Hm.

Bob Niemeyer, a mechanical engineer, says his top goal is defending the U.S. Constitution—and would do so by rewriting it to create a fourth branch of the federal government, an executive called “the principal.” In Niemeyer’s redesign of the Constitution, the principal could veto any financial decision by the president or Congress. Niemeyer’s choice for the job: Donald Trump.

I’m sure that’s what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

A curious question on the latest controversy of the NBA.  So we have an owner who made some horribly racist comments — private comments and then leaked to the gossip media.  Don’t bring a black person to the arena, Magic Johnson ew, and also such and such a baseball player is okay in his book…

And my ever asked question on just what emotional attachment to always changing sports teams means.  Understand, this is a controversy which has lead to the team… protesting and distancing themselves from the team.

The Clippers gathered at center court before a 118-97 Game 4 loss in their first-round series against the Golden State Warriors and took off their Clippers warm-up shirts and left them there. They then warmed up wearing inside-out red shooting shirts that did not display the Clippers name or logo. During the game, players wore black arm or wrist bands and black socks.

And this leads to fans taking a couple different stances of “Done with them”…

Former NFL defensive lineman Marcellus Wiley, who also has a radio talk show in Los Angeles and makes no secret he is a Clippers fan, suggested he will stay away from Game 5, too: “Donald Sterling’s latest racist comments just freed up my tuesday night plans at staples. Shame on us … we were warned! #HistoryRepeatsItself,” he tweeted.

OR… “In the end, the players represent the team more than the owner”…

Clippers season ticketholder Brian Claypool, who sits on the same row as Paul’s family, wants Sterling out — now.
“I think Sterling needs to be forced out and he needs to be removed immediately,” said Claypool, a civil rights attorney. “The remarks are so unsettling. They make me sick to my stomach,” said Claypool, a civil rights attorney.
But he said the players will get the fans’ support Tuesday: “Fans are going to be out in full support, and the Clippers will get beyond a standing ovation.” he said. “Clipper fans are the most loyal you are ever going to see. There will be a complete sellout and it will be fully supportive.”

And the question of emotional attachment… something odd about being a fan of the Clippers, and generally speaking a fan of a sports team is one that has some odd mental arrangement in their head of the history and continuity…

The Clippers have historically been a laughingstock of … pretty much all of sports.  And not only that, but one where the owner has played a nickel and dime approach in making money, keeping the payroll from being bloated while advertising as a budget alternative to the other team and playing up when major stars from other teams come in to play…

And not only that, but in the field of spectator sports attachment, which is built largely on the city, whatever the makeup of the team (from back when the city of Cincinnati embraced a  Cincinnati Red Stockings team made up of players not from Cincinnati in the 1870s) … they play in the same city and indeed arena as a marquee team of the NBA, the Los Angeles Lakers.  Note a figure of the controversy, “looming large in Los Angeles basketball history”, Magic Johnson — legendary player for the Los Angeles Lakers.

There has been a stable of Hollywood stars attending Clippers games, just as there are fabled stars attending Lakers games … I always figured these stars were acting just a little too kooky by half.

What the Hell is a Clippers fan?  Born of what geographic or sociological or whatever field does someone jump to the Clippers over the Lakers?

Then again, there might be a notable “passing of the torch” moment.  The two players who have shifted the Clippers fortunes… one from the 2009 draft pick of Blake Griffen… and the second came with a trade for Chris Paul… which came when the custodian owner of a New Orleans in the NBA itself traded Chris Paul to the Clippers instead of the Lakers… maybe it makes some sense: you root for whichever team in town happens to be playing best.

One more curious note to all this…

The NAACP, which previously honored Sterling with a lifetime achievement award, canceled plans to give him another. “The remarks attributed to Mr. Sterling are outrageous and remind us that racism is alive and well at every socioeconomic level,” said NAACP interim president and CEO Lorraine C. Miller.

Two questions:  Given the history, why would the NAACP give him a lifetime achievement award, and how can you award multiple lifetime achievements?

Leafing through books on “Reagan”… and I run into someone scrawling a note into the William Kleinknecht book “Man Who Sold the World”…  Here’s the relevant passage and the commentary, and a question…

People would gather around him after his appearances and relate their own mistreatment by the government, and he began incorporating those complaints into his speeches.  “I was seeing how government really operated and affected people in America, not how it was taught in schools” he said in his 1990 memoirs.

By the late 1980s, while still in office Reagan suffered from Alzheimer’s.  How could he write his memoirs in the 1990s?

Um… 1990 was not 1998 (and this would also mean he’d probably have written, with typical assistance that major figures get, it in the late 1980s anyways), and the advancement was not so far along that he wasn’t totally devoid of his mental facilities 100 percent of the time, and…
What’s the point?

Oh, for the love of … whatever.

Ages and ages ago, sometime in the 1950s, there was critical commentary on our Conformist society tagged with the symbol of “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit”.  (off of A Movie and a book.)  The revolt of individualist fashion against the this conformity followed, all hell broke loose, Lawrence Welk was for people who hated the all hell breaking loose and wanted to stick with the man in the gray flannel suit.

Or something like that.

Skip about to this retro-feeling of fashion, and this becomes either a stylistic revolt and commentary on the supposed Narcissism of the Movement (see: “Selfie”, or that apple ad which selling different colors as being akin to you dressing up your pet and having a lot of tattoos), or an ironic contribution to it — expressing your individuality by finding the most normal mean attire.

I don’t even know anymore?

In other items of … curiosity… this is not interesting nor uninteresting, it just … is...

The Pizza Underground is an American comedy rock band based in New York City. Namely parodying songs by The Velvet Underground with pizza-themed songs names and lyrics, the group consists of child actor Macaulay Culkin …

Mad libs?

Looking over this image of Pro-Russian militants in the Ukraine… Denis Pushiline standing center, of the self described “Donetask People’s Republic” … and decide what you want of the story…

I’m kind of interested in the people in the back row, wearing ski masks.

Because we’ve got a ski mask war going on now between pro-Putin forces and anti – Putin forces, ala “Pussy Riot“.

Gets interesting.

I’m a little amused by a book review from Abbas Milani in the latest New Republic.  It’s to a book recording early US — Islamic World relations.  It’s the first paragraph.  I thought it would be online, but i seems the magazine has wisely decided not to give their stuff away for free, so I can’t just cite it here.

It’s the classic trope where you relay the past as though it were the future… “Imagine a Smear campaign for the presidency”, then list off a bunch of transgressions, with the next paragraph starting with “No, it’s not the 2000s; it’s 1800!”

The problem is none of the transgressions are remotely plausible to any campaign in the current century.  A Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum cannot get away for blasting away at the undermining of this great nation by Atheists and Mohammedans, or for that matter calling Barack Obama a Muslim; his support would crater completely.  (This is where “dog whistles” and “under the radar” “surrogates” come into play).  It is an incredibly contrived and hackneyed version of this trope.  One of the most hackneyed I’ve seen, the correlation does not correlate well enough for any reasonable acceptance, and I point it out only because…

I’m kind of sick of this cliche.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez passed away.  He is noted by many literary fans for many an intelligent work of thought provoking literature hovering toward the genre of “Magic Realism”.  He is noted by many on the right for his support of Fidel Castro.

I know him first and foremost as the man who wrote the story that was adapted into a classic episode of the Simpsons.

Understand, years from now, I’ll note the passing away of Stephen Hawking by his appearances on the Simpsons.  It’s how I’ll frame the greats of the current age.