2015 NFL PLAYOFFS---ROUND I

I always use the same methodology to formulate these predictions, and last year's description of it is about as clear as I can make it, so here it is again:

I will be relying heavily, as always, on yards/pass adjusted for interceptions. This single statistic remains the only reliable measure of success in the playoffs and the Superbowl. Rushing yards, turnover ratios, sacks, FG%---all these things have their place, and each can be used to describe some aspect of football reality in a season or a particular game. What they cannot do is predict a winner. Adjusted yards/pass, however, though it has little descriptive value, acts like a chemical reagent to reveal something that would otherwise remain hidden---who is likely to win. In the morass of men and motivation and data and hope and history and expectation that is a yet-to-be-played game, there is a team destined to prevail, though its identity is obscured. Adjusted yards/pass dissolves that morass, lays bare the football truth and shows us that identity. It burns away the silt and clay and shows us the gold. Adjusted yards/pass itself has little to do with the football we see. Its meaning resides within the game rather than upon its surface. Adjusted yards/pass is the vehicle of the game's consciousness.

The AFC seeds this year are:

1. New England
2. Denver
3. Pittsburgh
4. Indianapolis
5. Cincinnati
6. Baltimore


My rankings are:


1. Denver
2. New England
3. Cincinnati
4. Pittsburgh
5. Indianapolis
6. Baltimore

The problem for any team that is not New England or Denver is that, to get to the Superbowl, you will probably have to win games IN New England and IN Denver on successive weekends. Pittsburgh has had a nice year, for example, and their passing attack under Roethlisberger has been outstanding, but can he beat both Tom Brady and Peyton Manning on the road? Answer: no.

Wild Card: Baltimore @ Pittsburgh (-3). The Steelers are more than 3 points better than the Ravens, with the Steelers gaining about 1000 more yards through the air than did Baltimore. Also, in home games, the Steelers outscored their opponents by more than a touchdown per game. I lay the points.

Wild Card: Cincy @ Indy (-4). The Bengals are actually a better team than the Colts, with better numbers. Indy's pass defense is especially suspect. Nevertheless, whether because they have a dome (actually a retractable roof) or for some other reason, Indianapolis is very difficult to beat at home (6 -2, both 2013 and 2014). On October 19 this year, Indy beat these Bengals 27 – 0. In all their home games this year, they outscored their opponents by an average of more than ten points per game. I pass on this one. The Bengals are almost as good offensively and a lot better defensively, but I won't bet against Indianapolis under their roof.

The NFC seeds are:

1. Seattle
2. Green Bay
3. Dallas
4. Carolina
5. Arizona
6. Detroit

My rankings:

1. Green Bay
2. Seattle
3. Detroit
4. Dallas
5. Arizona
6. Carolina

Now, look. I know you are afraid that the referees are going to allow Seattle, when it is on defense, to tackle the backs and receivers of the opposing team as they come off the line of scrimmage. It's what the refs did in last year's Superbowl and it basically ruined the game for tens of millions of fans and turned what should have been an interesting matchup into a televised mugging. I know. I'm worried too. But I'm praying somebody in the NFL office will tell the refs, “Hey, when Seattle cheats, throw a flag once in a while, OK?” So maybe they will this time. Oh, wait, that guy in the NFL office---that's what's-his-name, isn't it? Roger Goodell? Oh, well....

Green Bay is far superior to Seattle this year. Green Bay is the best team in the NFL this year. After the Packers, there is very little separating Seattle, Detroit and Dallas, all of whom have a small chance of getting to the Superbowl and even winning it.

Wild Card: Arizona @ Carolina (-4 ½). One of these two teams is going to win exactly one game in the playoffs this year, and it's probably going to be Carolina. The Cardinals, of course, through most of the season, have been far superior to the Panthers, and their numbers, based on those earlier games, are better (though not much better) than Carolina's. The teams are clearly heading in different directions, however. Arizona has lost four of its last six, including its last two. It has not scored more than twenty points in a game since November 9. Carolina's last ten results, on the other hand, look like this:

L L L L L L W W W W

The last of these was their 34 – 3 dismantling of the Atlanta Falcons (in Atlanta) on Sunday for the Division championship.

I suspect this is not a close game. I lay the points.

Wild Card: Detroit @ Dallas (-7). There are six teams in the Superbowl tournament with a non-trivial chance of winning the thing, and these are two of them. Dallas, of course, is on a magical roll with Tony Romo, and Detroit presents the best pass defense (in terms of adjusted yards/pass) in the NFC. On the surface, it looks like one of those irresistible-force-meets-immovable object games.

Several factors point to the Cowboys winning this game, however. First, in a playoff matchup between a great offense and a great defense, always prefer the offense. Teams that win playoff games in any sport are the teams that can score, and that can score on anyone. There are occasional exceptions to this rule, but they are less common than most fans think. A good defense will often get a team into the playoffs, but once there, offenses prevail.

Second, Detroit doesn't travel well. Domed teams are often that way. They were 7-1 at home this year but only 4-4 on the road, where they were outscored by an average of 4 points per game. Dallas itself has a strange home/road split this year, with all four of their losses coming in Dallas, but that would seem to be an anomaly of no significance here.

Finally, one minor factor is the suspension of the Lions' psychopath defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh for war crimes committed against Aaron Rodgers last Sunday. The Lions live and die by the defense, and Suh is an important part of it. Detroit had the best rushing defense in the league this year, but there will be a piece missing on Sunday.

Dallas will win this game, but I won't be betting it. The 7-point line is just about right, and I see no value here.

Copyright 2014MichaelKubacki

CHRISTMAS PREDICTION

I write this on the day before Black Friday (which some people call Thanksgiving). I work at Target. In fact, I will be there tomorrow morning at 7:00am greeting the happy shoppers.

I have no insider knowledge of Target or the retail world. I am a grunt. In fact, my job title is “Cockroach.” However, my sense of the upcoming retail shopping season is that it will suck. I am predicting an extremely weak Christmas for the Targets and Best Buys and WalMarts and Kohl's of the world.

This feeling grows out of impressions only; there is nothing I can point to that even qualifies as “evidence.” However, there are a lot of little things that lead me here. Sales of high-end gourmet prepared foods seem to me to have become rather soft lately. Instead of the delicately seasoned jerk chicken breast in cryovac, people have been choosing the basic, vastly-cheaper raw chicken breast they have to season and prepare themselves. The organic milk (that costs 30% more than regular milk), doesn't seem to move as fast as it used to. The continuing push to up the ante on Black Friday shopping (Target opens at 6:00pm on Thanksgiving this year), suggests desperation rather than intelligent merchandising. I just don't see anything encouraging in the department-store/big-box world at the moment.

Copyright2014Michael Kubacki

THIS & THAT IX

We used to see people walking the streets or riding the subway talking to themselves, but we never see them anymore. Actually, they haven't disappeared, but we now assume that everyone who talks to himself in public is using Bluetooth. We're so certain of this that we don't bother looking for the device clipped to the ear. Actually, a certain percentage of those folks don't have a phone. They are just old-fashioned loonies.

*

A related point: other insane persons now call themselves “performance artists.” Out of politeness, we don't question this.

*

Remember Geronimo's Cadillac? The American Indian Movement? The takeover of Alcatraz? The occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973? Drunken Ira Hayes?

“Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong” is a charming and cynical little book written in 2009 by Paul Chaat Smith, currently a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian in D.C., (which he describes as “a bad idea whose time has come”). Smith was once an activist himself and is now a lecturer and critic who has lived through every twist and turn of Indian politics, art and culture over the past sixty years. Much of the humor here grows out of his contempt for the cheesy romanticism (the “noble savage” myths and the phony environmentalism, in particular), that has infected white America's view of the Indian since actual warfare ceased 120 years ago.

*

Everybody generalizes.

*

Mnemonic to remember the seven Central American countries: “Be good, Elliot: have no colon problems.” (Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.)

*

Mnemonic for the seven sovereign Stans: “Keep tensions underground---put away that knife!” (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgystan.)

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“Recipes which have the word “BLENDER” in their title are only successful when an electric blender is used.” ---Joy of Cooking, by Rombauer and Becker (October 1972 edition).

Joy of Cooking, though it seems to have fallen out of fashion, retains its hard-nosed yet poetic charm. (E.g., How to skin an eel---page 355.) It is at least as amusing to leaf through as the Larousse Gastronomique, which can seem a bit snooty and authoritarian at times.

*

On Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia, I often pass this sign for a local business:

BAXTER PEST CONTROL

God creates....

We exterminate.

Every time I see it, I wonder about the people who own the place. Is this really the idea you want to implant in the heads of potential customers? Does it really sell pest control services to remind people that mice, fleas and cucarachas are also God's creatures? Who, other than someone who hates God, would ever give them a call?

*

Today at Target, I saw a woman in the full Muslim abaya and niqab, jet-black from head to toe, with just a slit for her eyes. As I passed her, I noticed she had a security badge of some type clipped to her robe. It was apparently issued by her employer and it featured a full color photo of her face and hair.

*

Higher education prices are one of the more opaque areas of the economy in America, and pretty much the only thing any of us know for sure is that, much like the world of oriental carpets, nobody pays retail. There's always a discount available, or in-state rates, or financial aid, or some private scholarship for which certain students qualify, or under-market-rate loans, or work-study stipends, or something. When you see that MIT tuition for a year is $43, 016, we all know that nobody is paying it.

There's a reason for this, of course, and it's the same reason nobody pays retail in the oriental carpet world. They don't want you to see what is going on behind the curtain. There are agendas. There are Indians and Mexicans and black students to be taken care of, as well as other, more obscure, diversity angles. There is “social justice” at work. And don't forget the war on women.

The race discrimination (and other types of group-identity discrimination) that the left is so fond of is under attack in many places, and some states have outlawed race discrimination in college admission policies. But the price of college for a particular student remains a secret and thus can still be used as a means of advancing the radical left's discriminatory and redistributionist philosophy. I don't know (nobody does), but I'll bet college pricing is used for that purpose.

I would like to see a study on this. I would love to see a study of tuition at, let's say, the University of Wisconsin. On average, how much (after all the discounts and freebies and scholarships) do white males pay? Blacks? Asians? Women? Then I'd like to see the numbers at Princeton and Auburn and a half dozen other places.

*

I never lived in New England, I've never spent a lot of time there, and I've never had a spiritual experience involving maple syrup. Nothing against the stuff, you understand, but faced with a stack of pancakes, Mrs. Butterworth will do me just fine. However, I've learned a thing or two about maple syrup recently.

For one thing, there are different grades of maple syrup, and people have strong feelings about them. Recently, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, a waitress in a diner was stabbed by a customer who had been served dark amber Grade A maple syrup rather than the Grade B he had requested. A local jury deliberated for three days until denying his claim of self-defense (based on the syrup switch), but convicted him only of disorderly conduct rather than the attempted murder charge the state had demanded.

I made that up, of course. I doubt anyone ever got stabbed over the wrong grade of maple syrup, but the world of BIG MAPLE SYRUP is a complex and dangerous place, with many different classification systems and many different organizations all vying for supremacy, including the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association, the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers Association, the International Maple Syrup Institute, the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association and the Ohio Maple Producers Association. (Ohio? Really? They make maple syrup in Ohio??? OK, and let's put an NHL franchise in Rio de Janiero.)

It's a lot like boxing in the 1970's when there were numerous boxing federations, each of which had its separate heavyweight champion, or maybe it's like when the papacy went all schismy in the 14^th Century and there were competing popes in Rome and Avignon and Kansas City and Malibu and nobody knew who the real one was or how to get to heaven.

But the real problem is that there are different grading systems for different colors and tastes and qualities of syrup, and there have to be because different colors taste different. Vermont Fancy, for example, is very light in color, so light in fact that most syrup literature strongly implies it is fit only for sissies. Then there's Grade A medium amber, Grade A dark amber, Grade B (which is even darker), and Grade C, which is so dark and so foul that it is apparently only used for industrial purposes like making candy or coating the underbelly of a Ford F-150. Don't memorize these categories, however, because they are all being changed to a different system (which the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association ominously describes as “Mandatory in 2015”). To wit: everything from Vermont Fancy to Grade C will now be categorized as either “Grade A Golden,” “Grade A Amber,” “Grade A Dark” or “Grade A Very Dark.” Even the maple syrup world changes with the times, apparently, and since we all now get a trophy just for showing up, all maple syrup will soon be Grade A, even the stuff underneath your pickup truck.

Unless you are in Canada, naturally. There, probably because a lot of them speak French, they don't use letters, only numbers, so if you happen to ask for Grade A in a restaurant in Nova Scotia, they assume you are an syrup terrorist from Vermont and, after a fair trial, set you adrift on an ice floe. “But we do not have this Grade A, mon frere; here we have only the maple syrup numero un, deux or trois. Prepare to die.”

A month ago, I didn't know any of this because in the temperate zones outside of New England and Canada, all we ever see in stores is Grade A medium amber. Then a friend brought me a gift: a bottle of Grade B. Good stuff, I thought to myself, slathering it on a pancake. Then I took out my Grade A medium, poured it on another flapjack for a little in-home Pepsi challenge, and---wow! That brought it home! Grade A medium amber is pitiful stuff indeed, but you don't find that out until you taste the Grade B. It was like I had never had a pancake before. It was like I had never tasted syrup before. It was like I had never had breakfast.

Why does this happen? Why don't they ship the Grade B to the “lower forty-eight,” or whatever they call the states that are not Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts or New York? Well, there's a reason for that too, but you're not going to like it. Most of the Grade B produced gets shipped to California where the last thing they would do with it is pour it on a waffle, as God intended. Instead, it is combined with cayenne pepper and used as a “cleanse.” And what is a “cleanse,” you ask? Well, it's a California thing and you wouldn't understand. If you must know, ask Dr. Oz.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

MY LETTER TO THE OWNER OF THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS

Daniel Snyder

Redskin Park

21300 Redskin Park Drive

Ashburn, VA 20147-6100

Re: The “redskins” issue

Dear Mr. Snyder:

I have a suggestion for how your organization might deal with the continuing attacks, by activists, politicians and the media, on the name “Washington Redskins.” I applaud your steadfast and reasonable attitude on this (non)issue, but it must be an annoyance, especially since you have to wonder if it will ever be put to rest.

Since the team has no official mascot, why not get one that effectively divorces the “Redskin” name from American Indians? Hire yourself a mascot to jump around on the sidelines in a redskin potato costume. Have your concession stands sell a snack made from redskin potatoes. Sell hats with plastic redskin potatoes on them. Sell bags of “Washington Redskins” in local supermarkets.

Nothing would stop fans like Chief Zee from wearing feathered headdresses and carrying foam tomahawks and the team would do nothing to discourage them. Having an official mascot of a redskin potato, however, would blunt the attacks of activists and fanatics and, at the same time, subtly mock the political correctness of it all.

                                                                                     Sincerely,

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

REPUBLICANS 101---The Endgame

For various reasons, mostly concerned with Obama's performance as President, it is assumed the Democrats will take a bit of a beating in the 2014 off-year elections. The Republicans will increase their edge in the House and will gain Senate seats as well. Whether they will take control of the Senate is uncertain---most analysts predict it will be “close”---but that would appear to be the only area of suspense.

The mainstream segment of the Republican Party has spent a great deal of money defeating conservative candidates in primaries (often in close races and sometimes, as in Mississippi, by cheating). Behind the scenes, much time and treasure has also been expended in subverting and co-opting the larger tea party groups so they no longer represent the views they did just two or three years ago. Conservative Republicans have been largely neutered for the 2014 elections. It is the Boehner-McCain-Graham-McConnell Republican caucus---the “good old boy” wing---that has won the primaries and will win the general as well.

And then what? What if, for example, the Republicans win control of both houses of Congress beginning in January 2015?

Will they vote to repeal Obamacare? Well, they haven't exactly promised to do that, have they? There has been no discussion of it for almost a year, though because of the way it was passed, Republican majorities could vote to repeal with no danger of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. Obama could veto such a bill, of course, but some Democrats might feel considerable electoral pressure to go along with the repeal. In any event, what's the downside for Republicans in doing so?

One thing Republicans could certainly do is cut back federal spending. The government continues to borrow $2.5 million per minute, each and every minute, either from foreign governments or from the American people (by debasing the currency), and the House of Representatives could put a stop to it by refusing to appropriate more funds than there are tax revenues. The House could shut down Obamacare, or the Department of Education, or the EPA, or it might simply pare down all expenditures for all departments. But under the control of the Good Old Boy wing, it won't. The Republicans could have done that at any time since taking over the House in 2010, but they haven't done so.

And that's the problem, of course. The GOB wing of the Republican Party is simply hoping to benefit from Obama's manifest incompetence and unpopularity, but it is not promising to do anything with the additional power they will obtain in November. And they won't do anything. If they were going to, they would have done it already, or some of it. Gaining control of Congress, in fact, will be a fatal blow for the Party. As they decline to use the Constitutional powers of the legislative branch, their electoral base will melt away. Much of it already has, but the decline has been masked by Obama's even-more-precipitous fall from grace. Doing nothing, with majorities in both houses of Congress, will anger and disappoint what is left of the Republican base.

And that will be the end of the Republican Party, at least as it is currently constituted. The GOB wing might succeed in nominating one of its own (Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney), for president in 2016, but it will never succeed in electing another president. This was the (unlearned) lesson of the 2012 presidential election.

What happened in 2012 had never happened before. Never in our history (barring a few oddball situations with third-party candidates), had an incumbent president been re-elected with fewer votes than he had in his first election. Incumbents either get more votes the second time around or they lose. Elections of this sort constitute a referendum on the first term.

And viewing it as a referendum, Obama was soundly rejected. He won ten million fewer votes in 2012 than he had in 2008. However, he was returned to office anyway. This happened because America's fondness for the prevailing brand of Republicans had fallen even farther and faster than Obama had. The trend is plain enough. McCain was not embraced. Romney was flat-out rejected. Jeb Bush or Chris Christie will be laughed at.

The conservatives and libertarians will inherit the party or forge a new one, and it's even possible this could happen before the 2016 elections. Even if it does, however, will the new opposition party be powerful enough under Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or any of the others to derail President Hillary? Doubtful, especially since the new kids are hated by the Boehners and McCains of the world and will get no assistance from them.

But the Republican Party, as we know it, is finished. The Karl Rove party is history, and the future custodians of liberty and freedom in America will be constitutionalists, libertarians, conservatives and the like. It is not the immediate future, however, and there may not be any liberty and freedom left by the time there is once again a political party that wants to protect it.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki    

SCHOOLS AND THE LEFT

One characteristic of the radical left is that it doesn't learn from its mistakes. (This is hardly an original observation.) Invariably, the explanation for a failure is that the Republicans or the fascists or the reactionaries wouldn't allow the left's plans to be fully implemented. Obama's $900 billion stimulus plan failed to pull us out of the 2008 crash, we are told, because it wasn't big enough. Roosevelt was unable to end the Great Depression even after a dozen years of trying because he just wasn't permitted to expand the federal government as much as he wanted to, and as much as it needed to be. We are already hearing that the various nightmares of Obamacare are occurring because what we really need is a single-payer system, but those darn insurance companies and doctors and hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are just so greedy and rapacious that the Democrats are not allowed to institute what is necessary.

The left's ideas, in other words, never fail. They cannot fail, because they are never judged empirically. They are the product of an ideology and since that ideology must be correct, the problem always resides in the incomplete or faulty implementation of whatever was tried. No matter how many times left-wing ideas are implemented, they fail, but that can never be because the ideas themselves are incorrect. Rent control ALWAYS results in housing shortages and higher rents, but to the left, the problem is that the rental market has never been regulated enough. Socialism impoverishes people wherever it is tried, but that's only because we've never really done it right.

I mention this now because Philadelphia's public schools are in the paper again, as they are every August. The amount of money spent on schools across Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, never goes down. It goes up every year. And yet, every year, there is a “funding crisis.” We need more money. Our children are being “short-changed.” Those Republicans in Harrisburg don't care about our children, probably because many of those Republicans are white and many of our children are black.

Philadelphia has been run by leftist Democrats for more than sixty years, and the annual “funding crisis” is a perfect example of the ideologically-driven politics I'm talking about. The Philly schools get worse every year, in terms of safety, in terms of educating children, in terms of the deterioration of the buildings and assets. By virtually every objective measure, Philly schools are worse this year than last year, and much worse than thirty years ago. And yet, nothing ever changes. THE PEOPLE WHO RUN OUR SCHOOLS WILL DO NOTHING DIFFERENTLY. Parents groups, politicians, bureaucrats, community activists, teachers and their unions---all of them are in lockstep on this point. Nothing must change.

This is the reason for the “funding crisis.” If you fail every year, and your results are worse every year, and you won't change anything you are doing, then the only defense you have is the claim that you don't have enough money to do the job right. And this is the argument, every year. Those bastards won't fund our schools! We need more money!

Over the past forty years, the money spent on public education in America (in real, inflation-adjusted dollars) has quadrupled; class sizes have been cut in half. I don't know the exact numbers for Philly in particular but I would be shocked if they were substantially different from the national picture. After all this, public education continues to deteriorate, steadily, largely because the money is not being spent on actual education. It is spent on increased salaries (especially benefits), for teachers and administrators, on counselors and social workers and various types of education Ph.D.s, on free transportation, on baby-sitting functions, on “free” lunches and breakfasts and dinners, on anti-bullying programs, health fairs and other liberal indoctrination schemes, on sports, and on a myriad of other boondoggles.

(I cannot resist mentioning the pitifully incompetent Arlene Ackerman, who served less than three years [2009 – 2011] as Superintendent of Schools at $350,000 per year, received a million dollar buyout to get rid of her, and then filed for unemployment compensation. This is typical of how money is spent on “education” in a city like Philly.)

The problem with public education in Philadelphia, and in many other big Democratic cities around the country, is that the people who run these towns do not really care much about education. They care about a lot of other things, and in order to get money for those other things, they say the other things are “education.” They care a lot about those other things. As for the actual teaching of children, well, not so much.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

IS THAT AN UZI OR ARE YOU JUST GLAD TO SEE ME?

With the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, there has been much discussion of the militarization of local police forces, which now get federal grants for surplus tanks, armored cars, gun boats and advanced weaponry, and get dressed up like Rambo for special occasions (like serving a warrant in the middle of the night). There are also dozens of federal agencies with their own SWAT teams. When the Bureau of Land Management raided Cliven Bundy's ranch a few months ago, for example, we learned there are actually BLM employees whose job title is “sniper.” Other SWAT-team-equipped federal agencies that might surprise you include the Tennessee Valley Authority, The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board and the FDA. The Department of Education raided the home of a man named Kenneth Wright at 6am one morning in 2011, looking for his wife who they suspected of student loan fraud.  It frightened the kids, apparently.

You see these guys every now and then, buying coffee in a convenience store or standing on a street corner in camo, jackboots and mirrored sunglasses, carrying an assault rifle. They usually are cops for the Township of Whatever (population 3.000), which just got $200,000 of free stuff that used to be in Iraq.

It's a disturbing development. I don't want people like this on the streets. I don't want the Township of Whatever to have ninjas, and I don't want the Railroad Retirement Board to have them either.  But we can put a stop to it, and the way we can do it is to make fun of them. These cops or cop substitutes need to be mocked. They need to be made fun of. It's our patriotic duty to do so. And if we do, they will stop wearing this military-style crap. They will have to. They want to be scary-looking---that's the whole point---and if we tell them, repeatedly, that they look ridiculous, they will stop. They will go back to wearing police outfits.

We, you and me, all of us American citizens and patriots can do this, and we can do it because of the camo. The camoflage clothing is the key here, the fatal flaw, since in an urban environment, it basically invites ridicule. I mean, they're not blending into a forest background, are they? They're not blending into anything. They're standing in a 7-11. They may want to look like Rambo, but the camo makes them look like the Village People. And that's what these men need to be told.

“Wow. Cool outfit, man! Are you, like, in a band?”

“Pardon me, sir?”

“The outfit. The camo and the shiny boots and stuff. You look totally fierce, dude. Are you going to a party or something?”

“I'm a police officer.”

“Really? Wow! I mean, you don't look like a policeman. You sure this isn't just some kind of butchy, leather thing? Because it's a great look for you. I want one myself.”

The scene will write itself, based on the particular uniform and gear you encounter, as well as your own fashion sense. Be polite, of course, and absolutely non-confrontational. You're just being friendly. You're just striking up a conversation with a guy who, you are convinced, is about to break into a chorus of “Y-M-C-A.”

It's a community project to get our policemen back into their police uniforms, and we all need to do it for a while because it's only when a robo-cop lookalike hears the same refrain from two or three of us that he will start to believe it. And it is only when he starts to believe it that he will go back to the barracks and complain about the costume he is forced to wear.

“Sarge, listen. I don't want to wear this stuff anymore. It's not really working. The people see me in this and---well, they think I'm a DJ, or gay, or something.  Can I just have my uniform back?  You know---the blue one, with the badge and the hat?”

Copyright2014Michael Kubacki

SHRINKAGE

Whatever happened to psychiatry? There are still psychiatrists who dispense pills, but what happened to psychoanalysis and other talking therapies? Is Freud dead? You rarely even seen cartoons in the New Yorker with a neurotic on a psychiatrist's couch anymore. Oh, it was always very expensive and elitist, and easily lampooned, but why is it that traditional psychiatry/psychoanalysis seems to have crawled under a rock?

As a “science,” of course, it left much to be desired but that's because it never really was a science. Psychology grew out of philosophy rather than empirical medicine, though attempts to graft on some sort of scientific patina (e.g., catalogs of mental disorders), were there from the beginning.

In other words, there's a lot to mock about psychoanalysis and talking therapies, and I mocked them, but I never thought they were worthless. Some of the explanations for human behavior that arose from theory made sense to me. They still do.

I suspect the field is largely the victim of political correctness since some of the accepted conclusions of these scientist/philosophers forty years ago are now not merely viewed as “incorrect,” but as offensive, hateful or racist.

I offer two examples.

First, leftist politics today is suspicious of the idea that individuals have a unique psychology based on their early experiences. Identity politics, based on skin color and sex and ethnicity, is the foundation of today's left, which believes (and insists) that women care about certain things because they are women and black people have black issues and gay people have gay issues, and so on. To the left, group identity trumps all. It's why a special font of leftist abuse is reserved for pro-life women or black conservatives or gay people who believe in traditional marriage. The problem with Clarence Thomas is not that his thinking is incorrect; the problem is that, as far as the left is concerned, a black man who thinks that way should not exist. Individual differences (founded in one's early upbringing), are what psychology and psychoanalysis are all about, but the left doesn't really approve of individual differences that conflict with their ethnic/race/gender expectations.

An even sharper example involves the question of homosexuality (especially male homosexuality). Several generations of Freudians had developed a quite sophisticated theory on this, involving the earliest infant and child reactions to sexual cues from their parents, the domineering mother, the weak or ineffective father, etc. And it always made sense to me. Virtually every gay guy I've ever known has had an odd or troubled relationship with an odd or troubled mother, and a father who, if he were even present, was something of a loser.

This line of analysis, however, is now forbidden. There is only one acceptable explanation for why a gay guy is a gay guy---he was born that way. Any other view is viewed as hateful and homophobic and unevolved and nasty.

And that is what happened to psychiatry. After 150 years of study, and a vast literature, it's just not cool anymore. It conflicts with those ideas of human development and behavior that are considered settled by our leftist elites, and from which no dissent is permitted. Therefore, it must be suppressed.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

RWANDA REDUX

In 2011, after both President Obama and Vice President Biden repeatedly claimed credit for winning the war in Iraq, Obama removed the last of our troops there. As he put it, “[W]e're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.... And we are ending a war not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement....” The abrupt withdrawal of all American forces was roundly criticized at the time, especially since Obama himself had earlier acknowledged that “There's no doubt there are risks of increased bloodshed in Iraq without a continuing US presence there.”

Welcome to 2014.

It is twenty years since 1994, and Bill Clinton is generally regarded as a lovable old rogue and America's potential “First Laddie,” once Hillary is swept into power. We no longer mention the rape, the perjury, the “bimbo eruptions,” the disbarment, the impeachment, stealing the White House silverware---it's all so very last millennium, you see.

But some of us remember. And eventually, history books will be written, and Bill's little peccadilloes will have to be mentioned. And the one thing for which he will never be forgiven is the Rwandan genocide. The number the commentators have settled upon is 800,000. That's how many Rwandan Tutsis were murdered in a four month period in 1994, and they were killed not with bombs and machine guns but one by one, with machetes, with knives, with clubs, with sharpened sticks, until the Kagera River was choked with corpses. Clinton saw it all coming (I did too---it was on CNN), and did nothing. He could have stopped it, in Christopher Hitchens' famous formulation, “with a telephone call,” but he didn't bother. He (and Madeline Albright) allowed UN peacekeepers to be ordered to stand down so the Tutsis would be helpless. Later, French forces were permitted to aid the killers, again with no objection from America. Clinton's indifference to the slaughter in Rwanda will follow him forever.

There have been Christians in Northern Iraq as long as there have been Christians. There have been Yazidis for even longer. Now, however, ISIL (The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) has been exterminating the members of these religious minorities. They have been doing it for months. Men have been summarily executed, children have been beheaded, women have been raped and taken for sale into slavery. Obama has done nothing. Yesterday, he finally decided to drop some food and water on a mountaintop where Yazidis are trapped and starving. He also took out an ISIL artillery unit with an airstrike. Way to go, Barack.

Northern Iraq is Obama's Rwanda. In moral terms, it is far worse. Bill Clinton, though he could easily have stopped the Rwandan killing, was not responsible for it. America had nothing to do with the tribal hatred there that boiled over into genocide. Obama, however, with his precipitous withdrawal of troops from Iraq, created the conditions that have led to the current horror. He was warned of the danger when he did it. He even admitted the possibility of this happening. And now he does virtually nothing.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki 

GOT GUNS?

Each time I see my family doctor, I am handed a short form with a dozen questions on it (meds now being taken, current complaint, most-recent visit, etc.). Buried in the list is this one: “Are there guns in your home?”

My doc is a leftist. Many docs are. And this question is a manifestation of the campaign to characterize (“demonize” might be a better word), gun possession as a public health problem.

I am not a fan of the public health rationale as a justification for national policy. It has an ugly history, and tyrants of all sorts have used “public health” as an excuse for their behavior. The Soviets put dissidents away in mental hospitals (often in Siberia) because their wrong-headed ideas about freedom might “infect” others. And the Nazis explained their genocidal murder campaigns as public health measures---according to them, the Jews, Gypsies and other groups were polluting the pure Aryan blood of the “master race,” so these inferiors had to be exterminated.

Nevertheless, while it pays to be suspicious of the rationale, public health is a legitimate concern of government. Quarantines, border enforcement and vaccination programs can be justified in a free society. I WANT the U.S. Government to prevent ebola from gaining a foothold in America, for example, even if it means that my freedom would be limited in certain miniscule respects.

The problem with the “guns-are-a-public-health-issue” campaign is that it undercuts the serious business involved in actual, potentially deadly, public health concerns. Painting gun possession as a public health problem trivializes the meaning of “public health,” and leads to unintended consequences. One of these consequences is that the claim of “public health” is now often viewed as just another bit of political rhetoric. When gun possession and distracted driving and seat-belt usage become public health issues, the term loses its meaning.

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are increasingly common in America and the resulting decline in herd immunity for such things as whooping cough poses a deadly danger to all of us. This is a direct result of political campaigns claiming that whatever leftists disapprove of is a “public health issue.”

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki   

GAZA CRANK LETTER

The following is a letter sent to the Philadelphia Inquirer about its coverage, on Sunday, July 20, of the Israel-Hamas war.

To the editor:

In Sunday's Inquirer, you published a photograph of dozens of Palestinians (all male, for some reason), standing around a hole in the ground, with some of them laying on the dirt and flailing their arms. The caption read: "Mourners use their hands to dig the graves of a Gaza family killed in an Israeli strike on their house."

Really? Really??? Are you seriously trying to tell me that these Palestinians, while they have thousands of Qassam rockets and the rocket-launchers to fire them, and grocery stores and apartment buildings and restaurants and schools and hospitals and shopping malls, DO NOT HAVE FREAKING SHOVELS?

This preposterous staged photograph was printed on the front page, above the fold. The other photos you published on Sunday were similar---Palestinian corpses and Palestinians weeping. The only picture of the Israeli side of the conflict was a shot of Israeli tanks rolling toward the border.

These photographs are typical of your coverage. Virtually every shot portrays the Palestinians as victims and Israelis as killers. Where are the pictures of terrified Israeli children cowering in bomb shelters? And when will you show us heavily-armed Hamas fighters heading out to battle the Jews they wish to exterminate?

The Philadelphia Inquirer's complicity in the Hamas propaganda campaign is appalling.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

THIS & THAT VIII

When you go to Starbucks, your barista will serve you your coffee in a disposable cup, and slide a cardboard collar onto it so it won't be too hot to carry. This collar has a name. It is called a “java jacket.”

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It has been at least twenty years since I last heard the word “nigger” used in its nasty, pejorative sense. However, in the back room at Target, I hear the word every single day.

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With some obvious exceptions (e.g., San Francisco, Seattle), the nanny state has not penetrated the culture west of the Mississippi to the same extent it has on the Eastern Seaboard. This occurred to me yesterday, on Kelly Drive in Philadelphia, when I passed a warning sign at one of the many curves. “25 MPH,” it warned. My mother used to take this curve at 35. Everybody else rolls around it at 45 or 50.

My experience of warning signs in Utah and Nevada and other places in the West is very different. There, if a roadsign tells you to slow down to 25 MPH, slam on the brakes and crank it down to 10. And if you see a sign that warns you of possible flash flooding, make sure you have a snorkel mask on the seat next to you.

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My current list of the ten greatest living Americans (other than self, friends or family):

Bill Gates

Ricky Jay

Jennifer Lawrence

Bernard Lewis

Peyton Manning

Camille Paglia

Dennis Prager

Thomas Sowell

Mark Steyn

Clarence Thomas

Making a list like this is an interesting intellectual exercise, and not as easy as it looks. The first three or four names come easily, and then you start searching. Eventually, you wind up asking yourself questions like “What is greatness?” You think about that. Then you put the list down and return a couple days later.

I invite you to compose a list, and put it in the comments section.

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A management tip: it is essential that, when a manager blunders, he find a way to acknowledge his mistake to the troops. A public evisceration is not necessary, but a quiet admission of the error is the only way to maintain morale.

Employees will work for a leader who is perceived to share their goals. In fact, they want to work for a person who shares the same goals. Because we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, social animals, the sense of laboring toward a common purpose provides us with a sense of meaning in life. If there is a job to do, the grunts will follow and respect a leader who they believe is as interested as they are in accomplishing the task. A leader who screws up, however, and will not admit his mistake, is seen as selfish, as someone who is only out to advance himself and his own interests.

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The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world that does not have its own country. The one possible silver lining in the meltdown of Iraq and Syria is that the Kurds may now emerge from the mess with a sovereign state of their own. There are very few groups in that region that are worthy of the respect of civilized peoples, but the Kurds are certainly one of them.

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Snopes.com has been around for twenty years. It is a rumor-and-urban-legend-debunking website. For example, you can go there, type “Tupac” in the search box, and get the latest myths making the rounds about the late, great rapper. Spotted in Oakland? FALSE. Secretly married to Madonna? FALSE. Etc, etc., etc.

Yesterday, in the back room at Target, Racheal was telling the gang (about six of us) that Obama had ordered the drinking age be raised to 25. This was big news, of course, because they were all between the ages of 21 and 25. I questioned her about this. In fact, I said it couldn't possibly be true.

She immediately whipped out her phone, put in a search term or two, and showed me the result. It was a link to: “Obama To Raise Drinking Age to 25? Snopes.com” This was proof, she said.

She had heard the rumor, punched it in her phone, and since the headline was there, out there, on the internet, the story had to be true. It never occurred to her to go to the website and read the story.

Just because there is more information “out there,” and just because it is easier to find, does not mean people are any better informed.

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A little while ago, I wrote a long piece about Bob Bergdahl (the dad), with the intention of posting it close to Father's Day, nominating him for Dad-Of-The-Year, etc. At the time, I thought it was funny, but as I read it over, and more news emerged, I found less and less humor in it. It's a sad tale ultimately, of a deeply confused young man who looks to his idiot father for advice, gets nothing useful and makes a horrible decision. Then there are the soldiers killed and wounded in the search for Bergdahl---that's really not funny. Finally, there's the clueless Obama swapping savage murderers for the kid. It's all just so damn sad.

There is one ancillary point to be made, however. In a recent column, Jonah Goldberg asked a fundamental question about the Bergdahl debacle: how does a guy who looks like he lives inside a dead tree get to stand next to Obama in the freakin' Rose Garden and blow kisses to the Taliban? In Pashto, no less. This is a good question. As Mr. Goldberg points out, there used to be guys who worked in the White House who would conduct a discreet investigation on the person who was about to appear in a press conference with the Prez. (Question #1---are you carrying a gun? Question #2---are you insane?) They would also ask him what he he was thinking of saying into the CNN microphone that would be instantly broadcast to hundreds of people around the world.

That sort of investigation apparently doesn't happen anymore. Maybe it would be rude. A more troubling possibility is that there are such people working for Obama who vetted Bob Bergdahl, read his history and his published emails, and decided he was just another flower in the great bouquet that is American diversity. “Hey, no problem! Bob, this is Barack. Barack, Bob!”

Fortunately, Mr. Bergdahl does not appear to have presented an actual danger to the President, but how, exactly, did the Secret Service and White House security know that? This is a guy who, just a few days before the party in Rose Garden, tweeted: “I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen!”

Ameen indeed! That would concern me a bit. In fact, if I'm in charge of protecting Barack Obama, the most protected man on the planet, I don't think I let the likes of Bob Bergdahl within a half mile of the Rose Garden. Even if you're in the Obama Administration and you feel you need to use the guy, don't you put him on a video feed from somewhere and patch it into the press conference? And don't you have a little tape delay built into the feed so you can bounce the guy if he says something goofy? (As, in fact, he did!)

Actually, there is a lesson here (which no one in Washington will heed), about the folly of elaborate, absurdly expensive, labor-intensive and technology-intensive security systems like the one surrounding Barack Obama at all times. It costs millions, or even tens of millions, for him or his family to go anywhere or do anything, and there are hundreds of advance men and secret service agents and snipers and communications specialists who fill up entire airplanes and hotels just so Obama can go surfing or say hi to the Pope. What is the point of all this? What is the point of traveling in a fifty-car motorcade if at the end of the road you walk right up to a guy like Bob Bergdahl who has God-knows-what going on inside his hairy noggin?

Recently, Obama found himself on stage with a gentleman named Thamsanga Jantjie, who was supposedly signing Obama's Mandela eulogy for the hearing-impaired. Except, as it turned out, he wasn't. Instead, he was making random hand gestures along with the occasional sign for “prawns” or “rocking horse.” Amusing at first, of course, until it was discovered that Jantjie has a lengthy criminal record for other light-hearted frolics like rape, fraud, murder and attempted murder. He now resides in the Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital since, in addition to his history of crime, he is a schizophrenic. Obama's 13-hour visit for the Mandela funeral, with his enormous entourage, bullet-proof cars, and security team, cost well over $11 million, and culminated with the President, completely unarmed, standing just a few feet away from a guy who might well be the craziest man in all of South Africa. In other words, Obama would arguably have been safer if he had left all his snipers and hovercraft and drones and Secret Service boys at home and just strapped a Bowie knife to his hip.

Security experts continue to debate on the relative merits of 1) complex, expensive, technology-based security systems and 2) low-tech, human-intelligence-based regimens. The contrast is illustrated, at least according to the fans of low-tech systems, by the TSA security at American airports versus the one-on-one, in-your-face interviews that are used to screen passengers on Israeli airplanes. High-tech systems, the theory goes, may not fail very often, but when they do, they can fail catastrophically. In the US, for example, if someone innocently walks through the wrong door at an airport, five thousand people will be shooed out of the terminals and re-screened, delaying flights across the country for hours. In Israel, this would never happen. The argument is that both Bergdahl and Jantjie were potentially catastrophic mistakes that resulted purely from the nature of the system; spending another $20 million would not have helped, but a close interview from a cynical old intelligence officer might have.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

IN DEFENSE OF DONALD STERLING

Well, OK. I guess I chose the title just to get your attention. Nevertheless, this is probably the most pro-Sterling article you are likely to read, even though its purpose is not so much to defend Sterling as to condemn the jackals (Oprah, Adam Silver, LeBron James, Al Sharpton, etc.) who are trying to take the L.A. Clippers away from him.

So let's summarize.

Donald Sterling has a relationship with a a woman fifty years his junior who is called, for some reason, V. Stiviano, though that is neither the name she was born with nor one of the many other names she has used over the years. The nature of the relationship is that, in exchange for money and expensive presents, she has sex with his 80-year-old carcass and accompanies him in public to basketball games and other events and behaves with respect to him as would a “girlfriend.” Sterling has had many other such relationships with women in the past.

Recently, a recording was made of a conversation between Mr. Sterling and Ms. Stiviano, and the only thing we really know about the provenance of this recording and its production is that Mr. Sterling was unaware it was being made. Nevertheless, it was disseminated widely by TMZ, the gossip-news internet site. I infer (as does everyone else who has heard it), that Stiviano is the source of the recording.

The topic of conversation, or one of them, is Ms. Stiviano's sexual dalliances with black men, including famous black athletes. Sterling expresses no objection to her relationships with these other men per se, and in fact, he tells her to hang out with them, love them, admire them, have sex with them—whatever she wants. He does ask, however, that she refrain from publicizing these relationships by putting pictures of herself and her lovers on Instagram, and bringing them to Clippers basketball games. Magic Johnson's name is featured rather prominently in the conversation, and he appears to be a particular bone of contention between Sterling and Stiviano.

(One cannot but wonder about the reaction to this chatter of Cookie Johnson, the long-suffering wife of America's most-famous HIV survivor, but this aspect of l'affaire Sterling has received zero attention in the media.)

So here's the first question: is Sterling's request really so unreasonable? This is, after all, a purely commercial relationship, and whether you approve or disapprove of such a relationship, the fact is that such arrangements have existed between rich old men and pretty young women since the beginning of time. They are entirely voluntary. And in this case, he is not even demanding she be faithful to him. All he seems to be asking is that she refrain from flaunting these other liaisons and publicly cuckold him. Do what you want, he is telling her. Just don't make me look like a jackass.

Is this so much to ask? Let us not forget that this bought-and-paid-for “girlfriend” has been well bought and well paid for. It has been alleged in a lawsuit (and apparently not denied), that he recently gave her a Ferrari, two Bentleys, a Range Rover, and an expensive condo. The guy is entitled to something for his money, isn't he?

(An aside: two Bentleys? I understand this is not a question a conservative should ask---I mean, it ain't my money---but two Bentleys? The socialist view of the two-Bentley phenomenon is that no 30-year-old ”girlfriend” of an 80-year-old-guy should have two Bentleys until every 30-year-old “girlfriend” of an 80-year-old guy has one Bentley, and while I am capable of arguing that this socialist view of other people's wealth is immoral, I find myself little inclined to do so in this instance.)

That's the first point---that his demands on Stiviano seem eminently reasonable given the context in which they were made. This was a private negotiating session over the terms of the young lady's duties in her lucrative arm-candy gig, and Sterling doesn't even seem to be asking much. And what possible beeswax is this of Oprah? Or LeBron? Or Keith Olbermann?

Ah, but it's the racism, you see. That's the objection, or at least that's what we are told. The guys she is screwing are black, and Sterling's comments about them are race-based and ugly, and that is his real transgression. That's why his $500 million team must be taken away from him. That's why he can never be allowed in an NBA venue. We're outraged, you see. We're outrageously outraged, and that's why an enormous chunk of this man's wealth must be taken from him without due process, or any process, though he has committed no crime and has apparently injured no one.

Again, let's put this incident in context.

Sterling probably doesn't like it that his mistress screws other guys. He says it doesn't matter, but this may simply reflect his acceptance of the reality of their relationship and the reality of who she is. In any case, he probably feels he is in no position to object to her other relationships, though that doesn't mean he likes them. Sterling may be a lizard, but lizards have feelings too, or they can. Thus, in this private, and somewhat emotional, conversation, some of that hurt and disappointment may leak out, and he may say some disparaging things about the other guys she is screwing. Had they been Lithuanians or Sikhs or Eskimos or Vietnamese guys, Sterling might have made some nasty remarks about Lithuanians, Sikhs, Eskimos or Vietnamese guys, but apparently she only does black guys (apart from Sterling), so his nasty remarks are the kind typically directed toward black guys.

And the racist remarks themselves? What are they? I listened to the tape, and while he does ask her not to “broadcast” her relationships with black guys, one searches in vain for the “Yo bitch---stay away from niggers” part. There simply isn't any such language on the tape that has been made public. In fact, what I hear is Stiviano's repeated attempts to goad Sterling into saying something overtly loathsome and racist and him not taking the bait.

And not only do I not hear Sterling saying anything loathsome, I do not hear Al Sharpton or Diane Sawyer or LeBron James or anybody else TELLING me what it is he said that was so loathsome. That is really what gets my spidey-sense tingling about this sorry spectacle. Every decent human being in America (which doesn't include me, I guess), is outrageously outraged about the horrible, nasty, vicious, racist things Donald Sterling said to V. Stiviano, but in the 60,000 hours of live television coverage and commentary since the incident, nobody will tell me exactly what it is Sterling said that should get me as outrageously outraged as they are. All we are told is that it's extremely nasty and offensive and racist, and we are informed of this endlessly, but the final step of the argument, the linking of evidence and conclusion, never occurs.

Since the tape was released, plenty of stories have surfaced about Sterling and about his views on black people. There was trouble with federal authorities some years ago, and Sterling was heavily fined for his efforts to avoid renting apartments to black tenants. Rollie Massimino, who once was considered for the Clippers coaching job, tells of standing courtside with Sterling and being told, “I don't know why you think you can coach these niggers.” At this point, we can fairly stipulate that Sterling is an anti-black racist who will occasionally express that racism in a very crude and offensive manner.

Based on the recording, however, and on his stewardship of the Clippers, what he is being accused of are merely thought-crimes. There is not even an allegation that he discriminates against blacks in the way he runs the team. This is the NBA! Even if he wanted to, how could he? Thus, his head coach is black, as are most of the players to whom he pays tens of millions each year. In the public sphere (as opposed to what he thinks, or what he may say in private conversations), what has he ever done as the owner of the Clippers to disqualify him from owning a team?

We are not trying to decide whether to give him the Nobel Peace Prize. All of us can agree he doesn't deserve it. We are trying to decide whether he should be stripped of a piece of property worth $500 million because his views on race, and the way he expresses them privately, are way out of step with contemporary mores. And do not be deluded by the unctuous pronouncements of NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. This “suspension” is a taking. According to Silver, Sterling is to have NO voice in the management of the team and is barred from NBA arenas. When every aspect of “ownership” is taken away, in what sense can Sterling still be said to be an owner? If Sterling is barred from any connection with the Clippers, and all management decisions are now to be made by the league itself, what is to stop Silver from simply folding the franchise and destroying the thirty years of wealth Sterling has created for himself and his family?

Sterling did not suddenly become a racist in a recent conversation with V. Stiviano. He's had these views, and expressed them, for years. Nobody in the NBA cared enough to impose any sort of league discipline on him. And in the larger world, Sterling is a sought-after contributor to Democratic politics and liberal causes. He has apparently been bankrolling the NAACP in Southern California for years, and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by that organization. Neither George Wallace nor David Duke ever got one of those plaques.

And certainly, he represents no danger to the prospects for racial harmony in America. At 80 years old, with prostate cancer, he is not exactly the voice of the future, is he? And since he does not (and cannot) engage in racial discrimination in the NBA, he is not a threat to the present either. He'll be dead soon. Soon he won't be able to offend LeBron James anymore. Most significantly, the outraged reaction to his taped remarks proves that Donald Sterling is out of touch with most of his countrymen. Doesn't the reaction to this story, across America, prove that this is not a racist nation? So what is the point of destroying Donald Sterling?

But there is a point to this exercise, and there is a reason. The reason is that America has changed, and that dissent from politically correct views is no long permitted, even in private. There can be no debate, and there can be no tolerance. The Left in America has changed, and those who are not sufficiently evolved must be silenced, or destroyed, or both. Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty must have his TV forum taken away. Government use of snipers on Cliven Bundy's ranch is justified, according to the NYT, because Bundy has incorrect views on race. Brendan Eich must be fired as CEO of Mozilla because he once donated money to the Prop 8 campaign in California. Universities must punish students who voice incorrect ideas. Little old Mormon ladies must be knocked to the sidewalk on their way to church because the LDS believes in traditional marriage. Other Mormons who supported traditional marriage must lose their livelihoods. Ayaan Hirsi Ali cannot be permitted to speak at Brandeis and Condoleezza Rice cannot address commencement at Rutgers. Pro-life students who set up tables on campus to persuade their fellow students must be shut down and have their literature destroyed. “Climate-change deniers” cannot be published in America and are banned from the BBC. Hundreds of Romney and McCain campaign offices are trashed by vandals (while almost no Obama offices are). Israeli academics are banned from international conferences of scholars.

At the federal level, the same process is occurring as the apparatus of government is converted to promote the political ends of the Obama Administration rather than our nation's laws. Here again, the goal is not to persuade, or to win an argument, but merely to silence the opposition. The IRS prosecutes conservatives and denies them equal tax treatment. The EPA, the ATF, the FEC, and the Justice Department enforce only those statutes their leftist administrators approve of, that embody their notions of “social justice.” The message for the rest of us is simple. Shut up. Keep your head down.

None of this happened ten years ago (or to the extent it was attempted, it rarely succeeded). But now a man must have half a billion dollars taken away from him because Al Sharpton disapproves of things he said to his mistress in private.

The Donald Sterling story has nothing to do with racism in America. It has to do with the rise of mob rule and the destruction of the rule of law. Law, if it is law, applies to everyone equally and protects everyone equally. It protects Donald Sterling just as it protects Rosa Parks. The attack on Donald Sterling is an attack on our freedom and our rights as individuals, and it is being executed by the caring, nurturing, intolerant Left which now decides which of us will be permitted to speak, and what we will be permitted to say. This is totalitarianism. This is mob rule, and it is taking over America.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki