Let’s see: renewing the Patriot Act, the Senate needing to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees, as well as a Supreme Court nominee, et cetera, et cetera.
So what do they turn their attention to? Why, the Bowl Championship Series, of course.
Pay attention, because this is likely one of the few political issues Lawson and I will agree on: Representative Barton, you’re wasting your time, your colleagues’ time, the time of BCS board members, and taxpayer dollars. Congress has no business sticking its nose in to the BCS mess.
I wouldn’t go as far as Barton in saying the BCS is “deeply flawed,” though it has made some whoppers in the past few years: picking Oklahoma over USC to face LSU in 2003, and picking Oklahoma over Auburn to face USC in 2004 immediately spring to mind.
The solution to the problems of the BCS is not a Congressional investigation. Rather, the football bigwigs at the NCAA need to get together with the various bowl organizers and sponsors and develop a playoff system for Division I-A football where the championship game will be rotated among the bigger bowls. As the ESPN article notes, there’s a lot of money in the bowl games, particularly the BCS bowls, and a playoff system would theoretically kill off some of those dollars. I don’t believe that would happen; look at March Madness with NCAA Division I-A basketball.
Nevertheless, the overriding issue is money. If it wasn’t, then the cadets and midshipmen wouldn’t be crammed into the corners of the stadium for the annual Army-Navy game, but would be seated, out of respect, directly behind their teams’ benches. (We wouldn’t see that awful swoosh logo on those classically minimalist uniforms, either.)
Until the NCAA and the bowls figure out a way to not lose money, we won’t see the much-needed playoff system–for the only sport in Division I-A without a playoff system–for college football, and we will continue to have controversy over whom should play for the championship, and which team is truly number one.
Tag: politics
Jeff points to Lorie Byrd’s recent column, and correctly notes how voters should want their elected officials to err: on the side of caution. What really stood out for me when I was reading Lorie’s piece, was this:
[I]t must be pointed out that Democrats are not to be trusted with the nation’s security. They have shown that not only will they endlessly debate until it is possibly too late but that after a military action has been initiated, in the face of difficulties and waning public support, many will back out and abandon the mission and the troops. The approach of the Democrats to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein as outlined in all of the intelligence reports available prior to the war in Iraq stands in stark contrast to that of the Bush administration.
Apparently Brownstein and Vaughn could not find one elected Democrat willing to defend the 2002 vote as right at the time and right in retrospect, which tells us a great deal about the Democrats and national security — primarily that they ought not to be allowed anywhere close to its control.
[Emphasis added. –R]
Happily for Mr Zarqawi, no matter how desperate the head-hackers get, the Western defeatists can always top them. A Democrat Congressman, Jack Murtha, has called for immediate US withdrawal from Iraq. He’s a Vietnam veteran, so naturally the media are insisting that his views warrant special deference, military experience in a war America lost being the only military experience the Democrats and the press value these days. Hence, the demand for the President to come up with an “exit strategy”.
In war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter’s easier. Just say, whoa, we’re the world’s pre-eminent power but we can’t handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don’t mind we’d just as soon get off at the next stop.
Demonstrating the will to lose as clearly as America did in Vietnam wasn’t such a smart move, but since the media can’t seem to get beyond this ancient jungle war it may be worth underlining the principal difference: Osama is not Ho Chi Minh, and al-Qa’eda are not the Viet Cong. If you exit, they’ll follow. And Americans will die – in foreign embassies, barracks, warships, as they did through the Nineties, and eventually on the streets of US cities, too.
You can always count on the press to put a gloomy tone on bright economic news.
[…]
Are four-year highs really modest? Here’s hoping the rest of the Christmas shopping season is marked by such “black clouds,” “modest gains,” “reluctance,” and “challenge.”
But profits can’t be judged by dollar amounts alone. What counts is the percentage of revenues those profits represent. “Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge,” Exxon CEO Lee Raymond tried, probably in vain, to explain during last week’s big Senate hearing on oil company profits. Exxon’s profits last quarter amounted to 9.8 cents for every dollar of sales. Is that obscene? Well, it was more profitable than Shell (which netted 7.8 cents of each dollar of revenue) or Chevron (6.6 cents) or BP (4.6 cents). But compared to Coca-Cola (21.2 cents), Bank of America (28.3 cents), or Microsoft (33.2 cents), it was nothing to write home about.
Everyone is complaining about the price they’re paying at the pump, yet no one seems bothered that a can of Coke that used to cost 35 cents has now doubled in price, or that they don’t see any dividends returned on that free checking account from BoA, or why the cost of Office isn’t $99 instead of $299.
I’m not begrudging Coca-Cola, Bank of America, or Microsoft their profits any more than I begrudge the oil companies theirs. The market is clearly bearing what the market will bear in each of the industries the above companies find themselves. Do you want Microsoft Office to cost under a hundred bucks? Then stop buying Microsoft Office. Use one of the scores of alternative word processors available. Well, if you’re using a Macintosh, any way. Microsoft seems to have strangled word processor development for Windows. But you see my point.
When there’s less demand, companies are forced to reduce prices. Gas prices haven’t gone down, because Americans aren’t buying less gas in significantly high numbers to warrant bringing the prices down dramatically. It’s called free enterprise, last time I checked.
Smacking oil bosses around may be good politics, but the unglamorous fact is that Big Oil’s earnings, 7.7 percent of income in the second quarter of 2005, is lower than the overall US corporate average of 7.9 percent. The oil industry is more profitable than some (automobiles, media, utilities), but it can only envy the profits earned by semiconductors (14.6 percent), pharmaceuticals (18.6 percent), or banks (19.6 percent).
Can you just see the CEOs of Intel, AMD, Motorola, and IBM being dragged before Congress to explain why they’re making so much money? Ridiculous.
The kicker, though, is this:
Government revenue from gasoline taxes alone has exceeded oil industry profits in 22 of the past 25 years.
Does the road work, including on roads which appear to need no work, ever stop where you live? Perhaps instead of gouging consumers with high gasoline taxes, state and local governments should examine their budgets more carefully. Rather than begin “improvement” projects on roads which are perfectly fine, under the guise of the “use it or lose it” excuse, perhaps state and local governments could channel those gas tax revenues in to paying off debt. Should there be no debt, then why not cut the tax? I suppose that would be too easy.
The tin-foil-hat crowd got one thing right after all: The American people have been systematically lied to since 9/11. Not by the President, but by the press.
As usual, Jeff says it better than I was thinking:
It’s as if we’ve got a country full of people who are walking around under the impression that the moon is made of green cheese, repeating it to each other, going on television talk shows to discuss the green cheese issue, publishing lengthy editorials in prominent newspapers about the implications of new revelations about lunar green cheese. It’s positively baffling.
Federalist Patriot 05-44 Digest:
The Big Three nightly newscasts have become nothing more than anti-war activists with a national platform. The Media Research Center recently released a review of over 1,300 news stories on Iraq from January through September. Among their findings was the following: 61 percent of the stories were negative or pessimistic, while only 15 percent were positive. The gap became even worse in August and September with negative stories nearing 75 percent; positive stories at seven percent. Stories about heroic actions by the troops were outnumbered eight to one by stories of abuse or other misconduct. Two of every five news stories covered bombings, kidnappings and other mayhem. Election stories also trended negative, as if things truly were better under Saddam Hussein. We think most Patriot readers will agree–the words that come to mind are “aiding and abetting.”
Please explain to me how our children have had no school yesterday and today so that the Teachers Unions can go out and organize for Democratic candidates — but the schools will be open on Friday when the federal Government and most offices will be closed to commemorate our nation’s war heroes?
This must be an East Coast (West, too?) thing, or perhaps confined to Shirley’s home state (Virginia?). The kids were in school yesterday and are today in DFW.