Monday, June 21, 2021
Soft Philly Cheese Process: "Hawks" Swoop, Make Helpless "Sixers" Prey
For the third time in seven games ATL went into Philadelphia and beat the "76'ers" to earn a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. The natives were particularly restless after this humiliation.
"This team is special, man," shooting guard Kevin Huerter said. And he didn't say but could have, Philly ain't.
the Hawks...knocked out Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons and closed the book on the Process.
Under coach Nate McMillan, the Hawks turned into birds of prey...
Embiid, the NBA MVP runner-up, Simmons and a high-priced cast of stars were supposed to put the upstart Hawks in their place. It never happened.
Huerter, who led the Hawks with 27 points, sealed the win with three free throws and the packed house of 18,624 fell as silent as it was when the season opened without any fans.
Sixers fans let the home team have it and booed them off the court and were reprimanded by the public address announcer for throwing trash on the court.
Philly was on edge — the public address announcer even noted “it’s a little quiet in here” — having seen two losses in this series already. Playing for the season, Rivers played four reserves over the final minutes of the third that produced little offense and little faith the Sixers could keep pace.
Simmons could be playing his way out of Philly with a postseason to forget. The All-Star guard was whistled for his third foul with 25.9 seconds in the first half and took only two shots. The embattled guard had vowed all series he would return to an aggressive style but instead was invisible on offense.
He picked up his fourth foul moments into the third quarter.
Simmons finished with five points on four shots taken, two of which he made, in 36' of playing time. He did dish out 13 assists and grab 8 boards. Simmons should go back Down Under. He's at contempt level in the NBA.
John Collins cleaned the glass for ATL with 16 boards, more than anybody on PHILA. Joel Embiid was game high with 31 points and had 14 'bounds. Embiid is a star; Simmons is a dimming 80 watt bulb.
Sunday, June 20, 2021
Start Spreading the News
“The negatives of New York life are worse,” said Seth Pinsky, chief executive of the 92nd Street Y, a longtime cultural destination on the Upper East Side.
...
New York has suffered deeper job losses as a share of its work force than any other big American city....
Boarded-up storefronts and for-lease signs dot many neighborhoods. Empty sidewalks in Midtown Manhattan make it feel like a weekend in midweek. Subway ridership on weekdays is less than half the level of two years ago.
...
The city’s economic plight stems largely from its heavy reliance on office workers, business travelers, tourists and the service businesses catering to all of them. All eyes are on September, when many companies aim to bring their workers back to the office and Broadway fully reopens...
The shift toward remote work endangers thousands of businesses that serve commuters who are likely to come into the office less frequently than before the pandemic, if at all. By the end of September, the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group, predicts that only 62 percent of office workers will return, mostly three days a week.
...
...hundreds of small businesses, which before the pandemic employed about half of the city’s work force, didn’t survive.
...
Even if just 10 percent of Manhattan office workers begin working remotely most of the time, that translates into more than 100,000 people a day not picking up a coffee and bagel on their way to work or a drink afterward.
...
One crucial factor in the city’s economic trajectory, civic and business leaders say, is addressing safety concerns. Violent crime has risen since the pandemic hit...
“Crime is going up and the city is dirtier,” added Mr.[Seth] Pinsky, who served as president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
🎼 I’m leaving today.🎵
...
...worries about crime are frequently cited by workers who have returned. “There are questions from employees about safety in the city and increased concern,” said Jonathan Gray, president of the financial behemoth Blackstone.
...
“I expect a lot of people will return, but not all of them,” he [James Parrott, an economist with the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School] said. “We might lose some neighborhood businesses as a result.”
...
Also weighing on the city’s outlook is the decline in visits by tourists, who are venturing back in dribbles, not in droves.
In 2019, New York welcomed over 66 million out-of-towners, and they spent more than $45 billion in hotels, restaurants, shops and theaters. City officials expect that it will take years to draw so many visitors again...
...
Employment in hotels and restaurants is about 150,000 lower than it was before the pandemic, while the number of jobs in the performing arts is down about 40,000.
...many residents fled the city last year...
🎼 Don’t want to be a part of it,
New York, New York! 🎵
Milwaukee Bucks survive instant classic to make Eastern Conference finals
…Kevin Durant's unbelievable shot fell through the net with one second left in regulation Saturday night, tying an unforgettable Game 7 between the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference semifinals…
…Milwaukee managed to outlast Brooklyn at Barclays Center and won 115-111 in overtime in an instant classic that saw both teams play to the brink of exhaustion.
"That was, like, the longest game ever," Bucks forward P.J. Tucker said. "It seemed like we were playing for hours. Just like a boxing match [that] just wasn't going to end."
They overcame Durant's incredible shot -- the ultimate gut punch -- to survive a marathon contest that saw multiple players on both teams hit 50 minutes played, including Durant and James Harden playing all 53 minutes for the Nets.
…
"We worked extremely hard our whole life for this moment," said Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo… "That's why we are here. No matter the pressure, no matter what's going on, we are built for this…”
… those stars playing virtually every minute of the game. The result was a performance that felt more like an endurance contest than a basketball game for all involved.
That was especially true for the game's biggest stars. Durant and Harden never left the game, with Durant setting an NBA record for points in a Game 7 with 48 and Harden finishing with 22 points, nine rebounds and nine assists while playing on what he said afterward was a Grade 2 hamstring strain…
As the night wore on, the weary legs were evident on both sides, with plenty of hands on knees and hips as the game stretched into the fourth quarter. Every player who hit the floor needed a moment to collect himself before slowly climbing to his feet.
…
…with six seconds to go and while trailing by two, Durant isolated against his close friend Tucker -- who hounded him all series long -- spun and buried a seemingly impossible shot over near-perfect defense.
Had Durant's foot been a quarter step farther back, it likely would've marked the end of Milwaukee's season. But it wasn't…
"That shot was incredible," Tucker said. "I laughed -- I actually laughed -- when he made it, because it was incredible."
###
That series, and that game warranted a writer worthy of the old Sports Illustrated writers. ESPN's Tim Bontemps provided it.
Saturday, June 19, 2021
FINAL IN BROOKLYN: MIL 115 BKLYN 111
What a HEROIC win for Milwaukee; what a soul-searing loss for the “Nets.” Neither of these teams are going anywhere. They are the creme de la creme and will be back next season. Congratulations to Milwaukee and to both teams for this series. Unforgettable. 
Giannis played 50', Kris 52', Jrue Holiday 48, and Brooks Lopez 46. For Brooklyn Kevin and James (!) played 53' each, Bruce Brown 52' and Joe Harris 47'. Multiple profiles in courage on these two stellar teams who did the league and the NBA game proud. God bless the Milwaukee "Bucks" and Brooklyn "Nets." Unforgettable.
107-109, 0.5.2 4Q
The game will always save us Commissioner Stern used to say. What a series, hmm, hmm, hmm.
81-82 End 3Q
The Greek Freak has 31, Easy Money 33 on identical 11/19 shooting. James is having another terrible shooting night, 3/13 for 17 points, so it’s a nearly pure heavyweight fight between Giannis and KD.
Let's Get Physical
"Ridiculous": Olivia Neutron-Bomb.
Good...Right? Isn’t all that good?
… One particularly challenging day at home caring for my older sister and me, she told me later, she was counting down the hours until my dad’s return from work, when she could leave for aerobics. She was already in her leotard, tights, and sweatband when he called to remind her he had to stay for a meeting that night — she’d have to miss her class. She sat down at the kitchen table and wept. Taking in the ridiculous combination of her Lycra and tears only made her cry harder. Aerobics, she realized, had become integral to her identity as a woman, independent from her roles as wife and mother.[emphasis added]
?...Are you being critical of your mother having an identity independent of wife and mother? How liberated of you!
Why is Lycra and tears ridiculous to you? Would tears and bib overalls have been a better combination? Lycra and smiles?
…
This is very shifty: With “ridiculous” Lycra and now“neon-hued fad”, “teased hair and leg warmers”, the author is “dismissing the things women love as trivial”! And she’s dismissing what it all meant to ‘80’s women—“self-determination”!
… Patriarchal myths like these reinforced the idea that women were the weaker sex. Men enjoyed a lifetime of practicing how to use and trust their bodies — from childhood sports to military service to physically demanding careers and heavy lifting at home. Women did not. This led to a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, ensuring women were physically inferior to men.
Wait a minute. You’re not telling me the female human is as physically strong as the male human, are you?
… The women’s movement encouraged my mother and others to cultivate literal and figurative strength. And the dawning realization that exercise was healthy for women, too, was soon backed up by science, when in 1968 Dr. Kenneth Cooper published the book “Aerobics,” which presented research suggesting both men and women should condition their heart and lungs.
So, it was, and is, scientific fact: Aerobics was good for women’s health. So what is your fucking problem?
…It’s hard today to conceive of how groundbreaking it felt for women to participate in a group physical activity…
If I was your mother it would be hard for me to conceive that I conceived you.
And sharing an activity with other women made them feel psychologically better.
…women discovered that the classes made them feel great.
Okay, have we covered all the bases here? Improved health, check. Feel better physically, check. Look physically better, check. Improved psychology, check. Woman comraderie, check. Empowered, check. Giving birth to you as a daughter, priceless.
Many women flocked to classes because they wanted to look like dancers — long and lean and free from dreaded flab. [original emphasis]
Can you imagine? They wanted to look like dancers not struggling writersAmerican fitness turned its back on this promise of empowerment and community…
Oh yeah, how'd it do that?
Yes, the language of aerobics also urged self-esteem — but if body-transformation and body-acceptance were at battle within the movement, there was eventually a clear winner: Women found that aerobics did transform the way they looked…[emphasis in original]
… Working out began to feel like a requirement of womanhood. Self-care became hard work. Consider Ms. Fonda’s mantra from this era, “discipline is liberation”…
…
As support for the Equal Rights Amendment flailed, a new belief in the individual took hold: If society wasn’t going to guarantee equal wages or control over a woman’s own body, she would need to find other routes to social power.
Oh bullshit. We lost ERA but we got “Physical”?
Yes, the language of aerobics also urged self-esteem — but if body-transformation and body-acceptance were at battle within the movement, there was eventually a clear winner: Women found that aerobics did transform the way they looked…[emphasis in original]
… Working out began to feel like a requirement of womanhood. Self-care became hard work. Consider Ms. Fonda’s mantra from this era, “discipline is liberation”…
…
As support for the Equal Rights Amendment flailed, a new belief in the individual took hold: If society wasn’t going to guarantee equal wages or control over a woman’s own body, she would need to find other routes to social power.
Oh bullshit. We lost ERA but we got “Physical”?
…
? What is the difference between “radically in control” and “control”? Usually anything "radical" is bad; here it's not. Evidently.
If we switch the adverb we get:Aerobics I…allowed women...feel in control of their bodies; Aerobics II demanded women radically control their bodies…No, that doesn’t make any more sense. What makes sense is that this woman is out of her mind.
What does “demanded” mean here? How did the fitness industry “demand” women “control their bodies”, shifting from "radically allowing” “in control of their bodies”? This is gobbledy-gook. This woman is traumatized by her mother’s Lycra and tears.
…
As for my mom, at 72, she continues to sweat it out at a cardio dance studio where most students are over 50 and represent all shapes and sizes. When I’ve accompanied her to class, I’ve barely kept up with the ecstatic routines.
…
As for my mom, at 72, she continues to sweat it out at a cardio dance studio where most students are over 50 and represent all shapes and sizes. When I’ve accompanied her to class, I’ve barely kept up with the ecstatic routines.
So your mom's kept at it, it wasn't a "neon-hued fad" for her! Good for her, sucks to be hue.
It’s a great workout, but it never feels like work.
Whatever that means. That’s how it ends.
No, I'm not even naming the writer. Google a sentence or two if you want to know.
Whatever that means. That’s how it ends.
No, I'm not even naming the writer. Google a sentence or two if you want to know.
On Juneteenth:
How Republican States Are Expanding Their Power Over Elections
In Georgia, Republicans are removing Democrats of color from local boards. In Arkansas, they have stripped election control from county authorities. And they are expanding their election power in many other states.
Lonnie Hollis in LaGrange, Ga. With Republican-led legislatures mounting an expansive takeover of election administration in a raft of new voting bills this year, local officials like Ms. Hollis have been some of the earliest casualties.
Anyway, I don’t know how Black people aren’t revolutionaries.
Cambria County, Pennsylvania was never overpopulated with greatness. The descriptive writing of George T. "Tom" Swank of the Johnstown Tribune, however, is unsurpassed, in my opinion, by even Dickens in the English language. Swank made artful use of literature's tools, metaphor and simile, and, most powerfully, the technique of making animate inanimate objects that is a cardinal mark of great literature.This is taken from an editorial after.
He saw buildings melt like sugar in a fire and regarded the wave as some evil vital force.
It came like a thief, and was upon us before we were aware. Already when it reached us it had numbered the victims by the hundreds. Mineral Point and East Conemaugh were gone, a passenger train was engulfed. Woodvale was swept away. Conemaugh Borough was shaved off as if by the sharp surface of an avalanche; in a moment Johnstown was tumbling all over itself; houses at one end nodded to houses at the other end and went like a swift, deceitful friend to meet, embrace, and crush them.
Then on sped the wreck in a whirl, the angry water baffled for a moment, running up the hill with the town and the helpless multitude on its back, the flood shaking with rage, and dropping here and there a portion of its burden—crushing, grinding, pulverizing all. Then back with great frame buildings, floating along like ocean steamers, upper decks crowded, hands clinging to every support that could be reached, and so on down to the great stone bridge, where the houses, piled mountain high, took fire, and burned with all the fury of the hell you read about—cremation alive in your own home, perhaps a mile from its foundation; dear ones slowly consumed before your eyes, and the same fate your own a moment later.
Houses “nodded”; water, “angry,” “baffled”, “running”, “shaking with rage.” You can see all of that happening via Swank's pen.
No writing better.
Friday, June 18, 2021
The First Federal Holiday for Juneteenth.
Black Americans built this country. They have always been the moral voice in this immoral land. I, a white man, thank you for saving this country and celebrate with you the end of slavery in 1865. Demonstrably, manifestly, you are the best and the brightest in America. Why you love this country I am incapable of understanding. Why you treat white people like me with friendship, I don't know. I hate too much, which is just right for me, to love as you do. Thank you. God bless you...You rank me. Thank you.
Targeting Biden,
Catholic Bishops
Advance Controversial
Communion Plan
The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States, flouting a warning from the Vatican, have overwhelmingly voted to draft guidance on the sacrament of the Eucharist, advancing a push by conservative bishops to deny President Biden communion because of his support of abortion rights.
The decision, made public on Friday afternoon, is aimed at the nation’s second Catholic president, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief since Jimmy Carter, and exposes bitter divisions in American Catholicism. It capped three days of contentious debate at a virtual June meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The measure was approved by a vote of 73 percent in favor and 24 percent opposed.
...
...the move to target a president, who regularly attends Mass and has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices, is striking coming from leaders of the president’s own faith, particularly after many conservative Catholics turned a blind eye to the sexual improprieties of former President Donald J. Trump because they supported his political agenda. It reveals a uniquely American Catholicism increasingly at odds with Rome.
###
One close adviser [to Pope Francis], Antonio Spadaro , a prominent Jesuit who edits the Vatican-vetted magazine, Civiltà Cattolica, has accused American Catholic ultraconservatives of making an unholy alliance of “hate” with evangelical Christians to help President Trump.
Biden Likely to Fall Just Shy of His July 4 Vaccination Goal
...
Experts say that from a disease control perspective, the difference between 67 percent and 70 percent is insignificant. But from a political perspective, it would be the first time Mr. Biden has set a pandemic-related goal that he has not met. Mr. Biden has continually set relatively modest targets for himself and exceeded them, including his pledge to get 100 million shots in the arms of Americans by his first 100 days in office.
There are some compelling series in the association. Some heroic performances. Brooklyn vs Milwaukee will go to game seven tomorrow after Giannis Antetokounmpo played forty-one minutes and had thirty points and seventeen rebounds; Kris Middleton played forty-two and had 38, 10, 5, and 5 as the "Bucks" evened 104-89. Kevin Durant had one of the best playoff games ever in game six in the borough Tuesday night. Playing all forty-eight minutes Easy Money put the "Nets" on his slight shoulders and carried them to the win with an astounding performance: 49 points, 17 rebounds, and 10 assists. Kyrie Irving sat out with bed bugs and the third star in Brooklyn's constellation, The Beard, played a heroic 46 minutes with his damaged knee looking like it was being held together with masking tape and chewing gum. Harden was 1/10 shooting which merely affirms the wisdom of Dr. Johnson's point about the dancing three-legged dog, "It is not that it is done well, but that it is done at all." Harden had a respectable 16 points on 5/9 (3/6) last night.
Compelling, Philadelphia and Atlanta, heroic and cowardly. Atlanta's diminutive point guard Trae Young has been heroic, averaging 29.6 ppg and 10.8 apg including 39 and 7 in a stayin' alive win in Philadelphia Wednesday. No courage from the "76'ers". They blew a twenty-six point lead with 8:31 left in the third in what for them was a close-out game. Their point guard, 6'11" Australian Ben Simmons, was a pee-wee Kiwi. In thirty-eight minutes of play gentle giant Ben took four shots. He has nerves of taffy. From the free-throw line Simmons was 4/14. Coach Doc Rivers had to take him out down the stretch, the "Hawks" were hacking him every chance they got. Simmons' ten missed freebies were more than the difference in the game, won by Atlanta by only three, 109-106.
Simmons is a strange bird. Durant-like size and skill but cannot lift, much less carry, his team. This has been ever since he has been in the States. Simmons was the greatest recruiting coup LSU scored since Shaquille O'Neal, but couldn't even will his team, in the one year he was there, into the sixty-eight team NCAA tournament field. Didn't care enough to even keep himself academically eligible. The "Sixers" made him the number one pick in the draft during their "Process" years despite prophetic wariness from draft analysts. Hasn't taken the "Sixers" to the Conference finals. Just doesn't care enough. Doesn't see why the fans would come to a game and boo their team when they play shitty. "Stay home." Simmons tugged on Superfan's cape with that one. Philadelphia fans of all the city's sports teams are ruthless, especially to false heroes. After Wednesday's debacle Simmons is done in Philadelphia. He won't care.
This is Frank Bruni’s last column with the New York Times. He’s going into academia. He is already genuflecting from the ivory tower. We see this often. A line worker gets promoted to a position as supervisor and becomes a different person entirely. Which is real? Consistency is sometimes demeaned as the hobgoblin of small minds, and often is as it morphs into unreasoning stubbornness. Certainly we must have the intellectual courage to become the later Wittgenstein through brutally honest reconsideration of earlier positions. Other times, I would venture, consistency is the product of thinking things through in the first place, before one puts pen to paper or mounts the soap box, for if not, there may not be a real, just a political and ethical chameleon.
The Anti-Krugman
The American Renaissance Has Begun
Dave Brooks gives optimism a voice at the Gray Lady.
Thursday, June 17, 2021
Democrats "hope" that Joe Manchin's alternative to S.1, the party's voting rights bill, gives them a path to federal legislation that would undo the existential threat to Democracy in America and the Democracy looming in Jim Crow.2, the enormous number of state bills Republican legislatures have passed.
These are the strands that make up the hope.
-Every other Senate Democrat fell in behind Manchin's alternative.
-McConnell and the Republicans went nuts.
(Those are two confirmations that this is a good idea.)
-Stacey Abrams, the Democrats' leader on voting rights wholeheartedly endorsed the Manchin plan.
(Three confirmations)
-With party unanimity in the Senate Chuck Schumer will begin the process of introducing Manchin's plan and other bills that have the "Magic 50th Vote" (NYT lede)
-All of those bills will fail because of the filibuster.
:(
-Harry Reid did the same thing back in the day to make it squeaky bum time for Republicans on judicial nominations, executive appointments, budget stuff, and there was a run on Imodium in the Republican Caucus and they eventually relented.
-Democrats will do the same thing with their fifty votes and "hope" for the same magic.
-But not really. This is a different Senate and a different GOP. Schumer knows that Republican assholes are sealed tight with Crazy Glue and all will vote against the Manchin plan and the other bills and suffer no embarrassing shit leakage.
-The Democrats only hope--You're saying there's a chance.--is that Manchin and the "handful" of Democratic senators who have squeaky bums on ending or reforming the filibuster will be outraged enough to end the filibuster as we know it.
-McConnell pissed off Manchin in filibustering the Jan. 6 Commission, which did have bipartisan support in the Senate, just not enough to get to sixty votes.
-It's logical to assume, but logic doesn't make it so, that Manchin will be re-pissed off if McConnell gives the filibuster stiff-arm to Manchin's own voting rights plan.
-Pissed off enough to change his Shermanesque written statement of just a couple weeks ago in his state's biggest newspaper that "I will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster"? From where I sit that seems a "forlorn hope" but it's all we got.
I have a question: Could the Democratic senate leadership not pitch Manchin that the filibuster is not a virgin?; that she has already had a few holes opened?; that surgically opening just one other teeny-weeny hole would not "destroy our government”, in fact, just the opposite, ensure that government of the people does not perish from the earth?
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