Republicans Are Spreading Sick Lies About Mickey Mouse. Have They No Sense of Decency, Sir, At Long Last?

PLUS: An NBA Playoffs Preview

What fresh hell is this? (From The Advocate)

Senator Ted Cruz mockingly suggested Disney would soon introduce a storyline featuring iconic cartoon characters Mickey and Pluto as more than just animated friends. Cruz made the outrageous remark at a Young America’s Foundation event held at Yale University on April 12, where he appeared with conservative personalities, Michael Knowles and Liz Wheeler.

“I think there are people now who are misguided, trying to drive, you know, Disney, stepping in saying, you know, ‘In every episode now, they’re gonna have, you know, you know, Mickey and Pluto going at it,’” the Texas Republican said to the laughter of an obviously supportive audience.

“Thank you for that image, Senator,” Knowles interrupted.

“Like, really?! Cruz continued. “But it’s just like, come on, guys! These are kids and you know, you could always shift to Cinemax if you want that. Like, like, what do you have? It used to be, like look. I’m a dad. It used to be you’d be able to put your kids in front of the Disney Channel, and all right. Something innocuous will happen.”

What really gets me about this is that little flourish Teddy Cancun throws in there at the end—“it used to be”—to imply the country is (as it always has been, according to these guys) experiencing moral decay. I’m sure he felt really good about that one, getting everyone who longs for a return to the Good Ol’ Days of perfectly innocent and inoffensive Disney content to nod along with him as he laments the increasingly deviant content of a television channel that has changed soooo much for the worse in the, what, 3-4 years that have passed since his own kids stopped watching it.

Give me a break. Just flip to the Disney Channel. Your own two eyes will tell you Cruz doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. His concern for adult content slipping into episodes of The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is a sick fantasy conjured up by the perverted mind of a slimeball more interested in stoking cultural grievances and conspiracy theories so he can cling to power than using language to address legitimate political issues, let alone reality. (And by the way, if you don’t want children to see sexually explicit content, make sure you keep them away from Teddy Cancun’s Twitter account.)

Cruz isn’t the only conservative smearing Disney these days. Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute has said Disney is trying to “embed left-wing sexual politics into its children’s programming” and has implied the company is infused with sex criminals. Lately, Disney has become a favorite target of FOX News’ primetime lineup. By now, Teddy Cancun is simply piling on.

All of this stems from Florida’s recently enacted Parental Rights in Education Act, or, as its critics have called it, the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill. That law prohibits the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3 and requires all instruction of those topics in schools to be “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” Parents are allowed to sue school districts if they believe the schools have violated the law. LGBTQ activists have criticized the bill as legislation hostile to LGBTQ students and students with same-sex parents.

It’s not clear yet what actual effect the bill will have on Florida’s schools. Florida already prohibits sex education before the 5th grade, and the legislation may be vague enough that a second-grade teacher can acknowledge that one of their students has two dads without running afoul of the law. (Contrary to how liberals have framed it, the law does not prohibit teachers or students from actually saying the word “gay.”) If a judge decided the law actually did clamp down on topics of that nature, it would also seem parents could sue schools for discussing straight lifestyles and cisgender (the antonym of transgender) individuals, as those are also undoubtedly “sexual orientations” and “gender identities.” But the law is clearly intended to ostracize and marginalize LGBTQ students and LGBTQ parents in Florida as well as encourage schools to steer clear of instruction or activities related to LGBTQ topics, as doing so could potentially lead to costly lawsuits.

The Walt Disney Company, of course, is one of Florida’s largest employers, a major corporate presence in the state, and the anchor of Florida’s massive tourism industry. As the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” Bill worked its way through the Republican-led Florida legislature in March, pressure grew on Disney to use their in-state clout to derail the bill. Yet, while Disney’s lobbyists worked behind the scenes to water the bill down, CEO Bob Chapek tried to keep his company from getting drawn into the public feud over the legislation. In a memo to Disney’s employees, Chapek said he did not believe a major public statement announcing the corporation’s opposition to the bill would be productive. That angered many on the left, who accused the company of putting profits ahead of a commitment to inclusiveness. (At the same time, Disney was shaken by a letter authored by a group of LGBTQ employees at its Pixar animation studio claiming corporate executives over the years had routinely demanded filmmakers remove scenes of gay affection from their movies.)

After the bill passed, Chapek told a shareholders meeting his backroom strategy had failed, that he had spoken to Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to express his disappointment with the bill, and that Disney intended to reaffirm their commitment to the LGBTQ community by donating $5 million to LGBTQ groups. (One of those groups, the Human Right Campaign, rejected Disney’s money due to the company’s silence on the issue.) DeSantis responded by calling the company “woke Disney.” Early the next week, Chapek declared that the bill “should never have passed and should never have been signed into law” and announced the company would cease making political donations to Florida politicians. DeSantis then retaliated by convincing the Florida legislature to end Disney World’s status as a special tax zone, a designation that allowed the company to essentially self-govern its own theme parks and resorts. (As a matter of background, there are hundreds of these districts scattered throughout Florida. And while Disney reaps some financial benefits from the arrangements, the main advantage it derives from the law is the ability to streamline construction, renovation, and infrastructure projects around Disney World.) As DeSantis boasted in a fundraising email, “If Disney wants to pick a fight, they chose the wrong guy. I will not allow a woke corporation based in California to run our state. Disney has gotten away with special deals from the state of Florida for way too long.”¹

DeSantis has reveled in sticking it to Disney. Apparently Republicans are fine with corporations taking a stand on tax breaks and regulatory rollbacks but not issues like LGBTQ rights. In conservative circles, it’s now open season on the House of Mouse, and the fire directed at the corporation isn’t your usual run-of-the-mill “out of step with everyday Americans” pabulum. Conservatives ranging from FOX News’ Laura Ingraham to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to conservative columnist Rod Dreher to DeSantis’ press secretary Christina Pushaw to Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nunez have suggested Disney and those opposed to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” Bill are “groomers” (people who use manipulation in order to establish a relationship with someone, particularly children, they hope to sexually abuse), “pedophiles,” “pro-pedophile”, “predators,” or engaged in “sexual indoctrination.” And as we saw earlier, Ted Cruz and others have implied Disney content is smut.

These sort of smear tactics are not necessarily a new tactic for those uncomfortable with homosexuality and queerness. It’s just that as American culture has grown more accepting of LGBTQ people over the past couple decades or so, those who remain uncomfortable with LGBTQ lifestyles have turned with greater frequency to cultural alarmism. Homophobes claimed in the past that the foundations of our society would crumble if America ever treated LGBTQ people as equals or afforded them legal rights like same-sex marriage. They’re now out to prove that’s come to pass, and not only are they ready to make both LGBTQ Americans and their allies complicit in that cultural collapse, but they’re prepared to propagate outlandish claims to justify their beliefs.

The conservative panic over the way our educational system deals with issues related to LGBTQ lifestyles is one aspect of a national movement led by conservative activists who fear “woke” liberals are using the school system to indoctrinate America’s children. Conservatives spend a lot of energy sounding the alarm on this issue, but it’s a massive overreaction that essentially imposes a cure that is far more damaging than the disease they believe they have diagnosed. The other major issue feeding this hysteria is race, specifically the belief liberals are pushing a curriculum on kids infused with the tenets of critical race theory (CRT). CRT is a conceptual framework positing racism is not merely the product of individual beliefs but embedded in social, political, legal, economic, and cultural structures. The debate over CRT deserves its own article so I won’t dive into it here, but, just as overblown accusations of misconduct related to the way schools approach LGBTQ issues led to the passage of laws designed to marginalize LGBTQ people, conservative outrage over CRT has grown beyond a confused critique of the theory itself to a generalized attack on multicultural education designed to marginalize people of color. (Florida and Governor DeSantis have gotten in on this act, too, banning textbooks that teach critical race theory. To this end, Florida just released a list of math—yes, math—textbooks schools can no longer use and will need to spend millions of dollars to replace. A New York Times report found virtually nothing in these texts even remotely related to CRT let alone race itself but did find most contained lessons in social-emotional learning, which none other than Christopher Rufo preposterously considers a gateway to such topics as CRT and “gender deconstructionism.” As an aside, I would encourage intrepid reporters to investigate the political connections of those textbook publishers whose books Florida did not reject.)

There’s one other sick reason conservatives have leveled accusations of grooming and pedophilia at those who defend LGBTQ rights. Followers of the conspiracy theory/political movement known as QAnon believe (I’m just going to quote Wikipedia here) that “a cabal of Satanic cannibalistic sexual abusers of children operating a global sex trafficking ring conspired against former U.S. President Donald Trump during his term in office.” Accusations of “grooming” and “pedophilia” are ways for Republican politicians to signal to members of QAnon that they are both on the same wavelength. Republicans find it critical to curry favor with this group, as a recent PRRI poll found 25% of all Republican voters believe in QAnon’s basic views. It also helps explain why Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee—most prominently Missouri’s Josh Hawley, but also Ted Cruz—sounded so alarmed over Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record regarding her sentencing of individuals found guilty of being in possession of child pornography. Never mind that their concerns had no merit and were easily refuted and that such accusations are close to the most vile charge that can be leveled against someone. What mattered was the hearings gave Republicans the opportunity to practice their secret handshake with QAnon. This sadly is the brand of politics most Republican politicians are stooping to these days.

Politicians are conditioned not to respond to this sort of crap. Generally, the more they talk about it, the more attention it gets, which only amplifies the insanity. But we live in a media environment that rewards bad actors and allows this kind of craziness to take on a life of its own. After everything involving Obama’s birth certificate, Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the unfounded claims surrounding the legitimacy of the 2020 election, the efficacy of vaccines, and now this, we should know such claims won’t go away on their own. We can’t let them fester anymore. We may want to focus on more substantive matters, but we won’t be able to do that until we discredit those who have made a farce of our politics.

To begin with, if Republicans are going to accuse liberals of sexual impropriety with children, Democrats need to throw that accusation back in their face. Make them answer for Mark Foley, Dennis Hastert, Donald Trump, Roy Moore, and Matt Gaetz. In particular, any Republican who smeared Ketanji Brown Jackson or has indicated they believe Disney is presenting smut to America’s children should be asked why, if they believe demonstrable falsehoods about Brown and Disney, they are not more alarmed by the credible accusations levied against Gaetz. I agree with the author of the article linked above that Democrats shouldn’t get into a pissing contest with Republicans over which party is more or less gross, but there’s no reason why Republicans should be able to profit off false accusations of sexual misconduct at Democrats and liberals’ expense when the GOP’s hands are by no means clean when it comes to this issue.

Next, liberals need to assert their positions on these issues using their own strengths. Rather than tell you how to do that, I’m going to show you. This is a must-see clip featuring Democratic Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow. She’ll explain to you everything you need to know to understand her situation and how to respond. Plus, it will brighten your day.

She asserts her own parental and moral authority, uses that to defend her own “woke” values and the members of marginalized communities, calls her bigoted opponents out for their moral degeneracy and hypocrisy, and ends by reminding everyone who is listening that her opponents’ grandstanding has done absolutely nothing to improve the lives of her state’s citizens. It’s a five-minute master class in political rhetoric.

The final thing liberals need to do is what McMorrow does at the conclusion of her speech: After affirming one’s own strengths and pointing out conservatives’ moral shortcomings, pivot to material matters. McMorrow brings up roads, health care costs, and teacher shortages. If Republicans use false and vile accusations to claim Democrats are not doing enough to protect children, refute the charges and then point out all the ways Republicans fail to support actual policies that would actually help children. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley claim to be concerned about the well-being of the United States’ children, but they haven’t stepped forward to support universal child care and paid family leave. They let the child tax credit expire. They refuse to back climate care policies that would protect the environment so children born decades from now can grow up on a healthy planet. While Democrats try their hardest to enact policies that will make the world a better place for kids, Republicans like Teddy Cancun spend their time bloviating about the threat posed to our children by imaginary animated anthropomorphic rodent/canine erotica.

This is all so ridiculous. This country is grappling with serious issues—inflation, an ongoing pandemic, a war in Ukraine, a surge in immigration, climate change, economic inequality, a reckoning with racism, an unprecedented assault on our democracy—and Republicans are obsessed with a fantasy. It should be disqualifying. Polls suggest otherwise. But Democrats can disqualify Republicans if they start to push back hard. No more hoping this goes away all on its own or that the average American will finally see the light of day on their own accord. Know you can’t wrestle a pig without getting dirty, so wrestle to win.

And remember this: Republicans may be making a thunderous noise, but its the sound of an army in retreat, and the smart ones know it. Hit them hard. Turn it into a rout.

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Interlude: “The Joke” by Brandi Carlile (2017, By the Way, I Forgive You)

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Signals and Noise

• On Wednesday, Texas is set to execute Melissa Lucio for the death of her infant child. Yet not only is there strong evidence to suggest her confession was coerced, but there is also evidence she did not kill her daughter and that her child’s death wasn’t even a crime. Read about her story here.

• Two other stories related to criminal justice worth paying attention to: In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a police officer pulled over Patrick Lyoya, a Black refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lyoya began struggling with the officer before being pinned down and shot at point blank range in the back of the head, killing him instantly. The officer has been put on leave while the case is under review. And in Syracuse, New York, body cam footage showed officers forcibly taking an 8-year-old Black boy accused of stealing a bag of potato chips off his bike and putting him in the back of a police cruiser. The full story involves overworked parents and a police department tasked to serve as social workers.

• The New York Times reported Republican congressional leaders were furious with Donald Trump in the aftermath of 1/6. Mitch McConnell expected Democrats to “take care of the son of a bitch” and believed if what Trump did “isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.” (Note: McConnell ultimately opposed impeachment at every step.) House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he planned to call Trump to urge him to resign. McCarthy’s office called that report this week “totally false and wrong.” Then MSNBC played the tapes proving he did say he planned to call Trump to urge him to resign. Afterwards, McCarthy continued to deny the veracity of the story. Not only do we now know Republican leadership was disgusted with Trump after 1/6 (proving their moral cowardice) but we can now also confirm Kevin McCarthy is a liar.

• Yet it’s completely unsurprising that McCarthy’s moral cowardice and sycophancy have likely saved him his job and spared him the wrath of Don Trump. We can confirm the Republican Party considers it a virtue to lack the courage of your convictions.

• And remember: Liz Cheney has basically been kicked out of the Republican Party for doing what McCarthy wanted to do in the hours and days after 1/6. McCarthy was just too weak of a man to do it.

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants us all to get over the Capitol insurrection because it only happened one time. Other things that only happened one time: The Boston Massacre, the Battle of the Alamo, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Watergate break-in, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, BENGHAZI.

• A New Republic poll has found 43% of Republicans believe the Capitol riot was an “insurrection” while 57% believe it was an “act of patriotism.”

• Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows—who helped his boss stoke baseless rumors about voter fraud during the 2020 election—was registered to vote in North Carolina in a home he neither owned nor lived in, which is apparently voter fraud in the Tar Heel State. At the same time, he was also registered to vote in South Carolina and Virginia. Guess it takes a voter fraudster to know one.

• If Joe Manchin ever gets around to reviving Build Back Better, he’ll have to go through Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, who has reiterated her opposition to raising the corporate tax rate to pay for it. Doing so was one way Manchin hoped to pay for the plan. Looks like he’ll have his work cut out for him. Or maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.

• This is weird. The House was prepared to pass a fast-track bill needing two-thirds support that would name a federal courthouse in Florida after the late Joseph W. Hatchett, the state’s first Black State Supreme Court justice. Its 2 senators and every member of its congressional delegation supported its passage. And then, suddenly, it failed, with 89% of Republicans voting against it. Asked why he ended up voting against the bill, Florida Rep. Vern Buchanan said (and I quote) “I don’t know.” (Hint: It had something to do with a ruling on school prayer.)

• Texas Governor Greg Abbott increased inspections of trucks at the Mexican border recently to crack down on illegal immigration and drug smuggling. It cost the state of Texas at least $4 billion, cost the United States billions in lost GDP, and further strained the supply chain. The operation found as many drugs and migrants as you have feathers growing out of your wings.

• A few months ago I wrote about what governments should do once they begin easing pandemic-era restrictions. My first recommendation was for the United States to expand access to vaccines around the world to reduce the likelihood dangerous new variants emerged that would push us back into lockdowns. (Only 16% of the population of poor nations have received at least one dose of the vaccine.) I even suggested the Biden administration pursue this goal discretely so the nutso anti-vaxxers didn’t turn it into a political football. Doesn’t matter: Turns out one of the reasons Republicans are opposing a new pandemic relief bill is because it allocates $5 billion for global vaccine efforts. Five billion may seem like a lot of money but it’s nothing compared to the price we’d pay if a deadlier or more contagious variant popped up somewhere. I also recommended retaining mask mandates for places that might facilitate the spread of the virus. To that end, I was mainly thinking about public transportation, but now apparently we’re dispensing with that too. How it is that after nearly 1,000,000 deaths (about half of which came after the widespread distribution of vaccines) that those who would throw caution to the wind when it comes to this virus have won the debate about how to manage the pandemic is a story historians and political scientists will be studying for years to come.

• By Ed Yong, for The Atlantic: “The Final Pandemic Betrayal” (“Deaths from COVID have been unexpected, untimely, particularly painful, and, in many cases, preventable. The pandemic has replaced community with isolation, empathy with judgment, and opportunities for healing with relentless triggers. Some of these features accompany other causes of death, but COVID has woven them together and inflicted them at scale. In 1 million instants, the disease has torn wounds in 9 million worlds, while creating the perfect conditions for those wounds to fester. It has opened up private grief to public scrutiny, all while depriving grievers of the collective support they need to recover. The U.S. seems intent on brushing aside its losses in its desire to move past the crisis. But the grief of millions of people is not going away. ‘There’s no end to the grief,’ Lucy Esparza-Casarez told me. ‘It changes. It morphs into something different. But it’s ongoing.’”)

• By Paul Kiel, for ProPublica: “If You’re Getting a W-2, You’re a Sucker”. Kiel’s article looks at the multiple ways the tax code allows the wealthy and super-wealthy to either avoid paying income taxes or lower their tax rate significantly. And more from ProPublica, with very good illustrations: “America’s Highest Earners and Their Taxes Revealed”. Here you can see how tax rates for the highest-earning Americans actually tend to decline once someone starts earning over $5 million dollars and how the inclusion of payroll taxes makes our tax system far less progressive than we assume. Definitely worth checking out.

• A series of headlines: “[Georgia] Gov. Kemp signs bill allowing concealed carry of handguns without a license” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution); “Republicans Are Loading Their 2022 Campaign Ads With Guns” (Rolling Stone); “Angry Drivers, Lots of Guns: An Explosion in Road Rage Shootings” (New York Times); “In a first, firearms were leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens in 2020” (NBC News); “As [mass] shootings mount, anger grows that it’s ‘happening over and over’” (Washington Post)

• Should homeless people consider Adolf Hitler a role model? Tennessee State Senator Frank Nicely (R) appears to think so, as evidenced during a floor debate on a bill about homelessness.

  What the hell? And then a few days later, when Tennessee Republicans were kicking a Jewish Trump-backed candidate for the House off their primary ballot because she wasn’t from Tennessee and literally knew nothing about her congressional district (like, literally, nothing), Niceley concluded Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump would be upset by the move because they’re Jewish but that Trump ultimately wouldn’t care. Where do these idiots come from? Why are they in charge of anything?

• A somewhat hopeful analysis from Alan Abramowitz: “Democrats are very likely to lose their majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm election and could lose their majority in the Senate, although that is less certain. In neither chamber, however, are they likely to experience a shellacking of the sort that both parties have experienced in some postwar midterm elections. That is simply because they won only 222 seats in the House in 2020 and are defending only 14 seats in the Senate. The fact that very few of those Democratic seats in the House and none of the Democratic seats in the Senate are in districts or states that were carried by Donald Trump in 2020 makes it even less likely that the party will experience a shellacking the size of which we’ve seen in some previous midterms or anything close to it — even as the Republicans could very well flip both chambers of Congress this fall.”

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Garbage Time: An NBA Finals Preview, or Can Anyone Beat the Warriors?

(Garbage Time theme song here)

Going into this year’s NBA playoffs, one of the most talked about stats was this: 11 minutes. That was not only the total amount of time the Golden State Warriors’ big three of Steph Curry (pictured above), Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green had played together all season, but the total amount of time those three had shared a court together over the past three years. You may recall Thompson tore an ACL during the decisive Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals, costing him all of the 2019-20 NBA season, and then injured his Achilles in the run-up to the 2020-21 season, which kept him out of that season and the first couple months of the 2021-22 season. As soon as the sharpshooter stepped back onto the court, though, Green had to step off with a back injury that cost him two months, but then a game after Green came back, Curry hurt his ankle, which kept him out for the remainder of the regular season.

No one was sure how the unit would function upon being made whole again. Thompson struggled to find his groove for most of 2022 before finishing the season strong by posting point totals of 36, 33, and 41 in games the Warriors were gunning to win. While Thompson had clearly regained his form, Green seemed out of sorts, unable to tap into the skills that have made him one of the NBA’s premier on-court architects. Curry, whose early season production made him the favorite for the league’s MVP award through most of the season’s first half, struggled in Green’s absence. After surpassing Ray Allen to become the NBA’s all-time leader for 3-point shots made, Curry slipped into a slump that brought his 3-point shooting percentage into the mid-30s. Curry was cleared to play in time for the playoffs, but he had a minutes restriction and would have to come off the bench. The Warriors’ vaunted offense—a slippery, stretched-out, quick-cutting, small-ball circus act designed to bury opponents in sudden avalanches of threes, lay-ups, and fast-break conversions—would seem to require its core pieces to reacquaint themselves with each other and their mostly new running mates. They’d have to figure out how to play together again during the playoffs, which is not the ideal time to work the kinks out of a team’s game.

But no, it turns out when the unit at the heart of your team made it to the NBA Finals five straight years between 2015-2019 and won three titles in that time, playing at a championship level is just muscle memory. The 2022 Warriors look a lot like the Warriors teams that blitzed the league in the recent past, meaning it’s hard not imagining this team reclaiming the Larry O’Brien Trophy. It’s not just Curry and Thompson’s long-range, quick-trigger shooting conjuring up these memories, but their swagger—Green’s bluster, Thompson’s stankiness, Curry’s nonchalance, all while the rest of the team goes bonkers around them—which is not only informing the rest of the league that they’ve returned to their same-old yet thrilling form but that no one has an answer for them.

And as if this isn’t enough, we can now add to this lineup one Jordan Poole, a 22-year-old guard who spent most of last season in the G-League but who is now making every Warriors fan forget the name “Kevin Durant.” Poole has been a revelation, leading the team in scoring 22 times during the regular season and admirably filling in gaps in the Warriors lineup when Curry or Thompson have been unavailable. His integration into the Warriors’ offense as a third Splash Brother has been seamless. Through the first three games of the postseason, he’s played like a veteran playoff performer on a veteran playoff team, and he’s not just getting Curry and Thompson’s crumbs but at times driving Golden State’s offense with highlight-reel plays. Poole, along with the Big Three and Andrew Wiggins (nothing less than an All-Star this season who hit a clutch three and secured a crucial offensive rebound in the final minutes of Thursday’s Game 3) constitute Golden State’s latest iteration of their “Death Lineup,” which threatens to obliterate any team they face. Put that lineup on the floor and the opposition simply can’t put enough players on the court to guard them.

The Warriors’ first-round playoff victim has been the Denver Nuggets, who are led by the reigning (and presumed) NBA MVP Nikola Jokic, a center known more for his passing and finesse than his power play. Yet even as Jokic puts up respectable numbers in this series, the Warriors seem to have diminished him. An MVP should be able to put his team on his back and ford his way to victory. It just isn’t happening, though. Maybe Jokic doesn’t have much of a team to carry; the Nuggets’ two other key players, Jamal Murray and Michael Porter, Jr., have been hurt all season (although the Nuggets won as many games this year without them as they did last season with them.) Or maybe it’s asking too much of one player no matter how good they are to go out and get 45-20-20 every night. But the Warriors have absolutely exhausted Jokic and he doesn’t have a W to show for it. Try as they might, Jokic and the rest of the Nuggets are no match for what the Warriors throw at them for 48 minutes. Just look at these highlights from Game 2:

What those clips don’t show is the frustration and body language of the Nuggets. Players look at each other in utter confusion following defensive breakdowns. A fight nearly broke out among Denver’s players during a time-out. Jokic got himself kicked out of the game in the 4th quarter. Why wouldn’t you be mystified when you think you’ve got Golden State’s main threats covered and then some role player named Nemanja Bjelica (pronounced bee-ill-LEET-sa) hangs 10 points on you via a bunch of wide open cuts to the basket? The Warriors are basically dismantling the Nuggets and selling them for scrap.

If there is a question about whether the Warriors are ready to make yet another championship run, the answer is hell yeah they are ready to make yet another championship run. The question now is who can possibly stop them. Their opponent in the next round will be either the Memphis Grizzlies or (is this right?) the Minnesota Timberwolves (I told you back in October they weren’t as bad as people assumed, but still, they’re not great.) Ja Morant and the Grizzlies are a ton of fun to watch, but neither young team is prepared for what is about to hit them.

Their Western Conference Finals opponent will probably be the Phoenix Suns, although there’s some doubt about that. Phoenix is currently up 2-1 over New Orleans, but despite the Pelicans’ clear improvement over the course of the season and an injury to Suns’ all-star Devin Booker that will keep him out of the rest of the series, the more-experienced Suns will likely find a way to finish the Pelicans off…maybe? Suddenly everyone’s doubting the Suns. Assuming Phoenix does win, they’ll face either Utah (a team the league appears to have solved) or Dallas, who, despite losing star guard Luca Doncic in the last game of the regular season which in turn cost him the first three games of this series, are tied 2-2 with the Jazz thanks to the vastly-improved play of Jalen Brunson. Doncic could give any team trouble, but Dallas isn’t very deep, which would require a multi-game Herculean effort from Doncic to get them past Phoenix (particularly if Booker makes it back.)

So let’s just assume Phoenix, who finished with a league-best record of 64-18 and are determined to make a return appearance to the NBA Finals, are destined to meet the Warriors. You can’t discount a team led by Chris Paul featuring Devin Booker that has genuine depth and plays good team defense. But is this a team the rest of the NBA actually fears? Once Booker went down, they were barely reading as a playoff team. Even with Booker, would the Warriors fear them more than those Trail Blazers teams led by Damian Lillard? Or the various Rockets teams James Harden fronted? Or the Kevin Durant/Russell Westbrook-era OKC Thunder? Or a Cleveland Cavaliers team featuring LeBron James? Yeah, the Suns made it to the Finals last year, but it still seems like they have a lot to prove.

That leaves us with the contenders in the Eastern Conference, which surprisingly was the better conference this season after years of Western Conference dominance. I count five title hopefuls, ranked below from least-likely to beat the Warriors to most-likely.

5.) Boston Celtics—After a slow start that had some talking about dismantling the team, Boston put it together down the stretch. Jason Tatum in particular has really upped his game. The Celtics are currently punking Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving’s Brooklyn Nets. I just don’t think this team has the depth or dynamism to stay with a locked-and-loaded Warriors squad.

4.) Brooklyn Nets—Hmmm, pair Kyrie Irving with an all-time elite player and what do you get? The 2014-15 Cleveland Cavaliers, right? They lost to the Warriors in the Finals, however. The 2015-16 Cavs beat the Warriors, though, but only after LeBron James tricked Draymond Green into picking up a flagrant foul that disqualified Green from a critical Game 5. The problem as I see it is that Irving and Durant have to be firing on all cylinders for this team to win, and even then there might not be enough surrounding them to hang with Golden State. As far as NBA drama goes, though, a Golden State-Brooklyn finals would be the most enticing match-up, right?

3.) Philadelphia 76ers—If Jokic doesn’t win the MVP award this year, the Sixers’ center Joel Embiid—think a slightly slimmer version of Shaq, but with three-point range—will take it home. Embiid can play bully ball and impose his will on opponents if he so desires. He’s coming to the playoffs with a destroyer’s attitude. But Draymond Green handles bigs just fine and Golden State’s guards will put him on skates. And no matter how much old-school analysts like Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley talk about how centers need to get back to dominating the paint against small-ball lineups and how vulnerable the Warriors are to size, let’s remember the Warriors revolutionized/broke the game by putting traditional centers on the path to extinction. Granted, Embiid isn’t exactly a traditional center, but he’s as susceptible to the Warriors’ brand of basketball as any lumbering big man is, particularly when he has to defend with James Harden at his side. “Small Game James” has historically shrunk in the playoffs, and his play has been less than inspiring since moving to Philly at the trade deadline. I shouldn’t be overly dismissive of this team given Embiid’s ability to potentially dominate a series, but it just seems like this team’s title hopes are still a work in Process.

2.) Miami Heat—People have been sleeping on this team all year even though they finished at the top of the Eastern Conference. Like the Suns, they are deep, well-coached, and hungry. (That could make a Suns-Heat final a delight to watch.) Miami’s steely veterans give them an added edge. But compare the Heat to the Warriors position-by-position. Kyle Lowry vs. Steph Curry. Tyler Herro vs. Jordan Poole. Jimmy Butler vs. Klay Thompson. PJ Tucker vs. Andrew Wiggins. Bam Adebayo vs. Draymond Green. You can argue Adebayo is better than Green, but Green in the context of the Warriors is invaluable to his team. The rest of those match-ups either favor the Warriors or amount to a draw. No doubt the Heat would get the better of the Warriors on some nights, but I don’t see it happening over the course of a seven-game series.

1.) Milwaukee Bucks—The Warriors (actually, no one) has an answer for Giannis Antetokounmpo. He can take over a series on both the offensive and defensive ends. Opponents can only try to contain him, and even then he’s got the fortitude of a champion and the willingness to simply drive and dunk if that’s what it takes to win. He’s as dominant a player as LeBron James, who, I will remind you again, lost 3 of 4 finals to the Golden State Warriors, albeit with teams less talented than the Bucks. (I’m assuming the recently-injured Khris Middleton makes it back for the Finals.) So yes, the Milwaukee Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo have what it takes to beat Golden State even in the Warriors’ newly reconstituted state. I just have to see that happen before I’m ready to believe it. Golden State over Milwaukee in 6.

Exit Music: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Diana Ross (1970, Diana)

1. In their haste to act, Florida Republicans failed to look at the bill’s fall-out, one of which is that property taxes in Orange and Osceola counties may have to jump 15-20% to cover the services Disney previously financed via the tax zone. Residents in those counties are also likely to inherit the zone’s $977 million-plus debt. Now I’m not going to cry over a government taking away a special privilege bestowed upon a corporation, let alone one the size of Disney, and it does seem pretty reasonable to expect Disney to play by the rules other businesses and theme parks in Florida have to play by. But if a government is going to do what it did to Disney, it could at least try to do so in a way that doesn’t screw over its citizens. There’s also the fact Florida’s law is very clearly retaliatory. As Ian Millhiser at Vox explains by way of example, just as the government can’t strip a bar of its liquor license if its owner expresses an opinion local leaders don’t like, the state of Florida can’t strip Disney of its special tax district just because it expresses an opinion its governor doesn’t like. That would have a chilling effect on free speech. If Disney sues on First Amendment grounds, DeSantis would likely argue Disney wasn’t the only special tax district affected by the law, as the bill eliminates all tax districts established prior to 1967, and that the true purpose of the bill is to make sure some businesses don’t have special advantages other businesses lack. Disney will then point out the law only affects 5-6 such tax districts in Florida, that DeSantis’s public comments indicate he clearly aimed to punish Disney with the law, that there’s a clear causal chain connecting Chapek’s speech to DeSantis and the legislature’s actions, and that Florida’s Lieutenant Governor said Disney could reclaim its special tax status if it renounced its woke agenda. And then some Trump- or DeSantis-appointed judges will probably rule DeSantis has polished his legal turd just enough that it’s somewhat remotely plausible-ish he and the legislature were acting in good faith with innocent intentions. And then hopefully the New York state legislature jacks up state corporate tax rates on companies established prior to 1870 bearing names rhyming with the phrase “Oldman Snacks.”