Sometime probably next late week the U.S. death mark from the coronavirus will go over the 56,000 benchmark. Which at that point means more Americans will have died on their own soil from this virus than were killed in Vietnam.
Of course, Trump never served because he had blisters on his feet and his father probably bribed his local politician to keep his son safe from the war. Medal of Honor winner Rush Limbaugh never served as well since his grandfather was a U.S. Federal Circuit Judge. Those are great jobs BTW. Real plums.
Bush 41 served and was a hero. John McCain served and was a hero. Donald Trump the coward hid behind his big daddy’s purse strings and stayed home like the coward he truly is.
So sometime next week more people will have died from the fake news coronavirus than died in the Vietnam War. While more jobs have been lost than Obama created in two terms, plus the jobs created these past three years with the stock buy back capers and the 14% corporate tax cut.
BTW…the average marginal corporate tax rate since Trump’s giveaway is at 11% so why does any well run company need a bridge of cash for two months from the American taxpayer?
What a complete group of f–king idiots.
Rant over.
It’s gonna take some big time karaoke tonight for certain.
Bobby Knight won three national championships with the Indiana Hoosiers during his time in Bloomington. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest college coaches of all-time. Coach Knight coached Michael Jordan on the 1984 U.S Olympics Team… in which of course the U.S. easily won the Gold Medal.
I actually have an autographed copy of his second book Bob Knight: His Own Man by Joan Mellon in my book collection. He wouldn’t sign my copy of Season on the Brink by John Feinstein. That’s whole other story.
I thought his take on Michael would be interesting given Parts 3 & 4 of The Last Dance air this Sunday evening on ESPN.
So I have this story to tell in places like Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana and other SEC locales. Please close your eyes as I tell this story.
There’s this young guy from Illinois named Barack Hussein Obama who got himself elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Illinois.
Completely self-made dude. He didn’t really have a father in his life. Didn’t inherit the Bush family wealth like 43 and Low Energy. Smarter than Dan Quayle or Jack Kemp ever prayed they could be. Didn’t get $420 million from his father in a trust. Didn’t cheat on his wife like Bill Clinton. This dude is pristine political cocaine is what he is.
He not only went and graduated from Harvard Law School, but became president of their Law Review. Imagine that.
He gave this speech at the DNC in 2004 which put him on his party’s radar screen. Then in 2008 when the country Bush 43 was running completely into the ground imploded like a dumpster fire he kind of became a thing. So this young guy somehow goes out and beats Hillary Clinton for his party’s nomination of all things. Go figure.
He then beats John McCain for the presidency at a time in our country’s history almost as low as the Great Depression with double digit unemployment and frozen credit markets seized by the fall of Lehman Brothers. Add to the fact Bush 43 has him in two wars in the Middle East.
But he doesn’t flinch. He graciously reaches out to John McCain in his acceptance speech. He reaches out to Republicans across the board. Heck…in the end he even becomes friends with John Boehner of Ohio and Tom Coburn from Muskogee, Oklahoma of all places.
He keeps Bob Gates as his Sec Def. He reaches out to work with Republican Fed Chair Ben Beranke and they create TARP to the tune of $787 billion dollars to bailout the country from in essence the banking industry so ordinary people don’t get wiped out across the economic spectrum. They even save the U.S. auto industry despite opposition from the Republicans.
The banks repay their loans with interest with Elizabeth Warren all over their asses which is totally believable after seeing her debate Michael Bloomberg.
And it works. For 84 straight months thru the conclusion of his second term the U.S. economy creates around 200,000 new jobs a month. The Dow rebounds from 43’s low mark of 6,500 to 19,300 in eight years. The U.S. is still perceived as the leader in the democratic free world and Leon Panetta even helps him get Bin Laden.
Shit…outside of the SEC and Oklahoma that’ll get a guy a 95% approval rating in states where people can actually read and aren’t emotionally tied with Joe Exotic and his husbands.
Now open your eyes and imagine Barack Obama is white.
In fact, the backlash from the older white generations in this country might have become worse after Barack Obama became president for eight years.
Initially… I thought the opposite would happen, but for certain in the South from Oklahoma moving east I would have to say I don’t think really much has changed.
Sadly…we didn’t cross the bridge and stay there.
Race is still a big deal. People might not use the word ‘nigger’ openly, but it’s still there in some people’s minds and inner core beliefs as to how they view the world. Oh, it’s there for sure.
In places like Oklahoma and Alabama it’s okay for your quarterback or your point guard to be black, but not your president, not your governor, or not your U.S. Senator with Tim Scott from South Carolina being an exception.
The world around us has changed rapidly at a dizzying pace, but in the Solid South…not so much.
The scene above is made from the iconic movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? The story revolves around a black man and a white woman who fall in love and want to get married in the year 1967. Just after LBJ passed all of Kennedy’s civil rights legislation.
Just so we’re clear, that’s when the Solid South became Republican and has stayed there ever since.
To me…this particular scene is one of the truly great movie scenes of all-time. It’s puts a lump in my throat every time I play it for some inner inspiration.
I’m basically brown and always have been. I don’t think of myself as white. I attended a high school which was half and half racially. I played baseball, football, and basketball with black guys. Skin color was never a deal with me.
That’s truly one of the great things about sports in that it crosses racial barriers because whether black or white you want to win.
Everybody is equal in that regard, unless you want to become a president, a governor, or a U.S. Senator in the South.
That’s apparently when winning in the South with certain white people takes a backseat.
Oklahoma City’s regular season should have ended on the road in Dallas on April 15th with the Thunder fighting for seeding position. But instead, the Thunder’s season ended at 40-24 at home when Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus.
Who would have known or thought little sleepy red neck racist make believe evangelical Oklahoma City of all places would be the genesis for the shutdown of sports as we knew it. This in itself tells me God did this for a reason in Oklahoma City.
Maybe it’s God’s way of saying to all these over the top white Trump bible thumpers…”Are you serious? Do you really think is what the New Testament is ostensibly all about?” Golden Rule? Good Samaritan? Any of that ring a bell? Psalms, Corinthians?””
I also think God clearly has a hand in negative West Texas Crude in regards to the behavior of these Trump knuckleheads who don’t believe in anything in the universe minus a Donald Trump or Dan Scavino tweet. Google Dan Scavino if you don’t know what I’m writing about on here. Are you people serious…do you want to be taken seriously within the spiritual realm of the conscious universe?
So God for the time being ended sports as we knew it in Oklahoma City with a sense of biblical justness that none of these white churches in Edmond seem to be able to come to grips with in an open manner.
Truth be known, if I were the Trump surrogate governor of Oklahoma… I’d close every white church in Oklahoma for a year. I would. I’d make them attend black, Hispanic, and Muslim places of worship for a year.
Brave men and women thru the course of our country’s history gave their lives for you to have the right to vote and you thought so little of these brave people you voted for Dan Scavino to become POTUS.
Read some books and soak your heads for another six months.
Sometimes God has to do what he or she has to do.
Enough of that lecture.
My NBA regular season awards:
MVP — LeBron with Giannis a close second
Player I Loved to Watch Most This Season — Pascal Siakam
Rookie of the Year — Ja Morant with Zion second
Coach of the Year — Nick Nurse with Billy Donovan second
NBA Exec of the Year — Sam Presti with no one being a close second
Player Who Won My Heart — Chris Paul..the same guy who almost rented the house across the street from me a decade a ago after Katrina.
Favorite National NBA Commentators — A tie with Doris Burke and Jeff van Gundy
Favorite local OKC Thunder scribe — Berry Tramel
I’ll do a formal Thunder wrap sometime after I see what God does with the NBA post season tournament.
In our current state of new normal it’s music which gets me thru these very trying times.
For me…this is the best rock song of all-time. Just just close your eyes and drift away with the lyrics.
I find it very relaxing.
I’d strongly suggest this if you’re an oil and gas guy just about now.
What could it hurt?
This bonus song is a classic as well. It ‘s been a tough month so far in Oklahoma. Joe Exotic going Hollywood and oil going negative both in the same thirty days. You need to practice on this one along with the video before you go all out karaoke ninja warrior. What a great music video!
People in the industry knew this this was coming with the expiration of the current future oil contracts. Oil basically is a commodity worth nothing as of today storage hubs such as the one in Cushing, Oklahoma have no space left to store oil.
Oil brokers are literally paying money to get rid of oil. There is no demand for oil with the U.S economy basically shuttered.
Another example of a complete lack of understanding and leadership by Donald Trump as he remained frozen like a deer in the headlights until it was too late to bring the Saudis and Russians in line way back when it could have mattered.
Can you imagine if Barack Obama had overseen this fiasco?
This will have tragic economic consequences for Oklahoma in that I would guestimate somewhere around 20% of Oklahoma’s GDP as a state is oil and gas trickle down related. Add to that how important the retail gas tax is to the state’s budget and this basically spells a very unpleasant scenario for the state moving forward.
I find it ironic that Oklahomans still embrace Donald Trump even as under his watch the U.S. oil and gas industry has been gutted.
Donald Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s not a businessman. He inherited $414 million from his daddy Fred Trump almost forty years ago. If any blind idiot had just taken that money and purchased indexed securities blind-folded they would be a multi-billionaire today.
Trump isn’t even that and that’s why primarily he doesn’t want to reveal his tax returns.
If you value his golf courses at somewhat coherent market values he may not even be worth a billion.
He doesn’t know how to create, build, or maintain a legitimate business. Every venture he’s ever touched has died.
To quote Michael Cohen, ” He’s a thug, a con artist, and a grifter.”
I’d love to have a chat with Rex Tillerson this morning.
My wife took me out in our backyard and cut my hair like I was a dog as Pauli watched through the glass in what I would describe as a riveted state of interest. It was the longest my hair had gotten since high school. It was kinda cool though almost like a Sam Elliot type of hair chaos bordering on a Mike Gundy mullet. I feel so much better with my first hair cut in the coronavirus era.
Then we had a nice dinner of chicken enchiladas before I settled in and watched the first two hours of the ten hour ESPN film The Last Dance.
I love the movie. I will be in hoops heaven watching the remaining eight segments. As a fan–the Jordan Era of the NBA was by far the greatest in my life because Jordan and the Bulls had to deal with Larry Bird’s Celtics, Isiah’s Pistons, and Magic Johnson’s Lakers to climb to the summit of the NBA world on their way to six eventual NBA championships.
The most staggering Michael Jordan stat for me has always been Michael’s teams never lost an NBA Finals once they got there.
For me…those were the golden days when David Stern’s NBA made the move from being a nice league to becoming a league which today ranks only behind the NFL in overall fan interest across the world.
Jordan, Bird, Johnson, and Isiah Thomas in my hoops world changed me forever as a fan even beyond what Bill Walton did with the Portland Trailblazers on their magical run or what Maurice Cheeks and Dr. J did for me with that ’83 Sixer team.
The Jordan Era in the NBA is the greatest era I’ve witnessed as a sports fan in my lifetime.
The game has softened so much from then to now. It’s still a great game, but not the same attitude towards winning and what it takes to become a champion.
I in no way can even remotely compare the entire decade of Durant and Westbrook to being mentioned in the same breath with Michael and Scottie Pippen. Some of us used to make the those comparisons early in the Thunder glory days, but let’s be candid… Durant and Westbrook quite simply didn’t have the level of mental toughness to take their team to the summit.
Not to say though I won’t be all in when ESPN makes a film on the Thunder story up to the loss to the Warriors in 2016 leading to Durant’s escape to Oakland.
Durant is no Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas, Magic Johnson, or Larry Bird. In fairness, Russell Westbrook isn’t Scottie Pippin either.
Durant although immensely talented will always in my mind have two asterisks next to two championships while to date Russell remains without a championship.
Anyway…looking ahead to next Sunday’s two episodes I thought I’d post this video on how Michael finally pushed his Bulls beyond the Bad Boy Pistons in ’91.
Finally…something sports related I can sink my teeth into for my sports addiction.
After staining myself permanently by ‘witnessing’ seven episodes of the Joe Exotic human train wreck…something sports related I’ve been eagerly awaiting on television tonight.
Michael is the most competitive athlete I’ve ever observed in my lifetime. Period. I hope the film doesn’t let me down. I need something beyond the Tiger King right now in my life.
This film has ten episodes so I’m hoping this is a quality production like most of the ESPN films.
It was a very solid show this morning with Amy Klobuchar getting the headline interview spot. She’s always very grounded, well informed, and competent…which of course made her in no way a viable presidential candidate in these times in which we live.
The poll question is the one on every American’s mind this morning. How should we re-open the country? By state, by region, or one blanket national program?
With just under 20,000 people responding the results were….
42% on a state by state basis
41% on a regional basis
17% on a one blanket national policy basis
I responded to on a regional basis. In a perfect world we would all answer on a national basis, but this isn’t a perfect world. At some point you cannot completely crater your own economy which generates revenue for things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, small business assistance, FEMA, ect, etc.
At some point you have to calibrate risk with sophisticated testing and get this country back to work or at some point you will lose the country you are in essence trying to protect.
This is a service economy based on consumption. With some real smarts attached the country needs to get back to consuming and living. Unfortunately…we have a president who has less nuance than any president in our history which makes this an even more difficult task.
It’s a great question when you consider every angle of the dilemma.