For Better Or Worse, The Broncos Are Must See TV

Even with the absence of the legendary Peyton Manning, the narrative would mostly be exactly the same as last year if not for that SB50 victory by my hometown Denver Broncos. and the hindsight view of what Manning did for this team as well as what he demanded of the AFC West opponents who hope to be champions too.....and because of concussions.

The Dallas Cowboy fans would like to remind you how they still dominate apparel sales even though Denver is the team defending the crown.  I'm the kind realist like true Broncos fans who've seen highs and lows, and who understand that Peyton did improve the AFC West, making it harder for this team to beat a bunch of improved teams without him. In reality, the America's Team shows plenty of signs of being better than 4-12, and expecting a healthy version of the richest team in football to continue to stink is a tainted glasses view of things.

In reality, we kind of need the Dallas Cowboys to become truly relevant on the field again just to offset the negative impact of all the concussion conversation that keeps hurting the league.  The future influx of our best athletes into sports other than football will reveal the impact of all this hysteria. What the league could really use right about now is a return of those Boys,  Love them or hate them it matters little.  They have the LeBron effect that draws both sets of eyes to the viewing.  It is an effect that the NBA will sorely miss when LeBron finally calls it quits. It's an effect that the NFL needs back via Dem Boys.

Some of this prediction might be might deep down longing for a league I love, but I am predicting that the richest team in football, the Dallas Cowboys, won't suck forever and the end of forever is now.  I am predicting that they actually bring the rookie running back along slowly enough, and he begins to show his promise near the end of the season, but they will grow terribly enamored by his talent and forget that he is not ready for playoff blocking assignments, causing them to lose in the Superbowl to my Denver Broncos, who will avenge the loss from our very first Superbowl, Superbowl XII.

Among the rest of football punditry the prognostication is mostly the same as last year, adjusted by two words; think and expect. They don't think we'll do quite as we'll or expect that we know how to overcome the challenge of losing key players without getting hungover from the thrill of  a SB50 victory.

I'm here to show them all why that all sounds good, but they are likely to be wrong.

While certain things have changed, nothing about our performance inspiring, championship coaching will be different, and that's why we win.

Actually, it will be somewhat different for our coaches who are returning after instant success while teaching a brand new system. Last seasons success gives the coaches instant street cred that will shorten the learning curve a bunch.  Their willingness to play everybody will give us an early glimpse of our future potential. Whether we realize that potential in the form of another Superbowl should not be a desperate goal of the fans, even if the team desperately intends to shut up the naysayers by repeating.  Loads of low expectation league wide will help them perform, unless loads of unreasonable expectation from Broncos fans cause us to make changes not conducive to our long term development.

Kubiak won't plan to be knee jerk at QB, but Broncos fans_some still salty about losing Brock Osweriler- will be, and that is the one element that concerns me the most.  From an outside perspective, our expectations this year is only distanced from last year by the trophy we bring to each game. Beyond that, we'll struggle to be favored in most of the games, meaning we will upset popular expectation- and Vegas- to do what we intend to do this year.  But don't get mad at Vegas or popular expectation for the respect they are indirectly showing to Peyton Manning the legend while seemingly dissing us.

We won't have Peyton, and nothing is going to help us know the impact of that except playing. With honest analysis, there are just as many signs of potential for better as there are for worse. The challenge of going 3-3 or 4-2 in the AFC West is enough to make things tough given the difficulty of the rest of our non-conference, Superbowl champions schedule. Splitting in the AFC West used to be good enough.  This year, add in the rest of the schedule and that might not be good enough to avoid a Wild Card(better)....or worse.

That offensive line seems better, more stout, more depth and eager to set league rushing records behind a guy who closed out games with amazing skill and style in CJ Anderson. For those who watch practice, they see CJ barking out protections to Mark Sanchez, who is seasoned enough to understand what the back is telling him. CJ says the barking is worse, or less useful with the younger QB's get more confused with such guidance, an early sign of which QB is getting the internal nod to lead this team this year.

Anderson stands poised to prove himself our new offensive team leader while proving his coaches game plan championship worthy, and not just something we accidentally won with. He also must prove himself able to stay healthy enough to help out his mighty might backup Ronnie Hilman, who is better...when used in small guy moderation- worse when overworked.

The entire stable of backs will be enlisted like back in the days of the original No Limit Soldiers and the Mile High Salute. I would expect that we carry an extra back with the return of the fullback too. The goal appears to be to make the team into a run whether you're expecting it or not team; a commitment that will demand chemistry they can't yet have with their rebuilt line, and health they've not shown in recent years at the offensive line or among the injury prone running backs.

Which is why we'll need depth and chemistry, the most challenging holy grail of any Superbowl pursuit.

Keep in mind that the run or bust approach (clock control with minimal turnovers) will also be forced to work  despite a league of coaches not fooled by media skepticism or punditry. Opposing coaches will bring defending champion preparation against the Broncos, mindful of the film, the ring we just earned, the Superbowl MVP we just signed and the thunder our boys brought to bear while earning it last year. Until further notice, that is the vision of us that they all see on film. Which means that the media skeptics are either counting on mostly championship efforts from each of our potential opponents, or certain decline from us.

They are mostly predicting decline Broncos nation, even though there truly are as many reasons to be excited as there are to be worried.

Linebackers are in place and ready to wreak havoc.....assuming Demarcus Ware can bring as much to the field as he brings to the locker room. They will likely need both to win it all.....although Shaq Barrett and Shane Ray are potential stars that might be ready to fill a void if Ware can't overcome those dreaded back issues he's plagued with. It might be better, or a blessing in disguise if the young players get the lion share of the reps and all that much needed development while Ware slowly heals himself for another title. It will be worse if we get stuck with players who are not our guaranteed Hall of Fame end rusher and foolish to ask young players to perform like a legend.

Once again, it's all a coin flip either way. Just like the secondary.

The secondary should be better and the most reliable group with so many returning players, but worse without Aqib Talib whose future makes that an unanswered question while we wait to see if he'll face punishment from the league.  I'm excited to let Bradley Roby get starter reps because I would love to see how he handles it- meaning even I really have no way to know until he gets the chance.

Unanswered question? Coin flip on the results.

Receivers are better with lots of depth from fresh talent in the fold....but they might appear worse because they must relent lots of pass opportunities to an uncertain, developing tight end core, a position vital in a Kubiak offense. Way too little tight end production last year lead to way too many turnovers and a less than stellar Superbowl jaunt, though winning it all is always better than losng, even when it's worse than you intended for it to look.

I would like to claim that learning how to win close games last year might actually be a sign of something better..... if it didn't feel worse because all of that good fortune seemed to come from Peyton's presence and prowess, and was used up on the successful pursuit of SB50..

After coming up short in recent years, scratching and clawing seemed a better approach last year......yet, expecting more of that again seems worse, maybe a little more desperate than confident now that we are defending our title and not chasing after one necessarily.

The Broncos really aren't claiming any cool rally cry, just an expectation for improvement of a team that most recently won it all. That shares no information about what improvement looks like or what other teams are doing to better themselves. Which means, getting better is always relative. If too many teams outpace your improvement, you're going to look worse and probably not repeat the same success as you had before.

 Fans mostly react out of emotion, not reality. Until further notice, champions are suppose to be respected. Just because you doubt the champions chances doesn't instantly give you room to dismiss them until they've dismissed themselves. Those who actually compete understand this, so a few smart pundits who played are watching the practices, getting out of their emotions from last year and recognizing the potential for better, not worse, while the rest of you just want to be right about this team being worse than they were when they proved way better than you expected.

2016 kicks off in less than two weeks for the defending champions, and we are all eager to know if the Broncos can get better, or if last season was a pure anomaly and the results will be dramatically worse. The signs are so unclear thus far, they demand WE watch closely. searching for signals that point either way.

In other words, until further notice- until we prove unworthy- my Denver Broncos are MUST SEE TV and the rest of your teams are optional viewing.

If you aren't planning to watch the Broncos preseason opener
you aren't really a fan of the NFL. Just saying.

Hillary's Panoramic Picture Needs A Zoom Lens

I must admit.

I was a little afraid for poor Hillary because she messed up and engineered the best group of political speeches we've ever seen as an affirmation to her credibility and an introduction to her as the official nominee of the Democrat party.

The Reverend Dr. William Barber II turned a more mundane list of final night speakers into a night of speaking just as strong as any of the other nights. But that is only because Hillary did the damn thing too.

I could have chosen much more dignified words to meet the gravitas of the moment and the person who owned it, but it was beyond presidential.  It was real talk like we've never quite seen from Hillary or any presidential candidate.

It had so much detailed specificity that the most common republican critique after the speech was not to the detail and planning, but to the fact that she didn't precede it all by saying "I'm going to ask congress for these things", realizing that the only encumbrance to her thorough dissertation would be those do-nothings.

Donald Trump, conversely, not only insures you that he- and only he- can do the things that he promises, he does so with as little detail as he can get away with.  Thus far, that is quite a bit.

On stage last night, Hillary followed up a man that started out his spiritual lambasting of conservatives- of which all of us who are Christian naturally find allegiance to- with a not so veiled refrain that went as follows.

"I am so concerned about those who say so much about what God says so little, while saying so little about what God says so much"

If the point wasn't quite made clear enough, Dr. Barber later added

"When religion is used to camouflage meanness, we know we have a heart problem in America"   

Are Down Low Christians Giving God A Bad Name?

Some stuff will stick in your craw until you take the steps to remove it.

This post is one of those things because thus far, I've only written two sentences.

 All spiritual questions and answers align themselves to the ear of those whose heart's are inclined to listen.

I say a heart to listen because our ears only have capacity to absorb that which we find pleasing. Rebuke is not on that list for most. To relish in rebuke is almost unseen in  the human experience. Even the pope, feeling justified in wading into political waters, seems shocked when sprayed with the disdain of the disagreeable.

Christ came not to condemn, but to redeem.....and it worked.  He lived a life worthy of sacrifice for the cause of redemption. He did it so that we wouldn't have to.

Have to do what?
What is the IT that Christ came to keep us from doing? 

 Live a life worthy of redemption for ALL (which includes you).  What it takes to save yourself would also be sufficient to save the world. None of us is even good enough to make it through a day sin free, much less an entire life. This gift from God doesn't give us license to be lazy because lazy implies doing something is actually an option in this matter.

Understand what a gift truly means. What do we have to do to receive our birthday gifts? Arrive at the party and open them.  That's all!!

Let me repeat this for those in the upper balcony area.  THE WORK IS DONE. If you believe that, you too are redeemed. Let the redeemed of the Lord say.....say what? That I am a Christian or that I am redeemed?

We Christians spend hours and sermons and days upon weeks upon years arguing over "Getting Right With God"; code words for going to church regularly and paying tithes....i.e., doing something, not just saying so.

By designating ourselves with the name of the actual doer instead of calling ourselves according to what has been done to us, Christianity became encompassed around an idea of a the blessed actions of a sent savior more so than salvation itself, in that we focus more on the act and actions of Christ the deity- past, present and future- instead of God the Alpha and Omega. If God had a seat at the naming seat, I imagine he would suggest we name ourselves exactly what we are, the redeemed of the Lord, not those people called Christians, because anymore, what does the term really mean?

How Many Christian Denominations Are There In America?  (That depends on how you define denomination)


In robbing the name of the redeemer, Christianity holds a self proclaimed supremacy of existence that offers privileges strictly from association, including a clue of end time prophecies and conjoining questions of each other (who already claim Faith) whether we'll be ready (a full functioning Christian associate) when he comes.

What Exactly Does Ready Look Like?

The humongous problem with this whole "ready" concept is the debate over who and what gets to define your qualified association- or readiness, if you will? If we both claim Faith but only one of us goes to church, who gets in to heaven first? Why? If heaven is our promise, does it matter the order of entry? And where are any of these answers written either way?


Is it tithing and attendance that offers a membership into the association, or is the association actually no more complex than accepting God's gift of redemption "just as you are", like some of us keep trying to describe it?

I'm not sure I care to debate that topic anymore. In short the answer to both questions is yes.

Yes. God can save you in your sin because, if we all agree that all have sinned and fall short, he really has no choice.  Right?

Yes you need to go to church and tithe if you heart has spoken to you in that fashion, and not because your family keeps wondering why haven't you shown up. Forget all those external voices. If that internal voice gets too strong, consider entering the ministry to calm the noise even more.  Keep in mind, however, that my informal independent studies have NOT shown that stingy people- even pastors- can become instantly benevolent from the act of tithing, regular churching or preaching. Our nature is coded to our DNA.

Some of our choices we think we would do differently given the opportunity to re-do them, but the likelihood is we will choose the path most aligned with our true nature.  If it's in my nature to dance, I'm probably going to that club even if the church folks don't necessarily approve.

Which begs the true question of who are you in Christ, and where is Christ in you?  Last I heard, Christ was living off of the grid and doing all of his best work in rent free temples that walk around and talk now.  He left many words of wisdom in a very special book, but he came not to just be heard, but to be seen of men. To create a living example of what Love in action looks like.  From my best analysis of what he did and what we've chosen as a response to that example, most of us ran back to the same synagogue that he rarely set foot in, because accepting ourselves as "the new church" makes each of us accountable to also be pastors of a sort.

I accept that call in the way I pattern my every encounter with another human, for if I am truly the church, fellowship can, and should, happen whenever and where ever I am. Many churches who function as a place you go on the weekend,  have started only helping their regular tithers and attendees instead of also helping those strangers or infrequent attendees asking for help . While that sounds like simple fairness, it also sounds like the slippery slope of momentarily earning the benefits of salvation....like an entitlement earned through taxation. Like government- a place where those who really need help get means tested and still somehow struggle to qualify. As a result, the church becomes blemished by the policy of fairness and not emboldened by the challenge to out give God.


In fact, way too many of my close friends and family keep wondering why church folks seem to be the last folks to help you anymore.

I hope not to suggest that any church can survive without financial support because no church can stay open without paying the bills. Turning their support inward is a reasonable reaction to dwindling memberships across the nation. Yet, some churches seem to trust in God's provisions enough to steer clear of pulpit fundraising campaigns.

Is that a rebuke against pulpit fundraising?

I'm really not writing to judge any man, or church, for their choices. This expose is an effort to shine light on outcomes....aka., fruits.

Unless it is natural to your DNA, pulpit begging has to be something incredibly tough to force yourself to initiate. It might get easier once you master the lines that fill the coffers, but those coffers are always going to depend on the mastery of that asker.

Master asker's rarely miss out on alter calls (membership building) or 'pay the bills' guilt preaching. Eventually, these are also the churches that close really soon after that asker dies or moves to do his asking of a bigger congregation.

In other words, even what appears to be economic growth might also be a cancerous growth in the gut of Pastor Stressoverbills as well as an unsustainable formula and a weak reflection of Faith.

I have never come to grips with so many Christians having such a clear ear for end of time prophecy (though the word clearly says that no man knows when) but not for the reliably consistent and sustaining blessings that ALWAYS come to him that waiteth on the Lord. If you haven't quite figured it out, all of God's blessings come when times seem most bleak, but also when you finally break and just Let Go and Let God. I may not know what Faith looks like, but I'm fairly confident it doesn't look like pulpit pressure.

There are examples of churches that try to give beyond their receiving (Salvation Army), but these are bad examples of regular churches because giving churches continuously struggle to keep pace with God's blessings despite their desperate efforts to help more and more people. Simply put, you can't beat God's giving, no matter how you try. Yet, so very few churches really try to do it.

It's as though the more those redeemed of God plant, tend and harvest the fruit for the redemption of others, the bigger and bigger the next harvest becomes.

This is why the more I live, the easier it gets to pray for blessings on even my enemy as I pray for myself. All conflict derives from the fleshly nature of ourselves, the material side of who we are,but none of us are truly reflected in our stuff or stature, because those things often bear hidden costs. Instead, we are all EXACTLY what our fruits say we are.

You DL Christians have not fooled anyone yet, because your fruit keeps giving you away. If you were stingy sinners, almost every one of you remains stingy while saved. If folks used to call you a liar a lot, they probably now just do it after y'all leave the church house. Hustlers on the street have surely taken to the pulpit, yet pulpit hustling is a grind and it creates the same quiet commentary that street hustlers endure. If you showed little integrity to your street hustle, it will likely carry over.

Which means, for some Christians, their reputation is the same bitter fruit it's always been. Meanwhile, that one Auntie who hates them church folk but also hates to see a young man down on his luck, seems to always put you up for the night without reminding you about missing church, and she'll put a $20 in your pocket that she will never ask for because it wasn't a loan, it was water on a struggling fruit tree.

I'm gonna stop now.

If I explain this one any further it will not be free of judgement. This message was only intended for Down Low Christians. You'll recognize them from that wilted fruit basket that used to feed the lost sheep. Now, that fruit is for members only.

There Is ONE Reason WE Can't Blame Government

The absolute, number one reason that WE will always struggle to reach the change that WE all desperately desire is functionally a GHOST.

A mythical monster that never could harm you because it can't even touch you.  Well, it can touch you for sure.  The movie "Ghost" proved that they can touch you, but they don't have the power to keep you paralyzed and downtrodden like we often allow ghost to do as we lazily lay in bed, afraid to even go relieve ourselves because of these unseen spirits.

No matter who you talk to these days, it seems WE all have some complaint about our nation that WE've calculated to be caused by corruption- our code word these days for Government. In the estimation of way too many Americans, Government Holds Our Society in Terror and is the primary reason for most every problem under the sun. If there was something tangible that we mean when we blame government, we might actually be pointing our fingers at something others could see.

Don't misunderstand my position.  I recognize that the Tuskegee experiment really happened.  I am also very aware of the findings of the Ferguson Report and the scathing indictment that it has become against the police department that killed Michael Brown, as well as the institution of policing that is slowly and quietly admitting to a nationwide practice of some of the same stuff that we found in the Ferguson report.

Policing For Profit was the glaring outtake of the report, a practice that ALL police officers are familiar with rather directly or indirectly.  Since police squeal on police even less than the street gangs do, we are left to trust the words of the rare "Rat" that dared to open his mouth and expose the shield for the hope of saving the shield.

These honest cops (aka., Rats) admit that the quota demand for ticket writing sends them to the areas of the most vulnerable, those without the resources to fight off bad policing. A place of least resistance if you will.

Is that true government sanctioned racism or just an unfortunate byproduct of blacks still being mostly poor? In reality, poor people of every race seem to theorize corruption from the unfair collision of poverty and policing. Underneath the surface of such theories, lies the fact that the unfair entity is, once again, our infamous government with its ingrained methods of manipulating money from the masses.

Assuming that policing for profit is an entirely true example of government corruption, I find myself considering ONE key contradiction for this and every other corrupt government theory.

That was not a typing error.  For EVERY corrupt government theory, there is but ONE contradiction that makes them all a lazy way of resisting change by overselling our status quo and those who've created it.

You name the theory, I'll name the one simple contradiction because our disgust for government is wide reaching, not just limited to the poor and disenfranchised.

How about Trump's claim that the process of selecting a president is rigged while he continues to try and win at the hands of that system?

Or Bernie's disdain for the superdelegates system, so he waited 37 days to concede the nomination to Hillary so he could have time to court those same delegates that he disdains?

Or Hillary's challenge of the Citizens United ruling while stretching it's limits New England Patriot style for  the sake of down ballot fund raising? Or her promise to maintain and strengthen regulations on the banks all while they bankroll her campaign to become president?

Yet, these are just the boogey monsters of our presidential candidate's; their personal, pre-made excuse they use for how Government is Holding Our Society in Terror. You see, the really sad aspect of their GHOST and our's, is that they are all an illusion and nothing more than the excuse WE use when get socially and politically lazy, stay in bed and get all pissy, because WE just couldn't have our own political way.

Nobody every complains about government when government does what they want it to do.  Listening to those angry Libertarians, you would think that- other than the 2nd Amendment- the government was ill-conceived from the founding since the same Founding Father's who warned about the tyranny of men and how it is inclined to oppress, also wrote the damn document that allowed for all the tyranny and oppression they predicted. Was there no way to stop tyrannical men, or are they nothing more than a fear instilled from the start?

Our Constitution ratified both slavery and suffrage. It was molded with the notion that certain truths are self evident, but quickly corrected it's own language when those truths were not made evident enough. Among the corrections was the 2nd Amendment, which is widely questioned for it's intent, but not by those who find it to be the most brilliant piece of thought that lives in the document.  Through it, some see all other aspects of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness as possible.

Yet, our Founders did not include it from the start?

Some credit our greatness to the Founders, or blame our weakness on their followers who dealt with slavery, and expanded voting for everyone instead of just those deemed smart enough to know better. That remains the mentality that comes to oppose our current rise of ballot initiatives or Direct Democracy. For every modern legislative mistake created through Direct Democracy, traditionalists complain that people are just too unaware to be trusted with leading themselves in this fashion.

If there was a flawless blueprint for government, we would already have it in use. All self governance is inherently flawed, but it beats oligarchy. Ask the Founders. They knew flexibility would be our strength, and that no government will flex without force.  The Constitution of the U.S. was always instilled with an evolutionary design. What that means is, WE had the power to force out slavery, and will never be a slave to our own government because WE are our own government and the recipients of our own forces for change.

By the people, For the people is not just a cool slogan, it is a mandate that is achieved through ONE magical provision. WHICH ONE?

Before I share it with you, keep in mind that this provision too was NOT written into the original Constitution.  The ONE provision that insures WE are never a victim of our own government was written into the Bill of Rights, and the Bill of Rights was retrofitted into the Constitution in 1791, four years after the Constitution was originally ratified (1787). If you are someone who actually values our Bill of Rights, you should recognize them as vital fixes to an evolutionary, but flawed document.

Some often look upon the brilliance of our founding as something divine and unworthy of challenge.  I see the divine blessing of America as our humility to correct our wrongs with a guiding document flexible enough to be fixed, as the absolute strength of this nation. What our Founder's achieved with the first magical amendment to the original plan was an excuse free nation, a band of people that would always be challenged to give voice to the changes they demand.

The First Amendment

_________________

Prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.

In one fail swoop, the First Amendment destroys 'blame the government' excuses and continues to contradict every last one of you who still tries to sell the theory that government is inherently corrupt.

Flawed?  Always has been. 

Corrupt? 
No corrupt government would leave the first amendment unchanged.  

If you are as hardcore as some of those Illuminati or Area 54 conspiracy theorist', you also have to accept that you found your own theory details and the corresponding Photoshop picture because of our free and unfettered press.

When situation demands, WE the People still have the power to stand up and be heard, even before we've ironed out the details of our complaint.  Though we often question the strength of our voice and our vote, it's mostly because that makes it easier to not speak up or vote when necessary...or to point fingers when we do both but still lose.

The BLM (Black Lives Matter) organization became necessary as a call to duty when Trayvonn Martin was killed in 2013.  By the time Michael Brown Jr. lost his life in 2015, BLM was ready to FULLY exercise their First Amendment duty to America and to themselves, even if few of us knew of them.

Ironically, it has been from the impact of two recent deaths of blacks at the hand of police, and the legion of video images of white people taking to the front lines of the BLM cause, that has opened our hearts to the same message that started with Trayvonn's death.

In reality, the message truly started in the 70's under Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers and probably long before that too if you consider MLK's and the civil right pleas against violence of the 60's, but somehow we finally hear the message and seem open to the potential for real change?  Was the change we are approaching simply waiting for white people to lead the charge?  Who knows...who cares?

Change is always possible in a government of the people, by the people.  You would think that our 1.3 million officers of the law across the nation would be in the forefront of helping reduce the number of guns on the street that could be used someday to kill them. Yet, many of  those same cops also seem to be the NRA gun lovers who would prefer cops that are anxious, edgy and increasingly in harms way above fighting to get some of these guns of war off of the streets. While we all work to legislate against razed gun violence and violence from suspects under watch, cops think more respect is all they require.

No matter.  The actual voices that are actually rumbling for something to get done, actually got both liberals and conservatives in Washington to draft and vote on gun restriction bills recently.  Neither side could agree on one of the four options they had, but getting something so polarizing to the stage of an actual vote is a significant victory that doesn't happen in a government conspiring one way or another.  Fixing guns in America could come to be much like the highly debated Bill of Rights itself.  After years and years of rigorous debate, we finally came to bipartisan agreement and ratified the Bill of Rights, the most important aspect of our entire Constitution.

That was government then, and this is government now.  A place where good people gather to govern.

It is also that dreaded, but magical GHOST that we run from when we're fearful, but chase after once we learn to appreciate it for what it is worth.  Like a ghost, our government has the power to reflect back on history and use it as a guide for the future. In fact, the government is best when functioning as our friendly ghost, using the clear trail of history to pave a path towards a mirky future.

Unless, of course, you're among those who dread government, in which case you see it as something more than just all of our friends and family that work there.  For every area of waste and corruption there are areas of benevolence and provision that come from government; benevolence and provision that we've not quite figured out how to accomplish absent the design of government. Even you smaller government types can't quite agree on what area to slice away first.

Are there flaws in such a model?

 The major flaw to our design is that most of us think government is only mildly functional when our chosen party is in control. Our government is actually no more flawed than humanity at large, which is mostly full of really good people trying to navigate the hurdles that a small percentage of bad people create. Because we change our opinion of societal success as often as we change presidents, much of our current trials come from our twisted perspective in which we "see the extremes in others while seeing the best of intentions in ourselves" (George W. Bush)

Government didn't purposefully breed those bad people who take advantage of leaks and loopholes in the system, nor did government intentionally imbue itself with so many leaks and loopholes.  What matters most is that our government is not immune to the lessons of history.  WE will rise and fall with the tides of life, and the focus of the greater good.

...and yes, governments do fall. Keep that in mind the next time you decide to convince yourself that your vote and your voice have little value.  Either our fate is NOT actually in our own hands and we are all actually doomed just like some of you say- or the government that caused all of this is also our only hope to fix it?

Why Exactly Do Police Officers Have Rats Too?

I'm beyond anxious about jumping into these waters in this fashion.  Finding the right words for subjects so confounding is hard when you are ripe with emotion and typing back and forth, fighting the urge to become the very thing that angers you, an insensitive social media kook who just doesn't understand that EVERY issue has more than one opinion, and nobody should feel guilty for what naturally spews from their emotional response mechanism.

The past weeks have revealed  fields of emotional responses and an epidemic of old scabs that we've unwittingly yanked off with the graphic deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and five officers of the law in Dallas- Sr. Cpl. Lorne B. Ahrens, Sgt. Michael J. Smith, and Officers Brent Thompson, Michael Krol and Patrick Zamarripa- all at the hands of Micah Johnson, a man that our American military trained to do exactly what he did that day.

I won't spend much time on the killer, or even mention him as another soldier committing murder, suicide or both from the post traumatic stresses of war. We don't care about our killers because they and their families lose the humanity that was vital to avoid such terror before it happens. After the fact, they become the forgotten ones who we only think about long enough to blame them for expressing the very anger that many of us expressed with our typing thumbs and not our trigger fingers.

I bring Johnson and his certain guilt stricken family into consideration only because this conversation is a broader investigation into scabs and rats.  Beneath the many scabs that were revealed from each of these deaths are gaping wounds that show how terribly infected this situation has gotten while covered with makeup masked scabs.

Fully exposed, we now see that same 'ol crowd of loud and angry blacks who've been screaming for change in policing for some time now. But next to them this time are WAY more non-blacks than any of US recall seeing before this situation unveiled itself.  We're hearing stories of the same police who were being protested against literally laying their bodies on the line for civilians.  Although this time their noble efforts may have done more harm than good since this killer trained himself for killing them.  He knew exactly who would be his target, and as a result, only two civilians took stray bullets.

What became abundantly clear for blacks like me, who also have lots of social media interaction with other blacks, is that many angry blacks don't see Johnson as the disturbed murderer that most of us think of him. In fact, Micah Johnson has been widely lauded by the extremely angry blacks and browns, as the guy to did what MANY others were talking about doing in the hours and minutes before he actually did it.

For days since, I've been tormented from recalling so many of my friends and family posting about doing what Johnson actually did.  Now, I just consider them all part of the legion of these uncovered scabs that we've found existed out there.  Whites had their own wounds with scabs because policing for profit hurts blacks and poor people the most and colors our entire society- whites by default- as biased against blacks. Blacks had several old crusty scabs, but we now have a new wound because our previous pain and anger might have inspired this murderer and all of this new, unforeseen pain and anguish. Police are hurting because they've lost more of their own, but they are also hurting from the pain of being colored by the bad behaviors of so very few within the force.

Which has me hurting to understand, why exactly do cops use the term 'rat' against good cops who blow the whistle? Doesn't that term draw a definitive line between the people who do bad and the only hope we have to stop it? Doesn't the very existence of the word rat in the mouth of any officer of the law serve to protect the actual rats against the whistleblowers?


With So Many Already Locked Up.....Why Is Policing So Hard?

If the job of policing is becoming unreasonably demanding, why can't the police and it's union strike out each day against these unfair community policing demands that they complain keep getting added to the task of policing, without pay or appreciation?  And why can't they ever do it days before we complain....again, about needlessly losing someone else? I never hear about the job being not worth the money until the quality of product gets challenged by those who pay the money.

Although starting base pay hasn't grown with inflation over recent decades,  advancement has always been fairly swift and overtime plentiful in most police forces. Whether via strike or public statement, police rarely complain about the job being not quite worth the money, until they get called onto the carpet....again to address the actions of another one of their bad apples.

 Although public safety concerns make's it against the law for cops and certain public officials to conduct organized strikes, we've seen random impromptu police strikes, but usually only for wage issues or from anger when the retaliatory assassination of cops began. What we have yet to see are cops organizing to remove their own internal corruption. Forget about the rats for a moment. Does anyone know of one scab (union line buster) who disagreed with a police union who attacked a whistleblower?

Have we ever seem any rat (aka., law abiding police officer) remain employed?

What we readily see is a protection of the shield that creates an environment in which police- with support from FBI or CIA- can uncover and convict every crime known to man- except their own. If doctors are bound to a hippocratic oath of do no harm, how exactly do we uphold a policing environment of  "shut your mouth", that exact same oath to secrecy that the street gangs and thugs survive under each day?

A small group of former police have attempted to blow the whistle on the conspiracy and protection of blue, but their voices are muted or destroyed by the violent silence of every man and woman still employed to serve and protect us.

 Smart defense lawyers and brutally honest cops will tell you to NEVER talk to a cop because they are trained experts at making you incriminate yourself. Once you find yourself in court against one, these trained statement thieves we call cops become a trusted citizen to judges and jury's.  Cops are assumed to be telling the truth because it is a necessary assumption of their societal role.  Since anything you say can and will be used against you, suddenly your life hangs between your word or the preordained credibility of a cop.

I've found myself wondering if practicing the art of making people talk makes you eventually grow to realize the supreme power of shutting the hell up? Maybe that kind of power conditions even virtuous people to tip-toe on the line of integrity with the supreme confidence that the shield will always silence the rat to protect the shield? Only God knows how this power overwhelms the truly dirty cops.

If there is a case of the rat winning, I have yet to find it in my research of this question. I challenge you to search for any rat who won.  They don't exist because they all get rubbed out. Every time another police force rat gets removed, we embolden our nationwide, state sanctioned shroud of secrecy gang called cops.

Is that too harsh? 

No harsher than ignoring a clear knowledge that ALL of our police still use the term RAT from shore to shore.  Let me repeat.  Police are law enforcement officials that are SWORN to the task of serving and protecting the citizens that pay them, not the shield they wear or the lawbreakers they work next to from time to time. Their choice to NEVER rat on each other comes with the consequence of being colored by the true rats,the very rats that the so-called rats swore to remove. How do you seriously complain about how you are perceived while protecting the bad apples that created your bad image?

Any internal investigations- after the fact- into an organization trained to shut up, will only uncover the stinky odor of another senseless death.  True justice for cops will always require a trustworthy witness to determine who this crap belongs to....again, since motives are impossible to discern, but techniques are taught, standardized and mandated for compliance. Way too often, the dead victims are literally being blamed for getting crapped all over, as if they were not even humans at all.

Human beings like Sterling, Castile and countless others.  WE could all gain comfort and display calm from our respect for the difficulty of policing, if we finally fully trusted that police will hold their own accountable when situation truly demands and stop asking civilians to be more calm with a gun in their face than cops prove to be with the gun in their hand. This job might be getting harder as so many like to tell you at these moments, but the statistics will tell you that it isn't because more and more people are shooting at cops.

With roughly a million law enforcement officials nationwide exposed to potential for violent attacks against them (not all cops work the streets or dangerous assignments), yet roughly 50 violent deaths per year, that says most cops are never even seeing gunfire or imminent violence directed at them at all. The numbers just don't justify cop paranoia, nor do they reveal any example of successful internal review that isn't isolated or forced by an irrefutable video. Because of the utter failure of the internal investigation process, we are now at the mercy of public video just to call even one of this year's nearly 600 people killed by cop, a murder, forget about the hundreds upon hundreds of other possible unjust murders by cop that happen year after year after year. They are the gone and mostly forgotten.

Read "Good Cop Down".  A blog about the results of
choosing to be a whistle blowing police officer
.https://goodcopdown.wordpress.com/

To this point, all Rats have been ruined and The Shield is undefeated, unexposed yet far from unblemished. 

If cops feel the shield has lost its shine because we are focusing on the actions of their few, it will take each of those in uniform- those sworn to the task of serving and protecting- to finally honor their own sworn pledges by upholding their first law abiding whistleblower, and start to return the shine to the shield.

All silence is violence.

This problem is personal.

NBA Contract Envy Reveals 'We All Wanna Hoop'

As we National Basketball Association fans take some time in between the conclusion of the NBA Finals and the start of the summer Olympics, there is unhealthy down time causing an uncanny fascination with this new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), which appeared to give back money, but now mandates expanding the revenue for players alongside the expansion of league revenues.  In a move of utter brilliance, the NBAPA (Players Association) bargained for themselves to enjoy the increasing fruits of their own labor.

As a result of the new CBA, teams are now responsible for insuring that they spend a mandated minimum on players salary, or the difference between what was spent on salaries and what should have been spent gets returned back to the players on the roster at the end of the season.  This new, exacting standard has many teams fighting to avoid the revenue floor, if they can, by paying several marginal players the kind of revenue that has some fans questioning the entire industry. Meanwhile, the superstars of the league continue to be their own GM's while realigning the location of stars throughout the NBA sky.

Take super star Dwayne Wade for example.  He rejected Miami's final 2 year, 40 million dollar offer (their first offer was only 2 years $20 million), while he pretended to pursue 2 year, 50+ million dollars from my home team, the Denver Nuggets, who were more than willing to use all of our extra money on Wade. It appears that he was using Denver to end up in his birth town of Chicago with a 2 year, $47 million dollar deal.

Denver did not accept the Wade meeting because he is particularly suited to our rebuilding plans, but mostly because the dim-stars we've got in-house already are hardly worthy of all the extra money, and not one of our hard to pronounce named players could insure one person shows up for the games even if we did pay them the money. Names can fill seats, but wins are what ignite hoop fans who've begun to question all that money for so many average NBA hoopers.

Now that Wade has finished working my team just to get back home to Chicago, it's my hope that Denver does something unique with the money and avoid the Von Miller contract mess that the Broncos are dealing with by locking up some of this young, 30 win team worth of  talent, to long term deals before the market dictates price. Especially since nobody really knows who they are yet.

Unlike our unknowns, D-Wade is a magnet for fans.  Superstar talents like Wade made last years playoff race one of the most watched in history.  For all the complaints about the modern game, the Finals themselves was actually the most watched NBA Finals in 15 years. If the viewership was not impressive, the ongoing social media arguments over LeBron's greatness as a player keeps returning us to conversations about who deserves the best player in the league moniker, is it fair for great players to join up for titles, why is Timofey Mosgov making so much loot out in L.A., and when exactly did basketball players become so damn rich and powerful in the first place?

In reality, basketball players have always been the cream of the athletic crop.  Golf only recently got it's full qualifications as an actual sport since people of my generation didn't think it was a sport until Tiger Woods made us try the game for ourselves.  NFL football is certainly America's new baseball, but football is one of those fringe activities that mostly strong, hyperactive boys take up as a childhood past time.  A whole lot of people (like my mom) never needed repeat traumatic brain injury to finally receive a name to consider football way too rough for daily doing, so professional football has always been mostly pursued by those non-hooping, crazed contact lovers who also couldn't hit or pitch well enough, or just grew to need crashing and banging from being forced to love it as a child.

Basketball, however, has always been a sport of athletic supremacy, with bodies crashing together like boxers, but eloquently done like ballerinas. Maybe boxers and dancers are actually the best of our athletes and basketball players somehow encompass them both.

Basketball as an endeavor is something that everyone can try out on a regular basis, so it also stands as one of those exceedingly humbling sports that help you to remember that- even if you could run fast and jump high and defend and block out- simply dribbling and shooting while mastering the aforementioned, demands amazing skill. Hockey makes a fair argument on the athletic demand scale, but it's just not our sport and mostly only gets playoff attention in America, or when your hometown team is more competitive than my Colorado Avalanche of late.

Take a close look at the bio for your most athletic players in every sport, and they typically played a lot of basketball to get that way.

NBA basketball players are magical and hardly invisible because their skills elevate them several inches above their commonly tallish frames.  In a recent radio debate,  two hosts argued over who would be most noticed in a crowd- Tom Brady or Kevin Durant.  I've waffled over the answer because one might have immense notoriety, but the other is nearly seven feet tall, black skinned and among that special group of people who do things with a basketball in hand that the rest of us only dream about. Given that the question came before KD exited OKC, and before all of the NBA contracts got announced, I might now be leaning towards Durant because he's a hooper, and WE ALL WANNA HOOP- or at least be on that team that under spends by $20 million this season.

Denver Bronco pass rusher  Von Miller even posted a picture of himself in a Golden State Warrior uniform with the words, "The Kicker". You see, despite so many hoop dreams, not all of us actually dream of a grueling 82 game career in the NBA. We mostly just dream of stuff like flying through the air from time to time right before dunking a basketball in the face of someone we don't particularly like very much- and that money too.

Can you imagine doing one of those Michael Jordan, free throw line flying dunks right in the face of Donald Trump, and then yell, "I'm richer than you too", while standing over him?  

Maybe that's just me?

Whether your interest in the NBA remains true love, or some twisted version of envy and hate (thanks LeBron), we all have some version of hoop dreams, and collectively, our hoop dreams are as big or bigger than the NBA Finals ratings this year.  If it weren't true, explain to me why have we never seen a traveling All-Star baseball or football team (either one..soccer or regular) like we've watched for decades in the Harlem Globetrotters? Yeah, I realize those other sports might struggle with travel arrangements, but we entertain ourselves yearly by watching a cavalcade of athletic animals and acrobats traveling from state to state, much like those Globetrotters, and I'm absolutely certain that the circus has way more equipment to transport.

Even if only in our hoop dreams, basketball maintains a position of athletic hierarchy that may not be readily acknowledged because we're too busy envying hoopers and their big guaranteed contracts, unlike any other athlete on earth. Especially their big guaranteed contracts.

To play the sport well demands a great deal of stamina and grit because the game moves at a pace beyond the control of most individual players. Yet, the greatest of players do dictate pace and have the wisdom to regulate the demand of energy expulsion.  It takes skill and will along with wile and guile to be simply be good at the game. It takes something truly special to be NBA great, that kind of great that has everyone watching and league revenues rising through the roof. If we have any reason to complain or care about salaries, it only goes to prove how interested we truly are.

I'm not sure how much money this new CBA is scheduled to bring to the individuals in the league because it should climb again and again over the next few years as our economy improves and league profits grow, so this moment of temporary rage towards people getting paid the cut they fully deserve- or for players recognizing their strength and ability to be their own GM's- is destined to have a few more flash points. The best of the best of hoopers will always have the eyes of the nation whether we're watching to see them succeed or fail, because basketball simply has that kind of allure.

LeBron James is the best player in the most athletically supreme support in the land.  By virtue of being the best hooper, he is functionally America's best athlete, maybe the world's best, and a lightning rod for every opinion that comes with the post.  If Steph Curry has one thing to be glad about, it's that his failure in the Finals will steer him clear of that best player on the planet moniker that comes with adoration, envy and loads of expectation, expectation that he might be smothering under, if not that Cleveland defense. Apparently, the fact that Steph still remains on the team that drafted him will also keep him clear of some the criticism that comes when players leave small markets for bigger venues; the kind of criticism KD is currently enduring as we speak.

Why Do We Care Where They Play?

Sorry KD. You used to be #1.
Now your best role might be as 6th man. 

Durant is now getting LeBron level criticism for choosing to join a team full of other really great players; a team that Durant nearly beat in the Western Conference Finals.  In my years of watching the NBA, the competitive draw of being seen as the best player in basketball, and the pseudo top athlete in America, has almost never seen a GREAT player joining a team that he's not clearly the greatest player on that team. Even LeBron and Miami came up short in their first season of trying the approach because the cockiness to be THE MAN in basketball was in full fledged contradiction to the humility it eventually took to make the chemistry work; chemistry that became clearly defined when it was clearly defined that LeBron was
the teams best player and not the other stars that shined
in the Miami sky while he was there.

A group of stars and superstars in Golden State must acknowledge who is THE MAN and stack rank themselves accordingly, and hope they can shine brighter than before their constellation realignment, while the eyes and expectations of a legion of envious hoop fans apply added pressure.

Good luck with that. We'll ALL be watching.