The View from Right Field

North Korea: It’s Harder Than You Think

Donald Trump has attacked Syria with cruise missiles because of its use of chemical weapons (chemical weapons that it supposedly got rid of and agreed not to use).  What happens next, as Bashar al-Assad continues to bomb Syrian cities he doesn’t control, is the question.  The cruise missile attacks were relatively easy.  What happens next is harder – and may be what stopped Barack Obama from doing anything. 

But harder still is North Korea. President Trump has said that, if China won’t help us stop North Korea from getting not only nuclear weapons but also an ICBM capable of hitting the United States, we will do it ourselves.  Now that is hard.

Thoughts on Last Night’s (and This Morning’s) #Cubs Home Opener

I suppose it is appropriate that a World Series game 7 victory that was delayed by a 17-minute rain delay would lead to a World Series banner-raising ceremony that was delayed by a rain delay – though I wouldn’t have minded if the rain delay last night was closer to 17 minutes than the one-hour-56-minute delay that we had.

Without being mean-spirited, who would have known, several years ago when Starlin Castro, Tyler Colvin, and Andrew Cashner were featured as the future of the Cubs, that Andrew Cashner’s biggest contribution was bringing us Anthony Rizzo in a trade?¹ 

Just Asking: Neil Gorsuch and Filibusters of Supreme Court Nominees

There has been more than enough hypocrisy on both sides of the debate regarding the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and the attempted filibuster of it.  Still, I had one question for Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.  If the right to filibuster Supreme Court nominees is such a long-standing tradition, why wasn’t Clarence Thomas filibustered in 1991?  He was only approved 52 to 48.  Of the 48 senators who voted “No,” only two were Republicans.  How could there not have been 41 votes sustain a filibuster of his nomination?

Syria – And Presidential Leadership

Well that was interesting – and different.  The President said Syria crossed a red line, “a lot of lines,” using poison gas to kill over 80 people, and then, the next day (if not the same one), he authorized a cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base.  No waiting for a 100%+ report from a UN commission; no debate at the Security Council ending with a veto by one nation or another; no weighing of the pros and cons for days/weeks on end.  Just: Assad did it.  We attacked him.

So, on one hand, we have a president who tweets, the day after meeting the German chancellor, that “Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”  And on the other hand, when somebody uses poison gas on kids (their own kids), he says lines have been crossed and then actually does something – immediately.

It’s an interesting question:  Which does the world prefer?  The president described above or his predecessor?
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UPDATE (4/8/17 9:30 am):  My answer: George H.W. Bush.

The Mike Pence Rules

Mike Pence is getting a lot of flak for saying, 15 years ago, that he doesn’t dine with women alone (or go to events where alcohol is served unless he goes with his wife).  Many people, most of whom already don’t like Vice President Pence, are aghast.  It’s discrimination; it’s unfair to women; it’s another example of the glass ceiling.

Megan McArdle responded so well that I don’t have much to add, other than to ask:  What about room service?
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UPDATE 4/7/17 9:20 am): Corrected a typo in the first sentence.

The Real Reason School Choice and Vouchers Are Right

The Wall Street Journal wrote about “School Choice Deniers” in yesterday’s paper.¹  The editorial  notes that, while most studies of voucher programs show benefits for the students involved, opponents of the programs focus on those studies which show no benefits or that show voucher students actually doing worse.  Which is, of course, the problem with focusing the argument for vouchers on academic studies of how well students do.  You can always find some study somewhere that will support your argument.

What opponents of vouchers can’t find is a voucher program without a waiting list or a lottery program without more applicants than spots.  Because the best indication of how well voucher programs are doing is not some academic study; it’s the number of parents who sign their kids up.2  Because it is parents who know best what is good for their children. 

The Problem With Facts: We Honestly Do Have Our Own Facts

The Economist’s “Word of the Year” for 2016 was “post-truth.”  Fact-checkers at major media outlets are doing a land office business.  Concern about “fake news” is all the rage.  The answer seems pretty simple.  As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  So the solution to the whole post-truth/fake news problem is to force people to get the facts right.

Except it’s not that simple. Tim Harford, the author of The Undercover Economist and columnist for the Financial Times, wrote an article in FT Weekend last month on “The problem with facts.”  The thing I found most interesting was this section, which is not on how our allegiances, or the “tribes” to which we belong, affect our opinions, but on how our allegiances affect our facts:

How a Small Country Pays for Donald Trump’s Great Mexican Wall

During Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency, he promised he would build a “beautiful” wall on the border between the United States and Mexico and that Mexico would pay for it.  It was one of his guaranteed applause lines.  He never said how he was going to get Mexico to pay for it, or why they would agree to do so, but that didn’t seem to matter.  He was going to build it and they were going to pay for it.

Now that he is president, things are a little trickier, since now he has to build the wall – and he has to get Mexico to pay for it.  One of his first equivocations was that we would pay for it initially, but he would get Mexico to repay us later.  Once again, he didn’t say how he was going to get Mexico to repay us, but that was just details – or something.

#Cubs in 2017: How Do You Approach Baseball Season When Your Bucket List Is Complete?

It’s a question a lot of Cubs fans may have this year – at least those of a certain age.  For younger fans, especially those who have not been schooled in Cubs’ history by their fathers and mothers, while 108 years is a long time, they weren’t there for all that much of it.  Heck, before 2015, the Royals hadn’t won since 1985 (and weren’t in the playoffs until 2014).  The Mets haven’t won since 1986 (which is fine by me), the Tigers since ’84, the Orioles since ’83, and the Pirates since ’79.¹  For fans under 35, there wasn’t that much difference the Cubs’ drought and the drought these teams have.

But for fans of a certain age, there was a difference.  When you’ve gone 60+ years without a World Series, winning is a big deal.²  When there was 1969 (and 1973), 1977 (and 1978), 1984, 1989, 2003³, and 2007-08, you figure that there was always going to be something.  And for 60+ years, there was.  But now, it’s different.  Because, while for a minute, in the bottom of the eighth inning, it seemed like there was going to be something again, all of a sudden⁴, there wasn’t.  All of a sudden, it happened.  It really did happen.