Month: October 2010

Finding Common Ground and Starting the Debate

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We’ve seen two different viewpoints, two very different perspectives, on the current state of the union. You can see from today’s posts how heated and diametrically opposed the two sides are in our present political climate, and honestly, I don’t actually believe the posts I wrote would do much to convince someone on either side.

And yet, there actually is some common ground between the two sides, although some of this common ground may be believed more by one side than the other, and each side holds similar views of their own and the other side. Both state their faith in the greatness of America as the beacon of hope in the world, as a place where you can be anything you want to be, though Republicans are more adamant about it (and tend to deny the opposition their similar belief). Both sides claim that the opposition’s policies are bad for the economy; both want to protect against terrorism in different ways. Both accuse their opposition of needing to wake up to the “real world”, and implicitly, that their own position is rational while the opposition’s is emotional. (On the one hand, Democrats are emotionally attached to the plight of the poor while Republicans see the poor as a necessary side effect of capitalism; Republicans are emotionally attached to their limited-government, free-market principles while being allegedly blinded to their limitations.)

Both sides claim to have America on their side, claiming that most Americans believe in their principles (though the Republicans seem to have more credibility) and that they have America’s best interests at heart, and accuse the other side of being pushed by interests out to squash the message of their own side by spreading misinformation – “big corporations” in the case of the left and the “liberal media” in the case of the right – and this explains the focus on media bias, since if the media weren’t biased everyone would obviously believe their own side.

But perhaps most importantly, the difference between the parties comes down to a difference in priorities, and at least at first glance, these priorities aren’t incompatible with one another. Republicans are concerned with limiting the size of government and maximizing the freedom of business to serve as the engine of the economy; Democrats are concerned with ending poverty and the equitable distribution of the wealth. You will even see Democrats claim that their desire to reduce the influence of the military is partly a reflection of limited-government principles, and Republicans claim that unrestrained capitalism will actually make the poor better off (the familiar “trickle-down economics”). Both sides do recognize the force of the other’s priorities, at least under certain circumstances; they just differ on which to side with when there’s a conflict. Democrats claim that helping the poor is a moral prerogative while one can’t be dogmatically opposed to all government; Republicans claim that the total amount of wealth in the system is more important than how it’s distributed.

Here’s where the conflict comes. At least in theory, the Republicans are right to claim that, if the wealth were perfectly evenly distributed, no one would have any incentive to work because they couldn’t get ahead of anyone else. (There are a few problems with this theory, but we’ll assume it for now.) Similarly, if the government took 100% of your income, you wouldn’t have any incentive to work because no matter how much you earned, all of it would go to the government. (This is a simplified version of the problem with applied communism.) Therefore, any wealth inequity produced by capitalism should be allowed to stand, or else you’re robbing the capitalists’ incentive to keep producing more wealth. Any effort to smooth out wealth inequities results in a reduction of the total wealth coming out of the system, although Democrats deny this. Further, any government interference, such as a tax, in the machinery of capitalism reduces the profits earned by the firm producing goods, and accordingly, reduces the amount of product produced by the firm.

So a limited government, in this model, is a precondition to the smooth workings of business, which may or may not naturally create a gap between rich and poor. A gap between rich and poor is, therefore, one possible consequence of limited government, or at least limited government in certain areas. (The argument applies more broadly when you argue, as Republicans are wont to do, that in general, people following their natural inclinations without government interference, only government protection, results in the best overall outcome for the economy.)

It does not follow, however, that the converse is true, that closing the gap between rich and poor requires a governmental solution. At least in theory, even the free market can solve some problems of wealth inequality, even if you don’t agree with trickle-down economics per se, so Republicans may be excused if they’re skeptical about Democrats’ belief in small government and their claim that government involvement is just what works to help the poor. You will sometimes even see Republicans claim that government interference itself is actually a cause, or even the cause, of wealth inequality. On the other hand, Democrats argue that, if closing the gap between rich and poor creates more consumers, it could have a positive effect on the economy that outweighs the negative effect. Now that we’ve reached this point in the debate, Democrats and Republicans could start brandishing numbers and studies backing their respective viewpoints, arguing over whether it’s better to limit government or help the poor, but they can also start debating ideas that synthesize both their priorities, rendering such debate over priorities unnecessary. (One is at the above link.)

We agree that America is the best country on Earth, the symbol for the ideals of democracy and freedom around the world, and a place where the lowliest of children, at least ideally, can grow up to become a titan of industry, though we may disagree on how realistic that is. We agree that we need to be attuned to the way the real world works and not become overly attached to our principles, and work to achieve what is best for America. We agree that, necessity aside, too much government can strip us of our freedoms and make us less happy and less prosperous, that absolute power corrupts absolutely, that even at low levels it leads to confusing and expensive bureaucracy, and that this has been proven in the past. We agree that, necessity aside, the gap between rich and poor and the existence of poverty is not something we like.

If we all admit that we are all in agreement on these four principles, it will not necessarily be easy to extend the common ground from there, especially when we are prone to disagree on basic facts, but if we focus on these principles we can use them as a framework to find solutions to our problems and disagreements that we can agree on. Some of these solutions may not be comfortable for one side or the other; they may represent a major concession. Then the question becomes to find out why one side or the other is uncomfortable, and either to explain why such things are not problems, or to find some other solution that takes those problems into account. Sometimes Republicans may have to accept a governmental solution because the cost for some group of people is too much; Democrats may have to accept a less equitable solution because the cost in government control is too much. And sometimes, we won’t be able to find a middle ground in this calculus because the difference in the proposed solutions comes down to the difference in priorities, and neither can be said to totally outweigh the other. Hopefully this last class will turn out to be smaller than it now seems.

Over the next few days, weeks, and months (I originally intended this past week but was stupid and procrastinated for two weeks, just as I’ve been procrastinating on this whole series all summer), I’ll be making several posts intended to illustrate how we can debate the issues by laying out our positions and trying to adjudicate between them. Rather than yelling and name-calling, I will model how we can have a civil debate by focusing on the issues themselves, recognizing our opponents’ concerns and reacting to them rather than dismissing them out of hand, and always keeping in mind our agreement on the four principles – and potentially more that will come out over the course of the debate. I can’t say that we will come to an absolute best solution for every problem, or that if we do it’ll be the right one, but I hope to bring each side to an understanding of their opposition and either a moderation of their perspective or at least a clarification of it through the perspective of the opposition. In short, rather than merely calling to “restore sanity” as Jon Stewart will do on Saturday, I’ll be trying to show how we can actually do it.

It won’t be easy, it won’t be pretty (these will still be emotionally charged debates), I can’t guarantee any sort of success, and I certainly can’t guarantee that I’ll singlehandedly heal the rift between left and right in this country, certainly not before the election, but someone needs to start the dialogue. And it needs to start by doing what I’ve tried to do: explain each side’s position in terms explicable to the other. Even if the dialogue is just me publishing the debate going on in my own head, an abstract liberal and conservative talking to each other is better than nothing. My hope is that real liberals and conservatives will take up where I leave off and continue it – and maybe then we can start to heal the rift.

The Liberal Case to a Conservative

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Click here to find out what this is all about.

Sometimes I wonder how a Republican can stand by, in good conscience, and support some of the things he supports, oppose some of the things he opposes.

How can you stand by and watch as millions of Americans suffer in poverty, without health insurance, without jobs? How can you stand by and watch as the top 5% hoard more than half of the wealth and live in opulence while millions go hungry? How can you stand by and do nothing as big corporate CEOs practically get away with murder at the expense of the American people? How can you let children of poor families go to school in dilapidated, worn-down schoolhouses and living in dangerous neighborhoods where they’re constantly exposed to drugs and crime while children of rich families get every privledge imaginable, sent to the best schools and isolated from the real world? For all your Christian rhetoric, how can you call yourselves Christians and let all this happen?

It’s wrong, it’s unfair, and it’s – dare I say it – un-American. I completely agree that America is – or at least should be – the greatest nation on Earth. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, where even a humble little boy from a small town can grow up to become President of the United States. “Give us your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But I don’t dogmatically and religiously believe that just because we say it’s so necessarily makes it true, and right now, for millions of Americans, that American dream is just that: a dream. (And when the dream does come true, it’s not exclusive to America.) They’re trapped in misery and feel powerless to escape, not even having a chance to win, because powerful forces want them to stay where they are. How can we live up to our ideals if we don’t give them what they need?

But you don’t care about that. America can go ahead and suffer for all you care, so long as you get to keep your sacred cows of “limited government” and “unrestrained capitalism”. Well, it’s time to wake up and see the real world, because all it’s gotten us is increased concentration of the wealth and naked greed – greed, incidentially, that isn’t good for the economy, and neither is poverty where people don’t have money to put into the economy. We’ve tried trickle-down economics, we’ve passed huge tax cuts for the rich, and it doesn’t work. Big corporations and rich people don’t care about America as a whole, only their own bottom line. How can anyone honestly feel admiration rather than shame and outrage at the obscenely wealthy? In this context, fears of “expanding government” seem trivial and petty. Government is not the problem, but misuse of governmental power; in this country, “big government” is a myth. We are a democracy, and government is supposed to work for all of us, and it can be a powerful ally.

And Republicans don’t “reduce the size of government” like they’re always talking about anyway. Every time Republicans come to power, they slash funding for services Americans need (they even tell you they’re going to repeal health care reform!), they privatize others to companies that only care about the almighty dollar, but then they turn around and spend, spend, spend on the military. Reagan and the Bushes, they all saw ballooning deficits, while we actually saw a surplus under Clinton. We saw Bush II send our young men to fight and die in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, to follow the imperial dreams of the neocons. It’s a policy that has led us to be hated around the world; we were once seen as the beacon of freedom around it, but policies like these are why the terrorists hate us.

America spends many times more on its military than any other nation; in fact we spend twice as much per person than the total income of two-thirds of the world’s population. We need to be united by our common humanity; America is just antagonizing the other nations of the world, even our alleged allies, and it’s ultimately making America less safe, not more. America can’t keep being the policeman of the world. Let’s stop fighting each other and start loving each other; let’s stop the killing and bombing and start the feeding and caring.

But no. Big, moneyed interests support the status quo, and money talks. It’s these big corporations with an interest in the status quo that own the big news networks; the notion of a “liberal media” is just cover for how they push their conservative agenda. Journalists may be liberal, but that’s because they see everything that’s happening around the world; the organization they work for won’t publish anything the boss won’t allow. And the big corporations spend billions of dollars spreading misinformation, trying to convince you they really do have your best interests at heart, even though they’ve proved time and time again that they don’t. Just because everyone believes something doesn’t make it true, and there are a lot of people who have spent many years trying to figure out the best way to do things. Most Americans would be on board with the progressive agenda in a heartbeat once they knew what it was, but the big corporations want to make sure you remain in the dark, and just demonize it as the work of “liberal elitists”.

And it’s not just the big corporations keeping ordinary Americans down. There are forces out to take away a woman’s right to choose and take away her control over her own body, to take away the right of gays to serve in the military or to enjoy the same protections given to any other loving relationship, to make non-Christians, especially Muslims, feel unwelcome, to make a particular religious agenda, often a disturbingly hateful one, the national agenda over the objections of those it hurts and offends, to keep guns on the streets and Americans unsafe.

It seems Republicans’ respect for the Constitution doesn’t include the Bill of Rights (except the Second Amendment of course!), and “freedom” just means the freedom for corporations to lead us all into the ditch, especially with all the spying on Americans the last decade, not that you heard the corporate media talk much about that either. It’s funny to hear the Tea Partiers talk about comparing Obama to Hitler or Stalin and preaching about “government interference in people’s lives” when we really did flirt with Orwellian totalitarianism under Bush. Do you really think his party has changed? Or is the old saying really true: “fool me once…”

It’s time to wake up to reality and come together to solve America’s problems, not turn a blind eye to them and go around thinking everything is just hunky-dory when it’s not.

The Conservative Case to a Liberal

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Click here to find out what this is all about.

The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they created this country and its constitution.

They had just seen first-hand what happens when people get too much power. They had just fought a war to free themselves from the tyrrany of King George. They knew they had to do something to make sure America never had to suffer like that again. They knew the power of government had to be limited to keep from interfering in the lives of ordinary Americans, because when Americans are left to their own devices, they have proven time and again that they can do some wonderful things. So they set out to create the freest nation on Earth, one that would be the envy of the world, a beacon of hope for oppressed peoples the world over, a place where anyone, with hard work and determination, could be anything they wanted to be.

For over two centuries that was exactly what America was, the greatest nation in the world. In the 1940s, when Nazi totalitarianism threatened to enslave the world, America made sure the world remained free. In the next half-century, when the threat of Communism threatened to spread all over the world, America remained the haven of free enterprise and took the lead at halting the spread of socialism and communism, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet Union itself.

And yet, now, after America’s greatest triumph, liberal elitists like you want to turn America into its opposite. You want to reach the tentacles of government to every part of American lives, to make each and every one of us dependent on our government, to impose socialism – the very ideology we spent half a century fighting – right here in the USA, here, in the greatest stronghold for free enterprise in all the world! And they have the gall to claim to know better than most Americans because we won’t go along with their America-destroying ideas – as though we’re just a bunch of stupid morons who should stay in their place and let the smart people run things. We’ve seen what happens when government gets absolute power, but I suppose the liberal elitists never studied history while getting their fancy-schmancy college educations.

Or economics. Because as much as you’ve demonized so-called “Big Corporations”, the fact remains that capitalism is the greatest economic system in the world. Competition, free enterprise, these things are more powerful forces than the liberals realize. They put money in people’s pockets and allow a rising tide to lift all boats. Other countries have tried socialism; the Soviet Union is dead, China has moved towards capitalism (because they recognize what the liberal elitists don’t), and Europe takes all your money, crippling life and the economy. We don’t need an Europe-style welfare state where everyone is coddled and pampered. Private business knows what’s best for America, because their task is to get the most out of their money, and they don’t need government regulation mucking things up. Even when it’s benign, government doesn’t have any motivation to provide the best service, since it has a monopoly; private business has to compete, so it does have to provide the best service for the money.

I know how sad you are to see poor people out there, but it’s time to wake up to reality. If you put everyone on a level playing field, if you give people wealth without work, no one will have any incentive to work because no one will be able to get ahead. Success through hard work is the most fulfilling kind of success; the American dream isn’t “the government will magically make you rich”. You can’t make everyone mediocre; you need to free people to aspire to wealth, and that means you need to have wealthy people for them to aspire to. Otherwise, the economy stagnates, and we get passed by China and India.

And on top of that, you want to cripple our military? That hippie pacifist crap went out with the 60s. You want to know why those European socialist countries don’t have any military? It’s because they rely on the United States military, finest in the world, to protect them for them. It’s the US military that protects freedom from those who would destroy it. I’m not going to defend Bush’s intelligence tactics, much as he was slandered by the media – apparently Democrats got the wrong message when the voters rejected his expansion of government into people’s lives – but don’t deny the continued threat of al-Qaeda and other enemies of America. You gut the military, and who will keep America – and the world – safe from terrorists and rogue states who want to hold the world hostage with nuclear weapons? You want to live at their mercy, or would you rather go move there and coddle them and give in to their every demand? But that’s not all; you also want to take away guns from private citizens, leaving us defenseless (except for the government’s police of course!) against petty criminals and especially against our own government?

But – as if all that weren’t enough – to complete the socialist takeover, you want to take away God from our lives. You want to turn doctors into murderers, you want to undermine the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman (because what’s the point of marriage if it can’t produce a child?), and most of all, you want to deny the Christian foundation of this country and turn it into a godless, atheist place. It’s one thing to destroy America, it’s another to guarantee yourself a place in hell and drag America down with it by offending God, much as you want to deny His existence. Yeah, try denying His existence when you’re burning in hell; pretending He isn’t there doesn’t make it so.

This is all common sense. So how come it’s now legitimate to talk about a complete government takeover of the health care industry, about expanding government to solve all our problems, about crippling this nation’s ability to defend itself and spread the message of freedom, about destroying the foundation of marriage and offending all God’s morals, and how come anyone who talks about how all this will destroy America – which is to say most Americans – is shouted down and insulted? It’s because the liberal media won’t tell the truth. Whenever the liberal media talks about businesses and their leaders, they always insult them and paint them as corrupt con-men. Apparently all the good business leaders give all their money away so the poor get a free ride. And all they ever talk about is the military killing people or committing some atrocity; they never talk about all the good the United States military does around the world, and in general all they talk about is what’s wrong with the world, not what’s right. In fact, anyone who so much as tells the truth or talks sense with Americans is slandered and painted as some extremist. And there is a liberal media; actual academic studies have proven it.

Well, America’s not going to take it anymore. America is a center-right nation, and it’s time to climb down from the ivory towers, stop looking at your beautiful abstract models that blind you to the real world, stop deluding yourselves into thinking Americans just need to know more about your little plot, and stop trying to lead America in a direction we see very well and don’t want to go. We’ve had enough of “change”. We like things just the way they are, thank you very much.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 7 (Now with non-speculative protected games!)

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NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that this was written with the 2007 season in mind):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 11
  • In effect during Weeks 11-17
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:20 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:20 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 the first year of flexible scheduling, but are now protected after Week 5.
  • Three teams can appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. At this writing, no team is completely tapped out at any measure, although the Jets have five primetime appearances and can’t be flexed out of any of them, which is a problem since five other teams also have five primetime appearances and can be flexed out of them. (So naturally this turned into the Year of Parity!) A list of all teams’ number of appearances is in my Week 5 post.
  • A rule that may have come to light late 2008 but that, given its restrictiveness and lateness in coming to light, I’m having trouble accepting, is that the balance of primetime games taken from FOX and CBS can’t go beyond 22-20 one way or the other. The current tally is FOX 18, CBS 17; with tentative games, the tally is FOX 21, CBS 20. With this rule in place, Weeks 12, 13, and 16 cannot be flexed away from AFC road games without making up for it in Weeks 11, 14, 15, and 17.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 11 (November 21):

  • Tentative game: NY Giants @ Philadelphia
  • Prospects: 5-2 v. 4-3, with the Giants leading the most attractive division in the league and the Eagles a game back. Extremely good chance to keep its spot.
  • Protected games according to this: Packers-Vikings (FOX) and Colts-Patriots (CBS).
  • Other possible games: Jets-Texans, Chiefs-Cardinals, Redskins-Titans, and Saints-Seahawks, with Falcons-Rams and Raiders-Steelers as dark horses, all very dependent on how everything shakes out. Right now if any of them had a shot it would begin and end with 1-loss vs. 2-loss in Jets-Texans.

Week 12 (November 28):

  • Tentative game: San Diego @ Indianapolis
  • Prospects: 4-2 v. 2-5; the Chargers always start slow, but something about this year feels different (especially with how much better the Chiefs and Raiders are), and there are some ominous signs in the Colts’ losses…
  • Protected games: Eagles-Bears (FOX) and Jags-Giants (CBS).
  • Other possible games: Thanksgiving Weekend, paucity of good games, though less so than in years past. Your options are Titans-Texans, Packers-Falcons, Bucs-Ravens, Chiefs-Seahawks, and who knows, maybe even Vikings-Redskins. This game is very much at risk with three battles of 2-loss teams (although all involve iffy markets, so if the decision came this week it might default to Packers-Falcons).

Week 13 (December 5):

  • Tentative game: Pittsburgh @ Baltimore
  • Prospects: 5-1 v. 5-2, potentially deciding the AFC North. Extremely good chance of keeping its spot.
  • Protected games: Cowboys-Colts (FOX). This week has only one good CBS game but a better tentative compared to the other CBS unprotected candidate last week.
  • Other possible games: Redskins-Giants, Falcons-Bucs, and Jags-Titans, with Rams-Cardinals an emerging dark horse, and Saints-Bengals a big long shot.

Week 14 (December 12):

  • Tentative game: Philadelphia @ Dallas
  • Prospects: 4-3 v. 1-5; an NFC East game always = ratings, but at what point do the Cowboys’ struggles become too much to take, especially with Tony Romo on the shelf? This is NBC’s only shot at a Cowboys game during the flex scheduling period, but they could come in to this game 3-9 or something gruesome like that; its only shot at keeping its spot may be if it’s the game Romo comes back in, and that probably won’t be known 12 days in advance. On the other hand, look at the alternatives…
  • Protected games: Patriots-Bears (CBS).
  • Other possible games: Bucs-Redskins is the only available game that doesn’t involve teams below .500, and it doesn’t feel like a game you’d abandon Eagles-Cowboys for. Rams-Saints and Jags-Raiders are dark horses. Giants-Vikings is an important wild card, but Brett Favre’s career may be over by then. Bengals-Steelers is hanging by a thread.

Week 15 (December 19):

  • Tentative game: Green Bay @ New England
  • Prospects: 5-1 v. 4-3, a bit lopsided but both teams are at least tied for their respective division leads.
  • Protected games: Jets-Patriots (CBS) and Eagles-Giants (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Saints-Ravens is very attractive. Texans-Titans, Falcons-Seahawks, and Jags-Colts are also options, with Chiefs-Rams as a dark horse. I originally didn’t think Fox would protect Eagles-Giants thinking they’d always want to hang on to the NFL’s biggest rivalry, but unless the Cowboys make an unprecedented comeback with Jon Kitna at QB Redskins-Cowboys might not even be Fox’s own spotlight game.

Week 16 (December 26)

  • Tentative game: San Diego @ Cincinnati
  • Prospects: 2-4 v. 2-5, and the Bengals will have trouble catching up to the Ravens and Steelers, while the Charger mid-to-late season magic may have run out with the rest of the division improved.
  • Protected games: Jets-Bears (CBS) and Giants-Packers (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Chiefs-Titans and Seahawks-Bucs both involve two teams above .500. Colts-Raiders and Redskins-Jaguars are also options, with Vikings-Eagles as a Brett Favre wild card.

Week 17 (January 3):

  • Playoff positioning watch begins Week 9.

College Football Rankings – Week 8

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First, for the rest of the college football season expect the college football rankings on Monday and the SNF Flex Schedule Watch on Wednesday. Second, the lineal titles have been updated; turns out San Diego blew a chance to unify the NFL titles.

There’s a non-BCS team deserving of playing in the national championship game… but it’s not #6 Boise State.

#1 TCU is the beneficiary of #4 Oklahoma’s loss to #5 Missouri, becoming the first team all year to lead the C Ratings in two different weeks. TCU’s lead over Boise State is all the more impressive considering the Mountain West is still a worse conference top-to-bottom than the WAC. Expect Boise’s rating to improve once they play #20 Nevada and Hawaii later in the year, but for now, TCU’s beatdowns of Air Force and Baylor trump narrowly beating V-Tech – and TCU themselves still has #10 Utah to play.

Missouri didn’t benefit as much as you might think from beating Oklahoma, failing even to pass the team they beat, despite winning by 9; but it was at home and Oklahoma had by far the worst A Rating of last week’s top 5. #3 Oregon managed to pass them by crushing UCLA. Similarly, because the BCS computers don’t factor in margin of victory, #9 Auburn is your new BCS #1 but actually lost a spot in the C Ratings because the C Ratings noticed they only won by a touchdown on the road to a team outside the top 10. (#16 LSU was #6 in the BCS last week but #11 in the C Ratings.)

#2 Ohio State rounds out the top five despite holding a loss. It was to a good #21 Wisconsin team on the road; all their wins have been by double digits, including a 49-0 drubbing of a Purdue team still above .500 that sent them skyrocketing up the rankings.

Other remarks on the new C Ratings:

  • The winner of the Missouri-#7 Nebraska game will win the Big 12 North and might actually be favored in the Big 12 Title Game for the first time in a long time… and the last time ever.
  • Upon further review, #8 Michigan State was #10 last week and Nebraska #6 with attendant corrections to the rest of the standings, with the implication that North Carolina was in the top 25 last week as well.
  • #11 Alabama better spend the bye studying film of the Auburn-LSU game, because it’s because of that game that the Tide now outrank the Tigers, and Bama needs to be ready for the game coming out of the bye. It’ll be their biggest test before the Iron Bowl.
  • #18 Stanford beat Washington State by ten points but fell behind two other Pac-10 teams, in part because Wazzu sucks, in part because #12 Arizona drubbed Washington by 40 points. The Wildcats are only slowly gaining respect, but it won’t kick in for real until they play the other three best teams in the Pac-10 in November. #17 USC is still puttering around the middle of the rankings, and need a win over Oregon to be playing for anything at all.
  • It looks like the win over Alabama wasn’t a fluke and the loss to Kentucky was. Vanderbilt isn’t much, but the Gamecocks lead the SEC East and are heading for a chance to prove themselves in the SEC Title Game.
  • Time for ACC Madness! Does #14 Virginia Tech, who lost to James Madison, standing unbeaten in-conference say more about the Hokies or the ACC? #19 Florida State might turn out to be a little better, though, and might lead the ACC in the C Ratings if FCS games counted the way I’d like them to. Two more ACC teams, #22 NC State and #23 Miami (FL), populate the Top 25, and both are in the places you’d expect in the standings, though NC State is knotted up with Maryland, a team that’s not on the first page let alone positive B Points.
  • Baylor, Oklahoma, and #15 Oklahoma State are actually locked up in a tight one in the Big 12 South, so Oklahoma could have been set back quite a bit by the Missouri loss. Yes, BAYLOR is ahead of the other Texas schools, and they and TEXAS A&M are the only ones in positive B Points, though neither is on the top 25.
  • #21 Wisconsin can say “a win is a win” because they beat Iowa by only one point – though it helped that it was a road game. That pretty much firms up their claim to the Capitol One Bowl; people may continue to overreact to the Ohio State win, but it won’t be enough to give them a BCS at-large, and if Michigan State goes to the national title game I hope the Rose Bowl is smart enough to pick Ohio State.
  • Yes, #24 Navy makes the top 25, hardly unprecedented. They have had some discouraging games (losing to Maryland? Beating Wake Forest by one?) but the beatdown of Notre Dame helps make up for that. #25 Florida rounds out the top 25 for real this week. They get a chance to bring the Princeton-Yale Title back to the good teams this week in the World’s Largest Cocktail Party, the first of three games they need to win to win the SEC East, but which will basically lock it up for them if they do.
  • The Big East is West Virginia’s world and everyone else is paying the rent? Not so fast my friend! The Mountaineers’ loss to Syracuse not only deserts the Top 25 of Big East teams, but combined with Pitt’s stomping of Rutgers, leaves them only two spots ahead of their rival in the C Ratings, and behind the unbeaten-in-conference Panthers in the Big East standings. The ‘Cuse is getting a lot of buzz but they’re still a mediocre team; both of their losses were bad (and one was to inconsistent Washington) and they beat West Virginia by only five; their only other two FBS wins were to South Florida, a team around the same area in the ratings, and dead-last-in-the-C-Ratings Akron.

Complete C Ratings

2010 College Football Rankings – Weeks 3-7

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Here are the insights gained after calculating the last five weeks of the College Football Rankings:

  • Wanna guess who was #1 after Week 3? It was a Pac-10 school, but it wasn’t high-scoring Oregon: it was Stanford. Alabama was #2, with Arizona #3, and Oregon all the way at #13 thanks to a weak schedule. Florida leapfrogged them all Week 4 by beating previously unbeaten Kentucky, and Oregon shot up to #6 after a relatively close win over Arizona State.
  • I didn’t like all the praise being heaped on to Boise before the season; it was like people wanted them to break into the BCS Title Game. And in the first rankings they’re #17. TCU, on the other hand, is #4, and moved to third behind Florida and Stanford the following week. Boise isn’t even the best team in their own conference after Week 3; that’s #11 Nevada. Beating Oregon State didn’t help them in the short term; they actually dropped to #22, behind Virginia Tech! Only in Week 5 did they climb ahead of Nevada to #15, and in week 6 they shot up to #5.
  • Looking at the Week 4 rankings, you’re probably thinking that, far from explaining many of this year’s upsets, if my rankings ruled there would actually be more of them; Florida was ranked ahead of Alabama, Stanford ahead of Oregon. That actually resulted in TCU shooting to #1 Week 5, followed by Alabama and Oregon, with Florida staying high at #4. Despite losing to Arizona earlier in the year, Iowa was at #5, followed by Oklahoma, Ohio State, Stanford, Nebraska, dropping-for-idle-hands Arizona, and Michigan. And the upsets predicted by the humans but not by me continued: Michigan State was #24 beating #11 on the road, South Carolina had been at #17 before beating Alabama.
  • Nebraska held the top spot after six weeks after a beatdown of previously-unbeaten Kansas State sent them shooting up the rankings. TCU, Ohio State, and Oregon rounded out the top five, with Oklahoma #6.
  • No one has led the rankings two weeks in a row. Oklahoma beating up on Iowa State explains why they’re now #1, but not in the BCS where margin of victory doesn’t matter. Did Texas handing Nebraska their first loss give the Sooners an SoS boost? The two major non-BCS schools, TCU and Boise State, file in at #2 and #3. 6-0 Missouri can boast of wins over first-page teams San Diego State, Texas A&M and Illinois, two of them by decent scores; #5 Oregon has beaten up on teams, but Stanford and Arizona State – an 11-point squeaker and a home win where they allowed as many points as they did against Arizona State – are their only first-page wins, and some of those wins (Tennessee, New Mexico) remain awful. Oklahoma should be on upset alert with the game in Columbia. Nebraska falls to 7th after the loss to Texas; Ohio State, unbeaten Auburn, and unbeaten Oklahoma State round out the top ten, with Michigan State at #11. (Don’t overreact to a loss!)
  • Next come unbeaten LSU, Stanford, unbeaten Utah, and Alabama to round out the top 15. Virginia Tech is 16th, and creeping back into the polls as well; non-bowl-eligible USC has been hovering around the middle of the rankings all year, and come in at #17 this week. South Carolina, Arizona, and Florida State round out the top 20, and NC State, Nevada, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Florida round out the Top 25 (of those five, only West Virginia and Wisconsin are ranked in the BCS). North Carolina, Mississippi State, Baylor, Iowa, Northwestern, Navy, Air Force, Michigan, and Oregon State make up the watch list (yes, Iowa is 15th in the BCS standings and 29th in the C Ratings – blame a pedestrian slate of opponents and a Penn State team now in the bottom half), with Arkansas, San Diego State, Clemson, Miami (FL), Troy, and UCF making up the rest of the positive B Point crowd.
  • The Big 12 appears to be the best conference, followed by the Big Ten, SEC, and Pac-10. Despite only one team in positive B Points the Big East is still ahead of the ACC. The WAC is surprisingly ahead of the Mountain West, which is the last year that’ll ever happen; in fact the Mountain West is only barely ahead of C-USA. The Sun Belt is actually ahead of the MAC. Kentucky is the lowest-ranked Princeton-Yale Titleholder I can think of in the time I’ve been tracking both, at #74 in the back half of FBS, with teams like UCLA and Toledo. Their opponent, Georgia, is at least 50th and can get on to the first page if they take the title.
  • Best game of week: #1 Oklahoma @ #4 Missouri, 8pm ET, ABC, for the 2006 Boise State title – and possible pole position on the road to the national championship game.

Week: 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 6

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Also known as “Why NBC’s only flex game might NOT be Week 16”.

NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that this was written with the 2007 season in mind):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 11
  • In effect during Weeks 11-17
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:20 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:20 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 the first year of flexible scheduling, but are now protected after Week 5.
  • Three teams can appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. At this writing, no team is completely tapped out at any measure, although the Jets have five primetime appearances and can’t be flexed out of any of them, which is a problem since five other teams also have five primetime appearances and can be flexed out of them. (So naturally this turned into the Year of Parity!) A list of all teams’ number of appearances is in my Week 5 post.
  • A rule that may have come to light late 2008 but that, given its restrictiveness and lateness in coming to light, I’m having trouble accepting, is that the balance of primetime games taken from FOX and CBS can’t go beyond 22-20 one way or the other. The current tally is FOX 18, CBS 17; with tentative games, the tally is FOX 21, CBS 20. With this rule in place, Weeks 12, 13, and 16 cannot be flexed away from AFC road games without making up for it in Weeks 11, 14, 15, and 17.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 11 (November 21):

  • Tentative game: NY Giants @ Philadelphia
  • Prospects: Both teams at 4-2 and tied for the division lead in the most attractive division in the league. Extremely good chance to keep its spot.
  • Likely protections: Packers-Vikings (FOX) and Colts-Patriots (CBS).
  • Other possible games: Jets-Texans, Chiefs-Cardinals, Redskins-Titans, and Saints-Seahawks, with Falcons-Rams and Raiders-Steelers as dark horses, all very dependent on how everything shakes out. Right now if any of them had a shot it would begin and end with battle of 1-loss teams Jets-Texans. (I think the Raiders have shown enough flashes of brilliance to potentially make the playoffs, especially in a division where they’re only 1 1/2 games back and tied for second, so I’m including every team at 2-4 or above.)

Week 12 (November 28):

  • Tentative game: San Diego @ Indianapolis
  • Prospects: 4-2 v. 2-4, but the Chargers always start slow. But there are some ominous signs in the Colts’ losses…
  • Likely protections: Reportedly, Eagles-Bears (FOX) and Titans-Texans, Jags-Giants, or nothing (CBS).
  • Other possible games: Thanksgiving Weekend, paucity of good games. Besides the potentially protected games, Packers-Falcons, Bucs-Ravens, and who knows, maybe even Vikings-Redskins or Chiefs-Seahawks.

Week 13 (December 5):

  • Tentative game: Pittsburgh @ Baltimore
  • Prospects: 4-1 v. 4-2, potentially deciding the AFC North. Extremely good chance of keeping its spot.
  • Likely protections: Falcons-Bucs or Cowboys-Colts, more likely the latter (FOX) and Jags-Titans if anything (CBS). This week has only one good CBS game but a better tentative compared to the other CBS unprotected candidate.
  • Other possible games: Redskins-Giants or the potentially protected games, with Chiefs-Broncos and Rams-Cardinals as potential dark horses, and Saints-Bengals a big long shot.

Week 14 (December 12):

  • Tentative game: Philadelphia @ Dallas
  • Prospects: 4-2 v. 1-4; an NFC East game always = ratings, but at what point do the Cowboys’ struggles become too much to take? This is NBC’s only shot at a Cowboys game during the flex scheduling period, but they could come in to this game 3-9 or something gruesome like that. On the other hand, look at the alternatives…
  • Likely protections: Patriots-Bears (CBS) and probably nothing (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Giants-Vikings and Bucs-Redskins are the main Fox protection candidates if they did protect something. Bucs-Redskins and Rams-Saints are the only available games that don’t involve teams below .500; neither feels like a game you’d abandon Eagles-Cowboys for. Broncos-Cardinals, Jags-Raiders, and Chiefs-Chargers are dark horses. Bengals-Steelers is hanging by a thread.

Week 15 (December 19):

  • Tentative game: Green Bay @ New England
  • Prospects: 4-1 v. 3-3, so NBC better hope the Packers look more like the first of those “3”s, or this could get disturbingly lopsided.
  • Likely protections: Jets-Patriots (CBS) and Saints-Ravens or Redskins-Cowboys, more likely the latter, but see below (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Eagles-Giants could well take this, but that maxes them both out of NBC appearances, and Fox would not be happy about losing both games of the divisional matchup, which makes me wonder if Fox may have in fact protected that game. Saints-Ravens would also be very attractive. Texans-Titans, Jags-Colts, and Chiefs-Rams are also options, with Falcons-Seahawks as a dark horse.

Week 16 (December 26)

  • Tentative game: San Diego @ Cincinnati
  • Prospects: 2-4 v. 2-3, and the Bengals will have trouble catching up to the Ravens and Steelers.
  • Likely protections: Jets-Bears (CBS) and Giants-Packers (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Chiefs-Titans is your best option with two teams above .500. Texans-Broncos, Colts-Raiders, Redskins-Jaguars, Seahawks-Bucs, and Vikings-Eagles are also options. So as far as interest in the game goes, flexing won’t improve this game much. It is conceivable that the Titans fall out of the division running behind the Colts and Texans, the Chargers make their usual mid-season surge, the Bengals hover around .500, and the NFL decides to stick with two name teams.

Week 17 (January 3):

  • Playoff positioning watch begins Week 9.

An Emergency Summit between Left and Right

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If last year’s health care debate and the rise of the Tea Party movement have shown anything, it’s that the 2008 election was not the messianic defeat of conservatism that many on the Left hoped it would be.

The Left saw itself as putting firmly to an end the abuses of the Bush era, the capstone of the rise to power that started with the 2006 takeback of Congress. I felt, and I suspect many on the Left did as well, that with Obama in power and a Democratic Congress, the “progressive” agenda could be pushed forward, and if it worked, it would kill the Republican party for a generation. Obama received one of the largest electoral vote wins in history; Democrats won a nearly filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The people had given the Democrats a mandate to pursue their agenda however they saw fit, and had firmly repudiated the conservatism of George W. Bush.

It did not work out that way. The Democrats received pushback. Obama struggled mightily to get anything at all passed; the country remained mired in the recession; and far from being killed, Republicans started beating the Democrats at what used to be their own game, marching and demonstrating. Now Republicans look likely to win seats, if not control, in both houses, and many on the left claim that this happened because the Obama administration wasn’t leftist enough. One wonders if the best thing for the Democrats would be to lose the White House and be marginalized almost to the point of irrelevance in Congress to force the Democrats back to their base and their own Tea Party-style movement.

What actually happened was that the Democrats put too much stake in politics. They felt that if they just elected enough of the right politicians they’d bring a “progressive” heaven on earth. We just needed to defeat the moneyed corporate forces trying to destroy our future. But there are actual conservatives out there, actual people listening to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and they aren’t just misled by misinformation being spread by Big Corporations. The Left has claimed that the Tea Party is nothing but a big astroturf movement by moneyed interests, but at this point it’s difficult to see that as anything more than a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory. After all, it’s taken aim at fellow Republicans, defeated GOP favorites in the primary, and made the claim that they lost in 2008 because they’re not rightist enough. The final Democratic triumph won’t occur until it sees the conservatives beyond the corporate boardrooms and recognizes their grievances and the forces behind them. At the same time, the Republicans need to realize that there are real Democrats out there, and they aren’t all misled by the liberal media – both sides need to realize that neither side is dominated by lunatics. After all, many of them have taken to the blogs in much the same way Republicans took to talk radio 20 years ago, and one of their complaints is that the media is if anything conservative!

And ultimately, the media is at the heart of all of this, accused of liberal bias on one side and conservative pandering on the other. I once tried to read both Media Matters for America and Newsbusters and came away with the idea that the media is just plain incompetent. Sure, everyone – including journalists – has an opinion, but why can’t the media simply report the facts as they are? Why can’t the mainstream media simply report all the relevant facts and leave them up to the reader’s interpretation, the way Fox News’ slogan claims – give us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? After years of being pilloried by left and right, how could the mainstream media still be biased?

The short answer is that your definition of “truth” is dependent on where on the political spectrum you lie. There will always be another fact you could have added, another study you ignored, and then some of the facts and studies you did cite may be misleading and just plain inaccurate. Every “fact check” you perform is showing bias in favor of the side you come out on. And then if you try “investigative reporting”, even in the past you had to choose where to send your resources, and then you’re effectively choosing entire stories that could show a liberal or conservative bias. And then on the flip side are those potential stories left behind, and no matter how radical or ridiculous the story sounds, if you refrain to report it it will ironically give the story more credibility than if you had reported it: “See, the mainstream media is covering up this story!” This is how we got 9/11 truthers and Obama birthers. The mainstream media could do a better job of bringing up these fringe theories the moment they come up and decisively squashing them, laying out all the evidence, but then one side will say you’re “legitimizing” the fringe theory (the fear that has been the mainstream media’s problem in the past), while the other will say you’re showing bias by presenting the “opinion” that the theory is wrong “uncritically”, which proves the first side right by legitimizing the theory.

And so the media can’t win. And in a landscape where the media can’t win, the winners are those places that are telling them the media is wrong in the first place. If you can’t trust the media, you can trust the partisan echo chambers known as talk radio, blogs, Fox News and MSNBC. Each political persuasion now has their own media, independent from each other and from the mainstream media. It is now possible to cocoon yourself and only expose yourself to those media that present a viewpoint that meshes with your own, that tell you how obvious it is that you’re right, how those big bad people on the other side want to ruin everything, and how the media are hiding the truth and coddling them. Party politics in this country is taking on almost religious connotations, with many of the same aspects of worldview, explanation, and reassurance – and it may be becoming literal, if Glenn Beck is any indication. (It would help if there were more than two political parties, but as Ralph Nader has proved, that’s difficult to accomplish as is, and the status quo arguably reflects one of the oldest divisions in the country, North and South, and maybe one of the oldest in the world, haves and have-nots.)

It becomes a vicious cycle: The partisan machine says mainstream media is biased, so you need to get your news from partisan sources, and that feeds the partisan machine. And the end result is that we now have two factions that are increasingly not speaking to each other – indeed, they increasingly can’t even understand each other. How can they? Admitting the other side might be right about something is a win for them. If they so much as claim that the risks of your position aren’t worth the benefits, you need to raise the stakes, ramp up the risks of their position, lest your followers potentially give in to the enemy. So every issue becomes an apocalyptic battle for the future of America. (On the plus side, no one now plausibly says there’s no difference between the parties.)

And not only are the mainstream media throwing up their hands and giving up on resolving the divide, they’re profiting on it and making it deeper. Complaining about the divide fills up time on political talk shows, but very little is done to do anything about it. CNN profited off the divide for a time by hosting Lou Dobbs’ rhetoric; MSNBC, where Keith Olbermann was once an anomaly, has now decided to plunge headfirst into becoming the liberal equivalent to Fox News, virtually matching if not exceeding Fox note-for-note in pundits with talk shows. Nowhere is there any serious effort in any of the three camps to bring the warring parties back together, to expose them to the other side’s views both on politics and the truth and give a reality check, to start a real conversation on common ground.

CNN tries to be nonpartisan. I think it would be better for the political discourse if it were bipartisan. I actually didn’t like it when Jon Stewart went on Crossfire, lambasted it, and led to its demise – that was one of the few places where left and right could come together and have their respective ideologies meet. In my view, the failure of CNN to see the true character of the political discourse in this country is reflected in its attempt to revive that format, Parker Spitzer. I saw an episode last week and saw a show where the hosts’ differing political ideologies seemed like a coincidence. It was a genteel setting where the hosts mainly engaged in roundtable discussions of high-level issues. There was very little effort to play left and right against each other, or even to represent them. Even in the opening segment, where each of the hosts presented their “opening arguments”, they basically agreed with each other that Obama needed to defend himself better. It’s like the show is living in a completely different universe than the rest of the political discourse, and not in a good way.

Defending the show to Richard Viguerie, who had expressed how unconvinced he was as a conservative about the show’s goals, Eliot Spitzer claimed that CNN was interested in fairness and balance, but it was also interested in the truth. That, to me, is the failing of the show. For many, Obama being born in Kenya or 9/11 being an inside job is the truth. If CNN really wants to correct the political discourse in this country, it needs to dwell on the fringes. I don’t want to see a debate between Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer; I want to see a debate between Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann, Sarah Palin and Al Sharpton, Michelle Malkin and Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh and Markos Moulitsas. And I don’t want it to be a cable version of Charlie Rose, I want it to be a political version of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption. I once brought up this issue in a class and was told that, precisely because of the religious fervor and diverging worldviews of each side, it could lead to nothing but the sort of shouting matches that Stewart criticized Crossfire for – neither side would really get anywhere because they wouldn’t be arguing from common premises and couldn’t argue to the other side’s values, so they’d just go around in circles repeating themselves.

I don’t believe that’s the case, and I know that because I myself have found myself agreeing with or at least understanding conservative positions online, despite my own liberal leanings. In fact, while most people seemingly believe whatever they encounter first, I find myself agreeing with whatever I read last. I’ve found myself getting very self-conscious about my own liberal leanings when I read something from a conservative point of view, and worrying about whether or not I really am ruining America. Unfortunately, people like me seem to be few and far between, and they’re getting fewer and farther between. In reality, I suspect they make up the majority of Americans, but most of them just don’t hold strong positions, don’t feel strongly enough to speak about it, and are turned off by the shouting that goes on by the people who feel strongly enough to speak up. And I’m not terribly optimistic about the potential for Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity to bring them out of the woodwork. (Especially when whatever serious message may lie behind the comedy is undermined by the parallel “March to Keep Fear Alive”, and especially when several in the media paint it as a “progressive” response to Glenn Beck’s rally, taking part in the breakdown of the political discourse instead of trying to fix it.)

Unlike a lot of people, I don’t believe we’re becoming a nation of two colors, red and blue, with completely different cultures that can’t understand each other. I certainly hope that’s not where we’re going, or it could lead to another civil war. However, we could get there if the current political discourse is left unchecked, so I’m using my understanding of both sides to force an intervention, one more substantial than the Rally to Restore Sanity. Over the next few days I will attempt to explain the basic credo of both left and right – but the political discourse has fallen far enough that I don’t believe it’s sufficient to merely explain but also to defend, and it’s not sufficient to defend, but also to actively attempt to persuade. I will attempt to promote the political ideology of the left in an appeal to conservatives, and attempt to promote the political ideology of the right in an appeal to liberals.

I’m going to lay my biases up front: As someone with liberal leanings, I am more likely to do the left justice than the right, and I am more likely to show a comprehensive understanding of liberal values than conservative ones. Note also that in order to properly appeal to each side, I would need to follow up on things said while defending that side – to argue one side to the other, I’d need to appeal to the other side’s values, which I would have established while defending that side – so things may seem a little disjointed. I’ll then attempt to find some sort of common ground between them, to the extent there is any, and use this framework to look at various issues in the political discourse.

Long live social media, king of the Internet!

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All right. I’m making my deal with the social media devil.

In preparation for the new series starting later today, there will now be an insane collection of sharing buttons on every post on Da Blog, powered by ShareThis. We have Facebook, we have Twitter, we have MySpace, we have Digg, we have more ways of sharing all the brilliant thoughts on Da Blog than you can shake a stick at. We probably have more than can fit on one line on the screen. Don’t have your favorite obscure social networking site? Let me know and I’ll look to see if I can add it. I want all my bases covered. I want as much of the power of the social network on my side as possible.

Well, and I like the visual of all the social networking icons all in a row with different numbers of shares. Though it would be better if more than just Facebook and Twitter were rendered in their own styles. And if tooltips popped up in case you didn’t recognize a site. (Most sites’ buttons should now have clues to their identity.)

Oh, and I finally got rid of the repeating effect on the header image. It’s weird: on my old laptop, I didn’t see it and I don’t think I thought it was ever going to be an issue, but on my new laptop, which supposedly uses the same resolution, I do.

An important announcement on the future of Da Blog

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You may have noticed that posting on Da Blog has slowed to an absolute crawl this year, and I’m long overdue for an explanation. Simply put, I’ve failed at my intended plan for Da Blog.

Call me a wide-eyed idealist, but I believe everyone should be able to make a living doing what they enjoy doing. By which I don’t mean simply “having fun” but whatever their passion is, what they would do if there were no need to make money. If you enjoy making tables and chairs and get a release out of it then maybe you should consider taking up a career in carpentry. This is, in fact, the only reason the Internet has created so much content that’s not directly paid for: people doing what they enjoy doing, people doing what they want to do. There are probably a wide variety of fields that I would be good at, but they wouldn’t be me. I would be working solely to pick up a paycheck. I want to work on what I’m interested in.

I created Da Blog, and later the forerunner to MorganWick.com, in large part to serve as a repository for my work on topics I was fascinated by, out of a hope that enough people would be interested in what I had to say about them to make Da Blog popular and possibly allow me to make some money off it without having to work in some grunt job or something out of a Dilbert cartoon. Once Da Blog was popular, I could use it to push some of my more controversial but profound thinking and build my true greatness. I’ve made several attempts over the years to build Da Blog’s popularity, from the various sports projects to Sandsday to the webcomic reviews to 2008’s October of Politics fiasco.

The webcomic reviews have been the most successful, or should I say least unsuccessful, of the lot… so naturally there may be no part of the site that has suffered more over the past year. One of the top two most popular posts in the history of Da Blog was the 2009 State of Webcomics Address, a post I was reconsidering my thinking on even as I was posting it, only to watch in horror as I was called on to defend views I was no longer sure I held, and given rebuttals I wasn’t sure I didn’t already agree with. One of my biggest regrets is never having posted a clarification to the Address giving a more refined version of my thoughts.

That I haven’t had the work ethic to work on all the posts I’d like to, that I haven’t been as fast or as committed as I’d like to be, has always been a problem of mine hindering Da Blog, but my time has also been restricted by the need to work on schoolwork. I’ve always attempted to juggle schoolwork and Da Blog, with a sensitivity towards the time-sensitivity of much of what I work on on Da Blog, and a desire to build upon what little I have. Honestly, my work on Da Blog has wound up having the impact of limiting the amount of schoolwork that gets done, and I wind up prioritizing the assignments that seem to me to be really important.

Everything started spiralling downhill last summer of 2009, when I took a summer class. Under normal circumstances, at my school most people take three classes at a time; as it happened, through a series of events early in my college career I was led to the conclusion that I was best off taking two classes at a time. But summer classes are very condensed and designed to be taken one class at a time, meaning for about a month, my schedule was equivalent to taking three classes at a time. The resulting time crunch was such that I decided to abandon following my RSS feeds (except for Order of the Stick).

A month may not seem like much to catch up on, but even before all this, my RSS feeds took so long to catch up on that I had to spend a significant portion of every single (week)day catching up on them. Combine this with the fact I wasn’t quite done with the work the course required, and while I made a fairly sizeable dent in catching up on my RSS feeds by the time regular classes started up again, it was far from complete.

Due to procrastination on my part, I was signed up for only one class when classes started up again instead of two, but fall is typically one of the busiest periods of the year for Da Blog because of all the football stuff, and my progress on my RSS feeds, slowed by the launch of the new site, had been derailed by my decision to commense an OOTS archive binge that, because of a related associated project, turned out to take far, far longer than I ever anticipated. Then, right as I finally finished the work for the summer class, the screen of my laptop broke, and it took at least a month before I finally got a new one, which hamstrung the work on the football projects and halted the archive binge, since I was having a hard enough time working on the work for my one class without a laptop. I still haven’t caught up on more than one feed since then.

The Christmas break was utterly unproductive, so I was still behind on the OOTS archive binge. That project wound up dominating my time for a good chunk of February, and in the meantime an old enemy flared up again. Despite writing some occasionally angry posts over the course of 2009, I had, in fact, figured that I had mostly shaken my old tendency to flare up in angry outbursts that got me into trouble and kicked out of classes. But one result of that was that I stopped seeing my therapist, and didn’t start up again even as the stress of not being able to keep up on my RSS feeds and the OOTS archive binge started getting to me.

So the end result was, I wound up kicked out of a class. Then, right as the quarter was ending, I had another outburst that would have gotten me kicked out of the other class if the quarter wasn’t ending. And at that point I was given an ultimatum: If you want to stay at Seattle University, you better make damn sure this crap never happens again. Otherwise you can go off to some online school for all we care.

For over a week I thought about it. On the one hand, leaving Seattle University would mean going all-in on Da Blog and hoping it works out, when it hasn’t worked out yet. But on the other hand, the requirements for staying at school – the steps needed to take to reduce the chances for another incident to as close to zero as possible – would involve strictly keeping up with the assignments and not falling behind on them at all, lest the stress of having to catch up cause problems, and to maintain that pace would require me to virtually abandon Da Blog for the two-plus years it would take to complete my degree.

I did eventually decide not to take the quitter’s way out, and I’m still going to Seattle University for the foreseeable future. But that means I can’t really juggle Da Blog and my schoolwork the way I used to while trying to get ahead with Da Blog anymore. I intended to use the summer as a way to wrap up a few projects of mine (as well as more schoolwork I didn’t get done during the actual school year) while making a last-ditch effort to make Da Blog popular enough to support itself, but thanks to TV Tropes and some other distractions, I wound up doing virtually none of that. Honestly, I don’t think that, at least in my case, colleges do a good enough job of reflecting and supporting their students’ true passions, instead boxing them in to a certain mode of living and learning.

Over the next couple of weeks I do intend to get one of my projects out of the way, an attempted reprise of the October of Politics with lessons learned from the past, but after that – unless it catches on – expect posting frequency to drop precipitously, and for the paucity of posts seen over the past year to become the norm. I’ll still get out a new State of Webcomics Address containing the aforementioned clarification of my views, and even finally catch up on my RSS feeds. But I’m probably not going to test the Line of Sight rankings this year, and once my desktop gets fixed I’m probably going to adopt the 2007 solution of posting only the RTFs of the regular College Football Rankings, at least for this year. Beyond that webcomics posts are probably going to be restricted to the summer only if at all, and summer in general should see the greater portion of the posts for the year over the next two years.

I’m not shutting down posting on Da Blog entirely, but if this new project doesn’t work out I think it’s very possible I may be back to square one in terms of finding something to do with my future. I need to find something that won’t grind down my soul, something that will properly use my abilities and that I’ll be able to enjoy at least a little (I need to find a word between “enjoy” and “tolerate”). Da Blog seemed like the best approach for my affinities, and I may now be back to Plan B, and the road ahead seems downright murky.