Mark Byron

Friday Musings

Here's an interesting (and ironic) story about Tampa Bay CB Aqib Talib getting charged in a shooting in Texas. If he gets suspended by the NFL, would that be a Talib ban? The ironic part is that talib is "student" in Arabic and the plural is taliban, hence the name for the Afghani seminarians/jihadis we all know and love.

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Some interesting coaching moves in basketball, with former Cavs coach Mike Brown heading to the Lakers and Kevin McHale moving to Houston. Meanwhile, Kuester is still officially the head coach in Detroit, although he was a no-show at the combine; try a quadrapalegic duck.

Both of those moves seem to be do-no-harm picks. The Lakers are still a championship-calliber team that could afford to move one of their three good big men for either a 1 or a 3 to go along with Kobe on the perimiter; Brown's experience managing Lebron's ego will help with Kobe. If Yao gets back to health, McHale could teach him a few things about low-post play.

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One wondered when Rand Paul's libertarian side would create headaches in the Senate; we just saw it with his obstruction of the Patriot Act's reupping.

Here's an interesting side point; the signature on the Patriot Act was from the autopen that they save for mundane stuff that needs to look like the president signed it personally. The president was off in Europe and they opted not to fly the bill to him. A bill will become law automatically without a signature after ten business days, but anyone busted using Patriot Act stuff in the next few days might have grounds for an appeal.

OK, birthers can become hancockers now now that their old cause has largely become moot.

 

Coming Up for Air

The Rapture didn't happen last weekend. No big surprise; what was surprising to me was that the fairly wide-spread Family Radio network was the sponsor of the meme. We don't have an outlet in our area of Michigan, but I recall them in Kentucky; they weren't my cup a tea and a bit... reactionary... but not that out of character for a modern Christian radio outfit. In other words, they didn't scream "Cult-like nutcase."

There's a cottage industry in dispensational circles of playing up the closeness of the End Times, and some people get tipped over the edge into declaring a date, even though the Bible cautions against such stuff. It's not too far from one old pastor-emeritus of mine being 80% sure the Rapture was coming this year to being 100% sure and slapping a date on it.

{Update 3PM-Check this out-when you get lolcatted, you've really jumped the shark}

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Speaking of cups of tea and Tea Parties, Herman Cain through his hat in the ring last Saturday in Atlanta. I was in town, but up in Sandy Springs teaching an MBA class. Cain is looking like a very viable option, getting an impressive (given the lack of exposure) 8% showing in the last Gallup poll.

What I've seen of him speaking on YouTube reminds me of Glenn Beck when he's on his meds (;-) and talking about American exceptionalism; that's a good thing, for Beck does have a very thoughtful side when he's not off in tin-foil-hat territory. So does Cain, who does an interesting cross of black Baptist preacher and free-market, God and Country patriotism.

Someone is going to be the favorite child of the Tea Party, and Michele Bachmann is methadone for Sarah Palin fans and enemies alike; Bachmann gets a lot of the same condescension from the media that Palin gets but also strikes a positive cord with quite a few voters.

Cain's business background will give him some inroads with more conventional conservatives as well; that and a stint on the KC Fed gives him some gravitas with the establishment wing of the party (but the Fed stint loses some TP street cred in more libertarian quarters). Yes, we haven't seen someone get elected president as their first elected post since Eisenhower, but there's no rule against it.

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Speaking of Palin, she's doing a book tour. Is that a prelude to a presidential run? Well, memory goes back to Colin Powell's book tour in 1995; he opted against running when it became clear that he was a notch too RINOey to get nominated despite his Desert Storm chops.

Palin is far from being a RINO; in fact, she might be off on the other end of the spectrum. She's unconventional and gives more establishment folks their own "fire in the belly." However, she speaks to Joe Sixpack in a way few politicians do. This book tour will let her get in touch with her peeps.

A Palin run short-circuits Bachmann and Cain, for she'd claim that segment of the vote quickly. She has negatives out the wazoo, but I think a large part of that is the ditzy Tina Fey version of Palin rather than the real person; given a real campaign where the issues and candidates are less filtered, I think she'll whittle those down... at least that's what I think will happen.

Defusing an F-bomb

Here's an interesting piece from ESPN's TrueHoop blog where Joakim Noah was discussing letting loose with a word rhyming with maggot towards an abusive fan over the weekend. Kobe's pocket was lightened earlier this season when he unleashed a dual f-bomb (the classic one followed by the maggot one) at a referee after a bad call.

Arnovitz: How homophobic is an NBA locker room?

Noah: Not at all.

Arnovitz: But f----- is tossed around without people even thinking about it?

Noah: Exactly. But a lot less than you probably think.

I don't know what locker rooms of the 2010s are like, but the playgrounds of the early 1970s had the maggot-rhymer used as an all-purpose put-down. Back then, we'd be more aware of homophones in English class than homophobia; such people in real-life were a distant theory as far as I knew. The pejorative was oft saved for people either on the un-macho side or just for someone you didn't like.

Thus, Noah may well be right; people use that term without cross-referencing homosexuality, just like a classic f-bomb may have nothing to do with sexual activity in the mind of the speaker.

That being said, it comes from a British term for a cigarette butt. A little more appetizing than a maggot, but not much. People might taught about someone welshing and gypping them without thinking that they are insulting southwestern British and Roma respectively.

Best not to insult at all. Easier said than done.

Monday Moainin'

The story of IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn is too good for US conservatives to pass on, letting them bash socialist cheese-eating surrender monkeys with glee. However, the IMF is too important to get pushed under the bus with the world's most prominent skirt-chaser.

What might be worth discussing is how much of a bad cop the IMF should play with insolvent countries; DSK has had them playing more of a good-cop than in the past. That could well change with new management at the IMF.

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Who are were the people supporting Donald Trump other than the birther crowd? I don't recall anyone in the Blogosphere supporting Trump, but I might not be hanging out with the Trumpettes. Anyways, it appears to be a moot point, as he's pulling his ring out of the hat.

The more important withdrawl is that of Mike Huckabee, which leaves me without a dog in the fight. It also leaves a good chunk of the GOP electorate up for grabs. Sarah Palin is the next big dog to announce their attentions; if she opts out of the race, Iowa will be a true free-for-all.

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Last year, when the Arizona immigraton law was major news, the Phoenix Suns made the step of rolling out a Los Suns uni to place themselves in the pro-immigrant camp. In 20-20 hindsight, one can now see why Los Suns might have opted to express solidarity with a put-upon part of their community; the big boss, GM Rick Welts, was part of another group the right likes to demonize as much as "illegals." 

Eye of Newt and Toe of ex-Governor(s)

Newt Gingrich is in the presidential race; a cartoon in USA Today had him throwing his three (one would assume wedding) rings into the hat.

Does he have baggage? Not as much as you would think. Other than his martial troubles (he was having an affair with Wife #3 while still hitched to Wife #2, among other things), he seemed to be getting into trouble for doing too many things at once in the md-90s, running a non-political education outfit and a state-level recruitment PAC and writing books and being a congressman all at the same time; sloppy accounting between those various hats seemed to be the lion share of the problem, if you follow the old adage to not chalk up to malice what can be better attributed to stupidity (or sloppiness).

He's got double-digit support. He's an idea guy, sometimes too much so. He also tends to be a loose cannon who will give bulletin-board material for oppo teams on a regular basis. With no one cracking 20%, that's enough to be in the conversation. Probably not enough to win, but someone has to win this.

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On to the governors. Mitt Romney was trying to distance himself from the "Obamacare" Sr. that he signed into law in MA back in 2006. This is likely the issue that will keep him from the nomination; Republicans are likely to want someone who can make the case against the health care bill, and this doesn't help Romney with that crowd.

Jon Huntsman was in the news this week, especially as Red State's Erick Erickson was giving him both barrels for being disloyal for being Obama's ambassador to China while doing the background work for a GOP presidential run. It's probably more his loyalty than his disloyalty that will get him into trouble with primary voters; anyone Obama would trust to be his envoy to China would have a hard time getting the trust of conservative primary voters. Somehow, I think that's more what Erickson was after, although your mileage may vary.

Unlike this time four years ago, Mike Huckabee is in the lead pack and actually leads in many polls. He also has a lot of lucrative media gigs that he'd have to take a leave of absence from were he to join Newt in throwing a ring into the hat. He's supposed to make an announcement on his Saturday night Fox News show tomorrow. Given that using Fox airtime to make a presidential announcement would be of questionable propriety, the CW is that he'll be announcing that he's not running.

However, he could also announce that he'll be winding up his show shortly, effectively announcing a presidential run without announcing it on the air on Fox's nickle.

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Huckabee isn't well liked by the dynamist wing of the party, but might be a good consensus candidate. He's still my first choice of the folks not yet out of the octagon (let's get our metaphors into the 10s) but he'll have to expand his appeal outside of evangelical voters in order to get a plurality of the vote. Herman Cain looks intriguing after his showing at the SC debate last week, but he has some work to do to get into the lead back.

I don't see a Huntsman nomination; he flunks the bumper-sticker test big time and is too moderate for the modern GOP.

Mitt... he has a lot of establishment support, but will be a hard sell for Tea Party voters.

The problem with the current race is that you can see a lot of people getting 20% of the primary vote on a good day (Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Pawlenty, Daniels, Cain, even Ron Paul) but have a hard time seeing them getting to 35%. All have their strengths and all have their weaknesses.

Monday Moanin'

The Lakers got swept by Dallas yesterday. The Mavs' three point shooting was so good(20/32), I used the game stats in a quant-methods quiz I created yesterday and asked students if it was significant on the 99.9% level. I won't answer that here, since my students might Google in.

Phil Jackson goes out with a kick in the teeth, assuming he holds to his vow of this being his last year. However, he's still on the short list of Best Coach in NBA History debate. It's not as bad as Tom Landry going out on a 1-15 debacle, and the Man in the Hat is on the NFL's coaching Rushmore.

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Do the Lakers need to be retooled? Maybe. Too many good bigs and only Kobe as a star-quality outside scorer; an all-world two-guard, mind you, but just one of him. How many classic teams have had just one great outside guy? Even the Kobe-Shaq Lakers had Robert Horry as a stretch-4 to hit those killer 3s.

How about a sign-and-trade with Detroit: Andrew Bynum for Tayshaun Prince and a #1? Might work, especially given that Prince is a metro LA native; they used to play Straight Outta Compton (with two t's, I find, on a Google check) for Prince at the Palace.

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Speaking of my Quant Methods class, I did something I haven't done as an adult over the weekend; use a mass-transit train. Atlanta's MARTA train system made this small-town conservative like mass transit. It might not be cost-effective everywhere, but it seems to make sense for dense metro areas like Atlanta.

The Art Insititute of Atlanta campus that South U borrows for the MBA class is a short drive from the Sandy Springs station that is the next to last stop of the Red Line. The Red Line starts in the Atlanta airport, so you go right from baggage claim to train station and a fairly clean (one ad with some PG graffiti in two trips) and user-freindly system.

It was less stresful than renting a car (you have to take an airport train to get to the car-rental area) and driving yourself across Atlanta, and about $100 cheaper.

Even Rush used to like riding MARTA;-).

 

Party Poopers

The Canadian elections were... interesting. The Conservatives managed to get a majority, sitting at 166 seats out of 308 as I sit. They gained a lot of seats in Ontario as the Liberals cratered to their worst showing in their history, dropping to 34 seats. The NDP ran the BQ off the board and put themselves into the official opposition, getting 103 seats; the BQ was trimmed down to four seats. Both Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and BQ leader Gilles Duceppe lost their seats, but Green Party leader Elizabeth May managed to get her party's first elected seat ever.

The Liberal party got a standing-eight count, which had the party looking in two different directions. Iggy's concession speech was looking to establish a vital center to Canadian politics while Bob Rae was open to a Liberal-NDP dialogue and Justin Trudeau spoke glowingly (albeit reluctantly as a good Liberal scion) of the "progressive" victories in Quebec of the NDP. Iggy reminded me a bit of Joe Clark, the guy on the wrong side of where things were going with his party.

We now have a Conservative majority in Canada... that will mean Conservatives can government for four years without looking over their shoulder at the opposition. The NDP has a big Quebec caucus to integrate and the Liberals have to wonder if they've went the way of the British Liberals who were swamped by Labour into a niche market of the white-collar left.

Quebec politics will prove the most interesting. Does the NDP become a force in provincial politics, or will the PQ maintain its standing despite its BQ analogue getting torched tonight? Many provincial governments don't run on federal lines, so the PQ has room for hope, especially when the current Liberal government in the province has its ethics issues.

Interesting result. A fascinating night for a poli-sci geek. NDP boss Jack Layton now gets the big stage as the oppostion leader, and has both an opportunity to become the leader of the Canadian left or to blow it if he becomes a bit too knee-jerk socialist. PM Harper now gets to run things his way, which could lead to overreaching and an interesting 2015 election; at least this majority makes sure that we'll wait that long barring a Conservative internal meltdown.

 

Who's Hiding in Costellobad?

It took ten years, but rough justice was done to Osama in the wee hours of this morning Pakistan time. No, he didn't get Mirandized nor did he get a trial, but he opted to go down fighting when a team of Seals came for him in a compound in Abbottabad. This wasn't a remote village but the site of the Pakistani West Point, so local officials will likely have some 'splainin' to do as to how Osama was sitting under their noses.

It's not a happy-happy day. al Qaeda has largely metastisized into a loose coaltion that doesn't need a leader, but the changes over the last few years have made the group less able to run big operations like 9/11.

What is interesting is that it didn't take a big military footprint to do the job; a small special-ops unit was able to do the job. That might play to a strategy that leans more towards a criminal/SWAT team approach rather than a tanks and bombers approach, supplimented by good military special forces and CIA assets.