Fish Fear Me

That Time Of Year

With the kickoff to the NFL season now less than two weeks away, it's time to once again prepare for the fantasy football draft. For the first time in this league's 23-year history we have consistent draft positions instead of selecting randomly via playing cards every other round. That means a strategy for the first four or six rounds is much more practical to work on ahead of time.

Because we also kept the "snake" method of draft order, I have the following picks overall through the first six rounds: 8, 13, 28, 33, 48, 53.  There are eight more rounds after that, but the top six are the most critical.

Now comes the fun part, weaving together my guesses about who will likely be available at each of those picks and what that means for me. Do I take a running back first? What about running backs with the first two picks? If I do that though, all of the elite QBs will surely be gone by my third round pick at #28 overall. Does that matter though? 

You get the point. My buddy Mark lurks here and is also in this league, so I probably won't be posting further here on my pre-draft strategy. If you are interested though, and/or have suggestions or tips, shoot me an email and I'll let you know what's going on. Not you, Mark.  :)

Hmmm

Okay, I hadn't factored this into my Bradley Manning assessment yesterday:

Pfc. Bradley Manning may want to live as a woman, but the young man sentenced to prison this week for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret government documents will face a difficult — if not impossible — task of beginning to switch his gender behind bars.

Manning, 25, announced through his lawyer on TODAY Thursday that he intends to request hormone therapy while at Fort Leavenworth prison. 

"I am Chelsea Manning. I am female," the Army private wrote in a statement read on TODAY Thursday. 

Now that DADT is history and gay servicemembers can serve openly, the next looming battle will be around transsexualism in the military and to what extent the military must accommodate it.

The services will fight to keep transsexualism as a reason to exclude people from service, but I'm not sure that Secretary of Defense Hagel will support them. Ditto for Obama. I'm also not sure how the issue relates to regulations that the DoD is free to change on its own and what may be dictated by statute, which in normal administrations means Congress must get involved.

In any case, get ready for the lawsuits around allowing transsexuals in the military to openly serve and around getting the military to pay for Manning's treatments while incarcerated, and eventually treatments for any other transsexuals serving in the military.

Did Syria Just Cross The Red Line?

Syrian rebels are claiming that regime forces used chemical weapons along with conventional ones in attacks on rebel held areas of the Damascus suburbs early this morning. The Syrian government emphatically denies the charge.

Reuters reported estimates from Syrian activists that more than 200 were killed on Wednesday after rockets hit an area in the Damascus suburbs. Syrian state television has denied any use of poison gas by the Assad government. Another group claimed nearly 500 were killed. The Syrian National Coalition put the death toll at more than 600, according to AFP. 

There are a substantial number of videos and pictures that appear to show dozens and dozens of bodies without visible wounds. If the claims of a chemical attack are a hoax it is a pretty elaborate one. Assuming some number of Syrians have died from chemical weapons, the question now is who did it?

The Assad regime is the obvious primary suspect, but there are several things that don't seem to make much sense. The first is that they have been accused of this before by the rebels and a UN investigation team arrived just a few days ago to look into that. Would they really launch a chemical attack with the UN right there? That would be one hell of a slap to the face, one that even Russia and China might not sustain in the Security Council. That seems too crazy for even Assad and company.

Second, this is too big of an incident to be a test of Obama's "red line." This would be boldly stepping over it and daring the Obama administration to use US military power against his regime.  Again, that seems too crazy.

Third, this is too little of an incident to be worth the risk. Using chemical weapons would have to be a measure of desperation or one where some large strategic gain would make it all worth it. I don't see either here.

It's also possible that the attack actually originated on the rebel side. There have been claims that al Qaeda related groups within the rebel camps have captured or made sarin gas. It's possible that this mornings attack somehow accidentally released a rebel supply of chemical weapons.

And we can't count out a deliberate release by some group within the rebels in order to frame the Assad regime and bring the US and other Western countries into the war. That concept is revolting to us, but al Qaeda is no stranger to murdering Muslims. They wouldn't hesitate to martyr hundreds if it means getting the rest of the world to whack Assad and his troops.

An AP report today seems to show there is no desire within the Obama administration or the US military to get directly involved in the conflict, but that may change if the scope of the incident becomes larger and public opinion shifts.

Anybody up for another war in the Middle East?

Almost Drowning In Space

I completely missed this when it happened last month:

The Italian astronaut who nearly drowned in his helmet during a spacewalk last month is sharing more details about the terrifying experience, revealing how he felt all alone and frantically tried to come up with a plan to save himself.

Luca Parmitano wrote in his online blog, posted Tuesday, that he could no longer see as the water sloshed around in his helmet outside the International Space Station.

Check out that blog post. Parmitano did a great job under extreme stress.

The article mentions they still don't know what went wrong with the American-made space suit so all space walks using those suits have been suspended. There's no mention in the story, but I'm guessing they haven't been able to get the suit back to Earth to examine it yet. 

Quite the story.

Off By Five

My prediction of a 30 year sentence for Bradley Manning was off by five years:

A military judge on Wednesday morning sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Manning, 25, was convicted last month of multiple charges, including violations of the Espionage Act for copying and disseminating the documents while serving as an intelligence analyst at a forward operating base in Iraq. He faced up to 90 years in prison.

The article goes on to say that Manning must serve 8 years before he is eligible for parole. 

I suspect that might as well be 800 years. As I've noted before, Manning does not strike me as the type who can handle prison, as in Leavenworth type prison. He could barely handle the brig at Ft. Meade. His handlers will have to mind their Ps and Qs for awhile until things settle down, but at some point in the not so distant future they will begin to make sure that Manning serves hard, hard time. Eventually, when they've tormented him enough to use his story to scare the hell out of every enlistee for the next 50 years, they'll snap him like a twig and turn their back while he kills himself.

Sorry for the brutal assessment, and I don't applaud it even though I think Manning deserves prison time for what he did. I just think that's the likely final chapter to this sorry story.

Egypt On Double Secret Probation

O, what a tangled web we weave...

In the latest example of its poorly understood Egypt policy, the Obama administration has decided to temporarily suspend the disbursement of most direct military aid, the delivery of weapons to the Egyptian military, and some forms of economic aid to the Egyptian government while it conducts a broad review of the relationship. The administration won’t publicly acknowledge all aspects of the aid suspension and maintains its rhetorical line that no official coup determination has been made, but behind the scenes, extensive measures to treat the military takeover of Egypt last month as a coup are being implemented on a temporary basis.

If the Obama administration's Egypt policy is poorly understood it's because it is so poorly conceived. And, if the above is correct, so willfully deceitful. Does anybody take anything at face value from this administration anymore?

But two administration officials told The Daily Beast that administration lawyers decided it was best to observe the law restricting military aid on a temporary basis, as if there had been a coup designation, while at the same time deciding that the law did not require a public announcement on whether a coup took place.

Both parties in Washington are getting Egypt horribly wrong right now. Maybe even disastrously wrong. We should be urging restraint on the part of the Egyptian security forces, but at the same time we should be strongly condemning the Muslim Brotherhood attacks on those same security forces and on the Egyptian Copts.  

There are no good options in Egypt, but backing the military there right now is the least bad. The Brotherhood democracy experiment is over, for now at least, and it is up to the Egyptians themselves to determine to what extent, if any, the Muslim Brotherhood will be allowed to participate in the political process. The Obama administration and Congress have to accept whatever the Egyptians decide if they want to retain any influence at all in Egypt, let alone start to repair the damage from the last two years. 

This is the time for straight talk and realism on Egypt. Obama needs to get with leading Democrats and Republicans and knock some sense into them(McCain and Graham in particular). Then he needs to get Congress to change the law in order to end this ridiculous charade that it wasn't coup, yet still allow the current military aid to go forward. 

In other words, it's time for Obama to step up and exercise some leadership. 

Hahahaha...sorry, I lost my head there for a second.

I Take Full Responsibility

Last week, in a momentary lapse of reason, I foolishly said to someone that we had seen the last of heat waves for the summer. Like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil, my words bounced and echoed through the karma of Gaia and resulted in this:

The mid-80s aren't so bad, but they aren't the mild 70s that we've been blessed with since July's heat wave. Given those mild temps and the fact that we were only about a month away from our average first frost, I thought I was safe.

I deeply apologize.

Riddle Me This

So, the Vikings starting offense put in a fairly dismal effort on Friday night. Left tackle Matt Kalil got things off by choosing to imitate a statue on the very first play, resulting in a sack on QB Christian Ponder. In five series Ponder went 5-12, 53 yards and two sacks. Buffalo's blitzing kept them pretty confused the first half.

There's no need to panic, of course. It's just preseason and with AP off the field it's a very different offense. It would be nice to start to see Ponder connecting though. Not all of his problems were because of the blitz. 

Speaking of Buffalo's blitz, I'm not getting Leslie Frazier's logic here:

They were still at work on their own playbook this week more than they were gearing up for the Bills, coach Leslie Frazier said. That made some of what happened at Ralph Wilson Stadium, particularly early in the game, look worse than it actually was.

"It's preseason. They have an option to do whatever they want to do," Frazier said. "We didn't spend a lot of time in Mankato preparing to play Buffalo. ... In this game, we took a different approach."

Yeah, not preparing for your opponent is a pretty different approach.

I get focusing more on your own team's issues at this point, but how do you evaluate players or the status of your offense if you don't even prepare for something as fundamental as the other guys blitzing the hell out of you? Not to mention that it seems like a good way to get your starting QB hurt before the season even starts. 

I don't know, that just seems bizarre to me. The result was a first half that was pretty much a CF for the offense by anyone's standards. I'm just glad nobody got seriously hurt in all of the confusion. If anyone wants to stick up for Frazier here I'm willing to listen.

The Scofflaw President

Not all of these are major impact deadlines, but they are written into the boondoggle that had to be passed before we could see what was in it:

As of May 31, 2013, when the CRS analysis was completed, the White House had yet to meet 9 of 12 deadlines from the first year after the Affordable Care Act was enacted. It failed to meet 22 of 53 deadlines in the second year; another 8 became moot after Congress did not appropriate funds to complete the assigned tasks. In year three, the administration missed 10 out of 17 deadlines. That’s a total of 41 out of 82 deadlines missed.

If you exclude the 9 deadlines that became moot because Congress never appropriated the funds to meet them, the Obama administration missed 41 out of 73 deadlines, or 56 percent.

Are we even a nation of laws anymore? It's not just Obamacare, there are a whole host of major issues out there where both the letter and the spirit of the law seem to have been shattered. 

Just last week the Attorney General of the United States decided that his department would deceive federal courts and not enforce certain drug laws with mandatory sentences because the Obama administration simply decided they didn't like them. Getting rid of some mandatory sentences makes sense to me, but the proper way to enact such a policy is through Congress and changing the law. Doing it by executive fiat blows us way past reasonable prosecutorial discretion and into banana republic territory.  

How about unilaterally implementing much of the Dream Act even though it couldn't pass Congress? Or illegal IRS activities. Or the growing sense that the NSA has gone completely rogue in the name of national security. If some sort of immigration reform passes Congress, does anyone believe Obama will actually enforce the parts of the law that he doesn't like?

How about just ignoring the coup in Egypt by simply deciding not to call it a coup? I don't think we should cut off aid to Egypt, but the solution for that is to call on Congress to change the law, not to simply ignore what the law demands.

There's plenty of talk these days about what Obama's legacy will be, but even the disaster of Obamacare will pale in comparison to the damage he is doing to the rule of law in this country. And when the rule of law collapses, all sorts of other institutions in civil society lose their foundation. 

Obama's real legacy may just be a nation of people who ask, "If the President of the United States doesn't give a shit about the law, why should I?"

Take That, Ronnie!

The day is far from over, but here's my nomination for retarded headline of the day:

Defying Reagan, Obama Returns Solar Panels To The White House

Yeah, I guess Obama told him! It doesn't get much bolder than defying a man who has been dead for nine years.

In the mythology of the so-called reality-based community, the evil Reagan tore out those solar panels because he couldn't stand the thought of fossil fuels not being burned and he wanted the whole world to choke on the fumes and...Evil! Reagan was evil, evil, evil!

The truth is much simpler, as the New York Times reported on August 24, 1986:

The Reagan Administration says it will not replace a solar water-heating system that was installed in the White House in the Carter Administration.

The panels of the system had been dismantled to fix the roof underneath. Dale A. Petroskey, a White House spokesman, said Friday, ''Putting them back up would be very unwise, based on cost.''

Not that the truth matters to people who are completely blinded by their own hate.