Why the college football ratings are complete garbage

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I came to realize that college football ratings were a bunch of garbage. It was the 1985 season, and the supposed number one team was playing the supposed number two team in a bowl game. And the number two team was a seven-point favorite! How can this be? It is because the people who vote on the rankings are unable to think and reason clearly.

For the record, Penn State was ranked #1 because it was undefeated, and Oklahoma was #2 because it had lost to the #3-ranked Miami Hurricanes, in a game in which its starting QB was hurt. Penn State had played a relatively weaker schedule, and of course, they lost 25-10 to the Sooners in the Cotton Bowl, and the voters were exposed for the idiots they are.

And now, fast forward to 2022, when the voters made a similarly ridiculous decision in putting TCU into the four-team playoffs over Alabama. The pathetic result of this disaster was TCU getting blown out in a complete joke of a final game to Georgia 65-7.

"American Caesar", by William Manchester

This 709-page biography of General Douglas MacArthur is a monumental work. Manchester covers his subject's entire life in great detail, and does it from a neutral perspective; that is, he describes MacArthur's military genius and heroism, but also doesn't shy away from documenting his failures.

What interests me the most is the final period of his life, after Truman recalled him to the States on April 11, 1951. Truman's action was hugely unpopular with the American public. Letters and telegrams to the White House ran twenty to one against Truman. Interestingly, however, a survey of journalists covering the story found that more than six to one thought that the president's action was justified. In other words, those who knew the most about the situation and understood the reasons for the firing, approved of it. Truman's approval rating, however, plunged to a low of 23%, and remained very low throughout the remainder of his presidency.

Upon his return to this country, MacArthur addressed a joint session of Congress. He was interrupted by applause 30 times in his 34-minute address. One representative shouted out, "We heard God speak here today. God in the flesh, the voice of God!" "Life" magazine reported that the audience was "magnetized by the vibrant voice, the dramatic rhetoric and the Olympian personality of the most controversial military hero of our times". Manchester says he was "lucid, forceful, dignified, and eloquent; though he clearly thought his message urgent, his delivery was unhurried and rhythmic. All his life had been a preparation for this moment."

What followed was a joint inquiry by the Senate Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees, beginning on May 3, 1951. The most significant exchange during these hearings occurred when a Senator asked MacArthur a question about how we would go about winning a world war. The general replied "That doesn't happen to be my responsibility, Senator. My responsibilites were in the Pacific." This exposed the weakness in MacArthur's diffferences with the Truman administration. Here MacArthur is admitting that it is up to the president, his cabinet, and the Joint Chiefs to determine overall U.S. foreign policy. Ignoring this reality is what got MacArthur fired.

Following MacArthur's testimony, the administration took seven weeks to methodically rebut MacArthur's position. Manchester says that "One by one, officers who admired MacArthur seated themselves before the Senators and sadly rejected his program for victory." The author goes on to state that "Against this array of fact and expertise, the general's Republican defenders had little to offer but a welter of party loyalty and conservative intuition."

After the hearings, MacArthur spent a full year "crisscrossing the U.S. in a one-man drive to arouse the country to what he regarded as its peril." But the result of all this speech-making was quite instructive. What happened was that MacArthur's star gradually dimmed, as people got tired of his constant bad-mouthing of Truman and the Truman administration. People were interested in the future, while all MacArthur was doing was re-litigating past grievances. Manchester says that "each time he took a swipe at Truman he descended a little". The crowds gradually dwindled, civic leaders started walking out of his speeches, and local leaders started calling him a "demagogue".

After the 1952 election, President-elect Eisenhower met with MacArthur to hear his views. Ike heard him out, but ignored the advice, which Manchester says was "as unwelcome to the new administration as it had been to the old. Dulles, like Acheson, was a believer in limited wars. The old General, one feels, had become an embarrassment to the leaders of both parties, an unwelcome reminder of the gallant past, now lost forever, in which intolerable differences between great nations could be resolved by the sword".

MacArthur lived out his life in a New York hotel, and was never again a force in American political life. Before his death in 1964, he met with first Kennedy and later with Johnson, warning them both to stay out of Indochina. This advice should have been listened to, as MacArthur was the foremost U.S. expert on the Oriental mind, but instead it was ignored.

MacArthur gets very high marks for rebuilding Japan during the five years he was in charge of the occupation. He was extremely popular in Japan; after his recall, Japan's foreign minister said that MacArthur's accomoplishments during the occupation were "one of the marvels of history. It is he who has salvaged our nation from post-surrender confusion and prostration, and steered the country on the road to reconstruction. It is he who has firmly planted democracy in all segments of our society. It is he who has paved the way for a peace settlement. No wonder he is looked upon by all our people with the profoundest veneration and affection. I have no words to convey the regret of our naton to see him leave."

The two great Tokyo daily newspapers joined in the praise. One said that "MacArthur's dismissal is the greatest shock since the end of the war. He dealt with the Japanese people not as a conqueror but a great reformer. He was a noble political missionary. What he gave us was not material aid and democratic reform alone, but a new way of life, the freedom and dignity of the individual. The other paper wrote that "Japan's recovery must be attributed solely to his guidance. We feel as if we had lost a kind and loving father."

I think that part of why MacArthur's star faded so precipitously during 1952 is that his speeches, increaingly consisting of deranged right-wing rants, were so clearly at odds with his humane and tolerant approach to the administration of Japan. The American electorate may not be very sohisticated or knowledgeable, but people can spot a phony when they see one. MacArthur's experience is eerily similar to Trump's in this regard, as Trump was a pro-choice Democrat before he got into politics and started posturing as an anti-abortion, right-wing demagogue. Trump is known to have contributed seven times to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaigns, and twice to Kamala Harris's Senate campaign.

A clear example of MacArthur's fall from grace was the spectacular failure of his keynote address at the 1952 Republican convention. Manchester says that it was "probably the worst speech of his career--banal and strident in content, wretchedly delivered, a bungling of his chance to become a dark horse...Halfway through the delegates began babbling so loudly among themselves that he could scarcely be heard." C. L. Sulzberger wrote that "He said nothing but sheer baloney. One could feel the electricity gradually running out of the room. I think he cooked his own goose and didn't do much to help Taft."

Sarah Palin is a recent example of someone whose star once burned bright, but who has since faded into insignificance. After her defeat in the 2008 VP election, she resigned her governorship the next year, citing a slew of ethical complaints against her. She tried her hand as a FOX analyst, but got cut loose at the end of her contract period, as the network came to realize that she had nothing worthwhile to say.

In 2017 Palin filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times for accusing her of "political incitement" in the run-up to the 2011 shooting of Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The case finally came to trial earlier this year, and the jury unanimously found against her. Her case was so weak that the Judge announced he was going to dismiss it, regardless of how the jury found.

This year Palin ran for Congress from Alaska, and couldn't even defeat a Democrat! In bright red Alaska! The man hired to prep Palin for her VP debate with Joe Biden in 2008 was recently interviewed on one of the news networks. He said that when he asked Palin what her position on NATO was, she responded, "What's NATO?"! This is beyond bizarre.

Another example of a star who will be fading fast is the attractive and charismatic former TV anchor, Kari Lake, who narrowly lost her Arizona Governor's race. She is a rabid election-denier, and in recent speeches has mercilessly trashed the memory of John McCain. And now she has filed a lawsuit asking the court system to throw out the election results! Just totally absurd. I predict her star will fade like the other examples mentioned.

All of the four examples discussed--MacArthur, Trump, Palin, and Lake--are characterized by focusing almost exclusively on what they are against, rather than what they are for. This can be said to be true of the GOP in general these days. It is hard to say what today's Republican party is for (they didn't even bother to adopt a platform in the last election!). We know what they are against, but not what they are for. The electorate will soon come to recognize the lack of any positive substance in today's GOP.

Ranked choice voting worked well in the aforementioned Alaska Congressional race, and should be adopted everywhere as a way to mdoerate our politics and keep the extremists and demogogues out of office. The same holds for open primaries; extremists could be kept out of general elections if states would adopt open primaries. But even liberal Oregon defeated this proposal when it was on the ballot a few years ago. Sadly. it seems that progressives are as determined to hang onto their power as right-wingers are.

I continue to believe that what happened to MacArthur in his later years will be a model for what will happen to Trump, whose speeches during the recent mid-term campaign were filled with airing his personal grievances, rather than offering any coherent vision for the future. Trump would appear at rallies in support of a local candidate, but then would spend most of his speeches talking about himself, not the candidate he was ostensibly there to support.

An election is about the future, not the past, and the voters will, in my opinion, ultimately reject Trump and choose to move forward into the future with new leadership. Already there are signs of this rejection. Florida governor Ron DeSantis won his race for re-election by 20 points, an amazing margin given that his opponent was the highly-respected former governor, Charlie Crist. Recent surveys show that GOP voters already prefer DeSantis to Trump for their presidential candidate in 2024. Other potential candidates are also positioning themselves to oppose Trump, including Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and Mike Pompeo.

Mike Pence Comes out of the Shadows

On the occasion of the publishing of his new book, Mike Pence has been on the airwaves daily recently. Most notably, he had a "Town Hall" with CNN's Jake Tapper this past Wednesday evening. While he deserves credit for coming onto a live broadcast for more than an hour, there were a number of aspects of his appearance which I found irritating.

1. Repeatedly plugging his book. Instead of simply answering questions, he prefaced nearly every answer with "As I say in my book..." After awhile this beame obnoxious. The in-your-face plugging leads one to wonder if the man is broke.

2. Criticizing the 1/6 committee as biased. Here Pence was way off base. Tapper had to interject and remind Pence that the Democrats had proposed a bi-partisan committee to investigate, but "McCarthy killed it".

3. Not answering questions. The most outrageous example of this was in response to a queston on abortion. Instead of speaking to the substance of the question, which was about a nationwide ban on abortion, Pence gave a speech about how he has reverence for life. He said nothing about why his religious beliefs should apply to the whole country. After this non-answer, I began to realize that there was a non-responsiveness to most of the questions put to him.

4. Testifying. Pence has repeatedly said that "The Committee has no right to my testimony", referring to the 1/6 committee. He has also said his appearance would be "unprecedented", which ignores Gerald Ford's tetimony before a Copngressional committee seeking to put to rest claims that his pardon of Nixon was part of a quid pro quo. It also ignores the role of the Congress in its oversight function of the administrative branch. Pence rants and raves about "separation of powers", failing to understand the oversight role assigned to Congress.

Pence has an image of a dull, drab campaigner, and I don't see any signs that this will change in the coming election cycle. I think a good comparison would be to Dan Quayle, who ran for the GOP nomination in 1996, after losing the 1992 election running with George H.W. Bush. Quayle never got any traction at all, and his campaign went nowhere. Pence wil suffer the same fate if he runs in 2024, as he is clearly considering doing.

Rule by the Best and the Brightest

George Will wrote a thought-provoking column a few months back on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Halberstam book "The Best and the Brightest". Will spends the whole column, up until the last paragraph, outlining the problems with academics trying to govern, which was the problem that got us into the quagmire of Vietnam. Some statements: "academia is an unsatisfactory incubator of statesmen", and "the perils of academic intelligence unleavened by wisdom acquired in the wider world", and "academic careers can make people susceptible to self-deception because they have been socialized in a world of theory in which their ideas have no consequences". But then comes his last paragraph, ending with "the best and the brightest can be tiresome, but the alternative even more so". Much food for thought here. I just finished a new biography of Andrew Jackson entitled "The First Populist", and his story certainly illustrates the dangers of the alternative to rule by the best and the brightest, which is a mindless populism fueled by a strong, charismatic leader. My son-in-law says that we have a kakistocracy, which is rule by the least competent. I can't argue with him.

"The Order", by Daniel Silva

I became aware of Daniel Silva a few months ago, when I heard him being interviewed on the occasion of the publication of his latest spy novel, which I later learned was his 25th novel dating back to 1996, all of which were best-sellers. Checking in the local public library, I was pleased to see that many of these novels were on the shelves, with the rest no doubt available through inter-library loan.

The main character in all but the first three of his novels is Gabriel Allon, the head of Israeli intelligence. In "The Order", Allon is investigating "the order", a shadowy organization composed of authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic Catholic priests, in coordination with like-minded figures throughout Europe.

The appeal of Silva's novels is two-fold. One, he takes you to places all over the world, and makes you feel like you are there. And two, he brings in current affairs, basing his plots on what is actually going on in the world. At the end of each novel, he has an "Author's Note", in which he explains what is factual and what is made up, and expresses his concerns based on recent world events. In "The Order", he outdoes himself, with an 11-page "Author's Note".

What is so impactful about "The Order" is the emphasis on the passage from Matthew 27:25, which says that the Jewish people are responsible for the killing of Jesus, supposedly saying, “His blood be upon us, and upon our children”. Silva's idea, which I cannot dispute, is that this passage has been responsible for 2,000 years of the persecution of Jews. And it is a clearly false passage. The idea that some Jew in the crowd might have yelled out "his blood be upon us", is, I suppose, marginally plausible. But to add "and upon our children" is ludicrous. We have to ask, how did this pathetic verse find its way into the Bible?

Atrocious Decision from Tump-appointed Federal Judge

U.S. District Judge from the Southern District of Florida, Aileen M. Cannon, issued a ruling the other day appointing a Special Master to review documents seized by the FBI while executing a search warrant at Donald Trump's Florida home.

The reason this is so outrageous is that the court system has no business injecting itself into an ongoing investigation. Courts don't normally get involved until charges are filed. Up until that time, an investigation is the sole province of the executive branch, as represented by the duly authorized prosecutors and detectives conducting the investigation.

In my experience lawyers who have tried to inject themselves into an investigation in an attempt to influence whether charges are filed have been soundly rebuffed. It is the same princple, which is that the legal system doesn't kick in until charges are filed in court.

This principle is why I see problems with the Miranda Warnings, as mandated by the Supreme Court in the famous Miranda case back in 1966. The first two sentences should be sufficient, informing a suspect that he has a right to remain silent, and that anything he says can be used against him later in court. The last two sentences on the right to an attorney should be dropped, as the function of an attorney doesn't kick in until charges are filed and the case thereby gets into the court system.

All an attorney is going to do during the investigative phase is tell his client not to talk to the police. I much prefer the British system, as illustrated in the many British detective shows available to stream these days. The British tell the suspect, "You have the right to remain silent, although if you fail to mention something that you later rely on in court, your silence can be used against you."

Will Trump Be Prosecuted?

The Justice Department no doubt can make out a case that Trump's taking government documents to his Florida home violated the law. But not all violations of the law are worthy of prosecution. There are many additional factors that need to be taken into account.

Since the FBI raid the Trump camp has offered many explanations and excuses for his actions. So much so that comedians and liberal commentators have had a field day in gleefully reciting all the disparate explanations that have been offered.

However, the problem with a jury trial is that you never know what tangent the jury is going to go off on. All it takes is for a jury to latch onto one of the many defenses Trump would put forth. Hence, the chance of a conviction would be slim, in my opinion, and this has to be a major consideration for the DOJ in considering a prosecution.

I think the Atlanta DA has much more of chance at a successful prosecution for election tampering. This is because the tape of the phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State pretty much makes the case, and it would be hard for a jury not to convict based on this alone. In this phone call, Trump is clearly trying to bully the Sec. of State into falsifying the Georgia election results.

The DOJ has to consider the political fallout from prosecuting Trump. It would accentuate the political divide in this country, and no doubt accelerate the arrival of the coming civil war.

I keep thinking back to Ford's decision to pardon Nixon in 1974, a month after Nixon had resigned his presidency. This decision was undoutedly the correct one, as it spared the country the spectacle of an ex-president being prosecuted, and allowed the country to go forward after Watergate. And yet, Ford probably lost the 1976 election to Carter because of the pardon. How fickle the US electoraste is! They re-elect Nixon in a landslide in 1972, and then go to the other exterme of wanting hiim prosecuted! Surely signs of an incompetent electorate.

Whether the electorate will turn on Trump as it did on Nixon is unclear. The evidence suggests that about 30% of the electorate will remain rabid Trump supporters, and no facts can cause these people to change their allegiance to him. But the remaining 70% will likely be totally disgusted as the evidence comes out about the many crimes this guy has committed.