Final Four

No Duke Zionists allowed!

Four major conferences represented.

BIG 12.

B1G 10 (er, 14).

SEC.

ACC.

Perfect, except Oregon should have beaten Virginia.

But dig it, Oregon's women are in the Final Four out of Tampa next weekend!


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Instant Classic

All the Zions in the world couldn't compete with tonight's blistering OT game between Virginia and Purdue in the Elite Eight.

The best tournament game I've seen in recent memory, with Virginia pulling out a thriller after appearing dead in the water in regulation.

The Duke Zions play tomorrow, and hopefully they'll fall.  I'm very tired of listening to the sports pundits and announcers slobbering all over the Great Zion.

BTW, when he starts competition next year against the real giants of NBA basketball he'll turn into just another journeyman very quickly.

He is ready for the NBA, of course, but so are a dozen or more players that I've watched in the tournament so far. And if I were a league boss, I'd draft several of them before Zion.

Yep, that's what I think.


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Dangerous Thoughts

To be sure, there have been times over the years when the candidates that Democrats and Republicans fielded differed from each other more than Coke and Pepsi do. In these cases, almost without exception, Republicans were the more odious of the two.  This has long been the case in general as well.

Even today, with de-Trumpification an urgent political task ahead, a good chunk of the Democratic Party is devoted to remaining a condition for Trumpism’s possibility.  They call this “moderation.”  Hillary Clinton called it “pragmatic progressivism.”--AL

Andrew Levine, and a few words about that which cannot be spoken.


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Sweet Nothings

Those old campaigners, sweethearts on parade.

How do you like your compromise politics now, jackasses, your across the aisle sweetness?


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Drill

What fun the day ought to bring!

Another dental appointment.

At least there are good basketball games to look forward to this evening.





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Big Games

My mind is blown, and not simply because Oregon gets a chance at Virginia in the Sweet Sixteen tomorrow night.

(It's big, despite rumblings of alleged Nike malfeasance at the edges of Oregon's program. Again?)

However bizarre that seems, after watching the Ducks sink time and again in their little self-made Eugene pond early on, I get it now.  Oregon seized the Zen Way, lifting the team out of its funk. The team is at the limit of its powers, identity intact.

Trouble looms ahead, though.

I've watched Virginia play often this year.  Oregon won't beat them. The Ducks have reached their apex, and that won't cut it against the Cavaliers of Charlottesville, a gifted team of deadeye shooters. 
Every time I sat down to watch Virginia this year Charlottesville weighed heavily.  You know why, I don't have to mention the neo-Nazis do I?

My memory flicks back to the "Mission Accomplished" banner on Bush's aircraft carrier in San Diego. The draft-dodging wanna-be warrior, wearing a codpiece larger than his tiny brain, smirked in his special way.

Big-balls Bush. Bush the Moron. The idiot child. Etc.

The war was over.

No, it turned out, it was just beginning. I knew it, but the people I worked with and my friends at the local bar couldn't see it.  They just didn't get it. In their willful ignorance they couldn't grasp the stupidity of what was happening.

I had to leave that scene, man.

From those days until now I have felt burdened. It's been like talking to cadavers. The dead don't listen.

To U.S. Americans the world is a game of  "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," though the country's leaders have a game of utter imperialism on their minds.

I'm sad.

But then I read pieces like these and take succor.

Will Brewbaker.

Maj. Danny.

Scheer and Zapata.

William deBuys.

Bill Blum.

And this, the holy online book of free thought.

As I say, my mind, if I had one, is blown.


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Shame on You, NPR

(art by Mr. Fish)

The Mueller report’s categorical statement that Donald Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia ends one of the most shameful periods in modern American journalism, one that rivals the mindless cheerleading for the Iraq War by most of the press. It further erodes and may prove fatal to the credibility of a press that has steadfastly rendered most of the country invisible and functions as little more than an array of gossiping courtiers to the elites.--CH

Chris Hedges righteously takes big media to task for their dive off the proverbial cliff concerning Mueller's Russian collusion investigation.

Good old Chris. Where would we be without him?


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Sunday Surprises

The Duke Zions got lucky today when Zion number 1 crashed into UCF's 7-foot 4-inch Taco Fall, fouling the Senegal native out of the game late.

The Great Zion clearly charged on a twirling move to the hoop, whence he scored and was gifted an and-1. Turned the game.

My guys beat Cal Irvine to unexpectedly land in the Sweet Sixteen.  Quite a run of late. The Ducks are loaded with heroes.

My Oregon gals beat Indiana.  Sweet Sixteen x 2!

On the political front, I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that Mueller found no Trump collusion with the Rooskies in the 2016 presidential cycle.

 Doesn't mean Trump isn't an asshole and as crooked as Nero, of course.

I never felt victimized by Russia.  Came about my disdain for Hillary simply by listening to her pablum.

The cackle always disturbed me for some reason. Or maybe I'm just a sexist/misogynist terrified of the glass ceiling crashing down on my right-wing shoulders?

The dems will never wake up, smothered by their own corruption.


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All the Wrong Ways

(pic Cal Thomas)

So it was this week, while sitting on a plane reading my oh-so-bourgeois Economist, and getting infuriated about seeing Elliott Abrams’ war-criminal face, that my thoughts again turned to good old American exceptionalism. My opinions on the topic have waxed and waned over the course of a career spent waging illegal war. First, as a young cadet at West Point, I bought it hook, line and sinker; then, as an Iraq War vet and dissenter, I rejected the entire notion. Only now, observing the world as it is, have I begun to think that America really is exceptional after all—only in all the wrong ways.--DS

I would say Maj. Danny is making inroads against the jingoism, hate, militarism and brainwashing that consumes the resurgent moral majority of U.S. citizens.


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First 16

I went to bed earlier than usual last night so that I might be fresher for the start of March Madness this morning.

With that in mind I got up early and filled out my million dollar bracket, confident that I will be a winner today as the first 16 games unfold.

Yep, I think I got 'em all. The winners came to me overnight as I floated in and out of my restless slumber, requesting answers from the deity.

I'm not messing around this year.  The Great Basketball Goddess in the rafters (the same one the players pray to before each game) has guided me this far, in a game played to the brink.

In my dream I spoke to Sabrina, who else?


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Coming to a Street Near You

Who are all the badass lefties who “play it tough,” in Trump’s words? Outside of some dicey Antifa and radical skinhead types, it’s a tiny group – certainly nothing compared to the assault weapon-wielding right-wing militias and other armed and brutish white-nationalists who thrill to Trump’s call to Make America White Again.

Fascism, however, requires the notion that the virtuous and betrayed white Nation is besieged by a big dangerous Left that must be put down by steely-eyed patriots ready to defend the “homeland” by any means necessary. Inflation of the “radical left” threat is a key part of the fascist playbook. It’s why nobody should laugh when they hear Republicans and right-wing media personalities habitually refer to the corporate-neoliberal Democratic Party as “socialist,” “radical,” and “leftist.”--PS

Paul Street spells it out for the politically challenged.  First-rate piece from one of the best actual "left" writers out there.


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BBall

Four amazing days and nights of college basketball, with Oregon somehow flopping into the Dance.  SI has the Ducks playing Mississippi State in the first round.

Poor Bulldogs.

We'll find out the real deal tomorrow.

Update: Oregon gets Wisconsin Friday afternoon in San Jose.


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Must Read

Consider a few final vignettes about my peers in the facility, many of whom are representative of thousands more similar cases. There was my Air Force buddy from whom I’d become inseparable and who’d served a tour in mortuary affairs cleaning and processing the bodies of young American troopers. His dreams haunted by that experience for years, he turned inward, to the bottle, and, eventually attempted suicide. The poor guy just wanted out of his contract, but the Air Force wouldn’t let him go.--DS

Maj. Danny with a powerful message, a must read for all.


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Second That

I’ve lost all patience with moderates, centrists, incrementalists and mainstream establishment Democrats who think the status quo is not so bad, just needs a little tweaking around the edges. They’d be satisfied just getting rid of Trump – which is fine as far as that goes, it just doesn’t go nearly far enough.--RS

Go away Nancy and Dianne and the rest of the corrupt Democrats (and Republicans) in Congress who let their greed and fantasies rule over common sense.

An appropriate photo essay.


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Say It Ain't So, Joe

Joe Biden’s friendly TV persona appeals to many. He smiles well and has a gift of gab. Most political journalists in the mass media like him. He’s an apt frontrunner for the military-industry complex and the corporate power structure that it serves. Whether Biden can win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination will largely depend on how many voters don’t know much about his actual record.--NS

Joe Biden is the perfect exploiter of the unfounded fear US Americans have of socialism.

How many voters don't know much about Biden?  Far too many, and that is because the majority of voters are just plain ignorant and would vote for a tamale if the mainstream corporate media told them to.


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Careful What You Wish For

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly still considering a symbolic “show vote” in Congress on an anti-Semitism and “hate” resolution—which would offer all the authenticity and honesty of a Soviet show trial. If she proceeds, it will prove Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s point about the inordinate influence wielded over Congress by the “Israel-right or-wrong”/AIPAC lobby and its power to stifle criticism of Israel.--JC

Nancy, you old bag of bones


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Homage

A friend recently paid homage and visited one of Dylan's old pads in NYC.


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False Alarm

This was the scene on a snowy February night outside my apartment building. Somebody burned popcorn again, which set off the fire alarm.  Happens too frequently in my building.

My daughter, who lives in rural Minnesota said the photo reminds her of why she chose small-town life. Crowded city streets annoy her and are a thing of her past.


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Mandelbrot set

The more things change the more they stay the same.


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