Don't Blame LeBron or LaVar. Blame Yourself

Is LaVar Ball a fool for branding his kids,
or would he be a fool not too/

That's all I can stand. I can't stand no more. I am tired to my core of people hating on a 15 year old basketball player for scoring 92 points in a California high school game, as if any scrubs can make a team anywhere in Cali.  I am tired to my core of those who are mad about AAU players and parents and coaches, as though all of you basketball purists actually travel to summer tournaments or determine who gets to college or watch the game outside of the month of March.

Sure, basketball is watered down from back in the day when we played the game all day every day, weather permitting. If you think things are watered down because players don't stay in college long enough to learn the game, you are probably right about that too.  Basketball, in its current form, is a watered down sport in which supreme knowledge of the game has given way to supreme athletic ability and shooting talent. There are a handful of parents and hoop mentors that force kids to perfect their games. The rest of America's basketball playing kids are playing video games a little too much during the summertime, creating a widening gap between the Ball'ers and the gamers who hoop during the school season only.

All of that simply is what it is, but none of that has anything to do with Sebastian Telfair, or Harold "Baby Jordan" Miner, or even Grant Hill who also once carried the burden of being "next in line". I could be weary from the endless comparisons made between LeBron and Jordan, but LeBron is just the current one, and the one with the best chance of living up to the hype. What makes me tired the most is each and every one of you, who has been searching for the next Michael Jordan starting several years before Jordan hung it up. It was back then when LeBron was first placed under the heat of expectation, and you all ridiculed that kid for being too cocky, even though he actually passed the ball more than he shot at the time, and the name James actually begged to be preceded with the word King. Now, you deride him for calling himself King and not shooting the ball more like Jordan did.

Did he really believe himself of biblical proportions when LeBron pegged himself King James, or was it just a cool nickname from a young boy named James with cameras in his face all the time?  At this point in his career, he's come way too close to living up to the expectations that were piled on him,  with the obvious hope of forcing him to fail.

People are generally too uncomfortable with their own success- or lack thereof- to assume the next person will live up to their promise. Consequently, it's much easier to predict doom and then root for yourself to be right, then to think that anyone will ever be the next Michael Jordan, and wait for them to prove you right.

I don't blame LaVar Ball for exploiting the potential of his very talented sons,  nor do I blame him for the hunger of a very ravenous NBA fan base who all hope to witness greatness, just so long as it's not greater than Jordan.

The inescapable truth is that all of this- the scrutiny and the skepticism- is about Jordan, a man that many of you didn't even like that much when he first retired. Today, we refuse to even dream of crowning another NBA GOAT as he is the last true king. Maybe it is because NO ONE before Jordan realized that you could make so much money from a shoe contract, so, being next up means a lot more than it used to? The window for making money in sports has forced the hand of every great player and their family. Either you embrace the shine and learn to earn it, or it will go away of its own devices.

In the end, we simply can't help but scrutinize and be skeptical towards the next great young player who we hope isn't quite as good as Jordan was. The way I see it, Lavar's kids are simply next in line.

Denying Donald's Dumbness Questions Intelligence

Donald J. Trump might actually want to follow the lead of his three previous presidential predecessors who all managed to achieve two terms of leadership over America and the free world with minimal changes over those 32 years in leadership of the intelligence community.

WE all understand the current skepticism in the two-party system and the lack of congressional leadership that made way for the dissolving of the faith from the American electorate, ie., the reason why we've got Trump. WE even understand this war with the media even if we can't see a positive outcome for anyone waging war against the fourth estate.

Where I am personally struggling is understanding how you impune an entire community of intelligence that has been trusted by 32 years worth of presidents, evidenced by minor changes in leadership over the years preceding Trump.

Every professional within the community of gathering intelligence has a duty to the other intelligence entities, and to the president that they serve, to do what it takes to keep Americans safe. The notion that any one of them would intentionally act in a way to harm Americans is absurd.


Speaking of intent, our press is an intentional aspect of the intelligence community, one with a great deal of intelligence gathering ability of their own. Rich and powerful media outlets can hire whoever they need to hire to get to the bottom of a Watergate, Bridgegate or whatever scandal we add the word "Gate" to next.

If no one objects, I'm pegging this one DummyGate while we watch Trump attempt to impune everyone he might need to keep America safe and also get elected to another term, something that won't happen if he doesn't truly keep us safe. Inciting radical recruiting efforts while publicly taunting those same radicals to see if they can beat your public declared travel ban will not keep us safe. The problem with DummyGate is that Donald is likely just the fortunate beneficiary of a whole lot of people who would rather play dumb than accept some of the signs of the walls surrounding Trumpland crumbling like Jericho.

Trump can try to create excessive doubt of the intelligence community just as he can try to win the presidency while not revealing his taxes. While one- if not both- has already worked for him, neither effort will stop people who make connections professionally from connecting the dots on both of these questionable behaviors. What Dumb Donald and his Trumpians don't quite understand is that hiding the truth is sort of unreasonable if the truth you are hiding is not a real or significant impediment to your goals.

Which is why I remain fairly certain that Trump had no real plan of winning the presidency, making the shock of his victory as equally impactful to the Donald as it was for each of US. If you don't expect you can win the presidency while revealing your taxes, you certainly question winning re-election with them. If this steady march towards uncovering those taxes, be that by Trump himself or congressional subpoena (whichever comes first), Trump needs to work on a really cool explanation for what the intelligence community is about to uncover in those taxes before they uncover it. Otherwise, he had better demean and impune American intelligence gatherers in advance just to diminish the value of what they could eventually reveal.

And there you have it folks. At this current pace of growing distance and discord between Trumpians, intelligence, and the media, Trump remains on a collision course with professional bloodhounds. From my perspective, why Trump would want to test the ability of bloodhounds chasing the scent of a trail speaks to the enormity of what they could someday find.  Nothing even close to equivalent to a pussy grabbing admissions on tape would be worth this war he's waging.

All of this ultimately leaves me to look at every so-called republican that doesn't have the courage to at least talk like John McCain or Lindsey Graham. Either you could care less what happens to the republican party after Dumb Donald quits this game and goes back to his business hustle, or you question that trickle-down identity that few republicans stand by very much anymore.

If those bad guys can get in despite current vetting measures,
nothing in your recent measure would stop them either.

In one minute, Trump claims that you can't announce a travel ban or all the bad guys would rush in during the week prior to the start date, and in the next, Trump announces the date of the new ban in the hopes of not causing such erratic travel disruptions around the world as he did with his last spontaneous combustion.

Forget the fact that his new order is just like the last in that it can only work to disrupt a bunch of people needlessly while never achieving the goal it purports to accomplish.  People don't tell you if they intend to harm you if they know you'll stop them, and the years it currently takes to properly vet bad immigrants is already enough time to uncover their intentions.

The current radicalization of immigrants who live in America is happening while in America and to the children of immigrants, not the parents who bring them or give birth to them on our soil like the Tsarnaev brothers (Boston bombers). Sometimes radicalization happens via online websites, while other times it is via other radicalized people already radicalized and living in America.  

Trump just can't understand that he looks stupid while trying to impune the intelligence community while leaking information (some involving him) that they share in confidence. In doing so, Trump is behaving like that sibling in your family who doesn't want to admit to breaking the rule of eating in his room so he hides the leftover food under the bed until it starts to smell revealing the missing dishes, broken rules and an inability to navigate something so trivial. Forget that WE somehow elected that sibling into office. In one way it's just his turn finally.  In another way perhaps, it's his punishment for being such a rule breaking prick all of his life.

Quite frankly, the only thing worse than our dumb, stinky-food hiding, rule breaking sibling are those who support him, turn a blind eye to him or keep pretending that his room doesn't smell so bad.