LyfLines

No hypocrisy here, nosirree...

2012-01-31T14:33:00.001-05:00

Q: What do you call a rich lawyer who supported "big insurance" in its efforts to reduce payments to workers who got cancer from working with asbestos?
A: Democratic "dream candidate" for the Senate!

...the Harvard professor also has a potential deadly political sin in her background. Maybe it is the reason President Obama didn’t nominate her to head up the consumer agency. It is not a secret that his administration believed Lizzy couldn’t survive the Senate confirmation process.

One of the Harvard professor’s many well-compensated part-time gigs included consulting for Travelers Insurance...What did Lizzy do to earn $44,000 in compensation from the insurance company? She made it harder for claimants to collect. Warren helped establish the bankruptcy strategy for companies to avoid crushing lawsuits. In short, go bankrupt to avoid paying victims.

It's amusing how often past activities that would cause shrieks of "principled" outrage on the part of the left if found in a Republican candidate's background produce, if found in a Democrat, the sound of crickets...

Understatement

2012-01-30T09:56:00.000-05:00

College Presidents Alarmed Over Obama's Cost-control Plan

President Obama's new plan to force colleges and universities to contain tuition or face losing federal dollars is raising alarm among education leaders who worry about the threat of government overreach. Particularly sharp words came from the presidents of public universities; they're already frustrated by increasing state budget cuts.

...

At Washington, President Mike Young said Obama showed he did not understand how the budgets of public universities work.

Glenn Reynolds observes that "it’s not at all clear that Obama understands how budgets work in general," but I disagree. I think it's quite clear that he has no understanding of budgeting whatsoever.

A couple of choral introits

2012-01-30T09:32:00.000-05:00

Jesus Christ My Sure Defense - 1/22/2012

Strong Son Of God - 1/29/2012

Spotted on facebook...

2012-01-30T06:36:00.002-05:00

SOTU

2012-01-25T11:27:00.001-05:00

Like Mickey Kaus, I didn't watch the ~~Obama Campaign PrimeTime Spectacular!~~ State of the Union Address last night.

I just finished reading Obama’s State of the Union. Didn’t see it. Reactions: 1) Was it as boring to see as it was to read? Because it is really boring to read.

That last part is sure correct - unlike him, I wasn't able to force myself to even read the whole thing.

"They played a little bit better..."

2012-01-23T09:24:00.000-05:00

According to Ravens QB, "they [the Patriots] played a little bit better." But from where I was sitting, that's not the case. I'm still not sure how the Patriots, with Brady playing poorly (in his own words, he "s*cked pretty bad"), with three turnovers to one takeaway, with no TD passes, settling for three field goals, with the defense unable to stop the Ravens on 3rd down in the second and third quarters, managed to come out of that game yesterday with a win.

But they did. And in two weeks, they'll play in the Super Bowl. Again. Against the Giants. Again.

Odds and ends from yesterday's game:

I think that there's a world of difference between a "drop" and what happened on the Lee Evans play at the end of the game, and people putting Evans on a par with Billy Cundiff - or worse - are underestimating the contribution of Sterling Moore. Yes, Evans did get both hands on the ball and yes, if he held on the Ravens would have won the game. But he never had an opportunity to put the ball away, as the ball was hit by the defender as he was trying to establish control. A little more credit to Moore and less blame to Evans is appropriate than what I've heard and read.
There is no excuse, however, for Cundiff.
Did Terrell Suggs play?
I did not realize, until they talked about it during the game yesterday, that Bernard Pollard was the Houston defender who tackled Wes Welker on the play in 2009 on which Welker tore up his knee. Pollard was, of course, the safety for the Kansas City Chiefs whose low tackle tore up Tom Brady's knee. And then, in the 3rd quarter of yesterday's game, he took down Rob Gronkowski, landing on and twisting his ankle in such a fashion that Gronkowski had to leave the game. Thankfully, he returned. But I don't want to see the Patriots playing against Pollard ever again...
That was a poor performance from the Patriots quarterback yesterday. The biggest surprise from the game may be that they're going to Indianapolis despite Brady, rather than because of him.
It wasn't just the picks. One of the most blatant mistakes came early, as Brady missed Gronkowski for a TD in the first quarter. Instead, they ended up settling for 3, and it affected everything that followed.
He's lucky that walked off the field after his diving sneak TD, when Ray Lewis put his helmet into Brady's spine while he was upside down. (And well after the TD had been scored...)
The best player on the field yesterday may have been Vince Wilfork. The Ravens couldn't block him.

The Giants go on to Indianapolis on the strength of not one but two blown punt returns by the 49ers - a muff in the fourth quarter that led to a NY touchdown, and a fumble in OT that gave NY the ball in field goal position (which they'd shown no likelihood of reaching on their own.)

And the number of replays of the David Tyree helmet catch that we're all going to see over the next two weeks is appalling to contemplate...

Eugenics Rising...

2012-01-18T09:40:00.000-05:00

A couple of different, and very disturbing, recent news stories.

Decision blasts judge’s order to force abortion

In a December hearing, the Department of Mental Health applied for temporary guardianship for the parents of the 32-year-old woman — referred to as “Mary Moe” — to let them consent to an abortion for their daughter, who already had one child currently in their care.

Harms approved guardianship, ruling Moe could be “ ‘coaxed, bribed, or even enticed ... by ruse’ into a hospital where she would be sedated and an abortion performed,” the appellate ruling states. “Additionally ... and without notice, the judge directed that any medical facility that performed the abortion also sterilize Moe at the same time to avoid this painful situation from recurring.”

The decision was overturned by the appeals court, but what if the Judges on that court had agreed?

Three-year old with kidney disease kept off transplant waiting list.

I begin to shake. My whole body trembles and he begins to tell me how she will never be able to get on the waiting list because she is mentally retarded.

A bit of hope. I sit up and get excited.

“Oh, that’s ok! We plan on donating. If we aren’t a match, we come from a large family and someone will donate. We don’t want to be on the list. We will find our own donor.”

“Noooo. She—is—not—eligible –because—of—her—quality– of –life—Because—of—her—mental—delays”

...

“So you mean to tell me that as a doctor, you are not recommending the transplant, and when her kidneys fail in six months to a year, you want me to let her die because she is mentally retarded? There is no other medical reason for her not to have this transplant other than she is MENTALLY RETARDED!”

“Yes.”

Ask yourself this question: If more authority to make medical decisions is transferred from parents to Government officials, does the occurrence of this scenario, or scenarios like it, get more common or less common?

I think we all know the answer¹ to that...

What we call Man's power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by. Again, as regards the powers manifested in the aeroplane or the wireless, Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda. And as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.
- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man²

¹ - In a world of scarcity, there is always going to be conflict over allocation of scarce resources. A donor kidney is obviously a scarce commodity. There are many ways to look at this particular issue, and a long discussion that I don't have the time for at the moment. But there's a surface callousness here that, in conjunction with the Massachusetts story, makes the Lewis take fresh and relevant. Again.

² - And no, I do not scan the internet everyday desperately looking for a story which can, however tenuously, justify quoting The Abolition of Man, or Lewis in general. It was a brilliant and prescient work, clearly articulating the road that society was traveling, and, having read it several times, I'm struck by its foresight frequently...

"Newtering Obama's re-election strategy"

2012-01-18T09:03:00.000-05:00

Milton Wolf has an interesting take on the Bain attacks on Romney from Gingrich and Perry:

President Obama should be very worried by the backlash against these attacks, real or perceived, on free-market capitalism. The White House’s divisive class-warfare strategy of running against free enterprise, against the “1 percent,” was given a test run by Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Perry, and it failed miserably. Not only was Mr. Romney given the opportunity to preview that line of attack and prepare accordingly but, more importantly, the voters soundly rejected it.

Obviously, Republican primary voters do not represent anything like a solid majority of those who will go to the polls in November, but in the long run, I think he's correct - dealing with the attack now, successfully, makes it, if not "old news," at least older news when the President goes negative in the fall.

Which, with no positive record to campaign on and the active aid and comfort of the media-wing of the Democratic Party, he inevitably will...

Online toy

2012-01-17T13:34:00.000-05:00

This Map Tunnelling Tool is very interesting. Want to dig a tunnel through to China? You need to start in Argentina. Or underwater.

What's really interesting is how much of the surface of the earth is covered by water. It's one of those things that you intellectually know, but you don't necessarily realize or visualize from a globe or a map. But almost anywhere on land that you start, if you go straight through, you're coming up in the ocean...

So Why Read Anymore?

2012-01-17T10:36:00.001-05:00

Victor Davis Hanson: So Why Read Anymore?

By nature, our ways of expression and even thinking always fossilize and are withering away with age and monotony — a process accelerated by the modern electronic age and the neglect of replenishment through reading. The actual vocabulary of our present youth seems to me reduced to about 1,000 words or so. “Like,” “whatever,” “you know,” “cool,” and other pop culture fillers now substitute for entire phrases, a sort of modern porcine grunting. The Greeks used particles to accentuate vocabulary and guide syntax; we used them instead of vocabulary. Our syntax, both written and oral, is reverting to “Spot is a dog”: noun, verb, predicate — period. How did incomprehensible slang, spiced with vulgarity, become an object of emulation? I used to listen to farmers without college degrees speak wonderful English; now to listen to a member of Congress almost requires a translator.

Reading alone enriches our vocabulary; it teaches us that good writing requires a sense of melody as well as a command of grammar. Soon those well-read become the well-spoken.

Read it all...

Reaping what has been sown...

2012-01-17T08:16:00.001-05:00

This passage about the Italian cruise ship accident has generated some commentary. (For example, here and here.) Rightfully so...

Fights broke out to get into the lifeboats, men refused to prioritise women, expectant mothers and children as they pushed themselves forward to escape. Crew ignored their passengers – leaving ‘chefs and waiters’ to help out.

In heart-rending footage, recorded on mobile phones, British children could be heard shouting ‘Daddy’ and ‘Mummy’ in the melee.

As she waited for a flight home from Rome, grandmother Sandra Rogers, 62, told the Daily Mail: ‘There was no “women and children first” policy. There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats. It was disgusting.’

It's not, obviously, a laughing matter. On the other hand, in a world in which men have been belittled and ridiculed for any and all characteristics that are stereotypically (that is to say, fundamentally, "male"), where we are constantly harangued and hectored to believe that any differences between men and women are just "societally imposed gender constructs," a world in which fathers are considered irrelevant and marriage is simply about tax breaks for sexual partners, what reason is there for a man to step aside and let the women and children have the lifeboats? The "women and children first" mentality is part of a moral code that has been relentlessly attacked in by the post-modern intelligentsia of the last half century. It's connected to traditional gender roles and traditional marriage, and the post-modern world in which we live has decided that we have no need of those things; that those things are archaic constructs with no utility in our new societies.

Unintended. Consequences.

Again, I go back to C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man. The first lecture, Men Without Chests, ends with this passage:

And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

AFC Championship Game Pre-Preview

2012-01-16T14:08:00.000-05:00

On Sunday afternoon, the New England Patriots will host the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game. The Patriots are the early favorites, which probably shouldn't surprise me, but does.

But there are more than a few numbers that suggest that they should be. And I'll share those later this week...

Santorum: Romneycare "disqualifies" Romney

2012-01-16T11:38:00.002-05:00

As quoted by Katrina Trinko at The Corner.

But, in his appearance on Fox News Sunday this morning, he also disputed that it was the “social conservative” vote that was splintering, saying “a lot of conservatives have concerns about Gov. Romney’s record on the economy, and obviously, Romneycare is a real scarlet letter here.”

“We can’t have a nominee,” Santorum continued, “that takes away the most important issue in this election, which is an explosion of the federal government and robbing of people’s freedom on the federal level with Obamacare, and Romneycare, which was the predecessor to Obamacare, just disqualifies him in his ability to go out and aggressively go after this top-down approach to health care.”

While I don't agree that it "disqualifies" him, I've made clear on several occasions that I believed it would prevent Romney from winning the Republican nomination. What that position assumed, of course, was that someone else would show up who could win it.

That's clearly not happened. That's clearly not going to happen. So, since I haven't commented recently on this, let's get this out there now.

The race for the Republican nomination for the Presidency is over. Mitt Romney is going to be the candidate. Huntsman, who was never a viable candidate, is gone. Ron Paul is not a viable candidate. Newt Gingrich is not a viable candidate. Rick Santorum is not a viable candidate. And Rick Perry, who looked like a viable candidate when he entered the race, has been a dreadful candidate. Yes, they still have to have primaries, and count votes, and add up delegates. But it's all mechanical now. The race is over; Mitt's won.

Obviously, I'm rooting for the Patriots tomorrow, but...

2012-01-13T09:37:00.000-05:00

I can't help but root for Tim Tebow, too.

Zack McLeod is Tim Tebow's kind of player — and man. And vice-versa.

The 20-year-old former high school football player won't snag any touchdown throws from his hero Saturday at Gillette Stadium when the Denver Broncos' on-field miracle-worker challenges the New England Patriots in an AFC Divisional playoff game. But McLeod just may catch a pass — and more compassion and love than he ever imagined.

As kickoff approaches, Tebow will do what he always does at pressure-packed times — give of himself. The 24-year-old quarterback will spend a few moments with McLeod , who suffered a traumatic brain injury playing football in 2008. They plan to meet on the sidelines as part of the Tebow Foundation's Wish 15 program that grants requests for young people with serious medical issues.

"When we told Zack (this week), he just screamed, 'Nooooo waaaay!' " says his father, Pat McLeod, who along with his wife, Tammy, work as Harvard University chaplains. " We are hoping Tim will throw him a pass. Zack still has great hands."

One thing is for sure: Tebow will hug McLeod.

It's always hard to be sure how much truth there is in what you read in the paper. But this is a story that I know about, and we've known that Zack was going to meet Tim since earlier in the week, when Pat posted the news on Zack's CaringBridge Journal. Despite the damage he suffered nearly four years ago, Zack lights up a room when he enters it, and I'm sure that Tim Tebow will enjoy meeting him nearly as much as Zack enjoys meeting Tim.

Odds and ends...

2012-01-10T10:44:00.000-05:00

A couple of sports topics...

I watched very little college football this year, and none with either LSU or Alabama. Until last night. My reaction to what I saw of the BCS National Championship game is bewilderment as to how that LSU team could possibly have entered the game undefeated. Alabama may have the best defense in the history of defence - it still wouldn't justify the ineptitude of what I saw from the LSU offense last night.
Congratulations to Barry Larkin, who deserves to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I think it's surprising that he's the only one, though. It looks like Jack Morris is going to make it in (mistake) and that Mark McGwire isn't (mistake). And I'd love to know why the people not voting for Tim Raines aren't voting for Tim Raines. If they're leaving his name off because of cocaine allegations in the mid-80s, well, that's their right (though there are a lot of users in already). If it's because they think he wasn't good enough, that's not right. Because he was.
I'm a little bit surprised (bewildered?) by the response from some quarters that the return of Josh McDaniels to the Patriots coaching staff this week somehow gives New England an unfair advantage, and should have been prevented by the league. What would that advantage consist of how? How would it manifest itself? I don't see it...
I don't trust the Patriots defense. At all. At the same time, the AFC team that I was most scared of was Pittsburgh, and they're gone. I said a week ago that I wouldn't be surprised if the won the Super Bowl and I wouldn't be surprised if they lost their first game. Well, I now would be surprised if they lost their first game. Not that Denver isn't capable of winning in New England (or, more accurately, that New England isn't capable of losing to Denver) but I don't expect them to.
Yes, the Packers put up the best record in football. Yes, they beat the Giants in New York not too long ago. Yes, they should be favored at home this weekend. But, while it would be an upset, it would not be a shocking upset if the Giants were to win in Lambeau on Sunday.
Would it even be a surprise if New Orleans won in San Francisco? Yes, they've been a lot better at home than on the road, and the 49ers are an outstanding defensive team. Still, I'm not sure that the Saints aren't the best team in football right now, and I don't think the 49ers can score enough to stay with them.
Which units are going to score more in Baltimore - the Ravens and Texans offenses, or the Ravens and Texans defenses?

"Liberty Enlightening The World"

2012-01-09T10:15:00.000-05:00

A couple of pictures from my weekend...

Exactly right

2012-01-09T06:52:00.000-05:00

Once and future Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who was the head coach who drafted him, on Tim Tebow, quoted in Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback column:

There're going to be doubts about him. Great doubts -- and I understand that. Some people don't think he has the natural traits of a great quarterback. Here's what I think: Do Jim Furyk and Tiger Woods swing the club the same way, hit irons the same way? No. But they both win tournaments. There's different ways to throw, different mechanics, and you can still get the job done.

I hadn't seen that before, and I love it. It's a great analogy. There are certain physical characteristics and abilities that you'd love for your quarterback to have, and Tebow is lacking in some of them. But there's so much more to the position than that. The ranks of the physically ideal "robo-QBs" who fail are legion. There's room for a few that aren't perfect to succeed.

And it (not surprisingly) echoes his former and current boss Bill Belichick, in an anecdote that I love and think speaks volumes.

"I remember sitting in a meeting with Bill that first year in Cleveland and the scouts were going around explaining what this guy does wrong and what this other guy does wrong and on and on. It was all criticism. And Bill said, 'Stop telling me what this guy does wrong. I want to know what he does well. Let's focus on that, and I won't even worry about the rest of it. We just won't ask him to do those things.'

"And you can see he still does that. Everyone else seems to be looking for the perfect player, and he's just the opposite. He says, 'Find out what they do well, we'll use them in that situation for 20 snaps and be thrilled with it.'"

Is Roethlisberger really the "ultimate team player"?

2012-01-06T12:30:00.001-05:00

At ESPN.com, John Clayton engages in question-begging...

Credit Roethlisberger with being courageous and for being the ultimate team player by staying on the field with an injury that would sideline most players.

Here's the question that he begs - is a one-legged Ben Roethlisberger actually better than a two-legged Charlie Batch? Or is he actually demonstrating that he's the ultimate "me-first" player, gathering plaudits and accolades for being tough and "courageous" while hurting his team? After all, if he doesn't go out and play quarterback, they don't forfeit - they don't automatically lose or go home for the season. The next guy in line goes out to play, and the next guy in line is an actual real live professional NFL quarterback. Obviously, if he were better than a two-legged Roethlisberger, he'd be the starter, not the backup, but equally obviously, the team is paying him money to play quarterback in the event that Roethlisberger gets hurt. Well, Roethlisberger's hurt. And, since he got hurt, bad.

Of course, it's Mike Tomlin's decision, in the end. But praising Roethlisberger for being "the ultimate team player," means assuming that a) the team has a better chance with Roethlisberger hurt than Batch healthy and b) no other NFL QB would be willing to play with a bad ankle sprain. Both assumptions are questionable at best.

Turnabout is fair play...

2012-01-01T17:49:00.000-05:00

(or Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better...)

Consider two sets of New England Patriots/Buffalo Bills football games:

During the week before the first game of the 2003 football season, the New England Patriots cut safety Lawyer Milloy. He signed with Buffalo, and the Bills, led by Milloy and former Patriots' QB Drew Bledsoe, beat the Patriots 31-0. In week 17, the Patriots returned the favor, beating Buffalo 31-0 for their twelfth straight win.
In week 3 of the 2011 season, the Patriots jumped out to a 21-0 lead in Buffalo before a defensive meltdown led to a 34-31 loss. Today, the Patriots allowed Buffalo to score the first 21 points before putting up 49 straight in a blowout win.

Question: Is Bill Belichick enough of an evil genius to have intentionally coached his team to a 21-0 deficit in today's game, in a diabolical display of oneupsmanship?

2011 Sunset...

2011-12-30T20:58:00.000-05:00

(A few more pictures can be found here...)

Today's Smaug level - very low

2011-12-21T08:17:00.000-05:00

This year, we've been looking forward to Tintin. Here's something to look forward to for next December...

The Hobbit

That explains so much...

2011-12-20T08:14:00.001-05:00

The brilliant Michael Ramirez looks at Jon Corzine's potential testimony on how MF Global, under his management, "misplaced" $1.2 Billion...

OK, not EVERYTHING went right for the Patriots this weekend...

2011-12-20T07:13:00.000-05:00

...because they lost Andre Carter for the season.

But other than that, they had something positive happen during every game slot. When play started on Sunday afternoon, there were four AFC teams at 10-3, and the Patriots were behind the others in playoff-seeding tie-breakers. To get a bye, assuming they won out, they needed either Houston OR both Baltimore and Pittsburgh to lose again. To get the number one seed, they needed Houston AND Baltimore and Pittsburgh to lose again. 36 hours later, they had sole possession of the best record in the AFC, just two home games against sub-.500 teams away from the number one seed, three home games away from hosting the AFC Championship game, and four home games away from the Super Bowl.

Early Sunday game:

Carolina 28, Houston 13
(Bonus: Kansas City 19, Green Bay 14, preserving New England's record for the longest regular season winning streak, and their status as the only undefeated team in the 16-game era.)

Late Sunday game:

New England 41, Denver 23

Sunday night game:

San Diego 34, Baltimore 14

Monday night game:

San Francisco 20, Pittsburgh 3

I actually have very little confidence after the home playoff losses of the last two years, and the defensive performances (which have been very offensive) this year. But after this weekend, they are very likely to enter the post-season as the number one seed in the AFC. Again.

Nativity Carol

2011-12-19T14:08:00.001-05:00

Nativity Carol

The Twelve Days Of Christmas

2011-12-19T07:38:00.000-05:00

My feelings about The Twelve Days of Christmas are that a) it's a fun song and b) the best thing you can do with it is get through it as fast as possible. It's too long, and when people start playing games with it, there's a tendency for it to get tedious. Well, at about the third day, during last night's Boston Pops concert, I started to get very concerned. What followed, however, was brilliant.

"I knew we had a winning new arrangement of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" when we premiered it in 2007, but the audience's enthusiastic response night after night was unlike anything I've ever seen at the Pops," said Boston Pops Conductor Keith Lockhart. "Then a flood of letters and phone calls came in requesting a recording of the new arrangement-an incredibly creative twist on one of the greatest Christmas-time classics. We knew then and there that we would make a recording of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and that it would become a staple of our Holiday season programming."

A different piece of (appropriate) music for each day, and the result is spectacular. As Lockhart said last night, it's a "bit of a mixed blessing" because they all know that they're "never going to get away with not doing it again."

The Pops at Symphony Hall is a real treat, and, in addition to Sleigh Ride, they'll be doing that arrangement for a long time.

I hope that this is correct...

2011-12-16T05:37:00.000-05:00

...but I also hope that the supply I've laid up since 2007 makes it unnecessary for me to buy any more anyway...

Spending bill blocks light bulb standards

The shutdown-averting budget bill will block federal light bulb efficiency standards, giving a win to House Republicans fighting the so-called ban on incandescent light bulbs.

GOP and Democratic sources tell POLITICO the final omnibus bill includes a rider defunding the Energy Department's standards for traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more energy efficient.

DOE's light bulb rules — authorized under a 2007 energy law authored signed by President George W. Bush — would start going into effect Jan. 1. The rider will prevent DOE from implementing the rules through Sept. 30.

But Democrats said they could claim a "compromise" by adding language to the omnibus that requires DOE grant recipients greater than $1 million to certify they will upgrade the efficiency of their facilities by replacing any lighting to meet or exceed the 2007 energy law's standards.

Fueled by conservative talk radio, Republicans made the last-ditch attempt to stop federal regulations from making their way into every Americans' living room.

"There are just some issues that just grab the public's attention. This is one of them," said Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.). "It's going to be dealt with in this legislation once and for all."

Based on my anticipated needs, I've got a 30-year (or longer) supply of 100W incandescent bulbs in my basement right now. (Unless they start breaking or burning out MUCH faster than they ever have, or I suddenly end up tripling my fixtures.) But I hope that I'll still be able to buy them next year...

Christmas music

2011-12-14T09:20:00.000-05:00

Park Street Church Sanctuary Choir - 12/11/2011

Introit - African Noel

Anthem - Magnificat (Heinrich Schütz)

Why Keynesianism Works Better in Theory Than in Practice

2011-12-05T11:54:00.001-05:00

This, by Tino Sanandaji, is an excellent piece about why Keynes was both right and wrong, and why the 2009 "stimulus" appears to have failed to stimulate...

...The Obama administration chose a strong dose of Keynesian medicine, confidently predicting that unemployment would be lowered to 6 percent by the end of 2011. As we now know, this promise was not fulfilled, with unemployment currently at 9 percent. This has, fairly or not, once again soured American voters on Keynes, with three-quarters of the public concluding that the stimulus failed.

Of course, the high unemployment rate alone does not prove that the stimulus failed. [LB: Absolutely true, and a point that far too many people miss, on this topic and many others. "Prove" requires far more evidence than we generally have when speaking of counterfactual possibilities. Events have, indeed, "proved" that the administration's predictions of the effects of the stimulus package were wrong, but they don't "prove" that the stimulus did more harm than good. I believe that to be the case, of course, and see the current situation as evidence in support of my position, but I don't claim that it's been proven.] It may be that unemployment would be 15 percent without it, as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested. On the other hand, the poor health of the patient cannot be ignored when evaluating a Keynesian cure which in practice has a spotty track record. [LB: This, of course, is also relevant.]

Another argument, most notably made by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, is that the high level of unemployment simply proves that the stimulus was too small....It is worth noting that Paul Krugman has used the same explanation for the failure of Japanese stabilization policy, i.e. that the failure of aggressive Keynesianism to achieve growth proves that deficits were too small.

In the decade following the 1991 crash, Japanese deficit spending was on average 5 percent of GDP per year, and 7 percent of GDP in the decade that followed. Japan’s debt increased from normal levels to a staggering 233 percent of GDP today, far higher than in every other advanced country, including Greece. None of this managed to stimulate growth.

In this vulgar form, Keynesianism is turned into a non-falsifiable theory. [LB: And, of course, falsifiability is essential for something to be a good scientific hypothesis. If the only two positions one allows for are a) the stimulus really worked or b) it really would have worked if it had only been bigger, then one has taken a position that's faith-based, not fact-based. (I recognize, of course, that the converse is true as well. Those of us who will only accept that a) the stimulus was a failure and b) a larger stimulus would have been a larger failure are also holding those positions as positions of faith, because, like the stimulus supporters, we can't prove it. We cannot go back in time and re-run the experiment. It does seem as if the evidence in support of our position is a little bit stronger and more fact-based, though...)] If borrowing and spending 150 percent of GDP fails to achieve growth, why, that merely proves Japan should have borrowed and spent 300 percent of GDP!

This part is good, too.

Still, a doctor whose remedy frequently fails can always say that things would have been even worse without it, but at some point he also has to be open to the possibility that his prescription is wrong.

Remember that the estimates of the number of jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus that we have seen used by the Congressional Budget Office, Mark Zandi, and others are not direct measurements. Rather, they are based on simulations where the effectiveness of the program is assumed a priori by applying a so-called multiplier to deficit spending. As Stanford University economist John Taylor points out: “You learn virtually nothing about the efficacy of a stimulus package if you use the same models to evaluate its impact ex post that you used to predict its impact ex ante.”

Read it all...

For Unto Us a Child Is Born

2011-12-05T07:12:00.000-05:00

For Unto Us a Child Is Born - Park Street Church Sanctuary Choir and Orchestra, 12/4/2011

Malazy

2011-11-30T11:50:00.001-05:00

An excellent new ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee - Obama's America. Malazy.

Typing through the tears...

2011-11-30T10:51:00.001-05:00

We woke up this morning to find this heart-rending story of political gamesmanship, gamesmanship which has "cost" the United States Government the continuing "service" of Barney Frank. Poor Barney...

US Representative Barney Frank yesterday accused Beacon Hill lawmakers of drawing the new congressional map in a way that shortchanged him in favor of fellow congressmen Edward J. Markey and Stephen F. Lynch. Had they done otherwise, said Frank, he might have run again.

‘‘Markey and Lynch were protected, and the rest of us got what they didn’t want,’’ he said. Losing the chance to pick up some choice suburban towns for his district, Frank said, retirement became a more attractive option...On redistricting, Frank said he spoke with legislative leaders at the State House several weeks ago about the new lines for the Fourth Congressional District, to which he was first elected in 1980. They wanted him to take a reshaped district grounded in Southern Massachusetts, centered away from his base of Newton and Brookline. He rejected that idea, he said, but still ended up with a district that "unpleasantly surprised" him..."I talked to Ed Markey, and frankly I was a little disappointed there," said Frank. "I think Ed had some influence with them, but it was spent mostly on his own district.

"There was stuff that Eddie got that, if I could have shared some with Eddie, it would have been a better district."

I'm sorry, did I say "heart-rending"? I meant, of course, "heart-warming". And the tears are of laughter.

Oh, and what about Ed Markey's influence on the process? What was he looking for?

"My influence was to ask that all nine districts be Democratic districts, and independent analysts are concluding that all nine are safe Democratic seats," Markey said.

Yeah, I bet they are. No reason for Republicans in Massachusetts to have any shot at actual representation.

So let me talk, a little bit, about something that I found very discouraging in November of 2010. Some of you may remember my reaction to the elections, which produced such "great" results for Republicans nationwide. ("I'm sitting here in Massachusetts this morning, and "disappointed" doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling...") Well, in some ways, Republicans had a ~~good~~ decent night in Massachusetts, too. But not good enough to actually produce any electoral victories. There was a lot of enthusiasm among Massachusetts Republicans. There were a lot of votes. And there were a lot of losses.

Obviously, Massachusetts is a heavily Democratic state. But, it's also a heavily gerrymandered state. (As it's also the state where the GerryMander first got it's name, when Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a controversial redistricting plan in 1812, I suppose that's not inappropriate...)

And the current proposed map is no less contorted. No doubt they've managed to put together a plan in which all nine seats will go to the Democrats in 2012. Easy enough to do given the majority they've got, but there are certainly enough Republicans in the state for at least a couple of "fair" or competitive districts. If, you know, anyone were interested in something like that.

And what's the impact of all of the gerrymandering? Well, the more of it that gets done, the bigger the disparity between the minority party vote share and the minority party seat share. Here's a table showing what happened in 2010.

Massachusetts Republicans - 2010 Election
	% of vote	% of seats
Governor	41.59%	00.00%
US Representative	34.84%	00.00%
State Senate	31.42%	10.20%
State Representative	25.16%	20.30%

(While the Republican percentage varied from office to office, the Democratic percentage didn't change much, from 54% of the State Senate vote to about 58% for the Governor's race and the State and US House races. There were a lot of 3rd party votes and, particularly for the lower races, unopposed candidates where there were a great many blank ballots.)

Now, there's only one governor's office, so that's included mostly for informational purposes. On statewide races, the Republicans can, fairly often, come up with 35-40 percent of the vote, and, in the right circumstances, even win the Governorship. But it's interesting to note what happens in the rest of the categories. First off, in the state rep races, the districts are all small enough that there's not really a lot of room for extensive gerrymandering. In those races, the percentage of the Republican vote is fairly close to the percentage of the races that they won. (Pitiably small percentages, obviously.) In the State Senate races, where the effects of partisan districting really start to show up, the Republicans won 31% of the vote and only 10% of the seats. The Democrats won 90% of the seats with 54% of the vote. And in the US House races, where they can get very artistic, the Democrats beat the Republicans by 58%-35%, and took all ten (100%) of the seats in the process. So, despite the fact that the Republicans took 35% of the vote to the Democrats 58%, there continues to be no representation of Republican Massachusetts taxpayers in the United States House of Representatives. And the system is rigged to prevent them from getting any in the next election, either.

This is not new, of course. Nor is it particularly partisan - in places where Republicans control the process, no doubt there are similar effects.

But is it good for anyone? Other than the politicians themselves, of course? It's not at all obvious to me that it is. Of course, since the people that benefit are the people that are doing it, it's not at all clear what mechanism could possibly force a change in the practice, either...

What Do Democrats Really Stand For Today?

2011-11-30T06:51:00.000-05:00

There's been a lot of analysis done of Thomas Edsall's NY Times piece from Sunday, in which he states that "preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class." The most interesting and cogent of which, I think, is this bit from Jim Geraghty:

You think the Democratic Party cares about wealth? Come on. In their minds, George Soros spending his money to help out his political views is noble, but the Koch Brothers are evil incarnate. Higher taxes are good, but no one will complain if Tim Geithner or Charlie Rangel cut corners on paying them. One might be tempted to argue that the righteousness of unions represent an inviolate principle to Democrats, but in New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trimming here and there and living to tell the tale.

No, the party really is about identity politics now; us vs. them. And everybody knows which side they’re on.

Obviously, they've been about identity politics for a long time. But right now, there doesn't seem to be anything else. It's us vs. them, period.

The Great Jobs Massacre

2011-11-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Michael Ramirez:

Just beat it, Barney!

2011-11-29T08:55:00.000-05:00

Michael Graham:

The open secret is that, as a congressman, Barney Frank has been wrong about almost every major policy in his long public career. From Reaganomics to Obamacare, his predictions of future performance have been wildly, embarrassingly off the mark. When he’s attempted to lead, he’s almost always taken off in the worst direction.

Amen, brother...

An early Christmas present...

2011-11-28T12:05:00.000-05:00

...for the entire country. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank will not seek re-election

Longtime U.S. Rep. Barney Frank won’t be running for re-election in 2012 ending an often controversial but always outspoken tenure.

Frank, 71, has served in Congress since 1980. He will take questions about his decision to relinquish his seat at 1 p.m. today at Newton City Hall, his office told the Herald.

Earlier would have been better, of course, as Frank's fingerprints are all over the housing bubble that is largely responsible for the crash of 2008, but hey - better late than never. If there's one thing that the US body politic desperately needs, it's fewer and better Barney Franks...

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

2011-11-28T08:18:00.001-05:00

Park Street Church Sanctuary Choir, with a lovely anthem for the first Sunday in Advent...

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Seen on facebook...

2011-11-26T13:06:00.000-05:00

Santa reads his email...letters from boys and girls everywhere.

Fat

2011-11-22T08:48:00.001-05:00

Let me just say this - I'm utterly shocked to see that CBS news produced and ran this story.

And I'll add one thing - the next time you see the Federal Government try to do something to help you out, whether it's providing health care, student loans, mortgages or dietary advice, stop and ask yourself one question. Are Americans healthier in 2011 than they were when George McGovern's Senate Committee, against the advice of the dietary scientists who recognized that there was, at best, insufficient evidence for the recommendations, decreed that Americans should eat less fat and more whole grains? With close to forty years of hindsight, there is now overwhelming evidence that McGovern's recommendations were damaging to real people trying to live their lives well.

Unintended Consequences. Not just a good idea - it's the law...

Democrats AP sees minefield in Dems' links to Occupy protests

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

Ah, the Associated Press, like the rest of the leftist US media, is nothing if not predictable. When something looks helpful to Democrats, it's promoted or praises - when something looks helpful to Republicans, it's forgotten or vilified. Remember how vitally important Cindy Sheehan was until she started criticizing Democrats? And then, "whoosh," right down the memory hole. Cindy Who?

You can clearly see the media's dawning comprehension of the typical American's feelings about the "Occupy" mobs in this Associated Press piece.

Democrats see minefield in Occupy protests

The Republican Party and the tea party seemed to be a natural political pairing. But what may have seemed like another politically beneficial alliance — Democrats and Occupy Wall Street — hasn't happened.

Although both Democrats and the Occupy protesters have similar views on economic inequality and corporate responsibility, each holds the other at arm's length. There's little benefit to Democrats in opening their arms wide to a scruffy group that has erupted in violence, defied police and shown evidence of drug use while camping in public parks across the country — much as the prospect of such a pairing delights Republicans.

Many protesters, in turn, are contemptuous of Democrats, arguing that both political parties are equally beholden to corporate interests and responsible for enacting policies that have hurt the middle class.

Here's Democratic Senatorial Candidate, and current pin-up girl for leftists worldwide, Elizabeth Warren, in October, keeping the Occupiers "at arm's length."

"Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren claims much of the credit for the Occupy Wall Street protests sweeping the nation.

“I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” the Harvard Law School professor and former Obama administration consumer advocate told Samuel P. Jacobs of The Daily Beast. “I support what they do.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee certainly kept the Occupy movement "at arm's length."

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) — the campaign arm of the House Democrats — sent out an email Monday morning urging readers to sign a petition supporting the growing “Occupy Wall Street” protests.

And then there's the leader of the Democrats in the House, Nancy Pelosi, resisting the urge to form a "politically beneficial alliance..."

House Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she supports the growing nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement, which began on the streets of downtown New York City in mid-September.

"I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen," said Pelosi in an exclusive interview with ABC News "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpour. "We cannot continue in a way this is not relevant to their lives."

Back in October, the New York Times noted that

Leading Democratic figures, including party fund-raisers and a top ally of President Obama, are embracing the spread of the anti-Wall Street protests in a clear sign that members of the Democratic establishment see the movement as a way to align disenchanted Americans with their party.

For two months, the media was enchanted by the possibility that the Occupiers would prove a political windfall for the Democrats. Now that it's clear that owning the movement would be a major political liability, the Emily Litella ("never mind") media re-appears...

H/T - John Nolte, at Brietbart's Big Journalism site, pointed out this story, and also did some more extensive deconstruction...

Should We Be Bullish on Solar?

2011-11-18T10:03:00.000-05:00

Megan McCardle has an interesting and worthwhile piece on the likelihood of solar energy costs falling below those of conventional energies any time soon. But she finishes it with a pretty silly question...

I'd close by restating Tyler's question in a slightly different way: if the price of solar is really likely to keep falling until it's cheaper than coal, why don't we see this revealed in the behavior of global warming activists? Where are Greens saying "We've decided to move on to more pressing issues, because clearly, the carbon emissions problem is just about solved."

For some people, maybe even most, the concern is, in fact, carbon emissions. For many of the activists, however, all of the evidence suggests that the concern is not carbon emissions as much as it is concern about the consumption and lifestyle of the US population. For my entire lifetime, the people in the vanguard of this movement have responded to any proposed crisis with the same set of policy prescriptions - more central control, more rationing, less freedom for individual movement, less individual autonomy. In short, for the most dedicated of the global warming activists, carbon emission control is simply a pretext for the actual goal - socialism.

Is Partisanship Responsible for the Success of Constitutional Challenges to ObamaCare?

2011-11-17T06:41:00.000-05:00

Is Partisanship Responsible for the Success of Constitutional Challenges to ObamaCare?

Does it really require rank partisanship to be skeptical about the merits of a never-been-tried legal requirement that regulates doing nothing based on the argument that doing nothing is in fact a form of activity?

I think not...

Obamacare odds and ends...

2011-11-16T11:31:00.001-05:00

From the Washington Examiner, CSPAN requests televised Obamacare oral arguments:

CSPAN chairman Brian Lamb wrote Chief Justice John Roberts today requesting that he break with Supreme Court tradition and allow for a televised broadcast of the oral arguments in the Obamacare case.

We believe the public interest is best served by live television coverage of this particular oral argument," Lamb wrote. "It is a case which will affect every American's life, our economy, and will certainly be an issue in the upcoming presidential campaign."

I'd watch...

Investor's Business Daily suggests that Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the Obamacare case:

Here are the facts on Kagan: She was the administration's solicitor general when ObamaCare became law last year. She has acknowledged that she was at a meeting in which state litigation against ObamaCare was discussed, though she said she was not involved in any legal responses concerning the states' litigation.

We also know that Kagan enthusiastically supported ObamaCare. This is made clear in emails released last week by the Justice Department.

"I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing," Kagan wrote on the day ObamaCare passed the House in an email to Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who was working at that time in the Obama Justice Department...Nearly lost in this is the possibility that Kagan lied during her confirmation. She told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had not been asked about the legal issues of ObamaCare nor had she offered any views on them. The emails, however, seem to tell a different story. Two exclamation points plainly show that in her legal opinion, ObamaCare was constitutional.

I have two things to say about that. The first is that the editorial is clearly correct about her conflict of interest and pre-expressed opinion - she's made it clear that there's no chance of her even considering the possibility that it might be unconstitutional, so that recusal is the only ethical approach. The second is that Barack Obama will demand that Congress repeal it before that happens. Zero chance.

Walter Russell Meade comments on a New York Times story of one of the unexpected consequences of Obamacare:

the New York Times reports that the controversial health care reform act has accelerated the destruction of small medical practices at the expense of large firms. And if the Times is right, these are part of some fundamental changes in the American health care system that no Supreme Court decision can undo...Is this what the social engineers who redesigned the American health care system really wanted to do? Is big better in health care, and is bigger still better still?

If the Times is right, so far the principal effect of the plan has been to accelerate the decline of family doctors and small medical practices in favor of larger, bureaucratic health care providers along the lines of HMOs.

Unintended or not? As we say in the software world, bug or feature? Well, let's just consider, for a moment, that age-old question, cui bono? Who benefits? Probably not the patients or the doctors, who end up breaking what is ideally a long-term and important relationship. But the politicians, who are then able to extract their ~~tribute~~ ~~graft~~ campaign contributions from a few large medical entities more dependent on their good will as opposed to many smaller entities less dependent on their good will certainly seem to.

Whether that was intended or just, from the politicians' point-of-view, a "happy accident" doesn't seem particularly relevant...

H/T: Instapundit, who linked all of these...

The Case Against President Obama's Health Care Reform: A Primer for Nonlawyers

2011-11-15T14:20:00.000-05:00

From the Cato Institute comes The Case Against President Obama's Health Care Reform: A Primer for Nonlawyers

An essential aspect of liberty is the freedom not to participate. PPACA’s directive that Americans buy an unwanted product from a private company debases individual liberty. And it’s unconstitutional.

Questions about what's at issue? Click the link...

Go Newt...

2011-11-14T14:27:00.000-05:00

Newt nails Scott Pelley on killing al-Awlaki

I'm not sure which part I liked better - the clarity and correctness of the answer, or the humiliation of Scott Pelley...

Court sets 5 1/2-hour hearing on health care

2011-11-14T12:02:00.000-05:00

When the ~~Obamacare monstrosity~~ Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law, there was incredulity on the part of some supporters that anyone might think it could possibly be unconstitutional. There was some mockery of those of us who thought it might not pass muster.

Yeah, well, it may or may not be tossed out, but obviously the constitutionality is not a foregone conclusion. SCOTUSblog:

Setting the stage for a historic constitutional confrontation over federal power, the Supreme Court on Monday granted three separate cases on the constitutionality of the new federal health care law, and set aside 5 1/2 hours for oral argument, to be held in March...The Court will hold two hours of argument on the constitutionality of the requirement that virtually every American obtain health insurance by 2014, 90 minutes on whether some or all of the overall law must fail if the mandate is struck down, one hour on whether the Anti-Injunction Act bars some or all of the challenges to the insurance mandate, and one hour on the constitutionality of the expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled.

I've already made up my mind, of course. I find no valid reading of the Constitution that allows the Federal Government to impose the kind of program that this law imposes. The Supreme Court may agree with me, it may disagree, but it won't change my opinion on that. There are too many decisions which have already expanded the Commerce Clause jurisprudence far beyond anything I believe the founders would have sanctioned for me to have confidence in the outcome.

I am curious to see what Scalia and Thomas, at least, have to say about it. One way or the other, we'll know the outcome when we head to the polls next November...

Service music for a Missions Conference...

2011-11-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

The introit is a classic hymn from the hymnal, on which the congregation joined the choir for the fifth verse.

"O Breath of Life"

And the anthem is not from the hymnal. A South African piece.

"Mayenziwe"

How Lovely Are The Messengers

2011-11-13T17:46:00.000-05:00

Mendelssohn wrote wonderful choral music...

This is from last week, 11/6, at Park Street Church.

Scenes from Arlington National Cemetery

2011-11-11T15:34:00.000-05:00

For Veterans Day, The Old Guard: Scenes from Arlington National Cemetery - YouTube

Will Western Civilization Rediscover The Moral Foundations Of Sound Money?

2011-11-10T13:04:00.000-05:00

Bill Frezza has an excellent piece at Forbes.com...

Wealth, or capital, is simply deferred consumption that is put to work. When done wisely, wealth multiplies, leaving more to consume tomorrow.

Money’s unredeemed promise might be tokenized by a paper note, a gold coin, or a few bits in a computer database. Every form of tokenization has its strengths and weaknesses. History demonstrates that the soundness of the token is directly proportional to the difficulty of its creation, as this helps ensure stability of the money supply.

The moral claim real money places on society on behalf of its bearer comes not from the intrinsic value of the token but from the fact that the bearer had previously produced some good or service deemed valuable by others. This is what gives money its moral legitimacy.

Western Civilization has forgotten this, and we are all paying the price.

Read it all.

Obama Couldn't Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax

2011-11-09T12:28:00.000-05:00

Does someone want to explain to me how this is a rational function for the Federal Government?

In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).

To pay for the new Federal Christmas tree image improvement and marketing program, the Department of Agriculture imposed a 15-cent fee on all sales of fresh Christmas trees by sellers of more than 500 trees per year (7 CFR 1214.52). And, of course, the Christmas tree sellers are free to pass along the 15-cent Federal fee to consumers who buy their Christmas trees.

Go ahead. Make the case...

Just a little revisionism...

2011-11-08T08:18:00.000-05:00

I'm generally a fan of Stephen Moore at the Wall Street Journal, but I think part of his review of Bill Clinton's new book, has a ... convenient interpretation of some fairly recent history.

Bill Clinton ascended to the White House as a New Democrat, wisely repudiating what had been a quarter-century of big-government liberalism and embracing instead welfare reform, deficit reduction, spending restraint, a strong and noninflationary dollar, and free trade. One might thus expect "Back to Work" to be a sharp condemnation of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and, of course, Barack Obama for their abandonment of his centrist policies...But instead of offering Democrats a road map for a return to the center, "Back to Work" is an ode to big government.

Certainly, he claimed for himself the mantle of the "New Democrat" during the campaign, and certainly "welfare reform, deficit reduction, spending restraint, a strong and noninflationary dollar, and free trade" were all hallmarks of the period during which he was President.

But I take issue with the idea that he "ascended to the White House" on those issues. On the contrary, his first two years, with a Democrat-controlled House and Senate, was characterized by his attempt to pass the next great goal of the progressive left - National Health Care. Like Obamacare, Hillary-care was extremely unpopular with the voters, and cost the Democrats control of the Congress in the middle of the President's first term. Unlike Obamacare, Hillary-care was defeated.

The differences between Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, therefore, are not, as implied by Moore, differences in policy goals. One key difference is circumstance. Clinton, after the Democrats' 1994 drubbing at the polls, did not have to defend Hillary-care any further. Obamacare is the law of the land, and Obama's chained to it. The other big difference is that Clinton was more pragmatist than ideologue, more interested in maintaining the Presidency in 1996 than in furthering his agenda. Obama is more interested in the agenda. (Clinton was also a much better politician than Obama.)

Welfare reform wasn't a Clinton policy - it was a Republican policy to which Clinton acquiesced. The "deficit reduction and spending retraint" that Moore mentions came from the Republicans in the House of Representatives. To his credit, Clinton acquiesced. His "era of Big Government is over" speech came, not during his campaign, not during his first two years in office, but in the State of the Union address that followed the voters repudiation of his first two "big government" years in office.

But the idea that Clinton's policy goals differed significantly from those of Pelosi/Reid/Obama strikes me as revisionism. It's almost a Conservative version of the media/leftist trope of looking back with affection at the reviled conservatives of the past as a means of denigrating the current conservatives. It's not necessary. Clinton was a better, more pragmatic politician than Barack Obama, but the idea that he came into the White House with a substantially less "progressive," leftist ideology, is not accurate.

Who can afford a a Chevy Volt anyway?

2011-11-07T13:47:00.000-05:00

One of my complaints about the Cash for Clunkers program was that it represented a wealth transfer from poorer to wealthier. The only people who benefited from the program were people who, with the $4500 clunker allowance, could afford a new car. It's unlikely that the group of people who could afford a new car with the credit but could not have afforded a new car without it is a large group. Furthermore, the program removed thousands of functioning used cars from the highways and, more importantly, the used car marketplace, raising prices for anyone that needed one. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that reducing the price of new cars while raising the cost of used ones is not a good-for-the-working-poor kind of exchange.

Which leads to the quote of the day (topic: tax credits for purchase of electric vehicle Chevy Volts), which is politically incorrect in all the right ways...

Tax credits like this merely take from those too poor to afford a coal fired white elephant and give to those that already live in mansions.

Busting the budget myths

2011-11-07T12:08:00.001-05:00

Robert Samuelson is right about some of this:

The conservatives’ fiction is: We can reduce deficits and cut taxes by eliminating “wasteful spending.”

The liberals’ fiction is: We can subdue deficits and raise social spending by taxing “the rich” and shrinking the bloated Pentagon.

You will notice one similarity. Both suggest that reducing deficits involves little real pain. No one, after all, favors “wasteful spending.” Similarly, taxing “the rich” doesn’t threaten most people who aren’t rich. Liberals and conservatives alike can reconcile all good things: fiscal rectitude (for both), tax cuts (for conservatives) and high social spending (for liberals). I wish it were so.

It isn’t.

I've said some of this before...

There are trade-offs that have to be made at the national level, too. If we want a cradle-to-grave welfare system, guess what? It has to be paid for. And there's not enough money in the pockets of the "rich" to pay for it all. So poll results like the above CNN poll are not useful. They're not helpful. They offer a bunch of a la carte options that people can't actually simultaneously get. They present "or" choices as "ands." You can have a cradle-to-grave welfare state which provides all things for all people OR you can have low middle class tax rates and economic freedom. One or the other. Not both. The math doesn't work.

That all remains true.

And the second of his fictions, the liberals' fiction, appear to me to be dead-on accurate. As near as I can tell, the left in this country has no other argument, no other position than raising taxes on "the rich" and the only cutting they are willing to contemplate is the military budget.

But I don't think that the conservatives' fiction is accurate. At least, it's not accurate in the way those terms are usually used. Do conservatives really believe that you can reduce the deficits simply by cutting "wasteful" spending?

I don't.

At least, not in the way that the term "wasteful" spending is usually used. "Wasteful," in common political parlance, refers to the anecdotal $500 hammers, the "waste and abuse" of the Medicare system, spending that is allocated for useful purpose and then gets lost or spent badly. There is, I suspect, far too much of the taxpayers' money that's squandered in that way, but it's unlikely to be enough to close the current deficits.

And that isn't the problem that most conservatives have with Government spending. The problem is not the money that the Government is "wastefully" spending on things that it should be doing. The problem is all of the money spent, "wastefully" or efficiently, on things that the Government shouldn't be doing at all. I don't want an "efficient" Federal Department of Education - I want the Federal Government out of the Education business entirely. I don't want to crack down on "fraud and abuse" in Federally guaranteed student loan programs - I want the Government out of the student loan business entirely. I don't want to crack down on "fraud and abuse" in Federally guaranteed mortgage programs - I want the Government out of the mortgage business entirely. I don't want to crack down on "fraud and abuse" in Federal health care programs - I want the Government out of the health care business entirely.

You see, the biggest waste of taxpayer dollars doesn't result from the Federal Government "wasting" money on things that it should be doing. It comes from the Federal Government spending money on things that it should not be doing. Spending money on things that not only don't benefit the private sector, and the general welfare, but actively impede and obstruct it.

We, as a nation, would be a lot better off if all politicians would be bound by the Hippocratic oath - "first, do no harm..."

Presidio volunteers make a difference in community projects

2011-10-31T21:00:00.000-04:00

Presidio volunteers make a difference in community projects

During World War II, Avila saw action in Europe. Then, after the war, he settled in Pacific Grove, where his family had recently moved to from Modesto, Calif. He joined the Army Reserve and re-enrolled in school, graduating from Pacific Grove High School in 1947.

He has been living in his current Seaside residence since 1980.

On Oct. 22 volunteers from the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center and Presidio of Monterey had the opportunity to lend a hand to Avila and the local community by participating in service projects as part of the nationwide Make A Difference Day.

An observation

2011-10-31T12:46:00.000-04:00

When the first snowfall is extremely wet and heavy, and it comes before the trees have shed their leaves, the effect can be ... significant. Many in Massachusetts are going to be without power for days as a result of this one. Mine was only out for about 13-14 hours, but my office has been down for almost 48, at this point, and it could be 72 more before it's back...

DEAR AMERICA: It’s Time To Say A Big “Thank You” To Amazon

2011-10-28T07:23:00.000-04:00

Henry Blodget:

If more American companies started to do what Amazon does--ignore short-term pressures, sacrifice near-term profits, and invest for the long-term--the American economy would start to heal itself quickly. America would create more innovation, more jobs, and more long-term wealth. And, just as important, more Americans would be able to go back to being proud of our corporations and innovators and entrepreneurs... instead of camping in parks and protesting them.

As both a long-time customer, and a long-time investor in Amazon, let me just say, "Amen." (And I wish I'd invested 10 times what I did when I first got in, and I'm not selling now...)

How the 1 percent ‘harm’ us

2011-10-26T09:46:00.000-04:00

Frank J. Fleming has correctly identified the mindset of the "Occupy America" crowd...

Here’s the thing: They’re the 1 percent, but we’re the 99 percent. Their wealth may be much more than ours, but 99 is a much bigger number than one. So we should just gang up and take their money.

When one person takes the property of another, that’s tyranny, but when lots of people get together and do it, that’s democracy. So we should legislate that the 1 percent no longer get to keep that vast wealth and must instead distribute it among the rest of us. (I should get the largest portion because it was my idea.)

After we’ve taken care of their wealth, to keep the nation happy and prosperous we should pass a law making it illegal for there to be a wealthiest 1 percent -- this country should just be the normal 99 percent.

Sure, that isn’t mathematically possible, but government shouldn’t be about what’s possible; it should be about what’s fair.

Click the link. Read it all. Brilliant...

Spotted on facebook...

2011-10-25T06:35:00.000-04:00

Will The US Be Different From Greece?

2011-10-24T08:43:00.000-04:00

Jeffrey Carter:

We are in a situation that calls for pretty radical change from the perspective of a socialist. But if you are a capitalist/entrepreneur, the changes we need to make aren’t that big a deal. It’s more like the normal course of daily existence.

The Greeks are on the march. No doubt, their kin in the US, public employee unions and socialists, will hit the streets here. They will make a lot of noise, and create a lot of fear. The reality is we cannot afford them anymore.

Things like that are a legacy of the past, just like buggy whip manufacturers.

The demographics of the United States allowed us to maintain, for the last 70 years or so, the fiction that the government could fund everything that anyone wanted funding, that we could pay for care from the cradle to the grave, and there would always be enough money available to do that without running out.

The demographics are changing...

Here's the real question...

2011-10-21T10:22:00.000-04:00

...why is it that high?

Obama job approval: Worst quarter yet

President Obama's cumulative job approval for the last quarter was the lowest of his entire administration and put him historically down in the lowlands of Jimmy Carter country.

The 41% average job approval for Obama's 11th quarter in office (july 20-Oct. 19) was down four points from his previous low (the 7th quarter) and down six points since the tenth quarter at the beginning of summer.

Questions that answer themselves...

2011-10-21T10:20:00.000-04:00

"Why cant I get a job in my field ? "

Been out of town...

2011-10-18T09:00:00.000-04:00

...but in case I don't get a chance to write today, here are a couple of pictures...

It says something positive about the nation that this is a task which is taken seriously...

The Pentagon 9/11 Memorial works.

The Air Force Memorial also works, but it works much better on-site than off.

Quite a view from "Bobby Lee's" Arlington House...

Fife and drum jam session with The Old Guard

"Hmm... That's bigger than I expected it to be..."

You can't make this stuff up...

2011-10-13T10:57:00.000-04:00

I had started to make some comments about the intellectual capability of an Illinois congressman, but have decided that his comments really speak for themselves...

Jesse Jackson Jr. - Congress in Rebellion

Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that congressional opposition to the American Jobs Act is akin to the Confederate “states in rebellion.”

Jackson called for full government employment of the 15 million unemployed and said that Obama should “declare a national emergency” and take “extra-constitutional” action “administratively” — without the approval of Congress — to tackle unemployment.

“I hope the president continues to exercise extraordinary constitutional means, based on the history of Congresses that have been in rebellion in the past,” Jackson said.

Clearly, he took his congressional oath of office, to protect and uphold the Constitution, seriously...

Follow Your Bliss—Sort Of

2011-10-11T09:51:00.000-04:00

Megan McArdle has a good piece about that commencement address that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford several years ago.

Steve Jobs', um, job, is to tell graduates how they could be Steve Jobs. And if they are to have any chance, they do indeed need to follow their bliss and take risks rather than settling down to a degree in accounting.

But not everyone has the potential to be Steve Jobs. Not just because most people are rather more ordinary, but because there are a limited number of jobs that are really fun, greatly admired, and fairly well remunerated, which is what most people want.

She's got some valuable, mature, adult advice. It's a good read.

Shall We Gather At The River

2011-10-10T08:03:00.001-04:00

Shall We Gather At The River - Park Street Church Sanctuary Choir, 10/9/2011

NFL vs. NEA

2011-10-04T08:54:00.000-04:00

Fran Tarkenton (of all people) with an excellent thought experiment in the Wall Street Journal...

Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player's salary is based on how long he's been in the league. It's about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he's an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player's been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Let's face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?

No matter how much money was poured into the league, it wouldn't get better. In fact, in many ways the disincentive to play harder or to try to stand out would be even stronger with more money.

Of course, a few wild-eyed reformers might suggest the whole system was broken and needed revamping to reward better results, but the players union would refuse to budge and then demonize the reform advocates: "They hate football. They hate the players. They hate the fans." The only thing that might get done would be building bigger, more expensive stadiums and installing more state-of-the-art technology. But that just wouldn't help.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the NFL in this alternate reality is the real -life American public education system. Teachers' salaries have no relation to whether teachers are actually good at their job—excellence isn't rewarded, and neither is extra effort. Pay is almost solely determined by how many years they've been teaching. That's it. After a teacher earns tenure, which is often essentially automatic, firing him or her becomes almost impossible, no matter how bad the performance might be. And if you criticize the system, you're demonized for hating teachers and not believing in our nation's children.

Service music - 10/2/2011

2011-10-03T06:41:00.000-04:00

Park Street Church Sanctuary Choir, 10/2/2011

Introit: Holy, Holy, Holy

Anthem: O How Amiable

Let me just say this about that

2011-09-29T06:32:00.000-04:00

The end was ... appropriate. Proportional to what led up to it.

This is what makes sports compelling. Storylines that would get thrown out of Hollywood script pitches as being too unlikely, too unrealistic...

Why "the market" has "failed" for health care...

2011-09-28T10:36:00.001-04:00

There's something in this Washington Examiner editorial that is fundamental to the issue of health care in the United States. Fundamental, widely unknown and almost never publicly discussed.

Price signals, a staple of any functioning free market, have been muffled in health care, where third parties (insurers and the government) pay roughly 88 percent of health care costs, up from 52 percent in 1960. Because patients don't pay the bills, most of them have no idea how much services cost, let alone what they are worth. This leaves doctors and hospitals in a competitive vacuum where price and value bear little relation to one another.

When people talk about health care as a good for which the market doesn't work, and therefore the government needs to step in, they're completely missing the point that, for the most part, the market isn't working because it's been broken by the intervention of the government.

Q: Why do so many people have health insurance as a "fringe benefit" of their employment rather than purchasing an appropriate policy themselves?
A: Government intervention in the market.

While its origins can be traced back to 1929, when a group of Dallas teachers contracted with a hospital to cover inpatient services for a fixed annual premium, the link between employment and private health insurance was strengthened by three key government decisions in the 1940s and 1950s. First, during World War II the War Labor Board ruled that wage and price controls did not apply to fringe benefits such as health insurance, leading many employers to institute ESI. Second, in the late 1940s the National Labor Relations Board ruled that health insurance and other employee benefit plans were subject to collective bargaining. Third, in 1954 the Internal Revenue Service decreed that health insurance premiums paid by employers were exempt from income taxation.

Q: What is the consumer view of the price of health care services as fee-for-service is replaced by fee-for-insurance, with no direct costs associated with consumption of services?
A: The per-service price has dropped.

Q: On a demand curve, what happens to quantity demanded as price drops?
A: It increases.

Q: So, it's pretty clear that the transition to "insurer pays" theoretically increases demand for health care services. Has that actually happened?
A: Clearly.

Q: So, what happens in a market when quantity demanded increases?
A: Well, quantity supplied must increase to match it. Or there are going to be shortages.

Q: What makes quantity supplied increase?
A: Increased prices.

Q: But the increased prices would then cause the quantity demanded to drop, would it not?
A: Well, it would if the consumers were paying the service prices. But they are not. The purchasers of services are insurance companies and government agencies, not the consumers of those services. So the price goes up for the purchasers of health care insurance, but that price is disconnected from the price for the purchasers of health care services.

Price is a feedback mechanism. Price drops, quantity demanded increases and quantity supplied drops, until you reach an equilibrium, a point at which the price makes the quantities demanded and supplied the same. That's "the market" in action. But when the consumer of the services is not paying the cost of those services directly, there's no feedback mechanism, no incentive not to use the services. In fact, the incentive is opposite - "I'm paying for the insurance, the insurance will cover it, why not go do it?" Whether the "it" is an MRI for a migraine or an office visit for a cold or an emergency room visit for a muscle pull, if you're paying for coverage but not services, you're much, MUCH more likely to consume the services than if you were paying for them directly.

That's why it's infuriating to listen to people say that "the market doesn't work" in health care. There is no "market" in health care, and hasn't been for a long time. The consumers of services rarely, if ever, pay directly for services, so there are no direct controls on prices. And there's no price control on consumption.

And that's why Obamacare is a plan that moves in exactly the wrong direction to deal with the problems that we have. Our health care issues stem from rising demand for services, and the partisan plan that the Democrats rammed through last year does nothing whatsoever to curb that demand. It further increases the disconnect between the consumers of services and the payers of those services. The only conceivable result of that plan is forced rationing. Economically, there is no other option.

"Solyndra Was Just a Bad Bet From the Beginning"

2011-09-27T16:57:00.000-04:00

Good piece from Megan McArdle on why Solyndra was a bad idea from the start, tax dollars essentially flushed...

Scale matters--you can't take billion-dollar fliers on too many ideas. Appropriateness matters--retirees shouldn't put their living expenses in tech stocks. And the potential payoff matters--we should not invest billions to develop a slightly better form of white-out, or into experiments that have a 1-in-a-trillion chance of developing a low-cost way to turn lead into gold.

I think Solyndra flunks on all three counts.

Read it all.

My favorite song...

2011-09-27T16:51:00.000-04:00

...when I was four.

It still works. As does a LOT of what The Seekers did...

Monday Pythagorean 9/26/2011

2011-09-26T08:47:00.001-04:00

One way or another, for good or for ill, this regular season is going to be over before the week is. One way or another, for good or for ill, the Red Sox cannot get out of this September soon enough...

How dismal has this 6-18 month been? They lost two games between wins on the 3rd and 6th. They lost two games between wins on the 13th and 16th. That's as close as they came to a winning streak.
The Red Sox played baseball games on five days this week. They lost a game on all five. The two wins were both the second halves of double headers.
Jekyll or Hyde? In two stretchs (2-10 to start, 6-18 in September) they played .222 ball for 36 games. In the 123 games in between, they were a .659 team, 81-42.
The second game In New York on Sunday was only the second time in the month of September that the Red Sox won a game without scoring 12 or more runs. It was also the first time all month that they scored between 5 and 10 runs.
The Red Sox' magic number is three. They need Tampa lose at least as many games at home against New York as the Red Sox lose in Baltimore against the Orioles. If the Sox go 3-0, it doesn't matter what the Rays do. If the Sox lose 1, they need the Rays to lose 1. If Boston loses 1 more than Tampa, they'll have a playoff game on Thursday. If Boston loses two more than Tampa, the Rays win the Wild Card. (All of this assumes that the Angels lose one or the Red Sox win one. If Boston loses three, the Angels win three and the Rays lose two, there will be a three-way tie, and I'm not going to go through the playoff scenarios that result from that right now. If Boston and Tampa get swept and the Angels sweep, the Sox and Angels would have a one-game playoff on Thursday.)
Tough to overstate the importance of Beckett pitching well tonight. The importance of the game in the standings goes without saying, but, in addition to that, the bullpen threw 12 innings yesterday. Beckett needs to pitch well and pitch long.
Some offense would help, too...
Red Sox Player of the Week - Jacoby Ellsbury hit .382/.400/.765/1.165, and capped off his week with the 14th inning three-run HR that was crucial to getting out of New York with a lead in the playoff hunt.
Red Sox Pitcher of the Week - When the best start of the week comes from John Lackey, you know that none of the starters are getting it. So the award splits this week, between Alfredo Aceves (6 1/3) and Scott Atchison (7 1/3), who combined for 13 2/3 innings of scoreless relief.

AL Pythagorean Projection Report - 4/18/2011
							Projected		Actual
	R/G	(rank)	RA/G	(rank)	Pythagorean	(rank)	W	L	W	L	Luck
New York	5.38	(2)	4.02	(3)	0.63	(1)	100	59	97	62	-3
Texas	5.3	(3)	4.22	(5)	0.603	(2)	95	63	92	66	-3
Boston	5.42	(1)	4.53	(9)	0.581	(3)	92	67	89	70	-3
Tampa Bay	4.36	(9)	3.78	(1)	0.565	(4)	89	69	88	70	-1
Detroit	4.8	(4)	4.42	(8)	0.538	(5)	85	73	91	67	6
Los Angeles	4.18	(10)	3.88	(2)	0.534	(6)	84	74	86	72	2
Toronto	4.66	(5)	4.77	(12)	0.49	(7)	77	81	79	79	2
Kansas City	4.55	(6)	4.75	(11)	0.481	(8)	76	82	69	89	-7
Cleveland	4.39	(7)	4.61	(10)	0.478	(9)	76	83	80	79	4
Oakland	4.01	(12)	4.27	(6)	0.472	(10)	75	83	71	87	-4
Chicago	4.09	(11)	4.35	(7)	0.471	(11)	74	84	77	81	3
Seattle	3.49	(14)	4.17	(4)	0.42	(12)	66	92	66	92	0
Baltimore	4.37	(8)	5.33	(14)	0.411	(13)	65	93	67	91	2
Minnesota	3.85	(13)	4.99	(13)	0.384	(14)	61	98	61	98	0

Top 5 projections (using current winning %)
New York	99	63
Texas	94	68
Detroit	93	69
Boston	91	71
Tampa Bay	90	72

Top 5 projections (starting with today's record, using Pythagorean winning %)
New York	99	63
Texas	94	68
Detroit	93	69
Boston	91	71
Tampa Bay	90	72

Standings for the week
							Projected		Actual
	R/G	(rank)	RA/G	(rank)	Pythagorean	(rank)	W	L	W	L	Luck
Texas	7.4	(1)	3.2	(1)	0.823	(1)	4	1	4	1	0
Kansas City	7.25	(2)	3.75	(2)	0.77	(2)	3	1	2	2	-1
New York	5.75	(8)	4.13	(4)	0.647	(3)	5	3	6	2	1
Los Angeles	5.33	(9)	3.83	(3)	0.647	(4)	4	2	3	3	-1
Tampa Bay	5.17	(10)	4.17	(5)	0.597	(5)	4	2	3	3	-1
Cleveland	6.75	(4)	5.63	(9)	0.583	(6)	5	3	5	4	0
Detroit	6.4	(5)	6.2	(12)	0.515	(7)	3	2	2	3	-1
Seattle	5.83	(7)	6	(11)	0.487	(8)	3	3	3	3	0
Baltimore	7	(3)	7.43	(14)	0.473	(9)	3	4	5	2	2
Chicago	4.33	(12)	4.67	(7)	0.466	(10)	3	3	3	3	0
Minnesota	4.86	(11)	5.43	(8)	0.449	(11)	3	4	2	6	-1
Boston	6	(6)	6.71	(13)	0.449	(12)	3	4	2	5	-1
Oakland	3.8	(14)	4.4	(6)	0.433	(13)	2	3	2	3	0
Toronto	4	(13)	5.67	(10)	0.346	(14)	2	4	2	4	0

Service music - 9/25/01

2011-09-25T17:18:00.000-04:00

Service music, Park Street Church Sanctuary Choir, 9/25/11

May The Mind of Christ My Savior

The King of Love

New clothes

2011-09-25T05:49:00.000-04:00

Sudbury Colonial Faire and Muster...

A cartoon of a picture is worth...

2011-09-23T12:46:00.000-04:00

Michael Ramirez:

A brief look at the catastrophe that has been Red Sox September

2011-09-23T11:45:00.000-04:00

Peter Abraham:

It’s not difficult to determine why the Sox have lost 14 of their last 18 games. Their starting pitchers are 3-9 with a 6.75 earned run average and 1.63 WHIP in those 18 games.

...

Beckett, Jon Lester, John Lackey, Tim Wakefield, Andrew Miller, and Kyle Weiland have produced two quality starts since Sept. 3. One was by Lester Sept. 6 against Toronto, the other by Beckett Sept. 16 against Tampa Bay. Those are two of the four games the Sox have won.

Yeah, it's not quite that easy, Peter. Yes, the starters have been bad. But Boston is now 5-16 in the month of September, and their lead in the Wild Card race is down to two games with six to play. If they were 10-11 in September, they'd already have clinched a playoff spot, and they are still likely to do so. So, is it just a matter of the starters performing badly?

The short answer: No. Yes, they've been pretty poor. No, they aren't solely to blame for the swoon, not even close to it.

The bullpen. There certainly has been some overuse in the middle innings caused by starters not getting deep enough. But consider this - the whole game plan for the Sox, all year, is to try to get an 8th inning lead for Daniel Bard and Jonathan Papelbon to finish off.
- On September 1, Aceves and Bard combined to give up three in the seventh to turn a 2-1 lead into a 4-2 deficit. Loss.
- On September 7, Bard blew a lead in the 8th, giving up 5 runs to turn a 2 run lead into a 3 run deficit. Loss.
- Bard lost another one on the 10th, giving up a run in the 11th inning of a tie game after facing just three batters. Loss.
- Bard gave up 3 with a 2-run lead in the 8th inning on the 14th. Loss.
- Bard and Papelbon combined to give up 3 with a one-run lead on the 20th. Loss.
Turn two of those losses into wins, and their magic number is three with six to play, and there's significantly less hyperventilating.

I don't care for Wins and Losses as a metric for pitcher effectiveness, but I think this is telling. The Red Sox starters are 4-10 in September. The bullpen is 1-6. And a couple of those starter losses came when the starter left the game with a lead or at least tied and the bullpen allowed the winning, or tying and winning, run(s) to score.

They've been almost as bad at the end of the game as they've been at the beginning.
Red Sox bullpen - 9/2011
ERA for 7-11th innings: 5.22
ERA in losses for 7-11th innings: 5.93

Have the starters been bad? Yep. Has the bullpen been any better? Not against established standards of performance, no they haven't.

Red Sox bullpen - 9/2011
ERA for 7-11th innings:	5.22
ERA in losses for 7-11th innings:	5.93

The offense. (The cry rises from the peanut gallery: "The offense? Are you nuts? They're averaging 5.8 runs per game in September! This is not an offensive problem!") Well, yes, they are averaging 5.8 runs per game in September. But remember that old saw about the man with his feet in the freezer and his head in the oven being, on average, at a pretty comfortable temperature? Ladies and Gentlemen, I present your September 2011 Boston Red Sox offense.

Five times in their 21 September games, they've scored in double digits (10, 12, 14, 18, 18). In those five games, they're 4-1. In the other 16, they scored five or fewer. In the double-digit games, they averaged 14.4 runs/game. In the other 16, they averaged 3.125. If you're failing to score 6 or more runs in 76% of your games, you're putting up a very bad offensive performance.

Red Sox offense - 9/2011
	AB	Runs	Hits	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	BA	OBA	SPct	OPS	Runs/Game	RC	RC/25
September	746	122	209	57	4	24	118	71	154	.280	.343	.464	.807	5.81	116.9	5.2
Double-digit games	206	72	88	26	0	13	69	26	37	.427	.496	.743	1.239	14.40	65.9	13.3
The other 16	540	50	121	31	4	11	49	45	117	.224	.282	.357	.639	3.13	52.4	3.0

They've had five strong offensive games, and then they've been awful. In more than three quarters of their games, they got performances like David Ortiz (.231/.333/.250/.583) and Dustin Pedroia (.194/.219/.339/.557) and Jacoby Ellsbury (.265/.292/.426/.718) and Jarrod Saltalamacchia (.139/.162/.333/.495) and Jason Varitek (.050/.136/.200/.336) and Jed Lowrie (.000/.048/.000/.048) and Josh Reddick (.209/.244/.279/.524) and Kevin Youkilis (.150/.261/.200/.461). They've lost 5-4, 4-3, 3-2 and 1-0. Shut out twice, one of which took 11 innings.

They lost 3 of 4 in Toronto despite outscoring the Jays by 9 in the series. They scored 24 in the middle two games, and 4 runs in the bookends. They lost 3 of 4 at home to Baltimore despite outscoring the Orioles by 6. They scored 18 runs in one game, 14 in the other four combined.

It's certainly an indictment of the pitching staff that they've gone 1-14 when scoring fewer than 10 runs, but it's an indictment of this offense that they've had 15 games in which they scored fewer than six, 11 (more than half) in which they've scored fewer than five and seven games in which they failed to score at least four.

They struggled against Mariano Rivera and James Shields and David Price, but they also struggled against Pedro Strop and Willie Eyre and Jason Berken.

The offense has been full partners in the "swoon." The offense has been just as ineffective as the pitching, or nearly so, but the nature of the beast allows for spectacular performances to skew the averages badly, and that's what they've done. A spectacular pitching performance, on the other hand, such as allowing 1 run in the 11th after 10 scoreless, can't make up for a bad one. So it looks like the pitching has been much worse. But it hasn't. Probably a little worse, but not MUCH worse.

I have zero interest in castigating the GM. Or the manager. Through the end of August, they were on a pace to win 100+ games. This is a talented team that's just played horribly in all phases of the game for three weeks. The slumps have all come together and they had two starters get hurt in three days when they already had two on the shelf, which challenged the depth. It's been painful to watch, and certainly, the starting pitching has been bad.

My only point is this - so has everything else. The relief pitching has been bad. The offense has been bad. They've lost games this month with bad starting pitching, bad relief pitching, bad base-running, bad batting and bad defense. (And bad luck. Barrel of the bat takes out the SS and directly leads to four runs scoring? Diving 3rd baseman lands on the base for a double play? Murphy's Law has been in full force.)

It may continue for another week, in which case they'll probably miss the playoffs. And they may come out of it. Either way, if they're still playing after next Wednesday, all of what's just happened has no bearing on what will happen going forward.

A picture is worth a thousand words...

2011-09-22T07:03:00.000-04:00

Via (shockingly) MSNBC:

Ok, here are a few words. We don't know exactly what the situation was when the picture was snapped. Not everyone is looking at the camera, so presumably the cameraman hadn't just told them, "say cheese!" Maybe it was just an accident that the photographer caught the oblivious egotistical narcissist looking like an oblivious egotistical narcissist. Maybe the picture isn't fair.

But...

(At least his jacket appears to be buttoned correctly...)

Correlation is not causation

2011-09-21T07:36:00.000-04:00

Glenn Reynolds, with another Higher Education "Bubble" update, quotes Robert Weissberg:

Administrative bloat is a major factor in the escalation of college costs, and ‘diversity’ administrators are probably the biggest part of it.

I think that's probably exactly backwards. Looking at colleges as businesses, I suspect that administrative bloat is actually one of the major results of the escalation of college costs, and diversity administrators are one of the biggest parts of that. That is to say, costs aren't going up because colleges are hiring more administrators - they are hiring more administrators because they have more money coming in. They have more money coming in because we've made a decision, as a society, that the path to success in this world includes the credentials that come with a college degree, and because Uncle Sam has stepped in with untold billions of dollars in guaranteed loans to enable people to go.

Stop and think about this from a business point of view for a minute. Let's assume that I'm running a college, and every year I have 1000 applicants for 800 slots in my incoming Freshman class. I go through the applicants, and, based on whatever criteria I choose, I come up with 800. Half of them can pay the nominal $15,000 per year tuition and fees, the other half get help from my endowment fund, and in the end, I end up with 800 students who are going to come in and pay somewhere around $10,000 per person, total. So I've got $8 million in revenue from that class for that year. If I drop the nominal price, I'm going to take in less, and I believe that if I raise it, I'll actually eliminate some of my applicants and probably not increase my revenue, either.

Now Uncle Sam stands up and says, "hey, you, barely literate, barely numerate graduate of our nation's fine public high schools - don't go to work in a factory or become a plumber or electrician. We'll loan you the money to follow your dream of becoming the Next Great Women's Studies Professor." And makes available to every high school graduate a $4000-per year, no questions asked loan. (You'll have to pay it off, of course, but that's out there in the future, and that Anthropology or Medieval English Literature degree will certainly vastly increase your lifetime earning potential.) What do I, as someone running a college, now see when I look out at the world?

"Hey! Every one of my applicants, every one of them, can afford to pay $4000 more per year than he or she could last year!"

Am I going to raise rates by $4000 in year one? Maybe not. But it's not going to take too long to get there. Why would I, as a greedy businessman, forgo profit that there's to be made if I can increase profits by increasing revenues? Or, to put a less cynical spin on it, why would I, as an idealistic educator, forgo the opportunity to improve my facilities and increase my endowment if the students who are growing at my nurturing institution can avail themselves of a little federal money to improve our school's general welfare?

No one's attending school anywhere because that school has "great diversity administrators!" Schools are hiring "diversity administrators" to make sure that they keep their first class seats on Uncle Sam's gravy train...

Monday Pythagorean 9/19/2011

2011-09-19T08:01:00.002-04:00

Staggering to the finish line? If they make it there at all after another 2-4 week...

We've a wonderful example here of averages lying. The Red Sox scored 6 runs per game this week, 2nd in the AL. But. 18 of the 36 runs they scored came in one blowout win. In the other five games, they averaged 3.6 runs per game, and went 1-4.
If the Red Sox end up missing the playoffs, these last two weekends will be largely responsible, as they've gone 1-6 vs. Tampa. One more in one of those six losses, and they've be in pretty good shape still. (And frankly, they're still in pretty good shape. With 10 games left, it's much better to be two up than two back.)
There have been some injury problems, and the pitching hasn't been great. It would be nice to have a healthy Youkilis. It would have been nice to have another start from Beckett, and a good performance from Lester, and maybe a couple of Bedard starts instead of Wakefield and/or Weiland. But. The guys who are there have been bad. The eight regulars who've played in all seven of those games (six of seven in the case of Saltalamacchia) hit .216/.283/.319/.602 over the two weekends. Shockingly, the only one of the eight who was decent was Crawford. The rest were abysmal.
Carl Crawford                 .364/.391/.455/.846
Jacoby Ellsbury               .276/.290/.448/.739
David Ortiz                   .250/.357/.292/.649
Josh Reddick                  .278/.350/.278/.628
Marco Scutaro                 .200/.222/.320/.542
Dustin Pedroia                .192/.250/.231/.481
Adrian Gonzalez               .048/.259/.190/.450
Jarrod Saltalamacchia         .100/.143/.300/.443
Pathetic.
Boston has seven remaining with Baltimore and three with New York. Tampa has seven remaining with New York and three with Toronto.
Boston's magic number is seven.
Red Sox Player of the Week - None
Red Sox Pitcher of the Week - Josh Beckett returned and pitched well in their only victory against the Rays, one of the biggest wins of the year.

AL Pythagorean Projection Report - 4/18/2011
							Projected		Actual
	R/G	(rank)	RA/G	(rank)	Pythagorean	(rank)	W	L	W	L	Luck
New York	5.36	(2)	4.01	(3)	0.629	(1)	95	56	91	60	-4
Texas	5.24	(3)	4.25	(5)	0.594	(2)	91	62	88	65	-3
Boston	5.39	(1)	4.43	(9)	0.589	(3)	90	62	87	65	-3
Tampa Bay	4.33	(7)	3.76	(1)	0.564	(4)	86	66	85	67	-1
Detroit	4.75	(4)	4.36	(8)	0.539	(5)	83	70	89	64	6
Los Angeles	4.13	(10)	3.88	(2)	0.529	(6)	80	72	83	69	3
Toronto	4.68	(5)	4.73	(11)	0.496	(7)	75	77	77	75	2
Oakland	4.02	(12)	4.26	(6)	0.473	(8)	72	81	69	84	-3
Chicago	4.08	(11)	4.34	(7)	0.471	(9)	72	80	74	78	2
Kansas City	4.48	(6)	4.77	(12)	0.471	(10)	73	81	67	87	-6
Cleveland	4.27	(8)	4.55	(10)	0.47	(11)	71	79	75	75	4
Seattle	3.4	(14)	4.1	(4)	0.415	(12)	63	89	63	89	0
Baltimore	4.25	(9)	5.23	(14)	0.406	(13)	61	90	62	89	1
Minnesota	3.8	(13)	4.97	(13)	0.38	(14)	57	94	59	92	2

Top 5 projections (using current winning %)
New York	98	64
Detroit	94	68
Texas	93	69
Boston	93	69
Tampa Bay	91	71

Top 5 projections (starting with today's record, using Pythagorean winning %)
New York	98	64
Detroit	94	68
Texas	93	69
Boston	93	69
Tampa Bay	91	71

Standings for the week
							Projected		Actual
	R/G	(rank)	RA/G	(rank)	Pythagorean	(rank)	W	L	W	L	Luck
Texas	6	(2)	3.17	(2)	0.763	(1)	5	1	5	1	0
Kansas City	6.67	(1)	4	(7)	0.718	(2)	4	2	5	1	1
Detroit	5	(5)	3	(1)	0.718	(3)	5	2	5	2	0
Tampa Bay	4.71	(8)	3.71	(5)	0.607	(4)	4	3	4	3	0
New York	4	(11)	3.5	(4)	0.561	(5)	3	3	3	3	0
Baltimore	4.67	(9)	4.17	(8)	0.552	(6)	3	3	4	2	1
Los Angeles	4.83	(7)	4.33	(9)	0.55	(7)	3	3	3	3	0
Boston	6	(2)	5.83	(10)	0.513	(8)	3	3	2	4	-1
Oakland	3.14	(13)	3.29	(3)	0.48	(9)	3	4	3	4	0
Cleveland	5.33	(4)	6.83	(13)	0.389	(10)	2	4	3	3	1
Toronto	5	(5)	6.6	(11)	0.376	(11)	2	3	3	2	1
Seattle	2.83	(14)	3.83	(6)	0.365	(12)	2	4	2	4	0
Chicago	4.29	(10)	7.71	(14)	0.254	(13)	2	5	1	6	-1
Minnesota	3.6	(12)	6.8	(12)	0.238	(14)	1	4	0	5	-1

The Servant Song

2011-09-19T07:20:00.000-04:00

Park Street Church, 9/18/2011

Boston 4, Tampa 3

2011-09-16T22:53:00.000-04:00

Well that was a big freakin' win.

Bard, three strikeouts in scoreless 8th. Beckett six pretty strong innings, only one run after the first. They beat Shields.

And most importantly, Tampa now cannot catch them without help - the Rays will leave town, done with head-to-head, and still be two games back. AT LEAST two games back.

Just huge...

Boston's magic number is now 9, with 12 games to play.

NY Times: "Yes, everything we ever said about bipartisanship was a lie."

2011-09-16T12:46:00.000-04:00

Over at the New York Times this morning, there's an astounding editorial.

As soon as he proposed to pay for his $447 billion jobs plan with tax increases, President Obama knew he was going to do battle with Republicans. But he is also being challenged by Democrats because they cannot face another big pre-election fight or are thinking more about campaign contributors than the country’s best interests.

Is that it? Those are the only two choices? The Democrats are scared of a fight or are putting campaign contributions ahead of the country's best interests? (And let's face it, that's only one choice - political interests are trumping national interests.) And that's the only thing that the Times could come up with? How an idea, Mr. Big-shot New York Times Editorial Writer. Maybe the Democrats, along with the Republicans, recognize the President's "plan" for what it is - a nakedly partisan, cynically political attempt to improve his own public standing at the expense of Congress', a "plan" that contains nothing but a re-hash of all the things he's already done that haven't worked, a "plan" that would do nothing to increase the economic well-being of the country but would, instead, continue to increase the already staggering debt without creating a single job in the process.

What's funniest about the whole thing, though, is the sheer chutzpah of the Times, one of the foremost "bipartisanship" fetishists, whining about what they normally cry out for. This is prima facie evidence that what they want isn't bipartisanship - it's liberal policies. This editorial renders every future cry they make for bipartisanship even more farcical than the ones they've made in the past. "Bipartisanship," like "civil discourse," is a political weapon to use against Republicans, not an actual trait that they really give a damn about, and this editorial is proof of that. Keep that in mind the next time Republicans refuse to agree with Democrats and the inevitable plaintive cries of longing for "bipartisanship" rise from the offices of the Times' editorial staff.

There's more "good stuff" in the piece, too.

Some Democrats oppose the jobs bill for its apparent connection to the stimulus law from 2009, which Republicans lambasted on their way to victories in the midterm elections in 2010. The problem with the stimulus bill is not that it did not work. [LB: There are others, too, of course, but yeah, the big problem obviously is that it did not work.] The problem is that neither the administration nor Congressional Democrats ever persuasively used the evidence of its positive effect on jobs, as documented by the Congressional Budget Office and in private economic analyses.

The reason that they never "persuasively used the evidence" is that there isn't any. Or, rather, that the evidence that exists is so weak that it cannot possibly be used "persuasively" to convince someone who didn't already wholeheartedly believe it without the evidence. The CBO report¹ that showed the stimulus working started with the model that they used to design the stimulus, the model that showed "if you do x, y will happen," and used the model to say "look, we did x, therefore y happened - the model proves it!" The Times' own pet Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman, has spent the last two years telling us that it didn't work (because it wasn't big enough). The idea that it was a colossal success that the administration is being too modest to take the credit for is well beyond silly, rapidly approaching insane.

Economists have estimated that Mr. Obama’s plan, if fully adopted, could create 1.3 million to 1.9 million jobs next year.

Yes, and what did those same economists estimate would happen with Mr. Obama's first plan? That it would prevent unemployment from topping 8%.

Here's the President's economic adviser Cristina Romer, on her way out the door a year ago:

What the Act hasn’t done is prevent unemployment from going above 8 percent, something else that Jared and I projected it would do.

And

Precisely because such severe financial shocks have been rare, there were no reliable estimates of the likely impact. To this day, economists don’t fully understand why firms cut production as much as they did, and why they cut labor so much more than they normally would, given the decline in output.

So obviously, there's no way they could be over-estimating the impact of doing more of the same thing that worked so well last time, right?

The Republicans will not support the jobs bill, if only because Mr. Obama wants it. Americans need Democrats to step up now, and for Mr. Obama to lead them.

Again, can they not see any other possible reason? Is it really beyond the realm of comprehension that someone might look at that "plan" and think, "you know, that's really not a very good idea"?

Apparently not.

It would be comical if it weren't so damaging...

¹ - Congressional Budget Office report:

Estimating the law’s overall effects on employment requires a more comprehensive analysis than can be achieved by using the recipients’ reports. Therefore, looking at recorded spending to date along with estimates of the other effects of ARRA on spending and revenues, CBO has estimated the law’s impact on employment and economic output using evidence about the effects of previous similar policies and drawing on various mathematical models that represent the workings of the economy.

A couple of economists

2011-09-16T09:07:00.000-04:00

Here are two links that you should follow and read. One of the problems that we really need to come to grips with, as a society, is our tendency to ignore trade-offs. These guys did not.

Stephen Heyward at PowerLine on Hayek vs. Keynes.

Amity Shlaes at Bloomberg on Bastiat and broken windows.

A little media quiz this morning

2011-09-15T09:25:00.000-04:00

If you've been paying attention, the following quiz should be easy. It deals with this story from Reuters:

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits rose ____________ last week in a sign concerns about a weak economy were sapping an already beleaguered labor market, data showed on Thursday.

Applications for unemployment benefits climbed to 428,000 in the week ending September 10 from an upwardly revised 417,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.

Which of the following words was removed from the story?

a) sharply
b) slightly
c) unexpectedly
d) predictably

And the answer is ... c) unexpectedly!

To re-quote Jim Geraghty,

If I find myself in a fistfight, I hope it's with one of these economists who are always getting quoted by Reuters or Bloomberg, because then I'll rest assured that I'll always have the element of surprise. These guys never expect everything.

Semi-serious question: does the Reuters style book require that its journalists refer to all increases in jobless claims as "unexpected"?

Deja vu...

2011-09-15T07:41:00.000-04:00

...all over again.

Tuesday night (9/6), the bats explode and the Red Sox win by double digits against the Blue Jays.
Wednesday (9/7), they take a lead against the Jays into the late innings, and a Daniel Bard meltdown costs them the win.

Tuesday night (9/13), the bats explode and the Red Sox win by double digits against the Blue Jays.
Wednesday (9/14), they take a lead against the Jays into the late innings, and a Daniel Bard meltdown costs them the win.

Hopefully, the wayback machine is now broken, and we don't continue down the path to a sweep by the Rays over the Sox...

Worse and worse: New e-mails show White House rushed OMB to approve Solyndra loan

2011-09-14T07:10:00.000-04:00

Haven't been following the Solyndra story? It can be difficult, I know, when the mainstream press isn't interested. But thanks to the internet, there are outlets for stuff that the press would have been able to suppress 15 years ago. There's a lot of bad behavior here...

Until now, the White House has insisted that it didn’t intervene in the deal, but what else would you call it if, due to time constraints, OMB was forced to use a possibly sub-standard model that led to approval of a loan that everyone else knew shouldn’t have been made?

This is how much these people care about taxpayer money. Half a billion dollars down the tubes because they wanted to get one of their speeches just right.

In terms of our current financial situation, of course, half a billion dollars is meaningless. But it is indicative of mindset.

Report spurs UW students to action

2011-09-13T09:34:00.000-04:00

The Badger Herald: Report spurs UW students to action

Two reports released today allege the University of Wisconsin discriminates against whites and Asian applicants and have electrified both UW administration and some student leaders.

A crowd of more than 150 students filled the Multicultural Student Center in the Red Gym on Monday after an ominous message from UW Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate Damon Williams claimed a threat had been made against the diversity efforts in the campus community.

The reports were released at midnight on Tuesday from the Center for Equal Opportunity in conjunction with a press conference CEO President Roger Clegg will hold at the Double Tree Inn at 11 a.m. today. Clegg will also be at a debate on the future of Affirmative Action at the UW Law School at 7 p.m. this evening.

Williams said the timing of the events is no coincidence.

In an interview with The Badger Herald, Clegg said the reports show how a heavy preference is given to blacks and Latinos over whites and Asians in the admissions process for undergraduate programs and in the law school.

In other news, scientists announced this morning that the sun will set in the west tonight.

This is news that "electrified" people? Seriously? Is there someone out there that didn't know that Universities practice racial discrimination? That the Supreme Court told them that they could? Someone's missed that? What is affirmative action other than an institutionalized racial discrimination policy?

But, hey, they're all "electrified" by the news that winter tends to be cooler than summer, and the University of Wisconsin's "vice provost for diversity and climate" (and how did education ever take place with no one filling that vital position?) is on the case...

The Programmed President

2011-09-13T09:19:00.001-04:00

Good piece in Human Events by Daniel J. Flynn:

Only in the bizarro world of liberalism is a program’s inefficacy considered a compelling argument to expand that program....

Reality is a rude affront to grand ideas.

Friedman, one of the Blue Collar Intellectuals included in my forthcoming book, waited tables, sold fireworks by the roadside, and peddled encyclopedias door-to-door before winning a Nobel Prize in economics. Obama collected signatures for Ralph Nader’s NYPIRG and taught in a law school before becoming president. Notice a difference?

The real world grounds ideas. Ideological fantasies send minds into the ether.

People armed with programs have usually been programmed. What they lack in ideas they make up in ideology. Ideologues don’t think. Their ideologies do this for them. Like a robot, the ideologue’s mental circuits overheat when confronted with a situation he hasn’t been programmed for.

Read it all...

New England 38, Miami 24

2011-09-13T09:16:00.000-04:00

Odds and ends, while contemplating New England's second consecutive 38-24 season opening win...

I'll confess myself shocked to look at the box score this morning and discover that Miami had the ball for three minutes longer than New England, and ran two more plays. It felt, watching it, as if the Dolphins defense could not get off the field, and that the Patriots just had the ball all night. I commented during the third quarter, or early in the fourth, that "the Patriots have got to be absolutely dominating the time of possession in this game." Obviously, that's not exactly what happened, at least by the final numbers.
Here's why I was right (at the time) and wrong overall.
1. By the time we got to that point in the game, I'd forgotten that the Dolphins had the ball first, and had over 7 minutes of possession time and 12 plays before New England ever touched it.
2. The Dolphins had the ball for the last 2:32. So Miami had the ball first and last, with about 10 minutes of possession total.
3. The Patriots had four 4th quarter drives. Two were three and out. One took only one play. They averaged over 11 yards per play in the 4th quarter. It's tough to consume a lot of clock when you're moving the ball that quickly - the field is only 100 yards long.
Between Miami's first and last drives, New England had the ball for about 28 1/2 minutes to the Dolphins' 22, and ran 72 plays to the Dolphins' 54.
The phony-baloney interceptionless streak ended. Not that the streak itself wasn't incredibly impressive - what was "phony-baloney" about it was that it was still officially continuing, despite his throwing an absolutely awful killer pick that played a huge part in their losing a playoff game last year. So now he can start a new one.
The first Miami drive was ... concerning. The defense allowed them to march right down the field and put the ball in the end zone.
Likewise, for Chad Henne to put the ball up 49 times and get picked only once, on the last play of the game, for him to get sacked just four times and throw for 416 yards, is not what you're looking for from the defense.
On the very significant plus side for the defense, however, is this: 2-of-14. The Dolphins converted only two of 14 third downs for first downs. New England's inability to get off the field on third downs last year was its Achilles heel. Of course, as gaudy as that 14% conversion rate is, it looks a little tarnished when you consider that Miami was also 4-of-5 on 4th downs, for a drive-extension conversion rate of 6-of-19, or about 32%. Still a big improvement over last year's typical effort.
About the offense, there's very little to say. They've got an all-time great quarterback, at pretty much the peak of his abilities, with good protection and excellent tools to work with. I think they're likelier than not to lead the NFL in scoring this year, and I expect them to top the 38 they put up last night on more than one occasion...

Monday Pythagorean 9/12/2011

2011-09-12T08:08:00.000-04:00

I don't even have a rant this week. They were not only bad, they were unwatchably bad, and my only commentary was that I found it impossible to sit through the entirety of any of those games. Even the one win was bad baseball, because it was over very early...

Even with the Yankees losing four straight to Baltimore and LAnaheim, the deficit continued to increase. If they haven't been eliminated from the division yet, and they haven't, neither have they locked up the Wild Card. This was about as bad a week of baseball as they've played all year, and the fact that they are still in a playoff spot is due to good work that they did earlier, not anything that they've done recently.
In the cold light of reason, I must now say this - they are still likely to make the playoffs. They've got four more home games and five fewer road games remaining than the Rays, and they've been a better team all year, and the race has gotten close as Tampa's had a hot streak that coincided with a dreadful Boston slump. Neither of those things is likely to continue much longer.
Of course, neither has to go much longer for Tampa to pass Boston...
The offense looked much better than it actually was, as they scored a ton of runs in games where it did them no particular good (14 runs in a shutout win, 10 more in a loss - they could have gone 1-1 in those games scoring 1 as opposed to 24.) But they couldn't seem to get enough hits at the right times to take the battered pitching staff off the hook. And when they did get a well-pitched game, they didn't score at all, losing 1-0 in 11 innings.
They actually outscored Toronto by over two runs per game in the course of losing 3-of-4.
Red Sox Player of the Week - Marco Scutaro (.464/.500/.714/1.214) was outstanding against his former team, the Blue Jays, and kept up his hot streak through the weekend in Tampa.
Red Sox Pitcher of the Week - I'm open to nominations. Ok, no, I'm really not. The pitching was awful this week, and the few guys who were effective, weren't effective enough for long enough to warrant awarding.
Red Sox Goat of the Week - I feel the need to mention two who warrant special mention. And I hate to do it, because as two of the better and more important players on the team, each is a big part of the reason that they are still in a playoff spot right now. But each was bad enough this week to warrant "special" mention. First, for the offense, we have Dustin Pedroia (.097/.125/.129/.254) with about as offensive a performance as you'll ever see. Capable of getting very, very hot, he's also capable of the opposite. He's stranding runners, killing innings, and just crippling their ability to come back. And Daniel Bard not gave up six runs in only three innings of work, he's almost single-handedly responsible for me having to listen to more "when will Tim Wakefield win his 200th game" talk.

AL Pythagorean Projection Report - 4/18/2011
							Projected		Actual
	R/G	(rank)	RA/G	(rank)	Pythagorean	(rank)	W	L	W	L	Luck
New York	5.41	(1)	4.03	(3)	0.631	(1)	92	53	88	57	-4
Boston	5.36	(2)	4.37	(8)	0.593	(2)	87	59	85	61	-2
Texas	5.2	(3)	4.3	(6)	0.586	(3)	86	61	83	64	-3
Tampa Bay	4.31	(7)	3.77	(1)	0.562	(4)	81	64	81	64	0
Detroit	4.74	(4)	4.42	(9)	0.531	(5)	78	68	84	62	6
Los Angeles	4.1	(10)	3.86	(2)	0.528	(6)	77	69	80	66	3
Toronto	4.67	(5)	4.67	(11)	0.501	(7)	74	73	74	73	0
Chicago	4.07	(11)	4.18	(5)	0.488	(8)	71	74	73	72	2
Cleveland	4.22	(9)	4.46	(10)	0.475	(9)	68	76	72	72	4
Oakland	4.06	(12)	4.31	(7)	0.473	(10)	69	77	66	80	-3
Kansas City	4.39	(6)	4.8	(12)	0.459	(11)	68	80	62	86	-6
Seattle	3.42	(14)	4.11	(4)	0.417	(12)	61	85	61	85	0
Baltimore	4.23	(8)	5.28	(14)	0.401	(13)	58	87	58	87	0
Minnesota	3.81	(13)	4.9	(13)	0.386	(14)	56	90	59	87	3

Top 5 projections (using current winning %)
New York	98	64
Boston	94	68
Detroit	93	69
Texas	91	71
Tampa Bay	90	72

Top 5 projections (starting with today's record, using Pythagorean winning %)
New York	99	63
Boston	94	68
Detroit	93	69
Texas	92	70
Tampa Bay	91	71

Standings for the week
							Projected		Actual
	R/G	(rank)	RA/G	(rank)	Pythagorean	(rank)	W	L	W	L	Luck
Detroit	5.83	(2)	2.67	(2)	0.807	(1)	5	1	6	0	1
Los Angeles	4	(10)	2.17	(1)	0.754	(2)	5	1	4	2	-1
Texas	6.83	(1)	3.83	(7)	0.742	(3)	4	2	3	3	-1
Tampa Bay	5.33	(3)	3.5	(5)	0.684	(4)	4	2	5	1	1
Chicago	4.38	(8)	3.13	(4)	0.649	(5)	5	3	5	3	0
Baltimore	4.86	(6)	5	(9)	0.487	(6)	3	4	3	4	0
Seattle	2.86	(13)	3	(3)	0.478	(7)	3	4	3	4	0
Kansas City	4	(10)	4.43	(8)	0.454	(8)	3	4	4	3	1
Boston	5.14	(4)	5.86	(12)	0.441	(9)	3	4	1	6	-2
New York	4.43	(7)	5.14	(10)	0.432	(10)	3	4	3	4	0
Toronto	4.29	(9)	5.57	(11)	0.382	(11)	3	4	5	2	2
Oakland	5	(5)	7.67	(14)	0.314	(12)	2	4	2	4	0
Cleveland	4	(10)	6.29	(13)	0.304	(13)	2	5	2	5	0
Minnesota	1.86	(14)	3.71	(6)	0.22	(14)	2	5	1	6	-1

Service music - 9/11/01

2011-09-12T06:43:00.000-04:00

The Sanctuary Choir at Park Street Church, Boston, MA.

Introit: My Hope Is In The Lord
Anthem: Beautiful Savior

9/11/2011

Fifes and drums. And sheep...

2011-09-12T06:39:00.000-04:00

Scenes from the jam session that followed the 2011 Drummers Call, on the village green at Old Sturbridge Village, 9/10/2011.

Where I was on 9/11

2011-09-11T05:57:00.000-04:00

(I wrote this on 9/11/2005, the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. I'm reposting it today on the 10th anniversary. I haven't changed or added anything.)

As I've written before, we homeschool our four children. One of the great things about that is that allows for tremendous flexibility in what you do, where you go and when you travel. In the spring of 2001, my wife and kids (8, 7, 5 and 3 at the time) started planning a field trip. They decided that we'd visit our nation's capitol. So they got guide books, found a hotel, and started putting together an itinerary. They studied the history of Washington, figured out where and when we could go, what we could see, and booked hotel rooms. We chose early September, after the summer vacations ended but before we thought school field trips would be in full swing, figuring that we'd have good access without big crowds to the sights we wanted to see.

So, on a Sunday morning in September, we loaded up our van and started south. We stopped a couple of times for bathroom breaks along the way, and made our way from Massachusetts to Washington, DC. One of our bathroom breaks was at the Vince Lombardi rest area on the New Jersey turnpike. As we got back in the car, I said to the kids, "Look over that way. See that tall building, the highest one? You watch as we drive here, and you're going to see that it's actually two buildings. They're called the Twin Towers, and they're the tallest buildings in NY." So we watched as we drove, and saw the buildings separate.

In Baltimore, we stopped at Fort McHenry. Our timing was just right, as we got to watch them take down the flag. And it was the big flag, the replica of the flag that was flying when Key penned the Star Spangled Banner. It's so large that they cannot actually fly it very often. If there's no wind, it doesn't move, and if there's too much, it's a threat to the flagpole and the flag itself. But it was a lovely day, with just the right amount of wind, and we saw it fly, and saw them take it down. You really need to see it being handled to get the perspective on how large it really is.

We made it into Washington in the late afternoon and drove around a little bit before finding the hotel. We drove around the mall, across the river to Arlington, and back around the city. Then we settled in to get some dinner and some sleep so we could get an early start the next day. We stayed at the hotel Harrington, just up the block from the Old Post Office building, and within pretty easy walking distance of everything that we wanted to see.

Monday was a busy day. We got off to an early start, before anything was open, and walked over to the mall. We stood at the Washington Monument for a few minutes, enjoying the view of everything that's viewable, and then started towards the Smithsonian.

We went into the Smithsonian castle for a little while, and then up to the Air and Space Museum, where we spent most of that day. At around noon, we crossed over to the National Gallery and had lunch, as the restaurants at Air and Space weren't open. We went back to Air and Space and enjoyed the rest of our afternoon, found some dinner, and put the kids to bed.

Tuesday's plan was to go to the Museum of American History. Or possibly Natural History. I'm not sure which. But the first thing that we did was to get on the metro and head to the Capitol building for a tour there. It was a beautiful morning, clear skies, not too hot or too cool, and everything was lovely.

We got into the line out front, got passes from the Ranger, and settled down to wait.

Shortly after we'd gotten into line, the rumor started that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in NY. Thinking it was a small plane, like the one that had crashed into the Empire State Building some years ago, we didn't let it impact what we were doing. As the tour group was going in, we had to go in the downstairs entrance, because we had a stroller, and when we were going through security, the uniformed officers were talking about the event in NY. That's when we learned that there had been a second crash, and that both planes were apparently commercial jets.

At that point, it was obviously a coordinated attack. But we were in the Capitol building, with four small children, and everyone was going on with the day, so we did as well. We took an elevator up and met up with our tour in the rotunda. Our guide gave us the background on the rotunda, all of the normal tourist information, the whos and whens, and then we moved on into statuary hall. As a native of Maine, I was attracted to the statue of Hannibal Hamlin, the only VP ever from the state of Maine, and I took this picture of my 8-year old. As I was doing that, the Pentagon was being hit.

Less than 30 seconds after that picture was taken, something happened, someone came running through the hall, and people started running for the exits. I still don't know what was said (though I had the perception that it was a bomb scare), but there was panic, and the crowd was moving. Fortunately, we were all together, but we had three walking and one in a stroller, and two of the kids got knocked down, and the stroller got pushed into one of the velvet ropes in the melee. By the time we got everyone upright again, most of the crowd was in front of us. A security guard led us to an elevator, and we went back down to the ground floor and out through an exit on the south side of the building. The first thing that met the eye was thick black smoke, lots of it, over the buildings facing southwest.

With nothing else to do, we started wandering around toward the mall, thinking at first that we might go to the museums as we'd planned, but knowing that was unlikely. As we stopped in front of the Capitol to take a picture, there was a huge boom that sounded like an explosion. (Looking at the timeline later, we determined that it been the sound of that section of the Pentagon collapsing.) Then, knowing that we weren't going to get into any museums that day, we started walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, heading back to the hotel.

The streets of Washington were filled with people. Washington's a company town, that company is the government, and it closed down. Every street was filled with cars (what I said at the time was that, for about two hours, no one was leaving Washington because everyone was leaving Washington), every sidewalk was filled with people. There were people who'd gotten out of their offices without keys, people without phones, without purses and money. There was a group of Congressional pages being led out of the Capitol back to their housing, and a woman who'd gotten kicked out of the Capitol without any shoes on her feet.

There were rumors flying wildly around, as no one really knew anything except that the Twin Towers in NY had been hit. We were told, as fact, that the Supreme Court had been hit. We were told, as fact, that a car bomb had gone off at the State Department. At one point we had to detour around some building because there was a cardboard box under a bench in front of it, and the police wouldn't let anyone pass by.

Eventually, we got back to the hotel, where we were able to call friends and family to let them know we were OK. We only had one room, and I really didn't want to watch any of the television coverage with the kids in the room, so, upon discovering that the local PBS station was showing "Sesame Street," we let the kids watch while I plugged in my laptop, figuring that there was no way I'd actually be able to get to the internet. But, as I mentioned earlier, the city was becoming a ghost town, and I didn't have any problem. The first thing I saw was this picture at the Drudge Report.

It made me feel sick.

Down the hall from us, there was a group of junior high school kids from New York. They'd checked out in the morning, then been unable to actually leave because of everything that had happened. The hotel had put them into a large conference room for the time being. There were a couple of them in distress, with parents that worked in the towers. I was able to send a couple of e-mails to people and actually spread some good news to both kids and parents over the next couple of hours.

Later that afternoon, the city streets, which had been so full earlier, were empty. We'd see the occasional groups of men walking arounds with earpieces and wrist mikes, but there was little to no foot traffic other than that. And there weren't many cars left, either, as people had vacated Washington. The information that I had, I got off the web, but it was all sketchy, and, not having seen the footage of the towers collapsing, I didn't understand that that had happened. There was a little information, and a lot of misinformation.

We'd been planning to meet some friends from south-east Pennsylvania at the Nation Zoo on Thursday. As Tuesday afternoon went on, we decided that there wasn't any point in staying in DC. We weren't fleeing - my take on it was that there was no way on God's earth that anything else was going to happen in Washington that day. No planes were going to fly, and anyone who wanted to set off a bomb and kill people had largely missed his chance. No, we were tourists, and everything that we wanted to see was going to be closed for the rest of our trip. So we checked out, loaded everything into the car, and headed to Pennsylvania. (Another piece of information came at a gas station/convenience store in Maryland, as I was told by someone who KNEW that the Air Force had shot down the plane in Pennsylvania.) There was a brief moment when I debated whether to go through the long tunnel in Baltimore, but decided it was probably not an issue. It was late afternoon, with the kids all playing outside, when I finally saw the footage of the towers collapsing, and the enormity of what had happened began to sink in...

On Thursday, we drove home, seeing the NY skyline without the towers and with smoke still billowing. A few days later, I saw the picture that I've thought about, and considered prayerfully, many times in the past four years.

I don't know why they hit the Pentagon instead of the Capitol building, but if they'd come a little bit north-east, I wouldn't be here today. I didn't lose anyone in the attacks, but I took them personally...

10 years ago today...

2011-09-09T11:27:00.002-04:00

... right about now, we pulled out of the Vince Lombardi rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike and I told my kids (who had never been that far south before) to look at that building. "See that? It looks like one building, but you keep your eyes on it, and you're going to see it split into two as we drive. Those are the two tallest buildings in New York..."

Two days later, they were gone.

Restaurants want a piece of food stamp pie

2011-09-09T09:37:00.000-04:00

In a rational society, do you confiscate from some to send others to Pizza Hut?

The number of businesses approved to accept food stamps grew by a third from 2005 to 2010, U.S. Department of Agriculture records show, as vendors from convenience and dollar discount stores to gas stations and pharmacies increasingly joined the growing entitlement program.

Now, restaurants, which typically have not participated in the program, are lobbying for a piece of the action.

Louisville-based Yum! Brands, whose restaurants include Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver's and Pizza Hut, is trying to get restaurants more involved, federal lobbying records show.

The question answers itself...

"961 days in, Obama becomes sick and tired of someone dawdling about jobs"

2011-09-09T09:12:00.000-04:00

Andrew Malcolm:

Obama, whose Democratic spending priorities have pushed the national debt beyond $14,000,000,000,000, said it was important to curb spending and keep to the deficit reduction plan agreed to earlier this summer while also investing in, you know, many important things.

He then provided a joint session of Congress with a broadly ambitious list of goals that sounded to many people very much like a lot more spending, like, say, the $787 billion economic stimulus bill of 2009 that didn't stimulate much of anything except that national debt.

With the national debt already increasing $3 million every minute of every day, Obama wants to repair and modernize 35,000 schools. Obama wants $35 billion to go toward salaries for teachers, firefighters and police.

Obama wants $140 billion largely to update roads and bridges. Obama wants another $245 billion in business and individual tax relief. He also wants to extend unemployment benefits.

And he wants it all right now. Seriously. Now that his Martha's Vineyard vacation is over, this situation is urgent.

Don't have time for the full rant...

2011-09-09T08:23:00.002-04:00

...but wanted to note this anyway. "Wins" are a lousy metric for evaluating starting pitchers. Here's just another little nugget of evidence.

On two consecutive nights, the Red Sox starting pitcher allows five runs in five innings. And the game stories in the Globe aren't even similar.
Thursday:

Wakefield handed an 8-5 lead to the bullpen.

Friday:

Miller was better this time, allowing five runs in five innings. But that was far from good enough.

Well, yes...

2011-09-08T10:07:00.001-04:00

Glenn Reynolds: "But what’s really juvenile is expecting that an inexperienced former community organizer could successfully execute the office of President of the United States..."

This is just a little thing...

2011-09-08T09:12:00.000-04:00

... but it's so typical of the prevailing bias in the press. This example is from the Hill, a purportedly non-partisan site that covers Washington Politics.

Obama does not appear open to meeting with Cantor, Boehner before speech

The president's speech to Congress — originally planned for Wednesday night, before Boehner rebuffed Obama for trying to upstage a scheduled GOP primary debate — will be aggressive in trying to pressure Republicans to sign on to Obama's jobs plan, Carney said.

If it was "originally planned" for Wednesday, that plan was only on the part of the White House. They never asked for, nor received, permission from the House, half of one of the three co-equal branches of the government, for their plan. They solicited an invitation, and pouted and whined when it wasn't at exactly the time that they wanted it.

My favorite line from the debate last night...

2011-09-08T08:22:00.000-04:00

...came from Mitt Romney, and represented what we heard several times, from several of the candidates.

Mitt Romney:

Right now we have people who on this stage care very deeply about this country. We love America. America's in crisis. We have some differences between us but we will agree that this President's got to go. This President's a nice guy - he doesn't have a clue how to get this country working again...

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