The 2024-25 Maple Leafs

I have no idea why the Leafs think that the deep drop pass on the rush during a powerplay works. I’ll bet the very first time they did it, 50 years ago, it probably confused the other team for a few seconds. Rielly doesn’t even bother to try to hide the secret plan any more. As soon as he reaches the blue line, he starts looking for someone waiting, hiding behind the net.

Their play right now without Matthews confirms something Bill James pointed out about baseball years ago. People in general have an exaggerated sense of the impact of star players. It appears that the second tier of players on the Leafs are better than they think and, given more ice time and less focus on the “star”, the team performs better.

Helps to have good consistent goal-keeping too.

Nylander, leading the team in goals, in only +1. It’s not hard to see why. He can be brilliant. And then he can fall down with the puck when he’s the last man back or gives it away at center while his wingers are rushing forward. Sometimes he skates by an opponent with the puck and just kind of waves at him.  He often picks up the puck near the net in an excellent scoring position but chooses instead to skate off somewhere.

Max Domi is lost somewhere. I wonder if there’s something going on off the ice that is demanding his attention.

Rielly has always been over-rated. It looks like Berube is starting to realize it.  Watch him: most of the time he either passes the puck to someone who is standing still, or to someone who is about to be checked.

On the plus side, both Woll and Stolarz are performing very well in goal, in the top five of most departments except for wins– which is good (it means the Leafs are able to split goal-tending duties without taking a hit in quality).

Marner is a phenomenal play-maker.  Please don’t continue to make him play with Holmgren.

They are in first place at the moment, in a tough division (up against Boston, Florida, and Tamp Bay, among others).  But nobody cares about first place, of course.

Elon Musk Cops No Subsidy

Apparently Elon Musk is on-board with getting rid of the $7500 federal tax break for electric vehicles. (Some Tesla models have some Chinese components and don’t qualify, so it won’t affect him as much as it will GM and Ford).

Why? Musk wants to get rid of ALL government subsidies for all enterprises. Hey, I’m on board with that! The oil industry gets $20 billion a year. Consumers will have to pick up the slack at the pump. The movie industry gets massive state subsidies as localities compete against each other to get Jennifer Lopez and Leonardo Di Caprio to come visit. Best of all, no more tax-payer subsidized sports stadiums. And no more states luring GM and Ford to build their plants in union-unfriendly Kentucky or Tennessee. Detroit will be happy.

I will believe it when I see it. Most likely, they will only try to remove subsidies for industries that benefit the consumer or the environment, but I’m open-minded.

I also hear that the Trump administration wants credit card interest rates dropped to no more than 10%. That might make up for Walmart having to increase their prices because of tariffs on Chinese goods (70% of Walmart’s products come from China).

Gosh, it’s going to be interesting.


The only time in history in which the working classes dramatically improved their economic status was the period after World War II up to the Ronald Reagan era (1980). Since then, under both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, the working classes’ income level and prosperity has been stagnant, while the investor class has seen lavish increases in wealth.

It is a mass hallucination to believe working class people improved their lot from 2016-2020, but inflation did eat away their income from 2020-2024.

The Usual Dubious Diligence

There is a case in Indiana of a man charged with the murder of two very young girls five years ago.  [The NYTimes Story].  

And More.

Liberty German and Abigail Williams went for a hike in a wooded park February 12, 2013.  They did not return.  A day later, their bodies were found at the bottom of a nearby ravine.

We’ve learned a lot over the years about how the police work.

We know that the police absolutely hate it when they don’t solve a crime that provokes a strong emotional response in the community, as in this case: two teenaged girls.

We know that once the police have landed on a possible suspect, they tend to have tunnel vision about any other possible suspects.  Because… well, they have a suspect.  They anticipate accolades from the credulous public: they caught the guy.  They nailed him.  Justice will prevail.

Hang him!

It’s not always clear whether the police are fully aware of how thin the evidence might be but don’t care, or whether they really believe that someone they have arrested and interrogated and pressured and incarcerated and threatened with a long, long prison sentence or even death, is guilty.  I think probably both.  It is clear that once the police have fixated on a suspect, they will come to believe that he is the only one who could have and did commit the crime.

In the case of Richard Allen, all the hallmarks of a wrongful conviction are there.  The evidence is extremely thin: no fingerprints, no blood stains, no objects that can be linked to the crime found in his house or car, no witnesses.  Just a grainy photo from a video on one of the girls’ cell phones.

There is a composite drawing the police issued with a wanted poster and a hefty reward offered for tips.

“It came through because of information that we received from persons that were in the area,” around the time the girls went missing, he said. “Either we did not make contact for the first time, or they were afraid to come forward.”

Sgt. Riley said the sketch artist had started about a month ago to piece together the descriptions, frequently consulting the witness or witnesses to refine the drawing. Investigators also interview people offering descriptions to make sure they are not just trying to get someone into trouble, he said.

The police had not disclosed where they got the composite drawing from.  It is not reassuring when the police insist that they took steps to make sure the source “was not just trying to get someone into trouble”. 

If I told you I didn’t take any money out of your wallet, what would you think?  You would think, why would I think you would think I took money out of your wallet?  

We don’t know if it was someone who might have seen the possible suspect in the area on the day the girls disappeared, or if it was given by someone who knew a man whom she thought was “creepy” and might have done it.  

Mr. Allen was held in solitary confinement.  After an extended period, he began to volunteer a confession to the murders.  We know how that works.

The only other evidence appears to be a bullet found near the crime scene that the police allege could have come from a gun owned by Mr. Allen:

Five years later, on Oct. 13, 2022, Mr. Allen was interviewed again and his home was searched. Investigators found a gun at Mr. Allen’s home that they determined to have at one point held the unspent round that was found near the victims’ bodies, the affidavit said.

Now, think about that.  Did they find the gun’s DNA on the bullet?  They can’t be serious.  Would a jury believe this?  This is ridiculous.

Think about the fact that the police would be extremely disappointed if it turned out that Richard Allen was not a very good suspect.  Well, he isn’t a very good suspect.  Not from the evidence they have presented.

Juries trust the police.  If the police say they have good reason to believe Richard Allen murdered Liberty German and Abigail Williams, well then, that’s good enough for me.  So what if they don’t have much evidence: they probably have stuff they can’t show us because of all those stupid laws protecting the rights of suspects.  You see it on TV all the time.

When you were in high school, did you know any really bright kids?  Did any of them become police officers?  I didn’t think so.

 

 

 

 

MAGA Facts

“Real investment in factories has more than doubled since President Biden took office; for the electronics industry, it has nearly quadrupled since the beginning of 2022. By comparison, Mr. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers tried to show that his 2017 tax cut spurred investment but instead found an effect of zero…”  NY Times

Facts don’t seem to register with voters. I ask myself, what do Trump voters think he will do about inflation– what policy or legislation or executive action? They don’t know but they know that when he announces it, it will sound simple and it will annoy people who spend their lives studying economies. And is he really going to round up “25 million” illegal immigrants? Will even his supporters have the stomach for what that will look like?

But I do look forward to the magic that ends the wars in Gaza and the Ukraine and persuades Iran to abandon it’s nuclear program. Just not holding my breath.

Billy Graham’s Sheepskin

The New York Times, in a piece on evangelicals and Trump, described Billy Graham as “non partisan”.

I responded:

“but he was mostly not a partisan activist”? Are you kidding? Only a fool would have believed that Graham was anything but a life-long Republican. What this article overlooks is that this sheepskin of “non-partisan”, in the face of issues like nuclear war, racism, pollution, poverty, and global warming, is in fact as rabidly partisan as it gets. By not speaking out on those issues, Graham played to Republicans: he provided them a “comfortable pew” from which to hold a studied indifference to issues that had and have a profound effect on all of our lives. It is no surprise to me that he voted for Trump in 2012, the ultimate sell-out. Graham’s primary interest was in the status he received by being invited to the White House, and I was royally embarrassed when even Clinton and Obama acceded to it.