Truly awesome Ted Talk.  Simon Sinek outlines his “Golden Circle” thesis of behavior… basically he answers the question: how do leaders inspire action?

During last week’s loss to the Patriots, raucous Eagles’ fans erupted into a “fire Andy Reid” chant.  Though Reid denied hearing anything after the game, the message could not have been any louder: Andy has lost the fans.

ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio said today on 97.5 The Fanatic that in his decades reporting on all 32 NFL teams and cities he had never witnessed fans chanting to fire the sitting head coach.  But with a 4-7 record and at least as many personality issues as when TO graced Philadelphia with his presence, it is hard to see how Andy Reid can get the fans back.

Not that he necessarily has to.  Eagles president Joe Banner and owner Jeffrey Lurie have been steadfast in their commitment to Reid.  They brought him in, they brought the Eagles from the doldrums of the NFC to the “Gold Standard” of the NFL (obviously debatable, but believable at the time.)  They did it together and I can only imagine that they see themselves as an unbreakable trio.  Reid is, by far, the most successful coach in Eagles’ history.  He has kept the Eagles at the top of the NFC east for 13 seasons now, including 122 wins, five trips to the NFC finals, one Superbowl appearance, and seven NFC east titles.

But he hasn’t won when it counted.  He has never won a championship and despite pre-season predictions of a banner (no pun intended) year for a team packed with so much star-studded talent, the Eagles are a joke.  How much is Reid’s fault?  Probably a significant amount.  He is the head coach.  He hired Juan Castillo and approved the ill-fated “wide-9.”  Reid brought in DeSean Jackson, an obnoxious primadonna who has no business being a professional anything.

Then again, one could have made similar comments about Pittsburg’s Bill Cower… until he went out and won a Superbowl.  And when he finally left the Steelers’ head job, he bequeathed a team well-positioned to win now.  The system was in place and allowed Mike Tomlin to come in and continue the franchise’s storied success.  The same thing happened to Mike Shanahan in Denver, where he and quarterback John Elway were dogged by years of failing to bring home a Lombardi Trophy… until they finally broke through and won.  So the point is that greatness and success rarely happen overnight (just ask Larry Brown, who is still looking for his first NBA championship despite bringing a record six different teams to the playoffs.)

With Reid, though, there is more to the story.  His stubbornness, in particular.  Reid has always insisted on favoring the passing game over his running game, no matter how talented that RB is.  This year, Reid has been blessed with one of the most talented runners in the game today (and I certainly don’t remember anyone predicting Shady McCoy as an elite back a year ago), and yet Reid still insists on his tried-and-failed strategy of abandoning the run at all costs.  It is an odd conundrum for a coach who was an offensive lineman during his playing days (which were several hundred pounds ago).  My understanding is that lineman much prefer running plays because it allows them to push forward with a deliberate goal, as opposed to defensively protecting a passer from all possible attacks for upwards of 10 seconds.

On top of that criticism (which is getting old in Philly, fans and analysts have made this point for nearly a decade), Reid has never been able to rebuild a defense which was always the cornerstone of the Eagles’ success.  After former Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson lost his battle with cancer a few years ago, the Eagle’s defense has basically died as well.  The torrid and tenacious play of Brian Dawkins, Bobby Taylor and Troy Vincent in the secondary and Hugh Douglas and Hollis Tomas on the D-line kept the Eagles competitive though all those years of an impotent offense (remember the singeing pain of James Trash and Todd Pinkston pretending to be pro football players for a few years??)

And I haven’t even mentioned the total lack of a linebacker since Jeremiah Trotter left.  Well now I did.  The “Ax-man” was the last even decent linebacker the Eagles have had.  The team – led by Reid’s strategic and personnel decisions (remember he was originally head coach AND general manager) – preferred to rely on talented defensive backs to shut down the other team in red zone situations.  Now, they are among the league’s worst in red zone defense (and offense for that matter) even though they supposedly had signed the best defensive back in the league with Nnamdi Asomugha and that other guy with two last names that nobody even talks about anymore.

But what do I know?  Cliff Satell has not played in the NFL and certainly has never coached any team.  And though I owe Andy Reid a debt of gratitude for providing so many incredible moments throughout my childhood, gratitude is all he will get.  His era is coming to a close and hopefully Reid can go to another team and put the pieces together in another way and win.  But more important is the need for Philadelphia to get a fresh football start while we still have the chance.  We have the talent, but the results just are not there.  Something has to give, and all these years after a gutsy drafting of Donovan McNabb, Reid’s goodwill is about up in the City of Brotherly Love.

Cliff Satell attended Duke University where he was a recognized student leader of several political clubs. Satell also played varsity baseball, wrestling and soccer in high school and club baseball at Duke.

Thanks to Stumbleupon, I came across this mix of classical songs (like Carmina Burana, Fur Elise, Beethoven, etc) remixed by a guy in Vermont.  Not a bad change of pace from most of what’s out there.

As a graduate of Duke, I’m not a fan of the legal system in general, and particularly the “criminal” side of things, including traffic citations.  Here is a story, folks:

After getting into an accident, my old car had to be replaced.  The accident was not major, but it did a lot of damage to my car because of the location of the contact.  Police showed up and eventually both cars were towed away (the other car was a large SUV that suffered minor damage to the rear bumper.)  The other driver and I both gave insurance info to the police, they filled their report, the scene was cleaned up and we went on about our business.

The car was pristine behind the windshield. Unfortunately this part of the car is important too.

It was one of those things… stuff happens.  Very annoying, very stupid, but it happens.  I was not hurt at all, nor was the other driver.  The damage could be replaced (in theory).  But since my car was behind the other car, I knew that as far as insurance was concerned, I would probably be held responsible.  However, I had not been drunk, was not talking on my phone, was not speeding or weaving in and out of lanes.  We were going no more than 25 miles per hour at most.  The police were relatively friendly and professional.

So imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks later I open my mail to find a careless driving citation.  Considering none of the police officers made any mention of careless driving, or asked me any questions relating to possible careless acts, I was shocked.  There had been no mention of a violation, or even the question of a violation, let alone an arrest or anything.  The ticket was written days after the accident and mailed to me.  Strange, to say the least.

Of course, I wasn’t going to pay the fine and accept the three points on my license since I had not violated the law.  And my car was the one that had to be totally replaced (which was a month-long nightmare), not that that is relevant to culpability.  My family and friends thought I should just pay the stupid fine and be done with it.  But I was truly appalled by the way these cops acted as if they were deities.

They can send anyone a citation or ticket and claim you broke the law.  Doesn’t much matter what the evidence is, assuming there even IS any evidence.  The system is screwed up – all about ego and power and very rarely about justice, or the public’s best interest.  I did not learn all that many things at Duke, but Duke is damn good at teaching you that.

Anyway, the first hearing date was continued by the state because the cop couldn’t show up that day.  It was rescheduled to this week.  I researched the careless driving law in the state.  And guess what?  I was unable to find a single case where similar facts had led to a careless or reckless driving citation.  The law was crystal clear that there had to be “more than a mere lack of care” on the part of the driver; to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt one must display such lack of care as to make a reasonable person think the safety of people might be in jeopardy (paraphrasing).  So I was confident.

When I showed up to the hearing – which was a good 45 minutes away and I was unfamiliar with the area – the receptionist greeted me with a frosty, “Name?”  ”Cliff Satell,” I responded.  She looked down, contorted her face, glanced at the clock on the wall and deadpanned: “You’re late.”  Yes, Madame, that was true. I was about 10 minutes late.  And my experience with these hearings are that they never begin within 20 minutes of the scheduled time.  But, she was right.  She gave me a flippant gesture that reminded me of a doctor’s office receptionist warning that, “Well ok, you can sit down, but we’ll see if he sees you!”  Fine.  I sat down and waited.

A short time later, the rather morose looking cop came out and called a few names, including Cliff Satell.  I went to a back hallway to talk to him and without even making eye contact with me, the officer – cliché mustache/waistline and all – informed me that this offense carries 3 points on my license.  So, he was graciously offering me a deal that would include zero points, but I’d plead guilty to the “same set of facts.”  Not entirely sure what he meant by that, I made a comment to the effect of, “Ok, but I don’t think I was careless.”  He retorted that since my cellphone went off right before the crash, that I was automatically guilty.  Yeah, not exactly, coppo.

One artist's rendition of a cop. This may or may not be the one who gave me the ticket, but the resemblance is uncanny.

We went back and forth for a minute before he ended it by saying, “Fine, we’ll have the hearing.”  I’m sure it was meant to be intimidating, as if I’d made a huge mistake.  I was still pretty sure I would be fine.

So I had to go into the courtroom and basically conduct a trial.  First, the cop went up to the stand, was sworn in by the judge and testified.  I was allowed to cross-examine.  The cop did not like my questions, which were surprisingly good, in my humble opinion.  My Mock Trial days at Duke surely helped.  All closed questions; succinct and clear; made him say “yes” or “correct” to virtually every question.  I was also polite and not defensive, surprising even myself.

Then, I testified.  I explained what had happened and why the law was on my side.  The cop attempted to cross-examine me.  He clearly was not a lawyer.  His first question was something like, “So am I to believe that this is everybody’s fault but yours?”  My answer: “Absolutely not.”  He moved on.

His questions were mostly just establishing the basic facts, like that I was driving, that no one else was in my car, and that we were driving southbound on the road.  Ok… cool.  Then he went into some lecture type of mode.  He even said directly at one point, “You see, the point I’m trying to get across to you is…”.  Now, obviously, you can’t do that.  So I just let him finish his paragraph-long soliloquy and the simply asked the judge if that was a question.  It had not been.  The judge told him to move on and stick to questions.

Finally, I got down and the judge allowed me to go right into closing arguments.  I didn’t even sit down.  So I wrapped up a 2 minute argument about my research, what the law requires for guilt, and the fact that the cop had failed to meet his burden.  The cop just somberly repeated the facts for his closing.  And he never stood up when addressing the judge.  HUGE no-no, I don’t care who you are or what court you’re in.

The judge then proceeded to ramble quite passionately for 10 minutes about his experience as a cop for 18 years and a judge for 20.  He had heard defenses like mine all the time, he said.  And, “research is all well and good, and it’s great that you did it, but” what they don’t put in the searchable records are the cases that don’t get appealed.  All the regular simple cases that are dispensed with the first hearing, either through a deal with the cop or a guilty verdict (or, I suppose, a not guilty verdict).

Then he smiled, leaned over his desk and loudly asked us what the only issue that mattered was.  It was something neither of us (me or the cop) had even mentioned, he bellowed.  He waved his hands indignantly as if he could hardly comprehend the absurdity that was a cop and a defendant not being able to read his mind.  Since he was looking at me mostly, I stood up and softly said, “culpability?”  No.  Ah, my bad and I sat down.  Kinda awkward.  Turns out it was the following distance.  Was I driving too closely to the car in front of me that I hit?  The issue wasn’t a distraction like a cell phone ringing; there are a million distractions every drive and rarely do the lead to hitting things… because you’re not supposed to follow so closely that you cannot react to a distraction and not hit something.  So since I hit somebody in front of me and I had been distracted slightly, he implied there was a prima facie case that I was following to closely, and therefore, being careless, and, therefore, guilty.

BUT, he reminded everyone that I had to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  And since there was no third-party witness, and the cop had not seen the accident himself (and there was absolutely nothing in the record to this point that I had been following to closely… a point I would have contended anyway), the judge said I had to be held:

NOT GUILTY.

Now, I normally would not reprint the words of a crazy person on my own personal blog.  There are many crazy people in the world, and I think most people would have no problem including the ever-so-lovely Ann Coulter in that revered class. If you haven’t heard, she doesn’t like liberals or democrats.  She hates anyone whose name rhymes with “Tin-Tin”  and she probably gets more hate mail than Rosie O’Donnell.

But, every now and again, Ann Coulter finds a way to offend every single reader while still including some valid logic and solid political points.  She has the courage (or arrogance) to identify the blatant racism and demonizing from left-wing leaders who need their black voting bloc to remain in tact and victimized in order for them to stay in power.  God forbid a black person evaluates the world for himself and decides to become a conservative.  Or, dare I say, a Republican!

Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Michael Steele, Clifford Huxtable (and the guy who played him) and now Herman Cain are all being labeled turncoats, traitors, “whitey” and worse.  Every day liberals wake up and call Republicans racist for opposing Obama.  Even Morgan Freeman, whom I otherwise love, gets in on the absurdity that is now commonplace: anyone who doesn’t want Obama to succeed (in pursuing his failed policies which would hurt the country and waste money) must be a racist because they cannot stand seeing such a wise and wonderful black man in the White House.  Why else would anyone dare oppose Saint Barack?  But that story line doesn’t work so well if the Republicans nominate a Republican (…or a woman for Vice President, or have a black leader of the Republican National Committee).

Anyway, just read her words, she does a better job.  And that doesn’t happen very often.  Because, again, she’s crazy.

Why Our Blacks are Better than Their Blacks

Ann Coulter

By spending the last three decades leveling accusations of “racism” every 10 seconds, liberals have made it virtually impossible for Americans to recognize real racism — for example, the racism constantly spewed at black conservatives.

In the last year alone, a short list of the things liberals have labeled “racist” include:

• Being a Republican;
• Joining the tea party;
• The word “the” (Donald Trump’s statement that he has a “great relationship with the blacks”);
• References to Barack Obama’s playing basketball (Trump again);
• Using Obama’s middle name;
• Scott Brown’s pickup truck;
• Opposing Obamacare;
• Opposing Obama’s stimulus bill;
• Opposing Obama’s jobs bill.

The surge in conservative support for Herman Cain confuses the Democrats’ story line, which is that Republicans hate Obama because he’s black.

Cain is twice as black as Obama. (Possible Obama campaign slogan: “Too Black!”)

This is why the liberal website Politico ran with a story on Cain that had everything — a powerful black man, a Republican presidential candidate, the hint of sexuality — except facts.

All we learned was: About a decade ago, as many as two anonymous women accused Cain of making unspecified “inappropriate” remarks and one “inappropriate” gesture in the workplace. (We had more than that on John Edwards’ mistress a year into the media’s refusal to report that story.)

If the details helped liberals, we’d have the details.

To have been accused of sexual harassment in the 1990s is like having been accused of molesting children at preschools in the 1980s or accused of being a witch in Massachusetts in the 1690s.

In the 1990s, one plaintiff won a $50 million jury verdict against Wal-Mart on the grounds that a “hostile environment” was created by her supervisor’s yelling at both male and female employees. In another case, a plaintiff won a $250,000 award for sexual harassment based on her complaint that a male colleague had reached for a pastry saying, “Nothing I like more in the morning than sticky buns,” while “wriggl(ing)” his eyebrows.

It got so crazy that a 6-year-old boy was suspended from class for a day for kissing a classmate on the cheek, and a Goya painting had to be removed from a Penn State classroom because a professor complained that it constituted sexual harassment.

With no standard other than the subjective offense taken by the accuser, absolutely anyone could be called a witch, i.e., a sexual harasser. So it’s striking that the only two conservative public figures accused of being witches both happened to be conservative blacks: Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain.

Liberals go straight to ugly racist stereotypes when attacking conservative blacks, calling them oversexualized, stupid and/or incompetent.

The late, lamented, white liberal reporter Mary McGrory called Justice Antonin Scalia “a brilliant and compelling extremist” — while dismissing Thomas as “Scalia’s puppet.”

More recently, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid called Scalia “one smart guy.” In the next breath, he proclaimed Thomas “an embarrassment to the Supreme Court,” adding, “I think that his opinions are poorly written.”

When Bush made Condoleezza Rice the first black female secretary of state, terror swept through the Democratic Party. What if people began to notice and ask questions: “Who’s that black woman always standing with George Bush?” Never mind! He’s probably arresting her.

In addition to an explosion of racist cartoons portraying Rice as Aunt Jemima, Butterfly McQueen from “Gone With the Wind,” a fat-lipped Bush parrot and other racist clichés, allegedly respectable liberals promptly called her stupid and incompetent.

Joseph Cirincione, then with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Rice “doesn’t bring much experience or knowledge of the world to this position.” (Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose experience for the job consisted of being married to an impeached, disbarred former president.)

Democratic consultant Bob Beckel — who ran Walter Mondale’s 1984 campaign so competently that Mondale lost 49 states — said of Rice, “I don’t think she’s up to the job.”

When Michael Steele ran for senator in Maryland in 2006, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee dug up a copy of his credit report — something done to no other Republican candidate. He was depicted in black face with huge red lips by liberal blogger Steve Gilliard. Oreo cookies were rolled down the aisle at Steele during a gubernatorial debate in 2002.

Trafficking in racist imagery is consequence-free for liberals because they have ruined charges of “racism” with their own overuse of the term. By now, any accusation of racism has the feel of a Big Foot sighting.

It’s a neat trick, rather as if the Nazis had called everything “genocide” right before launching the Holocaust, and then admonished resisters not to “play the genocide card.”

Liberals step on black conservatives early and often because they can’t have black children thinking, “Hmmm, the Republicans have some good ideas; maybe I’m a Republican.”

The basic setup is:

Step 1: Spend 30 years telling blacks that Republicans are racist and viciously attacking all black Republicans.

Step 2: Laugh maliciously at Republicans for not having more blacks in their party.

It is beyond insane that Herman Cain would have considered running for president if he had the tiniest skeleton in his closet. To be an out-of-the-closet black Republican, you had better be a combination rocket scientist/Baptist preacher. Which, as it happens, Cain is.

Meanwhile, MSNBC is cutting into its prime-time programming to announce updates in the fact-free hit on Cain. That’s not because anyone there thinks he’ll be the nominee. Everyone knows it’s going to be Mitt Romney.

But liberals are determined to make sure that, six months from now, everyone has forgotten Herman Cain so they can go back to claiming Republicans oppose Obama because they hate blacks.

COPYRIGHT 2011 ANN COULTER

Cliff Satell attended Duke University and led the Duke College Republicans as Vice-Chair.

I was perusing the web today and ran into this ridiculous video about bank fees.  Apparently it’s made by a group of video animators from  Taiwan’s New Media Animation news crew.  They’ve done other ones on Steve Jobs and other pop culture events.

This one goes on about how Bank’s are seeking to recoup all the fee revenue the industry was forced to abandon under the new Dodd-Frank Financial “Reform” Bill. Cutting banks’ fees on debit card transactions almost in half, Dodd-Frank basically ensured that banks would have to find other ways make up that revenue. Cause they like revenue and they don’t like it when it is taken away. Ergo, new debit card fees starting in 2012. $5 per month, or $60 per year just for the privileged of using their esteemed checking service. But if you need help at the desk from a Bank of American employee (if you have BoA like me), you can expect to pay another fee (close to $10) if you’re signed up for online banking. So, fun stuff.

I thought it was worth re-posting given it’s absurd accents, surprisingly over-the-top graphics and Saturday-morning-cartoon feel.  Not to mention the “Big Bank Fat Cat” that looks like a ninja version of Abe Lincoln. Enjoy:

Might have to start hunting

One perk of my ‘home-office’ is the view from the large double windows.  It is a picture perfect way to gauge the weather at any time of year.  Well, right now, as the leaves really begin to turn into a magnificent blend of colors, deer are everywhere.  Deer have been cropping up on more and more roads the last few weeks and they like to creep around yards, too.  Just walking by Merion the other day I snapped this:

Deer Invasion

But I’m not on here to complain, just share the excellent target they make when they innocently stumble downrange.  So to speak.  But thank God for video games, because someone thought of exactly the game to prepare someone for such a perfect view, the Oregon Trail.  Educational to some, amusingly captivating to others, Oregon Trail formed a significant part of my generation’s childhood, undoubtedly.  What with all the ford crossings, amo and bison buying and oxen hunting, you can learn anything from a video game these days.  Maybe I should start training Baxter on it, he’s getting to that level.

But back to the point.  Someone was over recently and complained about the dearth of good targets from my window.  They had brought their tools and wanted to take full use of the fortuitous positioning of the window.  But animals sometimes stay away from this patch since there really isn’t anything that spectacular enough to make them even meander over this way, let alone stay long.  There is the occasional squirrel, maybe a large bird… or even Baxter, who has fallen out of second story windows.  Specifically this window:

Nature comes to me: Baxter has fallen - or jumped - from this vantage point.

We eventually had to put a two liter bottle of something near the basketball net and just aim for that.  And for the record, we were shooting very un-powerful BB guns.  Not exactly what you take on a deer hunt.  I did not shoot at the deer, but it would not have hurt them at all.  At best it would chase them away so they stop eating all the plants on the street.

But there was plenty of target available yesterday, any good hunter would have been proud.  My visitor would not have complained seeing these two deer come along, first an adult female and then a young doe.  Both of them are right in range on either side of that thick tree, which I believe is technically on the Township’s property.

Deer in Headlights

Anyway, lots of trees with lots of very bright leaves all falling makes for a cool view, too.  Just watching and listening reminds me of the old Oregon Trail video game where you endured all of nature’s wrath while hunting, fishing and trekking through the wilderness in a caravan (the horse-drawn kind, not the minivan.)  I just need to put in a river and get some gangrene and it’ll be just like the 90′s again.  Or you can just go to this site and play the Facebook version of Oregon Trail.

Snow won’t be too long behind…

In light of the demise of athletic competence in Philadelphia of late, here is a great column from Philly Bar Stool this week:

Save Us Undefeated Flyers, You’re Our Only Hope

MLK rolls over in his grave

 By JUSTIN ROBINETTE and CLIFF SATELL

Amanda Knox after hearing the verdict Photo: AP.

Though I had heard ramblings about Amanda Knox and the kangaroo court she was being tried in over in Perugia, Italy, I was not following the case closely and did not know most of the facts.  It is very easy to hear about such an accusation and immediately assume guilt.  With such a high-profile and important case, how could the police possibly go this far without being pretty damn sure Amanda was the right person?  Well, it happens.  She was released from jail after four of what must have been unbearable years alone and scared.

Her life was interrupted.  Her family was thousands of miles away, not to mention her homeland and hometown.  She couldn’t finish college.  She was ridiculed and demonized throughout the press.  She was victimized by an over-zealous prosecutor and convicted in the Italian tabloids.  Her case exposed the insindiary nature of Italian courts and caused the eagerly watching world to stop and think a minute about all those criminals and their supposed presumption of innocence.

As I know all to well, the “press” doesn’t care about the truth.  It doesn’t care about the story, even.  And it sure doesn’t care about the subject, the person behind the story.  The press cares about ego.  It cares about inflating themselves by destroying others.  It recognizes – perhaps astutely – that conflict is in their business interest.  The more salacious the better because that’s how you get attention in today’s ADD world.  But it’s not right.  It’s shameful.  The type of self-righteous blithering that goes on daily at some of the world’s supposedly “prestigious” news outlets is maddening and getting worse.  The media has lost their sense of purpose and decided that gut-reaction and maximum pain is going to be their strategy.

And while the Italian justice system eventually exonerated Amanda and her boyfriend and freed them, they never should have been locked up like animals in the first place.  If anyone had been doing their job, if anyone had looked seriously at the evidence, if there were standards in place, Amanda would have graduated years ago and moved on with her life as a normal young adult in Seattle, where she grew up.  But that was taken away from her and for the rest of her life, she will be known as “Foxy Knoxy,” the girl who went on trial in Italy.

This column does a nice job analyzing the police mistakes in Knox’s case.  And I applaud the system for finally waking up and doing the right thing.  But “collective enforcement” of community rules clearly has it’s limits.  Of course there is a need to track down and punish those responsible for horrific crimes, as in this case.  Perhaps the biggest tragedy in the Knox case is that Meredith Kertcher – the brutally murdered victim – has not gotten justice and is often forgotten in the web of corruption and incompetence that seeps from Perugia.