by John Walters
Buck Shot
Sunday didn’t hurt. Last night hurt.
The Suns played with poise, or at least Devin Booker did, through three and a half quarters. Booker had 38 after three but then picked up his 5th foul (ticky-tack) early in the 4th on the very play after a ball had been called out on him after it had clearly gone off P.J. Tucker’s shoe.
Still, with just under six minutes to play, and Booker having just returned, Cam Johnson hit a jumper on an inbounds play to put Phoenix up 95-90. From there it would all unravel. Milwaukee would outscore the Suns 19-8 the rest of the way and win 109-103. Failures by key players such as DeAndre Ayton and Chris Paul highlighted the Suns’ collapse, while Milwaukee’s Khris Middleton (40 points) played out of his mind.
People will remember Giannis’ block of the Ayton alley oop late, and it’s worth remembering, but it was just one of many plays in the final six minutes in which the Bucks came up big and the Suns, long on poise this entire postseason, came up short. Booker and Jae Crowder and even Cameron Johnson were heroic. The rest of the team was just playing hoop.
Best of three. Here we go.
Why Now?
Another book (I Alone Can Fix It) in which a former Trump White House insider reveals a startling revelation or three about the last months of 45’s term but again the question to ask, Why didn’t you speak up at the time? In this book authors Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker report that as former Chief of Staff Mark Milley saw Trump’s machinations following his defeat in November, he told his staff, “This is a Reichstag moment. The gospel of the Fuhrer.”
Milley and the other military service heads saw what Trump was planning, but at a time when it would have been beneficial for them to go public with the info, they instead hunkered down and discussed how “they’re not going to f**king succeed.”
Oh, but they came very close, Gen. Milley. And if only they’d have shown up to the Capitol with more weaponry, a stronger resolve as to what they came to accomplish, and a few lass jag-offs leading the way, they would have accomplished. And where would your backroom strategizing have left you then?
I’m a little tired of the post-Jan. 6 insider-hero series. Democracy dies in darkness, as WaPo rightly asserts, and all of these men had the opportunity to out their boss long before Jan. 6. Instead, they held onto their jobs, happy with their position and afraid to stand up to Trump. Do you think they would’ve said anything had Trump’s army of idiots succeeded last January? Not a peep.
The Heat Is Here
Two items came across the Twitter yesterday that should concern fans of wildlife. The first is a report that most of the salmon in the Sacramento River will perish because the water temperature is simply too warm now. Second is this video of a momma bear taking her cubs to cool off in Lake Tahoe. First, as a person on Twitter rightly asks, Do you realize how hot it had to be for that bear to risk her cubs’ lives by putting them in such close contact with (dumb tourists) humans?
Second, and this should be evident, you know what animals really depend on salmon in their diet (besides me)? Bears. So what do you think hungry bears will start going after next? And then officials will start shooting bears for being rogue when after all they’re just hungry and it’s man who has been depriving them their food supply.
We’re going down, down in an earlier round. The West, where temperatures are now routinely above 110 in many parts this month, is just the most vivid example.
The Virus As Cryptocurrency
If it will help you to conjure one or the other with more clarity, think of Covid-19 as Bitcoin. It was the first virus and the one that everyone used interchangeably with “coronavirus”, just as we used Bitcoin instead of “cryptocurrency.” But now here comes the Delta variant, which was seen in 92% of new cases this past week. The Delta variant is like Ethereum or Dogecoin. Once a side note to Bitcoin, but beginning to overtake it.
I think I read earlier this week that 94% of new cases (or was it deaths?) of coronavirus in Louisiana, or maybe of hospital admissions due to the virus, are among unvaccinated people. As a fan of Darwinism and as someone who opposes MAGA, there’s a part of me that’s thrilled that the disinformation spread by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham is taking such strong hold in the reddest of red states. They’re practicing their own reverse-voter suppression by helping to kill of MAGA hat types.
We’ll see what happens.
Right now it sounds as if the counties that voted for Biden are mostly vaccinated and those that voted for Trump are less than half vaccinated. And more than 9 of 10 people who are hospitalized for Covid-19 or the Delta variant are unvaccinated. And getting the Delta variant doesn’t mean a death sentence, but if you have a pre-existing condition (most of which are related to obesity, which is anathema to say on TV because God forbid we fat-shame people), you could be in trouble.
Viva la natural selection!
Humanity Still Has A Chance
Been quite a dark MH today between the Suns’ losing, more reveals of Trump’s malfeasance, devastating heat waves that threaten species and, of course, the virus. So lets’s end on a positive note, shall we? There are still good people in the world. It’s a woman and a young African girl here. No rich white men around. What a surprise.