- Fred
Politics Ruin Everything
It doesn't feel like it. It feels like politics has bled into everything.
Let's review some of the biggest Sports stories in 2018, shall we?
NFL
The Philadelphia Eagles won Super Bowl in February.
Eagles' visit to White House canceled over national anthem dispute
White House cancels Philadelphia Eagles' visit
Let's not wade into that morass. Let's keep moving.
NBA
The Golden State Warriors will win the NBA Finals this week (as early as tonight).
LeBron won't visit White House
Neither will Golden State
Both teams declined invitations before the Finals ended and before they were invited.
NHL
The Washington (D.C.) Capital won the Stanley Cup this week.
Trump congratulates 'superstar' Ovechkin for making 'D.C. poppin' with Caps success
Let's dwell on hockey for a few moments. I'm a fan of Alexander Ovechkin and his 101 mile per hour slap shot. But in a year where the Russians won the Olympics, an Ovechkin led Capitals' team bereft of American talent (except for American Standouts TJ Oshie and John Carlson), isn't quite the same as an NBA team with 80-90% American citizens. (Don't forget, the Cavs' Tristan Thompson is Canadian.) Comparing the NHL to the NBA is really apples and oranges. All I'm saying is that the optics of Trump praising Putin friend Alexander Ovechkin isn't great.
MLB
The Houston Astros won the World Series last November.
Players of all colors and creeds visited the White House. A few abstained from the visit, most notably Carlos Beltran. Let me tell you why Carlos Beltran was right to abstain on behalf of Puerto Rico.
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Back in 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Southern Coast of the United States. The Hurricane quickly overwhelmed the local government of New Orleans, the state government of Louisiana, and then the federal government under George W. Bush. As the dominos fell from the smallest government responders, to the largest, my argument was, and still is, Bush should have known that Katrina was a disaster in the making. Any direct hit to New Orleans would have been catastrophic since New Orleans was, more or less, under sea level. That was not a secret, I read multiple articles about that fact before 2005. And not in obscure Science Journals, but in places like National Geographic. As the Republican President, he blamed the Democrat local governments and the local government blamed Bush. Bush didn't cause the hurricane, but he was slow to react when the devastation occurred. That is not revisionist history, the people of New Orleans were sounding the hurricane alarm years ahead of time.
Likewise, in 2017, back to back catastrophic hurricanes hit the island of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was mired in debt and government mismanagement and it had voted to become a state just 2 short months before the hurricanes hit, begging the government of the United States to help them out of their problems. When Irma hit, it rattled Puerto Rico, then Maria hit 2 weeks later and devastated the entire islands' infrastructure. The longest blackout in American History is related to Maria.
Then this story popped up on my news feed while I was working on this article:
Trump must answer for the deaths of thousands in Puerto Rico - From a newspaper in Great Britain.
Today.
All this gibberish about golfing and porn stars and fake news and kneeling are all just noise. The greatest failure of the Trump Presidency (thus far) was the federal response to Hurricane Maria. Trump knew the Puerto Rican government was a mess before the hurricanes even struck and he should have known that they couldn't handle a catastrophic event. Puerto Rico continues to reel from the events of 2017.
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