A rundown of the 2014 SOTU and GOP response.

The hour+ 2014 State of the Union address, in ~60 seconds:
America has created 8M jobs since 2009, lowered the unemployment rate to below that of the recession and companies are now moving manufacturing jobs back to the US.  But it's not enough.  So this should be a "Year of Action" where we expand retraining for jobs of the future, lower education costs, expand green energy, support veterans, bring back emergency unemployment income, reform taxes, support a proposal by Senators Harkin and Warner to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 and help push people above the poverty level, and encourage the House to pass immigration reform.  And no, you're not going to turn back the clock on the ACA, so stop wasting time trying to repeal it.

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The 15 minute Republican Party response in ~20 seconds:
We have the same concerns.  We want to focus on the opportunity gap, not the income gap, and we're going to help Americans regain opportunities for retraining, higher education and better jobs by...well, we'll get back to you on the details later this year, but know that we've been pushing for these ideas all this time.

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Commentary on the POTUS' SOTU:
The speech was so long, one might call it Clintonesque, especially with its appeal to populism.  Full of good stuff, but also included the kitchen sink, the dish rack, the sponge, the dish soap and the dish towels.  Without a doubt President Obama knows how to deliver a speech for full effect.

I have my doubts that Congress will be in a cooperative mood, but they did recently pass a budget bill and the House just moved on a farm bill with their backs up against a Jan 31st deadline.  They will most definitely not vote to increase the minimum wage, but immigration reform is very high on everyone's check list of GTD before the 2014 election cycle goes into overdrive.

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Commentary on the Republican Response:
Delivered by Representative (WA-5) Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, it was obvious that the teleprompter was moving too fast for her at times to deliver the speech as she wanted to, as she sped up then slowed down frequently.  It was not a Marco Rubio reach for bottled water scene, but she was definitely uncomfortable at times.

I didn't see the value in using her child with Down's Syndrome as an example of expanding opportunities for everyone; was she saying that the government should have a hand in guaranteeing equal opportunity for employment?  If free markets were left devoid of regulation, they'd almost never hire the disabled let alone accommodate Americans with disabilities, after all.  And if she thinks for a moment that the free market would cover her son's medical needs, she's deluded.

Not to belabor the belabored SF-Seattle feud, but...

Hope you saw this during the game.



When you watch the slowed down 1/4 time replay, you can clearly see a member of the SF team bend down, dip his shoulder, then push it up into Jeremy Lane's helmet, even as everyone else tries to avoid the action.

This is a blatant attempt to injure a Seahawks player, targeting a player's head.

One last thing: Wait for it at 0:27 into this Fox Deportes video.  There's your hug, and how Erin Andrews knew that Sherman was going off on Crabtree.

Not to belabor the Richard Sherman incident, but...

Well, it turns out he wasn't lying.  Everything transpired as he said it did at the end of the game, and Crabtree really was the jerk.  He didn't taunt Crabtree prior to getting pushed in the facemask by Crabtree.  As Sherman said, they were both mic'd up, and you can hear Sherman running up to Crabtree, saying, "Helluva game, helluva game," with hand extended to exchange shakes.  Then, Crabtree reaches out and pushes Sherman away in the facemask.

Sounds exactly like the same behavior and interaction  that Sherman's brother described, had occurred last Summer at Larry Fitzgerald's charity fundraiser, doesn't it?

That's what really pushed Sherman over the edge, when approached for comment by Erin Andrews.

It used to be that "words will never hurt me"; apparently Sherman's critics (and Crabtree) are hurt easily by words.

Grimmspotting.

Walked back and forth between home and the Central Library, but on the way back I thought I'd stop to grab a green eye from Starbucks.  You know the one ... across from Powell's ... I turned around and this guy looked like Sasha Roiz, so I stared a little bit before turning around.  I couldn't get it out of my mind so I turned back and that's when I realized that it was Sasha and David Giuntoli talking.  That was kind of neat.

Was Richard Sherman out of line?

Imagine a young black man, growing up in Compton, graduates with straight-As, gets a scholarship to play football at Stanford.  At Stanford he faces adversity on the football team but sticks it out and switches position, then graduates and gets drafted in the 5th round, with 23 other cornerbacks ahead of him.

Now, tally up his stats since he's entered the NFL (2011) and notice that he's got more interceptions than anyone else in the NFL.

That's Richard Sherman, and dude's got a right to be as loud as he wants to be.  He's earned his credentials to brashly critique the people he faces.  He's not telling some stranger that he thinks they're an idiot or a crappy person, though that's ironically exactly what people are doing to him on Twitter and elsewhere.

Are you really going to tell me, in this day and age of subversive liars who routinely attack people with their  passive-aggressive actions, better?  Dude put up, so that he doesn't have to shut up.

Oh, and this is why he had a beef with Crabtree:

"Sherman has been upset with Crabtree since last summer. Both attended Arizona star receiver Larry Fitzgerald’s charity event. While there, Sherman went to shake Crabtree’s hand, and Crabtree tried to start a fight, according to Sherman’s older brother, Branton. 

“I’m going to make a play and embarrass him,” Richard Sherman vowed that day. 

Sherman does plenty of planning, and his brother is often around to hear about what’s in store. Sherman’s incredible play at the end of the game? He had done something similar last month against the New York Giants, tipping a pass that safety Earl Thomas intercepted to ensure a shutout victory. 

“I did that on purpose, bro,” Richard said afterward. 

“Nah, that was luck,” Branton replied. 

“OK, I’ll do it again some time,” Richard said."

He followed through.

In any case, if you think Erin Andrews is upset at what Richard Sherman said and did, don't worry; she's not upset at all:

“I don’t want this to look like I was upset with him, I was frightened, I felt threatened, we all like Richard Sherman a lot at Fox,” Andrews told For The Win. “At that moment I saw how crazy it was going to blow up, and I wanted to make sure people knew it wasn’t a situation where I’m a victim and he acted like an idiot." 

“I walked in front of an interview that was going on because I knew we were coming on live,” she said. “He looked up, realized it was me and he gave me this giant bear hug because he was so excited … And he hugged me so hard I hit my chin on his pads. It was a raw, passionate, candid moment. That’s how pumped he was.”

Did you get that?  Sherman gave Andrews a big hug.

Sherman is a good guy; brash and loud, but a good guy.  And a great player.  He won't always be a great player -- everyone eventually falls -- but at this moment, he damn well is one of the best defensive backs in the NFL, if not the best.

Defense does matter: Seattle 23 - SF 17

Seattle's defense won the game.

In the waning moments of the NFC Championship, Richard Sherman knocked the ball away from Michael Crabtree's hands, and Malcolm Smith retrieved the ball in the air for the interception, ending all hopes for the 49ers to win.

Now, some have asserted that it was a close enough toss that, had it been slightly higher, Crabtree could have caught it.  Who'd you pick to win that battle?  Sherman, at 6'-3" has a 37" vertical jump (measured prior to being drafted) while Crabtree, at 6'-1" has a vertical jump of 34".

SF had three timeouts left and 30 seconds.  Rather than throw for a TD, Kaepernick could have thrown the sideline to rookie Quinton Patton, who was clear of any defender for 10 yards.  Kaepernick thought that Crabtree had the advantage -- Sherman at the line of scrimmage in man coverage -- but he thought wrong.  The replay showed that Sherman was fully in step with Crabtree all the way.

That -- Fight On! -- Malcolm Smith was in the right place at the right time from his outside linebacker spot means that he knew Kaepernick would try to make that throw.

All that trash-talking from Sherman following the play?  The guy put up, so that he wouldn't have to shut up.  Crabtree on the other hand, didn't win the battle against Sherman.  He says he did win most of the battles (except for the most important pass of the game, of course), but the numbers say otherwise.  Kaepernick passed for just 153 yards, and had his lowest rating of the playoffs, and Crabtree caught just 50% of the passes thrown at him.

In a game where Russell Wilson made a number of mental errors, the defense stepped in and won the game, stopping SF from scoring points in the last 21 minutes of a 60 minute game.  That's a big statement.

Seattle - SF: odds and wishful thinking

Too busy to write much these days, but I came across something so fascinating that I couldn't pass it up.  While looking all around for odds, I noticed that those who pick San Francisco to win in Seattle, do so by at most 4 points; those who pick Seattle to win, vary between 3 and 11 points.  The betting spreads give a 3 ~ 4 point nod to Seattle, with most people believing that Seattle will cover.

No one picks SF to win in a blowout; many people pick Seattle to win in a blowout.  The signal seems to me to be that people are using wishful thinking to project a means for SF to win, while those who predict Seattle to win big are expecting more of the same (see SF @ Seattle the last three years).  Confidence gives people the room to make blowout predictions; low confidence gives people a reason to hedge their prediction by picking a low number -- a prediction at a toss up, really.

In any given game, particularly in a playoff where the best of the best are playing each other, every team has decent enough odds to win, so it's not impossible for SF to win.   But I can't see how SF would win.  Seattle's lone loss in two years at Century Link Field, was a fairly meaningless game against a team -- Arizona -- who had a fighting chance to displace SF's spot in the playoffs.

Seattle 27 - SF 10

Which is to say, I think Seattle wins a Super Bowl this year.

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Added: FWIW, of the four teams today, New England has been flying under the radar almost all season long, with Denver, SF and Seattle all taking turns in the limelight.  They registered a blowout win against Indy in the playoffs, but also blew out the Ravens in Baltimore, the second to last game of the regular season.  So if you pick SF to win in Seattle, wouldn't you pick NE to win in Denver?

December 2013 employment gains too small?

The media across the board has reported disappointment that the BLS unemployment news release showed just 74,000 jobs were created in December 2013.  Should you panic?

Nah.

Hidden behind the story are five things:

1. The previous month's new jobs number was revised upwards from 203,000 to 241,000.  No one talked about that in the media.  If you average out Aug - Nov numbers, the average monthly gain is 213,500.  So don't be surprised when December's data is revised upwards dramatically.
2. ADP's report showed a gain of 238,000 jobs; combine that with the prior three months, and you get a four month average of 214,500 jobs created.  By now, you might see the point that the BLS data for December is likely a huge underestimation.
3. The official unemployment rate sank from 7.0% to 6.7%.  The media's narrative is that this was mostly due to a lower labor participation rate.  The total workforce includes all Americans over the age of 16, with no upper cap.  Each day, approximately 10,000 Americans reach retirement age, which means that as many as 310,000 Americans could have retired and taken social security.  BLS data indicated that in December, 71,000 (not seasonally adjusted) Americans age 65+ had in fact left the workforce.  So while there is a slightly lower labor participation rate, it's worth noting that a lot of Americans of qualified age for retirement still remain in the workforce, and distorts the nature of employment trends for prime-age workers (age 25 - 54).
4. The Central Bank announced a reduction in QE, following their December 18th meeting.  The Fed presidents are in frequent communication with employers within their regions, to maintain a pulse of how their region is doing, which is compiled in the Beige Book.  Here is the last one.  Had the Feds received feedback prior to its December 18th meeting that job growth was suddenly lethargic, they would not have pulled back QE, and instead waited.
5. Since January 2010, the difference between BLS' initial and final estimates has added up to 1.28M jobs.  That is to say, that if all you did was pay attention to the front number reported each month in the media, you would have been led to believe that the US economy had created 1.28M fewer jobs since January 2010, than what was actually created.  Again, let's see what happens in the next two months, as I fully expect this number to increase dramatically.

If you follow most economic projections, 2014 should be a big year in economic growth.  Don't get stuck on December's front data from the BLS.

I did not watch the BCS Championship.

After all, if the BCS wanted more viewers, they wouldn't have agreed to put it on cable.  Cable is dying; prices will never stop going up.

The highest-rated BCS Championship, ever, was Texas - USC.  The moment the game was moved to ESPN, the ratings sank.  That means ad buyers were paying far more for fewer eyeballs than ever before.

And now that ESPN has all but 4 bowl games, there's no point to the bowl season anymore, except to see the final score.  (Apparently FSU beat Auburn, 34-31.)

When the NFL is trying to expand viewership and CBS and Fox are streaming games online, college football is closing content off.

So, I obliged their closed-off garden and didn't watch it, and I didn't care.

Android goes mobile...automobile, that is.

I've seen a handful of 3rd party car stereo manufacturers dip their feet into producing head units featuring Android, but they were never designed to be more than head units, and sometimes are just ports of Android to a head unit with barely any reskinning.  Tonight, Google announced a push to integrate Android into vehicles, which would imply a much deeper and seamless build within a vehicle's CPU and vehicle services: The Open Automotive Alliance.

The members of the alliance: Audi, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Nvidia and of course Google.  No surprise that Toyota is not part of the group -- yet -- considering that they have their own system that makes generous use of Bing Search and Bing Maps.  And I'm sure that others are sitting on the sideline, focused on bringing better Apple integration.  But this points to a major problem which all of these automakers face, which I call Partitioned Choices.

So for instance, there's no way I'll buy a Toyota with its Entune system which uses Bing Search and Bing Maps, or at least I won't choose to upgrade the head unit, and instead I'll just buy an aftermarket head unit; I should have a choice as to whose maps and search I can use.  That's a Partitioned Choice.

The opposite of the Partitioned Choice, is an Integrated Choice.  This is where I'd buy a Honda and either Honda provided for head units with different ecosystems, or the head unit allowed me to select which search engine and maps I could use -- my choice of apps.  This is where an open ecosystem becomes important.  I don't know how much openness and the level of integration the OAA is planning on, but if it is done well, then it doesn't matter what sort of smart phone or tablet you bring with you, as there'll be apps to allow you to use any device with your vehicle -- incumbent of course, on Microsoft, Apple and others building apps.

The press release says that they'll have vehicles ready by the end of 2014 -- that's fast.  It'd be nice to be able to use my smart phone to stream playlists directly to my vehicle, you know, aside from the obvious GPS directional mapping from your phone.

Happy New Years 2014.

May we all have good health, a good life, and prosper in 2014.
Eat your long noodles to ensure a long life, eh?