The Celts are still done. No chance of repeating. No championship team should need two OTs to vanquish the Bobcats (The Bobcats also reinforce my conviction that the Fakers are a paper tiger). Garnett is still retired, he just doesn't know it or admit it.
There is something more profound than a sore knee at work with KG...and the Celts have NO CHANCE of repeating without him...
Today's grim announcement that KG is effectively out for the rest of the regular season spells the end of any dwindling hopes in Celtic Land that Gang Green might repeat this season. At best they're looking at staggering into the second round. Garnett is the heart and soul of that franchise, and after fourteen seasons, his career is over. He turns 33 in six weeks, he's in his fourteenth season, and there's something more serious than nagging knee soreness is at work here...something more dire than Doc Rivers and Danny Ainge are letting on...
I especially enjoyed Doc Rivers saying of his star player that "we just gotta shut him down at this point"...makes KG sound like the Three Mile Island reactor...
Ahh...we'll always have 2008...
It's going to be Cleveland anyway...60 Minutes is providing the foreshadowing for the coronation of King James, complete with impromptu halfcourt shot...
What we learn from studying history is that nobody apparently ever learns anything from history...
Exhibit A: Obamanon in Afghanistan is a repeat of Dubya in Iraq, which is a repeat of LBJ in
Vietnam...so on and so forth...(There is no such thing as successful counterinsurgency)
Exhibit B: Speculative bubbles in deregulated market economies always end well for everybody...
The economy of the 1990s and 2000s is a repeat of the economy of the 1920s, which is
a repeat of the entire nineteenth century...
Is it just that hubris/greed/machismo is invincibly allergic to common sense?
My shameless homage to the Bryan Brown character in "Cocktail"...
If it's overly complicated then it probably shouldn't be attempted...If it's overly complex, then it's probably not a good idea...
I don't normally recommend articles from Rolling Stone, but I just read (and re-read) a superb dissection of the roots of our current economic predicament in this month's issue by Matt Taibbi. If you can get past the lurid cover photo of the stars of "Gossip Girl," and the equally crude opening line of the article, you'll find a history of the meltdown that is as chilling as it is comprehensible and compelling...
While I don't entirely subscribe to his uber-conspiratorial conclusion (the author seems to channel his inner Oliver Stone in the final pages), I completely concur with his scathing indictment of crackhead capitalism (my unfortunate purple prose, not the author's...come to think of it, the kingpins on The Wire had more sense than the execs at AIG and Goldman-Sachs) and their lackeys in D.C.
Taibbi is clearly a man of The Left, but he is scrupulously fair in laying the blame at the feet of late 90s Clinton Dems as much as the likes of Phil Gramm.
I come away from two readings of this piece utterly convinced that our Days of Empire are done...Obamanon seems bent on recreating Iraq and Vietnam in Afghanistan...such expensive adventures are no longer fiscally feasible...There is NO money...If the President needs persuading he has only to read Taibbi's anatomy of the Wall Street rendition of Dante's Inferno...
"Nothing corrupts society more than the disconnection of effort from reward."
-John Maynard Keynes
My dear wife has been stricken with the same cold that I am sure I acquired from The Children of the Corn...However, she has rebounded nicely after a week of rest, Alka-Seltzer, and extensive viewing of the daytime judicial system...particularly her hero and nominee for the next Supreme Court vacancy, Judge Judy...
It is fascinating to observe her reaction to the Old Testament hanging judge that is Judith Scheinlen...there is truly a cathartic effect for her in watching Her Honor dispense blistering rebukes and scalding justice to the seemingly endless parade of The Clueless and The Derelict. What I get from watching Al Pacino or George C. Scott, she gets from watching Judge Judy verbally vaporize the legions of deadbeat dads and community college burnouts who amble into her courtroom.
Typical Alexis commentary as Judge Judy dismantles another hapless schmo who is visibly bereft of sense and non-welfare state income..."I LOVE HER!!!!...JIM, I LOVE HER!!!!"
It starts to get a bit out of hand when she starts channeling Her Honor in our daily lives (i.e., pointing to her eye with two fingers, or bellowing, "IM SPEAKING!!! SHHH!!!"...okay, she doesn't do the latter, that was unfair embellishment).
Anyway, it's amusing, and in the Age of Obamanon, highly therapeutic...For one hour, from 4 to 5 on KPIX, the righteous reigneth, and justice rolls down like mighty waters...
Far healthier that Fox News...it's just funny to watch...
