by John Walters

Starting Five

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

After a two-week hiatus, Saturday Night Live was a one-woman wrecking crew last night, as Kate McKinnon portrayed both Jeff Sessions and Kellyanne Conway. The cold open was the night’s best skit, but then McKinnon made cameos at least three other times that I noticed as Kellyanne in her now famous kneeling pose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xSXjQ0R5dY

The night’s best line belonged to Michael Che, though. After Colin Jost talked about how his family came over from Ireland a few generations back because of a serious lack of potatoes, Che quipped, “At least they had a choice.”

2. All The Prescient Men

If you’re following what’s happening in the White House (it’s kind of difficult to avoid), you may be feeling a sense of deja vu. That’s not imagined, especially if you’ve seen the 1976 Oscar-nominated film All The President’s Men. Inside Newsweek I did a blow-by-blow comparison between some of the film’s quotes/scenes and what is transpiring today. As I filed it on Saturday, the Donald was kind enough to send out the following tweet….

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

3. Berry, Berry Good

Berry II put up 28 in the best impersonation of Frank Mason III we’ve seen this season

North Carolina took down Duke in Chapel Hill, 90-83, as reserve 6’0″ guard Joel Berry Carroll played 36 minutes and scored 28 points. Luke’s Duke Kennard, or is it the other way around, also put up 28. Grayson Allen, still nursing a boo boo, did not start. If you were Coach K (who does know a little more about hoops than we do), wouldn’t you just sit Allen out of next week’s ACC tourney and let it “heel?”

About that tourney, to be held at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, Duke, Carolina and Louisville are all in the same half of the bracket. That’s a good draw for Notre Dame, who will likely open with Virginia (who, admittedly, owned the Irish in their lone meeting this season) and if they win could get Florida State next. Still, a more favorable draw.

(Speaking of the Irish—aren’t we always?—the men’s lacrosse team took down No. 1 Maryland 5-4 on Saturday).

4. Who’s Fast? J.R.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6miMpBZr8Ks

University of Washington wide receiver John Ross made himself a lot of cabbage yesterday when he smoked a 4.22 in the 40, the fastest time ever recorded at the NFL combine (breaking Chris Johnson’s nine year-old record). The 5’11” flash out of Long Beach, Calif., caught 81 balls and scored 17 TDs last season for a Huskies team that, you may have already forgotten, made the playoff.

Watch the video. It doesn’t even look as if Ross got to top gear there….

5. Princeton’s Back! (Rock on, Old Nassau!)

Over the weekend Princeton beat Harvard (73-69) and Dartmouth (85-48) in Jadwin Gym to become the first Ivy League school since Cornell in 2008 to finish the conference season undefeated (14-0).

In years past the Tigers would have an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament, but this year the Ivy League has christened a four-team conference tournament, a.k.a. “Ivy Madness,” so Princeton (21-6) still must win two more games. The tourney is at the Palestra in Philly and the Tigers open with Penn (13-14), so that’s a home game for the Quakers, who beat Harvard on a last-second shot on Saturday night to punch their ticket to the mini-tourney.

Princeton and Vermont were the only two schools to go undefeated in conference play this season in D-I hoops.

Reserves

Lord of the Lord

CNN propagandist Jeffrey Lord moved up to the big leagues on Friday night, and it didn’t go too well for him. “I like you, Mr. Lord, and I hear you’re a very nice guy, but don’t bullshit me.”

Another Day Of Trump

Much of what President Trump said on Tuesday night was easy for anyone on either side of the aisle to support. Not all. But much. Here’s something he said near the end of his speech to Congress:

The time for small thinking is over. The time for trivial fights is behind us.

And here’s something he tweeted yesterday, currently his latest tweet. Alas, I think we all know which one the REAL Donald Trump is.

Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

by Michael DePaoli

New Wave Returns

I am not sure what constitutes a “supergroup” anymore, but Dreamcar is a new group that is super, with a new super song called “Kill For Candy.” It is what happens when you mix No Doubt musicians with the AFI vocalist.

Logan Runs

The new definitely-go-see Wolverine movie is Logan, and it has a 94% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Which makes me ask: What has gone so pathetically wrong with the lives of the other 6% of the critics who did not like the movie (Ed Note: Maybe they know the difference between sh*t and shinola?).

A Whole Lotta Rosie

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion was published back in 2013, so it is technically an old book but I only recently listened to the audio version and therefore it is new to me. (Ed Note: This is what happens when you don’t make MH a part of your daily diet; we covered it 15 months ago). The book is is funny, thought-provoking, with a tight story, and excellent dialogue. Here is the review from The New York Times, so you do not have to just take my word for it:

or, you can just find the book on Amazon:

(Ed. Note: The main character kind of reminds us of someone we know)

by John Walters

Starting Five

Will Sessions be joining Flynn in the Ex-Trump group, and how long until Wilbur Ross joins them?

1.Repeal and Replace?

Redact and Rccuse

Resign and Retire

Try to remember/That time in September….

No, Jeff. Really. Try. Attorney general Jeff Sessions is able to vividly remember a trip he took to Russia in 1991, but apparently simply cannot recall what he and Russian ambassador Sergey Kilysak spoke about on Capitol Hill jus six months ago. Whatevs.

Even the Donald said of Sessions awful session during his confirmation hearing when he lied/misled Senator Al Franken/Stuart Smalley, “He could have stated his response more accurately (but it was clearly not intentional).” Does the second half of that statement even matter when you are under oath?

Sessions yesterday said that he would recuse himself from any inquiry into whether Russia and Team Trump conspired before the 2016 election (good, because he is potentially one of the perpetrators), but that may not be enough.

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

“I did NOT have international relations with that country…”

Another thing: The FBI had been investigating Sessions for a month or two before that confirmation hearing. The Bureau had no idea he had twice spoken to the Russian ambassador, or did they just not feel obligated to inform anyone, such as the confirmation committee? Hadn’t it been only three months earlier when James Comey went out of his way to inform Congress of even less than that in terms of only investigating HRC? Here, they would have had solid proof, as opposed to hearsay. Interesting..

2.  The Bank of Cyprus?

Every good James Bond or  Lisbeth Salander spy tale requires a shady offshore/island bank and it sure seems as a bank sitting in the Mediterranean is ours.

I mentioned this Rachel Maddow clip the other day and even included it, but I’m posting here again because even though it’s a tad complex, it is potentially the “Follow the money” clue to much of what is happening regarding Trump and Russia. A Russian oligarch in need of laundering money bought a south Florida home from Donald Trump for two-and-a-half times what Donald paid for it only a few years earlier. Trump made $60 million on the sale, gross. And now that oligarch, who still has money-laundering needs, is connected to a bank in which Wilbur Ross, the recently confirmed Secretary of Commerce, is a Vice Chair.

Follow the money. It’s all right here.

3. Dub Missteps

Durant could miss four weeks, and without him Golden State should drop to 2nd place. They may miss Barnes and Bogut more than people realize.

For the first time in 146 games, or 23 months, the Golden State Warriors lose two in a row. The Dubs, minus Kevin Durant, were outscored 10-2 in the last three minutes in Chicago last night to fall 94-87. They were 6 for 30 (20%) last night from beyond the arc and were 8 for 28 in Tuesday’s loss at Washington. That’s a combined 24% shooting from 3-point land, which is indicative of a tired team (or an untalented one, which they are not).

The Dubs play Atlanta, Boston and San Antonio in the next 10 days or so and are only two games up on the Spurs in the loss column (50-11 to 46-13). The winner of the West will get a virtual bye (Denver, most likely), while whoever finishes second is looking at a real foe in the Clips, Memphis, Utah or OKC.

The Bulls, meanwhile, as our friends at The Big Lead tell us, have now won 18 home games in a row playing on Thursday nights on TNT.

4. Vermont? Yes, Vermont

Lamb is the shepherd of Becker’s flock

No team in Division I hoops has a longer winning streak than the Vermont Catamounts, who have won 19 in a row and have a 16-0 record in the America East Conference (only one other school is unbeaten in conference play this season: Princeton, at 12-0). The 27-5 UVM boys last lost on the first day of winter, December 21.

This time of year folks in Burlington are usually more fired up about the NCAA skiing championships or hockey, but the men’s hoops team is also drawing attention (Burlington, by the way, is a GREAT town…SSSHHHH!). You may recall that 12 years ago the Kitties upset Syracuse in the first round of the tourney.

UVM is a balanced squad. 6’6″ frosh Anthony Lamb is the leading scorer at just 12.2 points per game and no one even plays 30 minutes. Of course, they haven’t needed to yet.

Kitty coach John Becker? Six seasons at Vermont, six 20-plus win seasons. He’s doing something right.

5. Mush’in Impossible

The annual Great Iditarod Sled Dog Race commences next week. You may be vaguely aware of that (you may be unaware that a few years ago, when Brooklyn was at Peak Hipster, there used to be [maybe there still is?] and Idiotarod Race in which teams pushed one another around in shopping carts). I digress….

What you may be unfamiliar with is the Iditarod Trail Invitational, in which human-powered races traverse either a 350-mile or 1,000-mile course tracing the famed Iditarod route going either by ski, bicycle or foot (you don’t alternate between the three; you choose one discipline and stick to it). That race is taking place right now. Current news says it’s 20-below as the racers are proceeding westward.

The doggies don’t have a choice. The people, they are choosing to do this of their own free will….

Music 101

Brand New Key

As a female folk singer-songrwriter in early Seventies, Melanie was buried beneath the flood of superstar talents such as Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. But I’d put her quirky voice on the same tier as any of theirs and she had two certifiable hits (this and “Look What They’ve Done To My Song”) that received massive airplay. This song hit No. 1 in December of 1971 and January of ’72. The Astoria, Queens, native, who is still around (age 70) is one of only three female solo artists who performed at Woodstock in 1969 (along with Joan Baez and Janis Joplin; pretty good company).

Remote Patrol

Saturday

Duke (23-7) at North Carolina (25-6)

8:15 p.m. ESPN

The Heels were held to a 38-year low with 43 points at Virginia earlier this week and they lost in Durham two weeks ago. Look for a might effort from Carolina blue.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Might Stuart Smalley bring down the AG?

You’re Duplicitous Enough, Deceitful Enough, And Gosh Darnit, People Like You

In today’s episode of Russian You-lette, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is in trouble for having lied under oath to Senator Al Franken during his confirmation hearings on January 10.

Here’s the (a?) relevant exchange from the Sessions confirmation hearing. pic.twitter.com/8LfMA9HgkX

— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) March 2, 2017

This morning the Washington Post is reporting that Jeff Sessions, back when he was a senator, spoke with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in July and September.  The guess here is that Sessions will not resign but will recuse himself from the investigation into Trump and Russia.

It’s this simple, though: If “under oath” has no meaning for the top-ranking law enforcement in the United States, why should it mean anything to the rest of us?

As the noose tightens….

2.  Baseball, We Need Relief!

Less of these, please

The average baseball game lasted 3 hours and 2 minutes last season—the AVERAGE—and that is too long. Consider that five of the past six Indy 500 races took less time to be run. So I provided five suggestions to speed up the game in Newsweek. Nearly making the cut but not: an espresso machine directly behind 2nd base, or maybe in the coaching boxes.

And here’s another idea that has nothing to do with speeding up the game but that I’d love to see MLB try just once, during an exhibition: The CCW/CW Game. The idea: during even -numbered innings runners would take the base paths in a clockwise direction, so that you’d run to third base after hitting the ball, etc. Defenses would be allowed to alternate fielders between positions as they pleased, but how cool would this be to see just once? Personally, if I were Sports Czar, this would become a fixture of baseball.

Before you condemn it, do the test I always do: If it were the other way around, would it seem any less insane to go from alternating running directions every inning to deciding that base runners would always run in the same direction?

3. The Good News? It Did Go Viral*

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

*The judges will also accept, “Ciao, Chow”

That’s Jonathan Chow, 17, at a shopping mall in Singapore. Chow wanted to be filmed for a Snapchat video stunt. The idea was that he’d jump over the railing so that he’d look as if he were leaping to his death but he’d really jump to a concrete ledge one floor below. The problem? The ledge was made of plywood or some soft material and he fell right through it and then three floors down past that to his death.  The last thing Chow reportedly said to the girl with the camera was, “Help me take a Snapchat video and I’ll jump.”

4. Rust The Process

Wait Til Next Year (Again)

Seriously, Philadelphia? Joel Embiid is done for the season? And Ben Simmons has yet to make his NBA debut (and why play him now?). The Sixers are actually decent not awful this season (22-38), but now they’ve traded Nerlens Noel (6th overall pick in 2013) to Dallas and the 3rd overall pick from 2014 (Embiid) and number one overall last June (Simmons) have yet to take the court together. Every Sixers’ top pick is really just Godot, isn’t it?

Other NBA news: Keep an eye on the Oklahoma City Thunder, who have won five in a row. The Fighting Westbrooks are in 7th place in the West but only 1 1/2 games out of fourth place. It’s very fluid is what I’m saying. Right now OKC would be facing the Spurs in Round 1, but expect that to change.

5. Mother Of Dragons

There’s a race I only learned about yesterday that takes place in late May in Wales. It’s known as The Dragon’s Back. Per The Guardian:

Five days, 200 miles, 8½ miles of ascent – the gruelling Dragon’s Back Race, which started on Monday 3 September, crosses the length of Wales, from Conwy Castle in the north to Carreg Cennen Castle in the south. One of the world’s most challenging races, it fills even the hardest runners with awe.

The Route:

Bucket List? You bet.

And…

Reserves

Spirit of ’72

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH3DwMZYxtU

September of 1972, Team USA suffers its first basketball loss in Olympic history on the controversial final play against the U.S.S.R. Doug Collins may have been the best player on that USA team.

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

March of 2017: Northwestern, which has never played in the NCAA tournament (despite hosting the very first one in 1939), beats Michigan on a similar play. Doug’s son Chris Collins is Northwestern’s coach. The Wildcats (21-9) will dance in a couple weeks.

Music 101 

Me and Mrs. Jones

I had no idea what “thing going on” was when this Billy Paul song hit No. 1 for three weeks in December of 1972, but all I can imagine is that Joe Cocker is pissed that this song didn’t land in his lap. This tune replaced “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” atop the Billboard charts, which may have been the 3rd-person companion tune to this. A lost gem from the early Seventies here.

Remote Patrol

Thunder at Blazers

10:30 p.m. TNT

Russell Westbrook, more than even Steph Curry, is the one player I’d pay to see this season. I mean, I wouldn’t pay much since you can watch him on TV for free and my momma didn’t raise no dummy. But something. I’d pay something to see the dude who’s averaging 31.2 ppg, 10.3 apg and 10.6 rpg.

by Michael DePaoli

BEATTY, DUNAWAY, TRUMP

And THAT is why Donald Trump is President.

Up on the stage for Hollywood’s biggest night, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty were supposed to announce the award for Best Picture. They were handed an envelope that should have contained the name of the winner. But, on the envelope itself was plainly imprinted these words: “Actress in a Leading Role.” If either Dunaway or Beatty had bothered to read the envelope they would have known something was wrong.

When they opened the envelope, the card inside was supposed to contain the name of the Best Picture. Yet, after they opened the envelope, they saw the card was imprinted with these words: “Emma Stone, La La Land.” The name “Emma Stone” on the card inside the envelope should have alerted Dunaway and Beatty that something was wrong.

Instead of paying attention to the actual words that were plain to see, Dunaway and Beatty ignored all of the letters on the envelope and they ignored more than half the letters on the card, and they just announced that La La Land was the winner.

We all make mistakes. We all misread things. Nobody is perfect. It is simply human nature to ignore the details, to overlook incongruities. We see what we want to see, regardless of the facts. That is who we are, as human beings. To be educated is to fight human nature.

This explains why there are still millions of people who support Donald Trump. They overlook the reality of Trump being a pathological liar. They ignore all the evidence that Trump does not know what he is doing. They skip over the lack of an economic plan, the lack of a foreign policy, the lack of a health insurance plan, the lack of a tax plan. The Trump supporters ignore the words, they ignore the reality, they just proclaim whatever they want to be real.

Trump’s campaign strategy boiled down to making empty and hollow promises, again and again, without regard for the truth. He knew that his people would ignore the details. His people would not read the envelope. His people would not understand what was really written on the card inside the envelope.

And, Trump knew he would manipulate the news media in the same fashion. And, it worked. It is still working.

NEW YORK TIMES SHUT OUT

The fact that the Trump White House excluded The New York Times from a press briefing should not be a surprise. That is who Trump is, and that is who Trump was during the campaign. By now, it has become embarrassingly and painfully obvious that our POTUS is a pathological liar who will continue to lie as long as anyone is willing to listen.

From my perspective as an anti-political lawyer/poet who hates political parties but loves the Constitution, my response to The New York Times is this: Blame yourself for Trump! (Ed. Note: I’m confused. Is it PriceWaterhousCooper’s fault of The New York Times? And have we not consider SterlingCooperDraperPryce as the perpetrator?)

Let us go back a few months. The New York Times online edition for Sunday, October 30, 2016 (just nine days before the election) had published on the front page several articles that obscured the reality of the upcoming election. One of the articles was titled “How Hillary Clinton Met Satan.” (Ed. Note: Click bait!!!!) Seriously? Would the NYT have printed that article if Hillary had been a man? Sure, the article has a twist to it. But, clever wordplay has no place when the Constitution is at stake. The title of the article reinforced the negative image of Hillary being with the Devil.

On the left side of the screen that same day the NYT published four different articles about the alleged controversy involving Hillary Clinton and the email issue. All of these articles reinforced the negative image of Hillary, despite the fact that the FBI had previously determined that there was no crime involved with the email issue. The New York Times was still keeping the issue alive and up front. The only article that should have been written on the front page that day should have been “Still No Evidence That Hillary Clinton Committed Any Crime On Email Issue.” Because, that was and still is the truth. Instead, The New York Times tried to create controversy by promoting the email issue with multiple articles.

Where were all the articles about all the numerous times that Donald Trump had actually committed fraud? Where were the articles about all the times Donald Trump had refused to pay his contractors? Trump was lying about having a plan to replace Obamacare. Trump was lying about having a plan to defeat ISIS. Trump was lying about his ability to create twenty-five million jobs and pay off the entire Federal Debt. On October 30, 2016, where were the articles about Trump?

Instead of printing the truth about Trump being a pathological liar (his own Republican Party opponents confirmed this), this is what the NYT published about Trump that day: An article that jokingly explained that Trump was saying “big league” and not “bigly.” Because, apparently the diction and pronunciation of Trump was so much more important than actually reporting all of his lies, all of his flip-flopping on issues, his Russian ties, his alleged molestation of women from numerous accusers, his economic plan that was completely bogus, his stated attempt to commit Constitutional violations by targeting Muslims, his racist proposal to build a wall along the Mexican border, and his refusal to accept the results of the vote (unless he might win).

Admittedly, the NYT endorsed Hillary Clinton. But, such endorsement rings hollow when the NYT failed to report on the real Donald Trump prior to the election.

And now, five days after being shut out of a press briefing, how does the NYT report on Trump’s speech last night to Congress? Did they get tough? Did they scold Trump and strenuously object to the fact that Trump failed to give any concrete details about his healthcare plan, or his ISIS plan, or his economic plan, or his tax plan? Of course not! The NYT online edition front page states today (March 1, 2017) the following proclamation: “Trump Offers Up A More Hopeful Vision.” (Ed. Note: Very slight overlap of NYT readers and undecided and/or Trump voters, no?)

Mardi Gras in St. Martin

xx