Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

How the World Changed and Who Changed It after September 11th

It would be inaccurate to link the current American decline too directly to the events of September 11th. This would be giving Bin Laden too much credit. Had there been no attacks, it is certainly possible that the Bush administration would still have led the country into damaging and extremely costly wars, perhaps even in Iraq. It is almost certain that the Bush administration would have sought to cut taxes and found ways to spend money thus creating the debt-related problems the U.S. now faces, but this might have happened more slowly or less dramatically.

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Another Angle on Verlander's Impact

The AL MVP race is beginning to look very interesting, not just because several players are enjoying excellent seasons, but because these players also represent different ways of viewing the award. There are three distinctive types of candidates among the players who are probably the four strongest candidates. Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista is a possible MVP due to having the best overall numbers in the league despite playing for a team that has not been close to the playoff hunt all season long. Justin Verlander may be the league’s best player this year, without whom the Tigers would not be heading towards the playoffs, but is a starting pitcher and very few starting pitchers win MVP awards. Adrian Gonzalez and Curtis Granderson are both the best players on playoff bound teams, but have numbers that are less impressive than Bautista’s. Thus, voting this year means not only voting for the best player, but making a decision about what the award means.

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Another Angle on Verlander's Impact

The AL MVP race is beginning to look very interesting, not just because several players are enjoying excellent seasons, but because these players also represent different ways of viewing the award. There are three distinctive types of candidates among the players who are probably the four strongest candidates. Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista is a possible MVP due to having the best overall numbers in the league despite playing for a team that has not been close to the playoff hunt all season long. Justin Verlander may be the league’s best player this year, without whom the Tigers would not be heading towards the playoffs, but is a starting pitcher and very few starting pitchers win MVP awards. Adrian Gonzalez and Curtis Granderson are both the best players on playoff bound teams, but have numbers that are less impressive than Bautista’s. Thus, voting this year means not only voting for the best player, but making a decision about what the award means.

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What Obama's Fundraising Advantage Means →

Despite President Obama's latest poll numbers showing that his approval rating lags behind his disapproval rating by a roughly seven points, the numbers are not all bad for Obama. A more significant indicator, at this time, is that the President has raised more money than all of his opponents combined. Similarly, all of the Republican candidates lag far behind where both candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were at a similar time in 2007.

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A Perry or Bachmann Nomination May Not Be Good for Democrats →

Rick Perry has shaken up the Republican presidential primary because he seems to be taking the mantle of Tea Party favorite and far right darling away from Michele Bachmann. Before Perry joined the race, Bachmann seemed to be the most likely to be the last Tea Party candidate standing against Mitt Romney. Now Perry is more likely to be in that position. On the issues, Perry is not more moderate than Bachmann. Both are fundamentalist extremists with radical anti-government views who have evinced little understanding of a modern state or economy and demonstrated little interest in or knowledge of foreign affairs other than their belief in a strong America. Perry seems to have eclipsed Bachmann's popularity because he is less prone to gaffes than Bachmann, is slightly better at keeping his mouth shut sometimes and is enjoying something of a bump in the polls because he is the new candidate about whom voters may not yet know very much.

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Hey Giants, How About Some Same Sex Couples on the Kiss Cam

If the Jumbotron at AT&T Park is to be believed, there are no gay people in San Francisco. Either that, or the city’s sizeable gay community includes no baseball fans. The evidence of this is that during the sixth inning of every game, the filler between innings is something called the Kiss Cam. The Kiss Cam consists of couples from the stands being shown on the giant screen in centerfield. After a few seconds, the couple generally notices they are on the screen and kiss each other. The crowd then cheers and the next couple is shown. The couples on the Kiss Cam invariable consist of a man and a woman. Same sex couples are seemingly never shown

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After Gaddafi

Defining and assessing the mission in Libya has never been easy because the underlying notion that the role of NATO was to prevent a genocide from occurring cannot easily be determined to have been successful or not. Although genocide has not happened in Libya, there is no way of knowing with any certainty whether one would have happened had there not been an intervention. It is the military equivalent of proving a negative.

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Can an Obama Jobs Bill Be Taken Seriously →

This bill almost certainly has its origins both in Obama's need to address the problem of widespread unemployment as well as for the President to regain the political upper hand in the jobs debate. While it is good that the President is concerned about unemployment and preparing to try to address this problem, albeit through proposals that will inevitably end up being too modest to make a significant difference, it is troubling that this far into his term, Obama is still searching for a way to both help develop jobs and to demonstrate that he is genuinely concerned with the widespread unemployment that has existed since he took office.

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Prospect their Futures and their Teams

There are many variables that determine which prospects are the most promising and have the brightest futures. These include quantitative measures, scouting reports and even things like size, body type, makeup and family background. For example, prospects who come from baseball families are often seen as having a slight advantage over others. One variable that is often overlooked regarding minor league prospects is the organization for which they are playing.

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What is a "True Yankee" and Why Should We Care if Jorge Posada is One

Should Posada move on to another team next year, one of the great Yankee careers will have come to an end. Inevitably, the baseball media and blogosphere in New York, will begin questioning Posada’s credentials as a “true Yankee.” Putting aside the legitimacy of questioning the credentials of a player who played a key role in four Yankee World Series winning teams, delivering numerous big seasons and clutch hits along the way, this also draws attention to the absurdity of this term.

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Romney Still the Front-Runner →

In the last week, three things have happened in the race for the Republican nomination for president: Texas governor Rick Perry officially became a candidate, Tim Pawlenty's candidacy officially came to an end, and Michele Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll. While none of these developments involved him directly, all three of these developments collectively were a victory for Mitt Romney, moving him slightly closer to his party's nomination.

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The Hall of Fame Numbers Game

The question of what active players will eventually get elected to the Hall of Fameis a fun one which can generate numerous articles and even more hours of debate. However, this topic also raises some interesting questions about the Hall of Fame itself and what defines a Hall of Fame ballplayer. Perhaps the most easily overlooked aspect of this discussion has to do with how many active players will end up in Cooperstown.

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American Partisan Fighting in the Global Context

It is something of an unusual development that the opposition party in a major economic power put the global economy at risk and contributes to downgrading their own country’s credit rating for little reason other than their desire to make the incumbent chief executive look bad and modestly improve their own party’s chances in the national elections which are still 15 months away. The story of one of that party’s leading candidates reacting to all this by holding a rally to call upon divine intervention to help his country and to mobilize his party’s fundamentalist religious base, is also notable. This is, of course, the state of political affairs in the U.S. as it might be seen from Moscow, Brussels, or from Beijing, America’s biggest creditor.

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The Debt Ceiling and the Grim Election of 2012 →

The coming election will also present voters with a choice, not between two sets of ideas or competing visions for America, but between one party, the Democrats, that has failed to either solve the myriad problems facing America or even demonstrate a genuine ability to govern, and another, the Republicans for whom solving problems and governing are simply not priorities. Over the last two and a half years, the Republican Party, even after winning back control of the House of Representatives in 2010, has remained focused on defeating President Obama and refusing to veer from their extremist and dangerous economic ideology of low taxes and cutting spending as the overriding priority.

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What the Georgian Spy and Bomb Stories Could Mean for the U.S.

The spy case and the bombing case, individually and together, raise a number of important, if largely unstated, questions for the Georgian relationship with the U.S. The first question is what if these accusations are wrong? In this scenario, the photographers have been essentially framed and the bomb near the U.S. embassy was the result of one man’s actions with no connection to the Russian embassy. This is a hypothetical scenario, as it certainly cannot be assumed that these accusations are wrong or unfounded. Nonetheless, if these accusations are false, than Georgia has again demonstrated a willingness to overstate Russian involvement in Georgian domestic affairs and to risk undermining relations between Russia and the US.

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The Beltran-Wheeler Trade in Context

The defending World Champion San Francisco Giants made two moves during the days leading up to the trade deadline. One, swapping top pitching prospect Zach Wheeler for slugging outfielder Carlos Beltran was intriguing, the other sending minor league outfielder Thomas Neal to the Cleveland Indians for Orlando Cabrera, a veteran shortstop who may well be finished as a useful player was not necessarily a terrible trade, but a frustrating one nonetheless.

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The Debt Ceiling and Obama's Silence →

Back in the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican candidate John McCain often suggested that Democratic candidate Barack Obama would rather see the U.S. fail in Iraq if it meant that President Bush's policies would fail, then see the US succeed if it meant success for Bush's surge. McCain used this line of attack to suggest that Obama was insufficiently patriotic. During the last few weeks, the Republicans in the House of Representatives have more or less overtly stated that they would put the country at risk of default if they did not get their way on massive spending cuts, thus placing their narrow ideological interests above the good of the country in a way that was clearly unpatriotic and probably worse.

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Obama's Elitism, Republican Principled Ignorance and the Debt Ceiling Debate →

Although many come from more privileged backgrounds than the president, the Republicans in the House of Representatives, on the other hand, cannot be accused of being elitists. On the contrary, they are contemptuous of formal education and wear their ignorance of the world and the economy as almost badge of honor. The contrast between the House Republican outlook and that of the president is extreme and playing itself out over the debt ceiling negotiations in a dire manner. Where President Obama, based on his negotiating strategy, sees a troubled but complex economy and recognizes the reality that failing to extend the debt ceiling would be a devastating mistake, the House Republicans see another opportunity to bang the anti-tax drum while continuing to live in an economic fantasy world where they can cut taxes and balance the budget either by magic or, failing that, by eviscerating what is left of the American economy and social fabric.

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The Hall of Fame Voting System and the Coming Logjam

In all elections, whether for awards, political office or All Star Games, the election system has a big impact. This will continue to be the case for the baseball Hall of Fame and it will add another dimension to an already complex and sometimes irrational process over the next few year

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The Debt Ceiling and America's Role in the World

Because the U.S. is still the most powerful state in the world, decisions and policies pursued by the U.S. can have impacts in almost every corner of the planet. Not surprisingly policy makers, journalists, diplomats and ordinary people in every country are often concerned about American policies which affect them.One of the most difficult aspects of American foreign policy to explain to people outside the U.S. is the tremendous role of domestic politics in foreign policy. Many people understand this to mean simply the power of ethnic lobbies and often overstate the role of these lobbies in determining U.S. foreign policy, but the relationship between domestic and foreign policy is much deeper and more complex than that.

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