Not Wild About Them

Pat Lackey on why MLB's wild card play-in will be exciting and fun and all kinds of wrong:

This is problematic because nothing about baseball is designed to be decided in one game. Nothing about baseball's really designed to be decided in five or seven games, either, but at least a multi-game series prevents a fluke from being decisive. Every Philip Humber has a perfect game somewhere inside of him, but that doesn't make him Sandy Koufax. When you schedule a one-game playoff, you've exposed the teams in it to the whims of fate, and you've basically invalidated the whole point of having a 162-game season, which in modern baseball is to stratify teams so that the best teams have the best chances in the playoffs.

I'm not being solely a purist or a pragmatist here, I'm being both. Baseball's long regular season is the most meaningful regular season in all of sports, because it lets the fewest teams into the playoffs. The implied point of this is that if you play 162 games, you don't need to let 16 of 30 teams into the playoffs because you know which eight are the best. That should always be the case. Scheduling a one game playoff between two teams that didn't finish the 162-game season with the same record is aiming for a cheap, manufactured thrill. It's trying to catch last year's lightning in a bottle, then claiming that the bottled lightning is the same as the real stuff. Doing that throws out the regular season; it says that one game can overturn 162. It will almost certainly produce some memorable moments and the excitement will be there every year, but is that worth giving up one of the things that makes baseball different from other sports? I'm not so sure that it is.

I hated the idea of the wild card play in game when it was initially proposed and hate it even more now. Will today's single elmination games be compelling and maybe even thrilling to watch? Perhaps. But that's not what baseball is supposed to be about.

They've Had a Few

The WSJ editors weigh in on The 60th Vote Regrets:

A second irony is that Democrats only had those 60 Senate votes because of a series of improbable and corrupt events. Mr. Webb won his race by a hair in 2006 after incumbent George Allen stupidly uttered the word "macaca," and the media portrayed him as racist. Alaska's Ted Stevens lost his seat in 2008 by 3,724 votes after he was convicted eight days before the election in a trial in which the Justice Department withheld crucial evidence. He was later exonerated. And Al Franken, who was trailing on Election Day, managed to steal the Minnesota recount in 2008 by 312 votes from a hapless Norm Coleman.

Add the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback and the other special deals that President Obama used to buy Senate Democratic votes for ObamaCare, and you have the first major new entitlement in history that passed along strictly partisan lines and is as unpopular today as it was on the day it passed.

Messrs. Webb and Bayh can lament what might have been, but the bitter truth is that the only way voters can undo their damage is by defeating Mr. Obama in November and electing a Republican Senate. Otherwise, both men will have left their country economically weaker and health care less affordable than it was when they decided to run for office. That should be their real regret.

I imagine the "hapless" Norm Coleman has a few regrets of his own about how things played out in 2008.

Behind Closed Doors

Matt Ridley’s “Mind and Matter” columns in the Wall Street Journal’s Saturday Review section are among my favorites that appear in the paper. He offers up unique perspectives on a variety of topics and even when I don’t agree with his analysis, it’s usually well thought out and interesting. His effort this past Saturday called Inside the Cold, Calculating Libertarian Mind was likewise an interesting and thoughtful read. Well, at least it was until this point:

All Americans value liberty, but libertarians seem to value it more. For social conservatives, liberty is often a means to the end of rolling back the welfare state, with its lax morals and redistributive taxation, so liberty can be infringed in the bedroom. For liberals, liberty is a way to extend rights to groups perceived to be oppressed, so liberty can be infringed in the boardroom. But for libertarians, liberty is an end in itself, trumping all other moral values.

So liberty can be infringed in the bedroom? This is the ends that social conservatives supposedly seek? This has to be one of most exhausted of tired clichés, yet it is the one that Ridley lazily employs with little apparent thought. What does this even mean?

Allow me to play Devil’s advocate for a moment and offer three examples that I think liberals or libertarians would offer to demonstrate how social conservatives would supposedly infringe upon liberty in the bedroom.

First up is contraception. As far as I know, no social conservative is calling for the banning of contraceptives or limiting their use. If asking that our church not have to PAY for contraceptives for others is an infringement upon liberty than the word liberty has truly lost all meaning. Liberty is being allowed to do something, not being subsidized for it.

Next up is abortion. Actually, I’m not sure if abortion has anything to do with “liberty in the bedroom” since pro-abortion advocates have assured us again and again that women never ever use abortion in lieu of contraception. But if the right to abortion is indeed connected to sexual freedom in the bedroom then by extension the same could be said of infanticide. Social conservatives aren’t saying you can’t have sex. We’re just saying that you have no right to kill the baby that results from it or out of the womb.

Finally, we have same sex marriage. Again, anyone who thinks that social conservatives’ opposition to gay marriage in any way limits what two consenting adults can do in the privacy of their bedroom clearly doesn’t understand the difference between tolerance and approval. No one cares what two guys, two gals, or some variation of do between the sheets. But don’t expect us to pretend that such relationships are the same as that between a man and woman or that the state should recognize them as such.

Liberals and libertarians may find it difficult to believe, but social conservatives have no desire to infringe upon anyone’s “liberty in the bedroom.” In fact, the less we hear about what’s going on in your bedroom or this tired trope that we in any care about it, the better.

HWX, with Steven Hayward

It’s a Saturday special edition of the Hinderaker-Ward Experience podcast.   John Hinderaker of Power Line and me Brian Ward of Fraters Libertas, joined by special guest, also from Power Line, the great Steven Hayward. 

It’s a lively discussion on the state of the Presidential race, including the characteristic optimism of John Hinderaker.  He doesn’t buy into the doom and gloom so many Republicans are feeling with regard to Mitt Romney’s chances in November, and he tells us to grab our pom-poms and not to believe the hype. 

We also get into the issues surrounding recent political polls and alleged bias with regard to over-representation of Democrats, and we preview the Presidential debate coming up on Wednesday.   Finally we wrap things up with Steve by putting our professional prognostication reputations on the line and predict what will actually happen on November 6.

Then it’s "Loon of the Week", courtesy of the fine folks at the Media Research Center.   They recently held their 25th Annual Dishonors Awards, and the "Obamagasm" of the Year is also LOTW.  And "This Week in Gatekeeping" with an international flavor, the editors and fact checkers in Iran  proving to be every bit as effective as their American counterparts.

Many ways to hear the podcast, including over on the mothership at Ricochet.   You can be sure to never miss an episode, by subscribing via iTunes or Feedburner.  Or just use the player embedded below or in the upper right hand corner of this web site.  If all of these fail, send me an email and I'll come to your house and read from the written transcript.  Enjoy!

They Might Be Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Children are naturally curious about the world around them and eager to explore and try to understand it. Our three boys are no different which means they are very interested in all things related to science. We attempt to foster and encourage this interest at every opportunity and are always looking for ways to make science more approachable and fun for them.

So when he heard that the band They Might Be Giants had a CD out full of science themed songs for kids, we jumped at it. The boys like to listen to music-their music-in the minivan and when it comes to children’s music, most of the material from TMBG is not like nails on a chalkboard to adult ears (with the notable exception of the “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” theme song-hot dog, hot dog, hot diggety dog...).

And for the most part, the CD Here Comes Science lives up to expectations. The songs are catchy and informative, the kids dig them, and we can listen to them without fear of losing our grip on sanity. However, the first song called “Science is Real” is troublesome:

Science is real
From the Big Bang to DNA
Science is real
From evolution to the Milky Way

I like the stories
About angels, unicorns and elves
Now I like the stories As much as anybody else
But when I'm seeking knowledge
Either simple or abstract
The facts are with science
The facts are with science

Science is real
Science is real
Science is real

Science is real
From anatomy to geology
Science is real
From astrophysics to biology
A scientific theory Isn't just a hunch or guess
It's more like a question That's been put through a lot of tests
And when a theory emerges Consistent with the facts
The proof is with science
The truth is with science

Science is real
Science is real
Science is real
Science is real

Why did they have to lump in angels with unicorns and elves? Why alienate a good chunk of your listeners when there is no need to? Our kids hear this and line and add their own rebuttal “But angels are real,” which causes us no small amount of parental pride. But why do those who seek to advocate for science so often believe that doing so must also entail advocating against religion?

Despite what many seem to believe, you don’t have to choose one or the other. It doesn’t have to be science OR religion. It can and should rightly be science AND religion.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has a book out that the relationship between science and religion called The Great Partnership: Science,Religion,and the Search for Meaning:

An impassioned, erudite, thoroughly researched, and beautifully reasoned book from one of the most admired religious thinkers of our time that argues not only that science and religion are compatible, but that they complement each other—and that the world needs both.

“Atheism deserves better than the new atheists,” states Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “whose methodology consists of criticizing religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity. Religion has done harm; I acknowledge that. But the cure for bad religion is good religion, not no religion, just as the cure for bad science is good science, not the abandonment of science.”

Rabbi Sacks’s counterargument is that religion and science are the two essential perspectives that allow us to see the universe in its three-dimensional depth. Science teaches us where we come from. Religion explains to us why we are here. Science is the search for explanation. Religion is the search for meaning. We need scientific explanation to understand nature. We need meaning to understand human behavior. There have been times when religion tried to dominate science. And there have been times, including our own, when it is believed that we can learn all we need to know about meaning and relationships through biochemistry, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. In this fascinating look at the interdependence of religion and science, Rabbi Sacks explains why both views are tragically wrong.

Why is it so hard for those on the “science is all there is” side to understand that religious believers can embrace and accept all that science offers while still believing that there are areas of our lives beyond the scope of science that require more than it can provide. That explanations are fine, but without meaning (without God), they are ultimately empty. That faith is beyond facts and that while the facts may indeed be with science, the real Truth is with God.

New Droog on the Block

Tim drops a promotional e-mail:

Hi there....Regular reader and fan. I thought I'd pass along a blog link that combines some Minnesota politics and media bias, a couple of your favorite subjects. Feel free to use as little or as much of it as you want, all off of my blog.

And Tim Droogsma's blog does deliver as advertised. In fact, there are a couple of additional regular subjects that Tim opines on that hit close to home:

WARNING: If you don't like hockey, golf or baseball, or if you take your politics too seriously, or if you don't agree that my granddaughter is the smartest little girl in the universe, or if you don't believe that the Vancouver Canucks represent Satan and all his hosts, then you might not enjoy this blog. Read at your own risk.

Having never met Tim's granddaughter, I'm unable to verify that claim. However, the rest-especially the well-deserved Canuck hatred-seems hard to dispute.

UPDATE- Bob from Michigan e-mails to concur:

What a great recommendation. And, what more could one say about the town where he resides. It rolls off the tongue with respect, "Red Wing, Minnesota." Okay, chuck the Minnesota part and it's perfect. God, what a lucky man he is.

Canuck hatred can unite the most unlikely of folks.

Minnesota Gets an F for Business

Yesterday, the release of the results of a survey of Minnesota business owners and managers lead to a back and forth on Twitter between myself and my former state representative Ryan Winkler (prior to redistricting). More on that exchange in a moment, first let’s see what the survey said.

The survey, which involved owners and managers of 350 Minnesota businesses, found 31 percent saying the state’s economy is improving, up from 13 percent last year. But nearly half think it’s the same, and less than a fourth reported improved profits.

That’s not surprising in the current economic environment of slow growth bordering on stagnation.

When it came to barriers, 69 percent said high taxes were either the biggest or second biggest hurdle. It was 34 percent for health care costs and 33 percent for hiring and retaining trained workers.

This too is not a surprise as the tax burden is regularly cited by businesses as the chief drawback to doing business in Minnesota and one of the main reasons some firms have left the state.

The survey also found that 60 percent of business owners and managers thought the state’s budget problems should be solved with a combination of both reduced spending and new revenue, not exactly the Republican position of late.

This almost seems like a contradiction to the previous point that high taxes were their biggest problem. Until you read further.

When it comes to reforming Minnesota’s tax code, a top issue for the Minnesota Chamber in 2013, 57 percent of business owners think it’s extremely important to raise taxes on voluntary behavior such as gambling, and buying alcohol and tobacco. Another 55 percent would like to see the tax code simplified so that taxpayers can more easily understand it.

So business owners and managers (like many other groups) are all in favor of “new revenue” (read more taxes) as long as that those new taxes are paid by somebody else. The problem is you can only jack up the so-called “sin taxes” so much and I believe that when it comes to alcohol and tobacco, the state of Minnesota already takes a pretty healthy cut. There’s also the issue that these taxes tend to disproportionately impact those in the lower income brackets and raises the question of whether it’s really a good idea to hit Joe Six Pack in the wallet every time he lives up to his moniker.

A surprising outcome of the Twitter exchange with Representative Winkler was that we both agreed that corporate taxes were too high in Minnesota and that the tax code desperately needed to be simplified. Now while I’m sure that Representative Winkler’s vision of what this would actually look like in practice and mine are quite different, at least we were able to find common ground in that these matters do need to be addressed by the Legislature.

This was the nugget that was really captured my attention:

The majority, 55 percent, also think Minnesota has a good business climate.

The article summarizing the survey results actually seems to present this as a positive. And that’s exactly how Representative Winkler pitched it in his initial tweet that got things started. No need to worry about Minnesota’s business climate after all. Only forty-five percent of the companies surveyed believe it’s negative and therefore may be considering moving to friendlier climes.

Are we really prepared to lower the bar this low? Are we really happy that FORTY-FIVE PERCENT of the companies in Minnesota believe that the state’s business climate is not positive? If I were the Governor or in the Legislature I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night unless I was confident that at least eight out ten businesses thought they were operating in a state with a good business climate. Fifty-five percent is a failing grade.

Lucky Dog

The latest installment of Prager University features comedian and podcaster extraordinaire Adam Carolla weighs in on the importance of the hard work over luck:

You're lucky that you're unlucky. Digest that theme and you might be on the royal road to success. Or I could put it like this: waiting around for good things to happen is a surefire way to make certain that nothing good happens. The answer, the only answer, is hard work. Working hard lets you take control of your life.

Blaming the Victim

The US government sets up a complex corporate tax system under which, unlike most other countries, income earned by US companies overseas is subject to the same rate is income earned domestically. So...

...large US multinational companies develop strategies-all LEGAL within the framework of the existing tax laws-to seek to minimize their tax burdens. So...

...the US Senate conducts an investigation. And blames...

the companies:

WASHINGTON—Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. used accounting strategies to hold down their U.S. tax bills while shifting profits in and out of the country, according to a Senate subcommittee investigating how multinational companies exploit the intricate U.S. corporate-tax code.

Senate investigators said much of the activity appears to comply with the letter of current tax regulations, though they regard some of the practices used by H-P as potentially abusive and subject to challenge.

Both tech giants said their strategies are legal.

The findings—from one of a series of reports on corporate-tax practices by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations—come as Congress prepares for a debate next year on an overhaul of America's business taxes.

It’s always amusing-in a sadly comic way-when the government creates a dysfunctional taxing system and then becomes surprised and angry when companies or individuals work LEGALLY within it to avoid paying more than they LEGALLY have to. Perhaps, just perhaps the problem here is not that Microsoft, HP, and a slew of other US companies and individual taxpayers are investing time and resources (which certainly could be better used elsewhere) to minimize their tax burdens, but rather that the government has created such an unwieldy system in the first place.

Back to Basics

Nick Schulz on the Hard Unemployment Truths About 'Soft' Skills:

American manufacturing has become more advanced, we're told, and requires computer aptitude, intricate problem solving, and greater dexterity with complex tasks. Surely if Americans were getting STEM education, they would have the skills they need to get jobs in our modern, high-tech economy.

But considerable evidence suggests that many employers would be happy just to find job applicants who have the sort of "soft" skills that used to be almost taken for granted. In the Manpower Group's 2012 Talent Shortage Survey, nearly 20% of employers cited a lack of soft skills as a key reason they couldn't hire needed employees. "Interpersonal skills and enthusiasm/motivation" were among the most commonly identified soft skills that employers found lacking.

Employers also mention a lack of elementary command of the English language. A survey in April of human-resources professionals conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and the AARP compared the skills gap between older workers who were nearing retirement and younger workers coming into the labor pool. More than half of the organizations surveyed reported that simple grammar and spelling were the top "basic" skills among older workers that are not readily present among younger workers.

The SHRM/AARP survey also found that "professionalism" or "work ethic" is the top "applied" skill that younger workers lack. This finding is bolstered by the Empire Manufacturing Survey for April, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It said that manufacturers were finding it harder to find punctual, reliable workers today than in 2007, "an interesting result given that New York State's unemployment rate was more than 4 percentage points lower in early 2007 than in early 2012."

The skills shortage is not just an absence of workers who can write computer code, operate complex graphics software or manipulate cultures in a biotech lab—as real as that scarcity is. Many people lack what the writer R.R. Reno has called "forms of social discipline" that are indispensable components of a person's human capital and that are needed for economic success.

This is not an exercise in blaming the victim. There's plenty of fault to go around, from America's inadequate K-12 education system to the collapse of intact families and the resultant erosion of human and social capital in many communities. But we shouldn't delude ourselves about the nature of the problem facing many of the millions of Americans who can't find work.

The gap between the skills that companies are looking for in workers and what those workers are actually able to do has grown in recent years and, Shulz notes, it’s more than just specific types of technical training and experience. Until this gap is closed, there is going to be a continuing problem with unemployment. You can create or save all the jobs you want, but if people don’t have the basic skills to fill them, they’re going to remain on the sidelines.

On other aspect of this not mentioned by Shulz is that if companies aren’t able to find minimally qualified workers in the US, they will look elsewhere. In recent years, there has been something of a reversal of the trend toward off shoring with more companies deciding to bring jobs back to the US or to add jobs here. There are a whole host of reasons for this change (rising labor costs in previously low cost countries, lower US energy costs, etc.), but if companies can’t get the workers they need here it may go back in the other direction.

A Vacation From Politics

Just back from a five day family vacation in South Dakota. Apparently, the Romney campaign is now completely falling apart and plummeting toward certain defeat. At least that’s what the pundits and some panicked Republicans seem to believe. However, the pollsters appear to be telling a different story as the Real Clear Politics’ spread has actually narrowed in the last week. Are the polls lagging the “problems” with the Romney campaign or is the perspective of most pundits not shared by most voters? I’m inclined to believe the latter. We’ll know soon enough.

One aspect of our recent South Dakota sojourn that was surprising and somewhat refreshing was the visible lack of politics. The few campaign signs I noticed were for state or local races. There was almost nothing in the way or signs or even bumper stickers to indicate a preference for the presidential race. The only campaign commercial I saw was for a Congressional candidate and it was so bland and non-issue specific that I couldn’t tell which party this gentleman was standing for (later research determined that he is a Democrat who seems to be trying to moderate his way to victory).

Now this could be because South Dakota isn’t exactly a swing state. When you see banners advertising “Friends of the NRA” fundraisers, you figure the place is probably a pretty safe bet to remain red. But even among the many visitors we encountered on the way to and at the many tourist sites we hit, there was little in the way of politics on display. We checked off license plates from forty-three states (a fun game for kids and parents too), but again saw few if any bumper stickers for either Romney or Obama on these vehicles.

We’re only fifty days away from what we’re once again being told is the “most important election in history.” Given that, the general indifference to politics (at least on the surface) that we encountered on the trip seems unusual. Maybe people have just had enough and tuned things out or decided that politics simply isn’t that important to them. I don’t know what this means or what it could portend for November. I do know that those actively involved in politics, those that report on them, and those of us who follow them closely probably put far more emphasis on the importance of every “gaffe”, every “game-changer”, and every “gotcha” than such occurrences actually merit in making up the minds of most American voters.

HWX, with Andrew McCarthy

The latest Hinderaker-Ward Experience podcast is up and ready for your listening pleasure.  John Hinderaker of Powerline and me, Brian Ward, of Fraters Libertas breaking down the week's news.   The disquieting events in the Middle East dominant our discussion, and we address John's theory that the official story of what happened in Libya is a cover up, his advice on how Mitt Romney should be framing the issue, and the really bad production values of "Innocence of Muslims," the movie that allegedly was the cause of all the hubbub.

Later, we're joined by the great Andrew McCarty of National Review.  We talk about his new book Spring Fever: The Illusion of Arab Democracy, and how its themes relate to the current crisis in the Islamic world. Andy is one of the world’s leading experts on Islamic radicalism, and the conversation is highly revealing.

We wrap things up with This Week in Gate Keeping and the Associated Press publishing the scoop on the real entirely fake story of the man behind the movie the "Innocence of Muslims".   Then the Loon of the Week, featuring a distinguished US Congressperson who apparently missed the day in school where they taught about basic US history.

Many ways to hear the podcast, including over on the mothership at Ricochet.   You can be sure to never miss an episode, by subscribing via iTunes or Feedburner.  Or just use the player embedded below or in the upper right hand corner of this web site.  If all of these fail, send me an email and I'll come to your house and read from the written transcript.  Enjoy!