World Cup 2026: final group play notes

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Preface: This piece continues discussion on FIFA World Cup 2026

The sixteen 2026 World Cup teams eliminated in group play were (in order): Haiti, Türkiye, Tunisia, Jordan, Panama, Czechia, Qatar, Curaçao, Iraq, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Scotland, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Iran. The mild surprise in that group is Uruguay, who could manage only draws against Saudi Arabia & Cape Verde. I’m not going to miss any of these teams, and neither will most football fans. I still insist that most (if not all) of these teams shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Cape Verde advancing to the round-of-32 has been hailed as a feel-good story which validates expanding the World Cup field to 48 teams. I’ve discussed the mercenary, free-agent character of these smaller national teams in my earlier World Cup piece, so I’ll rest on that. I’ll only add that Cape Vere plays Argentina next, and that’s when reality sets in for these smaller World Cup teams.

Of the 32 remaining teams, there still remains much mediocrity in: South Africa, Canada, Paraguay, Sweden, Ecuador, Congo DR, Senegal, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austria, Switzerland, Algeria, Australia, Egypt, Cape Verde, Ghana. That’s 16 teams listed, and a few play each other in the round-of-32, so some will survive into the round-of-16 simply due to bracketing advantage.

Meanwhile, two very good teams– Netherlands & Morocco– face off in the round-of-32, which illustrates the clearing-out of other brackets to appease the host nations, while opposite brackets such as this one are stacked with good teams. It smells of FIFA corruption. Football fans know that Switzerland v Algeria, Australia v Egypt, Canada v South Africa, shouldn’t be knockout-round games, but there they are. I’ll pass on those games for sure.

The manager of Ghana even said the game has been diluted as the expanded field isn’t good for the World Cup. This was after his Ghana team benefited from the new format by making the round-of-32 as a 3rd-place team. Even enabled beneficiaries of this expanded field don’t support it. It would have been nice if the current field of 32 teams could have been selected through a fair system of qualifiers, instead of diluted group play. Much of group play was painful to watch, and I skipped a lot of it.

The issue is that FIFA wanted to expand because it meant more money, power & influence. FIFA boss Gianni Infantino has a bloc of African nations, CONCACAF, and Middle East oil sheikdoms under his control. FIFA helps them with their national team aspirations in exchange for supporting his ideas like expanding the World Cup field & mandatory hydration (3-minute commercial) breaks. As a result, impoverished Caribbean islands, African semi-colonies and Middle East monarchies get more of their teams into the World Cup, in exchange for fans having to watch an inferior version of World Cup football with more commercial interruptions, and Fox analysts not telling fans why this is.

The synthetic turf at US NFL stadiums have all been converted to natural grass per FIFA. This has been done at great cost & time expense, especially for the domed stadiums in Dallas & Atlanta. This has led to renewed discussion among NFL players as to why they can’t play on natural grass. The bottom line is these NFL stadiums also host rock concerts, tractor pulls, rodeos, motocross races, etc, so it best serves the stadium owners to use synthetic turf which holds up better than grass.

As a sports fan, I don’t feel much sympathy for NFL players anymore. Their behavior towards others is generally atrocious, and their impulses towards violence are far too frequent. The NFL does everything it can to keep all this ugliness quiet, so I view the NFL players as spoiled, as many others do. Until American football players learn to behave more humanely towards women and the educated public in general, I’m not so interested in their labor grievances. These overblown gladiators thoughtlessly serve corporate America & US imperialism with their brand of unrestrained mayhem. Placated & enabled from the youth level with sports corruption & privilege, these professional athletes turn around and expect the oppressed working class to care about turf v grass. In terms of their politics, they couldn’t be more lost.

The grass will be ripped out after the World Cup. and all these stadiums will go back to their pre-existing playing surface. This is a touchy subject among NFL owners, players & fans. FIFA is a game that insists on being played on natural grass because it protects the players and allows for a better game. American football insists on synthetic turf because it’s about the stadium owners being able to profit from a multi-use facility. That defines a major difference between FIFA & American football.

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We have learned in 2026 that FIFA has the power to dictate stadium naming rights, which is an eye-opener. For instance, AT&T stadium in Dallas is where the Cowboys play. But in the World Cup it’s renamed Dallas stadium because FIFA dictates. This demonstrates powerful international authority. All this also explains why tickets are so costly for this World Cup. The above discussed turf-to grass conversions took ~10 weeks of non-use for these stadiums, to allow for 5 weeks of World Cup play.

That’s a lot of cost & lost revenue, but it’s more than made up for by FIFA in ticket sales & event buzz. There is nothing like the World Cup. It’s bigger than the Super Bowl because it’s global and only happens once every four years. I like it better than the Olympics because there is only one competition– football– which is the world game. The World Cup gives every nation (except Russia) a chance to qualify, and earn the right to compete in the most-prestigious athletic competition in modern sports culture.

There is nothing like hosting the World Cup. It allows the host nation(s) to automatically qualify, which in 2018 was an issue for the USMNT, who didn’t qualify for the World Cup held in Russia. World Cup 2026 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the USMNT to capture the hearts & minds of Americans who mostly call this game soccer. They kinda did it in 1994, but not really. All we got out of that was MLS.

The USMNT needs to beat Belgium in the round-of-16, and at least give a good showing in the quarterfinals against a world-class team to call this tournament a success. The lesson in their last-second 3-2 loss to Türkiye in group play is this team can only go so far. Temper your expectations because they aren’t that good. Rabid USMNT supporters say they believe in miracles. The reality is the USMNT would need four miracles to win the World Cup– starting in the round-of-16. A perfect game is a sports miracle, and it means you play your best as a team, while your opponent who normally over matches you, plays poorly.

It can happen once, like when a pudgy Italian-American kid named Mike Eruzione scores the winning goal for the US hockey team against the USSR machine in 1980. In 2026, sports miracles are manufactured by the mechanisms outlined above. The problem is when the hype fails, and fans are left with resentment due to unmet expectations. Promotion is double-edged. If performance & results don’t match the hype, the USMNT is finished as far as ever competing for a World Cup. That’s what’s on the line as the USMNT enters the knockout rounds. Bosnia-Herzegovina are their first opponent, and they should be dispatched easily by the USMNT playing at home.

Belgium will be more problematic. I’m presuming they will beat Senegal, but nothing is guaranteed at this point. Belgium looked sluggish for much of group play, yet still won their group. Senegal is a murky African team. They were stripped of their Africa Cup title, after the team left the pitch to protest a penalty kick given to Morocco, in a game Senegal eventually won 1-0. This FIFA matter is now being decided in court, and it’s a huge mess. Senegal is talented, but there are team issues and they were fortunate to advance. Senegal is one of those teams that can be dangerous if they put it all together, but more than likely won’t.

This why I’ve always seen a US v Belgium match-up in the round-of-16. Belgium is going to create all kinds of problems for the US, to which I don’t believe they have an answer. It’s this match that is probably going to decide the ultimate fate of men’s football/soccer in the US. Hosting gives your national team a huge home-field advantage that only comes around now. The USWNT has already left their legacy, four World Cup titles. The men have only reached the World Cup quarterfinals once– in 2002. This is their chance to do that again, and if they do so, they will have earned a substantial amount of respect in international football. Those are the lofty, yet still doable expectations for the USMNT.

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I’ve previously discussed ‘football v soccer’ as far as sports terminology goes in the US. Soccer became popular in the US in the 1980’s. It was coached largely by adults who never played the game, and often didn’t even watch the World Cup or European league football. They barely knew the rules, much less how to play. As a consequence, the US developed its own distinctive style of football known as soccer, which is a punt & run style of football. Soccer coaches love the kid who can boom the ball the furthest down the field. That’s their center midfielder. Accuracy, pace & timing don’t matter so much in the soccer school. Punting, physicality, and dribbling through multiple defenders is how the ball is typically advanced in soccer. Trying to get 11 players to work together and methodically control the ball was unheard of in US soccer early days. This losing football style has always ended is hard failure at the World Cup for the USMNT.

If you watch a team like Brazil pass the ball around in every World Cup, you realize why they are always competitive and a 5-time champion. You must control the ball as a team, while producing magical playmakers to win at football. US soccer has failed to produce a USMNT that is competitive at the World Cup because its team consistently lacks quality at every position, save goalkeeper. It values the wrong kind of players, while teaching poor strategies & bad tactics.

You must control the ball, one touch pass under pressure, and maintain a connection with all your teammates to compete with the best at the World Cup. The USMNT is at least two levels short of top tier, as the long-taught soccer style continues to stunt football from flowering in the US. The talent is there, but the correct skills, style & philosophy aren’t being taught early enough to produce the great players needed to compete with France, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, etc. Youth coaching needs to improve by several levels for the US to seriously compete at the World Cup.

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Specifically– being able to clear, trap, pass, serve into the box, and shoot with your left foot (assuming a right-footed player) is required in football. Too many US soccer players have no left foot, and that shows under pressure. Good teams will press your weaknesses until you crack, and that’s typically how the USMNT gets beat in the World Cup. With no left foot you’re half a football player.

As far as team play goes, you can’t be connected if some players don’t have the skills to control the ball under pressure. In football, every player needs to have these ambidextrous foot skills. On US teams that have competed in past World Cups, typically 3-4 players (at most) have international quality. I’m being generous on that, but the point is you can’t connect as a team when two-thirds (or more) of your players just aren’t good enough.

This leads us to USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino, who in my judgment has done a fantastic job with this team. Mauricio Pochettino had to rebuild a USMNT that was crushed when the Jürgen Klinsmann/Bruce Arena led team failed to beat Trinidad & Tobago to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. That was the nadir for football in the US.

Christian Pulisic was on that team. Mauricio Pochettino has stuck by his best player, and now their hopes rest on Christian Pulisic creating some real magic for the USMNT. He’s been hurt, so we haven’t seen much of him. Their group was among the weakest (with Canada’s), so it’s really hard to know how he’ll fare against some real competition. Remember the USMNT didn’t need to qualify this time, so most American sports fans haven’t heard much about the USMNT before this World Cup. This USMNT is still basically untested & unproven.

All-time leading U.S. scorer Landon Donovan was left off the final roster for the 2014 World Cup by Jürgen Klinsmann, which was considered to be one of many of his managerial mistakes. Today, Landon Donovan is probably the best US analyst of World Cup football. He works well with Ian Darke on Fox. He has an understated, compact color analyst style, a quality I always felt was mostly lacking among my youth soccer teammates. I had criticized Landon Donovan earlier, but I take it back– he’s much better than Cobi Jones, Clint Dempsey, or Alexi Lalas.

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Alexi Lalas has stuck his foot in his mouth repeatedly as a Fox 2026 World Cup analyst, and he personifies so many problems the US has in international football. Alexi Lalas always insisted he was better than he actually was. He was good at cutting a figure and politicking in a way that elevated himself while diminishing his teammates. He would publicly project a team spirit, while backstabbing & bad mouthing those whom he thought would expose his phony act.

The best players on the 1994 USMNT, which put US soccer on the map, were Kasey Keller, Eric Wynalda & Cobi Jones. Alexi Lalas was a hanger-on who politicked & promoted himself very well. With “teammates” like this, US soccer has always underachieved on the international stage. Selfish, conceited mediocre players like Alexi Lalas stealing the spotlight for themselves is a major reason why so many American kids quit the game early. You just can’t win playing with people like that.

Eric Wynalda recently summed up the Alexi Lalas schtick quite well in saying, “I think it’s been unwatchable at times. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think a lot of people feel that way. I mean, Alexi is, kind of true to the Fox brand, has been told: this is what we need you to do, start a fight, say some things, insult some people, say something outlandish that no one will believe, and we’ll see how many people will click into that. I think the American public has grown up now. I think our community, our soccer community is way too knowledgeable to fall for that anymore.”

It is from the perspective of a youth player who didn’t make it, that reveals some major deficiencies in US football/soccer. There were thousands if not tens-of-thousands of other kids like me, who had football ability, but were frustrated with the lack of coaching & skills among teammates. Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t go into professional sports, because it’s just too physical for my liking, so I’m not bitter about any of it. But I do know there were many others who could have helped a USMNT achieve better World Cup results, if only they had been recognized & properly coached. That is the difference Eric Wynalda is referring to concerning football IQ & level of play in the US today, versus the riff-raff of Alexi Lalas in 1994 & before.

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The point of all this is to illustrate & illuminate what’s been going on with the USMNT since it took flight in 1994. None of its former players & coaches, especially those who have become analysts for the World Cup on Fox, will honestly describe to the public what I’ve discussed. Even though all the best players know that what I’ve described to be absolutely true. It’s too shameful, as the consistently poor USMNT results speak to a bad process & poor leadership. Every player who participated is complicit by association, and I feel for those who really, really tried to make it work. The USMNT just didn’t have enough of them.

Facts are stubborn, and it’s an inflection point when amateurs can outshine overpaid professionals. It’s more about being honest about basic issues than access to top talent & media glitz. The point is there really isn’t any top US-born football talent to speak of. The best we’ve produced (outside of goalkeeping) are good, but not great by international standards. This is a shortcoming that isn’t honestly discussed, therefore it doesn’t ever get addressed, much less remedied.

The ball has energy which is directed by foot, leg, chest or head as it travels across the pitch. Each of the eleven players need to touch this energized ball at the right time, in the right place, with skill, continuity & connection. It takes a lot of serious practice to get to that. But there’s still too much politicking at the top levels of US soccer, which negatively affects youth football development. All the other top football nations have had their youth infrastructure in place for a long time, while the US is still trying to figure it out.

All this should be understood before jumping on the USMNT 2026 World Cup bandwagon, lest you look like a fool when they only do what they’re expected to do and no more. That’s the standard they’ve set. It’s up to this team to break through. Last chance. I’m neutral on all this. I don’t root for the USMNT, I watch them and take notes during the World Cup. I expect the USMNT to prove themselves worthy before I support US soccer again. I’m an international football fan first.

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Strategy’s STRC bitcoin timebomb

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Preface: This is the second part of a current series. Part 1 is here.

Strategy’s STRC is a high-yield, dividend-paying preferred stock that was first issued in July 2025– about a year ago. STRC was specifically created to raise capital to buy bitcoin by offering high annual income to investors. The stock is designed to maintain a stable par value of $100. Dividends are distributed to shareholders semi-monthly in cash.

Currently STRC is trading ~$75, with an effective yield that is about to go up from 11.5% to 15% on June 30– which is this Tuesday. As the STRC stock price goes down, the investor yield goes up. This fundamental capitalist feedback loop is now becoming the weakest link in the crypto house of cards.

Note this early promotional image below from Seeking Alpha of STRC. which was presented as analysis, capping the STRC dividend level at 12% over the next 16 years. As discussed above, STRC is already at 11.5%, and about to go three percentage points off their yield scale (to 15%) in less than a year. In other words, STRC is about to break through the yield projection models that were presented as legitimate crypto analysis less than a year ago.

Ever since Grayscale won their Supreme Court lawsuit against the SEC in August 2023, the nature of crypto has been flipped. Bitcoin is now publicly traded on Nasdaq, NYSE, etc, in the form of Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) that allow investors to get into bitcoin/crypto without actually buying bitcoin/crypto. The fact that bitcoin needs ETFs to attract investors who don’t really know (or care) what bitcoin is, tells you a lot about the nature of the crypto industry.

Nearly three years later, no one left in bitcoin/crypto advocates for it as decentralized finance. Bitcoin/crypto is now mostly traded in the form of stocks which are highly manipulated by the futures traders in the derivatives market. Most futures traders are shorting the market now because they no longer believe in Michael Saylor’s Strategy.

Note that STRC has no direct bitcoin backing, as it merely represents a claim on the company’s residual assets. Strategy’s only “asset” is the 846,000 useless bitcoins it holds for which it is ~$16,000/bitcoin underwater. This sinking ship, the USS Strategy, keeps trying to reshuffle deck chairs to maintain the illusion of rational business management.

How can Michael Saylor’s Strategy pay their ever-increasing dividend obligations to investors when no one wants to buy bitcoin anymore? Everything depends on the price of a useless asset (bitcoin) going up, and that’s not going to happen because the word is out.

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, etc, are widely seen as the leading crypto criminals. The Clarity crypto bill which Trump advocated for so strongly in 2024, is now dead in Congress. This crypto-sponsored legislation, along with the stablecoin bill, were designed to give a legitimate regulatory framework to crypto, in order for it to be eligible for a taxpayer bailout if the industry needs it.

The industry will definitely need a bailout to survive, the issue is the political pressure lawmakers have received over the Clarity & stablecoin bills. Traditional banking leaders have argued crypto capital requirements & consumer protections aren’t there. The fear is a crypto crash could take the entire financial system down, and they are correct.

The Fed will not be lowering interest rates anytime soon, which chokes crypto out. Bitcoin came out of the post-2008 subprime mortgage crash, as a new form of financial manipulation based on perpetual near-zero interest rates. After 2008, interest rates were kept near zero for over a decade, stimulating speculation into high risk assets such as crypto. Bitcoin mining is dependent on low energy costs and low interest rates, neither of which exist anymore.

Everyone in crypto wants to spin their narrative. No one in the industry wants to rationally look at the entire picture, gather all the facts, and come to an objective conclusion. In a macro-political sense, bitcoin is dead because Trump tariffs & his foreign wars (Venezuela. Iran, Lebanon…) have raised the cost of doing business for everyone. The crypto industry survives on cheap credit and small margins, which have been obliterated by the increased cost of living since Trump began his second presidential term.

The entire crypto market is dependent on bitcoin. Bitcoin is entirely dependent on Michael Saylor buying more bitcoin. When Strategy can’t buy any more bitcoin, and in fact has to sell bitcoin to pay its high-yield dividends to spooked investors, that’s when the big one hits. If Strategy tries to sell more STRC, the value of that stock will continue to decline, as the investor yield goes up, so that’s a downward spiral. If Strategy tries to sell bitcoin, well we saw what happened when word got out Strategy sold 32 bitcoins a month ago. Bitcoin went form $73k to $60k within a week, where it’s tenuously stayed since.

Who wants to give Michael Saylor the bailout loan he so desperately needs? He’s close to Trump, so he’s in the right circles, and that’s what’s kept him solvent up to this point, but patience is running out with big finance, and Trump has never been a partner in business that could be trusted. Trump’s own personal family fortune now rests on crypto, under his Trump Media umbrella, so he definitely has vested interest in keeping the bitcoin Ponzi scheme going. The question is now becoming, who is going to pay the bill on all the unpayable debt invested in useless crypto/bitcoin? That question has revolutionary implications which are not too far off. That is the question which bourgeois economists/politicians can’t/won’t honestly answer.

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The bitcoin squeeze

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Bitcoin mines at $78k per coin, while it is currently trading at ~$60k. Bitcoin has been mined at a loss for the last 5 months. One million bitcoins are left to be mined, requiring greater & greater computing power to produce– meaning higher mining costs in the future. But miners can’t continue to mine bitcoin as a business when it loses that much money. New supply of bitcoin is being squeezed due to thin liquidity and weak demand.

Furthermore, Strategy (MSTR) can no longer afford to make massive buys of bitcoin. After selling 32 bitcoins in late May to test the market, bitcoin quickly dropped from ~$73k to its current $60k level. What this revealed is that Michael Saylor can’t sell any bitcoin without causing a massive slide in bitcoin price. Michael Saylor has been the only large scale buyer of bitcoin for some time now. He has financed his bitcoin buying with MSTR preferred stock sales, promising healthy monthly returns to investors, which he soon won’t be able to pay.

The Block reports that if bitcoin slides to $50k, then MSTR stock will fall to $60; if bitcoin goes to $40k, then $36; if bitcoin falls to $30K, then $13. Strategy stock needs to trade at $100 and over for Michael Saylor’s dividend plan to remain solvent. Strategy is currently trading at $85 and falling, and Michael Saylor is running out of cash.

Strategy can’t sell bitcoin, because when it does the crypto market crashes. Strategy has reached its limits in selling stock as investors are losing confidence in the bitcoin market. It is a market waiting for buyers– and there aren’t any. ETF outflows on bitcoin are now ~$500M/day. Futures traders (the derivatives market) are betting on bitcoin going down.

Bitcoin faces downward pressure in retail & institutional buying (ETF outflows), derivative shorting, and Strategy being tapped out. Their debt is massive, and unpayable from any rational perspective. But rationality left the station long ago in the world of capitalist finance. In this post-2008 crash era of financial manipulation & parasitism, bitcoin rose to prominence as ‘digital gold’, the future of money, decentralized finance free from government regulation, etc. Today bitcoin personifies the Ponzi scheme hucksterism which inhabits the crypto-fascist White House.

Coindesk just reported that of the approximately 20 million bitcoins now in existence, ~11 million of them are held at a loss. Back in early 2020 when COVID hit the US, bitcoin was <$10k. After rising to $126k last October, it has more than halved in trade price since. This means the losses for each bitcoin holder who is underwater are much, much greater than any previous era, and they represent 55% of all bitcoins held.

This is unsustainable. You can’t have a supposed currency which few people use that is a net loss as an investment for over half of its supply. As discussed in the earlier linked piece, if bitcoin falls to ~$20k it’s lights out for crypto. With the latest data that’s been made public, the bitcoin ‘kill price’ is probably now closer to $30-40k– due to Strategy be so over-leveraged & cash-strapped. The important thing is that bitcoin doesn’t need to go to zero (or anywhere close) for the entire crypto market to crash.

It’s a death spiral for bitcoin, for which there is no way out. Bitcoin will soon crash, and when it does, the banks and large financial institutions that have loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to bankrupt crypto ventures will be demanding another US taxpayer bailout. Bitcoin/crypto has very little public confidence anymore. Many early Kool-Aid drinkers have been pushed out of bitcoin, and lost their money to crypto whales. Only inside traders & Ponzi scheme chieftains are benefiting in crypto.

Capitalism is an unfair, rigged game, and that is the lesson Libertarians refuse to learn. They thought bitcoin would change the world. Instead it became just another financial bubble, deeply tied to US imperialism & corporate financial swindling. Bitcoin in its 15-year-or-so history has risen from obscurity to become a global get-rich-quick phenomenon, which is now an albatross for the entire global financial system.

All eyes in crypto focus on Strategy and what Michael Saylor will do. He’s the massive whale on the hook, with over 850,000 bitcoins he bought at an average price of $76k. His ‘buy high & hold’ strategy is in ruins, with no hope for a price recovery, as all the big tech money is shifting into AI. MSTR needs a bitcoin buyer and there aren’t any.

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White Lightning is Back!

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An Eye for an Eye (1981) is the great lost Chuck Norris movie, if there is such a thing. Chuck Norris died a few months ago and I let his death pass unnoticed. I’ve already reviewed his movies here & here. This will be my final critical review of Chuck Norris and his impact on Hollywood.

The story in An Eye for an Eye is about a Chinese drug smuggling operation into the US, which Chuck Norris is hell bent on stopping. His police partner gets killed early, then his partner’s wife. This leads to Chuck Norris resigning from the police force to become a vigilante. Chuck Norris unwittingly confides in a police buddy who is working with the drug-dealing Triads, and is surprised (stunned silence) at the end when he discovers this betrayal. Every character is a stereotype that can be deciphered in about five seconds.

Chuck Norris doesn’t kill the main villain in the end, so it really isn’t the Biblical revenge promised in the movie title. It’s a lot of James Bond type explosions & helicopter chases, with hitmen who are often reluctant to use their guns & automatic weapons when facing Chuck Norris. This allows Chuck to kill many bad guys, which is the point of the movie. Christopher Lee sits in his palatial mansion with spreadsheets & a prospectus for all his well-healed partners in the heroin trade, going over every typed-out detail of the illicit operation, just as SWAT & the SFPD are about to raid them. There’s no real purpose or wrap-up at the end, as An Eye for an Eye stumbles towards the closing credits as the plot fizzles out.

I firmly stand by my controversial thesis that Chuck Norris movies must been seen as unintentional comedy– hideously silly tripe– for there to be any value in watching them. An Eye for an Eye is the third movie in his peak-era trilogy, following A Force of One (1979) & The Octagon (1980).

Upon final viewing I’m rating An Eye for an Eye as Chuck Norris’ second-best movie, behind The Octagon. It’s better filmed, directed, lit, edited & produced than A Force of One, which is grittier and more 8-track than the direct-to-VHS classic An Eye for an Eye. Chuck Norris movies seem to look better on TV for some unexplained reason. USA Network & TBS is where his movies lived in the 1980’s. The constant commercial interruptions on basic cable were often welcome relief to this Chuck Norris film buff.

Movies start in the public as a trailer. You view it before the main feature, or see a commercial on TV, and decide whether you want to go to the theater and see it when it comes out. In An Eye for an Eye, the trailer is better, much better, than the movie– and that hooked us back in the day. The music is better, the promo announcer adds to the excitement, and no doubt about it– action fans wanted to see this movie. White Lightning is back…

There was no social media back then to warn kids this movie is a turkey– you had to pay up & learn the hard way. Word-of-mouth reviews from Chuck Norris fans were unreliable at best.

To watch Chuck Norris movies you need to be able to absorb pain. The cast in An Eye for an Eye is mostly good enough, it’s Chuck Norris who keeps delivering the pain. He just doesn’t care, and clearly won’t do a second take when a scene needs one. With that established, let’s meet the rest of the cast.

Professor Toru Tanaka (above) played the henchman Oddjob in Goldfinger (1964) who wore a Square-Crown Bowler hat that doubled as a guillotine. He appears as a club-footed assassin in An Eye for an Eye. Diminished somewhat, but still a menacing villain, to me Oddjob doesn’t look like he’s aged a day since he battled James Bond to the death. He’s a perfect foil for Chuck Norris because he doesn’t speak, he growls & grunts while letting his wrestling moves do most of the talking.

Maggie Cooper is probably the best lead actress with whom Chuck Norris ever worked. Again, that’s a controversial statement, and I’m sure this will set Chuck Norris message boards ablaze with debate. There’s detectable chemistry for the first, and perhaps only time in his acting career. She really goes for it, but it appears in retrospect that it didn’t get her very far. Like so many other actresses before her, Maggie Cooper’s career wilted & died after working with Chuck Norris– and it was probably for the best. In this she best compares to Jennifer O’Neill in A Force of One, for the powerlessness she brings to her role.

Chuck Norris fears two things in his movies: intimacy & truth. Chuck Norris exits virtually every scene alone, always having to be the tough guy who walks out & rejects the other person first. When asked a serious question, he freezes like a block of ICE.

Mako was a Japanese-American actor who plays martial arts mentor to Chuck Norris in An Eye for an Eye. Mako had some talent and tried his best to lend some dignity to this movie, but Chuck Norris just wouldn’t allow it. Mako constantly reminds him to concentrate, but Chuck always shrugs him off with a smile. It’s not clear if Mako is referring to his sloppy martial arts or stunted acting, but he repeatedly implores to Chuck Norris, “Concentrate!”

Richard Roundtree [Shaft (1971)] gets a plum role in An Eye for an Eye, as Chuck’s boss in the SFPD. The best line in the movie is early on when Shaft remarks how well Chuck Norris’ left shoulder has healed, only a few scenes after he has taken a bullet wound. Chuck Norris apparently compensates for this by always punching the bad guys with his right hand throughout the movie.

Most kicks, punches & strikes in An Eye for an Eye are cut-away shots. Chuck Norris by now is relying more & more on editing tricks because he can’t do the martial arts well enough to impress/fool his audience. Many scenes are very well-composed, with impressive backgrounds and expert cinematography in An Eye for an Eye. The problem is when Chuck Norris enters the frame. He typically says little and does nothing. The idea in entertainment is to ‘get through the glass’, and reach your audience. Instead, Chuck Norris shrivels-up in front of the camera every time he’s asked to act. It’s comical. There is no one else who became such a big star, who was that bad artistically.

When Chuck Norris decides to go for action in An Eye for an Eye, he does stupid stuff like set fire to a freighter cargo hold full of fireworks because he couldn’t stay quiet & hidden. You must riff Chuck Norris movies to get through them without a lobotomy, and this leads us directly to the main villain in An Eye for an Eye— Christopher Lee.

The title character in The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969) was the role Christopher Lee was born to play. When you are a name actor who stars in possibly the worst movie ever made, that’s the role you were born to play. Christopher Lee, the UK-born actor, plays Fu Manchu like no one else can, making that film impossible to remake because you just can’t do that anymore.

Billed as a horror-adventure film, I feel there is an Andy Warhol quality to The Castle of Fu Manchu that has been overlooked. Unfortunately it’s so vague & indecipherable, I can’t define it– and neither can anyone else. If I had been paid to review movies at the time, and was asked by my editor to do a write-up of The Castle of Fu Manchu, and be kind; I would have written something like, “Fu Manchu is an assault on your senses!!”

Anyway, Christopher Lee brings his boring overblown act to An Eye for an Eye, and he becomes a comic delight as the evil bad guy whom no one is afraid. He makes speeches, acts indecisively, then cuts a figure for the camera on his closeups, while doing everything wrong in order to allow Chuck Norris to capture him in the end. Basically, Christoper Lee mimics his role as Fu Manchu. Gesundheit.

If you watch An Eye for an Eye in this spirit, the riffs will come and you’ll be thankful for them. This was the last movie where a studio invested in a decent script, crew, etc, to try to make a good Chuck Norris movie. After this it’s turds like MIA Braddock & Delta Force franchises, and then finally Walker Texas Ranger where Chuck Norris was permanently consigned to the small screen where he always belonged.

I’ve always felt Chuck Norris would have been best suited to be on a game show as some kind of mascot or attraction. Maybe a sidekick to the host. He could just stand there and be Chuck Norris and people would laugh & jeer. Imagine Chuck Norris as the co-host of Love Connection… now that would be entertaining!

In my alternate version of this classic dating game show, Chuck Woolery still hosts, but any date that goes badly would require the contestants to visit with Chuck Norris for romantic advise. Something like:

Chuck Woolery: Roberta & Jeremy had issues on their last date, so we’re sending them to Dr. Chuck to see if he can help them make a Love Connection…

Roberta [to Chuck Norris]: Jeremy doesn’t get aroused when I flirt with him. How can I remedy this?

Chuck Norris:

 

Roberta [to Chuck Norris]: Jeremy likes to drink beer and becomes abusive when he’s drunk. Does this need an intervention?

Chuck Norris:

 

Roberta [to Chuck Norris]: Jeremy likes to shoot his guns, sometimes more than he likes being with me, I feel. Is that a healthy relationship?

Chuck Norris:

 

Roberta [to Chuck Norris]: My vagina needs special stimulation before intercourse, can you give Jeremy any tips on that?

Chuck Norris:

 

………..<><><><><>………..

FIFA World Cup 2026

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Preface: This will be a serial piece, reporting on noteworthy events as they happen over the next few weeks through July 19.

The most prestigious international sporting event after the Olympics is the FIFA World Cup. Politics always plays a part in the World Cup, and the money involved is immense. Because of this, the World Cup organically invites & breeds corruption.

For the USMNT, it’s about advancing out of group play and finally winning a match in the knockout round. Note that there is a possibility the US could play Iran in Dallas, if both teams finish second in their groups, so watch for that. Iran has had issues getting visas for support personnel for their national team. Also, ticket allotments to Iranian national team fans have been reduced by FIFA. It must be understood that Donald Trump is closely allied with FIFA president Gianni Infantino for any of what’s going on to make any sense in this World Cup.

The game on the field matters less than ever, and that’s a shame. The USMNT has been handed a comfortable draw with Paraguay, Australia & Turkey in Group D. They didn’t have to qualify being a host nation, and that’s what kept the USMNT out of the World Cup 2018 in Russia. That year, 2018 was probably the lowest point for US men’s soccer since it came onto the international scene after hosting the 1994 World Cup and advancing out of group play for the first time.

The USMNT needs to advance to the round-of-32 and win at least one game for this World Cup to be successful for them. A problem with US men’s soccer is that there isn’t enough pressure on them to perform. No one who knows anything about futbol/football expects this team to do much, and it probably won’t. But the hype is there, that’s for sure.

By contrast, the US women’s national team has won the World Cup 4 times: 1991 (inaugural), 1999, 2015 & 2019. The US men haven’t been able to put any kind of competitive team on the World Cup stage ever, and 2026 represents a crossroads for men’s professional soccer in America. With all the advantages the US enjoys, not the least of which is having US imperialism literally destroy much of the global competition for the USMNT. Colombia, and much of Latin America can’t field a competitive team due to US-led violence unleashed on these impoverished nations. Iran surely has been diminished by US imperialism since Feb 28, 2026. Russia and it’s allies aren’t even allowed to compete, due to cynical US-led sanctions. Rotten politics permeate World Cup 2026.

The tournament has been expanded to 48 teams, from 32. This makes winning in the first knockout round (now a round-of-32, not 16) much easier for the USMNT, and it strangely feels like that was a primary reason for the expansion of the World Cup field. Anyway, more nations than ever are in the World Cup, but there has perhaps never been a greater disparity between the true contenders and the pretenders who are mostly just happy to be there.

Of course, every team wants to win, but the difference in quality between the world class teams and the rest will typically be made clear by the round-of-16. The US play Paraguay in its opener, just an hour away as of this publication. The US is playing in Los Angeles and should win easily, as they are better and have every advantage. The problem is, this is when the USMNT has historically spit the bit and laid an egg. Those are the storylines going in. It’s now time to let the players & teams decide the matter, as much as they are allowed. More on all this when the game is over.

Fri 12 Jun 2026 10:10 PM CDT

Mandatory hydration breaks by FIFA this World Cup have turned these games from two halves into four quarters, more resembling American sports. It’s an acknowledgement of global warming, and the need for player safety especially after Qatar 2022, Brazil 2014 & South Africa 2010 where world class athletes were being broken by the heat. I believe it helps the USMNT to play with this rule. Of course, the real purpose of this FIFA rule is to insert another round of commercials during each half, similar to when NASCAR went to stage racing a decade ago.

Coincidentally, a US player finally scored after the first hydration break in its opening match against Paraguay on their way to a 3-0 lead at halftime. Not much of a match, with Paraguay unable to clear the ball out their zone, repeatedly turning the ball over, giving the US multiple resets in the box, barely mounting a serious attack of their own, while tallying an own goal in the process. Hardly a game, and an illustrative example of how far away from competing these small & impoverished nations are in the World Cup.

The US has definitely improved from its disastrous setbacks of the 2010’s, where they completely lost their direction. The USMNT made the quarterfinals in Japan 2002, which is their best result ever in a World Cup, but have flopped since. The USMNT is definitely better organized, and there is finally some real talent on the team that can put the ball in the net, but I’m not convinced they can hold up against serious competition, which they probably won’t face until the round-of-16 at the earliest. Therefore I don’t get too excited over the USMNT dismantling Paraguay 4-1. The result virtually ensures the US will go on to the knockout stage, especially with their goal differential, so it’s a nice start but not much of a test.

The inaugural World Cup was in 1930, with 1942 & 1946 cancelled due to World War II. Brazil (5) has won it the most, with Germany & Italy (4 apiece), Argentina (3), and France & Uruguay (2 apiece) as the only multiple World Cup winners. England (1966) & Spain (2010) also won it. That’s the list. France is considered the favorite in 2026. Spain, England, Brazil & Argentina (2022 winner) all have strong teams and can win it. Beyond that there is a tier of 4-6 teams that can be dangerous. The USMNT isn’t considered to be on that list.

Early impressions: With FIFA expanding the field to 48 teams, the World Cup has been severely diluted, and the ramifications should be understood. Normally in the traditional 32-team World Cup field, there are 3-4 teams that have a poor showings and don’t win or draw a game in group play. They have a hard time even scoring a goal, and are sent home early in ignominy.

This time there will be ~20 teams that really don’t belong in the World Cup– ~40% of the field. Increasing the field by 50% only dilutes the quality of play, as FIFA has allowed too many third-rate national teams into World Cup 2026. Qualifying has traditionally been the method of ensuring only the best make this tournament. Now it’s a much lower bar to qualify, which doesn’t help the game.

This aggressive expansion will lead to many tedious games that will be sparsely attended & hardly watched. High ticket prices aren’t helping either. On average, ticket prices for World Cup 2026 are 5x higher than Qatar 2022. Who in America is interested in the Ivory Coast v Curacao match? Saudi Arabia v Uruguay, etc? Who will win Brazil v Haiti? Mismatches, along with boring match-ups are the story of group play in World Cup 2026. It was all done so FIFA could extract more money from fans & sponsors.

There are now 12 groups instead of 8, with some having 2-3 teams/group that aren’t internationally competitive. See Groups E, G, H & J, and decide for yourself. These ‘also-rans’ will win a few games, because they are playing opponents (40% of the field) who are at their level, but they aren’t World Cup teams in any traditional sense. The ‘group of death’ moniker no longer applies, as all the best teams are alone at top of their groups with a bunch of cupcakes below them.

Travel restrictions have also become an issue, as many foreign fans have decided to not attend the World Cup in North America for these reasons discussed above. Being detained by ICE is a very real risk, and who wants to pay inflated prices for inferior competition, while exposing yourself to the danger of being detained by the American gestapo?

The vastness of North America is also an issue, as the distance between the stadium venues is hundreds, if not thousands of miles. That’s too much travel, in an era of high gas prices along with the soaring costs of attending major sporting events. Watching the World Cup on television is simply a more sensible option for the vast majority of football/soccer fans in 2026.

Sat 13 Jun 2026 03:20 PM CDT

Video Assisted Replay (VAR): Switzerland v Qatar had an event which illustrates the corruption that is FIFA. At 17 minutes into the first half, after a Swiss buildup, the ball is played deep into the Qatar box, resulting in a violent collision between the goalkeeper and a Swiss attacker. A penalty kick was correctly awarded by the referee. All of these calls are reviewed by VAR these days. We the TV viewers get one quick look at what appears to be the Swiss attacker being offside. A VAR ruling of offside would nullify the penalty kick. We the viewers never got a VAR look of the play, even though Fox had “VAR check” on the screen and everyone is waiting for a decision. Why weren’t we given a VAR look at that play? Thierry Henry asked that same question at halftime after he analyzed the play. Clearly, the reason was the Swiss player was indeed offside, but FIFA wanted Switzerland to have the PK. Switzerland leads 1-0 at halftime. They outclass Qatar, but that is blatant VAR prejudice from FIFA. This is what fans mean when they say it’s less about the game on the field than ever. Click.

——-

Automated Balls & Strikes (ABS) has come to MLB in 2026, and it was long overdue. What really annoys sports fans are players who spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about calls to the umps, refs, and officials. ABS has elegantly taken care of much of that in MLB. My favorite ABS moment so far was a game a week or so ago when a hitter challenged strike 1, and strike 3 in a single at-bat– and lost them both as it wasn’t even close on either call. He foolishly & arrogantly exhausted his team’s challenges in the middle-innings, on a low-leverage plate appearance, and hurt his team while making himself look really bad. It was quite a feat to behold. I was so glad I finally saw something like that happen. As a neutral fan watching the game, I’m on my feet in front of the TV saying, “STFU & hit!” I’m guessing his manager & teammates also said something similar to him after the game, out of earshot of the media.

Flopping is the soccer equivalent of arguing balls & strikes in baseball. FIFA uses VAR to review all fouls, questionable offside, touchline in/out, and will even advise the referee to issue a card. VAR is an advance, but only if it is used fairly. Flopping is the biggest competitive issue on the field in football/soccer. Kids are taught at a young age to flop, so by the time they’ve reached the professional levels they’re experts. Each flopper has their own style, an individual reflection of their need for attention & special consideration, channeled into team sports tactics. It’s not only how you flop, it’s also when & where you flop. If you flop in front of a home crowd, during an important moment in a match when emotions are running high, this can often induce a desired whistle from the referee, along with a friendly nod & wink from FIFA VAR. This could win the World Cup for your country someday, so every flopper out there is trying their hardest at this. Click.

——–

FIFA Men’s Rankings are linked here. Sponsored by Coke. There are 211 teams ranked, with San Marino currently last on their list. The lowest-ranked 2026 World Cup qualifiers (FIFA rank in parenthesis) are: New Zealand (85), Haiti (83), Curacao (82), Ghana (73), Cabo Verde (67), Jordan (64), Bosnia and Herzegovina (63), South Africa (61), Saudi Arabia (60), Iraq (57), Uzbekistan (51), Qatar (50), Congo DR (46), Tunisia (45), Czechia (43) & Paraguay (42); all of whom sit outside the FIFA top-40. These are all teams that shouldn’t be there, and wouldn’t be there with a traditional 32-team field. If you’ve seen any of these overmatched teams play already, and objectively watched their level of play, then you know.

Only an outlier or two outside the FIFA top-40 (at the most) traditionally qualifies for a World Cup. Sixteen are listed above. I sense a form of gerrymandering is going on behind the scenes as far as these qualifying groups go. This is where things get murky murky with FIFA.

——–

Alexi Lalas was a defender on the 1994 USMNT. Their success in that tournament springboarded soccer in America by establishing the MLS, and boosting the USWNT who finally broke through in 1999. Alexi Lalas was best known for his red afro with corresponding facial hair, and being an original MLS name player for the New England Revolution. “If you want American soccer players to stay in America, then you need to pay them,” was the quote I remember best from him after the USMNT was eliminated by Brazil in World Cup 1994. I remember it sounding more like a plea, than a threat to leave for Europe.

Alexi Lalas wasn’t coveted by the top teams in Europe. On the other hand, Colombian defender Andrés Escobar was. When asked to speak about his 1994 experience as a Fox analyst in 2026, Alexi Lalas didn’t mention Andrés Escobar.

The 1994 World Cup was won by Brazil over Italy in a shootout. The player who made the biggest impression on me was Hristo Stoichkov, the Bulgarian striker. The event I will never forget from World Cup 1994 was Andrés Escobar scoring a devastating own goal for the US in group play that virtually eliminated pre-tournament favorite Colombia. Andrés Escobar was murdered by drug-gang hooligans in Medellín, Colombia less than a week after Colombia was eliminated from the World Cup.

The dirty, US-led drug wars of the 1980’s & 1990’s devastated futbol in South America, Colombia in particular. Two Escobars (2010) tells this tragic story well. Any discussion of World Cup 1994 that fails to mention the tragedy of Andrés Escobar is disrespectful on every level.

Final thoughts on 1994: To be fair, it’s organically impossible for Alexi Lalas (or any other member of that USMNT) to say the truth about that World Cup– the first hosted by the US. The big money involved created a viable soccer league in the US when MLS was inaugurated in 1996. If he could be honest, Alexi Lalas would say, “We benefited greatly, more than most fans could ever know, by the destruction of Colombian soccer by the US government & military. It was probably the biggest reason the USMNT made the knockout round in 1994. US imperialism not only destroyed soccer in Latin America, it wrecked all of its societies with violence that maintained inequality, meaning poverty for the masses & soaring profits for American capitalists. We were used as a propaganda tool by FIFA, US imperialism & its corporate interests. I am proud of our team’s performance in 1994, but deeply ashamed of the cost that went into our achievements. That is why it is important to remember Andrés Escobar.”

Response to this statement from Fox would be swift & clear, “Alexi Lalas, you’re fired. You will never work in television again.”

Sun 14 Jun 2026 02:23 PM CDT

There’s not much left to say at this point. Football/futbol/soccer is the world game. The US was simply the last country to embrace that concept. Drunk Americans who incessantly chant, “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A,” expect a miracle from the USMNT– like Lake Placid in 1980. Of course, US hockey gold in 1980 wasn’t a miracle. Of Miracles and Men (2015) tells the rest of that story– which most Americans don’t want to hear either.

All this is why I don’t believe the hype on this USMNT. They need to beat a good team in the knockout round of the World Cup for me (& the rest of the world) to be a believer. Historically, the USMNT’s best players have been their goalies– Kasey Keller & Tim Howard. That speaks volumes about the level of football in the US. Today, the USMNT finally has some scoring talent on the pitch. They’re at least dangerous now, when before they were pushovers. In 1994 the USMNT packed everyone into their own box and held on for dear life against Brazil. Obviously you can’t win like that in the World Cup, so things had to change for the US to become respectable in international football. We won’t find out the answers to the USMNT until probably the round-of-16– due to this diluted field.

The stadiums are still full, despite massive price-gouging, visa issues & rising inflation. FIFA is still corrupt, with murky politics everywhere. Expansion of the field fits the interest of FIFA, so it’s here to stay. So are mandatory hydration breaks.  Fifty percent expansion has turned group play into a warm-up exercise for the best teams. They no longer have to worry about being eliminated in group play.

The best group play match-up was Brazil-Morocco- which ended in a 1-1 draw. Both teams played not-to-lose in the 3rd & 4th quarters. It was a gentleman’s draw, as the rest of their group are cupcakes. That was the best match-up in group play. The rest is an exercise in evaluating the best teams for when the knockout stage begins, or teams playing that absolutely won’t make the knockout round. This is day 4 of the World Cup and I’ve seen enough for now. I’ll check in on a few matches of interest as they arrive, but mostly this story is already written until there is a possibility that a good team could be eliminated from the World Cup.

Dilution means more product that is weaker. Also, just like the Olympics, many of these small nations have only a few players (if any) who were born or live in the nations they are playing for in the World Cup. Many have NCAA experience, and almost all have played professionally in Europe, the US, or South America. What this means is there isn’t really a Curacao national team. It’s a bunch of guys who have ancestral ties and can use that to become part of the World Cup. It helps their careers, and provides FIFA with cheap labor from which they profit handsomely. The few millions FIFA sends these impoverished nations for participating in the World Cup are pennies compared to the wealth they rake in broadcasting these diluted games. Germany over Curacao, 7-1. Alexi Lalas on Fox post-game refers to those criticizing this expanded World Cup field as “cynics.” Click.

Mon 15 Jun 2026 12:39 PM CDT

Late last week US president Donald Trump suddenly began pushing hard for a ceasefire deal with Iran. It seemingly came out-of-the-blue, for no apparent reason, as many things do with him. Trump never honestly explains why he does anything, so it’s left to people with functioning brains & integrity to figure it out and explain it to others who would like to know.

Trump’s reasons for signing a 60-day ceasefire agreement with Iran (terms of which are murky and to which Zionist Israel still hasn’t agreed) are: 1) this war was never popular, hasn’t achieved any of its stated objectives, and is hurting Trump & his party; 2) oil prices were about to spike dramatically as US reserves have nearly been exhausted; and 3) the World Cup match featuring Iran today in Los Angeles is expected to bring massive protests, which Trump wanted to blunt with this agreement. That explains his sudden rush to get a deal (any deal) done. All this is cynical public relations & optics– nothing more. Trump will renew hostilities with Iran whenever he pleases, with full approval of the Democrats. The entire world knows it, so don’t expect this worthless agreement to diminish any planned protests.

Iran plays New Zealand today at 6:00 PM PDT. The Iranian national team and its coaches have had to answer endless questions from the media that have nothing to do with New Zealand. They have been placed in an impossible situation, and therefore deserve every serious sports fan’s support.

Iranian head coach, Amir Ghalenoei, stated the other day, “We only think about our country. We are not political people.” Unfortunately this is ignorant babble, when clear thought & expression are desperately needed. In fact, countries are political entities by nature. Before capitalism, in the era of feudalism & the Church, nation states (countries) didn’t exist. It’s ridiculous that no one in the corporate media even points out this historical & political fact. If you strongly identify with your country, that defines your politics.

Those who insist politics should be kept separate from the World Cup are naive fools and/or cynical liars. The FIFA World Cup is an international event, which only ramps up the politics because every nation is competing against all others. Money, power & prestige are involved– which is politics. Visas are required to travel, and for that national teams, fans, media, etc, need host government approval. The process of being selected as a host nation by FIFA is highly political. I could go on & on– all politics.

“Diaspora” is a term that has been frequently used during the World Cup. It refers to a nationality that has spread globally, creating a larger pool of players and fans for a particular national team. As briefly discussed above, Curacao has a diaspora that has led to the formation of their national teams, etc. So when Amir Ghalenoei says to the American media, “The Iranian nation, we respect each and every one of the Iranians,” he is referring to the Iranian diaspora here in the US (& everywhere else) as well as the citizens of Iran. He is appealing to reactionary nationalism, as opposed to international solidarity. That’s the ignorance & danger of his words, which only adds fuel to the fire for Trump and his fascist cabal in the White House.

Diaspora means emigration & immigration. To have a diaspora, free movement of the global population needs to be possible. As we all know from bourgeois politicians & ICE on television every day, immigrants aren’t actually welcome in the US– or any other first-world nation. Especially poor immigrants. Yet the Fox announcers at the World Cup keep gushing about “diaspora” influencing the game of football in such a positive way, etc. The hypocrisy & cynicism is staggering, and often leads to the mute button in my World Cup viewing.

———-

In Group H play, Spain v Cape Verde ended in a 0-0 draw. This was a dud of a match, and another red flag. I watched the first quarter, then switched off at the mandatory hydration break to write & publish the installment above. I finished around the conclusion of this match. From what I saw (and I’m glad I didn’t see most of it), Spain didn’t even look interested in playing hard.

Perhaps it’s somehow to Spain’s advantage if Cape Verde makes the knockout round, or there were diplomatic issues involved, etc? Or maybe Spain just didn’t care to compete in this diluted field. Spain possessed the ball for a staggering 74% of the match time, but showed little energy, with their players being passive with the ball and not really attacking. That’s what I saw at the beginning & the end. I’m sure if I had the sound on, I would have heard Fox announcers hyping the performance of Cape Verde as historic, a boost to their national pride, etc.

How many Cape Verde national team players actually live in Cape Verde? I asked Google AI: one. The rest are diaspora. How can the population of Cape Verde be proud (from a nationalist perspective) of a national team that has only one citizen on it? Will there be a “homecoming” for this national team after the World Cup, so Cape Verdians can celebrate with “their” players– most of whom they have never met & don’t know? Identity is so fluid these days, it’s hard to take any of it seriously. There is a mercenary, free agent quality to many of these lesser-known national teams that outweighs the humanitarian, feel-good narrative.

One thing people who have never played need to realize is that it is very difficult to score a goal in football. It’s probably the hardest thing in major sports, and that’s why most professional matches end 0-0, 1-0, 1-1, etc. If you pack everyone into the box and stay there, it’s difficult for even a very good opponent to find the net. Overmatched teams often employ this strategy because the World Cup is about results. Cape Verde gets their national glory in a 0-0 draw, Maybe someday the Cape Verde national team will score a goal against a good team in the World Cup. Anything is possible. There is an element of nationalist enabling and ‘participation trophyism’ that rings hollow in all this.

Gonzo journalism: I suppose you could call this ‘gonzo journalism’ if you’re reading me here. I was never a huge fan of Hunter Thompson, but he had the right idea in that it’s about a lot more than the game on the field. Other people’s thoughts & ideas matter just as much, if not more. Without fans there is no spectacle, and the World Cup is a massive global spectacle. Gonzo journalism becomes an influential style when it grasps & reveals deeper truths that most participants miss. It means no rules, no bourgeois editors censoring content– in a word, freedom. I prefer to bring a rational, materialist, and yes Trotskyist perspective to my gonzo writings, as opposed to confused, drug-crazed anarchism.

———

Hunter Thompson is a complex figure. I spent one summer in college reading books from the library. I spent a week on Hunter Thompson, William Burroughs, Henry Miller, etc, and didn’t like any of them. I can read them in bits & pieces, but they jump around, drop existing threads to go off on tangents, and generally can’t hold a story together– which frustrates me. I don’t read to be frustrated, so I usually leave them on the shelf, so to say. Hunter Thompson arguably worked best in a magazine format. This allowed installments, which are easier to deliver than a good finished book, which typically takes years.

I don’t like a lot of things Hunter Thompson did & said, but I credit him for contributing a very important concept to modern writing. BTW, this is a good way to negate prejudice towards a flawed person, by crediting them on something important. Also note italics as a gonzo technique. It’s about cutting through the noise and getting directly to a hungry reader with something exciting & important.

Readers always crave enlightening gonzo journalism because the corporate media is all propaganda & lies, as Hunter Thompson recognized. You aren’t allowed to say that on television, even though most people know it. Bourgeois society is afflicted with a severe case of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Gonzo journalism brings free-form humor & humanity to all this madness, which “serious news” people aren’t allowed to present. All they do is selectively recite numbers and lifelessly churn out narratives. If done well today, gonzo journalism easily eclipses all corporate media content, because truth matters foremost.

More than ever we need gonzo, so thank you Hunter Thompson. To all this, I imagine Hunter Thompson would tell me to fuck off, and that’s fine. He has that right & freedom. As long as he doesn’t slander or violently attack me, he can do what he wants. Since Hunter Thompson is long dead, I am addressing his fans who carry on his thoughts & ideas. It’s really hard to find people who respect each other and think this way anymore, and that’s surely what frustrated Hunter Thompson into becoming a gonzo journalist. People aren’t black or white, they are many shades of grey; and therefore people who insist on black-white binary thinking need to be outed as reactionary philistines. That’s the aim of gonzo journalism.

Fri 19 Jun 2026 05:42 PM CDT

For the USMNT, who will easily win their group, it’s going to be a 3rd-place team in the round-of-32 on July 1, a match they should easily win. Then it’s likely to be Belgium (10) in the round-of-16. Portugal (7) or Spain (3) in the quarterfinals are the-most likely match-ups for USMNT, if they advance that far in this World Cup. That’s ambitious and I don’t see the quality for the USMNT to get past a team like Belgium, but stranger things have happened.

Their ugly 2-0 win over Australia today was an own goal and a misplay by the keeper going to the ground when he didn’t need to. That’s not going to happen so much against the top teams. The US defense is shaky at times, and hasn’t really been tested under constant pressure during this World Cup. I still don’t see a magical player for the USMNT. Christian Pulisic is injured, and he can now be rested until the round-of-16, but he isn’t Ronaldo, Messi, or Zidane. The USMNT still doesn’t have that great international player who puts them over the top. That limits how far they can go.

Turning the matches from two halves into four quarters is deeply unpopular with fans & players. That, along with the diluted field are the stories of this World Cup so far. Everyone correctly sees this as a money grab for FIFA. There are a lot of uninteresting games I don’t even bother watching. FIFA and their sponsors are playing to the FOMO crowd which cheers for anything. Those who turn on the World Cup to see consistent quality are seeing far too little of it. We will have to wait until the second week of July for that. I’ve seen far too many good teams going through the motions in the first round of group play. That shouldn’t happen at the World Cup.

Russia once again is prohibited from competing. When Russia hosted the World Cup in 2018, four members of Pussy Riot crashed the final in Moscow. France-Croatia was interrupted in the 52nd minute as political hooligans Veronika Nikulshina, Olga Kurachyova, Olga Pakhtusova, and Pyotr Verzilov staged their pitch invasion. They somehow obtained police uniforms, which they used to disguise themselves and get close to the field. They were quickly hauled off by police, but later sentenced to only 15 days in administrative jail.

Pussy Riot have been declared foreign agents by the Russian government since December 2021. If you are going to try a political stunt like this in front of Vladimir Putin in Moscow, you had better have CIA protection like Pussy Riot does. That’s the lesson of pitch invasions at a World Cup, as Pussy Riot reeks of provocation..

———–

After the first round of group play, I like France. Germany & Argentina also look strong. I’ve noticed the FIFA bracketing has those teams far from the USMNT. None of this is random chance, as these brackets are intensely scrutinized & planned by FIFA, as are the draws that determine the teams in each group. Sponsors want to know (as much as possible) what they are getting. What I’m saying is much of this World Cup is scripted, and so far everything is going according to FIFA’s script.

I like the intensity & togetherness of the US team so far. It probably is their most talented team ever at the World Cup. The problem is the US is so far behind the rest of the world in football. The US is playing soccer, while the rest of the world is playing football. When you say “football” in North America, sports fans think of the Super Bowl & Rose Bowl. Football is the NFL, CFP & CFL. We have Major League Soccer as the highest level of football in North America.

Note that the rest of the sporting world refers to the game played in the NFL as “American football”, a game that developed in the 20th century. It is presumptive & arrogant to name your sport after a much older & more popular game already existing around the world, but you aren’t going to get NFL owners to give up football. There is a point of pride at the international level on this nomenclature, and to a certain extent it hurts the US in World Cup football.

The first written evidence of a football match came in England in about 1170. When kings heads were publicly guillotined, as the Industrial Revolution swept through Europe during the 18th & 19th centuries, their fleshy skulls were kicked around the streets by the jubilant masses– an early form of football. The game was codified in England during the 19th century. Knowing this rich history helps understand the deep working class roots in the game of football. Many great professional players, of yesteryear & today, grew up poor. Football represents the idea that talent (instead of privilege) rises to the top and always deserves our respect.

Sat 20 Jun 2026 03:50 PM CDT

Rebecca Lowe hosts NBC’s US coverage of the Premiere League. Football fans LOVE her because she’s passionate & knowledgeable about the game. Too many women in sports journalism are there just to be a pretty face. Rebecca Lowe is so much more as she is quick-witted, presents well, and is always spot-on with everything Premiere League football. Rebecca Lowe checks all the boxes.

In case you haven’t noticed, every World Cup team has multiple starting players who are playing in (or have played in) the Premiere League. Football is a tough game, and it doesn’t get any tougher that England’s Premiere League. Having Rebecca Lowe along with multiple teams of former European players as analysts really makes Fox’s broadcast a vast improvement over past US telecasts of the World Cup.

Former USMNT players (Alexi Lalas, Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey) don’t add much by comparison. I understand why Fox wants a few of them there– it’s to lend credibility to US soccer by featuring a few voices of their own, but many football fans feel the current US team will best speak for itself– on & off the field. It feels like a lot of bandwagoning from former US players, who never really did anything in the World Cup– or anywhere else.

This entire World Cup tournament needs to be reconsidered as far as what is accomplished and what it means. Forty-eight teams now comprise the field, which will be cut to 32 after group play. What this means is making the knockout stage is no longer a major accomplishment. It’s now the same thing as qualifying for the World Cup used to mean. The round-of-32 now accomplishes what group play used to do–reduce the field to 16. This round is what football fans are waiting for when they watch the World Cup.

Once we get into the round-of-16, it’s important to ask– who is the host nation for this World Cup? Seven of the eight games in the round-of-16 are to be played in the US, as will all the games in the following rounds. Canada & Mexico have been junior partners to the US in hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2026. Notice how this politically mirrors US president Donald Trump’s desire to make Canada the 51st state and renaming the Gulf of Mexico for America.

This expanded field has opened up opportunities for smaller nations to make an impression on the world stage. That is the only benefit to the expanded field. Does that outweigh diluting the World Cup? Many football fans feel the rigorous World Cup qualifying process should narrow the field to the best 32 teams. But how fair is the qualifying process? FIFA has so much murkiness & corruption beneath their surface that it’s hard to berate their decision of expanding the field. There may actually be a few impoverished national teams that deserve more respect than they have gotten and the World Cup is their chance to prove FIFA’s rankings incorrect. That’s the debate here.

At this point, I’ve written all I need to on World Cup 2026, so I’m signing off. The results will confirm or nullify all the narratives.

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Elon Musk’s big money grab

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This SpaceX IPO, set for today, is the largest scam in financial history. Roughly 93% of its projected $1.75T value is in AI, and Elon Musk’s xAI/Grok models are garbage.

Only Starlink makes money, as all other SpaceX divisions lose money. SpaceX leases CPU to Anthropic, it’s competitor, and that is SpaceX’s biggest revenue stream in AI. In other words, it’s an AI infrastructure leasing company being given a big tech valuation. Just how is a leasing company considered an AI innovator?

Their IPO prospectus (sample above) is a joke, an exercise in science fiction & fudging the numbers. SpaceX is claiming a ‘total addressable market’ of $28.5T, which is almost the entire US GDP ($30T). Shareholders will have no vote or say in how SpaceX is run, as Elon Musk will control 85% of the shareholding vote, meaning he can never be fired and will pick his successor, etc. He can even start a new rival company that competes with SpaceX, if that suits him. This is a huge circular deal that rewards all of Elon Musk’s cronies, and keeps him afloat despite SpaceX’s annual net losses & massive debt obligations.

This deal is being hyped because all the right people are getting paid and it keeps the music going. This IPO is also how Elon Musk is meeting his debt obligations for his overpay of Twitter in 2022. There is massive working class resentment over this institutionalized graft, which is widely understood in online comments, blogs & forums, but isn’t seriously discussed or analyzed in the corporate media which accepts this blatant fraud as legitimate business.

Here’s a good video explaining this SpaceX IPO fraud in detail:

As mentioned in an earlier article, SpaceX according to its IPO disclosure holds 18,700 bitcoins purchased at ~$35k each. Therefore, crypto Kool-Aid drinkers are expecting a bitcoin price bump with this IPO, even though there is no rational reason why. Bitcoin has been backsliding since its primary booster, Michael Saylor’s Strategy, sold 32 bitcoins in late May to pay stock dividend obligations. Because Elon Musk is a big crypto booster, and Space X has a sizable stash of bitcoin, this IPO must be a bitcoin price booster. That’s the logic of the market, where casual correlations become influential narratives, and no one cares to explain how it all happens.

Bitcoin/crypto, like the SpaceX IPO, is a huge con built on the cult of personality. Both mirror when Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) went public in March 2024, This fake company, TMTG, operates the Truth Social platform and World Liberty Financial, Trump’s crypto venture. TMTG operates at a heavy loss, with little revenue. Trump Media & Technology Group’s IPO price was ~$79, and just over two years later it trades at $8.25 per share. As of this publication, Trump’s WLFI tokens exchange for $0.06. This should give anyone with any financial sense, a clear idea where SpaceX’s IPO is heading. That 2024 TMTG IPO was simply a handout to Donald Trump from his wealthy supporters, as he desperately needed the cash; just as SpaceX’s 2026 IPO is nothing more than a supporter-backed bailout for Elon Musk.

In conclusion, the IPO price for SpaceX has been set at $135 per share, with a $1.7T valuation because Elon Musk says so. That’s not normally how it works, but we are in a new era of high finance. It’s all in that ridiculous prospectus, which the banks who are making hundreds of millions of dollars off this fraud, barely scrutinize. This IPO is expected to raise $75B for SpaceX, and make Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Of course all this is fictitious value, as all of the value of SpaceX is based on lies & cooked numbers— especially its bitcoin. Elon Musk simply put himself at the head of the line when it comes to AI-company IPOs, and that’s what’s getting him top dollar for his SpaceX junk. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

OpenAI & Anthropic are expected to follow with ~$1T IPO valuations. These companies actually have workable AI technology that people use, but they are part of a massive tech bubble that will burst upon us all. By the time these companies go bankrupt, they will have looted all the money that can be squeezed out of the system. They will be among the biggest companies in the world, and thus deemed too-big-to-fail, and we know what that means: More taxpayer bailouts for these fraudsters, because all the wealthy elites & political players are in on it. The ruling oligarchy tell us what’s what, and we the workers must always obey them. Those are the rules, until a revolution comes along and consigns all this detritus into the dustbin of history.

Fri 12 Jun 2026 05:52 PM CDT

Epilogue: SpaceX stock opened at $150 and rose 19% to $160, after reaching an early high of $172. One particular aspect that has serious investors upset is Nasdaq changing its own eligibility rules for index funds, which acts as yet another hidden boost for Elon Musk. How does he do it? Most human commentors on social media believe the pre-IPO buyers will take their money and wait for the crash, then buy the dip & hold. Plenty of xAI bots attacking these comments. What a rigged charade, as at least two-thirds of the American people aren’t the least bit fooled by this orchestrated fraud.

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Trump crashes at MSG

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On the ABC pregame, NBA commissioner Adam Silver covered for Trump by saying he’s a long-time Knicks fan who was invited by owner James Dolan to attend, and that sports shouldn’t be divisive, etc… Question: If sports are to bring us all together, then why does Trump need so much security & isolation at MSG?

Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Draymond Green, Shaq & Ernie Johnson just sat there quietly during Adam Silver’s false explanation, even though every basketball fan knew how hoops fans really felt about it. If any of these analysts had contradicted Adam Silver, they would have been fired. Disgraceful coercion & capitulation all-around. It was nothing more than a photo-op and a chance to insert himself into the narrative of the NBA finals, everyone knew it, and it was a complete disaster for Trump.

As for the Knicks, they had one of the greatest home court advantages in sports flipped on them because Trump had to make his presence felt. When the MSG crowd is right, they are feverishly cheering for the Knicks, appreciating extra effort & hustle, and exposing phonies on the opposing team. To understand what has happened, we need to take a step back.

The person most responsible for reviving the New York Knicks is Tom Thibodeau. As their head coach from 2020-25, he re-instilled defense as the Knicks bread-and-butter, echoing the Patrick Ewing years when the Knicks were last competitive. Tom Thibodeau is considered an innovator of basketball defense, insisting on player accountability, connectedness, and strict help-side rotations to clog up the middle. Players must rotate early & hard to force a kick out pass, then recover & contest. Repeat until the possession is over. This involves sitting in a stance and literally working your ass off. It takes a lot of serious coaching to get players to buy into this, but it’s what wins.

Knicks fans who have attended games at MSG over the years know & appreciate this. The Knicks made the finals this year because they came together defensively. This is the Knicks most-talented roster in decades, and that deserves most of the credit. The Knicks under Mike Brown now have the players to make Tom Thibodeau’s defensive system work effectively, and it’s gotten them this far.

That defensive energy translates directly to the basketball crowd at MSG. Even the entertainment celebrities understand it. But when someone who ALWAYS demands to be the center of attention, and it widely despised, proclaims that he will be at game 3 in MSG, it sucks a lot of juice out of the building. For the fans & players, it’s no longer about the game; it’s about Donald Trump, and that doesn’t help the home team.

It wasn’t just a jinx that Trump brought into MSG in game 3, it was all the crap we watch sports to forget about for a few hours. Every fan in the building felt it, because they all had to go through extra security, etc, and it diminished their experience of the game. When you pay what it costs to attend a game like that, you feel cheated. You’re angry, and it affects your ability to cheer for the home team. That is absolutely real, and has nothing to do with a jinx.

Game 4 will still have the remnants of Trump– extra security and longer waiting in line to get in. Donald Trump has managed to neutralize the MSG crowd, which severely hurts the Knicks. I didn’t think it was possible, but everyone saw it. How can Donald Trump call himself a Knicks fan after falling asleep in game 3? For the NBA record, Trump distracted everyone in the building who wanted the Knicks to win, and that is carrying over for the rest of the series.

As far as who will win the series, game 4 will tell us a lot. I believe the Spurs are a better team, but the Knicks are close & more experienced. The best team doesn’t always win (see Celtics 1984), and sometimes something that has nothing to do with basketball can influence events on the court. Not since COVID-19 temporarily halted the 2019-20 NBA season has such a disruptive outside force influenced the finals.

For context, what I have written here is from a basketball fan who is not a Knicks fan, but appreciates this historic NBA franchise. Below is a 10-minute video which shows how Knicks fans (& New Yorkers in general) feel about Trump. Warning: It turns into a shameless promo for the Democrats after ~5 minutes, but the first half captures the essence of the moment well enough in its NY style.

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Final WNBA scouting report on Caitlin Clark

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This is the third essay in a series on basketball. Part one is here. Part 2 is here.

I watched the Indiana Fever-New York Liberty game on CBS, and everything I’ve mentioned about Caitlin Clark’s poor defense helped lose a game the Indiana Fever should have won. Beyond that, Caitlin Clark’s offense is limited in ways that aren’t being discussed by WNBA announcers & analysts.

For starters, Caitlin Clark has no left hand– weak dribble, weaker passing, and won’t even try finishing in the paint with her off hand. For a guard, that needs to improve. She’s a good passer with excellent vision, but tries to make too many passes that aren’t really there. She’s trying to make her teammates batter with her passing, but it’s still too much of a mixed bag. No left hand (off hand) limits her as a player.

Beyond that, Kelsey Mitchell needs to be the one with the ball for the Indiana Fever, and Caitlin Clark needs to learn to play without the basketball. Playing effectively without the ball is an advanced offensive skill which requires complete court awareness & better spacing on Caitlin Clark’s part. She’s not the best player on her team anymore, so her game needs to adapt for her to be a winning player in this league. Learning to play on the weak side and being a spot-up 3-point threat is how her offensive game needs to develop. In short, her defense must improve; along with her left hand, and playing without the ball.

Reggie Miller

I’ve mentioned Steve Alford as Caitlin Clark’s best NBA comparable. The NBA player she needs to emulate to be successful in the WNBA is another Indiana basketball legend– Reggie Miller. As the Pacers shooting guard from 1987-2005, Reggie Miller was a master at coming off screens & moving without the ball. It takes patience & discipline to stayed properly spaced, until the time comes to shoot or move quickly & intelligently without the ball.

All her career Caitlin Clark has had the basketball in her hands, but her weak off-hand is leading to too many turnovers in the WNBA. She’s not quick enough, nor does she have the handles to be a point guard. Reggie Miller had to work hard just to become an average NBA defender, but that effort made him a Hall-of Famer because it kept him on the floor. He didn’t let his defensive effort become a liability that kept him off the court at crunch time. He didn’t often get into foul trouble, which would put him on the bench and the other team on the free throw line. Individual & team defense are separate, essential skills in basketball.

2008 Celtics

Caitlin Clark isn’t cut out to be the team leader, she’s not good enough, so she needs to channel Ray Allen with the Boston Celtics behind Kevin Garnett & Paul Pierce. For the Indiana Fever, Kelsey Mitchell needs to be their primary facilitator & scorer, with Aliyah Boston as their option in the paint if there is a mismatch, and Caitlin Clark being a roving 3-point shooter. That’s (maybe) a championship formula that can eventually work if everybody does their part. It starts with having the game to compete, and then playing connected as a team, which isn’t happening on either end of the floor with the current Indiana Fever roster.

Team defense basics: As I mentioned in the first essay, A’ja Wilson is (far & away) the best player in the WNBA, the only player who needs to be double-teamed every time she touches the ball. To beat the Las Vegas Aces, opponents need to pressure the ball to deny her an easy entry pass, then come with a quick, hard double-team when she does get the ball and force her to pass out of it. WNBA teams all know how to double-team & rotate to open shooters on defense. Not all WNBA teams can actually execute it well, but all the coaches & players at least know what they should do, and that’s a measure of growth in the women’s game.

Rotating out of a double-team is objectively measured by who gets the open look and for how long. If the opponent’s second-best scoring option gets a clean look, then the rotation is poor. If the third option gets a look, it’s average at best. If the 4th or 5th option is the one made to shoot, then the defense is dictating and doing its job. If no one gets a look, or a turnover is created, that’s elite team defense. Team defense is five players on the floor, connected together, each busting their butts to cover for each other in order to prevent the opposition from scoring. A scouting eye sees this better than analytics.

Team defense is hard to measure & evaluate, largely because there are a lot of players (boys & girls at all levels) who don’t give much effort on defense, and have learned ways to blame others in order to deflect criticism. Your teammates can make you look bad in basketball, by not being there for you when you need help in recovering, etc. All kinds of egos are clashing in basketball, and trash talking is how a lot of it gets worked out amongst the players. Learn the game (old school), and your trash talking (new school) will take care of itself.

Team defense means you get on board, or you’re benched or traded. Team defense is an old school ethic, with new school science & applications. For example, in today’s game you can’t give up an open corner 3 to a good shooter, at any level, as that’s like giving up an open lay-up in the pre-3 era. For every player, team defense & playing without the ball are about being efficient & effective with angles & spacing to help your team win on both ends of the floor.

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Crypto plummets after Strategy sells 32 bitcoins

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In the latest crypto news, this article from CoinDesk on Monday June 1, set off a rush to exit in bitcoin. It reads, “Michael Saylor’s Strategy sold 32 bitcoin for $2.5 million to fund dividend payments. The 8-K filing Monday says proceeds from the May 26-31 sale, executed at an average price of $77,135 a coin, will fund distributions on Strategy’s preferred stock.”

For context, bitcoin had “stabilized” at ~$73k for a few weeks, until this news hit. I still wonder how Michael Saylor got $77k for his bitcoin which was selling at $73k, but that’s perhaps only a trivial matter. The bigger story is that bitcoin has been falling ever since and is now hovering ~$60k with little industry hope for a recovery.

It’s incredible to know that someone who holds over 843,000 bitcoins can spook the entire crypto market to such a degree when he sells 32 bitcoins. I previously outlined the latest issues involved & billionaire nervousness with bitcoin, which centers around Michael Saylor fanatically buying bitcoin at an average price of $76k.

Strategy’s monthly stock dividends are becoming unpayable for Michael Saylor, who has hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. It’s a fact that the richest people in the world are often financially underwater, and therefore not rich at all. They just have infinite credit, which is nice.

Once Strategy sells more bitcoin (and Michael Saylor will have to) that will become an existential crisis for bitcoin/crypto. The US stock market keeps hitting records highs, but a crypto crash threatens to bankrupt everything. Hedge funds, venture capitalists, big banks, corporations, and Donald Trump & family are all invested.

It’s important to remember that every business Trump has led: casinos, the USFL, Trump University, Airlines, etc, has gone bankrupt. His latest venture is the crypto exchange Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which is tobogganing towards bankruptcy, as is the US Treasury under his second term as American president.

Trump tariffs (April 2025) have played a huge role in this impending insolvency, while his war on Iran has reached a level of surrealism, as the Iranian national team has just been allowed visas (by the Trump administration) to play in the World Cup. Iran’s national soccer team will play matches in Los Angeles & Seattle later this month, and it’s hard to imagine this happening in WW2 or any other serious conflict.

Russia isn’t allowed to compete in any international competition (Olympics, World Cup, etc) since it was provoked by Western imperialism to invade Ukraine in early 2022. Allowing Iran’s soccer team visas only proves this war on Iran isn’t serious, from a US perspective. Zionist Israel is taking it far more seriously, as they absolutely would not allow Iran to compete if they were hosting the event.

Competing ideologies among ruling elites is what makes this so murky. Trump wants to end the Iran war, as it’s hurting him and his party in the mid-terms to come, but the Democrats & Netanyahu won’t allow that. Trump can’t withdraw without victory, his ego, and more importantly– imperialism– won’t allow that.

US imperialism cynically insists on the government of Iran turning over its enriched uranium, which BTW Iran is allowed to have for peaceful purposes. There is nothing illegal about Iran having enriched uranium, as nuclear power is used globally, even by countries that don’t have nuclear weapons– such as Canada.

Nuclear bullying & misinformation are favorite strategies of US imperialism & its corporate partners, especially those in arms manufacturing. There’s so much profiteering going on, and all these entities are addicted to it, so it can’t be stopped. Halting this madness would be ‘bad for the economy’, pundits advise from their ivory towers.

That’s the logic of late-stage capitalism in its death throes. Reckless speculation, heavy spending & debt loads, media propaganda, and unlimited access to credit for those too-big-to-fail. Of course there are no rules that apply to this elite class. They are above the law, and in fact they are the law. They control the police & ICE, the DOJ & the courts, the department of corrections, the corporate media, and the two-party system. It’s why the Jeffery Epstein clients are all still at large, while activists, artists, leftists, students, rank-and-file labor organizers, anti-genocide protesters, etc, are the domestic targets of capitalist imperialism.

This layered look at our modern political economy reveals a corrupt web of lies & crimes against peace & humanity. The question all serious people are asking is: What will be the catalyst for the collapse of this massive house of cards? I believe it will be bitcoin, for all the reasons I’ve analyzed for years now. Crypto has more potential to explode into catastrophe than any other industry, primarily because it’s fake to the core. We have a massive fake economy that has been built around, and taken the profits from, the productive labor of those who do the real work, and bitcoin is the crystallization of phony.

Health care workers, educators, factory & construction workers, secretaries & janitors, etc, are the working class that produces all the economic value to society. The billionaires are the parasites, who employ a semi-educated upper-middle class of minions & bureaucratic functionaries to do their bidding. These are union representatives, upper level management in corporate, university faculty, etc. This educated class is assigned with the task of containing the working class & youth by isolation and keeping them in the dark politically. Identity politics is an ideology of isolation through half-truths, and it is the flip side of right-wing white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, etc.

All this can be thrown into the dustbin of history when bitcoin crashes. As a crypto skeptic from the start, I’ve always advocated that bitcoin will eventually go to zero. Crypto is simply an elaborate, computerized Ponzi scheme.

But bitcoin doesn’t need to go to zero anymore for the crypto industry to crash & die. As discussed in an earlier piece, not all bitcoin holders are created equally. Satoshi Nakamoto/Adam Back has a large stash of cheap bitcoin, which he hoarded from the start because he invented bitcoin. It’s those who have bought at $90K/bitcoin and above who are wiped out. That price level isn’t returning, ever.

The real number for bitcoin to be worthless is far above zero. This has to do with the crazy accounting in high finance these days, which I will confess I don’t completely understand– nor do I want to. I know enough already. It’s entirely based on speculation & leveraging debt, with fundamentals such as use value, profitability, stability, etc, being thrown out the window. Capitalism is no longer serious about anything it has claimed to make it great in the past.

Innovation & artistry have been stifled by billionaire capitalists who have hijacked the internet and everything else of value for their own fascist agenda. The are all partners with the NSA, FBI, CIA, ICE, etc. I predict bitcoin will be where the buck stops for the international working class, because this crash will be so fast, so sudden and “out-of the blue” that heads will be spinning– as will political pundits of all bourgeois stripes. Everything happens faster in crypto, as it’s part of the addiction for the original Kool-Aid drinkers.

The crypto kill price for bitcoin is probably closer to $20k. At this level, virtually everyone in bitcoin will be wiped out, except Adam Back/Satoshi. It’s like when you win at Monopoly. Once the winner has everyone’s money, the game is over and it’s time do something else.

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New school & old school

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Preface: This is a continuation of previously published essay– WNBA mediocrity

I’ve used these terms a lot when discussing basketball without fully defining them. Old school is Red Auerbach. This means the coach/GM runs the organization and is considered the most important person. In old school, no player is above the coach or management. What they say goes, and players who complain or object are benched and/or traded away. Old school was too rigid & deeply unfair to the players, especially star players before free agency. The best players never had any leverage in salary negotiations, and that had to change– hence new school.

New school begins with free agency in any sport, and in basketball it really started with Michael Jordan who was the first player to be above his team because he was so, so great. The Chicago Bulls stunk when Michael Jordan was drafted in 1984, and he immediately made the Bulls the league’s hottest attraction. His Air Jordan shoe deal with Nike and the phenomenon it spawned made Michael Jordan the most popular athlete on the planet. That was the ESPN/cable-TV era of sports, pre-internet.

When I write that Michael Jordan was new school, it doesn’t mean he didn’t have any old school in him. Michael was a team player, who valued winning first, which are old school attributes. New school emphasizes self promotion & getting paid as the priority. Michael Jordan wanted to get paid, so he invented new school to take care of himself. In a pre-sneaker deal era, Michael Jordan would have been reduced to just being the best player, without him being the cultural icon he became in the 1980’s & beyond. It’s a combination of being ready to meet the moment, and society being ready for someone like Michael Jordan in the NBA.

New school means you have your own voice in the media. Media is defined as corporate outlets & social media. All professional athletes have a social media profile and manage it seriously. It’s how they speak directly to their fans & critics. It’s how they express their displeasure with the head coach over minutes, shots, and usage. There is no going back to old school on that.

The best athletes in any sport are the ones who maintain a healthy combination of old school & new school. You need to be able to express yourself publicly, but you also have to look yourself in the mirror first. If you aren’t putting in the work and your performance isn’t meeting expectations, then it’s best to shut up and get to work. This means going back to an old school mentality by listening to the coaches, accepting criticism, taking responsibility, etc. It’s taking an attitude that no one is bigger than the team or the game.

In the old school NBA days, if a ‘star player’ underperformed and started being a crybaby to the sports writers, a team enforcer would find a moment alone in the locker room to set that problem straight. Players simply weren’t allowed to throw a coach or a team under the bus without violent repercussions. With hazing now frowned upon in locker rooms (new school), these issues get handled differently today– for better or worse. The worse is when team drama gets dragged out because no one wants to have an uncomfortable discussion. Too many overpaid snowflakes being enabled is a new school issue.

The WNBA is all about drama. It’s just as much a soap opera as an athletic competition these days. This is different from all other sports leagues that have risen to prominence. The NFL, MLB & NBA all have drama going on behind the scenes, but the game remains the main attraction for the fans. In the WNBA, drama over Caitlin Clark dominates their daily narratives. More people know about that, than the defending WNBA champs. The primary narrative & financial driver for the WNBA is an unremarkable player named Caitlin Clark, and it represents new school at its worst.

Whatever temporary boost her popularity gives the league, in the long run the WNBA will be worse off for hyping Caitlin Clark as a great player. The issue here is all the basketball fans who recognize this garbage and call it out. The WNBA isn’t getting those fans back any time soon. What the WNBA has done with Caitlin C;lark is fundamentally disrespectful to the game, prioritizing hype over performance.

Up until Caitlin Clark came into the league in 2024, the WNBA was solid growing. Ownership embraced Caitlin Clark because she has caused franchise values to skyrocket. The Golden State Valkyries, a second year WNBA expansion franchise is now valued at $1B. The average WNBA franchise value is $460M according to Google. Ten years ago there wasn’t a single WNBA team that could get $100M in valuation.

The WNBA is a financial bubble, with insanely overestimated franchise values, and Caitlin Clark has been a tool for that. The WNBA needed a ‘great white hope’ and so they manufactured one in her. The element of racism that underlies all this is the elephant-in-the-room that can’t be discussed in the corporate media. It’s too uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, WNBA critics are labeled misogynist, racist or whatever semantic inversion they prefer in order to silence any discussion on the matter. The WNBA owners are the ones profiting from this hype, and when Caitlin Clark finally crashes, it will be perceived by them as the fault of those who correctly analyzed this from the start. Because myself (& others) have been critical we’re all slandered as ‘woman haters’, as that’s easier to understand than all the facts & issues involved. That’s NIL new school.

Thu 04 Jun 2026 10:00 AM CDT

Update: It’s been reported that the Indiana Fever revoked the press credentials for Scott Agness, the reporter who broke the story of Caitlin Clark not playing due to a sudden “back injury” on May 20. The team violated league rules by not reporting it on time, and was reprimanded by the WNBA for it as her unavailability was announced just before tip-off. All professional sports leagues take this seriously because of the wagering going on. Tanking (new school strategy) wasn’t the issue here. The Indiana Fever organization claims Scott Agness had his team credentials revoked for spreading “inaccurate and unsubstantiated information,” by referring to load management as the reason for the unavailability. What’s actually going on here is blatant retribution by snowflakes for reporting the truth, which isn’t popular with corporate institutions & their concocted narratives.

Along with this is a new article in the Athletic that is critical of Caitlin Clark’s defense, referring to her as a “sitting duck during hunting season.” None of this is untrue, yet the Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark fans are (again) in a tizzy over this. It’s been branded a “hit piece” by Caitlin Clark supporters, when the fact is she is a poor defender and a liability to her team for it. The flak from her adoring sycophants is the head coach has the wrong scheme, and isn’t protecting her on the court as she should, etc. This comes mostly from people with money & influence who aren’t experienced enough to coach a JV basketball team, yet insist know best. Ball players counter that if she stinks on defense, that’s her fault and when her coaches call her out Caitlin Clark throws tantrums instead of sucking it up and improving her effort.

Fact: The WNBA still doesn’t make a profit, with annual revenues of only $300M and operating costs being much higher. Now that the CBA has been settled, franchise valuations are what matter most to the league. The hype over Caitlin Clark, and the extreme sensitivity over any criticism of her performance is part of this. The ‘chosen one’ has to be protected (enabled) to maintain these wildly inflated WNBA franchise values. That’s the source of all this media hysteria.

This is nothing more than new school nonsense taking over the game, in which performance doesn’t matter so much, as there’s always an excuse to protect its top attraction. If the Indiana Fever don’t do everything in their power to deflect criticism of Caitlin Clark, then her head coach will be fired, other players will be traded, or perhaps Clark will finally demand a trade. She has all that leverage, simply by being in the right place at the right time. Those are the new school rules in play, and it rubs many in the game the wrong way. Old school would involve what’s been discussed above, and apparently Caitlin Clark isn’t interested in that. This is just the latest dramatic episode in As the WNBA World Turns. It won’t be long before this tired act gets tuned out, which spells big trouble for the WNBA. That’s the Faustian bargain they’ve made which will eventually come home to roost.

To use a NFL analogy sports fans can appreciate, if you are Ryan Leaf instead of Peyton Manning, fans will learn the difference– sooner or later. That may feel extremely harsh to Caitlin Clark, but it’s much closer to the truth than the narratives being floated through the corporate media and onto social media. All this protective enabling isn’t doing Caitlin Clark, the Indiana Fever, or the WNBA any good. The sugar high of inflated franchise values will eventually turn into diabetes of the WNBA, meaning it will cost the league much more than it has gained. This lying & racist ‘great white hope’ campaign is hurting the league’s credibility.

Old school means you work for your rewards, making them sweeter when they are finally achieved. And if you fall short, at least you gave it your best. New school is demanding the reward up front, then deciding if you want to put in the work or not. It’s turned the WNBA into an exercise in projections & speculation. Caitlin Clark isn’t measured by her performance, she’s measured in futures. Like the derivatives market in finance & investing, all the money thrown at her is about image & what bettors believe her future will bring. To honestly assess that, one needs to objectively look at her current professional track record which isn’t favorable. With these examples drawn out in ~1,800 words, lies the difference between old school & new school.

Post script: Defense is half the game. That’s actually an understatement of fact. Good defense leads to easy offense, while bad defense gives easy offense to the opponent. One energizes and the other demoralizes. Defense wins championships. Everyone in basketball knows this. All your teammates & coaches care about is are you an asset or liability on the floor? If you give up too many easy looks & baskets then you are a negative on +/- player rating. That’s a losing player. People who try to spin the truth on basketball don’t discuss defense seriously. For more on old school defense, read this.  For new school defense, read here.

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