Author: mhasegawa

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The afternoon before Iowa

Yesterday we were out in South Hadley having our traditional family Japanese New Year brunch when talk turned to the 2012 election season and to Nate Silver’s piece in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times.  Some very interesting stuff there.

For example:  Iowa is 91% white (the entire country is 74% white).  You knew that, right?  Did you know there are so few Jewish people, they don’t register as a percentage?  But, except for race and the fact the Jews did not migrate to Iowa, the state is a fairly good mirror.  Oh, except for turnout.  Iowa wins 67 to 57.   Iowa and New Hampshire have each picked 10 of the eventual nominees.  Iowa does better with Democrats picking 6 while NH has picked 5 from each party.  They have each picked the President correctly 3 times with Iowa having the most recent pick, President Obama.  The track record is not particularly spectacular, but all the candidates  are flocking there and political junkies are watching polls eagerly.

John Nichols writes in the Nation that the Republican candidates and their PACs will have spent upwards of $200 per vote when you count only television advertising.  Kinda of nuts.

Seriously? All this for an glorified straw poll?

That’s the problem with the caucus system, which operates on an only slightly better model on the Democratic side.

Huge amounts of money are spent to influence a very small percentage of the electorate—less than 20 percent of Iowans who are likely to vote Republican in November will participate in Tuesday’s caucuses, and most of them will leave after the balloting finishes. An even smaller number of Iowans will begin the process of choosing representatives to county conventions, who in turn elect delegates to district and state conventions at which Iowa’s national delegates are actually selected.

As of lunch time today, Real Clear Politics shows  Romney edging out Paul 22.8% to 21.5%.  Romney is not even projected to get as many votes as he did in 2008- 25.2%.  Nate Silver has the race a little closer with Romney edging out Paul 21.8 to 21.  It is all in how you weight the various polls.  Throw in an estimated 41% undecided and Iowa is anyone’s game.  I think it is a measure of the field that Republican’s can’t decide who to support.  Poor Jon Huntsman.  We all agreed yesterday that is the only sensible one in the bunch so he has no chance.  Probably lucky for Obama.

Rosie Moser, an undecided voter thinking of endorsing Michelle Bachmann, listened to former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, in Independence, Iowa, on Monday.

(Daniel Acker for The New York Times)

Speaking of the President. he has been organizing in Iowa for more than a year and has more field offices that any of the Republicans.  It is will be interesting to see what the Democratic turn out is tomorrow night for a caucus that is already decided.  The link is to an interesting video on the Obama efforts from the New York Times

I think the polls are all done and we only need to wait for the caucus goers to speak.

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Newt the Unprepared

So.  Newt didn’t read the rules carefully enough and despite having a Republican Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of the Commonwealth, and a legislature, he will not be on the Republican primary ballot in Virginia.  It was just the other day that he left campaigning to go gather signatures in his adopted state

Virginia is probably the most difficult state on which to get on a primary ballot.  Signatures have to come from all 11 Congressional Districts, at least 400 from each.  Those who gather the signatures must be registered to vote in Virginia.  There must be at signatures from at least 10,000 registered voters.  In other words, you have to have a ground organization to succeed.  I believe that Newt actually paid people per signature and still didn’t make it. 

The Virginia Republican primary will now be between Mitt Rommey and Ron Paul.  50 delegates elected on March 6.  Gingrich was leading the polls, but who knows where his support will go now.  And what will the fallout be for the rest of states on Super Tuesday.  Maybe he can lose Virginia and still get delegates elsewhere.  Or maybe voters will see the disorganization and look elsewhere.

But on Newt would announce he will run a write in campaign before reading Virginia election law which prohibits write-ins in primaries.  The reaction of his campaign:  This is Pearl Harbor.  Wrong, Newt.   No one will die because you couldn’t read the rules and get on the Virginia ballot. 

This from the Governor of Virginia quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Virginia’s rules regarding qualifications for the ballot in statewide elections are clear, said Tucker Martin, a spokesman for Gov. Bob McDonnell.

“Prior candidates for president, governor and senator, from both parties, have needed to meet the same requirements as are in place for this election. It is unfortunate that a number of candidates did not submit enough verified signatures to qualify for the March primary, but the system has been in place for a long time and the ballot requirements well-known,” he said.

“The governor, however, is certainly disappointed that Virginia will not have a more competitive primary,” Martin said. “He would have preferred to see more candidates make the ballot.”

Gingrich, McDonnell

Credit: MARK GORMUS/TIMES-DISPATCH

 

So what are the options. Getting the Virginia Legislature to allow all the candidates on the ballot?  Not exactly fair to Romney and Paul.  Gingrich going to court?  I would say his changes aren’t good given that even the Republican Governor says the rules are clear and well known.  And they have been in place since the 1970’s. 

I think that Newt along with Perry, Bachmann, Huntsman, and Santorum are just out of luck. 

 
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P.D. James and Jane Austen

I need to explain that I re-read Pride and Prejudice at least once a year.  I loved the early PBS version of the book, but that has been replaced now by the Colin Frith version which I own on DVD.  I’ve also dipped into some of the sequels and expansions (most are horrible) to feed by habit.  

P.D. James is one of my favorite writers.  I have read all of her mysteries. One of my favorites is An Unsuitable Job for a Woman which introduced the young Cordelia Gray.  Adam Dalgleish her primary detective is not only a police inspector, but also a published poet.  Her books are literate and the mysteries complex and interesting.  So when I saw that James had written a kind of sequel to Pride and Prejudice I ordered a copy immediately.  And I was not disappointed.

Death Comes to Pemberley

With her usual elegance, James tells brings us to the Darcy estate six years after Elizabeth Bennet married her Mr. Darcy.  They now have 2 children and Elizabeth has clearly taken hold as mistress of Pemberley.  All the other characters make their appearance including George Wickham who is still a wild neer do well and his wife, Elizabeth’s sister Lydia is still tends to hysteria.  They are at the heart of the mystery.

Liesal Schillinger in her review last week in the New York Times book review writes

James clearly understands that many readers feel as close an attachment to Austen’s characters as they do to their own relatives and friends. So she cannily begins by furnishing answers to the natural question: “Where are they now?”

How right it feels to learn, as James informs us, that Bingley and Jane moved away from Netherfield soon after their marriage, wanting to put distance between them and the ever-querulous Mrs. Bennet at Longbourn. What a delight to read that tone-deaf, humorless Mary Bennet has married a “thin, melancholy” rector, “given to preaching sermons of inordinate length and complicated theology.” How apt that the evil seducer George Wickham, after marrying Lizzy’s frivolous sister Lydia, worked as a secretary for the foppish baronet Sir Walter Elliot (a character from Austen’s novel “Persuasion”) until Lydia’s “open flirtation” with the baronet and Wickham’s simpering attempts to ingratiate himself with his employer’s daughter met “finally with disgust.” And what a treat to see Bingley’s snobbish sisters, Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley, get their comeuppance — and Harriet Smith (of “Emma”) her reward.

Above all, James will delight Austen’s devoted fans by showing Darcy and Lizzy to be (if anything) more in love and better matched than anyone might have hoped, six years into their marriage.

If you love Austen and you love James or you love one or the other, I think you will love this book.

(Illustration by Skip Sterling)

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Accept the tax increase and defeat the Republicans

I was eating my lunch at my desk today as I often do (I know a bad habit) and the Republicans were voting down the Senate bill in several complicated procedural moves I don’t pretend to understand.  I do know the bottom line:  Increase in payroll taxes, no unemployment extension, and funny things happen to reimbursements to doctors for Medicare.  Anyway, I posted on the New York Times comment section on the story of the Republican vote, that maybe we should accept the tax increase as a way of contributing to the Republican’s defeat in 2012.  Last time I check it had over 300 recommendations!  Maybe I’m on to something here.  But I have to give credit to my husband at FortRight who said at breakfast, “it might be worth $1000 to see the Republicans go down.”

Stand firm, Harry Reid.  Stand firm, Mitch McConnell.  You made your compromise as the House asked and just because John Boehner can’t herd his cats or maybe squirrels (Ana Marie Cox on her Guardian blog quoted a friend who called them squirrels because “[they] are panicky and prone to irrational running into traffic.”) doesn’t mean you have to save him.  Here is John with his squirrels.

Now they want the President to order the Senate back.  Stand firm, Mr. President.  Yes, not passing the bill will hurt briefly, but the Republicans will get the blame and will be forced to come back in January and be serious about a real bill, with real funding to pay for it.  As Ana Marie Cox said, “Congressional Republicans are roadkill.”

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Summer Reading

I was away for a few days last week and did what I always do in Vermont: hike a little and read and relax a lot.  There are several books in my sister’s library I re-read once a year:  Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright.

Understood Betsy

This is the story of a little orphan girl around 1900 who has to leave the home of her aunt in an unspecified mid-western city and move to near Putney, Vermont.  She learns self-sufficiency, kindness and, most of all, what it takes to be happy.  My sister’s hardback is so old, it was published when Dorothy Canfield has not yet added the Fisher.  It was published in 1917.  The book is like the Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder in the way in which they talk about how to do things like churn butter and make applesauce.  And of course, it is about Vermont.

Gone-Away Lake is also a children’s book.  First published in 1957, it tells the story of young, almost teens who discover an abandoned resort on a lake that became a swamp after a dam was built.  They discover a brother and sister fallen on hard times who moved back to where they had once spent summers.  They have adventures and keep the discovery a secret as long as they can from their parents.  It is a book about accepting differences couched in a summer vacation story.  There is a sequal, Return to Gone-Away in which one of the abandoned houses is purchased and restored by one of the families. 

Elizabeth Enright

Elizabeth Enright won a Newberry Honor award for Gone-Away Lake.

My other favorite thing to do is to poke around a wonderful used bookstore in Brattleboro, Brattleboro Books.  (They, like all bookstores, need a little press.) This year the treasure I unearthed by Dorothy Gilman’s The Tightrope Walker.  I had not thought about it or read it in many years, but the minute I spotted the book, it all came back to me.  It is the story of a young woman who solves a mystery and discovers herself. (Is there a theme to these books?)

The heroine finds a note in a hurdy-gurdy and follows a trail to uncover a the secret of the note writer’s murder.  It is an old-fashioned follow the clues where ever they lead mystery with some romance thrown in.   Gilman wrote the tightrope walker in 1979 in between writing her better known Mrs. Pollifax spy stories.

So now you know what I read on my summer vacation. 

 

 

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No Hit Ball Players: Adam Dunn and Bill Bergen

The title of this post does not refer to anything a pitcher might accomplish.  This is about position players, starters, who can’t hit the ball. 

We all have days when things don’t go well.  Maybe your boss chews you out for a mistake or for forgetting to do something.  Or you mess up cooking something you have made a thousand times before.  Maybe you put in a load of laundry and forget the soap.  But imagine an entire season like that.  Imagine an entire career. 

Adam Dunn is having one of those years.

The slugger, Adam Dunn, who had been a model of power and production for the past 10 years, finished Tuesday night’s game against the Yankees with a batting average of .165. That is not a typo, not a mistake, and not an easy thing for a professional player to do even if he is trying to.

The New York Times story continues

Dunn, who signed a four-year, $56 million contract to join the White Sox this past winter, has struck out 138 times this season and is on pace for 207.

He has struck out three or more times in 18 games, twice the total of anybody else in the major leagues. Of course, none of this has been made easier — for White Sox fans to believe or for Dunn to endure — by the fact that Dunn is, of all things, the team’s designated hitter.

“I hate it more than anybody can imagine,” Dunn said in an interview Monday. “But what do you do? There’s not an easy button I can push and start over. Or I would.”

Sports have forever been riveting for the wonder of athletic accomplishment, for the demonstrations of grace under pressure, for the ability of people to overcome adversity. But sports can also be riveting for their spectacular moments of failure.

Nick Cafardo had a slightly different  take in the Boston Globe when the White Sox were in town before they played the Yankees.

Dunn’s is a sad story. The more hitting experts look at his swing, the more they realize he has no chance because his hands are never in good hitting position. Dunn doesn’t exactly work overtime to correct it either, and when he recently told Jeff Passan ofYahoo! Sports that he was contemplating quitting, you can understand why. Nowadays when he walks, that’s considered a breakthrough. Nobody saw it coming, and the White Sox are saddled with a completely unproductive player.

“When a guy is going that bad, it’s just sad,’’ concurred one American League scout. “You can’t even evaluate it because the guy is so messed up.’’

Dunn’s season has been historically awful. He has a chance to finish with a lower batting average than even Rob Deer’s .179 in 1991.”

 

But Dunn is only having a spectacularly bad season.  If he bounces back next year, 2011 will be considered an oddity.  Think of Bill Bergen.  No, I never heard of him before today either.   Bergen played for the Brooklyn Superbas from 1901 to 1911.  Lynn Zinser has written a long and interesting story on Bill Bergen who “couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”

In 3,028 career at-bats, he hit two home runs. In only one season did his average top .200. His career .194 on-base percentage means he didn’t walk much. His career .201 slugging percentage means he rarely hit for extra bases. Perhaps his quirkiest statistic: he was never hit by a pitch.

“He is about as bad a hitter as you can possibly imagine,” said David Jones, a baseball historian who edited two books on baseball’s dead-ball era. “But if he’d been a little bit better hitter, no one would ever talk about him.”

Instead, his name crops up whenever a baseline of offensive futility is needed. He does not have a line named after him like Mario Mendoza, whose paltry batting average made him synonymous with hitting .200. But Bergen is firmly installed in the history of futility.

 How did he last 11 seasons?

Bergen’s secret was playing at a time — that dreaded dead-ball era — when good defensive catchers were worth their weight in Teddy Roosevelt autographs. Bergen was a great defensive catcher. By some statistical measures, he is considered among the top five defensive catchers in National League history.

“It was an era when catchers were even more important than they are today because bunting and stealing bases were the main way teams would score runs,” said Tom Simon, who along with Jones edited the books on the stars of the dead-ball era. “So teams would carry a guy hitting .139 if he could keep the other team from scoring.”

Bergen caught a relatively modest 941 games but ranks in the top 20 in career assists by a catcher with 1,444. He threw out 47.3 percent of runners attempting to steal. He once threw out six in one game, against St. Louis in 1909

Bergen at least was good at something.  Poor Adam Dunn is the DH so he can’t point to his fielding.  His manager, Ozzie Guillen, said, “When we play him at first, he doesn’t hit either.”

So here is hoping that Dunn finds his hitting stroke and has a better season next year. 

 

 

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The complicated deficit deal

I know I’ll be writing more about the imact of the “compromise” in the days to come, but for now here a summary.  The Atlantic Wire has the best written summary I’ve been able to find.

The basic plan, as explained by The New York Times‘ Carl Hulse and Helene Cooper, Politico’s David Rogers, and The Hill‘s Alexander Bolton, goes something like this:

1. Raise the debt limit by $900 billion and cut spending by the same amount over 10 years. Members of Congress can vote to show they don’t like the increase but Obama can veto their disapproval. 
2. Create a bipartisan committee with three members of each party from each chamber of Congress to find spending cuts the size of a second debt limit increase of $1.5 trillion. As a special holiday treat, the plan must be presented to colleagues by Thanksgiving and voted on by Christmas.
3. If the plan passes, Obama can raise the limit by $1.5 trillion.
4. If the cuts committee can’t come up with a plan, Obama can get only a $1.2 trillion debt limit increase, and Congress must either:
a. Pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, or
b. Allow spending cuts the size of the debt limit increase over the next 10 years, with at least half coming from cuts to defense spending. These cuts would be automatic by the end of 2012.
 
 
There is still a chance to get revenue increases through the committee’s recommendations.  That is what the Democrats have to run around the country selling:  increased revenues and more chanced to create jobs.  I heard Nancy Pelosi say at one point that the country did not want this debt crisis business, but were interested in “jobs, jobs, jobs.”  This has to be the new Democratic message:  OK, we have pretty much caved on the debt business, now create some jobs.
 
 
We Have a Debt Limit Deal: Now What?
 
So smile now, because if there aren’t more jobs soon – and the deficit deal has the potential to make a lot more of them go away – you might not be smiling in November 2012.
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Baseball trading day and the Red Sox

On the day of the deadline for non-waiver trades, the Red Sox picked up a starting pitcher, Erick Bedard,  from the Mariners.  Does this mean that the outlook for Clay Buchholz returning this season is slim to none?  According to MLB.com

The Red Sox traded four Minor Leaguers in two separate deals. Catcher Tim Federowicz, pitcher Stephen Fife and righty Juan Rodriguez were sent to the Dodgers for outfielder Trayvon Robinson. The Red Sox then dealt Robinson and outfielder Chih-Hsien Chiang to the Mariners to complete the exchange for Bedard and Minor League reliever Josh Fields, a right-hander.

I think I agree with Nick Cafardo’s reaction in the blog posting soon after the news broke

Think Tim Federowicz and Chih-Hsien Chiang are going to be pretty good players. Federowicz was certainly the Sox’ most complete catcher. Chiang’s taken a while to get going, but now a pretty good player.

At least Sox didn’t have to give up third baseman Will Middlebrooks, who didn’t play for Portland today giving rise to speculation he might have been involved in a deal.

Still unclear as to why Erik Bedard cost them this much.

I have only had a chance to see Middlebrooks and Chiang when we got to a Portland Sea Dogs – New Hampshire Fisher Cats game a week ago.  I remarked to Bob that Chiang had a good shot of making it.  Middlebrooks didn’t stand out.  So now he will, only for Seattle.

MLB.com had reaction from Kevin Youkilis

Bedard, 32, has made 16 starts, going 4-7 with a 3.45 ERA. In 91 1/3 innings, he has allowed 77 hits and opponents are hitting just .226 against him.

“He’s nasty,” Red Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis said of Bedard earlier this week. “I think he owns me. When he was pitching against us, when he was healthy, I don’t know if we beat him — he beat up on us. He’s good. He has a great slider. When he’s healthy and he locates pitches, he’s a pretty remarkable pitcher.”

When he’s healthy is the key.  So the Sox will likely give Bedard Andrew Miller’s spot in the rotation.  Andrew Miller struggled again today even though the Red Sox rallied to beat the White Sox again.  His problem has been walks, but today he gave up 10 hits instead.  The other pitcher who could be pulled out the rotation is Tim Wakefield who is actually having a pretty decent year for a guy who will be 45 in 2 days.  He just got  his 2000th strikeout and will probably get win 200 next time out.  Yes, the knuckleball is unpredictable, but I can’t see replacing him with Bedard.  You can call me sentimental, but let’s let Wake finish the year in the rotation.

And we also got a utility infielder, Mike Aviles.  A sign perhaps that as optimistic as everyone is sounding about Jed Lowrie, they are worried about him staying healthy.  He arrived in Chicago last night

Aviles, who was in Cleveland with the Royals, arrived in Chicago in the third inning, put on his new uniform with No. 3 on the back, and played the bottom of the ninth inning at third base.

The 30-year-old has played second base, third base, and shortstop this season. The righthanded-hitting Aviles is batting .222 this season, but is at .309 with a .944 OPS in 55 at-bats against lefthanded pitchers. He is a career .296 hitter against lefties.

Playing off the bench for the Red Sox, Aviles said, is not a problem.

“The situation here is completely different,’’ he said. “We’re in first place and we have an opportunity to win a world championship. It’s going to take more than 25 guys to do that. I’m more than happy to be one of those guys.’’

And the Red Sox are rolling.

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Watching the circus

Watching the circus in Washington used to be a fun activity, but right now it is just depressing.  I got home from work last night expecting to watch the Republican vote on the Speaker’s plan only to learn that it had been postponed.  When I went to bed at 10 it was still pending.  At 5 this morning, I learned it didn’t happen because the Republican leadership didn’t have the votes.  All this for a bill that is DOA in the Senate.

We are all being held hostage by a handful of tea partiers and other Republicans who are convinced that their election gave them some kind of mandate to kill the country.  As they are learning in Wisconsin, people are beginning to have buyer’s remorse.  On the other hand, the tea partiers are threatening to run against the very people they elected if the new Congressmembers don’t come through.  Among those making the threats are Sarah Palin and the founder of the Texas Tea Party on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show last night.  So I don’t think the 20 or so votes that Boehner is looking for will materialize, but then again, this whole spectacle is full of surprises so one never knows.

Everyone, including President Obama, has let this small faction define the fight.  I think Eugene Robinson is right:  The Republicans have one easily stated idea:  Reduce the deficit (and deny Obama a second term) while the Democrats and particularly Progressives don’t have an easily stated idea.

Those who would chronicle events in Washington can find no richer source of analogy and metaphor than the Three Stooges. These days, I’m thinking of the times when an exasperated Moe, having suffered the indignity of an accidental spritzing or clobbering, turns to Larry or Curly and demands, “What’s the big idea?”

The premise of the debt-ceiling fight is too far-fetched for a Stooges film, since no audience could imagine leaders of a great nation stumbling into such a mess. Moe’s trademark line is still relevant, however, even if it’s not followed by the two-fingered poke in the eyes that our elected officials richly deserve.

It is clear that unless President Obama ends up taking unilateral action to break a hopeless deadlock, Republicans will win. The House, the Senate and the White House are all working within GOP-defined parameters: New tax revenue is off the table, painful budget cuts are a given, everyone seems to accept the principle that a debt-ceiling increase — which allows the Treasury to pay bills Congress has already incurred — must be tied to reductions in future spending.

Besides not having an easily stated idea that everyone repeats, the Democrats have done all the compromising.  And it hasn’t worked out so well.  Look back at the retention of the Bush tax cuts:  Do you see any jobs?  Robinson concludes

Obama talks about “winning the future,” but that’s too nebulous. I’d suggest something pithier: jobs, jobs, jobs.

People may dislike paying taxes, but they dislike unemployment more. Progressives should talk about bringing the nation back to full employment and healthy growth — and how this requires an adequately funded government to play a major role.

The next time Moe asks about the big idea, Democrats, say “jobs.” You might avoid a slap on the noggin and a poke in the eyes.

I think it maybe time for the President to stop trying to compromise, to get together with Reid and Pelosi and make a real proposal.  To quote Paul Krugman

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

,,,

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

Time for the President to not only talk the talk as he did last week, but also walk the walk.  Compromise by only one side has lead to this circus that is not even very entertaining.  At the very least, round up enough votes in the Senate to pass the Reid plan so the Democrats can at least say they did something.  You can compare plans here.  And please, let there be only one vote.  I don’t think anyone can take this again in 6 months.