The LA Lakers are now officially idiots; what about Cavs and #LBJ?

Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol won't be trading places.
Blame either Laker greed or Laker stupidity.

A week ago, I said the Los Angeles Lakers needed to run, not walk, on the  rumored trade in the air between them and the Cleveland Cavaliers, which would have swapped disgruntled Lakers center Pau Gasol and currently disgrunted and temporarily suspended Cavaliers (and former Lakers) center Andrew Bynum.

The Lakers then could have dumped Bynum, rather than playing him, before most of his contract guaranteed, and reaped dual benefits. 

Come again?

Yep, and here's why on the first benefit:

By trading Gasol in a package for Bynum and then waiving Bynum, the injury-ravaged Lakers could save more than $20 million in salary and luxury taxes, which could help them maintain financial flexibility heading into the next few summers. A Gasol-Bynum trade would have to include at least one other player to make the deal work under league rules, and perhaps other assets from Cleveland.

But, tis not to be.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have changed focus and offered Bynum plus draft choices to the Chicago Bulls for Luol Deng.

Why? In part, reportedly, the Lakers got greedy, asking for Dion Waiters as part of the mix, as well as possibly at least some of the draft choice swapping Cleveland did with the Bulls.

True that shooting guards, even young ones on the rise, may be a dime a dozen and that this is part of where the Lakers have need, at the same time. It was still an overplay. It was asking too much. And, the need probably could have been halfway been met elsewhere.

It also ignored the Lakers' other pressing need besides lux tax relief — rebuilding, and doing so on the fly.

The Lakers, further out of the last Western Conference playoff spot than the Cavs are in the East, threw away a gold-plated chance to tank, and tank hard.

Per previous blogging I've done ever since news of Kobe Bryant's downtime with a broken leg, this gives the Lakers the perfect, justifiable reason to start tanking and get in the Riggin' for Wiggins sweepstakes to nail down a shot at Kansas freshman star Andrew Wiggins.

Given that Steve Nash is likely out for the years and the Lakers have no true point guards, and that no Gasol eliminates a playmaker of sorts as well as a scorer and rebounder, it would be easy to accumulate plenty of lottery Ping-Pong balls this way.

Why the Lakers and GM Mitch Kupchak would want to wait, I don't know. By the time Kobe is back, they'll be deep in the Western Conference dust with no chance of coming back, anyway. Even without this trade and dump.

And, there's another good reason:

The Lakers have been luxury-tax payers for six straight seasons. While the luxury-tax savings this season -- and the ability to avoid the repeater tax penalty, which kicks in when a team is a taxpayer in four of five years, starting with the 2011-12 season -- would undoubtedly help the Lakers' long-term flexibility, the franchise's history and organizational culture make that a difficult prospect to consider.

So, the Lakers are the New York Yankees of the NBA, in essence. But, they had a chance to get smarter than the second generation of Steinbrenners. And got greedy, or were in self-denial about their playoff chances, or both. Either way, they got about as dumb as Hank and Hal Steinbrenner, after all.

Beyond that, Laker fans need to face reality even more than the front office. It's time to rebuild. This offers at least a puncher's chance of doing that relatively quickly and painlessly.

That said, I don't totally get the Cavs, either. Deng is a free agent after this season. I don't know what chance they have of signing him but, per this ESPN trade analysis story, it won't be cheap. And, while they may make the Eastern Conference playoffs now, unless they get to the No. 6 spot or higher, they'll be obliterated by either the Miami Heat or the Indiana Pacers in the first round.

On the other hand, somebody on Lake Erie may still believe they have a chance of getting LeBron James back if he opts out of his contract. Not resigning Deng would give the Cavs extra flexibility.

I'm nowhere near an NBA salary cap expert, but, it did get me to wondering. That said, that assumes that LBJ wouldn't simply accept a new five-year max contract from Miami.

Brian Schweiter — great but flawed #Hillary opponent?

Brian Schweitzer: Can he overcome his guns & greens flaws?
Getty Images photo via Slate

In the face of the potential landslide 2016 Democratic presidential nomination of the yet-unannounced Hillary Clinton, two potential opponents have been mentioned — financial populist Elizabeth Warren, now Massachusetts' junior U.S. Senator, and Brian Schweitzer, mountain West populist former Montana governor.

While I don't agree with Schweitzer on everything, or am even close to agreement in some areas, this Slate interview points out why I hope he runs and why, if I don't need to vote in a contested Green primary, I would consider pulling his lever in a Democratic primary.  

But, please note what I said. Consider, but not guarantee. While he's got a lot of positives, he's got some definite, and large, negatives, which I note later on in this piece.

He's definitely not going to be inside the bipartisan foreign policy box. That's the biggest plus.

First, he knows, and admits the truth of, why Iran dislikes and distrusts us — the anti-Mossadegh coup:

So we’ve had a bad history with Iran because of what we did in 1953, replacing an elected official with a dictator. 

Bingo.

And, he background that with his knowledge of the Middle East, having lived there and being a good Arabic speaker:

The Iranian deal makes sense. We linked up with the Saudis before and after World War II. Look, unlike virtually every member of Congress, I have a pretty good firsthand knowledge of the Middle East. The day after I got out of graduate school, after I defended my thesis, I went straight to Libya. I was there for a year; I was in Saudi Arabia for seven. I learned to speak Arabic. I can explain to you, in a way that almost no one else in the country can, the difference between a Sunni and a Shia. I can explain to you who and what the Wahhabis are in Saudi Arabia. I can talk to you about why we, the United States, initially got involved with the Saudi royal family, what we got out of the deal. I can explain to you why we knew Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We knew, because we supplied chemical weapons to him so he could poison the Iranians. The Iranians are Persian, not Arab; they haven’t got along for several thousand years.

Hillary Clinton just isn't going to tell us that. And, as of now, I have no idea of Elizabeth Warren's stance on foreign policy issues.

Schweitzer goes on to criticize our still being in Iraq, bluntly saying the Taliban is in the Stone Age and of no threat to us.

That leads to the next issue.

He's not inside the bipartisan snooping policy box, either:

If Edward Snowden is a criminal, then so are a lot of people that are working within the CIA and the NSA who have been spying illegally on American citizens. They ought to grant Snowden clemency.

No way Hillary Clinton is saying that.

Meanwhile, he admits Obamacare isn't working well, probably won't work well, and says why: payoffs to lobbying groups, including those tied to former Montana Senator Max Baucus. That said, he says that he can make it work, as well as diagnosing those problems:

I will give you not just how this thing should have been written, but what it will get to be, because what we have right now will not work. No. 1: You pass national health insurance laws that say you can’t discriminate against women, charge them higher premiums than men of the same age, you can’t discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, you can’t have annual caps. Then you allow insurance companies to compete wherever they want, in any state. Boom. The second thing is, you say to every citizen in the United States, now you have the option to buy into Medicare.

We just need to act like capitalists, not socialists. We need to negotiate to buy medicine. Now, what’s interesting is that the detractors hear that and say—this is like socialized medicine. No! Are you kidding me? France, the United Kingdom: They negotiate like capitalists to buy their medicine. The United States? We say to the pharmaceutical companies, how much would you like this for? We continue to pay them three times what they sell the same medicines for all over the world. Right after the bill was passed, big pharma was running ads for all the Democrats who voted for this thing. Even in Montana. What’d they get out of it? They now have a lot more money.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Keep the insurance coverage guarantees of Obamacare, do actual negotiations for drug prices, and make "Medicare for all" an option, at least.

As to why we got where we are on Obamacare, he's blunt about Dear Leader himself, too:

He’s not unlike Woodrow Wilson, who was the last really big Democratic corporatist.

Ouch. That said, he does have a somewhat more nuanced overall assessment:

In part what a president is able to do is elevate, through rhetoric, issues that need to be elevated. I’d give him an A in that area. His ability to communicate, to deliver the message about the values that set us aside as Americans, is very good. I just don’t think his administration has been very good at doing things, about organizing things. It’s not just about the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. As governor I had four years to work with the Bush administration and four years to work with the Obama administration, and they’re just not good at getting things done.

I think he's far from alone in the "competency" assessment, a think that Obamiacs who admit their man is a neoliberal still fight tooth and claw. The "competency" issue is, as some conservatives note, at the heart of liberal governance. Because neolibs want to surrender more of that to the private sector, "competency" is even more important for the slice of governance it wants kept in the public sector.

Also, the Wilson comparison quote shows he's a definite student of history in general. And, that he wouldn't be part of the bipartisan economic policy establishment, either.

That said, is Brian Schweitzer perfect, or nearly so, as a presidential candidate?

Probably not.

The main disagreement I have with him? He's a squish on environmentalism. When he was governor, he wanted to start a massive coal gasification program with eastern Montana's coal. First, that takes a lot of water — water that eastern Montana doesn't have. Second, it's air polluting. Third, the waste rock detritus is ground polluting. Fourth, it's carbon intensive. I don't know if he's ever apologized for that or not, but it would make me leery.  (And, while he may hoo-haw for Montana hunters, Montana farmers like the Jon Tester he semi-derides wouldn't like those water shortages, either.)

And, this isn't the only area where he's problematic, or worse, on environmental issues. He has advocated breaking federal law, namely the Endangered Species Act. Considering that elected officials are all supposed to swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States, he arguably broke his gubernatorial oath of office.

Even more leery? In his gubernatorial re-election run, especially, he touted his NRA membership and affinity. Now, the NRA of pre-Obama days wasn't quite as nutbar as today's, but it was already nutbar enough that this was after the time that Poppy Bush had resigned his membership. I'd specifically want his take on the need (or lack, he might say, for what I know) of additional gun control laws, and actual stricter enforcement of current ones (not just the NRA lip service mantra) post Newtown.

In short, his greens and guns stances leave me thinking that, overall, he might be an upgraded version of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. I mean, the skeet shooting trick is about exactly like what Manchin did.

Hence, I said consider, but not guarantee, on voting for him in a Democratic primary. And, while he'd be a breath of fresh air, unless he changes his position on guns and green issues, I'd still vote capital-G Green in the general election if Schweitzer somehow got the Democratic nod.

I vote 10 in #Cooperstown, uphold principle on #roiding, keep "small Hall"

Here's the 2014 Hall of Fame ballot.

And, in a few brief words, I'll show how I can vote 10 quality players in, not vote in pretty obvious and unrepentant users of performance-enhancing drugs, and still avoid ESPN's Big Hall drooling.

Per previous discussion, most recently updated here, I'm not willing to let the most likely roiders, like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, in without some contrition, not just by them, but lots of others. It's not just the contrition, it's to get info from them on how they did it so we can improve current testing. It's to figure out, like a Roids+ similar to ERA+ and OPS+, approximately how much to adjust their records.

Call me back when that happens.

Meanwhile, the 10? Going by last year's voting rank, for the non-newcomers, followed by them:

1.  Craig Biggio.

2. Jeff Bagwell.

3. Tim Raines.

4. Curt Schilling.

5. Allen Trammell.

6. Jeff Kent.

7. Greg Maddux.

8. Tom Glavine.

9. Mike Mussina.

10. Frank Thomas. 

I've blogged more than once about Jack Morris and his anti-sabermetric career. About Larry Walker and how a non-Coors career would have dinged his counting stats as well as WAR, etc, plus injuries and so forth. About Edgar Martinez in a similar vein, discussing the injuries and games missed, etc., for a DH. Lee Smith falls under my generally being underwhelmed by closers.

Here's my in-depth wrap of last year's candidates, and another of this year's.

Mike Piazza? After reading recently, via CBS, about what Jeff Pearlman quotes him, and quotes other players as saying about him, while I'm not quite in Murray Chass territory, I want to think a bit more.

To ESPN-type fluffers who don't take my stance on roiding? You can easily add Bonds and Clemens by having Kent and, say, Schilling, wait a year. You can then deal with lesser roiders after that.

And, at the same time, this still would put a brake on your fluffing. That's even as Jim Caple flings out yet one more paean to Morris. Good fucking doorknob, give it a rest. Caple should stick to his "Off Base" columns, and by the amount of HOF fluffing ESPN's other writers do, they should become Republican presidential pollsters.

Or, take them out and shoot them. Shoot Jayson Stark twice for being a flip-flopping hypocrite (no, not a repentant mind-changer) on this issue. 

That also said, when ESPN's current staff has people voting for Fred McGriff ahead of Mussina, one realizes that a sports writer is just a lucky man with a big opinion who found a big place to land.

And, Michael Knisley has some very interesting thoughts about some "Name" players who might not stay above 5 percent this year.

Fjetland fires salvo in Texas Dems' Senate race

Saw this in my email today:

There are 5 of us running in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate –
1)     A doctor from Odessa, who may have a website now

2)     A woman local lawyer from El Paso, a city that has never elected a statewide candidate

3)     A dentist from Dallas who spent $4.5 million for a Congress seat in 2012 and came in 4th – at a cost of over $1,800 per vote,

4)     A woman named Keesha from Houston who has campaigned to IMPEACH President Obama-- and actually won the CD22 Democratic party in 2012! She is a LaRouche party member, a fringe group (Imagine the embarrassment to the party if she even gets into a runoff in this race!)

5)     And Michael Fjetland, the only other candidate from Houston with a following  who has previously run for Congress at a cost of less than 50 cents a vote (vs. $1,800) -- who is an international lawyer and global entrepreneur who has negotiated in over 50 countries the past 30 years, has been a TV Terrorism Analyst since the first Gulf War of 1991 (and on/after 9/11), , who founded a green/security company that has grown 500% since its beginning in 2008 despite the worst economy in 70 years – and has an actual written economic plan to make America No. 1 again in this inescapable global economy entitled “Agenda for American Greatness.”  

Just one or two problems, Michael.

Of you five in the race, you're possibly almost as conservative as David Alameel, the Dallas dentist. (I'm not counting Kesha [one "e"] Rogers.) Maxey Scherr, the El Paso attorney, is more of a real Democrat than you, you who ran as a Republican in a previous race. As for why you switched? Am I to infer you didn't think John Cornyn was that bad before 2008?

Oh, and what's with the dig at El Paso? By party affiliation, it's about as liberal as Austin. (And, with more labor/blue collar Democrats there, there's arguably more better Dems in El Paso than Austin.)

Second, what's with specifically identifying the two female candidates, but only them, by sex?

You're not making me excited with language and angles like this, either. In fact, you're pretty much shooting yourself in the foot.

If the War on Poverty failed, here's why

The New York Times has a good piece saying that, in actuality, it succeeded, in at least driving poverty rates down a bit, and surely, in keeping them from expanding. It adds that, to the degree the War on Poverty is considered a failure by some, that's because the right wing has long attempted to strangle the child in its crib.

But, could it have done better?

Yes, certainly in reducing housing segregation, one of LBJ's biggest goals in the last couple of years of his administration.

ProPublica documented a year ago, since LBJ signed into law the 1968 Fair Housing Act, how one of its requirements, not distributing block grant money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to communities who did not appear to have plans to use said grants in a non-discriminatory manner, was gutted by Tricky Dick Nixon. HUD Secretary George Romney continued to push to fulfill the letter and spirit of the act, though, and for his pains, got fired.

Since then, ProPublica noted, both GOP and Democratic HUD administrations have largely only given lip service to this.

Results? Continued segregation in public school districts, variable access to urban and suburban amenities, etc.

That said, and to give a kudo to the Obama Administration, in the past year, things ticked up a bit, ProPublica says in a follow-up.

Do read the original main piece, though. LBJ knew just what was at stake when he pushed so hard for this. So did his opponents.

New Year's resolutions: It's OK for "you" to fail

Great piece here from the New York Times' "The Stone" series of online op-eds devoted to matters philosophical, "In Praise of Failure."

The piece isn't primarily about failure and New Year's resolutions, to which I will get in a minute. It's about accepting, even embracing, the possibility of failure in general. And, it's NOT about embracing failure from some New Age "positivity" point of view, either.

Costica Bradatan has three main points:

1. Failure allows us to see our existence in its naked condition. 

(F)ailure also possesses a distinct therapeutic function. ... We insatiably devour other species, denude the planet of life and fill it with trash. Failure could be a medicine against such arrogance and hubris, as it often brings humility. 

2. Our capacity to fail is essential to what we are. 

Ultimately, our capacity to fail makes us what we are; our being as essentially failing creatures lies at the root of any aspiration. 

3. We are designed to fail.

No matter how successful our lives turn out to be, how smart, industrious or diligent we are, the same end awaits us all: “biological failure.” ...

A better model (for how to face failure) may be Ingmar Bergman’s Antonius Block, from the film “The Seventh Seal.”   

Read the whole thing, though, not just that summary.

And,  now, relating this to New Year's resolutions, to a newspaper column I recently did, and why "you" is in scare quotes.

Why do so many of us make New Year's resolutions only to break them? In fact, why do so many of us continue to make them, based on the likelihood that we broke similar ones in the past and expect ourselves to break the new ones, often quickly, in the future?

It’s pretty simple, if you will: That may not be “all of us” making those resolutions.

Modern philosophy of mind and psychology talk about things like “subselves.” In the Christian Bible, Paul said, “What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Sounds like a bit of the same thing. Another hallowed Christian leader, Saint Augustine, famously prayed, "Lord, grant me chastity, but not yet."

Some part of ourselves, often, really doesn’t want to fulfill these regulations. I think that’s even more the case if they’re phrased in a “negative” way, like promising to “stop” or “quit” something rather than “start” something. 

Some part of us does want to quit, but another part doesn’t. And, so, we are of two minds. Or three, when we start feeling guilty about actual failure, or potential failure before it happens. Or four, if we’re conditioned to somehow, perversely, like feeling guilty, or at least anxious.

Beyond that, nature abhors a vacuum. Including a mental one.

So, promising to quit a bad habit is often doomed to failure if we don’t also promise to replace it with a good one. Part of the trick is finding the right good habit related to that.

Or, if not to directly replace it, to reward yourself in some other way. And that’s because, besides nature abhorring a mental vacuum, our inner selves don’t like being scolded, lectured, or otherwise made to have no fun. And, to the degree the "subselves" idea has truth behind it, some part of our selves is a young child, ready to rebel against such lecturing and scolding.

That said, why do so many of us, or "us," make these resolutions in the first place?

In part, some portion of our self believes we do legitimately need to make a change. On things like quitting drinking or smoking, or other health-related matters, that belief may be absolutely correct.

But, there may be another part of ourselves that is afraid of failing to achieve that change.  And, here’s where another phrase, that isn’t necessarily a cliché, comes into play — “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Sometimes, below the level of full consciousness, we move almost inexorably toward some result we expect to happen, or even want to happen, but don’t want to consciously discuss.

Related to this is the idea that free will, or "free will," since we're still in the Early Bronze Age on cognitive science, is, as a part of consciousness being "embodied cognition," a social phenomenon. In other words, "free will" is influenced by our interactions with our environment. 

That said, not all New Year’s resolutions are ones that are necessary. 

Maybe we’ve decided to resolve to be kinder to friends, neighbors, coworkers or other family members. We’re not going to have a heart attack or cirrhosis of the liver if we don’t follow through on that one, though.

But, the resolution itself may not be fully our own idea. Maybe it’s something we think we “should” do. Or, more to the point, it’s something that somebody else thinks we “should” do.

In this case, some inner part of our selves drags our feet, passively resists, or otherwise decides not to go along with the program. And soon enough, the resolution fails.

So, to sum up?

The way I see it is that, if you want a resolution to succeed, it should be one you want to do, that you can fully get yourself behind, that you can reward yourself for achieving, and where you can not only change something by keeping the resolution but replace it with something better.

And, if not?

To riff off what Hawkeye Pierce said on an episode of M*A*S*H many a year ago, make a resolution to not make more resolutions!