Monthly Archives: January 2020

The state of basketball in 2020.

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With the recent death of former NBA commissioner David Stern, the Cynic made the ad-hoc decision to produce a brief treatise on the state of basketball in 2020.

It should first be pointed out that commissioner Stern took over an NBA that had just started a rebound from a state of almost complete public apathy. He left it a healthy, wealthy and growing sports league, with a product that was much different than it was his first day on the job.

The state of basketball is representative of the state of sports in general in 2020. All sports, college and professional, have the same concerns. They can all be summed up in one word: money. Probably the correct concern for the professional ranks since, after all, they are businesses. Colleges, on the other hand, are not. Nevertheless, colleges have bartered their athletic souls to the highest bidders, and the bidders could care less about anything but money.

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Trump’s impeachment strategy (and its possible consequences).

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The Cynic has not opined about impeachment for one reason: it seemed like an open-and-shut case — in the president’s favor.

The president asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. The Democrats contend that the request was for the express purpose of securing info on Joe Biden to, in turn, rig the 2020 election. The trigger for the entire House of Representatives investigation was the assertion that the president withheld, or threatened to withhold, aid to Ukraine until such an investigation was commenced.

The president then released a transcript of his conversation which he claims exonerates him. The Democrats, MSNBC (Chris Matthews) and CNN (Jeffrey Toobin) insist, on the other hand, that the transcript condemns the president.

So, after a hurried investigation, the Dems in the House voted two articles of impeachment: obstruction of Congress (really?) and abuse of power.

The Republicans keep yelling for anyone who will listen that the aid was in fact delivered to Ukraine in spite of the conversation, or in American vernacular, “no harm, no foul.”

But this argument by the Republicans seems shallow. It encourages the dismissal of the articles without addressing the alleged transgression. The president’s request to Zelensky to investigate continues to dangle untouched, for any of Trump’s opponents or enemies to point to as evidence of the president’s unfitness to hold the world’s highest office.

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