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Brad Pitt finally won his Oscar playing a role which in true life was based on Burt Reynold’s stunt man Hal Needham. Pitt won his first Oscar playing this role of Cliff Booth in Quinton Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ which is Tarantino’s classic piece depicting what old Hollywood was leading up to the point of the Charles Manson murders.

I’m happy for Brad Pitt and I know like me he thinks the GOP senators are cowards, but I don’t want to put ‘that’ speech up today because the Oscars should be that one night we don’t talk about Donald Trump. It’s a night we should honor the craft of storytelling. So here’s Brad Pitt giving his speech at the SAG awards leaving off the part where James Lankford and Jim Inhofe are still in search of their better angels.

I only pay attention to seven awards. These were my seven picks.

Best Picture: I had Parasite and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in a virtual tie on my sheet. I’m okay with Parasite in that it was one helluva story told under the genre of a foreign language film with subtitles. Yet this movie grabbed me from the opening scene to the climatic ending. Great screen play.

Best Actor: I had Joaquin Phoenix for his performance in The Joker in another impact film which Bradley Cooper produced. If ever a producer picked the right actor in a film it was this time. Just a stunning performance by Phoenix in this movie. I have no idea whatsoever his rambling acceptance speech meant, but that doesn’t matter. He nailed the performance.

Best Actress: I had Charlize Theron playing Megyn Kelly in Bombshell. More should have been made of this movie which depicts the Roger Ailes era at Fox Network. The only problem with this movie is half of the country thinks the story is fake news propagated by the birthers Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.

Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. He was great and I loved his female pitt bull Brandy who won my Best Performance Dog category. The dog almost stole the show from Brad Pitt and Leonardo. Almost.

Best Supporting Actress: Nicole Kidman was very solid as well for her role as Gretchen Carlson in Bombshell. Obviously not very many people in Oklahoma watched this movie because we all know this could never have happened at Fox with Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly. Deep state fake news…and of course that’s why the network itself paid out millions upon millions to settle out of court and fired Ailes and initially took O’Reilly off the air. But still…fake news.

Best Director: Bong Joon-ho,Parasite

Best Screenplay: Bong Joon-ho, Parasite

My five favorite movies of the year went in this order: 1 Parasite, 2 Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, 3 Two Popes, 4 (1917), and 5 The Irishman.

For the most part…I think the Academy got it right…I just would have gone harder on the female performances in Bombshell.

Get your mind off Trump and enjoy a good movie now and again.

I didn’t check the Vegas spread on this game before tip, but I would have probably had Boston favored at something like -1.5 or so. Additionally, if I had ranked the top ten teams in the entire NBA I would have had Boston at No. 7 and Oklahoma City at No. 8 in my power poll.

In reality, this was a one possession game when Marcus Smart turned over Shai G. Alexander with under ten seconds left in the game.

Boston made a couple of plays at the end…Oklahoma City didn’t.

OKC will look back on this game having to live with the fact it missed a bunch of shots at the rim or near the basket. Dennis Schroder especially struggled in this regard.

I thought Steven Adams was especially disappointing only hitting 2 of 10 shots. You don’t pay $25 million for this level of performance against a Boston team which has nothing special at the center position.

Billy Donovan giving Terrance Ferguson 26 minutes was puzzling. In those minutes his line read…0 points, 2 rebounds, 1 assist, 4 fouls, -2.

Lu Dort’s minutes were pulled back to 11 minutes in spite of Ferguson not doing anything. Hey…I would roll with a hot hand, but there was no need to roll with something which wasn’t even slightly warm let alone hot. He doesn’t do anything. He can’t dribble. He rarely gets to the rim. He’s at best a pedestrian rebounder. Even Andre Roberson cpuld back cut to the rim.

I don’t understand the fatal attraction to Terrance Ferguson given in fact his team has not been able to count on him for significant portions of the season to be there for them.

OKC’s Big Four combined for 92 points, but didn’t get enough from its supporting cast, plus the missed shots around the rim came at just the wrong spots in the game.

You shake it off, you study the things which need to be done at a higher level and go to the next game which is against the struggling San Antonio Spurs.

It was a very interesting night. I pre-registered my RSVP on Saturday morning on line. I had no idea whatsoever what kind of turnout Bloomberg would get in a rogue red Tea Party state like Oklahoma.

It was held at the Oklahoma Museum of History across the street from the state capital. I got there forty minutes before the doors were to be opened and the parking lot was almost full…kid you not. Once the doors finally opened they had to delay the start of the rally to facilitate the walkup crowd getting inside with the overflow crowd. I’m sure every fire code was violated. I would guesstimate 2,000 people were in a facility which should have been holding maybe 1,200 people.

I didn’t see one person I knew although I did meet many new people I liked. It was a somewhat diverse crowd and the complete opposite of the Trump rallies with exception of one young white male wearing a Trump T-shirt who became unhinged at the end of the rally as Bloomberg trolled the CGOTUS (Chief Grifter of the Unites States).

It was comical. A uniformed female police officer came over to him and he still wouldn’t calm down. This happened somewhat close to me and was extremely annoying.

I gave him my best look of disdain I give all these clueless Trump dimwits and said, “This isn’t a Donald Trump-Jerry Springer Live freak show. Successful… intelligent adults are in the building.”

I’m almost certain he told me to fuck off…whereas I grabbed my crotch and winked being the adult in the room.

At this point the female officer put his hands behind his back to handcuff the pride of Trump Nation. He then whined like a little girl about police brutality as she led him out of the building while I chanted, ” Lock him up.”

Who could write this ending for me…seriously?

A perfect night to close out the perfect week in which I was banned for life on the Daily Thunder message board as well.

I think I’ll go meditate.

This season wasn’t supposed to happen in Oklahoma City. When the Thunder unloaded Paul George, Russell Westbrook, and Jerami Grant this past summer–the implications seemed to be clear.

Those being–at some point before yesterday’s trade deadline Thunder GM Sam Presti would unload both Chris Paul and Danillo Gallinari as he did in Seattle with Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis when Clay Bennett’s team was still in Seattle and we hadn’t read the emails yet.

Before taking the court on November 29th… the Thunder were 6-11 and seemed headed towards that very scenario. But then something odd happened—this team starting winning.

The three guard offense with Chris Paul, Shai G. Alexander, and Dennis Schroder turned into something special. Danillo Gallinari stayed healthy and showed why his shooting stroke is one of the smoothest in the NBA. Throw in an undrafted rookie defensive guard named Lu Dort and Nerlens Noel playing some nice bench minutes and all the sudden the season of tanking in Oklahoma City has turned into something different.

It turned into winning. Winning is fun—it’s a contagious elixir which ripples through teams in any sport when this type of trust emerges on a team…be it basketball, hockey, baseball, or football.

Since November 29th the Thunder are 26-9 overall and 13-3 on the road. Even during the glory days of Durant and Westbrook these would have been gaudy numbers. This upsets the confused white millennial ‘writers’ at Daily Thunder in as it doesn’t coincide with any of their narratives. They can’t grasp this as they sit playing backgammon, sipping gin and tonics, and collectively debating which brand of wafer cracker is their favorite. It’s vexing for them since they never played or coached any sport at a high level.

There is no metric for what it feels like when a team loves playing together and gets on a roll. It just happens and its magical.

In this latest Thunder win over Detroit it was basically the same recipe. The three guards combined for 60 points and overall the team’s best five players- Chris Paul, Schroder, Alexander, Gallinari, and Adams scored 95 points on the night.

The Thunder now sit at 32-20 overall and is in the 6th seed alone.

The Boston Celtics are in town for a special Sunday afternoon matinee game as the Thunder enter 9-1 in their last ten games.

Big game for the Thunder.. especially for a team which wasn’t supposed to be playing any big games this NBA season.

This was the deal which caught my eye at the trade deadline more than any other trade with the Warriors rightfully unloading D’Angelo Russell and in return acquiring Andrew Wiggins.

The Warriors stand 12-40 as I write and will be drafting in the lottery this off season. In a way—the manner in which this season of tanking unfolded for Golden State is probably a long term blessing as the core of Curry, Thompson, and Draymond Green was able to rest their overworked bodies for the first time in the last six seasons as the Warriors had made five NBA Finals in a row.

The Warriors also rightfully got rid of Willie Cauley-Stein this week and now have a core in place for next season of Curry, Thompson, Draymond Green, Wiggins, Kevon Looney, and the lottery pick. It will be interesting to see GM Bob Myers rebuild his bench heading into next season as the Warriors if healthy should be a contender again. As far as the draft pick… I’m not sure, but the Warriors will need some rim protection and rebounding strength one would think, plus a couple of dependable wing scorers off the bench.

But back to Wiggins…will he be a new player in the Warriors’ championship culture now that’s he’s escaped from the losing culture in Minnesota?

I think he will be for several reason. Primarily—he doesn’t need to be a star. There’s no pressure for him to try and carry a team. His role in a sense should be like that of Harrison Barnes back in the day before Kevin Durant became a Warrior.

The best teams coach themselves from within as the Thunder are doing currently with Chris Paul leading the way in that regard. For the first time in Wiggins’ NBA career he’ll have a players’ coach in Steve Kerr and the tough love no nonsense championship peer influence from Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Steph Curry.

Here’s another thing as well, it won’t just be Andrew Wiggins who should be hungry with something to prove. The entire Warrior core will be hungry with something to prove as well as they seek to climb back into the top three of the West next season.

As far as the Thunder–I have to admit…for the first time this season the day after the trade deadline…I have a little bounce in my step as a blogger on my small Thunder blog. I love what Presti didn’t do yesterday…namely unload Gallinari from a team which has the best record in the NBA since December 1st while being 13-3 on the road in that span as well.

Sometimes you play a pair of kings and queens and see what happens.

I kind of rubbed my eyes when these people bought Royce Young’s blog from him. The thought never struck me it could actually get worse from the proceeding two seasons…but this goes to show anything is possible within the boundaries of a free market economy transaction.

I tried to help them at multiple levels of the season. I tried to explain to them the way Lu Dort would seamlessly meld with the other starters. I tried to gently explain to them Presti can’t really unload Gallo in a market like Oklahoma City which has no other major league sports teams.

I even tried to explain to them the similarities of the Terrance Ferguson situation to the Alex Abrines situation with some deft humanity attached.

Evidently—I have better inside off the record sources than any of these clueless dimwits.

I tried…I tried…I tried.

Unlike Trump and more like Michelle Obama….I tried to take the high road with these blathering idiots and help them nuance their insights with keen experienced takes which would make it appear a group of fourth graders weren’t turned loose by their parents running their first lemonade stand at the end of the block.

If they take a glance right now on their own contest of sorts what they will see of course is dr. el prez charging as he always does when the season gets towards the goal achieving portion of the schedule.

So in answering my own question which wasn’t intended in any way to be a rhetorical one….. ‘Yes…I would offer these idiots a lowball offer and then see I could sell it again to an equally clueless Little Nick Gallo and monetize the sale of the blog for a second time in the same year.’

If that’s not a classic OPM move and Trumpier than Trump then I don’t what is. I believe there could be a unique specific statute in Oklahoma which allows one to do this if the other party proves to be so stupid and inept they could reap brand damage to the original first party of the first deal.

I tried taking the high road like Michelle Obama, but with some people you can’t take the high road.

The Thunder beat the hapless Cleveland Cavaliers last night in a game in which in reality they should have lost. But that’s the thing about this Thunder team…they win close games in the fourth period. They make plays and off the top on my head they’re something like 15-3 in games decided by five points or less this season.. Plus, they’re 13-3 on the road in road games since that 8-12 point in the season when they started inserting Lu Dort into some games with that Utah-Portland road swing.

The dunderheads at the Daily Edmond Millennial may or may not realize this…but this Thunder team since December 1st has the best or very close to it record in the NBA.

I know these frail feeble ‘men’ who Royce Young has put together haven’t been taught any better, but this is when you roll the dice a little bit and say.. what the fuck. This is when you say to your owner Clay Bennett.. ‘We really wouldn’t even have an NBA team if not for Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Bennett, we have nothing to lose. Let me put my Mike Rizzo big boy britches on.’

Why not?Because for the first time in Oklahoma City’s NBA history they have an All-Star point guard who doesn’t beat his own team every other game playing out of control in the fourth period. This point guard not only wins the close games — he answers Berry Tramel’s questions after the games.

They have two hybrid guards in Shai G. Alexander and Dennis Schroder who are capable of scoring thirty points apiece on any given night.

The fourth piece is something the Thunder have never had minus Kevin Durant…that being, a silky power forward who’s uber efficient scoring the ball with an economy of shots.

All of those late first round draft picks aren’t worth in six years from now what they have right now in hand…that being, a puncher’s chance of winning a first round playoff series.

Maybe Sam Presti got smart and started reading my blog. This is what a GM has to do…especially in a market like Oklahoma City. He has to calibrate his odds of doing something special when the stars align.

Should Mike Rizzo have unloaded Anthony Rendon at the trade deadline for a couple of young prospects at the deadline in fear of losing Rendon for nothing?

He did eventually lose Rendon, but he did win a championship…and he made that decision when no one, and I mean no one thought the Nationals would win a wild card game let alone do what they did.

So it’s been a great week for me Thunderwise. I got banned at the Daily Millennial and Sam Presti is playing the hand he was dealt this summer by keeping Gallinari. Plus…I think it’s a really good test to see what Billy Donovan is made of as an NBA coach.

This is one of the most surreal moments I’ve witnessed in my lifetime from a historical standpoint. It personally touched me because I was in fact a member of ‘that’ Republican Party from 1976-2000. In fairness to Donald Trump my decision to leave the party came sixteen years before Donald Trump ever came on the political scene as a candidate of either party.

I utterly disdain Trump, but to be objective there was more to my decision than just the Tea Party wingnuts or the extreme direction to the far right the party was steering towards.

Most of it was about me as I got older and began to see the world in a wider more empathetic prism where it does matter how we treat those around us. I became a husband, a father, witnessed my parents age, lost both my father and father-in-law, lost my grandparents….and came to better fully understand the journey of life from three different generational perspectives….not just mine.

I wrote in John McCain in 2000, voted for John Kerry in 2004, and would have voted for McCain in 2008 if he hadn’t selected Sarah Palin ( worse than Admiral Stockdale) as his running mate. Instead… I voted for Obama and then again voted for him in 2012 when he ran against Mitt Romney.

In 2016, completely confused as to my own ideology… I went to vote with the thought I would write in John Kasich, but while standing in line felt a pang of regret and wrote in John McCain once again as a gesture of thanks for him at least standing up to Trump during the campaign of 2016.

Yesterday was in fact the end of the GOP as we knew it. With Mitt Romney’s vote to convict Trump on Article I which outlined the abuse of power… history was clearly defined in front of our eyes.

Romney’s vote to convict was the first time in American history a senator from the same party as the president being impeached went against partisan party lines to convict a president with the intent to remove attached.

This did not happen in the Andrew Johnson or Bill Clinton impeachment trials. It would have happened though with Richard Nixon if he hadn’t resigned and cut a pardon deal.

Mitt Romney knew his vote would be the only vote from a ‘Republican’ senator. He knew it was a foregone conclusion his fellow GOP senators would wilt to constituent pressure. He also knew he would in essence be a senator without a party for his remaining four years in the Senate.

In essence, what Romney did was go one step beyond Lamar Alexander and censor Donald Trump with the hope our sitting president would somewhat grow up and become a better president these next ten months and possibly beyond.

Of course, that won’t happen.

Since I live in a state where my two senators have zero political courage whatsoever it was a historic day for those of us who were paying attention to words beyond Donald Trump’s twitter account.

Thank you, Senator Romney.

I was watching.

This was my song over there at the Royce Young Edmond Day Care Center. I owned that place for two years in my prime. I forgot how much I loved playing this back in the day as I would push Royce Young to the side on his own blog. Don’t make yourself a stranger, TC. This is a quiet place where humans of a mature nature can talk away from the millennial rabble.

Those were the days.

It was the perfect speech to go along with Rush Limbaugh being given a Congressional Medal of Honor. In fact, it was by far the most disciplined speech I’ve ever heard from Donald Trump.

There was not one single mention of the Dems self-destruction in Iowa, nor was there a single mention of his impeachment. The speech was by far the best of Trump’s three SOTU speeches to date even if most of what he said in it was non-factual or misleading.

I won’t tackle the entire speech, just the economic portions on here because that in essence is what will probably get Donald Trump re-elected.

What Trump failed to mention in his speech is following the economic meltdown in 2008 was the fact the U.S. economy after the TARP stimulus package grew 200,000 jobs a month for 84 straight months leading into Donald Trump’s first term. It should also be noted that in Obama’s last three years in office the U.S. economy created an average of 227,000 jobs a months….which specifically has outperformed Trump’s economy these past three years.

When Obama took office after the 2008 meltdown the unemployment rate was approximately 9%. When Obama left office the unemployment rate was approximately 4.5%. When Obama left office he was still basically operating under the tax code changes which were put in place in 2001 and his annual budget deficits were hovering around the $500 billion plateau.

What Donald Trump failed to mention is following his corporate and individual tax cuts the U.S. is now and will continue to run trillion dollar debts for however long he is in office. The premise of the tax cuts was to free liquid capital and grow the economy at a minimum of 4-5% annual GDP growth. Obama left office with GDP flattened at around 2%. Trump’s GDP growth has registered at around 2.2%. If the economy doesn’t grow GDP at 5% then there is no rational explanation of how the U.S. even comes remotely close to running a balanced budget.

As far as trade and trade policies the U.S. in 2019 amassed a record trade deficit of $581 billion dollars plus paid an additional $18 billion dollar subsidy to the farmers who were specifically harmed by Trump’s own trade tariffs.

As far as the markets… Obama inherited a Dow down around the 6,000 mark when he entered the White House. As Obama left office the Dow hovered around the 16,000 mark. Under Trump the Dow has soared to just under 29,000 as of this morning. What basically has been created is more government debt which is offset by all this tax cut liquidity making the markets a flush with freed capital. But again is there real sustained growth in wages and in the average American’s monthly standard of living minus the current value of their 401k?

As far as the U.S. becoming the world’s leading oil producer that ironically occurred during Obama’s tenure when the fracking and horizontal drilling craze changed the U.S. oil and gas industry. As far as health care reform there has been none expect for the elimination of the mandates and as I write Trump is still trying to eliminate the Affordable Health Care Act which protects pre-existing conditions.

As far as how many times Trump lied in this speech I have no specific number. And given the fact the Dems are still trying to count the votes in Iowa I would guess they don’t care either. They can’t run a presidential primary process…so why would any of us expect them to hold Donald Trump to anything he does or says.

Having written this–if the Dems can pull there heads out of their asses just enough to realize that if they win the very same states Hillary won in 2016, plus Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania they would defeat Trump by a slim margin and regain the White House.