This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Limbaugh and O'Reilly and others have, to a large extent, built their careers by making their listeners and fans feel like victims and, equally importantly, presenting powerful and, implicitly non-Christian, interests as the powers causing the problems. The War on Christmas fits so perfectly into this framework that if it did not exist, these victimhood entrepreneurs would have to create it themselves, which come to think of it, is exactly what they have done.
For over half a century, Candlestick Park has been one of the most famous and recognizable, if not pleasant or attractive, buildings in San Francisco, but it will be demolished sometime in the coming months or years. It is difficult not to see the imminent demolition of Candlestick Park as a symbol for something in today's San Francisco. San Francisco, like all cities, is in transition, but the transition has accelerated in recent years as a city that was once a quirky and cool provincial town that punched well above its weight in culture and progressive politics, is looking more like a playground for the rich while many others are being priced out. It is consistent with these developments that the 49ers will be leaving the city for Santa Clara County where they will be closer to the center of Silicon Valley power and wealth, but physically and economically out of reach for many of their most faithful fans.
Two other intriguing Hall of Fame manager candidates are Bruce Bochy and Terry Francona. They are 58 and 54 years old so have more years as managers left than the others. They have also both each won two World Championships, but Bochy has only won 1,630 games while Francona has only won 1,121. Bochy and Francona are both still managing so they have the opportunity to increase their total number of wins and both have an outside chance at winning another championship. If Bochy manages four more years, he will have well in excess of 1,900 wins and will have a strong Hall of Fame candidacy. Francona will need to mange for nine or ten more years go get to 1,900 wins, so despite being younger he has a more difficult challenge.
The political climate following September 11th, when concern about terrorism briefly for some, and not so briefly for others, trumped democratic rights and even common sense, was not on its own enough to usher in a surveillance program on the scale of what the NSA has done. The new technologies over the last decade or so have also made this possible. Twenty years ago monitoring the phone habits of every American would have been an extremely burdensome task. Forty years ago, it would have been insurmountably difficult. Today, the technology exists to make this much easier. This means both that citizens and their representatives should be even more vigilant about protecting our rights and defending the constitution. Unfortunately, that has not been the case in recent years.
Many of these right wing attacks are offensive and extremely disrespectful to the memory of a truly great man, but they should not be so quickly dismissed as just the rantings of angry right wingers. These comments about Mandela are also echoes of what many said about him when he was alive, particularly before he became president of a free South Africa.
Obviously, it is good that the President saw fit to address this very serious issue, but it is, frankly, outrageous that it took him almost five years into his presidency to address an issue that has been a growing problem in the US for decades and that was brought unmistakably to the fore by events that occurred in the last months of the 2008 campaign. While it is interesting that Obama quoted the Pope in his speech, it is almost as if Obama waited for some kind of political cover from the Pope before publicly addressing the issue of income inequality; either that or the depth and impact of the problem had not occurred to him until the Pope tweeted about it.
This year, due to the quality of players on the ballot, the question of which players get less than 5% of the vote and fall off the ballot is almost as interesting as who will get elected. It is very possible that players with clear Hall of Fame credentials will not meet this 5% threshold and thus not get future consideration by the BBWAA. In this regard former Oriole and Yankee pitcher Mike Mussina is one of the most interesting candidates. He is not as well known as many of the other players on the ballot, but his career numbers compare favorably to many Hall of Famers. Mussina falling off the ballot is a real possibility, but is made more notable by the likelihood that an inferior pitcher, Jack Morris will be elected.
The Hobby Lobby case has generally been framed as being primarily about the freedom of employers to exercise religious views. The freedom of the worker to do whatever she wants to with the compensation she has earned by her work, however, seems to be overlooked in that paradigm. Health insurance is not some kind of largesse bestowed upon workers by generous employers. It is something that employers over a certain size are required by law to provide, like social security payments of a minimum wage. In this regard it is part of the basic compensation package for employees.
Peralta's signing also indicates that the Cardinals believe that Peralta not only has served his time, so to speak, but that he is capable of performing at a high level even without the steroids. After all, Peralta will face a 100 game suspension if he tests positive again. If Peralta can perform as he has in his better years, this will be a good signing for the Cardinals, but if he cannot do that without PEDs, it will not. The Cardinals must know this and believe that Peralta does not need PEDs to post an OPS+ in the 110-120 range. The Cardinals almost certainly would not have singed Peralta if they thought his production was dependent on PEDs. If the Cardinals, a team reputed to be one of the smartest run franchises in the game thinks that a proven steroid user, who is generally speaking good but not great, can play well without steroids, perhaps steroids are not the magic slugging pills they have been portrayed to be for well over a decade
In a year when, even more than most, the Democratic Party, and indeed the country, may be looking for an outsider, Clinton is about as far from being an outside as possible, except for one thing. Clinton would have a real chance at being the first woman president. That alone makes her different from every other previous president as well as every other nominee from a major political party. Thus, Clinton is a consummate insider with one very substantial outsider credential. That alone may not be enough, but it is something on which Clinton can build a successful campaign.
The Yankees now have a distinct combinations of comparative strengths and weaknesses. On the down side, they have few prospects who are close to being ready to contribute at a major league level, few good young players under team control and several older and less productive, but still well paid players. The Yankees, as is well known, have one enormous structural advantage, their deep financial resources. Opportunities to use this resource are changing, and in some senses, shrinking. There are fewer top level free agents available; and teams seeking to rid themselves of salary during the season are demanding prospects of the kind the Yankees do not have in exchange. Moreover, the latest round of playoff expansion means fewer teams view themselves as out of contention halfway through the season.
During his last years in office, Obama will have several items on his agenda, but fixing the ACA should be at the top of that list. The administration has framed the ACA as the signature legislative accomplishment of Obama's presidency. Fixing the ACA will not be easy, as clearing up computer problems is only part of it. The broader problems of ensuring that people can keep their insurance policies and that younger healthier people sign up for health care through the program are more important. Making progress, or even to be seen as working hard to make progress can begin to turn Obama's poll numbers around. The state of the Republican's in congress makes this somewhat easier for Obama as his political opponents are discredited outside of their own partisan base.
The bigger problem facing the Hall of Fame is that due to the backlog on the ballot, as well as the increased numbers of team, players and thus, eligible candidates, the players from the 1990s and later will be severely underrepresented over time. Finding a way for one of these players to get in will only make the lack of players from the 1990s and later more striking. If Parker gets into the Hall of Fame only a few years after getting rejected by the voters, the cases for more recent corner outfielders like Lance Berkman, Larry Walker, Gary Sheffield, Vladimir Guerrero and others who were better hitters, but with shorter careers like Bobby Abreu and Brian Giles will be much stronger. Similarly, the logic of letting Garvey in, while, as is likely to happen, keeping John Olerud, Jason Giambi and Fred McGriff out, is tough to follow. Garvey or Dave Parker would not be the worst Hall of Fame selections, but perhaps the most puzzling.
The last time New York was governed by a Democratic mayor, it was a very different place. When David Dinkins took office in 1990 maybe 1,000 New Yorkers had an email address, people who rode bikes were considered weird even by progressives, racial tension was at the center of city politics and climate change was known as global warming and was not an issue anybody but a few scientists and environmentalist discussed. Most significantly, the people in the city were very different, age replacement, immigration and other population movements have changed the city a great deal. Joe Lhota learned this the hard way as he and former mayor Rudy Giuliani sought to scare people by painting a fear mongering and inaccurate picture of Dinkins, a mayor who many New Yorkers don't remember at all.
This will, and probably should, be enough to get Ortiz into the Hall of Fame. On the surface it seems wrong that a player who is, on the numbers, a strong, but not overwhelming Hall of Fame candidate and who has some connection to steroids will get into Cooperstown before some of the greatest players of his generation who have their own strange and unclear relationship with steroids. There is, of course, an inconsistency here. Had Ortiz not been so good with the media, and such a likable player, the Hall of Fame discussion, and the discussion of his recent World Series performance would be very different right now. It is possible that if Ortiz is elected, the rancor towards other players with connections to steroid use will slowly recede because the questions around Ortiz will linger. If not, the Hall of Fame will look even more absurd with Ortiz on the inside and Bagwell, not to mention Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rodriguez on the outside.
Clearly the team that wins the World Series plays the game the right way, but the meaning of this phrase in not always what it might seem. The right way to play baseball at the big league level is to score more runs than the other team. That is all. However, when an announcer or writer describes a team as playing the game the right way, this usually means the team fields well, doesn't hit too many home runs, probably bunts too much and does things like move the runners by hitting to the right side of the infield.
The bigger problem is that for the ACA to work financially, healthy people, particularly young childless healthy people, need to sign up for insurance. In any health insurance system, these young healthy people keep the cost down for others. While this may not seem fair, any American who has received health care through their employer has been part of a similar system. At a big company, the young healthy workers subsidize the older and less healthy workers. The difference is that people who get health insurance through their jobs are mandated to participate in the program. Of course, everybody is mandated to buy health insurance, but it will soon become clear that the enforcement of this mandate will not be strong.
Two other issues have moved to the forefront of Georgian politics in the absence of a heated election campaign. These are the question of whether or not the Georgian Dream coalition will hold together, and what the impact on Georgian politics will be if Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili steps down shortly after the election, as he has indicated he will do? The general feeling with regards to these questions is that both of these possibilities would threaten the democratic advances Georgia has enjoyed over the last year or so.
The primary reason for this is that there already has been a civil war in the Republican Party; and the far right won. The situation in the Republican Party today is very different than at various points in the 20th century when liberal or moderate Republicans fought with right wing for control of the party. Today, there is no battle between the moderate and far right wing of the Republican Party. That fight ended years ago with the moderates losing. Although there may be a small handful of centrist Republicans remaining in the party, they do not have a lot of power and move quickly to the right as they become national figures. The most recent obvious example of that was Mitt Romney who had governed Massachusetts as a moderate, but ran for president as a unapologetic conservative. Even people like Chris Christie who are said to represent the moderate wing of the party are, in many respects, conservatives who either have had to govern or who come from the northeast.
The San Francisco Giants, who have won two of the last three World Series, have been forgotten by most of the media, partially because they had such a poor season and partially because it was such a long time ago. In 2012, to refresh our memories, the US was fighting a war in Afghanistan, Barack Obama was president and Miguel Cabrera was viewed as baseball's best hitter. Many of the things that make the Cardinals a great organization were true of those 2010-2012 Giants as well. They developed a core of great young players like Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. They invested wisely in players thought to be washed up such as Aubrey Huff, Ryan Vogelsong and Andres Torres and they had a strong and deep bullpen. The Giants also had a manager who was at his best in the post-season. It is worth remembering that one of the reasons the Giants won in 2012 is because Bruce Bochy ran circles around Cardinal manager Mike Matheny in the NLCS that year.