Virus Delete

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

—Norman Cousins

Dear Madam Speaker,

As you might have guessed, this is a post about loss. And the realization that what has been lost is invaluable. I speak, of course, of our democracy.

At present, it rests in the hands of a despot. A despot who respects nothing and is, himself, incapable of respect.

He was elected by the worst of us; an angry, cynical, short-sighted and selfish minority who are so deeply and blindly hateful that, like the candidate they endorse, they respect nothing. Scorched earth is their policy of choice.

They remind me of the parent standing in the check-out line with a screaming infant. They know it is making conversation at the register impossible and is shredding the nerves of those around them, yet instead of taking the baby outside they choose to remain in line, apparently feeling that if they have to endure this ordeal, then you do, too.

This is their twisted take on united we stand, divided we fall. In other words, if I'm unhappy and don't have everything I want, I want to make sure you don't either. And this makes us a better people exactly how?

It is human nature to take things for granted. Especially that which has been in our lives for, well, all of our lives. The most effective way to renew our appreciation of something is by having it taken away.

And this is the unintentional gift of the Trump administration.

I miss issue-centric debate. I miss sober reflection. I miss compromise. I miss the embrace of the greatest good for the greatest number ideal. I miss law. And order.

In short, I miss democracy.

With the release of the Mueller report, we now have concrete evidence as to the extent of Trump's voluntary, wilful and on-purpose obstruction. It is critical to this nation's well-being that the Trump administration becomes our low-water mark.

The depths we never, ever sink to again.

Madam Speaker, your stated reasons for not pursuing impeachment are laudable. But ignoring this administration's wholesale obstruction and non-stop debasement of the law is even more destructive. More divisive.

We tell our children over and over again that they need to respect boundaries. Rules. That we need to show and give respect. By letting the Trump administration continue, exactly what are we telling them?

It is critical that we protect democracy. It is critical that we maintain the integrity of the office. It is critical that government leads and does not follow. Pursuing impeachment is about re-committing to a political ideal that was once the envy of people the world over.

Madam Speaker, that is how we make America great again.

Impeach Donald Trump.

Spurring Success

It's pretty ironic. The buttoned-down San Antonio Spurs, who have always emphasized team over individual and sought function over dysfunction, have wantonly and willfully defied the natural order.

By resisting the ebb and flow endemic to all professional sports franchises, their twenty-two consecutive winning seasons has exploded convention and impaled the notion of gravity on a wrought iron spike of obstreperousness.

You should know it is the fifth-longest such streak in U.S. professional sports history. And the longest ever in the NBA. Put down your phone and think about that for a moment. The last time Spurs fans endured a losing season was in the winter of 1996/97.

Bill Clinton was president. There was no Google, no Twitter, no Facebook. There was no texting. If you were one of the 36% of American homes with a personal computer, you could send an e-mail via AmericaOnline.

We used keys to unlock our cars. CD players to listen to music. And no one would ever think of mounting the big, console TVs we used to watch ER and Seinfeld on the wall.

Consider that within this span the Shaq 'N Kobe Lakers rose—and fell. LeBron James justified the hype and ended Cleveland's fifty-year-old championship drought. Dwyane Wade led two separate editions of the Miami Heat to three titles. And the then-New Jersey Nets visited the NBA Finals—twice.

Dirk Nowitzki led the Dallas Mavericks to a decade of dominance and their first-ever championship. The Seattle Supersonics drafted Kevin Durant, moved to Oklahoma City and became an NBA powerhouse. The Carmelo Anthony-era Denver Nuggets strung together ten-straight winning seasons—and nine first-round exits in ten visits to the NBA playoffs.

My hometown Chicago Bulls broke-up the Jordan-era dynasty, slowly rebuilt, were shredded along with Derrick Rose's ACL on April 28, 2012 and have struggled to stay healthy ever since.

Good times.

Another injury was perhaps the most fortuitous ever incurred by a domestic sports team. Spurs' center David Robinson broke his foot on December 23, 1996. It was the final blow in what would become a disastrous season, with the Spurs falling from championship contender to lottery hopeful.

As luck would have it, the top prize in that year's draft was Tim Duncan, a prodigiously talented ex-Olympic swimming hopeful from the Virgin islands. With the Spurs at a franchise (and NBA) worst 20-62, Duncan was theirs for the taking. And take they did.

Duncan and Robinson soon formed the core of a team that was as disciplined as it was talented. Spurs players didn't have posses. They didn't deride practice. And they didn't act as if every basket was their first. They only did one thing—win.

Over the next twenty seasons, they averaged 56.6 victories a year. (58.1 if you toss out two strike-shortened seasons.) They played in six NBA Finals, winning five. Posted the league's best record five times. Compiled a .710 winning percentage. Won a minimum of 50 games for eighteen consecutive seasons, and won 60+ six times. And they competed in ten Conference Finals, which meant that every other year they were knocking on the door of the NBA Finals.

No other post-expansion team went so far so often. I dare suggest it is the greatest sustained success in the history of the NBA.

Of course, not all of their decisions were as blindingly obvious as the one to select Tim Duncan. The twosome of Duncan and Robinson needed to be supplemented without the benefit of top ten picks or the fat checkbook required for free-agent signings. And that required some supremely savvy front-office talent.

And the Spurs found it in Larry Brown disciple Gregg Popovich. In his dual role of general manager and coach, Popovich not only selected Duncan but uncovered two foreign players, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, who would play enormous roles in the Spurs' success.

Each was an all-star caliber talent. Durable. And possessed of a temperament that fit seamlessly into the Spurs' team-first culture. Tellingly, it was only after their integration that the Spurs became perennial title contenders.

Popovich eventually relinquished the title of GM to R.C. Buford in 2002. Again, even without a single top twenty draft choice, Burford kept the Spurs machine humming.

To wit, Buford was consistently able to sign ancillary talent like Michael Finley, Robert Horry, Richard Jefferson, Rudy Gay, Brent Barry and future Warriors' coach Steve Kerr. He dipped his toe in the deep end of free-agency with the signing of LaMarcus Aldridge. And made lemonade out of lemons with the acquisition of DeMar DeRozan.

All made (or are making) significant contributions to their respective teams.

But Buford's greatest hit was the theft of Kawhi Leonard from the Indiana Pacers. Leonard's infusion of scoring and defensive prowess re-energized the Spurs and masked the inevitable aging of Duncan and Ginobili, yielding a final championship in 2014.

All these years later, there are some cracks in the foundation. The once-automatic fifty wins aren't quite so automatic. The once-loved Leonard suffered an ugly and prolonged exit from San Antonio—unusual for a franchise so skillful in marrying talent with team. And as of this writing, they're on the verge of a second straight first-round exit.

Gravity may at last be exerting its pull on the San Antonio Spurs. But it won't ever diminish the wonder of their near quarter-century of unbroken success.

Immigrant Chess

In his latest act of domestic terrorism, Donald Trump is again doing what he does best, which is creating divides instead of crossing them. I speak of his threat to transfer detained immigrants to sanctuary cities where, in his eyes, Democrats can deal with them.

Touche!

While we're calling out our political parties to walk the walk and talk the talk, I'm going to ask Republican businessmen to remove every single illegal immigrant currently in their employ, starting with those hired by the Trump-whore at Mar-a-Largo, his golf clubs, his hotels and on his constructions sites.

How 'bout it, Donnie?

The gasbag-in-chief regularly spouts off about the importance of American workers and creating American jobs even as he endorses a poisonous re-write of the North American Free Trade Agreement and gives our corporations and the one-percent massive tax breaks.

C'mon Donnie. Discharge those illegals and hire union tradesmen at your building sites. Hire naturalized American citizens in your hotels and your golf clubs. Ditto your palace in Florida.

Two years into your presidency, it's high time for you to set an example. You're a Republican! You hate immigrants! (At least when you're not marrying them.)

Why do you hire them, anyway? Do you really want (in your words) rapists, drug-users and unwashed vermin fluffing your pillows and cooking your food and doing god-knows-what in your garden?

Of course not!

Show us those lofty Republican values. We're begging you. Please—be our role model. Support the American family and hire an American. You know, family values and all that.

What's that? They're too expensive? And your skanky Republican businessmen friends feel the same?

Awww. Anybody got a violin?

Listen up, people. Get a clue. No illegal immigrant ever took an American's job.

That job was given to him by a Republican businessman who saw a chance to fatten his bottom line.

You get that, right?

So while we're calling on political parties to live their beliefs, I want to see every Republican businessman exploiting immigrant labor to turn around and replace that employee with an American.

And if you're reading this and happen to be an illegal concerned about losing your job, no worries. It'll never happen. Given the choice between profits and people, a Republican will invariably choose profits.

However contemptible you may be in the Republican playbook, you're never too contemptible to make a buck off of.

And if you're one of those opioid-chewing, high school drop-outs who voted with your anger and installed the Trump-whore in the White House, this is your boy at work. 

Is America great for you yet?

That Toddlin' Town

Ah, spring.

Yes, a third of the way through April the thermometer reads thirty-five degrees. For those of you calculating in Celsius, that would be 1.6. The wind chill (yep—still talking about wind chill), thanks to the twenty-mile-per-hour winds, stands at twenty-four (or minus 4.4 C).

In the fine northern Illinois tradition, the skies are a featureless sheet of grey.

I look for a ray of sunshine. It doesn't matter if it's literal or metaphorical. Anything will do.

(And no, the minuscule chance of sunburn does not count.)

There is a newspaper story detailing the heroic actions of six cops who selflessly cast personal safety aside to rescue a man who had jumped into Lake Michigan—in January—to rescue his dog. With an Arctic vortex bearing down on the city, the officers picked their way across the shifting sheet of ice.

Grabbing each other's belts, the cops formed a human chain and were able to hoist the man out of the water and across the ice to safety. I can't speak for you, but this is several area codes removed from my comfort zone.

One column over, the clouds close back in. The sunshine is temporary.

The last particles of fallout from the Laquan McDonald shooting have settled on the ground. Four cops who figured prominently in the initial cover-up stand to lose their jobs if found guilty of conspiracy (again).

But in the highly-politicized world of the Chicago Police Department, this is not the clear-cut case their feeble testimony and the mountains of evidence would lead you to believe.

Initially, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson wanted to fire the four after an official investigation concluded they were guilty of conspiracy. But in the inside-out, up-is-down world of the CPD, your boss can't fire you.

Instead, they were suspended for a year.

Restored to paid positions, their disciplinary hearings were then delayed by the Jason Van Dyke trial. (If you're scratching your head, join the club.) Even after these hearings conclude tomorrow, it will be months before a decision is reached.

There is layer upon layer of review boards and committees that decision must pass through, giving all concerned ample opportunity to concoct another implausible lie depending on how disagreeable they find the outcome.

This puts us at four years since the release of the dash cam video, and five since the actual shooting. When has it ever taken this long for an employer to fire an errant employee or four?

Since they'll be excused anyway, can't we save taxpayers the expense and re-route this through Domenica Stephenson, who can again reject conflicting evidence out of hand and rule that even after being shot sixteen times, Laquan McDonald represented a threat to the officers on the scene, justifying any and everything they did afterwards?

(On a personal note, it is my belief that Stephenson watched way too many Freddie Krueger movies as a child.)

Sunlight becomes even more remote after reading the interviews conducted with CPD officers Janet Mondragon, Daphne Sebastian, Ricardo Viramontes and Stephen Franko.

Like the rationale offered by Jason Van Dyke, Joseph Walsh, Thomas Gaffney and David March, we can be thankful it's not toilet paper, so thin is it and so easily does it dissipate under even the slightest pressure.

It is impossible to differentiate their words from those of the hardened rapists, murderers and drug dealers they routinely encounter. In contrast to the cops on ice story, it is sobering to realize how easily these cops lie and how defiantly they look their interviewers in the eye and invite them to challenge the layers and layers of protection surrounding CPD officers.

It's not too hard to imagine a crime boss testifying before congress, smugly dodging question after question and offering only the most banal, most obvious lies when they do speak. No wonder the city's black population feels itself a target to be used and abused without consequence.

This is the latest battle in an escalating race war.

The same Fraternal Order of Police organization that is behind the knee-jerk protection of even its worst officers is urging official reprimands of Cook County Prosecutor Kim Foxx, she of the equally-mysterious and indefensible exoneration of Jussie Smollett.

Right or wrong, blacks see this as payback for the exoneration of the CPD in the murder of Laquan McDonald.

Outside, the wind continues to blow. There is no sunlight.