January 24, 2018, 9:49 am
The Republicans are running around counting coup, crowing that the Democrats totally caved on the continuing resolution and talking about how much bigger their political cojones are than the Democrats', or something.
My question is -- given that this entire negotiation has to happen again in 3 weeks -- how does this make even a small bit of sense? All they are doing is firing up the Democrats to fight harder the next time this happens which is ... in 3 freaking weeks. This is like the Cleveland Browns publicly calling out Tom Brady for being overrated just before their next game. Are politicians so desperate to win one 12-hour news cycle that they are willing to bollix up the playing field for the next battle?
January 18, 2016, 10:31 am
The media does not like people spending money to elect non-Democrats. That is the only conclusion I can draw from the fact that all of their articles on "dark money" seem to focus almost exclusively on the Koch brothers (who to my eye are more libertarian than Republican). One would get the impression that the Koch's are the #1 giver of money to election campaigns, but in fact according to OpenSecrets.org they were #14 in 2014 and #49 in all elections since 2002. Why wouldn't the media illustrate election-spending articles with someone in the top 10? It's as if the sports media spent all its time talking exclusively about quarterback Ryan Tannehill (14th in 2015 in NFL passing yards per game) without ever mentioning Tom Brady or Drew Brees.
If the Koch brothers deserve to be excoriated for their election spending, then the organizations that give more than they must really be evil, right? If one were cynical, one might think that the media ignores the top 8 or 10 because they mostly all give to Democrats. Well, here is the list from 2014 via OpenSecrets.org.
Update, from a reader and via Instapundit:
Consider this: in 2013, the left wing Center for Public Integrity reported that “Four foundations run by [the Koch brothers] hold a combined $310 million in assets…†By contrast, the Ford Foundation’s endowment is more than $12 billion — about 38x larger than the Koch Foundations.
On a list of the top 100 US Foundations (by asset size), the Ford Foundation is #2. The various Koch Foundations don’t make the list, nor do they make the list of top 100 Foundations by annual giving.
Yet, the news media and transparency groups constantly harp on the Koch’s massive organization and its “insidious,†“dark money†influence on American politics, while almost completely ignoring the far larger left-wing political Foundations.
In part, this is due to the perception in the media that money from conservative/libertarian/free market leaning organizations must be tainted, while funding from left-wing Foundations is free of such bias. It may also be due to the fact that the left wing Foundations fund many media organizations — I’m looking at you, NPR, PBS, Washington Post, LA Times and others — sometimes even funding them to cover “[other people's] money in politics.â€
Postscript: If you really want dark, check out the website for hedge fund Elliott Management. There is not a single byte of information in the publicly accessible pages, only links to contact forms.
January 28, 2014, 9:53 am
I friend sent me a note analyzing data on NFL quarterbacks past and present, and came up with this top five based on a points system that ranked the top 40 all time quarterbacks on a number of dimensions, such that the lowest score is the best:
1. Joe Montana - 54 Points
1. Tom Brady - 54 Points
3. John Elway - 68 Points
4. Terry Bradshaw - 84 Points
5. Peyton Manning - 86 Points
Even without going through the numbers, I can live with this. The conundrum is that Peyton feels to many, including me, like he may be the greatest of all time, but nearly any numerical or scientific analysis puts him behind other quarterbacks, including Tom Brady. So why do our hearts tell us something else? I have two hypotheses:
- He is the most interesting guy in the history of the NFL before the ball is snapped. This is a criteria I never would have thought even existed 10 years ago. But Peyton has made watching the team at the line of scrimmage before the play starts totally compelling. No one in history is even close. Think of all the great quarterbacks in history -- you think of them throwing, right? With Montana, for example, I see those slants to Jerry Rice, hitting him in stride. Now, how do you picture Peyton? Yelling Omaha at the line of scrimmage.
- He is money in advertisements and live appearances (e.g. Saturnday Night Live). Have you seen Joe Montana's and Farvre's ads? Stiff. How much better would Peyton have been in There's Something About Mary? Only Bradshaw is close.
Peyton gets dinged for being a poor bad-weather quarterback. I am not sure if the numbers support this hypothesis, but he would have to go a long way to being worse than Aikman was. I was in Dallas during their three Aikman-era superbowls (actually I lived in Denver for their 2, and St Louis for theirs, and Arizona for theirs, all of which is payback for growing up an Oiler fan). Aikman always disappointed in bad weather. The one year of their four year run in the 90's that they did not go to the Superbowl, they lost to SF in the Conference championships. That day, the moment I saw it was raining, I knew the Cowboys were doomed.
