Category Archives: Economics

Michael Jordan on load management

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This video aired last night on NBC.

Load management is an individual athlete’s choice. Michael Jordan has his opinion from the perspective of an all-time elite athlete. Most athletes are inspired by his example but simply can’t live up to his standard. That’s what it means to be the best at what you do.

If you are hurt, you really can’t prove yourself because you’re hurt and can’t perform. NBA players are entertainers, but not like Broadway entertainers, where there is no real physical punishment & required recovery as part of the gig. Fans need to understand athletes are human beings, and sometimes they really can’t perform– and need rest. If a fan can’t understand that then that ‘fan’ is really a hater. There’s no point in trying to please haters, and you really aren’t going to shut them up either. You can quiet them for awhile, but they’ll be back and you’ll be more hurt trying to prove yourself over & over to people who don’t respect you.

Michael Jordan retired twice during his playing career, after his age-29 season and after his age-34 season. In that sense he load manged his career. He didn’t want to play when he was burnt out, or after his father was murdered, or when his back-stabbing GM Jerry Krause broke up the Bulls after 1998. Michael Jordan came back with the Wizards as a player/owner, which was something much different than MJ with the Bulls. Actually it was similar to when Michael Jordan first came to the Bulls in 1984 and the franchise was a joke.

Michael Jordan performed as best he could for two seasons with the Wizards from 2001-2003, then retired for good after 15 seasons and cashed in his Wizards chips to buy the Charlotte franchise. It’s clear Michael Jordan didn’t fully respect his ‘new school’ players as a NBA team owner. His standards were too high, so inevitably that clashed with new school attitudes of players demanding a trade, or a coach be fired, etc. Players’ grievances deserve to be heard, and their concerns honestly addressed, but there are too many egotistical players who haven’t helped their team win anything, demanding to call the shots for the organization. I’m sure that never sat well with team owner Michael Jordan.

The Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets stunk and never drafted well during the MJ tenure as owner. Being a NBA player means something different as compared to Michael Jordan’s era. Players are paid MUCH better, and many are celebrities, and all that is due to Magic Johnson, Larry Bird & Michael Jordan. Dream Team 1992 finally put those rivals on the same team, and basketball has never been the same since. I believe Michael Jordan feels that too many modern NBA players don’t give him enough credit for making them millionaires.

I believe that’s why MJ walked away from the NBA as an owner in 2023. He has since gone into racing where he has been much more successful as far as winning goes. He looks happier too, which is probably the most important thing for him now. Keep in mind, Michael Jordan made a $3B fortune for himself as a NBA franchise owner, much more than he made in salary as a player, so in that sense he was a successful owner. It all depends on your perspective & definition of success.

From a medical & physiological perspective, Michael Jordan is super-human as compared to any other basketball player. Even LeBron James needs load management rest, as any 40-year old athlete would. Would you rather him retire? I’d rather see Lebron James keep playing as long as he wants, even if it means he needs to sit for extended times during the regular season. The pace of play is much faster in this era, making the up & down 82-game grind even more punishing. The NBA is a punishing marathon in terms of what it does to a player’s body.

Any athlete that feels his/her body needs rest should not feel badly about not playing. It’s a professional athlete’s obligation to know their body and we all have limits. To try to push beyond those limits to entertain others while meeting a professional standard one has set for oneself is an ethical choice every athlete faces. There is a point where winning isn’t worth it, and that’s what Michael Jordan is talking about when he says he has a competitive problem.

Winning & leadership have costs, as Michael Jordan has pointed out, but winning at the cost of sacrificing ethics & bodily health isn’t healthy. The allure of glory & financial reward can mask those ugly costs for a period of time, but they won’t sustain excellence in the long run because they’re unrepeatable. You aren’t as talented as MJ at basketball, so you can’t criticize what he did as a player, even if it crossed ethical lines with his teammates at times. Winning & his greatness justified the means as long as they could be covered-up, but knowing what we know today, teammates in this era wouldn’t tolerate what they would consider abusive behavior from their superstar player.

Honestly, I think it’s abusive to expect NBA players to play all 82 games in the regular season anymore, and then expect them to be ready to perform at their best in the play-offs which have been greatly expanded from the era of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan retired from the game whenever he wanted because he could. Most players don’t have that ability, and therefore have to do everything they can to extend their careers and get paid. Most retired players are lucky if they can get a broadcasting job, which is a huge pay cut, but still pays normal bills.

Michael Jordan is such an icon that he can do whatever he wants because he lives a different life than most people. He does what’s best for himself, just as any other person should do what’s best for themselves. As long as you are honest & of good heart, your ethics are secure.

It’s impossible to go through life without making a great many mistakes. When an athlete gets injured, as all great athletes have at some point in their career, it’s how they rehabilitate & recover to come back that often defines them. Taking care of your body & staying healthy is a skill. It’s also a personal judgment that no one else can (or should) make for you.

The danger of heroes is that we idolize them and believe they could never be wrong. This means what’s right for Michael Jordan may not be right for you. People get consumed by their admiration and lose their heads on stuff like this. Michael Jordan needed to play every game because he didn’t want to disappoint even one fan. I’m not a basketball savant like MJ and neither are you, so don’t worry about living up to his standards, because you can’t and there’s no shame in that. It simply acknowledges his greatness which you know you can never achieve. You can still be inspired by his example without trying to copy his personal template.

Humanize your heroes instead of worshiping them blindly. Michael Jordan doesn’t want you to worship him & he doesn’t need your money anymore. Instead he wants your understanding & respect. What Michael Jordan meant in his “Insights to Excellence” interview with NBC’s Mike Tirico last night was that he is the best player ever and this is why. He played in every game he could and didn’t need load management.

Hall-of-Famers like Grant Hill did need load management. Hall of Fames have inner-circles, and then inner-inner circles, and that distinction is important to winning according to MJ. If you get that, then you are understanding load management science correctly, in a situation that is confusing & muddled because fans don’t fully understand the true greatness of their hero.

Last Thoughts on the Last Dance

Michael Jordan was only seriously hurt once during his playing career, when he broke his left foot at the beginning of the 1985-86 season. When he returned he was load managed into 7 minutes/half, which he didn’t like. Michael Jordan felt his playing time was being manipulated to gain a better position in the 1986 NBA draft. Ironically, the Cleveland Cavilers were the team that lost out to the Bulls for the playoffs, but got the #1 overall pick and selected Brad Daugherty out of UNC. The Celtics took Len Bias #2. That was what was available and Bulls GM Jerry Krause surely wanted Len Bias. We all know how that turned out.

Michael Jordan says his best teammate ever was Scottie Pippen. Scottie Pippen load managed his 1997-98 season by having necessary ankle surgery late. This created resentment with Michael Jordan which apparently still exists to this day. Bulls head coach Phil Jackson wasn’t upset by it, because he understands player’s interests and can handle it. Scottie Pippen insists he would do the same thing again because he had to protect his interests. Who is right?

Talkin’ baseball load management

Last night the Toronto Blue Jays beat RHP/DH Shohei Ohtani in game 4 after Ohtani went 9-9 in plate appearances in an 18-inning game 3 Dodgers win. Game 3 was perhaps the best World Series game ever, but I believe if Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had it to do over again he would start Ohtani in game 3, knowing he would have an off day to rest before his start. No one expects an 18-inning game, but they would have been better prepared for that contingency with RHP Tyler Glasnow starting game 4. The Dodgers can stack both starters in game 7, if necessary, so that’s not a concern. Shohei Ohtani pitched on short rest, after needing an IV after game 3, and didn’t perform anywhere near his best in game 4 the next evening after a nearly seven-hour game the night before.

I have to tell you I was exhausted just watching that amazing game. Game 3 to 4 in the 2025 World Series defines the limitations of human performance and the need for proper load management in the example of Shohei Ohtani. The World Series is now tied at 2-2, as the once-invincible Dodgers are now in a dogfight, arguably because their manager didn’t load manage his superstar correctly in a short series.

A strong case can be made that Dave Roberts should have started LHP Blake Snell (on 3-days rest) in game 4 when it was apparent that game 3 was getting crazy long. By the 15th inning or so, Dave Roberts needs to explain to Blake Snell that he now has to be the starter tomorrow night, because Shohei Ohtani is exhausting himself getting the Dodgers a win tonight. RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, their game 2 starter [!], was warming-up (team player) so Dave Roberts didn’t have to use a position player on the mound if the game went into the 19th inning. 1B Freddie Freeman homered to lead off the bottom of the 18th, so he didn’t.

I don’t know if Dave Roberts approached Blake Snell about this or not, but that’s what needed to be done for the Dodgers. Blake Snell needs to make up for it by winning game 5 tonight, otherwise he’s a bust for the Dodgers in 2025. Snell under-performed in WS game 1 and took the loss, so tonight is what the Dodgers have paid him for. That’s the pressure of the situation the Dodgers have put themselves into.

I wonder how Dodgers minority owner Magic Johnson feels about this? Magic certainly won’t reveal his true feelings to the public now, but after it’s over he’ll open up & share his thoughts, especially if it backfires into a Dodgers failure. Magic is accountable like that and that’s why even Celtics & Padres fans love him.

The best thing about the original Dream Team in 1992 was that as a Larry Bird fan, it felt great to finally have Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan & Charles Barkley on my team, because those guys have been killing Larry Bird’s team for years. Larry Bird now has a bad back and is retired, so he needs these great rivals to carry his team now. The core superstars in 1992 all wanted to play with Larry Bird for the same reason. That was the level of respect & camaraderie that defined the greatest sports team ever assembled.

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The Chauncey Billups NBA mafia-gambling scandal

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Earlier this week the FBI made arrests & then held a press conference on an alleged fixed-betting & gambling ring tied to the Bonanno, Genovese & Gambino organized crime syndicates. More than 30 individuals have been indicted, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, and former player and assistant coach Damon Jones.

“Face cards” are sports celebrities which the mafia uses to lure high-stakes betters into their rigged poker games. They use rigged card shufflers, x-ray tables and other high-tech devices to fleece the “fish.” It’s also alleged by the FBI that insider information on injuries to key players, etc, was also passed on to these mafia associates. ESPN online today reads, “NBA commissioner Adam Silver ‘deeply disturbed’ by indictments.” It’s their first official comment on the matter, and it’s entirely an attempt to distance the league from an issue it has tried to ignore & downplay for a long time.

For historical context, the NBA did everything it could to cover up their gambling issue when crooked NBA official Tim Donaghy went public in 2007 after being arrested by the FBI. Tim Donaghy convincingly explained that the NBA under commissioner David Stern had been rigging outcomes for years to favor the LA Lakers and other preferred teams. Tim Donaghy was threatened & assaulted while in prison for 11 months, and last I heard he was an online betting handicapper.

The 2002 Lakers-Kings conference Finals is the one that forever stands out most clearly in the minds of basketball fans. That series was clearly rigged by the refs for the Lakers. Players & observant fans knew it, and it’s been a different game since. Instead of the best team winning, it’s now about enabling “superstars” like Shaq to the title, so the league can make more money. It’s all about tie-ins to sponsors and who is most marketable.

Because of this, I’m much less passionate about all sports as far as the outcomes go anymore, which is healthy. As a healthy adult you can’t allow yourself to be used by the game you love. It’s crucial to understand how to use the game for your benefit, as I have done in my writings on sports. You don’t need to be a professional athlete to master sports, but you do need to be passionate & serious about them on all levels. A lot of professional athletes don’t understand the bigger picture and this is how they get used by the game.

For all the couch potatoes & wanna-be’s, being an obsessed fan makes you an overweight obedient zombie that can be easily manipulated by a sports addiction. The point of these games today are twofold: 1) they’re contests for the viewers to make wagers on, and 2) the endless series of commercials telling us what & how to think. That’s the root problem with sports, but no one can say it, as rule #1 is don’t antagonize the sponsors because they’re paying for this. What corporate America is actually paying for is league (ownership) partnership so they can attach themselves to the glory of the game. This serves to distract attention from how they are destroying society & corrupting the sports they are bringing us.

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A case study in MLB inequality: 2025 LA Dodgers

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What’s wrong with MLB is now on full display during the NLCS featuring the scrappy small-market Milwaukee Brewers against the behemoth of baseball in the LA Dodgers. The Brewers had the best record in MLB in 2025 and were 6-0 against the Dodgers, so their fans had hope going in. They both had met in the 2018 NLCS, with the Dodgers winning in seven, in what was a competitive & hard fought series. The Dodgers were then handled by the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.

* Later it was revealed the 2018 Boston Red Sox had used Iphone watches to relay signs stolen through clubhouse video, which seriously violated MLB rules on technology use during games, so that year has a fan asterisk on its champion. In 2017 the Houston Asterisks relayed their stolen signs by banging trash cans and this is why MLB now has PitchCom. I’m excited that MLB batters, pitchers & catchers can finally appeal balls & strikes in 2026. It’s about time, as this greatly reduces zealous Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, etc, crowds from unfairly influencing balls & strikes. No fan will miss the art of pitch framing by a catcher in MLB, we’ll be glad it’s gone. Padres SS Xander Bogaerts was punched out on ball four at Wrigley Field in the 9th inning of a deciding game three in the wild card round as his team was rallying. Technology needs to be used to prevent over-excited umpires from doing the wrong thing just to please a home crowd. This is the sports era we live in. Too many people who aren’t really part of the game keep trying to insert themselves into the game. This creates too many asterisks.

In 2025, the Los Angeles Dodgers are showing the baseball world what front office brains, tremendous clout & bottomless spending can achieve. In a game as random & unpredictable as baseball, the Dodgers have virtually ensured themselves a World Series championship. That much is clear after two games of the NLCS, with the Dodgers leading 2-0 and going back to Chavez Ravine for the next three, if necessary. They may only need two, but the outcome already feels inevitable.

As a San Diego Padres fan, it’s our calling to know & dislike the Dodgers. The Padres are like the Brewers & Mariners, they’ve never won it– while Seattle has never been. Mariners are up 2-0 on the Blue Jays and going home in the ALCS. Both these ALCS teams are better than the 2025 Brewers, but neither are going to be able to match the Dodgers. There is a qualitative change in how the Dodgers do things that has led so many fans to this conclusion.

The Dodgers won it last year and were dominant. The Padres were the second-best team according to the champion Dodgers, but there was some distance between them. This year the Padres fell to the 10th-best team in MLB, making the playoffs but losing to the Cubs in the Wild Card round. Among the post-season qualifiers, the Padres only could have beaten the Reds or Guardians, making them the 10th-best MLB team in 2025.

The Dodgers didn’t dominate MLB during the 2025 regular season like they did last year. They had significant injuries on the pitching side, and their bullpen collapsed at times. The Padres had many opportunities to win the NL West, but couldn’t score runs consistently. Their superb bullpen & great defense carried them as far as they got. The Padres were a flawed team, as was every other team in MLB– except the Dodgers.

The Dodgers do things differently from everyone else because they have the clout & brains to do it. For instance, the Dodgers signed LHP Blake Snell last winter for 5/$137M, specifically to pitch in October. The Dodgers only got 61.1 IP from Blake Snell during the season, but they were never concerned and didn’t have to rush him back from injury. Contrast that to 2024, when Blake Snell pitched 104 innings with a 3.12 ERA for the San Francisco Giants and his team wasn’t happy with that. Snell signed late because he had a limited free agent market due to QO restrictions, etc. The 2023 NL Cy Young winner (his second) missed the early part of 2024 with oblique injuries and by the time he got healthy the Giants were out of it and even floated trading Blake Snell to the Yankees at the 7/31 deadline. After the 2024 season, Blake Snell opted-out of his deal and inked with the Dodgers, who only expect him to pitch like an ace in October. The Dodgers are a different animal. Most teams need their ace all season AND in the post-season. Many teams have their World Series aspirations derailed by an injury to their ace. The 2025 Dodgers have four aces.

Big RHP Tyler Glasnow (4/$117M) pitched only 90.1 innings during the season, so he’s recovered, rested & ready to go for the playoffs, with an arm that most MLB post-season starters had in June. DH/RHP Shohei Ohtani 47 IP, 2.87 ERA during the season in which the entire organization has been building him up as a post season starter. RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12/$325M) is the Dodgers true ace, making 30 starts with 173.1 IP and a 2.49 ERA. They didn’t overuse him trying to make the post season because they knew from the start they would probably win their division and surely make the playoffs. This is programmed planning that begins well before spring training. The Dodgers used homegrown pitchers to eat innings during the 2025 regular season, which allowed them to save their expensive aces until the playoffs. No other team can do that.

LHP Clayton Kershaw is a Hall-of-Famer, but he’s no longer dominant. In his final season he gave the Dodgers 112.1 above average innings as a starter. In the 2025 playoffs Clayton Kershaw is a middle-leverage reliever, and to his credit he accepts his role. RHP Dustin May pitched 104 innings and was good enough during the season, but gets left off the post-season roster. Tony Gonsolin is another Dodger homegrown righty starter who doesn’t make their post-season roster due to injury and/or ineffectiveness.

The Dodgers just use these guys and many others like them in the bullpen, to get through the regular season while allowing their championship level pitchers the season to recover and be ready to win in October. The Dodgers are playing a different game as compared to the rest of MLB. Even the Yankees have to struggle and fight with everything they’ve got just to reach the post-season. The Mets didn’t even make the post-season with a $320-350M payroll in 2025. The Dodgers spent the same or more than the Mets. The Shohei Ohtani contract currently defers $68M annually, so payroll commitments for the Dodgers are really over $400M/season. On top of that, their clout is all-powerful. Last winter in international free-agency, the Dodgers grabbed ace RHP Roki Sasaki, who is now their post-season closer. The Padres were in the Roki Sasaki running, but were forced to concede to the Dodgers, otherwise MLB would cancel (or at least downgrade) their TV deal.

It’s a fluid situation season-by-season these days, but in 2025, MLB produced & distributed local broadcasts for five teams: Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins, and San Diego Padres. These are teams that couldn’t negotiate a lucrative-enough TV-rights deal on their own, so MLB broadcast their games and paid these teams much less than others with their own deals.

For instance, on January 28, 2025, the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable signed a 25-year broadcast agreement valued at $8.35 billion, which would see the establishment of a new channel known as SportsNet LA. By comparison, the Padres lost $80-100M in the Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy, announced in March 2023, and have been trimming payroll while trying to remain competitive ever since. By the time Roki Sasaki was conceded to the Dodgers last January, all the remaining top international prospects had been signed, so the Padres were shut out of the 2025 international draft after signing the top prospect two years running. It’s like shoving sand against the tide for Padres GM AJ Preller.

And most fans feel pretty much the same at this point. No other league allows one team to outspend its competitors by 3-4 times. The NFL & NBA understand that star salaries need to be capped, while most athletes understand there needs to be more payroll equity at the bottom– especially for younger players. MLB is probably heading towards an owner lockout after the 2026 season.

There are serious labor rights issues here, along with ownership-league issues on competitiveness. These inequalities are distorting the game to the point where whichever big-market team manages itself the best and wins the hot stove season is virtually guaranteed a World Series. When MLB gets to the point we are now, radical new thinking is required. The same old tweaking, and revising of a broken system just leads to more conflict. The root issues are money & power over the game.

Players need to start taking more ownership of their game. It’s their labor that creates the game with all the fan interest. Billionaire owners mostly don’t understand baseball and only want to make money for themselves from it. This hurts the players, the fans, and the game itself. Capitalism is about crushing your competition, and that’s what the Dodgers are doing to baseball right now. MLB needs 30 teams competing on a level playing field for the game to be interesting again. In 2025, we have MLB hyping its behemoth for maximum ratings, while fans who have already anticipated the outcome are rapidly losing interest.

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NIL issues with AI

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Note: This short piece is an extension of “What is Tilly Norwood?”, published yesterday.

NIL means Name, Image & Likeness, and it has transformed college sports since Ed O’Bannon won his lawsuit with the NCAA in 2015-16. Women’s hoops has undergone a qualitative transformation with athletes like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese & Paige Bueckers getting paid in college, then popularizing the WNBA to new heights.

The owners of the NCAA & WNBA want to convince everyone that it is their platform that has created this success, when really it’s the players. WNBA franchise values have exploded this year due to the players making the game more popular. It’s always the workers who create the value, with the owners trying to convince everyone the opposite. It’s high time for exploited workers to take control of their industries and shout down the parasitic & criminal owners who are impeding progress for humanity.

When it comes to Tilly Norwood, she is a composite of many young female likenesses that have been stolen and re-packaged as proprietary to a corporation. “Tilly Norwood is art,” says it’s creator, but art always acknowledges those who helped make it possible, while Particle6 erases them from history and pays no future royalties. The young women who contributed to create Tilly Norwood by having their faces & bodies scanned are kept anonymous and never compensated beyond that session.

AI is becoming a cheap way to replace people– from film to TV to pornography. It’s also being used to replace workers in other industries, because the people who currently own & control AI are ruthless capitalists, always looking to cut costs and increase their profits. This doesn’t work for the vast majority, who are being exploited & discarded with no future. Humanity is better than this, but we need new leadership and it has to come from a unified international working class.

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What is Tilly Norwood?

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If you read the Wikipedia page to “Tilly Norwood” and check the (currently) twenty references, you’ll notice than none are earlier than 9/27/25, and most are dated yesterday & today– see the screenshot below. Before then no one knew of this artificial intelligence (AI) generated actress that is taking Hollywood by storm. AI is a powerful tool that is being put to use by the ruling class to cuts jobs & production costs for big studios.

According to Wikipedia, “Tilly Norwood was created by Xicoia, the artificial intelligence (AI) division of Particle6, a production company founded by Dutch actress-turned-producer Eline Van der Velden in 2015. Xicoia was officially announced on September 27, 2025 [last Saturday], at the Zurich Summit, part of the Zurich Film Festival… Van der Velden stated she intended Norwood to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman… and Particle6 has stated that using Norwood could cut production costs by 90%.”

This has raised immediate & hysterical alarm bells among actors, including/especially A-listers. AI Commissioner, the computer generated comedy sketch which launched Tilly Norwood has been described as clunky, unreal & unfunny. Yet, the question within the entertainment industry is, “Will a talent agency sign Tilly Norwood?” The answer appears to be yes. Here’s the Particle6 video introducing Tilly Norwood to the world:

Tilly Norwood never gets old, and costs 1/100th of an A-list actress. Tilly Norwood never gives the director a hard time on anything. Tilly Norwood is pornography coming to Hollywood. Every actor now realizes they are screwed, just like the rest of us who work for a living. Welcome to the class war you’ve been ignoring for all these years in the name of your careers.

That’s how a lot of movie fans feel about Hollywood actors at this point. The fascists came for the immigrants, socialists, leftists….and when they finally came for them, the A-listers, no one was left to defend them. That’s celebrity ignorance coming back around to haunt them. How about lending your collective voices to the revolution? You’re pampered by comparison and not as good as you think, which is why AI snuck in and is about to wipe you out as an influential social class. Nobody who works for a living feels sorry for these living marionettes because they had it coming.

All the actors & actresses who supported the #MeToo campaign, which wiped out much of the top talent, are now about to be wiped out with AI. Ask Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman or Bill Murray how they feel about this and their thoughts and feelings will echo what I’ve written. These pretty puppets who backstabbed their talented colleagues to get ahead are now themselves on the chopping block. The irony couldn’t be more real for those blacklisted & MeToo-ed.

Tilly Norwood is deep-fake pornography presented as legitimate. This is how messed-up things are in entertainment. The audience is reduced to a bunch of fat, stupid losers, who don’t appreciate the difference between what’s real and what’s fake. It’s part of the dumbing-down of culture, which now defines Hollywood and the entertainment industry. If movies are all superhero blockbusters, action propaganda, or lame rom-coms, then why not have AI actors? That’s the logic of the capitalist market, which monopolizes power into the hands of the richest class that gets to make all the decisions on what’s best for everyone.

Tilly Norwood can be featured in any of these types of movies, without any artistic value being compromised, because there isn’t any artistic value to begin with. Feature Tilly Norwood on AGT, The Voice, or The Masked Singer. Just punch her in, it wouldn’t matter, as these would still be the same shows filled with vapid ass-clowns & over-produced garbage. When culture is allowed to deteriorate to such a degree that this is possible, it becomes apparent to EVERYBODY that we need a revolution. That’s the explosive nature of what Tilly Norwood represents.

You can’t interview Tilly Norwood face-to-face. Everything she says is someone else’s words & ideas, so how can a public ever accept Tilly Norwood? How does Tilly Norwood accept an Oscar or Emmy? How can Tilly Norwood be considered an actress if she isn’t a real person?  Aesthetically, Tilly Norwood is a cartoon, no matter how lifelike she appears. It’s such a joke, yet it’s also the foreseeable future of Hollywood entertainment.

That’s the dialectics of revolution. Tilly Norwood represents the complete bankruptcy of the entertainment industry and the need for it to be overthrown. It means the studios don’t care about the quality of their content, they just want to cut costs and not pay anyone. This is the economic model being applied to science, healthcare, education, etc, and it’s what’s failing us.

Tilly Norwood means we as a society are going to allow pornography to be legitimate while Jeffery Epstein clients will never be prosecuted because they aren’t so bad, etc… Tilly Norwood is the specter of fascist degradation which now looms over humanity. You can’t ever actually meet her, but you can follow her on Instagram. What more could you ask for?

The WNBA players are currently trying to win themselves a fair share of the league they have created & built through their work, but the commissioner (who always represents the owners), has been telling them to be grateful for what they get, as if they can be replaced. Fortunately for the players, the WNBA is real and can’t be replaced by AI. But listening to the WNBA commissioner, one gets the impression she & the owners wish they could.

What we have in both instances is the same struggle, but in different stages: workers (actors & WNBA players) against capitalists represented by team owners & big production studios. The WNBA is booming, and the players now realize they should be profiting more from their labor. Their CBA is about to expire after the Finals. The WNBA owners aren’t budging on player salaries or any other important issues. It’s capitalist greed that is leading to a labor war in the WNBA, and next season is already in question.

The WNBA players need to realize they are a part of a much greater struggle, otherwise they will be isolated & defeated. The owners & corporate media are too powerful for working class start-up institutions such as the WNBA players. The ruling class defeat of A-list actors with the introduction of Tilly Norwood is confirmation of that. Working class consciousness & solidarity across all industries is required to defeat capitalist fascism.

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Jimmy Kimmel or Charlie Kirk?

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Millions of people who never watch Jimmy Kimmel Live! tuned in last night to see his return to the airwaves after the Trump administration & FCC chairman Brendan Carr (pic below) pulled him for comments he made concerning the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Nothing Jimmy Kimmel said to get him cancelled the week before was outside the boundaries of free speech, but we now live in an era where Constitutional rights are being shredded by a fascist ruling class.

The Trump narrative is that Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a leftist, without providing a shred of evidence for this. Any suggestion that the shooter had right-wing ties is considered slander by the fascist Trump administration, despite the fact the shooter was a confirmed Trump supporter. The Democrats won’t acknowledge this truth, which leaves the field open for pro-Kirk fascist propaganda which has been non-stop since the shooting. Facts don’t matter anymore in politics, as big money demands conformity & obedience.

Here is Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue last night:

Jimmy Kimmel is to be commended for standing up to a fascist administration which seeks to stifle free speech and any political dissent. ABC initially acquiesced to Trump’s bullying, but were forced to retract due to overwhelming popular demand. This is another fact that is being downplayed in the media. Kimmel is more popular than Trump, says the American people, and that’s why he was back on the air last night– to Trump’s dismay. The ruling class is in crisis with no popular support for its reactionary policies.

Free speech advocates have become Kimmel’s new demographic, and there are a lot of them in America and around the world. Kimmel’s removal was part of a murky backroom deal demanded by the dictator-in-chief. Two giant right-wing corporate affiliates Nexstar Media Group & Sinclair Broadcast Group have refused to broadcast Jimmy Kimmel Live, despite the voracious viewer demand for his return. All this is part of appeasing Trump for his approval of their merger. These two companies control about 20% of the US media market, and are currently airing Celebrity Family Feud in place of Kimmel.

Right now, those are the battle lines in this free speech media war. Disney, ABC’s parent company, has lost nearly $4B in market capitalization over this, as viewers have cancelled their Disney+ subscriptions en masse. YouTube views of last night’s Kimmel monologue have exploded, and Hulu airs the next day, so how long will Nexstar & Sinclair lose advertisers & revenue over an ideological battle they really can’t win? This remains to be seen.

Charlie Kirk was a racist, homophobic, Christian nationalist who advocated political violence. Jimmy Kimmel is a liberal comedian talk show host. Which is more dangerous? To ask the question is to answer it. The lionization of Charlie Kirk is a disgusting spectacle that revolts tens of millions of Americans, so there needs to be voices allowed to express that sentiment, otherwise we have a fascist dictatorship. The Kimmel controversy highlights how close we are to that.

Jimmy Kimmel & Charlie Kirk are now forever connected in politics as they represent very opposite viewpoints. Keep in mind, Jimmy Kimmel is tame by any serious political standard. But free speech advocates support Jimmy Kimmel’s right to speak his mind without being censored. Too many socialists & left-wing activists have already been blacklisted & silenced, and it’s been going on for decades. What the Kimmel-Kirk-Trump conflict reveals is the deep-going nature of fascism today, and the popular impulse to resist it.

George Carlin paraphrased it best: If you don’t like the content, then change the channel. We have a president who is being allowed to be a dictator that can’t use a remote control properly, so he decides to take away everyone else’s TV remote control options. That’s like cutting millennials off from the internet, and it will quickly & predictably provoke a massive & angry response. People are now tuning-in to Jimmy Kimmel just to be part of a resistance to fascism. That’s what Jimmy Kimmel represents right now, and it’s a heavy burden to carry, so popular leftist support is all important.

On the ICE shooting in Dallas, Texas this morning: Clearly ICE isn’t doing enough to protect detainees & inmates from harm. Some nutcase shot through an ICE van and killed one detainee while wounding two others. Shut this American gestapo down through mass worker action, not political violence. That’s leftist ideology. Anything else is fake left, false-flag provocation & political confusion that has nothing to do with Marxism or socialism. This is the ‘big lie’ imperialist slander which must be politically defeated to end ICE terrorism.

Leftists educate & organize the workers & youth. Anarchists & Stalinists play into the hands of the Western imperialists with their reactionary brand of violence. Socialists condemn this pathological shooting, whose casualties were three detainees. If it had been three ICE agents as casualties, socialists would condemn it just the same because this isn’t the answer. It’s impossible to find a bourgeois politician who can be fair to the left because they view socialists as their existential enemy to be slandered, terrorized & annihilated. These capitalist criminals are responsible for this violence, and people need to be allowed to say that, otherwise we live in a police state.

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CIA Democrats livid over Trump-Putin Alaska summit

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A US President is being publicly friendly towards Russia [!!] which has thrown the entire Western intelligence apparatus into hysterical panic. This was the Friday evening news for one hour, where Vladimir Putin was treated with diplomatic respect [!] on American soil by Trump. This is all part of Trump’s strategy to win Election 2028. Hitler was friendly to Stalin when he needed to be, but it didn’t lead to peace. That’s a lesson worth remembering.

The CIA Democrats were at the center of a right-wing coup that installed a pro-Western neo-Nazi government in Kiev in 2014, and they mean to see it stays that way as it gets everything it needs to fight Russia. To US ruling class interests, this is about fighting the evil enemy in Russia through a proxy in Ukraine. This distant war is not only good political policy, it’s good business for Raytheon & Boeing.

The problem is Zelensky is widely hated in Ukraine, where elections & freedom of speech aren’t allowed. Young men are conscripted by being kidnapped off the streets or from their homes & work by neo-Nazi goon squads, who send them off to be canon fodder. That isn’t popular and socialists such as Bogdan Syrotiuk are thrown in jail for being actively anti-war. Western media never mentions the case of Bogdan Syrotiuk when talking about Ukraine, as it conflicts with their pro-Zelensky, pro-war narrative.

Putin was provoked into this war with Ukraine by the activities of Western intelligence & NATO, who supported neo-Nazi fascist atrocities against inhabitants of the Russian-majority population of Crimea & the Donbas. The Russia-Ukraine War is popular in neither country because it was instigated (& is maintained) by the external forces of imperialism. US, German & UK intelligence with their military advisors are the instigators & leading proponents of the Russia-Ukraine War, and they certainly don’t want a ceasefire that cedes the Donbas & Crimea to Russia.

Zelensky is running out of rope, as his hold on the presidency is tenuous. His unpopularity makes him susceptible to far-right forces in Kiev, as well as in Berlin, London & Washington that are ready to remove him if he can’t remain firm in keeping the Ukraine army fighting even though it has been exhausted. Manpower losses have reduced this to a defensive war for Zelensky & his NATO backers. No NATO country will commit its military to significant boots on the ground, due to the unpopularity of doing that, so this NATO-provoked war is lost for imperialism.

Drone strikes are the new warfare. Drones are hard to stop because they are high-tech precise & devastating in impact. Despite its high-tech costs and operator training, drone warfare is cheaper than tanks, jets & helicopters because it offers a lower casualty rate for the attack side as compared to human operated attack vehicles. Drones make warfare more economical in every military sense.

Russia is winning the war because; 1) it has more resources, and 2) the war is being fought on Ukrainian soil. That means the majority of civilian casualties & infrastructure damage is on the Ukraine side. Ukraine is losing the battle of attrition and this was inevitable. Trump will not authorize long-range missile strikes deep into Russia from Kiev, because he knows that will lead to nuclear war. The CIA Democrats want Trump to play a game of nuclear brinkmanship with Putin because US intelligence is Russiaphobic to its marrow. These ruling class conflicts highlight the fundamental madness of capitalist imperialism.

The October Revolution of 1917 still lives in the collective class consciousness of every CIA Democrat & fascist, and it arouses all of them into fits of anger & hysteria. Lenin & Trotsky are considered the most serious enemies of capitalism. CIA Democrats always collaborate with fascists to persecute & exterminate socialists. All intelligence dirty tricks operations target the political left, meaning the US intelligence apparatus is an agency of spying & right-wing provocation.

Liberal Democrats are tools of the CIA Democrats, meaning AOC is a tool of Chuck Schumer & Mark Warner. With Trump warming relations with Russian President Putin, the liberal Democrats are being outflanked by a fascist who brings hope for peace to his people. There was no hope with Joe Biden, and Trump exploited that in Alaska with Putin. Trump & Putin both won this political game they’ve played, while the CIA Democrats are fuming at their defeat. Just hosting this event was too much for most of them. Russiagate, the ‘2016 election interference’ narrative was ridiculed by Putin, then Trump, which certainly infuriates CIA Democrats. No peace until there is a complete carve-up of Russia is the CIA Democrat mantra. We need to risk going to nuclear war over this we’re told. And told, and told…

These protestations over Putin as an aggressive war criminal are cynical when Benjamin Netanyahu, an ICC-wanted war criminal is armed to the teeth for the Zionist led IDF genocide & starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza & the West Bank. Double standards are the standard for the US corporate news media. It’s straight intelligence propaganda on network news & the NYT.

The sands are shifting from under the Democrats, who remain less popular than Trump. Their educated, left-leaning, and industrial worker base had moved to the left. Most youth now correctly understand that capitalism is the problem. Anything that doesn’t move to the left, has to gravitate towards Trump & fascism. Any anarchists, fake-leftists and such are actually right-wing provocateurs in that they seek to create confusion & chaos through violent acts & meaningless stunts.

Speaking of impotent political stunts, I haven’t updated on Pussy Riot in awhile. Their latest news is a lesson on what happens when silly provocateurs try to make a statement against fascism and get overwhelmed by real-life events. According to a report in the July 15 Guardian:

Nadya Tolokonnikova was only three and a half days into what was supposed to be a “durational performance” reenacting her two years as a political prisoner in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But Donald Trump had ordered national guard troops into Los Angeles, over the objections of California’s governor, and the protests against immigration raids that Trump wanted to target were happening just a block from the gallery where Nadya Tolokonnikova was performing. The Museum of Contemporary Art hastily decided to shut its doors. But Tolokonnikova, 35, whose political art has left her as a wanted criminal in Russia, chose to continue her performance inside the empty museum. “Police State Exhibit Closed Today Due to the Police State,” she posted on Instagram.

This is what has become of Pussy Riot, the CIA cutout whose postergirl spokesperson is Nadya Tolokonnikova. You can hear the demoralization of this defeatist in her email statement, “I was thinking how the western idea that history inevitably moves toward progress is a mirage.” This begs the question: Who wants to be led by hopeless & impotent performers who can’t hold their audience?

Putin outed Nadya Tolokonnikova & her Pussy Riot cohorts as foreign agents a few years back, which was vehemently denied by CIA Democrats everywhere, particularly liberal feminists. Now, when Trump orders the National Guard to take over, her feminist milieu shuts down and abandons Nadya Tolokonnikova’s performance because in reality it is a useless & empty gesture which no one stands for when the military starts pointing guns in your direction. All of Nadya Tolokonnikova’s supporters ran away and abandoned her performance protesting life in a police state and her courageous resistance which has inspired so many…

Nadya Tolokonnikova performed to an empty room in LA for a bit, then gave up and went home because no one cared. She didn’t join the LA protesters just outside who were courageously condemning the ICE gestapo. Instead, she sat lifelessly in her fake prison cell until she gave up on her fake ‘durational performance’ which everyone had walked out on due to real threats from an all-too-real US police state which (according the her) can’t be resisted. This is the political & artistic legacy of Pussy Riot.

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Basketball & Race

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Preface: This article is the final essay in a recent trilogy on the game of basketball. The first concerned sex toys being tossed by crypto groups in WNBA arenas, and the second is a general discussion on the game of basketball.

All the best basketball players are black, but the game was invented & developed in its early stages by whites. So who’s game is it? This is the question all the racists & racialists ask out loud in the media and privately to their friends.

Blacks were first allowed in the NBA in 1950, but they were limited in number and function– blacks were to be “role players only” on their white teams. It wasn’t until Bill Russell (1956) & Wilt Chamberlain (1959) came into the NBA, and immediately dominated, that blacks could be stars. From the time Bill Russell joined the Boston Celtics until he retired in 1969, it was him & Wilt for the title every year. Only once, when Bill Russell got hurt in 1958, did a “white team” win the NBA title as the St. Louis Hawks were led by Bob Pettit.

Red Auerbach was a mob-connected NBA operator who ran the league behind-the-scenes during its Bill Russell dynasty in which he led the Boston Celtics to 11 titles in 13 seasons, the last two with Russell as player-coach.

Red Auerbach was white and not a racist, he only cared about winning and everything that came with that. He ran the Celtics until his death in 2006 at the age of 89. He had appointed Danny Ainge as team GM by then, who then engineered the Kevin Garnett & Ray Allen acquisitions to go with Paul Pierce that won them the 2007-08 NBA title.

This highlighted & made aware the need for a “big 3” to win a title, over the HoF Shaq/Kobe, then Shaq/Dwyane Wade & Kobe/Gasol model of winning. A ‘big three’ means one more star player, which is easier to acquire & manage as compared to two superstar players. Egos between superstars are more likely to clash & combust. Tim Duncan was the humble superstar in San Antonio, and his organization would draft & develop at least two All-Stars around him to became a dynasty with that big 3 model. They couldn’t replace David Robinson, so they developed Tony Parker & Manu Ginobli, etc. You need three guys who can score when it’s their turn and also shut down their man because it’s really about ‘plus-minus on match-ups’ that determines winning hoops.

Today the financial cost & self-destructive quality of two superstars playing together makes NBA dynasties impossible to maintain. This is the challenge every winning GM & team owner has, it can all be gone when one or two key guys go down with a serious injury. Just like that it’s over and that team is in the draft lottery. Winning is such a thin margin, and more variable to injuries than ever.

For example, I’m watching the 2025 NBA Finals and the announcers are constantly going on about the Pacers as being “a well-run organization and will be a contender for years under current management…” Then, Tyrese Haliburton tears his Achilles tendon trying to play in Game 7, which he clearly shouldn’t have, and a front office & team medical staff that was responsible for the health of their franchise player let him play and inevitably suffer a serious sports injury that could have been avoided. When players are expected to make those sacrifices for their team, the entire sport franchise model needs to be re-evaluated from the top down.

The NBA season is brutally long, the most grinding marathon of all the major sports, by this sportsblogger’s account. The NFL is surely the most brutal, and thus much shorter with 17 games plus the playoffs which are 3-4 games for the Super Bowl participants.

MLB is 162 over six months, so players gets days off, pitchers have their rest days depending on usage to be ready for the playoffs through the World Series, where the eventual champion has to win 3-4 playoff series. The MLB wild card round is best-of-3, all games at the same ballpark. The divisional round is best-of-5 (2-2-1 home format), and the league championship series is best-of-7 (2-3-2), as is the World Series.

The NBA is 82 games, plus 4 rounds of best-of-7 series (2-2-1-1-1 home format) to win the NBA title. On top of that there is now the ‘7-10 play-in scramble’, which adds a game or two for those teams.

MLB, is a regular season marathon, then a 12-team post-season tournament to crown the champion. It takes a roster of at least 60 players & pitchers to be competitive in a modern MLB season. Once you survive that marathon, you have to be able to win short series match-ups against the best remaining teams. You need time to rest some of your best performers during the season which starts in mid-February for pitchers & catchers, and in March for the rest of the position players. They need to be fresh enough to perform when it really counts in October, that’s what they’re paid for and that’s what they play for.

The NBA starts in the fall and plays its finals though late-June. The NBA fines teams for resting their starters during the regular season, as hot-headed & ignorant fans complain about paying big money to see stars and they are all on the bench in street clothes. The season & playoffs are too long, as star players commonly get hurt towards the end which is a result of these abusive workloads.

The regular season needs to be shortened to say 64 games, and the playoffs need to go back to a mini-series (best-of-3, 1-1-1 home format) in the first round, and give the top teams byes into the second round, which should be best-of-five, then best-of-7 for the conference & NBA Finals. That would cut out a lot of unnecessary basketball and finish things from April to mid-May.

After the NCAA Tournament should [immediately!] follow the NBA Playoffs. This would help the WNBA too, by getting off the main stage sooner and letting the women own professional summer basketball. The WNBA is way more entertaining than old pro 3-on-3, I will say that, and so do the number of fans in the stands. 3-on-3 leagues, alumni leagues, etc, are the XFL-ification & Hulk Hoganization of pro hoops– in their presentation, marketing & content. Try to find a corporate sportswriter who can convince his editor to print that.

The ABA (1967-76) deserves a ton of credit for diversifying pro basketball and getting the game moving in the right direction. Cocaine and other illicit drugs were widely available to professional athletes throughout the 1970’s, and the NBA & ABA suffered for it. The quality of basketball was negativity affected by cocaine usage, which was estimated by the late-1970’s to be 40-70% of the players– black & white.

Professional basketball had become black dominated by the time of the ABA-NBA merger in the summer of 1976, but NFL & MLB players had drug usage issues which negatively affected their sports, which were considered ‘white sports’ by the racist media & team owners.

Julius Erving, AKA: Dr. J, came into the NBA with the Philadelphia 76ers, and the league had a new style it could promote to inner city black kids as well as small-town white hicks with imagination. Bird & Magic (then MJ) re-imaged the NBA by not getting caught up in drugs, thus becoming transformative superstars through leadership & example.

Basketball became an inner-city game in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and this is when the preferred style-of-play shifted from the strictly-disciplined, Kentucky-Indiana white rural style, into a playground creative free-flowing black style that became part of pop culture. It’s like going from Dixieland & big band jazz to bebop & Sun Ra– everyone knows the change is for the better. That’s how basketball became black. It’s more organized, concentrated & competitive in the big cities, so that’s where the best players come from. Larry Bird was the exception being from a hick town– making him a rare bird for sure. That’s why he had to prove himself to all the black players from the inner cities & major NCAA programs, which he did.

The bottom line is you need black & white to win at basketball. All the best players are black, but you’ll always take a white baller, particularly if he’s seven feet tall. Even if he isn’t but he can shoot, pass, rebound, defend then he’s a winning player and you want him on your team. You need role players & glue guys to win a title, not as much as stars, but enough to define the difference between winning & losing in competitive basketball because it’s a team game.

You need great coaching, scouting, medical & training staff, and front office support that manages its roster & playing rotations to get the most out of it. It used to be a NBA champion could win with just a great player or two, then it became a Starting 5. Today you need your entire bench, roster depth and G-League support, etc, to be in the hunt. It’s expensive & costly in every sense, and when it goes down with a knee or Achilles tear, it first makes you sick to your stomach, and then angry at the people who profit most from this abuse and know better but hide from their responsibility for it by paying the media to cover-up everything and make excuses for them. This sportsblogger watches of lot of sports with the mute button on.

It’s this way when it comes to race as a political discussion in the 21st century. Officially we have white supremacists as Trump’s MAGA base, opposed to Democratic Party racialist identity politics as the representatives of Wall Street & the CIA. Republicans are shameless liars, while Democrats are the party of the big lie. Both always try to foist their crimes onto their political enemies, ie– anyone who will tell the truth about things.

Anyone who has seriously played & studied basketball knows you need black & white together to win. It’s about team, it’s about unity and accepting everyone as your brother or sister. It’s about being open-minded, as well as suspicious, on new things you don’t understand and deciding on their merits. When it’s your turn to speak your mind, know how to speak respectfully and when it’s time to trash talk, execute with precision & impact. The idea is to get in your opponents head with some hard truths and let that break them down while others watch. Ultimately, basketball is all about respect, which is why everyone respects a serious baller.

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On Basketball

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I’ve proclaimed myself a basketball purist, so it is incumbent on me to define this & then prove it as a sportswriter. Really I’m a sportsblogger, which is a form of sportswriter, but different in that bloggers aren’t held to a corporate standard or code-of-practice which binds sportswriters into a political straitjacket, severely restricting them from expressing their truest & deepest thoughts.

So much has to be censored & covered-up, in the name of fake news, which means corporate media sportswriters only scratch the surface on the most serious stories. Their task is often to keep it vague, and then forget it & move on. Current stories like ‘NFL ownership colludes to suppress QB salaries, then covered-up by NFLPA legal representatives’ don’t play well in the mainstream media. ESPN has just announced the purchasing of the NFL Network, so there’s no way ownership-union collusion can be a story to investigate & feature any more than professionally required.

The most compelling sports stories are usually discovered (& always best-analyzed) by bloggers & other independent entities these days. Virtually everyone promotes themselves on social media, which organically helps bloggers over corporate sportswriters whom we’ve heard from too much already. We all know they have very little to tell us despite all their Hollywood access & face time on Network cameras.

Network (1976) is the best Hollywood film ever. If you want to talk film with me then start there, otherwise you’re shit on movies. That’s basketball trash talking on cinema. Notice how it is concise & directly to the point. That’s how you win at a fast-moving game like basketball.

I’ve loved this game since Bird & Magic, and of course I was a Celtics fan back then. I hated the 76ers & Lakers, until the Celtics won three championships. Then Len Bias tragically died and these Celtics were finished winning titles. It got to the point where I accepted the greatness of Magic Johnson. That junior, junior sky hook was undeniable in its beauty & championship finality. Larry Bird’s shooting and overall play made black players give their respect to white dudes who can play. That was only part of how they transformed the game of basketball.

Basketball is a game where it is accepted by all serious participants that the black players are the best. When it was Larry Bird taking the last shot, it scared opponents to death, because they went in so often, and Larry would look at everyone with an expression that said, “I knew it was going in. What did you expect?!” That’s legendary hall-of-fame trash talking from a master, the first time a white guy could really do it.

Michael Jordan became the ultimate hoops master, the perfect basketball player. What does this mean? It means he has no weaknesses in his game, every aspect is the highest level of excellence & durability: scoring, passing, rebounding, defense, making your teammates better, being a team leader, winning, handling the media & being an ambassador for the game without claiming to be perfect. It takes all that & more to be the best and MJ did that for Generation X. He was the first modern rockstar athlete who you compare to Tiger Woods, Roger Federer & LeBron James.

Before Michael Jordan, sports heroes were different. They were allowed their privacy because they were so revered by sportswriters, as compared to the TMZ paparazzi media we’ve had since the rise of ESPN. In baseball Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax & Bob Gibson would be treated much more harshly today by a media industry that is looking to build you up to tear you down. We shouldn’t do that to our sports heroes, and I’m a sportsblogger who understands & expresses that. Too many sportswriters have egos and want to make the game about themselves. For example the issue of PEDs & MLB hall-of-fame voting, it is very political with stubborn intransigence among a class of ‘old school’ sportswriters who are eligible to vote, but maliciously shut out worthy candidates.

The NBA is a much different game today because of the great players I’ve mentioned from the 1980’s. The 1992 Dream Team is unquestionably the best basketball team ever assembled. Being on that team is equivalent to winning a NBA championship, so Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullen, John Stockton & Karl Malone earn that respect. They are ALWAYS to be addressed as champions in NBA terms. What they did in Barcelona transformed the game. Opposing players were asking for pictures, sincere handshakes & autographs before their games because they knew they were going to lose and were simply honored to be on the court with them. No one had, or has since, seen anything like that in Olympic competition. It’s the athletes who create these-type moments that catapult them into the best-ever discussions, in any sport.

Here’s a digression that will eventually lead back to modern basketball, I promise. I’ve been a fan of women’s soccer since before the start because I played with girls in our hometown leagues as a kid and through high school. Summer leagues were more relaxed and you could pick your coach which was important because high school & traveling league teams were monopolized by local sports politics, with coaching dads often prioritizing college scholarships for their boys over developing the best players and building a winning style of play that can eventually compete with Europe & South America. That still hasn’t happened and that’s why the USMNT loses.

The World Cup is in North America next summer, so the USMNT gets the automatic hosting invite and didn’t have to qualify. If they had, they wouldn’t have made it. The next big day is when the World Cup teams in the 12 groups are revealed and the brackets are set. Lots of betting worldwide on the World Cup. It’s bigger than the Super Bowl because it’s only once every four years and football/futbol is the world game. The world stops when the ball is rolling in the World Cup.

As for the USWNT, their next World Cup is in 2027 and there will be no issue for them qualifying, they’ll again be a favorite but no longer THE favorite. The USWNT has slipped from it’s highest of highs in WC 1999 to settle in as a global force in women’s soccer. The best coaching in US soccer eventually realized the men were hopeless, so they gravitated into the women’s game. It was that dynamic that help US women’s soccer win the world.

Their best player from the start in 1991 was Michelle Akers. Mia Hamm was the first Gen X rockstar female athlete. They all had something you liked so they were like the Beatles in the summer of 1999, and after that it was cool to be a soccer mom. Soccer in the 1980’s didn’t have enough girls in most towns to have their own league, so they had to play with the boys.

The 1999 USWNT became the Dream Team of their sport. Now girls in every small American town have girls soccer leagues. What was achieved was a social revolution and what is important to understand is that an entire society was involved in it. Everyday people were inspired by this team of determined young women, and used their glorious victory to get something they didn’t even know they wanted for their children. The revolution was inspired by sports stars, but achieved by all the “little people.” Understanding that is the art & science of dialectics.

This is why I prefer the USWNT to the WNBA.  They did it more organically and under greater adversity, where the WNBA has had huge promotional assistance from the NBA & its corporate sponsors from the start. Since the USMNT has always sucked, the soccer women had to do it on their own, which is much more impressive to me. Soccer & tennis are the two sports I most enjoy watching women compete, outside of the Olympics.

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My all-time rotating basketball five by position: PG- Magic Johnson/Steph Curry; SG- Michael Jordan/Kobe Bryant; SF- LeBron James/Larry Bird; PF- Karl Malone/Kevin Durant; C- Kareem Abdul Jabbar/Wilt Chamberlain. You get two bench guys and three reserves on a NBA team. Tim Duncan is one and the rest are debatable among a dozen or so great great players. You want Phil Jackson & Gregg Popovich coaching, I’ve always loved Hubie Brown, Chuck Daly, Doc Rivers & Steve Kerr too. They know the game, understand what it takes to win, and always respect the talent and get the most out of it by treating them as men first.

If you want to become a good basketball player then learn the rules. Become an official and learn the game from a different perspective and get paid for it. You’ll play a lot smarter after doing this because you’ll know how & why officials make calls– good & bad. Handling the officials is a skill & artform and no one was better at it than Michael Jordan. This video is the only known instance of MJ getting handled in trash talk, and Magic Johnson still half-apologizes for it– because he knows. Larry just laughs. This is as good as it gets.

Basketball is the easiest game to manipulate/fix through corrupt officiating. Too many team fouls and the other team gets free throws (easy points to a good team) for the rest of that period. Too many individual fouls and you’re either on the bench or disqualified. No other sport has this as such a big part of the game that determines winning & losing. Soccer is the next easiest sport to manipulate through officiating, but fans seem to recognize it quicker so it’s less of a constant at the highest professional levels. VAR and replay officiating have cut down on bad calls determining the outcome, but also have slowed down the game.

The NBA has had officiating problems since before the ABA/NBA merger in 1976. The NBA allowed the ABA to raid its top officials early in their existence, which helped the ABA gain legitimacy with its players and hurt the NBA. If you know you have straight & professional officiating, then you can actually play. If you have an incompetent officiating crew, then it’s hopeless and good players will quit on it one way or another. No point busting your ass only to get cheated with every whistle. I’m not MJ, I can’t overcome bad officiating by being ultra-dominate to a point where the officials have to respect my game. That’s how the rest of us who aren’t superhuman approach playing against bad officials. It’s part of the game, no question.

As far as not watching the NBA, the Shaq/Kobe Lakers early 2000’s titles were all tainted by league-biased officiating, favoring the Lakers every step of the way to three consecutive NBA titles, before it blew apart. It was a political ideology of the era (9/11) that insisted on physical dominance being the most rewarded trait that biased NBA officiating in favor of Shaq & his power game. I always thought Tim Duncan was the superior big man to Shaq. He worked hard and was a better teammate, a true quiet leader– the rarest of rare birds.

There was an aesthetic quality to Tim Duncan’s game that really impressed basketball purists. There was no waste in how he did things. Economical equals five NBA titles with the right coach. Critics called his game boring. The lesson there is don’t listen to the critics. Tim Duncan was the last great college player (Wake Forest) to stay four years when he could have been a top pick earlier. The San Antonio Spurs were the perfect franchise for him, an organization that understood him as the main guy to replace Dream Team center David Robinson when he retired. The right organization builds a dynasty around that by properly valuing his contribution to winning and showing him contract respect by never letting him get close to leaving.

On the other side of the management scale, Shaq from LSU went to the Orlando Magic in 1992, which proceeded to foolishly squander its championship aspirations in that era despite have (on paper) what it took to win a NBA title. They had Chris Webber as the #1 overall pick to go with Shaq in 1993, and potentially replace him in case he bolted for Hollywood– which he did. Weak management in Orlando listened to Shaq lobby for Penny Hardaway, and Magic management let their superstar player make their trade, dealing away the best player in the draft in Webber, a sophomore from the University of Michigan’s legendary Fab Five.

When Michael Jordan came out of his first retirement to re-join the Bulls and kick every team in the Eastern Conference’s ass, that was when Shaq finally went to the Lakers as a free agent and trashed Penny & the Orlando Magic as he left. When Penny hurt his knee and Orlando Magic team physicians were too incompetent to diagnose & understand the serious nature of his injury, Penny Hardaway was finished as an All-Star player. They didn’t do too well with Grant Hill either, all covered in this classic write-up of this tragic franchise.

Brian Hill, Chuck Daly, Doc Rivers & Stan Van Gundy are all above average NBA head coaches (at least) which needs to be respected. None of them could win a title despite having hall-of-fame dominate big men in two different eras: Shaq in the 1990’s & high school #1 overall pick Dwight Howard in the 2000’s. That’s organizational failure starting with cheapskate ownership and its incompetent GM’s, first & foremost. They had great players and all the resources needed to be a dynasty, but couldn’t figure out winning and still haven’t. They have another chance now with Paulo Banchero, another miraculous #1 overall pick that fell in their laps (call it NBA Magic), but I don’t like the guys they have around him so color this central Florida native skeptical on the Orlando Magic for a NBA title. Salary cap aprons really limit a modern NBA franchise’s ability to maintain championship rosters, meaning ‘windows to win’ are shorter, tougher and less predictable than ever.

If it happens for the Magic, it would be like how the Bucks got lucky in 2022. You need a great player, some serious guys around him, good luck & full health. They all count the same when you do it, dominant or lucky. It’s so tough to win so it’s celebrated as greatness as it should be in any integrated & competitive era. Can you imagine the NBA without blacks or foreign players today? Just watch a few YouTube videos and you’ll see it’s unwatchable by modern standards, NBA & NCAA. Diversity is good for everything is the lesson basketball teaches us all.

To understand the greatness of Steph Curry requires respect for ‘old school’ to be blended with an appreciation of ‘new school’ when referring to style of play in professional basketball. When the NBA began after WWII, it was all-white & had only has two levels of scoring: the painted area and an outside shot. Both counted for two points, but since it’s easier to score the closer you get to the hoop, an inside shot in the painted area was always preferred as a winning strategy. Coaches, announcers & analysts harped on this repeatedly, so you couldn’t get past it.

The ABA (1967-76) had the three-point shot from the start and its outside shooters embraced it. Boston Celtics GM (& league power broker) Red Auerbach was against the 3-point with the NBA-ABA merger, but when he acquired the draft rights to Larry Bird in 1978 he changed his mind and the 3-point shot has been in the NBA since the 1979-80 season. Larry Bird was immediately the best 3-point shooter in the game and changed how NBA players & coaches thought about that shot as a weapon. Back then it wasn’t used enough to be considered as a consistent source of offense. That came with Reggie Miller of the Indiana Pacers and his era. Ray Allen is the other hall-of-fame sharp-shooter in the pre-Steph Curry era. Their three-balls were now a potent source of offense on championship level teams.

What the 3-pointer did was create a ‘third level’ of scoring offense, where you can get 3 points by making a shot behind the line. This opened the game up for little guys (under 6’5″) who can shoot, which is always fun & exciting to watch as a basketball fan. SGA of OKC has mastered the mid-range, the area between the 3-point line and the painted area. Jimmy Butler is another guy who has that mid-range game and can finish at the rim. The 3-point shot has caused a lot of young players (Gen Y & Gen Z) to mistakenly abandon the mid-range. There are plenty of clean scoring opportunities in the mid-range, without have to absorb all that contact you get taking it to the hoop. A good mid-range game is a career-extender at any level of play.

What Steph Curry did was create a ‘fourth level’ of offense, well-beyond the 3-point line. You can’t give Steph Curry a wide-open 30-footer, he’ll make that shot consistently and if he gets hot the other team is finished– at any point in the game. Draymond Green sets a solid screen just past half court and the defense is in trouble. No basketball player has ever created such fear & panic from a screen set just past half-court. That’s how far the ‘fourth level’ extends out from the 3-point line.

Everyone from Luka Dončić to Caitlin Clark are prodigies of the Steph Curry ‘new style’ of play. Big men now handle the ball & shoot 3’s, when that was discouraged or forbidden by head coaches back in the day. Quick shots are okay now because advanced metrics have proven you might not get a better look so take the shot. No need to make your team work longer & harder to get essentially the same (or a worse) shot. Hubie Brown & Tex Winter always understood this, but they were in the minority in the profession of basketball coaching.

This ‘fourth level’ creates more opportunities for little guys with skill. For big guys, they are considered & referred to as ‘wing players’ instead of forwards in modern basketball terminology. They need to be long, quick & athletic. Their job is to rim protect and cover out to the 3-point line on defense, and be a vice versa threat on offense. Centers are thicker today, all can shoot 3-pointers, and need to be good passers to help their team on offense. Wing players are more shot-blocking conscious than ever, so center dominance of the Shaq/Wilt variety isn’t really possible in today’s NBA. The level of grinding & physicality creates a big man preference towards skilled mid-range & 3-point shooting over power basketball in the painted area. This reduces wear-and-tear on the body, and saves energy for when it is needed late in the game & season.

Health is a skill, and staying healthy in such a grinding game as the NBA requires hard work and serious maintenance. LeBron James is the ‘old man’ of the NBA at age 40, yet he has maintained his body at the highest level of basketball fitness. He went straight from high school, at age 18 into the NBA, and now you can’t do that anymore. When they change rules because of your talent, and fans are still amazed at it over 20 years later, that’s true greatness.

Basketball is a trash talking game. Every sport has its form of discourse between the competitors, but basketball is a fast moving game that only allows a series of split seconds & brief pauses to say what’s on your mind, and if you hesitate, the moment is gone and the other guy might get hot from there on which really shuts down your trash talking ability. That’s why so many young players start trash talking from their first made shot, because they know they might not see another one go in, so they’re talking like they are Kobe Bryant. As a rule: If you don’t have the skills & ability to back it up, then it’s usually best to check your trash talk.

The best way to shut down trash talking opponents is to play good defense. Shut them down, steal the ball, block their shot, fake them into travel violations, etc, and they’ll get real quiet. Defense is ~15% physical technique with the rest being heart, hustle & brains. All great defenders are among the smartest players. They know the rules, as well as all the tricks they can get away with and how to work the officials. And how to trash talk.

The US men’s team lost to the USSR in the 1988 Olympics because basketball is a team game. The US had the most-talented players, but they were up against professional teams from Europe that had been together for years. Playing as a team is the ultimate difference maker in competitive basketball. This filters down to high school, AAU & even YMCA leagues.

Unless there is a player who is exponentially better than everyone else on the court, generally speaking it’s the side that plays most as a team that wins the game. If you have basketball talent, but don’t help your teammates, then you create a ceiling for that team’s success because it’s all about the individual ego. Speaking of egos in basketball, corrupt and/or bad officiating can skew any game into unwatchable madness. There are plenty of (too many) out of control egos in the ranks of basketball officiating.

This is how I view basketball from an amateur perspective. I’m an amateur in the sense that I’m not paid for any of this, I publish here because I love the game and believe these thoughts are worthy of your consideration. You don’t have to have played the game professionally to know the game, you just have to study & apply yourself at it and you can learn many things about yourself and the world we live in.

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The WNBA, ESPN & crypto dildos

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This is the story of Green Dildo Coin (DILDO).

Delbert Carver, 23, was arrested after throwing a sex object at a July 29 WNBA game in Atlanta. Charged with disorderly conduct, public indecency/indecent exposure and criminal trespass; Carver told police, “This was supposed to be a joke, and this joke (was) supposed to go viral,” according to the arrest affidavit. Since then at least half a dozen similar incidents have happened in WNBA arenas. WNBA spokespeople have been dumbfounded over this, often refusing to comment when pressed by media. This ducking of uncomfortable questions makes Trump’s continual lying on the Jeffery Epstein files look strong by comparison.

Los Angeles Sparks coach Lynee Roberts after Aug. 5 incident: “It’s ridiculous. It’s dumb. It’s stupid. It’s also dangerous, and you know, player safety is No. 1, respecting the game, all those things.”

“I would have picked that thing up and thrown it right back at them,” former Phoenix Mercury star Diana Taurasi.

If the sexist & hateful feminists who monopolize WNBA management can’t find a spokesperson who can understand what’s going on & represent the players here, then they all should be fired and replaced with real women such as those quoted above. Diana Taurasi is a strong woman who understands you can’t allow ANY disrespect on this, because once you do (by not having a serious & immediate WNBA spokesperson response), the league appears weak & becomes the butt of a sick joke. That devalues the league, and if the WNBA can’t handle this appropriately, then they deserve to be devalued.

I’ve never seen Diana Taurasi play, but I can tell you she’s a great player because she’s thought about this situation & understands exactly who to pass to. Basketball is a trash-talking game, which means you have to be able to handle it & dish it back out, otherwise you aren’t a real baller and you won’t get any respect. Players get this, while bureaucrats don’t.

Basketball purist thoughts

Was Diana Taurasi disrespected at the 2024 Paris Olympics by her coaching staff? It felt that way watching, even though I’m not a WNBA fan. I don’t follow the players because I don’t watch the games. I also don’t watch men’s college basketball with much enthusiasm anymore, as it’s a qualitatively inferior game when compared to the 1980’s & early 1990’s when it was at its best. The NBA is the best basketball organization by far, and I’m a purist, so as a sports fan I don’t really watch the WNBA because any men’s college team would beat any WNBA champion in any year. It’s my right as a sensible sports fan to not be interested in the WNBA for these reasons.

The following is a fact of sports everyone needs to accept: men are better because they are bigger & stronger due to natural testosterone. That’s basic biology and it isn’t going to change. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for women’s sports to be popular & respected. If it inspires young girls (& boys) to be healthy & active, then I’m all for it. If the WNBA gives good paying jobs that provide quality entertainment for their audience, then that should be encouraged in every way.

I notice they’re on everywhere these days: ESPN, ABC, CBS & ION. You can’t miss the WNBA, it’s on every weekend (multiple times) on network TV through the spring & summer. I’m a sports reporter so now I’ve had to start watching a few WNBA games because of how this sex toy campaign has gotten so out of control. That’s the real story here.

Barry Bremen was a salesman [!] who knew he didn’t have a life, so he became the great impostor. Those were different times and it was considered funny at first, but then he started getting arrested and it wasn’t so funny anymore. Barry Bremen died in middle age of cancer, so really his antics became defined as sad & sick cries for attention. It’s wrong because it disrespects the game, the athletes, coaches, officials, and everyone in the crowd who paid for a ticket. To continually insert oneself where you don’t belong is selfish & childish. Crypto enthusiasts & online gamblers (nurtured by ESPN) have taken the example of Barry Bremen to the extreme in this sex toy campaign.

The biggest problem the WNBA has had during this string of events is the lack of statements from their spokespeople, who are paid to represent the players in times of crisis, which this has become. Over & over I read, “A WNBA spokesperson declined to answer questions about…” The WNBA players have been requesting updates from the league, and getting nothing. Players have now been told by league officials they are “investigating claims that individuals were being incentivized” to carry sex toy stunts. All vague talk with no answers, explanations, or details to satisfy those asking the questions.

To get answers, we had to go to Dave Mason, brand manager of Panama-based online sportsbook BetOnline, who told ESPN that when the second sex toy was also green, he started looking for who could be orchestrating the stunts. Mason put a betting line on where the next toy would be thrown and what color it would be, then tracked his winning bettors and quickly found the crypto coin group Green Dildo Coin. Dave Mason said in an email to ESPN, “It’s part of the game when offering markets like these. We can either choose to offer them or not. We know people will have inside info and might bet.” To figure it out you have to follow the money, and notice it was an independent gambling site that discovered this, not ESPN or USA Today.

Green Dildo Coin (DILDO) is highly active in the Telegram community (& also X), and apparently they are behind this memcoin/sex toy stunt campaign. Green Dildo Coin is a Libertarian cyberpunk group, meaning they are young crypto Kool-Aid drinkers, responding to what they call a “toxic environment” in the current crypto world. This is a typical Kool-Aid drinker capitalist reaction to Trump taking over crypto & shutting them out. Green Dildo Coin’s deity is surely Elon Musk.

What I’m describing is the kind of leadership & understanding that is necessary to stop this nonsense, instead of relying on more police, security, media hysterics, etc. This is what spokespeople are paid for, so if officials all reply “no comment,” then the players will be asked about this when they shouldn’t have to answer to it. They are paid to play, not answer questions about how the league isn’t handling this issue and letting it get out of hand, and not figuring it out, etc.

Clearly there are too few adults in the WNBA front office, who don’t know how to handle this like a man. It’s young men (& a few inside girls who also want to get rich) that are doing this, so it therefore needs to be handled in a man-fighting way. Bitchiness & cat-fighting won’t cut it here for the WNBA, and it’s not unhealthy to admit this truth. It’s past the point of no return, where the WNBA players have to get together and put a stop to this the next time it happens, or they will continue to be disrespected & devalued. That’s a capitalist law.

Another law of capitalism is capitalists only care about money. So the players looking towards ownership & management for guidance on this is futile. Futility would be a good word to describe the WNBA spokesperson response since July 29, when the first sex toy in this memecoin campaign was tossed in a WNBA arena. Any WNBA player would be justified if she went into the stands and kicked that person’s ass. Fans would cheer that. As wrong as that would be (see the Malice in the Palace incident), it’s better than waiting for a WNBA spokesperson to make some lame politicized statement long after the fact.

This intersectionality of sports financialization with the political weaponization of sex, in the absence of trigger warnings, has made certain WNBA representatives very uncomfortable, and thus they have no comment. So they look to others to handle it for them, which no one respects.

An honest DEI spirit would be to have a few good men around (because diverse points-of-view & experiences are valuable) when shit like this hits the fan. But when #MeToo campaign feminists insist on running out all the good men because they are too threatening, this leaves WNBA players wide open to these kind of punk attacks, which are easy for any real man to handle, but can become troublesome because players are being misrepresented by enabled hysterical women who never became adults.

In short, there are too many sexist bureaucrats in management and not enough former players, which is a BIG problem no one in the WNBA wants to admit. This is also true in the NFL, NBA & MLB. Professional athletes need smart & successful former players in management to keep these union lawyers in line, otherwise these attorneys & PR flak will play back-room politics every time. This is where league officials are collaborating with ownership, instead of representing the interests of the rank-and-file. It’s not a sex issue as much as it is a class issue, but that isn’t allowed to be acknowledged in the capitalist media– another immutable law.

Legal fees are about to eat up all the betting & crypto profits of Green Dildo Coin, yet another capitalist law. Libertarians aren’t too well-read on history, politics, or anything else. They just want to make money fast and not have to pay any taxes. In a word they are lazy, impatient half-baked parasites. In essence those qualities define crypto and also modern-day capitalism.

Final thoughts

No one has been more of a crypto skeptic than Ric Size, as industry leaders hate me (bigtime) for it. When I posted on July 20, concerning the WNBA CBA situation after their All-Star weekend (linked above), I began with the statement that the WNBA was now a financial speculative bubble in terms of exploding franchise values, and later compared it to crypto in profitability. As a skeptic I am privy to no inside information, so I clearly had no official knowledge of this ‘crypto green dildo campaign,’ yet somehow I foreshadowed it and am not at all surprised by it.

I can explain all this emotional stuff (sex, sports, money) rationally in a media environment that is all hype, which is no mean feat. Any intelligent dissent has been censored, blacklisted & slandered for over a decade now– on all corporate platforms & political institutions. If you know sports as I do, then you earn some readership credibility over time. first with the athletes, and then with their leading fans who are online 24/7. I’m a players booster here because I’m ALWAYS a booster for the workers who create the economic value. That’s what a socialist is and it’s what scares Trump & his gang of fascists, first into incomprehensible fury and then into violent reactionary assaults on the working class.

All Trump can do is lie at this point, while the Democrats still accept it as good coin because he’s President, when really Trump is a sociopathic conman now hawking memecoins by pumping the Ponzi scheme known as bitcoin. Donald J Trump should have been thrown in jail for life with no parole long, long ago. He has committed heinous crimes against humanity and his accomplices are on both sides of the aisle.

Trump is the NYC underworld financial mob boss who became a realty TV star and then the fascist strongman politically demanded by the US ruling class, with the Democrats being his Vichy collaborators to recall a WWII analogy for Nazi sympathizers in France. The most serious lesson of WWII was that we can’t tolerate fascism in any form because it is inherently hostile to peaceful democracy & human rights. It never cuts off its own claws and can only be defeated through organized class-conscience struggle. That’s a Trotskyist– the most serious, respected & (by the bourgeoisie) politically-feared Marxists who are represented by the Fourth International, SEP branches worldwide, and the WSWS their daily publishing organ. That’s where to go for political clarity & leadership on a daily basis.

This crypto dildo throwing campaign has gotten so insane for WNBA players because everything is allowed to be irrational under Trump– tariffs, support for Israel & Ukraine, Jeffery Epstein, ICE Gestapo, public health policy, global warming, etc. These are the most dangerous criminals in the world, and it’s no secret, yet they keep presenting themselves as legitimate and are entirely propped-up by a corrupt corporate media which can now certainly be defined as entirely state propaganda. This is why people call it “fake news” and Trump now owns it with his political power over the media, courts, Congress, higher education, the police, military & intelligence, so this lewd behavior will be tolerated/exploited to its political limits by the anointed fuhrer. Only the political defeat of Trumpism (and all its state-corporate collaborators!) will stop this exploitative pornography.

You can no longer separate sports & politics, at all, there’s too much money at stake these days. Sports franchises are now expected to double in value overnight, yet player pay hasn’t increased along the same scale. It’s this nagging feeling working people EVERYWHERE have that tells WNBA players they are being cheated by capitalism, as salaries aren’t rising as fast as crypto profits for politically enabled pump & dump dildo memecoin campaigns. Like all the WNBA players, I’m over it.

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