Embarrassed?

Danica Patrick crashed in the first turn of the first lap yesterday, finishing 43rd and last in the Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway. The announcers and driver spoke of the accident as it was something that happened all by itself, was some sort of spontaneous event having nothing to do with the driver, which actually may be true. I think the car was embarrassed by the color it was painted; decided "I'm not staying out here for 267 laps looking like this," and turned itself into the wall. Sort of a vehicular form of hari kari. Regardless of cause, race cars don't want to be pink.

What can one say about the Chargers? That they're not the Giants? Philip Rivers threw the same number of interceptions that Eli Manning did yesterday. Three.

I told my wife that the Broncos beat the Cowboys by 51-48 yesterday and she said that she didn't realize that the basketball season had started yet. What interested me about that game was that about half of the time when the receiver caught a pass, on both teams, there was no defender within five yards of him. What were they doing?

"Reasonable" Con Job

Just as Bush did before them, the Obama administration has said to Iran that it will negotiate with them regarding their nuclear program, but not until after they have dismantled their nuclear program. I’ve never understood the logic of that approach.

It’s like saying to my neighbor that I will negotiate with him over the nature of his tree, but not until he first cuts down the tree. That's just silly. After he cuts down the tree, what is there to negotiate about? He cuts down the tree and I just say, “Haha, you lose.”

Now Obama and the Democrats are saying to the Republicans that they will negotiate with them over spending, but not until after the Republicans allow passage of a “clean spending bill.”

Saying that they will negotiate, that “we’ll negotiate over all sorts of things,” sounds so very reasonable, but what is there to negotiate after the bill is passed? Unless I’m missing something about the legislative process, after the Republican House passes the Senate’s “clean spending bill” the President signs it and tells the Republicans to piss up a rope. Some negotiations.

Democratic Complacency

I think the Democrats are being a little too comfortable sitting back and letting the Republicans look bad, while doing nothing to alleviate the situation. They should be at least be trying to take some affirmative action to end the stalemate; instead they are simply pointing fingers and saying, “See, it’s all their fault.”

Democrats are calling Republicans “obstructionist,” but it’s Republicans who are passing bills and Democrats who are killing them in the Senate. Democrats claim to be passing bills in the Senate, but that is political posturing because these are revenue bills which, by dictate of the constitution, must originate in the House.

Yes, Democrats are on the populist side, and in a position of logic and reason, but the optics are not in their favor in the long run, and they need to be thinking about that.

Partisan Delusion

I usually make allowances for Obamabots, but this comment took me all aback and left me in irons. (That’s sailing talk. I watched the America’s Cup too long.) I commented that Obama had largely ignored his liberal base and this was one of the responses,

The liberal base got national health care, championing of homosexual rights, an end to the “war on terror” and likely another amnesty coming soon, that’s not being ignored in my opinion.

Oh my goodness, let’s start with the “national health care” that the liberal base supposedly got. Even calling that legislation “health care reform” is a stretch, because it’s basis has nothing to do with health care but with health insurance, which it requires everyone to purchase from private corporations. That is a very, very long way from “national health care.”

His “championing of homosexual rights” is almost as much of a stretch. For four full years he said simply that “don’t ask don’t tell” would be repealed “at the right time” without saying what that time might be. It was repealed because Congress responded to gay activism and Obama responded to Joe Biden shaming him into action by acting first. As to gay marriage, his view on the subject is to this day still “evolving,” and his administration has declined to participate in two cases on the subject at the Supreme Court.

As to the claim that he has brought “an end to the war on terror,” one has to simply laugh and hope that the writer will seek mental help. We’re still at war in Afghanistan and seeking to maintain a troop presence there after the war nominally ends. We are still employing Hellfire missiles fired from drones to kill people whose names we do not even know in at least four Islamic countries because they look like they might be “extremists.” We’re still foaming at the mouth over Syria and Iran. The “national security” apparatus is at an all time high and still growing, there is still incessant fear mongering about Al Queda and the war on whistleblowers rages unabated.

Finally, anyone who thinks there is “likely another amnesty coming” is, at best, using a seriously bad choice of words. Obama championed immigration reform during the 2012 campaign season long enough to secure the Hispanic vote and has not spoken of it since, and even then he avoided the term “amnesty” like it contained four letters; was careful to promise that whatever he offered it would not be amnesty.

At least there was no claim of him ending the war in Iraq.

Preserving Disorder

Every time the Obama administration feels that it is or might become unpopular it launches a campaign to get the name Al Queda in the news as often as possible and the media, of course, is happy to oblige. CBS Evening News has been on a real binge since the government shutdown, even though Obama is blaming the Republicans for it.

Last night they were celebrating the twenty-year anniversary of “Blackhawk Down,” complete with a “never before seen” film clip, and said that the mission was about capturing an “Al Queda affiliated warlord” in Mogadishu, which is an awesomely stupid and/or dishonest statement.

Whatever Mohamed Farrah Aidid was, he most certainly was not in any way affiliated with Al Queda or in sympathy with its goals. He was a Somali national, educated in the Soviet Union, who rebelled against the then Somali king and declared himself to be the head of the new Somali government. He was one of several vying in violent and bloodthirsty conflict for that role.

As a point of interest, he and his fellow warlords were later overthrown by the Islamic Courts Union, despite the fact that the United States was actively backing the warlords. Wait, we were backing the warlords after the “Blackhawk Down” incident?

Well, Aidid was dead by that time, so the conflict was less than it might have been, but it was still a bit odd. We claimed the ICU was harboring Al Queda, which it almost certainly was not. And this was another proxy war that we lost, because the ICU prevailed and established a considerable degree of order in the nation, which had known none under the warlords.

Nonetheless, we wanted the ICU gone, so we prevailed upon Kenya and Nigeria to invade and depose them, and assisted them in that process, thereby restoring total disorder to Somalia and returning it to its previous status as a failed state. We excel at creating disorder. At any rate, that opened the door for Al Shabab, which certainly is an element of Al Queda, to enter the country so in addition to introducing Al Queda to Iraq we also introduced them to Somalia.

CBS Evening News did not, of course, report any of this. The only Al Queda they mentioned in Somalia was Aidid, whose name they did not use and who was not actually Al Queda.

On Wednesday they ran a piece which was supportive of the war on whistleblowers, but which was also utterly incoherent.

It began, innocently enough, by blaming the New York Times for damaging the “war against terrorists” by reporting on the conversation within Al Queda which was intercepted and which led to the shutdown of nineteen American embassies. That link, CBS says, “went silent” as soon as the Times article appeared, and so the intelligence agencies lost a valuable asset.

They then said that “the material stolen by Snowden is almost certainly in the hands of the Chinese and the Russians,” and declaimed at great length about how damaging that is to our ability to deter terrorists from dropping a nuclear bomb on New York City. Haha, take that New York Times.

Okay, I made up the part about the nuclear bomb, but what does publication of one event by the Times have to do with unpublished documents taken six months earlier? And why is possession of those documents by China and Russia harmful? Are they suggesting that either of those nations sponsors terrorism? Or that they will pass the information on to terrorists?

Russia, at least, is actually working with us to stop terrorists. Does no one recall that some time back they notified us that a couple guys were headed our way who might be terrorists and we ignored them? The upshot of that was that the two guys set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, and I don’t recall any real words of praise about how Russians were such good guys for trying to prevent the tragedy.

Anyway, they kept condemning anyone who is willing to tell us what the government is doing. It was kind of ironic watching the news media saying that the news media should not report the news.

The Pox Is In Both Houses

To say that our government is becoming increasingly dysfunctional is so trite as to be hardly worth saying, but it’s time to ask what the hell are we going to do about it and when are we going to do it?

In the present “crisis” the government has failed so many times to pass a budget that it quit even trying to do so and resorted to passing “continuing resolutions” to operate the government financially. These resolutions had to be of shorter and shorter duration in order to pass, and now they cannot pass one as short as three fucking months.

The government has always lied to us, but until recently they at least tried to conceal the lies. Now they don’t even try to make the lies remotely believable, nor do they make any real attempt to conceal from us the fact that they are lying. The revelation that the Director of National Intelligence lies to Congress is met with a huge yawn. The director of the NSA admits that the reports of “dozens of terror plots” that the administration has been telling us about was vastly exaggerated, and no one cares. Obama says that “no one is listening to your phone calls” and just three days later a report comes out that proves him a bald faced liar; no one cares.

Congress has constituted itself to render the minority party utterly irrelevant, denying it the ability to participate in governance. When Democrats were in the minority they accepted irrelevance and whined about how the Republicans were not treating them fairly. Now that Republicans are in the minority they reject irrelevance in the only manner that is available to them. Democrats are happy to allow them to do so, complaining about “obstructionism,” and blaming everything on their opposition for their own political gain.

Americans have short memories. It’s only been seven years, but we threw out a Republican Congress and installed a Democratic one in order to end the war in Iraq and put a stop to the Bush imperial presidency. We got the “surge” in Iraq, immunity for the telecom industry with regard to spying on Americans and TARP. We elected Obama to change the way things are done in Washington, and we all know how that worked out.

Democrats are saying this mess is all the fault of Republicans, but no one’s skirts are clean in Washington today. The entire government is foul with corruption, greed, money and influence peddling. If the American people had either intelligence or courage we would throw them all out, but we will not.

They will promise lower taxes and we will reelect them.

It's All About Leverage

Obama’s position of “I’m not going to negotiate” is unattractive. It may be the correct position, because certainly the Republican position is utterly absurd, but it is tactless in its optics. A position in which he said that “There are points on which I am not prepared to be flexible," accompanied by a willingness to have talks would be a lot more sympathetic.

Americans like “tough guys” though, and I guess he is playing to that.

Although it sounds eminently reasonable, there is actually a certain unreasonableness in the Democratic insistence that “Congress pass the clean spending bill now and then we will negotiate everything else.” It is, in effect, asking the Republicans to surrender and then negotiate the terms of that surrender after they have emerged from their positions, laid down their arms, and put on the handcuffs.

Republicans have very little leverage. Democrats have the threat of presidential veto, and control of the Senate. Republicans have the House, and the only thing that gives them is control of revenue. They control nothing else, only revenue bills, and Democrats are demanding that they surrender on the revenue bill and only then will they negotiate on all the other bills; the ones where Republicans have no leverage whatever.

I don’t see this as a case of both sides currently being at fault, but that doesn’t mean that Obama and company has clean skirts. Obama has been a terrible negotiator, frequently making concessions before negotiations even began and then making further concessions during the process. He has backed himself into a position where he really can concede no further, and if he had been a better negotiator earlier we would not be here now.

It’s often true that the earlier you precipitate something the less disastrous that precipitation will be. There really was no need for this.

Weekend Thoughts

In how many ways was it emotional to see the final act of number 42 in New York? I’m not even a baseball fan, but watching the clip of Rivera’s last pitch brought tears to my eyes. The last pitch by the greatest closer of all time, and the last appearance of the most famous number in baseball. Awesome.

There is, as always this time of year, mumbling about modifying NASCAR’s “Chase For The Championship,” which is sort of like a playoff system. Matt Kenseth says, however, that NASCAR should “leave the Chase alone for now.” That’s not surprising, given that he has won the first two races of the Chase and is leading for the championship by 14 points.

Chargers tight end Antonio Gates is again spouting the line about the team losing games by “just missing one play.” As I wrote after lest week’s game,

The Chargers were outgained on the ground by 170 yards to 102 yards. We were outpassed by 299 yards to 184 yards. Tennessee ran 68 plays to our 53. We gave up 299 passing yards to a team that passed for 246 yards in its two previous games combined, and surrendered 170 rushing yards to a team with a previous high of 119 yards.

That is not “just one play” short of a win, regardless of the score. They were 15 plays short last week, and in any case, one play does not gain 68 yards rushing and 115 yards passing that the Chargers were short in terms of yardage that day. You cannot correct a problem when you do not admit that you have a problem.

Time to go brace myself for LSU at Georgia. Geaux Tigers.

Krugman Yet Again

Krugman wrote a post in his blog yesterday that starts off by wondering whether current economic policy is stupid or evil, and then asking why we need to choose. Indeed. It can, of course, as he does not proceed to suggest, be both at the same time.

He says that “problem of maintaining adequate aggregate demand is going to be very persistent,” which I think is a masterpiece of understatement given that wages are declining and the government really doesn’t give a shit about that, and goes on to say that “monetary policy could no longer do the job of stabilizing the economy” as if it was ever able to do that in the first place, given all of the bouncing around that our economy has historically been subject to.

It's also a bit odd to think that demand is something that needs to be created, rather than something that happens by itself. Sort of like making someone love you. It either happens or it doesn't.

He then makes the profound observation that “if monetary policy is assigned the task of discouraging people from excessive borrowing, it can’t pursue full employment and price stability,” because full employment and price stability require excessive borrowing and cannot be achieved without it, you know. What is he smoking, because I want some of that good stuff.

He then poses a dreadful thought, asking, “And here’s the worrisome thing: what if it turns out that we need ever-growing debt to stay out of a liquidity trap?” Hello? The world is out here Doctor Krugman. Are you just now figuring that out?

He follows that with his favorite hobby horse, higher inflation, saying that, “One answer could be a higher inflation target, so that the real interest rate can go more negative. I’m for it!” So if you were thinking about saving for retirement, forget it. Paul Krugman wants you to work until you physically can no longer do so, at which point your kids will borrow money to take care of you. That will work fine, though, because inflation will eventually reduce their debt to somewhere in the neighborhood of five cents, while their kids borrow money to take care of them.

"Another answer could be sustained, deficit-financed fiscal stimulus. But, you say, this would lead to exploding public debt! Actually, no – not if the real interest rate is persistently below the economy’s growth rate, which it will certainly be if it’s persistently negative. In that case the government can run a primary deficit even while keeping the debt-GDP ratio constant – and the higher the level of debt, the higher the allowable deficit."

And here we have the famous “debt only matters as a percentage of GDP,” which is one of the biggest and stupidest lies of all time. GDP is not a measure of wealth, it is a measure of cash flow, and not a particularly accurate one at that, and comparing debt to cash flow is a financial absurdity. Debt is offset against assets, wealth, not against cash flow.

If I pay you $50 to mow my lawn, and you pay me $50 to mow your lawn, according to Paul Krugman we can borrow about $90 between us because we have created $100 of GDP. We have not created a single dollar of wealth; I am out the $50 I paid you and enriched by the $50 you paid me, and you are in the same boat. But that $90 debt is offset by that totally imaginary and meaningless $100 GDP.

If we repeat the process the following month, we can increase our joint debt to $180 because we have increased our GDP to $200. Despite the fact that we now owe $180 instead of $90, we are not any deeper in debt because we still only owe 90% of our GDP. How long can we repeat this before the bank quits lending us money?

“Debt only matters as a percentage of GDP” is saying that you can borrow $90,000 because you are spending $100,000 per year. We don’t care about your income, we don’t care what assets you have, we don’t care how rich you are. Your income might be only $50,000, but since you are spending $100,000 per year we will allow you to borrow $90,000.

Think, too, about the last part of Krugman’s statement, “the higher the level of debt, the higher the allowable deficit.” The more you owe, the more you can spend above your income. The higher your debt, the faster you can create additional debt. That is utterly absurd on the face of it. Only a crazy person would say that. Or an economist.

Yikes !

Oracle Team USA should be called Miracle Team USA. They have won seven straight, preventing the Kiwis from winning the single race that would send the Cup to New Zealand. Final race is tomorrow, and I don't see how New Zealand has a chance. Oracle has not been beating the Kiwis, they have been slaughtering them.

In the second race today New Zealand won the start, led the downwind leg and was leading at the leeward mark by 17 seconds. Oracle not only took the lead going to windward, but was leading by 57 seconds at the windward mark. It was a bloodbath. The announcers were reduced to stammering.

PITA Feline

Molly has been dealing with some dietary issues, which reached a peak on Sunday; not only refusing to eat, but barfing up water and having a mild case of diarrhea. So, right after the Chargers lost we took her to the emergency vet, where she was kept overnight on IV fluids and medication. It was not fun going to bed with her not here.

Yesterday we took her to a feline internist (!) for exam, blood work and an ultrasound. Turns out they believe she has pancreatitis, but they can’t quite prove it. We are now medicating her for it, with five different pills twice per day. She doesn’t care for that, but pretty much takes it in stride.

She is doing fine today, eating canned food and demanding attention when she is not sleeping. They had to shave her belly for the ultrasound, which bothers me more than it seems to bother her.

You do not even want to know how much all of that cost.

Weekend Fizzle

The San Diego Chargers are again saying that it was “a few little things” and that “we just did not finish” that caused them to lose the game yesterday. At least I didn’t hear “we know what to do and we’ll do it” as we tended to hear under Norv Turner.

The Chargers were outgained on the ground by 170 yards to 102 yards. We were outpassed by 299 yards to 184 yards. Tennessee ran 68 plays to our 53. We gave up 299 passing yards to a team that passed for 246 yards in its two previous games combined, and surrendered 170 rushing yards to a team with a previous high of 119 yards.

Their quarterback ran for 68 yards, while our star running back, Ryan Matthews, ran for 58 yards. Locker did it on 5 carries, Matthews needed 16 carries for ten fewer yards, and his longest run was 8 yards to 39 for Locker. Locker is their quarterback.

Those things are not “few” nor are they “little.” Those things are dismal. It was not as close as the score would seem to imply; we were thoroughly trounced in every aspect of the game.

A happier fizzle occurred on San Francisco Bay yesterday. New Zealand needed only one win to take home the America’s Cup trophy and they didn’t get it. Oracle USA won both races, and won them with enough margin to make it seem quite possible that they might pull off four more in a row for the successful defense.

I am still not happy with what they have done to this contest, but the racing has been better than I anticipated, and the coverage is simply spectacular. NBC Sports is doing a lovely job of persentation, and the announcers are delightful. There are downsides to presenting it in the confined waters of the Golden Gate, but what a treat for spectators it has provided! Overall, a good decision.

LSU did not fizzle, and it is beginning to look like they might be a legitimate contender to unseat the Crimson Tide. Maybe I’m just being sentimental, but the Tide is looking a tad vulnerable right now.

The SDSU Aztecs, on the other hand, added to the weekend fizzle. With an upset in the making, they throw two interceptions in the last three minutes and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

It's not even October yet, I know that because my wall calender is still on August, and they are predicting a Santa Ana wind for tomorrow. For those who don't know, that is a wind out of the desert and it can, and often does, bring wildfires. Bad ones.

Partisanship

Partisan politics has not only become rancorous, it has descended into illogic and insanity as each side tries desperately to defend positions which are becoming increasingly indefensible.

I have some small measure of respect for conservatives, who at least have some degree of consistency in their basic argument; they don’t want to impose taxes and they don’t want the government to spend money. I think their basic position is mistaken and without question they have taken arguments in defense of and positions with respect to it to ridiculous and destructive extremes, but at least the two parts of their basic ideology are not fundamentally at odds with each other.

I used to have great respect for what were then “tax and spend” liberals who felt that government should spend money to provide programs which created a social safety net and strengthened the social fabric of the nation, and that it should impose taxes sufficient to pay for those programs. They passed legislation such as Social Security, in which a person pays into the program for a lifetime and benefits from it upon retirement.

That group has now become “cut taxes and spend” liberals who still favor the government programs, but who no longer favor the imposition of taxes because suffering American voters cannot afford to pay taxes. They demonize health insurance companies as being the evil empire and then pass legislation which requires every citizen to purchase insurance from those evil health insurance companies.

They demonize “big business” as being the cause of American impoverishment, and claim that if they can just tax big business heavily enough to drive down their profits then the workers who are employed by big business will somehow become enriched.

The inconsistencies of the positions held by today’s liberals are myriad and baffling to me, and if you point that out and ask for clarification they simply become angry and call you names. Liberals actually spend far more time slinging accusations of “stupidity” and “insanity” at members of their opposition, and calling them “evil,” than they do either defending their own views or criticizing the opposition’s policies.

Neither side really makes any sense, but at least conservatives have not painted themselves into a corner and resorted to yelling, “Your mother wears combat boots.”

Clarification, Part Two

I will attempt to clarify my disdain for “tax the rich,” today. Of course we should tax the rich. We should to a lesser extent tax the middle class as well. We have been on a tax cutting binge for the past three decades, a plot fomented by pandering politicians as a sop to obtain votes from ignorant and greedy voters.

I certainly believe that our tax code should be significantly more progressive than it currently is, and it should be higher at all levels of income with the possible exception of the very lowest income level. My reasoning is that we should have a sustainable social fabric which serves the needs of the people of this nation, one which is paid for and not one that is propped up by ever increasing debt.

I was recently involved in a discussion where a person insisted that “tax the rich” would promote growth because a higher marginal tax rate would discourage “keeping profits” and make hiring additional employees a “good investment,” thereby creating jobs. The idea is ludicrous, since employment is not an investment decision but rather is a market decision, but even if it were I abhor the idea of government using the tax code to manipulate the business environment.

“Tax the rich” is a populist slogan invented to suggest to the masses that they can have the benefit of government programs without having to pay for them; that they can receive benefit and require someone else to foot the bill. Free lunch. Obama loyalists keep talking about wanting to “reverse the Bush tax cuts,” but they only want to reverse that part which affected the rich, and they want to keep the Bush tax cuts for the middle class. They want to eat their cake and have it at the same time.

Voters are real big on “support the troops,” so long as “the troops” are not 99% of the American voters; the people who are supporting the troops by putting magnets on their cars. That is not what General George Patton meant when he said that war is about “making some other poor bastard die for his country.”

Every person who benefits from living in this nation should have a stake in maintaining it as a viable entity, if not by personal service then at least by paying some small portion of the monetary cost of operating its government. That does not mean “making some other poor bastard die for it” and taxing the rich.

NFL Football Thought

Watched the game last night. Notwithstanding the ravings of three sets of announcers about the awesomeness of the Eagles and Chip Kelly, what record is Piladelphia going to have to reach before everyone admits that a college offense in the NFL is not a viable proposition? It seems that 1-3 hasn't quite done it, but cracks are beginning to appear in the facade of media adoration.

Clarification

Perhaps I should clarify what I wrote earlier about California driver’s licenses. I don’t care if this state wants to issue driver’s licenses to illegal residents. It’s no skin off my nose and if it makes people feel good than by all means go for it. My post was merely to point out the illogicality of Governor Brown’s statement that doing so will allow illegal immigrants to “drive to work safely and legally.”

First of all I know of no manner in which having a driver’s license makes one safer behind the wheel of a car. The idiot who was racing at 110 mph and killed himself and his three passengers had a valid driver’s license, as did the moron who was texting when she hit a bridge abutment. I have no data to prove it, but I'm willing to bet that a great many more accidents are caused by drivers who do have licenses than by those who do not.

Further, illegal immigrants are not even in this country legally, so how can they drive in this country legally? And, since they cannot legally work in this country, the legality or illegality of their driving to work is of very little consequence.

There is the advantage of licensing illegals, in that it does lead to a greater likelihood of them being insured, but “driving to work legally” is simply not a benefit of issuing licenses, and Brown’s statement is absurd in its entirety.

As is the concept of issuing an identification card which is labeled as not being for the purpose of identification. If it is not for that purpose, why does it have a holographic photograph and a thumbprint? Why make the “non-identification” driver’s license be in all respects identical to the one which can be used for identification other than a label saying that it cannot be used for identification, while including on it all of the features which permit it to be used for identification?

Like most moves made by any government, this whole thing is done on a whim, without in any way thinking it through.

Sunday Circus

Yes, Bruce, after a Saturday Circus on Sunday and a Sunday Circus on Saturday, we now have a Sunday Circus on Monday. Try to keep up.

San Diego sportswriters have finally learned their lesson. They are deliriously happy about the Chargers win yesterday, but they are not using the words “Super Bowl,” or even suggesting what will happen next week in Nashville. None of them have gone so far as to admit that the Eagles’ defense stinks, but let’s not expect too much.

They are, on the other hand, saying that the Chargers’ defense stinks, which is kind of ridiculous. That defense held Philadelphia to 89 yards total on the ground, including Vick. When the offense gave up two turnovers they permitted the Eagles to score zero points off of them. The Eagles had first and goal three times without scoring a touchdown, including the one in the fourth quarter which set the Chargers up to win with a field goal.

Bad Eagles defense or not, celebration is appropriate. We’ve played bad defenses before and lost. We played well on both sides of the line of scrimmage yesterday, only punted once in the entire game, and won.

Again I was struck by the blind admiration the announcers displayed for Michael Vick, constantly swooning over his “pinpoint accuracy” as a passer, etc. Never mind that at least six times he had a receiver wide open and, even though not pressured by the San Diego defense, threw the ball where the open receiver was not. At least two of those mis-thrown passes would have been touchdowns. The truth is that Vick is a highly erratic passer; at times very precise and at other times unexplainably badly inaccurate.

NASCAR has added yet another rule for yet another rather bizarre reason, having to do with restarts. Actually it has to do with their fecklessness in enforcing the rule on restarts.

There is a marked “restart zone” prior to the start/finish line within which the leader is supposed to initiate the restart by jumping on the gas. If he does not do so the starter, the guy in the platform above the line, will wave the green flag to restart the race. The second place car, who restarts beside the leader, must not cross the start/finish line ahead of the leader.

That last part has been violated rather frequently lately without the officials noticing, and drivers have been complaining vigorously; sometimes with validity, sometimes not. The officials have noticed a time or two and penalized the offending driver, but usually they just blow the complaints off with some sort of excuse such as that the leader spun his tires, or that he drove slowly on purpose. (?!)

So NASCAR has now dropped the last part of that rule, the part about the leader having to cross the start/finish line first, so as to “remove the subjective judgement part” of the restart rule. Weird. If looking at which car crossed the line first is a “subjective judgement” on a restart, then why is it not a “subjective judgement” in determining who won the race?

Saturday Circus

I would not say that Nick Saban got his revenge. Yes, Bama won the game, but his defense letting the opponent rack up 42 points was humiliating no matter what his offense did, and his offense did it against a weak defense.

It was amazing to watch the sycophancy displayed by the announcers in the form of endless adoring discussion of “Johnny Football” no matter what he did. At one point he was scrambling Fran Tarkington-style to avoid a pass rush on third and twelve, was more than twenty yards behind the line of scrimmage, and threw up an unguided air ball into the center of the field. The pass was a horrible decision, it had the trajectory of a punt and was as likely to be caught be a defender as by one of his own. Had anyone else thrown that pass the announcers would have been declaiming it as absolute stupidity, but because it was thrown by “Johnny Football” and by sheer good fortune was caught by an Aggie for a first down, they were going crazy about what a brilliant pass it was and raving about the thrower’s athleticism.

We will undoubtedly see a lot of high scoring college football games, because the new rule about “targeting” has made defensive secondary players afraid to play pass defense. Not only can you not hit a pass receiver before the ball arrives, you now cannot hit him after the ball arrives either without fear of not only being penalized but of being ejected from the game. You are, apparently, required to tackle him without hitting him, which is a pretty neat trick.

An Alabama defender went for the interception. He had both hands on the ball in front of the receiver, made contact with the receiver shoulder to shoulder, and was flagged for “targeting.” The ejection was overturned by replay, but the penalty for pass interference was not. It seems the referees are told to “err on the side of receiver safety.” I’ll tell you how that receiver can be completely safe. He can sit on his sofa and watch the game on television at home. Football is not a noncontact sport.

During that play the cat left the living room in some degree of haste. My wife came from the back room to assure herself that I was okay. Always nice to know she cares. The referee probably does not actually have some of the habits of which I was accusing him.

Utah’s coach, by the way, is an idiot. Yes, Lee, that was addressed to you. On offense in overtime he went with two weak running plays and kicked a field goal. He had to know OSU would score a touchdown, given that they had done so on each of their last four possessions.

Sunday Circus

Well, NASCAR has now lost it completely. As in, gone completely nuts. As in, have had their brains scrambled by listening to too many unmuffled car engines. Maybe this generation of the France family wasn’t very bright to begin with.

Last weekend’s race was the final one to set the 12-car field for the “Chase,” which is NASCAR’s version of the playoffs. The top twelve cars will be the ones competing for the championship and, during last weekend's race the cheating to manipulate the standings rose to awe inspiring levels.

Clint Boywer, who is locked into the Chase, spun his car on purpose so that a team mate, Martin Truex, could advance position during the ensuing caution. That was not sufficient to get Truex in, so Brian Vickers, another team mate who was not in the Chase, simply pulled into the pits to give Treux another position. That resulted in Truex being in the Chase and Ryan Newman, who drives for a different team, being out.

Meanwhile, the Penske team was conspiring with another team to have their driver slow down so that their driver, Joey Logano, could gain position. That worked and got Logano in the Chase, but it knocked Jeff Gordon who, again, drives for a different team, out.

All of this is against the rules, and they are not even trying to hide it; the cars are spinning and pitting right out in front of God, fans, officials and everybody, and the negotiations are happening on radios that have the frequencies published so that fans can listen in. The whole thing is resembling a scene out of “Talledega Nights” and I’m looking for Ricky Bobby to show up in his underwear any minute.

So NASCAR decides they need to take corrective action and issues penalties which result in Truex being out of the Chase and Newman being in. Unfortunately, it leaves Boywer, the guy who started the whole mess with his fake spinout, in the Chase and it leaves Logano in and Jeff Gordon out, so there is still a lot of grumbling.

NASCAR’s next move, then, is to "expand the Chase" to 13 cars and put Jeff Gordon in, which is beyond bizarre. About the only one who is happy about that is Jeff Gordon. Everyone else wants to know why, since Logano’s team cheated to get him in, he isn’t penalized as the other team was, which would put him out and Gordon in, instead of this nonsense about "expanding the Chase."

Gordon’s own teammate, Jimmy Johnson, is even complaining about the move, saying that having 13 cars in the Chase rather than 12, “alters the dynamics” of the deal. He’s obviously nervous about the fact that his average finish in the last four races is 35th, so I’m not taking him very seriously.

Side Effect, You Say?

The vet prescribed a new medication for Molly, which I picked up yesterday. I noted on the label a warning that the drug "may cause a slight degree of drowsiness." Seriously? We're talking about a cat here; a creature closely related to a vegetable. How are we supposed to tell if the medication causes any amount of drowsiness, let alone a slight one?