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Thursday, March 30, 2023

There is much to talk about, mainly women’s college basketball. Other than that nothing has happened, has it?

Donald Trump was indicted today.

The Iowa guard Caitland Clark put up the most remarkable performance the other day. No one has ever done what she has done. Not Wilt, not James, not Jordan – a 40 point triple double in college.

Donald Trump, Jr. has pointed the finger at Alan Bragg and said it was George Soros backed with help or outrage from Pol Pot and Mao. 

With 3:20 left in the game Louisville guard Hailey Van Lith tried talking smack to Clark. The response? “You’re down 30 points. Shut up.” Whoa.

I don’t know if this is true, but I believe that Dancing With The Stars invite has been turned down by Don Jr. However, Eric Trump said he was available, and turned down by DWTS.

There are many people who like Caitland: Steph, James, Mahomes, and Kevin Durant who first saw her play in an under 17 league. As Steph Curry said that when you can shoot like she does there are no bad shots.

Trump is innocent (currently).

Clark shows little emotion when she’s playing but she does make a few gestures. She did John Cienna “You don’t see me” gesture. She does the Jordan “come on” raised arm thing. 

There are possible indictments to follow. Many are mentioned however one has not been mentioned – rape.

Clark can make a 3 pointer from inside the circle at mid-court.

The Republicans are already lining up saying this is political. Personally, I want to be George Soros. I had no idea how powerful he is. Oh yeah there are these papers that spell out something called “a factual basis.” Surely, someone must have alternate facts?

Friday night is the big game at 7pm Friday. Little known Virginia Tech will face off against LSU, which I want to point out the “Pardon the Interruption” guys can’t spell. (Hint: it’s spelled “L”…”S”…”U”.) And those two have never seen Virginia Tech play. Why would they watch a number one seed?

At 9pm will be South Carolina and Iowa. Can Clark beat SC? What will South Carolina do to stop her? Mug her? It will be a heck of a game. What will be interesting to see is the championship game which will feature Virginia Tech (I predict they’ll beat USL – whoops that’s spelled backwards) against either Iowa or South Carolina. The Hokie women will have to have the game of their lives and I hope Coach Kenny will have his players stay under the basket to get a second or third attempt.

BTW Trump has been indicted. In case, you hadn’t heard.

The other interesting thing about Clark is that she currently makes $192,000 from endorsements from six or eight backers. The WNBA pays $72,000 for a top level player. Clark could play for them in front of a crowd of 1,700 or she could stay at Iowa to sold out crowds of 18,000. What would you do?

• to understand this T-shirt fold the picture between the two lines of letters and lift the bottom line of letters up the meet the top line such that the bottom half of the top line is blocked and lined up with the bottom half of the bottom line.

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Okay, I’m about done with basketball for now, except, except, we just went to lunch and watched “Pardon the Interruption”. Wilbon and Kornheiser had lots to say about South Carolina and Iowa’s Caitland Clark. They knew how to spell LSU, might have actually watched those women play for a few seconds. Virginia Tech was dismissed by both with an “I don’t know anything about Virginia Tech.” Great in depth analysis guys. Maybe they haven’t looked at the bracket to realize only South Carolina or Iowa can make the final game. That leaves the other side for either LSU or Virginia Tech. Had they watched how LSU and Miami played they might have had an opinion. Had they looked at the ACC’s leading #1 and #2 players in Kitley and Amoore they might have said to themselves, “Huh. Maybe this here VerGinYa Tech is purdy good!” 

On to economics:

I recently tapped into some conservative economic forecasters and stock pickers selling economic newsletters. Their pitch is twofold: 

1. The country runs on diesel and coal. Green energy isn’t big enough to make a dent, and the country does not have adequate refining and transportation so at some point our power grid will collapse and there will be riots in the streets.

2. Our national debt is out of control and this will lead to weakening our economy and our national standing in the world. Plus, the Fed is making it worse, so are politicians.

I just finished reading a long invective from one of these folks who went on and on calling the Fed and its chairman and all the economists morons, stupid, and ineffective. What I did not read was anything suggesting how to fix the situation. Well, hold on, if I wanted to spend money to get their Premium Newsletter, they would give me a tip of a stock to buy. But what good would that be if the economy collapses along with the power grid and there is rioting in the streets? Surprisingly, they don’t address those kind of things.

They also like to say Biden is a clown. Why? Never made clear. I guess, “Ya gotta believe!”

Aside from DeSantis saying Florida is the place woke goes to die, his lawyers were asked in court to define what they meant as woke. To them it meant caring for others and giving a sh*t. Well, yeah Ron, I guess you are anti-caring.

I also saw a number of things pointing out stuff about liberals. AOC saying when she’s accused of being liberal she says if you mean that I’m for health care for all then yeah. And she lists a bunch of other stuff like that. The conservatives like to go on about her Gala dress and that it was a terrible ethics violation and it shows how “they do it too.” Somehow those conservative voices get real quiet about the House Ethics Committee’s findings in this regard. There was no violation. Yes, she was invited by Vogue Magazine and not the actual organization. However, Vogue Magazine runs the Gala for the MET. So in reality Vogue is the sponsoring organization. And yes she paid for the dress, the hair, and the makeup. It was late in paying and that was a staff screw up. Don’t believe it? Okay. They do it too! Yeah, but there’s a difference. She paid. it’s not like the Republican who publish books and they get bought by the pallet full. Or the the 3,403 conflicts of interest accrued to some ex-president so far.

And then there was that little blurb I saw on facebook of a young woman looking straight at you and reminding us about such things as “why can a woman get a car loan or credit card without her husband’s approval and signature?” That’s a liberal idea – not conservative. And what about the right for women to vote? etc. etc etc. All liberal ideas. If the conservatives had their way none of this would have happened. Or what about pensions for workers. You think a capitalist business man wanted that? 

And then there was an interview with Jon Stewart and some politician who wanted to enforce protecting children from art that he considered pornographic. Stewart said to him that the #1 cause of children dying in our country is guns and that’s a fact. “if you are so interested in protecting children why don’t you do something about guns? But you don’t. That’s hypocritical.” Nailed it.

And there were the folks from Iowa I meet in the elevator at our hotel. i mentioned to one that Henry Wallace had been a friend of the family and drew a blank stare. The next Iowan knew of him. Wallace had been FDR’s Vice-President and was replaced by Truman in the last term. There was fear that Wallace was too liberal. I’m beginning to think liberal means “concerned about things and wanting to do something to fix the situation.” This as opposed to the Republican and conservative “Aw shucks. I don’t know  nuthin’ “ attitude.

When Wallace ran for President in ’48 he was called a commie and that ended his ability to garner many votes. I often wonder if he had been President would we have gotten a health care system for everyone and not the company mandated one that we ended up with. It’s been a mess for decades. We passed the highest prices for some of the worst health care in the world. You or your baby are more likely to die in childbirth here than in all modern countries (but one.)  Hell, some war zones have better outcomes than we do.

Another school shooting, this time in Nashville. A woman took the open mic after the press conference to say she had been involved in another school shooting at home and now she was on vacation and involved in another. She asked the question, “How many more?”

Oh and then there’s that flaming liberal from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, she did not approve of the midsized banks getting less regulation, being labelled community banks, and having their asset limits expanded. I don know about those conservative pundits who keep claiming the U.S. banking system is going to collapse, but Warren pointed out exactly what would happen if those asset limits were expanded and she opposed the reappointment of Jerome Powell specifically because he did everything he could to give banks like Silicon Valley as much leeway as possible. Warren thinks banking should be boring and not risky. She wants to see the Glass-Steagall regulations reinstated that were repealed and under the Republicans. Why? Because they worked and kept our banks whole and not in trouble like some are now.

Now the Georgia legislatures have passed a bill that allows them to get rid of prosecutors they don’t like. As has been pointed out multiple times, this is how authoritarian regimes work. Welcome to Fascism 2023.

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

The Hokie women are in The Final Four!

I thought I’d tell you because you have to listen very closely to the reporting to pick it up.

It seems to come as an after thought by most of the commentators. As in, “Oh yeah, there was another game and Virginia Tech won.” Then they go back to talking about the woman who had 26 three point baskets in the tournament (before last night’s game) and they don’t mention that Georgia Amoore the point guard for the Hokies had 30. 

VT defeated OSU last night. But why talk about that when we can endlessly talk about what Lamar or Aaron might do? Or South Carolina or Caitland? Virginia Tech certainly gets the Rodney Dangerfield “I Don’t Get No Respect” award. There was a lot of talk about OSU’s press. It certainly worked against Louisville. But Tech broke it in various ways. First Georgia Amoore could just out dribble: around or between the defenders. Otherwise, Tech set up players at either side of half court and one would alway have to be open. 

Passing the ball to Elizabeth Kitley near the basket the defensive strategy by Ohio State was to collapse three players on her and mug her. Why not? The refs wouldn’t call a foul, just a jump ball. Tech then went to the three point shot and kept sinking them.

The final defensive strategy was to elbow Moore in the chin and knock her to the floor. She had to be helped to the locker room by two trainers. Moments later she ran back to the bench. She’s from Australia where she used to play rugby. 

We’ve been surprised by the dirty play of many of the other teams. Be it raised elbows and twisting bodies, or jabs to the throat, or SDU’s “wrap your arms around our center,” and the ”shove the person out of bounds and to the floor”. Why those things aren’t called leads to more of the same.

But now VT plays LSU in Dallas. LSU won the game against Miami in one of the lowest scoring games of any tournament. And it wasn’t a defensive struggle as much as it was a clunk fest. Neither team cold make a basket. Here’s hoping LSU keeps up their … uh … shooting. In fact the first quarter score in the VT/OSU game just about equalled the score of that whole game.

If the Hokies beat LSU they will take on either SC or Iowa for the championship. It would be soooo sweet to hand South Carolina their first defeat in two years.

Monday, March 27, 2023

“Wait”, you say, “How can a mid-weekend report be on a Monday?”

Easy, this is an extended weekend for us, and it’s over after we watch the Virginia Tech women play against Ohio State late today in basketball and we go home the next day.

So this report is to catch you up on the action up to this point and to speculate on their advancing.

On the other side of the bracket are two powerhouses: South Carolina and Iowa. South Carolina are the reigning national champs. They haven’t lost a game – blah blah blah. Iowa has Caitln Clark. She doesn’t look like a basketball player. She’s six feet tall, skinny, with no emotion shown on her face – ever. Well, hardly ever! (Nod to G&S.)

Iowa took on Louisville last night with the pigtailed Van Lith. The news commentators talked about how much Van Lith likes to play, how hard she works, how her relatives are all here because she grew up and played high school basketball 135 miles from here. Blah, blah, blah.

Louisville jumped out to a quick lead. I don’t know what was going on with Iowa. Maybe, they were asleep. Then Caitlin came down the court with the ball. She stopped short of the 3 point line, about ten feet away from it, right in line with the top of the key. She was looking to pass. No one was open, so she buried a three pointer. From then on Louisville was playing catch up. Iowa was ahead much of the second half by twenty points. Speculation was running high that Clark might have a triple double and 30 points by the end of the game. It hung that way for quite a while. She got the triple and thirty. Then she went on to get 41 points. A triple double and 40 points had never been done in men’s or women’s D-1 basketball – ever. Clark was responsible for 79% or was it 81% of all the points scored by Iowa. That means she either made the basket or had the assist.

The other well known player on Louisville is named Robinson. In a previous game she shoved an opposing player out of bounds near the basket. it was intentional. There was no reason for it. There was no call. She did it again in this game. Seems to be her MO. Didn’t make any difference to Iowa.

The commentators were now talking about Clark. The cameras showed Van Lith getting more and more worked up. Clark? Nothing. The color announcers who had played the women’s game marveled at Clark’s ability to pass, to find the open player. Chess pass, bounce pass, ally op – She did what was necessary to get the ball to the player. And she did it in such a way that the other team had no chance to touch the ball. One pass to her center under the basket went to the player’s outside shoulder and it was a high pass where only that player could get it.

I know lots of folks are talking about South Carolina winning it all, but they haven’t met Iowa. I think Iowa can beat them and perhaps take the whole thing.

I would like to see Tech in the final game and have it against South Carolina, but Iowa? Whoa. 

Ohio State beat UConn by employing a press. Surprisingly, Connecticut couldn’t see to handle it. On the other branch of the bracket was Miami and LSU. It was a low scoring game. Some say it was a defensive struggle. That wasn’t it. Both teams had their worst game. No one could make a basket. It wasn’t a struggle. It was a question of who could do nothing more. it wasn’t until the second half that one team managed a three pointer. Boink City.

I think the Hokies will get by OSU and then beat LSU easily. But then? South Carolina or Iowa? They will have to have their best game ever and few mistakes. It’s a tall task.

Saturday, March 26, 2023 (written Sunday morning)

After watching the Virginia Tech women Hokies basketball win the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament in Blacksburg, Virginia we decided to come to Seattle to watch the next two rounds. My son Alex lives in Seattle and we had wanted to see him and his girlfriend Dani. Plus Kat Robishaud was putting on her Misfit Cabaret show in Seattle that weekend. Three good reasons to come and then Shelby discovered she had over 200,000 mies on United, which was interesting as I’m the one doing the traveling, but she pays the bills so United knows where to send the freebees.

We started off seeing Misfit Cabaret on Friday night with Alex and Dani. Kat sang, boy did she ever. Then four acts: a stripper, a contortionist, an acrobat and another terpsichorean act. I wish Ron DeSantis would come here to watch Kat’s show. His head would explode.

Saturday we went to the Climate Pledge Arena (one block from our hotel!) to watch the first Ohio State beat UConn (a real surprise) and then the women Hokies subdue Tennessee. We were seated up in a corner to the side of the Tennessee band and behind their team bench. We had to endure “Rocky Top” several times, but it wasn’t as bad a when VT played them in football a few years ago. At that time I think that was the only tune the band knew. Tennessee never led. It got to within one point and four but that’s as close as they came. This despite some rather dirty playing on their part, which amazingly went unseen by the refs. Tennessee’s tall slender center had a habit of swinging her raised elbows into anyone who was around, which was usually our center, Liz Kitley. We’ve seen games where she is accosted by two, three, and four opposing players and somehow the refs don’t call that. I guess an elbow to the throat doesn’t count as a foul. 

But the worst was the foul that decked Taylor Soule. Taylor is one tough cookie. However, on a defensive transition a Tennessee player by the name of Walker held Taylor by the back of the neck, punched her and then shoved and punched her to the ground. No foul. That should have been called a flagrant one or even two with game ejection, but instead – nothing. After the game Taylor remarked that she should get an endorsement from a pickle juice company because she uses it so much.

See it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqBIS2dPLXM

And the other remarkable thing is the lack of coverage the team and the players get. I know the girl in pigtails from Louisville is a good shooter and all, but come on. The headlines read how VT “survived a run by Tennessee” and that was about it. Survived? Tennessee never led.

After the game we went atop our hotel’s “world class” rooftop patio. How about “L” shaped walkway? It’s nice. Four women were having a reunion with wine and girl scout cookies there. Very nice. We headed to Ozzi’s where we ate bugers and watched the Uconn men obliterate Gonzaga. it was surprising to me because the center for Gonzaga had been so dominant and bullying in other games.

Today we’ll be in the stands for Ohio State versus Virginia Tech. Ohio State was dominated by UConn early in the first quarter. Women play four 10 minute quarters. Then Ohio State dug in, caught up to the Huskies and went on to win. I was kind of disappointed that Tech won’t get to play UConn as their fan cheer is “Let’s Go Huskies!” and ours is “Let’s Go Hokies!” 

One of our players is from Australia, Georgia Amoore. She’s a guard and looks tiny out there at 5’ 6”. When pressed by two players the typical strategy to break the press is to throw the ball to the open player. In Amoore’s case she’ll typically dribble the ball between the two players and leave them behind. I heard last night that the coach saw Amoore play in a tournament in Belarus. What was the coach or a young woman from Australia doing in Belarus? I have no idea. During Covid, Georgia was in Blacksburg and didn’t see her family for two years. Wow.

If the Hokies win this evening (game time is 6pm PT, 9pm EST) then they go on to Dallas to play the winner of Miami/LSU and if they win there it’s the final game where South Carolina is thought to be the team coming out of that side of the bracket. SC is undefeated this year and maybe last. They are thought to be the ones to “take it all.” Here’s hoping a lot of people will be surprised.