ASH WEDNESDAY

I don't remember the last time I failed to get ashes on Ash Wednesday. This year, I got them at St. John the Evangelist on 13^th Street in downtown Philly. I never go there for any other reason, but their ashes operation is a very streamlined, in-and-out affair designed for working people who don't have time for an hour-long mass in the middle of the work week. You walk in, light a candle if you want, say a prayer, and then the priest (who is usually a guy from Lesotho or Manila or Lima) comes out and conducts a five-minute service. Then two or three helpers emerge from behind the altar and everybody in the joint gets ashes.

The priest or helper always says something as he (or she) applies the smudge. In the Middle Ages, it was usually “Memento mori,” which means “Remember death.” Bit of a buzz-kill, of course, but that's what Ash Wednesday is about. It's the beginning of Lent, which is the last forty days (actually forty-five) of Christ's life, so a remembrance of mortality is a big part of the story.

The ritual sounds grim, but in fact, it's not. When you start your day with a reminder, in no uncertain terms, that your end is nigh, you walk out of church with a need to affirm life and the vital principle and to, in the words of the late Warren Zevon, “Enjoy every sandwich.” That's what always happens to me, in any case. Getting ashes is supposed to be the most depressing thing that happens to you that day, so that afterwards you walk around smiling and cheerful and you pat little kids on the head.

Except it's not the Middle Ages anymore. For the past ten years or so, the homily I've been given with my ashes has been “Turn away from sin and read the Gospels.” Wimpy stuff. Pitiful, really. If there were Catholic restaurants that served fortune cookies, it's what you would get in a Catholic fortune cookie. But that's modern feel-good Catholicism for you. It's a big reason there aren't as many Catholics as there used to be, at least in the U.S.

But this Wednesday, I got lucky. I approached one of the helpers and as she loaded up her thumb with a double shot of the blackest, she looked me right in the eye and said, “Remember---you are dust and to dust you will return.” And she said it like she meant it.

Awright!!!

In a way, getting ashes these days is more fun than it used to be. When I was a kid, it seemed like most of the foreheads you saw on Ash Wednesday had a nice black smudge on them. Those were the days in Philly when everyone knew one or more working-class Catholic families with six kids, all of whom went to parochial school. My father, who practiced law in the 50's and 60's, once told me about running into a lawyer named Jacob Goldstein on Ash Wednesday and being surprised to see ashes on Jacob's noggin.

“Jake,” he asked him, “did you convert?”

“No, Stan, but I've got a jury trial today.” Expecting seven or eight Catholics on the jury, Jacob was taking no chances. Back then, getting ashes in Philly was no big deal. Even Jews had them---well, a few Jews anyway.

Today, however, ash-wearers are sufficiently rare that I usually get told by someone, seriously, that I have some dirt on my head and I should wash it off. I see people looking at me, puzzled, and then realizing, “That's right. Yesterday was Mardi Gras.” I like it much better this way. Before, I was just another smudge in the crowd; now I'm slightly exotic and even somewhat annoying. Being honest now, one reason I never miss a year is that I know there's a certain number of cranky atheists who look at me and get pissed off.

After church, I went to my job at Target, where I typically see hundreds of people during an eight-hour shift. Only ten or twelve (all women) had ashes, but because ash-wearers are now so rare, a guild mentality has developed in places like Philly where those of us who sport the smudge are a distinct minority. You notice each other. You make eye contact. “Oh, yeah,” you think, “we cool.” At one point, I was bending over and arranging some bread on a shelf so the customer who came up couldn't see my head until she spoke to me. I looked up and there, two feet away, was a forehead just like mine. She was startled. “Dominus vobiscum,” I told her, and made the sign of the cross. It was a second or two before she remembered she wanted to know where we keep the cream cheese.

The ashes even provide an introduction. I never speak about anything personal with customers unless they initiate it, but I did on Ash Wednesday, telling several of the young ladies about how I scored big at St. John's that morning. All were suitably impressed. They were young enough that some had never heard anything but the turn-away-from-sin, fortune-cookie stuff.

My favorite Ash Wednesday experience occurred in St. Louis (not an especially papist burg), about twenty-five years ago. I was there on business, had flown in that morning, and was stuck in a law office until early afternoon when we broke for lunch.

Early that morning I had ascertained there was a cathedral downtown, so as soon as I was released from the high-rise where I had spent the morning, I hauled ass about ten blocks to the church, sailed through the (one) open door and found, in an enormous structure with a nave straining up to heaven itself---nobody. An open Catholic church downtown in a major American city always has some poor bastard in one of the pews, praying for something-or-other, but this one, in St. Louis MO on Ash Wednesday afternoon, had nobody but me. I approached the altar, genuflected (ask a Catholic what that means), and sat myself down in the front row. There was only so much time I could spend there. I only had an hour for lunch.

Five minutes passed.

Then, the door just behind the pulpit opened slightly and a woman peeked out, saw me, and shut the door. I thought about this for a minute, then advanced into what is called (I think) the presbytery, where the mass is done, and knocked on the door. Thirty seconds passed and the door was opened by the same woman. I introduced myself, explained my mission, and asked if there were some way to get my ashes.

“That was all over an hour ago,” she said, and gave me a long look. “OK, I'll see.” And the door closed.

Time passed. Minutes. Was I being so terribly unreasonable? It's Ash Wednesday, it's only about one o'clock, and this is the big church in downtown St. Louis. I mean, what am I---a burglar?

Finally, the door flew open and a tiny man, shrunken with age, looked up at me. He had to be 80 years old and though he was wearing the backward collar, he seemed otherwise disheveled, as if roughly awakened, recently.

“Ashes?” he said. “You want ashes?”

I explained my quest, apologizing all the while. But now I felt terrible because the situation was suddenly rather obvious. This venerable geezer had been up since 4 am on Ash Wednesday duty, had planted smudges on hundreds of heads and done two or three masses, and finally he had retired to the rectory for his soft-boiled egg and a dry martini, and had fallen asleep in front of “The Price Is Right.” And then I came along.

“Fine,” he said, shutting me up. “Wait here.” He went back inside and reappeared a minute later with a dish of black ash. Loading up, and with a flick of his wrist, he punched me in the head with his thumb and smeared the results across a wide swath. “Turn away from Satan,” he told me, “and read yer Gospels. OK???” An instant later, he was gone and the door was shut in my face. In the silent, empty cathedral, the slam of the door made me shiver. It was the sound of doom itself.

Copyright2015MichaelKubacki

THE 2015 SUPERBOWL

[Much of the analysis that follows, and the story of Virgil Carter, comes from “The Hidden Game of Football” by Carroll, Palmer and Thorn, first published in 1988]

Greek tragedy doesn't do the boffo box office it did in Aristotle's day. In 2015, we're more into RomComs or CGI spectaculars or comedies like “Bad Bosses 2,” with Jennifer Anniston as the irrepressible nymphomaniac. Nevertheless, the ancient echoes of “Oresteia” and “Medea” and “Oedipus” still speak to us of the inevitability of doom that follows, that must follow, a moral transgression.

I am speaking, of course, of the Green Bay – Seattle game, a Greek tragedy with Packers coach Mike McCarthy in the role of Oedipus, for that is what Packer fans were calling him after the game. Well, not “Oedipus” exactly, but its modern 12-letter equivalent. In the first quarter, you didn't know how the Pack would pay for its sins against the gods of football, but you knew they would.

I watched the game with a horrifying certainty that Green Bay would be punished, with the suspense and drama residing only in the method by which their comeuppance would be exacted. An emergency on-field leg amputation for Aaron Rodgers? A Green Bay coach disemboweled in a bizarre sideline accident involving a linebacker, a cheerleader and a parabolic microphone? Instead, the vengeance from Mount Olympus was simple, but perfectly fit the crime. After giving away points in that first quarter (to the Seahawks! in Seattle! in the NFC Conference Championship!), Green Bay found itself, as the clock ticked down to 0:00 in regulation, needing just one of those squandered points for a victory they had thrown away. (And by the way, did anyone on Planet Earth think Green Bay would win in overtime?)

It was the field goals, of course. You can't kick those field goals. In the first quarter, with 8 minutes remaining, Mike McCarthy was facing 4^th and goal at the 1/2-yard line. He didn't hesitate, and sent out the fieldgoal team to kick an 18-yarder.

(Mike McCarthy: You're looking especially hot today, Jocasta!

Jocasta: I dunno, Mike, it feels funny somehow.

Mike: Hey, what could go wrong?

Jo: Oh...OK. Can you unzip me? Oh, wait. That's right. Zippers haven't been invented yet!)

Three minutes later, following a Seattle turnover, Green Bay again found itself 4^th and goal at the Seattle 1-yard line, and McCarthy again took the three points.

You can't kick those fieldgoals. You can't kill your father and you can't have sex with your mother and you can't kick those fieldgoals. I'm not really sure which of the three is worse, though I lean toward the fieldgoals. I guess I'll leave that issue to the professional theologians and philosophers.

The reasoning is not complicated, and you would think that most football coaches would have figured out the 4th-and-1-in-the-first-quarter scenario by the time they got their first paying job (or would have had it explained to them). We are only looking at two choices here---kick it or go for it---and all we have to do is calculate the resulting points (the “expectation”) from each option.

Option A, the fieldgoal, is easy to assess. You are almost certain to make a fieldgoal from that distance. Call it 97%. Multiplying 97% by 3 points is about 2.9 points, and that is your expectation. On the rare occasion the kick is missed, Seattle gets the ball on its 20-yard-line, which, as we will see later, holds no advantage for either side.

Option B, trying for the touchdown, is a bit more complicated since there are two possible significant outcomes---you score the touchdown or you don't---and the differing expectations from these alternatives must be summed.

First, the chance of making a first down (or in this case, a touchdown) on 4^th and 1 does not vary much from year to year in the NFL. You have about a 66% (or 2/3) chance of making the first down. Since a touchdown is worth 7 points, going for it nets you 2/3 times 7, or 4.6 points. This is already 1.7 points better than the 2.9 points to be expected from the fieldgoal.

(These are averages, of course, and the odds for a particular team against another particular team in a particular situation may be different. But is there any reason to think Green Bay's chances, even against Seattle, are worse than the league average?)

But there's more! What about the 1/3 of the time Green Bay fails to make the touchdown, and Seattle takes over at its 1-yard-line? What are the expected points arising out of that situation?

For this, we turn to the work of Virgil Carter, a BYU quarterback who became an NFL journeyman and backup for three teams in the 1960's. He was not a great QB, but he was a smart guy, and he had the brilliant insight that field position in football could be expressed as a number of expected points for one team or the other. His findings were published in Operations Research in 1971.

Carter compiled years of data from NFL games and determined, for example, that a team with a first down at the 50 yard line has an expectation of +2 points. This doesn't mean they would score a safety, and it doesn't mean they would score at all in their current possession. It means that when you average all the “next scores” in all the games where a team had a first down at the fifty, the average result was +2 points for that team. This could also be expressed as a -2 expectation for the team on defense.

All of which brings us to Seattle's expectations if they succeeded in stopping Green Bay and took over possession at their own 1 yard line. According to Virgil Carter (and subsequent work), Seattle's expectation with a first down at its own 1 is -2 points. In other words, if you are stuck that deep in your own territory, the other team is more likely to make the next score than you are.

Remember that 2/3 of the time, Green Bay scores its touchdown, with an expectation of 4.6 points. The other 1/3 of the time, when Green Bay fails, they are still a favorite to put up the next points, and that expectation is equal to 1/3 times 2 points, or .7 points.

Green Bay, by going for the touchdown, expects 4.6 plus .7 points, or a total of 5.3. Since their expectation when kicking the fieldgoal is only 2.9 points, they give away 2.4 points when they kick from the 1 yard line. And they did it twice.

Kicking those fieldgoals was a dreadful mistake. Green Bay gave away almost 5 points by doing so. Worse, they summoned the vengeful gods of football and made their defeat the only just result.

There are people who will not criticize a coach for doing something unforgivably stupid, like kicking those fieldgoals. The broadcasters certainly didn't. They said something like, “Seattle forced the Packers to go for three.” Of course, the Seahawks did no such thing. McCarthy did what he did because in a situation he has seen hundreds of times in his career, HE HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO! Or he “went by his gut” (another dopey thing broadcasters will often say), as if there is no objective answer to the question of whether to kick the fieldgoal or try for the touchdown. But there is. There always is. Sometimes it can be a close call, but there is always an objectively correct answer. And this was decidedly not a close call.

When you are playing blackjack and you have twelve while the dealer is showing a face card, you take a card. You do so not because you “have a feeling,” but because it is the correct play. Presented with that situation a million times, you will win more (or lose less) by taking a card than by standing pat. Your feelings have nothing to do with it. Among other things, the cards don't know you have feelings and they wouldn't care about your feelings even if they did know. The inexorable percentages in the NFL are much the same way.

Mike McCarthy won a Superbowl a few years ago, and it's hard to fire a guy like that no matter how little he knows about basic game strategies. What Green Bay should do, however, is to hire some local kid who plays poker and backgammon and a few other games, and have him stand on the sidelines with Mike and tell him when to punt or go for it or kick a fieldgoal or when to go for two after a touchdown. You wouldn't have to pay him much---let's say $100 a game and a few hotdogs. He would win a game for them every year, a game they should win but which Mike McCarthy would otherwise piss away.

** ** **

And then there's the Superbowl, featuring Seattle and Green Bay, which Vegas says is a pick-um. Based on my numbers, Seattle is better. Surprisingly perhaps, the Seahawks win the yards/pass contest 6.4 to 6.1. With defensive yards/pass, they are even better. Seattle wins that matchup by a 4.7 to 5.3 score.

As you may have gathered, I don't like Seattle much. I don't like the way they play, I don't like their ethically-challenged coach who left USC one step ahead of NCAA sanctions, and I don't like the way the NFL allows them to get away with what is politely called their “defense.” Also, I have grown fond of Bill Belichick for his increasing resemblance, behaviorally and even physically, to Richard Nixon. I want New England to win.

However, I don't think they will. “Inflategate,” or as I prefer to call it, “Ballghazi,” probably hurts New England here. First, it's a continuing distraction for the Patriots, while Seattle is left entirely unmolested by the media and can focus completely on their game plan. In addition, the media obsession with New England can be used by the Seahawks to pump themselves up. I mean, here they are, the World Champions, back for a second title, and nobody is talking about them. They ain't getting no respect, and it probably pisses them off.

After the gift victory from the Packers, Seattle wins the Superbowl this year.

Copyright2015MichaelKubacki

2015 NFL PLAYOFFS---CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS

Often wrong but never uncertain---that's me and I'm proud of it. So even though I am a mere 2 – 4 against the spread on these games so far, I'll be happy to tell you who's going to win these games. And don't worry. You can rely on me. Bet the house.

Indy at New England (-7). Offensive yards/pass numbers are about even---NE has 6.1 and Indy has 6.0. New England's yard/pass on defense, however is superior---5.3 to 5.9. Also, as a general matter, the smart guys will tell you that the Colts' defense is not very scary. By my numbers, Indianapolis can't win this game, but of course, they couldn't beat Denver last week either. And that's the problem. The Colts are dangerous. A road win in the playoffs is a meaningful event. I like the Pats to win this game, but I wouldn't lay these points.

Green Bay @ Seattle (-7). Have they given the Superbowl trophy to the Seahawks yet? The games are just a formality, right? And what about the Stanley Cup? Did they give them the Stanley Cup too? That's the way is seems, doesn't it? Seattle's back. It's over.

Green Bay wins the yds/pass matchup by a 7.3 to 6.4 tally, with defensive yds/pass equal. Green Bay is, by my basic measure of playoff competence, better than the Seahawks, and they are getting 7 points as well. I like the Packers to win this game, and even if they don't, I certainly like them with the points.

Countervailing considerations include the following: 1) Seattle is at home where they are very good and Green Bay is on the road, where they are not, 2) the Packers were underdogs three times this year (at Seattle, New Orleans and Detroit) and they got toasted on all three occasions, and 3) Aaron Rodgers has one leg.  Problems.  I admit it.  So don't bet the house.  Just the Mercedes.  

Perhaps the biggest reason I like Green Bay is that the Seahawks are the best defensive team in the league and the best defensive team almost never wins the Superbowl. For the best defensive team to win it two years in a row? Well, I doubt it has ever happened.

Copyright2015MichaelKubacki

CHARLIE HEBDO CRANK LETTER

This week, the Philadelphia Daily News published a column by their star blogger, Will Bunch, explaining that he and the paper were sensitively sensitive to people's sensitive sensitivities about religion and blasphemy and such, and thus would not be publishing any content from the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. This was my response.

To the editor:

Will Bunch informs us ("Free to be--and not be--Charlie"), that he and his colleagues at the DN disapprove of the crude humor in Charlie Hebdo, and so will not print the cartoons that led to mass murder in Paris. A month ago, there was perhaps a place for Mr. Bunch's nuanced editorial judgments about what is, and what is not, proper. Now, however, the cartoons are at the heart of the biggest news story in the world and you are a newspaper. How can you not publish them?

In fact, this new-found, finely-tuned aesthetic sensitivity is just a fig leaf, and a transparent one at that. Cowardice is the only reason newspapers around the world, including the Daily News, will not publish this material.

The worst aspect of this is that we already know the harvest Mr. Bunch's attitude will bring. It's what we saw in Paris last week. If the Daily News (and the Inquirer and the New York Times and fifty other papers around the world) had published the Danish Muhammad cartoons after the riots in 2005, the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo might well be alive today. But when the Western press cowered in submission to the threats ten years ago, it only encouraged those who would kill to extinguish basic human freedoms. By refusing to fight back now, you ensure there will be many more Charlie Hebdo's, some large and some small. It will happen again and again. For evil to succeed, all that is necessary is for good people to do nothing.

To paraphrase Hyman Roth in Godfather II, "This is the business you have chosen." Like it or not, Will Bunch, you are in the free speech business, and when the barbarians are at the gate, when cartoonists are being mowed down with automatic weapons, it's a bit late for your delicate sensibilities. If you are a newspaperman, this is the moment you must stand up unequivocally for freedom.

Or not. Perhaps in your case, it's time to run away. Fine. Go. Take that job at the food co-op. Just don't call yourself a journalist anymore.

Copyright2015MichaelKubacki

2015 NFL PLAYOFFS - ROUND 2

Based on adjusted yards/pass numbers, none of these four games is close. New England is a half yard better on offense and .6 yards better on defense. Green Bay beats Dallas by a half yard on offense and .9 yards on defense. Denver is only .3 yards better than Indy on offense but 1.6 yards better on D. Seattle is 1.1 yard better than Carolina on offense and .8 yards on defense. All four home favorites should win.

But that's not always how it works, is it?

At the beginning of each season, the playoff dream of every coach and player in the NFL is the same: win enough games to get a top seed in the Conference, then: 1) bye, 2) home win, 3) home win, 4) Superbowl win. Considering how universal the desire, it's surprising just how infrequently this happens. Of the fourteen Superbowls played in this millennium, only four teams have gone bye/homeW/homeW/SuperW. These were the 2004 Patriots, the 2009 Steelers, the 2010 Saints and the 2014 Seahawks. The other ten championships were won by teams with at least one road victory along the way. The 2013 Baltimore Ravens had two road wins, one of which came in Foxborough, Mass. The 2012 Giants also had two (this was the year I kept telling you the Giants were the worst team in the playoffs, even after their two road wins). The 2011 Packers and the 2008 Giants each had three road wins on the way to their Superbowl victories.

Even I am capable of learning things, and after doing these predictions for several years now, this is what I have learned: if you win a road game in the NFL playoffs, you are a real threat to win it all. When you win on the road, you are a contender, no matter what my numbers say. Winning on the road is a BIG DEAL. (Or, as Joe Biden would put it, a “big f***ing deal!”)

As of which brings us to...

Baltimore @ N.E. (-7) The Patriots have better numbers, but they have the smallest advantage of any of the four favorites and the Ravens are proven road warriors, having won at Pittsburgh last week. Also, let's not forget that win in Foxborough two years ago. There are very few teams that win in New England in December and there are even fewer that win in January, and maybe a win two years ago doesn't mean much this weekend, but Harbaugh and Belichick and Brady and Flacco remember it.

Speaking of Flacco, he's not cute and southern and laid-back like Peyton and he's not self-deprecating and quiet like Rodgers, and he doesn't do commercials for big insurance companies, but he's a very nice player. His record in the playoffs is 10 – 4 and he owns a ring. Also, he has been in the league for seven years and I don't believe he has missed a game to injury.

This is a close call, but I'm taking the points with Baltimore.

Carolina @ Seattle (-11) The Panthers won the first round at home so we can't properly call them playoff road warriors, but their final regular-season game was a 34-3 thrashing of Atlanta, in Atlanta, to win their division, so that kinda sorta puts them in the category (and certainly made me take notice).

What I really like about Carolina is that they awakened on the morning of December 7 with a record of 3–8–1, and now have fought their way to the second round of the playoffs. I also like the 11 point spread.

It is possible, of course, that Cam Newton will complete his first two passes to Seattle ubercornerback Richard Sherman and find himself behind by two touchdowns 90 seconds into the game. At that point, Carolina players start taking out their cell phones to secure tee times at Pinehurst for Monday. Much more likely, however, is that both teams struggle to score and one of them wins a 16-14 war of attrition. Taking Carolina here is not about Cam Newton, it's about believing in the Panther's defense, and in their current magical mojo. I do.

When you bet against Seattle this time of year, you not only have to beat Seattle, but the referees as well. Nevertheless, I take the 11 points.

Indianapolis @ Denver (-7) In contrast to the first two games, one looks in vain for some magical mojo. By any measure, Denver is far superior and Indy would appear to be just another dome team going on the road in January. I do not discount Andrew Luck, who will someday win one or more Superbowls, but at this stage of his career, going on the road to beat a really good team is not something he can be counted upon to do. Take Denver minus the 7.

Dallas @ Green Bay (-6) And this is the easiest pick of the week. Green Bay has been the best team in football this year, and Dallas (like Indy) is a dome team going on the road (to Lambeau!) in January. Last week, at home, in a game dominated by the Lions, Dallas squeaked out a victory with considerable assistance from the zebras. What's to like about the Cowboys in this spot? Chris Christie's lucky sweater?

Romo has had one of his best years and he has now won two playoff games in his 11-year career, but he will have to wait until next year to win his third. Take Green Bay and be thrilled you are not being asked to lay two touchdowns.

Copyright2015MichaelKubacki

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.

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

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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.

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Everybody generalizes.

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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.)

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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