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       

THIS WAY FOR THE GAS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

I went to my local branch of Citizens Bank last week. It was a quick trip. I dashed in, made a deposit, and was back in the car in three minutes. It's not a large office---there may be ten employees there on a busy day---but five of them smiled at me, made eye contact, wished me a nice day, etc. And they didn't just happen to be standing around when I walked by them. They came over to me, or waved to me from their desks. I'm not any sort of high-roller in this joint, by the way. I'm just a schmo with a checking account, and not a very big one.

When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine from the manager at the branch. Would I please give him a call?

OK, I thought. Is there some trouble? Was there something wrong with the check I deposited? Did I accidentally leave my checkbook there? Had my identity been stolen? I called the manager immediately.

“Mr. Kubacki,” he said, “you were here a little while ago, and I just wanted to know whether you had a good experience this afternoon at Citizens Bank.”

“Sure,” I replied. “It was fine.”

“Just 'fine'? Mr. Kubacki, at Citizens Bank we hope it was better than that.”

It was at this point I stopped worrying whether my identity had been stolen.

“Better than what?” I asked. “I deposited a check and then I left. Your teller accepted the check for deposit and gave me a receipt. I got exactly what I wanted. It was fine.”

“Mr. Kubacki, we just want your Citizens Bank experience to be exceptional, every time.”

I'm really getting tired of this crap.

I don't go into my bank for a hug or because I am feeling low that day and I need a boost for my self-esteem. I go in there to conduct business, and it's usually not very complicated business. While I am there, I will smile politely and perhaps have a bit of chit-chat with the teller about the weather or the Phillies game last night, and when I am done my business I will bid them a good day and I won't mind if they bid me one as well.

But that's as far as it goes. I don't care about their happiness or the state of their eternal soul, and I don't want them to care about mine. As we all know, there are few things more annoying than offering a polite “how ya doin'?” to a stranger or a semi-stranger and getting an eight-minute blow-by-blow on the recent issues and interventions involving his prostate. But it seems that in many businesses today, there is a Human Relations and Diversity Training Officer who somehow manages to convince everyone that basic courtesy is no longer enough. We have to let our customers know we really, really, really care, you see. Customers are not even customers anymore--- they are “guests,” or “clients,” or “business partners.” And if we all just smile and treat them with the sort of simple human dignity that has somehow worked to preserve civilization for the last five thousand years or so, we might lose market share. We have to do more!

It's false. It's phony. And I always feel sorry for the employees in this situation. Forcing them to behave in ways they would not normally behave (in ways no one would behave!) is a violation of their rights of conscience. These are human rights that we all must respect. The employees at this bank are not actors who choose to play a role, and they are not trained seals. Yet at peril for their jobs, they must dissemble in my presence and pretend to feel something they do not.

It's something the minions of Kim Jong-un have to live with. Smile at the right moment, or applaud, or cry, and you will survive. Failure to do so, however, is a punishable offense. A free people should never be subjected to this sort of bullying.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

(NOTE: The title of this piece is the name of a book by Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski about his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz.)

CHRISTIE

Chris Christine gave a speech at CPAC last week and he got a standing O, and he is supposed to be the darling (again) of the Republican Party. I guess it's because the media frenzy to destroy him over the closing of the George Washington Bridge has gotten so absurd there is now a backlash. He is perhaps garnering some sympathy from the peanut gallery.

I have written about Christie before. The coverage of the “Bridgegate” scandal is ridiculous, of course, but there are a lot of other reasons to dislike him. He has embraced Obamacare, for example, and he seems way too comfortable with NJ's highly-restrictive gun laws. In addition, he seems to have no understanding of jihad or the Islamist campaign to impose sharia law in America. His appointment of Sohail Mohammed to the New Jersey bench, for which he was placed on CAIR's “best list” in 2013, is very troubling.

He's not a conservative, in other words, and I won't vote for him if he mounts a campaign for the White House in 2016, but I'm hoping it doesn't get that far. We've been there and we've done that, haven't we? In fact, it was only sixteen months ago.

Christie, like Romney, is a blue-state Republican from the Eastern Seaboard with questionable conservative credentials. These guys CANNOT WIN. The selling point is always the same: “He crosses the lines! Democrats like him! He got elected as a Republican in a heavily-Democratic state!” It sounds plausible until you think about for a minute or so, or until you look at the results from 2012. Then you realize. It's not enough to do better in the blue states, you have to win them. And they don't. They don't come close. Romney, for example, did much better against Obama in Massachusetts than McCain had. In 2012, Obama had to settle for only 60% of the Massachusetts popular vote.

With Christie, the story will be very much the same. Ask yourself this: in a presidential election, would Chris Christie carry New Jersey against Hillary?

OK, you may say, but every Republican is going to lose New Jersey to Hillary. And New York and California and Connecticut and Illinois and Massachusetts as well, so what's the difference if Christie winds up losing those states rather than, say, Ted Cruz?

And there's no difference, of course. New Jersey doesn't matter to Republicans, and neither does Massachusetts, at least not in a presidential election. That's why, when Romney and Christie and their supporters talk about how impressive it is to be a Republican governor in a blue state, they should be ignored. WE LEARNED THAT LESSON LAST TIME, DIDN'T WE???

For a Republican, being popular in a place like Texas or Utah or Mississippi matters a lot because that's where the money comes from, and the volunteers and the enthusiasm. All those assets can be parlayed into electoral juice that will actually turn the tide in the dozen or so states that can swing one way or the other---Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Arizona. Romney never got the benefit of that enthusiasm and that juice, and Christie won't either. Chris Christie will never be loved, or even trusted, in the places that need to love you and trust you if you are a Republican and you want to be president.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

THIS & THAT VII

In our wimpified world, snowfalls are given names, like the recent 8-inch dusting dubbed Winter Storm Hercules. News reports on these events now tell us not only the “wind-chill factor” or the “real-feel temperature,” but also how long it takes for exposed flesh to freeze. This is especially troubling since exposing my flesh is pretty much all I ever do in the wintertime. It's all I have left, and now I'm afraid to do it.

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surfstop, n., a television show the entire audience of which consists of people who, while flipping through the channels, pause briefly out of curiosity, horror, ennui, or some combination thereof; a television show virtually no one ever intends to watch but which is viewed by a few people anyway.

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I have never understood why Republicans, and even some conservatives, always refer to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party.” It's pejorative---I get that--- and it's done to annoy Democrats (which it does), but why? I've always assumed that there is some underlying implication that the Democratic Party should be called the Democrat Party because they're not “democratic,” whatever that means. But I've never actually heard anyone make that argument, and I can't guess what the argument would consist of.

Taking the most charitable view of this, let's assume there is some historical reason for “Democrat Party” that once made some sense. Even so, doesn't it now just seem churlish and mean-spirited and lame? Why do Republicans do this? Isn't it like those people way back when who insisted on calling Muhammed Ali “Cassisus Clay?”

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The latest craze in faux politeness from the corporate world is thanking you for asking a question. I have encountered this several times. You call a help line or a benefits office or a phone bank set up to take calls from the public, you spend eight minutes navigating the menu options until somebody picks up the phone, you finally pose your query, and the person says, “Thank you for asking that question!”

The first time you hear it, you are puzzled. The second time, you're amused. Now it's just annoying. And there is nothing more annoying than being thanked for asking a question by a person who doesn't know the answer.

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Pope Francis showed up in Davos this year to tell the billionaires they need to cough up more cheese for social justice and such. This takes a lot of nerve with Bill Gates sitting there, whose business activities have improved the life of every civilized and semi-civilized person on the planet. As for the non-civilized folks, he has done a lot for them as well with some of the $28 billion he has contributed to his Foundation. Then there's Warren Buffett, who doesn't attend Davos but who gives away more money than Gates does.

This pope's a dope. As pope, he has some responsibilities as a head of state and one of those is to have, or acquire, some minute quantum of economic knowledge. The guys he was castigating are the reason the number of poor countries around the world has been cut in half over the last twenty years. Economic freedom, business innovation and entrepreneurship are what, over the last 300 years, has made all of our lives significantly less “solitary, poor, nasty, brutal and short.” Francis, however, doesn't understand that.

I'm finding it hard to like Francis. He seems smitten with various fluffy-headed socialist ideas that have failed wherever they were tried. It is only democracy and economic freedom that have put food in the mouths of the poor. Also, anyone who looks at the 20^th Century and cannot see the 100 million corpses produced by those who were opposed to economic freedom is a bit of a fool.

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First we had the coincidence of Thanksgiving and Hanukah, and then we found that Superbowl Sunday and Groundhog Day also occurred on the exact same day. Between these two synchronous double-overlap celebrations on November 28 and February 2, we were attacked thrice by the bone-chilling and mysterious Polar Vortex during which exposed flesh freezes within twenty seconds or three minutes or sixteen parsecs (depending on the meteorologist).

Next winter, I want everything to happen on a different day.

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As the years go by, the list of email contacts on my computer is increasingly populated by the dead---friends, relatives, acquaintances who have passed on. I can't bring myself to delete their email addresses. It would be so final a goodbye, I can't bear to do it. It would feel like a betrayal somehow, as if I were personally consigning them to oblivion. Yes, they're gone, but they're still on the list, right? They may be dead but I can still send them an email, can't I? Can't I?

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ESPN reports that the NFL is giving serious consideration to a new rule that would penalize a player on the field for using the word “nigger.” The first offense would draw a 15-yard penalty and the second violation would result in ejection.

Or as Adam Carolla has pointed out, “In twenty years, we'll all be chicks.”

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Working with and among the public, I see a lot of women who accessorize for the Christmas season---Santa hats, jewelry, knee socks, antlers, etc. And what I have noticed is that some women look really good in antlers and some do not. So here is my fashion advise for women at Christmas: find out whether you look good in antlers. Ask a trusted girlfriend and demand the truth. If you do not, NEVER WEAR THEM. On the other hand, if you are one of those lucky women who look smoking hot in antlers, wear them all year long. Please.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

SHAME

Bill Conlin, who died a month ago, was the best writer at the Philadelphia Daily News for at least thirty years. Then, in 2011, allegations surfaced that he was being accused by a niece and three of her childhood friends of pedophilia. Hours before the news hit, this dean of Philly sportswriters resigned his position and disappeared into a retirement community in Florida. He never spoke to anyone about the allegations. I was told by his colleagues at the Daily News that Conlin was never a terribly sociable guy and had no friends at the paper, but even so, his vanishing act was extreme. He wouldn't answer the phone. He wouldn't answer an email. Exactly nothing appeared about him in any Philadelphia newspaper from December 2011 until the report of his death on January 9, 2014.

I mention him because his story is today so unusual, though public figures caught in corruption scandals or moral turpitude used to do this all the time. They would disappear in shame, and you would hear nothing about them for decades. Today, however, the ambit of public shame has shrunken so much that Conlin's story is a bit of a shocker.

A 49-year-old US president cheats on his wife with his star-struck 22-year-old employee, then perjures himself about it in an unrelated legal matter. There was a time, well within living memory, that a scandal of this nature would have led to his resignation and his departure from public life. Instead, there were howls of outrage from his supporters that anyone would suggest such a thing. Today, he remains very visible in public life, and it is considered rude to even mention his past behavior.

Lesser creeps consorted with hookers (Spitzer), cheated on a cancer-stricken 30-year wife (Edwards), drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl (Polanski), and repeatedly sent photos of his penis to strange women on the internet (Weiner). All these guys took career hits from their transgressions, yet none of them seems especially contrite. They all seem to be merely waiting until the rest of us come to our senses and stop being so damn judgmental and let them back onto the A list. And they all have their defenders though, unlike Clinton, maybe not so many.

Expelling a person from public life for transgressions against accepted norms had several purposes. First was deterrence. By stripping bad actors of their celebrity privileges, society made it clear that disgraceful or dishonest or evil behavior would carry a price, and this made it more likely that those who were lifted up to positions of power and influence would refrain from giving in to their baser instincts. There was an implicit understanding that those few individuals would hold themselves to a higher standard. I can offer no mathematical proof of the deterrence principle, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. I don't remember seeing bad behavior from the high and mighty nearly as much as we do today. Then it was always a shock. Today it is almost expected.

A second purpose was to teach humility, and this aspect is something I desperately miss. When I see a weird serial pervert like Anthony Weiner trying to resurrect his political career, I am struck primarily by the arrogance of it. Does he really believe we can't get along without him? Does he think the New Yorkers he represented in Congress will be so distressed by his departure that they will be unable to find somebody else? This was the other lesson of the shame-and-disgrace model---that no one is so important they cannot be replaced, or are beyond the reach of our contempt---but that lesson is no longer being taught. Instead, these creeps hang around, disappearing briefly for a stint in a clinic but then re-emerging (cured!) to reclaim their sliver of limelight. I just want them to go away. But they won't.

But Conlin? At one point, he and I had a lengthy argument on-line about Gene Mauch's proper place in baseball history, and Conlin actually blocked my emails. At the time I didn't know that could be done, and I don't know why he did it other than the fact he was a crotchety old bastard. I didn't like him much, in other words, but I have to give him some minimal credit for understanding there is a line between good and bad and that he had fallen on the wrong side of it. Knowledge that there is such a line is far from universal, though it used to be.

John Profumo was Secretary of War for Harold Macmillan's government in 1963 when he became entangled with a young hottie named Christine Keeler in a complicated scandal involving Russian spies that might have compromised (but probably didn't), British national security interests. He then lied to the House of Commons about it, and that was viewed as a considerably worse thing than the scandal itself. Two weeks later, he resigned his position and went to work as a volunteer cleaning toilets at the Toynbee House, a charitable institution in London's East End.

And that is where he spent the last forty years of his life.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki 

BLUE JASMINE---A Film Review

You have probably noticed that film reviewers who really really really WANT to like a movie (for whatever reason), will find something wonderful about it even if the movie itself is dreadful.  Often it is an acting performance.  "The Master" got raves everywhere solely on the basis that Philip Seymour Hoffman (God rest his soul), captured an unusual character in an astonishing way and made the film a masterpiece.  What the reviewers said about Hoffman may be true, but the movie itself closed instantly.  Nobody wanted to see the goddamn thing.  But oh, we were told, it's a tour de force!

All of which brings me to "Blue Jasmine," a monstrosity from Woody Allen.  This too was sold as a lifetime acting wonderfulness opportunity for Cate Blanchett, who has been nominated for the Best Actress award.  (And why didn't we realize before what a great actress she is?  What's wrong with us?  Do we all live in double-wides?)  It was also promoted as the great Woody Allen movie we've all been hoping Woody still was capable of making, and here it is!  At last!

In fairness, "Blue Jasmine" is not Cate Blanchett's fault.  She did her best.  But she was required to play a part written by a man who has been morally empty for twenty-five years, and now also hates women.  He didn't used to hate women.  He didn't hate women when he wrote "Annie Hall."  He didn't even hate women when he wrote "Manhattan" or "Hannah and her Sisters," (though one could make the case).  The tide turned somewhere around 1990, however, and now his misogyny has entered a darker, cartoonish phase.

The two main characters of "Blue Jasmine" are sisters.  No women like this have ever existed, and they never will.  These two literally have no interest in life other than finding a man to love and support them, both of them hate their own children, and neither the women nor anyone else in the movie ever suggests there is any possibility that their lives could be lived differently. The situation depicted in the movie is preposterous, and while there is nothing wrong or even unusual with a preposterous scenario in a movie, the reason it is preposterous is that Woody Allen wishes to present his own emptiness and nihilism as normal, as the best any of us can hope for.  He is wrong about this, of course.  None of us can deny that the human condition is fundamentally tragic, but that doesn't mean life is meaningless, or hopeless.  It is only Woody Allen's moral cowardice, his unwillingness to confront the difficult questions of existence, that leads him to make a movie as uniformly un-entertaining and full of despair as this one.  

From the opening frame, my spidey-sense began tingling immediately.  I don't know anything about film technology, but this movie looks different.  It is shot with an extremely high-definition camera and the result is an ultra-realistic, see-every-wrinkle-in-every-face film that strips the actors of all the glamour we have come to expect in a movie.  I mean, I know that the impossibly beautiful women we see on the screen are not as impossibly beautiful in "real life."  I know George Clooney might actually have a wart on his nose sometimes.  Fine.  I'm cool with artifice.  So it made me immediately suspicious when I saw Allen was determined to strip all that blurry, gauzy Hollywood glitz away and accentuate the ugly bits.  Why?  Does ugliness make art more "artistic?"  More meaningful?  More profound?  Or is that an aesthetic theory we generally outgrow by the age of fifteen?  

But that only pushed the needle on my pretentiousness meter up to 8.5.  It hit 11.0 (most pretentiousness meters go to 10.0, but I recently had mine recalibrated) when I realized there was not a single joke in the entire freaking movie!  Think about that.  First of all, it's a Woody Allen movie.  Remember him?  The guy who made "Bananas" and "Take the Money and Run?"  Just because of who he is, he could not have written this movie without throwing some jokes in it, accidentally, inadvertently.  That means he had to remove them; he had to edit out any hint of humor that might have somehow slipped in.  Then consider that three of the actors are Andrew Dice Clay, Louis C.K and Alec Baldwin---two stand-up comics and a great comedic actor.  It is unnatural, even perverted, that there would be no laughs whatsoever in this movie.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki         

2014 SUPERBOWL

Those of you who follow this blog religiously (i.e., nobody) will have noticed that I began picking NFL playoff games in the 2010-2011 season, which means I have picked three Superbowls prior to this one. In 2011, I took the Steelers over Green Bay. Then in 2012, I chose the Patriots over the NY Giants. Last year, I took the 49ers minus the points and then watched the Ravens (almost) romp. I'm 0 for 3. Then there was the 2012 presidential election. I liked Romney in that one. How did he do?

This year, I'm taking Denver minus the 2 ½ points. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of my little mind, and since I still believe an ability to throw the ball down the field is a prerequisite for success in the NFL playoffs, I have to pin my hopes on Peyton Manning. Denver's adjusted yards/pass number is 7.3, best in the league. Seattle's is 6.6.

Defensively, Seattle gives up an amazing (adjusted) 2.6 yards/pass, while Denver's number is a merely decent 5.2 yards/pass. Seattle led the league in interceptions with 28. Seattle gave up a league-best 231 points (only Carolina and San Fran joined them in the under-300 category). They truly have the best defense in the league.

On the other hand, Denver's accomplishments on offense were even more astonishing. Denver scored 606 points, which no team had ever done, and the second-highest number in scoring offense was Chicago's, with 445. Put another way, the Broncos scored 37.9 pts/gm, while the second-best offense in the league scored 27.5/gm.

This game, unlike many Superbowls, may very well be decided by the officials. Seattle's pass defense is not especially subtle or nuanced. It is simply brutal. Receivers coming off the Denver line will be pushed, grabbed, and knocked down. That's how the Seattle defense plays and it's how they have been allowed to play. It is not much of an exaggeration to observe that a flag might be thrown on the Seattle defense on every Denver pass play. Just ask Jim Harbaugh in San Francisco what he thinks of the way the officials have treated the Seattle pass defenders.

The referees will set the tone for this game in the first quarter. Certainly, they won't flag everything the Seahawks do; at this point in the season, after the Seahawks have been allowed to cheat all season, it would unfair to take their “game” away from them completely. On the other hand, what Denver has accomplished on offense this year deserves a certain amount of respect as well, and I would hope the zebras will not allow the secondary simply to flatten Denver receivers every time Peyton steps back to pass.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

THE LAND OF THE SETTING SUN

In a recent article, Mark Steyn describes contemporary Japan as a sort-of dystopian theme park characterized by an “earnest childlike wackiness, all karaoke machines and manga cartoons and nuttily sadistic game shows.” The demographic meltdown in Japan has spawned a number of recent articles, all attempting, more-or-less unsuccessfully, to explain what has happened, why Japanese culture is dying, and what the island will look like in 2040, 2060 or 2100. I guess this is one more of those articles.

The arithmetic is inexorable. The fertility rate currently stands at about 1.39 babies per woman, a level from which no society has ever managed to recover. Since 2006, there have been more deaths than births in Japan. In 2012 there were 212,000 fewer people than there were at the end of 2011. It may be hard to see in the cities, but rural areas are depopulating rapidly. Small towns are empty, farmhouses are abandoned, and wildlife has taken over areas that once were developed.

Plummeting birthrates have also created a “gray” society, where there are more adult diapers sold than baby diapers. By 2040, the median age throughout the country will be 55 years. (The median age in the retirement community of Palm Springs, California is 52.) The collapse of Japanese society will likely occur long before that, however. Any young person capable of leaving Japan will do so rather than wait around for the nation to become a nursing home.

Europe does not face the same spectre of depopulation that Japan does, of course, because there are people in France and Belgium and Sweden and Italy who still have babies. They are the religious ones. They are the Muslims. Sweden in forty years will still have people in it, they just won't be blond and Lutheran; they will have dark hair and they will worship in mosques. The difference is immigration. Japan has none to speak of, so it is slowly emptying. The cities remain full (and the subways), and the rents are high. But the countryside is gradually returning to nature. Where once there were farms, now there are forests, and brush, and bears.

Japan is different in other ways as well. Italians are not reproducing either, but in Italy there is no sekkusa shinai shokogun, or “celibacy syndrome.” Italians (and Swedes and Spaniards and Greeks) still want to have sex. Young Japanese, however, do not. No, really. They're mostly uninterested in sex, dating, relationships, and everything connected with them. Really.

In Japan, of those under thirty years old, 30% have never dated. And of those unmarried people in the 18 – 34 demographic, 61% of men and 49% of women are not currently in any sort of romantic relationship. Even among couples of child-bearing age, 40% of marriages are categorized as “sexless” by the Japan Family Planning Association, meaning that such couples “rarely or never” have sex.

Why is this happening? Well, while Japan is racing toward extinction, French and Italians and Norwegians also are in a death spiral from lower-than-replacement-level fertility, and they will get there quick enough. (Trivia question: What is the most popular name for a boy baby in Belgium? Answer: Muhammad.) And the reason, wherever this is happening, appears to be the same. The churches are empty. Atheists do not reproduce much. And who can blame them? Without a transcendent meaning to life, what's the point?

When pollsters ask the Japanese about God, 70 – 80% of them say they do not believe in God or any religion. This is an extraordinary number, among the highest in the world, and it probably explains why the Japanese face the worst, and most rapid, demographic meltdown. There remains a tradition of Shinto and Buddhist ritual observance for funerals and weddings and the honoring of ancestors, but these are no longer religious practices, and God is not involved.

Here's a theory on the death of Japan: it's our fault.

Until, and during, World War II, the religion of almost everyone in Japan was something we now call State Shinto, under which the Emperor was a divine figure. Following the allied victory, emperor-worship was abolished. It became a crime. Religious observance in Japan declined rapidly, and apart from a very small number of Jews and Christians and Hindus, belief in the divine largely disappeared. And when the divine disappears, babies eventually stop getting born.

(The foregoing is an absurdly oversimplified description of Shinto and the kami, or “divine,” status of the Emperor, of course, but the history is true.)

There is no surer way to destroy a people than to destroy their belief in God, and that is what the U.S. and Douglas MacArthur did to the Japanese. The militaristic character of Japanese culture and religion certainly had a lot to do with starting the war in the Pacific, and we cannot blame MacArthur for crushing the institutional worship of the Emperor after that horrible, bloody conflict, but a more enlightened conqueror might have seen the wisdom in mobilizing a post-war army of Christian missionaries to replace the beliefs that were being banned. If Japanese people were Christians today, they would be in churches, they would be having babies, and they would still be here fifty years from now.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

SOJOURNERS

In all the political talk about immigration and what is to be done with the 12 million or 15 million or 25 million illegals, it is assumed by both sides in the debate that the vast majority are caught in some twilight zone and yearn for a “path to citizenship,” or some legal way “out of the shadows.”

Undoubtedly there are such people, but I suspect that category of immigrant is much smaller than we are led to believe. I don't personally know any immigrants like that, but I do know some members of a group that is almost never discussed---the sojourners. These are Mexicans who work here, send money back to wives and mothers and other family, and have no intention or desire to become Americans. Because the border is so difficult and dangerous to cross, they remain here, working for years or decades, but they fully intend to go home someday to the family they have supported and the houses their money has built. The ones I know carry photographs of their families and of their homes. And some of these homes can only be described as mansions. “A hundred dollars here,” one of them said, “is a thousand there.”

The lucky ones work entirely for cash, but many are forced to use a fake social security number so that at least some of their earnings get taxed. It's the cost of doing business.

Much of the immigration debate is fueled by political forces that do not necessarily wish to address the reality of the situation. The reality includes a lot of sojourners, but their existence doesn't fit anyone's vision or anyone's political agenda, so they are never discussed.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

WEED GOES LEGIT

The legalization of marijuana in Colorado and (soon) in Washington state, represents a tipping point. Like gay marriage, legal weed is now inevitable. Maybe we will have dope states and non-dope states for some years to come, but the culture has changed. This political battle is over.

What is interesting about this, politically, is who won. It is the first major Libertarian victory in American history. Most of the electoral juice came from the Left, of course, but the legalization could not have occurred without the Libertarians and the Libertarian wing of the Republican party.

The Left would never have done this alone. They have historically been behind the most draconian drug laws in America because, first of all, the War on Drugs was just the sort of big government program leftists love, and had the added benefit of allowing Democrats to appear tough on crime. The largest beneficiaries politically and financially have always been blue state Democrats like Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York City because the Drug War was a steady source of federal money. All the big Democratic cities with major drug problems lined up at the trough as well.

One ironic aspect of legalization is that it appears to be, at least in part, a reaction against the nanny state. Those of us who have grown weary of the constant drumbeat against potato chips and second-hand smoke and trans fats and sweet drinks and wheat and beef welcome this kind of rearguard action as a blow for freedom, regardless of our fondness or lack thereof for weed itself. And it's a major blow. All the other mini-fascist incursions of the punitive Left will now be much more difficult to justify. If I can legally smoke a joint in the park, what self-respecting policeman is going to write me up for sucking down a 2-liter Pepsi?

Do not be surprised if the next states to legalize dope are those with traditions of fierce independence and a distrust of government. These will be mostly western and southern states, rather than states dominated politically by leftist elites in big Democratic cities. Utah will legalize weed long before Illinois does. Texans will toke up before Massachusetts.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

2014 NFL PLAYOFFS---Conference Championships

New England @ Denver (-5 ½)

The Patriots-Broncos tilt on November 24 was one of the more entertaining games of the year. Denver went up 17 – 0 in the first quarter, which featured a 60-yard fumble return, and entered the second half ahead 24 – 0. That's right. The Broncos were winning that game 24 – 0 before they lost in OT, 34 – 31.

As I mentioned last week, teams that can throw the ball down the field present a problem for Denver, and one thing you have to give the Patriots credit for is that they are a team (with or without gangster-killers), who can throw the ball down the field. Denver's loss of cornerback Chris Harris to a knee injury does not help the Bronco pass defense, which is not much better than mud and sticks and twigs to begin with. Even Gisele Bundchen understands the significance of Harris' departure.

The Broncos win the yards/pass contest against the Broncos by a 7.3 to 5.6 score. They (slightly) lose the defensive yards/pass battle by 5.3 to 5.1. They have been a much better team over the course of the season, they still are, and they probably squeak by in Denver. Considering Harris, however, and considering the history of the Brady – Manning wars, you CANNOT take Denver and lay these points.

If nothing else impresses you, consider this. Brady is 18 - 7 in playoff games. Peyton is 10 – 11.

Take the points. I still make Peyton a very slight favorite to win the game, but a Patriot victory would not be a surprise.

San Francisco @ Seattle (-3 ½)

These two met twice in 2013, with the Seahawks crushing the 49ers 29 – 3 on September 15 and San Fran winning 19 – 17 on December 8 on a field goal with 0:26 on the clock. Seattle wins the yard/pass battle 6.6 to 6.2 as well as the defensive yards/pass contest 3.9 to 4.5.

In other news, Seattle has given up fewer points this year than any other team. Also, before I looked at the numbers, I assumed San Fran had had a better second half of the season than Seattle. In fact, both teams went 6 – 2 over the last eight. Seattle outscored their opponents by 106 points over that stretch, while the 49ers outscored theirs by 61. And did I mention that the Seahawks have the best pass defense in the league?

It's not that San Fran is weak or has a lot of warts and nicks and cuts. San Francisco belongs here, in the Conference Championship. But Seattle is superior on both sides of the ball, especially in Seattle. I'm betting the Seahawks, minus the points.

A Note on the Games So Far

It is natural in the playoffs for players to get excited, to feel the pressure, to dread getting beaten, and that usually means there will be a bit more holding on the line of scrimmage. In addition, as receivers invade the defensive secondary, there may be more frequent collisions, and some hard feelings may result.

It is the job of the officials to maintain order in the game, and if that means throwing a few flags in the first quarter in order to set the proper tone, so be it. I'm disappointed because the refs have not done so. As they say in the broadcast booth, “The refs are letting them play today!”

In fact, the refs are not letting them play, they are letting them cheat. The game is less fun to watch when every receiver gets his jersey grabbed by a defensive player, defensive linemen routinely get tackled on their way to the QB, and nothing is called. (Or the occasional penalty flag is thrown, seemingly at random.) These are intentional violations of the rules. They are not accidental penalties, like jumping offside or colliding with a receiver when a pass is in the air. Holding a wide receiver's arm is always volitional. It's cheating, everyone knows it's cheating, and the only hope of the player who does it is that he will get away with it because the refs do not notice, or allow it to happen.

Cheating should not be allowed. There are just so many reasons to banish it. First, it rewards less-skilled players whose primary ability is their knowledge of how to cheat without being detected---this effectively punishes the best athletes by narrowing the gap between true superstars and those who are merely adequate. It also cheats the fans, like me, who just want to see the best athletes doing amazing athletic things. That's a big reason I watch football, and if the speed, and the moves, and the smarts of a great receiver can be thwarted by a defensive player who doesn't have the ability to cover him but is allowed to cheat---well, all football fans are losers. And finally, of course (you knew this was coming), there's the kids. Professional sports are supposed to be a meritocracy, and that's basically the lesson we want children to take from it: be the best, work hard, and you will succeed. The NFL is now presenting kids with an alternative path to success: figure out how to cheat and not get caught. We all know this alternate path is there, and it always has been, but the difference is that cheating is being legitimized. If that's how you need to win, well, just win, baby You can still be a hero, even if you cheat. Kids get cynical soon enough. We don't need to be teaching them there is no intrinsic value in honesty and sportsmanship.

All of which brings me to the San Francisco @ Carolina game and the embarrassing spectacle of wide receiver Anquan Boldin (SF) and safety Mike Mitchell (Caro), trying to figure out their respective gender identities on national TV in front of 30 million fans.

The entire first half of the game (and parts of the second) was dominated by these two jabbering at each other, bumping helmets, and delaying the game with a “qui-es-muy-macho” narcissistic psycho-drama that had nothing to do with the football game and everything to do with their own insecurities. Their behavior should not be confused with that of traditional, aggressive male athletes. Reggie White would get in your face if you tried to back him down, as would Lawrence Taylor, Brian Urlacher, Troy Polamalu, and thousands of others. Football is a violent sport and tough guys play it. The prancing, drag-queenish quality of Mitchell's and Boldin's pas-de-deux, however, was something else entirely.

It was embarrassing to watch. I am aware that Boldin and Mitchell are both young men and that young men are not always certain who they are and whether their primary sexual attraction is to boys or girls, BUT I DON'T CARE. I just wanted to watch a football game.

And again, the refs did nothing about it. Yes, there were a few flags thrown, at random moments, but that sort of intermittent reinforcement actually encourages players to cheat, act out their fantasies, and otherwise ruin the game. Both Mitchell and Boldin needed to be ejected from the game. Harsh justice, certainly, but that which gets tolerated (and rewarded) gets repeated, and the Mitchell/Boldin show should never be repeated.

BONUS---Scoring and Not Scoring

Over the last thirty years, the top scoring offense has made it to the Superbowl fifteen times. (That's almost half the time.) The best scoring defense has made it ten times. (You do the math.)

This year, Denver's top scoring offense (606 points) might wing up playing Seattle's league-leading defense (231 points allowed) in the Superbowl. The last time that happened was the 1990-1 season when the New York Giants (best D) beat the Buffalo Bills (best O) in the game that established Bill Parcells as a certified genius and Scott “Wide Right” Norwood as Buffalo's answer to Bill Buckner.

As luck would have it, this odd duck, statistically speaking, turned up the previous season when the 49ers (top-scoring) won the Superbowl against the Denver Broncos (stingiest defense).

The one other time this happened in the past thirty was in the 1984-5 season when the high-scoring Miami Dolphins fell to the league-best scoring defense of San Francisco.

You may be wondering whether any team has had both the highest-scoring offense and the stingiest defense, and in the past thirty years, there have been two teams to achieve this: the 1996-7 Green Bay Packers and the 1985-6 Chicago Bears. Both won the Superbowl in blowouts. The New England Patriots were, in each case, the victims.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki

2014 NFL PLAYOFFS---Round 2

New Orleans @ Seattle (-8)

Of course, it's hard to picture a Saints victory here. How would it happen? Does the entire Seattle starting secondary run into each other during warm-ups and suffer concussions before the game even starts? There is not much difference in the quality of these two offenses, but the Seahawks' defense gave up 14.5 points per game, lowest in the league. The Saints' defense was very good as well, but of the four NFC teams left, well, they're fourth.

This is the end for New Orleans. Their victory in Philly (by a hair) exposed some Eagle weaknesses but did not really make the case that the Saints are capable of going on the road and beating a genuine Superbowl contender like the Seahawks.

The Saints' worst loss of the year, 34 – 7, came in Seattle on December 2, and I don't think much has changed in either team since then. Drew Brees remains a superstar and he will score more than 7 points, but he won't score enough to win.

You have to like Seattle here, but do they cover? I offer no opinion.

San Francisco (-1) @ Carolina

This is the easiest pick of the week. Carolina's adjusted yards/pass is a full yard higher than San Fran's (7.2 vs. 6.2), and the Panther defense is also stronger. Carolina should be favored by a touchdown. Carolina should be favored even if the game were in San Francisco. Carolina beat San Francisco in San Francisco in Week 10, and though the final was 10 – 9, the Panthers dominated the game. Carolina has another advantage as well---they are not coached by Jim “I'm the dopey” Harbaugh, the guy who is largely responsible for San Francisco's loss in last year's Superbowl.

There are two reasons San Fran is favored.

The first is that Carolina has not been nearly as dominant in the second half of the season as they were in the first half. Though they went 7 – 1, and beat San Francisco, New England and New Orleans, most of the scores were close. They only outscored their opponents by 27 points in the last eight games, so that makes them suspect.

The second reason is that San Francisco has cable cars and sushi and Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and a quarterback with tattoos all over him. They're cool and they have lots of gay friends and multiple piercings. Carolina, on the other hand, well, where is it anyway? Is Carolina a city or is it one or those generalized geographical NFL team areas like “New England” or “Arizona” or “The Middle East”? And if this so-called “Carolina” is not actually a city, what city do they play in, exactly? Memphis? Tuscaloosa? Hong Kong?

Cam Newton is now a real quarterback. Carolina wins outright.

Indianapolis @ New England (-7)

Is a retractable roof a dome? Is Indy a “dome team?” I ask because I was wondering about the last time a dome team came to New England in December or January and beat the Patriots. I'm still wondering. I looked back through the year 2000 and I couldn't find a loss like that. Maybe it never happened. Maybe it happened in 1987. In any event, I'm predicting it won't happen this year either.

New England's 12 – 4 record this year may represent one of the best coaching jobs Belichick has ever done. At times, it seemed that all his receivers were in prison or in the hospital or catching passes thrown by Peyton Manning, and yet he somehow managed to find guys Brady could throw the ball to. Even with a great record and a first-round bye in the playoffs, you would still have to describe this as a rough year for the Patriots.

But they're better than Indianapolis and Brady is better than Luck, especially in New England. The yds/pass numbers are about the same, New England's defense is a bit better, and then there's the home field. This doesn't look like a championship season for the Patriots but they will beat the Colts.

As for laying 7 points, I decline. The line is about right.

San Diego @ Denver (-9)

Denver is the best team in the tournament by far, but this is a tough match-up for them. Though the Broncos have ten blow-out wins (by 10 or more points) this season, they have appeared mortal against teams with star quarterbacks and good passing attacks. Brady beat them in New England, Andrew Luck beat them in Indiana, and Romo put up 48 against them (though Dallas lost). San Diego, with Phillip Rivers, beat them as well. In Week 15, the Chargers went to Denver and handed them their only home loss of the year by a score of 27 – 20. (Earlier, in Week 10, the Broncos had beaten the Chargers 28 – 20.) In terms of passing yards given up, Denver has the 29^th best pass defense in the league. It is their one area of vulnerability.

The line here is nine points, the biggest spread of the weekend, and it should be. Denver leads SD in yds/pass by 7.3 to 6.9; the Broncos lead in defensive yds/pass as well (5.3 to 6.6). These represent the largest spread in any of the games this weekend. Manning can outscore anyone, and he will outscore Rivers. Denver remains the favorite to win the Superbowl.

But Rivers will score. The Chargers seem to get more dangerous each week, and their somewhat supernatural win over Cincinnati last Sunday must give one pause.

I'm taking these points.

BONUS---Blowout Wins

In any sport, a team's record in blowout victories is a good indicator of just who is good and who is not. While sports commentators seem obsessed with one-run baseball games or buzzer-beaters in basketball, these records have very little predictive value. Winning a baseball game by one run probably means you were lucky that day. A 12-3 victory, on the other hand (or lots of them), probably means you are better.

I refer to blowout wins a couple of times above, and I used a definition of 10 or more points. In the following table, I use 8 or more points simply because it yields more results.

2013 Regular Season Record in Blowout Wins (8 or more points)

Denver 11 – 0

New England 5 – 0

San Diego 5 – 2

Indianapolis 6 – 4

Seattle 8 – 0

San Francisco 9 – 2

Carolina 7 – 2

New Orleans 7 – 2

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki