I have seen the movie "Blinded by the Light" twice, and I cried for probably 30 minutes both times. Here is why.
I grew up on a farm. I wasn't a very social kid. Between the time I was 5 and the time I was 12, I can recall going over to another kid's house on a "play date" three times. All three times really ended badly. (I do not recall a kid ever coming to my house).
When I was 5, a kid in my kindergraten class decided he liked me and wanted to be my friend. (I think I had talked to him twice). He invited me over to his farm. After about 30 minutes playing in the house, he asked me if I wanted to go outside and play. Sure. We ended up about a mile away behind a stone wall in a farm field pretending we were in the army. After about an hour, we had to walk back to the house, which took forever. We had dinner and then the kid's mom took me home. My mom asked what I had done for 3-4 hours. I told her. "WHAT?!?!?! Did his mom know where you were?" I have no idea. Never went to that kid's house again.
When I was 10 I went to a kid's house who was in Cub Scouts with me and who lived in a small town.. I played cards in his room. Then we got bored, and he asked me if I wanted to walk around town. Not really (perhaps recalling my last such outing). Oh, come on! We picked up trash and mowed the lawn for some old guy who lived by himself who paid us like 75 cents total. He did advise us that we probably shouldn't be walking around doing chores for people we did not know. Then the kid and I had dinner and then I went home. I just told my mom we played cards. Never went there again.
When I was 12, I was the #1 baseball player in the county, and our Little League team was the second best team (I could pitch 3 innings a game, twice a week, there was one team who could beat us by beating our second pitcher). Anyway, so after a great deal of urging, the other pitcher invited me over to his farm. His mom monitored us a fair amount, much more than the other moms, but after a while we went out to the front lawn and played one on one football. Now, I didn't want to play, and it seemed really stupid. But the kid wanted to play, so we played. About 30 minutes in, I tackled him at the 1 foot line. I said, "Close enough. That is a TD for you." No, I have to earn it. He hiked the ball to himself and ran straight ahead. I let him score. He lost his mind. YOU HAVE TO TRY! "Um, OK." So I gave it like 75% effort, he plowed through me and scored. As I lay on the ground, he dropped the ball and starrted punching me in the back of the head. TRY! TRY!! I slept over. But I never went back there again either.
So, as of 7th grade, I really had never had a friend, except for my little brother (who at the time was 10). In 7th grade I hung out with a couple guys, Jeff and Jim, who basically liked to rip me for being a teacher's kid (my dad was a guidance counselor). I was basically the "friend" in the group who was the lowest on the rung. It sucked. So, one day I was in art class. Now, here is basically how any school art class always went for me:
Teacher: "OK, today we will be making __________... In the next 15 seconds I will show you how to make _______. Then you will do that for the rest of class and I will grade your work."
Me: Raises hand -- "Um, I cannot do what you are describing."
Teacher: "Anyone can do this."
Then the teacher would walk around the class for 20 minutes and watch people do their work. "Good job Mary! Good Karl! Excellent Steven!" Then she would get to me. "What are you trying to do there?" I'd explain what I was doing. "Oh. Well....But look how well Jerry is doing!"
How terrible was I at art class? I got 100% on all written tests, and I struggled to get above 80% in the class. So yes, my art was regularly graded between 50-65%. I tried. I got absolutely zero instruction, zero encouragement, and I had two "friends" both of whom found it hilarious that I received failing art grades.
One day Jim and Jeff were ripping me for my shitty art efforts, and a voice came over for two tables away - "Hoops Maven, would you like to sit at our table?" It was a guy named John W. Now John W. I knew abolsutely nothing about. But shit, yes! I will come sit with you. John W. "Look, man, those two are assholes. They are not your friends. They are not trying to help you. Me and Chris here will be your friends." And I was saved.
John W. was a huge Beatles fan. Insane. He wanted me to be a Beatles fan. But I never really cared for the Beatles.
But he stuck with me, and he was my friend in 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th grade. In 10th grade he came up to me and said, "Look, I know you don't like the Beatles, but why don't you try Springsteen, You will like Springsteen." So he gave me Born to Run and I took it home and listened in my sister's room on her purple shag carpeting on her turntable. It was wonderful. I brought it back to him three days later. "Look, Hoops Maven," said John W., "I don't need it. I can always get another. Just keep it and listen to it. It reminds me more of you anyway"
So I kept it, and I listened to "Thunder Road" and "Jungleland" and "She's the One," all songs that were written by a guy from Freehold, New Jersey. A guy whose experience with life was far different than mine in rural New York. But what I heard in the songs was a pretty consistent message of struggle and the desire to escape and the yearning for something better. And then I bought "Dakness on the Edge of Town," which constantly drove home the message that there is a hardness to the world that can defeat you, but there is also hope, and there is also a better life and a better world. A Promised Land. That was followed by "The River" and all of its classic lines. "I come from down in the valley, where Mister. when you're young, they bring you up to do, like your daddy done." "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"
And I recall listening to Springsteen when I finally got a girlfriend, and when life gradually became more hopeful. I listened in college when I wanted to recall home, and I especially listened when I did not want to recall home.
Anyway, watching Blinded by the Light (set in 1987, around 7 years after I found Bruce) I see through the young characters' eyes so many things that remind me of me:
- growing up where you definitely do not want to be or want to end up
- hearing the powerful Springsteen lyrics for the first time
- FINALLY finding a girl to love you
- feeling such a crushing need to escape where you are
- wondering what will eventually become of you (my dad told me when I was 22 that he was pleasantly surprised that a spring intership had resulted in a summer job for me - "I never really thought anyone would ever want to hire you" -- in hindsight, this is pretty hilarous given that I was an honor student, captain of 2 sports teams and a kid who literally never got in trouble).
- being pulled between a love of your parents and the desire to be nothing like your parents.
Look, it is a flawed movie. It has a number of pretty avoidable errors. But it is like sitting there and seeing myself grow up and like hearing the Springsteen songs for the first time through someone who is still young. I am not sure I will ever watch the movie without a very deep emotional response.
You see, it really was a town full of losers, and I was always pulling out of there to win.
Wednesday, September 04, 2019
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Updating MVP Stats
Giannis wins MVP #1 last night, but he has a LOOOOOOONG way to go to reach these names:
Most MVP Wins
Kareem 6
Bill Russell and Michael Jordan 5
LeBron, Wilt 4
Dr.J 4 (counting ABA).
Most 2nd places
Bird 4
West 4
Durant 3
James 3
Jordan 3
Harden 3
Most 3rd Places
Magic 4
Oscar, Kobe, LeBron 3
Most 4th places
Kareem 4
Pettit, Kobe, Karl Malone 3
Most 5th Places
West, Kobe, Oscar 3.
Most Top 5 finishes (finish 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5).
Kareem 15
LeBron 13
Kobe and Russell 11
Jordan and Wilt 10
Oscar, Magic, Doc, Karl Malone, Duncan 9
Most Top 4 Finishes
Kareem 13
LeBron 12
Russell 11
Jordan 10
Bird, Wilt, Magic 9
LeBron and Russell each had 11 year streaks finishing top 4.
Russell starting in 1958
1 2 2 1 1 1 3 1 4 3 4.
James starting in 2008
4 1 1 3 1 1 2 3 3 4 2
Most consecutive years getting at least a vote of some sort:
Kareem 17
LeBron 16
Karl Malone 15
Tim Duncan 12
Most Top 3 Finishes
Jordan 10
LeBron 10
Russell, Kareem, Magic 9
Bird 8.
Most Top 2 Finishes
Jordan 8 (5+3)
Kareem 7 (6+1)
Russell 7 (5+2)
LeBron 7 (4+3)
Bird 7 (3+4)
Wilt 6 (4+2)
Doc 6 (4+2 includes ABA)
Once basketball-reference.com gives Harden his 0.75 MVP Award Shares from last night (and LeBron and Durant their super small shares) , the Top 16 in MVP Award Shares Will look something like this:
Most MVP Wins
Kareem 6
Bill Russell and Michael Jordan 5
LeBron, Wilt 4
Dr.J 4 (counting ABA).
Most 2nd places
Bird 4
West 4
Durant 3
James 3
Jordan 3
Harden 3
Most 3rd Places
Magic 4
Oscar, Kobe, LeBron 3
Most 4th places
Kareem 4
Pettit, Kobe, Karl Malone 3
Most 5th Places
West, Kobe, Oscar 3.
Most Top 5 finishes (finish 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5).
Kareem 15
LeBron 13
Kobe and Russell 11
Jordan and Wilt 10
Oscar, Magic, Doc, Karl Malone, Duncan 9
Most Top 4 Finishes
Kareem 13
LeBron 12
Russell 11
Jordan 10
Bird, Wilt, Magic 9
LeBron and Russell each had 11 year streaks finishing top 4.
Russell starting in 1958
1 2 2 1 1 1 3 1 4 3 4.
James starting in 2008
4 1 1 3 1 1 2 3 3 4 2
Most consecutive years getting at least a vote of some sort:
Kareem 17
LeBron 16
Karl Malone 15
Tim Duncan 12
Most Top 3 Finishes
Jordan 10
LeBron 10
Russell, Kareem, Magic 9
Bird 8.
Most Top 2 Finishes
Jordan 8 (5+3)
Kareem 7 (6+1)
Russell 7 (5+2)
LeBron 7 (4+3)
Bird 7 (3+4)
Wilt 6 (4+2)
Doc 6 (4+2 includes ABA)
Once basketball-reference.com gives Harden his 0.75 MVP Award Shares from last night (and LeBron and Durant their super small shares) , the Top 16 in MVP Award Shares Will look something like this:
1. Michael
Jordan* 8.115 MVP Award Shares
2. LeBron James 8.075
3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar*
6.105
4. Larry Bird* 5.612
5. Magic Johnson*
5.104
6. Bill Russell*
4.748
7. Shaquille O'Neal*
4.380
8. Karl Malone* 4.296
9. Tim Duncan 4.278
10. Kobe Bryant 4.202
11. Wilt Chamberlain*
4.173
12. Julius Erving*
3.551
13. James Harden 3.278
14. Kevin Durant
3.200
15. David Robinson*
3.123
16. Moses Malone*
2.854
Friday, June 14, 2019
Happy Father’s Day 2019
June 16, 2019 is Father’s Day. At age 55, here is what I know about being a father:
1) My Grandpa on my dad's side worked 14 hours a day as a dairy farmer. His primary role as a father was to make sure his kids' life was nothing but school and farming. He ran the farm, and he took no shit.
As far as I can tell, this Grandpa's role in his kids' emotional well-being was.........none. Remarkably, virtually every one of his 6 kids is a super nice person. I mean, 4 became teachers and one became a nurse. The other became a dairy executive. I honestly have no idea how they became so pleasant and well liked, but I'd gather it was from my grandma, who always issued small acts of kindness and always made sure everyone got fed. (And fed a lot - the 6 kids all have type 2 diabetes which hit about 50-55. I am similarly afflicted).
2) My Grandpa on my mother's side was a remarkably mean person. He didn't like his kids, their spouses, their grandkids. He was just a mean and ornery guy. He was around 6'3" tall and had a 5'1" wife, who was a very nice sweet lady who never crossed him.
They also had 6 kids, many of whom are successful, but almost all of whom are pretty weird people, which certainly seems to make sense in the overall scheme of things since their household was run by a maniac, with only moderate input from the nicer person.
Lesson from 1&2 - it is probably OK for the dad not to be a real loving type, so long as the mom makes up for it, or so long as the dad is just absent and not affirmatively bad.
3) My dad is a super nice guy. He is not super smart, but he is educated, and he knows well what he needs to know. He does not pretend to be what he is not. My dad sees the world in shades of gray and always cautions against condemning people or positions taken unless you first try to understand the background of the person or why a position is being taken. He has always preached education and has always asked for patience. He is very slow to anger. He can be very funny, and he enjoys the simpler things in life - like playing or watching sports and taking a nap.
He married my super bright and super angry mother. He always wanted his kids to do well, and he always preached that you judge people by their actions and not their skin color or religion or background. As I said, he is a great guy.
4) I have been a dad for 25 years. Being a dad can be tough, and I actually had a good dad! When your kids are little, you so fear for their physical health and try to make sure they literally do not die due to some accident. When your kids are 10-20, you worry greatly for their emotional health and their ability to interact with people and make friends. When they pass 20, you start worrying about their ability to fend for themselves in the world and their ability to get and hold a job.
In other words, you never stop worrying about your kids. So, every day, I think about my kids and hope they are doing well.
Another hard thing for me about being a dad is that your role is not really set. I mean, I have seen nice dads, mean dads, sort of distant dads, tough dads, dads who treat their kids as a friend. Sometimes one role works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it works for one kid and not another.
My mom can really be a jerk. But I learned a lot from her. And I am positive that I would have never succeeded in life to the point I have unless I had the constantly angry and demanding mother that I did. I have said that I wished all of my kids could have lived with my mom for a year, just to give them a dose of high expectations and tough demands. I'd imagine they all would have benefitted.
Since I am sure my wife would never allow such an arrangement, I have always viewed my role as a dad to be as much like my own father as possible, but with a little of my mom's high expectations mixed in. I also have always tried to teach my kids things and tell them things I know. Sometimes they already know, but a lot of the time they do not. Life should always be a learning experience, and it should not be limited to school.
I think as a dad you will always have the desire for your kids to do well, and you will always think they are great at things they are good at. My dad always thought I should have played college sports. I always thought my son should be Brad Pitt or Chris Hemsworth. We have a high opinion of the kid, so we would like the kid to get to where we want them to go. I think this is part of the whole, "I will never be good enough for my dad" feeling people have. We dads just want you to use your inner greatness, and as a kid you usually do not feel like you have inner greatness. The kid is the one who has to care, so the kid generally wins, and the dad, as the loser, looks disappointed. Dad doesn't love you any less; he is just disappointed in the result.
Moving on -- I think it is also good to be sort of a fallback position for your kids. For example "I'd like to do that, but my dad would lose his mind." "My dad won't let me." Sometimes there are things your kids should not do and really do not want to. It is always nice to have someone to blame for good judgment.
As a dad, I try my best. I also love my kids. I was told when I was about 22 that "you love your girlfriend, but wait until you have kids." So true. If you are any kind of human being at all, you will protect your kids and put yourself on the line for them. No one hurts your kids.
Being a dad - you work at it and you hope that it works out for your kids. But they will always have stories about how mean or lazy or dumb you are or how you are unfair and treat their siblings better. I only know one dad (my wife's late father) whose kids worship him and find he has absolutely 100% no flaws. The minister at his funeral asked for some stories from the kids about his foibles - they could provide none. I don't want that said about me, because I know it is untrue as to me. As Robin Williams said in Good Will Hunting,
"Wonderful stuff, you know, little things like that. Ah, but, those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I knew about....People call these things imperfections, but they're not, aw, that's the good stuff."
Finally
When my dad's father died, I went to the funeral. I was about 18. The service was pretty dull - he wasn't a super interesting guy. But then the minister said that he had asked folks about my grandpa's guiding principles and someone had told him that he viewed the family as a tree, and the dad was the trunk and roots of the tree from which all of the rest of the tree is allowed to grow and prosper. It is not the dad's job to be beautiful or showy. He is supposed to support the tree and allow the branches and limbs and fruits a chance to grow and become beautiful. He was the trunk and roots of his family's tree.
There was suddenly not a dry eye in the house.
Happy Fathers' Day.
1) My Grandpa on my dad's side worked 14 hours a day as a dairy farmer. His primary role as a father was to make sure his kids' life was nothing but school and farming. He ran the farm, and he took no shit.
As far as I can tell, this Grandpa's role in his kids' emotional well-being was.........none. Remarkably, virtually every one of his 6 kids is a super nice person. I mean, 4 became teachers and one became a nurse. The other became a dairy executive. I honestly have no idea how they became so pleasant and well liked, but I'd gather it was from my grandma, who always issued small acts of kindness and always made sure everyone got fed. (And fed a lot - the 6 kids all have type 2 diabetes which hit about 50-55. I am similarly afflicted).
2) My Grandpa on my mother's side was a remarkably mean person. He didn't like his kids, their spouses, their grandkids. He was just a mean and ornery guy. He was around 6'3" tall and had a 5'1" wife, who was a very nice sweet lady who never crossed him.
They also had 6 kids, many of whom are successful, but almost all of whom are pretty weird people, which certainly seems to make sense in the overall scheme of things since their household was run by a maniac, with only moderate input from the nicer person.
Lesson from 1&2 - it is probably OK for the dad not to be a real loving type, so long as the mom makes up for it, or so long as the dad is just absent and not affirmatively bad.
3) My dad is a super nice guy. He is not super smart, but he is educated, and he knows well what he needs to know. He does not pretend to be what he is not. My dad sees the world in shades of gray and always cautions against condemning people or positions taken unless you first try to understand the background of the person or why a position is being taken. He has always preached education and has always asked for patience. He is very slow to anger. He can be very funny, and he enjoys the simpler things in life - like playing or watching sports and taking a nap.
He married my super bright and super angry mother. He always wanted his kids to do well, and he always preached that you judge people by their actions and not their skin color or religion or background. As I said, he is a great guy.
4) I have been a dad for 25 years. Being a dad can be tough, and I actually had a good dad! When your kids are little, you so fear for their physical health and try to make sure they literally do not die due to some accident. When your kids are 10-20, you worry greatly for their emotional health and their ability to interact with people and make friends. When they pass 20, you start worrying about their ability to fend for themselves in the world and their ability to get and hold a job.
In other words, you never stop worrying about your kids. So, every day, I think about my kids and hope they are doing well.
Another hard thing for me about being a dad is that your role is not really set. I mean, I have seen nice dads, mean dads, sort of distant dads, tough dads, dads who treat their kids as a friend. Sometimes one role works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it works for one kid and not another.
My mom can really be a jerk. But I learned a lot from her. And I am positive that I would have never succeeded in life to the point I have unless I had the constantly angry and demanding mother that I did. I have said that I wished all of my kids could have lived with my mom for a year, just to give them a dose of high expectations and tough demands. I'd imagine they all would have benefitted.
Since I am sure my wife would never allow such an arrangement, I have always viewed my role as a dad to be as much like my own father as possible, but with a little of my mom's high expectations mixed in. I also have always tried to teach my kids things and tell them things I know. Sometimes they already know, but a lot of the time they do not. Life should always be a learning experience, and it should not be limited to school.
I think as a dad you will always have the desire for your kids to do well, and you will always think they are great at things they are good at. My dad always thought I should have played college sports. I always thought my son should be Brad Pitt or Chris Hemsworth. We have a high opinion of the kid, so we would like the kid to get to where we want them to go. I think this is part of the whole, "I will never be good enough for my dad" feeling people have. We dads just want you to use your inner greatness, and as a kid you usually do not feel like you have inner greatness. The kid is the one who has to care, so the kid generally wins, and the dad, as the loser, looks disappointed. Dad doesn't love you any less; he is just disappointed in the result.
Moving on -- I think it is also good to be sort of a fallback position for your kids. For example "I'd like to do that, but my dad would lose his mind." "My dad won't let me." Sometimes there are things your kids should not do and really do not want to. It is always nice to have someone to blame for good judgment.
As a dad, I try my best. I also love my kids. I was told when I was about 22 that "you love your girlfriend, but wait until you have kids." So true. If you are any kind of human being at all, you will protect your kids and put yourself on the line for them. No one hurts your kids.
Being a dad - you work at it and you hope that it works out for your kids. But they will always have stories about how mean or lazy or dumb you are or how you are unfair and treat their siblings better. I only know one dad (my wife's late father) whose kids worship him and find he has absolutely 100% no flaws. The minister at his funeral asked for some stories from the kids about his foibles - they could provide none. I don't want that said about me, because I know it is untrue as to me. As Robin Williams said in Good Will Hunting,
"Wonderful stuff, you know, little things like that. Ah, but, those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I knew about....People call these things imperfections, but they're not, aw, that's the good stuff."
Finally
When my dad's father died, I went to the funeral. I was about 18. The service was pretty dull - he wasn't a super interesting guy. But then the minister said that he had asked folks about my grandpa's guiding principles and someone had told him that he viewed the family as a tree, and the dad was the trunk and roots of the tree from which all of the rest of the tree is allowed to grow and prosper. It is not the dad's job to be beautiful or showy. He is supposed to support the tree and allow the branches and limbs and fruits a chance to grow and become beautiful. He was the trunk and roots of his family's tree.
There was suddenly not a dry eye in the house.
Happy Fathers' Day.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Hillary Clinton Just Got Killed In the Rural Areas
Since I had a "Twitter discussion" about this last week (which consists of me stating facts and someone just replying "false") I thought I would do a little confirmation of my position that Hillary Clinton just got killed in rural areas in 2016.
This fact is confirmed by the counties listed here: https://ballotpedia.org/Pivot_Counties:_The_counties_that_voted_Obama-Obama-Trump_from_2008-2016 who went Obama-Obama-Trump. 206 counties, almost all of which are rural counties. Just amazing, for example, that Hillary could not only lose voters in the counties where Obama won by 5-10-20%, but Hillary managed to outright LOSE a majority vote in these counties to Trump.
Now, think about this for a second - counties in Iowa, Minnesota, upstate NY -- happy to vote twice for the black guy. Could not stand Hillary Clinton. Rural Iowa voters gave their votes to Barack Obama, crazy black Kenyan communist. But not Hillary Clinton.
If you review the big city votes in the key Obama states that Hillary lost, the states and city counties are as follows (I will name the city, not its county but I am using county totals):
Pennsylvanis (Philly and Pittsburgh) -- Hillary outperformed Obama
Iowa (Des Moines) -- Hillary underperformed by 6,000 differential (almost statistically insignificant)
Michigan (Detroit) -- Obama did much better (91K differential better)
Florida (Miami and Palm Beach County) - Hillary did better (82K better differential)
Wisconsin (Madison and Milwaukee) -- basically a push.
It is worth mentioning that in 2016 the cities saw a shitload of 3rd party votes (Pittsburgh 30K, Des Moines 18K, Detroit 12K, Florida cities 48K, Milwaukee 26K). It is hard to say whether these were potential Republican voters who hated Trump or whether they were Dem voters who hated Hillary. In any event, while she blew it in Detroit, she did better in Florida, so the cities didn't cost her the election as a whole.
What is really remarkable is the northern states bloodbath that Hillary suffered in county after county. See, for example, this map: https://www.cnbc.com/heres-a-map-of-the-us-counties-that-flipped-to-trump-from-democrats/ Again, this is someone polling 5-10-20% worse than Barack Obama (supposedly the divisive candidate).
Look at Mower County, Minnesota -- it went from 60-37% Obama to 50-42% Trump. And it could have been worse, as the county registered an 8% third-party vote.
Wisconsin Counties like Barron, Buffalo and Fond du Lac showed enormous vote differential swings to Trump and away from Obama's party (those 3 counties alone going +14,000 differential for Trump).
And even these results understate what a terrible candidate Hillary Clinton was in rural areas. Many rural areas had 4-6-8% third party voting, where Obama's elections had seen far lower thrd-party figures. The lesson there being that people either felt so disenchanted with both candidates that they punted, or they hated Hillary, or they hated Trump and Hillary should have actually lost by much MORE against a decent candidate. Any of those scenarios is a nightmare for Hillary.
And by stating the counties which switched heavy to Trump, we ignore the counties which were already Republican strongholds and went even harder to Trump. It is estimated Hillary lost rural America 3-1. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-rural-voters-trump-231266 I will concentrate on a rural part of the country with which I am most familiar - western NY.
Wyoming County is blood red Republican. It generally goes 63-36 Republican. Trump went 72-22%, gaining 3,500 votes in this tiny county.
Livingston County went from 54-44% county to a 58-36% county. Plus 4,000 votes.
Steuben County -- 57-41% to 64-30%, plus 5,000 votes.
In upstate NY, this won't matter since NYC is so huge and can carry the state for a Democrat barring some horrific collapse. But the point here is this. Obama was at least maintaining a traditional Democratic level of loss in these counties. Hillary was venturing into McGovern 1972 territory. She was just super distatsteful to rural voters. And, again, it could have been FAR worse if the traditional GOP voter had all voted for Trump. These rural counties were seeing 5% 3rd party voting. Had that simply been split 60-40% Trump (doubtful it was that low) the bloodbath becomes even worse.
In short - Hillary just got killed in the rural areas, no matter what some idiot on Twitter tells you.
This fact is confirmed by the counties listed here: https://ballotpedia.org/Pivot_Counties:_The_counties_that_voted_Obama-Obama-Trump_from_2008-2016 who went Obama-Obama-Trump. 206 counties, almost all of which are rural counties. Just amazing, for example, that Hillary could not only lose voters in the counties where Obama won by 5-10-20%, but Hillary managed to outright LOSE a majority vote in these counties to Trump.
Now, think about this for a second - counties in Iowa, Minnesota, upstate NY -- happy to vote twice for the black guy. Could not stand Hillary Clinton. Rural Iowa voters gave their votes to Barack Obama, crazy black Kenyan communist. But not Hillary Clinton.
If you review the big city votes in the key Obama states that Hillary lost, the states and city counties are as follows (I will name the city, not its county but I am using county totals):
Pennsylvanis (Philly and Pittsburgh) -- Hillary outperformed Obama
Iowa (Des Moines) -- Hillary underperformed by 6,000 differential (almost statistically insignificant)
Michigan (Detroit) -- Obama did much better (91K differential better)
Florida (Miami and Palm Beach County) - Hillary did better (82K better differential)
Wisconsin (Madison and Milwaukee) -- basically a push.
It is worth mentioning that in 2016 the cities saw a shitload of 3rd party votes (Pittsburgh 30K, Des Moines 18K, Detroit 12K, Florida cities 48K, Milwaukee 26K). It is hard to say whether these were potential Republican voters who hated Trump or whether they were Dem voters who hated Hillary. In any event, while she blew it in Detroit, she did better in Florida, so the cities didn't cost her the election as a whole.
What is really remarkable is the northern states bloodbath that Hillary suffered in county after county. See, for example, this map: https://www.cnbc.com/heres-a-map-of-the-us-counties-that-flipped-to-trump-from-democrats/ Again, this is someone polling 5-10-20% worse than Barack Obama (supposedly the divisive candidate).
Look at Mower County, Minnesota -- it went from 60-37% Obama to 50-42% Trump. And it could have been worse, as the county registered an 8% third-party vote.
Wisconsin Counties like Barron, Buffalo and Fond du Lac showed enormous vote differential swings to Trump and away from Obama's party (those 3 counties alone going +14,000 differential for Trump).
And even these results understate what a terrible candidate Hillary Clinton was in rural areas. Many rural areas had 4-6-8% third party voting, where Obama's elections had seen far lower thrd-party figures. The lesson there being that people either felt so disenchanted with both candidates that they punted, or they hated Hillary, or they hated Trump and Hillary should have actually lost by much MORE against a decent candidate. Any of those scenarios is a nightmare for Hillary.
And by stating the counties which switched heavy to Trump, we ignore the counties which were already Republican strongholds and went even harder to Trump. It is estimated Hillary lost rural America 3-1. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-rural-voters-trump-231266 I will concentrate on a rural part of the country with which I am most familiar - western NY.
Wyoming County is blood red Republican. It generally goes 63-36 Republican. Trump went 72-22%, gaining 3,500 votes in this tiny county.
Livingston County went from 54-44% county to a 58-36% county. Plus 4,000 votes.
Steuben County -- 57-41% to 64-30%, plus 5,000 votes.
In upstate NY, this won't matter since NYC is so huge and can carry the state for a Democrat barring some horrific collapse. But the point here is this. Obama was at least maintaining a traditional Democratic level of loss in these counties. Hillary was venturing into McGovern 1972 territory. She was just super distatsteful to rural voters. And, again, it could have been FAR worse if the traditional GOP voter had all voted for Trump. These rural counties were seeing 5% 3rd party voting. Had that simply been split 60-40% Trump (doubtful it was that low) the bloodbath becomes even worse.
In short - Hillary just got killed in the rural areas, no matter what some idiot on Twitter tells you.
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Greatest NBA Finals' Performances Since 1984, Sorted by Average "Game Score"
"Game Score" is a statistic that tries to evaluate how effectively and efficiently a player plays. So, by plugging in certain statistical game inputs, https://captaincalculator.com/sports/basketball/game-score-calculator/ you come up with a "Game Score."
Generally, 60+ is almost impossibly great, 50+ is phenomenol, 40+ is great, 30+ is generally the best 1-2 scores of a given regular season night, 22.5 is a very good productive starter game, 15 is a good starter game, 10 is an OK game or a good game in limited minutes. Anything below 10 - you haven't contributed much.
So, I saw a tweet today where a guy said that Dwyan Wade's 2006 NBA Finals performance was the greatest Finals performance of all-time. Well, since 1984, our friends at www.basketball-reference.com have caluclated NBA Finals Games Scores, and, in fact, have included an "average Game Score" for the series for each player! So, comparing apples to apples (we're using the exact same stats, calculated the same way), lets' see who has the highest Game Score Average for a Finals series since 1984.
35th Place - Tony Parker 16.2 - 2007 Spurs
34th place -- Ray Allen 16.7 - 2008 Celts
33rd -- Chauncey Billups 17.3 - 2005 Pistons (team lost)
32nd -- Shaq 18.7 - 2004 Lakers (team lost, so he loses the tiebreaker to #31)
31st -- Kobe 18.7 -- 2010 Lakers (teammate Pau Gasol = 18.6)
30th - Shawn Kemp 18.9 -- 1996 Sonics (team lost, but his AGS > Jordan's 18.5)
These 6 are the Worst Efforts to lead the Finals. All under 20.
Next category 20-24.99999
29th -- Hakeem 21.0 -- 1994 Rockets
28th -- Clyde Drexler 21.3 -- 1990 Blazers (team lost)
27th -- Jordan 21.4 -- 1998 Bulls
26rh -- Kareem 21.7 - 1985 Lakers
25th -- Dumars 22.4 -- 1989 Pistons
24th -- LeBron 22.5 -- Miami 2014 (team lost, so he loses the tiebreaker to himself)
23rd -- LeBron 22.5 -- Miami 2013
22nd -- Duncan 22.6 -- Spurs 1999
21st -- Wade 22.7 -- Miami 2011 (team lost)
20th -- Kobe 22.8 -- Lakers 2009
19th -- Jordan 23.4 -- Chicago 1997
18th -- LeBron 23.6 -- Miami 2012
17th -- Bird 23.7 -- Boston 1984
16th -- Bird 23.9 -- Boston 1986
15th -- Duncan 24.1 -- Spurs 2003
14th -- Magic 24.4 -- Lakers 1988
13th -- Hakeem 24.5 -- Rockets 1995
12th -- LeBron 24.6 -- Cavs 2015 (team lost).
TOP 11 -- Average Game Score Over 25
11th -- Wade 25.4 -- 2006 Heat
10th -- Jordan 25.8 -- 1992 Bulls
9th -- LeBron 26.5 -- 2016 Cavs
8th -- Shaq 27.4 -- 2001 Lakers
7th -- LeBron 28.3 -- 2018 Cavs (team lost, so loses tiebreaker to Magic)
6th -- Magic 28.3 -- 1987 Lakers
5th -- Jordan 29.4 -- 1991 Bulls
4th Jordan 29.6 -- 1993 Bulls
3rd -- Shaq 30.1 -- 2002 Lakers
2nd -- Kevin Durant 30.3 -- 2017 Warriors
1st -- Shaq 30.6 -- 2000 Lakers
So, of the 35 Average Game Score leaders, 8 were on losing teams (Chauncey, Kemp, Shaq, Clyde, Wade, LeBron 3x).
The best non-winners I saw on this inquiry were:
Durant 30.3 beats LeBron 29.6 in 2017 -- LeBron's greatest ever Finals Average Game Score.
LeBron 28.3 beats Durant 26.9 in 2018 -- Durant's play got him MVP.
So, if we include LeBron's losing 29.6, here are the raw numbers for these top 8 guys:
Magic 1987 - 26-8-13, shot 54%
LeBron 2018 - 34-10-8, shot 53%
Jordan 1991 31-7-11 shot 56%
Jordan 1993 41-8-6 shot 51%
LeBron 2017 33-12-10, shot 56%
Shaq 2002 36-12-4, shot 59.5%
Durant 2017 35-8-5 shot 56%
Shaq 2000 -- 38-17-2, shot 61%
Of the top 35, Most Times Having Best Average Game Score
1 Season -- Parker, Allen, Billups, Kemp, Drexler, Dumars, Durant, Kareem
2 Seasons -- Duncan, Magic, Bird, Kobe, Wade, Hakeem
4 Seasons - Shaq
5 Seasons - Jordan
6 Seasons - LeBron
Generally, 60+ is almost impossibly great, 50+ is phenomenol, 40+ is great, 30+ is generally the best 1-2 scores of a given regular season night, 22.5 is a very good productive starter game, 15 is a good starter game, 10 is an OK game or a good game in limited minutes. Anything below 10 - you haven't contributed much.
So, I saw a tweet today where a guy said that Dwyan Wade's 2006 NBA Finals performance was the greatest Finals performance of all-time. Well, since 1984, our friends at www.basketball-reference.com have caluclated NBA Finals Games Scores, and, in fact, have included an "average Game Score" for the series for each player! So, comparing apples to apples (we're using the exact same stats, calculated the same way), lets' see who has the highest Game Score Average for a Finals series since 1984.
35th Place - Tony Parker 16.2 - 2007 Spurs
34th place -- Ray Allen 16.7 - 2008 Celts
33rd -- Chauncey Billups 17.3 - 2005 Pistons (team lost)
32nd -- Shaq 18.7 - 2004 Lakers (team lost, so he loses the tiebreaker to #31)
31st -- Kobe 18.7 -- 2010 Lakers (teammate Pau Gasol = 18.6)
30th - Shawn Kemp 18.9 -- 1996 Sonics (team lost, but his AGS > Jordan's 18.5)
These 6 are the Worst Efforts to lead the Finals. All under 20.
Next category 20-24.99999
29th -- Hakeem 21.0 -- 1994 Rockets
28th -- Clyde Drexler 21.3 -- 1990 Blazers (team lost)
27th -- Jordan 21.4 -- 1998 Bulls
26rh -- Kareem 21.7 - 1985 Lakers
25th -- Dumars 22.4 -- 1989 Pistons
24th -- LeBron 22.5 -- Miami 2014 (team lost, so he loses the tiebreaker to himself)
23rd -- LeBron 22.5 -- Miami 2013
22nd -- Duncan 22.6 -- Spurs 1999
21st -- Wade 22.7 -- Miami 2011 (team lost)
20th -- Kobe 22.8 -- Lakers 2009
19th -- Jordan 23.4 -- Chicago 1997
18th -- LeBron 23.6 -- Miami 2012
17th -- Bird 23.7 -- Boston 1984
16th -- Bird 23.9 -- Boston 1986
15th -- Duncan 24.1 -- Spurs 2003
14th -- Magic 24.4 -- Lakers 1988
13th -- Hakeem 24.5 -- Rockets 1995
12th -- LeBron 24.6 -- Cavs 2015 (team lost).
TOP 11 -- Average Game Score Over 25
11th -- Wade 25.4 -- 2006 Heat
10th -- Jordan 25.8 -- 1992 Bulls
9th -- LeBron 26.5 -- 2016 Cavs
8th -- Shaq 27.4 -- 2001 Lakers
7th -- LeBron 28.3 -- 2018 Cavs (team lost, so loses tiebreaker to Magic)
6th -- Magic 28.3 -- 1987 Lakers
5th -- Jordan 29.4 -- 1991 Bulls
4th Jordan 29.6 -- 1993 Bulls
3rd -- Shaq 30.1 -- 2002 Lakers
2nd -- Kevin Durant 30.3 -- 2017 Warriors
1st -- Shaq 30.6 -- 2000 Lakers
So, of the 35 Average Game Score leaders, 8 were on losing teams (Chauncey, Kemp, Shaq, Clyde, Wade, LeBron 3x).
The best non-winners I saw on this inquiry were:
Durant 30.3 beats LeBron 29.6 in 2017 -- LeBron's greatest ever Finals Average Game Score.
LeBron 28.3 beats Durant 26.9 in 2018 -- Durant's play got him MVP.
So, if we include LeBron's losing 29.6, here are the raw numbers for these top 8 guys:
Magic 1987 - 26-8-13, shot 54%
LeBron 2018 - 34-10-8, shot 53%
Jordan 1991 31-7-11 shot 56%
Jordan 1993 41-8-6 shot 51%
LeBron 2017 33-12-10, shot 56%
Shaq 2002 36-12-4, shot 59.5%
Durant 2017 35-8-5 shot 56%
Shaq 2000 -- 38-17-2, shot 61%
Of the top 35, Most Times Having Best Average Game Score
1 Season -- Parker, Allen, Billups, Kemp, Drexler, Dumars, Durant, Kareem
2 Seasons -- Duncan, Magic, Bird, Kobe, Wade, Hakeem
4 Seasons - Shaq
5 Seasons - Jordan
6 Seasons - LeBron
Friday, February 08, 2019
Happy Moses Malone Day
OK, since it is Moses Malone Day in Philly, let's go through some Moses Malone love.
1) Most importantly,
Moses is my #18 player of all-time. Since I spend weeks on that analysis every 3 years, and I rank Moses so high, I think it is pretty egregious that Moses is only now getting his number retired in Philly.
2) Moses Malone was so physically dominant as a high school player that he was told to go home early from Five Star Camp. As recently as 2016, Hubie Brown stated that Moses was the greatest player ever at Five Star Camp.
Moses once stated of his own physical dominance that he and any 4 guys he could pick off the street in Petersburg, VA could win NBA games.
3) Moses Malone in 1979-83, finished 1-9-4-1-1 in MVP voting:
1979 -- Beat George Gervin 112-35
1980 - received a first-place vote (Magic did not)
1981 - finished behind Dr. J, Bird and Kareem
1982 - beat Bird 40-20 in first place votes
1983 - had 69 out of 75 first-place votes. (defeating Bird, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem)
So, over a 5 year stretch, Moses did better in MVP balloting than 4 of the top 20 players of all-time - Dr. J, Magic, Bird, Kareem).
3) Over this same stretch of time, Moses' Houston team went to the Finals from the West in 1981 (displacing Magic/Kareem - something that was not done again in the Western Conference until 1986)
Moses led the NBA in playoff Win Shares in 1981 and 1983. Again, this means he had more playoff WS than Bird in 1981 and more playoff WS than Magic or Kareem in 1983.
There is a solid argument that from 1979-1983, Moses Malone was the #1 player in all of basketball. Certainly he destroyed Kareem in head-to-head competition on a regular basis, taking him out in 1981 as a Rocket and then sweeping the Lakers in 1983. In 1983, Moses was so head and shoulders above his competition that he stated his classic "Fo-Fo-Fo" boast before the playoffs, and, but for a long Sidney Moncrief buzzer beater, would have gone 4-4-4. As it was, teams got exactly 1 game off the Sixers, and the Magic/Kareem Lakers were swept.
CAREER STATS
4) Moses
-- #2 in career FT made and attempted
-- #9 all-time in career points
-- #3 all-time in career rebounds
-- #14 in Win Shares
Only Russell and Wilt have more rebounds.
5) 4X first-team all-NBA, 4X second team all-NBA The league did not go to 3 teams of all-NBA until 1988-89.
Moses was a 13x all-star, so he was really good for 13 years, even though only 8 of them resulted in all-NBA honors.
6) Moses was the greatest offensive rebounder since offensive rebounds were counted as a statistic in the NBA in 1973-74.
NBA Seasons with over 330 Offensive Rebounds:
Moses 14, Rodman 7, no one else more than 5.
NBA Seasons with over 400 offensive rebounds
Moses 6, Rodman 3, Drummond & Larry Smith 2. No one else with over 1.
Seasons with over 500 offensive rebounds.
Moses 3, Rodman 1 (end of list)
Career Total Offensive Rebounds:
Moses 7382
Gilmore 4816
Now, imagine that there is some statistic that has been around for 45 years and you are number one by roughly 50% in excess of the 2nd place guy.
The active leader is Dwight Howard. If Dwight Howard gets 22 more offensive rebounds, he will have 50% of Moses Malone's career rebounds.
7) Moses Was the greatest Offensive Rebounder/Scorer Ever, By a Huge Margin.
Games With 40+ Points and 10 Offensive Rebounds - Moses 5, Shaq 3
30/10 - Moses 29, Barkley 10, Shaq 8, David 7, Hakeem 7
25/10 - Moses 40, Barkley 17, Shaq 13, Hakeem 12, David 10.
8) How great was Moses as a 30 points/20 Rebound Player?
For seasons after 1973:
Moses -- 36 Such Games
Kareem 27
McAdoo 22
Barkley 20
Shaq 18
Hakeem 15
Cousins 10
Big E 10
Ewing 8
Dwight Howard 8
9) 24 Point and 12 Rebound Seasons
Wilt 10
KAJ Baylor Pettit 9
Moses 6
McAdoo 5
Bellamy Hayes Shaq 4
Hakeem 3
10) Moses Had 3 MVPs, and a Finals MVP, and was regular season and Finals MVP in the same year, in a year where he led the league in both regular season and playoff WS and WS/48.
This has been done as follows:
1971 - Kareem
1983 Moses
1991 Jordan
1996 Jordan
2000 Shaq
2012 LeBron
Worthy of a Note:
In 1967, Wilt won the MVP and his team won the title and he won WS and WS/48 for the season and the playoffs. But there was no Finals MVP formally awarded.
In 2013, LeBron waon MVP, Finals MVP, WS and WS/48 in the season and WS in the playoffs - but his temmate Chris Anderson had the best WS/48 at .303, playing roughly 300 minutes. Chris Paul also had a higher WS/48, playing around 200 minutes.
CONCLUSION -- Moses was awesome. Happy Moses Malone Day!!!
1) Most importantly,
Moses is my #18 player of all-time. Since I spend weeks on that analysis every 3 years, and I rank Moses so high, I think it is pretty egregious that Moses is only now getting his number retired in Philly.
2) Moses Malone was so physically dominant as a high school player that he was told to go home early from Five Star Camp. As recently as 2016, Hubie Brown stated that Moses was the greatest player ever at Five Star Camp.
Moses once stated of his own physical dominance that he and any 4 guys he could pick off the street in Petersburg, VA could win NBA games.
3) Moses Malone in 1979-83, finished 1-9-4-1-1 in MVP voting:
1979 -- Beat George Gervin 112-35
1980 - received a first-place vote (Magic did not)
1981 - finished behind Dr. J, Bird and Kareem
1982 - beat Bird 40-20 in first place votes
1983 - had 69 out of 75 first-place votes. (defeating Bird, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem)
So, over a 5 year stretch, Moses did better in MVP balloting than 4 of the top 20 players of all-time - Dr. J, Magic, Bird, Kareem).
3) Over this same stretch of time, Moses' Houston team went to the Finals from the West in 1981 (displacing Magic/Kareem - something that was not done again in the Western Conference until 1986)
Moses led the NBA in playoff Win Shares in 1981 and 1983. Again, this means he had more playoff WS than Bird in 1981 and more playoff WS than Magic or Kareem in 1983.
There is a solid argument that from 1979-1983, Moses Malone was the #1 player in all of basketball. Certainly he destroyed Kareem in head-to-head competition on a regular basis, taking him out in 1981 as a Rocket and then sweeping the Lakers in 1983. In 1983, Moses was so head and shoulders above his competition that he stated his classic "Fo-Fo-Fo" boast before the playoffs, and, but for a long Sidney Moncrief buzzer beater, would have gone 4-4-4. As it was, teams got exactly 1 game off the Sixers, and the Magic/Kareem Lakers were swept.
CAREER STATS
4) Moses
-- #2 in career FT made and attempted
-- #9 all-time in career points
-- #3 all-time in career rebounds
-- #14 in Win Shares
Only Russell and Wilt have more rebounds.
5) 4X first-team all-NBA, 4X second team all-NBA The league did not go to 3 teams of all-NBA until 1988-89.
Moses was a 13x all-star, so he was really good for 13 years, even though only 8 of them resulted in all-NBA honors.
6) Moses was the greatest offensive rebounder since offensive rebounds were counted as a statistic in the NBA in 1973-74.
NBA Seasons with over 330 Offensive Rebounds:
Moses 14, Rodman 7, no one else more than 5.
NBA Seasons with over 400 offensive rebounds
Moses 6, Rodman 3, Drummond & Larry Smith 2. No one else with over 1.
Seasons with over 500 offensive rebounds.
Moses 3, Rodman 1 (end of list)
Career Total Offensive Rebounds:
Moses 7382
Gilmore 4816
Now, imagine that there is some statistic that has been around for 45 years and you are number one by roughly 50% in excess of the 2nd place guy.
The active leader is Dwight Howard. If Dwight Howard gets 22 more offensive rebounds, he will have 50% of Moses Malone's career rebounds.
7) Moses Was the greatest Offensive Rebounder/Scorer Ever, By a Huge Margin.
Games With 40+ Points and 10 Offensive Rebounds - Moses 5, Shaq 3
30/10 - Moses 29, Barkley 10, Shaq 8, David 7, Hakeem 7
25/10 - Moses 40, Barkley 17, Shaq 13, Hakeem 12, David 10.
8) How great was Moses as a 30 points/20 Rebound Player?
For seasons after 1973:
Moses -- 36 Such Games
Kareem 27
McAdoo 22
Barkley 20
Shaq 18
Hakeem 15
Cousins 10
Big E 10
Ewing 8
Dwight Howard 8
9) 24 Point and 12 Rebound Seasons
Wilt 10
KAJ Baylor Pettit 9
Moses 6
McAdoo 5
Bellamy Hayes Shaq 4
Hakeem 3
10) Moses Had 3 MVPs, and a Finals MVP, and was regular season and Finals MVP in the same year, in a year where he led the league in both regular season and playoff WS and WS/48.
This has been done as follows:
1971 - Kareem
1983 Moses
1991 Jordan
1996 Jordan
2000 Shaq
2012 LeBron
Worthy of a Note:
In 1967, Wilt won the MVP and his team won the title and he won WS and WS/48 for the season and the playoffs. But there was no Finals MVP formally awarded.
In 2013, LeBron waon MVP, Finals MVP, WS and WS/48 in the season and WS in the playoffs - but his temmate Chris Anderson had the best WS/48 at .303, playing roughly 300 minutes. Chris Paul also had a higher WS/48, playing around 200 minutes.
CONCLUSION -- Moses was awesome. Happy Moses Malone Day!!!
Tuesday, February 05, 2019
50 Most Rat-Infested Cities 2019. Have I Been? Do I Like Them?
- Chicago - have been many times, love the city
- Los Angeles (+1) love
- New York (-1) love
- Washington, DC (+1) love
- San Francisco (-1) love
- Detroit (+1) some good, some bad
- Philadelphia (-1) some good, some bad
- Cleveland, OH (+5) yes, I like Cleveland
- Baltimore (-1) some good, some bad
- Denver (+1) like a lot
- Minneapolis-St. Paul (+1) my home
- Dallas-Ft. Worth (-2) do not like Dallas
- Boston (+2) some good, some bad
- Seattle (-5) like a lot
- Atlanta (-1) terrible city
- Indianapolis (+3) - it is a nice little town
- Miami-Ft. Lauderdale (+1) don't love
- Hartford, CT (-2) - terrible
- Pittsburgh (+3) some good some bad
- Cincinnati (+4) same
- Milwaukee same
- Charlotte, NC (+6) do NOT like Charlotte, almost mugged there
- Houston (-3) terrible
- Portland, OR (-7) really like
- Columbus, OH (+6) it is fine, nothing to write home about
- San Diego (+9) mediocre, not great
- Raleigh-Durham (+6) has come a long way, would say like alot
- Buffalo, NY (+2) - my home town, its struggles continue, but it is OK.
- New Orleans (-6) - I love the outlaw nature of NO
- Norfolk, VA (-1) - only driven through
- Richmond, VA (-6) - same
- Albany, NY (+4) -- I like Albany, kind of a sleepy quiet town
- Kansas City, MO (-6) - has some really nice things, I'd go with really like
- Portland, ME (+19) -- basically a poor man's Boston
- Nashville, TN (+5) - love
- St. Louis, MO (-4) - terrible city
- Sacramento (-11) - never been
- Greenville, SC (+4) - driven through only
- Grand Rapids, MI (-5) - driven through only
- Phoenix (+4) -- can be OK, not great
- Orlando (+6) - can be Ok, not great
- Tampa (-4) -- traffic is insane, if you lived way out on the water it would be cool
- Burlington, NY (+11) -- I imagine they must mean VT - went 30 years ago - pretty
- Champaign, IL (-3) - not much to recommend here, where I was born
- Rochester, NY (-6) - it's fine, getting smaller and smaller
- Syracuse (-1) - nice Italian food, little else
- Charleston, WV (+17) - never been
- Dayton, OH (+7) - driven through only
- Memphis (-6) -- I like Memphis to visit, pretty crappy town though
- Flint, MI (-1) - driven through only/ They have to be happy to finally find out that the absolute bottom of some list is sometimes preferable (since they are at the bottom of so many).
Wednesday, January 09, 2019
Tom Thibodeau Fired - My Thoughts.
Tom Thibodeau was fired and he has been replaced with Ryan Saunders. I have been a Timberwolves season ticket holder for 30 years now. I am one of under 200 individuals who can say that. I have seen an awful, awful lot of bad things and terrible basketball. I have seen many people come and go. With that perspective, my thoughts on the Thibs Era:
The Good
1) Thank you Thibs for the one playoff appearance. The Wolves had not reached the playoffs since 2004. They managed to win game 82 against Denver and make the playoffs. I went out to a bar and bought random people drinks after Game 82. Why? Did I view this as a step to an NBA title? No.
I viewed the playoff appearance as a way to avoid the laughingstock label that has plagued this franchise for so long. (I will note here that the people I know on the non-basketball side are excellent at their jobs, but the on-court product they sell is the worst in the history of professional sports, at least last I looked at winning percentages - it is possible that the new Browns are worse.) When you see the graphic go up, "Have not made the playoffs since George W. Bush's first term" you cringe.
So, thanks Thibs. That was worthwhile.
2) Thibs was a pretty good evaluator of talent. Look, he knew Butler was good, and Butler was very good for us (on the court). He knew that Jeff Teague was an above average PG who had gas left in the tank. Same with Taj Gibson (old, but still good). He drafted Okogie, who has been good for a low #1. He drafted Bates-Diop, who has been good in the G League for a mid-low #2. He acquired Tolliver, who (when played, see below) has been a worthwhile player.
He dumped Kris Dunn and LaVine and passed on Markkanen. Sure he had missed on his odd love of Dunn originally (passing over Jamal Murray and Buddy Hield - who both were better players and filled a huge need). But if you could say you would have one really good year of Butler and then get Saric and Coveington and not have signed LaVine to an $80M deal, I'd take that deal any day.
3 Thibs has a concept of what he wants to do, and he does it. There is some benefit to this. I mean, Kurt Rambis's players would say "We hate having to run the Triangle Offense" and he'd respond, "85% of what we run isn't the Triangle Offense." OK, so that is WORSE! Your players do not even know what they are being asked to do. Thibs' players at least knew what they were being asked to do, and, quite frankly, they were often pretty good at it. For example, while the Wolves ran a caveman style offense, they were in the upper echelon of the league in Offensive Rating. This would be like an NFL team running th ball 75% of the time in today's game and still scoring 24 points a game. Odd, illogical, but I guess it works.
The Bad
4. Thibs' defense, his alleged calling card, never worked. Whether it was (as most believed) because it was horrifically outdated, or whether it was (as Thibs believed) that his players were too bad or dumb to figure it out, what does it really matter? When you run a scheme that makes you a bottom 20% defense (sometimes worse), how do you just blindly stick with it? If you were teaching someone math, and they had the same blank stare at you for 2 years, would you show up every day and continue to use the same exact teaching method? One would hope not.
This, of course, goes to Thibs' personality -- when something is wrong, it cannot be his fault. "I know this defense works. It worked in 2008 and 2011. It works still today." Well, here is an example of actual coaching -- I coached an 8th grade B team for my daughter. We were pretty bad. We started like 3-8. So I had a sitdown with the girls and I said, "Look, what do you LIKE about what we do and what do you NOT like about what we do?" Got input, heard things about how we could do better. Where it made sense, I added more stuff they liked and reduced the stuff they didn't like. Ended 15-15. That is the sort of stuff you need to do. Thibs was completely unable and unwilling to adjust his defense to his players or to the modern game. In his defense, it appears that no player or coach or owner was willing to suggest that either.
5. Thibs hitched his wagon to different guys, generally not corectly. Look, Taj is a very good player. He shouldn't be getting 36 minutes a night. Wiggins played 36 a night, regardless of whether he was good, bad, indifferent, or VERY indifferent. There were absolutely no consequences for bad play if you were one of the guys Thibs liked.
It took me all of one scrimmage to recognize that Jamal Crawford was a horrific defensive player and would give you almost zero rebounds a game. Thibs played him a lot (from what I gathered, less than Crawford was promised, but way too much for what he was giving you). Crawford averaged more shots per 36 than Towns.
Thibs' reliance on Derrick Rose (who has completely re-worked his shooting and become a good shooter) appeared to some to be a great idea. But if basketball-reference.com has him at 116-116 ORtg/DRtg, what is he really giving you? A lot of difficult isolation scoring which he gives back on the other end? Thibs also was so happy to be correct about Rose that he literally played him to exhaustion, to the point where he was too tired/sore/injured to play! I mean, a fair evaluation is that the guy is either a guy you trade and get value for ("sell high") or he is a guy you play fewer minutes (15-24) and prolong his career and what you can get out of him both during a single seaon and in the long run. Thibs played him 30+ minutes, often over 34.
6. Thibs had a weird habit of signing players (Cole Aldrich, Anthony Tollver) and then not playing them. While these guys are just role players, why spend money on them if you are just going to have them ride the pine? You'd be better off signing no one and then acquiring prospects that other teams had to cut at the end of training camp. It is cheaper, and there is probably a higher ceiling for some of these guys.
Weird.
The Ugly
7. Thibs's primary weakness was that he could never take a long-term view and try to develop the franchise. He viewed every game, even every possession, as the end of the world. If someone literally told Tom Thibodeau within two minutes of the end of the Hawks game, "You better get Rose out or there is a 75% chance he gets hurt and is out for a week" Thibs would take the 25% chance. He needed the Hawks win that badly. To make matters worse, the risk did not always result in a reward.
Up 25, down 25, the starters were running the last 3 minutes of the game. There might be a 2% chance that the bench could blow that lead or the starters might come back. All that really mattered was the one single game. Every game was Game 7 of the Finals.
Imagine if you had to drive 3,000 total miles in 10 days. On day 4 you are sick and throwing up. You'd spend that day in bed, maybe drive more the next day. Thibs would get a bucket and throw up in it as he ground out his 300 miles. It would be 100% completely unnecessary to do so, and it probably would endanger the entire trip and maybe his life, but he'd do it anyway, because it wasn't the trip, it was the day that mattered.
8. Thibs was a horrific micromanager. It is almost impossible to play excellent basketball if you do not enjoy it. I would tell my players when I coached, "Look, if you cannot find joy in basketball, you ought to consider some other sports." Now, I had a coach in 11th grade who screamed at us and constantly had us do sprints in practice and who employed a full-court press against every opponent (we were very white and very slow and small). We had the #1 player in the three-county area. We went 7-11. The next year we lost our best guy, got a new (more rational) coach, and went 12-6.
It just isn't any fun to play basketball when your every move is scrutinized. It sucks. So when a player is a bench guy getting maybe 15 minutes and he gets pulled for his first mistake, you have now effectively lost him as a player. He will not provide you with much value.
To make matters worse, some players were micromanaged and punished for errors, while others (see #5 above) were micromanaged but never disciplined for anything.
9. Thibs alienated his players and did not understand how to play to their strengths,
Towns - 3rd Team All-NBA, 4th on the team in shots per minute. How does that possibly occur? Towns at the end of a game stepped in-bounds while throwing in the ball. Thibs, "You stupid motherfucker!" Now, this is inappropraite coaching or teaching at any level. If your 15th guy got in and forgot to dribble the ball, you'd treat him better than this.
Right before Thibs' firing, he was willing to say that Towns had played "the best he has played." Well, wow! Alert the media! Towns had gone 28-12 for 6 straight games, the longest such streak since Moses Malone in 1982. Thibs phrased this once in a generation streak as, basically "Towns is playing better." Towns' reply, "He said something nice about me!?!? Wow."
Tyus Jones - as I have said numerous times, Tyus Jones is a great "with the ball" player. he SUCKS as an "off the ball" offensive player. Where does Thibs insist on playing him? With DRose and Jamal Crawford getting huge Usage and Tyus standing in the corner waiting for the ball. So, you are taking guys with MAYBE a 2-1 assist to turnover ratio and having them handle the ball while your 6-1 assist-to-turnover guy (who is a very poor spot-up shooter) stands in the corner. If you are going to operate with this strategy, then you need to not play Tyus at all. Play an off guard or just play a huge defensive lineup. Play someone who will compensate defensively for how terrible Crawford and Rose have been as team defenders (and Crawford as an individual defender).
And can we pry ONE positive comment from Thibs abaout Tyus? I mean, here is a guy who you don't value (he wants to play him 12-16 minutes a game) and when forced into action as a starter (due to injury) he was one of your best plus-minus players (generally the best) and was a key to several winning efforts. Answer - no, that will not occur. In one such game earlier this year, Tyus was a key to victory, when asked about Tyus, Thibs said "I thought Jarryd Bayless played very well." Um, OK.
Wiggins -- now, it may be that no one can ever unlock Andrew Wiggins, but I can assure you this - playing him as a standstill "end of the play" spot up shooter - this is not his highest and best use. So, again, if you believe that he can only be used in that role, you need to cut his minutes and play Tolliver or Bjelica instead. Same as the Tyus example. If you have a car that will go 120 miles per hour and rides rough when under 40 mph, don't drive it the 5 miles to and from work. Drive it on long trips.
What is really clear is that Towns hated Thibs, Tyus resented Thibs, Teague regularly tried to embarrass Thibs with the media, Bjelica couldn't wait to get away from Thibs, Butler knived Thibs in the back (maybe in the front), Gorgui almost had a mental breakdown playing for the guy, Crawford felt lied to and betrayed. And those are the guys I, as a fan, know about.
10. Thibs' Behavior Was Unprofessional
Look, we all wish we were king. And I think Thibs figured he was king. Great. But if you really ARE NOT the king and you have a boss of any kind, then you need to build up some relationships and gather some relationship "chits" you can cash in later when things go poorly.
-- When your boss asks you to a barbecue, go.
-- When you are the coach of a team, appear in the media and do some PR. If you come off poorly in person, have someone write you some B.S. emails to the fans, or recite some text written for you on video..
-- Do not lock employees from one side of the business out of your side of the business.
-- Do not throw a laptop through a glass conference room wall.
-- Do not tell free agents you want them and then don't play them as you said you would.
-- When your owner tells you to trade a guy, do your effing job and trade the guy.
-- Don't call your superstar a "stupid motherfucker" for committing a turnover.
-- Reward consistently good play and punish consistently poor play with minutes.
-- Talk to your players.
-- Say nice things about your best players or guys who give a lot of effort, even if you don't want to.
-- Don't scream and micromanage every possession.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't panic.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't demonstrate by your body language that you are disgusted/worried. Instead, put up an aura of "we know how to recover from this".
These are 13 things that, again, I know about just as a fan. Imagine the plethora of other terrible unprofessional things I am forgetting or that I am unaware of right now.
Conclusion
Grading on the very kind grading curve that is Wolves Coaches, Thibs was not terrible. He had a team that made the playoffs and he was almost .500 overall. So, I'd place him here:
1) Flip
2) McHale
3) Adelman
4) Dwane Casey
5) Thibs.
Thibs defeats Musselman, Lowe, Blair, Rodgers, Wittman, and Rambis, Sam Mitchell and anyone else I am forgetting.
(For you Muss defenders, he was crazier than Thibs when it came to lack of player development, lack of professionalism, and winning at all costs. For Sam fans, Sam understood player development, but his teams were very poorly prepared and he could never adjust in-game).
So, how terrible has the Timberwolves franchise been? Thibs is clearly a top-half coach in their history!
Ryan Saunders -- long-time assistant. Will undoubtedly have better relationships with the key Wolves players and is an immediate huge upgrade on professionalism. His dad was an offensive genius, but didn't give a damn about defense (Garnett was basically the eraser for all of Flip's defensive indifference, with mixed results). Hopefully Ryan will take the good of his dad and find some way to care more about defense.
As someone who has seen 30 years of basketball and yet only 1 year where we won any playoff series, obviously I am rooting for Ryan very hard.
HM
The Good
1) Thank you Thibs for the one playoff appearance. The Wolves had not reached the playoffs since 2004. They managed to win game 82 against Denver and make the playoffs. I went out to a bar and bought random people drinks after Game 82. Why? Did I view this as a step to an NBA title? No.
I viewed the playoff appearance as a way to avoid the laughingstock label that has plagued this franchise for so long. (I will note here that the people I know on the non-basketball side are excellent at their jobs, but the on-court product they sell is the worst in the history of professional sports, at least last I looked at winning percentages - it is possible that the new Browns are worse.) When you see the graphic go up, "Have not made the playoffs since George W. Bush's first term" you cringe.
So, thanks Thibs. That was worthwhile.
2) Thibs was a pretty good evaluator of talent. Look, he knew Butler was good, and Butler was very good for us (on the court). He knew that Jeff Teague was an above average PG who had gas left in the tank. Same with Taj Gibson (old, but still good). He drafted Okogie, who has been good for a low #1. He drafted Bates-Diop, who has been good in the G League for a mid-low #2. He acquired Tolliver, who (when played, see below) has been a worthwhile player.
He dumped Kris Dunn and LaVine and passed on Markkanen. Sure he had missed on his odd love of Dunn originally (passing over Jamal Murray and Buddy Hield - who both were better players and filled a huge need). But if you could say you would have one really good year of Butler and then get Saric and Coveington and not have signed LaVine to an $80M deal, I'd take that deal any day.
3 Thibs has a concept of what he wants to do, and he does it. There is some benefit to this. I mean, Kurt Rambis's players would say "We hate having to run the Triangle Offense" and he'd respond, "85% of what we run isn't the Triangle Offense." OK, so that is WORSE! Your players do not even know what they are being asked to do. Thibs' players at least knew what they were being asked to do, and, quite frankly, they were often pretty good at it. For example, while the Wolves ran a caveman style offense, they were in the upper echelon of the league in Offensive Rating. This would be like an NFL team running th ball 75% of the time in today's game and still scoring 24 points a game. Odd, illogical, but I guess it works.
The Bad
4. Thibs' defense, his alleged calling card, never worked. Whether it was (as most believed) because it was horrifically outdated, or whether it was (as Thibs believed) that his players were too bad or dumb to figure it out, what does it really matter? When you run a scheme that makes you a bottom 20% defense (sometimes worse), how do you just blindly stick with it? If you were teaching someone math, and they had the same blank stare at you for 2 years, would you show up every day and continue to use the same exact teaching method? One would hope not.
This, of course, goes to Thibs' personality -- when something is wrong, it cannot be his fault. "I know this defense works. It worked in 2008 and 2011. It works still today." Well, here is an example of actual coaching -- I coached an 8th grade B team for my daughter. We were pretty bad. We started like 3-8. So I had a sitdown with the girls and I said, "Look, what do you LIKE about what we do and what do you NOT like about what we do?" Got input, heard things about how we could do better. Where it made sense, I added more stuff they liked and reduced the stuff they didn't like. Ended 15-15. That is the sort of stuff you need to do. Thibs was completely unable and unwilling to adjust his defense to his players or to the modern game. In his defense, it appears that no player or coach or owner was willing to suggest that either.
5. Thibs hitched his wagon to different guys, generally not corectly. Look, Taj is a very good player. He shouldn't be getting 36 minutes a night. Wiggins played 36 a night, regardless of whether he was good, bad, indifferent, or VERY indifferent. There were absolutely no consequences for bad play if you were one of the guys Thibs liked.
It took me all of one scrimmage to recognize that Jamal Crawford was a horrific defensive player and would give you almost zero rebounds a game. Thibs played him a lot (from what I gathered, less than Crawford was promised, but way too much for what he was giving you). Crawford averaged more shots per 36 than Towns.
Thibs' reliance on Derrick Rose (who has completely re-worked his shooting and become a good shooter) appeared to some to be a great idea. But if basketball-reference.com has him at 116-116 ORtg/DRtg, what is he really giving you? A lot of difficult isolation scoring which he gives back on the other end? Thibs also was so happy to be correct about Rose that he literally played him to exhaustion, to the point where he was too tired/sore/injured to play! I mean, a fair evaluation is that the guy is either a guy you trade and get value for ("sell high") or he is a guy you play fewer minutes (15-24) and prolong his career and what you can get out of him both during a single seaon and in the long run. Thibs played him 30+ minutes, often over 34.
6. Thibs had a weird habit of signing players (Cole Aldrich, Anthony Tollver) and then not playing them. While these guys are just role players, why spend money on them if you are just going to have them ride the pine? You'd be better off signing no one and then acquiring prospects that other teams had to cut at the end of training camp. It is cheaper, and there is probably a higher ceiling for some of these guys.
Weird.
The Ugly
7. Thibs's primary weakness was that he could never take a long-term view and try to develop the franchise. He viewed every game, even every possession, as the end of the world. If someone literally told Tom Thibodeau within two minutes of the end of the Hawks game, "You better get Rose out or there is a 75% chance he gets hurt and is out for a week" Thibs would take the 25% chance. He needed the Hawks win that badly. To make matters worse, the risk did not always result in a reward.
Up 25, down 25, the starters were running the last 3 minutes of the game. There might be a 2% chance that the bench could blow that lead or the starters might come back. All that really mattered was the one single game. Every game was Game 7 of the Finals.
Imagine if you had to drive 3,000 total miles in 10 days. On day 4 you are sick and throwing up. You'd spend that day in bed, maybe drive more the next day. Thibs would get a bucket and throw up in it as he ground out his 300 miles. It would be 100% completely unnecessary to do so, and it probably would endanger the entire trip and maybe his life, but he'd do it anyway, because it wasn't the trip, it was the day that mattered.
8. Thibs was a horrific micromanager. It is almost impossible to play excellent basketball if you do not enjoy it. I would tell my players when I coached, "Look, if you cannot find joy in basketball, you ought to consider some other sports." Now, I had a coach in 11th grade who screamed at us and constantly had us do sprints in practice and who employed a full-court press against every opponent (we were very white and very slow and small). We had the #1 player in the three-county area. We went 7-11. The next year we lost our best guy, got a new (more rational) coach, and went 12-6.
It just isn't any fun to play basketball when your every move is scrutinized. It sucks. So when a player is a bench guy getting maybe 15 minutes and he gets pulled for his first mistake, you have now effectively lost him as a player. He will not provide you with much value.
To make matters worse, some players were micromanaged and punished for errors, while others (see #5 above) were micromanaged but never disciplined for anything.
9. Thibs alienated his players and did not understand how to play to their strengths,
Towns - 3rd Team All-NBA, 4th on the team in shots per minute. How does that possibly occur? Towns at the end of a game stepped in-bounds while throwing in the ball. Thibs, "You stupid motherfucker!" Now, this is inappropraite coaching or teaching at any level. If your 15th guy got in and forgot to dribble the ball, you'd treat him better than this.
Right before Thibs' firing, he was willing to say that Towns had played "the best he has played." Well, wow! Alert the media! Towns had gone 28-12 for 6 straight games, the longest such streak since Moses Malone in 1982. Thibs phrased this once in a generation streak as, basically "Towns is playing better." Towns' reply, "He said something nice about me!?!? Wow."
Tyus Jones - as I have said numerous times, Tyus Jones is a great "with the ball" player. he SUCKS as an "off the ball" offensive player. Where does Thibs insist on playing him? With DRose and Jamal Crawford getting huge Usage and Tyus standing in the corner waiting for the ball. So, you are taking guys with MAYBE a 2-1 assist to turnover ratio and having them handle the ball while your 6-1 assist-to-turnover guy (who is a very poor spot-up shooter) stands in the corner. If you are going to operate with this strategy, then you need to not play Tyus at all. Play an off guard or just play a huge defensive lineup. Play someone who will compensate defensively for how terrible Crawford and Rose have been as team defenders (and Crawford as an individual defender).
And can we pry ONE positive comment from Thibs abaout Tyus? I mean, here is a guy who you don't value (he wants to play him 12-16 minutes a game) and when forced into action as a starter (due to injury) he was one of your best plus-minus players (generally the best) and was a key to several winning efforts. Answer - no, that will not occur. In one such game earlier this year, Tyus was a key to victory, when asked about Tyus, Thibs said "I thought Jarryd Bayless played very well." Um, OK.
Wiggins -- now, it may be that no one can ever unlock Andrew Wiggins, but I can assure you this - playing him as a standstill "end of the play" spot up shooter - this is not his highest and best use. So, again, if you believe that he can only be used in that role, you need to cut his minutes and play Tolliver or Bjelica instead. Same as the Tyus example. If you have a car that will go 120 miles per hour and rides rough when under 40 mph, don't drive it the 5 miles to and from work. Drive it on long trips.
What is really clear is that Towns hated Thibs, Tyus resented Thibs, Teague regularly tried to embarrass Thibs with the media, Bjelica couldn't wait to get away from Thibs, Butler knived Thibs in the back (maybe in the front), Gorgui almost had a mental breakdown playing for the guy, Crawford felt lied to and betrayed. And those are the guys I, as a fan, know about.
10. Thibs' Behavior Was Unprofessional
Look, we all wish we were king. And I think Thibs figured he was king. Great. But if you really ARE NOT the king and you have a boss of any kind, then you need to build up some relationships and gather some relationship "chits" you can cash in later when things go poorly.
-- When your boss asks you to a barbecue, go.
-- When you are the coach of a team, appear in the media and do some PR. If you come off poorly in person, have someone write you some B.S. emails to the fans, or recite some text written for you on video..
-- Do not lock employees from one side of the business out of your side of the business.
-- Do not throw a laptop through a glass conference room wall.
-- Do not tell free agents you want them and then don't play them as you said you would.
-- When your owner tells you to trade a guy, do your effing job and trade the guy.
-- Don't call your superstar a "stupid motherfucker" for committing a turnover.
-- Reward consistently good play and punish consistently poor play with minutes.
-- Talk to your players.
-- Say nice things about your best players or guys who give a lot of effort, even if you don't want to.
-- Don't scream and micromanage every possession.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't panic.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't demonstrate by your body language that you are disgusted/worried. Instead, put up an aura of "we know how to recover from this".
These are 13 things that, again, I know about just as a fan. Imagine the plethora of other terrible unprofessional things I am forgetting or that I am unaware of right now.
Conclusion
Grading on the very kind grading curve that is Wolves Coaches, Thibs was not terrible. He had a team that made the playoffs and he was almost .500 overall. So, I'd place him here:
1) Flip
2) McHale
3) Adelman
4) Dwane Casey
5) Thibs.
Thibs defeats Musselman, Lowe, Blair, Rodgers, Wittman, and Rambis, Sam Mitchell and anyone else I am forgetting.
(For you Muss defenders, he was crazier than Thibs when it came to lack of player development, lack of professionalism, and winning at all costs. For Sam fans, Sam understood player development, but his teams were very poorly prepared and he could never adjust in-game).
So, how terrible has the Timberwolves franchise been? Thibs is clearly a top-half coach in their history!
Ryan Saunders -- long-time assistant. Will undoubtedly have better relationships with the key Wolves players and is an immediate huge upgrade on professionalism. His dad was an offensive genius, but didn't give a damn about defense (Garnett was basically the eraser for all of Flip's defensive indifference, with mixed results). Hopefully Ryan will take the good of his dad and find some way to care more about defense.
As someone who has seen 30 years of basketball and yet only 1 year where we won any playoff series, obviously I am rooting for Ryan very hard.
HM
Friday, January 04, 2019
Tucker Carlson's Speech On How America Is Going Wrong
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/tucker-carlsons-galvanizing-speech/
This is an interesting speech to give. Carlson, apparently upset by Mitt Romney's disagreement with Donald Trump's behavior, basically goes after the Rich Wing of the Republican Party and states that the only way to a happier and healthier America is the abandonment of tax cuts and wars and finding some way to increase pay for men, particularly for men in rural areas.
The part of the speech that is getting criticized is the call for women to stop working so much, go back to making less money than men, and (for God sake) please stop having kids out of wedlock. Do like the wealthy do -- get married first and only then have kids.
The difficulty with this approach is that it lumps in every sort of person into the category of "single parenthood is bad." Is a woman who makes $200,000 and who has never been married going to be a worse parent than a "2 parent family" where one works, or neither works, or both cannot afford daily necessities for themselves or the child? Certainly not. And if you have a child out of wedlock, is that worse than the person who has a child in wedlock and then divorces when the child is 5-8-10 years old? We know that 50% of marriages end in divorce. We also know that many middle-income and lower-income non-custodial parents do not pay their child support. How is that child better off?
I think that what Tucker Carlson is really describing is the lower-middle-class or poor 16-22 year old woman who gets pregnant by an acquaintance and decides to have the child and not give it up for adoption. Yes, that generally ends poorly because the child lacks both attention and money. This is the worst of al worlds.
But Carlson uses the terrible results of this sort of relationship/condition to justify his position that women should stop making so much more than men -- since these men are not marriage material, and the wealthy women just have a kid on their own. Again, I refuse to believe that a child raised by an affluent single mom is generally in a worse situation than a child raised in a divorced family, a family where a parent dies, or any of a number of abusive two-parent families. I guess we could see the data, but you'd have to convince me that is true.
I'd like to say one last thing on that topic. I grew up in a lily white county in western NY. In the 1970s and early 80s, we were #1 in NY in per capita teen pregnancy. #1. And 90% of the teen preganancy was due to poor to lower middle class guys having sex with poor to middle class women. It had nothing whatsoever to do with these teenagers seeing men as unworthy of marriage. They lived a shitty life, they wanted something to do, they had unprotected sex. We also know that out of wedlock pregnancies exist in poor urban areas where a majority of the population has never had any decent job. So to blame women having kids out of wedlock on men having fewer manufacturing jobs seems like an awful stretch.
Anyway - Tucker Carlson's other points are rather weird ones for a Republican to be making: 1) Mitt Romney doesn't get taxed enough; 2) the tax code favors the wealthy, 3) government should do something to make sure working men get fair wages (he really doesn't say what, other than to say he opposes socialism or libertarianism).
; and 4) we should stop waging foreign wars.
The Republican Party, as long as I have been alive (since 1964) has done everything in its power to defeat every single one of these things. It is the party of huge tax cuts, huge favors for the wealthy, union busting, and endless foreign wars. Every truly wealthy person I know is a Republican. Every one. There are some people who are worth $1-2M who hang in there as Democrats, but the people I know who are worth $5-500M are all GOP, and strong GOP. I have attended conventions where these people gather. The things I have heard just absolutely shock me. I attended one presentation where the presenter bragged that he had convinced a group of minimum wage workers that their wages should never go up or they would all be fired. He had them fill out form letters to send to their elected representatives arguing that any increased wages would cost them all their jobs. I know people who make $10M a year and yet fight a $1 minimum wage increased because (they say) it would "bankrupt" them. Again, these are all Republicans.
The things that most help raise wages for the bottom rung of wage earners are 1) unionization, 2) minimum wage increases. The GOP opposes these as if they were a bill to endorse widespread introduction of The Plague. So, exactly what Republican position is the GOP going to take that would make it so the white male in Lewiston, Maine who Carlson cares so much about can make more money? Well, he needs givernment "help." What is that? That is unclear. But we know that Carlson can no longer stand a world in which the millions of people who live in NYC and LA get more done for them than the 40,000 people who live in Wyoming County, NY.
This seems an unbelievably odd position for anyone (Democrat or Republican) to take. As someone from the sticks, I realized early on in my life that if I wanted to make something of myself that I needed to 1) do well in school, 2) get higher edication, and 3) take advantage of any scholarships or loans that favored me. Then I had to move to a growing area where jobes were plentiful and my acquired knowledge would be worth money.
I was born into a family that made about $25-40,000 during my K-12 years. My parents had five kids. That was my life. I had a better life than 98% of people I knew where I grew up. But that was not a life I wanted for myself. I wanted out. Everyone knew that, and many people sneered at that idea, that I was not content with my place in life and did not want to stick around and make the best of the area where I grew up. But I really could not see myself ever being that person. I got scholarships, I borrrowed money, I left.
I cannot accept, then or now, that as a lower-tier economic person I had some obligation to stay in a rural area where no one made any money. While I am fully 100% aware of the derogatory manner in which city people treat rural people, and it sucks, I would never, as an educated person, suggest that the government owes my 40,000 person county the attention that it owes the 30,000,000 people in metro L.A. and NYC. Carlson's suggestion that the person in a rural area should be given a greater chance than the people in areas close to jobs and industry is nonsensical. It is like someone saying that 5'8" white guys from rural areas need a chance at the NBA, not just the much taller and more athletic players found almost entirely in the city and surrounding suburbs.
So, if what Tucker Carlson is suggesting is that men need higher wages and more manufacturing jobs, he needs to support unions, increased minimum wage laws, and government requirements upon industries to keep and create jobs. None of these are Republican positions. If he wants tax increases on Bain Capital, that is a VERY easy fix. There are under 20,000 people who game the system that way. They have 20,000 votes. If you pass a law, there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop it. Again, the GOP under Trump passed an enormous tax cut. Had they wanted to pass an enormous tax INCREASE on the super welathy and private equity companies, they could have done that in a snap of their fingers. They did not, nor will they ever.
While I agree that the Poor Wing of the GOP should draw more attention from elected reprsentatives than the Rich Wing of the GOP, the only attention that Wing has received is tacit or not-so-tacit support for their rampant racism, and maybe a bone thrown to them for reduced sentences for opiod crimes. Great. Where are the jobs promised to these poor unfortunate rural white guys? There are none. And Tucker Carlson's proposal appears to be that we get General Motors to build plants it doesn't need in poor white rural areas......hiring only men. Therefore, the guys I went to high school with, who had sired three children by the time they were 23, will now suddenly be deemed to be desirable target for marriage. Their wives will agree to stay home and not work, and the world that has sucked since the steel industry went under in 1977 will suddenly srping to a glorius life.
(Or else the company will pay them $10/hour, no benefits, and the sole shareholder will make $300,000,000 and ship their jobs to Mexico when they unionize. One or the other.).
This is an interesting speech to give. Carlson, apparently upset by Mitt Romney's disagreement with Donald Trump's behavior, basically goes after the Rich Wing of the Republican Party and states that the only way to a happier and healthier America is the abandonment of tax cuts and wars and finding some way to increase pay for men, particularly for men in rural areas.
The part of the speech that is getting criticized is the call for women to stop working so much, go back to making less money than men, and (for God sake) please stop having kids out of wedlock. Do like the wealthy do -- get married first and only then have kids.
The difficulty with this approach is that it lumps in every sort of person into the category of "single parenthood is bad." Is a woman who makes $200,000 and who has never been married going to be a worse parent than a "2 parent family" where one works, or neither works, or both cannot afford daily necessities for themselves or the child? Certainly not. And if you have a child out of wedlock, is that worse than the person who has a child in wedlock and then divorces when the child is 5-8-10 years old? We know that 50% of marriages end in divorce. We also know that many middle-income and lower-income non-custodial parents do not pay their child support. How is that child better off?
I think that what Tucker Carlson is really describing is the lower-middle-class or poor 16-22 year old woman who gets pregnant by an acquaintance and decides to have the child and not give it up for adoption. Yes, that generally ends poorly because the child lacks both attention and money. This is the worst of al worlds.
But Carlson uses the terrible results of this sort of relationship/condition to justify his position that women should stop making so much more than men -- since these men are not marriage material, and the wealthy women just have a kid on their own. Again, I refuse to believe that a child raised by an affluent single mom is generally in a worse situation than a child raised in a divorced family, a family where a parent dies, or any of a number of abusive two-parent families. I guess we could see the data, but you'd have to convince me that is true.
I'd like to say one last thing on that topic. I grew up in a lily white county in western NY. In the 1970s and early 80s, we were #1 in NY in per capita teen pregnancy. #1. And 90% of the teen preganancy was due to poor to lower middle class guys having sex with poor to middle class women. It had nothing whatsoever to do with these teenagers seeing men as unworthy of marriage. They lived a shitty life, they wanted something to do, they had unprotected sex. We also know that out of wedlock pregnancies exist in poor urban areas where a majority of the population has never had any decent job. So to blame women having kids out of wedlock on men having fewer manufacturing jobs seems like an awful stretch.
Anyway - Tucker Carlson's other points are rather weird ones for a Republican to be making: 1) Mitt Romney doesn't get taxed enough; 2) the tax code favors the wealthy, 3) government should do something to make sure working men get fair wages (he really doesn't say what, other than to say he opposes socialism or libertarianism).
; and 4) we should stop waging foreign wars.
The Republican Party, as long as I have been alive (since 1964) has done everything in its power to defeat every single one of these things. It is the party of huge tax cuts, huge favors for the wealthy, union busting, and endless foreign wars. Every truly wealthy person I know is a Republican. Every one. There are some people who are worth $1-2M who hang in there as Democrats, but the people I know who are worth $5-500M are all GOP, and strong GOP. I have attended conventions where these people gather. The things I have heard just absolutely shock me. I attended one presentation where the presenter bragged that he had convinced a group of minimum wage workers that their wages should never go up or they would all be fired. He had them fill out form letters to send to their elected representatives arguing that any increased wages would cost them all their jobs. I know people who make $10M a year and yet fight a $1 minimum wage increased because (they say) it would "bankrupt" them. Again, these are all Republicans.
The things that most help raise wages for the bottom rung of wage earners are 1) unionization, 2) minimum wage increases. The GOP opposes these as if they were a bill to endorse widespread introduction of The Plague. So, exactly what Republican position is the GOP going to take that would make it so the white male in Lewiston, Maine who Carlson cares so much about can make more money? Well, he needs givernment "help." What is that? That is unclear. But we know that Carlson can no longer stand a world in which the millions of people who live in NYC and LA get more done for them than the 40,000 people who live in Wyoming County, NY.
This seems an unbelievably odd position for anyone (Democrat or Republican) to take. As someone from the sticks, I realized early on in my life that if I wanted to make something of myself that I needed to 1) do well in school, 2) get higher edication, and 3) take advantage of any scholarships or loans that favored me. Then I had to move to a growing area where jobes were plentiful and my acquired knowledge would be worth money.
I was born into a family that made about $25-40,000 during my K-12 years. My parents had five kids. That was my life. I had a better life than 98% of people I knew where I grew up. But that was not a life I wanted for myself. I wanted out. Everyone knew that, and many people sneered at that idea, that I was not content with my place in life and did not want to stick around and make the best of the area where I grew up. But I really could not see myself ever being that person. I got scholarships, I borrrowed money, I left.
I cannot accept, then or now, that as a lower-tier economic person I had some obligation to stay in a rural area where no one made any money. While I am fully 100% aware of the derogatory manner in which city people treat rural people, and it sucks, I would never, as an educated person, suggest that the government owes my 40,000 person county the attention that it owes the 30,000,000 people in metro L.A. and NYC. Carlson's suggestion that the person in a rural area should be given a greater chance than the people in areas close to jobs and industry is nonsensical. It is like someone saying that 5'8" white guys from rural areas need a chance at the NBA, not just the much taller and more athletic players found almost entirely in the city and surrounding suburbs.
So, if what Tucker Carlson is suggesting is that men need higher wages and more manufacturing jobs, he needs to support unions, increased minimum wage laws, and government requirements upon industries to keep and create jobs. None of these are Republican positions. If he wants tax increases on Bain Capital, that is a VERY easy fix. There are under 20,000 people who game the system that way. They have 20,000 votes. If you pass a law, there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop it. Again, the GOP under Trump passed an enormous tax cut. Had they wanted to pass an enormous tax INCREASE on the super welathy and private equity companies, they could have done that in a snap of their fingers. They did not, nor will they ever.
While I agree that the Poor Wing of the GOP should draw more attention from elected reprsentatives than the Rich Wing of the GOP, the only attention that Wing has received is tacit or not-so-tacit support for their rampant racism, and maybe a bone thrown to them for reduced sentences for opiod crimes. Great. Where are the jobs promised to these poor unfortunate rural white guys? There are none. And Tucker Carlson's proposal appears to be that we get General Motors to build plants it doesn't need in poor white rural areas......hiring only men. Therefore, the guys I went to high school with, who had sired three children by the time they were 23, will now suddenly be deemed to be desirable target for marriage. Their wives will agree to stay home and not work, and the world that has sucked since the steel industry went under in 1977 will suddenly srping to a glorius life.
(Or else the company will pay them $10/hour, no benefits, and the sole shareholder will make $300,000,000 and ship their jobs to Mexico when they unionize. One or the other.).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)