All I’ve got left is hatred
For there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. — Epictetus
Seriously, are you telling me that within a 12-month period I must:
1. Root for Joe Biden to be elected president?
2. Root for the Lakers to win the NBA title?
Apparently so.
PS. Trade Kyrie for Russ. I want to see what OKC would have looked like if they’d stayed together.
Tags:
13. January 2021 at 16:37
sumner misattributes a line from hamlet to epictetus, further evidence of his blandness of intellect. though the stoics said similar things, this line is directly from Hamlet, who’s author no doubt had read the stoics, such as seneca, among his wide ranging readings.
13. January 2021 at 16:43
OT thought of the day: groups identified as right-wing or Trump backers use Bitcoin to transfer money. Left-wingers outlaw Bitcoin.
13. January 2021 at 17:13
agrippa, I gave you the English translation. You wanted it in the original Greek?
13. January 2021 at 20:13
Explain!
After “make a team” started with Malone and Payton going to LA I thought the of the NBA how you think of the USA. Banana republic.
14. January 2021 at 08:16
Well, finally you admit the obvious.
There are four reasons why the west is filled with hate:
1. Multiculturalism, which you promotes, is doomed to fail.
Why do you think borders were invented in the first place? For a country to exist, it must have people who share a common bond, and a common purpose.
2. Centralization of industry and government is destroying our lives. WEF is a corrupt, authoritarian, cocktail party in which the major players get together to collude new measures that will plunder everyone else. It was a bad idea to begin with, and an unconstitutional one. The founders never wanted the United States congress to give up authority to an outside group of elites.
3. The Fed is engaging in theft on a massive scale. Since inception, the dollar has lost 95% of it’s values. That is the track record of the Federal Reserve. They print, and print, and print, and print, and print. By lowering interests, they encourage others to take on more risk than they should. The economy is inflated, out of control, and bound to come crashing down to reality.
The world is in massive debt that will never be repaid.
It’s one of the greatest Ponzi schemes of all time. And your idiocy, or unwillingness to speak out, is a travesty. You were entrusted with guardianship of our economy, and you blew it.
4. SSA, universal health care, and all these dumb programs are uneconomical. If you are 65 and broke, then you can live with your kids. There is no reason for the government to bail you out. And before HMO’s and government involvement in medical care, the care was extremely cheap. And people who could not afford the cheap rates were provide free care by philanthropic doctors. Nobody in the 1920’s was refused health care because they were poor. But the govt doesn’t want to tell you about that. Because if they do, a lot of apparatchiks will be unemployed.
Call for the end of the Fed!
14. January 2021 at 08:30
“Why do you think borders were invented in the first place? For a country to exist, it must have people who share a common bond, and a common purpose.”
Precisely! Multiculturalism is being promoted, so that the elites can establish a world government. That is the whole point of promoting open borders. And that is why they consistently try to remove people like Assad from power. The entire Arab spring movement was a CIA funded movement. They want to destroy any country that refuses to play by the global rules, and they are using intelligence agencies to do that.
The French are now being forced to open their homes and shelter migrants. And that is the breaking point. And it’s why you are seeing massive rioting and protests in Europe. The west is somewhat responsible for the poverty, but only because they are sending aid that props up corrupt regimes. If they stop sending aid, these regimes will collapse and the people in those countries can install better leaders. But at no time should we be harboring these people. They must fight for their own survival. And if that means civil war, then they ought to go to war. But crossing the channel, and forcing someone else to open their home to you is not proper. The French people have their own problems.
14. January 2021 at 08:37
A nigerian economist told Obama many times to STOP sending aid.
1. Aid is theft from the American taxpayer.
2. The aid is marketed to the American taxpayer as helping those in poverty. But it is not used for that. The aid is given with the condition that most of it be spent buying American products. It’s corporate welfare. And whatever is not spent on American products goes to the bank accounts of the foreign politicians.
14. January 2021 at 09:04
@ agrippa posthumus
An internet search turns up this from the Enchiridion:
“It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them.”
Close enough?
14. January 2021 at 09:39
@henry
You wrote
It seems an odd time to point out that multi-culturalism is failing. The end of the global pandemic is in sight because a Hungarian scientist pioneered mRNA technology that was used by a pair of Turkish immigrants working for a German company that is the subsidiary of an American pharmaceutical company run by a Greek immigrant to build a vaccine to attack a virus that was first sequenced by a Chinese scientist who shared the information with his Australian colleague before his Australian colleague shared the information with all his peers including the aforementioned Turks.
14. January 2021 at 10:02
Milljas, Yes, and I recall rooting for Detroit that year, as did all good people.
14. January 2021 at 13:12
@Carl: excellent comment
@ssumner: That’s right, I also rooted for Detroit, and they won… it was the only NBA championship ever won by a team with no superstars/Hall of Famers on it. A big reason they won is they were coached by the best basketball coach of all time (Larry Brown, only coach to win both NCAA and NBA titles, took a team with Iverson and a bunch of stiffs to the Finals, won everywhere he went)
14. January 2021 at 13:28
msgkings. Yes, and that Iverson team beat my Bucks in 2001, even though the Bucks were probably better.
14. January 2021 at 16:35
NBA=No Balls Association.
Remember Hong Kong.
There is not much ordinary people can do about Hong Kong or the CCP in general.
You can stop patronizing the NBA, and you can send emails explaining often why you no longer patronize the No Balls Association.
Sand castles against the tide….
14. January 2021 at 20:33
I’m not one to normally be all about angry, insulting rhetoric, but Ben has the right of this one. An American corporation should be proud, HONORED even, to get the boot by a totalitarian government currently crushing a democracy movement and committing genocide. The NBA knuckling under to the CCP is a foreign policy issue as far as I am concerned and they should be punished, not just by the American consumer, but by the American government.
14. January 2021 at 21:14
Scott,
I don’t get it. What’s so bad about the other teams. Don’t root for the Lakers. That’s like rooting for Bayern Munich or Real Madrid or Manchester United. Brooklyn has to get to the finals first. I’m not seeing any defense. When I used to watch NBA (many, many years ago), it was said: offense wins games, but defense wins championships. If that balance is no longer true today, then the whole sport is boring anyway.
14. January 2021 at 22:10
Ben, Your comments on the NBA are so silly I shouldn’t even respond. But just for the sake of argument, please provide a list of all the US entertainment industries that have boldly spoken out on Hong Kong.
I can’t hear you.
None you say? So are you boycotting all films, TV, sports, and other forms of entertainment?
Or just the one that is mostly comprised of blacks?
14. January 2021 at 22:29
Scott- how many times have I criticized Disney, Apple, Walmart, BlackRock et al for doing business in China, while hypocritically posing about on human rights? At least dozens.
Yes, I do not consume Disney products.
And this particular post, the NBA came up. I don’t follow the NBA much, but I have noticed most players are black, although there seems to be more Europeans and others lately. There was that big guy from China for while, but I don’t know what happened to him.
I don’t know the color of the ownership and management of the NBA. I assume they are largely non-blacks, and I am criticizing NBA policy.
By the way I watch the NFL—-does that make me pro-black? I also like major league baseball, so I guess I must be in favor of Latins.
Your comment is beneath you.
14. January 2021 at 22:32
“Facebook censors libertarian Ron Paul amid Big Tech purge”
The Donks are just warming up?
Good luck everybody….
15. January 2021 at 08:05
LOL, agrippa postumus is right, Sumner is a dime store philosopher who hears stuff second hand and retweets it. His most cherished book is probably Bartlett’s Quotations, which re memorizes for pithy insights. When will Sumner realize his entire life has been a fraud, and asides from regurgitating graphs from two generations ago, probably contributed nothing to the betterment of this world except his biological offspring? Other than that, Sumner’s alright.
15. January 2021 at 08:57
to Ray Lopez, please continue to post on this POS blog; you, xu and Mr. Benjamin Cole’s comments make it worth checking at least once daily.
15. January 2021 at 11:08
Benjamin is quite right. The NBA has been particularly hypocritical. That’s why they deserve his criticism.
Just before the Hong Kong remarks, NBA and its most famous players (like LeBron James) were spearheading against alleged oppression and advocating for human rights.
And then Daryl Morey spoke out about Hong Kong in that spirit. He was so naive and thought it was really about human rights and not about BLM being a great business opportunity for the NBA.
So suddenly the NBA and LeBron had an extreme amount of hypocritical work to do. They had to keep lying to Western fans that it was all about human rights, and at the same time they had to explain to the CCP that everything wasn’t meant that way and that the money was extremely important to them. They tried to have their cakes and eat them too.
They were like Trump, who could switch to opposing messages right after one another, directed at two different audiences, with the difference being that the NBA audience is a tad less deluded than the Trump audience, so there were isolated cases, like Benjamnin, who noticed the scam.
Scott is still in the deluded camp, saying that there’s nothing special to see here, just keep on walking. But where is his journey headed? I personally do not want to live in such a world of hypocrisy. It’s a really dark alley. No, thank you.
15. January 2021 at 11:55
Ben, You said:
“By the way I watch the NFL—-does that make me pro-black? I also like major league baseball, so I guess I must be in favor of Latins.”
I can’t understand why. Those leagues are not devoting their time to speaking out on Hong Kong. What’s wrong with you? Have you no morals?
And if you wish to be treated with respect, why have you spent the last 10 years trolling?
Christian, No one cares what the NBA thinks about Hong Kong.
15. January 2021 at 12:40
“Facebook censors libertarian Ron Paul amid Big Tech purge”
Freedom of Association being used against Libertarians lol. Ron Paul spent his whole life trying to argue to give Whites the right to use Freedom of Association to discriminate against Blacks. His whole life. Now that the freedom of association is being used against his ilk, he is crying like a baby. The irony is rich. It’s a private business choosing who they want to associate with, Ron Paul should be on their side to allow them to exercise that right.
15. January 2021 at 18:49
JohnR, Your comment just shows that you don’t understand anything about libertarians or about Ron Paul. The fact that he thinks it should be LEGAL to discriminate against anyone you want does not mean that you SHOULD discriminate against anyone you want, or that there is no right to complain about it. I know that’s a complex idea, one step up from caveman level, so most people never are able to grasp it.
Sumner, The issue is not what the NBA thinks about Hong Kong but about whether the NBA is going to censor every person connected to it and prevent them from speaking their mind on Hong Kong.
16. January 2021 at 10:36
Anonymous, You said:
“The issue is not what the NBA thinks about Hong Kong but about whether the NBA is going to censor every person connected to it and prevent them from speaking their mind on Hong Kong.”
And the answer is clear, they will not:
https://www.nupoliticalreview.com/2019/11/04/censorship-and-self-censorship-china-and-the-nba/
16. January 2021 at 12:26
” That’s right, I also rooted for Detroit, and they won… it was the only NBA championship ever won by a team with no superstars/Hall of Famers on it.”
Although you could argue that the `79 Sonics really had no more star power the `03 Pistons. DJ and Sikma maybe slightly greater stars over their careers than Billups, Hamilton and Rasheed, but not so much at the time.
And those Sonics would have won two except for some ridiculous officiating at the end of game 7 the year before. As we all know, of course.
16. January 2021 at 12:44
“After `make a team’ started with Malone and Payton going to LA I thought the of the NBA how you think of the USA. Banana Republic.”
Well, Malone was 40 and Payton 35. I wonder if that was really the best way to build around Shaq and Kobe. I don’t remember my view at the time, but I’m certainly skeptical now, so as a long-time Laker-Hater I am retrospectively happy with the move.
I kind of recall Payton on the Lakers that year no longer being the real Glove, 35 was older then than it is now.
16. January 2021 at 12:46
“Yes, and that Iverson team beat my Bucks in 2001, even though the Bucks were probably better.”
Yeah, they made the EC finals that year. But of course had they been in the WC, would they have been in the playoffs at all?
All kidding aside, that year might have been the height of WC dominance.
16. January 2021 at 17:12
@anon/portly:
Good call on the ’79 Sonics but both Sikma and DJ are in the Hall of Fame (both recently added). No one on that Pistons team is, although I could see Billups with a shot.
16. January 2021 at 22:39
Carl,
easily the comment of the year so far. The pandemic of nationalism is ludicrous. It is spread by people who have no idea how the world works, and why.
16. January 2021 at 22:43
Urgh, this was another Anonymous again. This time I swear I’ll be back with a better name. – Anonymous the Todd Slayer.
16. January 2021 at 22:45
Scott,
Please don’t go all Todd on me. We’ve all seen the reactions of CCP China. The CCP seems to care a lot about extremely trivial things. Just think of the Nobel Prize and how they attacked Norway because of it. Pure madness. And then their attack on the NBA, because a little guy from the second row said something about Hong Kong that nobody would have ever noticed if the CCP didn’t have this odd and terrifying combination of extreme aggressiveness and sheer stupidity. The funny thing is that CCP will repeat this mistake over and over again. How stupid can one be?
The CCP, unfortunately, is not nobody. Plus they incite the Chinese population at an alarming rate because of trivialities. Plus the reactions of Western fans and media to that. They all cared quite a lot. It was a mess, maybe even a beautiful mess.
It’s also unclear whether you even finished reading the article you linked to. The article says that the end result between CCP China and the NBA is completely open. There’s no indication for the things you said, on the contrary the article ends with: If the NBA is any indication, to a great extent, profits will come first.
And the NBA has already censored itself, no one will ever say anything about Hong Kong again. Compare that with the NBA’s other political statements, which the NBA actually encouraged, and you might notice the extreme differences. What you write politically about CCP China is just pure clowning around. You can’t be serious. Are you sure you are not a bigger troll than Benjamin?
17. January 2021 at 04:55
Multiculturalism: within a nation-state’s borders/sovereign with a major culture (or regional major culture) and the rest a numerical minority adhering to their own culture (India with multiple states but each state a distinct culture, even sub-cultures within major state level culture) (or) multi-cultarilism across multiple nation-states in close geographical proximity. (Hungary vs Austria vs Germany vs Poland vs Spain etc. in Europe).
Multi-culturalism can be meaningful and useful and utilitarian in the 2nd model too – with the advent of technology and communications, cross cultural exchange & pollination of ideas isn’t at risk.
Let’s face the reality: human beings are tribal and the moment a tribe senses that they are at a risk of being overrun by a different tribe, its a race. Whereas as long as they each are in their distinct spheres, there is collaboration, admiration, and all +-thingies.
Iff Protestants established the US as it is envisioned*, then is Protestantism compatible with Islam (they both are hegemonic monotheistic religions with their My God is The God dogma) if the population adhering to Islamic culture is growing in US (or UK or France or China). Is a multi-spousal (4 at a time IIRC) and talaq culture of Islam compatible with the founding ethos of US (or Confucian basis of China) and would they be able to reconcile the differences and then Islamic culture folks give up some of the things that their religion (culture) allows.
Yeah, yeah, there are budding reforms , changes are a-comin’ etc.
17. January 2021 at 08:20
Make what you will of them
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-crises-capitol-assault
https://human-as-media.com/2020/10/20/the-trump-bump-in-the-news-media-commodifighting-trump/
17. January 2021 at 08:47
This strikes a chord: The social crisis. People who are rooted in real communities—extended families, neighborhoods, occupational associations, religious congregations—do not make good foot soldiers in partisan armies deployed by remote elites who are battling for control of government offices. They have jobs they can’t miss and children they have to pick up from school and errands to run.
The angst-ridden-and-facing-bleak-employment-income-streams-and-student-loan-repayments-looming products of left leaning college campuses, UBI looks promising for sure, are the foot soldiers for one set of elites (a nebulous word any qualifies, what/who is an elite?)
A pivotal turn from education-as-means-for-gainful-employment to education-as-means-for-knowledge-and-additionally-bonus-employment-income-stream would be most welcome
17. January 2021 at 12:12
anon/portly, It’s worth mentioning that the Bucks were 8-0 against the top 4 teams in the West that year.
Christian, Obviously I meant no one in the West cares.
Do companies kowtow to the wishes of their consumers?
YES THEY DO!!
Wake me up when companies start boldly criticizing the political views of their customers.
17. January 2021 at 16:37
mbka and msgkings:
Thanks. I started to write about AstraZeneca and Sinovac conducting trials in Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa, but figured that might be considered piling in.
17. January 2021 at 19:36
“Good call on the ’79 Sonics but both Sikma and DJ are in the Hall of Fame (both recently added).”
I hadn’t realized this. They were both really good players, for sure. Not sure if “superstar slash HOF” really quite fits though….
All star games: Sikma 7, DJ 5, Billups 5, Wallace 4, Hamilton 3. (Sikma may have had a positional advantage of sorts).
Career high in PPG: Sikma 19.7, DJ 19.5, Billups 19.5, Wallace 19.3, Hamilton 20.1.
17. January 2021 at 21:01
“It’s worth mentioning that the Bucks were 8-0 against the top 4 teams in the West that year.”
It is? That just means they were 6-14 against the rest of the West, if anything *bolstering* the case that they might have missed the playoffs in the West. Maybe they could have slipped by Minnesota for that #8 spot, but no sure thing, eh?
The West was 259-161 against the East that year.
19. January 2021 at 10:29
I wonder if Milwaukee in 2001 could have simply traded their coach, George Karl, for the Philadelphia coach, Larry Brown, at the start of the series, they would have in the finals pretty easily? You have the coach with the worst playoff resume going up against the coach with maybe the best.
I happened to look at that year again and was amazed to see Philly’s starting 5 that year. I guess Mutombo could be pretty useful but Aaron McKie, (oldish) Tyrone Hill and Jumaine Jones?
19. January 2021 at 15:20
anon, You said:
“I wonder if Milwaukee in 2001 could have simply traded their coach, George Karl, for the Philadelphia coach, Larry Brown, at the start of the series, they would have in the finals pretty easily?”
Equally true of the Bucks loss to Toronto in 2019 and Miami in 2020.