Posted: November 29, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized
A while back I wrote about the relative measures of success for Brady and Belichick in their new positions. As Brady has already won a superbowl we can safely state that he has met the goals without re-iterating them.
As for the Patriots and Belichick I graded the Pats on the following scale based on the pre-Brady years:
Any year that the New England Patriots post Brady:
Have a winning record: should be considered OK
Win 11 games: should be considered a success
Win their division: should be considered a big success
Make the playoffs: should considered a huge success.
Win a playoff game: should be considered an spectacular success
Go to the Superbowl: should be considered an extraordinary success
Win a Superbowl: should be considered a Miracle
Now there are those who consider that a fair amount of Tom Brady’s success in general and the Patriots success in particular should be given to Coach Bill Belichick who some consider the greatest coach in Football history. For those of you who consider this the case let’s make a slight adjustment.
Any year the New England Patriots Under Belichick post Brady
Win a Superbowl, it’s an extraordinary success
Go to the Superbowl it’s a spectacular success
Win a playoff game it’s a Huge success
Make the playoffs, it’s a big success
Win their division, it’s a success
Win at least 11 games, it’s an OK season
Win less than 11 games…fire the bum!
These are reasonable expectations. I suspect that Patriots fans after two decades of winning will not be as generous as me with their expectations.
This makes the Bill Belichick Era going into today’s game a 24-34 as the coach of the New England Patriots in games not started by Tom Brady and in the three seasons that he coached the team sans Brady he made the playoffs….nearly once.
My expectations scale was “fire the bum” if he failed to win at least 11 but given the Covid situation that while effecting all teams hit his team hard I’d give him another season’s leeway, particularly if he can manage to make .500. If not I think we can safely say that the question of Bill vs Tom in terms of credit has been answered conclusively.
Well the Patriots are now 8-4 , in first place in their division and while not a lock for the playoffs yet looking pretty good with Rookie Mac Jones at the helm. Under standard Patriots scale it’s already an OK season and the Pats only have to go 3-2 the rest of the way to qualify for OK status under my Belichick scale.
Belichick has done this with a Rookie QB who had four other QB’s picked ahead of him.
It may be early to say this but I think we must conclude that Brady + Belichick were the perfect storm of the best in their professions coming together and that neither one negates the greatness of the other.
But there are still a few games to play so let’s see…
Last Sunday a career criminal, Darrell Brooks Jr, allegedly drove his SUV into a parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing six people and injuring dozens of others. He was out on $1,000 bail, an amount deemed “inappropriately low” the next day by the Milwaukee County district attorney, John T. Chisholm. Earlier this month Brooks allegedly ran over the mother of one his children in that same SUV.
Chisholm is one of many woke prosecutors elected in major metropolitan areas who believe in “affordable” or even no bail for individuals accused of violent crimes. Others include Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, who faces a recall election next year, George Gascón in Los Angeles County, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, and Kim Foxx in Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago is the county seat. Many of their campaigns accepted contribution from sources tied to radical leftist George Soros.
Foxx, whose title is Cook County state’s attorney, made a national name for herself after dropping charges involving the hate crime hoax engineered by former Empire star Jussie Smollett. He was charged again after a special prosecutor was appointed after the uproar in response to Foxx dropped those charges. Smollett’s trial begins tomorrow.
But what is far worse than that is Foxx’s weak bail policy involving accused felons.
As I’ve mentioned before at Da Tech Guy, if you want to get the true story of how violent crime is devastating Chicago and its inner suburbs, you need to regularly visit CWB Chicago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Chicago Tribune–more on them in a bit–the Chicago Sun-Times, and the broadcast TV station websites document many violent crimes, particularly the murders. But CWB provides the indispensable back story.
Since New Year’s Day CWB Chicago has been documenting individuals “accused of killing, trying to kill, or shooting someone in Chicago this year while awaiting trial for a felony.” With a little more than a month left in 2021 CWB Chicago has discovered 55 such people. Of those, 26 of them are accused of murder–and two others are charged with reckless homicide involving a vehicle. That brings us to a total of 28 fatalities.
The complete CWB Chicago list, as of November 28, is here.
What else is there to be found in that back story?
Last summer John Kass, then a Chicago Tribune columnist, wrote a column about the rise in crime in big cities that have woke prosecutors whose campaigns were funded by Soros. Kass was attacked and essentially demoted when co-workers of his, by way of their union, the Chicago Tribune Guild, claimed that the Soros column was anti-Semitic. Soros, a Holocaust survivor, is by most accounts a secular Jew. Kass never mentioned the religion or ethnicity of Soros in that column. So why was Kass attacked? Because he was on to something, the truth that is, about Soros and those catch-and-release prosecutors.
By the way when I first heard of Soros I figured he was a Greek-American As for Kass, who is a Greek-American, well he’s also a big fan of CWB Chicago. A few months ago he accepted a buyout from the new owners of the Trib. He has his own site that I regularly visit. A site, as he mentioned in one of his Chicago Way podcasts, where he is allowed to use the word “riot,” which he wasn’t able to do when he was with the Tribune.
Clearly Chicago and Cook County–I live in suburban Cook–has an ongoing Waukesha problem. So far my family and friends have not been affected by the increase in violent crime here. Although on Thanksgiving I had to explain to my daughter and her cousins what to do if they hear gunfire.
And as bad as Kim Foxx is–she doesn’t deserve all of the blame. Although a hardened leftist as well, Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has chilly relations with Foxx, a member of a rival political camp. But Lightfoot endorsed Foxx when she faced a tough Democratic primary last year. Lightfoot’s feckless police commissioner, David Brown, does Lightfoot’s bidding. The mayor pledged to reduce crime as a candidate–but crime has instead soared. Chicago already has endured more murders in 2021 than in any year since 1996.
Illinois’ governor, JB Pritzker, was seemingly talking tough last month when he said that Chicago is “nearly at a state of emergency in our need to address crime.” Then Pritzker got silent on the subject–presumably after he remembered that like Lightfoot and Foxx, he is a Democrat. Oops.
In 2023 Illinois becomes the first state to without cash bail. Pritzker signed that bill into law earlier this year. Judges will be able to jail those accused of serious crimes.
Oh, what about Cook County judges? Circuit court judges are elected here–and once on the bench they face a retention vote every six years. Typically nearly all judges are retained. It’s time that voters take a close look at the role that judges play in the catch-and-release atmosphere in Cook County.
Posted: November 27, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized
Today is day two of seven straight days where I’m working during our busy season which begins Black Friday.
In the morning I figured I’d take a look at Amazon for things to pick up and asked the wife about a few things and it suddenly hit me.
I’ve reached the age where I need nothing.
I’ve got my home, I’ve got may family. I keep up with my bills as best I can, but there really isn’t anything that I’ve got to have.
Yeah occasionally I pick up a movie on Amazon when it drops to $5 (the latest being the Ghost and Mrs. Muir) and yeah I like my Dynasty baseball but when it comes down to it, there is no thing I really am dying to have and if I need something I just pick it up.
Do I have as much as a lot of others? No. Am I likely going to be a lot more than what I am? Unlikely. But I’ve got my wife, my sons and God willing there will be grandchildren before I die.
All those things I don’t have don’t matter, I’m content, where I am.
It strikes me that this is a state that people have wished to reach for all of the time they have existed.
Thanksgiving 2021 offers many parallels to events and conditions that led up the first Thanksgiving. Rampant inflation and supply chain problems have led to the most expensive Thanksgiving ever, by a wide margin, along with shortages of traditional Thanksgiving staples.
The Pilgrims were religious, united by faith and a powerful desire to start anew, away from religious persecution in the Old World. Each member of the community professed a desire to labor together, on behalf of the whole settlement. In other words: socialism. But when they tried that, the Pilgrims almost starved.
Their collective farming — the whole community deciding when and how much to plant, when to harvest, who would do the work — was an inefficient disaster. “By the spring,” Pilgrim leader William Bradford wrote in his diary, “our food stores were used up and people grew weak and thin. Some swelled with hunger… So they began to think how … they might not still thus languish in misery.”
Socialism nearly did in the Pilgrims, as it could do us in if we continue on the path the Biden regime has set us on. A rapid course change to freedom and private property by the first governor of the Plymouth colony not only saved the colony from starvation, it led to abundance and prosperity. This miracle is chronicled here in the manuscript William Bradford: from History of Plymouth Plantation, c. 1650 in the section Private and communal farming (1623)
All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other thing to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; and that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.
A return to freedom, private property, and free market capitalism will very rapidly return the United States to its true glory as the freest and most prosperous nation that ever existed.
