It Ain’t Easy Being Tebow

I’ve always been a Peyton Manning fan, so I was happy when I heard he was coming to Denver. I was also happy when I heard that Tim Tebow was being traded away; and it’s not that I have some personal animus against Tebow or his expressions of faith. Hell, I even think he might be a decent quarterback some day (although it’s going to require a lot of work on his part).

No, I was happy that he was leaving town because being in the Tebow business is a miserable grind. It’s misplaced venom and anger, fans who think ten minutes of impressive football per game somehow makes a QB a winner, and flame wars in the comments section of local web sites.

Tebow’s biggest negative, aside from slow decision-making and poor accuracy, is a rabid fan base who truly managed to poison the well last year. Those fans, whose live in (I’m sorry, Steve) Tebow’s Reality Distortion Field, credit those wins to Tebow although to any honest fan the majority of the credit needed to go to a Broncos defense that kept games manageable through the first three quarters of inept Tebow play, a kicker that played beautifully in crunch time, and a running game that helped measurably in making up for the weakened passing game.

I watched every game, absorbing the good and the bad of the kid, and felt an intense frustration at the inconsistencies in his play. Yes, he is competitive, hardworking, and full of athletic promise; but it takes more to be a great NFL quarterback. Indeed, for most of the great QBs, the hallmark is consistency. They play consistently good football and sprinkle it with moments of greatness. Tebow plays consistently bad football and sprinkles it with occasional miracles and wonder.

And I don’t want to hear about how great last year was. Last year was another 8-8 year for the Broncos where they were lucky to make the playoffs. Their record wouldn’t have earned them the trip most years and is a tribute more to the weakness of the AFC West than to the skills and miracles of Mr. Tebow.

So, while I think Esiason may be wrong about Tebow in calling for the Jets to cut the young man, it’s the comment section of this article that reminds me of how annoying the universe of Tebow can be when you have to live with it week after week. Here are a few of the more special comments:

s37en • an hour ago
esiason probably voted for obama. he is not ok in the head
GozieBoy • an hour ago
I think that Elway and Boomer know a thinng or two about ego, and simplly seethe at the attention and popularity that Tobow brings to anythiung he does. Boomer fears potential competition in the booth in future years as well, especially as his skills are so marginal. Maybe the real call is “CUT BOOMER NOW”.
Phil Kammer • an hour ago
I truly believe this is all bigotery against a powerful Christain figure
Joseph Lizak • 3 hours ago
Tim Tebow is the first QB that’s a real man. He’s buffed up like a linebacker and has the ultimate winning spirit only god would understand. Boomer on the other hand goes to a beauty salon to keep his blonde hair perfect for TV, was made fun of as a kid because he was left handed, and wears his high school girlfriends cheerleading dress he saved from 1984 when he’s feeling kinky.

That’s quality commentary right there.

Read the rest.

Why Should I Trust the President on Energy Policy?

Pipeline
Pipeline
Pipeline, Photo Courtesy SXC.hu.

President Obama just tried to convince me that he wants to strengthen the middle class by  developing domestic energy resources and taxing the wealthy to pay down our debt, amongst a few other things. Now, the plan to increase taxes on the wealthy won’t touch the trillion dollar annual deficits we seem to be running habitually right now, but it will certainly change the way some folks invest and use their capital. And it’s doubtful that it will do so in a way that “strengthens the middle class”– but that’s really what I want to talk about right now. Right now I want to talk about developing energy resources.

Firstly, I’ve said this before and I consider it to be an important point to make: the United States is the only developed nation that I can think of that actively works so hard against developing its own natural resources. We do this to the detriment of our own business interests and to the detriment of a citizenry that sees energy prices swelling while job growth is moribund and real salaries have stagnated.

Secondly, when a neighbor, who happens to be an important ally and business partner to the United States, can help provide a reliable, reasonably priced source of oil, it is vital to find ways to take advantage of that opportunity. In the case of the Keystone Pipeline, it would mean good paying jobs, an immediate boost to industries that are currently struggling (like the aggregates, cement, and concrete industries, as an example), and a boost to US manufacturers that serve those industries. It would mean increased tax revenues, both local and federal, and it would certainly help in stabilizing energy costs over the long haul.

But the President would prefer to pin our hopes on heavily subsidized renewable energy resources that have yet to prove their reliability or cost-effectiveness. In fact, by his own admission, his energy policies, taken to the conclusion that he wants, would cause energy prices to rise.

Which doesn’t at all help business struggling to make profits or folks struggling to make ends meet in a recovery that has yet to really start. High energy prices will make it less likely that companies will increase hiring because the money simply won’t be there to do so.

And, on a personal level, what this administration has done to harm the coal industry is unconscionable.

So, why should I trust President Obama to deliver the kind of energy policy– built around domestic resources– that I could support? Why should I think it would be any different than the direction that he has currently plotted? A failed direction that hasn’t done much to, ahem, “strengthen the middle class.” Or any other bit of our country, for that matter.

That is a long lead-in to this link— and a situation that wouldn’t exist if we had a president with a more practical view of this nation’s energy policy.

When President Barack Obama blocked the Keystone Pipeline, Republicans said the move would encourage Canada to pursue oil deals with China instead of the United States and cede a massive chunk of North American oil assets to the communist nation.

Now, with China’s state-run oil company CNOOC poised to cut a $15.1 billion deal–the largest ever foreign acquisition for a Chinese company–with Canadian oil company Nexen, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are in full backpedal mode.

Things like this matter and things like this are why I will be voting Romney in the upcoming elections.

Your mileage may vary.

Question

Courthouse
Courthouse
Courthouse, Photo Courtesy SXC.hu.

I originally put this on Facebook, but it belongs here. Especially since I’m adding a new link:

As a citizen, I think one of our most important jobs is to very simply question our government. This is not a partisan thing; question at every level, question whomever is in office, and question whether they share your party affiliation or not. Question the reasons for their decisions, the morality of their policies, the pragmatics of their solutions.

And in questioning, understand that the next job of the citizen is to push back where it is right. Not to the extent that you step on the guy next to you, not to the extent that you harm others, but by every legal method available, with determination and will, to correct imbalances. All of that in the context of remembering that no citizen is always right, no citizen has the right to always get his way, and no citizen should forget to do his best to treat his fellows with respect and kindness.

Occasionally, I lose sight of my own rules; then I see a story like those linked below and I suddenly remember. Job number one is to question.

Story 1: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

The government also argued that it could keep Megaupload in legal limbo indefinitely. ‘None of the cases impose a time limit on service,’ the government’s attorney told the judge. Therefore, the government believes it can leave the indictment hanging over the company’s head, and keep its assets frozen, indefinitely. Not only that, but the government believes it can continue to freeze Megaupload’s assets and paralyze its operations even if the judge grants the motion to dismiss. 

Story 2: Why, No, We Don’t Feel Responsibility for What We’ve Done

“Your driver was shot in your truck,” said the caller, a business colleague. “Your truck was loaded with marijuana. He was shot eight times while sitting in the cab. Do you know anything about your driver hauling marijuana?”

“What did you say?” Patty recalled asking. “Could you please repeat that?”

The truck, it turned out, had been everywhere but in the repair shop.

Commandeered by one of his drivers, who was secretly working with federal agents, the truck had been hauling marijuana from the border as part of an undercover operation. And without Patty’s knowledge, the Drug Enforcement Administration was paying his driver, Lawrence Chapa, to use the truck to bust traffickers.

These stories speak of an arrogant, irresponsible government with no sense of accountability to the folks that they should be serving. These folks should feel shame for their part in twisting laws and ruining lives, but, of course, what they actually feel is self-righteous indignation at the thought that someone like me might question their actions. Don’t I know that they are just acting in my best interests?

Now, for pushing back…

(Updated) The Problem Is…

M16
M16
M16A1 Assault Rifle, Photo Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

…That Jason Alexander doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. His lengthy monologue on guns and gun rights isn’t stupid; it’s well-considered and well-presented. Unfortunately, what Mr. Alexander doesn’t know is what he doesn’t know.

His knowledge of guns is obviously exceptionally limited and I doubt that he has spent much time considering gun rights in the constitutional sense.

This, for example, is wrong as soon as he starts answering his own questions. It is wrong because he doesn’t know what he is talking about.

What purpose does an AR-15 serve to a sportsman that a more standard hunting rifle does not serve? Let’s see – does it fire more rounds without reload? Yes. Does it fire farther and more accurately? Yes. Does it accommodate a more lethal payload? Yes. So basically, the purpose of an assault style weapon is to kill more stuff, more fully, faster and from further away. To achieve maximum lethality.

Nope, your standard AR-15 is not more powerful than, perhaps, the majority of hunting rifles. It most certainly doesn’t fire “farther and more accurately” than your standard hunting rifle. Depending on the kind of hunting rifle you are employing, it may well not even have a larger magazine nor “fire more rounds without a reload.”

The AR-15 uses a relatively light round with decent medium-range accuracy. In fact, the whole point of the modern assault rifle was to use lighter rounds in lighter weapons to deal with the reality that most combat happens not at long distances but in relatively close spaces.

The military assault rifle was also designed to send a lot of lead downrange quickly since studies post-WW 2 showed that most infantrymen did less aiming than their superiors might have expected. Casualties, then, were expected to be more a function of a storm of bullets than a well-placed, single shot. The rifles that men carried into combat previously had been designed with much heavier bullets to fire at much greater distances with better accuracty– and were more cumbersome, heavier, and slower.

But a civilian AR-15 ain’t a military assault rifle. It doesn’t have the select fire capability that allows it to create that storm of bullets. Just as with any other semi-automatic rifle, every time you pull the trigger one round fires, a shell is ejected, and another round is chambered.

What Mr. Alexander has described is some mythical weapon that he has built in his head. This weapon has terrible purpose and magical killing abilities. To him, the civilian assault rifle is demonic.

Again I say, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This is not me calling him a moron or telling him he doesn’t have a right to his opinion; this is me saying that he is speaking from a place of deep ignorance.

He says he wants an honest discussion, which is fine. The first part of that discussion, though, would be for him to educate himself instead of passing on misinformation. Include in that this little doozy: “Despite these massacres recurring and despite the 100,000 Americans that die every year due to domestic gun violence…”

That number is about triple the number of actual gun fatalities in the US (31,513 in 2010), and more than half of those fatalities came from folks committing suicide (19,308). No, that doesn’t make the real number pretty, but it is nothing like the number put forward by Mr. Alexander– his numbers are about as trustworthy as his understanding of the civilian AR-15.

Mr. Alexander is calling for those of us who believe it is our right to own a weapon like the civilian AR-15 to have a conversation with reasonable people who believe the opposite. When I start running into reasonable, well-informed people on that side of the conversation, maybe I’ll take his advice. Until then, the first step is education and pushing back against the lies, half-truths, and misconceptions.

Update:

For a little more reading on the subject of the 5.56mm round, here’s a little something from our friend, Roger Fraley.

Carmelo Anthony Takes Another Hit

Carmelo Anthony (Team USA)

Mark Kiszla is pulling no punches in response to his recent interview with Carmelo Anthony in which the forward said, “It’s easy. I go out there and my focus is not to score 30 points. My mindset is a lot different. I can just go out there and clean up shots with offensive rebounds, get loose balls and play defense.”

Kiszla doesn’t seem to be buying into the idea that Melo might be more heavily focused on defense and rebounding– although, to play devil’s advocate for a moment, if anyone can pull that kind of a performance out of Melo, it would be a guy like Coach K. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.

But here is what Kiszla had to say in response:

Defense? Not sure Anthony knows how to spell the word, much less play it.

Rebounding? Anthony is more likely to eat only blood pudding in Great Britain than acquire a taste for crashing the boards.

Glue guy? Well, he certainly has sticky fingers. Throw him a pass. It sticks. Good luck getting the basketball back.

You can call Anthony a lot of things. Olympic gold medalist. Clutch shooter. NCAA champion. Coach killer.

Ouch. I’m a little surprised that Anthony will still talk to Kiszla.

Read the Rest.

Guns: Helping People Help Themselves, Pt 2

Revolver

A citizen with a gun stopped a knife wielding man as he began stabbing people Thursday evening at the downtown Salt Lake City Smith’s store.

Police say the suspect purchased a knife inside the store and then turned it into a weapon. Smith’s employee Dorothy Espinoza says, “He pulled it out and stood outside the Smiths in the foyer. And just started stabbing people and yelling you killed my people. You killed my people.”
[…]
Then, before the suspect could find another victim – a citizen with a gun stopped the madness. “A guy pulled gun on him and told him to drop his weapon or he would shoot him. So, he dropped his weapon and the people from Smith’s grabbed him.”

I’m not one to hate the police, but I am realistic about them: police are rarely there when you need them. If you want to keep yourself safe, you have to be prepared and able to handle some situations without the illusion of safety that is the idea that the police will magically save you. Quite often, the police are the folks who show up after the bad bits are over.

That isn’t a negative comment; it’s just reality. Police have no more fantastical ability to be everywhere at once than I do.

I note this as a person who has wished like hell that the police would show up and save the day– and at the end of that day, wished that I had been armed so that I could have done a better job of protecting myself and the young lady who was with me that evening. While neither of us was harmed that evening, it took a significant amount of quick thinking and putting both of us in harm’s way to escape the danger.

So cheers to the unnamed citizen in the report who acted to help stop a bad situation. Well done.

Read the rest.

Let’s Call it Damning With Strange Praise

Carmelo Anthony (Team USA)

Adrian Wojnarowski’s article about Carmelo Anthony is in turns harsh, praising, and insightful. I believe it is also right on the money in terms of the former Denver player’s strengths and weaknesses.

For everything that Anthony has given USA Basketball as a talent, he hasn’t always been able to sustain the world-class conditioning, deference on offense and determination on defense. And all these leaders surrounding him … well, they never made him one, too. His flaws have shown themselves within the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks, but Team USA is constructed to take all of ‘Melo’s good, and never been burdened with the bad.

Throughout his entire tenure with Denver, he was obviously talented but unpredictable and, ultimately, frustrating. His conditioning, defense, and focus were all areas of question– at least for me.  When Chauncey Billups showed up, it gave George Karl the equivalent of another coach on the floor to help keep Melo working according to game plan. It helped that Billups is not only smart (and exceptionally basketball smart), but also well respected and still talented.

Carmelo Anthony (Team USA)
Carmelo Anthony (Team USA), Photo Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Melo’s best season as a pro came with Billups acting as the glue that held together a team of odd talents and erratic ability. Melo can score points, but he has yet to prove that he has that uncommon skill to help others truly perform better. He also has yet to prove that he can really control a game in the way that players like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan managed.

I like Melo and I love the fact that he ushered in an era of winning for the Nuggets. We fans went a long time without having a team consistently making their way to the playoffs.

And, boy, I was happy to see him go. I lost faith in him to grow into the player that might deliver a championship to the Nuggets; and without that hope, why not look in new directions?

I still hope he does well and I hope he helps bring the US another gold medal, but I can’t wait to see what the Nuggets look like this year without him. It’s a rare team that can surround a man with the kind of talent that is on the Olympics team and, someday, he’ll have to learn how to achieve greatness with a more human cast of supporting players.

Really good article.

Guns: Helping People Help Themselves

Revolver

This isn’t likely to change any minds, but at least Paul Hsieh’s PJ Media article is a little bit of a corrective to the usual media line on guns in the United States. A taste:

This journalistic bias against defensive gun use was especially clear in a 2009 example cited by Cramer and Burnett, when a robber held up a small grocery store at gunpoint, emptied the cash register, then herded the customers into the back room. The store manager “opened fire on the robber, killing him.” The police ruled it “justifiable homicide.” But the Miami New Times reported it as: “South Florida Store Clerks Go Vigilante.”

Read the rest.