Not at all Baffling

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Last weekend, the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams played an NFL football game. With four seconds to go in the game, and the Rams in possession and down by ten, they went for—and made—a field goal. No time left, and the Rams lose by seven. Had they gone for a touchdown (not a pipe dream, the line of scrimmage was the 49ers’ 20 yard line) and made that, they would have lost by three (or two had they then chosen a two-point conversion). Fail on the touchdown try, and they’d have lost by those ten. Some folks thought the Rams’ decision was “baffling.”

But maybe losing by seven points was all they needed.

By game start, the betting spread on the game had settled at the 49ers winning by 7 points or 7.5 points, depending on the betting parlor. (Lots of parlors don’t like gambling ties, and that half-point in the spread eliminates those.) By losing by 7 instead of by 10, they beat the spread, and the field goal was a surer thing than going for the touchdown. The parlors paid holders of the correct side of the 7.5 point spread, and they refunded all bets on the 7 point spread (one reason parlors don’t like ties).

The Rams coach, Sean McVay, has a different take on his decision. Before the field goal’s prior play, he intended that prior play simply to get them into field goal range, and with time on the clock, hit the field goal, recover an ensuing onside kick, and go for the tie or win. In the realization, though, the down and in (in-cut) ran longer on the field and on the clock than expected so there wasn’t time left–those four seconds–to hit the field goal, get the onside kick, and…. At that point, he simply decided to stick with the field goal. He says he was unaware of the betting line [bowlegs in the original]:

Apparently, (Rams V.P. of communications) Artis (Twyman) told me there’s a lot of people in Vegas pissed off about that decision. I clearly was not aware of that stuff[.]

The first-linked article went on at some length about the spread and the field goal, but it missed the larger point: this is the impact of allowing gambling on professional sports, even if McVay, on the sidelines, wasn’t aware of the betting line. The mere discussion of the betting implications demonstrates the vulnerability.

I’ll Virtue Signal…

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…but no fair holding me to that.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she is “fearful that any day” planes filled with illegal immigrants will be flown into the city.

Never mind that the Progressive-Democratic Party mayor is proud to tout her city as a sanctuary for illegal aliens.

But don’t you dare hold her to her proudly given word by sending, you know, actual illegal aliens, who volunteer for the trip, to her city. Bass says that doing so is evil and just an effort to destabilize cities.

Never mind that what LA has received in the way of transported volunteer illegal aliens in their aggregate are what the cities and towns along our southern border get inundated with every few days.

More Witness Intimidation?

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Now Hunter Biden is suing the IRS and referencing one of its whistleblowers ostensibly for illegally disclosing private tax matters to the public. Never mind that what was revealed was matters relating the DoJ’s naked interference into investigations of Offspring Biden’s tax peccadillos.

But wait.

Biden’s lawyers suit documents appear[] to misquote IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, and those lawyers alter[ed] the facts regarding testimony from an FBI official about the Hunter Biden investigation [brackets in the original].

During an interview that aired Aug. 1, 2023, on Fox News, “Mr Shapley alleged that FBI General Counsel, Jason Jones ‘was given a letter the Sunday before [his July 17 deposition before the House Oversight Committee] from DOJ basically telling him not to talk,'” the lawsuit states.
The entire quote from Shapley on Fox News‘ America’s Newsroom is: “For example, the FBI SSA that testified for the House Ways and Means Committee, he was given a letter the Sunday before from DOJ basically telling him not to talk. And I know that he could have confirmed additional material facts on this investigation.”

And his lawyers are lying about the facts of the case. Lying, not making mistaken claims: these are highly talented and heavily trained lawyers and words are their stock in trade. They knew what they wrote in their complaint, they knew what they were going to write when they formed the thoughts, and they know what they’ve written after the fact.

The former agent [whom The New York Post identified as Joe Gordon] testified to the Oversight Committee on July 17 that the FBI “asked us to, quote, decline to respond to questions seeking nonpublic information likely covered by one or more components of executive privilege or other significantly—or other significant confidentiality interests…we intend to abide by and follow the Department’s guidance and expectations.”

This just seems like another method for intimidating the witnesses involved in the Joe Biden & Son potential criminal activities.

Ransom

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That’s what President Joe Biden (D) paid for five Americans kidnapped by Iran—$6 billion worth of ransom. Here’s Biden’s disingenuous (at best) claim:

Today [18 Sep 2023], five innocent Americans who were imprisoned in Iran are finally coming home…after enduring years of agony, uncertainty, and suffering[.]

Translation: Today, the United States government aided and abetted a criminal entity in the pursuance of its crimes by rewarding Iran for its crime of kidnapping.

Paying this ransom has just put a price tag on all Americans traveling overseas, and especially in the Middle East. Worse, that price has gone sky high: Biden has set the reserve price at $1.2 billion per American.

Biden’s dishonest rationalization, through a carefully anonymous senior administration official, for paying the Iranian ransom:

The alternative is these Americans never come home.

Never mind that lots of prior administrations—not just the immediately prior Trump administration—had brought kidnapped Americans home from a variety of criminal enterprises, not only Iran, without paying any ransom.

That’s not all. In addition to upping the incentive for kidnapping and raising the ransom requirement, Biden has personally funded further Iranian terrorist and terrorist-supporting activities for Iran, to the tune of $6 billion that Iran didn’t have last Sunday.

Cowardice in DoE

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Recall that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tried a cross-country trip in her electric vehicle convoy and that, along the way on a hot and humid Georgia day, a staffer driving a gasoline-powered vehicle blocked off an EV charging station so that when the rest of Granholm’s group arrived, one of the EVs in her convoy would have a place to recharge. Police were called over the behavior by a separate EV driver who needed a charge and had a small baby in the car.

Last Tuesday, Granholm was called to testify before the House Science and Technology Committee about that incident among other items. Responding to Congressman Scott Franklin’s (R, FL) question about the incident, Granholm said,

Let me just say, I have a fantastic young staff, just fantastic. It was poor judgment on the part of the team.

Fair enough, openly acknowledging the error like that.

But when pressed by Franklin,

Granholm also sidestepped blame during the back-and-forth with Franklin on Thursday, saying that it was not her that was “saving the spot.”

But whose error, again? Isn’t she the one in charge? Wasn’t her fantastic young staffer only acting within the department culture and associated imperatives that she has consciously developed during her tenure?

This is the arrogance of Government above all, and the MFWIC of DoE above all of that. Not her fault; she’s the one in charge, she’s not one of the worker bees who, you know, actually do things.