Consolidated Break

  7/30 How has Iran heard of Muhammad Ali, but not Trump ? Most pundits, well paid or not, declared that Trump had lost to Iran months ago. All that seemed left was Congress reeling him in. But Trump is still cursing at Iran on his own personal social media platform, as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait are added to the theatre of war.  The United States attacked terrorist camps in Iraq yesterday. You might ask, what year is it ? But the Pentagon never shut down the war in Iraq from 1990. Did you know that ? The United States Department of Veterans Affairs legally defines the Gulf War as ongoing. Aug.2,1990 to the present day, a continuous period. That's 40 years y'all. And this has always been a Republican led effort.  God Bless Lindsey Graham, but wasn't he wrong about most things ? Trump eulogized Graham by saying he never met a war he didn't want to fight, or something really masculine like that. Yet isn't Lindsey Graham the perfect example of an American po...

  Vice President JD Vance went on the most popular podcast in the country this past week. In it he described what he called secretive forces within Israel's government who were trying to manipulate both American opinion and the administration. Vance's conclusion was that these mysterious forces were attempting to "keep the war going" for what he called unknown reasons.  In 2026, could a Democrat go on a podcast, talk about scary, war mongering actors inside Israel and not be called a bunch of names ? Vance seems to cozy right up to some of the same opinions that Saudi Arabia, not to mention Iran, have held for some time. Well I'll be, won't you look over there, it's Trump promising the Saudis nuclear technology. So now that we are going to sell nukes to the Princes, it's ok to question Israel's motivations.  Trump himself has criticized Netanyahu for going to war with Lebanon. So here we have the Vice President questioning the legitimacy of the war...

  The break that the great Novak Djokovic and Jannick Sinner are taking, in between the end of Wimbledon, and the start of the Western & Southern, is almost as long as the break they'll take at the end of the year. In fact, I venture to say it is longer than most players' break at the end of any given year. We're talking a complete month, four entire weeks. The Canadian Open doesn't even start until the second week of next month. Why would anyone need to pull out now ? And how did Novak & Jannick cancel on the same day ? There is so much stupidity here. How about show up and lose guys ? How about not taking a ridiculously long break since you're supposed to be two of the top ten players ?  So many guys are in North America right now. There is a star studded list of entrants for the Citi in DC. In fact, Alex Michelson, who just won the Michigan Challenger, is drawn against Jack Draper, who was  scheduled to play a Challenger in Canada, before I believe smartl...

  It's difficult to avoid the 'broken record' syndrome when criticizing professional tennis. So why don't I begin with a victory, at least in my eyes.  One of the long held criticisms of pro tennis was its lack of integration with the American college system. That is not only over, the success of players who have attended college proves that all we needed was a system that was fair. And it helps highlight what is special about tennis, that we produce athletes that can not only succeed in college, they can succeed period.  It was once probably taboo for tennis fans to even know that a player went to college. But that snobbery should never have existed. Connors (UCLA) and McEnroe (Stanford) were "one and done" decades before Mike Krzyzewski used the term. But all the pieces seem to be there for the tour to promote more than just the top ranked players. Tennis has players coming from big colleges, some with NIL, so people should stop thinking that these athletes ...

  7/26 Many have a right to be scared of the Republicans in 2026. They're deporting people showing up for court. They're deporting people after changing their status. They're literally driving around and racial profiling America as I type. And they are covering up what Blackwater is doing in Haiti to combat gangs, despite wanting to send hundreds of thousands of Haitians home. There's also a cover up as to why they are shooting missiles at speed boats coming from other countries they want to deport people to. The Republicans, for a lot of people, are either shooting at them directly, or sending them directly to a shooting gallery.  But I'm not scared and neither should anyone reading this. I am frankly fascinated that the Republicans are copying literally every movie I have ever seen that details authoritarianism, and seemingly jumping from the pages of Orwell's 1984 on a daily basis. It's as if the Republicans are totally ignorant to history, decency, art o...

  7/19 We are 100 days away from the midterm. So far, Democratic excitement is lacking. And the DNC is lost at sea, blown apart by the DC establishment, pushed below the waves by Democratic Socialists taking over the party. But wait, is this all occurring because no one is embracing nuance ? The Democrats are getting bullied into positions without a fight.   It seems rich for the party in power, that's herding immigrants, challenging basic laws, attacking the media and ignoring judges, to be the one calling everyone else communists. Trump, his family and the small group of Epstein Island visitors making decisions, embody a communist dictatorship in every conceivable way. Isn't this perfectly evident ? A small group of elites embracing military actions outside of Congress, combined with a concerted effort to undermine the media and violent reactions to protests, it's all there. The people of Chile and Argentina know full and well what Trump is, they have seen communist dic...

  7/22 Pete Hegseth told Congress yesterday that the Pentagon couldn't pay the military and that they were running out of bombs. It doesn't matter what your political affiliation is, this is totally unacceptable. The Republicans must be voted out of power in a couple of months. This is such a broken record - a Republican Administration hunting weapons of mass destruction, but being forced to hunt down international law in order to do it. America can't turn the International Criminal Court on and off when it wants. We invented it. The Republicans are hyper focused on wrecking the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, the Ivy League, the National Mall and the White House, as they proclaim the need to eliminate all terrorism by further bombing Iran. The Republicans are also hyper focused on defunding federal agencies, laying off experts, firing inspectors and erasing federal unions, as they proclaim a renewed war on drugs featuring blatant murder before trial. That is quite a full ...