In a sport full of corruption and supremely egotistic managers, Arsene Wenger insist on coaching a system that emphasizes the team game. The sum is always greater than the parts with him. Wenger coaches with empathy and a generosity of spirit rare in today’s game.
It is hard to imagine that Mario Balotelli is nowhere to be found in France as Italy is again proving doubters wrong at the UEFA Euro 2016.
Italy seemingly limps into every tournament only to surprise. This years is no different, with the latest masterclass against Spain. Part of the reason many doubt Italy would do much in this year’s championship is that the team is made up of mostly anonymous players.
The biggest missing piece is Balotelli who seemed like such a bright star four years ago but whose career has since spiraled. I hope he finds the inspiration to dazzle again.
It is no longer a rumor that Bill Clinton talked to Donald Trump in the weeks before he ran for president.
For the people who believe that, Trump gives them ammunition daily. It’s like Trump calls the HRC campaign headquarters each day to get his talking points about how to further kneecap himself. Or, maybe BC is the ventriloquist that makes the Trump dummy spout nonsense to make himself unpalatable to the general election electorate.
How else would you explain Trump on Sunday calling for profiling Muslims?
See a video of his call-in to CBS’s Face-the-Nation here:
Now, why would a former president whose wife was a certain candidate for POTUS be advising another man to get in the race for the same office? Some conspiracy minded people have gone so far as to say that BC planted Trump in the Republican nomination contest to destabilize the GOP and smooth the way for his wife becoming POTUS.
Republicans may believe in profiling but they don’t believe in stating it so baldly as Trump is prone to do on this and on so many other issues that the GOP prefer to hint at, dog whistle, if you will. Trump, God bless him, just prefers to say what he believes.
Despite his “good relationship with the blacks” and being the “least racist person” he knows, Donald Trump history of discriminating against people of color goes back to the beginning of his business career.
The New York Times, which over the weekend released a story about how DT devastated lives in numerous bankruptcies in Atlantic City, NJ while laughing all the way to the bank, released today this Times Insider piece from 1973 that showed Trump was “Accused of Antiblack Bias in City” at that time.
“The Department of Justice had brought suit in federal court in Brooklyn against Mr. Trump and his father, Fred C. Trump, charging them with violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in the operation of 39 buildings.
“The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color,’ ” The Times reported. “It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.”
As it is his won’t, DT bellowed like a stuck pig: The charges are “are absolutely ridiculous,” he said.
“We never have discriminated,” he added, “and we never would.”
It even turned around and sued the U.S. government for $100 million (or, as the Times noted, $500 million in today’s dollars). Yet, it quietly settled the lawsuit under terms that seemed to essentially acknowledge its guilt on the charges.
Over the weekend, as news of the Orlando atrocity came to light, DT was again at it, spewing racist, sexist and anti-muslim garbage in all directions. Yet, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and most of the GOP hierarchy and the party’s establishment insist this man is fit to be our next president.
It is a strange process that we put all our heroes and heroines through.
First, we seen them as dangerous and revile them. Then, in death, we (even their former antagonists and adversaries) adopt them and turn them into everything we wished the hero to be, everything we could not make them be when alive.
Much as we turned Martin Luther King, Jr. into a plaster saint that even the racists among us could quote to our own ends, so too shall we render Muhammad Ali.
For Ali, the process actually began when he lighted the Olympic flame at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
It was the first time the whole world saw how much Parkinson’s Disease had taken from Ali. Though, an apparition by the time he turned up in Atlanta, he stood tall, powerful and defiant still.
But because he could not really speak for himself, not anymore, people started speaking for him and saying for him things that he might not have said for himself.
His death may complete that process of sainthood. He would be fitted with feet of clay, the better to keep him in place. Writer Dave Zirin is cautioning against that in a Los Angeles Times opinion-editorial.
Kirin wrote:
“His life was one of polarization and reconciliation, anger and love, and a ferocious, uncompromising commitment to nonviolence, all delivered through the scandalously dirty vessel of corruption known as boxing. Few have ever walked so confidently and casually from man to myth, and that journey was well earned.”
I’ll quote one more passage but this article is required for anyone who ever cared about Ali and what he stood for:
“Ali’s death, however, should be an opportunity to remember what made him so dangerous in the first place. The best place to start would be to recall the part of him that died decades ago: his voice. No athlete, no politician, no preacher ever had a voice quite like his or used it as effectively as he did. Ali’s voice was playful, lilting, with a rhythm that matched his otherworldly footwork in the boxing ring. It’s a voice that forced you to listen lest you miss a joke, a gibe or a flash of joy.”
In a series of interviews with the BBC’s Michael Parkinson, Ali expanded on his views about everything under the sun. The most iconic of those interviews was the first one, which took place Oct. 17, 1971.
Some of what Ali remarked on then are commonplace today and are taken for granted. But, when Ali spoke, not only did African-Americans lack much power and rights, our society, including the power of our own government, resisted the civil rights movement.
A friendly but earnest conversation between a man with a dog and a couple on a walk. This was a Sunday morning on Memorial Day weekend in a Northwest New Jersey suburb.
I caught only a snippet of the conversation:
“. . . back in the days when Christie was not a scumbag politician,” the man said as his wife looked on.
I didn’t yell out that Christie was always a scumbag politician, a junkyard dog who did the dirty job that party higher ups wanted him to do. He is well suited for whatever errands that Trump might have in mind for him. I didn’t say that.
I was coming from soccer scrimmage. The morning was hot. I was sweaty and tired. I made it to my car and drove past the couple. The man wore khaki shorts and a white t-shirt. His wife wore a three-quarter length Khaki pants (sorry, I don’t know what those are called).
Just a nice couple out for a Sunday morning walk. A nice couple who’ll find their way clear to vote for Trump in the fall.
As the character of our next POTUS—Donald Trump—blooms right before our very eyes, it occurs to me it is not too soon to start imagining how future events might play out. Take that first Trump summit with Russia President Vladimir Putin. A lot is going to be riding on that one.
Trump and Putin had admired each other from afar but, now that the unthinkable has happened and the American people have lost their heads and gone and elected Trump as “leader of the free world,” they find themselves uneasy rivals on the world stage.
Putin has ridden bareback, his and the horse’s; he’s famous for his judo moves and has wrestled bears, among many manly exploits. Trump plays golf and, as he has assured us, whatever the size of his hands, it does not mean what Little Marco jerkily insinuated: “I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee it.”
But, in this first summit, Trump and Putin began squabbling immediately. The first issue was where to meet. As most countries of the Western world declined to host Trump, they settled on the out of the way Yesanguan Township in Badong County in China.
“Yeah, China,” Trump says. “China is a big country. Anybody can tell you, I only go to the biggest countries. No shrimpy countries for me.”
“I hate China,” Vlad says, “but, because you are hated all over the world and you’re too chicken to meet in Russia, we have to come to this hellhole.”
I should have known it was always going end like this: A Donald Trump/Megyn Kelly 2016 GOP ticket for president. Trump takes a backseat to no one. Not even to that evil political mastermind Frank Underwood.
I know now why he can’t seem to let go of Megyn Kelly. Why he always brings her up when it seems the media was about to let go of their tiffs in favor any of Trump’s latest outrage.
This was all because he’s been planning to make Ms. Kelly his 2016 running mate all along. In one fell swoop, he checkmates Hillary Rodham Clinton, takes care of the women’s vote and literally torpedoes the political narrative about him being a chauvinist pig with an unbeatable ticket.
Gone forever is talk of GOP leaders and party establishment ambushing Trump at the Cleveland convention in favor of a non-existent option. And this has the virtue of also saving them from a third-party run by Trump. Party leaders will worship Trump because he has solved all of their problems with that bold move. He not only increases their majorities in the House and Senate, we get new Trump-like governors and state legislatures across the nation.
You’re probably saying how very “House of Cards” of me. This ticket beats even the Underwoods!
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We must also, as a society, fix the underlying economic and social conditions that make Trump-like supporters in the first place and then vote the way they do.
Donald Trump is only the latest demagogic figure to come along and exploit much of the ignorance and insecurities that some of these people feel in their lives. The Republican Party is currently organized around exploiting the fears of poor people who are not of color.
What is U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan who, despite his more dignified pose, has espoused many of the same policies and bigotry that Trump and Cruz have been trafficking in? The danger is to think of this demographic as just ignorant. We cannot just mock them. They have real and legitimate fears that we need to understand, respect and help find solutions for. Our future will depend on how well we do that.
