Horns Should Be Subversive

Ever listened to Morphine's The Night? I don't usually like horns and winds in popular music, because they always sound so positive. "Hey! We're horns! We sound big and brassy! Yippee! We're winds! We're soulful. Like Hootie!"

The Night is different. In The Night, the sax is downright subversive. I almost expect to get caught listening to it and thrown in some weird dungeon.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, if it weren't for Morphine, I probably couldn't join the Big Brass Alliance, just on general principle. But now I see that winds can be subversive, too. And I hope you're waiting for me, cause I can't make it on my own...

So of course the Big Brass Alliance was brought to my attention by Shakespeare's Sister, linked through The Liberal Avenger.

So an assist to both players.

And tell me again how we get there?

The Spurs Are Good

The Spurs are dangerously good. I almost placed a large bet against them earlier in a year with a San Antonio loudmouth online.

I'm glad I held my tongue. They could be the next big thing.

Fourth Quarter Update

Bruce Bowen is a ridiculously smart basketball player. It's possible most NBA players are this smart and it's only obvious to me because his skills are so limited, and that's a floor game I understand implicitly.

But BB just knows his shit. When the Suns set up a play that results in a shot that's a little too wild, he's there for the weakside rebound. When his man strays far from the ball, Bruce gives him a little cushion and eyes the lane. When Tim Duncan is struggling at the line in the fourth, Bruce Waves off a lesser player and feeds Duncan in the post, setting up more trips to the line.

The Suns may get one. It sort of seems like their night. But up 6 with 5 to play is a dangerous place to be on the road.

Professional Basketblogging

It's very common among sports fans, particularly white sports fans, to like basketball but dislike the NBA. Let me say from the outset I see where these folks are coming from. The NBA is very different from other sports, and a lot of those differences don't favor the NBA.

One big problem with the NBA is the number of perennial losers' gyms in operation. At least half the league is simply hopeless. The Golden States and LA Clippers of the world simply aren't going to win the title, ever. These teams are missing pieces that no one is trying to find.

The NBA has a lot of the same problems as Major League Baseball, but in the NBA the effect is greater. In baseball a few teams with massive payrolls dominate year in and year out, but there are always cracks through which a medium-market team can sneak in and win it all. That's why the system in baseball, unfair as it seems, works OK. The Angels (based in Anaheim) or the Pirates (based in Pittsburgh) can occasionally put a great team together.

The reason this works in baseball and not basketball is that baseball is kind of a mystical game, even at the highest level. What exactly makes a championship baseball team? Take a look at ten different championship baseball teams and you'll see ten different ways to win it all. The only thing they will all have in common is that they will all have one of the best starting rotations in the league. But even the correct makeup of a rotation is a bit of a matter of opinion.

In basketball, there are basically three ways to win a championship. The league is divided into the teams that know this and are constantly trying to achieve one of the three formulae, and teams whose owners either don't know the formulae (Mark Cuban of the Mavs) or don't give a shit about winning the championship (Donald Sterling of the Clippers).

The three ways to win an NBA championship, in order of how easy they are to achieve:

1. Solid defense, and an offense that consists of a big post player as the #1 option, a reliable jump shooter as the #2 option, and some B+ player as a #3 option. Examples include teams like the Showtime Lakers (Kareem & Magic) the Bird Celtics (McHale & Bird) and the Shaq Lakers (Shaq & Kobe.)

2. Spectacular defense, including borderline dirty play, especially under the basket, and an adequate offense with at least one elite scorer. The Pistons did this last year, and also during the Isaiah Thomas days.

3. Have Michael Jordan.

On some level I think the newfound existence of option #3 is part of the problem. Michael Jordan created the illusion that there is a third way to win the title (this may have also happened with Clinton and his own famous Third Way.) In reality, there are still only two, unless you have Michael Jordan, which you don't because he's retired.

So this year you have three teams left that can win it. The Heat are going with option #1, as are the Spurs. The Spurs have the better defense (it's probably a notch above solid) while the Heat have better offensive weapons (Shaq/Duncan is a wash, but Wade/Parker is a big advantage Heat). It's a pretty classic matchup, especially since the Heat run the floor better, which will give them a chance to make up for their probable slight disadvantage in the half-court game.

So the question is, how do teams like Phoenix and Dallas happen? You can cut the Suns some slack - they just built this team. Even so, clearly their idea of just adding a true center to the existing mix is not going to work. Where does the D come from? You need defense to win, probably more in basketball than any other sport. I don't know what team was the last team with a bad defense to win the NBA title, but I don't think it was in my lifetime. It was definitely before I started paying attention to basketball.

But somehow, teams like the Mavs do happen. Every year the Mavs have an elite offense and a terrible defense. And every year they go out and tinker with the team a little bit, trying to gain some x-factor or other. Why don't they nuke the team, keep a post player and a jumpshooter, and start over? They're never going to win a championship the way they're going at it.

Long story short, I see what people don't like about the NBA. The same teams seem to rise to the top pretty much every year. A lot of years one conference is without a championship-type team and you wind up with a boring, uncompetitive finals.

Yet something about this actually fulfils a very core piece of what sports fandom is all about to me. I really believe that the modern system of American pro sports, where there are three dozen teams in the league and the idea is that any of them could win it all, is just unnatural. You can't really sustain that. You're always going to have some teams that consistently cannot compete.

In basketball, the long guaranteed contracts and the small roster size basically mean that teams that aren't always striving for a championship simply cannot win one. There can be no Florida Marlins phenomenon, where the team rises from obscurity, wins a title, then gets trashed and rises six years later to win another title. Basically in the NBA you have to be in it to win it every year.

If you don't believe this is the way it is, you probably pull for a team that isn't one of the teams that's consistenly trying to win. In which case what I'm about to show you is probably going to make you a little sick to your stomach.

In the past 20 years, do you know how many different clubs have won NBA titles? Six. Lakers have six, Bulls have six, Pistons have three, Spurs have two, Rockets have two, Celtics have one. And the Celtics don't really count; that title was the tail end of a long, long dynasty that is all but forgotten.

So the bottom line is that there are five modern basketball towns - Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, San Antonio, and Houston. Those are the cities that have a chance at an NBA title. Now, this year it certainly appears that Miami has possibly been added to that list.

However, I warn you that it is not that rare that a team will appear to have assembled a great group that goes deep into the playoffs for many years but can never get over the hump. As unlikely as that seems with Shaq and Wade, it's a distinct possibility for the Heat.

Anyway, I have no point. I just like the NBA, and you can't stop me.

Slacktivist

I'm adding a link to the Favorite Links list - The Slactivist. I think you'll agree that it's a site after my own heart. Funny, incisive, witty... What do you mean, what's the connection?

Anyway, one particular post you should check out is also linked from the Poor Man; Bush's Social Security Self-Bamboozle.

Enjoy.

Renaming the DoD

This is nice.

Wasn't it in the 40's they changed the name from "Department of War" to "Department of Defense?" It's time for another switch.

"Department of Irresponsibility?"

Not specific enough.

How about the "Department of Screwing Up Really Bad, But Blaming Someone Else?"

I guess that's too clunky.

OK, I got it. The Department of Rationalization. It's a synonym for "defense," but the connotation is a bit more spot-on:

2: (psychiatry) a defense mechanism by which your true motivation is concealed by explaining your actions and feelings in a way that is not threatening

Yeah, that's the ticket.

The Poor Man at his Very Best

Not sure how I missed this gem.

One of the funniest, most perfect blog posts I've ever read. Wonderful. Just wonderful. And my favorite part:

The government is very powerful, and all power corrupts, yada yada. I’m not going to get all libertarian, but it’s just worth keeping in mind that the government is more powerful, by a significant amount, than any community college professor; or, indeed, than all the college professors in the whole world combined. Hence, I’d be a little bit more concerned when the federal government says something completely nuts than when Professor Beardly McTenure says something nuts, even if it is two, five, or even an incredible one hundred times as nuts as what the federal government says!, because it just doesn’t matter. All his students fall asleep when he talks, and they’re getting graded, not you. Also, the government can take care of itself; worryingly well, in fact. You don’t have to save it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Can't Miss

I nominate this for Worst Idea of the Century. Granted, it's a young century. But this one will last a while, I think. At least until someone decides to cast Evander Holyfield in a reality TV-show centered around a dancing competition.

What? Oh, Christ...

Krauthammer Melts Down

There is still a lot of moaning on other lefty blogs about the filibuster compromise. I guess people are entitled to their opinion. But really, if something pisses Krauthammer off this much, can it really be that bad?

I say no. My favorite "Charles Unhinged" paragraph:

The second sure thing is that the seven Republicans who went against their party are the toast of the Washington establishment. On Monday night they came out of the negotiations beaming. And why shouldn't they? They are being hailed as profiles in courage, prepared to put principle ahead of (Republican) party. We will soon see glowing stories in the mainstream press about how they have grown in office. (In Washington parlance, the dictionary definition of "to grow" is "to move left.") After that, the dinner-party circuit, fawning articles about their newfound stature and coveted slots on the Sunday morning talk shows.

Yes, Charles Krauthammer, complaining about the inside-the-beltway, dinner-party, Sunday-morning-talk-show element of DC journalism. Rich like chocolate cheesecake.

Liberal Media Comes Through

This actually isn't as snarky or ironic a post title as it would usually be. There are two Bolton headlines floating around out there, Senator Calls for Delay in Vote on Bolton, and GOP Confident Bolton Will Get UN Post.

It appears from my cursory research that the former headline seems to be dominating most papers. Kudos to the Dem PR people, for once.

Also, kudos to Voinovich, who got this Bolton quote printed in basically every serious English-speaking paper in the world:

'The message will be lost because our enemies will do everything they can to use Mr. Bolton's baggage to drown his words,' Voinovich said. `The issue will be the messenger, not the message.'

It's Godwin's Law in reverse - whoever brings up terrorists first wins. Nice work Senator. Hope to see you on the other side of the aisle soon.

Correction - Frist stepping down in 06

In an earlier comment I had alleged that Frist's upcoming election bid in 2006 was a factor in his positioning on the Nuclear Option. In fact Frist is stepping down from his seat in 06 to position himself for a presidential run.

The analysis itself holds well enough, since Frist needs a good result for the GOP generally in 2006 to validate his leadership of the Senate Republicans. Regardless, The Ape Man regrets the error.

Nuclear Confusion

There still seems to be a lot of confusion over what actually happened yesterday and what it means. It's fine that a lot of people on the left don't like the compromise - I'll admit when I first heard about it, I thought it sounded shitty. But when I actually looked at the deal, I realized why it's a big win for the Democrats, and even more crucially, a big shitburger for the Republicans to eat.

We are certainly all entitled to our opinions about the value of the compromise. But we should all be able to agree on the basic facts of the deal. Here they are:

The reason there were originally 12 Senators involved is because the Magic Number for the Democrats in this deal was 6. That's the number of Republicans they needed to pick off in order to prevent a 50-50 tie (with Cheney the tiebreaker) on the Nuclear Option. The final two were added, presumably, because there was one extra guy in each party that just really wanted in for his own reasons.

The Republicans needed 5 Democrats to break cloture on the stalled nominees. So with 7 Republicans agreeing not to Nuke the Filibuster, and 7 Democrats agreeing to break cloture on the three nominees covered by the agreement, these 14 Senators now control, for practical purposes, what happens with all future Bush judicial nominees.

Let's look at what happens with the next Bush nomination. There are basically three possibilities.

Possibility 1 - The 7 Democrats decide together that the nominee is not extraordinarily bad. Thus according to the agreement they will sign a cloture petition if the Dem leadership decides to filibuster. Crisis averted.

Possibility 2 - At least 3 of the 7 Democrats decide together that the nominee IS extraordinarily bad, and worth filibustering. Thus they will join a Democratic filibuster and not sign a cloture petition. So the Dems notify the 7 Republicans of this, and the 7 Republicans meet to decide whether, in their view, this constitutes an abuse of the filibuster. They decide it doesn't, and that they will vote against the nuclear option (at least six of the seven have to agree to this.) Crisis averted.

Possibility 3 - The 7 Democrats join a filibuster, and the 7 Republicans decide to vote for the nuclear option.

So you can see now that if Frist wants to bring about the Nuclear Option Showdown, he needs to find a nominee who is bad enough that the 7 Dems will filibuster, but not so bad that the 7 Republicans will vote against going Nuclear.

You'll notice I didn't mention the deal itself, with three judges getting through and two (really seven, since five have already gone down to Dem filibusters) getting deep-sixed. That's because that aspect of the deal is so minor it's hardly worth talking about.

Those on the left dissatisfied with the deal seem to be focusing on two things - the three judges who got through, and the question of "who decides" what constitutes an extraordinary circumstance.

On the first point, folks are welcome to their opinion that these particular three judges pose a big enough threat to the republic that they shouldn't have been let through. On the second, people just don't seem to understand the nature of the deal. The 7 Democrats on the compromise committee decide. Period.

Batting .500

Well, so the whole Iraq thing is a bit of a mess. But at least we won that Afghanistan thing, right? That was a big success. So we're batting .500.

But wait, looks like the official scorer may be about to turn that hit into an error...

The Filibuster "Compromise"

There is much relief on the Democratic side and much consternation on the Republican side today after Republican moderates reached a deal with Democrats on two really terrible judges and another sort of medium-terrible one. The other four judges go down.

From a certain point of view, this is a qualified win for the Dems. But taking a longer view, I'm not sure this agreement really has any significance at all. The Dems gave the GOP three judges and a couple of empty promises. Recall that the man theoretically bound by the agreement, Harry Reid, came out immediately after the deal was reached and said that the Democrats were still considering filibustering the very next controversial nominee who comes to the Senate floor, John Bolton.

Frist says in the same article that he thinks that from now on filibusters of Supreme Court nominees would be "almost impossible." However, in my reading the word "extraordinary" is used to imply that on the very most serious questions the Democrats reserve the right to filibuster. There is nothing more serious than an appointment to a lifetime post on the only unchecked body in the U.S. government.

And of course, though it's a little strange how few commentators have mentiontioned this, of course this has been about the Chief Justice all along. The idea was to pave the way for Rehnquist to retire and for some really terrible replacement to be appointed, and Scalia moved to Chief Justice. The smart money is on Ken Starr right now.

If Starr is nominated to the high court, the Dems will be forced to filibuster. And if the Republicans bring this issue to the fore any time after early this winter, they will transform what was almost the most gargantuan political mistake in American history into one of the biggest political mistakes in human history.

The crisis has not been averted. It has merely been put on hold because the Republicans got cold feet at the last minute.

The Filibuster "Compromise"

Nuking the Constitution

Well, it looks like Frist is really going to go forward with the Nuking the Constitution option. Essentially he's about to push through a radical, activist interpretation of a clause in the Constitution that pretty clearly does not say what the GOP is pretending it obviously says.

This is so far out of step with what Republicans claim their values are that it really will be a watershed in politics. Anyone who goes along with this is basically not worth talking to, not worth arguing with. Republicans who support this measure are declaring their devotion to increasing their own power at all costs, with no regard to fairness, democratic principles, or basic ethics.

Both sides appear to be All-In. Let's turn over the cards and see what everybody has.

Management-Speak

Ever been in a meeting with upper management and, in a moment of weakness, you use some shopworn cliche' or other that everyone thinks is this great turn of phrase and they all start saying it over and over, and it makes you want to just stop them and say "OK, now we've all said it, and the phrase is officially retired."

Except you can't do that because you're the most junior person at the meeting, so you just have to sit there listening to a roomful of otherwise intelligent adults just happy-assing around saying "Where the rubber meets the road" over and over and over again.

That happened to me today.

Have a nice weekend, everyone.

Just a Question

Why are Democrats not seizing the golden opportunity presented to us by the Republicans' lexicographic flailings and branding it the "Nuking the Constitution Option?

Media Follies

I've actually had a nice pie-in-the sky idea recently for what can be done about our pathetic media. It's based upon an interpretation of how the media works that it peculiar to me (I think) so I'm going to do an article on it before I get into the nuts and bolts of the fix on here.

But just in case there is anyone reading who is not quite aware of the nature of the beast, here are two good examples.

Rick Santorum compares Democratic judicial filibusters to Hitler's occupation of Paris. What will be the media reaction? We'll see.

Al Franken has an illuminating exchange with two Washington reporters. He shouldn't pick on Senator Allen, though, who has the excuse of being achingly stupid.

Josh Micah Marshall at his best

Josh Micah Marshall is like anybody.

When he talks about things with which he is intimately familiar, on which he has spent a great deal of study and effort, he is extremely eloquent, sometimes even prescient. The resulting posts are what make him and his blog worth reading.

When, on the other hand, he talks about things with which he has little or no specific or comprehensive knowledge, he tends to say things which are more or less unintelligible, sometimes even howlingly stupid. These other posts are what make him and his blog at times maddening.

You can make some version of this statement about basically anybody, or at least anybody who knows anything about anything.

The difference between one individual and another on this score is mostly one of individuality. That is, what really separates one commentator from another is the frequency with which they wander into areas in which they have no specific competence.

On this score Josh Micah Marshall is pretty good. It's something he often gets criticized for, but his blog generally focuses on things that he really understands, and that selectivity is what makes his blog one of the best politics blogs, if not the best politics blog, in Washington.

I have much to learn from this man, on this and probably many other scores. In any case, behold one of his very best posts here.

You can think the filibuster is a terrible idea. And you may think that it should be abolished, as indeed it can be through the rules of the senate. And there are decent arguments to made on that count. But to assert that it is unconstitutional because each judge does not get an up or down vote by the entire senate you have to hold that the United States senate has been in more or less constant violation of the constitution for more than two centuries.

There are many thoughtful people who have supported the Republicans through many unwise and self-contradictory initiatives over the years. I know many of these people. And I believe in my heart that for many of them, this may simply be a bridge too far. Perhaps I am overestimating these people, or underestimating the ability of the Republicans to come up with some flashy rubric, perhaps invoking September 11th (wait for it...) that will give thinking Republicans some ideological cover.

But I feel in my heart that the Republican party is about to make the biggest mistake, politically, that it has ever made.

Let the games begin.