by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

 

“Do you believe your father’s [sexual misconduct] accusers?” –@PeterAlexander

“I think it’s a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes the accusers of her father when he’s affirmatively stated there’s no truth to it.” –@IvankaTrump pic.twitter.com/23AVPgcOdE

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) February 26, 2018

Starting Five

Sean Gone?

“Career-ending,” ESPN’s Jay Bilas said Saturday morning on a live edition of ESPN’s “College GameDay” in Lubbock. “I can’t imagine [Sean Miller] ever coaching in college again.”

On Friday night ESPN reported that FBI wiretaps heard Miller talking with a sports agent, Christian Dawkins, about paying $100,000 to ensure star player Deandre Ayton signed with the Wildcats. In the aftermath Ayton’s family has issued a statement that they are “outraged” and “disgusted” by reports implying that he was involved in any illegal (by NCAA standards) behavior.

Miller, who did not coach Arizona in Eugene on Saturday, has only said that “I…am confident that I will be vindicated.”

Did Bilas overstep? Or is Miller whistling in the graveyard? Meanwhile, flood warnings will be in effect if and when Miller sits down with an FBI interrogation unit.

2. America Fourth!

The PyeongChang Olympics ended with Norway as our new hibernal overlords. The Norwegians would win 39 total medals, most of any nation. Germany finished second with 31 medals, although they equaled the Scandinavian nation’s gold total of 14. Finishing third? Canada, with 29 medals, and then came the U.S.A. with 23.

Gold medals for the Yanks? Four in snowboarding, and one each in women’s hockey, freestyle skiing, alpine skiing, and our first ever in women’s cross-country and men’s curling.

In Saturday’s women’s 30K cross-country ski race, Austrian Teresa Stadlober was in second place with just 7K remaining when she veered right on a downhill slope as the rest of the field correctly turned left. Stadlober’s wrong turn cost her a spot on the podium, as she finished 9th. “I had a blackout,” said Stadlober, who admirably shouldered the blame for her blooper. “I don’t know why I took the wrong way.”

The race’s winner, Marit Bjoergen of Norway, won five medals total in PyeongChang. That’s more than any other athlete. The 37 year-old retires with 15 Winter Olympics medals total, the most of anyone in Winter Olympics history, and eight golds.

3. Black Pander

As Black Panther was eclipsing the $700 million mark at the box office in just its second weekend, a CPAC communication director Ian Walters was telling a table full of people at a CPAC dinner Friday night, “We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy, that was the wrong thing to do.”

Well, that got out. And then CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp, a Notre Dame alum (we’re sorry, world) went on air with Steele and did a horrible job of whitesplainin’ Walter’s remark. As for Steele, who has been a Republican for 41 years, did he not realize how overtly racist a majority of the GOP has become in the last 10 years? Was this a revelation to him?

Michael Steele joins Christopher Steele as folks who get under the GOP’s skin. Funny that a party so irrationally in love with coal is so irrationally in hate with Steele.

4. What’s Up, Doc?

This is Timothy Cunningham, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. Nearly two weeks ago Cunningham, 35, left work claiming that he felt sick. No one has seen him since. This sounds like the start of a dystopian biohazard sci-fi horror film.  “I feel like I’m in a horrible ‘Black Mirror’ episode,” says his sister, Tiara Cunningham.

Cunningham, who has degrees from Morehouse and Harvard,  left behind his wallet, car keys and dog.

5. Rome Snow

The Eternal City had its largest snowfall in six years this weekend. Was it only a week or two ago that Paris morphed into a winter wonderland, too? You’re next, London.

 

Reserves

Walker Capital

Among high school friends, the MH staff is known as “Walker” and a year or so ago we began offering stock tips to those friends (all of whom have greater net worth) as Walker Capital. With that in mind, we’d like to apologize for our MH Stock Pick of 2018 (GBTC).

We’ll still own it, the accountability of having chosen that. But there’s no reason you need to own the stock. So what do we suggest? No big surprises, but we highly recommend Amazon (AMZN), Boeing (BA), Nvidia (NVDA) and Netflix (NFLX).  Just trying to help. Look where the stocks are year-to-date—AMZN up 29% , BA up 20%, NVDA up 24% , NFLX up 47% —and we’ll keep an eye on where they’ll finish at the end of the year.

Music 101

Cult of Personality

In terms of crunchy guitar rock, Living Colour is/were the Michael Steele of the genre. The New York City band won a Grammy in 1989 for Best Hard Rock performance for this song, which went to 13 on the Billboard chart. And chances are future members of Rage Against The Machine owned the band’s debut album, which featured this song.

Remote Patrol

The Best Years Of Our Lives

8 p.m. TCM

Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, etc. This film that focuses around three U.S. servicemen returning home from World War II and the difficulties they face garnered a total of seven Academy Awards. Also, The Godfather comes on at 6 p.m. on AMC if you want to see another movie indirectly revolving around a returning World War II hero.