Your Daily Dose of Glenn Greenwald’s Mendacity

For those of you who may be tempted periodically to take Glenn Greenwald seriously, Patterico has a thorough, detailed and highly specific roundup of his latest breathtaking hypocrisy in attacking conservative bloggers for quoting anonymous comments on lefty blogs (more here from Jeff Goldstein), while QandO catches him in a gross distortion of a 2005 Joe Lieberman quote on Iraq.

An Oscar To Grouch About

Well, I didn’t watch the Oscars on Sunday; I ended up getting sucked into an Iwo Jima documentary on PBS instead. I don’t get to the movies much anymore and it’s rare these days that I see anything that gets nominated (well, except for those agitprop penguins).
Matt Welch did, and he had quite enough of Hollywood’s self-congratulation:

I live in East Hollywood. I do not like that Bush fellow. I’m worried about Global Warming. I really liked An Inconvenient Truth (except for the horror bits where Robot Al whispering his haunted memories about some river, his son, Katherine Harris, whatever). I’m really happy that lesbians rock the mic and get married and make babies with evil David Crosby’s sperm; I’m on that team (well, not David Crosby’s, but you get the point). But watching these people congratulate each other for their enlightened views, their activism, their spreading of “awareness,” kinda makes me want to do one-handed pushups with Brent Bozell, or at least lick my hand & slap that Guggenheim kid on the back of his Gore-loving neck.

Bogus Burgos?

Well, we knew Ambiorix Burgos had a live arm and was wild as all get out, but ace Royals beat writer Joe Posnanski (h/t Pinto) offers some specific cautions about Burgos, who he compares to Michigan J. Frog:

He blew 12 saves last year, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the agony of watching him pitch. Tom Burgmeier, the old Royals bullpen coach, used to talk about one of his pitchers who had outrageous stuff — every single time Burgie watched the guy flounder around on the mound he had the same thought: “You stupid son of a b***h, I would have KILLED to have your stuff.”
That’s the feeling Burgos inspires. You would have killed to have his arm. Instead you have to watch him shake off fastballs because he’s in love with his splitter, you have to watch him throw fastballs high and outside and get into 3-1 counts, then you have to watch him groove thigh-high fastballs over the heart of the plate that hitters tattoo into the bleachers (the guy gave up 16 bombs in 73 innings last year … and every single one of them, it seemed, cost the Royals a game). He wasn’t a bad pitcher. He was an insult to pitching.

Posnanski also isn’t impressed with reports of Burgos lighting up the radar gun in Mets camp:

By the way, what kind of goof throws the ball 100 mph before the end of February? I’m not crazy, right? Isn’t this like walking up to a doctor and saying, “Hey, would you mind cutting my ulnar collateral ligament? Thanks.”

I don’t know if Burgos pitched winter ball, but if he did he’s probably loose enough to turn it up to 11. If he didn’t Posnanski’s right.
The Mets picked up Burgos, like Oliver Perez, largely as a project for Rick Peterson to fix. And yes, that’s what they said about Victor Zambrano, though in Peterson’s defense, Zambrano was apparently already injured when the Mets got him. If Peterson can turn these two around, he really is as good as his press clippings. I’ll take that chance; Burgos is 23, and Posnanski makes it sound like a lot of his trouble is pitch selection and location, and a successful pitching coach for a successful organization may have more luck fixing that, as may a veteran catcher who isn’t afraid to get in Burgos’ face (the Royals had none of these things – I mean, with their track record developing young pitchers, would you listen to them?). Still, I have to assume there’s pretty good odds that Burgos will be as bad as Jorge Julio was last season, and/or will get shipped to New Orleans (no, that doesn’t sound right yet to me, either). As for Brian Bannister, Posnanski is right about his smarts but I never saw a sign that Bannister had that much upside as a big league starter.

I Will Get Fooled Again

RichardsonNK.jpg
Bill Richardson may or may not be a serious contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination – he does, at least, have far more experience in executive and foreign policy roles than the top three contenders combined – but it’s a safe bet that the former Clinton Administration UN Ambassador and current New Mexico governor will play a significant role in the next Democratic Administration, and may well be a frontrunner for the VP job. So, Gov. Richardson’s foreign policy op-ed piece in Saturday’s Washington Post deserves some scrutiny.
Unfortunately, the results aren’t pretty. Gov. Richardson wants us to use the recent nuclear deal with North Korea as a model to deal with Iran. Let’s start with his description of that agreement:

The recent tentative agreement with North Korea over its nuclear program illustrates how diplomacy can work even with the most unsavory of regimes. Unfortunately, it took the Bush administration more than six years to commit to diplomacy. During that needless delay North Korea developed and tested nuclear weapons — weapons its leaders still have not agreed to dismantle. Had we engaged the North Koreans earlier, instead of calling them “evil” and talking about “regime change,” we might have prevented them from going nuclear. We could have, and should have, negotiated a better agreement, and sooner.

Of course, this is rather a different tune than Richardson sang on his visit with the North Koreans in 2003:

North Korea has no intentions of building nuclear weapons, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Saturday as he concluded three days of talks with two envoys from the communist nation.
“We discussed issues very frankly, but in a positive atmosphere,” Richardson said.
North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Han Song Ryol, said during the talks that “North Korea has no intentions of building nuclear weapons,” Richardson said.

Well, so much for that. But has he learned anything from the experience? The agreement with North Korea is an improvement over the 1994 Clinton Administration agreement because it involves North Korea’s patron and powerful next-door neighbor, China. That’s worth something in terms of the costs to the North Koreans of violating the agreement, or at least the costs of being publicly caught again violating the agreement. But other than that, the deal is essentially the same leap of faith, with little in the way of verifiable benchmarks North Korea can be held to. As even Gov. Richardson now concedes, the agreement doesn’t even require North Korea to dismantle its weapons, plus it rewards the North Korean strategy of nuclear blackmail.
The virtue of the North Korean agreement, if there is one, is in getting a temporary delay in the day of reckoning with the North Korean threat so that more of our military and diplomatic resources can be focused on the primary theater of the current struggle against international terrorism: the tyrannies and struggling democracies of the Muslim and Arab worlds, in particular the Middle East and Central Asia. While North Korea is a serious threat in itself and – to the extent it proliferates its weapons and technology – also a part of that broader struggle, a temporary mollification of the North Korean regime, even at the price of more suffering and starvation for its downtrodden people, can help our strategic position in dealing with the major front.
But Richardson instead wants to see the Band-Aid that’s been stretched over this side injury applied to the major wound. He throws around appeals to sensible propositions like “speaking credibly from a position of strength” and having “a record of meaning what you say.” And, to his credit, he eschews the bizarre insistence of some Democrats that the U.S. should insist on unilateral negotiations, and recognizes that Russia would need to play the role with Iran that China does with North Korea (left unsaid is the fact that Russia appears to have no interest in taking the U.S. side in this fight). But his ultimate message is an exclusive focus on a negotiated resolution that appears to ignore the multifaceted nature of the Iranian menace:

A better approach would be for the United States to engage directly with the Iranians and to lead a global diplomatic offensive to prevent them from building nuclear weapons. We need tough, direct negotiations, not just with Iran but also with our allies, especially Russia, to get them to support us in presenting Iran with credible carrots and sticks.
No nation has ever been forced to renounce nuclear weapons, but many have chosen to do so. The Iranians will not end their nuclear program because we threaten them and call them names. They will renounce nukes because we convince them that they will be safer and more prosperous if they do that than if they don’t.

Now, lining up a diplomatic coalition to pressure Iran on its nuclear program is all well and good – that’s largely the path the Bush Administration has signalled in recent years – but at the end of the day, an agreement with the Iranians is no more likely to hold up than the current or past agreements with North Korea. The problem with Iran – as it was with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – is inherent in the nature of the regime, and by no means limited to the nature of the regime’s armaments. Validating and rewarding that regime in exchange for nuclear concessions of dubious enforceability will only weaken our position in dealing with Iran’s support of terror groups in Iraq and Lebanon. Unfortunately, Richardson – whether out of naivete or an effort to appeal to the ostrich faction in the Democratic primaries – is all too willing to get fooled again.

Carl Levin Rattles His Saber

Carl Levin is my least favorite US Senator; other Senators, like John Kerry and Chris Dodd, may have equally bad records of working at all times against the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States and taking the side of our enemies in every argument, but nobody else works as hard at it as Levin. If the New York Times was a Senator, it would be Carl Levin.
So I’m still reeling at the news that at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today, Sen. Levin called for more aggressive action against Iran and Syria’s meddling in Iraq, including openly advocating military action against Syria:

It’s more than just – we’re trying to close down the Iranian border area too. The problem is that these weapons are coming from a state which is – doesn’t recognize Israel either, just like Iran doesn’t. We’ve got to try to stop weapons coming into Iraq from any source that are killing our troops. I agree with the comments about trying to stop them coming in from Iran, I think we have to try stop them that are going to the Sunni insurgents as well as to the Shia. I was just wondering, does the military have a plan to, if necessary, to go into Syria to go to the source of any weapons coming from Syria? That are going to Sunni insurgents? That are killing our troops? … I think we ought to take action on all fronts including Syria and any other source of weapons coming in, obviously Iran is the focus – but it shouldn’t be the sole focus.

Levin also conceded that U.S. troops are needed in Iraq for “a counter-terrorism purpose” against Al Qaeda. Amazing.
The video of Levin’s comments on Syria is here.

The Veterans Pick Nobody

Ron Santo and umpire Doug Harvey led the balloting. I generally think Santo is a solid candidate, and Harvey was so respected by the players he was nicknamed “the Lord”.
The new Veterans Commitee seems designed not to work, which isn’t the worst result but it would be nice to see guys like Santo, Minnie Minoso and Dick Allen get a fair shake. The balloting:

Results of the 2007 Player Ballot (62 needed for election): Santo (57 votes, 69.5%), Jim Kaat (52, 63.4%), Gil Hodges (50, 61%), Tony Oliva (47, 57.3%), Maury Wills (33, 40.2%), Joe Torre (26, 31.7%), Don Newcombe (17, 20.7%), Vada Pinson (16, 19.5%), Roger Maris (15, 18.3%), Lefty O’Doul (15, 18.3%), Luis Tiant (15, 18.3%), Curt Flood (14, 17.1%), Al Oliver (14, 17.1%), Mickey Vernon (14, 17.1%), Minnie Minoso (12, 14.6%), Cecil Travis (12, 14.6%), Dick Allen (11, 13.4%), Marty Marion (11, 13.4%), Joe Gordon (10, 12.2%), Ken Boyer (9, 11%), Mickey Lolich (8, 9.8%), Wes Ferrell (7, 8.5%), Sparky Lyle (6, 7.3%), Carl Mays (6, 7.3%), Thurman Munson (6, 7.3%), Rocky Colavito (5, 6.1%) and Bobby Bonds (1, 1.2%).
Results of the 2007 Composite Ballot (61 needed for election): Harvey (52 votes, 64.2%), Marvin Miller (51, 63%), Walter O’Malley (36, 44.4%), Buzzie Bavasi (30, 37%), Dick Williams (30, 37%), Whitey Herzog (29, 35.8%), Bill White (24, 29.6%), Bowie Kuhn (14, 17.3%), August Busch Jr. (13, 16%), Billy Martin (12, 14.8%), Charley O. Finley (10, 12.3%), Gabe Paul (10, 12.3%), Paul Richards (10, 12.3%), Phil Wrigley (9, 11.1%) and Harry Dalton (8, 9.9%).

Res Ipsa Locomotor

I’m sorry, but at 100mph the cops shouldn’t care what is or is not a well-established Fourth Amendment rule, they should only care about public safety. What seems to get lost here is the fact that Officer Scott’s actions – ramming a car moving that fast – were exceptionally dangerous to himself, for the benefit of the public. What kind of sick society rewards that with a civil lawsuit?

Quacks Like The Fonz

Edgardo Alfonzo is headed to the Long Island Ducks:

Add former Mets All-Star Edgardo Alfonzo to the flock of Ducks who see the Long Island team in the independent Atlantic League as a stepping stone back to the majors.
The popular infielder known as “Fonzie” yesterday was acquired by the Ducks in a trade with the Bridgeport Bluefish for first baseman Bucky Jacobsen and starting pitcher Pat Mahomes.
Alfonzo hopes to take the road successfully traveled by former Ducks Carlos Baerga and Bill Pulshiper and avoid the path taken by recent Ducks John Rocker and Juan Gonzalez, who failed in their comeback attempts.

The article notes that the Ducks are managed by former Cardinals and Yankees pitcher Dave LaPoint, who hopes to try Alfonzo out at second, short and third. Me, I’d guess that the Bluefish got the better of the deal, given that Jacobsen is probably well-suited to Independent League play.
In other news, Bobby Abreu is suffering the ouchies of spring.

Lowered Expectations

The Yale Daily News reports that some “advocates” want Yale to aspire to fill its incoming classes with people who couldn’t get into state colleges (H/T):

States that have enacted constitutional amendments banning the use of racial preferences in public college admissions have seen acceptance rates for minority applicants go down. As more states consider such measures, civil rights advocates said, private colleges may inherit those students who can no longer get into public schools, or who no longer want to attend public schools with increasingly homogenous student bodies.

In a small sign of sanity – or, more likely, of the tribute vice pays to virtue – Yale officials aren’t buying this logic:

But Yale Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzel said the ripples might not make it to New Haven. Since Yale typically competes for applicants with only a small number of universities, almost all of which are private, the University’s applicants and admissions officers are insulated from the shock that the recent bans have had in California and Michigan.
“With respect to achieving diversity at the most competitive schools, I think the key is always to evaluate students as individuals, in light of whatever opportunities and challenges they have been presented,” he said. “Race and socioeconomic class are relevant aspects of an applicant’s context, and to the extent we do a good job overall of weighing context, we will sustain a diverse undergraduate body with exceptional talent and promise.”

Good for Yale. Granted, these are elite state colleges we are talking about, and granted, the Yale admissions office, like many in academia, is undoubtedly doing its bean-counting on a retail basis these days and learning to keep quiet about it. But even the necessity of driving race-consciousness and what is increasingly its open embrace of mediocrity underground is a victory of sorts.

Age and EWSL, 2004-06

This is Part III of my look back at at how Established Win Shares Levels fared in 2006. It’s time to look at the age adjustments. (I’ve looked at these previously here, here and here).
The great thing about doing something like EWSL as an ongoing project is that the data becomes progressively more stable over time: I now have three years of results to work from in evaluating how players tend to perform at each age relative to their adjusted Established Win Shares Levels, and thus can have progressively more confidence in the age adjustments I use going forward. For example, the more years of data I have, the less influenced it will be by a single generation of exceptional players born in a particular year.
Let’s start with the 3-year results for the non-pitchers:
Non-Pitchers 2004-06:

Age # WS EWSL %
21- 4 33 34 0.878
22 15 262 116.200 2.255
23 24 355 247.333 1.435
24 43 490 387.536 1.264
25 64 708 564.900 1.253
26 93 1065 934.770 1.139
27 89 1028 963.963 1.066
28 114 1416 1349.902 1.049
29 103 1221 1340.370 0.911
30 112 1329 1444.836 0.920
31 84 858 1014.036 0.846
32 89 902 1067.233 0.845
33 69 708 818.103 0.865
34 67 709 773.003 0.917
35 60 411 593.170 0.693
36 41 379 505.333 0.750
37 30 239 390.496 0.612
38 22 201 273.830 0.734
39 16 175 222.500 0.787
40+ 16 120 222.830 0.539

As you can see, the rapid rise of young players and their gradual fall from age 29 on is a powerful pattern, and one that grows smoother with each year’s additional data. 2006 was a good year for 27-year-olds and a bad year for 28-year-olds, so some equilibrium has been restored in that regard from the prior age adjustments showing 27-year-olds flatlining but then hopping up one last time at 28. After age 32, the number of players holding jobs really starts to drop off.
The train wreck at age 35 only grew more pronounced this season. On the other hand, additional data helped bouy up the 40+ year olds, whose numbers got devastated by Barry Bonds’ 2005. Here’s this year’s data on its own:
Non-Pitchers (2006):

Age # WS EWSL %
21- 0 0 0
22 4 58 26.20 2.214
23 11 198 134.90 1.468
24 15 155 125.97 1.230
25 18 160 127.10 1.259
26 30 401 358.67 1.118
27 21 282 219.13 1.287
28 28 289 318.67 0.907
29 29 364 396.57 0.918
30 45 550 636.47 0.864
31 25 270 266.67 1.013
32 32 348 439.40 0.792
33 16 140 163.67 0.855
34 26 323 357.17 0.904
35 19 133 209.17 0.636
36 15 102 152.00 0.671
37 6 36 89.33 0.403
38 8 69 110.83 0.623
39 6 48 65.50 0.733
40+ 7 60 84.83 0.707

As I’ve explained before, the nature of any established performance level will exaggerate the upward and downward trajectory of player aging, since a 25-year-old is still being partly compared to his 22-year-old self, while a 35-year-old is still being partly compared to his 32-year-old self.
Now, the pitchers:
Pitchers (2004-06):

Age # WS EWSL %
21- 7 42 30.000 1.400
22 17 128 105.000 1.219
23 23 177 172.230 1.028
24 40 266 256.870 1.036
25 57 442 376.800 1.173
26 76 474 463.800 1.022
27 87 592 617.560 0.959
28 92 617 596.800 1.034
29 79 499 576.536 0.866
30 69 423 498.400 0.849
31 63 416 507.170 0.820
32 55 292 425.630 0.686
33 49 275 383.300 0.717
34 39 205 272.966 0.751
35 29 118 194.336 0.607
36 23 123 147.670 0.833
37 20 147 153.663 0.957
38 22 161 204.996 0.785
39 19 141 162.333 0.869
40+ 26 232 269.336 0.950

2006 was a tough year for the established pitchers, at least the under-30 set. The one-year sample sizes get really small – for example, Jon Lieber was the 36-year-old starting pitcher, Steve Trachsel and Paul Byrd the only 35-year-old starters. In general, the rule still holds that the pitchers as a group start to fall off earlier than the hitters. The 2006 data:
Pitchers (2006):

Age # WS EWSL %
21- 2 19 13 1.462
22 6 36 41.60 0.865
23 6 36 33.30 1.081
24 15 96 107.77 0.891
25 23 169 158.17 1.068
26 17 98 93.30 1.050
27 29 230 228.90 1.005
28 33 202 218.40 0.925
29 25 149 174.77 0.853
30 26 144 188.27 0.765
31 20 155 174.17 0.890
32 12 49 71.83 0.682
33 18 95 143.50 0.662
34 14 92 115.80 0.794
35 8 40 50.67 0.789
36 9 46 54.67 0.841
37 3 24 20.83 1.152
38 5 35 41.83 0.837
39 6 61 55.50 1.099
40+ 13 86 115.67 0.744

Overall, as consistent with past data, the age/EWSL numbers are a powerful reminder of the tides of age pulling players down from 29 onward. Which is not surprising: in baseball, as in life, everyone comes up from nothing and goes back to nothing in the end.

EWSL Rookie Adjustments

In Part II of my look back at how Established Win Shares Levels fared in 2006, I’m taking a look at the rookies. Rookies – players with no significant major league track record – present a unique challenge for what is intended as a system for objectively evaluating players’ major league track records. As I’ve noted before, EWSL uses a standard arbitrary figure for all rookies – it does not distinguish between, say, Ryan Zimmerman and Reggie Abercrombie if both are expected to hold everyday jobs. I’d like to add a non-subjective adjustment for rookie quality, but until I can get Major League Equivalency Win Shares (I don’t believe they exist anywhere), I have to rely on the facts that (1) bad rookies rarely get everyday jobs and (2) good rookies often fall on their faces.
Of course, the one subjective element of this is my evaluation each spring of who looks like they have a job nailed down. One reason there were more rookies listed in 2006 was because I ran the EWSL rosters later in the year, mainly during April.
Anyway, part of the quest to make EWSL more empirical and less guesswork is that the adjustments – both the age adjustment and the rookie adjustment – get tweaked every year based on the accumulated data I have from, now, three years’ worth of results. Let’s look at those results:

Type of Player 2004 # 2004 WS 2005 # 2005 WS 2006 # 2006 WS # WS Rate
Everyday Players 6 74 10 101 17 187 33 362 10.97
Bench Players (Under Age 30) 4 26 10 38 11 29 25 93 3.72
Bench Players (Age 30+) 2 2 0 0 0 0 2 2 1
Rotation Starters 3 1 3 13 3 28 9 42 4.67
Relief Pitchers 4 21 1 1 6 43 11 65 5.91
TOTAL 19 124 24 153 37 287 80 564 7.05

After 2004, I had split off the rookie bench players by age because guys who break in as bench players in their 30s generally lack upside (the same isn’t true of starters, since rookie everyday players age 30 and up tend to be Japanese imports). You can see a steady uptick the last three years in the number of rookies being given jobs early in the season, although bearing in mind that part of that is changes in my own estimation of who would play. Still, there’s no disputing that last year had a real good crop of rookies from Day One. You can also see the miserable return from rookie starting pitchers – the good ones, like Jered Weaver and Dontrelle Willis, tend to come up a few months into the season, while with the exception of the occasional Verlander, guys who win rotation jobs early are often there more because of team need than because they are definitely ready.
I’ll be using these figures, rounded off (most are pretty close to whole numbers anyway) for this year’s adjustments – 11 for everyday players, 4 and 1 for bench players under and over 30, 5 for starting pitchers, 6 for relievers.

Barack Obama’s Symbolic Appeals to Cannibals

To the average American, it may have seemed that Senator Obama intended to invoke Abraham Lincoln by announcing his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Illinois. But Springfield has another history – which raises certain suspicions about that announcement speech. You see, Springfield was the origin of the infamous Donner Party, whose trip to the West ended in cannibalism. And that’s not all:

Also ill-fated were the 850 Pottawatomis who trudged through Springfield in 1838, past the Old State Capitol, then being built. Under armed military guard, the Native Americans were on a forced march, later known as the Trail of Death, from Indiana and Michigan to Kansas. It was part of the U.S. government’s effort to resettle all tribes west of the Mississippi.
The 660-mile journey, also commemorated in a plaque on the kiosk, took 10 weeks, and the death toll is estimated to have been at least 40.


Was Senator Obama secretly using coded appeals to cannibals, and conjuring up the wistful nostalgia of some Americans for the days of forced resettlement of Native Americans?
Ridiculous, you scoff. But how well, really, do you know liberal Democrats’ secret desires? Probably as well as The New Republic’s Rick Perlstein knows those of conservative Republicans. As Perlstein writes of Mitt Romney’s decision to announce his candidacy in Dearborn, Michigan in front of the Henry Ford Museum:

As the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) immediately observed, its location, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, is a “testament to the life of … a notorious anti-Semite and xenophobe.” Some observers wondered if perhaps this wasn’t intentional: If you want to prove to conservatives you’re no liberal, what better way than to announce on the former estate of a man who, as the NJDC also pointed out, was “bestowed with the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle by Adolf Hitler”?


Well, that makes precisely as much sense as seeing Obama’s choice of location for his announcement as a coded appeal to those voters with a taste for man-flesh.
Or maybe Perlstein’s just responding to dog whistles.

John Edwards, Iran, Israel and Memory Lane

Well, John Edwards, finding himself in plenty of hot water, is now denying a report by Variety magazine of a remark by Edwards that didn’t go over so well even before a Hollywood audience:

John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes last week until, during question time, he invoked the “I” word – Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.


(H/T Steven Foley). As well Edwards should distance himself from that remark – not just because it’s foolish but also because it would be quite a surprise to a certain then-U.S. Senator running for Vice President in 2004. Then, you will recall, Democrats wanted Iran to be dangerous so they could argue that the Iraq War was a distraction from the real security threat; in the service of that election-year talking point, Senator Edwards told the nation as follows in a nationally televised debate with Vice President Cheney:

The vice president just said that we should focus on state sponsors of terrorism. Iran has moved forward with its nuclear weapons program. They’re more dangerous today than they were four years ago.


+++

The reality about Iran is that Iran has moved forward with their nuclear weapons program on their watch.


And in response to a question about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

First, the Israeli people not only have the right to defend themselves, they should defend themselves. They have an obligation to defend themselves.
I mean, if I can, just for a moment, tell you a personal story. I was in Jerusalem a couple of years ago, actually three years ago, in August of 2001, staying at the King David Hotel.
We left in the morning, headed to the airport to leave, and later in the day I found out that that same day, not far from where we were staying, the Sbarro Pizzeria was hit by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. Fifteen people were killed. Six children were killed.
What are the Israeli people supposed to do? How can they continue to watch Israeli children killed by suicide bombers, killed by terrorists?
They have not only the right to the obligation to defend themselves.
Now, we know that the prime minister has made a decision, a historic decision, to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. It’s important for America to participate in helping with that process.
Now, if Gaza’s being used as a platform for attacking the Israeli people, that has to be stopped. And Israel has a right to defend itself. They don’t have a partner for peace right now. They certainly don’t have a partner in Arafat, and they need a legitimate partner for peace.
And I might add, it is very important for America to crack down on the Saudis who have not had a public prosecution for financing terrorism since 9/11.
And it’s important for America to confront the situation in Iran, because Iran is an enormous threat to Israel and to the Israeli people.


Of course, then, Senator Edwards was a member of, and at least theoretically entitled to attend sessions of, the Senate Intelligence Committee, whereas now, he presumably has access to a really big television. So maybe he’s better informed now. Or not; you see, Edwards also spoke at the AIPAC Policy Conference in May 2006:

During this difficult time, all Israelis should know that America stands with them, remaining committed to their security and their efforts to build a better and more peaceful future, and as we all wish the Prime Minister [Ariel Sharon] our love and affection for he and for his family, our thoughts and prayers are with him every day. More than anyone else, Prime Minister Sharon understood that a strong Israel is a safe Israel, and we need to remember, all of us need to remember the example that he set, especially as we consider the extraordinary security threats that Israel faces today.
Let’s start with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which I believe is the single greatest security threat, not only to Israel, but to the United States. In fact today is a pivotal day with the IAEA meeting to send the matter to the U.N. Security Council to take action. It’s about time, is what I have to say about that. For years I have argued that the United States has not been doing enough to deal with the growing threat in Iran. While we’ve talked about the dangers of nuclear terrorism, we’ve largely stood on the sidelines and the problems got worse.
I believe that for far too long we’ve abdicated our responsibility to deal with the Iranian threat to the Europeans. That is not the way to deal with an unacceptable threat to America, and an unacceptable threat to Israel. Iran’s recent actions beginning with the reprocessing of uranium, refusing to cooperate with international inspections, makes clear that it intends to build nuclear weapons.
And the Iranian President’s statements such as the despicable description of the Holocaust as a myth or his ugly pledge to wipe Israel off the map, you know, when he says these kind of things, I take him at his word. And we need to treat it as a very serious statement.


You can read more ducking and weaving by Edwards in this interview with Ezra Klein following the AIPAC speech.

The ADA in Action

Oh, it must be a proud day for the framers of the Americans with Disabilities Act:

A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal.
James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam.
In papers filed in federal court in White Plains, Pacenza said the stress caused him to become “a sex addict, and with the development of the Internet, an Internet addict.” He claimed protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act.


Of course, he casually defames Vietnam vets in the process, with his claim that combat stress forced him into frequenting sex chat rooms at work.
UPDATE: Overlawyered has more on the case.

Rashofitz

If you have not already, you should read Tom Maguire’s roundup of the trial testimony in the Libby case. What remains bizarre about the case is not that perjury charges were brought where there was no underlying crime – that does happen – but that perjury charges were brought where the prosecutor was investigating a whodunit and already knew when he started the investigation who done it.
Did Libby lie? I have to say, Maguire’s portrait of the testimony certainly suggests that Libby’s account was probably untrue, and difficult to square with the testimony – but also that (1) it would be very hard to have enough confidence in that conclusion to convict him, especially given how much trouble the prosecution witnesses had keeping their own stories consistent over time and (2) Tim Russert probably did not tell the truth either.

2006 EWSL Wrapup By Team

As I did last year, before diving into my preseason Established Win Shares Levels roster analyses, I’m going to take a quick look back at last season’s. First up is the team-by-team results. For those of you who need a primer on EWSL and my annual roster roundups, go here. A few basic reminders:
*I look at 23 players (13 non-pitchers, 10 pitchers) per team, so an average team should exceed its EWSL due to the fact that most teams these days use between 30-45 players in a season.
*EWSL is an estimate of the established major league talent on a team (adjusted for age) going into a season. It’s not a system for predicting the future, although it can be a helpful part of the toolkit (or at least a sanity check) in making predictions of the future.
*EWSL uses a standard figure for rookies (12 WS for rookie everyday players, 6 for rookie bench players, 4 for rookie pitchers (starting or relief)). It does not distinguish between, say, Ryan Zimmerman and Reggie Abercrombie if both are expected to hold everyday jobs. Thus, a team with a lot of high-quality rookies will exceed its EWSL. I’d like to add a non-subjective adjustment for rookie quality, but until I can get Major League Equivalency Win Shares (I don’t believe they exist anywhere), I have to rely on the facts that (1) bad rookies rarely get everyday jobs and (2) good rookies often fall on their faces.
That said, basically, my analysis assumes that there are three components to team success: how much established talent is on the preseason roster, how well they perform, and how much production the team gets from guys who supplement those top 23 players with trades, rookies or scrubs. The following table shows the following columns: (1) each team’s 2006 EWSL; (2) the actual Win Shares for those 23 players (includes Win Shares earned for other teams, e.g., Bobby Abreu counts with the Phillies); (3) the ratio of column (2) divided by column (1) to show how the 23 players fared relative to EWSL; (4) the team’s total actual 2006 Win Shares (i.e., Wins x 3); (5) the team’s Win Shares minus those from the top 23 players (in the example above this will include the negative value of, say, Abreu’s Yankees Win Shares from the Phillies’ “Rest” column); and (6) the ratio of column (4) divided by column (1) to show how the team as a whole fared relative to EWSL. Teams are ranked by that last column:

Team EWSL 23-Man WS 23-Man WS/EWSL Total WS Rest Total WS/EWSL
Tigers 194.70 249 1.279 285 36 1.464
Rockies 160.96 188 1.168 228 40 1.417
Padres 188.40 209 1.109 264 55 1.401
Marlins 167.71 192 1.145 234 42 1.395
Reds 182.16 209 1.147 240 31 1.318
Twins 224.49 242 1.078 288 46 1.283
Dodgers 208.02 188 0.904 264 76 1.269
Astros 196.82 203 1.031 246 43 1.250
Giants 184.24 198 1.075 228 30 1.238
Mets 235.18 237 1.008 291 54 1.237
Mariners 192.02 216 1.125 234 18 1.219
D-backs 193.86 194 1.001 228 34 1.176
Blue Jays 224.76 241 1.072 261 20 1.161
Phillies 223.25 231 1.035 255 24 1.142
Royals 163.20 135 0.827 186 51 1.140
White Sox 238.09 252 1.058 270 18 1.134
Brewers 199.47 192 0.963 225 33 1.128
Angels 236.79 204 0.862 267 63 1.128
Indians 212.02 207 0.976 234 27 1.104
Pirates 184.21 162 0.879 201 39 1.091
Nationals 196.88 162 0.823 213 51 1.082
Rangers 228.06 214 0.938 240 26 1.052
Cardinals 237.00 210 0.886 249 39 1.051
A’s 267.34 245 0.916 279 34 1.044
Yankees 280.18 238 0.849 291 53 1.039
Devil Rays 181.79 142 0.781 183 41 1.007
Orioles 211.61 179 0.846 210 31 0.992
Braves 241.69 193 0.799 237 44 0.981
Red Sox 269.77 246 0.912 258 14 0.956
Cubs 236.80 166 0.701 198 32 0.836

It should come as no surprise that the Tigers, 2006’s big story, rate at the top of teams that exceeded expectations, and that the Cubs land at the bottom of the pile. As you can see, the top teams are something of a mix of teams that had great seasons and teams that had very low expectations – I was a little surprised to see the Reds and Rockies listed, for example. The Mets, on the other hand, did pretty much as expected with their roster but did better than average with guys they added on (although I should note that players overall rated at 0.968 of their EWSL, which will factor in as I re-adjust this year’s age and rookie adjustments). The Dodgers rate the highest in that regard, with rookies like Andre Eithier helping out, while the Red Sox, White Sox and Mariners got the least help for their original roster. For the most part, teams that were near the top of this list last year tended to be nearer the bottom and vice versa, but the Cubs were down with the dregs for the second year in a row.
Here are the players among those on the preseason 23-man lineups of each team who were the biggest over and underacvhievers (I’m mixing those who were the biggest ups or downs by percentage or raw total):

Team Best Worst
Tigers Justin Verlander, Curtis Granderson, Carlos Guillen Chris Shelton, Dmitri Young
Rockies Brad Hawpe, Garret Atkins Cory Sullivan, Luis A Gonzalez
Padres Adrian Gonzalez, Mike Cameron Ryan Klesko, Shawn Estes
Marlins Alfredo Amezaga, Hanley Ramirez, Dan Uggla Reggie Abercrombie, Chris Aguila
Reds Brandon Phillips, Aaron Harang, Bronson Arroyo Jason LaRue, Chris Hammond
Twins Francisco Liriano, Mike Cuddyer, Justin Morneau Carlos Silva, Rondell White, Lew Ford
Dodgers Takashi Saito, Derek Lowe Bill Mueller, James Loney
Astros Trever Miller, Lance Berkman Eric Munson, Brad Lidge
Giants Kevin Corriea, Barry Bonds Mike Matheny, Jason Ellison
Mets Jorge Julio, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran Anderson Hernandez, Victor Diaz, Victor Zambrano
Mariners JJ Putz, Joe Borchard, Raul Ibanez Matt Lawton, Jeremy Reed, Joel Pineiro
D-Backs Brandon Lyon, Juan Cruz, Brandon Webb Tony Clark, Jose Valverde
Blue Jays BJ Ryan, Alex Rios Gustavo Chacin, Josh Towers
Phillies Shane Victorino, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley Aaron Rowand, Alex Gonzalez
Royals Emil Brown, Mark Teahen Angel Berroa, Zack Grienke
White Sox Matt Thornton, Jim Thome, Jermaine Dye Mark Buehrle, Neal Cotts
Brewers Gabe Gross, Chris Capuano JJ Hardy, Derrick Turnbow
Angels Robb Quinlan, Ervin Santana, Juan Rivera Jeff Mathis, Bartolo Colon, Darrin Erstad
Indians Bob Wickman, Travis Hafner Jason Johnson
Pirates Ian Snell, Jason Grabow, Freddy Sanchez Joe Randa, Oliver Perez
Nationals Mike Stanton, Ryan Zimmerman, Nick Johnson Jose Guillen, Cristian Guzman, Brandon Watson
Rangers Mark DeRosa, Gary Matthews Laynce Nix, Brad Wilkerson
Cardinals Scott Speizio, Chris Carpenter Mark Mulder, Jim Edmonds
A’s Frank Thomas, Kiko Calero Huston Street, Antonio Perez, Rich Harden
Yankees Chien-Ming Wang, Derek Jeter Hideki Matsui, Gary Sheffield, Carl Pavano
Devil Rays Shawn Camp, Mark Hendrickson Jorge Cantu, Jonny Gomes
Orioles Chris Ray, Ramon Hernandez Luis Matos, Brian Roberts
Braves Oscar Villereal, Brian McCann Kelly Johnson, Jeff Francouer
Red Sox Kevin Youkilis, Jon Papelbon JT Snow, Jason Varitek, Coco Crisp
Cubs Matt Murton, Bobby Howry Derrek Lee, Mark Prior, Jerry Hairston

Bear in mind again that these are full-season numbers – Jorge Julio, for example, did his good work in Arizona. Derrek Lee had the worst falloff of any marjor league player, from an EWSL of 27 to 4 Win Shares. It doesn’t show here but the Rangers also took big hits from Teixera and Blalock.

New Day, Same Spin

Today’s NY Times:

Senate Rejects Renewed Effort to Debate Iraq
The Senate on Saturday narrowly rejected an effort to force debate on a resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq, but Republican defections emboldened Democrats to promise new attempts to influence the administration’s war policy.
The 56-to-34 vote in a rare Saturday session was the second time Republicans were able to deny opponents of the troop increase a debate on a resolution challenging Mr. Bush, and it came just a day after the House formally opposed his plan to increase the military presence in Iraq.
But the outcome, four votes short of the 60 needed to break a procedural stalemate, suggested that Democrats were slowly drawing support from Senate Republicans for what was shaping up to be a drawn-out fight between the Democrat-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush over his execution of the war.

Of course, this is Times-speak for the fact that Senate Democrats were unable to break a filibuster and force cloture and thus get a floor vote on their resolution. As you will recall, when Democrats use the filibuster to prevent Republicans from getting cloture, it’s called extending debate. After all, the vote doesn’t stop anybody from debating, it just prevents a vote.
I can’t say I’m surprised that the Democrats use different terms to describe the same procedure depending on who is doing the filibustering. But would it be so difficult for the Times to at least pretend to even-handedness on this sort of procedural point?

No Stick

As if the Nationals don’t have enough problems, and as if Nick Johnson hasn’t had enogh injuries, it looks like the broken leg he suffered at the end of last season isn’t healing well: Johnson says he doesn’t know when he will be healthy enough to play and thinks it might be June at the earliest.
Washington has to be the odds-on early favorite for the worst record in baseball in 2007.

No Duca

Paul Lo Duca wants a contract extension; his deal is up at the end of this season. If the Mets are wise, they will proceed very cautiously on this one. Lo Duca is 35, and highly unlikely to repeat last season, when he batted .318; if he hits below .300, his offensive value is minimal, and he doesn’t throw well. Catchers past age 35 have a gruesome record, and while Lo Duca was 29 when he made the majors and thus doesn’t have as heavy mileage on his legs as some guys (I’m not sure how many games he caught in the minors) you have to figure he’s a bad bet long term.
That said, catchers are in short supply, and as Casey said, you gotta have a catcher or you’re gonna have a lot of passed balls. I don’t believe that the Mets have anybody in their system who is ready to go, even to share time with Ramon Castro. It’s certainly worth considering an extension, but the Mets should not operate on the assumption that Lo Duca is a valuable commodity.

The Real Leaker

It’s always nice to be vindicated. When grand jury testimony was leaked from the BALCO investigation, pointing to Barry Bonds and others using steroids or other performance enhancing drugs, lots of people (most vociferously, Bonds’ defenders) assumed that it must be, had to be, the prosecutors doing the leaking. I never did a post here on the topic, but I did respond in comment threads when I saw this point made, arguing that it was at least as likely that the leaks were coming from defense lawyers rather than prosecutors. For example, in December 2004, Will Carroll wrote:

This “trial by leak” is something I’m very much against. In this case, the government has leaked its first significant broadside into what has been a very united front by Conte, Anderson, and others.


My response in the comments:

One thing I’d caution is that not all leaks come from the law enforcement side. It’s illegal for prosecutors, FBI agents, etc. to leak grand jury testimony, which is secret (which is not the same as saying it doesn’t happen), but not illegal for the witness or his lawyer (or someone to whom they gave the information) to disclose testimony. That seems wildly unlikely in Giambi’s case, but there are often situations where a witness or codefendant has an interest in a leak, or where a defendant who is a political or other public figure prefers to leak things in drips at opportune times and spin them (while the prosecutor can’t respond without disclosing other secrets) rather than face a sudden ‘blockbuster’ disclosure of the charge and the evidence all together.
My sense, though, is that many leaks in high-profile cases come from people lower down in the pecking order (court clerks, secretaries, word processors, etc.) who have less of an agenda and more personal or financial interest in handing sensitive information to reporters. Nothing happens in the law without a whole lot of people seeing it, and you can’t watch all of them all the time.


I was too glib there about the law, by the way – a grand jury witness can only legally disclose the substance of his or her testimony, but can’t, say, leak whole transcripts, at least not if they got them from the government. Obviously, my mind was heavily on Ken Starr’s Lewinsky investigation of Bill Clinton – the leaks in that case almost invariably benefitted Clinton, allowing him to ride out each individual bit of the storm, where if the Starr Report had arrived out of the blue, it would have finished Clinton in one blow.
None of which is to say that prosecutors can’t or don’t misbehave with leaks – but it’s always important to remember that there are just as often incentives to leak on the defense side as well.
In January 2005, CrimProfBlog argued that it had to be the prosecutors or the defense lawyers, and that it was unlikely to be the defense:

The defense attorneys and the defendants might have had an incentive to leak, since Bonds denied knowledge that the substances were steriods and said that he didn’t think the BALCO defendant from whom he received the substances would have provided him with illegal steriods. It seems perhaps unlikely that one of the defense attorneys leaked the information, however, because leaking secret grand jury evidence to the media, and then moving to dismiss charges by blaming the government for the same leak, is a high risk venture that would take serious moxy if not insanity. Too much to lose, not enough to gain.


David Pinto linked to that analysis, to which I commented:

Well, except that taking risks and hoping they get away with being outrageous aren’t exactly novel tactics for criminal defense attorneys.


While David kept his opinions to himself, others were not so shy – TalkLeft’s Jeralyn Merritt, for example, asserted, “I rule out the defense.”
Now, the truth is out: the leaks came from a defense lawyer for Victor Conte, who – get this – was devising a deliberate fraud on the court by leaking and then moving for dismissal of the charges on grounds of improper leaks, which his motion (including his own sworn false denial of being the source of the leaks) blamed on the government.
Hey, we can all be wrong, but I think this post is a good example of the crow that should be eaten by some of the more vociferous proponents of the “it has to be the government” theory.

Progress At Last

Good news for those of you who have been waiting for more baseball content on the site: I’ve finally at long last finished entering all the 2006 Win Shares in my spreadsheets, so I’ll be starting soon to roll out my analyses and conclusions from those numbers.
And I suffer for my art: to avoid disrupting the rolling spreadsheets, which are on Microsoft Works, I’ve put off buying a new PC until this year’s Established Win Shares Levels analyses are completed; I’ve been worried that there may be difficulties in transferring the data to Excel, and I assume that any new PC I buy will have Excel rather than the archaic Works (I got my current PC in October 2000, and it runs on – hold on and cringe here – Microsoft Windows ME).

Federalizing The Local Diner: The Curious Case For A National Minimum Wage

One of the major agenda items for the new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill has been a hike in the federal minimum wage from $5.15/hour to $7.25/hour. Much to their embarrassment, Democrats found that they could not push legislation through the Senate controlled by the Democrat-Socialist majority without agreeing to a tax cut package to relieve some of the burden they are placing on small business. On Monday, House Democrats caved and approved the tax cuts, paving the way for the bill to become law.
The minimum wage, like all attempts at a command economy, is based upon the idea that there is an ideal “fair wage” or “living wage” that can be set by the government, not the market. Longtime observers are wearyingly familiar with the arguments on this point: liberals argue that it’s unfair to allow people to work for peanuts, conservatives respond that people are free to work for what they will choose. Liberals argue that you can’t raise a family on the minimum wage, conservatives respond that most minimum wage workers are young, single and/or part-time. Conservatives argue that the minimum wage throttles job growth for small businesses and entry-level workers, liberals contend that the job losses resulting from the minimum wage are nonexistent or overstated, conservatives reply that liberals are relying on quack economic studies.
Let’s leave all that aside for now, and assume for the sake of argument that it is actually possible for the government to set a Platonic ideal minimum wage that provides a fairer income to workers with the minimum possible cost to job creation. That still doesn’t answer three questions:
1. Why should there be a single federal minimum wage law for the entire country, covering every local labor market from Midtown Manhattan to Northern Mississippi?
2. If there really is a need for a single federal minimum wage, why does Congress nonetheless permit individual states to have higher minimum wages – and why should Representatives from those states care what the federal minimum wage is?
3. If the goal of a single federal minimum wage is to eliminate ‘unfair’ competition from workers willing to work for a lower wage, how do Democratic proponents of the bill expect it to succeed if it’s not accompanied by stiffer enforcement directed at illegal immigrants who are the people most likely to work ‘off the books’ for a lower wage?

Continue reading Federalizing The Local Diner: The Curious Case For A National Minimum Wage

Voter Intimidation

Republicans, for some time now, have been pushing for fairly tame measures to prevent voter fraud, most of which revolve around requiring voters to show some form of identification and otherwise leave a record that enables a determination of who, precisely, voted. In response to these common-sense proposals and other efforts to assure the integrity of the ballot, Democrats invariably complain that Republicans are engaging in some form of voter intimidation. Apparently, according to Democrats, even the mere act of having to properly identify yourself is so intimidating as to inhibit the right to vote.
Well. Now that the Democrats are in the majority, they are hard at work on legislation in another election context that will go far beyond mere identification, and eliminate secret ballots entirely, allowing voters to be pressured, even by their co-workers and in their own homes, to vote a specific way. The legislation, involving union elections, involves a practice called “card check,” and it will be the subject of a bill markup today in the House.
UPDATE: Vice President Cheney says President Bush will veto the card check bill.

Continue reading Voter Intimidation

Koufax by a Nose

One of the cool things about the expansion of David Pinto’s database back to 1957 – you can now compare home/road splits back to the 60s. So, when outside of Dodger Stadium, was Sandy Koufax the best pitcher in baseball in 1963-66?
Yes, but not by really so much. Koufax had a 1.31 ERA at home in those years, but on the road his ERA was 2.44 to Marichal’s 2.52 and Bob Veale’s 2.63, and 10 other pitchers clocked in between 2.71 and 2.99.

Pay Me Now or Z You Later

Carlos Zambrano wants big money now, before the season starts, or he’ll become a free agent. Not hard to see where this is headed, or why – between the out-of-this-world payout to Barry Zito, a solid but manifestly inferior pitcher to Zambrano (but the only other guy who matches his combination of durability and consistent quality) and the Cubs’ offseason spending spree, you can’t blame Zambrano for wanting his piece of the honey pot.

Ted Olson Endorses Rudy Giuliani

The biggest obstacle for Rudy Giuliani in the GOP primaries is his stance on social issues, which in many cases diverges from the views of most GOP primary voters and the party’s platform. And for the most part, Mayor Giuliani is not backing off those positions, most notably his belief that abortion should be legal.
For me and other socially conservative, pro-life voters who are inclined to support Mayor Giuliani, however, there is one bridge he can build to make him acceptable – appoint judicial conservatives to the federal bench, judges who are likely to leave divisive social issues to voters in the states rather than attempt to settle them through extra-textual and ahistorical readings of the Constitution.
In convincing voters that Mayor Giuliani is serious about appointing those kinds of judges, there are few endorsements better than the one he just picked up: former Bush Administration Solicitor General, Reagan Administration head of the Office of Legal Counsel and long time Federalist Society lawyer Ted Olson:

Continue reading Ted Olson Endorses Rudy Giuliani

Name Their Accomplishments

What would you say about the presidential qualification of 14 years in the Senate, a handful of years as a state legislator, and virtually no record of legislative accomplishment? In the Republican field, that would be the resume of a mediocre candidate – less seasoned than John McCain or Newt Gingrich, less accomplished as a public sector executive than Rudy Giuliani or Mike Huckabee, less accomplished as a private sector executive than Mitt Romney.
In the Democratic field, though, that’s the resume of the top three candidates put together.
On the basis of what accomplishments do these Senators ask for this job?

Continue reading Name Their Accomplishments

Sadr To See You Go

While the Democrats debate the wisdom of the surge and the lefty bloggers deny that Iran could have had anything to do with Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, events have overtaken them:

According to senior military officials al Sadr left Baghdad two to three weeks ago, and fled to Tehran, Iran, where he has family.
Al Sadr commands the Mahdi Army, one of the most formidable insurgent militias in Iraq, and his move coincides with the announced U.S. troop surge in Baghdad.
Sources believe al Sadr is worried about an increase of 20,000 U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. One official told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, “He is scared he will get a JDAM [bomb] dropped on his house.”
Sources say some of the Mahdi army leadership went with al Sadr.


I guess those talking points about Sadr not being an Iranian puppet have been rendered inoperative. [UPDATE: Sadr’s people say he hasn’t left.]
It’s almost academic now, but for those critics still obsessing over the fact that the intelligence officers who presented the weekend briefing on Iranian arming of Iraqi insurgents did not give their names or appear on camera, I present excerpts from yesterday’s White House press conference, featuring a “Mr. Snow”:

Continue reading Sadr To See You Go

Profiles in . . . Debatability

Tom Vilsack says the House Democrats lack the courage of their convictions for supporting only a non-binding resolution on Iraq – now, Vilsack, he would be the real deal:

In the shorter term, the nation must deal with its mess in Iraq, Vilsack said, and a nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush’s plan to send more troops — the sort of resolution Pelosi, D-San Francisco, began pushing through the House on Wednesday — simply won’t suffice.
“How many lives are going to be saved with a nonbinding resolution?” he asked rhetorically during a question-and-answer period after his speech. Facing reporters later, he said Congress has “a constitutional and moral responsibility to debate whether we should continue to fund this war.”


Yes sir, we have a moral obligation to go beyond non-binding resolutions and . . . debate. Strong stuff.

Omar’s Steal

Kris Benson has a torn rotator cuff, forcing the Orioles to sign Steve Trachsel. I think we can now conclusively credit Omar Minaya with a steal for getting John Maine (and Jorge Julio, since cashed in for El Duque) for Benson. (Of course, re-signing Benson in the first place was a bad idea). For the record, at the time I was in favor of dumping Benson but less than enthused about what the Mets got for him – more here.
Pity poor Leo Mazzone, asked to make a rotation with both Trachsel and Jaret Wright function. If Mazzone can pull this off, he really does deserve to be the first pitching coach in the Hall of Fame.

Ranking the Pitchers

Studes continues his look at the best of all time by Win Shares Above Bench, this time with the starting pitchers. The results are a little different from my own past analyses, which I probably need to update – he rates Christy Mathewson, Warren Spahn and especially Red Ruffing higher than I would (all three benefitted very significantly from great run support).

Stopping the Iranians

Mark I looks at the US military briefing laying out the evidence that Iranian-manufactured weapons have been provided to forces fighting the US in Iraq, principally Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. There is fair debate about precisely how best to respond to this particular provocation. Certainly, full-scale war with Iran would be a bad thing for all concerned, and our policy for now should be aimed at raising the costs of this sort of thing to convince the Iranians that attacking U.S. troops is not in their interests. There are many different ways to do this, between overt and covert military actions and economic and to a lesser extent diplomatic screw-tightening; what we should be aiming for is reaching the point where Ahmadenijad and the other Iranian leaders wake up every morning saying to themselves “how do we get those ****** Americans to stop?” At the same time, the longstanding fact of military life is that when you hit the other guy back, you had better be prepared for him to escalate, and know how you respond next. So the next steps are perilous – but continuing to let them attack without consequence is perilous, too. Our guys in the field need to know that we don’t take this sitting down.
It’s been interesting to see the frantic responses from the Democrats and the left side of the blogosphere. Two of the complaints about the Iraq War, you will recall, are that (1) we have enabled the Iranians to gain undue influence in Iraq and (2) we should have dealt with Iran first. In fact, Iranian meddling in Iraq isn’t news to either side of the aisle. But then, those criticisms were leveled by the people who always want to deal with any problem except the one at hand, and they’ve gone much quieter lately.
First up, John Kerry:

Ultimately, they [Iran] want an Iraq that is stable. They want influence. They want to be players in the region. And we need to [recognize] that and engage in a kind of diplomacy that the Iraq Study Group recommended…


The idea that Iran wants a stable Iraq, at least in the sense that we would think of stability, is so delusional it’s not even worth discussing. What needs to be done is to force the Iranians to decide that a stable Iraq is in their interests – but you can’t just wave a magic wand and assume that the other side already agrees with you.
Then we have Sen. Jack Reed:

The question is: is this a deliberate policy of the Iranian government at the highest levels. Is it rogue elements within the government?” Mr Reed told Fox News. He added: “And then the other question is to what extent are there countervailing signals that the Iranians actually are trying to — not control, but not to further raise the stakes in Iraq,” he said.


At some level, the question of who authorized war against us is beside the point. Power in Iran is diffuse – Iran is a tyranny, but not a dictatorship. The mullahs are the principal power, but they may not be any more monolithic than the Saudi royal family; Ahmadenijad holds elected office only at their sufferance, but he’s not without influence. At the end of the day, though, this isn’t a criminal trial in which we are trying to affix individual punishment – it’s a matter of stopping something that’s emanating from the borders of a sovereign state. (And color me skeptical that munitions are manufactured and distributed without the government’s involvement). If we apply sufficient pressure on the regime, I have no doubt that the regime has the power to to make it stop, and if it doesn’t, well, then Iran has lost control over its own territory and we need to take matters into our own hands.
A number of left-leaning sources have cited comments by General Peter Pace as somehow undermining the contents of the briefing:

We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se [specifically], knows about this,” he said. “It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it’s clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit.”


In other words, Pace knows what is clear from Iraq – that Iranian-made stuff is being used against our guys. The sensitive intel part of this is tracing it to the regime, although as I said, on some level that’s beside the point. One of the central defenses of terror-sponsoring regimes has been deniability – hit first, deny responsibility later. Here, we can trace the source to inside Iran – that should be enough to make the Iranians take responsibility.
Then we have Juan Cole, who disputes the accounts of Iranian support almost entirely on the basis that Shi’ites don’t cooperate with Sunnis. Of course, that ignores not only the mounting problem of Shi’ite violence but also the fact that the Iranians have been supporting both sides. Which may make no sense if you are locked into academic categories, but makes eminent sense if you regard this as an exercise in power politics (after all, they are not the only ones meddling in Iraq).
Next up is Glenn Greenwald, who has a long post complaining about the lack of credibility of anonymous sources. Funny, Greenwald has very regularly relied on anonymously-sourced reports about US surveillance and detention policies and other issues that provide fodder for criticism of the Bush Administration. In fact, what is different here from the typical anonymously sourced report is that this is an official briefing with the imprimatur of the Administration, as opposed to an unknown axe-grinder. And note that the champions of Valerie Plame are suddenly unable to grasp that sensitive intelligence sources, including the identities of military intelligence personnel, are not well-served by the disclosure of their identities to the media.
The Iranian problem is indeed complex, presenting many different strands that need to be resolved. But sticking our heads in the sand while the regime that took 52 US hostages in 1979 and killed 240 Marines in the Beiruit bombing in 1983 does it again is not an answer.

2/12/07 Quick Links

*I’m not thrilled to see any foreign leader meddle in US domestic politics, but it is nonetheless heartening in John Howard’s war or words with Barack Obama to see a reminder that the “international community” is not as monolithically anti-American as sometimes portrayed. Powerline has some useful thoughts on why Obama’s response was so ham-handed. Of course, the Democrats are never as solicitous of countries that actually support our policies.
*An interesting analysis of the Hamas-Fatah accord. Via Frum. My guess as to the alternative explanations for Abbas’ behavior would be “all of the above.” I tend to think that the accords are a good thing simply for the fact of their existence, i.e., the fact that an Arab government sat down two warring Arab factions and got them to negotiate an agreement without the involvement of the US, the UN, Israel or financial or territorial concessions from any of the above. Hamas is still Hamas, but I still believe that while you can’t negotiate about terrorism, you sometimes need to negotiate with terrorists, and it’s not like there are other good alternatives. The best policy for the US is to avoid the situation as much as possible and play “show me” – i.e., make the Palestinian regime demonstrate its trustworthiness and peaceable nature before we give them anything. At least with Hamas in power, there is less pretense that they are actually peaceable or trustworthy unless they can genuinely demonstrate otherwise through deeds.
*There is little enough worth saying about the Anna Nicole Smith story; she rose to fame due to her natural physical gifts combined with tremendous ambition and a corresponding willingness to use and add to what she had, and she fell due to a lack of sense and even greater lack of discipline. A familiar Hollywood story. But Larry Miller has useful words on the litigation that will long outlive her:

Since yet another of the heart-broken offspring has gallantly appeared to pick up the cudgels and continue contesting it, I’d like to offer two choices of what I think is some pretty good advice: (1) Get a job. You didn’t earn that money and you don’t deserve it. And, by the way, every penny of it should go to Anna Nicole’s daughter. Or, (2) Try your best to get reincarnated as a sexy woman.


*Yes, CENTCOM is indeed engaged in the blogosphere.
*A statute beached by the tides of history: Y2K litigation reform.

Staffing

Two notes on the back end of the Mets’ pitching rotation, as the pitchers report for spring training.
1. In case you missed it last week, Dave Williams is out until at least May (h/t), which is bad news for Williams, whose principal virtue is being available to pitch. Then again, an emergency starter may be more needed in June or July.
2. The optimist would point out that (1) Chan Ho Park had a 4.29 ERA before the All-Star Break last year, before his intestinal troubles brought him down, and (2) that included a 3.42 ERA against NL opponents. The pessimist would point out that he doesn’t get a second shot at a first time back around the league.

The Blind Side

Just in case you may have considered not reading Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side, I’m here to tell you to reconsider. The Blind Side is one of the best sports books I’ve ever read.
Like Lewis’ previous books Liar’s Poker (about Salomon Brothers in the 1980s) and Moneyball (about the Oakland A’s in the past decade), The Blind Side is fundamentally a book about markets and how they interact with the people whose unique skills or insights are suddenly made valuable by those markets. In this case, it’s the market for NFL left tackles who protect the end of the line of scrimmage on a right-handed quarterback’s blind side from increasingly quick and dangerous pass rushers. Lewis starts his tale with a (literally) shattering anecdote, recounting in stop-motion detail Lawrence Taylor’s legendary hit on Joe Theismann and noting that the Redskins’ star left tackle, Joe Jacoby, was on the sidelines that night. Lewis then details the rapid rise of left tackle salaries and the ripple effect that has had on the position all the way down to high school.
Wrapped inside a book about markets, however, is a second story – a unique coming of age story that takes over the narrative. Lewis follows Michael Oher, a 16-year-old African-American kid from the worst possible part of Memphis who arrives, Tarzan-like, at an overwhelmingly white Christian school with nothing but the ideal physical size and gifts to be an NFL left tackle. And I do mean nothing: no family, no home, no education, no money, no background in organized sports, no medical history – but also, perhaps surprisingly given his background, no boiling anger, no criminal record, no bad habits. The kid was just a complete cipher. It’s an amazing testament to the generosity of his neighbors that a kid who never knew where his next meal was coming from somehow made his way to 350 pounds of mostly muscle by age 16.
I’ve been told by more careful watchers of the NFL that Lewis has a few factual details wrong – names misspelled, dates wrong. As a narrative, the only false note in the book is a chapter entitled “Death of a Lineman,” which ends with the early death from cancer of 49ers guard John Ayers; while Ayers’ story fits neatly into Lewis’ narrative, his death really has nothing to do with nothing, and feels tacked on for surplus emotion (perhaps it would have felt less so if not for the chapter title).
This book may be less significant than Moneyball, in that it’s far less likely to stir new debate in the NFL, but it’s a great yarn full of laugh-out-loud “wow” moments (I may be biased because I went into Moneyball knowing more of the story). On the other hand, Lewis does also manage to bring in more of the world outside football through his examination of a Memphis neighborhood that is staggering even by the standards of urban poverty.
Lewis was a childhood friend of Sean Touhy, the Memphis businessman who takes Oher under his wing, and so this is the second outstanding book that Lewis essentially fell into, the first being Liar’s Poker, which came out of Lewis’ own tenure working at Salomon Brothers. That said, he’s a tremendous writer and it’s a tale worth the telling.