Note: Sorry I forgot to post this Thursday. It was almost ready, too. I simply forgot. My bad.
The Women's March that took place worldwide (even in Antarctica) on Saturday was a true testament to its strength. The size of the crowds was enormous. It dwarfed the inauguration crowd and made President Trump angry. I probably had three dozen or more Facebook friends take place in a march, either in their home city or in Washington. That's the most I've seen for any political event. I want to tackle three criticisms of the Women's March real quick — two I don't buy and one I do — before making a historical comparison.
Criticism 1) I don't even know what it was about -- it didn't seem like any one thing!
This one bugs me the most. I had about a half-dozen conservative female friends decide that because they personally didn't understand the Women's March, that it was pointless. If they didn't know what it was about, the causes are pretty easy to find. These complainers are right that it wasn't one cohesive, single issue. But it didn't have to be. There are numerous women's issues that need to be addressed, and leaving any one of them in the dust would have limited the scope and depth of the march. Issues included women's health treated the same as men's health, equal pay for equal work, the underrepresentation of women in Washington (though this has gotten incrementally better), pro-choice issues, the lack of justice for sexual assault victims, the fact a man who brags about sexual assault is sitting in the White House, and so on. It wasn't merely Trump-bashing, but there was some of that, too. It's a big tent. This is ignorant.
Criticism 2) They went too far! They don't speak for me!
First, as I understand these people, protests must be super polite, not obstruct traffic, not trample grass, must not have any one member do/say anything stupid, and not include idiots. That simply cannot be the case for marches consisting of 3 million people worldwide. However, as protests go, this was remarkably calm. Not a single arrest in Washington — remarkable. But I saw videos of celebrities delivering speeches passed around as "Can you believe the women's march stands for this?" Madonna and Ashley Judd come to mind. But characterizing a march this large about the actions of two celebrities is asinine. The thousands of marchers in Kansas City didn't hear Ashley Judd speak when they marched. Neither did almost all of the marchers elsewhere. And even if those celebrities or those marchers don't speak for you, they spoke for themselves. It was obvious that they didn't speak for you, since you weren't there. This is dismissive.
Criticism 3) This is an example of the partisan divide. Most of the rallies were in democratic-leaning cities and not in the Midwest; this is why Trump won.
I wondered if this were true on Saturday, but the numbers bear it out. There were roughly 400-500K marchers in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. There were 400K marchers in NYC. Boston, Chicago and Seattle each had more than 110K people. St. Paul, MN, had nearly 100K people. Every one of those cities and states voted blue in November. The first state that voted red with a large march population was Madison, Wisc., which had about 87,500 marchers and was a narrow win for Trump. After that, it's Atlanta at 60,000 and then Austin, Texas, at 45,000. FiveThirtyEight pointed out that 80 percent of the marchers came in cities that voted for Clinton. Nothing about these marches seems to indicate that the electoral college would be any different. This is... true to an extent.
The historical comparison that came to mind first was one from my old Pittsburg days and a fascinating piece of history. On Dec. 11, 1921, 500 women, including mothers, grandmothers, daughters and sisters, crowded into the Franklin Miners Hall. Many of their male family members were miners, as the area produced nearly 1/3 of the country's coal at one point. They were upset over unfair labor practices, including unsafe working conditions, poor pay, long hours and discrimination. (Their men were already on strike.) They would organize a march of 3,000-6,000 women on the mines the next three mornings, armed with the American flag in front and no weapons (though they did carry red pepper to throw in the face of those undercutting the union). The marches gained national attention, with the New York Times calling the "An Army of Amazons." My old paper, right in the thick of it, called them "Militant Women," but noted there was little violence. (Note: The East Coast was very mad about the protests, and the Pittsburg area was among the most socialist in the country. Times have changed.) The governor sent in the state militia, who supposedly shot at the women's feet. They'd arrest 49 women and hold them on a four-times-higher-than-normal $750 bond for unlawful assembly, disturbing the peace and assault. The protesters wanted eight-hour work days (!), child labor laws, etc. Most of those things didn't happen immediately. It wasn't until 1938 that the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, enshrining most of the worker protections we know now (40-hour work week, minimum wage, ending child labor, and overtime rules). So although the Amazon Army didn't see a ton of immediate change, they were one of the first national sparks that led to a fire of reform a decade or so later.
The last surviving member of the marches, Eva Gartner, who had been carried as a baby by her mother near the front of the march, died roughly two years ago at age 93. She took part in a recreation of the march two years before her death. One other historical note: The leader of the Amazon Army was Slovenian-born Mary Skubitz, who spoke five languages (very important for the melting pot of immigrants involved). Her son, Joe Skubitz, who was 14 when the marches took place and learned to make bread the mornings she marched, would go on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives for 16 years. He played a big part in passing most of our Black Lung laws and Mine Safety legislation. He died in 2000.
So what does this all teach me? First, protests are rarely celebrated in their own time. The term "Amazon Army" was not meant kindly. Second, even if nothing happens immediately, organizing is the first step to making change. Third, change takes time — years, if not decades. Saturday's Women's March is a good start, but it would be a shame if nothing comes of it. Fourth, 3 million people is nothing to sneeze at, but it seems there's a disconnect between the left-leaning bastions and their more rural sisters. That'll need to be addressed before national change becomes impossible to stop.
Humana/Aetna
This is probably the biggest story you haven't heard of, and I really want to give it proper space and time. I heard a bit of it on NPR and tried to find it on NBC News — no story, not even in the health section. I looked on CNN and couldn't find anything, not even in their health section. It's not on Fox News. It's on the New York Times and Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times — yet another reason to subscribe to a newspaper, since broadcast news isn't covering it..
Here's the recap: Health insurance company Aetna wanted to buy fellow health insurance company Humana. The Obama administration, already dealing with another, larger health insurance merger between Cigna and Anthem, made moves to block the Aetna-Humana merger on antitrust grounds. This is where it gets bad: Aetna made it clear to the Obama administration that they would pull out of the Obamacare exchanges if the deal were not approved — not because of costs. When the administration said no, they pulled out anyway, claiming the costs were too much in this story just five months ago. Aetna pulling out of Obamacare's exchanges has been a major Republican talking point ever since. However, they pulled out of many profitable states and counties just to thumb their nose at the Obama Administration.
Even shorter: Aetna pulled out of the Obamacare exchanges because of spite — not cost — because the Obama administration fought them on a huge merger. Or, as U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said: "Aetna tried to leverage its participation in the exchanges for favorable treatment from DOJ regarding the proposed merger." He also found that Aetna tried to hide this decision-making process by using phone calls (no paper records of what was said) instead of emails, and abusing attorney-client privilege (not public) bordering on "malfeasance."
Judge Bates has blocked the $37 billion acquisition of Humana by Aetna on antitrust grounds, but the Obamacare blackmail was a key part in his decision making. Truly despicable actions by Aetna.
Alternative Facts
Much has been said already about the start of the Trump Administration, but it's off to a rocky start with the press. First, Trump's Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that "That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period." It was demonstrably false by anyone who covers these things, including my former OU colleague (now Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the LA Times) Hailey Branson-Potts here here here and here. It's been mocked all over, including Saturday Night Live, who noted that when you have to add "period" to the end of a sentence, it usually means you're lying (Example: "I'm a doctor, period."). On Monday, he'd add: "Our intention is never to lie to you."
Perhaps the audacity of that claim and its easy-to-disprove nature left Trump Advisor Kellyanne Conway on the defensive, but she doubled down on the claim on Sunday morning in an interview with Chuck Todd, claiming that Spicer was presenting "Alternative facts." To his credit, Chuck Todd immediately called her on that, saying "Alternative facts aren't facts; they're falsehoods." It was a powerful moment of journalism, I thought, of a journalist refusing to just go along with the answers. The "alternative facts" has found its way into the last few days of pop culture. Several sports teams have started presenting outrageous "alternative facts" about their teams as a joke. NBA TV even did an "alternative stats" of the Lakers-Mavericks game showing the Lakers winning with a team of their all-time all-stars instead of the real stats of losing by a record margin.
But what's not had the same amount of attention was the rest of Conway's response. Later in the interview, Todd returned to the question of why Spicer felt he had to lie about crowd size. Conway's answer spoke volumes about this administration's squelching of journalism: "Your job is not to call things ridiculous that are said by our press secretary and our president. That's not your job." After further being pressed by Todd, she said to "...think about what you just said to your viewers. That's why we felt compelled to go out and clear the air and put alternative facts out there." Conway is trying to get Todd to just go along with what the president/press secretary say. To her, journalism's job is to be the administration's mouthpiece/puppets.
Summary Judgments
The federal government just paid $24 million to 100 black Secret Service agents as a settlement. Why? They were routinely passed over for promotion in favor of less-qualified white Secret Service agents. While a settlement usually includes no admission of guilt, it also is a "I don't want to take this to the courts to prove I'm innocent." It's the purest example of "make this story go away please." • • • I have seen as many of my liberal friends upset over comments by an NBC writer about Barron Trump as conservative friends. It's not a one-sided issue, even though my conservative friends seem to think so. Kids are off limits, unless they bring attention to themselves. Barron did no such thing. But all this hoopla over it? It was dealt with quickly and properly on the next business day and everyone was equally upset. Where's the fire? • • • Scary stuff from Minnesota, where the governor collapsed while delivering the State of the State. He's OK and this has happened before, but scary nonetheless. One thing I found interesting about the journalism in that linked story: There's no mention of his party affiliation. That's because party affiliation isn't important when it comes to health. • • • An oral history of an Internet cartoon I spent a lot of time watching when I was younger? Yes, please. More about Homestar Runner and Strong Bad. More Teen Girl Squad (which matches up surprisingly well with the Bennet daughters in Pride and Prejudice). • • • I ran three times last week before taking a few days off for having a cold/it being cold reasons. I at least have a head light now, so I won't fall anymore. I'm still sore! • • • We've been playing a lot of hide and seek lately, which amounts to me hiding and the kids counting to 10 (educational!) before going to look for me. When they find me, Evie usually says "I scared you," which is usually right if you reverse the pronouns. But it always amuses us when Evie wants to hide. She always picks the same spot (by the front door) and giggles when we get to 10. One time, we said "Let's go look for Evie!" And she responded, "That's me!" giving away her location. It's adorable and I love it.
Friday, January 27, 2017
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Reaching an NFL Plateau
I don't think the National Football League will ever fade out of the public eye for good, nor will it truly wane. But I think its years of growth are over. *Note: I'm not the first to take this stance, but I'm pulling some things from the last few days.
First of all, it's too expensive to go to a game. It's roughly $60-$80 for the cheapest seats available at Arrowhead Stadium for a Chiefs game, plus $20-$40 for parking, plus another $20-50 for food once you're there. That's not sustainable because it's not accessible. Granted, there are maybe 7-10 home games a year, but that's still not accessible. Further, it's not as non-stop action in person as you'd think. The first NFL game I went to was in Dallas as a kid, and I remember being struck by how much down time there was because of TV breaks. And with the development of HD televisions and not having to deal with rowdy, drunk fans, home is a better — and cheaper! — alternative on Sundays.
Second, it's starting to become uncomfortable to watch because of potential head injuries. The threat of chronic head trauma means that every time a player gets hit in the head or there's a particularly violent tackle, it means years of a life being shaved off. During the final Chiefs game of the season, Chris Conley took a vicious hit to the head. He looked dazed immediately. When it happened live, I said, "Oh, yay! Oh no!" because I was happy the Chiefs were getting closer to the end zone, but frightened for Conley. It didn't look good on the replay. TV went to a commercial, and when it came back, he was walking off with help. He was back on the field a play later. But the whole time, I felt uncomfortable about what I'd just seen. Am I watching a player who's going to need assistance by the time he's 50? One of the most dynamic athletes of all time, Bo Jackson, has said that he would never have played football if he'd known what it does to a player's brain. That's troubling about the long-term future of the sport.
Third, there are three clear examples that the NFL does not care about its fans all that much. Two teams have left their decades-long homes for the greener pastures of Los Angeles: the Rams and the Chargers. The Rams franchise has a long history of being back and forth, but they'd found a home in St. Louis. They'd also put the price tag for their stadium onto the backs of Missouri taxpayers. The Rams told the state that they'd leave for Los Angeles without a new billion-dollar stadium, and the state (and St. Louis) said no. Now that the Rams are in Los Angeles (which didn't really want them), the state is still on the hot seat: Missouri will be paying $12 million a year until 2022 for the Edward Jones Dome, built in 1995. The Chargers also made a similar blackmail threat, thinking that Los Angeles wanted them, too. The Chargers had been in San Diego since the 1970s. But voters (wisely) rejected paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of an NFL franchise. So Chargers owner Dean Spanos is now paying $650 million to move the team to L.A., which doesn't appear to want them. Why he couldn't have used that money to keep the team in San Diego is beyond the point. Finally, the Oakland Raiders will soon drop "Oakland" to become the "Las Vegas Raiders." The teams don't care about the cities they live in. We're just profits to them.
Finally, I think the NFL has overdone it a little in its zeal to control the game. You can't celebrate touchdowns anymore without either a fine or a flag. It's something out of a Key and Peele sketch made real. Further, there aren't a lot of surprises right now. Either Tom Brady, Peyton Manning or Ben Roethlisberger has represented the AFC for all but one of the last 14 years. Finally, some Pro Bowl changes were overdue, but changing the location from Hawaii to Orlando and putting it the week before the Super Bowl (and therefore losing the players in the Super Bowl).
Details Matter
When the intelligence community said that they think Russia interfered in our election, they mean two things: 1) Russian intelligence used propaganda elements to discourage Clinton voters and encourage Trump voters. 2) Russia's hacking and subsequent release of DNC emails possibly changed the outcome of the election. They do not mean that Russia hacked the election itself, but that they influenced the election.
I think this is important to note. When we say Russia hacked the election, it's that they influenced people, not votes. It's not the overt vote-rigging that I think some imagine when we say Russia hacked the election. So when people say that Donald Trump won the election, they're right. He still won the votes in the right places. But when people say that Russia didn't affect the election, they're wrong.
We don't know how much it affected the outcome. Did it convince enough people in enough swing states to make a difference? Who can say definitively?
But one thing else I want people to note: Donald Trump ended up nearly 3 million votes behind Hillary Clinton. Yet he won because he won all the swing states and had enough of an edge in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan to pull it out. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin hadn't gone Republican since before I was 10, yet they went Republican, because people change. There's nothing that says they won't change their minds again in four years.
Summary Judgments
According to this Jezebel piece and this Cracked piece, Trump is a prosperity gospel believer. Of course he is. In short, prosperity gospel believes that God blesses people financially, etc., as reward for their faith. It's also the opposite: People are rich because of their faith. It ignores things that Jesus said. I agree with the title of that piece that it's "Distorted Gospel." It explains a lot about Donald Trump, actually. • • • I went for my first run of the season on Wednesday. It was still dark outside, and it was foggy, and actually freezing fog, so the roads were a bit slick. That's all legitimate justification for tripping on some debris and biting it pretty hard. I had stigmata on my left hand for a few minutes, and my shoulder's been sore ever since. It wasn't that running was hard or that I was embarrassed. The feeling that came to mind immediately was that I was old. I hope to fix that feeling as I run more often. • • • I thought this was a good breakdown of the election by FiveThirtyEight genius Nate Silver. They were the least wrong about the election, and I think he's been far more middle-of-the-road about it than people give him credit for. • • • I don't have a great story about the kids this week. Sorry! Nothing stands out right now. I'm sure we'll make up for it soon.
First of all, it's too expensive to go to a game. It's roughly $60-$80 for the cheapest seats available at Arrowhead Stadium for a Chiefs game, plus $20-$40 for parking, plus another $20-50 for food once you're there. That's not sustainable because it's not accessible. Granted, there are maybe 7-10 home games a year, but that's still not accessible. Further, it's not as non-stop action in person as you'd think. The first NFL game I went to was in Dallas as a kid, and I remember being struck by how much down time there was because of TV breaks. And with the development of HD televisions and not having to deal with rowdy, drunk fans, home is a better — and cheaper! — alternative on Sundays.
Second, it's starting to become uncomfortable to watch because of potential head injuries. The threat of chronic head trauma means that every time a player gets hit in the head or there's a particularly violent tackle, it means years of a life being shaved off. During the final Chiefs game of the season, Chris Conley took a vicious hit to the head. He looked dazed immediately. When it happened live, I said, "Oh, yay! Oh no!" because I was happy the Chiefs were getting closer to the end zone, but frightened for Conley. It didn't look good on the replay. TV went to a commercial, and when it came back, he was walking off with help. He was back on the field a play later. But the whole time, I felt uncomfortable about what I'd just seen. Am I watching a player who's going to need assistance by the time he's 50? One of the most dynamic athletes of all time, Bo Jackson, has said that he would never have played football if he'd known what it does to a player's brain. That's troubling about the long-term future of the sport.
Third, there are three clear examples that the NFL does not care about its fans all that much. Two teams have left their decades-long homes for the greener pastures of Los Angeles: the Rams and the Chargers. The Rams franchise has a long history of being back and forth, but they'd found a home in St. Louis. They'd also put the price tag for their stadium onto the backs of Missouri taxpayers. The Rams told the state that they'd leave for Los Angeles without a new billion-dollar stadium, and the state (and St. Louis) said no. Now that the Rams are in Los Angeles (which didn't really want them), the state is still on the hot seat: Missouri will be paying $12 million a year until 2022 for the Edward Jones Dome, built in 1995. The Chargers also made a similar blackmail threat, thinking that Los Angeles wanted them, too. The Chargers had been in San Diego since the 1970s. But voters (wisely) rejected paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of an NFL franchise. So Chargers owner Dean Spanos is now paying $650 million to move the team to L.A., which doesn't appear to want them. Why he couldn't have used that money to keep the team in San Diego is beyond the point. Finally, the Oakland Raiders will soon drop "Oakland" to become the "Las Vegas Raiders." The teams don't care about the cities they live in. We're just profits to them.
Finally, I think the NFL has overdone it a little in its zeal to control the game. You can't celebrate touchdowns anymore without either a fine or a flag. It's something out of a Key and Peele sketch made real. Further, there aren't a lot of surprises right now. Either Tom Brady, Peyton Manning or Ben Roethlisberger has represented the AFC for all but one of the last 14 years. Finally, some Pro Bowl changes were overdue, but changing the location from Hawaii to Orlando and putting it the week before the Super Bowl (and therefore losing the players in the Super Bowl).
Details Matter
When the intelligence community said that they think Russia interfered in our election, they mean two things: 1) Russian intelligence used propaganda elements to discourage Clinton voters and encourage Trump voters. 2) Russia's hacking and subsequent release of DNC emails possibly changed the outcome of the election. They do not mean that Russia hacked the election itself, but that they influenced the election.
I think this is important to note. When we say Russia hacked the election, it's that they influenced people, not votes. It's not the overt vote-rigging that I think some imagine when we say Russia hacked the election. So when people say that Donald Trump won the election, they're right. He still won the votes in the right places. But when people say that Russia didn't affect the election, they're wrong.
We don't know how much it affected the outcome. Did it convince enough people in enough swing states to make a difference? Who can say definitively?
But one thing else I want people to note: Donald Trump ended up nearly 3 million votes behind Hillary Clinton. Yet he won because he won all the swing states and had enough of an edge in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan to pull it out. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin hadn't gone Republican since before I was 10, yet they went Republican, because people change. There's nothing that says they won't change their minds again in four years.
Summary Judgments
According to this Jezebel piece and this Cracked piece, Trump is a prosperity gospel believer. Of course he is. In short, prosperity gospel believes that God blesses people financially, etc., as reward for their faith. It's also the opposite: People are rich because of their faith. It ignores things that Jesus said. I agree with the title of that piece that it's "Distorted Gospel." It explains a lot about Donald Trump, actually. • • • I went for my first run of the season on Wednesday. It was still dark outside, and it was foggy, and actually freezing fog, so the roads were a bit slick. That's all legitimate justification for tripping on some debris and biting it pretty hard. I had stigmata on my left hand for a few minutes, and my shoulder's been sore ever since. It wasn't that running was hard or that I was embarrassed. The feeling that came to mind immediately was that I was old. I hope to fix that feeling as I run more often. • • • I thought this was a good breakdown of the election by FiveThirtyEight genius Nate Silver. They were the least wrong about the election, and I think he's been far more middle-of-the-road about it than people give him credit for. • • • I don't have a great story about the kids this week. Sorry! Nothing stands out right now. I'm sure we'll make up for it soon.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Obama's Legacy
I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that Donald Trump will sit in the Oval Office, but such is life. With the last weeks of President Obama, it's time to take a look back at eight years and see what he did well, what he did poorly, and some of the odd things about his presidency.
Good
One of the biggest successes of the Obama Presidency is the turnaround in the economy. When the Great Recession hit in 2008/2009, the country was in a dire place. And Obama — once he got settled in — made some clear strides to correct that. The ARRA (aka the "stimulus") was actually a large success, bringing jobs, improved infrastructure and more that wouldn't have been possible without it. In an example of what can happen when the two parties aren't at odds, George W. Bush passed the auto bailout, but left it to the incoming administration to distribute and manage. It's to both presidency's credit that the auto industry was triaged, saving what could. Chrysler and GM were eventually saved and the auto industry is doing well again. Unemployment is half of what it was (depending on your choice of measure) and Wall Street is booming. Job growth has been good. We are in a better financial place now than when he took office. You could argue that there's nowhere to go but down; You could also argue that any president would have done something. But we didn't have any president, we had Obama. And he deserves credit for taking action and having success.
I think the Iran nuclear agreement will be seen as a success, too. America has a lot of problems with Iran. Many of those are legitimate. We see them as an agitator in the Middle East. They probably are. This deal, however, agrees to limit the nuclear weapons capability of a country that could have pursued it if they wanted. We have monitoring, we have an agreement in place, and we have parameters. That's better than the nothing that we would have had. Is it perfect? No. But it takes compromise to get a deal.
American troops are no longer in Iraq and Afghanistan to the same extent as they were. We're practically out of Iraq already, and there are some troops still in Afghanistan. However, they are fractions of what they were. There were about 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan when Obama took over. Even after the surge (which reached nearly 100,000 troops), the number of troops is closer to 10,000, with plans in place to drop to 5,500 by the end of the year.
Osama Bin Laden is dead. There are reports that the previous administration moved away from targeting him. However, Obama made the decision to target him and also made the decision to do a stunning raid to take him out. This is arguably the best moment of his presidency. Further, al Qaeda is crippled both for reasons Obama can take credit for and those he cannot (See below, re: ISIS).
I go back and forth on this subject, but I think taking immigration seriously as a subject also includes being tough on those that break the law. While Obama had some major changes with DACA/DAPA (See below), it would have been hard for him to speak with authority if he didn't take the deportation of foreign criminals seriously. And he did, deporting 24 percent more people than George W. Bush and leading some to call him the Deporter-in-Chief. The more you look at his record, the more you can tell he has been very tough on those attempting to cross the Mexican border or those who commit crimes once already here. But for non-criminals and those who were already in America, he has been more lenient.
Climate change is real, and it is happening. And Obama was part of an international delegation that reached an agreement about it, called the Paris Climate Agreement. It's significant enough that climate change is being taken seriously. It's more significant that the U.S. did not stick its nose in the sand while other countries addressed the problem — we were an active participant. Again, the agreement isn't perfect, but building something is always harder than tearing down.
Obama's most significant change in rhetoric came in the area of LGBT rights. He did not start out in favor of it, but has come around to it. On a national scale, he's made moves to make LGBT discrimination illegal. While he didn't directly do it, the Supreme Court codified gay marriage into law during his tenure. The societal ills of passing gay marriage have not come to pass.
The Lilly Ledbetter Act is not the panacea to wage discrimination that it's declared to be. But it's a major step. It was one of his first major proposals to address the wage gap between men and women in the workforce.
The most significant thing about Barack Obama is something he could not control, but is probably what lifted him to the Oval Office — symbology. In the photo at left, 5-year-old Jacob Philadelphia touches Obama's hair back in 2012. "I want to know if my hair is just like yours," the boy said. And the President bent over to let him discover for himself. It makes me tear up every time, because it's so powerful, and the President didn't say a word. On the right is a picture that shows 106-year-old Virginia McLaurin dancing with Barack and Michelle Obama. She's now 107 and still dancing. She was born in segregated South Carolina, and picked cotton in her youth. She saw and met the first black President. That's worth waiting for.
Bad
Barack Obama's biggest failure is in the Middle East. In removing the Armed Forces and much of the muscle from the region, that left a power vacuum that was not filled by the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government has largely turned out to be unhelpful, but they seemed to stoke sectarian violence. Into that breach came more radical sectarian groups, first called Al Qaeda in Iraq (in the Bush years) and operating in war-torn Syria before seizing land and declaring itself ISIS. The rise of the brutal and violent ISIS has been the biggest fault. On one hand, it's understandable — we just got out of land wars in Asia, and it doesn't usually turn out well. On the other, ISIS was given plenty of space and time, and it grew to dangerous levels. They were not dealt with, and it metastasized into an international threat. There are ISIS-inspired attacks in our country, there are ISIS attacks internationally, and ISIS seems to be planting seed groups in many hotspots. Barack Obama did not want to get us into another war. But it found him anyway.
Another example of his reticence to take military action was in Syria. Specifically, I remember his "red line" about the use of chemical weapons by Assad. Then Assad used chemical weapons. And we got to the brink of doing something. Then Secretary of State John Kerry was asked what could Assad do to prevent a U.S. attack, he offhandedly said Assad could admit to having chemical weapons and give them all up peacefully. There wasn't the honest expectation that it could be done. Almost immediately, Russia forced Syria to do just that. America stayed out. Syria remains in Civil War, and Russia looks like a major player in the Middle East. The good news is that we got chemical weapons out of Syria (and therefore removed a threat to Israel and other allies in the region). The bad news is that Syria's still a mess, and we looked weak.
Guantanamo Bay is still open. This was a big campaign promise, and he never could do it. The number of prisoners is down (from nearly 250 to roughly 60), but this is still a black mark on the nation.
The economy didn't come back better than ever. GDP growth has been close to 2 percent. It "should" be at 3-4 percent. So it's growing, just not as fast as we want. The labor force is falling (though much of this can be attributed to Baby Boomers retiring and people deciding to pursue college degrees). The number of Americans in poverty has risen. The number of Americans on food stamps rose dramatically. Net household wealth has been relatively stagnant until late. Manufacturing took a lot of hits, and they weren't fully replaced. The gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of us has only continued to grow. We haven't fixed the structural issues of our economy.
One other issue is racial relations. Tension has boiled over several times, and while Obama's rhetoric wasn't always as divisive as it was painted to be, I don't think it always helped. Sometimes it's OK to sit back and let justice be done. Other times, like the investigation into Ferguson, deeper issues were revealed. I would say that we haven't done anything to address racial relations in America. We like to ignore it. When it does rise up, it becomes this question of Who do you Support?, pitting cops v. people of color. And that's a false dichotomy. Finally, while the trends are still down, there has been a spike in murders in the last year in big cities. Gun violence has not been addressed at all.
Somewhere In The Middle
You've said it; I've said it; even Barack Obama's said it: I still don't know why he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy has been both successful and found to be constitutional. Effectively, it's a policy of not prosecuting children who are brought to America illegally as minors. It also makes them eligible for work permits. This is good. Its sister program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) extended that policy to parents of American-born citizens. It has been blocked by federal judges until its constitutionality can be determined, but it's likely to be a moot point with Trump coming in.
His signature health plan, Obamacare, is listed here. I think there is no doubt that it was better than what we had before. It offers many protections and possibilities that were not available. I also think it's fair to say it didn't live up to hype. It's better than you think because you forget what it was like before it and it has legitimately saved the lives of many people. It's also worse than you think because many of its provisions were gutted by Republican opponents, it was tasked by the public with solving a problem it wasn't meant to address (health care costs), and it's been dramatically misinterpreted by even those who have stood to benefit from it. I give him credit for putting his neck on the line for such a big piece of legislation. I also take credit away because he always felt defensive about it. Life is better with Obamacare existing, but its lack of total embrace nationally has left it with a bumpy future.
Drone strikes are a necessary evil, I think. I don't like them and think it makes the decision to act in war seem like a video game — there's no personal stakes if you can kill from a computer desk on a different continent. But I also understand that they prevent human deaths.
Probably the biggest mixed bag has been that he couldn't find any common ground with Republicans. They were obstructive to a fault. Whose fault is it? Your answer may vary, but I certainly think fault lies on both sides. There were some battles that didn't need to be fought (debt ceiling, for one) and others that were fought vindictively. Not one Republican vote for Obamacare. I personally find that the GOP made things difficult from Day One for him, but I also think he made some enemies before he should have.
Gang of Eight
Since this blog originally started out to critique the news organizations, it's time I got back to that a little bit. In a recent CNN story about the troubling intelligence that was given to our nation's top leaders about Russia possibly blackmailing our President-Elect into supporting their positions (It's messy and I'm not sure how much I believe it, but it's troubling that the allegations exist at all), CNN referred to the "Gang of Eight" as the top four Congressional leaders and the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate/House intelligence committees.
The positive news is that they explained what they meant by "Gang of Eight." Unfortunately, this was potentially confusing. The term most famously referred to the bipartisan group of eight senators that pushed a 2013 immigration bill (that ultimately failed). Members of that group include Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Jeff Flake. What a diverse group!
It turns out that "Gang of Eight" originated with its intelligence use — the one CNN used most recently. It was particularly in use in the late Bush 43 years, when Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez repeatedly used the phrase in hearings on the Bush Administration's warrantless surveillance/domestic spying program.
To make matters more confusing, there was another "Gang of Eight" that formed to avoid the Fiscal Cliff issue. There's also a Canadian "Gang of Eight" and an attempted coup of Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR by a "Gang of Eight." There was also a 1962 Mexican-Spanish movie called.... "Gang of Eight."
In short, there are several uses of "Gang of Eight." The first two (immigration and intelligence) are fairly regular terms in Washington. To avoid confusion, I propose that the immigration "Gang of Eight" be renamed. It's not exactly a term that rolls off the tongue anyway, and there's no reason "gang" needs to be there. Since I'm rolling over a new leaf this year and proposing solutions instead of just complaining, I propose the immigration group goes by "Banda de los Ocho." It's Spanish for Gang of Eight, and it's at least a tie to the Spanish-speaking immigrants that they're trying to help.
Summary Judgments
I've barely stepped foot in California in my entire life. But going there to explore Yosemite and the Sequoia trees are on my bucket list. After heavy rains and a long life, the famous "drive-thru tree" or "tunnel tree" at Calaveras Big Trees State Park will no longer be an option. I'm saddened. • • • Charlie Brotman has been the Inauguration Announcer for every President since 1957. He was unceremoniously dumped by our incoming President to make way for a campaign supporter. Was this necessary? It doesn't take any effort to be kind, and this was the smallest possible act of kindness the President-Elect could have made. • • • I'm both an OU fan and a Chiefs fan. This story by ESPN's Mina Kimes about the struggle to be a fan of players who have domestic violence backgrounds like Joe Mixon and Tyreek Hill hit the nail on the head. Also, Sports Illustrated beat ESPN to a similar story. I want to cheer these players on the field, but knowing what they've done off the field makes me question that. Although they're saying and doing the right things now, do you permanently paint them by their sins or, by forgiving them, are you tacitly forgetting the heinous things in their past? It's a question without an answer, I'm afraid. • • • I think I want to see this Russian version of X-Men/The Avengers? • • • Running starts up next week, or as soon as this weekend's expected ice storm melts enough. I'm planning to sign up for four runs, each 4 miles long, with the first on St. Patty's Day. I'm also going to do a 5K obstacle course in April and probably run two other races (the same ones I did this year. My goal is 32 miles at age 32. I just want it to warm up a bit so I can get on that. • • • Roland's definitely more talkative than Evie, but he's also WAY more opinionated, bordering on rude. I'm usually the first up with the kids in the morning before I take my shower after Alyson wakes up. But when Alyson wakes up first or early? "No, Mommy. Go back to bed. No talking!"
Good
One of the biggest successes of the Obama Presidency is the turnaround in the economy. When the Great Recession hit in 2008/2009, the country was in a dire place. And Obama — once he got settled in — made some clear strides to correct that. The ARRA (aka the "stimulus") was actually a large success, bringing jobs, improved infrastructure and more that wouldn't have been possible without it. In an example of what can happen when the two parties aren't at odds, George W. Bush passed the auto bailout, but left it to the incoming administration to distribute and manage. It's to both presidency's credit that the auto industry was triaged, saving what could. Chrysler and GM were eventually saved and the auto industry is doing well again. Unemployment is half of what it was (depending on your choice of measure) and Wall Street is booming. Job growth has been good. We are in a better financial place now than when he took office. You could argue that there's nowhere to go but down; You could also argue that any president would have done something. But we didn't have any president, we had Obama. And he deserves credit for taking action and having success.
I think the Iran nuclear agreement will be seen as a success, too. America has a lot of problems with Iran. Many of those are legitimate. We see them as an agitator in the Middle East. They probably are. This deal, however, agrees to limit the nuclear weapons capability of a country that could have pursued it if they wanted. We have monitoring, we have an agreement in place, and we have parameters. That's better than the nothing that we would have had. Is it perfect? No. But it takes compromise to get a deal.
American troops are no longer in Iraq and Afghanistan to the same extent as they were. We're practically out of Iraq already, and there are some troops still in Afghanistan. However, they are fractions of what they were. There were about 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan when Obama took over. Even after the surge (which reached nearly 100,000 troops), the number of troops is closer to 10,000, with plans in place to drop to 5,500 by the end of the year.
Osama Bin Laden is dead. There are reports that the previous administration moved away from targeting him. However, Obama made the decision to target him and also made the decision to do a stunning raid to take him out. This is arguably the best moment of his presidency. Further, al Qaeda is crippled both for reasons Obama can take credit for and those he cannot (See below, re: ISIS).
I go back and forth on this subject, but I think taking immigration seriously as a subject also includes being tough on those that break the law. While Obama had some major changes with DACA/DAPA (See below), it would have been hard for him to speak with authority if he didn't take the deportation of foreign criminals seriously. And he did, deporting 24 percent more people than George W. Bush and leading some to call him the Deporter-in-Chief. The more you look at his record, the more you can tell he has been very tough on those attempting to cross the Mexican border or those who commit crimes once already here. But for non-criminals and those who were already in America, he has been more lenient.
Climate change is real, and it is happening. And Obama was part of an international delegation that reached an agreement about it, called the Paris Climate Agreement. It's significant enough that climate change is being taken seriously. It's more significant that the U.S. did not stick its nose in the sand while other countries addressed the problem — we were an active participant. Again, the agreement isn't perfect, but building something is always harder than tearing down.
Obama's most significant change in rhetoric came in the area of LGBT rights. He did not start out in favor of it, but has come around to it. On a national scale, he's made moves to make LGBT discrimination illegal. While he didn't directly do it, the Supreme Court codified gay marriage into law during his tenure. The societal ills of passing gay marriage have not come to pass.
The Lilly Ledbetter Act is not the panacea to wage discrimination that it's declared to be. But it's a major step. It was one of his first major proposals to address the wage gap between men and women in the workforce.
The most significant thing about Barack Obama is something he could not control, but is probably what lifted him to the Oval Office — symbology. In the photo at left, 5-year-old Jacob Philadelphia touches Obama's hair back in 2012. "I want to know if my hair is just like yours," the boy said. And the President bent over to let him discover for himself. It makes me tear up every time, because it's so powerful, and the President didn't say a word. On the right is a picture that shows 106-year-old Virginia McLaurin dancing with Barack and Michelle Obama. She's now 107 and still dancing. She was born in segregated South Carolina, and picked cotton in her youth. She saw and met the first black President. That's worth waiting for.
Bad
Barack Obama's biggest failure is in the Middle East. In removing the Armed Forces and much of the muscle from the region, that left a power vacuum that was not filled by the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government has largely turned out to be unhelpful, but they seemed to stoke sectarian violence. Into that breach came more radical sectarian groups, first called Al Qaeda in Iraq (in the Bush years) and operating in war-torn Syria before seizing land and declaring itself ISIS. The rise of the brutal and violent ISIS has been the biggest fault. On one hand, it's understandable — we just got out of land wars in Asia, and it doesn't usually turn out well. On the other, ISIS was given plenty of space and time, and it grew to dangerous levels. They were not dealt with, and it metastasized into an international threat. There are ISIS-inspired attacks in our country, there are ISIS attacks internationally, and ISIS seems to be planting seed groups in many hotspots. Barack Obama did not want to get us into another war. But it found him anyway.
Another example of his reticence to take military action was in Syria. Specifically, I remember his "red line" about the use of chemical weapons by Assad. Then Assad used chemical weapons. And we got to the brink of doing something. Then Secretary of State John Kerry was asked what could Assad do to prevent a U.S. attack, he offhandedly said Assad could admit to having chemical weapons and give them all up peacefully. There wasn't the honest expectation that it could be done. Almost immediately, Russia forced Syria to do just that. America stayed out. Syria remains in Civil War, and Russia looks like a major player in the Middle East. The good news is that we got chemical weapons out of Syria (and therefore removed a threat to Israel and other allies in the region). The bad news is that Syria's still a mess, and we looked weak.
Guantanamo Bay is still open. This was a big campaign promise, and he never could do it. The number of prisoners is down (from nearly 250 to roughly 60), but this is still a black mark on the nation.
The economy didn't come back better than ever. GDP growth has been close to 2 percent. It "should" be at 3-4 percent. So it's growing, just not as fast as we want. The labor force is falling (though much of this can be attributed to Baby Boomers retiring and people deciding to pursue college degrees). The number of Americans in poverty has risen. The number of Americans on food stamps rose dramatically. Net household wealth has been relatively stagnant until late. Manufacturing took a lot of hits, and they weren't fully replaced. The gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of us has only continued to grow. We haven't fixed the structural issues of our economy.
One other issue is racial relations. Tension has boiled over several times, and while Obama's rhetoric wasn't always as divisive as it was painted to be, I don't think it always helped. Sometimes it's OK to sit back and let justice be done. Other times, like the investigation into Ferguson, deeper issues were revealed. I would say that we haven't done anything to address racial relations in America. We like to ignore it. When it does rise up, it becomes this question of Who do you Support?, pitting cops v. people of color. And that's a false dichotomy. Finally, while the trends are still down, there has been a spike in murders in the last year in big cities. Gun violence has not been addressed at all.
Somewhere In The Middle
You've said it; I've said it; even Barack Obama's said it: I still don't know why he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy has been both successful and found to be constitutional. Effectively, it's a policy of not prosecuting children who are brought to America illegally as minors. It also makes them eligible for work permits. This is good. Its sister program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) extended that policy to parents of American-born citizens. It has been blocked by federal judges until its constitutionality can be determined, but it's likely to be a moot point with Trump coming in.
His signature health plan, Obamacare, is listed here. I think there is no doubt that it was better than what we had before. It offers many protections and possibilities that were not available. I also think it's fair to say it didn't live up to hype. It's better than you think because you forget what it was like before it and it has legitimately saved the lives of many people. It's also worse than you think because many of its provisions were gutted by Republican opponents, it was tasked by the public with solving a problem it wasn't meant to address (health care costs), and it's been dramatically misinterpreted by even those who have stood to benefit from it. I give him credit for putting his neck on the line for such a big piece of legislation. I also take credit away because he always felt defensive about it. Life is better with Obamacare existing, but its lack of total embrace nationally has left it with a bumpy future.
Drone strikes are a necessary evil, I think. I don't like them and think it makes the decision to act in war seem like a video game — there's no personal stakes if you can kill from a computer desk on a different continent. But I also understand that they prevent human deaths.
Probably the biggest mixed bag has been that he couldn't find any common ground with Republicans. They were obstructive to a fault. Whose fault is it? Your answer may vary, but I certainly think fault lies on both sides. There were some battles that didn't need to be fought (debt ceiling, for one) and others that were fought vindictively. Not one Republican vote for Obamacare. I personally find that the GOP made things difficult from Day One for him, but I also think he made some enemies before he should have.
Gang of Eight
Since this blog originally started out to critique the news organizations, it's time I got back to that a little bit. In a recent CNN story about the troubling intelligence that was given to our nation's top leaders about Russia possibly blackmailing our President-Elect into supporting their positions (It's messy and I'm not sure how much I believe it, but it's troubling that the allegations exist at all), CNN referred to the "Gang of Eight" as the top four Congressional leaders and the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate/House intelligence committees.
The positive news is that they explained what they meant by "Gang of Eight." Unfortunately, this was potentially confusing. The term most famously referred to the bipartisan group of eight senators that pushed a 2013 immigration bill (that ultimately failed). Members of that group include Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Jeff Flake. What a diverse group!
It turns out that "Gang of Eight" originated with its intelligence use — the one CNN used most recently. It was particularly in use in the late Bush 43 years, when Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez repeatedly used the phrase in hearings on the Bush Administration's warrantless surveillance/domestic spying program.
To make matters more confusing, there was another "Gang of Eight" that formed to avoid the Fiscal Cliff issue. There's also a Canadian "Gang of Eight" and an attempted coup of Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR by a "Gang of Eight." There was also a 1962 Mexican-Spanish movie called.... "Gang of Eight."
In short, there are several uses of "Gang of Eight." The first two (immigration and intelligence) are fairly regular terms in Washington. To avoid confusion, I propose that the immigration "Gang of Eight" be renamed. It's not exactly a term that rolls off the tongue anyway, and there's no reason "gang" needs to be there. Since I'm rolling over a new leaf this year and proposing solutions instead of just complaining, I propose the immigration group goes by "Banda de los Ocho." It's Spanish for Gang of Eight, and it's at least a tie to the Spanish-speaking immigrants that they're trying to help.
Summary Judgments
I've barely stepped foot in California in my entire life. But going there to explore Yosemite and the Sequoia trees are on my bucket list. After heavy rains and a long life, the famous "drive-thru tree" or "tunnel tree" at Calaveras Big Trees State Park will no longer be an option. I'm saddened. • • • Charlie Brotman has been the Inauguration Announcer for every President since 1957. He was unceremoniously dumped by our incoming President to make way for a campaign supporter. Was this necessary? It doesn't take any effort to be kind, and this was the smallest possible act of kindness the President-Elect could have made. • • • I'm both an OU fan and a Chiefs fan. This story by ESPN's Mina Kimes about the struggle to be a fan of players who have domestic violence backgrounds like Joe Mixon and Tyreek Hill hit the nail on the head. Also, Sports Illustrated beat ESPN to a similar story. I want to cheer these players on the field, but knowing what they've done off the field makes me question that. Although they're saying and doing the right things now, do you permanently paint them by their sins or, by forgiving them, are you tacitly forgetting the heinous things in their past? It's a question without an answer, I'm afraid. • • • I think I want to see this Russian version of X-Men/The Avengers? • • • Running starts up next week, or as soon as this weekend's expected ice storm melts enough. I'm planning to sign up for four runs, each 4 miles long, with the first on St. Patty's Day. I'm also going to do a 5K obstacle course in April and probably run two other races (the same ones I did this year. My goal is 32 miles at age 32. I just want it to warm up a bit so I can get on that. • • • Roland's definitely more talkative than Evie, but he's also WAY more opinionated, bordering on rude. I'm usually the first up with the kids in the morning before I take my shower after Alyson wakes up. But when Alyson wakes up first or early? "No, Mommy. Go back to bed. No talking!"
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Alliterative QBs and the Magic School Bus
With the end of the NFL's regular season, there were a number of quarterback injuries. Since this is the most important position in the game, you'd think teams would be ready for that. But they weren't.
Instead, we had the slate of backup quarterbacks starting. In Oakland, Matt McGloin replaced the injured Derek Carr until he was injured and replaced by Connor Cook. The Dolphins had an injured Ryan Tannehill and went to Matt Moore as backup. In Buffalo, Tyrod Taylor did not get the start because either the team wants to quietly get rid of him or he's injured .... long story. The same could be true in Jacksonville, as the Jaguars may be looking to move on from the Blake Bortles era.
All told, these names stood out to me, because people with alliterative names are not all that common, and yet here are five quarterbacks who are alliterative, and they're all backup QB-level in quality. Maybe it's just my memories, but it feels like alliterative quarterbacks are always backup-level or just not good. So I did some research to see if I was right. Follow me down the rabbit hole, will you?
Best alliterative QB: Kerry Collins
I was surprised to find someone I remembered watching be this high, but that's the case. Collins reached the Pro Bowl twice and played for six teams in 16 years in the NFL. I was shocked to learn that he passed for the 16th-most yards in NFL history. In 17th place is the legendary Joe Montana. He's also kind of the perfect proof of my thesis on alliterative QBs: He also sucked. His career record was 81-99 and he threw only 12 more touchdowns than interceptions.
Second-best: Chris Chandler, 53rd all-time passing yards, eight teams, 67-85 record, 2 Pro Bowls
Most Forgettable Career: Jeff George
This was one of the first alliterative-sounding QBs I thought of for this post. He's further proof of the alliterative-QBs-are-bad conjecture. Jeff George (also a member of the two-first-names club) played for five teams in 11 years. He only made the playoffs twice. He never made the Pro Bowl. His record as a starter is 46-78. He led the league in passing once, in 1997! But his team went 4-12. He led the league in sacks taken twice. His best season by yards/completion was 1999, when his Minnesota Vikings lost to the eventual Super Bowl-winning Rams in the playoffs. That team included young Randy Moss and veteran Chris Carter in his heyday. Jeff George was replaced by Daunte Culpepper the next season and he never started more than 5 games in a season again.
Best Deadpool: Wade Wilson
The character Deadpool, who's the basis of the recent Ryan Reynolds movie, has the real name of Wade Wilson. But there was a QB in the 1980s/1990s with the same name. The comic book character is better. The QB Wade Wilson had a long career of 17 seasons, including 10 with the Vikings and some halfway decent years in the late 1980s, including one Pro Bowl in 1988. I remember him more for being the Dallas Cowboys backup QB for Troy Aikman during the Cowboys' heyday, though he only started four games in that role. In some ways, he never left: He's still the Dallas Quarterbacks Coach, and that team has two good QBs right now in Dak Prescott and Tony Romo. He's the 125th-best passer of all time.
Best Full Name: Bubby Brister
This is a bit of a cheat, since it's not his birth name, but here's another person I instantly thought of for this post. He was never very good, but he started for the Steelers around the late 1980s/early 1990s. My memory told me he played for the Oilers, but I my memory was wrong: He never did. In his best season, he led the Steelers to a 9-7 record, but they missed the playoffs. Oh, and his full name is Walter Andrew Brister III. "Bubby" was a nickname.
Modern Name I Hadn't Considered For This List, But Is A Good Fit Now That I Think About It: Colin Kaepernick
He's probably not going to be a starting QB anymore, but it's not because of his national anthem stance. It's because he's not very good.
Most Promising Youngster Who Could Avoid The Curse: Kirk Cousins
"You Like That?" he was once caught saying after a surprising win. Kirk Cousins, now in his fifth season with the Redskins, doesn't suck. He might be good. He didn't make a Pro Bowl or anything, but he threw for more than 4,000 yards twice in a row known nearly broke the 5,000-yard mark this year with 4,916 yards, the best single season by an alliterative QB in history. The Redskins are stuck in no-man's-land with him: They can keep him, and they probably will, but they're also not sure if he's worth the $20 million+ payday (and status among the league's highest-paid QBs).
Others of Note:
Tommy Thompson, Eagles QB in the 1940s..... Mark Malone, Steelers QB in the 1980s, who Bubby Brister took over for toward the end of the decade.... Bob Berry, Vikings/Falcons QB in the 1960s.... Marcus Mariota, current QB of the Tennessee Titans.
Back on the Magic School Bus
One of the fun things about being a parent is the constant question: "Where did the kids get that from?" Recently, Roland has been begging to watch Magic School Bus. I don't know what caused him to know what it was or why he should like it, but he does. It's really scratching a nostalgia itch for me. Beyond the obvious questions, like "How is a teacher only teaching 8 kids?" and "Does the principal just constantly look the other way" and "Does the history teacher have a time machine?", the show is educational and just plain fun. Supposedly it's making a comeback sometime this year.
I'm also a little sick of it, because we have not stopped watching it lately. I never paid attention much to the actors/trivia from the show, but it's kind of amazing:
• Lily Tomlin does the voice of Miss Frizzle, of course. She won a Daytime Emmy for the role in 1996 for Outstanding Performer In an Animated Program. Ms. Frizzle's full name is Valerie Felicity Frizzle.
• Little Richard did the theme song. Once I saw that, I thought, "Why didn't I know that?"
• Arnold, the kid with glasses who wishes he'd stayed home, was/is voiced by Danny Tambarelli, who you may know as the younger of the lead characters from The Adventures of Pete and Pete. This fact blew my mind.
• The girl who voices Wanda, the Asian student, voiced one of the main characters on the kids' show Babar.
• The girl who voices Keesha, the black girl student, was one of the leads on Shining Time Station, a show I barely remember involving George Carlin and Ringo Starr. But to modern audiences, she's the voice for Sapphire on Steven Universe, a show I love.
• Malcolm-Jamal Warner voiced a character, the producer. (Sidenote: He was the long-term boyfriend of actress Michelle Thomas, who portrayed his girlfriend on The Cosby Show and later was Steve Urkel's girlfriend Myra on Family Matters. Malcolm-Jamal Warner was at her side when she died of a rare form of cancer in 1998, the same year Family Matters was canceled. One more note: She was the daughter of one of the members of Kool and the Gang.)
• The guy who voiced Ralph, Stuart Stone, is a rapper/podcast host/comedian. He's apparently somewhat famous, I guess, in his native of Canada.
• "According to my research," .... Dorothy Ann has never been given a last name in either the show or the books. It might just be "Ann."
• In the books, Ms. Frizzle has 19 kids instead of 8.
• Dorothy Ann's mom is voiced by Tony and Emmy winner Swoosie Kurtz.
• Tyne Daly voiced Ralphie's Mom! I watched that episode and didn't recognize the voice, but saw her name in the credits.
• Edward James Olmos voiced Carlos' Dad!
• Keesha's Grandma was voiced by Eartha Kitt!
• Trapper John from MASH was Arnold's Dad!
• Others providing voices: Carol Channing, Dolly Parton, Dan Marino, Wynonna Judd, Sherman Hemsley, Malcolm McDowell, Ed Asner, Rita Moreno, Dom DeLouise, Tony Randall, and Ed Begley Jr.
Summary Judgments
I'm going to give credit where it is due: I don't think the House GOP abandons its plan to gut an independent ethics group unless Donald Trump pressures them about it the next day. Of course, it was heavy handed and done haphazardly, but he got to the right result. • • • Some media notes: Greta Van Susteren of Fox News is now Greta Van Susteren of MSNBC. And NBC has also hired away Megyn Kelly from Fox News. It seems the top women (don't forget Gretchen Carlson) are leaving Fox News, even after Roger Ailes has left. Interesting to watch. • • • Chris Berman is largely retiring from ESPN. The older I got, the less I enjoyed him. But he had longevity at ESPN over nearly 30 years. • • • Sears is selling the Black and Decker brand to Craftsman. I don't think Sears is going to be around much longer, friends. • • • Evie was at daycare during the Christmas break, and one of the workers brought their husband and showed them around. Evie sees the husband (all the daycare workers happen to be females), points, and says, "It's a Boy! It's a Boy!" repeatedly.
Instead, we had the slate of backup quarterbacks starting. In Oakland, Matt McGloin replaced the injured Derek Carr until he was injured and replaced by Connor Cook. The Dolphins had an injured Ryan Tannehill and went to Matt Moore as backup. In Buffalo, Tyrod Taylor did not get the start because either the team wants to quietly get rid of him or he's injured .... long story. The same could be true in Jacksonville, as the Jaguars may be looking to move on from the Blake Bortles era.
All told, these names stood out to me, because people with alliterative names are not all that common, and yet here are five quarterbacks who are alliterative, and they're all backup QB-level in quality. Maybe it's just my memories, but it feels like alliterative quarterbacks are always backup-level or just not good. So I did some research to see if I was right. Follow me down the rabbit hole, will you?
Best alliterative QB: Kerry Collins
I was surprised to find someone I remembered watching be this high, but that's the case. Collins reached the Pro Bowl twice and played for six teams in 16 years in the NFL. I was shocked to learn that he passed for the 16th-most yards in NFL history. In 17th place is the legendary Joe Montana. He's also kind of the perfect proof of my thesis on alliterative QBs: He also sucked. His career record was 81-99 and he threw only 12 more touchdowns than interceptions.
Second-best: Chris Chandler, 53rd all-time passing yards, eight teams, 67-85 record, 2 Pro Bowls
Most Forgettable Career: Jeff George
This was one of the first alliterative-sounding QBs I thought of for this post. He's further proof of the alliterative-QBs-are-bad conjecture. Jeff George (also a member of the two-first-names club) played for five teams in 11 years. He only made the playoffs twice. He never made the Pro Bowl. His record as a starter is 46-78. He led the league in passing once, in 1997! But his team went 4-12. He led the league in sacks taken twice. His best season by yards/completion was 1999, when his Minnesota Vikings lost to the eventual Super Bowl-winning Rams in the playoffs. That team included young Randy Moss and veteran Chris Carter in his heyday. Jeff George was replaced by Daunte Culpepper the next season and he never started more than 5 games in a season again.
Best Deadpool: Wade Wilson
The character Deadpool, who's the basis of the recent Ryan Reynolds movie, has the real name of Wade Wilson. But there was a QB in the 1980s/1990s with the same name. The comic book character is better. The QB Wade Wilson had a long career of 17 seasons, including 10 with the Vikings and some halfway decent years in the late 1980s, including one Pro Bowl in 1988. I remember him more for being the Dallas Cowboys backup QB for Troy Aikman during the Cowboys' heyday, though he only started four games in that role. In some ways, he never left: He's still the Dallas Quarterbacks Coach, and that team has two good QBs right now in Dak Prescott and Tony Romo. He's the 125th-best passer of all time.
Best Full Name: Bubby Brister
This is a bit of a cheat, since it's not his birth name, but here's another person I instantly thought of for this post. He was never very good, but he started for the Steelers around the late 1980s/early 1990s. My memory told me he played for the Oilers, but I my memory was wrong: He never did. In his best season, he led the Steelers to a 9-7 record, but they missed the playoffs. Oh, and his full name is Walter Andrew Brister III. "Bubby" was a nickname.
Modern Name I Hadn't Considered For This List, But Is A Good Fit Now That I Think About It: Colin Kaepernick
He's probably not going to be a starting QB anymore, but it's not because of his national anthem stance. It's because he's not very good.
Most Promising Youngster Who Could Avoid The Curse: Kirk Cousins
"You Like That?" he was once caught saying after a surprising win. Kirk Cousins, now in his fifth season with the Redskins, doesn't suck. He might be good. He didn't make a Pro Bowl or anything, but he threw for more than 4,000 yards twice in a row known nearly broke the 5,000-yard mark this year with 4,916 yards, the best single season by an alliterative QB in history. The Redskins are stuck in no-man's-land with him: They can keep him, and they probably will, but they're also not sure if he's worth the $20 million+ payday (and status among the league's highest-paid QBs).
Others of Note:
Tommy Thompson, Eagles QB in the 1940s..... Mark Malone, Steelers QB in the 1980s, who Bubby Brister took over for toward the end of the decade.... Bob Berry, Vikings/Falcons QB in the 1960s.... Marcus Mariota, current QB of the Tennessee Titans.
Back on the Magic School Bus
One of the fun things about being a parent is the constant question: "Where did the kids get that from?" Recently, Roland has been begging to watch Magic School Bus. I don't know what caused him to know what it was or why he should like it, but he does. It's really scratching a nostalgia itch for me. Beyond the obvious questions, like "How is a teacher only teaching 8 kids?" and "Does the principal just constantly look the other way" and "Does the history teacher have a time machine?", the show is educational and just plain fun. Supposedly it's making a comeback sometime this year.
I'm also a little sick of it, because we have not stopped watching it lately. I never paid attention much to the actors/trivia from the show, but it's kind of amazing:
• Lily Tomlin does the voice of Miss Frizzle, of course. She won a Daytime Emmy for the role in 1996 for Outstanding Performer In an Animated Program. Ms. Frizzle's full name is Valerie Felicity Frizzle.
• Little Richard did the theme song. Once I saw that, I thought, "Why didn't I know that?"
• Arnold, the kid with glasses who wishes he'd stayed home, was/is voiced by Danny Tambarelli, who you may know as the younger of the lead characters from The Adventures of Pete and Pete. This fact blew my mind.
• The girl who voices Wanda, the Asian student, voiced one of the main characters on the kids' show Babar.
• The girl who voices Keesha, the black girl student, was one of the leads on Shining Time Station, a show I barely remember involving George Carlin and Ringo Starr. But to modern audiences, she's the voice for Sapphire on Steven Universe, a show I love.
• Malcolm-Jamal Warner voiced a character, the producer. (Sidenote: He was the long-term boyfriend of actress Michelle Thomas, who portrayed his girlfriend on The Cosby Show and later was Steve Urkel's girlfriend Myra on Family Matters. Malcolm-Jamal Warner was at her side when she died of a rare form of cancer in 1998, the same year Family Matters was canceled. One more note: She was the daughter of one of the members of Kool and the Gang.)
• The guy who voiced Ralph, Stuart Stone, is a rapper/podcast host/comedian. He's apparently somewhat famous, I guess, in his native of Canada.
• "According to my research," .... Dorothy Ann has never been given a last name in either the show or the books. It might just be "Ann."
• In the books, Ms. Frizzle has 19 kids instead of 8.
• Dorothy Ann's mom is voiced by Tony and Emmy winner Swoosie Kurtz.
• Tyne Daly voiced Ralphie's Mom! I watched that episode and didn't recognize the voice, but saw her name in the credits.
• Edward James Olmos voiced Carlos' Dad!
• Keesha's Grandma was voiced by Eartha Kitt!
• Trapper John from MASH was Arnold's Dad!
• Others providing voices: Carol Channing, Dolly Parton, Dan Marino, Wynonna Judd, Sherman Hemsley, Malcolm McDowell, Ed Asner, Rita Moreno, Dom DeLouise, Tony Randall, and Ed Begley Jr.
Summary Judgments
I'm going to give credit where it is due: I don't think the House GOP abandons its plan to gut an independent ethics group unless Donald Trump pressures them about it the next day. Of course, it was heavy handed and done haphazardly, but he got to the right result. • • • Some media notes: Greta Van Susteren of Fox News is now Greta Van Susteren of MSNBC. And NBC has also hired away Megyn Kelly from Fox News. It seems the top women (don't forget Gretchen Carlson) are leaving Fox News, even after Roger Ailes has left. Interesting to watch. • • • Chris Berman is largely retiring from ESPN. The older I got, the less I enjoyed him. But he had longevity at ESPN over nearly 30 years. • • • Sears is selling the Black and Decker brand to Craftsman. I don't think Sears is going to be around much longer, friends. • • • Evie was at daycare during the Christmas break, and one of the workers brought their husband and showed them around. Evie sees the husband (all the daycare workers happen to be females), points, and says, "It's a Boy! It's a Boy!" repeatedly.
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