In case you slept through it, Roger Federer outlasted Raffy Nadal in an instant classic five set match to win the Australian Open. Just an incredible match between the two greatest players in the history of the game.
Federer hadn’t won a major since 2012 and hadn’t played in a tennis tournament in six months. He now stands alone among all the tennis greats with eighteen major wins. Nadal has fourteen.
Amidst all the ugliness which is going on in our country currently, I found Federer’s acceptance speech to be uplifting, graceful, and eloquent. And even though Nadal is my favorite tennis player because of his grinding never say never style, I wanted to share Federer’s speech on my blog because in essence it’s what competition should be about at the end of the day.
Federer hadn’t beaten Nadal in a while in a major. However, he didn’t move on to become a member of the Golden State Warriors to remedy this shortcoming, can’t do that in singles tennis. It’s just you and what’s inside your heart. Rather, at the age of thirty-five, he trained his ass off for six months and came back and beat Nadal after trailing 2-0 in the fifth set.
Congrats, Roger Federer. Job well done.
It just got removed by the user, but here’s the link if you can find it later somewhere. It’s beautiful because if I heard it right… Federer is gently saying goodbye because he might want to exit playing the best fifth set of his career.
For the time being, I think what I’m going to do is cover both the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Trump ‘presidency’ moving forward. Ostensibly, I started this blog to cover the Thunder, but Durant and Draymond Green are expecting their first child, and America is trending towards going from the greatest democracy ever to a quasi dictatorship. So as an American, I have to admit in all candor, I’m spending much more time following Caligula Lite than I am the Thunder. But still I’ll do my recaps and maybe a little more here and there on the Thunder, but I think keeping an eye on our country right now has my primary focus.
Before I go any further, there’s two books I have to recommend to all Americans , especially if you’re one of the sixty million who said WTF and voted for our Village Idiot President. The first is Losers by Michael Lewis. Lewis of course is famous for writing Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, and The Big Short. But this little unknown book called Losers is a must read if you really want to know how America’s two party system devolved to the point where a reality television star con artist could actually become POTUS.
Lewis covered the 1996 presidential race from beginning to end, but with an emphasis on covering the GOP field. In case you’ve forgotten, Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole and won the White House for a second term. Of course, not long after, the impeachment of Bill Clinton began despite the fact America was going through a period of seven straight budget surpluses and the greatest peacetime economic expansion in the history of the world. But as we all know, there was a blow job and from that point forward American politics devolved into two nations within one border and has remained that way since.
The second book is Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Election by Matt Taibbi. I just finished the book and historically it reads as if its the sequel to Losers. Taibbi’s narrative describes both parties as virtually lost and devolving even further into the abyss. Like Lewis did in ’96, Taibbi covered this election as a beat writer with a leaning on covering the massive GOP field of seventeen candidates, but taking the story to its conclusion on November 8th. Absolutely a page turning read. Taibbi can write his ass off and if you’re a history junkie like I am you’ll read it in two days.
Okay, now back to American Hitler. You’ll notice, I’ve pretty much narrowed my nicknames of Trump to three at this point…Caligula Lite, Village Idiot President, and American Hitler. Little Donald isn’t really mine, it’s Lawrence O’Donnell’s, so ignore this entry heading in that regard. I was just doing it for Lawrence and how much he’s made me laugh this week even though in reality I’ve been crying from what I’ve witnessed.
What a week. The TPP trade agreement is done, which in essence now allows China to do as it pleases in the geographical region of the world where economies are growing fastest. Who needs any of that because as you know—we’re building a wall, and paying for it ourselves. Trump is also wanting to shut down Obamacare even though all other GOP’ers admit they don’t have a replacement plan even though they’ve had since in essence the election of W in 2001 to get one in place. Always remember this about the GOP, it’s primarily the party of the Koch Brothers and Grover Norquist.
The mantra of the GOP is to make sure the highest marginal rate payers pay the lowest effective rate possible. The lowest marginal rate for U.S. wage earners is 15%, but consider when Mitt Romney ran for president his effective tax rate was 7% and Donald Trump’s was 0%. I just hope of the sixty million or so who voted for Trump they have effective tax rates somewhere between 0% to 7% or else they really appear pretty fucking stupid at this point with all that chanting and such. The cheer at those Trump rallies shouldn’t have ‘Build the Wall’ but rather ‘Zero to Seven’!
It’s a big week-end for Little Donald with his telephone chat with fellow dictator Vladimir Putin on tap. Hope he does better on this one than he did with Enrique Pena Nieto and Theresa May earlier this week. The whole Mexico thing is very sad, but the Theresa May meeting was horrible as well as she basically had to school Trump on NATO, European history post WW II, and how the Russian sanctions should be handled.
How much you want to bet Putin comes out of this week-end with the sanctions being not that really all that important to Little Donald.
Kudos to this young blogger, podcaster–he nailed it.
Sigh. Probably the most ‘interesting’ week in U.S history in quite some time as President Obama morphed into Fuhrer Trump. It was stunning. In fact describing it as chilling I don’t think is hyperbole.
I mean, what do you even attempt to say at this point and we’re only one week in? Okay…from 2000 thru 2008, George W Bush deported 2 million people back to Mexico, and as I hope Trump Trekkies remember–Bush is a Texan and has his own ranch in Crawford and you know was kinda the governor of Texas before he became president. Now—from 2009 thru 2016, Barack Obama deported 2.5 million people back to Mexico which gives him the No. 1 rank in that category as a U.S. president…ever. More to the point, illegal immigration from Mexico into the U.S. is at a forty year low.
More to the point, Mexico is the second leading importer of U.S goods and one of our staunchest allies and I would hope even the staunchest Trump Trekkie would look at a map and realize it might be somewhat important that the U.S. and Mexico have a symbiotic partnership of sorts. Quid pro quo per se.
Lawrence O’Donnell is loving all this in a sadistic sort of way. I won’t watch Rachael Maddow—she’s too shrill for me. But I have to say, I do enjoy watching O’Donnell because he’s presenting the case of the U.S Constitution vs. Donald Trump–and doing it like any good trial lawyer would. My father, the trial lawyer, would have been beside himself by now and broken at least one flat screen by hurling something at our Village Idiot President.
I might be putting quite a bit of Lawrence on here moving forward until the Unites States selects the ghost of Vince Bugliosi to special prosecute the impeachment of Donald Trump. Make no make mistake about this, where we’re headed as a nation currently will most likely make the Nixon ending seem tame in comparison. Not even close. There’s a reason we have a Constitution, and if you’re even remotely paying attention Donald Trump could care less. But of course who cares about all that when we have to get to the bottom of birtherism, voter fraud, and crowd size or even if Ted Cruz’s father really killed JFK.
In closing, for the 60 million or so who voted for this pathetic caricature of how far America has fallen, I have no empathy for you, none. You should have known better and were told so by both parties or just reasonable people in your everyday lives. But for the other 270 million Americans who didn’t vote for this clown at least we can take solace that at the very least we didn’t completely turn our backs and succumb to this endless stream of stupidity, vulgarity, and self flagulation. At least we have that even if it feels shallow right now, but you know what—that’s why people have to vote, educate themselves about civics, history, and the world. So if nothing else comes out of this, I hope Americans who didn’t vote come to realize what a precious commodity freedom truly is. Please get smarter and vote.
Just when it appeared the Oklahoma City Thunder finally got Steven Adams, Victor Oladipo, and Cameron Payne all back and healthy–Enes Kanter did pretty much the most stupid thing to date I’ve witnessed during the Thunder era when he fractured his own right arm on his bench seat in an act of frustration as to how bad he was playing on Thursday night. The arm is fractured and Kanter will now miss 6-8 weeks just when you were getting the impression they could improve and make a run at No. 4 seed in the West.
Kanter’s numbers for the season before his self inflicted fractured arm were…14.4 ppg, 6.7 rpg, and a PER of 24.6. But right now he’s getting a -2 on my TSN scale for appearing to be even dumber than the average Oklahoman who voted for Caligula Lite in November. Kanter is OKC’s fourth best player and makes around 17.5 million and in essence is OKC’s bench scoring per se.. Now all of that is gone until the last week of March.
To be honest, depending on what Presti could get for Kanter–it wouldn’t kill me if Presti could trade Kanter for a wing who could score 16 points a game and then maybe find an affordable vet big banger for the stretch run. If you think Enes Kanter is the future for OKC becoming a serious contender then you wouldn’t make a trade, but in the West the name of the game minus Karl-Anthony Townes is going to be who can create the most adaptable small ball or even medium size lineups.
As far as this game against the wretched Dallas Mavs…OKC finally beat them by a score of 109-98. The Mavs pretty much left their starting lineup back in Dallas and the game shouldn’t have been as close as it was.
Russell Westbrook didn’t triple double but did score 45 points on a 16-29 shooting night. Victor Oladipo scored 17 points while Steven Adams added 15 points.
As far as this game goes it wasn’t much to watch as both teams were on the second night of a back to back and OKC was playing its third game in four nights. The Thunder improve to 28-19, but lose their best bench player and any lineups which would have featured Adams and Kanter playing together. One would think this means Sabonis and Lauvernge will get heavier minutes and the always smart Nick Collison could play a valuable role. And then of course, Donovan will have to be very smart using multiple small and medium sized lineups while Enes Kanter and his 17.5 million dollar salary sit as the Thunder hit the most important stretch of the season heading into February and March.
Former Chief Birther Donald Trump’s ‘extensive’ voter fraud probe started today and it netted two more voting fraud violators to go along with Steven Bannon, Steve Munuchin and daughter Tiffany. Today, Trump’s probing investigative net landed son in law Jarrod Kushner and his press secretary Sean Spicer, who like the other three perps registered to vote in multiple states. That’s five so far and all are either related to Trump or work for Trump. I’ll talk about Nieto at a later time. You can only kill so many brain cells in a given post.
I may have to start my own genre related to American Hitler and the transition from the world’s greatest democracy to what looks to be a quasi dictatorship in the shaping. So far, I’ve witnessed three politicians in America somewhat challenge Trump, all three are black. To date, I haven’t witnessed one white politician either Dem or Republican standup to this clown. A lot of white women around the world made a statement, but to date not much from Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Schumer, or even Hillary’s running mate Tim Kane. Hopefully, someone along the line in Congress will have the balls to say something. It’s stunning to witness.
Sigh. Face palm. Whatever. I guess my letter to Donald Trump went unread.
Is this really fucking happening? Right now I’d like to be writing about the Oklahoma City’s Thunder’s 104-95 win in New Orleans last night. It was a nice little win as the Thunder won their second straight road game and improved to 26-17. Russell Westbrook notched his 23rd triple double of the season while Steven Adams had one of his better games of the season in looking like the player we watched last post season. So this is all good as the Thunder host Dallas tonight in Oklahoma City.
Usually, I like to recap with a much longer story, but once again Donald Trump’s Big Adventure in the White House has me cutting my recap short this morning. Honestly, I thought once the inauguration took place–I’d be cutting way back on Trump on here. I just assumed once he took office he’d stop acting like a petulant four year old. Clearly—I was wrong. This is who he is. He can’t help himself. Maybe he’ll just whip it out and jack off at his first State of the Union address. But color me confident on this–Dude Trump is not changing. Maybe this is why Melania is living in New York and damn glad she is. Who could blame either one of them? He had to win the presidency to save the marriage. Move over Romeo and Juliet.
Okay….so. While the Big Donald was telling us the Wall is a done deal and Mexico will pay for it, he then implemented various immigration nuance bans, and just for the heck of it advocated water boarding and other means of torture even though Mattis and Pompei are against torture. But still with a smile, he said he’d still like to torture, but only if they come around with him on this.
He then delved into his voter fraud conspiracy theory even though it appears Steven Bannon, his daughter Tiffany, and U.S Treasury Subprimer Steve Mnuchin are registered to vote in two states. I know…. I live in one of the most mentally regressed states in Oklahoma, but even people in Oklahoma aren’t this stupid. So here’s Lawrence O’Donnell having the time of his life helping Donald Trump figure out his own voting fraud conspiracy. I’m going to throw in the Sweep Home Alabama video as a thought as to what our national anthem might need to become after the first hundred days of Trump. Rock on, Trump America!
From the Dave Letterman Home Office in Deer Creek, Oklahoma
TOP TEN TRUMP TO SPICER ALTERNATIVE TRUTHS FOR THE NEXT PRESS BRIEFING
#10 Shamelessly claim a million new jobs have been created in the Rust Bucket since Monday by Trump.
# 9 Float out the thought the Dow was trending at 2,800 just after lunch because of new Trump policies.
# 8 Reveal an agreement spearheaded by Eric and Don Jr. which will have the U.S. and Russia jointly acquiring Cuba.
# 7 Explain to Dems that Betsy DeVoss was on medication during her only confirmation hearing.
# 6 Say something snarky about Little Marco Rubio just to remind him I own his worthless little ass whenever I need his vote–remember have some fun out there, Sean.
# 5 Be audacious and announce China and Great Britain have forgiven our debt and see how it flows. Remember, it’s always the art of the deal.
# 4 Say something snarky about Ford and let’s see if we can drive their stock price down to a 52 week low.
# 3 Alert the press Lyin’ Ted Cruz was spotted exiting an alien spacecraft on the White House lawn at approximately 2:30am-EST. Our core kooks need to know we haven’t forgotten them.
# 2 Global warming, scmhobal warning. We’re done with the EPA as well. Tell them we’re sending Scott Pruitt back to Oklahoma where he belongs. Are you kidding, I was trolling him like I did with Romney.
# 1 And the #1 alternative truth is, drum roll, please….. Announce the Dept of Energy has been abolished, but Rick Perry will be re-assigned to Dancing With the Stars to Make America Great Again.