Can LeBron be King Again?

            Never before has an entire nation rallied around the miserable defeat of a team like we all did watching the Miami Heat fall to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals. We cheered and jumped for joy at the sight of LeBron James and company walking off the court in utter disgrace: another moment of coming up short for the King.

            It’s unlikely that the hatred surrounding James will have dissipated in just a year. And we are all still quick to point out his shortcomings: he has no fourth quarter; he never comes up clutch, etc. And it’s undeniable that he stood no chance of winning the league MVP this past year (he was the bad mouthing pariah who ditched his home team for warmer weather and super friends going against a young and humble hometown hero in Derrick Rose). But now, one year removed from everything, can LeBron James carry the Miami Heat to where they need to be?

            He can only if he does carry them, like he carried the Cavaliers for seven years. He’s no longer on a team of nobodies, and if free agency ever begins the Heat can only improve. They’re still weak at the point and center positions, but James has consistently made up for that. He has the sheer power of any center in the league and the passing skills of any point guard (he often runs the point, as a matter of fact). He’s a rock on defense (have you seen the chase down block from behind?) and a stone cold killer on offense. Except for his less than average performance in the Finals, James put up astounding numbers in the playoffs, knocking out the Sixers, Celtics and Bulls. It wasn’t that he lacks the ability. Most likely, the hatred and loathing finally caught up with him. It’s his misfortune that it caught up then.

            This season, James should be able to get past all that. Up until last year, he was adored worldwide. He was idolized by a legion of fans who all wanted to “Believe.” He was 250 pounds of sheer God-given talent who could not be stopped. He wasn’t human. He was Jordan incarnate. Then he made the move to South Beach, and all that glory went out the window. He was no longer adored. He was no longer a hometown hero. He became an outcast, and thieving freak who deserved nothing more than to be beaten and ridiculed. And so he was.

            James has a sterling opportunity now to get past all that. The hatred will be slow to disappear, but James and Heat can now begin to really take off. It’s unlikely that they’ll stumble out of the gates again whenever this season kicks off. Assuming they make at least a few decent free agency signings, the Heat will still be heads and shoulders above everyone in the league. James can begin to ignore all those hateful wishes of failure he hears day in and day out. Because by now he’s heard them all, and they’ve already become reality. He can now begin to play basketball the way he was born to play and without distraction.  

            James has been beaten twice in the playoffs now. He’s constantly put himself in the shadow of Michael Jordan, and that may have lead to his failures. But now that all his enemies have wished him beaten and seen it happen, James can begin to move past it. He doesn’t have to care what any fan (or anti-fan) thinks of him anymore, because they’ve got what they wanted. And the player who doesn’t care, who is immune to the outside world, is 100% lethal in the NBA.

            I’ve tried my hardest to hate LeBron James. But try as I might, I cannot hate the player the way I hate the individual. He is simply too good to hate forever. I’ve never been able to take down the number 23 Cavs jersey that hangs in my bedroom because that is the LeBron James I remember; the inhuman being that defied all conventions. The Decision is over, and James can finally begin to get back to the way things used to be. He is honestly too good for American sports fans to despise him forever. Even Kobe could get past the rape allegations because he was the best at the time and figured out that people love a winner. And that’s LeBron right now. He may be a bad person, but he’s too goddamn good at basketball to be hated forever. And as much as it pains me to say it, he’s still the best player on the best team. Someday, maybe in 2012, the Heat will win the Finals. And if LeBron plays the way he’s meant to, he’ll win league and Finals MVP. But first he has to stop worrying.

Who is the Republican Savior?

            Lately, the GOP has been turning to any new face to be the savior to the Republican Party. In the beginning it was Romney, with his savvy business skills and presidential smile. Then came Bachmann with a win in the Ames straw poll. After that came Perry, who was a late addition to the race but who stampeded to the front in record time. These days, Republicans don’t know who to turn to. Some say Herman Cain, especially considering his victory in the Florida straw poll. Others say Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor who still insists that he’s not committed to running. But who really is the GOP savior? For a group of people so dedicated to the cause of making Obama a one term president, Republicans and the tea party alike have done themselves no favors with this flavor of the week nonsense.

            Romney still seems like the smart money in this race, but that’s only if Christie keeps his word and steers clear of this mess. The two of them would clash all over the East Coast while Perry could clean up in central and western America, thereby winning the nomination. Christie also doesn’t fit in well with this current group of GOP hopefuls. He believes that “climate change is real” and “human activity plays a role in these changes.” He also nominated a Muslim to be a judge, one who defended 9/11 terror suspects (who were later cleared) and simply said he “tired of dealing with the crazies” and that “this Sharia law business is crap.” Not your typical dialogue for a GOP savior.

            Perry meanwhile has suffered a small series of setbacks. After have convinced the American people that he has what it takes to run this country, he was beaten like a dog during a televised debate. Whereas candidates like Romney and Cain presented actual economic plans for their hypothetical presidencies, Perry has simply pointed fingers and claimed that he wasn’t as gifted a smooth talker as Romney. All that he has proposed is “low taxes” with no actual plan (which is still better than Bachmann’s “no taxes” plan, if you could call it that). Perry still has a lot of work to do before he can call himself the savior.

            Bachmann has apparently lost momentum just as soon as she gained it. She’s been suspiciously quiet these past few weeks, aside from her comments on taxes (and retraction, saying that people would have to give something back to keep the government running). Perhaps her lack of Constitutional knowledge caught up with her. Maybe it’s all the stupid things she says in general. Or maybe she’s just hunkered down and licking her wounds, watching and waiting to come out swinging for real when the Primaries start.

            Romney has a long history as a chronic flip-flopper, most notably with his stance on healthcare. He was also once a supporter of abortion rights and gay rights, two things that most GOP contenders have been getting very hot and bothered about. But he has the strongest rhetoric to keep his head above water.

            Regardless, there is no clear Republican savior for this race simply because there is no savior to the Republican Party. They are a tired group of people who have split into factions: the tea party, the Fox News conspiracy theorists and the unclaimed. Each faction has their own idea of what a savior is and what that savior should look like, but none of those versions match up. They’re all too drastically different, and no one is willing to compromise. And if they can’t, they’re not only doomed in this race. They’re doomed forever. 

Class Warfare: The Quest for Kennedy's Seat

            When will people learn? The Kennedys are gone, lost to the ages. Jack and Bobby were gunned down long ago, and a lifetime of guilt claimed Teddy. It’s been a long time since we heard the Boston accent in the White House and we might not ever again.

            When Ted Kennedy died in 2009, Democrats all over Massachusetts wept but never worried; they had the audacity to believe that no Republican could ever win in that state, let alone take over for the last lion of the Senate. But that arrogance is exactly what did them in; Martha Coakley didn’t even bother campaigning. She simply yawned and honestly believed that being a Democrat in Massachusetts would carry her to the Senate. But then Republican Scott Brown, the proverbial underdog with a zero percent chance, pulled the rug right out from under Coakley and the Democrats. He won because he wanted it more and never pretended that he was entitled to it.

            With 2012 looming eerily closer, campaigning for the Doomed Season has begun. But it is not the Presidential election that has people talking right this minute; it is the fight for the seat that so many people still believe belongs to a Democrat. Elizabeth Warren, the Special Advisor for the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, (what a mouthful, right?), has announced that she will be running for the spot currently held by Brown. But the issue is not whether who will win or who will lose; it’s the consistently arrogant consensus from the Democrats that Brown never really held the seat at all. To them, it’s still Kennedy’s seat and Brown was just a fluke.

            I’ve never been a supporter of Scott Brown. In my opinion he’s a politician who believes he has that presidential look and who doesn’t fully understand the immense responsibility that the Senate is supposed to hold. But at the end of the day, he won, fair and square. And truth be told, he not only earned the seat over Coakley but he also deserved it. He campaigned harder and fought tooth and nail to win a seat that no one said he could. The trouble is that no one will give him credit where credit is due.

            Elizabeth Warren may well win the seat back for the Democrats. She has name recognition in a state that overwhelmingly elects Democratic Senators. She has the resume to back up what she’s preaching, and she understands the economy and political world far better than Brown does. But at the end of the day, the seat is not rightfully hers just because she’s a Democrat. Ted Kennedy is dead, and while his legacy lives on, the seat is no longer his. There will always be the stigma attached for any Senator, knowing that that was the seat that the last Kennedy brother held before he died.

But to continue saying that the seat belongs to Kennedy is doing a great disservice not only to Scott Brown, but to the democratic system itself. Scott Brown won the same way the John Kennedy won the White House; through perseverance and an unwillingness to surrender. And in this democracy we call home, if someone gets 50% plus one, they win. And like it or leave it, Scott Brown won.

Chances are good that Scott Brown will be a one term Senator, that he will always be remembered as the fluke who somehow temporarily took Kennedy’s seat. But regardless of what he accomplishes or fails to accomplish, he deserves more respect than he’s getting. And more respect than he’ll probably ever get.

A nomenclature doesn’t entitle you to anything. Hopefully Elizabeth Warren learns this lesson, or else she’ll end up no better than Coakley. And this leads to this inherently entitled question: would it still be remembered as Kennedy’s seat if a Democrat had won? Or is this simply a narcissistic question of self worth?

Truth be told, there are no lions left here. 

The Lone Ranger: How Rick Perry's Stance on Social Security Will End His Run

            Just by looking at him, Rick Perry seems like an utterly average guy; you could almost confuse him with fellow presidential contender Mitt Romney. Whereas Michele Bachmann seems insane in both speech and appearance, Perry gives off the façade of somebody who is cool, calm and collected. But the governor from Texas is something much more diabolical than what he appears. He may look like Romney, and he may even have a comforting accent, but Perry is a very different kind of candidate. He has the wildest dreams of Bachmann but stands a better chance to be elected, simply because more people think he is sane. And therein lays the problem.

            For some reason, Perry is widely considered a front runner in the narrowing Republican field. He, Romney and Bachmann round out the top three candidates, with Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman somewhere on the fringes. What really separates Perry from Romney is there view of the economy, specifically Social Security. Perry has threatened to abolish social security, and while he could never actually succeed at doing so, people are eating it up.

            Perry has gone on record as saying that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” which goes to show more than anything that Perry has no idea what a Ponzi scheme actually is. Perry seems to gladly neglect the fact that those who receive Social Security have already paid into it and are just collecting the money they put in. While certainly some Americans would see an immediate benefit from no longer paying Social Security (they’d no longer be paying the 6.2% income tax), the economy as a whole would suffer. If the program were to suddenly end (in the event of President Perry) the effect would become a Ponzi-like scheme; people who have paid into the program wouldn’t get anything out of it. The effect on the economy would be the same as when any major fraud collapses; poverty would surge (in this case, among retirees).

            Perry may be toted as a legitimate contender right now, but his stance on Social Security will be the death of his presidential dreams. Already, other Republican candidates are ganging up on him, pulling the carpet out right from under him. Romney and Huntsman will hit him hard and often on this, much like the Democrats did in 2004 to Howard Dean and his antiwar stance. They will cast him as someone who cannot beat Barrack Obama, like Dean was cast as someone who couldn’t beat George Bush. Voters will then have to turn to the smart money, Mitt Romney (or whoever is left).

            Once there’s blood in the water, the other sharks will surge. There is no honor among presidential candidates.

            Whereas Perry seems to be the new poster boy for the ultra conservatives, Romney can gain serious ground by hammering him on Social Security. If he does, Perry will lose every vote of anyone who is even 10 years away from retirement. Perry will no doubt retain some of his supporters, but if the other Republicans keep at him, the fan base will deplete to the point where they will take the smart money over the easy money.

            But for now, audiences love the easy money in Perry. At the GOP debate, they roared for Perry’s record of putting more inmates to death than other governor in recent history. That’s a pretty strange thing for someone who is so adamantly pro-life to do. But Perry doesn’t have to make sense to be liked. He just had to retain the far right long enough. And maybe he will, but I doubt it.

            When you come out swinging at Social Security, chances are you’re going to miss.

The Lost Decade

            Yesterday was the first real day of football, but the moment was not as joyous as it should have been. Looming just days ahead is the ten year mark of 9/11, the single most destructive yet defining moment for our generation. The costs have been high and the consequences calamitous, but we have nothing to show except a few piles of rubble that we never got around to cleaning up; industrial reminders of what we lost so long ago.

            We had terrible fears stemming from that day. We believed that the end times were upon us. We huddled in our houses, too afraid to open the blinds. We believed the worst was yet to come, and we were certain that it would never be safe to travel again. All that we knew for certain was that the towers were gone, reduced to blood and burning steel that never really went away. We, as a nation, did not believe that we could pick ourselves up.

            But time went on, as it always does, and eventually those crushing fears turned into massive hopes. Hopes of unity within our country. Hopes that our strength would send a message to all evil doers around the globe. Hopes that, in time, the world would become safe again.

            Perhaps we were naïve in both our fears and hopes. Slowly we began to get back on airplanes and fly to all corners of the globe. Likewise, our dreams of unity began to fade. We all adopted a business as usual attitude for 364 days out of the year, the lone exception always being the anniversary of the day the towers fell.

            Ten years is a long time. In that time, we have successfully started two wars that seem to have no end in sight and a bill that has become increasingly harder to ignore; we have helped dispose of a handful of Middle Eastern dictators that we said was in the name of democracy; we have seen the genocide rage in Darfur and we have turned a blind eye. We have seen sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives sent to die in the desert for wars they didn’t ask for and didn’t quite understand. What have we learned in that lost decade?

            We learned that nothing has changed. More attack attempts came: an underwear bomber, a car filled with explosives left in Times Square, but we moved on because no one was hurt and failures are often easy to forget. Our politicians have brought us down into a hellish reality that we may never escape from; a world of two vindictive ideologies that will not rest until the other is destroyed for no good reason at all. We are impatient again. We are just as prejudiced as before, maybe even more so, and we still have no problem killing each other.

            All that we have to show is a largely unplaced hatred for anyone farther west than France. We have an ungrounded suspicion that all Muslims are up to something so sinister that they deserve to be sent to Guantanamo right now, no questions asked. We cannot go to the airport without random security checks and TSA pat downs. Throughout this decade in despair, we have not changed for the better. We watch TV, go on Facebook and order takeout to forget that we ever lost anything. Somebody else would eventually come along and start the long process of sweeping up debris.

            Eventually, even the rubble that was the towers and our loved ones became garbage, and had to be hauled out of sight and buried.

            Osama bin Laden is gone, and so are ten long years. But we are no different than we were on September 10, 2001. We are the same consumers who don’t look at price tags before we put something in our shopping carts. We are the same people who blame one president and exonerate another. We are the same people who demand blood for blood. We are still the same Americans.

            Maybe in another decade we will be able to fully absorb and understand what 9/11 meant. Or maybe we won’t. If that’s the case, at least we can adequately distract ourselves. 

Pawlenty, Perry and the Midwestern Swing

            Strange winds are brewing for the Republican race for the presidency. The standings are far from what many had initially expected out of the already watered down pool of candidates. The Ames Straw Poll (the presidential pre caucus vote held by Iowan Republicans) was held on August 13. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, Michele Bachmann won the poll, handily beating Ron Paul by 0.9%. Third in line was Tim Pawlenty, who many thought would have won or at least come in at a close second. But it was not the numbers that shocked the Pawlenty followers; it was the way he took the defeat. One day after the less than significant straw poll, Pawlenty dropped out of the race. One of the few agreeably sane contenders, Pawlenty gave up before he ever got off the ground.

            Pawlenty’s problem is that he made the mistake of thinking this was a meaningful vote. The only candidate in recent history to win the Ames Straw Poll and go on to win the White House was George W. Bush in 1999 before he ascended his throne in 2000. For example: in 2007 Mitt Romney won the Ames Straw Poll while McCain would get the nomination (and lose to Obama): in 1995 Bob Dole tied in Ames, won the nomination, but lost to Clinton: in 1987, Pat Robertson won the Poll, but George H. W. Bush won the nomination and the White House: in 1979 Bush won in Ames but Reagan got the White House. Pawlenty needed only look back at recent history to see that losing in Ames doesn’t mean shit and that his chances were the same as ever. But instead he hung his head and waved the white flag. So long, Tim Pawlenty.

            The day before Pawlenty’s presidential aspirations ended, Texas Governor Rick Perry’s began. While his name was not on the Iowa ballot, he formally declared his candidacy in South Carolina. A late addition to the contending race, Perry had adamantly denied for years that he would seek the office of the President. But like any other politician, he changed his stance and threw his hat in the ring. Perry is now considered to be in a three way race with Romney and Bachmann for the nomination, making up a kind of “Big Three” that will take on Barack Obama in 2012. Whether or not this is true remains to be seen; after all, Perry has only been a candidate for one week.

            The subtraction of Pawlenty and addition of Perry may spell some good news for Mitt Romney. He also was not on the ballot in Iowa, mainly because he feared that was a losing race. The Romney Campaign was betting that Pawlenty would win close to home, so they were concentrating more on the East Coast (Romney has been in New Hampshire seemingly all year). But with Pawlenty gone, perhaps Romney may reconsider the Midwestern states. Bachmann may seem to have the upper hand in that area, but Romney appeals to more voters than the conspiracy theory laden Bachmann (she recently said we have to fear the rise of the Soviet Union, in addition to her long list of people who are out get her). With Pawlenty gone, the middle ground in the Midwest seems up for grabs, and Romney could be the guy to grab it. 

How the Democrats Lost Big in the Battle of the Debt

            The debt ceiling deal has been reached and approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was a text book example of the something is better than nothing approach that the White House has been taking lately. Barack Obama surrendered complete control of the issue over to the far right, who somehow convinced everyone that they had bargaining power. But the power that the Tea party actually had was nothing short of a terrorist like plot: they threatened to let the government default if they didn’t have their demands met. But perhaps it is too flattering to liken the Tea Party to terrorists demanding some form of political retribution. The Tea Party is much more like a group of spoiled rich kids who use their parents’ credit cards and complain about their allowances. A deal was reached, but it was the wrong deal.

            Obama and the Democrats had to sacrifice everything they promised to get something passed by the deadline; the only silver lining for Obama is that the deal will last through 2012, so he won’t have to deal with it during the election season. But for all their power (they have the White House and the Senate) the Democrats simply rolled over on this debate and let the Republicans call the shots. The Democrats seem to have a very Stockholm-like Syndrome when it comes to fighting the Republicans and the Tea Party; rather than fight like cornered animals, they simply allow themselves to be taken hostage and victimized.

            The deal itself calls for spending cuts that will burden the disappearing middle class but adds no tax increases on the super wealthy. It was a bad deal that the Democrats shouldn’t have even considered, but because of their breathtaking lack of balls they felt they had to. The Democrats might be a weak party, but they seemed pitiful on the vote. The Republicans, for all their dirty tactics and complete disregard for everything except themselves, came out smelling like roses yet again.

            Since 2008, the Democrats have allowed the government to be hijacked twice by right winged financial thugs who promised to blow the United State to hell if they didn’t get everything they wanted. And the biggest problem is that we have no one standing up for us. We elected Obama to look those terrorists – those teenage brats – in the eye and call their bluff. But instead, he just sighed, signed the deal and gave them back their credit card.