I don’t believe in “hate” crimes. As far as I am concerned you can hate someone all you want, that’s your business between you and your maker. between you and your maker (although I reserve the right to have a low opinion of you for said hatred and act accordingly). I further think all the laws in the world against “hate” crimes are not only going to increase such hatred because “hate” is a relative thing but are unlikely to discourage violent attacks or theft which are the things that such laws are supposedly designed to prevent or discourage. Such as the horrible attacks we’ve seen against religious Jews lately
There is, in my opinion only one way to prevent such crimes and that’s to make the cost of such a crime prohibitive both in terms of punishment and in terms of likelihood of success.
Now a long sentence for attempted murder and/or the death penalty for murder is a good start by making the cost of such a crime prohibitive in terms of punishment. That will discourage all but the most gullible or the most fanatical who don’t care if they’re caught or killed. For that you need to make the likelyhood of success in such an attack so small that it’s not worth trying.
And to do that, American jews, particularly religious Jews need to arm themselves as if they’re a bunch of Texas Church goers.
That fellow waving a machete would not have gotten very far if the law abiding Jews at that house were armed and carrying and I’d wager a lot of those going folks going after Jews would think twice if they thought that the man or woman they were targeting were armed.
The left doesn’t like the idea of increased police presence? Fine loosen the gun laws and permit restricts and let these citizens defend themselves.
If Cuomo & DiBlasio are really interested in stopping these attacks cold, that’s the way to do it. Until they do, it’s just talk and Jewish town, Jewish places of worship and Jewish homes should declare themselves 2nd amendment sanctuaries and act accordingly.
Are we still after last year seeing sports casters saying that even if the New England Patriots win against the hapless Dolphins today that the only question in the playoffs is: “Do the Patriots lose to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs at home or in Kansas city?”
Now don’t get me wrong, Kansas City is a good team and as demonstrated earlier in the year they are quite capable of beating any team including the Patriots, but I can’t think of anything that is more likely to motivate an already great Patriots defense and Tom Brady back into “Deflategate revenge tour” mode than stuff like this.
It’s still very early in the season but I’d like to point out that last year the Brooklyn Nets finished the year at 42-40 with a .512 winning percentage without Kyrie Irving as the 6th seed while the Boston Celtics finished at 49-33 with a .598 winning percentage as the 5th seed in the east with Kyrie irving.
This year Irving left the Celtics and the team is currently the #3 seed at 22-8 with a .733 winning percentage and even with the #2 Miami Heat in the Loss Column. Irving signed with the nets who are currently 16-15 with a .516 winning percentage and 7th seeded in the conference, but more importantly is 12-8 with a .600 winning percentage since an injury sidelined Irving after a 4-7 start.
This man is the anti-Brady
Last year in the NHL during the Regular Season the Tampa Bay Lightning simply dominated the league in a way we hadn’t seen in years until the playoffs came around. I remember driving home after game one listening to sports radio as they declared that despite that loss Columbus had no chance right up until they finished the lightning off.
It’s a year later and the team that managed 128 points, a solid 20 above every other is now currently at 42 points five points behind the last wild card team. Now there are still 46 games to go but it’s an important reminder that you have to take advantage of any opportunity you have because you just might not get another chance.
Speaking of not getting another chance as the year ends and the 2020 season draws near we are still getting “the trade or don’t trade Mookie Betts” debate in Boston.
It’s been a pretty quiet off season for the Red Sox with three players from last world series win (Brock Holt, Mitch Moreland, Rick Porcello ) currently testing free agency and Catcher Sandy Leon traded to Cleveland for minor league pitcher Adenys Bautista. As of today their current offensive depth chart looks like this (via redsox.com):
With the exception of Pedroia this is pretty much the Red Sox offence that tore up the league last year but was betrayed by injuries in the rotation and weakness in the bullpen. Or to put it another way, this team is one closer and perhaps one healthy rotation away from fielding a team more than capable of dominating the American league with a monster offense, a zipper outfield and a rotation as good as any other in baseball.
So to those who say forget 2020 and trade Mookie let me remind all these people who have forgotten the lean times of a little history.
Exactly 100 years ago another Red Sox had an off season at 66-71-1 (one game called after 10 innings never made up) where they had dropped to sixth a year after winning the world series. They decided to get rid of their star right fielder, who could also pitch a bit, before the start of their next season selling him for a price higher than the entire payroll of the the previous year’s team. More money than the combined salaries of the top 8 players in the league.
That team had won five World series in the 20th century at that point, they would not win another.
Now Mookie Betts is no Babe Ruth but the point of the story is when you have a chance to win a World Series take it, because it might be another 86 years before you win another.
Finally as I mentioned before the old table top face to face fantasy baseball league that I started 32 years ago (the year before I got married) was revived this year. Going into Friday I had a record of 8-4 having won my 1st 4 series with a pair of series coming up against two relative newcomers with one season of experience between them both with losing records.
Over the next two days I lost 4-6 including a 9th inning blown save by Kimbrel, a 14th inning marathon, and had a team with Mookie Betts batting 1st and Anthony Rendon hitting 3rd shut out for the final 20 innings of the last two games against a sixteen year old kid who was playing in his 1st baseball simulation league 50 years after I had gotten my 1st baseball simulation game, Milton Bradley baseball for Christmas in 1969 (great game btw you can get it on eBay here) at the ripe old age of six.
This demonstrates a sports rule that extends even to games on paper. No matter what the betting line or the prognosticators say there is a reason why you actually play the games.
Posted: December 28, 2019 by datechguy in Uncategorized
People are talking about Donald Trump getting as much as 30% of the Black Vote and a lot of media heads are exploding at the very thought but the Trump Campaign pitch can be explained fairly easily.
Three years ago Donald Trump made this pitch to the black community:
“Look at how much African American communities have suffered under Democratic control,” Trump said to his supporters. “To those hurting, I say, ‘What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump?’ You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
The businessman — who only 1 percent of black voters support nationally, according to an August 4 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll — continued, “I will produce for the African Americans. And the Democrats will not produce. All they’ve done is taken advantage of your vote. If you keep voting for the same people, you will keep getting exactly the same result.”
Not a lot of black voters took Donald Trump up on that challenge, not even voters whose lot didn’t improve during the Obama years and found themselves unemployed.
Now think of where such people are four years later
Imagine if you are a black American who was unemployed four years ago during the Obama administration who is now working and not only working but has the prospect of advancing in the Trump boom
Imagine if you are a black teenager or twenty something with a job who either couldn’t find a job or watched an older teenage brother or sister look in vain for work during the Obama years now employed under Trump.
Imagine if you are the mother or grandmother of one of those teenagers. Four years ago with no prospect for work you worried day and night about the gangs & dealers tempting your kid with the only prospect for income they might have now applying for legit jobs and having a prospect of getting them.
Imagine if you are were a con four years ago. Under Obama prison reform went nowhere and even if you managed to get out your legit prospects were slim and none. Now thanks to prison reform you have not only a legit shot at a 2nd chance at a new life but real job prospects as as well.
Imagine if you are the wife and more importantly the son of a black ex-con who was unemployable four years ago but now sees her husband or father working and setting an good example rather than a bad one or if you are the baby mother of such a man had no prospect of collecting child support four year ago when he wasn’t working and couldn’t pay, but now is working and can.
Four years ago, during the Obama years Donald Trump declare they had nothing to lose by voting Trump, but four years later they have a lot to lose by voting against him.
That is the real pitch to black america and it a pitch that every man, woman and child in the black community who has a better life now then they did four years ago will understand.
Posted: December 27, 2019 by datechguy in News/opinion
I’m a great believer in logic, data and fact and going where such things take you. Which is why this piece about a prescription heroin program in England run by a Doctor John Marks from the 80’s was such an eye opener to me:
He told them to stop using, and they argued back, telling him they needed it. ‘I found this a bit of a headache,’ he says, ‘and I had bigger fish to fry.’ He decided to shut the programme down.
But as he prepared to do this, there was a directive from Margaret Thatcher’s government. Every part of Britain had to show it had an anti-drugs strategy, it said, and conduct a cost-benefit analysis to show what worked. So Marks commissioned the academic Dr Russell Newcombe to look into it. He assumed Newcombe would come back and say these patients were like heroin addicts everywhere, at least in the cliché — unemployed and unemployable, criminal, with high levels of HIV and a high death rate.
Except the research found something very different. Newcombe found that none of the addicts had the HIV virus, even though Liverpool was a port city where you would expect it to be rife. Indeed, none of them had the usual problems found among addicts: overdoses, abscesses, disease. They mostly had regular jobs and led normal lives.
this seems completely counterintutive but Doctors were not surprised:
He discovered that all doctors agree that medically pure heroin, injected using clean needles, does not produce these problems. That’s why when people are routinely given heroin in hospitals — to treat the pain of a hip operation, for example — none of these problems occur. But under drug prohibition, the criminals who control our drug trade cut their drugs with whatever similar-looking powders they can find, so they can sell the heroin in more batches and make more cash.
That’s just capitalism 101, but here was the real surprise
And something nobody predicted took place. The number of heroin addicts in the area actually fell. Research published by Dr Marks in the Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh compared Widnes, which had a heroin clinic, to the very similar Liverpool borough of Bootle, which didn’t — and found Widnes had 12 times fewer addicts.
This is another batch of totally counteractive data, but again to why these results too place was again Capitalism 101.
But why would prescribing heroin to addicts mean that fewer people became addicts? Dr Russell Newcombe, working out of John Marks’s clinic, told me what he believes is the explanation. Imagine you are a street heroin addict. You have to raise a large sum of money every day for your habit: £100 a day for heroin at that time in the Wirral. How are you going to get it? You can rob. You can prostitute. But there is another way, and it’s a lot less unpleasant. You can buy your drugs, take what you need, and then cut the rest with talcum powder and sell it on to other people. But to do that, you need to persuade somebody else to take the drugs too. You need to become a salesman, promoting the experience.
So heroin under prohibition becomes, in effect, a pyramid-selling scheme. ‘Insurance companies would love to have salesmen like drug addicts’ — i.e. with that level of motivation — Dr Marks explains. Prescription kills the scheme. You don’t have to sell smack to get smack.
Eventually the program was discontinued and the people on it went to street drugs and an early death.
I’m going to want more data and frankly I don’t like the concept of ceding a portion of the population to an addiction which is plenty destructive to health in it own right, but given the situation in cities like Chicago and Baltimore which have become war zones over the drug trade a pilot program of this nature would seem worth a shot.
If I was Donald Trump as soon as I was re-elected I would bring Dr. Marks out of his exile in New Zealand and give him a free hand to try something like this in Chicago or Baltimore or even San Francisco. Given the state of these cities are in there would seem to be little to lose and a lot to gain, unless you are the drug cartels.
