But it’s only a matter of time before suburbia-whipped city dwellers return with tails between their legs.
2020 Saw ‘Mass Exodus’ from NYC…
Saturday, June 5, 2021 at 7:06 AM
BLM Co-Founder Resigns Amid Charges of Scamming – Just Like Leaders of Other Non-Profits
Thursday, June 3, 2021 at 6:23 AM
It was curious, to put it charitably, that Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, was making news lately more for her million-dollar properties than for her political activism. This is why her resignation this week came as no surprise.
USA Today reported on her “golden parachute” from the front lines of the ongoing fight for racial justice on May 28. Here is an excerpt:
_________
Patrisse Cullors, who has been at the helm of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation for nearly six years, said she is leaving to focus on other projects, including the upcoming release of her second book and a multi-year TV development deal with Warner Bros. …
The BLM foundation revealed to the AP in February that it took in just over $90 million last year, following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. … The foundation said it ended 2020 with a balance of more than $60 million, after spending nearly a quarter of its assets on operating expenses, grants to Black-led organizations and other charitable giving.
__________
Unsurprisingly, right-wing commentators are accusing her not just of misappropriating funds for personal use, but of abandoning the BLM cause to go Hollywood. I suspect, because Shonda Rhimes has made it look so easy, Cullors probably thinks she can make it big there too. But it’s hard to imagine either MLK or Malcolm X leaving the struggle for Black civil rights to sign a deal to provide content (of any kind) for a white entertainment studio.
Whatever the case, forget those right-wing naysayers – all of whom Cullors can fairly claim are nothing more than political opportunists. Because here is what mothers who, in fact, lost Black lives are saying about her resignation – courtesy of The New York Post, May 29, 2021:
________
Grief-stricken mothers who have accused Black Lives Matter of profiting from the deaths of their sons condemned the group’s embattled co-founder Patrisse Cullors after she announced she was stepping down from the movement.
‘I don’t believe she is going anywhere,’ Samaria Rice, the mother of a 12-year-old boy shot by Cleveland police while playing with a toy gun, told The Post. ‘It’s all a facade. She’s only saying that to get the heat off her right now.’
Lisa Simpson, a Los Angeles-based mother whose son was slain by police in 2016, also blasted Cullors. ‘Now she doesn’t have to show her accountability,’ Simpson, 52, told The Post. ‘She can just take the money and run.’
Cullors, the executive director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, announced on Thursday she was leaving the group a month after The Post reported on her $3.2 million real-estate buying spree and questions about the group’s finances.
________
Frankly, I don’t think any political activist has been so publicly damned since the daughter of chokehold victim Eric Garner famously damned Rev. Al Sharpton in February 2015 for just being “all about the Benjamins.”
Of course, if you are shocked and dismayed, you are probably that proverbial bumpkin who just fell off the turnip truck. Because media reports abound about CEOs of charitable/non-profit organizations who seem to think the proverb “charity begins at home…” means they’re the ones who should benefit first and most from charitable donations.
Hell, according ABC News, the former CEO of Make-A-Wish Iowa pleaded guilty just yesterday on charges of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars that were donated to brighten the lives of sick children and their families.
Only that perversion of charity/non-profit explains former President Donald J. Trump doing this – courtesy of The New York Times, April 17, 2021:
__________
Former President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party leveraged false claims of voter fraud and promises to overturn the election to raise more than a quarter-billion dollars in November and December as hundreds of thousands of trusting supporters listened and opened their wallets.
But the Trump campaign spent only a tiny fraction of its haul on lawyers and other legal bills related to those claims. Instead, Mr. Trump and the G.O.P. stored away much of the money — $175 million or so — even as they continued to issue breathless, aggressive and often misleading appeals for cash that promised it would help with recounts, the rooting out of election fraud and even the Republican candidates’ chances in the two Senate runoff races in Georgia.
What fraction of the money Mr. Trump did spend after the election was plowed mostly into a public-relations campaign and to keep his perpetual fund-raising machine whirring, with nearly $50 million going toward online advertising, text-message outreach and a small television ad campaign.
__________
And if you think Trump is ever going to use any of that money for anything but his personal use, he has some swamp land in Florida he’d like to sell you too.
Of course, his alleged high crimes and misdemeanors are such that grand juries in New York and Georgia could make him the first president in US history to be arrested and indicted on a battery of criminal offenses; that is, if there’s a God.
Only that perversion/non-profit explains NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre doing this – courtesy of NBC News, August 6, 2020 :
__________
On Thursday, LaPierre’s position as CEO and executive vice president of the most dominant gun lobby in the United States became more precarious after New York Attorney General Letitia James sued him and three other high-ranking current or former NRA executives, alleging that they have undercut the nonprofit organization’s charitable mission by engaging in illegal financial conduct.
That includes diverting tens of millions of dollars for personal trips and expenditures, lucrative no-show contracts to buy people’s silence and other improper spending, according to the lawsuit.
‘The NRA was serving as a personal piggy bank [with LaPierre even fleecing it to pay ] for private planes … custom suits … NASCAR events, country music shows and medical visits … hair and makeup.’
__________
No doubt you recall the way NRA spokesman Charlton Heston challenged liberals with the famous slogan:
I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
But who knew that, behind Heston’s macho sloganeering, a dandified LaPierre was using NRA donations to buy bespoke suits and other designer duds. Ha! Apropos of laughter, NRA executives filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas to avoid having to account in New York for his egregious financial abuses. The judge laughed them out of court.
Incidentally, this means the NRA will have to face the same New York attorney general’s office that forced Trump to pay $25 million to reimburse students he scammed through his defunct Trump University. It’s also the one that forced him to shut down his family’s charitable foundation for using it as little more than a “checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s businesses and political interests.”
Adding insult to that order to shut down his foundation, Trump had to pay $2 million in restitution and has to subject himself to strict oversight if he ever forms a new charity or even joins one.
Only that perversion of charity/non-profit explains supermodel Naomi Campbell doing this – courtesy of the Daily Mail May 29, 2021:
__________
Naomi Campbell’s charity is facing calls to improve its governance after accounts revealed it spent more than [$2.3 million] on a spectacular fundraising gala in Cannes – yet gave only [$7,000] to good causes over the same period.
Fashion For Relief, a charity set up by the 50-year-old supermodel, hosted the glitzy event in May 2018 to raise money for Time’s Up, an organisation established after the MeToo movement to support women in the workplace.
__________
This has nothing to do with governance, of course. Because the heads of Time’s Up and MeToo probably enjoyed A-list revelry in Cannes for that fundraiser on their behalf. And they were probably then too hungover the morning after to even remember why they attended.
The point is that the vast majority of fundraising events and donation drives are a friggin’ racket. This is why I urge you to limit your charitable donations and efforts to local charities as much as practicable. For example,
- instead of donating to presidential campaigns, donate to people running for city councils and state legislatures;
- instead of donating to the Red Cross, donate blood to your local blood bank; and
- instead of donating to international relief organizations, donate to local food pantries and homeless shelters (or to local churches and other organizations that you know are affiliated with international relief efforts).
In the interest of full disclosure, two of my trusted local charities are S.O.M.E. (So Others Might Eat), which combats homelessness, hunger, poverty in the DC area, and AFAC (Arlington Food Assistance Center), which provides supplemental groceries to poor residents in Northern Arlington.
Related commentaries:
Black Lives Matter… Eric Garner… Trump grand jury…
Commemorating, and Finally Recognizing, Tulsa Race Massacre … 100 Years Later
Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 12:51 PM
The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 was arguably the worst race massacre in US history. Yet it was so effectively whitewashed from history books that even eminent political commentators are confessing ignorance about it today.
Try as I might, I cannot recall even a passing reference to it during my school days – not even in the Black American History course I took in college.
Of course, this is hardly the forum to delve into the facts. But here in part is how President Biden shared some of them in A Proclamation on Day of Remembrance: 100 Years After The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which he issued from the White House on May 31:
_________
One hundred years ago, a violent white supremacist mob raided, firebombed, and destroyed approximately 35 square blocks of the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Families and children were murdered in cold blood. Homes, businesses, and churches were burned. In all, as many as 300 Black Americans were killed, and nearly 10,000 were left destitute and homeless. …
Before the Tulsa Race Massacre, Greenwood was a thriving Black community that had grown into a proud economic and cultural hub. At its center was Greenwood Avenue, commonly known as Black Wall Street. Many of Greenwood’s 10,000 residents were Black sharecroppers who fled racial violence after the Civil War. …
In the years that followed, the destruction caused by the mob was followed by laws and policies that made recovery nearly impossible. … A century later, the fear and pain from the devastation of Greenwood is still felt.
__________
As it happens, though, no less than three documentaries are now available to educate me better than any college course probably would have. They include Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre, which aired on The History Channel on May 30; Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street, which debuted on CNN and began streaming on HBO Max on May 31; and Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten, which premiered on PBS on May 31.
I watched Dreamland last night. And so I’m going to end my humble tribute with one serious and one superficial observation:
With respect to the serious, I urge all Americans of good faith to beware. Because the reason that massacre happened 100 years ago is the same reason white folks in “red states” across America are trying to suppress the voting rights of Blacks and Hispanics today: A desire to maintain the prerogatives of white supremacy laced with a rabid compulsion to deny blacks their success out of jealousy.
Mind you, the ultimate showdown will come when Congress convenes in January 2025 to count the electoral votes and certify the presidential election of 2024. And what do these voter-suppressing, election-rigging MAGA idiots in red states think is going to happen if they attempt to present their contested electors? Do they think electors from blue states are just going to roll out the red carpet for their two-legged orange calf to return as president?
Civil War II: Red States vs. Blue States! And, trust me, just as Trump himself dodged the fight on January 6, no Trump will be among the idiots fighting this war for his cause either. Oh, and Biden, not Trump, will be Commander in Chief; so, in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, prepare to die, suckers. I presaged this looming war in my podcast episode, “Biden’s Foreign Policy ‘A-Team’ Is Failing Him,’ on May 15. But I digress …
With respect to the superficial, I say kudos to LeBron James and his partner Maverick Carter for producing this documentary. I’m not sure if it even qualifies to emulate Kobe Bryant’s Oscar for his animated autobiography. But this documentary clearly has far more socially redeeming value. It’s probably a lock for an Emmy at the very least.
Finally, when Biden visits Tulsa to mark this solemn anniversary today, he will be greeted by clarion calls to put US dollars (and many billions of it) where his White House proclamation is – in a word: reparations. But truth be told, the inter-generational debt America owes the Black victims of this massacre, and the millions of other Blacks who have suffered similar acts of systemic discrimination and death since the founding of this nation, amounts to trillions of dollars.
Because the amount of this debt is so astronomical, however, is no reason for America to refuse to even consider paying it. On the contrary, its ballooning nature looms as a categorical imperative for America to do so.
Ironically, perhaps it can be guided by the small steps Germany has been taking to pay reparations for historical wrongs, including everything from the Holocaust the Nazis committed in Poland during World War II to the genocide German colonial soldiers committed in Namibia during the early years of the 20th Century.
Pay up, America!
Related commentaries:
Reparations… podcast: Biden’s A-Team…
Citing Mental Health Concerns, Naomi Osaka Withdraws from French Open
Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 6:24 AM
In a world of trash-talking athletes, Naomi Osaka stands out as a superstar who clearly prefers to let her playing do all the talking.
This is why it was hardly surprising when so many athletes spoke out against racial injustice after the infamous killing of George Floyd last year. But it speaks volumes that Osaka probably had the greatest impact by simply wearing a BLM mask emblazoned with the name of a Black person killed by a white cop during each round at the US Open in September.
And, because she played all seven rounds en route to winning the championship, the seven “say their names” were Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Philando Castle and Tamir Rice.
The open and notorious but silent way Osaka chose to protest on that occasion was universally applauded. Therefore, I suppose one can hardly blame her for thinking a similar version of that protest would work at this year’s French Open.
She was painfully mistaken. Here in part is how CNN reported yesterday on events that led to her withdrawing:
_________
Naomi Osaka said Monday she is withdrawing from the French Open after refusing to speak to the media at the grand slam.
The four-time major winner posted a statement on Twitter saying she was pulling out so that ‘everyone can get back to focusing on the tennis going on in Paris,’ adding that she would ‘take some time away from the court.’ Osaka revealed she had ‘suffered long bouts of depression’ since winning her first Grand Slam title in 2018.
Last Wednesday, citing mental health reasons, Osaka posted on social media she would not participate in any news conferences during the French Open, hoping that any fines she incurred would go toward a mental health charity. Following her straight-set victory on Sunday, Osaka was fined $15,000 for not talking to the media, Roland Garros announced in a statement.
__________
Clearly, if Osaka had persisted, she would have left tournament organizers no choice but to expel her well before the semifinals. And this, no matter her personal reasons for not talking and no matter her ability to just pay the fines.
Before proceeding, however, I feel obliged to make clear that nobody is a bigger Osaka fan than I am. And I can cite many commentaries that attest to this, including most recently “Women’s Australian Open: Hail, Naomi Osaka!” February 22, 2021.
That said, I respect her decision to withdraw to protect her health. Nobody in their right mind holds this against her. And surely everybody wishes her well. We all know enough about mental illness these days to know that whenever anyone cries out for help like this, we should give it immediately and in abundance. Period.
Of course, the irony of ironies is that she cites that 2018 Grand Slam match against Serena Williams as the beginning of her mental issues. Because, to the untrained eye, it seemed it was her unmatched mental toughness that enabled her to prevail over the heavily favored Serena and despite an overtly hostile, even rude crowd.
But anyone who knows anything about Grand Slam tournaments knows that players are required to do press conferences. Therefore, it’s a shame she did not have someone on her team who could have spared her this all-too-foreseeable public spectacle (i.e., by prevailing upon her to stay home). Because trying to bend the rules to her will, to no avail, can only have aggravated her mental anguish.
Not to mention that, as sympathetic as everyone might be, she has left after alienating fellow players and tournament organizers with her ill-advised and plainly unsustainable media boycott. But I hope Osaka fully appreciates that nobody will care what she has to say if the media are not reporting on it in the context of her winning tennis tournaments. And her sponsors will react accordingly…
Of course, everyone was waiting with bated breath for Serena to chime in. Here, as reported by ABC News, is how she finally did last night:
Many [post-match press conferences] I’ve been into where I’ve been – very difficult to walk in those moments. But you know, it made me stronger.
Ouch! So much for the sisterhood then. To be fair, though, psychologists will affirm that adversity makes you stronger. But hey….
Meanwhile, I fear Osaka might also be unwittingly vindicating the racist slur Fox News host Laura Ingraham hurled at LeBron James and other black athletes, when she told them, in effect, to just shut up and play ball.
For what it’s worth, I find it enlightening and entertaining to hear professional athletes answer post-game questions about their play and the outcome. I know Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets appreciates having this opportunity to disabuse fans of the apparent presumption that NBA players are just performing monkeys.
Alas, the confluence of Osaka’s withdrawal, Harry and Meghan’s celebrity focus on mental health, and the metastasizing zeitgeist of being woke or being canceled might prove a centripetal force too great to resist.
Therefore, I would not be surprised if post-game press conferences in all professional sports are suddenly in flux. This, as organizers decide whether to keep them, make them optional, or scrap them entirely. For the reasons stated above, making them optional or scrapping them would be a shame.
In any event, I wish Osaka a full and speedy recovery.
Related commentaries:
Naomi Osaka… Harry & Meghan…
Memorial Day Should Be (More Than) a Day at the Beach
Monday, May 31, 2021 at 5:39 AM
Podcast: Apple the Apple of China’s Eye on Its Citizens
Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 6:49 AM
Lord Ashcroft’s Daughter-in-Law Arrested for ‘White Mischief’ Caribbean Style…
Saturday, May 29, 2021 at 10:11 AM
The tiny Caribbean nation of Belize is making worldwide headlines today. This, because local authorities arrested the daughter-in-law of a notorious British lord for allegedly murdering a local man she was “socializing” with on a pier around midnight on Thursday.
Except that, as one might expect given this lady’s status in life, this was no ordinary local. In fact, he was no less a person than the very popular Superintendent Henry Jemmott.
Local station 7 News Belize ran the breaking news in part as follows last night:
________
He was one of the best known cops in Belize, but tonight 42-year-old Superintendent of Police Henry Jemmott is dead. He was fatally shot with his own gun last night on a San Pedro pier; and the news at this hour is that – according to the family – a post mortem has confirmed the headshot was the result of a homicide – not an accident, not a suicide.
The only suspect remains in custody at his hour at the San Pedro police station: she is Jasmine Hartin, the common law wife of Andrew Ashcroft and the daughter-in-law of lord Micheal Ashcroft.
Reports tonight are that Hartin was found on that pier splattered in the officer’s blood and that she suggested to first responders that the bullet might have come from a passing boat.
Indeed, it’s a mystery for which the intrigue is escalating tonight. …
She is still not volunteering any information to the police. Reliable reports say she is suggesting that the shot which hit Jemmoth behind the ear may have been fired from a passing boat.
________
Frankly, this smacks of Jasmine trying to get her groove back, but ending up a sugar mammy whose white mischief has now triggered this neo-colonial tragedy.
But her billionaire father-in-law practically owns Belize. So I suspect her fate really depends on how cuckolded her (common-law) husband feels.
After all, the reason she was out socializing with Jemmott at that hour might be because they have an arrangement that frees her (and him) to swing and swirl that way. In which case, he might not feel as betrayed by the infidelity this apparent assignation implies as one might expect.
In any event, if Lord Ashcroft wants her to get away with murder, even if it takes a show trial – his will be done.
Sorry, Jemmott. But I hope, whatever the nature of your relationship with this woman, that you derived at least some modicum of pleasure while it lasted. RIP.
Related commentaries:
Lord Ashcroft… white mischief…
Navalny Withers as Putin Summits…
Saturday, May 29, 2021 at 7:13 AM
Russia’s unrepentant and unrelenting transgressions were already such that they provoked me to publish “To Reinforce Sanctions Against Lukashenko the Skyjacker and Vlad the Poisoner, Biden Must Cancel the Putin Summit!” May 27, 2021.
Then came this:
Microsoft says another wave of Russian cyber-attacks has targeted government agencies and human rights groups in 24 countries, most in the US.
It said about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organisations had been attacked this week.
The group responsible was the same one that carried out last year’s SolarWinds attacks, which Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is accused of orchestrating, Microsoft said.
(The BBC, May 28, 2021)
Frankly, Biden meeting with Putin, despite Russia attacking his country so tauntingly, would smack of cuckoldry that makes Cruz meeting with Trump, despite Trump insulting his wife so wantonly, seem chivalrous.
Putin is clearly daring (or shaming) Biden to cancel their June Summit. Biden should make a public show not only of doing so, but of punishing Russia in ways that really hurt. This, for hacking US elections, government agencies, and business entities, to say nothing of ordering hits on dissidents abroad – all without serious consequences.
As for Alexei Navalny, well, what can he possibly do to get attention after a hunger strike that nearly killed him? Martyrdom next time…?
Related commentaries:
reinforce sanctions… Navalny…
To Reinforce Sanctions Against Lukashenko the Skyjacker and Vlad the Poisoner, Biden Must Cancel the Putin Summit!
Thursday, May 27, 2021 at 6:29 AM
EU leaders led the world in condemning the president of Belarus for ordering a truly extraordinary caper on Sunday. In a piece on May 24 titled, “A State-Sponsored Skyjacking Can’t Go Unanswered,” the editorial board of The New York Times began its condemnation as follows:
_________
Aleksandr Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, has gone too far. Hijacking a commercial airliner to kidnap an opposition journalist is simply too dangerous a violation of international norms for the United States, the European Union and other responsible states to let pass without serious consequences.
A throwback to the regional bosses of the Soviet era, Mr. Lukashenko has become steadily more repressive and autocratic over his 27 years in power. With neighboring President Vladimir Putin of Russia as kindred spirit and protector, Mr. Lukashenko has consistently shrugged off criticism and sanctions from the West.
_____
Sure enough, with concerted alacrity hardly ever seen, EU leaders showed they had no intention of letting this pass without consequences.
The European Union agreed Monday to impose sanctions on Belarus, including banning its airlines from using the airspace and airports of the 27-nation bloc, amid fury over the forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest an opposition journalist.
Reacting to what EU leaders called a brazen ‘hijacking’ of the Ryanair jetliner flying from Greece to Lithuania on Sunday, they also demanded the immediate release of the journalist, Raman Pratasevich, a key foe of authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
(The Washington Post, May 24, 2021)
Meanwhile, this international incident has seen US President Joe Biden emulating his former boss by leading from behind. He made quite a show of joining the EU chorus in condemning this “outrageous incident … in the strongest possible terms.” He also endorsed those EU sanctions and telegraphed his intent to have the US pile on. But here’s the rub:
EU leaders have been sanctioning Belarus for almost as long as they’ve been sanctioning Russia – all to no avail. In fact, as the Times piece duly indicates, these sanctions will hardly constitute “serious consequences” for Lukashenko. And, ominously, Putin has shown time and again, that the more Western leaders sanction Russia, the more outrageous his actions become.
This is why Lukashenko has no reason to take Biden or EU leaders seriously. More to the point, the US has had just cause to vent even greater outrage and levy far more onerous sanctions for far worse transgressions against Russia. This, most notably for interfering in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, ordering political hits on dissidents abroad, and hacking hundreds of US government and corporate entities for billions in ransomware (aka the SolarWinds caper).
Yet, despite all those brazen assaults on American democracy and corporate interests, Biden is practically salivating at the prospect of a summit with Russia’s dystopian leader.
President Joe Biden will hold a summit with Vladimir Putin next month in Geneva [on June 16], a face-to-face meeting between the two leaders that comes amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia in the first months of the Biden administration.
Biden first proposed a summit in a call with Putin in April as his administration prepared to levy sanctions against Russian officials for the second time during the first three months of his presidency.
(ABC News, May 25, 2021)
I argued in my podcast episode, “Biden’s Foreign Policy ‘A-Team’ Is Failing Him,” May 15, 2021, that the only way Western countries can regain the moral high ground in their dealings with China is to prevail upon the IOC to relocate the 2022 Beijing Olympics, and let the chips fall where they may.
In a similar vein, the only way the United States can regain any moral high ground in its dealings with Russia is for Biden to make a show of canceling this summit. Not least because, while others rushed to condemn Lukashenko, Putin rushed not only to congratulate him for this derring-do, but also to invite him for a state visit this weekend to offer, in person, any help he might need to weather any sanctions those outraged world leaders impose.
No doubt they’ll be chuckling away, while doing shots of Stolichnaya. This, especially as they contrast all the brazen acts of lawlessness Lukashenko has committed to stay in power with the way pro-democracy protests forced wannabe strongman Viktor Yanukovych to hightail it and run from neighboring Ukraine.
I commented on the restive events that ended in Yanukovych seeking refuge in Russia in “Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Turns Red,” February 25, 2014. Nobody has seen or heard from him since.
Of course, nobody should be surprised that Putin applauded this brazen act of lawlessness like the proud mafia boss I often cast him as in commentaries. I refer you most notably to “In Putin’s Russia Even Athletics Is a Criminal (Doping) Enterprise,” November 9, 2015. Even worse, though, Putin has effectively dared Biden to cancel. Only that explains him threatening just last week to “knock out the teeth” of the US or any nation that even attempts to claim any part of the Arctic he has already claimed for Mother Russia.
Frankly, you’d be forgiven the impression that early-stage dementia has Biden thinking Putin is the leader of the old Soviet Union. To be sure, Putin fantasizes, openly and notoriously, about being the czar of a reconstructed union of all socialist republics that once composed that Soviet bloc. And I’ve been mocking him for years for doing so in commentaries like “The Putinization of Russia Extends to Georgia,” November 2, 2005.
The reality, of course, is closer to what the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona used to say to get under his thin skin, namely that
Putin is the leader of the largest gas station in the world just masquerading as a country.
No doubt he has always been a thug. But Putin has reduced Russia to little more than a doping kleptocracy that specializes in cyber crimes and political assassinations.
This is why any leader who commands any respect on the world stage holds him in utter contempt. But, since he can’t brag about doping his athletes, fleecing his people, hacking foreign entities, or ordering political hits, he’s resorting to schoolyard taunts to get their attention. And, alas, he has succeeded in getting the attention, on a grand scale, of no less a person than the leader of the free world.
But I’ve been arguing for years that US presidents should coordinate with Western allies to impose crippling sanctions not on states but directly on rogue leaders and their oligarch cronies. Further, that they should limit all contact with these rogues to formal channels through diplomatic underlings.
I refer you in this regard to commentaries like “Why Do World Leaders Even Give North Korea’s Leader the Time of Day,” October 4, 2006, “Pussy Riot: Russia’s ‘Vlad the Poisoner’ Strikes … Again,” September 19, 2018, and “Germany Confirms What Everyone Knew: Putin Poisoned Navalny!” September 3, 2020.
In other words, as I explained in the May 15 podcast episode I referenced earlier, Western leaders should not be giving autocrats like Putin and Kim Jong-un the time of day. But I delineated in this same episode the economically MAD (as in the acronym for Mutual Assured Destruction) reasons why Xi Jinping might appear the exception to this rule but is, in fact, not.
Finally, I’d be remiss not to note how much former President Trump’s public dalliances with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has cheapened once-coveted summits with US presidents. Because only that explains the public show Kim made of rejecting Biden’s inexplicable overtures for a summit with him.
The point is that there’s no wonder autocrats, even tiny Samoa’s, feel emboldened. And you ain’t seen nothing yet: wait till China’s Xi starts flexing his authoritarian muscles.
Related commentaries:
podcast Biden’s A-Team… Ukraine’s Orange Revolution… Putinization of Georgia…
Doping enterprise… time of day… Vlad the poisoner… Navalny…
Hail, Mickelson. Golf’s Oldest-Ever Major Champion! Tiger Who?
Tuesday, May 25, 2021 at 6:49 AM
Anyone who knows me knows that the last thing I expected to be doing on Sunday afternoon was watching golf. Yet that’s what I did, and I’m happy to say so.
This report from the May 23 edition of The New York Times explains why:
_________
Weathering a riveting, roller-coaster test of nerve over five hours, Phil Mickelson, who will turn 51 next month, won the P.G.A. Championship on Sunday to become the oldest golfer to win a major championship. The record was previously held by Julius Boros, who was 48 when he won the 1968 P.G.A. Championship.
Mickelson shot six under par for the tournament, finishing two strokes ahead of the runners-up, Brooks Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen.
‘I hope that this inspires some to just put in that little extra work, because there’s no reason why you can’t accomplish your goals at an older age,’ Mickelson said after his round. ‘It just takes a little more work.’
_________
Hear, hear!
After all, just months ago, everyone was hailing Tom Brady as the living Dorian Gray for winning the Super Bowl at the old age of 43. Yet, in winning this championship at nearly 51, Phil made Tom look like an over-achieving rookie.
That said, despite all the sunshine in Kiawah, South Carolina, there’s no denying the dark shadow that was hovering over the golf course, especially on Sunday. Because, truth be told, I never thought I’d enjoy watching any golf match that did not feature Tiger Woods. And, if I ever did, I thought it would be because “a new Tiger” had captured my interest the way he did.
In fact, this blog is replete with commentaries declaring Tiger not only the biggest draw in golf, but in all sports. I refer you, for example, to “Golf: More about Tiger than the Game Itself,” July 25, 2014, “The Masters: All about Tiger Even When He Was Losing,” April 15, 2013, and “The US Open: Tiger, Tiger, Tiger!” June 17, 2008, which includes this damning admission:
If Tiger Woods is not playing, I’d rather watch paint dry than watch golf.
So imagine my surprise to find myself thoroughly hooked for 3 hours watching Phil on the back 9 on Sunday to win this P.G.A. Championship. I miss you Tiger. But Phil gave us a damn good show!
Of course, Tiger is still recovering from the injuries he sustained in that horrific car crash in February. And all indications are that it will be years before he returns to professional form, if he ever does.
But Phil’s victory might be just the inspiration Tiger needs not just to return to the Tour, but to win another major, or two. After all, he’s only 45.
Get well, Tiger.
Related commentaries:
Tiger… Get well, Tiger…