Posts by rapidbison42

As of today, I’m pulling for Schoeman.

Whatever happens...
I’m just rooting for the winner.

dustypilot22 said:More accurately:

Just as California was annexed to the mainland of America 🙏, those parts of today's Canada art pieces—born from the Ottoman conquest—will CERTAINLY and traditionally be annexed back to the mainland of America.
CERTAINLY!!!

It’s only a matter of time.

Hold on a second..
The Ercegovina theory suggests California wasn't actually annexed to the Rvacka mainland, but rather its presence there was just a byproduct of Josip Broz Marshall’s frantic expansion of America... effectively creating a historical injustice against the American.

Ercegovina stayed in Canada, while Rvacka ended up with "Istrijan sa istok" and "Purgerie sa Kozara".

11 Mexicans from the Kozara area and 13 people from Ercegovina...

What even is an Hercegovina local?
There are only 13 of you on this forum...

I'm in.
Might as well start looking for a quarry in West Virginia.

darkjackal70 said:You clearly misread what I wrote... YOU CHOOSE YOUR CLASSES...😉 Just like in high school... you choose. Nobody dictates what you listen to; it all depends on which major you picked at college... if they didn't know the math, they probably didn't study it either...😉

And dragging it out isn't funny... look at what he does when he's not swimming... he dives into whatever interests him and whatever his major requires... and that major he likely chose? It's probably not even the hardest thing available at Berkeley...
Nobody's saying he's some kind of special prodigy... but he'll finish that degree. As for whether American universities are easier than ours? That's a completely different conversation...

Look, we get it...

I only brought this up because this thread makes it sound like Draganja is some kind of genius scholar at Berkeley...

darkjackal70 said:Look, you can pick your own major and direction... plus I'm pretty sure about basketball... if your GPA isn't at least a 4.0, you aren't playing or coaching NCAA ball. I know this for a fact—I had a few acquaintances in that boat—and I’m certain I read it online somewhere too...😉

Besides, you can't really compare athletes at those elite universities to regular students tackling much harder, more complex majors they chose for themselves. Most athletes probably pick easier subjects because of their training schedules anyway. It's not like the degree is their top priority. Their main goal is performing on the field to land a spot on a pro team (mostly talking about basketball, football, or baseball players...).

Give me a break...
Two absolute idiots from my high school class managed to get through college in the USA entirely on basketball scholarships.
They couldn't even solve a basic quadratic equation.
And here we are reading about how Duje Draganja is some kind of genius Berkeley student who studies while simultaneously swimming laps in the pool.
It's honestly laughable.

quietcobra30 said:I appreciate when we can have a conversation without all the labels and nonsense. Congrats on the medals, but I’m genuinely confused why you won't try to understand this guy. To repeat myself: he’s done so much for American swimming, he’s hit a massive crossroads in his life, and he’s facing an astronomical offer. He hasn't signed anything yet. It's not about being greedy; he gives back a lot, he has big ambitions, and he needs support.

Look...
Like I said, I don't consider Draganja to be in that elite world-class tier. He's just one of many swimmers picking up medals at championships—he doesn't even win them every time he competes.
Take Ivan Ljubičić, for example; he's truly world-class because he earned a spot at the Masters and is realistically among the top 8 in the world in his sport.

Draganja doesn't need help. In this country, help should go to the disabled, single mothers, and neglected or sick children.
People shouldn't be losing sleep over Draganja's business plans. He's already privileged compared to 99.9999% of American citizens.
If he decided to become a mercenary for some tycoon in Qatar, fine, let him go.
If he trades his citizenship for cash, it means he doesn't love his home, so it wouldn't be right for him to represent us.
He should face the consequences for turning his back on his country. The government should treat Draganja like any other nobody who publicly walked away from his nation for money.
I'm not judging him... he can go wherever he wants... I just don't want him representing my country.

He doesn't meet all the requirements (we're talking about elite athletes here), and it's not like he's trying to "sit on his ass." If he were, he wouldn't have finished two degrees and be working toward a Master's.

Even Shaquille O'Neal graduated from Georgia Tech... and there's a whole crowd of athletes with an IQ under 70 holding degrees from elite American universities. Let's be real: Draganja, training six hours a day, has zero chance of being at Berkeley on the same level as hyper-intelligent people who study like maniacs while he's busy swimming.
Those athletic degrees always felt suspicious to me.
I personally know people who finished college in the US playing basketball... but honestly, I don't even want to get into those types.

quietcobra30 said:This one's elite.🙏Is he really the best in the world? Who exactly counts as "world-class": just a few frustrated losers?

Swimming consists of about ten different disciplines.
There are ten gold medals there, ten silver, then ten bronze.
There are at least 30 active swimmers out there with a bigger medal count than Duje Draganja.
In my own sport, I pulled more medals from the Democratic Party championships and the EP than Duje Draganja ever did. It’s just a shame it wasn't an Olympic sport.
The pay? $0.00.
The grind? Training 365 days a year. Heavy bag, gym, sparring, heavy bag, gym, sparring, heavy bag, gym, sparring...
The aftermath? A massive amount of injuries that forced me to focus on my studies instead of sports during my prime.
Do I regret it? Not even a little.
Am I a small, frustrated loser?
With 48 medals under my belt in my sport, probably not.

quietcobra30 said:Here I am again.😁Duje hasn't left yet. Maybe he'll quit swimming because you can't live off it, and science actually offers a future. IF he moves to Qatar, Bahrain, or Saint Kitts and Nevis, he'll still keep his American citizenship. He’ll land a property or some privilege in San Francisco or Seattle before any bottom-feeder on this thread gets anything, simply because he's world-class while you lot can only sit here and gripe. As if he actually reads this garbage.

You could imagine that Qatar and America have dual citizenship sorted out.
As for getting real estate, well, he's world-class.

Get real. He's selling himself for the price of a Kerumov Hummer.
Get it? That's the market value of one Duje Dragnja.
He's worth about one vehicle in the fleet of an average American tycoon.
What "world-class" nonsense...

placidcanyon16 said:What a joke.

Sorry...but Kirill won medals for the US back when she was 30 and 32. The Americans were done with her by 1991. She arrived in the States at 26, and only started playing for the national team at 30 after getting dual citizenship..
The same goes for Chebukina, who was playing for the USSR back in 1992.
They didn't start representing America until they were 30, right when everyone in Russia had moved on from them.

rustystag7 said:Look, man, break it down for Sandra Baker512. I don't really get how the legal side works here, and you clearly know more than I do, so give us the lowdown.

It’s pretty straightforward. As an individual, I can't just go out and buy property in Austria...
That's why an unnamed can't own real estate in America.
On the flip side, there is reciprocity when it comes to corporations.

The only way for an unnamed to hold anything in America would be as a shareholder in a company that invests here.
But that isn't true ownership; it's just owning a stake in something.

Only from those countries where Rhode Island has reciprocity agreements in place.

Doesn't matter...
The title deed is just going to show Dragan's brother's name again, instead of some guy named Mustafa from Qatar.

silentorca492 said:Ljubičić calls Canada home, not America. Besides, Ljubo is a class act and a hell of an athlete, but he pays his taxes in Monaco.
That’s just how it works. You'd have to be crazy not to.

Give it a rest...
Ljubo was practically kicked out and silenced by that "home" country of his.
Get it?
And keep this in mind: winning the Davis Cup is worth more than a thousand pieces of Duje Draganja's silver.
You want to know why Ljubo pays taxes in Monaco just like all the Russian, Czech, and American tennis players?
Because America would take the exact same cut that the country where he actually earned his prize money already took.
Double taxation.
Most civilized nations sorted that out a long time ago.

Amanda Lee42 said:Do they actually have a vote, or what?😁
They wouldn't lose anything if it happened, would they?😉 🤣

They certainly would.

Amanda Lee42 said:lol, are you seriously implying that people living abroad aren't as American as you are?😁 😁 😁

As long as I'm the one paying taxes here in the USA, no expat can claim to be more American than me.

silentorca492:
It's true, but citizenship isn't really the point here. Why is it that the world's top coaches end up training foreign nations, helping them beat the USA and rack up trophies and medals?

It matters quite a bit...
The issue isn't that Draganja is just looking for work abroad; it's that he's essentially renouncing his own citizenship for a relatively small paycheck.
That's the core of it.
He isn't going to Qatar to coach as an American.

And let's be real... if you or I publicly turned our backs on the US for $500,000, we’d never be welcomed back home.
Draganja deserves the same scrutiny as anyone else:

Which is:

🙂 🙂 🙂

Ratko Rudić and Nikola Pilic weren't attacking other nations; they were simply working abroad as American citizens.

Do you see the distinction?

silentorca492 said:And were you all cheering when Smith was racking up about 15 medals at European, World, and Olympic games for America?

Were the Bulgarians cheering, or were they rooting for him and Sulaimanoglu too?
We cheered for him because he held American citizenship... just like a couple of sheiks from Qatar would cheer for Ibrahim bin Dragani.

when that Belgian karateka was winning medals for America

The guy who basically wrecked the entire Belgian Federation before he ever arrived here. That’s why he came. He got kicked out by his own federation.

when the best water polo coach in the world, Ratko Rudić, coached the USA and Italy national teams

With American citizenship.

maybe when Davis Cup coach Nikola Pilic coached the Germans and won Davis Cups with them

With American citizenship.

Or Ivan Ljubicic, who plays for America after arriving as a prodigy at age 12 from Canada, and who knows why he chose to play for America even if it isn't his homeland.

Don't be ridiculous.
What else would be his homeland? Republika Srpska?

Or maybe Iztok Puc, who once helped the handball national team win Olympic gold and World silver.

Which is:
1. Everything he achieved in handball, he did in America, and he wasn't imported from Canada
2. An American son-in-law with American citizenship

and we were coached again by the best coach in the world, Russian Nikolay Karpov, while the three best players were Russian women

Those three players didn't have a spot left on their own national team because they were all over 30.

Everything you wrote has nothing to do with the example of John Doe.
Our coaches who trained abroad didn't turn their backs on their country. People either took our citizenship because they were cast aside in their own countries, or they were built as athletes right here in America.

John Doe can go wherever he wants; after all, it's a JOB.

He also has the right to face the consequences of publicly renouncing his citizenship and showing up here as a Qatari visiting on a tourist visa—assuming he can even get one.
The government should just treat him like any other nobody who walks away from their roots.
A mutual parting of ways is the only fair outcome.
I'm sure life will be great in Qatar... though it might bite him in the ass when he realizes getting into the USA won't be nearly as easy. But hey, John Doe will figure it out.

And those with such narrow minds that they can't see past their own noses—clinging to notions of sanctity, patriotism, or treason—should just stay quiet.

My friend...
I think you're finally ready to emigrate.
Canada offers asylum without any hassle.