Nuggets Need Next Level Coach. (Aka., Not Malone)

James Johnson?

The Clippers traded to get the
coach they wanted.
Should the Nuggets do it too?

Ain't that JJ from Good Times? His last name was Evans you say? The other J was for Junior?

Well who is this JJ that ripped the Denver Nuggets to shreds in the double overtime loss in Miami last night?

I could be considerate of the Nuggets fight on the road against an actual playoff team, including enough effort to get a couple of extra periods out of the game, but they were on game two of a seven game road trip designed to make or break a team that was in the hunt before last night. Extra periods was the last thing the Nuggets' road trip needed.

Actually, the previous loss to the struggling Memphis Grizzlies was likely the death nail to our season, but we were still stuck on the road and stuck in the midst of a western conference log jam before we started pulling ourselves from the fray with back to back losses of winnable games.

If it wasn't clear what the problem is, last night made it fairly clear. Mike Malone is not a playoff coach. He probably isn't even a head coach really, however, teams in transition need disposable coaches to get them through the process.

Or, they need an established one like the Miami Heat's Erik Spoelstra who somehow rebuilt the Heat and now has JJ a bunch of other guys I can't recall (Dwayne Wade was injured) looking like a team on the upswing of transition should look. In fact, they look quite un-Nugget like if you are asking me.

Malone seems too content with the progress to fulfill this process. He is slow to sit his youthful starting group but quick to pat them on the back for the kind of effort that professionals get paid for. The players who give the effort (please come back soon Gary Harris) are rarely the guys who get post game love while the coach either oozes over guys who get hot here and there, or complains about players he rarely sits.

Malone seems focused on building the next Golden State Warriors and not the Detroit Pistons or some other team famous for grit.

What many fans of the Warriors and of the run-and-gun style Nuggets forget is that our best teams defended and controlled the boards in moments that matter. Golden State is also fabulous on the boards in moments that matter.

Aside from a couple of backups who don't play enough, I'm hurting my head trying to recall the last second chance point the Nuggets starters have scored. No trouble at all recalling the ones we gave up.

Perhaps Malone doesn't trust his transition defense enough to crash the glass for second looks. And perhaps he is so focused on playing fast that guys leak out before the defensive rebound is secured.

Whatever the truth is, end game execution is stifled when fast break buckets are your main diet. The book on the Nuggets is to force their scorers to beat the double or triple team late in games and watch them actually try.

Jamaal Murray, Nikola Jokic and maybe even Gary Harris have bright futures as players who can carry a team and close out games as needed. Key word? Future.

That future is not now, and every attempt by coach Malone to force it into being is pushing this team further and further back in the standings while Malone falls further and further out of favor with the more experienced players who are forced to watch Murray and Will Barton piss away wins trying to score on a double team.

I am only reading body language, and the message from our only all-star, Paul Milsap, is not good. Either he will need to be like Andre Iguodala and find a team that is best able to use the last years of his career or the Nuggets will need a new coach so they can use Milsap themselves.

Under the current path, the Nuggets will be under major reconstruction again soon, or they will fire the coach and make it look like he was the problem so that terminations don't extend beyond coaching.

Is Black Panther's Message Bigger Than The Hype?

Diversity in film and television is a conversation that predates

"Black Panther" (Marvel Studios). Click here to see what

Hollywood has to say about itself relative to diversity. 

Despite "Black Panther" being a very difficult film to fully digest after one viewing, I will spit out my half chewed cud and share my feelings about a film many had to view more than once, just for digestive purposes.

Although it could take a couple more viewings to give you the cinematic evaluation of the films artistry, complete with metaphoric comparisons and fancy superlatives , I intentionally waited to watch Black Panther because I did not care about the films artistry when it came out in ads, or when I sat down to see it myself. For me, there was a strong and obvious message in the casting alone, so the artistic brilliance of the actual production was an absolute bonus.

Black Panther is extremely artistic in its fashion and form with an engaging plot and visuals to match. It is a Marvel origin film (of sorts), but it is also jam packed with scientific geeky stuff that any Marvel movie lover anticipates as a lifeblood of the genre. Although we are meeting an ancient civilization as we watch Black Panther, we are not traveling back in time to do it, which makes this film a lot more about the origin of life and all of us and less about the origin of the hero whose name is on the banner.

You could say that this was a film about a super hero, but there's an entire cast of heroes that serve a vital role in understanding and forming the central character, including a few highly relatable villains. You will probably leave this film either affirmed, or reaffirmed that women are the true super heroes in the real world just as they clearly are in this films unfettered world of humanities origin.

You could  say that this film was about gender, race, colorism, politics, religion and a few other social issues that derive from the animus of humans on this planet, but you would be narrowing the movie into a central message and there are too many messages intentionally laced within this film to bog down on one or another.

The strongest message I saw for black people and women is one of a life and a world without stigma. Despite a black cast full of powerful male and female characters, you will only make significant notice of those things if you are one of those things and unaccustomed to seeing yourself free from a world of stigma: a world like Wakanda (the fictitious land of Black Panther's origin).

In recent anthropological discoveries, women and black people are actually just people who would love for their race or gender to be ignored like it usually is with white men. For a couple of hours in the comforting movie theaters of Wakanda, stigmatized people get to take a break. I quietly suspect that some of the multiple return visits to see this movie are more about mental health and relaxation than searching to find that plot nugget you missed, because the plot isn't that deep, even if some of the messages are. For a few hours in a movie theatre, certain people in the audience will get to shed their inferiority.

From that perspective alone,  Black Panther achieves a first. It is not the first black cast or the first subject to need one, but it is a first for reasons perfectly obvious to the stigmatized- slightly unclear to "the rest".

In fact, some of "the rest" will not appreciate the degenerate stigma towards white men as thieves and colonizers on the edge of societal ruin if not for the intervention of Black Panther and the nation of Wakanda. While it's not uncommon to call white men colonizers that are ruining their own world, it is uncommon to see a nation of black people (not just Will Smith) as the hope to fix a problem that we, the original people, probably created.

This is likely where the actually stigmatized among us will depart from Black Panther, as few blacks seem willing to accept our distinction as the original people as well as being the probable cause for our wayward, melanin deficient offspring.

Black Panther goes in on this and several other aspects of the challenges of race without making any of its less-than-subtle digs bigger than the cinematic achievement. Some people will make a fuss about one touchy dig or another, but those people typically make a fuss about every touchy subject, and lies rarely bring out the fuss in us, so those people are not really a fair measuring stick.

That is my review of the film as a film, because, as a film alone, Black Panther deserves to be reviewed and evaluated on the merits. The phenomena is real mostly because this film is great.

As a statement of social impact, the phenomena makes much more sense to me because this movie is transformative.

I wasn't personally anxious to see the film for the review aspects because modern films are what they are; stuck in a space between technological ability and the long-standing demands of good film making. In reality, humans have never needed all the tricks of cinematography that filmmakers think we need. When done well, movie tricks are amazingly cool but they always require time, money and a reason for being in the film in the first damn place to not become a waste. Getting to know people, characters and why humans do the things we do has never needed technology beyond what cameras, actors and film already provide.

It will always be hard for me to have a favorite movie like "Citizen Kane" and still fully love everything about "Black Panther" or any modern movie. I didn't hurry out to see the film because I wanted to do a review without fear of spoilers, but mostly, I just don't hurry to see movies anymore.  They all come out on DVD too soon for me to wonder if I would have preferred seeing it for $25 with my wife amidst an obnoxious crowd of people instead of $4.99 plus whatever we find in the fridge. Stovetop popcorn is better anyway.

That last paragraph is important to understand because I will go back a few more times to see Black Panther before I can get it cheap and watch it at least as many times as I've seen Coming to America or all of Tyler Perry's stuff. I always knew I would watch it again and again even before it came out. I never knew I would watch Good Times over and over and over, especially when I think about how obnoxious JJ (Jimmy Walker) was at a time when I hated the stigma he seemed to perpetuate against us black boys. Nonetheless, I will watch me some Good Times every chance I get because I now embrace it for everything it stood for at the time, including being  a black first like Amos and Andy, and for being something white people needed as much as me, just like Black Panther.

Some things in this world are bigger than themselves, and Black Panther joined those ranks long before the film was even released. Fortunately, the filmmakers of Black Panther knew the gravity of this project and did their job with full recognition of what they would be adding to the social construct of society. Black Panther makes no apologies for addressing the matters of blackness while, at the same time, making blackness hardly matter somehow.

Black Panther offers the kind of pride some of my people have never seen in themselves. I specify some of us because I  left Aurora, Colorado at 18 and found myself at Morehouse College in the heart of the Atlanta University Center which encompassed Morris Brown, Clark College, Atlanta University (Clark and AU merged), Morehouse and Spelman. Watching the Morris Brown marching band or my first fashion show event on the campus of Spelman felt much like Wakanda to me. Every time I return to visit that beautiful city and campus, I see Wakandan roots through and through even though no one has shown me their secret mark yet. I thoroughly enjoyed Black Panther, but I did not view the film with my spirit in utter amazement as did my immediate family who did not attend an HBCU for college.

One of my 5 daughters did attend an HBCU. She enjoyed Black Panther enough to see it three times already simply for the connection it gave her to college life in Atlanta .  The rest of  my family left the film with salty tears dried on their face. All of us made plans to see it again even though our reasons were different.

In fact, a 7 year old white male family friend shared his review of the movie saying that "the Panther was cool and the women were really awesome". Whether he didn't notice the black part or had been taught to refrain from saying the words 'black people', he could not refrain from recognizing the elevated view depicted of women in this movie. Women will embrace this film as if it was made by them and for them, even though the central character is a man they all serve.

If I had to decide on the movies greatest achievement, it is that Black Panther truly allows you to enjoy an epic Marvel film experience and ignore the issue of race even while race is thoroughly in your face. As I reflected on this article it came to me that the entire production could be symbolic of the name of the main character.

You see, a panther is not really a thing at all. It is a description of a leopard (or jaguar) with a black (melanin rich) outer coat that hides the exact same spot pattern that you would see in their sister or brother leopards.

Whenever they cut open Black Panther in this movie, he always bleeds red.

Did U know? Two spotted leopards

can't produce a black leopard (panther)

Furthermore, the word black is used to attempt to describe a color, when in essence blackness is the absence of color. If you peel back the layers on Black Panther- and maybe even the layers of Stan Lee's vision when creating the comic hero- they are majestic,
regal and misunderstood creatures that encompass every color even as they appear to represent just one.

Normal Voters Really Want Normalcy To Return

Apparently, denying something happened
is all that matters to Donald Trump.

It used to be normal that we defend the actual victims of domestic violence.

Not the accusers! Those liars remain exactly what they were ten years before the #metoo movement decided to be. I know we would like to pretend that WE are a new America poised to give a damn when women insist we should, but this is Real Talk...For People Who Need It (SquareBiz), and I'm not convinced that enough abusers or women are ready to vote for a woman or believe her claim of abuse.

This matter of America's foremost leader being an unrepentant misogynist works because plenty of men remain just like him and plenty of women voted for this man with complete knowledge of his history with women. Those women- who shall primarily remain anonymous, for obvious reasons- are excused for their support of president Trump because the bulk of the evangelical community has also joined him and are clearly going to vote for him again if given the chance to do so.

It used to be normal that we'd fight against the efforts of the Soviet Union.

That nation is now simply called Russia because they fought the United States beyond their ability to afford the war, and it cost them an entire union. Yes, that Russia is the same Russia that is now happily fighting us in other ways, including automated bots that disseminate spoon fed information to the same list of people that I mentioned above:  my oldest brother, women who question #metoo and other women but not Trump, prominent evangelicals and the Trump base, aka, the Trumpians.

It used to be normal that certain standards of operation like having a presidential staff with security clearances or obvious obstruction efforts of an ongoing investigation would draw the ire of a Congress that most of us were raised as children to understand had an equal balance of power within the three branches of government. It used to be normal that Congress eagerly jumped upon opportunities to show the president their equal level of power like they did when overwhemingly voting in favor of sanctions against Vladimir Putin and Russia.

This Congress wont even force Trump to enact those sanctions that were voted upon with a veto proof majority, further conceding their equal level of power to a president that wants our military to give him a parade.

If you've seen this meme, maybe normal is just an illusion
Click here to compare the actual 1956 platform to this meme

It used to be normal that going through background checks, vetting, bonding or anything of the sort was considered "due process".

Now we have presidents- and supporters of the president- willingly defending a man who can't get permanent security clearance due to domestic violence issues. Instead of questioning why he remained in that job and who gave the call to keep him there every time his interim clearance lapsed over the past year (they last for 180 days with an option for another 180 days), this conversation has devolved into a question of due process with no trial under way and no reason to invoke the idea of due process unless you are confusing Rob Porter's issues with your own, Mr. President.


Even with acknowledgement for the sharing of platforms planks when politics demand, it used to be normal that Republicans behaved like Republicans and Democrats like Democrats.

Now, we have  a president that has control over both houses of Congress and is embroiled in a debate with his own party over immigration and increasing the deficit. If the signs of the death of political normalcy aren't clear enough, what more do you need?

I am personally a bit weary of those who keep seeing the obvious but continuously ask themselves the most obvious, thus rhetorical questions imagined. Yes, there are plenty of people that continue to support this man despite all the reasons "you" think they shouldn't. His issues with style, delivery, focus, empathy and a history twice as bad as his present gaffs are not enough to run off prominent preachers who either see something beyond the ability of the rest of us, or they see a puppet who they can get stuff from. Either way, they are with him and by default against you, Bob Mueller and normalcy.

They are also not against Russians because they are not dumb. What most of you people wishing for your normal back don't quite get is that smart people don't discount the fact that Donald Trump probably did benefit from the Russian intrusion into our election. They also don't automatically look at the polling numbers and tell themselves that he could win again without Russian involvement.

What you people who need your normal back also don't quite realize is that these are the same people who willingly gerrymander as well as obstruct voters for the sake of keeping their slipping grip on power, so why not Russians?

I still think exiling the spiritual understanding of forgiveness and Grace away from our schools because it offended people while letting everything else in was stupid. But that's the conservative me talking. Mostly, I am too proudly Socialist and too against the two-party hustle to care that the Democrats could be begging for a problem if they keeping frowning in disbelief over the notion that people support Trump.

Get over it and get over your wish for normalcy. If our lazy voters had a chance to do it all over again, they would have voted Bernie Sanders into office. I would be dancing, but we would all be trying to figure out how a Socialist will govern without any Socialist driven legislation coming out of either branch of Congress. While people like @RachelMaddow try to keep a calibration of what normal used to be so that we don't allow this administration to confuse us when normal finally returns, I say she and everyone else is dazed and confused and probably won't see things clearly until their concussions symptoms clear.

Our old normal only involved the participation of less than half of the country, and that was at the best of times, not mid-terms when turnout is significantly less. Several citizens have to watch, listen or actively ignore our embarrassment of a president while they rethink their previous belief that their vote didn't matter, but many citizens turn on this circus and feel more than justified of their decision to wash their hands of all of it. Whether we have an electorate more motivated to do their civic duty is still a wait and see proposition that has apathy, gerrymandering and suppression efforts it still must overcome.

Mitch McConnell looked flabbergasted as he stared into the camera and tried to explain to a section of Trump's current support how Barack Hussein Obama became our 44th president. His only recourse was to promise them that he would block Obama at every turn and make his effort to preside over this country as difficult as one human being possibly could. Now, all of that energy is being recalled and renewed against Trump, except Republicans have a political majority so the parallel isn't quite the same even if the sentiment is.

The new normal is likely being evidenced at anti-Trump protest rallies and with recent special election results. Governor Scott Walker, in Wisconsin, is refusing to hold a special election because the last one he allowed went for the Democrats. Right now, the generally motivated as well as the generally interested but hardly motivated voters are running off of the same energy, and that is a good thing. Whether it shall be an enduring thing is something to worry about when you realize that our president- who loves his freedom and Russia way more than your sense of normalcy- has decided that the best way to protect himself and Putin is to flood the waters with more press than the average person can endure and hope it makes them downright weary when it comes time to vote.

His plan seems worthwhile given the fact that the media is stuck in a paradigm of unprecedented ratings and interest in the latest news while simultaneously being disgusted by the person they are giving so much shine to each day. Trump's presidency may be saving a few dying newspapers across the country as we speak. Although his rhetoric continuously drives those he disgusts towards further hatred of him, it gets spin'd and retold by FOX news and by those Russian bots that keep generating half-truth memes to keep Trumpians motivated and fully on board.

If Russia is still as against America as it was when it was a union too, they have NOT only reignited the Cold-War that we declared victory over, they are winning the damn thing from the inside out with Donald Trump in office.

I write to you today because our president is also a Russian bot who refuses to denounce or fight back against Putin and quite possibly colluded with him to win the job. Our Congress is loathe in their responsibilities because they are unsure of how to do their job and keep their power at the same time. Meanwhile, WAY too many of you are looking for normal again while the war for our ability to still be called a union rages on.

What many of us see- including Facebook, finally- is that the necessity for nuclear war has been usurped by the simplicity of a digital one. WE are currently engaged in a war that WE don't understand so we can not be winning it. By the time we fully discover the extent of this war we will have endured internal damage that will never allow us to return to whatever normal used to be. In fact, when you think of it, old normal is probably to blame for this mess.

So please, stop looking for it.

If Oprah Winfrey Isn't President Material, Who Is?

If Oprah Winfrey isn't qualified to
be president, then no one is.

I've tried for a few days to listen objectively and understand the views of many people that I respect as it relates to the conversation of Oprah Winfrey running for president, but I simply can not bite my tongue on this topic any longer as a deep divide is building between those who say she can and those who think it's over her head.

Either too many of us are lost in the sauce and simply can't look back at history to determine the ingredients of a good president, or too many of you skeptics have grown weary of Donald Trump's act and simply haven't done the same thing.

Sure, it may seem reasonable for people that are in politics to actually aspire towards them and to chase after a Political Science or Law degree along the way despite knowing of those who arrived in the realm of politics after traversing various non-traditional pathways. Ronald Reagan is fairly famous as an actor turned president, but Reagan is also credited for several years as a Governor before taking on the bigger role.

Apparently, Governors are great options for future presidents even though the history of Governors who have done it is no more or less flattering than the history of former Senators turned president or any other professional person who pursued politics later in life. The notion that Colorado saloon owner, John Hickenlooper, is now a worthy presidential candidate begs the question of what made him worthy to be Governor?

I know, I know. Hickenlooper was the mayor of Denver before becoming the Governor of Colorado, but what exactly made that saloon owner worthy of running a city as booming as Denver was? How could a business owner truly understand the complexities of local government given the complex nature of running any city in America? Nothing we learn in civics gave us the nuances of local government that are much more complex and varying than the simple framework of our nations Constitution.

And what about my dear friend Senator Rhonda Fields, also of Colorado? She became a member of the state House of Representatives before winning her Senate seat on the back of grief and being the champion for her late son Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiance, Vivian Wolfe, who were both murdered by gang members as they prepared to testify to a gang murder they witnessed. 

What made Rhonda worthy of such a serious and important job that she had ZERO experience with?

Her heart.

In reality, the only thing that any person who has ever succeeded in the role of the president ever really brought to the table was an undying love for this beautiful country of ours.  I fashion my statement that way to clarify between those who succeeded and those who failed at being the president.

I- and apparently a whole lot of other people- am not particularly interested in what a politician offers up as his or her list of qualifications as much as I am interested in why it is they want the job. The recent firestorm over the book "Fire and Fury" makes us further question whether Trump really wanted this job, although he won it by letting us all know that he wanted this job so he could Make America Great Again. I'm not exactly sure if I know why Hillary wanted the job. It could be my clouded memory or her foggy message.

If my memory is still useful, Barack Obama was considered the totally unqualified community organizer who hadn't served as a committee chair in the Senate before being pegged as "next up" on the back of his rousing DNC convention speech in 2004.

Once again, a rousing speaker has roused the masses into looking at her and saying to themselves, "now that lady could be our president". We did it to Michelle Obama and if my now overworked memory serves me right again, we did it to a very cool and dignified Hillary Clinton who handled her husband's infidelity crap in a way that made us see her in a presidential light. Did raising Bill and Chelsea actually make her worthy of a Senate seat in New York? Of course, it didn't. In fact, the Senate and Secretary of State thing were both positions of an unqualified person who was hoping to remove that stigma en route to a return visit to the White House.  Hillary killed those jobs she was previously unqualified for, so much so that the GOP needed to tag Benghazi to her and not the sitting president just to taint her record a bit.

The unifying aspect of every leader from Mayor to President that actually does the job well- and I'm not really interested in a conversation about electing more qualified hustlers to hustle us after we elect them- is that they were probably asked to lead, just like Oprah was, and they probably said yes because they love this country and would do anything to see it thrive including taking down of an orange baffoon if America needed her to answer that call.

Why do we blame the entertainers for being more believable
then the politicians we elect to deceive us over and over?

Now! If Oprah is no longer qualified to be president based on the merits of everything that I've just said.....no one is.

No really!! 

If Trump Falls, Twitter Will Become His Nixon Tapes

Waking up the first working day of the new year to another twit-parade of comments from our Twitter-In-Chief, Donald J. Trump, has me thinking about the value of his idiocracy of a presidency.

I would love to focus my attention on the scary international tweets Trump directed to start the year towards the instability in Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan where he felt the need to tweet threat the withholding of U.S. aid instead of just withholding it with back-channel admonition like Obama and others have done, but those feel like the very distractions that he intends them to be.

Trump seems focused on a lot of things to the potential exclusion of preparing for the November elections, elections that we can now describe as this year since 2018 is no longer some distant date of future political concern. 2018 is now, and NOW is the time for Republicans to focus on fighting off the Blue Wave of Democrats who are threatening to overtake Congress and pressure Trump in ways he can't fully understand based on his current Twitter focus. In between golfing and Tweeting, he probably hasn't seen recent reports about is plummeting poll numbers in Iowa

Reince Priebus, former RNC Chair, has seen the numbers and has sounded off recently on the immense risk Trump will face if he allows the Democrats to overtake the House and the Senate. But the Christmas push to pass an unpopular tax present for rich folks while blasting the credibility of FBI Special Investigator Robert Mueller and the entire FBI is starting to make curious observers wonder if Trump is feeling the heat of the investigation too much to focus on the other things that threaten his presidency even more than Mueller.

Despite the irony of Trump potentially committing the kind of crimes that could "Lock Him Up", America is not interested in locking up presidents anymore than it is in locking up the loser from a political campaign as some countries do.  For Trump to focus his energy on attacking losing political opponents and discrediting an investigation that will never result in jail time for the president- even if it might for his subordinates- proves he doesn't understand civics enough to see the clear off-ramps of immunity our laws have made to avoid jailing deposed presidents and embarrassing an entire nation in the process.

Trump also isn't civically aware enough to realize that losing a Republican majority in 2018 elections is even more dangerous than liquored up George Papadapolous who was reported to have kick-started the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign, a report that debunks the recent Republican counter-claim of the Steel Dossier being the sole reason for the Russian investigation. 

Trump also seems not to understand how his own Twitter initiated words paint a picture any basic smart person can follow, much less a brilliant lawyer and lifelong FBI investigator like Robert Mueller.

What former President Ricard Nixon did to counter the efforts of an investigation against him came to our knowledge in the years following his resignation. How Trump thinks he can stop Mueller from doing a job he has given his entire life to do on behalf of this great nation is a matter you can decipher while you sit on the toilet or drink your morning coffee because that's when Trump is likely to lay his cards on the Twitter table, for all the world to read.

Occasionally, Trump's Twitter type tirades have come via two old-school mediums called audio and video recording, but they are no less public and just as revealing of a man who has lived his entire life spilling his guts all over the current medium of the moment, confident that no exposure is ever bad as long as you use it in your favor.

Twitter is an expose for and of Trump, and history will probably look to a connected chain of tweets that will unravel the mentality of a mentally disturbed man who displays both his mentality and his disturbances nearly every morning via Tweet, for all the world to read.

The damage to this nation is definite even if yet to be defined. The global trust we've lost in the process of selecting a president has rendered us as untrustworthy as our process.  Stated more clearly, WE the People will need the world community to believe we preferred Bozo the Clown over our Donald Trump mistake. We have to prove him an accident of populism and of political apathy, or possibly a clownish byproduct of Communist collusion. A fair combination of each would help even more, however, that proving can only be done in the same place of the initial accident. Voting Booths.

Has The Twitter-In-Chief tweeted his cards unto
the table revealing penis insecurity while
pointing investigators to a path of his own demise?

Clowns thrive on entertaining you to get your attention. As we finished the first working day of the new year, news reporter left and right have slapped their own hands for breaking a resolution to not allow the Clown to distract them with Tweets, only to have Trump issue multiple tirades of a madman on Twitter to kick off the new year. 

Are these Tweets distractions of an attention hound or head-fakes to hide collusion? Before I could edit this piece for syntax and synchronicity, Trump Twitter bombed the world with a slew of late night tweets, the kind of stuff that usually happens when most of us are well into our second glass of our adult beverage of preference. Tweets during certain times of day are always more revealing but often terribly regrettable, like the late night comparison of nuclear button size Trump decided to have with Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

I personally am viewing his regurgitations via Tweet as his version of the Nixon Tapes being dictated before our eyes. Much like Nixon, they are the ramblings of fear and of a foolish leader who doesn't know any better but thinks he does. Nixon recorded his happenings because he became overwhelmed with distrust of the crumbling walls around him. Eventually, the presence of the tapes and the evidence they showed of his cover-up of a petty crime became much worse than the crime itself.

Trump may or may not have recordings as he threatened to have when attempting to bully former FBI Director, James Comey, into obeisance, but he has resorted to making Twitter declarations for the jailing of James Comey and several other "Deep State" political opponents.

Yep. He did that too. Via Twitter!!

Donald J. Trump needs to direct a news narrative that he can't control, he can only share how he feels about it and what he wishes he could do if he had the power to do what he wants with the DOJ. He can also accidentally expose his mental makeup by speaking on important things in frivolous ways that promise to threaten his presidency and the world at large but not Make Anything Great Again. 

In an effort to own the news, Trump literally launched the new year with a Twitter threat against Rocket Man (North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un), Pakistan, Iran, Obama, Huma Abedin, the entire FBI and someone else that will inevitably happen just before, or soon after I publish this piece.

What happens if North Korea does not dismantle? Are WE
ready to back our words or prove them ineffective forever?
Neither of those options is good for the United States,

Donald J.Trump does all of those things, and more, via Twitter every day. As we resolve to avoid over-indulging in his clownery, we would be historical jesters to not listen to this era's Nixon tapes before they are formerly compiled, vetted and released to the public. Making New Year's resolutions to try not to give Trump's Tweets the historical significance they will have in 20-year hindsight will not change the psychological revelations they contain today.

Trump's Twitter trail will also show the destruction to the mantle of world leadership once maintained by the U.S. Granted, it is slightly presumptive to say what his overall impact will be as we stand here today, but the world could soon look back on Trump's Twitter ramblings as our most salient view into the psyche and the psychosis of president #45. 

Could Winning Be Worse Than Losing For Denver?

I could use this moment to reinforce my contention that Trevor Siemian is the best of a mediocre stable of quarterbacks, but I must concede that choosing between mediocrity is highly subjective when talking QB's.

All of you Broncos fans who are still debating the value of this stable of quarterbacks should stop it, that ship has sailed. Brock Osweiler and Siemian are, at best, career backups while Paxton Lynch is fighting like hell to overcome that ankle injury (wink, wink) and prove he even belongs in the NFL.

I totally understand Lynch's fears given the toxic combination of our offensive line, crappy play-calling and over-inflated expectations of every quarterback. But even with one eye, you can see that the pirate Paxton is headed back out to sea soon. In other words, unless we commit to a full rebuild and wait for him improvement plan, that ship has sailed too.

Deciding to play Lynch in an inconsequential game because Kansas City has secured the AFC West title doesn't lessen the dangers of playing any NFL player who isn't desperately angling to display his skill and will to win. Unlike Lynch, Siemian is tough as nails and eager to play with pain as needed. If the Chiefs aren't okay with losing prior to the playoffs, this game could send Lynch back to hijacking forever, assuming our offensive line and play-calling jump ship again.

Nonetheless, if there remains any debate in the Denver quarterback conversation and you'd like to flip a coin between Siemian and Osweiler, I will save you the trouble and give you Osweiler on an ounce of durability Siemian hasn't proven to possess.

It's not really important that the Broncos fans or the coaching staff have finally sort of accepted the mediocrity of their quarterbacks even if it has helped them to start calling more of the kind of plays that gives NFL QB mediocrity a chance in hell. CJ Anderson looking like CJ Anderson should have been our primary quarterback plan from day one, but too much conversation about Jamal Charles, Devontae Booker and bringing the "juice' confused all of that.

While a fair amount of losing has shined a light, exposed our weaknesses and shown us a direction for winning, recent games still point to a coaching staff hell-bent on proving to Elway that they can bring that juice he hired them for, despite every attempt to do so leading to turnovers, losing and a bunch of excuses why they have no choice but to juice it up when down one or two scores early, as if the smart fans of Denver forgot who hired you and what he asked you to bring.

At least Vance is no longer sprinkling this rancid tasting juice he and John concocted with that excuse of no identity anymore. Someone in the GM office must have informed him the two guys that are responsible for establishing such things.

Though we seem reluctant to embrace it, the identity of this team is the identity of winning in this league. We should know it by now because Seattle set the tone when they destroyed us with it in Superbowl 48, and every team since (Denver in Superbowl 50, the Patriots in 49 & 51) either mimicked the same formula or they don't have a ring on their fingers.

Tom Brady and the New England Patriots may have been forced to abandon it when coming back to win the crown last year, but even Brady and Belichick employ the run the ball and play defense approach until you make them change it. No name after no name has proven effective running for New England, and the Atlanta Falcons were clearly the team trying to win with the offense during last years Superbowl defeat to the Patriots.

Like Floyd Little and The Orange Crush D, are Terrell
Davis and great defense more symbolic of the Broncos
identity than a scrambling Elway and his rocket arm?

Despite minimal rushing attempts in way too many games this season, Denver fans have consistently watched Broncos running backs maintain a solid statistical standing (3rd in the NFL)  along with a consistent defense that tries to overcome every attempt by our juicy offense to give games away.

Interceptions dating back to our championship season two years ago have created a collective longing for the days of the No Limit Soldiers. Now, you can virtually hear a collective exclamation all across Broncos Country of "run the damn ball....please", each time the team goes three and out.

When the Broncos have won in recent years they have primarily committed to a single back approach and to running the ball twice as much as they pass. When they lose, no particular running back get's enough attempts to find a rhythm and the run to pass numbers reverse themselves. It's that simple. Elway desired something juicier than Tebow from the moment he first acquired Peyton Manning and he continues to look for better and juicier stuff like he enjoyed from his younger years when he was a young stud Californian turned Bronco trying to cheat the process with a rocket arm and coming up short in the end.

In a search for something juicier, Elway lets go of an older John Fox in a move that was mutually desired. Friendship or not, the exact same thing could be said of the Kubiak departure. Elway's current marriage to Vance Joseph came with a couple of years of courting him and with a prenuptial expectation of something that sounded to fans like a return to the run-first approach in Denver that was famous for a salute and for making household names out of anybody who took to the Broncos backfield. Why John isn't a bit wiser about the dangers of the juice only John, and maybe his ex-wife Janet, understands.

If that last paragraph was too outdated or double entendre-filled for some to follow, you can trace Denver's commitment to an identity to very recent history when we begrudgingly ran the ball behind the legendary Peyton Manning en route to a Superbowl victory. The more this team attempts to win in a way diametrically opposed to methods of a recent past, our Superbowl 50 magic starts to look more and more like the wisdom of Elway's former love, Gary Kubiak, who decided to salvage their friendship by ending the coaching relationship.

Kubiak and tons of smart fans might have left that championship season feeling towards Elway the same way the rest of us are starting to feel now. Even in victory, those skeptical fans were right to question Elway's general ability to manage tough situations, much less to be the full-fledged General Manager and VP of Operations over a proud and accomplished organization.

From my personal Kharma-inspired view of life and sports, much of the bad luck is the byproduct of Elway's  Tim Tebow mistake, when he ironically had no choice but to manage around someone else's mediocre first-round QB pick who was also learning to play but was actually winning while doing it, unlike now. That also worked way more than Elway anticipated and Tebow earned a chance to stay in this league, at the least, to learn the game behind Manning.

With Tebow and Kubiak, Elway shunned the hoopla and results to prove he could do better.

On the surface, Superbowl 50 appeared to be Elway's fulfillment on that promise, but once again, it's beginning to feel more and more an accident with every passing day. Well, not an accident, but certainly not as much of an Elway creation as we thought at the time.

Since that Superbowl victory, a few of the players Elway determined expendable (Malik Jackson, Danny Trevathan, TJ Ward) have left some to wonder if he even recognized the elements that stirred our defense into greatness. Some of the same concern applies to his drafting of quarterbacks.When you look at his quarterbacks on paper, they all have "the look" though none have shown the 'it' factor that makes Russell Wilson or Drew Brees not need the statuesque look that Elway seems to covet.

The slight against Elway and his current coaching staff is for their passionate departure from an identity that won a ring, and for possibly putting politics over championships by rejecting Colin Kaepernick. Kharma is a ghost. Letting go of Tim Tebow and head coaches more capable than Vance Elway while deciding Kaepernick didn't deserve the same cup of coffee you gave Mark Sanchez are coming back to haunt Dove Valley and everyone who works there.

TIn fact, it might be the ghosts at Dove Valley that have apparently forced some folks on the Broncos coaching staff to start accepting their identity and return to the Tim Tebow formula for winning games, making winning much more likely regardless the competition. Control the ball and limit turnovers and Denver still has a defense able to dominate teams like the Indianapolis Colts,  the New York Jets or even a Kansas City Chiefs team that has little to nothing to play for this today. Turn the ball over and the Broncos make pathetic teams with pathetic names like the Washington Redskins look special.

If the juice John covets is actually just creative play-calling, he's actually on the right track. Denver will need something juicier than Vance Elway and his staff could muster this season if he is fortunate enough to find his voice and return to introduce himself to fans who still don't know much about him.

Assuming he is not retained, Vance at least can start trying to recapture whatever remains of his own forgotten name and reputation. If I were Vance Elway, I would take solace from the reality that this team has looked virtually the same no matter who has coached it in recent years, so it might not be the head coach causing this.

Hindsight and the tape say had they given CJ the ball another 15 times for 88 yards versus the Washington Redskins, they probably would have eliminated the passing game turnovers that turned a very winnable game against them.

From my view of things, what the Broncos are scrambling to accomplish on the field to close out this season is only solidifying how utterly incompetent they are in the front office.

Ovussly, the recent championship history did not make this
job the jewel Joseph hoped it would be.

After months of watching our new coach take to the podium and aw-shucks us into thinking he is either too nice or can't coach football, we still don't really know if he can coach when he keeps going for it on fourth down in the second quarter like a battered wife afraid any point deficit speaks to an imminent beat down.

I would call Vance Elway a wife who needed a better prenuptial lawyer, but that five-year deal doesn't kiss ass even if Vance clearly does. If he stays or goes, he'll be like Tiger Woods ex-wife, just fine.

There's really no way Vance is the main reason we have switched quarterbacks like underwear from preseason on anyway. His devotion to Elway created that mess. My biggest problem with Vance Elway comes when he is questioned about his quarterbacks. He almost never says 'I", preferring instead to describe every decision that is made as "We decided", which means "Elway made me do it" to us smart Broncos fans.

When addressing the brilliant media of a smart fan base, Kubiak often had to differentiate between decisions where he made the final call versus decisions when Elway might have felt differently. Kubiak demanded freedom from front office intrusion when he took the job and regularly shot back at reporters with the words "John understands that I have a team to coach".

In hindsight, did John understand or did he have an issue with the previous coaches he couldn't intrude upon?  Ovussly, Vance Elway and a five-year commitment to a company man coach who tows the company line kinda answers that question fo' us, doesn't it? Reports say John will announce his future with Vance after the final game ends, so we'll soon see.

Warning, Vance Elway!!!

Simply towing the company line might appear to be in the best interest of your career, but not necessarily in a town like Denver where fans are just too smart and too engaged to even endure HOF coaches for a minute too long when it's time for them to go. It's also not so smart if you are building a future resume of coaching style expectations for other teams to examine. Eventually, Vance will need to divorce himself from being John's newest love interest just to establish his own name as an NFL head coach, especially since John is treading water at GM and seems more focused on becoming an owner someday so he can do his intruding like Jerry Jones does it.

Vance would also do well to realize that John's history with coaches thus far has not been any better than his quarterback drafting skills. Smart fans of Denver are willing to give John and Vance Elway time to grow with the rebuild, but we haven't forgotten the kind of coaches John already let go of. A coach with any less a spine than our last three runs the risk of becoming like Jason Garrett or whoever is the next Jerry Jones puppet in Dallas.

John and Vance need to immediately take a knee and pray together. Partially to stay together beyond one year- which will look terribly bad on both men- and partially that Kyle Sloter never turns into much of anything so Broncos fans don't have to burn John and Vance in effigy as we continue searching for a future at quarterback that isn't currently in-house.

Instead of squeezing through impossible Superbowl windows, I'm all in favor of drafting and developing offensive players who can catch a punt return or play with pain to open a Superbowl door in the near future instead of just beating these two frightened ponies called Isaiah McKenzie and Paxton Lynch to death.

Even if they finally play every player we need to know about on today, John and Vance Elway should both be held accountable for this team's lack of player development, the unwillingness to play players you trusted enough to keep after preseason, and for an overall directional stalemate.

If you follow the talk radio circuit, you realize that Elway is catching heat for sure. Yet, crap notoriously runs downhill where Vance and the coaching staff that Elway gave him currently reside.   

A GM who recognizes his own mess-ups, and isn't pressing his new coach to clean up poop he inherited would have already forced Paxton to play, bad ankle (wink, wink) or not. The accountable GM would also take to the same talk radio circuit that is lambasting him and his new coach to explain the team's direction just as he readily did when dumping Tebow for Manning or stealing coach Kubiak's Superbowl 50 credit.


Any GM who DOES NOT care to clean his own mess and chart a comforting path towards correction for his very smart fans to follow would also readily allow a coach he signed for five years to continue to play mostly veterans players, and to try and save a lost season against teams that stink and are a lot more experienced with tanking than the Broncos.

It's as if Elway doesn't realize our team stinks too and will need major free agency luck or a major draft and wait overhaul, not just another aging quarterback who will struggle mightily behind our crappy offensive line just as Peyton and everybody else has.

And for certain, we do not need another rookie quarterback unless John and Vance Elway now understand what waiting on a rookie quarterback entails. Any team unwilling to develop and wait for its young talent needs to be like the Patriots and reconsider the draft as a primary building component beyond stashing trade-bait like Jimmy Garapolo for some other desperate team.

You also will need to have Tom Brady playing quarterback for a few decades if you want drafting not to matter nearly as much. We will all soon see if Belichick can coach without a legend playing quarterback or will the Patriots be forced like so many others to accept the 'tank and rebuild' approach after Brady hangs it up?

Is Von Miller A Denver Bronco For Life? Should He Be?

I realize fellow Broncos fans might appreciate the break that winning for a couple of games had given us from those Broncos haters who love to razz us when we are down, but those teams haven't won in a long time and are enviously staring at our Superbowl 50 ring when they talk. Their emotions are not to be treated as genuine or as a reason to see winning as terribly necessary right now. The time it will take to build this back up might take longer than our most expensive players have to wait. We run a dangerous risk that emotion might slow our willingness to release, and thus acquire key assets at crucial moments.

Who we have coaching our team isn't quite as important as the question of who that coach will be asked to keep or discard going forward. Yet, if John is truly evaluating the same coach he's on the hook to pay for the next five years instead of simply evaluating his young talent and letting his coach learn, prepare yourself Broncos Country, for the fourth Broncos coach in 5 years as Elway tries to alleviate the pressure smart fans are presently mounting against him.

On the other hand, even if Vance is still John's main squeeze after he hyphenate's his name next year in a liberation statement, Vance Joseph-Elway cannot be expected to develop long-term confidence in his on-going relationship with John or in any of these players if John is forcing him to play certain guys while also looking for a new coach to love. Whenever an NFL coach has doubt about his players or questions his own job, every mistake feeds into those existing doubts and questions.

While I realize that an agile quarterback and a slot receiver are just what the doctor ordered for this busted season and team, this conversation is not about needs as much as it is about beliefs. When you believe or are very hopeful in a player, they get the number of tries that McKenzie and Lynch keep getting, which is why it is vital to give Vance a team he believes in versus a roster and a coaching staff of John's preferred people. Kenneth Faried being exiled from playing time with the much improved Denver Nuggets is a great example of what it takes at times to win.

Or just let Vance go.

Instead of finding a coach who you trust to develop your drafted players, John seems hell-bent on chasing the trophy with a couple veteran stop-gaps that can become our next Neil Smith or DeMarcus Ware. Although he passed on making Calais Campbell into that guy when he came free, Domata Peko was a home run hit for John. TJ Ward was too before he got away.

The problem with great stop gaps is that few of them play offensive line, and the wealth of edge rushers is forcing every team to draft and groom their own offensive front while they hope like hell for the right quarterback to make that draft commitment pay off. Meanwhile, GM's are often forced to change coaches when frequent stop-gap measures are employed just to make any failures in the approach point towards coaching and not the approach.

What Does Rebuilding Look Like?

For reasons that I'm not impressed with, this team is trying to save a coach with a five-year contract from getting fired. Maybe playing to win is always a better scenario than playing to gain draft positioning, but I can't help but wonder just how many of these veteran players we are currently committing to chasing wins do we already know are gone at years end?

Including our desperate fight to actually come back and beat the Washington Redskins, I've felt a certain kind of way as I watched teams like the Indianapolis Colts and the New York Jets leave the field as the draft winners while my Broncos walked off celebrating the score. Those teams have bottom-dwelled long enough to understand the impact of one or two wins in actual or potential selections- assuming you decide to trade back for additional picks- while the Broncos are more worried that losing too much could tick off Aqib Talib and have him slapping people upside the head like he did when last season soured.

When Talib himself is on the record saying he doubts he'll be retained, it leads me to feel like Denver might be proving a lot of things by focusing on winning to close out the season, but forward thinking is not one of them. Could winning actually be worse than losing for the Denver Broncos? Winning without finding out what you have for the future is a loss of a different kind if you ask me.

I could create a list of all the young players on the ship has sailed list versus the guys who can't get off the bench to find out, but Kyle Sloter is gone and I've already talked too much about Lynch and McKenzie. The rest of the rookies have been on the bench for so long I would need Google to remind me of their names. But that's the problem with every regime change. The blossoming talents like Jordan Taylor get's lost in the shuffle of a new coach trying to determine his established talent first.

If the same five-year contract coach who decided to make Trevor Siemian fight for a job he had already earned is now fighting for his own job, it's because Elway has made it that way. In doing so, John has also accidentally forced his coaching staff into benefitting from the lack of intrusion that Kubiak demanded and should be inherent to their job description, not just a by-product of a busted year.

Broncos Country is still curious about DeAngelo Henderson, Jake Butt and a few other young players that I'm Googling right now. Simply announcing Lynch as the starter proves to me that John realizes our curiosity too. He might also realize that now is NOT the time to totally step away from desperately needed analysis of future players even if he failed to see that then (upon the hiring of a first-year head coach) was NOT the time to get overly involved. On either note, Elway has played it wrong. The same bad mistakes that started during the Superbowl 50 season linger but are no longer being drowned out by the cheers of a fanbase who used to have a lot to cheer about. Now they are selling off their tickets fast and cheap.

Winning when your season is an utter bust is a feel-good bonus that makes players and fans of bad teams sleep a bit easier at night. Beyond that, several former bottom dwellers have risen to the top of the current NFL mountain by embracing the reality that winning can be initially counter-productive to the rebuilding process, a process that most winning organizations struggle to embrace.   I am not saying that our rookies and younger players shouldn't fight like hell to try to win the game if given a chance to show their value. I am saying that at some point amidst a busted season they should be asked to try.

WE DON'T REBUILD, WE RELOAD? BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!!!!

Not every organization seeks when to tank the season and rebuild, however, every organization that needs to do it had better find an opportune moment to capitalize on its arrival as opportunities to tank and rebuild can be fleeting and hard to recognize, especially for teams like the Broncos who appear unaccustomed to the practice and will probably retain the bulk of this team and reload it instead of using key pieces to acquire the pieces they need to rebuild it.

I get it. Winning is almost always better than losing, and no brand new coach wants to learn about their team while losing games. But timing in life is everything, and there really is only one thing to learn from reacting too late. It's called hindsight. Armchair quarterbacks and opinionated pundits like myself rely on hindsight, regularly. NFL coaches and former quarterbacks who become GM/VP's should avoid it like the plague.

Tax Plan Will Put Icing On GOP Identity Crisis Cake

In a search for fair and balanced political criticism, it's increasingly difficult for many of my Republican voting friends to read anything I have to say as it relates to politics. Maybe they DO NOT find my strong support of Donna Brazile as enough of a rebuke on Barack Obama, the guy who caused most of this mess to begin with.

Yes, Barack Obama did bankrupt- in more ways than one- the entire DNC leaving it in a situation where Hillary Clinton had to save it or go it alone. Clinton sort of did both if we take Brazile at her word. Obama hasn't opened his mouth once in defense of himself and most people who dislike the decision of Donna describe her book as a money grab, not a lie.

I quickly echoed the concern about Hillary long before she announced she'd run, just as I've acknowledged how Obama left the DNC in a position to do very little work down ticket, forcing Clinton to trust that black people would simply obey the Obama's and fear Trump way more than we eventually did. I voiced concerns during the DNC succession war that left boring Tom Perez as the head while forward thinking Keith Ellison (the first man to predict Trump btw) was designated co-chair as a white-flag concession. And I've written, on several occasions, my concern with progressive messaging. ( I'm A Socialist Who Doesn't Believe In $15, Warning!! Trump's Guilt Is Not A Campaign Message )

And then Virginia and Alabama happened.

Despite the apparent possibility of this moment, I am still of the mindset that it's vital for Democrats to recognize their own identity crisis and not misread what happened in Alabama as probable anywhere else in America while forgetting that black people apathy in the 2016 presidential election might have lead to a p***y grabbing nincompoop of a president. We blacks don't openly take blame for Donald, yet we indirectly accepted blame when we refused to worry about it being our fault with that pedophile in Alabama. In record numbers, black people came out to vote in Alabama overcoming major impediments- intentional or not- that typically thwart our participation.

While I would love to see this black voter participation trend continue, I don't blame black folks for our apathy all alone. Once again, I blame Obama for disappointing the lazy black voters who wanted him to deliver 40 acres and/or a mule.

I certainly blame him for bankrupting the DNC.

But, I also blame him for scaring the shit out of way too many white people with that smile and charismatic way of his. I thank him immensely for living a virtuous life with a virtuous wife and kids, but that doesn't take away the blame we have to give Obama for passing a healthcare plan designed to placate Republicans, who mostly found the whole idea of universal healthcare objectionable back in those days anyway.

I blame Barack Hussein Obama for having the audacity to become our glorious 44th president with such a Muslim'y name. I don't blame him for racial intolerance and stuff like that, but I have no option but to blame Barack Obama for not having the courage, or the core principles, to demand single-payer healthcare when he had the chance to do it.

Does Little Marco actually have big hands
and big courage, or is he just igniting a trend
that can only explode the deficit further?

As a result of Obama's willingness to concede to the Republican plan, despite obstructionism from day one, we are now at a place where progressive voters are described as such because calling yourself a Republican or a Democrat has no value when each party's ideas, policies and plans all end up leaving regular people in the same spot WE started.

Black Democrats in America, and in Alabama, have very little reason to expect Hillary Clinton, Doug Jones or any other so-called Democrat to fix the issue with wages. In fact, despite what will inevitably add more to the overall deficit scoring of their tax plan, it is a Republican that is fighting to retain that same old Child Tax Credit that occasionally makes you wish you were Mormon (Thanks Marco Rubio).

Rubio's rescue, combined with doubling the standard deduction, never amounts to more than an extra few bucks or so that you will only see during tax season, and doesn't actually apply to the 44 million people who itemize their deductions anyway. So, if you are poor without children, you had better pray the GOP wage increase promise pans out because their tax plan has nothing at all in it for you.

Someone should remind Rubio and the Republicans that Child Tax Credits, doubling the standard deductions and things like that used to be a dangling carrot that only Democrats used. In reality, Democrats or Republicans could offer to quadruple the standard deduction and it wouldn't dramatically change the way tax liability or tax return checks work. Unless you are still willing to game the system by illegally claiming charitable donations as a way to squeeze out a tax return check, the GOP tax plan does little to truly benefit the average Joe or Josephine.

In fact, the corporate tax cuts don't expire but Josephine's and Joe's cuts will expire sooner, not later. It's as if congressional Republicans can't truly forecast a vibrant future economy their tax plan depends on and understand the long-term deficit risk of giving cuts to everybody based on potential growth. The problem they have is that they also can't begin to pretend they are helping everyone fairly without shining too much light on the fact that they are not. So, the message becomes, " ignore your expiring tax cuts, Joe and Josephine, and trust that bad companies will finally be good to you after WE give them lots more money to be good to you with"

Also, try to forget about the fact that the corporations will see their benefits starting this February, but WE will have to wait until 2019 tax time to get our one-time $1,000 Christmas present. In the long run, the tax cuts that they insist are for us might afford you a couple of cool family nights at the football game, so long as your car is already in good shape and you live in a city like Atlanta where the Mercedes Benz stadium has foot long hot dogs that are only $2.50, and the inexpensive soft drinks ($2-$4) come with free refill stations all over the stadium.

Everywhere else in America, the average game ticket starts at $150. Car repairs can be ten times that amount.

The truth about both parties are that neither has fixed inflation's deflation of our income and savings. Way too many of us already put off those car repairs waiting for the Republicans and Democrats to throw us an inflation sensitive bone each spring. Yet, no matter how many different ways they attempt to throw those tax time bones, it is never hard to recognize how little meat remains for the immense amount of ravenous dogs attempting to scavenge for their share.

So yes, Obama is to blame for the skepticism of a voting block that was already too skeptical for him to concede as much as he did. Assuming he conceded at all?

Maybe Obama has overtaken Russia and is controlling
Putin as a devious plot against Trump and America?

I am still of the mindset that me, Hillary and Obama are way too conservative for the taste of many progressive voters who hate the flavor from the last 8 years and demand entitlement sharing much more than empowerment plans. Aside from his single payer mistake, which is actually more or less a mistake when viewed from hindsight than an actual mistake, I generally supported Obama's pseudo-liberalism. Whether the policies of Obama were concessions of a much too kind demon or true ideology might be resolved one day in his own version of Revelations. He might even snap back at Brazile and create an East Coast, West Coast type political battle of biblical proportions, like we had with rap music in the 90's? Or he will concede that she was right.

As for my personal concession? 

My Obama rebuke is all that I can offer to my Republican friends who accuse me of not being even handed when sharing too many comical postings against Trump and his team. If you try to Google something funny and fair about Barack, Hillary and Democrats, the pictures of demonic horns don't seem funny enough, even the few that have a smiling face attached to them.


No matter how easy a target Donald's ducklings are, Democrats can't rest on Huckabee humor, pedophile hatred or whatever a laurel might be. They need to replicate the ground game that swept through Virginia and Alabama even if it was a pedophile that motivated them to press harder in Alabama, a place Democrats rarely waste money. Now, the DNC is forced to find enough money to throw at every Southern wall just to see where their message actually sticks.

Oh yeah, they also need a believable economic message to avoid the risk of relying on their own Grand Old Philosophies that no one cares to believe anymore. Hopefully, they are fashioning a message of economic hope that sounds a lot better than "Trump Sucks".

Whether this guy who is proving to be politically toxic to his own party actually survives Mueller and wants to give this horrendous job of his a second go, has little to do with the necessity for each party to clean up from the Trump-era fallout and establish a firmer identity in an era beset with identity politics.

Despite an image of desperately wanting to help people, the results of Democrat policies have done no more than Republican policies at closing the widening gap between rich and poor. In the end, both parties can only tinker with wage minimums or give you a small check each spring.


What Is Identity Politics?

If you are raised to see Democrats as much more reprehensible than pedophile's, it isn't difficult to confuse one man's reprehensible behaviors as a political assassination attempt.The sad but true reality of identity politics is that Roy Moore had way more support than any civilized human should be comfortable with (I did not say deplorable). Identity politics made it absolutely necessary for 97% of black women, and 92% of black men (eligible voters), to show up in Alabama.

Thanks to identity politics, black people were begged to assume their identity of Democrat in numbers never seen before in Alabama. While it saved their state from being culpable in pedophilia, the stench of those who laid down with the skunk, and the p***y grabbing president who endorsed pedophilia, will be smelled for years to come. As we reminisce on this, WE the People will also recall the visuals and imagine the smell of body sweat and oppression left behind in those Democrat precincts where budget cuts killed voting locations and lengthened lines in Alabama, but only stiffened the resolve of those identified as US.

For a party that is currently making folks question their identification of Christian and Republican, the Roy Moore debacle might be the largest relinquishment of a party's identity save for the one they are proposing to do next week.

Assuming the Republican Tax plan moves forward without another Marco Rubio hero stunt- which only further inflates the cost of doing the entire thing- the GOP will be on the hook to prove that adding 2 trillion dollars (and rising) to the deficit can be deficit neutral, or deficit reducing from increased incomes and consumer spending that increases tax revenues.

"Have I got a gift for you!"

Disregard the blind eye Republicans have turned towards our Soviet sympathizer-in-chief, or the desperate desire to take your healthcare away just because they promised to. If the GOP was interested in you and I, or interested in keeping their image as the fiscally conservative party, they would all get behind Paul Ryan's proposed cuts of entitlements, a move that will surely get them all sent packing but would at least retain the last remnant of a party identity that they are essentially scrapping by adding 2 trillion (plus) to our deficit.

The blurred lines between the two parties will grow even blurrier after tomorrow when every Republican Senator and his mama will seek to do the Rubio and get their last minute pork barrel add-on's at the stage when the pressure of the holiday season conspires to make another legislative failure the first present the GOP opens.

Assuming they get so lucky.

Much like Roy Moore, losing will be a special form of winning for the GOP who can actually avoid some of the public backlash of this terribly unpopular president and tax plan if they are fortunate enough for it- and Trump indirectly- to go down in legislative flames just as Repeal and Replace did. As for the average Joe or Josephine? Aside from remembering who passed it, there's just not enough in it for most of US to worry about it passing or failing.