Last season Sensitive City lost 18 games total. This season with 9 games left they have lost 28. Their season win percentage decimal is .616. They are 6-4 in their last 10, as close to .616 as you can get over 10 games. Last season after humiliating Miami in the first round they were gentleman's swept by Yellow in the second. This season Drunk Toby Altman intentionally ignored November and December to better prepare physically and mentally for the playoffs. Maybe they will be. With the regular season winding down however, they are not surging but meandering.
Friday, March 27, 2026
Thursday, March 26, 2026
We fell from 8th to 10th without playing!
A day after we rose from 10th to 8th by beating Sensitive City.
Queens beat Mamdani City and Magicschizoid beat "Kings" There is now (there was once a four) a three-way tie on records, Orlando, Queens, Miami in the Middle East. Orlando on top of both on tie-breakers, Queens ahead of us on same.
I called the Orlando schizoid. They were 7W from March 3-14. Then they were 6L March 16-24 before winning tonight.
The "Heat" are 1.5 games behind Ontario State for the sixth and final playOFF spot not earned via the playIN. Ontario State has a game in hand.
Public Occurrences March 26, 2026
I had NOTHING to do with it!
Sharks in the Bahamas test positive for caffeine, painkillers and even cocaine, study finds
CBS
Trump’s Signature to Be Added to U.S. Dollars, a First for a Sitting President
8:27 pm:
And he is mentally debilitated
Money is all it is to him. In this war, in the presidency, in life. Money. He's not the absolute worst person on Earth, but he is in the bottom one-tenth of 1%.
AP
Trump tells Iran to ‘get serious soon’ on negotiations after Tehran dismisses ceasefire plan
AP
Trump interrupts a Cabinet meeting dealing with the Iran war and rising prices to talk Sharpies
During a Cabinet meeting Thursday that discussed the war in Iran, record-long security lines at many of the nation’s top airports, rising oil prices and skittish stock markets, the president interjected by holding up a custom-made black and gold Sharpie and offering a long story about how his preferred marker came to be a White House fixture.
“See this pen right here?” Trump said at the start of a roughly five-minute, on-and-off diatribe on the Sharpie. “This pen is an interesting example.”
It was one of several lengthy asides the president made during the meeting that sometimes felt especially jarring given how many more important things his top advisers could have been discussing.
The Sharpie monologue came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, envoy Steve Witkoff, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered sobering comments about missile strikes, Tehran’s uranium enrichment efforts and the U.S. troops that remain in harm’s way.
The president offered the winding tale as an example of how his business sense can lead to better, cheaper outcomes in federal spending. He was also seeking to drive home his broader, long-standing criticism that renovations to the Federal Reserve building in Washington are too expensive.
“We’ve gotta get our priorities straight,” Trump said.
8:09 pm:
Trump interrupts a Cabinet meeting dealing with the Iran war and rising prices to talk Sharpies
Trump delays Strait of Hormuz deadline as Wall Street has biggest loss of war
APMoney is all it is to him. In this war, in the presidency, in life. Money. He's not the absolute worst person on Earth, but he is in the bottom one-tenth of 1%.
9:29 am:
Iran and the US harden their positions as Tehran tightens its grip on the Strait of Hormuz
Using Pakistan as an intermediary, Washington has delivered to Iran a 15-point ceasefire proposal, which includes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
A day after saying Iran wants to cut a deal, Trump posted on social media Thursday that Tehran needs to “get serious soon” on negotiating an end to the war “before it is too late, because once that happens there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty!”
He did not elaborate, but said Iran should be negotiating because “they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview on state TV that his government has not engaged in talks to end the war and does not plan to.
Araghchi said the U.S. had tried to send messages to Iran through other nations, “but that is not a conversation nor a negotiation.”
Press TV, the English-language broadcaster on Iranian state television, said Iran has its own five-point proposal, which included reparations and recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Zollner 103-100 Pigeons, 9:49 4Q, Pigeons Full Roost. PUHLEAZE Zollner
Pigeons led by EIGHTEEN at HT.
HT Sensitive City 46 Low Places 63
Spo went with the incompatible Tyler and Norman as starters. He started four guards and Bam: Andrew, Bam, Davion, Norman, and Tyler
Queens Crown "Kings", Leap Over "Heat" into 9th place (tie-breaker) in Middle East
Miami is now TENTH.
There is a triple tie: Orlando, Charlotte, and Miami have identical records. Orlando is 8th on tie-breaker over both, and Charlotte owns the tie-breaker on us. All three teams are only one game behind Phila., 7th, only two behind Hotlanta in 6th and the playOFFS, and trail fifth Ontario State by 2.5. Ontario State has a game in hand on all the rest, 11 left to play, 10 to go for the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th teams. There are only 15 teams in each conference so we're really talking about the Lower Middle East. Two of the four play-IN teams will make the 8 playoff places vie the play-IN round robin.
I haven't compared other schedules but I would be surpised if any other Lower Middle East team plays as intimidating a schedule as Miami: a double-header Wednesday and Friday in Cleveland; at a decrepit but dangerous Yellow team, home for Phila, who have at least Paul George back, home to Beans, home for Lizards, a double-header in three nights in Ontario State, at Lizards, at home to Majestic Soaring Predator "Hawks, We are u.d.s Wed. in Sensitive City, and probably will be Friday, unless we beat them Wednesday (but maybe not); I don't know who will be favored in Indy or in Bleak House against Phila.; underdogs to Beans and the two against Ontario State, favored over Lizards, and u.d.s to Atlanta.
No team in the Middle East or the Lower Mid-East can fall out of the play-In. Beer is 9.5 behind Miami for the last play-in slot. If the chalk holds, Phila would play Disney. The winner becomes the 7th seed in the playOFFS. The loser plays the winner of Miami vs. Queens (as it stands now) and the winner of that match becomes the 8th playOFF seed. Miami would play a win-or-go-home against Queens.
I see the "Heat" going 5-5 in the remaining games, finishing 43-39. There is little chance as I see it that Miami can escape the play-in.
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Sensitive City 32 Disney 39, end 1Q
Queens "lead" "Kings" 106-68, 2' 3Q
HT Mamdani City 66 Katrina 60
Public Occurrences March 24, 2026
von Ribbentrump:
Did Iran "UNCONDITIONALLY SURRENDER", Liar?
"This war has been won."
Trump declares victory and claims Iran offers a 'prize' in talks Iran has denied having
He would not specify what the offer was but said it was "a very significant prize" related to the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump Lies
8:44 am:
Trump Did Not Totally LieThere were, and are talks. Either indirectly through neutral nations or through intermediaries. Iran says no direct talks
Monday, March 23, 2026
For All the World to See, This is Who the American People Are
Toilet People! Iran "Bursts Out Laughing At" at Bum Trump and You
"Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
America is built on those worn out. not able to make a living elsewhere, and homeless. Americans are combined wretched refuse of others gathering hopeless on others' shores, taken in by this new country that needed bodies, able or not, intelligence and morals irrelevant. America has accumulated 200 years of garbage and are thrilled to elect one of their own. Garbage does not take itself out and toilets do not flush rhemselves. A new species of humanity, the ignorant, easily fooled Toilet People have taken root, flowered and spread their pestilent seed all across the land. Americans are the worst of the worst, laughed at by Iran, at the United Nations, by the world, who would flush them if they could, and may yet.
They are "marks", easily fooled, ignorant dullards. The world sees.
Bruh, did you see all the splosions? America, fuck yeah!
Because American marks might be fooled by this, but the world’s political, military, and economic leaders wouldn’t be.
The world LAUGHS at them:
[The president chosen by the American people twice] also jabbed at Ireland’s President Catherine Connolly, when asked about her criticism that the U.S. and Israeli operations have been “deliberate assaults on international law.”
“Look, he’s lucky I exist,” Trump said of Connolly, who is a woman.
Associated Press, March 17, 2026
The Iran war is "a big chess game at a very high level — very high-level chess, the highest.”😂
Not since the swiss-cheese brain of Idi Amin has any nation's leader been so mocked for his cognitive deficits. Never has a people so convincingly proved themselves too stupid to make democracy work than has the American people. They chose (twice) the Caddyshack president, The Apprentice president, the Saturday Night Live regular. Americans truly are the "wretched refuse" of humanity, as their national statue is inscribed. The world would be a cleaner, safer place if these Toilet People and the Toilet Nation they comprise were flushed from the surface of the Earth.
March 3, 2026, 2:41 pm:
“Look, he’s lucky I exist,” Trump said of Connolly, who is a woman.
Associated Press, March 17, 2026
"Big hitter, the Lama"
Not since the swiss-cheese brain of Idi Amin has any nation's leader been so mocked for his cognitive deficits. Never has a people so convincingly proved themselves too stupid to make democracy work than has the American people. They chose (twice) the Caddyshack president, The Apprentice president, the Saturday Night Live regular. Americans truly are the "wretched refuse" of humanity, as their national statue is inscribed. The world would be a cleaner, safer place if these Toilet People and the Toilet Nation they comprise were flushed from the surface of the Earth.
Trump says US may strike Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub ‘just for fun’
(...and always have been)
Pressed for answers on Iran, Trump is betrayed by his limited attention span
Monday offered the president an opportunity to explain and justify the war he’d started. He appeared far more interested in the White House decor.
Feb. 21, 2026, 6:17 pm:
"There's hatred there."--Brady Tkachuk, Team USA on Team Canada, who play for the Olympic gold medal tomorrow.
It is who we always have been.
As the Chief Justice put it, "Having just fought a revolution motivated in large part by taxes imposed on them" by the King of England without their consent...
The most absurd cause of revolution in the history of humanity. Born in a temper tantrum, die in a temper tantrum.
And on...
[Trump's racist Obama meme is] something which had, for many years, been confined to the dustbin of history, while still very much a part of the vocabulary of white supremacists.
But something has changed.
Maybe it's social media, maybe it's something else, but something has changed. We are in a new reality where, for more than 12 hours, Trump's White House thought this was OK.
sky.com (UK)
Trump: "I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine. Nobody knew that that was at the end."
Trump said he looks at "thousands of things" when he spoke to reporters on Air Force One en route to Palm Beach.
Public Occurrences March 23, 2026
Trump Caught Lying, Iran "Laughing at him"
Saturday, March 21:
If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
It has now been 48 hours.
Iran responded eleven hours later, Sunday, March 22:
محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf <--Note the name
@mb_ghalibaf
بلافاصله پس از هدف قرار گرفتن نیروگاههای برق و زیرساخت در کشورمان، زیرساختهای حیاتی و زیرساختهای انرژی و نفت در سراسر منطقه اهداف مشروع تلقی شده و به نحو بازگشتناپذیر منهدم خواهند شد و قیمت نفت برای مدتها بالاتر خواهد رفت. وألقِ ما في يمينك تَلْقَفْ ما صَنَعوا.
Translated from Persian by
Immediately after the targeting of power plants and infrastructure in our country, critical infrastructure and energy and oil infrastructure throughout the region will be considered legitimate targets and irreversibly destroyed, and oil prices will rise for a long time. And what you throw in your right hand will be what you have made.
Rate this translation:
6:30 AM · Mar 22, 2026
This morning, March 23, 2026:
In a social media message timed before markets opened, Trump said he was putting off for five days plans he announced over the weekend to bomb Iran’s power plants unless Tehran opened the Strait of Hormuz by Monday evening.
I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
So as he was threatening to obliterate, and as the Iranian Parliament Speaker Mr. Ghalibaf promised retaliation, Trump claims the U.S. and Iran were having "very good", "in depth, detailed, and constructive conversation".
Axios reported that Trump's interlocutor was...Mr. Ghalibaf.
Ghalibaf's response:
"Iranian people demand complete and remorseful punishment of the aggressors. All Iranian officials stand firmly behind their supreme leader and people until this goal is achieved.
"No negotiations have been held with the US, and fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped."
Iran's general response:
Sure as Death and Taxes
All the ups and downs, hopes and despairs of a season level out as it nears the end. The "Heat" are not the Hi-Cs, but the Reversion to Means. As they prepare to entertain Wemby and the Hotspurs in Bleak House tonight they are on track for 44 wins, their average for the last twelve seasons.
Sunday, March 22, 2026
Public Occurrences March 22, 2026
...we can still reasonably acknowledge the following: At some not yet determinable point, the current war against Iran could involve one form or other of nuclear weapon use.
Drifting Toward Chaos: Donald Trump, Iran and Nuclear War
It’s no longer the stuff of fiction. By his willful indifference to science-based explanation, US President Donald Trump is heightening the likelihood of a nuclear war.
There are necessary clarifications. For the first time, a threat of nuclear war links with the unsteady behavior of an American president. In the continuously dissembling Trump era, one casus belli atomicum is apt to be a presidential incapacity to understand complex military challenges. More precisely, scholars and policy-makers should now be focused on growing prospects for decisional miscalculation, psychological breakdown, cognitive impairment (including transient dementia) and (by both Trump and his Iranian counterparts) outright irrationality.[2]
EXCELLENT piece that goes beyond a news clipping service into analysis and reasoned prognostication from MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU I have bookmarked their page and intend to consult it frequently.
Good night.
Death Toll in Lebanon from Israeli Attacks: 1,029,
118 children, 79 women
11:15 am:
Schizo, ADHD, Child BrainTrump: From "winding down," Strait "will open itself", to
Trump says US will ‘obliterate’ Iran’s power plants if it doesn’t open Strait of Hormuz
The template for Iran to win against U.S.-Israel is the Islamic Republic's "foundational myth", the Iran-Iraq War
From the Wall Street Journal article.
Iran liberated every inch of its territory by 1982—but only agreed to a cease-fire with Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1988, after massive destruction and hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides
With all its horrors, the Iran-Iraq war also created the foundational myth of the Islamic Republic, cementing its power for the ensuing decades. The regime’s most dangerous enemy now is the Iranian people: The Islamic Republic killed thousands of protesters as it suppressed demonstrations in January.
The current conflict may provide the regime—if it survives—with renewed strength at home, cautioned Nicole Grajewski, an expert on Iran and a professor at the Sciences Po university in Paris. “The regime could play this off as a new Iran-Iraq war,” she said. “There is an outcome of this war that makes the regime more entrenched and more militaristic, with a new mythology around survival and around managing to withstand the U.S. and Israel.”
TACO has no idea. TACO and his short attention span are what the Iranians count on. Trump and Izvassal could literally drop atomic and thermonuclear weapons on them, the Islamic Republic will not surrender. Like Britain in its darkest hour against the Nazis, Churchill said if the island were successfully invaded, the Empire would continue from Canada and the Dominions. For Iran, if their country is irradiated, the Islamists will scatter throughout the world. They will wage asymmetric warfare against the U.S. and Izvassal from wherever they are. They will target civilian gatherings with alacrity. They have threatened festivals and celebrations. The Alliance of Stupid will stop 95% of them, at great cost. But 5% will get by. And the damage from those small sleeper cells can be devastating. Trump and Netanyahu personally will be targeted.
But the grand strategic aim is control of the Strait of Hormuz and the world's energy supply. Iran will allow and has allowed countries, Turkey, India, China and others, to transit the Strait free of harassment and attack. They have stated explicitly that they will sink only ships of their enemies, the U.S. and Izvassal.
Kharg Island is their redoubt. From there they can do as they please in the Strait. TACO knows the threat but he has little stomach for it. The number of marines on their way has doubled. With determined, overwhelming firepower and, crucially, a Marines ground invasion, they could capture Kharg. But the marines on Kharg would be honey to Iran's guerrilla bees who would float and sting and cause hundreds of American casualties. The task for the Americans is not only to seize Kharg but to hold it. It is every guerrilla's wet dream to have enemy forces trapped on an island indefinitely surrounded by them. America and Iran have the same goal in the Strait, to make it theirs and to hold it forever. But this is not Staten Island surrounded by America, this is Kharg surrounded by Iran. Both want to make it their country's toll booth.
Who has the greater resolve? Iran. Who has the inestimable value of proximity? Iran. Who has the greater conventional arms? The U.S., obviously. But TACO is preparing for peace talks. The Iranians malevolently laugh at TACO's naivety and imbecility. TACO does not know, and he is preparing for "what peace talks with Iran will look like". He will find out. TACO can escalate but he will be alone and vacillating. Iran is alone but is not vacillating. The progress of the war from here will resemble the Iran-Iraq war if Iran can keep Trump from nuking Iran. Iran can escalate but the U.S. can escalate exponentially further. Exponential escalation by TACO will bring the world's opprobrium down on him. The U.S. will be further isolated, increasingly a pariah.
As long as the Strait remains closed to American shipping, the price of gas at American gas pumps will continue to inflict pain on Americans--which I support.
This is the American peoples' fault, not a dictator's. Trump was fairly elected. That is his legitimacy.
But Iran has its "foundational myth". That is its legitimacy, its motivation and that is worth a lot of materiel. America and Israel are not going to conquer Iran. A ground invasion will unify Iranians against the invader and will fail. Iran's goals are defined, it is closer to succeeding in accomplishing them than the Americans' with no or shifting, retreating, threatening, conflicting goals.
In short, Iran is winning the war. America is losing. That doesn't mean that America cannot snatch some claim to victory out of the festering asshole of defeat. But the chalk tonight is with the clearer-sighted Iranians. Good night.
"You stood tall and proud next to Cesar Chavez for a long time [actually all of his life and for 33 years after his death]. For people struggling to understand that fidelity and support..."
Huerta has some "Rape Measure" in her mind, some metric that weighs the quality and quantity of accomplishments that make a rape, two rapes, a hidden child here, one there (six years apart), not turning on the rapist all of his life and over three decades after, "worth it".
It is impossible for me to think and write about this without cynicism. Dolores Huerta, now near 96 years old, is an amazing human being who has led a life of meaning, purpose and service. But in Huerta's mind her life had no intrinsic "value", she was not "worth it"--to herself. Huerta is self-nihilistic.
"I think it was worth it because of all the things we accomplished. My coming out would have been pretty much the end of the movement from the very, very beginning." --Dolores Huerta on being raped by Cesar Chavez
It follows then that the "worth" of the two rapes to Huerta was dependent upon the success and longevity of the UFW. Half as long, half as successful, maybe only "worth" one rape, only one child.
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Right now, with the Miami game pending, FOUR teams, 6th-9th, have identical 38-32 records
With a dub, the "Heat" would jump from 9th in the play-in, to 6th in the playOFFs. The Middle East is tighter than a 10-year old's asshole.
Public Occurrences March 21, 2026
TACO Retreating, Retreating...
Trump's team game planning for potential Iran peace talks
Trump's team game planning for potential Iran peace talks
After three weeks of war, the Trump administration has begun initial discussions on the next phase and what peace talks with Iran might look like, according to a U.S. official and a source with knowledge.
According to WSJ March 20, they're not going to like what they see.
Demands voiced by Iranian leaders in recent days as conditions for ending the war include
- massive reparations from the U.S. and its allies
- the expulsion of American military forces from the region
- transforming the Strait of Hormuz into an Iranian toll booth controlling one-third of the world’s shipborne crude oil.
-Expediency Council member Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to the supreme leader on economic affairs, to the country’s Mehr news agency.
March 6:
"There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!"
8:41 am:
March 7:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Iran, which is being beat to HELL, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore. This promise was only made because of the relentless U.S. and Israeli attack. They were looking to take over and rule the Middle East. It is the first time that Iran has ever lost, in thousands of years, to surrounding Middle Eastern Countries. They have said, “Thank you President Trump.” I have said, “You’re welcome!” Iran is no longer the “Bully of the Middle East,” they are, instead, “THE LOSER OF THE MIDDLE EAST,” and will be for many decades until they surrender ["until they surrender"; "has surrendered" in first sentence.] or, more likely, completely collapse! Today Iran will be hit very hard! Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
And then, of course, there was the succession to the assassinated Supreme Leader:
March 4:
“One of the things I’m going to be asking for is the ability to work with them on choosing a new leader. I’m not going through this to end up with another Khamenei. ..."
-phone interview with Time
March 9:
Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Ali Khamenei, was announced as the new supreme leader on 9 March.
10:31 am:
The Worst of Times
Israel War-Criming
Lebanese Civilians Dying
Bum Trump Retreating
MAGA Scum Supporting
Iran Winning
Hormuz Closing
Oil Rising
Uh-oh Anglos: Iran Astonishes with Strike at UK-US Diego Garcia Base
The Iranian attack on the Diego Garcia air base — located about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from Iran — suggested Tehran has in its stockpile missiles that can go far further than it had previously acknowledged.
Robert Mueller, post-9/11 FBI Chief for 12 Years, Trump-Russia Investigator, Dead at 81
Bum Trump:
"Good, I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Google, we can now celebrate Charlie Kirk's murder, right?
What he meant was Iran will make no deal except an AMERICAN UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER! After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).” Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Friday, March 20, 2026
Public Occurrences March 20, 2026
TACO "signals retreat"
-left the issue of reopening the Strait of Hormuz to other countries
-softened the wording on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear fuel stockpile,
-softened the wording on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear fuel stockpile,
-avoiding the requirement that it must all be removed from the country...
-talking instead about making sure the United States is in a position to “powerfully react” if Iran tries to reconstitute its nuclear program.
-retreat from some of Mr. Trump’s earlier, more ambitious goals,
-omitting any reference to them.
-Instead...focused on weakening Iran’s military and defense capabilities, while vowing to defend U.S. allies in the Middle East.
11:10 pm:
DUBAI—Three weeks into the war, the Iranian regime is signaling that it believes it’s winning and has the power to impose a settlement on Washington that entrenches Tehran’s dominance of Middle East energy resources for decades to come.
10:19 pm:
TACO! Strait of Hormuz "WILL OPEN ITSELF"! 😄😂
Cowardly. Lyin'. Big, Fat, Dumb🤡!
9:51 pm:
TACO! Iran Won: Ayatollah Trump considering "winding down" War, leaving Strait to others to open, "it will be easy"
@realDonaldTrump
We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran: (1) Completely degrading Iranian Missile Capability, Launchers, and everything else pertaining to them. (2) Destroying Iran’s Defense Industrial Base. (3) Eliminating their Navy and Air Force, including Anti Aircraft Weaponry. (4) Never allowing Iran to get even close to Nuclear Capability, and always being in a position where the U.S.A. can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation, should it take place. (5) Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others. The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not! If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy Military Operation for them. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Mar 20, 2026, 5:13 PM
8:36 pm:Dolores Huerta: "worth it" getting raped, impregnated by Cesar Chavez
Q [Maria Hinojosa, NPR]: How can you explain your fidelity and support to Chavez?
A: "The only way I can explain it we have to look to see all of the things that we accomplished for farmworkers." ...
Q: "And (sigh) how are you understanding that decision [to stay silent] now?"
A: "......I thought my coming out would hurt the movement. ...I think that would have been pretty much the end of the movement from the very, very beginning."
"It was my personal pain. It was my personal problem. And, you know, I think it was worth it because it was my cross to bear.”
...
Q: "How do we process the legacy of the work you've done within the context of the fact that there was somebody very abusive at the top, Cesar Chavez?"
A: "Well, I think we just have to look at the accomplishments that were made..."
Okay man, whatever. I'm done. I don't know what to say.
HAPPY NEW YEAR IRAN!
From TACO Trump. And from Eleven on the key lime pie cam.
Persian Year 1400
Happy Nowruz
The new Iranian year 1400; ‘the year of production, support and removal of obstacles’
Addie Pray
What literature needs now is editors, sweet editors
Joe David Brown's book is the printed source for the exquisite film Paper Moon.
The book was published in 1971 by Simon and Schuster, a major publishing house.
I don't know how it got published. Brown had to have had an editor. I would like to string up the editor.
I'm both parsimonious and voluminous in my reading. I vet books before I read them and I read every book that I can find that passes my vetting process. Life is too short to read bad books. Addie Pray is a bad book. I did not vet Addie Pray beforehand; I read it as the final, unfinished task in researching Paper Moon.
I have five criteria in judging the quality of a book of fiction.
1) Is the writing good?2) Is the story well-told?
3) Does the book "transport" me to the scene so that I leave my world and enter the author's?
4) Are the characters well-drawn so that I can see them?
5) Is there a "lesson" or even just a meaning to the book?
3) Does the book "transport" me to the scene so that I leave my world and enter the author's?
4) Are the characters well-drawn so that I can see them?
5) Is there a "lesson" or even just a meaning to the book?
Joe David Brown's writing is good enough. On all other criteria Addie Pray fails.
There is a story in Addie Pray, that of a precocious girl-swindler. The genre is the journey, as old as Homer. The journey speaks to something deep in mankind's soul. Making a child the title and central character is a winning twist. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. A girl, with her innocence, is a adorable.
Brown had a basis in his real-life experience to write this story: he was a police reporter for the Birmingham (Alabama) Post. But the story that Brown writes is attenuated beyond plausibility to the snapping point.
As I read and my boxes remained unticked I focused on the last of them. There is little innocence in Brown's Addie. She is only six when her journey with Long Boy (Moses Pray) begins. She had had even then a hard life, her mother was a party girl, a prostitute it seems, who was killed in a car crash two days before Addie turned six. Her father could have been one of three men, including Long Boy. Not going to get any good life lessons in a rural, white Southern ghetto life raised by a single mother prostitute anymore than boys get good life lessons in an urban Black Northern ghetto life raised by a single mother prostitute.
Brown goes here and there with the moral of Addie Pray, and with Addie Pray's morals. Addie is an admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He is a great man who helps the poor. Positive lesson. Addie gets Long Boy to take her to see FDR in person. Through impersonation (negative lesson), Long Boy gets her right at the foot of the train platform. Their take-away from seeing the great man up close in person is to run a scam selling framed portraits of him.
Brown tries the Robin Hood route to morality at one point. Addie and Long Boy use the proceeds from a scam to buy car-loads of food and dump it on the porches of shocked poor people. But the book is based in Depression Alabama. Not many wealthy people to steal from. Everybody was poor. So their go-to scam, selling bibles supposedly ordered by husbands before death to recent widows preys (prays) on the poor to benefit only two other poor people, Addie and Long Boy.
In the second half of the book the story-telling goes completely off the rails, as it did for Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn. Brown has to think of how this tale is going to end, and if he is going to make a moral or ethical point. He inserts a preposterous figure, a Yalie scammer, and makes a feint toward the seriously high-brow in a conversation between the erudite Yale man and young Addie. The lesson tries to be on the nuanced distinction between the legal-illegal and the moral-immoral, but Brown bungles it.
"You truly don't know the difference between right and wrong."
"Why, I'm not bad."
"You have a keen awareness of the difference between good and evil ...[but not] whether society regards what you are doing [as] right or wrong."
It was his last attempt at moral philosophy.
They never get caught. They get into two scrapes with the law. They talk themselves out of one with the judge, and escape out of the jail house in the other. They travel all over rural Alabama and into Mississippi, Tennessee, and Louisiana perpetrating scam after scam and leaving a trail of victims. They could not be more distinctive, a fully-grown adult male traveling and scamming with a pre-pubescent female. But in six years on the road together scamming, they never get caught. Neither man's justice nor God's is served in the book.
How about the softer, feminine virtue of love? Does Addie love? Does she love Long Boy, even as a father? What of that sexually suggestive name "Long" Boy? In the iconic scene in Paper Moon, Addie primps in the hotel bathroom, dousing herself in her mother's perfume and posing suggestively in her underwear while Moze sleeps off a drunken liaison. Neither that scene, nor anything close to it, appears in the book. Sex, or even sexual attraction, is never hinted at despite all.
How about the love between daughter and father? Long Boy hems and haws not answering Addie's query if he is her father, but dotes on her and wants her with him in all of their shenanigans. He treats her like a father would. In Paper Moon, Addie clearly loves Moze as a father, or father figure, while Moze angrily denies parenthood, only begrudgingly accepts Addie on his travels, and always with the end in mind of dropping her off at her aunt's house. At one point on the road, when Addie asks, "You don't like me, do you?", Moze pauses half a beat and yells, "No. I don't like you!"
But in the book, to answer my own questions, no, Addie does not love Long Boy. It was jarring for me to read the first time Addie (the book is written in Addie's voice), talking in her mind, refers to Long Boy as "the old fool". It was puzzling to read the put-down repeated numerous times, and it was telling to read the last three words in the book: "the old fool." No, Addie does not love Long Boy. Period. In fact, she scams him and all others of her love.
The book ends with a final Baroque scam that is the tell in Brown's desperation to end it. The Yale man cooks it up and has it figured out to the last detail. Addie is to pretend to be the lost granddaughter found of a bitter, old, reputably wealthy widow near death in New Orleans. The scam is to cheat the widow's wealthy lawyer nephew out of his inheritance. The beneficiaries of the plot are the widow, her companion, Addie and Long Boy. The reputed wealthy widow, Amelia Sass nee Goldsborough, is in reality broke. She has lived for 75 years with her family's former slave and her closest girl-hood companion, Mayflower Goldsborough.
Addie gets dropped off in both book and film. In film, it is against her will, she wants to be with Moze; in book, it is with Long Boy's misgivings at being separated from her for the six weeks plus that the plot takes simmering. Addie is taken in lovingly by Mayflower, begrudgingly at first by Grandmama Sass. They eventually warm greatly to each other. The head spins, as Brown's does, and Addie tells all near the end: she is not the long-lost granddaughter. But (gotta wrap it up here!) it doesn't matter to Grandmama Sass nor to Mayflower by that time (six-eight weeks?); Grandmama Sass dies; after the funeral Addie and Mayflower have a tearful conversation of remembrance:
On that morning we sat in Grandmama Sass's room and talked for hours. Finally, at noon, I got up and kissed Mayflower. "I'll be back," I said. "Don't worry about that. I'll be back." Mayflower held me close and said, "You've got to come back. This is your home, cherie."
Calvin [a servant] had already taken my baggage downstairs. I walked out of the door across the verandah into the bright sunshne. Long Boy was waiting. ...
..."Thought we'd ride up to Kentucky. I've been studyin' on it, an' I've got an idea we can do some business with tobacco."
I got into the truck and--do you know?--it felt so good. Like I was home. ...
Long Boy cut his eyes at me. "Got me a V-twelve Cadillac engine in this ol' thing," he said. Then he turned and gave me the biggest widest, sweetest grin. He said, "Figured you 'n' me still got a long ways t' go, honeybunch. The old fool.
So no, Addie Pray did not love anybody and Joe David Brown had no moral to his story.
Thursday, March 19, 2026
Luka Doncic thinks he's Bam!🤭 FT MIA 126 La-La Lake-Lake 135
Haha Luka, only 60.
Hi-Cs 3L 38-32, 8th place.
XXs and XYs some quick evolution has occurred in the Pigeon species. They are soaring as Majestic Predator Hawks
They won their ELEVENTH straight NBA game tonight in Dallas against the Mavwrecks. For Least and "Heat" followers, these PigeonHawks are dive-bombing Miami-uh. They have identical 38-31 records and Miami leads on tie-breaker only for 7th place. Their 11 straight dubs have completely closed the gap which was 4 games before HotAtl's streak began. Both Miamuh and Atl are only .5 game behind Borelando in playoff sixth and 1.5 behind Toronto 5th. Advantage Atl. on this amazing streak and advantage Borelando on the laughable 5-0 sweep of the "Heat" as the tie-breaker.
A reasonable chalk is HotAtl 5th, Orlando 6th, Ontario State 7th, and Miamuh 8th. If that prediction holds Ontario State and Miamuh would play a first round play-in; the winner would become the 7th seed in the playoffs. The loser would play the winner of Phila.-Queens for the 8th playoff slot. Carrying those predictions one step further, Miamuh would play the second seed, Beans, in the first playoff round and would get swept or gentlemanly swept. That is not being "very competitive" in the playoffs, 601 Biscayne's stated "High Ceiling".
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Professorial Semi-Professional Basketball
Miami (OH) 31-1 upset Smoo 19-14 in a "First Four" game in which the "Redskins" entered as 6.5-7/5 underdogs. To prove the cognos wrong they beat the ponies by 10. Next up for "Redskins" (WHY DO THESE OFFENSIVE NICKNAMES PERSIST?!?!) is sixth-seed Tennessee "Checkerboards" who are 10.5 favorites. GO SCARLET CLAD PEOPLE!
Public Occurrences March 18, 2026
Too Horrible to Write Until Now: Cesar Chavez, Idolized Farmworker Leader, Raped Dolores Huerta, Impregnating Her Twice, Sexually Abused Underage Girls
What If Iran . . . Wins?
Lmfao
Today I want to think through what happens if we get a dirty finish in which both the United States and Iran can plausibly claim victory. The specifics of the dirty finish don’t really matter3 and you don’t have to think it’s likely. The point of the exercise is imagining what happens if the Islamic Republic can credibly claim that it stood up to the combined might of Israel and the United States; that it held its ground and achieved its strategic objectives; that it demonstrated that mastery of the Strait of Hormuz was both achievable and determinative. And all the while, the United States is reduced to saying,
Bruh, did you see all the splosions? America, fuck yeah!
Because American marks might be fooled by this, but the world’s political, military, and economic leaders wouldn’t be.
LOLOL. Good writing.
Israel suspends UNICEF shipments from Egypt to Gaza
AP8:14 am:
Israel's Way: Under Cover of Iran, Massacre Civilians in Lebanon
AP
8:04 am:
Another One Bites the Dust: Israel Kills Iran Intelligence Chief, Esmaeil Khatib
Netanyahu has given the military permission to kill Iran's leaders "at will".
I have a sense of personal unease
The sun is not up but I am unsettled. There is a fragility to the members of my family, my childrens' mother's cancer, relationship unrest between my son, his wife, his wife's family, our family. I lay in bed an hour ago and had a portentous feeling that I could not shake. Good morninga.
Public Occurrences March 17, 2026
Israel Kills Ali Larijani, Iran's Top Security Official, Gholam Reza Soleimani, Head of Feared Basij Force
This picking off of the leadership may work. The accepted theory is that you can kill dictatorships by killing the dictator (Ayatollah Khamenei). That was the theory behind the Stauffenberg plan. And, perhaps it's necessary to kill the top lieutenants, too. Israel had great success whacking the Hamas leadership, and of course the unfortunate page malfunctions, had a chilling effect on the apparatchiks. The reverse is that you can kill the chosen leader of a democracy but you will not kill the democracy. However, but. I don't know that the dictatorship theory has ever been proved. Iran moved to a successor for Ayatollah Khamenei with alacrity.
But there is an uncertain end game in dictatorships. Is it regime change? Who is the replacement American and Israel have in mind? It certainly wasn't Khamenei's son, however debilitated by the strike on his father he may be. Is the replacement the Shah's son? In short, what are you changing the regime to? To use a puerile analogy, which nonetheless may have force, when a major sports team axes its head coach, it best have a replacement ready to step in when the axe falls. As high a regard as I have for the Iranian people, I don't see Federalist Society sleeper cells ready to burst forth. I don't see an Anwar Sadat (who was murdered by his military, btw) shooting up from the rubble ready to make love not war with the Israelis and Amerks.
And has air power, i.e. without ground troops, ever precipitated regime change? Israel killed 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza, 80% of them civilian, 30% children. Gaza had 2.1M-2.3M residents before the war. Iran has 93M. Gaza was raised by air and Israel invaded with ground forces. Israel has 10M people. It is not impossible for a country of 10M to invade and rule a country of 93M with the 10M's regime of choice.
So, I like Israel targeting Iranian leadership more than I like anything else Israel has done (and I don't like almost all of it) but I do not know, I literally don't know what the end game of either the U.S. or Israel is, i.e. whether the successor regime (if it comes to that) is even a thought for the two aggressors.
Finally, tonight, this morning, there is a competing theory, it is my own (as far as I know): "Better rubble than rabble", i.e. nuking Iran, as the U.S. did Japan. Go on killing leaders, scientists, generals, fighters as soon as they spring up without getting bogged down in a ground "quagmire" that you cannot win, but if you're not making the requisite progress, mushroom clouds and irradiation are much quicker. To be sure there is the inconvenience of travel in one's golden years when one has one corruption trial looming at home (or 34 felony convictions already on your rap sheet) and warrants out for your arrest on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide internationally, with non-understanding officials in Europe, Canada, and New York City ready to snap handcuffs on you, but if you book your travel prudently, as Henry Kissinger did, perhaps it's no big deal.
Anyway, Trumpanyahoo, do be prudent negotiated these land mines, and those in the Strait of Hormuz. Good night. I hate you.
9:37 pm:
Meteor Startles ClevelandWhat? It's a public occurrence. Shut up.
Trump fumes at NATO for refusing to help secure the Strait of Hormuz
11:51 am:
‘Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation’: Trump-appointed intelligence official resigns over Iran war
“After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today,” Joe Kent wrote in a post on X.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent added in the resignation letter he attached to the post.
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Queens Blow Out "Heat" (2L) 136-106
I think 30 is the most lopsided loss of the season for Miami. Tyler and Norman played, Bam did not, Andrew missed his sixth straight; Nikola his 12th. The "Heat" are 7th in the Least (38-31 --> 45-37), .5 behind Orlando, 1 behind Toronto in 5th, .5 ahead of HotAtl and Phila. at 7th and 8th respectively.
The Worst of Times
"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The American people have changed more in one decade than in the previous two centuries.
American Jewry has changed more in two decades than in the previous five.
The Israeli people have changed more in two decades than in the previous five.
The American government has changed more in one decade than in the previous two centuries.
The Israeli government has changed more in two decades than in the previous five.
It has been the worst decade of my seven decades alive.
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