Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog

News of the football, uh, Thursday

October 2, 2014

History, media, Packers
With the Packers hosting their neighbors to the immediate west tonight in a rivalry that has featured these excellent moments …

… two news items seem appropriate, the first particularly noteworthy for those of us of Nordic descent …

… from National Geographic:

The Vikings gave no quarter when they stormed the city of Nantes, in what is now western France, in June 843—not even to the monks barricaded in the city’s cathedral. “The heathens mowed down the entire multitude of priest, clerics, and laity,” according to one witness account. Among the slain, allegedly killed while celebrating the Mass, was a bishop who later was granted sainthood.

To modern readers the attack seems monstrous, even by the standards of medieval warfare. But the witness account contains more than a touch of hyperbole, writes Anders Winroth, a Yale history professor and author of the book The Age of the Vikings, a sweeping new survey. What’s more, he says, such exaggeration was often a feature of European writings about the Vikings.

When the account of the Nantes attack is scrutinized, “a more reasonable image emerges,” he writes. After stating that the Vikings had killed the “entire multitude,” for instance, the witness contradicts himself by noting that some of the clerics were taken into captivity. And there were enough people left—among the “many who survived the massacre”—to pay ransom to get prisoners back.

In short, aside from ignoring the taboo against treating monks and priests specially, the Vikings acted not much differently from other European warriors of the period, Winroth argues.

In 782, for instance, Charlemagne, now heralded as the original unifier of Europe, beheaded 4,500 Saxon captives on a single day. “The Vikings never got close to that level of efficiency,” Winroth says, drily.

Just how bad were the Vikings?

Winroth is among the scholars who believe the Vikings were no more bloodthirsty than other warriors of the period. But they suffered from bad public relations—in part because they attacked a society more literate than their own, and therefore most accounts of them come from their victims. Moreover, because the Vikings were pagan, they played into a Christian story line that cast them as a devilish, malign, outside force.

“There is this general idea of the Vikings as being exciting and other, as something that we can’t understand from our point of view—which is simply continuing the story line of the victims in their own time,” Winroth says. “One starts to think of them in storybook terms, which is deeply unfair.”

In reality, he proposes, “the Vikings were sort of free-market entrepreneurs.”

To be sure, scholars have for decades been stressing aspects of Viking life beyond the warlike, pointing to the craftsmanship of the Norse (to use the term that refers more generally to Scandinavians), their trade with the Arab world, their settlements in Greenland and Newfoundland, the ingenuity of their ships, and the fact that the majority of them stayed behind during raids.

But Winroth wants to put the final nail in the coffin of the notion that the Vikings were the “Nazis of the North,” as an article by British journalist Patrick Cockburn argued last April. Viking atrocities were “the equivalent of those carried out by SS divisions invading Poland 75 years ago,” Cockburn wrote. …

Rather than being primed for battle by an irrational love of mayhem, Vikings went raiding mainly for pragmatic reasons, Winroth contends—namely, to build personal fortunes and enhance the power of their chieftains. As evidence Winroth enumerates cases in which Viking leaders negotiated for payment, or tried to.

For example, before the Battle of Maldon in England, a Viking messenger landed and cried out to 3,000 or more assembled Saxon soldiers: “It is better for you that you pay off this spear-fight with tribute … Nor have we any need to kill each other.” The English chose to fight, and were defeated. Like anyone else, the Vikings would rather win by negotiation than risk a loss, Winroth says. …

The Norse were prodigious traders, selling furs, walrus tusks, and slaves to Arabs in the East. Winroth goes so far as to argue that Vikings provided much needed monetary stimulus to western Europe at a crucial time. Norse trade led to an influx of Arabic dirhams, or coins, which helped smooth the transition to an economy of exchange instead of barter.

Yet even among scholars who attempt to see things from the Vikings’ perspective, disagreements persist about the nature of Viking violence. Robert Ferguson, for example, doesn’t downplay its ferocity, but he characterizes it as symbolic and defensive, a form of “asymmetric warfare.”

In the year 806, for example, the slaughter of 68 monks on the Isle of Iona, off the coast of Scotland, sowed terror in Europe. Ferguson suggests that the move was designed to convince Charlemagne and others that it would be very costly to expand Christianity into Scandinavia by force. The Vikings “were fighting to defend their way of life,” Ferguson says.

Tonight’s game is, of course, a sellout, which means it will be on TV in the Packers’ home markets, Green Bay and Milwaukee. The NFL prohibits home-market telecasts if games aren’t sold out 48 hours before kickoff. There were two games blacked out in 2013 — almost including the Packers’ playoff game against San Francisco, though the deadline was barely met — and 15 in 2012.

About which, the Washington Post reports:

Federal regulators on Thursday sacked the longstanding sports “blackout” rule that prevents certain games from being shown on TV if attendance to the live event is poor.

In a bipartisan vote, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously agreed to strike down the much-criticized 40-year-old policy. Under the blackout rule, games that failed to sell enough tickets could not be shown on free, over-the-air television in the home team’s own local market.

The FCC said the rule mainly benefits team owners and sports leagues, such as the NFL, by driving ticket sales but it does not serve consumers.

”For 40 years, these teams have hidden behind a rule of the FCC,” said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “No more. Everyone needs to be aware who allows blackouts to exist, and it is not the Federal Communications Commission.”

The rule was initially put in place in 1975 amid concerns of flagging attendance at live sports games. At the time, almost 60 percent of NFL games were blacked out on broadcast TV because not enough fans were showing up at stadiums. Today, that figure stands at less than one percent, and professional football is so popular on TV that programming contracts contribute “a substantial majority of the NFL’s revenues,” said FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai.

The NFL has warned that ending the blackout rule would hurt consumers by encouraging leagues to move their programming exclusively to pay TV. But Pai pushed back against those claims Tuesday, saying teams can’t afford not to air their games on broadcast TV.

”By moving games to pay TV,” said Pai, “the NFL would be cutting off its nose to spite its face.”

The vote doesn’t mean that blackouts are going away immediately. The NFL still has blackout rules written into individual contracts with regional sports broadcasters. In general, these deals last until the beginning of the next decade. The FCC’s rule, which was struck down, essentially served as a stamp of approval for the NFL’s policy.

In new contracts, the NFL would have to renew those blackout provisions over the objections of the federal government. On Tuesday, the FCC’s message was clear: If the NFL chooses that path, it will be the only one bearing the brunt of consumer ire, particularly from low-income Americans and the disabled who can’t make it or have a harder time getting to the games.

The cable industry welcomed the 5-0 vote.

”We commend the commission’s unanimous decision to eliminate the antiquated sports blackout rule,” said the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. “As the video marketplace continues to evolve and offers consumers more competition and a growing variety of new services, we encourage the FCC to continue its examination of outdated rules that no longer make sense.” …

The NFL indicated Tuesday that it had no immediate plans to change how it broadcasts games.

“NFL teams have made significant efforts in recent years to minimize blackouts,” the NFL said in a statement. “The NFL is the only sports league that televises every one of its games on free, over-the-air television. The FCC’s decision will not change that commitment for the foreseeable future.”

The next to last sentence is not correct. The Packers host Atlanta Dec. 8, in a game that will be televised on ESPN. It will be on “free, over-the-air television” in Green Bay and Milwaukee, but not anywhere else in Wisconsin. If you don’t get ESPN on cable or satellite, and you can’t get channel 2 in Green Bay or channel 12 in Milwaukee, you won’t be watching.

The point here, which the Post finally got to, is that the FCC’s ruling has no weight given that the networks that carry the NFL have agreed to the blackout provision as part of their contracts.

What makes the blackout issue different now from the past is that the NFL has been taking a public relations beating (pun not intended) recently, thanks to the misbehavior of some of its players (which is not a new thing) and the NFL’s perceived mishandling of the issue. It’s impossible to say what the NFL’s public image will be in the early 2020s, when the NFL will be negotiating its next TV contracts after the current contracts expire after the 2021 season. That fact and the networks’ agreeing with the NFL to the blackout rules make the FCC’s decision less news than it may appear.
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Presty the DJ for Oct. 2

October 2, 2014

Music
Today in 1953, Victor Borge’s “Comedy in Music” opened on Broadway, closing 849 performances later. (Pop.)

Today in 1960, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs released “Stay,” which would become the shortest number one single of all time (at least to date):

The number one single today in 1965:

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Some get better, most get worse

October 1, 2014

US business, US politics
The George Mason University Mercatus Center has some bad news for those who want the minimum wage increased, in graphic form:

The X axis shows the unemployment rate, and the Y axis shows the minimum wage as a percentage of the average hourly wage. The chart shows unemployment rates by age and educational level since 1985. You’ll notice that as the relative minimum wage goes up, so does unemployment among those with a high school diploma, or less education than that.

The data reflects logic. If an employer is going to be mandated to increase wages of his employees with no guarantee of increased profitability or even worker output, the employer is going to be more picky about who gets hired. Tough luck for someone who didn’t get a college degree, and even more tough luck for someone who didn’t get a high school diploma.

The last thing we need is more government policies that create more unemployment, given that the correctly measured unemployment rate is at least 12 percent.

Louis Efron explains:

Despite the significant decrease in the official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) unemployment rate, the real unemployment rate is over double that at 12.6%. This number reflects the government’s “U-6” report, which accounts for the full unemployment picture including those “marginally attached to the labor force,” plus those “employed part time for economic reasons.”

“Marginally attached” describes individuals not currently in the labor force who wanted and were available for work. The official unemployment numbers exclude them, because they did not look for work in the 4 weeks preceding the unemployment survey. In July, this marginally attached group accounted for 2.2 million people. To put that in perspective, there are currently 16 states in the U.S. with populations smaller than 2.2 million.

741,000 discouraged workers – workers not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them – are included within the list of marginally attached people. Another 7.5 million were not considered unemployed because they were employed part-time for economic reasons. Those people are also called involuntary part-time workers – working part-time because their hours were cut back or because they were unable to secure a full-time job.

When you look at state populations – using the 7.5 million – the number represents more than the population of Washington, Massachusetts, or Arizona.

These numbers mean the U.S. has nearly 10 million workers only marginally engaged in their work situation. They don’t contribute their full potential to their households, the economy or society in general. While reporting a low, declining unemployment number may comfort people, we can’t ignore the millions of workers feeling the pain of the real unemployment number rising from 12.4% to 12.6% last month.

Dan Diamond’s Forbes article, Why The ‘Real’ Unemployment Rate Is Higher Than You Think highlights another disturbing fact that compounds the challenge: The longer you’re without a job, the less likely you’ll get called back for an interview. By the eighth month of unemployment the callback rate falls by about 45%. The article concludes “many employers see these would-be workers as damaged goods.” These same people could be contributing greatly to the economy. Instead, they are spending their days trying to secure employment or working in unfulfilling and part-time jobs while depleting their savings and 401K’s to supplement their income. Or worse yet, living off their credit cards just to survive.
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The Department of (Insufficient) Commerce

October 1, 2014

Wisconsin business, Wisconsin politics
Mary Burke has been touting her business experience (which seems, as you know, rather amorphous) and her experience as Gov. James Doyle’s secretary of commerce.

It turns out that Doyle apparently didn’t care for Burke’s work, while Burke apparently didn’t care for the agency she ran. Media Trackers reports:

An email between then-Gov. Jim Doyle and his chief of staff, Susan Goodwin, show Doyle was looking to replace Mary Burke as commerce secretary a full month before Burke announced she would leave the job. The chain of events that followed Burke’s resignation leaves questions about whether Burke was ready to leave the position of her own accord.

Burke, who is the Democratic challenger to Gov. Scott Walker (R) this fall, served as Wisconsin’s commerce secretary between 2005 and November 2007. Burke announced her resignation from the post on October 12^th, 2007. But an email between Doyle and Goodwin on September 12^th, 2007, shows Doyle and Goodwin were already in the process of looking to replace Burke.

Burke and Doyle were both on a trade mission to China and Japan at the time of Doyle-Goodwin exchange. Records show Burke racking up thousands of dollars in expenses on the taxpayer paid trip just a month before her resignation – including 1^st class flights that Media Trackers previously reported on.

While it may not seem unusual that Doyle and Goodwin were looking for a replacement for Burke, assuming they were aware she planned to depart, the chain of events following Burke’s resignation indicate Doyle may had been caught off guard.

According to news reports at the time, Doyle did not have a replacement in place when Burke announced her resignation and he did not name a replacement until a month later, leaving the position vacant for several weeks.

The answer to why Doyle may have been looking to replace Burke may be found in an October 20, 2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article. According to the article:

Shortly before announcing her resignation as Wisconsin’s secretary of commerce, Mary Burke issued a harsh criticism of her agency…The Commerce Department, which ought to be among the state’s most influential economic players, has sat on the sidelines while other states vie to recruit new businesses, she said…”We are not out there selling the state and attracting the companies,” Burke said late last month, echoing private-sector criticism.

The article goes on to note criticisms of Burke’s agency by those in the business community.

Burke’s criticism of her own department in September, as well as concerns raised in the business community about the ability of her agency to do its job, may indicate a rift between Doyle and his commerce secretary, giving credence to the likelihood that Doyle may have been looking to push Burke out before her resignation.

Another indication of the unplanned nature of Burke’s resignation is that as the sister of the president of Trek Bicycle, and a former Trek executive herself, one would assume Burke could have easily worked her way back into her family’s company. But a report from Right Wisconsin indicates that instead, Burke – who was 48 years old at the time of her resignation – has not worked since abruptly leaving her position as Commerce Secretary.

Doyle may have been the only person who cared for the Department of Commerce during his administration. Readers of my previous blog may recall the harsh criticisms of the DOC by not just Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker, but his Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett.

Go back to the aforementioned Journal Sentinel story:

“We haven’t been there when we need to be,” said Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce.

Julia Taylor, president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, hopes Doyle names someone with a track record of industrial attraction “in other states or someone who’s done it in this state. …

Other states vastly outspend Wisconsin, Burke and others conceded.

The nonprofit Forward Wisconsin agency, which does marketing but not industrial attraction, has a budget of $600,000, with half that amount supplied by the state and the rest from non-taxpayer donors. In his current budget proposal, Doyle wants to add $590,000 for business attraction. …

By contrast, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development proposes spending more than $500,000 next year to market rural economic initiatives alone, a spokeswoman said. And the Michigan Economic Development Corp. has one full-time staffer who routinely shuttles to Europe and another who travels regularly to Japan, both spending much of their time luring businesses to that hard-hit state, a spokesman said.

“You ought to call the folks in Texas – their capacities and funds are at least five times greater,” said Mike Shore, a spokesman for the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Burke directed the agency for 2 1/2 years. Her predecessor, Cory Nettles, left after about two years.

“Both did well with the resources they had, but they have probably one of the weakest tool sets of any state commerce secretary in the country when it comes to incentives, tax breaks, flexible training dollars,” Sheehy said.

In the 2006 governor’s race, Doyle’s Republican opponent, Mark Green, criticized Doyle for economic passivity.

Doyle administration officials respond that the state has focused on growing its own businesses. His aides talk about “economic gardening” – tending to the soil with tax incentives and taxpayer aid to see what sort of operations spring up without importing industry.

“There is a real opportunity here for the state to put its best face forward for national attraction on key industries,” Taylor said. “If you’re going to focus on business attraction, you need to be charismatic, do the business of the state, get the governor to the table when you need him.”

This is another example that elections have consequences. Had voters correctly chosen Green instead of Doyle in 2006, Green would have not continued Doyle’s approach, whatever that was.
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Presty the DJ for Oct. 1

October 1, 2014

Music
I present the number one single today in 1977 to demonstrate that popularity and quality are not always synonymous:

The number one single today in 1983:

Today in 2004, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne officially opened AC/DC Lane, named for the band, to the bagpipes from …

Birthdays begin with actor Richard Harris, who “sang” …

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The view from outside

September 30, 2014

media, Wisconsin politics
Eliana Johnson provides an outside-Wisconsin view of the governor’s race:

The daughter of Trek Bicycle founder Richard Burke, the woman gunning for Scott Walker’s job, is the scion of a prominent Wisconsin family who’s had the wealth to flit from one career to another.

In an election being litigated primarily on economic issues, Mary Burke has touted her business experience. But it’s the sort of business experience only an heiress could afford: a couple of years spent toiling at a failed start-up company and two stints working for her father. Between her two tours at Trek, Burke spent a couple of years “as a snowboard bum in Colorado.” (That’d be from the Harvard Business School alumni bulletin, not her campaign website.) At Trek, she ran the company’s European division, and has said she increased international sales by a whopping $47 million, but the company denied PolitiFact’s request to verify the number.

The private sector, it turns out, wasn’t really for her. “While I have the business background, I really — how should I say this? — I prefer the work in the public sector,” Burke told Politico in an interview.

By her mid 40s, she’d left to become a philanthropist and told Democratic governor Jim Doyle’s political team when it expressed interest in bringing her aboard — she was eventually appointed to run the state’s Department of Commerce — that she wasn’t sure she wanted to “reenter the full-time work force.” The only elected position Burke has ever held is a seat on the Madison school board. Now, she wants to become governor.

Burke has cited her Harvard MBA and her business savvy as evidence that she has the know-how to revitalize Wisconsin’s economy. So it says something about her candidacy that large portions of her jobs plan — and of several other plans she has released, on subjects such as entrepreneurship, small-business development, and public-private partnerships, where one might expect her to bring her experience to bear — were lifted word for word from those of several other (mostly failed) gubernatorial candidates.

Burke blamed a Harvard-educated consultant for the incident, and he was promptly fired, but she stood by her borrowed plans, telling reporters that Wisconsin need not “reinvent the wheel.” Burke is offering Wisconsin voters public policy recycled by a political consultant — policy rejected by voters in Virginia and Indiana, to boot.

But the race is tight, and Burke’s latest flirtation with a serious career has given her a real shot to unseat one of the GOP’s top presidential contenders. The most recent Marquette University poll has her tied with Walker, 46 all. How did that happen?

That the race is so close is a testament both to Wisconsin’s political polarization and to the fact that, though it has at times looked purple, it remains a blue state. Walker, like his colleagues Sam Brownback, John Kasich, Rick Snyder, and Susana Martínez, among others, was elected in the GOP wave of 2010. Democratic majorities in the Wisconsin state assembly and the state senate were wiped out that year, too, but 2010 proved to be a political outlier. …

Walker rose to national prominence when he succeeded in getting legislation passed to curb the collective-bargaining rights of the state’s public-sector unions, and he caught the attention of top-dollar Republican donors when he beat back a union-led effort to recall his election. As throngs of left-wing protesters rushed the state capitol, he looked like the adult in the room, and he won the recall election by a greater margin than he was elected with in 2010. …

In an election that has centered on the performance of the state’s economy, Walker’s record has been scrutinized. There are things to boast about: Since Walker took office in January of 2011, unemployment has fallen to 5.6 percent from 7.6 percent. It’s half a percentage point below the national average.

But one of the central promises Walker made on the campaign trail in 2010, to usher in the creation of 250,000 private-sector jobs, has come back to haunt him. Even though the state has seen the creation of more than 100,000 jobs on his watch, the unmet campaign promise looms over him, and Burke is leveraging it in her ads. One Wisconsin Republican likened it to the “read my lips” moment that sealed George H. W. Bush’s fate in the 1992 presidential election.

It’s not just victory that matters for Walker, but the margin of victory. In modern times, all of the governors who have gone on to win the nomination of a major party have not been reelected narrowly but have galloped to victory. “Obviously, he’d like to win by more than five points,” Republican strategist O’Connell says. …

Top Republicans are also quick to point out that Walker has qualities that can compensate for his failure to waltz to victory in November. Though he is the top target of unions this cycle, Walker, who doesn’t have a college degree, has tremendous potential appeal to blue-collar voters, who largely supported him in 2010. That’s a group that Republicans, with Mitt Romney as their standard bearer, struggled mightily with in 2012, and it will undoubtedly become a focus in 2016. The son of a Baptist preacher, Walker is also popular among religious conservatives. And he’s one of the few potential GOP nominees with a foot in both the establishment and tea-party camps.

Walker also likes to say this is his third race in four years and, if he wins in November, his primary selling point may be his proven ability to repeatedly win drag-out fights in a left-leaning state.

And what do non-Wisconsin readers think?
- Ah, the idle rich. Reminds me of the Kennedy’s in many respects. Politics is a toy.
- When the author contacted the Trek company to confirm her quoted international sales number, they refused. In my eyes, if Daddy could back up her claims then he would be very boastful about her accomplishments. The unions will vote against Walker as opposed to voting for a qualified candidate. What’s a little plagiarism among friends.
- Was she instrumental in raising international sales at her father’s company? The company’s not saying. Nor will they talk about whether or not she was involved in the outsourcing of production by the company to foreign locations, displacing WI workers. As to her time in the state commerce dept., the record is what the record is as stated by the author. If there were some fantastic program or project that she created while there, I have no doubt it would be blared out to voters by her campaign – but there is none.
- Real business background – Entrepreneur – as in successful startup, not going to work for Daddy.
- I have met her on several occasions. Years ago, in a context having nothing to do with politics. She is an entitled airhead whose position at Trek was a sinecure with neither responsibilities nor regular hours.
- What is wrong with Wisconsin? Scott Walker should be ahead by 20 points just for his record of breaking the hold that public employee unions had on the state. Instead the polls show that an accomplished governor is in a close race with a dilettante socialite with no real ideas other than those she purloined from other losers like herself.
- Two lib cesspools, Milwaukee and Madison, war with an otherwise small town, rural state. Most people in Wisconsin appreciate the constitution and the value of our dwindling lib oppressed freedoms. Burke does not earn any votes based on her record or intellect. Sadly, half our population is composed of idiots who choose socialism over the benefits of freedom.
- It’s pretty clear that she has very little experience at anything and she was chosen by the Ds as a female candidate that they can build an image around who will do their bidding after election, as she is likely to show as much interest in governing as she’s shown for everything else in her life. Government of the union, for the union and by the union will return to WI with a vengeance.
- It’s a safe bet that if she does win the governorship, her first task will be to reward the unions by returning to the rule that if you wanted to work for govt you had to be a member of the union. Expect Wisconsin to resume its descent into irrelevancy that was interrupted by Walker.
- Mary Burke has nothing to offer. She’s just another useless power grabber — one who can’t run her own life too well, but who has a million ideas how we should run ours and wants government power to jam them down our throats. She has been assisted by a Democrat prosecutor who keeps totally bogus charges against Walker plodding through the courts — the Democrats’ favorite ploy (see also Perry, Delay, Hutchinson in Texas). I’m sick of rich little morons who have theirs and seem to think government’s main job should be killing opportunities for the rest of us, not to mention taxing us to death. No creative thinking here, only two ideas: more regulation, more taxes. When Walker won the recall, I had hoped Wisconsin might shake off its liberal fascist tendencies. Come November, we’ll see how strong the totalitarian temptation still is.
- Wisconsin is neither blue nor red. Having recently escaped the cess pool that is Illinois to become a cheeze head, I am struck by the upside-downedness of Wisconsin. The people who ought to be conservative voters in every respect seem to be Democrats. Those who would be liberals under normal circumstances have connected the dots between socialism and the poverty it engenders. Unemployed former union members have an almost universal distrust of Big Labor and a healthy scorn for Blue Sky collectivist promises. They’d rather work full time for minimum wages than be unemployed on a picket line. Meanwhile, farmers and big business here seem to be nuttier than Greenpeace. Any good that Walker has accomplished will be quickly undone with a Burke victory. It’s 50-50. Perhaps the difference will be the recent transplants from my former state who will certainly not be pulling the lever for the bicycle babe. One can only hope.
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Presty the DJ for Sept. 30

September 30, 2014

Music
The number one song today in 1957:

Today in 1967, bowing down to popular music, the BBC began its Radio 1:

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Postgame schadenfreude, U.S. 41 edition

September 29, 2014

media, Packers
Regular readers of this column know that nothing brings more joy the morning after a Packers win over an archrival than to read the loser’s media the morning after.

Particularly Chicago media, given that the Chicago media covering Da Bears appears to drink Drano before spitting out their caustic thoughts about the team they’re paid to cover.

We begin with ESPN Chicago’s Jon Greenberg:

There are many myths, myriad untruths, about the Chicago Bears‘ controversial quarterback Jay Cutler.

Here’s what I know about Cutler: He is very, very tough. He is very, very smart. His hair contains multitudes. He can’t beat the Green Bay Packers.

Just look at the numbers.

Facing his nemesis once again, Cutler threw two costly second-half picks on consecutive possessions that the Packers turned into touchdowns as the Bears dropped a squeaker, 38-17, at Soldier Field.

Yes, the NFC North still goes through Green Bay. The Bears will play there in a prime-time game on Nov. 9.

Cutler is now 1-9 against Green Bay in his roller-coaster Chicago career, including that 2010 NFC Championship Game defeat. He’s thrown 20 interceptions in those games.

Run the spread-blame formation all you want, Cutler fans, but turnovers and losses are connected.

Yes, the Bears’ defense was putrid, with no pass rush up front and no chance for the secondary to cover Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb.

It’s not like Green Bay’s defense was particularly good. It just took advantage of the Bears’ mistakes. …

Smart observers knew that this defense, depleted further with the absence of an ill Jared Allen, would have its hands full with Aaron Rodgers. This wasn’t going to beGeno Smith winging it around.

So that meant more pressure on Cutler to be perfect, or close to it. Instead, Cutler was Cutler, a victim of circumstance as fortune smiled upon his opponent.

The game was close at the break — 21-17 Green Bay after the Bears missed a last-second touchdown by inches and perhaps a bad spot — and the second half belonged to the better quarterback and the better team.

It was Rodgers, who had told his rabid fan base to relax after a 1-2 start, who was close to perfect. …

While the Bears finally achieved offensive balance with 235 rushing yards (122 on 23 carries forMatt Forte) and 256 passing yards, Green Bay took advantage of Chicago turnovers and then just relied on its franchise quarterback to move the chains and win the game.

Anyone who still thinks Cutler is ready to pass Rodgers in the NFC North quarterback derby, raise your hand.

Here’s my expert take: Rodgers is up here (reaches high) and Cutler is around here (waves hand around flabby midsection). …

On the second pick, Bears coach Marc Trestman said the play call was for Marshall to run an 18-yard hook, but Marshall “turned it into” a go route, i.e., he ran straight down the field. Cutler threw to the hook, a country mile from where Marshall was at the time, and Sam Shieldswas there to take advantage, returning it for 62 yards to the Bears’ 11-yard line.

Marshall, who has been hobbled by a bum ankle, declined to speak to reporters after the game.

“He was upset,” Cutler said. “A miscommunication on my part and his part. Sometimes miscommunications in this game can be pricy.”

Speaking of pricy, this past offseason Cutler signed a deal for $54 million in guaranteed money, while Marshall was inked for about $22 million in guaranteed cash. That’s “Beat Green Bay”money. They know that, of course.

The Arlington Daily Herald’s Barry Rozner:

The Bears have now won two games on the road in prime time against top NFL defenses and lost twice at home, opening against Buffalo — 6-10 a year ago — and now losing to a Green Bay team that came in 1-2 and had done virtually nothing right for three weeks.

Welcome to the NFL. …

Here’s what the Bears did well in their 38-17 loss to the Packers on Sunday at Soldier Field: They ran the football against one of the worst rush defenses in the league, and stopped the run against one of the worst rushing games in the league.

Here’s what they did wrong: pretty much everything else.

And while the city will light its collective hair on fire and focus much of this week on Jay Cutler and his struggles against Green Bay, the real problem continues to be the defense.

Granted, they were missing Jared Allen, Jeremiah Ratliff and Charles Tillman, but Aaron Rodgers and the Packers scored touchdowns on five of their first six possessions and got points on every possession of the game except the last, when the Bears blocked a field goal.

“He’s the best quarterback in the league and it was their day today,” said linebacker Lance Briggs. “We couldn’t get to him.”

It was a clinic. Rodgers was 22-of-28 passing for 302 yards, 4 TDs, a QB rating of 151.2 and was never touched in the backfield. …

The Bears did get Rodgers moving a few times, but he simply bought himself some time and then found wide-open receivers. …

Rodgers doesn’t have the weapons he once did, but when he’s got all day to sit in the pocket, or use his feet to extend a play, he’s going to find a player wearing the same jersey. …

Rodgers executed and the Bears’ defense was consistently late, but nearly all the blame goes to the pass rush, which was nonexistent against an offensive line that had been awful for three weeks.

Remember when Da Bears’ defense led the team? Now, not so much, as demonstrated by the Chicago Sun-Times:

“We’re going to do everything we can to get pressure on this guy, as soon as we can, as fast as we can,” defensive end Willie Young said. “But even when he’s on the move, he’s still a great guy. It doesn’t change him one bit.”

“This guy” would be Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. And “this guy” was praised effusively like an active Hall of Famer in the Bears locker room after completing 22 of 28 passes for 302 yards, four touchdowns and a 151.2 passer rating (the best rating against the Bears since 1965).

“That’s Aaron Rodgers, you know,” Young said.

“I mean, he’s great,” linebacker Jon Bostic said.

“It’s Aaron Rodgers,” defensive end Lamarr Houston added.

The Bears had one sack, but it came when rookie defensive tackle Ego Ferguson ran Rodgers out of bounds during the second-to-last play of the third quarter. Game statisticians had the Bears down for zero quarterback hits. Repeat: zero hits.

Zero punts, too, by either team, only the second time that’s happened in NFL history.

Dan Bernstein of The Score apparently has jumped off whatever Bears bandwagon existed:

So much for all that about the Bears.

So much for the rejuvenated defense, powered by the burgeoning development of so many young players behind an invigorated pass rush. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers shut that all up real quick, needing all of two minutes to burn through them for the first of his four touchdown passes in Green Bay’s 38-17 win at Chicago on Sunday afternoon. Rodgers put to bed the murmurs about his own early season struggles, completing 22 of 28 passes for 302 yards with a rating of 151.2.

The Bears’ opportunity to seize control of the NFC North turned into a reaffirmation of Packers’ dominance over a flaccid secondary that couldn’t match up with the obvious. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb would be targeted, yet the two still combined for 17 catches for 221 yards and those four scores.

So much for the latest, lazy iteration of the newest “new” Jay Cutler. After the killer interception in the opener against Buffalo, enough of his other picks were dropped by the 49ers and Jets that the usual suspects in the business of giving bad, wrong opinions pushed the idea that mature Jay is something other than what an eight-year, 107-game sample size has proved him to be. Clay Matthews corralled a deflection after Cutler tried to force a slant to Josh Morgan despite inside-leverage coverage, and then a miscommunication with buddy Brandon Marshall allowed Sam Shields a freebie.
So much for what a commitment to the run game would do to create some all-important offensive balance. The Bears rushed for 235 yards and 16 of their 33 first downs. They averaged 5.7 yards per attempt.

And they lost by three touchdowns. …

So much for general manager Phil Emery’s recent draft classes asserting themselves, as Kyle Fuller and Jon Bostic both evinced more uncertainty than execution Sunday, and there was little help noticeable from Will Sutton or Ego Ferguson up front.

So much for coach Marc Trestman’s sustained brilliance, as his creative play-calling and refreshing onside kick risk-taking were undermined by inexplicable clock management at the end of the first half that resulted in time expiring and no points, as Martellus Bennett’s futile reach for the goal line was obscured enough by defenders to stand upon review.

There is ample time to restore all the good vibes humming in the air after three games, but this one just popped a bunch of hopeful balloons. This was what the matchup has looked like for too long.

The Chicago Tribune’s David Waugh heaps blame on the defense as well:

Oh, Cutler needs to play at a higher level. He acknowledged as much when explaining each mistake like a professional. But the blame Cutler will receive around Chicago for the Bears being totally outclassed and outcoached will be disproportionate to what he deserves. Every fair and accurate explanation of what went wrong in a 21-point defeat starts with the Bears’ deplorable defense, not Cutler. If forced to compare shortcomings, the Bears remain closer to having a playoff-caliber quarterback than defense.

Alas, this is what mediocrity looks like in a league full of flawed teams like the Bears. They end the month 2-2, alternately good enough to inspire hope and bad enough to restore reality into every NFC playoff discussion — due mostly to a defense that disappointed them yet again. Cutler could have thrown for 400 yards without an interception and it likely still wouldn’t have been enough against a Packers offense that turned a shootout into a blowout. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers arrived struggling, by his standards, and left laughing. …

The Packers scored on six of seven drives, none lasting longer than 4 minutes, 3 seconds. Rodgers routinely put the ball wherever he wanted to wide receivers who got wide open wherever they chose. The grounds crew broke more of a sweat than Packers punter Tim Masthay, who hopefully enjoyed his view of the Chicago skyline during the second NFL game ever without a punt.

The Bears possessed the ball for 36 minutes and gained 235 yards rushing — destroying myths about running the football in today’s NFL — and still lost by three touchdowns because their defense remembered how hard life is when Geno Smith isn’t the opposing quarterback. Too often, the Bears eschewed blitzing and relied on a four-man pass rush that went nowhere fast trying to shake a quarterback who’s unshakable.

Meanwhile, the Daily Herald’s Mike Imrem takes a look upstairs:

It was easy to imagine George Halas and Vince Lombardi sitting at that big gin rummy table in the sky Sunday afternoon.

Each kept one eye on their cards and the other on the heavenly big-screen TV transmitting the Packers-Bears game from Soldier Field.

Cable knows no limits, you know?

Neither of the two legendary former football coaches could believe what they were seeing. They tuned in to the Packers and Bears, but a Showtime Lakers vs. Jordan Bulls score-fest broke out.

“What the heck is going on down there,” Lombardi finally said in his inimitable tone.

That was about when Green Bay was taking a 21-17 halftime lead on the way to a 38-17 victory.

The game was as much in the tradition of Bears-Packers as Lindsay Lohan is in the tradition of Audrey Hepburn.

“Remember our first game against each other?” Lombardi said.

He arrived at Green Bay in 1959 and his first regular-season game as Packers coach was a 9-6 victory over the Bears.

“I can’t believe we lost that one,” Halas groaned.

Lombardi chuckled, “I can’t believe we let you score 6 points.”

Every yard was precious when Halas and Lombardi squared off from ’59 through ’67. The game plan was to play stingy defense and on offense run the ball to set up, well, more runs.

In 1962, Green Bay allowed the Bears 7 points in two games. In ’63, the Bears allowed the Packers 10 points in two games.

Sunday the teams combined for 38 points in the first half alone. The 2010s are pretty pastels, while the 1960s were black and blue.

Defense — whether it be strategy or ferocity — was only a rumor in this latest edition until the Bears managed to stop themselves in the second half.

The NFL is more entertaining now, especially if scoring is your thing. Three yards and a cloud of dust has been succeeded by 30-yard pass completions and 15 more yards after missed tackles.

The Bears did run the ball in an attempt to keep it away from Green Bay’s offense. They finished with 235 rushing yards, but the Packers’ passing game scored faster and more often.

“Do you believe neither team forced a punt in this game?” Lombardi said.

Back when he and Halas coached against each other, some coaches believed the punt was the most exciting play in football, just ahead of the 2-yard-plunge on third-and-long.

“No punts and no punches, either,” Halas said, perhaps remembering back to when the Bears beat you up even if they didn’t beat you. …

In a game of pass-fail, the Packers passed to daylight and the Bears ran toward futility.

Lombardi jabbed at Halas, “We learned to throw the ball with Brett Favre in the 1990s and you’re just starting to with Jay Cutler. Good luck with that.”
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Plagiargate

September 29, 2014

Wisconsin politics
While the media reports that Mary Burke apparently borrowed her ideas from several different sources …

… it turns out someone is swiping her ideas, wherever those ideas came from.

(By the way: I came up with the headline last week, though it showed up on Facebook Saturday by two of my Facebook Friends.)

Breitbart reports on South Dakota Democratic gubernatorial candidate Susan Wismer:

BuzzFeed reported Thursday that Susan Wismer, the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nominee in South Dakota, has been caught plagiarizing from the already plagiarized jobs plan of the party’s Wisconsin gubernatorial nominee, Mary Burke. Wismer also plagiarized from the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nominee in Texas, Wendy Davis.

Until this plagiarism of a plagiarized plan story broke on Thursday, Wismer liked to point out the similarities between herself and Burke of Wisconsin.

On her campaign website, for instance, the lead story in her news section cites an article published in the Washington Post last month, which reported that “Mary Burke made Wisconsin history Tuesday. She and South Dakota’s Susan Wismer — both of them Democrats — this year became the first women since 1970 and likely ever to secure a major-party nomination for governor in their respective states, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.” …

The instances of plagiarism first identified by BuzzFeed on Thursday (shown below) are numerous and blatant:

Mary Burke’s Jobs Plan:

She knows how to make responsible decisions that keep a balance sheet in the black while creating jobs because she’s spent her career doing it. Scott Walker has taken a different approach. Despite making historic cuts to education, he’s turned a projected budget surplus into a deficit, and state spending has shot up by $4.6 billion.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

As an accountant, Susan knows how to make responsible decisions that keep a balance sheet in the black while creating jobs because she’s spent her career doing it. This governor has taken a different approach. After making historic cuts, he took a $127 million dollar budget surplus and padded his reserves rather than giving back what was cut to areas desperate for funding.

Mary Burke’s Jobs Plan

Mary believes Wisconsin schools should be among the best in the nation—and she knows that making historic cuts isn’t the way to do it. She’ll work every day to strengthen our public education system, from K-12 to our technical colleges and university system.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

Susan believes South Dakota schools should be among the best in the nation and making historic cuts isn’t the way to do it. Susan will work every day to strengthen our public education system– from K-12 to our technical colleges and university system.

Wendy Davis’ Campaign Document:

Wendy Davis will build a well-trained workforce of teachers by engineering guaranteed pathways to careers in education and ensure ongoing support by raising teacher pay to be in line with the rest of the country.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

Susan will build a well-trained workforce of educators and ensure ongoing support for them by raising salaries to be on par with the rest of the country.

Wendy Davis’ Campaign Document:

When responsibly invested, economic development funds can help bring new businesses and jobs into the state, promote innovation, and encourage technological advancements. But under the wrong leadership and without accountability, too often they become giveaways to special interests and insiders that drain valuable resources from essential investments like our schools and increase taxes on working Texas families.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document

Susan knows that the best businesses for communities are usually local businesses. When responsibly invested, economic development funds can help create new businesses and jobs, promote innovation, and encourage technological advancements. However, under the wrong leadership and without accountability, too often they become giveaways to special interests, corporations, and insiders that drain valuable resources from essential investments.

Wendy Davis’ Campaign Document:

As Governor, Wendy Davis will:

Promote transparency, accountability, and responsible investment of economic development funds to ensure they actually create jobs, as well as encourage innovation and development that benefits all Texans.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

As governor, Susan will promote transparency, accountability, and responsible investment of economic development funds to ensure they actually create jobs and encourage innovation and development that benefits all South Dakotans. She will establish strong, independent oversight of our incentive funds. Susan will ensure transparency and accountability of tax exemptions.

Mary Burke’s Jobs Plan:

The Walker administration has taken a different approach. Rejecting hundreds of millions of our own federal tax dollars means our money goes to cover health care in other states, and leaves us paying more as a state to cover fewer hard working Wisconsinites. It’s an example of what happens when you put politics ahead of progress. And it’s just wrong.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document

The Daugaard administration has rejected hundreds of millions of our own federal tax dollars, money that is covering healthcare in other states, and leaves us paying more to cover fewer hard-working South Dakotans. It’s an example of what happens when you put politics ahead of progress.

Mary Burke’s Jobs Plan:

Mary will overturn the current administration’s refusal to accept the federal expansion of Medicaid, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer money back home to our state, where it belongs.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

Susan will overturn the current administration’s refusal to accept the federal expansion of Medicaid, bringing over $272 million of our taxpayer money back to South Dakota, while providing 48,000 South Dakotans with access to affordable, preventative health care.

Breitbart News requested a comment from the Wismer campaign but has not received a response.

There have been no reports yet that any other Democratic gubernatorial candidates have plagiarized Wismer’s plagiarization of Burke’s plagiarized plan. But with another 40 days still left until election day, it is still too early to discount the possibility of a third generation of campaign document plagiarization among Democrats this cycle.

It’s getting to the point that a diagram will be needed to connect who swiped which ideas from whom. One also wonders how many incorrect facts are in Wismer’s plan, such as the inaccurate claim about job growth in small business since the Recovery In Name Only began.

Of course, as I’ve pointed out ever since this hit the interwebs, the big issue here is much less about stolen ideas (though it speaks to Burke’s personal character) as it is the quality, or lack thereof, of those ideas. Advocating policies that will chop 120,000 jobs from the state doesn’t qualify under any sane person’s definition of “best practices.”

About those ideas, the Club for Growth observes:

On hearing Friday’s news that Mary Burke’s job-creation plan was plagiarized from other Democrats running for governor, in Delaware, Tennessee, and elsewhere we thought, well…there are think tanks whose business is to share such ideas.

But Burke reacted less calmly, firing the consultant responsible for the cut-and-paste job. Why? For duping her into thinking she had a jobs plan?

More intriguing than Burke snatching ideas that may be interchangeable among Democrats is her apparently scant familiarity with what she is proposing. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel quoted her saying “This is my plan on how to drive Wisconsin’s economy forward,” later adding that she had made it “the centerpiece” of her campaign—begging the question of why she wouldn’t recognize material that wasn’t her own. The lingering impression is that the content doesn’t matter, least of all to Burke.

So what does matter in this singularly odd campaign?

A jobs plan outsourced because there had to be one; a resume mixing employment by a company her family owns with periods of prolonged unemployment and activity Burke strains to define. A privileged baby-boomer in a candidacy disconnected from achievement, based solely on Mary Burke not being Scott Walker. That. Is. All.

As Jim Doyle’s Commerce Secretary, effectively his chief job-creation officer, didn’t Burke have ideas of her own? Dare we ask how they worked out? Weekend stories detailed more plagiarism that couldn’t have involved the fired consultant. Has Burke no agenda she can safely reveal?

If anything about the Democrats’ handpicked nominee seems familiar, seems to resonate with current realities in America, it’s the apparent detachment from the necessities of governing. A vaporous, unfocused figure glimpsed occasionally through swirling mists, the anti-Walker, nothing more.

Rep. Dean Knudson (R-Hudson) points out:

Indeed much of Burke’s plan was copied, but not just from other campaigns. Burke also plagiarized copyrighted material. Her jobs plan, “Invest for Success”, directly copied material from “Manufacturing’s Secret Shift”, a study copyrighted in 2011 by Accenture, one of the world’s largest consulting firms.

Take a look at these two passages, the first from Accenture, the second Burke’s.

“Companies are beginning to realize that having offshored much of their manufacturing and supply operations away from their demand locations, they hurt their ability to meet their customers’ expectations…”

“But today, many companies are beginning to realize that moving their manufacturing and supply operations overseas has hurt their ability to serve their customers.”

This is sometimes referred to as mosaic plagiarism, the splicing of key phrases with only minor changes within the same sentence structure and meaning. A Harvard grad like Burke might know this. The rest of us can Google “Harvard mosaic plagiarism.” That Burke plagiarized copyrighted material is beyond doubt, but there is more.

Mary Burke might “take the time to read the whole” Accenture study she was plagiarizing. It might help her understand why her proposals for Wisconsin are so misguided. Accenture asked manufacturers to identify the most important factors in selecting locations for their operations. Respondents ranked as most important these factors: labor costs, proximity to the customer, skills of workforce, taxes, transportation costs, and government regulations.

Wisconsin must be more competitive in attracting and keeping manufacturing in our state. We need to improve the skills of our workers, reduce taxes and streamline regulations. Mary Burke’s mistake is much bigger than plagiarism. Burke is advocating failed liberal ideas that would move us in the wrong direction on labor costs, taxes and regulations.
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Presty the DJ for Sept. 29

September 29, 2014

Music
The number eight song today in 1958:

Today in 1967, the Beatles mixed “I Am the Walrus,” which combined three songs John Lennon had been writing. The song includes the sounds of a radio going up and down the dial, ending at a BBC presentation of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Lennon had read that a teacher at his primary school was having his students analyze Beatles lyrics, Lennon reportedly added one nonsensical verse, although arguably none of the verses make much sense:

The number 33 single today in 1973 …

… 32 slots behind number one:

(more…)
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