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Clearly…for me on my okcthunderground.com blog…Lon Kruger’s No. 9 ranked surging Sooners are the basketball lead story as this basketball season heads into late February. The Sooners have won six of their last seven games with five of those wins coming against nationally ranked teams and the lone loss a one possession loss at ranked Texas Tech.

I have the Sooners on my preliminary bracket sheet as a Sweet Sixteen team. Depending on where the Sooners are placed in the tournament field in relation to Baylor and Gonzaga.. the Sooners could be a be a legit threat to make the Elite 8….and perhaps beyond.

OU is deep. They are multifaceted in that they can play small with three guards or they go with a big lineup with Kuath, Manek or Victor O. Victor O is a rebounding stud if you haven’t seen OU play yet.

The Sooners are especially deep at the guard position with Austin Reeves, Elijah Harkless, Moj Gibson, Olandis Williams and with true frosh 3 pt bomber Trey Phipps.. if that need ever occurs beyond the top ten rotational players.

The Sooners make free throws as well. Guard play, team defense, and free throw efficency are all winning ingredients for a team to make a deep run in March Madness.

Plus, the Sooners have a Hall of Fame coach in Lon Kruger who instead of getting older seems to be getting better with coaching age.

Again…I laugh at the notion Sam Presti has a head coach with the Thunder who has never been a head coach at either the NBA or Power 5 level of basketball coaching. G League—yes…and it appears that is what the Oklahoma City Thunder are for the time being…a glorified G League franchise like the Triple AAA Dodgers in Bricktown who develop players and then disperse them around Major League Baseball depending on the Dodger’s current needs.

But the difference is…the big boy Dodgers just won the world championship and are contenders every season whereas the Thunder haven’t won a first round playoff series since Kevin Durant escaped from the land of Donald Trump birtherism nut jobs.

BTW…Andre Roberson just signed a non-guaranteed deal with the Brooklyn Nets and has hooked up with former Thunder stars Kevin Durant and James Harden. Good for Andre. I hope his health will allow him to be a contributor. You’d have had one helluva a basketball team in Oklahoma City if……………. .

The Sooners host Texas tomorrow at 5:00pm in the second game of this season’s Red River Rivalry. OU won the first game in Texas without the Sooners most clutch finisher Austin Reeves and versatile wingman Olandis Williams. This is a big game for OU because if they get past this game with another win they have Baylor still coming bak to Norman which was postponed due to Baylor’s Covid issues.

If you haven’t seen the Sooners with EJ Harkless and Moj Gibson…you should take the time because the Sooners are a different basketball team with them in the lineup.

Keep this in mind, due to the NCAA’s ruling on Covid…every single starter on this OU team, much ilke the Iowa State football team, can come back and play again next season in Norman.

The NCAA for next season has already expanded scholarship limits to fifteen and Coach Kruger has already signed another nice guard and another nice foward. So– in essence OU’s roster is already full for next season. Another thing–if one of the seniors do leave…Coach Kruger has proved himself especically skilled in using the transfer portal to bring skilled players to Norman.. much like Billy Tubbs used to do in his hay days with bringing nationally elite jucos to OU.

What I’m saying is the basketball future at OU looks very bright right now and the Thunder need to get their ass in gear and come out of this summer’s NBA draft with something other than a project from Serbia if they want to sell tickets.

Mike Boynton’s No. 23rd ranked Cowboys host Iowa State at a special 3:00 pm start today due to the weather. Iowa State has some 3 pt bombers and should make this a somewhat entertaining win for Cade and Co.

I’m bumping the Thunder tonight with Portland in town because PBS has a special on black music in America and its impact on the country…and I still have to finish Frank Sinatra Week no less.

I’ll try to watch some of the Thunder game on the replay, but in all honesty the Thunder are a fifth tier story currently and I think its good we have interns at the Daily Thunder covering the team like the school newpapers do in Norman and Stillwater.

More snow coming this afternoon…stay warm and help others get through this historical weather event which has driven short term natural gas prices off the charts in Oklahoma and Texas. If Boone were only still living he’d have a big smile on his face today and could maybe buy out Mike Gundy’s contract feeling no angst.

On with the music as more snow rolls into Oklahoma.

1 (8) Roy Orbison – Oh, Pretty Woman (from Black & White Night) – YouTube

It’s -8 degrees at the Deer Creek Weather Station at 10:00pm. I’m going to do an all-nighter because no way in hell I’m setting foot outside tomorrow until at least 1:00pm. No way..no how.

This is an epic music video….just epic.

2 ‘I Was Meant For You’ by Jewel

(8) Jewel “You Were Meant For Me” (1996) – YouTube

3 ‘Turning Me On’ by Blake Shelton

4 ‘Ain’t Goin’ Down Till The Sun Comes Up’ by Garth Brooks

5 ‘Dream Baby’ by Roy Orbison and Friend

I’m done. Heading to the bed by the fireplace with the lab. Stay clear of artic glaciers tomorrow. Be safe.

Frank Sinatra in his time on this earth was in essence almost for a century the alpha figure of American pop culture. Not only with his music, but he won Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1954 for From Here to Eternity and was nominated for Best Actor in 1956 for the film The Man With the Golden Arm.

Imagine if you will that Sinatra was to entertainment what Michael, Kobe, and LeBron combined have been to basketball just for half a century.

His impact on music has been eternal even after his death in 1998. Guys like me never stopped listening to his music, instead we go to concerts with Tony Bennett and Michael Buble singing his songs.

Do we consider Elvis or Michael Jackson or the Beatles timeless?
I would say the Beatles yes for certain, but I’m not sure I can go all the way there with Elvis and Michael Jackson.

First thing tomorrow when its -10 degrees again…I’m going to post a ten minute capsule of the movie. I know it’s Oklahoma, but if you can waste your time watching the Tiger King…surely you can watch the Frank Sinatra docu film.

Frank Sinatra certainly wasn’t perfect. Like all of us … he did some things he probably wished he shouldn’/t have done. You could almost define part of his legacy as tragic. But the music lives on in all of us in multiple American generations.

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It went -12 at the Deer Creek Weather Station before sunrise to set an all-time low out here since I’ve been recording weather stats. At 2:00pm today we crested to a balmy +1.

Out here on our five acre mini ranch-wildlife refuge which is wooded and runs parallel to Deer Creek itself…it’s like nirvana as far as the wildlife.

Deer, raccon, fox, coyote, rabbits, squirrels, hawks, dove, owls, woodpeckers, roadrunners…just magificent. Bob used to come out here after really bad days of practicing law to smoke a cigar and just watch the wildlife and birds.

I’d love to have a black bear if these frilly Edmond types would allow a change to the covenants.

We even have a 200lb black mountain lion which from time to time is spotted in the vicinity. Pauli the diva black lab and I have twice at dusk spotted this big cat. The hair on Pauli’s back literally goes berserk and it took all I had each time to hold her back from pursuing this mountain lion we’ve named Elsa. We have no idea if it’s a male or female, but we’ve named it Elsa from Born Free.

But to the point…we’ve adopted these four incredible male wild turkeys who’ve made our property their home so to speak for over fifteen years now. They’ve become like pets to us. Pauli loves on them and amazingly plays with them now and again. She won’t do that with dogs. She bares her alpha fangs to the dogs around her just to estbalish turf dominance just like I did on the Daily Thunder messageboard before I got banned for life. Teacher and the student, know what I mean? We’ve actually named the four males…Little Jerry Seinfeld, Little Kenrick Perkins, Little Baker Mayfield, and Little Mike Gundy.

Occassionaly their four female friends join them, but they’re extremely aloof and I haven’t named them.

Little Jerry Seinfeld is the brightest. Little Kendrick Perkins is the slowest. Little Baker Mayfield is the one who keeps grabbing his crotch with one of his wings…and Little Mike Gundy is the one wearing the special turkey sweater I bought for him with 1-15 on the front. He always gets his ass whipped when they get into the mating season rituals.

I almost brought them in last night, but held back given my wife might have had a problem with that if she woke up before I put them back out. That would be a scene worse than death itself.

They look okay this afternoon and I think or hope last night was the coldest temps we’re going to experience through this historic weather event which was obviously a result of Trump’s flagrant abuse of climate policy per pulling put of the Paris Accord. Just kidding on that, but you have to hope the Trump domestic terrorists out here in Deer Creek and Edmond have a sense of humor and can take a little joke here and there.

Be safe and do the right thing to help others in need get through this.

It’s friggin’ -4 degrees with a pretty tough wind at the Deer Creek Weather Station. I’m literally having to drag Pauli off her bed in front of the fireplace to go oustide and take care of her business.

The windchill is brutal. Pray for those who have to work outside during the week….and pray for those amongst us who are homeless in need of shelter. I’m an outdoors person and this is like nothing I’ve experienced in Oklahoma in my life.

What a horrible six month experience for trees, shrubs and plants as this weather follows the historic ice storm we just experienced in late October.

My son actually played in an outdoor hockey tournament in Durango, Colorado this week-end and it was 45 degrees on Saturday and mid twenties yesterday. Not too bad. No goalies. His team went 3-2 and lost one game by a 25-18 count to a team which had all minor league hockey players.

Stay inside with your animals and read or listen to music would be my advice. Make a donation to those who help the homeless. Be kind to those who need help.

I learned quite a bit about Frank Sinatra watching the docu movie. For instance…he was married five times. His first and final wives were not famous, but his second wife was Eva Gardner, his third wife was Lauren Bacall, and his fourth wife was the very young Mia Farrow.

My take was that Frank’s eternal love was Eva Gardner and he never got over the fact she somewhat blew him off in ending their short marriage.

I also learned that Frank’s favorite composer during his career was Nelson Riddle and they worked together on close to a hunderd different songs over the years.

His politics were very interesting and I’ll talk about that on another song.

I know this is Oklahoma and you’re breathlessly waiting for Tiger King II which features a Mike Gundy cameo appearance singing with Joe Exotic…but maybe you’ll like this docu movie as a holdover option.

Stay warm, eat Italian, and drink some great wine then follow it with some warm coffee. Take care.

Arrivederci.

I watched some of this game in between commericals on the No. 1 rated CNN which has pummeled Fox Fake News of late as they started their Stanley Tucci: In Search of Italy series which I thought was outstanding. Going to spend a vaction in Italy is on my Bucket List so in retrospect I honestly don’t give a shit about the Thunder’s season of tanking just right now.

I’m not into losing when you don’t have to be losing.

I mean…this is so stupid. The whole Sam Presti thing was his deal with SUSTAINABILITY and there’s no reason for Oklahoma City to even be tanking if they’d kept Jerami Grant, Sabonis, and Oladipo from the Serge Ibaka trade haul.

I’m not in any way dissing these current Thunder players. I’ve even on here professed my basketball love for Dort, Kenrich, and Mikey Muscala….but this is just stupid.

Are Shai and Maledon even really hurt or is this more Thunder mystery bullshit?

If you gave me two free tickets to the Thunder right now versus me paying for tickets to go watch Lon Kruger’s trending Sooners…I’d pay to go see the Sooners and pass on the free Thunder tickets.

What is this bullshit? Is there an official statement on SGA and Maledon as to when they might return? Has Little Nick Gallo relayed this world secret to the public and I missed it because I haven’t really been paying attention?

I could care less about George Hill because he’s gone at the trade deadline.

It’s too much to accept the tanking and not be able to see two of the key parts of the alleged rebuild sitting unless they have tested positive for Covid or have serious injuries.

From what I saw of this game former NC Tar Heel Justin Jackson would be my player of the game. I saw him play for Roy Williams in college and it’s good to see him back on track in pursuit of an NBA career.

Even though I have a domain named okcthunderground.com…the Thunder are a fourth tier storyline right now sports wise on my blog: I’d go… 1 OU Sooners hoops, 2 Cade and O State, 3 Stanley Tucci’s In Search of Italy…then 4 the ‘sustaining’ tanking OKC Thunder…maybe 5 the Dallas Stars and their streaking power play. The Stars made it to the Stanley Cup Finals last season…. just saying.

And of course…Lincoln Riley might have the most talented roster at OU since Coach Stoops won his national championship. I’ll do spring football if these guys can’t get their heads right and win the tanking battle leading into the NBA draft.

The lack of focus concerns me.

The Thunder can’t even lose when they’re supposed to lose. Stanley Tucci could grow on me. He’s not Anthony Bourdain..that’s for certain, but who could be?

I wonder if they have Waffle Houses in Italy?

You have not lived until you’ve been at the Waffle House on Memorial Road in Oklahoma City at 2:00am on the same night Floyd Merriweather beat Conor McGregor’s ass…and you’re the only white guy inside the jammed pack building… at the counter no less. It was one of the ten best sports nights of my life. On that same night we saw Clayton Kershaw pitch for the OKC Dodgers on a rehab assignment.

If John McCain were still living he would have been the eighth GOP senator to vote for conviction on Saturday. Not a doubt in my mind.

Our two U.S Senators from Oklahoma…James Lankford and Jim Inhofe were nowhere to be scene as far as exhibiting any courage whatsover.

As in none.

Here’s what is really sad about this…Jim Inhofe was a John Kasich supporter during the 2016 GOP primaries, while James Lankford, the quintessential Heritgage Foundation type, was either a Little Marco Rubio or Low Energy Jeb Bush supporter. But he was never a Donald Trump guy.

So here it is …. the Dems do all the heavy lifting and these two go silent in the night without a whimper after Lankford gives himself cover with all his drama after the Trump directed riot which has to date resulted with seven innocent human beings losing their lives.

I thought the GOP per their stance on pro-life would be the political party which you know might value a human life. Seems to me a very substantial contradiction of philosophy.

Anyway… as an American I want to say thank you to Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse, Mitt Romney, Bill Cassidy, Pat Toomey, and Richard Burr.

Thank you for doing the right thing while putting your country in front of your political career… because as Mitt Romney already knows—you will be receiving some heavy heat from your constituents for pretty much however long you remain active in politics.

History in the end will say all that needs to be said about these political cowards.

How do you think history would have treated Bush 41-then RNC Chair, Barry Goldwater, and Howard Baker if they’d rolled over like common street whores to Richard Nixon instead of removing him from office?

That was rhetorical. Answer it to yourself as you see fit.

It’s Valentine’s Day and with this brutal weather in Oklahoma …I can’t imagine too many people getting out later today in the midst of this historic weather event.

So it’s perfect timing for the Frank Sinatra Music-Fest we’re having this week-end. But before I get started today…I just had to post this for Valentine’s Day. Such a beautiful arrangement.

Open a bottle of wine, bring the dogs and wild turkeys in by the fireplace…and get comfortable since we have no football for seven months.

Now…let’s get on with it.

Jaime Herrera Beutler shares her opinion on Trump – YouTube

Lots of Monday morning quarterbacking going on this morning in regards to the Senate trial which wasn’t a real trial per the Senate’s own pre-trial rules.

As an honors graduate of the Bob Jackson School of Law …I thought the House lawyers were okay. Nothing special though. I thought their approach with the GOP Senators was too congenial. It can’t always be rainbows and butterflies with the Dems. Sometimes you have to crawl through the mud to convict the slime. I would have gone the other route and been confrontational with the GOP Senators since I was going to lose anyway. This was an unwinnable case from the moment the jurisdiction vote went 55-45. Clarence Darrow wasn’t going to win this case in this United States Senate chamber. No way–no how.

But even doing it the Al Pacino-Scent of a Woman way the House lawyers may have lost the seven courageous GOP senators they eventually won over. So I don’t think being in your face would have garnered a conviction as well.

As a first day Bob Jackson Law School student you learn these three things about being a criminal defense trial lawyer…1 When the facts are on your side…you pound the facts. 2 When the law is on your side … you pound the law. 3 When neither the facts or the law are on your side… you pound the table, object to everything, and create confusion within the jury box.

I mean…the House lawyers didn’t really do this, but they did connect the dots beyond a reasonable doubt. And give the personal injury lawyer who Trump added to his legal team some credit…he was good with Rule No. 3. He went to war for his client and THAT’S EXACTLY what a capable defense trial lawyer is supposed to do. Namely…go to war for his/her client. Fuck the truth-fuck the facts-fuck the law. Excuse the language, but that’s how lawyers talk at times.

YOU GO TO GODDAMN WAR FOR YOUR CLIENT! I can still hear his voice booming in my ear.

I mean, let’s be clear here. This is completely on the GOP for how this turned out. It’s on Mike Pence for remaining silent. It’s on Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy for not displaying any semblance of moral leadership. And it’s on Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Lindsey Graham for going to war for Donald Bin Laden in the Senate chamber instead of going to war for the American people and the truth.

This is on them and it should stain each of their legacies to certain varying degrees.

Would my father have taken this case like the personal injury lawyers did for Team Trump? No. My father picked his spots and would never have disgraced himself in this manner in a courtroom with Trump. He was literally reading the decision on Gore vs. Bush in the last days of his life shaking his head in anger. My father hated Scalia with a passion….like most defense trial lawyers did at the time..

The above video is from Jaime Herrera Butler’s townhall meeting in 2017 when she as a GOP lawmaker had to explain to her constituents her stance on Donald Trump at that time.. and why she didn’t vote for either Trump or Hillary Clinton. Pretty like I didn’t vote for Trump or Hillary Clinton as well. I wrote in John McCain… literally at the last second and my vote didn’t count for anything. That’s on me.

There is a Shakesperean or at the least Godfather II irony to what we just witnessed in the ending of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial victory in just over a year. That being— Trump was right way back when he claimed he could shoot someone in broad daylight and it wouldn’t matter to his voters or even to the Heritage Foundation types who used to own the Republican Party.

Donald Trump was right and anyone in between was wrong as to how far America has devolved both culturally and in fundamental decency in these past five years since Trump decided to become America’s first open pussy grabbing Christian evangelical draft dodging dictator.

Some will say this was a moral victory for democracy in that those in power beat the over/under of 56 senators in getting to the 57 vote plateau, but in essence what this was …was a day even darker than January 6th when Trump’s domestic terrorists invaded the nation’s capitol and left five dead in their wake of Donald Trump directed terror.

What this verdict was is a singular marker of how far America has fallen from the country of exceptionalism and aspirationalism to the tawdry base level of being Trump’s version of Jerry Springer Live from either the White House or Mar A Largo.

America has fallen so low its alleged best lawyers from the House couldn’t even get to the 60 vote plateau with all of January 6th on video for all of the world to witness ad nauseum.

Trump had a legal team headed by an insurance personal injury lawyer which seemed more fitting for Mr. Pillow’s defense team than the 45th POTUS and not only won the trial, but didn’t even have to endure one witness tesstifying in front of the country on television.

It’s beyond the realm this is the same country which won WWII, put a man on the moon, passed Civil Rights legislation, won the Cold War, and killed Bin Laden.

This trial was in a word pathetic and a historic marker of how much the Democrats and Republicans distrust each other. That in essence, they mutually allowed Donald Bin Laden to merely walk away from this with no retribution for any of his actions these past five years.

Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, the two most previously owned by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, were the main enablers of all of this—but to a ceratin extent all of America should get an assist for what this counry has become in the last five years.

Namely…a transactional whorehouse which is a disgrace to America’s greatest generation which defeated Hitler and of which Tom Brokaw wrote about in his book… The Greatest Generation.

Does anyone walking and breathing today in America think for a second what we just witnessed from Joe Biden’s Democratic Party and Mitch McConnell’s GOP— that this America is going to go get Donald Bin Laden? Let alone put him in a federal prison for his role in the deaths of those five humans, and somehow restore any sense of moral realignment in America after what we just witnessed?

Count me as one who doesn’t.

Instead, what Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham did was kick the can down the road again and in the process miss a glorious opportunity to begin the rehab process of what used to be America.

How sad.

John McCain should consider himself lucky he didn’t live long enough to be a member of this United States Senate.