boonville blog, by jeff egnaczyk - you are listening to me talk

Ounce of Prevention

Being the A-List Blogger that I am, I wanted to note one thing about the infamous shoe throwing at President Bush last month in Iraq:



Some people asked how the guy was able to get the second shoe off before a) he was tackled or b) someone got in the way of Bush. No, this wasn't the Secret Service asleep at the wheel (or intentionally dogging it). The reason they didn't diffuse the situation immediately is that they had diffused it before it ever happened. By properly screening every person who got into that room they almost guaranteed that the worst someone could do to Bush was throw a shoe at him. Regardless of whether that's a great insult in the Middle East (apparently it is), the worst it could have done was bruised Bush's skull (insert joke about that being the place that would do the least damage). They did 99.9% of their job in the hours, days and weeks before Bush got into that room. So it wasn't exactly an "ounce" of prevention. There was a lot of hard work done to ensure Bush's safety. It was all done behind the scenes though. Keeping the president safe can involve any and/or all of screening for guns, background checking people or diving in front of bullets. The moral of the story is that doing work at the beginning of a project is more efficient and effective than doing it at the end.

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2008: Not Bad

So the big news in 2008 was that Carol and I started down the path to completion of the American Trifecta: marriage (2005), home ownership (2005) and now parenthood. We spent the time between July 2 and the end of the year preparing for something that didn't seem real. Late in the year though Carol has gotten bigger. That, and the turn of the year, has made it feel a lot more real.

Otherwise, good health in our home and overall for our family and friends. Work didn't really pan out the way I would have liked it too but nothing bad happened.

Sports were a bit of a downer this year. The Yankees and Syracuse basketball were shut out of their respective playoffs. The Bills continued to disappoint. The Olympics were fun though and change is in the air at Madison Square Garden.

I hope to write some reviews for the books I read this year. I read some good non-fiction like Guns, Germs and Steel and The Omnivore's Dilemma. Didn't catch a lot of movies in the theaters but, as always, Netflix kept me entertained.

A good year was 2008. Could have been better but not too much on the bad side. The big deal still gets an incomplete grade. I'll save that one for 2009. Should be an interesting year.

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Playoffs?

I'm rocking my Bills throwback t-shirt despite another 7-9 playoffless season. We messed up Denver's playoff plans in week 16 but couldn't muster a point to stop New England's aspirations. Fortunately the Dolphins took care of business against the Jets, keeping both Brett Favre and the Patriots out of the postseason. I had earlier declared it legal for Bills fans to root for the hated fish if it kept the Patriots out of the playoffs. It's a one time thing. New England deserved it after last year's murderous campaign of destruction against the NFL. Next year it goes back to hating in this order: Dolphins (or Jets), Jets (or Dolphins), New England, Tennessee, Dallas, Giants, Redskins and any team that ever moves to LA.

I digress. Congratulations to my lovely wife who decided she would get back into football right after the Dolphins went 1-15. She got in on the ground floor and was rewarded with a playoff birth. Congratulations also to my mom and her family in Philly for getting into the playoffs. You guys just won the World Series and now you're in the NFL playoffs ... can we all chill out a little?

Arizona and San Diego have already moved on, putting away the Falcons and Colts. I think I'll root for the E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles this year.

P.S. Phil Sims is brutal.

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Fact: Communication with Pets is Inexact

Comics from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and A Softer World. Check them out.

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College Football: Still A Sham

It's pretty obvious that despite Utah's undefeated season after defeating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl the team shouldn't have a chance to win the BCS national title. The reason is because - hey look, Lindsay Lohan got in a fight with Samantha Ronson at Miami International Airport!

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Pink Hats

"Pink hat" is a deragotory term in Boston. The Red Sox don blue and red. If you're part of the "pink hat crew" it means you're a bandwagon fan of the Boston Red Sox. Nothing in sports fandom is worse than being labeled a bandwagon fan. After the Sox won the World Series in 2004 the fan base naturally swelled. As any base of people gets larger it becomes more eclectic. The group that was added to "Red Sox Nation" was a group less committed to the Sox. Many of these newcomers were women since women generally like sports less in our society. Whether it's a dumb gender stereotype or not, women are more apt to like the color pink. Hence, to appeal to the newcomers the "pink hat" was created.

In that way the pink hat became known as an indicator of a bandwagon fan that wasn't around for the lean years. To an extent this is true. The pink hat gets a bad rap though. Many women do like pink and do like the Red Sox whether they arrived before or after 2004. So the pink hat expresses their support of the Red Sox in a more personal way. Now I used to be a person who didn't accept a different style of hat. These are your team's colors and you stick with them. I certainly always shit on the pink hat crowd (more as an insult to Red Sox fans after years of insults from Red Sox fans). It all kind of changed for me when I saw a Yankees cap my brother bought - the Argyle Fade Fitted cap by New Era. It reminded me of the type of Yankees fans I would see on television or at games in the Bronx. That is how they express their support for the team. It made more sense for them to express their support that way than have the mainstream way forced on them.



P.S. Liz, I actually wrote this post in a notebook a while ago on the train. Then today I went to post that very post but Firefox froze after I wrote the whole thing. Then we had lunch today and talked about your disdain for pink team merchandise.

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The Mall

Another interesting podcast I wanted to mention was Radio Lab's "City X" (what would I do without Radio Lab?). It centers around that icon of American life, the mall (it's so American that I thought I heard it on This American Life). The show touches on how the mall killed downtown shopping centers and how big box stores are in turn killing malls. A book I read, A Consumer's Republic, dealt with this as well. I found this interesting as it relates to government housing subsidies and transportation infrastructure spending. Malls exist in an environment where most people own single family residences spread out in the suburbs requiring automobiles to travel everywhere. The mall would not have thrived had it not been for government action. Essentially it is the result of urban planning*. The mall was not an overt act of government direction but a direct side effect. This is a pet peeve of mine. People act like automobiles and single family residences are the result of freedom and natural growth. In fact they are the result of government policy - just like public transit and density could be.



*Some businesses felt it was the result of collusion amongst department stores. The argument went that just agreeing to operate in shared space was collusion. It didn't even need to be some overt act. I find this to be an intriguing legal argument and I wonder what became of it - i.e. how was it defeated.

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Because Affirmative Action is Bad

Somehow Republicans are complaining about the lack of southerners in Barack Obama's cabinet. I would say that Irony's family should sue for wrongful death but clearly Irony was killed years ago by the Bush administration. Right now they should be looking at getting compensation for desecration of their beloved concept's remains. Apparently it's wrong to redress centuries of slavery and oppression by picking a black guy or a woman but it's OK to have a quota for southern white Republicans.

And for the record a good affirmative action program is not a quota system. I don't support quotas but I do support affirmative action. Beverly Daniel Tatum does a good job of explaining how it works in Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?. Even though she ends up supporting quotas and defines racism differently than I do it's a pretty good book.

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I Before E Except in Teixeira

So how's that for taking evil to the next level? First it was CC Sabathia, then it was AJ Burnett and now it's Mark Teixeira. People are complaining about how the Yankees have ruined baseball with this signing. I've always agreed with most people when the topic of more parity in payrolls comes up. The problem with this round of whining is that the Angels and the Red Sox could and should have had Tex. They blew it. The Yankees only offered a couple million dollars more per year. My guess is that it came down to including an opt-out clause or a no-trade clause. The Yankees offered the no-trade clause and no one else did. If the Sox or the Angels pulled in Tex no one would have been complaining about the money. I believe all it would have taken was a no-trade clause from Boston. The Fenway front office really dropped the ball on this. Think about that infield. From right to left: Mark Teixeira, MVP Dustin Pedroia, Jed Lowrie and Kevin Youkilis. That's the best in the league. Combine that with JD Drew, Jacoby Ellsbury and Jason Bay in the outfield and you have a well balanced young lineup. The only hole they would have to fill would have been at catcher. With Mike Lowell (a guy I really like) expendable they could have eaten some salary and traded him for an arm in the bullpen.

The Yankees now have their infield set for at least a couple of years with Teixeira, a hopefully resurgent Cano, Jeter and Rodriguez. The signing also allows them to keep Matsui and his bad knees at DH for the entire season. Now comes the decision on what to do with the 5 outfielders they have. Do they put Swisher and Nady at the corners and Damon in center? Or do they trade Damon or Nady and platoon Cabrerra and Gardner in center? My preference is to move Nady based on what I've read of his projections next year. Last year may have been a breakout year but the experts seem to think it was a blip and that he'll return to average production.

With the pitching signings the Yankees have the front line starter they've been missing for some time - and then some. Sabathia leads the way followed by Burnett, a healed Wang (stop snickering) and a still innings capped Chamberlain. There's been talk of re-upping Pettitte for less money or giving Hughes, Kennedy and Aceves a shot at the fifth spot. I'd prefer letting the young guys go at it (stop snickering) but maybe the Yankees are making an all or nothing 3 year push at the title. Damaso Marte was resigned for less money and more years, giving the Yankees a consistent lefty in the pen behind Rivera. Next in line is Brian Bruney. Behind him are the likes of Phil Coke, Edwar Ramirez, David Robertson and Jose Veras. I've heard good things about Mark Melancon, Jon Albaladejo and Humberto Sanchez and would love to see them this year.

It's interesting to see how Cashman went about getting these three players. He got out in front of Sabathia with an absurd offer. While people may have been laughing at him outbidding himself I think the move effectively shut teams out from even trying. The Yankees, after passing on Santana, needed a front line starter. They weren't going to leave anything (Sabathia wanting to be on the west coast, wanting to play in the NL) to chance. They now have a player who might not be as good as Santana but is close and they didn't lose anything but a (now second round) draft pick. The opt-out clause has caught a lot of flack but I don't mind it that much. Essentially the Yankees have signed CC for three years. Sure, if he's great they're going to have to compete for his services again in three years. I guess I just don't mind. We have him now for three years. We can figure out how to sign him again when we cross that bridge.

The Burnett signing was a bit much. I think he could be the second coming of Carl Pavano with his injury problems. Five years is way too much and so is the money. It does give the Yankees at least a couple of years of having two big time front line starters at the front of the rotation. In this case the Yankees went out and stole him away from Atlanta. They had the money and the bullied him away from a weaker team. Ultimately I don't like this move.

Teixeira may have been Cashman's best work. He laid low and when the Angels and the Sox stalled he swooped in and took Tex with something as simple as a no trade clause. Maybe in the long term this will work out for Boston better but I really think they blew it here. They passed up the third best first baseman in the league because they didn't want to include a no-trade clause for a player they would never trade anyway.

In other news: Darrell Rasner was sold to a Japanese team for $1 million. I always like Rasner and I wish him luck. He just didn't have the stuff to pitch in the American League East. I think he could have been a decent pitcher in the NL though. The Yankees also picked up Nick Swisher for Wilson Betemit (and others). When I read that I thought that meant the Yankees would be using Swisher to fill in for Abreu or Giambi and that Teixeira was off the table. Mike Mussina decided to forgo a 3 year journey to 300 wins and retire. Mussina goes out on top with a sub-3.5 ERA and 20 wins for the first time in his career. Most of us wrote him off last year and after seeing his first couple start this year we didn't change our minds. He showed he was a great pitcher though, not just someone with stuff. Watching him pitch was truly the best part of the 2008 season. Finally, the Yankees lost Chris Britton to free agency. Britton was acquired from the Baltimore Orioles for line drive magnet Jaret Wright, making him my favorite addition in recent years. Sadly he kept getting moved back and forth between Scranton and New York, never really getting a hold in the majors. Wright you'll remember was notorious for not getting past the six inning with the Yankees. He didn't even pitch in the majors last year. Thank the gods for Baltimore.

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Auto Bailout

This headline just about sums up the Republican party:

Executive Pay Limits May Prove Toothless
Loophole in Bailout Provision Leaves Enforcement in Doubt

We have a saying in the software industry when someone lodges a complaint about the way something works: "It's a feature, not a bug." It may not work the way you think it should but that's how we designed it. There's no "loophole" here. See (emphasis mine):

Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping pay of Wall Street executives, so lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules.

But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision, congressional aides said. The change stipulated that the penalty would apply only to firms that received bailout funds by selling troubled assets to the government in an auction, which was the way the Treasury Department had said it planned to use the money.

Now, however, the small change looks more like a giant loophole, according to lawmakers and legal experts. In a reversal, the Bush administration has not used auctions for any of the $335 billion committed so far from the rescue package, nor does it plan to use them in the future. Lawmakers and legal experts say the change has effectively repealed the only enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives.

Oh sure, Mr. President, that seems harmless and we totally trust you. So actually my first sentence is inaccurate. This just about sums up your entire United States Congress. The thing that does sum up the Republican party is the fact that they've held up the auto bailout bill over the issue of union member compensation. Executive pay for the people who made all the decisions that lead to this entire mess: no restrictions (and make no mistake, this "loophole" was intentionally added). Pay for blue collar workers who don't make crippling business decisions: must be cut (that is, again since it was negotiated down last year).

Like the financial industry bailout I'm pretty much deferring to experts about supporting the auto industry bailout. In happy times I would actually defer to the market and bankruptcy laws to take care of GM and Chrysler. Now, I'm just not sure. The Democrats are lining up to help their union constituency while also doing what the conventional wisdom says is the best thing for the economy. The Republicans, like they did with homeland security after 9/11, will oppose anything that helps unions regardless of how important it is.



Also, interesting to note Ford's take on the unions.

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