Month: February 2022

If this is the case, then the team should be moved to either Seattle or Las Vegas as soon as the deal can be done for integrity of the game issues.

Tanking is one thing. Prolonged borderline consumer fraud in a small market where there’s only one major league franchise in any sport is another topic.

Again…unless you’re a little slow, this is what Sam Presti and Thunder ownership did in Seattle when they stripped their team of Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis while doing everything possible to discourage Seattle fans from attending Sonic home games while that entire new arena fairytale/caper was being hashed out with David Stern presiding as judge and jury. Another words…Clay Bennet and Group had them a bought jury.

This part of the Thunder’s migration to Oklahoma City, much like the Donald Trump ascension to power caper, is not an aspirational story.

This is not a new play in Sam Presti’s playbook.

Despite my snarkiness at times for the Thunder…I don’t want them to leave because I enjoy being twenty minutes away from being able to see real NBA teams play in person with real NBA stars who are trying to win championships.

I’ll be right at seven or eight home games attended for this season. I have extremely enjoyed sitting behind the visitor’s bench and cheering for real NBA basketball teams.

Both Klay and Tyler Herro both actually gave me a thumbs-up when they were here in the cultural armpit of all NBA franchises.

If only I could sit next to Mike Gundy at a Thunder game, my Make-A-Wish Thunder game night would be complete this basketball season.

Josh is No. 2 on my ROY ballot and you’re telling me Sam Presti is going to deny his paying Thunder ticketholders this one singular thread of positivity from this season.

That’s total and complete bullshit. That’s borderline consumer fraud is what it is. That’s like paying to see Tony Bennett and you get Justin Bieber thrown out there at the end for the final third of the concert.

We’ll see how this goes with Josh being held out. I clearly have no sources with the Thunder. I’ve never been a paid whore like some in this market who in essence have always been on the Thunder’s payroll.

There’s some Putin the way the Thunder manipulate media relations.

I just hope for the kid and for the somewhat integrity of the NBA we don’t see Sam Presti benching a player who could very well be the NBA Rookie of the Year.

If they’re going to bench him…then maybe Joe C could work out a deal with the NCAA and Josh could be allowed to play for Porter Moser the rest of the season in Norman.

If you put a 6’8″ point forward like Josh on the Sooners’ they could be an Elite 8 team with the right draw.

I really feel for these Thunder fans who were stupid enough to pay full ticket prices this season. I never pay more than thirty cents on the dollar for my seats right behind the visitors’ bench. I even got Steve Kerr’s autograph when the Warriors were here.

Good luck, Josh.

This is the last day of February, thus the last official day of Black History Month.

I wanted to do more on my blog in relation to BHM, but I got sidetracked with everything which is going on in Ukraine and Russia. I may in March do something on both Thurgood Marshall and Barbara Jordan.

But I wanted to close the month with heroic Capitol Police Officer Euguene Goodman before Joe Biden addresses the nation tomorrow night with his State of the Union speech.

I wonder if any of you Trump sycophants even consider the irony of Officer Goodman’s brave actions on January 6th, 2021.

You people probably hate him even more because he potentially saved the lives of Mike Pence, Mitt Romney, and Nancy Pelosi.

We are in a dark, dark place in America right now. Very dark.

But when you see courage and honor from someone like Officer Goodman it should be noted.

That’s it for me right now. I don’t want to depress myself thinking of you Trump people on a Monday. Some of you genuinely sicken me.

Buy maybe in all of this there is the hope there could be a silver lining of some sort.

It must be Antifa pretending to be those Russian troops, right?

I would suggest every GOP U.S. senator minus six watch the following video and observe what it is you do not possess…namely courage, honor, and a sense of duty.

I thought this was a telling interview on Sunday morning by former 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Pretty straight to the point.

I don’t want to carelessly use the words treason, sedition, or criminal at this point. I don’t want to be reckless.

Seventy-five percent of the world does however view what Putin is doing in Ukraine as the acts of a war criminal.

The very war criminal both Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump praised earlier this week.

*

I don’t know what to write about you Trump people any longer. Your penchant for shame seems to have no limitations whatsoever.

The WWII generation will always historically be viewed as our Greatest Generation…and rightfully so.

But you people…you are really something.

If you stay on the track you’re currently navigating, you will have a chance to be recognized as the most historically dubious generation of Americans.

Even in the Civil War, history has shown some empathy for the Confederacy and those who defended it. But you group of people not only gave legitimacy to a criminal’s attempt to hang his own vice-president and overthrow the Constitution of the United States. But you went even more yard this week. You out did yourselves this time.

You’ve gone even beyond the O.J. Simpson standard of hall-of-fame shame a mere one year later.

You’re now telling us Donald Trump in his praise of a murderous thug and war criminal is prescient for his praise of Putin.

Mitt Romney called you people idiots and morons today on State of the Union with Dana Bash. Just so you know. I’m not going to disagree with Mitt Romney. Hillary Clinton called you Deplorables…she was right. You’re deplorable human beings.

So why don’t you people do the rest of us a favor. Why don’t thirty- million of you move to Russia and live with your boys Donalt and Vlad.

And in your absence, we’ll find a way to replace you with twenty-million Ukrainians who actually understand what it means to embrace liberty and freedom.

What it means to be an American.

We’ll call this the Romney Doctrine.

‘Your Honor, at this time the prosecution would like to enter the following video into evidence. At a later time, the State would like to comment as to the evidentiary relevance within the context of other admitted evidence.’

‘Granted. Please proceed, Mr. Jackson.’

‘Thank you, Your Honor.’

Footnote: “Putin no doubt has contempt for the weak and malleable orange Mr. Trump with his tiny raccoon-like hands and gerbil-sized genitals.”

Editor’s Note: ‘What I did here was use part of a sentence from Maureen Dowd and a thought of my own in the structure of this sentence. Unlike FLOTUS 45 when she plagiarized Michelle Obama…I want to make sure and give Maureen credit for half of the sentence. No wonder FLOTUS 45 has that dour expression on her face 24/7.’

If there are two more clueless dimwits in America than Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump you would have to think those two would be Mo Brooks from Alabama and Josh Hawley from Missouri.

But right now given their pathetic performance even by the incredibly low bar these two idiots have set… these two are clearly the two runaway winners as the two dumbest white people in America.

For this they both get a Dave Chappelle Oscar for Most Outstanding Achievement by a Fool in a Leading Role.

I’ll be back later today to address why I don’t think the U.S. should put troops on the ground in Ukraine and I’m also going to give Mitt Romney a shout out for the straight up things he said this morning in an interview on CNN.

Bravo, Senator Romney.

Bravo. I won’t ask you to feel between Liz Cheney’s legs. You got a set, bruh. You looked just like Howard Baker with Nixon…finally.

This was the day after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor… December 8th, 1941. And of course, this was before Fox had been created to fill the airwaves with humans like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Donald Trump.

I would submit except for a brief period at the conclusion of Desert Storm and the 9/11 terrorist attacks…FDR’s declaration of war was the last time our nation was genuinely unified and aspirational as far as America’s place in the world.

I would think the reports coming out of Ukraine the next several days will be very difficult for us to view as Americans.

I was shocked by the results of the results of the Smerconish Question of the Week Poll Question on Saturday morning. The question was: Should the United States and NATO declare war on Russia for their invasion of Ukraine?

With over 40,000 votes cast when the show went off the air, which is record number of votes for any question, the results were Yes…77%, No…23%. Keep in mind a lot of the viewers on this show are either Independents or moderates like myself. This isn’t a show for the nutjobs on either side of American politics.

I voted no.

I’ll explain why I voted no tomorrow morning.

Marvin Johnson saved the day for OU with a couple of big plays coming down the stretch as OU beat O-State in overtime by a score of 66-62.

Marvin can help the Sooners when he’s healthy. He’s got a great basketball body and can fill in the defensive void created by EJ’s season ending knee surgery. Marvin needs to be playingtwenty minutes a game from this point moving forward.

Marvin is one of those TSN type of players who can make some plays with his hustle and grit. I would compare his role on this OU team as to what Kenrich Williams does for the Thunder when he’s allowed to play in non-tanking situations.

OU came into this game with a net No. 47 ranking despite the tough stretch of late. This puts OU at 15-14 with a home game against West Virginia on tap on Tuesday. I would guess OU will be an ESPN 59-61% favorite win that game.

The loss which will hurt OU the most with the Committee will be the close home loss to TCU. That one hurt. That’s one which might haunt the Sooners when the Committee deliberates their fate.

But if OU could somehow steal a road game at K State to close out the regular Big 12 with a win over the tough Wildcats…that loss could be absolved by the Committee.

OU should have won this game by around six points in regulation, but once again fifth year senior point guard Jordan Goldwire struggled with some bad time and score offensive decisions coming down the stretch.

I thought O-State’s Avery Anderson had one his best games of the season and was the primary reason the Cowboys had a chance to win late in the game.

The Sousse kid is going to be a nice player for Mike Boynton as well once he develops a little eight-foot shot or so. He gave the Sooners fits in both Bedlam games this season with his shot blocking. Of all the excellent defensive players in the Big 12 I’ve seen…Sousse along with some guys at Texas Tech and Texas gave the Sooners fits this Big 12 season on the defensive end.

I love Mike Boynton, but he like Porter Moser needs to go get him a point guard next season for Avery Anderson to play off of on the offensive end of the floor.

I’m just happy these OU kids hung in there today and found a way to win a close game they absolutely had to have to stay alive in the NCAA Tournament discussion.

I still think OU gets in the Big Dance with 17 wins because of the schedule they’ve played.

The key for OU is Jordan Goldwire. Can he settle down and forty minutes where his decision making doesn’t implode for a five-minute stretch somewhere in the game.

Marvin Johnson gets my helmet sticker. It’s just nice to be able to play Boomer Sooner again.

BOOMER!

You have to admire the courage these Ukrainians have and their devotion to remain a free nation. You have to remember though, Ukraine has basically been a free nation since 1991 because of what Reagan and Bush did in the Cold War.

How sad it is we have these Trumplicans who equate freedom with minimal effective tax rates….and to varying degrees racism.

How sad.

Unless you’re a sociopath of some sort, it’s extremely painful watching the scenes coming out of Ukraine. My heart breaks for these people.

A tremendous about of stupidity being espoused by those in America who to my knowledge never served our country in war unless you count Lindsey Graham who was a military jag. This isn’t like Top Gun with Maverick and Mother Goose just flashing into Russian air space and putting this to an end. War is horrific and very non-glorious.

One of my uncles served in the European Theatre in WWII as an expert sniper. He lied about his age being he was too young to serve. He won two Purple Hearts and when he came back he literally didn’t speak to anyone for over a year. Sat on his sister’s porch and smoked a pipe in silence. He was probably never the same person.

To Nixon’s credit, after his disgraceful exit from power, he at least had the minimal sense God gave a dirt clod to keep his mouth shut for a period of time before he resurfaced to make an occasional comment here or there about American foreign policy.

But not the case with Donald Trump and his band of warrior bunions on the Fox propaganda network which btw nets Rupert Murdoch and one of his sons a cool net profit of $1 billion each last time I looked it up.

Since none of those people have ever done anything as far as serving our country…I would at the least do some research on what you hear on the Fox Propaganda Network.

Colin Powell passed just year from Covid and I’m sure to the very end he regrets the speech he made to the U.N. about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But whatever you believe in relation to that speech…one thing is clear the U.S. hasn’t done well in intervening in countries with the hope of nation building since the Marshall Plan.

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria just to jog our collective recent memory didn’t end well.

Ukraine is the size of Texas with a population of 44 million people. Now…just for a second imagine you put 44 million Trump lunatics inside of Texas and then had the daunting task of financing and governing these idiots for a prolonged period of time.

See my point.

Nation building is tough.

So… I hope what we as a country do is take a deep breath and aid the Ukrainians in their fight for liberty with weapons and humanitarian aid, but with the thought this is their war for freedom.

In closing…remember how quickly the Afghan military folded after we departed this summer. Iraq never wanted us there. Syria was a disaster and the mistake of staying in Vietnam cost LBJ the legacy of being one of the five greatest presidents in American history.

We can’t keep fighting every single war which breaks out around the world.

Because in the end, if you break it, you own it.

Last night I tried watching the Thunder because Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was actually allowed to play against the terrific Phoenix Suns inside of an almost empty Pay. Com Arena. I may or may not write something down about the game later this week-end. I haven’t decided yet. The game itself as another scripted Thunder loss isn’t worthy of anything beyond two paragraphs.

You know, unlike others in this market …I actually take some journalistic pride in the content of my blog. I’ve always wanted the blog to read like something between the NY Times Magazine, ESPN, CNN, and a piano bar…..but coming from an Oklahoman’s perspective.

I’m not in this for numbers. I’m in this with my obscure underground blog because there’s such a paucity of honest objective writing in the Oklahoma markets on just about everything. Everything is just so over the top rogue red.

Alex Ovechkin is Russian and he’s in the twilight of his NFL career. In my mind…he will go down as a Top Ten player of all-time. I love watching Alex play.

Watching Alex on a power play is truly one the rare treats in watching an NHL game. I have him above Gretsky for two reasons…he can check and he can fiight.

The five shills of a hockey player are 1 skating, 2 passing, 3 shooting, 4 checking, 5 fighting. Gretsky was a three-skill hockey player. Pretty boy. Bobby Gordon Orr from Parry Sound, Ontario and Gordie Howe were not pretty boys. They were hockey players like Alex.

It did take Alex awhile though to focus on his checking and two-way commitment to the game. When he did…he finally won his Cup in 2018.

The fact is Alex’s Washington Capitals were in New York last night playing the NY Rangers. It was an awful game when I turned it off with the Caps trailing 3-0.

Alex didn’t seem like himself on the ice.

Anyway…this is Alex above giving his heart felt thoughts on the Russian-Ukranian War the world now finds itself enmeshed in just because of one man’s obsession of what the USSR was before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union.

Alex stops short of condemning Putin on this video given as they’ve been friends in the past. But he certainly doesn’t endorse the war in any way.

Because unlike the Idiots Twins…Trump and Tucker Carlson…I think Alex like all of us realizes what a horrific thing war actually is for those who don’t claim bunions and have to be participants in the human brutality of war.

Ben Sasse is a conservative United States senator from Nebraska. He was one of the six GOP senators who actually had enough political courage to vote to impeach Donald Trump after the January 6th Insurrection at our nation’s capital.

When I was young…I was probably quite a bit like Ben Sasse in my views of what America’s role should be in the world.

You get older and your views change or steer a bit as you go through the journey of life.

I was a registered Republican from 1976 -2000. I didn’t leave the Republican Party to join the Democratic Party. I left to become an Independent who’s still very much a fiscal conservative with a much more tolerant view of social issues than what the GOP has evolved into in the past twenty-two years.

If I were a young person looking across the horizon of where our country now stands…I would say in 2024 I’d probably look for a ticket of say Ben Sasse from Nebraska and possibly either Lisa Murkowski from Alaska or Tim Scott from South Carolina to fill out the ticket.

This in no way means I agree with these three people on everything, but what it means to me is I would hope this could be a ticket which could draw Americans back together and all of us could remember what it means to be an American…and why being an American should be aspirational and special.

I would even be willing to have a moderate Democrat on the ticket if both sides could agree on how that might come into being.

But I know this…the path America is currently on is not sustainable.

Gold bless the brave people in Ukraine who deserve an opportunity to be free. They seem to understand freedom much more than we do currently.