encouraged to look at China as "our enemy." It is neither friend nor foe. China is simply our equal. After having been told for so long of our vaunted "exceptionalism", that must be a difficult pill to swallow. I say, either swallow it, or choke on it. What say you?  

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Speaking of Bullies...

They are now saying that we must begin to make Artificial Intelligence kinder, considering it will one day become more powerful than ourselves, and we will be dependent on its benevolence. Is that the only reason we should want A.I. to be kinder? If the answer is "yes", then I guess that is as good a reason as any.  

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Abraham, Abraham...

ESPN's Stephen A. Smith has decided that California's governor, Gavin Newsom, would make a fine presidential candidate because he "looks so good." Interesting...

I wonder what Stephen A. would have thought of Abe Lincoln? I hear tell a rather homely woman encountered Lincoln on the streets of Springfield, Illinois, and straightaway declared: "I swore that if I ever met a man uglier than me, I would shoot him." Lincoln simply smiled. 

Don't Go There...

They are better than us - these women, 

    I'd say

Closer to heaven in every way

With their hands and their hopscotch

    (certainly nothing wicked)

Yet, even as girls

They scared us to crickets.

(Such secrets, such eyes

So much more civilized.)

Not good enough - they want to be like the boys

    Want to try those hands

    Want to re-tip the scales

    Want to make their own stand.

"Want more women's sports?

They'll take the call

Yet, they can't fly high

    with a basketball."

"They are queens and models

Cat and canarys, at once

Such sweet music they make

If only they could dunk...

What started out as Title IX

To give girls a chance to play

Has become a curious parody

Of when, and when not to pay,

They have given us the professional WNBA

(Along with a concerted attempt to mislead)

There is a dearth of great talent there

Certainly, no dearth of great greed.

Comes soon a women's Flag Football League

With the NFL's commish as high patron

He will falsely declare "must-see games"

What we know will be pure recreation. 

In '28 we will call them "Olympians"

For playing kiddie football, for Christ's sake

Fits a pattern of social engineering

Corrects God's awful mistake. 

Women rise to the top anywhere they chose:

Business, politics, even war

But, when it comes to athletic excellence

"Katie done barred the door!" 

Cash in your glories - call yourselves "studs"

Go to where the maned lion lingers

You've only descended the mountainside 

To forever be a league of pretenders. 

So be it - you have nothing to prove

What truly matters is plain to see: 

When we boys were hanging from every limb

It's you girls who coaxed us out of the tree. 

The Wrong One

Kamala Harris, in her new book, "107 Days," claims she chose Tim Walz as a running mate over her first choice, Pete Buttigieg, because the American people were not ready for a black woman married to a Jewish man on the same presidential ticket with a homosexual. Nonsense. 

First, American voters do not vote for vice presidents; they vote the top of the ticket. Second, Americans will vote for whomever they please. 

People said America was not ready for a black president, that is, until Barack Obama came along. Then, they voted for him twice. Why? Because he was the right one. They said America was not ready for a Catholic president until it voted for John Kennedy. Again, he was the right one.  

America would have voted for Hilary if she had been the right woman. She was not; neither was Kamala. (In fact, Kamala was a bad candidate. It did not help that party leaders chose to anoint her with the top spot on the ticket, leaving voters with the bad taste in their mouths that she had not earned what previous candidates had to endure a gauntlet to achieve. Much of the blame for that can be put on Joe Biden's selfishness. But, don't blame the American voters. They are resilient. They say, "Show me what you got." Kamala did not show much. Wrong move, Kamala.)

You would think that such sophisticated people as Americans would not vote for a maniac for president. But, what if he was the right maniac, like Donald Trump?

Americans will vote for a woman, a Jew, a communist, a gay - Americans will vote for a felon for president... if they like that felon. Kamala should stop blaming the American people for her loss to Trump and start looking at her own shortcomings. 

Buttigieg, Walz, Pennsylvania's Jewish governor, Shapiro - it does not matter. She could have chosen either of them, and she still would have lost - no matter her color, her creed, her husband, or whatever else she thinks might have defined her. America defined Kamala Harris: She is the wrong one. 

Baseball's Top 25

1. Josh Gibson*

2. Willie Mays

3. Shohei Ohtani

4. Babe Ruth

5. Hank Aaron

6. Barry Bonds

7. Nolan Ryan

8. Ken Griffey, Jr.

9. Aaron Judge

10. Frank Robinson

11. Stan Musial

12. Satchel Paige

13. Bob Gibson

14. Ted Williams

15. Roger Clemens

16. Buck Leonard

17. Jackie Robinson

18. Lou Gehrig

19. Ricky Henderson

20. Mickey Mantle

21. Steve Carlton

22. Iciro Suzuki

23. Mike Trout

24. Smokey Joe Williams**

25. Alex Rodriguez

*Josh once proclaimed, "I don't break bats, I wear them out." Over a 17-year career in the Negro Leagues, he hit .347. Against Major League pitching, he hit .426. In 1936, he clubbed 84 home runs. He was a catcher. 

**Smokey Joe Williams spent his entire career in the Negro Leagues. Against Major League teams in the All-Star Games and exhibitions, he was 20-7. 

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.