It is Simple Math: Two Wrongs Don't make a Right

Bibi Netanyahu, previously a prime minister of Israel, came under criminal indictment prior to returning as Israel's prime minister in 2023. Too weak to form his own government, he was forced to align with a far right-wing faction to complete his coalition. Immediately, his coalition was on the ropes. An unprecedented 100,000 Israeli citizens took to the streets to protest his extreme policies, including an on-going attempt to re-order the judicial system and make it subservient to the executive branch. Governments worldwide shunned him; even Joe Biden refused to invite him to the White House. Then, Hamas attacked Israel, and killed 1300 Israeli citizens. Suddenly, Netanyahu is the toast of the town. Coincidence? I think not. 

Israel's Mossad is one of the most effective intelligence agencies on Earth. Their network of informers riddle the ranks of Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, and even the Iranian government. So, how is it that a ragtag group of Hamas of fighters with a couple of bulldozers can breach Israel's multi-billion dollar wall separating Gaza from Israel, and commence in a wholesale slaughter of Israelis? Egyptian intelligence informed Israel that an attack might be imminent, as well as did the U.S. Bibi did nothing. Now, he has carte blanche to level Gaza, and soon turn it into a series of Israeli settlements extending the full length of what used to be the Gaza Strip.  

Speaking of math: The customary ratio of dead Palestinians to dead Israelis in these affairs is 10:1, even as high as 20:1. This current affair started out 1:1, when 200 dead Israelis matched the 200 dead Palestinians. A weak later, it was about 2:1 - 2400 dead Palestinians, 1300 dead Israelis.  

Maybe, when that ratio grows to the standard imbalance and the number of Israeli human rights violations shame even Joe Biden and America's media horde, we will unclip our tongues and speak out for humanity. 

Asymmetrical War: A Euphemism for "Shooting Fish in a Barrel"

A Fox News correspondent reporting on the conflict between Israel and Hamas declared: "This is a war between good and evil." No, it is not. 

Israel has occupied Gaza since 1967. It has blockaded Gaza by land, air, and sea for the past 16 years, rendered that impoverished territory of over two million Palestinians on open-air prison. President Carter has likened Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people to apartheid. The Gazans, like any humans would anywhere, have resisted the occupation and the subsequent blockade, at times resorting to terrorist acts because they have no vote, no say in this Israeli democracy. Neither side is good; neither side is evil. They are occupier and occupied; oppressor and oppressed. One side is strong, and the other refuses to be weak. 

In the wake of Hamas' brutal attack upon Israel's border communities on Oct. 7, Israel has been lavished with goodwill from the international community. It is predictable that Israel will squander that goodwill by committing an even more brutal act of vengeance. Israel's prime minister, Netanyahu, has already vowed to "exact a price that will be remembered by Israel's enemies for decades to come." Of course you will, Netanyahu. It is your nature to "out-cruel" all adversaries. Israel will attack Gaza with tanks, planes, artillery, and over 300,000 soldiers. Hamas will counter with a forces less than 20,000. They call that imbalance "asymmetrical warfare." 

What is to come in Gaza will remind us of the movie, "Cool Hand Luke" and the prison fight between Luke and the hulking, Dragline. When the fight starts, the other prisoners look on. The scrawny, Luke, played by Paul Newman, is game, but the entire time, he looks like he is trying to fight his way out of the proverbial "paper bag.," Each time Dragline, played by George Kennedy, hits Luke, Luke goes down and the crowd cheers. Soon, the cheering stops as Dragline pummels the pathetic Luke. Finally, one of the prisoners, shamefaced at his participation in the spectacle, turns away and mumbles, "Somebody ought to stop this thing." 

That is a glimpse of coming attractions. The world community will soon beg for a stoppage of the slaughter. Even the warden, Joe Biden, who vowed, "unending support" for the Israel effort, will have seen enough.  

A.I. Ain't Writin'

Artificial Intelligence shall permeate our lives, and cause us to question everything our fellow humans do: "Did you write that?" "Did you create that all by yourself?" "Did you really catch that ball, or did those techno-gloves catch that ball for you?' It's a fair question. "Are you insulated?" 

The Hollywood writers have settled their strike (for the most part) against the television studios. Those same writers who whined about A.I. stealing their jobs, according to the settlement, can now use A.I., themselves, to complement their work. Chances are, many of these so-called "writers" may not be true "writers", at all. Chances are, many of them have no more true writing talent than I have singing or drawing talent, though I do like to sing, and dabble. 

A.I. uses recycled content to create its poems, essays, and scripts, just as many Hollywood writers have been using recycled content for years, and pushing it off as their own "genius." We know better when we see so many television scripts and movies look and sound like the ones before. 

There was a time, in football, when we would marvel at the "great, soft hands" of elite receivers. You never hear such talk anymore because, now, they all wear gloves - even in 80 degree temperatures! - which obscure those with "great hands" from those with "good hands." It is the gloves that secure the ball on contact. These gloves - I call them "techno-gloves" - are a form of A.I. You might ask, "Why don't the gifted receivers chuck the gloves, and show the world how "real men" once did it? Too late for that. Today, a great receiver without the techno-gloves is like a great guitarist without an amplifier. 

The truth is: The studios have little respect for their so-called "writers" because they see little "true talent" among the lot of them. That is why the studios were so slow to settle. And, even then, look at the terms of the settlement: Where the UAW is asking for 20%, 10%, and 10% raise over the next three years, the writers have settled for a 5%, 4%, and 3% raise over the same period. It would seem that is apropos to the talent these writers apparently bring to work. 

Great writers never need A.I. When writers couple with A.I., they cease to be writers; they become construction workers. I say, "Let A.I. have the touchdowns. It ain't writin'."

Crucified

Jesus was crucified

We know this

We do not know what

    it feels like

To be crucified

But we can imagine

We are human beings

We are built to imagine.

Some of us in our zeal 

Enact our own unique crucifixions

Replete with spikes and lances

and cries of "Why me?"

We must be crucified!

Our sins are so great

And mounting so

That  crucifixion seems too

    good for us

But it is the worst

We can imagine. 

More Racial Dilemmas

Sage Steele, recently-fired ESPN anchor, declared: "I'm bi-racial." I declare, "So?" A large percentage of African-Americans are bi-racial, thanks in large part to America's "crime against humanity" - slavery - where the white slavemaster has his way with the two million original African-American women under his complete control. 

Then, Sage declared, "Barack Obama is going around saying that he is a black man, when he is actually bi-racial, like me." Sage should not have gone there. Barack knows who he is, and where he comes from. He has never denied his black Kenyan father , nor his white Kansas mother. After living in places around the wold , he settled in about the "blackest" community in America - Chicago's southside. After dating women all colors, he married a truly black woman - Michelle Robinson. He has a black family. Barack Obama chooses to be a black man. 

Back to Sage: Once you declare yourself "bi-racial", most people tend to wonder, "Okay, so what races are you?" Let me put it this way: I am a dark-skinned African-American man. My paternal great-grandfather was white. My maternal great-grandfather was full-blooded Native American. (The rest of me, for the most part, hails from western Africa.) That, I suppose, makes me "tri-racial". Should I declare myself that? Not unless I want to sound foolish. Chances are, many of us are tri-racial, and then some. Nonetheless, most of us declare a race: Hispanic, Black, Native American, Asian, etc., because that is the community we most identify with. 

Funny how a bi-racial person can claim to be anything he/she wants to be, except "white."

All the Way to the Back

"All the way to the back," she said

"All the way to the back" 

Those words were ingrained into our heads

Was it simply because we were black?

We had to do it, the good kids we were

Taught to do as were told

No time for sass - just march, lad and lass

All the way to the back of the bus

All the way to the back

Fill up those seats - Leave room! Leave room!

No matter how tight you are packed

"All the way, all the way, all the way," she said

All the way to the back.

"All the way to the back," she said

"All the way to the back" 

Words to children so easily uttered

Was it melanin all that she lacked?

Who was this woman with the hypnotist's glare

And the siren's knack?

It was Josie Wroblewski - the gasman's wife

Who said, "All the way to the back." 

She drove the bus, and the lot of us

And did it without any flack

How else could we have made it to school

Except for going all the way to the back

Except for sitting way, way in the back?

This 60s Woodland Park and Bitely did business

Played baseball, rode the same bus

Adjacent black and white rural communities

Never forgetting the thin line between us. 

Fill up those seats - Leave room! Leave room! 

No matter how tight you are packed

"All the way, all the way, all the way," she said

All the way to the back. 

And she got away with it

Until such time as Daria Plaut

Hitched a ride on that bus

She was a teacher's aide at Baldwin High

Heard the cry with the rest of us: 

"All the way to the back"

"All the way to the back"

"All the way to the back of the bus." 

Daria saw how each day we were herded

To clear space for the white kids to sit

Being a Woodland Parker - born and bred

She wasn't having any of it.

This was not Montgomery, Alabama

And Daria never claimed to be Rosa Parks

She heard, "All the way back" -

Stopped it dead in its tracks

Another community climbed out of the dark.

We had joined in a struggle waged across the land

From L.A. to Detroit to D.C. 

Black communities all - rallying to the call 

Of a people bound to be free.

"All the way to the back" - one by one;

Thanks to Big Sis, those days were done

Now, a faint and fading echo

Of a day Woodland Park had won.

Knowledge of Fire

I wonder if China whines as much about the U.S. as the U.S. whines about China: "They're taking our manufacturing jobs; they're buying up our farmland; they're stealing our intellectual property... wah, wah, wah..." 

Robert O'Brien, American Global Strategies co-founder, and former Trump administration national security advisor, appeared on C-Span on August 5th and said, "It is hard to compete when people are stealing from you." As he rattled off China's litany of abuses, such a pained expression came over his face, I began to wonder if he would burst into tears. "There are slaves," he said, "picking cotton in China today - Uighura - and we are buying their product." Do you really want to go there, O'Brien? 

Throughout history, none has stolen more than the U.S., starting with the theft of free people in Africa and converting them into slaves for America. We stole great swaths of land from Native American tribes, and drove them - their women and children - out onto the barren prairie where they died by the thousands from exposure and starvation. We stole, took, and cheated Mexico out of lands that today comprise the states of Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. We could not have cared less about "fair competition." 

China is competing. They did not kidnap Buick, and force it to perform in China. Buick went there of their own accord, as did many other U.S. manufacturers whose bottom lines thrived amid China's burgeoning middle class. Neither does China force Americans to sell their farmland. Those farmers gladly part with that land for Chinese cash. 

And, speaking of "intellectual property": The U.S. pulled off the greatest such theft in history with "Operation Paperclip" in 1945. There, U.S. agents secretly spirited 150 Nazi scientists away from Germany, among them Wernher von Braun, the greatest rocket scientist ever. His rocket design and mathematical calculations put America on the moon in 1969 and then brought us safely back to Earth. It remains humankind's greatest achievement. 

In a perfect world, nations would willingly share technology to ensure immediacy - that people worldwide simultaneously benefit from humanity's genius. That world is yet light-years away. Hence, countries like China, the U.S., and every other living nation must spy, steal, reverse engineer, and pull out every stop to learn what others know to advance their own societies. 

Heck, there was a time when men stole fire because they did not know how to make it themselves. I say: Knowledge by whatever means necessary. Why not?

Watch Your Step

There is nothing wrong with Texas' Governor Abbott putting barriers on the Rio Grande to prevent immigrants from illegally crossing over into America. If you want to come in, there are rules and designated pathways to follow. America should make it as difficult as possible for anyone to enter, otherwise. 

If someone wants to enter your yard, you insist that they enter through the gate. If they want to enter your home, they cannot climb through the window. They must enter through the front door.  

Heroes... Standing By

A child may call his father or mother "hero," but we will not call them "heroes." We are more likely to call them "good parents." Nature equips women to be good mothers, and men to be good fathers. Not all men and women live up to that ideal, but that does not mean that those who do are thus extraordinary, and thereby, heroic. 

Likewise, policemen are not heroes because they intercede to protect a public citizen from harm. It is his job. That is what he is paid to do. Same thing for teachers. They are not by definition heroic. They are paid to teach. If you do not pay them, most of them, probably, will not teach; neither will officers police, nor firemen fight fires. That does not mean they will not risk their lives to save your child from a burning building. I suppose a number of men and women would do that. And, if they do, they will be heroic, mainly because it is a split-second decision, and no external force - like payment for services - compel them to act. They are driven only by a sense of humanity. There is heroism. It is far less common than we want to believe. Yet, it exists as potential energy within each of us. 

There is a teacher in us, and a fireman, and a policeman, and a soldier. That person may never be called upon, or he/she may rise up out of us in the next instant. Such is the hero in us all. It has nothing to do with a uniform. It has everything to do with our sense of humanity when humanity needs us most. 

A Bit of the Spirit of John Henry

The Hollywood writers are on strike. Besides wanting more money, their chief complaint seems to be Artificial Intelligence is stealing their thunder. 

Stop whining. A. I. is here to stay. Either become more creative to start writing better scripts, or find different jobs, the kind that are not so directly challenged by A. I. 

What are Hollywood writers doing to distinguish themselves, anyway? I hear another "Mission Impossible" movie is out - one expected to be a blockbuster. Why? "Mission Impossible", like most sequalized movies are made for A. I. intervention. Like all done movies, once done, "Mission Impossible" is pure content.   A. I. feeds off of content. Feed it a movie, and watch it spit out sequels like ninety-going-north. That is all Hollywood asks nowadays. Most of the movie-going public is non-discerning, anyway. Say, "John Wick" or "Indiana Jones," and they automatically think they are in for a treat, (even though Hollywood and its writers had barely broken a sweat.) 

A. I. is not the problem. what is needed in Hollywood is writers with the balls to stand in the breach, a la John Henry, and take on the false god... a writer comme moi. 

If A. I. can write a better movie, then any writer sitting on his pen should get out of the way. Personally, I do not believe A. I. can write a poem better than I can. And, like John Henry, I would put my soul on the live to prove it. 

Any of you picket-sign-carrying softies ready to put your soul into your work? Do it, and I doubt A. I. anywhere can touch you.  

Sick, Sick, Sick

The two leading candidates for president of the these United States in 2024 is Joe Biden and Donald Trump. One is physically decrepit, the other is morally bankrupt. Seventy percent of the country does not want Biden to run again; sixty percent does not want Trump. Nonetheless, this nation, because of its twisted and antiquated electoral system, is able, and willing, to force these two done men down America's throat. Sick.  

******

The nation that prides itself on law and order has distributed, (by hook or by crook), 400 million guns to its 330 million citizens. And, these citizens are not bashful about using their guns-shooting one another at a clip that leaves all other nations on Earth appalled. Sick.  

******

The richest nation on Earth is witnessing homeless encampments spring up in every city in America. The phenomena is fueled by mental illness, illegal drugs, illegal immigration, and a general lack of dignity - people who refuse to care, refuse to work, refuse to respect the rights and space of others. 

This is 2023. There is no war. There are no Dust Bowls. The stock market is sky-high; unemployment is at an all-time low. This is not 1929, before FDR's New Deal, when shanty-towns sprung up because that is what good people had been reduced to in bad times. This is purposeful decay, and sloth. It is a portrait of a great nation protected by two oceans on either shore, and two friendly nations on its northern and southern borders. No other nation on Earth is so ideally situated. So, what do we do? We attack ourselves. And, we will lose. Sick. 

The Bell Tolls ... For Us

 "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

- Hamlet, Act I, Scene V

Just thinking: Perhaps for every man, woman, and child killed by an American-made weapon oversees, a man, woman, and child is killed by an American-made weapon on the streets of America. 

Without much thought, we seem to take an unseemly pride in the number of Islamists we kill by drone in the Middle East; in how we tacitly approve the 10:1 ratio of Palestinians killed by American-backed Israelis; and celebrate Russians killed by American-made Heimers and howitzers, and soon, our own cluster bombs in Ukraine. 

But, what of the karma, balance? Death is demanding; life is on call. A notch in our belt in Bakhmut may be answered by a corresponding notch from the southside of Chicago.

I wondered about this, even as the news flashed of a man in Queens, New York who randomly shot people - apparently for fun - from the seat of his scooter. Where does such wantonness come from? How is it reckoned?

President Clinton, toward the end of his second term, ordered a missile strike on a large pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. (He had erroneously believed that terrorist activities were being planned there.) Fortunately, he did not kill 3,000 people, which would have equalled the number of Americans killed a year later on 9/11. He did, however, destroy an economic sector that, to the Sudanese, may very well have been equal to America losing the Twin Towers. Though they determined that no terrorist activity was transpiring at that Sudanese plant, I doubt that "Big Bill" said so much as a "sorry."

Think of it this way: East calamity we foster will reverberate back upon us with an equal force, kind of like Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." So, a death there could mean a death here? Sounds weird; even far-fetched. But, impossible? I think not. Shakespeare said, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." That opens us up to endless possibilities.

In 2022, there were 647 mass shootings in the United States; there are 369 (as of July 10) this year. That is thousands of deaths, and tens of thousands of wounded each year in America, or likely, about the same as the number of mean, women, and children killed and wounded each year in our interventions overseas. Coincidence? Or, is something metaphysical at work? Just thinking. There are more things in Heaven and Earth...

The "Justice Putsch"

Crediting Trump for putting three conservative judges on the Supreme Court, is like giving Neil Armstrong the credit for putting a man on the moon,.

Wernher von Braun, the German engineer who designed Hitler's V-1 rockets, came to the U.S. at the end of World War II and built the Saturn V rocket that put America on the moon. Likewise, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell engineered the "Justice Putsch" by stealing a judge from President Obama, and another from Biden, and giving them both to Trump. The middle justice happened to be ripe for the picking, and President Trump filled the three vacancies like any other good Republican would have done given the same bounty.  

McConnell had dared to refuse Obama's pick, Merrick Garland, a judicial hearing, claiming it was too close to the 2016 presidential election, despite that election being over a year away. Five years later, he reversed his shady reasoning, and quickly hand over to Trump the seat left vacant by the death of /Ruth Bader Ginsburg only months before Trump's term ended in 2020.  It was political hardball, and Mitch had executed a once-in-a-lifetime triple play.

That is how Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Affirmative Action, and Student Loan Forgiveness, etc., etc. President Trump ran the bell, but plaudits, such as they are, go to Mitch McConnell's evil genius.  

*******

Puck Up! 

Tennessee State University, a Historically Black College (HBCU), will be the first of its kind to start a hockey program. Good. African-American men cannot sing, cannot fight, and cannot play baseball anymore. Why not try hockey. 

If women can go to-to-toe in the octagon, pole vault in the Olympics, and throw hammers, the brothers ought to be able to strap on skates, and take it to the ice. Puck up! 

Joe, and Me

Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 left Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, in a state of shock. Yevgeny Prigozhin's invasion this past week did the same for Russian president, Vladimir Putin. 

Stalin, who had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler tow years earlier, hid out at his dacha for eight days while German troops overran Russian defenses. Member of the Soviet Politburo left to run the government in Stalin's absence, found him at his home looking haggard, and confused.  Initially, Stalin though they had come to arrest him, ostensibly for the dereliction of duty. Rather, his foreign minister, Molotov, simply said to him, "Get up. We need you." only than did Stalin rouse himself, and go toe-to-toe with Hitler for the next four years. 

Putin's ally, Prigozhin, left the Ukrainian battlefield on June 22, 2023, crossed over into Russia, took Rostov-on-Don, and then Marched on Moscow. Putin, who fancies himself a latter-day Joe Stalin, went dark for two and a half days. Certainly, he knows about the stain of Stalin's abdication. Funny that he would repeat it, nonetheless. And, he still seems unable to shake it. Three days after finally making an appearance, he still looks "dear-in-the-headlights" scared. 

In the end, Hitler killed over 20 million Russians in the fight on the Eastern Front, yet Stalin prevailed. Despite being nearly as cruel a human as Hitler, himself, Joe Stalin will go down as the man who brought Hitler's unmatched reign of horror to an end. Putin will not end nearly as well as Joe. 

Tell It Like It Is

You ever referee a ballgame? Doesn't matter what kind - baseball, football, basketball. Something comes over many people when placed in those positions - call it a "strong sense of obligation." I've done it. And, once there, I immediately lose all sense of personal attachments. All that matters is getting the calls right. 

Being a news person should be like that: Once charged with such an office, that powerful sense of obligation should take over. Yet, CNN, FOX, and MSNBC, among others, seem perfectly comfortable with shading the truth in directions most palatable to their viewers. That is not news; it is entertainment. 

On Monday, June 5, Anne Navarro, co-host of "The View," in an apparent effort to please her audience, purposefully served up a misleading version of Biden's Saturday fall while exiting the stage at a graduation ceremony. "He fell," she said, "and then got right back up..." No, Anna, he did not. Biden fell. When he braced his hands against the stage in an effort to push himself back up, he faltered again. Biden's handlers had to bodily lift him up from off the floor. It would have been better had Anna told us the truth, especially since most people had already seen the same footage, which had been repeatedly aired on a number of stations throughout the weekend.

There was no shame in Biden's fall, nor any shame in his struggles to regain his fee. It was simply a human moment. The shame occurred when a person entrusted with informing the public re-orders events with a version that would not likely suit her viewership. If you cannot relate fundamental truths that we commoners have already witnessed, how can you be trusted to inform upon more complicated matters that we have had no access to? 

Detaching myself from people and their emotions while working a game, made me a better referee, a better umpire. The failure to detach themselves from people who expect their biases to be satisfied, render many in the media unfit to call balls and strikes. Therein lies the gulf that exists between the media and the people who depend upon them.  

Sickenings

Sickening. Every day, 120 Americans lose their lives to gun violence: another 200 are wound... every day. Sickening. So far this year, there has been 15,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S.  During this same five-month period, only 31 British citizens have died from guns. 

although the United States modeled its constitution after Britain's own constitution, when it comes to guns, the two countries, recently, have taken divergent paths. After two mass shootings in Britain - one in 1987, the other in 1996 - Britain's Conservative government instituted a near total ban of automatic and semi-automatic weapons. 

People in the U.S. will be quick to cry: "We have a constitutional right to carry guns., The Brits don't." that Second Amendment right to carry guns that Americans so vociferously defend was written in 1787. It gave American citizens the right to own a musket. That is all. Our brilliant "fore"fathers should have had the "fore"sight to realize that just as weapons technology advanced from the bow and arrow to musket, one day it would advance from muskets to AR-15s. They did not look ahead. I wound, when AR-15 technology advances to "phasers", will we boast of our right to carry them, as well? Sickening. 

To the Precipice: Are We There Yet?

The other day, while riding a subway train, Jordan Neely, a homeless man, cried out, "I'm tired of being hungry... I have nothing to live for." Daniel Penny, an ex-Marine riding on that same New York City train, took it upon himself to put Neely in a choke-hold, and end his life, even as the train hurtled on to its next stop. It was a microcosm of the American experience imploding. Are we there yet? 

Shooting upon shootings, public chokings: We are headed for the cliff. In a civilized society, average American citizens have been given the green light to kill other citizens if they feel threatened by them. In a country so reckless, how long before our children expect the right, themselves, to "stand their ground," and shoot? they live under the threat of physical violence as much, if not more, than adults. Must they continue to ball up their little fists and settle things the old-fashioned way? 

We humans are at the top of the food chain.,. by far! Yet, we feel we need 400 million guns - the estimated number of guns circulating amongst the American populace - to cement our standing. If we were cows chewing our cuds, perhaps a sidearm would help. But, compared to all other earthlings, we are already super-beings. And, it is not guns that make us so; it is our minds. Guns only dumb us down - convince us to settle for for being bestial by flashing our teeth and our claws instead of our intelligence, and our humanity. 

Guns are so dumb. And, we are approaching the cliff... or, are we there yet? 

Quartered Potpourri

The NAACP has issued a traveler's advisory for African-Americans in Florida, even going so far as to discourage them from settling there. These warnings are prompted, they claim, by Governor DeSantis' "aggressive efforts to erase black history." 

First: NAACP, how about joining the 21st century. No more of this National Association for the Advancement of "Colored People." Change your name to NAAPC, for the advancement of people of color. Then, shove your traveler's advisory. You're fomenting fear. People of color should be encouraged to travel anywhere they damn well please. This entire country is their country, too.  

*******

In the "Land of 400 million firearms," Memphis Grizzlies phenom, Ja Morant, flashes a pistol on a home video, and the NBA suspends him... to protect its image. Image? This is the same NBA that nestles itself in China's back pocket - the same China that stifles free speech and forces its minority Uighura into re-education camps to teach them how not to be Uighura. 

Stay warm, Commissioner Silver, and be careful you are not suspended... for flashing your billions.

*******

Looking at the 89-year-old Diane Feinstein clinging to power - being pushed through the halls of the Senate in a wheelchair - reminds us of what an 84-year-old Biden might look like halfway through a second term as president.

*******

Queen Elizabeth's funeral cost the citizens of the United Kingdom 200 million dollars. What a waste. That is why I insist: Bury me in a pine box. 

The People and Their Government: A Shaky Alliance

Twenty-one-year-old Jack Texeira is in deep doo-doo for sharing with us innocents the truth. How could he? The man is despicable. He must have known that only America’s finest can handle the truth. Now, we are traumatized for life. Fie on you, Mr. Texeira!

Pardon my sarcasm, but… really? Recently, Pete Hegaeth, co-host of “Fox and Friends,” spoke in support of secretive government: “People are doing dark, dirty work on our behalf,” he said, “that we know nothing about, and do not want to know about.” And, we, the American people, are supposed to be comfortable with that - feel obliged toward people who do “dark and dirty” things… for our good? How about we say to them, “No, thanks.”

 

President George W. Bush led us into the Iraq War, for our own good, where over 4000 young Americans were killed, and many more were left without arms, legs, and recognizable faces; where a hundred thousand Iraqis were killed over weapons of mass destruction that never existed. People who leak truths might have exposed Bush Administration lies before so many people were slaughtered.

 

It is not just America. All nations – all government – it appears, lies unapologetically to their citizens. To further make themselves indispensable, they will create bogeymen for us to fear, tht they then must slay to keep us safe.

 

The leaker, Bradley Manning, among other truths, exposed the number of Iraqi civilians killed by American troops in Iraq, and revealed the extent of U.S. abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Edward Snowden revealed how many millions of Americans were being spied upon by the U.S. government. Jack Texeira has exposed truths the Biden Administration does not want us to know about the Ukraine War, which American taxpayers are upwards of $100 billion deep into subsidizing. And, don’t forget Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the “Pentagon Papers,” famously contradicting U.S. assertions that we were winning the Vietnam War, when we clearly were not. And, then there is Julian Assange, who exposed everybody; the Russians, the Saudis, the Germans, the Brits, etc., etc.; and yes, the Americans. He shined a great light so that all the world’s citizens could bemoan his very existence.

 

There is a heroic quality about these people who render these truths at such great risks. Might they be seen as latter-day knights – not perfectly chivalrous, (then neither were the knights of old), but willing to stand in the breach to advance a cause nobler than themselves?

 

The media speaks of these “leaks” as though they were some awful contagion. These leaks are unassailable droplets of truths we may not have known in our lifetimes, except for people who told us the truth now.

 

CNN’s Smerconish says, “This young man (Texeira) compromised national security. He needs to be punished harshly.” (George W. Bush “compromised national security” when he turned Iraq, a bulwark against America’s enemy, Iran, into an ally of that nation. No one is punishing him.)

Biden has pooh-poohed Texeira’s disclosure – said of his leaks: “Nothing contemporaneous here.” Biden’s critics pooh-pooh his pooh-poohing, calling him, “…either out of touch, or dishonest with the American people.” Of course, these leaks are contemporaneous. All exposed lies are contemporaneous because they reveal the truth nature of our present-day relationships.

 

The foundation of all good relationships is trust. Without trust, we manage shaky alliances, at best. More and more, that has become the plight of relationships between the world’s governments, and their people.

 

Sunlight is still a great disinfectant, and transparency democracies’ ideal. If that is not enough, the hear this: Nothing rattles relationships like lies, and nothing is so profound as the moment when truth displaces them. 

Where Are Your Manners?

We all possess the same emotions and have experienced these emotions since the beginning of time – anger, joy, frustration, etc. It may be fair to say that of all our emotions, throughout the millennia, fear has been the most prevalent.

FDR once told Americans, “All we have to fear is fear itself.” Americans seem to have taken his words the wrong way. “Fear” is perhaps the driving force behind Americans’ obsession with guns. Yet, we fear nothing so much as we fear guns in the hands of fellow Americans. What are we doing?

 

In the wake of the school shooting in Nashville, where three nine-year-olds were murdered, along with three adults, I thought about our manners. Japan has a virtual gun-free society, and by that token, know nothing of the 40,000-plus gun deaths gun-happy America suffers annually. They also have good manners, something upon which America has lost its grip.

 

Good manners are a simple proposition, but absolutely essential to a peaceful society. We take for granted the good manners of the Japanese people – imagine it being ingrained into their national psyche, and thus easily achieved. Then, what is ingrained in ours – aggression, violence, vanity? We certainly do not make a big deal out of manners – not in our communities, perhaps neither in our homes. Then, where do we expect our children to learn that essential nature? The history books?

 

The Japanese have found – perhaps knew all along – that they do not need guns, having learned early on that the best defense against ill-mannered people is forbearance and a dose of humility. Having guns, rather than alleviating our fears, probably exacerbates them. We are much more likely to grow monsters in a subconscious effort to justify our guns, and then upgrade to more lethal weapons as our self-importance grows.

 

Guns have one purpose: to kill. We need one another much more than we need one another dead. Bad manners stand in our way. They are the spawning grounds from which springs the violence, rape, theft, and other such manifestations we fear most. How deeply endemic is this malignancy in America? Can we reverse it? Perhaps we have gone too far – dug a hole so deep we could not heave our guns out if we wanted to.

 

There will be many more shootings in America because that is where the guns are, and guns have a stupid way of making people and their manners obsolete. They have a gravity about them – a gravity all of their own, And, as our fingers steadily gravitate toward these guns, we become Tolkien’s Golem, and they become our “Precious.” 

Tin Man, JK Rowlings, and the Love of the Game

President Joe Biden may walk like the Tin Man of "The Wizard of Oz", but lately he has been on a bit of a roll. That ten-hour train ride from Poland to the embattled Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was a master stroke. Then, unfortunately, he got off the train and began to walk, such as it was, down Kyiv's red carpet. That same man wants to run for re-election in 2024.

Look, I loved my father. But, if he had said to me, at the age of 82, that he was thinking about running for President, I would have flat out said to him, "I'm not voting for you." I wouldn't vote for any 82-year-old to run for anything unless 82-year-olds were all that were left.

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J.K. Rowlings. She is the British author, who hit the mother lode with her creation of the Harry Potter Chronicles. 

Recently, she offered up her feelings regarding transgender identity:  "If you were born a man," she said, "then, you are not a woman." One of her fans responded: "Your legacy would have been one of the most beloved in history had you not said that." J.K.'s response: "Legacy? How pompous is that? I don't care about legacy."  

What a woman. She prefers being genuine to being loved by people who prefer she be a phony. 

J.K. did it again. She hit the mother lode.  

*******

With all the hand-wringing in the National Basketball Association over load-managing - the proclivity of star players to sit out regular season games - a glimpse of a Major League Baseball player from the 50s and 60s might help give some perspective:  

Ernie Banks, Hall of Fame shortstop for the Chicago Cubs, after playing a nine-inning game in the early afternoon would often declare, "Let's play two." 

Love of the game. That's what the NBA needs most from its stars. Simply, love of the game. 

A Potpourri of Shorties

U.S. Representative, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, is under fire for referring to Israel as an "apartheid regime." She is not the first prominent American to tell the truth about Israel. Former president Jimmy Carter wrote a book, "Peace, Not Apartheid", detailing the systematic abuses of the Israeli government - the primary beneficiary of American foreign aid - against the Palestinian people. What the Israelis inflict upon the Palestinians today is kith and kin to the systemic apartheid the South African regime once heaped upon its black citizens. And, no one, besides her, President Carter, and a few others in America seem to care. 

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Al Sharpton, at Tyre Nichol's funeral, called Nichol's family attorney, Ben Crump, "America's black attorney general." Utter hogwash. Attorney Crump is the quickest "ambulance chaser" in America, today. That's all. Gloria "Me, Too" Alred is the second quickest.  

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Headline: "CHATGPT passes U.S. Medical Licensing Exam." That is artificial intelligence - Generative Pre-trainer Transformer - a computer program that can spit out professional papers, expert prose, poems, songs, etc., at the push of a button, and attribute the writing to any Tom, Dick or Harry you please. It is a time-saver, a money-saver, (indeed, some medical folk say, "a lifesaver"), and it will absolutely put some writers out of work. 

For writers who have committed their lives to their craft, CHATGPT is more formidable than a dragon. Now, I know how John Henry must have felt when he heard about that "bleeping" steel-driving machine.

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There is a terrible civil war going on in Myanmar, courtesy of a military junta that has replaced the country's democratically-elected leaders in a coup. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians are being killed; over a million of its citizens have been driven out of their homes into the cold. Almost no one knows about this war. Why is that? Perhaps because the people are not white; perhaps because these brown-skinned Burmese do not look like Ukrainians.  

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Speaking of guns: Ask yourself, if given the chance to live in a community where everyone has a gun or a community where no one has a gun, which community would you choose? Your answer is America's answer to 400 million guns on its streets.  

The "Load Managers"

The National Basketball Association has a problem. many of its players have no respect for its regular season. They would rather "sit out" games - call it "load managing" - while basking in their pre-playoff auras. Poor Commissioner Silver does not know how to address this vainglorious sloth. (Begging the players to "suit up" - "for the fans, the fans" - does not work.)

Try this commissioner: Chang the way you appraise their regular season performances. Currently, the scoring title goes to the man who averaged the most points per game over the regular season. He can play in as few as 65 games of an 82-game schedule and still be crowned scoring champion, despite someone who has played in every game and has out-scored him by hundreds of points. Simply award the scoring title to the player who scores the most points. That way, these prima donnas will have to play in as many of the scheduled games as possible to achieve the honors they crave. 

The same goes for rebounds, assists, blocked shots, etc., just like homerun and RBI champions in baseball, and touchdown and yardage leaders in football. For the biggest awards - Most Valuable Player, and Defensive Player of the Year - base their very consideration for such awards upon their availability to play. Insist that players play 90% of the schedule or a minimum of 73 games for any chance at MVP. That way, they will not sit around "load managing." Rather, they will play in every game they possibly can, and will save those precious eight games over the minimum for when they really need a day off. 

Though they are men, these NBA players cannot be trusted to honor the game they profess to love. The work ethic that saw Michael Jordan, and many greats before him, play every scheduled game no longer exists. 

Time to revive that ethic, Adam Silver, even if it means leading your pampered stars to center court like one would lead thoroughbreds to the starting gate. Put honor back in the game... for the fans, for the fans. 

Get the Bag

There is not a single African-American star in all of Major League Baseball. That has not happened since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. What has happened to us? We can't sing, we can't fight, we can't play baseball anymore. 

Coming up in the 50s, baseball, and boxing were all there was in sports. There was no football or basketball to speak of. Boys in the black community dreamed of being the next Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Joe Louis, and Sugar Ray Robinson, and we acted like it. We played baseball every day after school and sparred with one another between innings. They were skills that could only be honed out of the dust and dirt of boyhood. From our generation came the likes of Ricky Henderson, Joe Morgan, George Foreman, and Muhammed Ali. When boys dream, they become.

Followed a generation that produced Griffey, Bonds, Frank "The Big Hurt" Thomas; and fighters like Evander Holyfield, and the iconic Mike Tyson. Came titans out of football and basketball, as well. And music: Much of what we call "Rock 'n Roll" today was derived from white folks speeding up the tempo of the rhythm and blues blacks sang in the 50s and 60s. And, how do we quantify black folks' gift of jazz - that purely American art form that blew the doors off of musical expression? Man, we were something. We were beautiful. We were chosen. 

Then, almost suddenly, the door closed. How are we special, now? We are good at selling drugs, forming flash mobs, looting, and shooting people from moving vehicles. (Nobody does it better.) We are unparalleled in our ability to write rap songs about drug dealing, flash mobs, and drive-bys. And, when all else fails, we can always revert to the old standby: Act a damn fool.  

It would be wishful thinking to say we are at a crossroads; we are not. We passed that place decades ago, when we chose the easy way out - when we chose instant power in guns, and instant fortune in drugs. What comes quickly, comes without a soul.

African-America has become a nightmare - self-hating black men with little respect for life, especially black life. count the dead in Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc., etc., etc. We have become champions of death... the death of a great community. 

How could our run have been so brief - less than a hundred years? Now, all they talk about is "the bag." "Get the bag."  I suppose that means money. Hmmph. "The bag" will no more save us than thirty pieces of silver saved Judas. 

BRITNEY!

We are all glad that Britney is free. She seems to be a very sweet lady who truly meant no one any harm. (She was caught with less than a gram of cannabis oil. Nine years in a Russian penal colony for that?) 

It is interesting, however, that we celebrate ourselves for freeing one American from a Russian prison while steadfastly holding two million Americans in bondage, ourselves. There are eight million people being held in prisons worldwide. America, which comprises only 7% of all Earth's people, commands 25% of its prisoners.  

Why is America celebrating? How bad does America truly feel about imprisoned Americans? It reminds me of the Russian leader, Josef Stalin, who infamously said, "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic."

Is that how America truly feels about its two million imprisoned men and women, and their families? It would seem so.  

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The Merchant of Death is Free

Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer dubbed "The Merchant of Death," has been traded back to Russia for American basketballer, Britney Griner. He was serving 26 years for selling weapons to various nefarious groups involved in conflicts worldwide. In other words, he sold arms to bad guys. 

Americans, as much as anyone, must know that one man's "bad guy" is another man's "hero." We helped arm Afghanistan's Mujahadeen in their war with Russia, and called them "freedom fighters." Twenty years later, we had to fight those same Afghanis. Then, we called them "bad guys." 

Besides, "Merchant of Death"? Really? America deals more arms worldwide than any other entity on Earth. (And, our weapons are the best, i.e., the deadliest.) That must make us "Death's Emperor."