And where a talk show host returns to that tired old saw of the NFL and income redistribution

Here's Bill Maher explaining why football is superior to baseball and is generally the most excellent thing ever because of socialism or something.


(please advance to the 1:55 mark to get pass the creepy-ass misogynist's potty mouth but where you will still get to hear a gay slur.)







We're not economists nor statisticians but were not quite sure that making your case for "sharing the wealth" can be made pointing to a model that consists of a mere 32 entities. The NFL operates in a highly controlled environment where all 32 franchises are engaged in the exact same business. To compare the NFL to a complex, diverse and varied economy consisting of hundreds of millions of people is to compare apples to oranges.



Besides, how else would you split revenue from a national television contract except equally among all 32 teams? Baseball is completely different in that the majority of the TV revenue generated is on a regional basis as teams are allowed to go out and cut their own deals. Again apples and orange.



Likening the NFL's revenue sharing model to socialism is similar to comparing Saudi Arabia to socialism. Sure the Saudi citizens receive generous social services and straight cash payments but it's all because of one thing: raping Mother Gaia similar to how the NFL has cleverly manipulated and exploited a gullible public. Yep. Socialism did not make the NFL the monster that it is today - it was shrewd marketing, promoting the "brand" and exploiting a blood-thirsty American public on the violence of professional football. Oh, that and NFL owners extorting this national passion for football in the form of getting the public to pay for their team's personal revenue deluge: publicly-financed stadiums. That's not spreading the wealth, that's being a robber-baron through the ballot box.




Fact: virtually all revenue generated at and by the stadium belongs solely to the ownership group of that team. We're talking parking, concessions, food and beverage and of course ticket sales, personal seat licenses and the biggie, the luxury box fees. The owners get to keep all that jack. They don't have to share any of that.



You know what else is more important to the NFL's success than this silly notion of revenue sharing? Anti-trust exemption. That's right. There's no competition for the NFL now is there? There's no Sports Clips to Super Cuts in the retail chain hair-cutting business. The NFL can pretty much run their business operation any damn way they see fit without fear of reprisal, recrimination or... competition. They have cornered the market on professional football and everyone is completely OK with this dominant monopoly. Again, we'd obviously be more willing to split up a fraction of all that jack we were rolling in if we knew the fix was in. Do you think Bill Maher would be willing to pool and split equally his salary with 31 other comedians or talk show hosts? We'd certainly be willing to pool our salary with that of Bill Maher. Think he'd be down for that? No, he probably wouldn't.



"The frozen tundra of Lambeau Field"* is not socialism. It's an iconic phrase in the American lexicon because former commissioner Pete Rozelle had the foresight to put Ed Sabol and his fledgling Jersey-based film production outfit (NFL Films) at the tip of the league's marketing spear. If you are over the age 40, a big reason why you love the NFL is precisely because NFL Films made the game and its players seem larger than life. If you love football, you drift off to sleep at night picturing close-up shots of tight spirals in slow-motion spinning through an Autumn Sunday afternoon or breath vapor coming from players on the bench on a frigid December game day, images provided courtesy NFL Films. This is not socialism. This is shrewd marketing that has established and promoted an image with such a broad swath of the American public, it is now firmly entrenched as Culture in America. This is infinitely more important than how the NFL splits up its T.V. revenue.



Maher would have you believe that this wealth redistribution model has led to a veritable free-for-all every-body-has-a-shot-at-the-Super Bowl scenario in the NFL. The facts tell a different story. Over the past dozen years or so, the AFC play-off picture has been dominated by four teams: the Baltimore Ravens, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts. And do you know why those teams have been consistently good to great over the years? Hint: it's not because of how the NFL splits its television revenue. It's because those 4 franchises have had stable leadership at the top that has made sound personnel decisions plus good to great play at the quarterback position. That's the formula for success in today's NFL: smart management and a franchise quarterback. (The NFC is a bit more of a mixed bag but the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants have mirrored their AFC counterparts as how to operate your NFL franchise.



For all this talk of parity, franchises like Jacksonville, Cleveland and Buffalo don't have an ice cube's chance in hell of making it to the Super Bowl. It isn't a revenue thing - it's a management thing. (Cleveland has a real opportunity to make it to the playoffs this year. Perhaps not coincidentally, they had a complete front office overhaul in the off-season with a change in ownership which merely re-enforces the point we made above about having a management team that knows what the hell they are doing).



To wit, you just can't throw money at free agency and expect your football team to click. Baseball is different. You can get away with cobbling together a roster of All-Stars and expect to win. The Philadelphia Eagles and their "dream team" experiment of last year is proof of football being an entirely different animal from baseball. As baseball is an ensemble of individual performances, chemistry and teamwork are decidedly more important to football than they are to baseball.



One of our favorite quotes of all time came from the former and recently deceased Baltimore Oriole manager, Earl Weaver, when he was asked about team chemistry. Weaver waived off the notion with, "Team chemistry? Team chemistry is a 3-run homer".



Back in June, Don Mattingly, the L.A. Dodger manager was in danger of losing his job. Enter Yasiel Puig who has become the most physically explosive player in the game and Hanley Ramirez coming off the DL and say hello to an ensuing 50-8 record and a play-off berth. Don Mattingly is still no coaching genius. Yasiel Puig's seeming aloofness can, in our mind, be simply chalked up to the fact that his English is extremely poor. That's right: perhaps the Dodgers' best player cannot even talk to a majority of his teammates. How's that for chemistry? And let's not forget the fact that last year's massive mid-season trade between the Dodgers and the Red Sox was beneficial to both teams.



Take in that paragraph above and give us a comparable scenario in the NFL. You can't. To try to compare baseball and football in terms of how money is spent and player personnel decisions proves you know nothing about either baseball or football.



Is the revenue sharing of the T.V. contracts an element of the NFL's parity and overall success. Sure. It's an element. Just that but it is in no way close to being as important as Maher wants to make it and who is using the NFL to try to make an over-arching point about income re-distribution in America and failing miserably while doing it.


Stick to making gross, sexist cracks about conservative women, Maher. It suits you better.




Side note: the screed about keeping kids out of crappy schools was rich. Conservatives and libertarians have been at the forefront of school reform: charter schools, school choice, some... any degree of teacher accountability - a laundry list of ideas to break from the obviously failed status quo. These reform efforts have been opposed at every turn by an unholy alliance of teacher unions and big city Democratic pols.



* Yes, we are aware John Fecenda never uttered these actual words which makes the marketing genius of the NFL that much more impressive.

Of hecklers and softballs

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C'mon, she had to be a plant, right?

While campaigning in Peoria, Illinois yesterday, ahead of today's primary in that state, Mitt Romney confronts a heckler demanding free birth control and promptly smokes it into the gap for a stand-up double.

Question from woman in Peoria, Illinois: "So you’re all for like, 'yay, freedom,' and all this stuff. And 'yay, like pursuit of happiness.' You know what would make me happy? Free birth control."

Romney: "You know, let me tell you, no no, look, look let me tell you something. If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for, vote for the other guy. That’s what he’s all about, okay? That’s not, that’s not what I’m about."

This demostrates precisely what we have been saying all along with respect to the willy-nilly making up of rights out of thin air and particularly making goods and services rights: "free" stuff necessarily requires the involuntary confiscation of other people's wealth and property to pay for it.

This woman wants "free" birth control (yes, we will be using air quotes from here on out whenever applicable) but that comes at a cost to everybody else in the form of higher premiums so that this woman can get laid. That may be her pursuit of happiness but we're pretty damn sure the founders didn't intend for her pursuit of the same to be the responsibility of others. Pursue getting laid on your own dime is elegant in its simplicity.

And irony of ironies, since this woman is insisiting that we all pay for her to get laid, an activity we were once told was the exclusive domain of the two (or more) consenters, she is now insisting that her getting laid be our business as well. Hey, we are paying for it, after all.

It is completely incoherent logic but logic just the same for a reditributionist statist.




We have been told to stay away from the contraception issue as it is one of those un-winnable social issues. Nonsense. The contraception issue , if approached correctly from religious conscience, personal freedom and fiscal responsibility angles will help illustrate the conservative and libertarian principles of the freedom coalition.

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Meanwhile, on the shores of picturesque Lake Davos...

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This from the annual confab of global redistributionists and social justice types (think U.N. glee squad on Winter break):

Economic and political elites meeting this week at the Swiss resort of Davos will be asked to urgently find ways to reform a capitalist system that has been described as "outdated and crumbling."
"We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations," said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.

"Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole.

"We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual," the 73-year-old said, adding that "capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us."

Without us seeming impolite or untoward, allow us to make some slight course and speed corrections to the terminology employed by the gracious host Mr. Schwab: We think what he really meant was that there is no longer a place in the world for the heavily bureaucratized, centralized and cronyist social democracy model that is saddled with unsustainable entitlement obligations which is outdated, crumbling and morally corrupt.


However hopeful we may be and contrary to the evidence before them, why do we get the sneaking suspicion that whenever these well-meaning chin-strokers all get together, simply "business as usual" is all that is on the menu?

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#OWS update

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Nothing demonstrates the intellectual incoherency of Occupy more vividly than these port shutdowns, some of which have already been effected and calls for future ones, a shutdown of the Longview marine terminal in the Puget Sound, being the most high-profile.

Never mind the vast majority of the jobs that will be effected by these port shut downs are the very good-paying union jobs Occupy claims to be championing, precisely how is interrupting commerce going to reverse the income inequality gap Occupy rails against? In fact, if anything, it will exacerbate the situation: those 1 percenters have deeper pantries than the rest of us - they can much better ride out the interruption of goods than can the rest of us.

But let's call these protests what they really are: acts of theft. By not allowing goods to freely flow back and forth between markets, Occupy is effectively engaging in the theft of goods and services. Expect no consequences for these thieves, however. Whether it's playing footsie with the ruling class/media establishment of this country or being aided and abetted by big city mayors (New York City has dropped hundreds of arrest charges against the Occupiers there), their lawlessness has actually been encouraged.



And in other news today, that glittering jewel of colossal ignorance is trying to put some distance between her party and Occupy:

This morning, Politico Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen interviewed House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for Politico's "Playbook Breakfast."

The discussion turned to the topic of Occupy DC and their attempt to disrupt Congress. Pressed on whether she was worried about this and what she thought the message of Occupy was Pelosi distanced herself from the movement stating 'We don't really have much of a connection with the Occupy' and declaring the tea party' as 'wholly owned subsidary of the Republican Party'

She was, of course, singing a different tune this past fall when Occupy first came upon the scene:

During a press conference Thursday afternoon, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi praised those participating in the "Occupy Wall Street" protests. "God bless them," Pelosi said, "for their spontaneity. It's independent ... it's young, it's spontaneous, and it's focused. And it's going to be effective."

"The message of the protesters is a message for the establishment everyplace," said the House Democrats' leader. "No longer will the recklessness of some on Wall Street cause massive joblessness on Main Street."

Pelosi did not comment on--and was not asked about--the law-breaking that occurred during the protest over the weekend. About 700 protesters were arrested by New York City police after the protesters "swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge and shut down a lane of traffic for several hours," according to CBS News.

Own it, Nancy. There may be no official connection but Obama's Whining Squatters are the foot soldiers and are singing the same income inequality tune as their boss that is cover for his efforts to further his statist redistributionist agenda. It's so transparent, there is nothing to try to hide.



H/T: Hot Air

The most wonderful time of the year

With the weather turning cooler and tomorrow kicking off the beginning of the holiday season there is an unmistakable feeling of good will towards mankind in the air. Why, just this past Monday, we reported out on the fact that Al Gore finally admitted that corn ethanol was a horrible idea (no doubt before moving on to the next subsidized green get-rich-quick scheme).

And, also just the other day, we've figured it all along but one of the leading acolytes of the faith-based AGW movement came out and admitted that international efforts to combat global warming/climate change have nothing to do with global warming/climate change.

Just in time for the movement's big confab down in Cancun next week, here's Ottmar Edenhofer:

Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change (say that twice), told the Neue Zurcher Zeitung last week: "The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War." After all, redistributing global wealth is no small matter.

Edenhofer let the environmental cat out of the bag when he said "climate policy is redistributing the world's wealth" and that "it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization."

The spectacular failure that was the climate change conference in Copenhagen last year (remember Hopenchangen?) gets another go around but this time the AGW zealots are dropping any pretense of wanting to do anything towards thwarting climate change and instead will attempt to implement a global wealth redistribution plan.

Edenhofer claims "developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community" and so they must have their wealth expropriated and redistributed to the victims of their alleged crimes, the postage stamp countries of the world. He admits this "has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole."

It's as if these Marxist AGW zealots figured out they junked up the science so much the public no longer believes them so they look around and say, "Well, we don't have much credibility anymore with the "AGW" thing but we still have our "Marxist" and "zealot" chops intact - let's roll with that.

Again, we are appreciative of the honesty and good will that is bursting out all over the place, of late.

And may Cancun '10 be every bit the laughable spectacle that Copenhagen '09 was.

The sadly obligatory kids-get-sent-home-from-school-for-wearing-American-flag-shirts-on-Cinco-de-Mayo post (UPDATED)

(please scroll to bottom for update)



By now you've probably heard about the 5 kids who got sent home from high school up in the Bay Area for wearing American flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. Story here.

And from the last paragraph:

The boys will not be suspended and were allowed to return to school Thursday. We spotted one of them when he got to campus -- and, yes, he was sporting an American flag T-shirt.

And home-schooling gets a rap because of what? For the sake of these boys continuing education, a permanent expulsion may have been in their collective best interest.

The article explains that many of the Mexican-American students were "offended" that these 5 students would fly their colors on a "Mexican holiday". It's bad enough these particular students don't know American history, they don't know Mexican history, either. Cinco de Mayo, to our knowledge, is not a holiday that is celebrated in Mexico. And other than wearing goofy sombreros to and getting half-priced Margaritas at Mexican restaurants, it holds no real cultural significance here, either.

But above and beyond the obvious lunacy of this incident, it provides a nice peek inside Arizona's illegal immigration law outrage. There are legitimate concerns over racial profiling, however, one does not have to scratch far beneath the surface to get to the latent anti-Americanism that is hostile to freedom and liberty (two concepts not to be confused with license) and capitalism.

The major players against the law, groups like La Raza, are racialist, if not racist, in nature that bow before the twin gods of diversity and income redistribution. They hold complete antipathy and contempt for American exceptionalism that is rooted not in race but shared cultural values of the rule of law and property rights (what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours). These concepts are not only foreign to them, they are to be struggled against.

Ultimately, this is what's at stake. Not whether some people will be rounded-up illegally or unjustly harrassed but rather whether we allow a culture of lawlessness and 3rd world socialism to further erode our sound, just, equitable and hard fought-for American culture.

Don't allow yourself to be distracted from the big picture. Yes, the potential for abuse of this law, any law for that matter, is real - just ask Congress. However, the larger backdrop is a set of people who through racial guilt, intimidation and victimization are waging a war of "social justice" against those who hold dear the rule of law, property rights, freedom of speech and a belief that this country is not great because of its diversity but rather this country is diverse because of its greatness.


(UPDATE #1): We think we've determinend who it is that should've been suspended.

About 200 Hispanic teens are marching in Morgan Hill yelling "We want respect!" and "Si se puede!" in reaction to a controversy ignited when the Live Oak High School principal effectively sent four students home for wearing T-shirts with American flags on them during Cinco de Mayo.

Mexican-American students felt the students were being disrespectful on the only day they celebrate their heritage while students sporting red, white and blue said it violated their First Amendment rights.

Six police cars and a Morgan Hill motorcycle officer have been cruising alongside the large group as it marches.

The group - mostly high school students - walked out of school this morning after the story of four students who were sent home because they wore American flag T-shirts went viral on TV and online. Many wear red, white and green and two large Mexico flags can be seen at the front of the line.

The students say they want people to know they're proud of their heritage and they believe wearing red, white and blue on Cinco de Mayo is disrespectful.

Need any further proof of the culture war going on here and how the playing field is skewed against believers in American exceptionalism?

Wear a t-shirt with an American flag on it, get sent home. Walk out of school on the tax-payer dime, get a police escort.

And we're sure the irony of people exercising the 1st amendment in order to deny the 1st amendment to others is not lost on you.

I Got Mine!

You gotta love it when one of the world’s richest men doesn’t want you to leave too much money behind for your children. Article here reports out on Warren Buffet being in support of the estate tax, the repealing of which is something being bandied about in Congress right now.

Proponents of the estate tax reason that wealth passed down to the next generation unearned is an anathema to democracy and contributes to a widening gap between the haves and have nots. Here’s the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. himself going all poli-sci on us:

"Dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise. Equality of opportunity has been on the decline. A progressive and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement of a democracy toward plutocracy."

Uhhh… whatever. You can dress-up that pig any which way you want but its still just a pig and all that flowery verbage can’t disguise the fact that this “death tax” is just a good ol’ fashioned government money grab. Again, any pro-active attempt by the government to take it upon itself to redistribute wealth in the name equality, justice, income gap, democracy… whatever, is pure folly.

And it hits even closer to home because this “progressive” program was mainly responsible for the O’Malley family, the model of stability and dignity as sports franchise owners, selling our beloved Dodgers to Rupert Murdoch and the Fox empire back in the 90s and which has not coincidentally resulted in over a decade of mediocrity and irrelevance. So screw you, Warren.

We’ll credit Buffett for being perhaps the most unpretentious multi-billionaire in the greater Omaha, Nebraska area but it represents the height of gall for someone who can play “what’s a few hundred million dollars between friends?” opining on the financial legacy we wish to leave our children.