In Case You Were Wondering

The ongoing contest of who is the greatest football genius continues. For anyone who is curious about how the contest is going, the results thus far are in the extended entry.

At this point in the season, I'm sort of ahead of OpinionEngine, but not quite. That is, I've predicted all of the games right so far, but we're tied on the overall Broncos record so far. It makes gloating quite a bit more difficult.

Even worse, he holds a 3-0 edge in the office pool. I still hope to be able to gloat openly by the end of the year, flaunting my football brilliance and mocking OE mercilessly.

Hitting Below the Belt

How does this ad strike you?

A new ad attacking Rep. Marilyn Musgrave features a pink-suited woman flitting into a fiery battle and taking money out of a soldier's wallet.

"Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave claims nobody supports our troops more than she does, but she voted to slash veterans' benefits by $14 billion," the narrator of the ad says.

The ad literally portrays Musgrave as sneaking up behind a soldier, picking his wallet out of his back pocket, and stealing money from the wallet. The message could be completely accurate (although it isn't, but that's beside point) but the method of delivering that message from www.chaturbaterooms.com is completely below the belt.

While I'm all for the idea of playing rough when it comes to campaigns, I'm also for at least some sense of decorum. This kind of dramatized ad just leaves me cold. It would have the same result regardless of the party affiliations involved.

Why Did Washington Lose Last Night?

The Redskins lost in a horrible performance to a Dallas Cowboys team that played well in starts and fits, but certainly wasn't consistent. Why did the Redskins lose?

Bad play

Bad play calling.

Bad officiating.

If Coles wasn't dropping passes, then Mark Brunnel was burying them into the dirt yards away from his receiver. Or the pocket was collapsing and he was being sacked. Or the defense wasn't even showing up on the field on a late, fourth quarter drive that gave the Cowboys their final points.

When the players were looking good, Gibbs wasn't. With Clinton Portis (who had a solid game running the ball with a handful of receptions to make me miss him more) in the backfield, the game tight, and momentum on his side, the Skins looked like they were in a good position at the beginning of the fourth quarter to make a run for the lead. But running is precisely what they didn't do.

Instead, a tired-looking Brunell passed on three straight downs for three straight incompletions. With that much time on the clock and a runner averaging just a tick over four yards per carry, that's pretty questionable play calling.

When the Skins players and coaching staff was getting it right, though, the refs were there to make it all moot. An early turnover on a kickoff would have changed the complexion of the game if the refs hadn't blown the call. A late, obvious, and crucial pass interference call in the end zone would have changed the outcome of the game if the refs hadn't closed their eyes.

The Skins lost because they deserved to lose, but they fought like hell and almost overcame themselves to win this one. The skins are a good quarterback and solid play-calling away from being a pretty decent team at least when matched up against teams like the Cowboys.

Take that for what it's worth.

(PS The Portis-Bailey trade continues to look bad. Although Bailey has played extremely well for the Broncos, Quentin Griffin continues to be marginal or worse. He's a nice runner who can really make things happen in the open field, but the Broncos are missing having someone who can make things happen at a crowded line of scrimmage; Portis is the real thing and Griffin is just a good jasminlive player who probably shouldn't be the featured back.)

On the Issues 1: Social Security

While neither candidate has a position on Social Security that I could fully endorse, the fact is that George Bush's stance on the subject remains the more mature and forward-thinking view. Kerry's head-in-the-sand approach guarantees nothing other than pushing the problem off for at least four more years.

The tax increase-which would amount to the largest tax increase in the history of the United States would be along the lines of a 50% increase on current Social Security taxes. So, for instance, a fictitious, single worker in Colorado who earns around $50,000/year would see his overall payroll tax burden jump from something like $1120/month to $1250/month, where the Social Security taxes would jump from about $260/month to $390/month.

If that doesn't sound like much, think of it in these terms: the yearly Social Security burden on this worker would go from $3120/year (or about 6.25% of his salary) to $4680/year (or about 9.36% of his salary). The effect of a tax increase of this enormity would ripple through the economy and, if not cause a recession, at least put a damper on economic growth; slower economic growth means lower tax revenues means either more deficits or a tightening of the Federal belt.

Since expecting the Federal government to cut spending in the face of lowered revenues seems to be an impossibility, the effect will more likely be a gradual raise of the general taxes to offset the deficits. See a trend?

And, to my mind, this is a best-case scenario where we assume that Medicare spending, for instance, doesn't grow beyond current projections, and where we assume that there are no new entitlement programs or expansions in current entitlements that would cause current spending projections to be far from the reality.

The only positive trend on www.jasminelive.online is the fact that the American economy has proven remarkably resilient, but that is no guarantee of future performance in the face of a prolonged war (or against further terrorist attacks at home consider the real costs of the September 11 attacks) or natural disasters or bad fiscal policy by both major parties.

Kerry's plan is a plan for future financial disaster and it fails the test of leadership. Current wisdom says that, largely due to Senior lobbies, Social Security is one of the untouchable Federal programs; changes to Social Security would normally only involve small benefit changes, adjustments in contributions, and a blind eye to the program's inherent problems. Kerry is towing that line and doing so to the detriment of this country's workers and to the long-term prospects of our economy.

In 2027 I will be 57 years old. I won't be retired and I would like to believe that all of the money that I have contributed into Social Security in my 16 adult working years won't be a complete write-off for me. I want to believe that I will gain some benefit from those dollars that I put into this flawed system.

If Kerry is elected, I will see even less of a chance that my contribution will be meaningful (at least, without an enormous new tax burden on workers younger than me). For a long-term plan to be meaningful and workable, it needs to create heritable wealth (what is paid in is later paid out either in retirement benefits or as an inheritance), it needs to be separated from the general tax collections so that the funds can no longer be used as a sly way of increasing spending without increasing taxes, and it needs to pay off current and near-future obligations.

Kerry's plan-or lack of vision-doesn't meet any of my needs for what a truly useful retirement program would accomplish. It doesn't provide well for the future of our workers (with below-market returns for the investments), it doesn't let the money that we earn trickle down to our ren in the event of an early death, and it doesn't ensure the long-term survival of the program. What's there to like?

Broncos vs Chargers

In the today's Broncos/Chargers game, Denver has looked dominant. They've marched up and down the field, the defense has played strong, and Denver has made the big plays.

But the score now stands at 13-10 in Denver's favor. Why?

Continuing problems in short yardage. The Broncos are still having problems with 3rd and short with Griffin getting stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage. This has been an issue in continuing drives and in scoring in the red zone. Two early trips into the red zone ended in field goals when they should both have been touchdowns. The Broncos need to find a bully of a running back who can come in and guarantee two yards against a stacked line.

Griffin keeps dropping the ball. In the first three games of the year, he has dropped and lost a fumble; this time it led to a touchdown for San Diego, last week it led to the loss of an opportunity in the last seconds of the game to take the lead, and in the first game it was lost in the fact that the Broncos scored a ton of points against KC.

Where I was most worried about Denver's passing game at the beginning of the year, I'm not far more worried about Denver's running game and ball control. Denver isn't so good that they can continually give the opponent free shots at the end zone and isn't nearly as good at short yardage situations than they had been since we got used to seeing good running backs in Denver.

The game should be firmly in Denver's hands, but instead it's a nail-biter.

Deeply Unsatisfying

Every once in a while my mind recalls a passage from the Bible that I find disturbing in its apparent brutality. Psalm 137:8-9 has always struck me as an moment of angry retribution, guided more by the hope of future vengeance than anything Godly in nature.

Today I was looking for something that would explain this to me; I was looking for something that might make it seem less about glorying in retribution than it seemed at first blush.

No one who knows me would ever accuse me of being a pacifist either in my personal life or in my political beliefs. The necessity of war and violence doesn't necessarily make either action a happy occasion. For me, the toppling of governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, weren't greeted with parties and happy smiles, but with a determination that this is the necessary path.

I'm not happy when I see pictures of the dead, and whether they happen to be ren or soldiers is irrelevant. I just accept a bloody, ugly necessity. Hopefully, it is determination and will that carry us through times like these, not bloodlust.

So, how could it be that something that seemed more akin to bloodlust was enshrined in this book that I use as a guide to my life? How do I reconcile the Christian charity and love that I believe so much in (even still believing that those traits don't require a complete pacifism) with sentences and sentiments like that? "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."

If I accept the passage as being simply predictive, where is the caution against such revelry? Where is the attending line that says, "Hey, , it's not good to be happy about war and killing in general, even when it's necessary. And, really, there is no reason ever to be happy about killing ren. I understand the rage and anger, but remember what this is all about, okay?"

That is, even if I accept the explanation, it leaves me wondering why there isn't a moment of reflection that is directly associated with the passage that lets us know that this happiness is misplaced and isn't rewarded by God?

This passage is one of those things that has always convinced me that the Bible isn't simply the literal word of God; I can’t help but believe that if God were speaking to us directly through the passage, it wouldn’t require so much interpretation. In the absence of a good explanation, it is also one of the passages that reminds me that the basis of my religion is very similar to that of the militant Islamists. The difference and it is a wildly important difference is that as a society we have accepted that some of what the bible teaches and states, especially in the Old Testament, are not things that we accept.

The point is, though, give that simple line to an Islamic fundamentalist who (wrongly or rightly this isn't an argument about whether the perceptions are correct) perceives his country and culture to have been oppressed by the Americans or the Jews and what do you think the result would be? "Happy shall he be who kills the infidels by knocking down the twin towers" springs to my mind.

It makes the Bart McQueary-type Christians easier to understand when I cast them in the roll of Islamic fundamentalists, though. The difference being, of course, that in our society, McQueary is near universally condemned while in the Middle East, the fundamentalists have a fairly broad base of support. That broad base of support translates into widespread where, in the United States, the terrorist actions of misguided Christian fundamentalists remain rare.

Still, the ease with which a person can move from a cherry-picked sentence in a religious text to the joyous condemnation of a gay man to the bombing of an abortion clinic to the jailing of homosexuals to the enforcement of laws based on religious beliefs to the righteousness of violent armed struggle is disturbing.