My Political Fantasy Pence & Haley 2020

In the election for President this November I will vote for the Republican candidate. I have made this decision because I believe that the Democrat party has become a nihilistic, anarchist, racial grievance party. Putting it into power would be extraordinarily dangerous.

Beyond that I have hated Biden since his attacks on Bork and Thomas in the early 80s.

I will vote for Trump, not out of any admiration or belief in him or the job that he has done, but just because the Democrat party and their candidates are such an incredible threat to the constitution and the health of the republic.

I am absolutely convinced that if they have a majority in the Senate, they will enact measures that will permanently alter the balance of American politics in their favor, such as packing the Supreme Court with young ultra liberals, making Washington DC and Puerto Rico States to give them 4 extra senators, and enacting procedural changes to election conduct to make it impossible to control their frauds*.

I also fear that they will revert to the Obama foreign policy of sucking up to China, Russia, and Iran, that they will sacrifice the national defense budget for social welfare programs, and that they will undermine Israel’s position in the Middle East.

I also want to make it clear, that I do not have any real quarrels with the substance of actions taken by this administration. In particular, I think that the whole China virus epidemic has raised serious questions that are not properly debated and are so far from clarity that it will take years to evaluate what was the right thing to do**. Although, I will not give Trump any style points.

I only know what I see in the media. I don’t want to argue about the validity or meaning of polls. Nor, do I have any useful things to say about election strategy. But … the conventional wisdom is that if this election is a referendum on Donald Trump, he will lose. And, that possibility has me worried sick.

What follows is my fantasy. If you don’t like it, go have your own fantasy.

If Trump is seeing what the vast majority of pundits think is reality, maybe, just maybe, he will decide that he does not want to be humiliated by losing to a moron like Joe Biden and being responsible for the reign of terror that will be inflicted on the Country.

Therefore, on Thursday night, he will begin his acceptance speech by thanking the party for its trust and confidence. He will then say that after much soul searching and discussion with his family, he decided that he must decline the nomination. He feels that he has accomplished most of what he set out to do, but that for the sake of his health and the incredible burden that has been placed upon his family, he has decided that he should step aside. He would be the oldest man to ever begin a term as President and it is just not fair to the Country to have even the slim possibility of a health problem that might interfere with steering the ship of state in very turbulent waters.

He therefor is requesting the unanimous consent of the party to the nomination of Mike Pence as its candidate for President. Mike and he have agreed that the party and the country would best be served by having Ambassador Nikki Haley be the party’s nominee for vice president.

Doing this would entirely reset the election. The media would have a melt down because their obsession with Trump would no longer be the issue. Pence is 17 years younger than Biden. Haley is more experienced than Harris, and she is also the child of Indian immigrants. She is also smarter, younger, and prettier than Harris.

I really doubt that this will happen. I don’t think Trump believes that he can lose. Nor do I think he is willing to sacrifice personal advantage for the well being of the Republican party, of which he was not a member before he ran for President, or to protect the republic. But, it is nice to have a fantasy.

*The Democrat party has lived off of fraud for centuries.

**It will take a long time before we understand the social and economic damage that has been inflicted by lockdowns (e.g. people who died from heart attacks because they afraid to go the hospital, people who slipped into drug addiction because they were lonely and bored) and what the real cost of the virus infection was. As I wrote before, any disease that kills mostly very old people and very few children is probably not that much of a problem.

"Biden’s Lockdown Mistake: A President’s job is to consider the national interest, not to default to experts who often disagree." By The Editorial Board | Aug. 23, 2020 | WSJ.com

"The truth is that the experts have been wrong numerous times in this pandemic, and they often disagree. They first said masks don’t help but now say they do. They said ventilators were vital but soon learned other clinical methods worked better. Most of all, they counseled strict lockdowns, but we’ve learned the hard way that shutting down the country can be more costly than the virus. ...

"A study this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports that newly identified cancers fell 46.4% from March 1 to April 18, which will likely lead to cancers detected at more advanced stages with worse clinical outcomes.

"Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic last month reported the incidence of stress-induced cardiomyopathy from March 1 to April 30 increased four-fold. Doctors at Tufts Medical Center last month warned that psychological distress, fear and emotional stress, “coupled with worse clinical outcomes when patients avoid seeking effective care, creates a double hit from this pandemic in which morbidity and mortality associated with cardiac disease might well overtake the risks directly linked to the virus itself.”

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week reported that 13.3% of Americans in June said they had increased substance use to cope with pandemic-related stress. About half of those ages 18 to 24 reported severe anxiety and depression, and a quarter said they had seriously considered suicide in the last 30 days.

"People being cooped up at home for long periods amid enormous stress has also led to an increase in domestic violence. A new study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston reports a spike in injuries indicative of domestic abuse, especially severe injuries from strangulation and use of weapons, from March 11 to May 3."

Just a note here for those of you who feel that you don’t want to vote for Trump: Please believe me when I tell you that electing the Democrats will harm this country. If you can’t vote for Trump and you live in a swing state, please have the decency to stay home. Those of you who live in NY or CA, your vote does not count, and I do not care what you do with it.

 

Baseball Is Back. Don't Boo the Astros. Laugh at Them.

One of the more discouraging things about modern life is the tendency of the media to take every little thing to DEFCON 1* without investigation or thought. That is certainly true of things connected to politics, but the tendency has flowed far beyond that realm. Take for example the revelation that the Houston Astros had engaged in "sign stealing" using "technological means" during the 2017 and 2018 seasons. The MLB head office investigated the situation, issued a report, fined the Astros $5 million, and suspended the General Manager and Field Manager for the 2020 season. That would seem to put an end to the matter and we could go back to worrying about our favorite teams pitching staff.

But, no. The media constantly echoes with more and more furious denunciations and demands for acts of contrition. here is perhaps the most over the top reaction I have seen:

"It's anger. I feel like every single guy over there needs a beating. It's wrong. They're messing with people's careers." -- Braves outfielder Nick Markakis on his reaction to the Astros' scandal and the ensuing response.

And now, ESPN.com asks: "What we lose when we can't boo the Astros on Opening Day".

My quick answer is yet another chance to engage in ritual displays of anger. A habit that does not exhaust the emotion, but instead stokes it. Anger is something people in this country need a lot less of.

I would like to argue on several grounds that the incident is less worthy of attention than the amount of electrons, the media has spent on it. I believe that there is a lot less here than meets the eye and that we can drop the matter and go back to worrying about coronavirus and the stock market.

First, there is the matter of terminology. Sign stealing is a bit of a misnomer. The signs are not traffic signs stolen by undergraduates to decorate their living rooms. They are gestures made by players and coaches to communicate plans for the next play to their teammates. A coach may touch his chin or rub his scalp to tell a base runner to try to steal a base on the next pitch. Catchers put fingers down between their legs when squatting for the next delivery to tell the pitcher what type of pitch he should throw.

Signs cannot be stolen because they are displayed in public for all to see. The only thing that is not public is the exact system of meaning assigned to each sign by each team each game. But, the signs are not that obscure. There are a limited number of signs and most teams have a few coaches or players who know what the signs of other teams are and what they mean.

Sign stealing is not like handbag stealing. The latter is mallum in se [violation fundamental morality]. The former is sort of mallum prohibtium [violation of published rules]. In fact, the signs are displayed in public. The signers hope that the opponents will not decode them, but, we are not talking about the NSA and AES 1024.

A very important system of signs is the ones used by catchers to ask the pitcher for a certain type of pitch on the next offering from the mound. Of all signs, these are least accessible by the opponents because they are usually displayed by the catcher while holding his hand between his thighs while he is in his crouch behind the plate awaiting the pitch.

The catcher's signs are not, by any means, invisible to the public. The fans at home watching the view from the centerfield camera can see them clearly. Occasionally the announcers will decode the signs for the fans. Further, opposing players standing on second base often have a good view ot the catcher's signals.
What, the Astros did was having a team employees watch the feed on a television monitor near the team’s dugout, decode the signs, and bang loudly on trash cans to warn batters of upcoming curveballs or changeups. The idea was that the information would allow Astros hitters to more accurately gauge the next pitch and have a better chance of hitting it. Some sports media people call that technology. I guess it is prohibited. To me this on the level of bat corking and Vaseline on the pitchers cap.

Second, the scheme was not innovative. The ESPN story above relates:

In 1961, the Reds won the National League pennant. That offseason, one of their pitchers, Jay Hook, admitted that the Reds had put a scout in the scoreboard with a set of binoculars. The scout peered to see what the catcher was signaling, then phoned the signs to the dugout. It was one of a number of bombshells about sign stealing published that winter: Rogers Hornsby wrote in a memoir that the league was awash with these schemes, and the Associated Press quoted insider revelations that Bobby Thomson's famous Shot Heard 'Round The World in 1951 was assisted by the same type of sign stealing. NL owners gave the league president power to declare forfeits if teams were caught in the act.

Another ESPN story says that:

It's nearly certain the 2017 World Series wasn't the only one marred by players stealing signs using illegal technology or personnel. If you had to pick another team to go nuts over, it might be the 1948 Cleveland club. According to Paul Dickson's "The Hidden Language of Baseball," Cleveland that year "employed a telescope that Bob Feller had used as a gunnery officer during World War II. The telescope was mounted on a tripod, placed in the Cleveland scoreboard, and operated alternately by Feller or Bob Lemon, who remembered that he could 'see the dirt under the catcher's fingernails.' They would call out the next pitch to a groundskeeper, who would then use another opening in the scoreboard to relay the signs to Cleveland hitters."

Both Feller and Lemon are in the Hall of Fame.

Third, violating the rules of baseball has seldom been seen as very serious. The ESPN Booing Story goes on:

Cheating was incredibly common in baseball up to that point [1961]. It has been incredibly common since. People in the Hall of Fame have done what the Astros did, and they've done worse, and many of those stories of cheating are now told as charming pieces of baseball arcana. Baseball has an approving proverb about cheating -- if you're not cheating, you're not trying -- and it has a loose moral code, in which it's up to your opponent to catch you and not up to you to not do it. What the Astros did might have been immoral, but were they immoral? They assumed that their opponents were probably cheating, too. They didn't seem to feel shame among themselves.

On the point of opponents acting, ESPN published an article: "Catcher Jonathan Lucroy says he was changing signs every pitch vs. Astros"

"I knew about that two years ago, that it was going on," Lucroy said Thursday. "I know it just recently came out. Everyone in baseball [knew], especially in that division that played against them. But we were all aware of the Astros doing those things and it was up to us to outsmart them, I guess you could say.

"... We actively changed signs. Every single pitch, we were changing signs. You had to because they would relay them to second, stealing them from first, too -- from between your legs. They had a very intricate system going on. We were well aware of it, and it was a challenge. It was a mental challenge to really overcome that. It's easier said than done. But it's a shame, and I'm glad it came out and it came to light."

Lucroy added that he never heard the banging of a trash can, but he would not have been listening for it in the first place.

Lucroy said that Mike Fiers informed him of Houston's tactics once they became teammates in Oakland in 2018. The revelation led Lucroy, who signed a minor league deal with Boston earlier this week, to create more and more intricate sign-calling patterns to preemptively fight any tactics used by the Astros. Working with different pitchers called for different tactics as well.

The ESPN writer of the Booing story, wallowing in the same moral dudgeon as everyone else alive in this God forsaken year, goes on: "If I were an Astros fan, I wouldn't have booed the Astros for being bad people. I would have booed them because I'm against even good people acting corruptly."

This is a classic example of the fallacy known as begging the question but better named as assuming the consequent (even better in Latin: Petitio Principii). He has assumed that the Astros scheme was mallum in se. But, he has just established that they were only mallum prohibtium.

The English sometimes say that an something contrary to traditional standards of fairness or rectitude is not cricket. It is phrase familiar to Americans. But, nobody says something contrary to traditional standards of fairness or rectitude is not baseball.

Note: I was amused to read a recent article in the Wall Street Journal about the impact of the epidemic on cricket: "Virus Threatens a Revered Tradition in Cricket—Spit on the Ball: Players have long sought to tilt the flight of the ball, using substances from resin to sandpaper to hair oil. A legal one, saliva, now faces potential doom because of the pandemic." Baseball has explicit rules going back a century, against doing any of those things. But cricket views it as part oif the game. I think it shows that there are few things in sport that are mallum in se.

Fourth, the Astros simply did not achieve a competitive advantage from the efforts. It is easy to see. Using BaseballReference.com, I assembled a 20 year chart of the Astros offensive output on the road and at home. The chart starts in 2000 when the Astros left the Astrodome to play in what is now known as Minute Maid park. It shows the runs the Astros scored at home and on the road in each of the years 2000 through 2019. This comparison is immune to park effects. The home and road stadiums are a constant. It also does not depend on any artificial calculation of runs created [Bill James formula OBP × (TB + BB)].

		Runs scored at Home		Runs scored Away		Home Minus Away
2019		489		431		58
2018		373		424		-51
2017		395		501		-106
2016		334		390		-56
2015		367		362		5
2014		318		311		7
2013		298		312		-14
2012		311		272		39
2011		325		290		35
2010		297		314		-17
2009		334		309		25
2008		367		345		22
2007		361		362		-1
2006		372		363		9
2005		360		333		27
2004		405		398		7
2003		425		380		45
2002		405		344		61
2001		440		407		33
2000		505		433		72
Avg.						10
Std. Dv.						43
Std. Dv.		Excluding 2017-2018				31

I show the average and the standard deviation, which is a simple statistic that allows us to calculate the likelyhood of the result being random fluctuation. A measure that is within one standard deviation of the mean has a 1 in 3 chance of being random. In the above chart the Astros in 2017 (the year they won the World Series) had a home deficit of 106 runs, which was 116 runs less than the average. That was 2.7 sd less than the mean using all of the sample and 3.7 sd excluding the years they schemed. The first one has a 0.6% chance of being random, the second is less than 0.01%.

I think the Astros sign "stealing" scheme harmed the Astros more than it harmed their competitors. I think it is quite understandable. A hitter facing a major league pitcher must command every resource of concentration available to him in order to avoid being injured by the ball and in order to have a chance of hitting it into fair territory. Trying to communicate the pitch information by banging on a trash can could easily be imagined to break the concentration necessary to face down a major league fastball and hit it successfully.

Conclusion: Yes, the Astros violated a rule. No, they did not obtain a competitive advantage by their violation. Indeed they hurt their ability to compete. They violated a rule, albeit a poorly defined and sporadically enforced rule, for which they were punished. Case close. But, don't boo the Astros. Laugh at them.

*The DEFCON warning system prescribes five graduated levels of readiness (or states of alert) for the U.S. military. It increases in severity from DEFCON 5 (least severe) to DEFCON 1 (most severe). DEFCON 1 has never been issued. DEFCON 2 was only reached during the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962.

Note: The Dodgers real problem is that Kershaw sucks in the post-season, and not just against the Astros. Clayton Kershaw: Regular Season W 169 L 74 ERA 2.44 Postseason W 9 L 11 ERA 4.43. He sucked against the Nationals in 2019.

Maybe the Kids Will Listen to the Music

I really liked a couple of lines out of Quinn Hillyer's scream of despair over the attraction of young people to the candidacy of socialist fossil Bernie Sanders. I have quoted them below. But I think some Classic Rock anthems that warn against the delusions of revolutions might get through to them. They are linked below. Share them with any Bernie Bros you meet.

The dangerous delusions of Bernie’s brigades

by Quin Hillyer • February 14, 2020

 

WashingtonExaminer.com

 

Upon seeing the way young voters flock to Bernie Sanders, the temptation is to grab them all by the shoulders, shake them until they think they’ve been in an earthquake, and demand proof that they actually have brains.

To support an avowed socialist like the Vermont senator is to be historically illiterate — indeed, willfully ignorant on that front — and arithmetically inept to boot. Sanders and his agenda are a spasm of self-deluding fantasy, a phantasmagorical utopia utterly unmoored from reality. It’s a bad political acid trip, a daft dream descending into a nihilistic nightmare.

At some point, adults should be expected to think and act like adults. Adults exercising citizenship rights should do the basic five minutes of research necessary to discover that socialism hasn’t, doesn’t, and cannot work. Plus, basic common sense and simple math expose Sanders’s promises as nonsense of the 2+2=95 variety.

* * *

All the evidence suggests that a Sanders presidency would be not just deluded, but dangerous to American prosperity and freedom. Yet here he is, leading the Democratic pack on a wave of support from voters aged 44 and younger. Even in a multicandidate field in New Hampshire, for example, he received more than half of the votes from those between 18 and 29, and a field-leading 36% of those aged 30 to 44. 

 

One would ask what these young voters are thinking, but the obvious answer is that they are not thinking at all. Their electoral emanations are inexcusably irresponsible. Sanders’s supporters need to get real and abandon his “revolution” to the same pathetic fate as Leonid Brezhnev’s late, unlamented Soviet prison state.

Street Fighting Man · The Rolling Stones

Revolution · The Beatles

Won't Get Fooled Again · The Who

Only A Fool Would Say That · Steely Dan