Joust The Facts

Reviewing The Draft - Bleed Green Edition

Among the players available when the Boston Celtics picked at #21/#22 in the first round were a great shooter in 2 guard John Jenkins, an hyperathletic 6'6" point guard Tony Wroten Jr., an offensively talented quick big man in Arnett Moultrie, a mobile and athletic big in Perry Jones III, a 6'10" small (!) forward in Quincy Miller, a very athletic small forward in Quincy Acy, and a sharp and hard working seven-footer in Festus Ezeli.  The Celts brain trust read the press clippings of Ohio State's ground-based big man Jared Sullinger and selected "the guy with the bad back at #21.  Then at #22 They selected one of the more puzzling and enigmatic bigs in Syracuse seven-footer Fab Melo.  Sigh.

I was listening to Celtics draft coverage on their home cable sports network, Comcast SportsNet, and none of the individuals providing commentary liked the idea of selecting Sullinger when first queried.  As the night wore on and Sullinger dropped in the draft, some changed their tune.  I didn't.  He was a very good college player precisely because his size and strength overwhelmed most opponents.  That doesn't happen in the NBA.  I hope he proves me wrong, gets up and down the court quickly enough to run with Rajon Rondo and Avery Bradley, is able to post up down low in the pros like he did in college, and is able to play at least a little above the rim.  But I would rather have seen the team add athletic bodies rather than just a big one.

Melo is another story.  The kid has potential, but came into his freshman season at Syracuse woefully unprepared and inadequately able to push himself.  To his credit he improved dramatically between year one and year two in his fitness, ability to run, and understanding of the game.  Unfortunately that simply moved him from Complete Bust to Serviceable Big Man on a team that played zone and had so many wing scorers that the middle was vacant for him.  He had academic issues, along with some others - ahem - and it's doubtful that a few million dollars in his bank account will improve his motivation and character.  I hope he proves me wrong, too.  He has bigger upside than Sullinger, but is also a riskier pick because you don't know where his head is.

In the second round you simply hope you strike gold, and the Celtics may have.  Kris Joseph is a talented small forward, though his shooting is erratic, and his handle could use some work.  Both are things he can improve, and it won't hurt him a bit to understudy Paul Pierce.

I think I might have preferred Moultrie and Perry if you wanted two bigs with those two picks.  I didn't think, from my reading, that either of those would be still on the board at that point.  Neither of the first round picks makes the C's more athletic, and quickness in the NBA is a lethal weapon.  While I hope I'm wrong, I have the sinking feeling that with these two picks the Celtics have rolled the dice, and may have crapped out. 

One aside/possible ray of sunshine:  I notice that West Virginia forward Kevin Jones went undrafted.  If I were Danny Ainge I'd be bringing him in for a free-agent tryout ASAP!

7/1/12 0800: Bummer.  Kevin Jones signed by Cleveland.  The Celtics better hope that they can sign both Jeff Green and Brandon Bass now. Scott Machado, perhaps, as a Rondo understudy?  On the other hand, the Celts may be fine if last years second rounder, E'twaun Moore, can step up his game. He's a good shooter, and just needs to get a bit more creative with the ball.

The Joust The Facts "Quote Of The Day"

J. E. Dyer at Hot Air, writing lucidly on the (mistaken) belief in the infallibility of government by many with an almost religious fervor.  He dubs this Govfall, the religion of government infallibility.  The proximate cause, the appeals court ruling on the EPA's right to regulate your every breath.

The ruling describes the EPA’s opinion on global warming and greenhouse gases as “unambiguously correct” – which is a deeply silly formulation for characterizing any scientific theory, but would also have been considered, by our Founders and virtually all federal jurists up until the last 20-30 years, as comprehensively invalid language for any kind of judicial ruling.  Judges aren’t competent to make decisions for the public on this matter.  Their competence is in interpreting the law, not certifying scientific conclusions...

If we cannot behave, in our economic lives, as if we think catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is a much-falsified theory waiting for some solid proof, then we are not effectively free to think it.  We are constrained to behave as if we don’t.  That situation differs only by the jackbooted thugs at the door from the lifestyle of people under communist rule, in which you’re free to “think” whatever you want, as long as you say and do only government-approved things, and never speak about or live by your own beliefs.

Sometime in the last century, the weight of sentiment among those who aspire to government jobs, in any role in any of the branches, tilted toward the religion of Govfall.  It has become unendurable to them to think of the people out here doing things they disapprove of, and they have diligently enlarged the purview of government to encompass ruling on ideas and theories – always invoking the supposed disasters and wrongs that government power is either averting or redressing...

Just so.  The passage of the ACA was just another example of this, and unfortunately for the liberty of 320 million Americans it was upheld (largely) by the Supreme Court today.  I'll have more about that later.

A Health Care Decision Reminder

Over the last week or so we've been deluged with stories attempting to pre-emptively delegitimize the Supreme Court's decision on the ObamaCare health care law, the inappropriately named Affordable Care Act.  The latest was from Roger Simon, writing at the ostensibly non-partisan Politico yesterday.  He does so by quoting extensively from Jeffrey Toobin, whose viewpoints are wholly partisan.  And from former Justice John Paul Stevens, who was on the losing side of the Bush-Gore election dustup in 2000.

At this writing, I do not know how a majority of the justices will rule on Obama’s health care plan, which was passed into law by Congress. Two branches of government have spoken, but their speech is but a whisper compared with the shout of our high court.

The die was cast in 2000. And it would take the most dewy-eyed of optimists to expect the court’s decision to be anything other than political.

Justice John Paul Stevens, now retired, wrote in his dissent in Bush v. Gore in 2000: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

That is a lot to lose. But we have lost it. And getting it back may be a long time in coming.

You see, if the court rules the individual mandate constitutional and allows the law to stand, then it's the correct decision and the members of the court were able to overcome their political slant.  If they determine the mandate unconstitutional, then it's purely politics.  It must be easy to be on the left.  You're always correct, and any disagreement can only be because of political bias.

Recall, however, just how weak the arguments in favor of the individual mandate were in court.  The same Jeffrey Toobin called them a "train wreck."

Today’s arguments focused around the central constitutional question of whether Congress has the power to force Americans to either pay for health insurance or pay a penalty.

According to CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, the arguments were “a train wreck for the Obama administration.”

“This law looks like it’s going to be struck down. I’m telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong,” Toobin just said on CNN.

And on the question of a limiting principle, Justice Steven Breyer got silence from Donald Verrilli.  Remember also that there's no severability clause in the law, meaning that if any part is struck down the whole law should be by right.  It's not the SCOTUS that wrote the law that way.  Justice Antonin Scalia remarked that on the issue of severability it would be "cruel and unusual punishment" to require them to read the whole law and pick and choose how it should have been written.  Recall also that the government did a poor job as well in arguing for the Medicaid payment extortion written into the law, whereby states would lose federal dollars entirely if they didn't expand their state program in a way acceptable to the feds.

The court’s divisions were on vivid display Wednesday during a discussion of the law’s Medicaid expansion, which gives states more federal money if they agree to enroll more of the poor. States can refuse, but only if they pull out of the program altogether.

The states challenging the legislation say that is not an option. The Medicaid program has grown so large that it is impossible to forgo federal funding and still provide medical care to the poor, they say.

"Nice state you got there.  It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."  Of course, that's the Obama administration modus operandi, demonstrated this week against Arizona who had the temerity to try to control the flow of illegals across their southern border by applying federal laws.

So, as you read all the articles today screaming about the health care law being overturned (my prediction), remember just how weak the arguments were in its favor just three short months ago.

6/28/12 0935: More:

• Ace has a nice roundup, including  a link to a Reason compendium of pre-emptive strikes.
• I agree with The Blogfather, and he with me.
• Gabe Malor at Ace of Spades addresses Mr. Toobin's nonsense in Roger Simon's Politico piece about the Roberts court overturning more legislation.  Unfortunately for Mr. Toobin, he doesn't read the NY Times.  From Mr. Malor:

Just three laws per term! Far, far from being "eager" to overturn legislatures, as hack Toobin dribbled, and obviously, indisputably playing no unusual role in "second-guessing laws," as Fallows alarmingly squeaked, the Roberts Court has been a model of restraint. Restraint is, naturally, one of Chief Justice Roberts' well-known characteristics and it was remarked upon during his confirmation hearings. One could even creditably call the Roberts Court the most restrained, incrementalist Court of the modern era. (I assure you, these numbers have not changed appreciably in the past two years.)

Should the mandate be overturned today, liberals will repeat their lie endlessly in order to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and to tarnish the Chief Justice's good name. You know better. Do not believe this sad, angry lie. And do not let some foolish lemming repeat it in your presence. The truth is that the Roberts Court has been unusually restrained in overturning laws when compared to its predecessors.

A Big Day Today

I know there are a few other minor news stories coming today, with, for example, the upcoming contempt of Congress vote on Attorney General Eric Holder, and another story of narrow interest.  Something having to do with health care, I think. But the big news is really in the world of sports.  It's NBA draft time!  (/sarc)

The Boston Celtics, who with a depleted roster put up a substantial challenge against the Miami Heat, have the 21st and 22nd picks in this years first round (and #51 in the second).  I'm pretty sure Danny Ainge isn't looking for my advice, but he's going to get it.  Barring a trade he's not going to come up with one of the consensus top 15 players, and of those 15 there are really only a few that would provide an instant boost.  So I'd stick with the two picks he has and try to come up with guys that can a) step into a playing role immediately off the bench, and 2) have the potential to develop into something more special.  I was never very good at indexing.  Of course, someone may fall down the board, and if that someone is Perry Jones III you grab him.  I don't think he'll fall to #21, but you never know.

Here are five players that I think meet both of those judgements. 

1. The St. Bonaventure forward Andrew Nicholson is a big guy with both a post game and a shooters touch from outside.  I'd like him to be a bit more of an athlete, but he can score inside and out and will give them instant help.  An NBA fitness program will help his explosiveness.  He may not be a star, but he can in the future be a starter.

2. One problem for the Celtics this year was that of their primary players only Rajon Rondo and Avery Bradley were sufficiently explosive off the dribble to get to the basket.  Paul Pierce does it more with footwork and guile than quickness at this point in his career.  Washington's Tony Wroten can give them that.  He's a very good ball handler, has quickness to spare, finds the open man, and can get to the basket with length.  At 6 foot 6 he's a ball handling guard that be an immediate piece of the team and can potentially be a star if he can nail down a jump shot.

3. The same goes for Moe Harkless of St. Johns.  An explosive athlete with length, he's only 19 years old and can be a star in the future.  Right now most draft boards have him going in the high teens, but if he falls just a couple of slots to 21 you've got to grab him.

4. The best shooter in the draft is John Jenkins of Vanderbilt.  It's nice to have Ray Allen draining threes when Rondo, Paul Pierce or Kevin Garnett kick the ball back out.  It's nice to have a shooter whom the defense can't leave for a second, because that's all the opening he needs.  It opens the floor for everyone else.  If you're not going to re-sign Ray Allen, then you need a John Jenkins.

5. Kevin Jones of West Virginia is simply a player.  He is a small power forward who can hit threes, can post up bigger players inside, can rebound over players with more length, is fearless, and plays hard all the time.  He's built like Dwight Howard, three inches shorter but a better shooter.  Look at the success of Kenneth Faried in Denver, and you've got Kevin Jones.

I like a few other players at #21/#22 a lot, and wouldn't be terribly disappointed if those are selected.  Quincy Miller of Baylor is a solid scorer inside and out and handles the ball like a guard at 6'9".  Festus Ezeli of Vanderbilt has good size inside, can rebound and block shots and would be a good finisher for Rondo's dishes.  Doron Lamb of Kentucky can shoot, but I worry about his ability off the dribble.

I'm not big on Royce White of Iowa State.  He's very good, but the fear of flying (NBA teams fly a lot!) and other issues worry me.  And I'm definitely not big on Fab Melo of Syracuse.  I don't think he's a good fit on a Celtics team that relies on smart basketball with quick decision making.  He doesn't have great hands, and he doesn't run the court that well.

With that #51 pick I think there should be a few available that could help.  Tennessee Tech's Kevin Murphy is a very good shooting guard.  Marquette's Darius Johnson-Odom can get to the basket with the best of them and handle the rock.  And for a sleeper how about Rakim Sanders of Fairfield, and athletic shooting guard at 6'5"?

I'll be watching tonight.

Embarassing The Media Cocoon

Here's Brian Williams informing you about the gunwalking program Fast & Furious, about which, if you had previously been relying on Mr. Williams to inform you, you might not have been aware it existed.

 

So that's it.  A little political dustup in Washington between those evil racist partisan Republicans and the noble African American Attorney General Eric Holder.  Just another example of our "broken politics.

Not exactly.  Here's Bill Whittle, in 7 pithy minutes, giving you the full story.  "A few processes under the radar" indeed.

And Jimmie at The Sundries Shack outlines it in a slightly less pithy but quite coherent version, replete with links galore.

John Hinderaker at Powerline Blog documents three instances in which Mr. Holder's testimony to Rep. Issa's committee has been, ahem, less than truthful.  Two of the items were so obviously false retractions were required.

But heck, we don't even have to go to a full-throated evil racist conservative to get the information out.  America's news source The Daily Show and Jon Stewart can do the job.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

That was a year ago.  Updating anything, Mr. Stewart?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Are you embarrassed yet, Mr. Williams?  You should by now realize that cocoons are terribly fragile.

All He Wanted Was The Headline

On the Yahoo! home page I found this headline.

U.S. debt load falling at fastest pace since 1950s

Curious, I thought.  Puzzling even.  How could that be, when every day we're hearing about the steadily rising national debt?  So I had a look at the U.S. National Debt Clock.  Sure enough, click on it every two seconds and America's debt notches upward about $100,000.  It's now less than 300 billion short of $16 trillion.  Recall that just about a year ago there was a showdown over raising the debt ceiling above the statutory limit (at the time) of $14.294 trillion.  Last time I checked, $16 trillion was nearly $2 trillion more than $14.294 trillion.  So I needed more information.  And there, in the story itself, I found the answer.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Everyone knows America has too much debt. What they don’t know is that things are getting better, not worse.

Little by little, our economy is reducing its debt burden, slowly repairing the damage caused by 10, 20 or 30 years of excess.

If you want to know why economic growth has been so tepid, here’s your answer. Four years after the storm hit, the economy is still deleveraging. And it’s very hard for any economy to grow when everyone is focused on increasing their savings.

Total domestic — public and private — debt as a share of the economy has declined for 12 quarters in a row after surging over the previous decade.

The rapid rise in federal debt over the past four years has distracted us from the big picture. The level of public debt is indeed worrisome, but it’s not as big a worry as the economy’s total level of debt — public and private...

As much as we hear politicians, pundits, tea-party patriots and the Congressional Budget Office obsessing about government debt, it was excessive private debt — not public debt — that caused the 2008 financial meltdown. And it was private debt — some of it since transferred to the public — that lies behind the current European debt crisis. (Greece is unique in having a public sector that ran up spending while its private sector is rather conservative.)

And then I took a look at the author of this MarketWatch story, and suddenly it all made sense.  It's Rex Nutting, the journalist who fed the Obama campaign the punch line that Mr. Obama has really been the stingiest of presidents in terms of growth of government spending.  He conveniently ignored the fact that the 2009 budget was held for Mr. Obama to sign by the Democrat-controlled congress, ignored that the non-stimulating 'stimulus' was wholly his and his alone, and ignoring the fact that the burst in spending was to be temporary with TARP and the 'stimulus' and should have returned to lower levels in 2010 and 2011 but didn't.  Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute took apart Mr. Nutting's central thesis without even digging in to the politics of the budgets, and there were a host of other valid critiques.

So Mr. Nutting is at it again.  It was all about the headline.  "U.S. DEBT LOWER!!!"  Huzzah!  Huzzah! Presto!  The Obama campaign, almost miraculously, has a new talking point to throw at the less-informed.  But it's private debt - the debt held by private individuals in the private economy - that's dropping.  Mr. Nutting buries the data 16 paragraphs into the story.

In the U.S., household debt has now fallen to 84% of GDP from a peak of 98%. Nonfinancial corporate debt has fallen to 77% from a peak of 83%. Financial sector debt has plunged from 123% of GDP to 89%. Public debt has risen to 89% from 56% [of GDP].

The U.S. government debt keeps climbing rapidly, and will soon approach once again a statutory debt ceiling.  Private debt, not so much.  Well, when people feel economically threatened they retrench - pay down debt, save, spend less.  Why would they be economically threatened.  Stagnant jobs, falling home equity, falling median income, soaring government debt, future entitlement debt bombs, threats of higher taxes, and continued drunken-sailor spending by our elected officials in Washington.  Not to mention soaring energy costs, an anti-business NLRB, and a regulatory regime intent on stepping on the neck of business growth.

So no, although I'm certain that Mr. Nutting's latest venture will be quoted by administration flacks as evidence of the boss's frugality, Mr. Obama doesn't get credit for falling "total" U.S. debt, except to the extent that the stagnant, low growth economy he has engineered is making people worried enough to reign in their personal debt. 

For that I'll give credit.  You betcha.

Truth In Parody

Remember this?  You may have seen it in an email previously.

Now have a look at this:

Ugh.  Where to start?

"Democracy died tonight...the end of the USA as we know it."  No, actually.  Democracy died when leftists/progressives threw a temper tantrum and fled Wisconsin rather than allow Governor Walker's reforms to be passed by the democratically elected legislature and signed into law by the democratically elected governor.  And then, having lost that irrational, tantrum-fueled battle, they decided to try to undo the legal actions of duly-elected representatives by packing the court with a sympathetic jurist ... and failed.  Then having lost the chance to have a court overturn the laws, they decided to continue the tantrum and stage recall elections, basically over a policy disagreement ... and failed.  This is not the end of the USA.  We would have been much closer to "the end of the USA as we know it" had they been successful with any of these irrational tantrums.  The way to settle policy differences is by winning a regularly scheduled election.  The problem with that approach is apparent, what with the overwhelming win by the governor due to the success of his reforms, turning a $3.6 billion deficit into a surplus without a tax increases or service cuts.

"We just got outspent $34 million to $4 million dollars."  What, we're not counting outside expenditures from, say, the unions, who poured as much as $30 million into the effort?  I'm sure this guy was disappointed in Mr. Obama outspending John McCain in 2008 too.

"If the people you see here behind me can't get it done, it's done."

Buddy, it's done.  Trust me, or just read the returns yourself.  And stop wallowing in self-pity and despair.  The "end of the USA as we know it" won't come from democratically-run elections going against you.  Instead, it'll come when the losers of such elections take to the streets to overturn them.

6/6/12 1300:  Just curious.  Does democracy look like death wishes and threats for the political foe who defeats you?  And if so, what differentiates said democracy from third world banana republic dictatorships?