Michael1942's Blog

George Korda, Special to USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee Published 5:53 a.m. CT Jan. 10, 2018 | Updated 11:42 a.m. CT Jan. 10, 2018

In their desire to cleanse Tennessee of statues of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Tennessee politicians and Tennessee cities are perhaps unknowingly missing a target of opportunity to turn the tables on racists.
The City of Memphis sold two city parks to get around a preservation law to remove statues of Forrest and Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis. Gov. Bill Haslam wants a bust of Forrest removed from the State Capitol building. A privately-owned Forrest statue next to I-65 in Nashville was recently vandalized, and is, of course, a source of argument.
Forrest was a lieutenant general, feared and hated, respected and condemned. His brilliance as a cavalry commander is undeniable – a fact his enemies fully recognized. Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman said of Forrest, “That devil Forrest…must be hunted down and killed if it costs ten thousand lives and bankrupts the federal treasury.”
After the war, Sherman offered a further reflection on his Confederate adversary: “After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.”

Forrest is controversial for his Civil War Confederate allegiance; for a massacre of black Union troops at Ft. Pillow, Tenn. (about which there is dispute as to Forrest’s role); his pre-war business as a slave trader, and his connection to the Ku Klux Klan.
Most problematic in terms of today’s public perception is his Klan association, mentioned in every news story dealing with one of his statues.
The first Ku Klux Klan was formed on Dec. 24, 1865, in Pulaski, Tenn. by six former Confederate soldiers. They subsequently approached Forrest to be its first grand wizard.  Debate exists as to why Forrest accepted. Some historians say it was because he wanted to continue to subjugate blacks and use the Klan to effectively keep fighting the war. Others say it was to oppose predatory Reconstruction practices being visited on the South. Or something else. Opinions vary.
Hooper: Removal of Nathan Bedford Forrest statue was monumental art heist
According to John Tures, a political science professor at LaGrange College, Georgia, Forrest’s attitudes on the Klan and race aren’t as cut-and-dried as Forrest detractors contend.

In a July 6, 2015 blog article published on the Huffington Post titled, “Nathan Bedford Forrest vs. the Ku Klux Klan,” Tures wrote, “But even this Forrest critic can admit that the Klan founder did one great thing for this country. He disbanded the KKK, and even worked to fight those who wanted to keep it going.
Tures continued, “…for those who seek to kill blacks while waving a Confederate flag, or those who burn African American churches across the South, including my state of Georgia, keep this in mind: General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and the Confederate War heroes you worship, wouldn’t have approved. In fact, they might have fought you for your illegal actions.”
What? Not the Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not that Forrest.
About Forrest and the Klan, PBS writer Ben Phelan wrote, “After only a year as Grand Wizard, in January 1869, faced with an ungovernable membership employing methods that seemed increasingly counterproductive, Forrest issued KKK General Order Number One: “It is therefore ordered and decreed, that the masks and costumes of this Order be entirely abolished and destroyed.” By the end of his life, Forrest’s racial attitudes would evolve — in 1875, he advocated for the admission of blacks into law school — and he lived to fully renounce his involvement with the all-but-vanished Klan

The History Channel website says, “Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was the KKK’s first grand wizard; in 1869, he unsuccessfully tried to disband it after he grew critical of the Klan’s excessive violence.”
The Klan for decades was, as Phelan said, all but vanished. But it emerged again in the 1920s with its masks, flaming torches, and terrorism directed mainly at blacks but also Jews, Catholics and others.
And if the Klan as we know it today is a problem, and a reason to dismantle statues, why are there memorials for the late U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV?
Byrd, far closer to us in time, was for a period of his life devoted to the domination of blacks. At age 27, In a 1944 letter to a senator, Byrd, a Klan Exalted Cyclops, wrote, “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side…Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”
As a U.S. senator he filibustered and voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
There are more than 50 education buildings; bridges; community centers; roads; industrial parks; government buildings, and other places named for Byrd. The “take them down” controversy doesn’t surround Byrd because he changed and repented of his views. He said his Klan association was the “worst mistake of my life.” When he died, President Barack Obama said, “America has lost a voice of principle and reason.”
And that speaks to the opportunity concerning Forrest. There’s a record that Forrest changed his views. That’s something of which to take advantage.
It is completely understandable that a black American can look at a Forrest statue and say, “If his side had prevailed, slavery would have continued. Why are we memorializing that?”
On the other hand, as black American and former professional basketball player Charles Barkley has famously said, “I’m 54 years old. I’ve never thought about those statues a day in my life. I think if you asked most black people to be honest, they ain’t thought a day in their life about those stupid statues.”
Here’s a chance to take a Confederate battle flag out of the racists’ hands. Ripping down statues and removing busts is motion, not action. Focus instead should be on Forrest’s change of heart, his General Order No. 1, and the personal respect about which he spoke later in his short (56 years) life. One such example is demonstrated in his 1875 speech to the Order of the Pole-Bearers, an association of black southerners. “We were born on the same soil, breathe the same air, and live in the same land. Why, then, can we not live as brothers?” Forrest said in his speech. “I will say that when the war broke out I felt it my duty to stand by my people. When the time came I did the best I could, and I don’t believe I flickered. I came here with the jeers of some white people, who think that I am doing wrong. I believe that I can exert some influence, and do much to assist the people in strengthening fraternal relations, and shall do all in my power to bring about peace…We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment.”
The present approach makes Forrest a martyr to racists. It also unnerves people who dislike images of statues being torn down, or any form of a similar practice called by the ancient Romans damnatio memoriae (damnation of memory).
Sign Up: Get Knox News headlines in your inbox every day.
But neither outcome is necessary. Forrest’s words of reconciliation, and his opposition to the Klan, can be shoved back into the racists’ faces.  It takes away the value to them of Forrest as a symbol.
That’s not to say Forrest should be transformed into some sort of civil rights hero. That’s going too far. But if Robert Byrd’s 20th century Klan affiliation and racist words can be forgiven and hailed by America’s first black president as a an example of evolving attitudes, why not take the same approach with Forrest and talk about the evidence of his transition?
That also might be a better message to the next generation than simply tearing down statues.

Please Donate

George Korda is political analyst for WATE-TV, appearing Sundays on “Tennessee This Week.”  He hosts “State Your Case” from noon – 2 p.m. Sundays on WOKI-FM Newstalk 98.7. Korda is a frequent speaker and writer on political and news media subjects.  He is president of Korda Communications, a public relations and communications consulting firm

By Chris Mooney
January 9, 2018 at 4:46 PM

Just a day after federal regulators nixed a major Trump administration proposal to shore up the struggling coal industry, the nation’s top energy forecaster predicted continuing, slow declines in U.S. coal production and in the burning of coal for electricity in 2018 and 2019, thanks to cheap natural gas and coal plant retirements.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s monthly short-term energy outlook, the first to include predictions for 2019, projected that coal production will decline from 773 million short tons last year to 759 million in 2018 and 741 million in 2019. The burning of coal for electricity — its chief use in the United States — also will decline steadily.
By 2019, the report forecasts, natural gas will provide 34 percent of U.S. electricity and coal 28 percent — leaving gas as the top fuel for U.S. electricity generation, a role held by coal as recently as 2015. In 2003, coal provided 51 percent of U.S. electricity and natural gas just 17 percent, which gives some sense of the magnitude and the rapidity of the change.

The report offers the latest evidence that while the Trump administration’s focus on energy production may advantage some fossil fuels — the report also predicts a record U.S. crude oil production of 10.3 million barrels a day in 2018, followed by 10.8 million in 2019 — it’s proving more difficult to change the trajectory for coal. That’s because it’s a carbon-intensive fuel that faces not only adverse policies but also market forces, such as the booming production of natural gas thanks to fracking.

“I think what the administration is not realizing is it’s not really regulation that’s killing coal; it’s cheap natural gas,” said Christopher R. Knittel, a professor of applied economics at MIT, in response to the EIA findings. He said studies have shown that as much as 70 percent or 80 percent of the decline in coal is the result of competition from cheaply priced natural gas.
“And, if anything, the policies of the current administration are going to exacerbate that,” he said, “in the sense that they’re opening up lands for more drilling, which is likely to generate more oil but can also generate more natural gas — which might be the final nail in the coal coffin, if you will.”
Related: [Oil, coal prices boosted by frigid weather in northern United States]
Tyler Hodge, a member of the electricity analysis team for the EIA, echoed Knittel on Tuesday. The decline of coal is “primarily driven by the sustained low price of natural gas,” he said during a call with reporters. The price of natural gas for electricity deliveries is projected to fall 2 percent in 2018, Hodge said, while the price of coal for electricity delivery should actually rise a bit. At the same time, the power industry is continuing to build more natural gas plants and retire more coal plants.
“Right now the industry is reporting to us that they’re planning to build out 20 gigawatts of new natural-gas-generating capacity, and in addition there’s a planned retirement of probably about 13 gigawatts of coal,” said Hodge. A gigawatt refers to the capacity to instantaneously and steadily generate 1 billion watts of electricity.
The news Monday certainly won’t help coal. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled against an Energy Department proposal that would have ensured additional compensation for nuclear and coal plants in some electricity markets, based on the idea that they’re crucial to grid stability and resilience. That proposal was strongly supported by the coal company Murray Energy.
Another major Trump move aimed partly at helping the coal industry — repealing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan — also won’t make that much of a difference for coal, said MIT’s Knittel. That same Clean Power Plan predicted that by 2030, under the policy’s changes to the electricity sector, natural gas would provide 33 percent of U.S. electricity, and coal would provide 27 percent. Yet even though the Clean Power Plan has never gone into effect and is now being repealed by the EPA, coal is already being surpassed by natural gas — and sooner.

“The fact that the Clean Power Plan went away could help on the margin,” Knittel said.
There has been one partial silver lining for coal. U.S. exports were up to 95 million short tons in 2017, from 60 million in 2016. And they’ll stay at higher levels — 80 million and 75 million, respectively — in 2018 and 2019, the EIA forecasts.
Coal-mining jobs have also ticked upward slightly during Trump’s first year in office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but not enough to reverse a major long-term decline since 2012.
“The only hope for coal, for U.S. coal, is probably exports,” Knittel said. “But the key potential growth markets for our coal are also trying to transition away from coal, and that’s China and Europe.”

Chris Mooney reports on science and the environment.

Please Donate

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards is right: Courts matter. They matter because liberal judges long ago stopped interpreting the law and started inventing it.

By Margot Cleveland
January 2, 2018

It’s the judges, stupid. Cloaked beneath claims of sexism, that message headlined the year-end social media feed of Cecile Richards, president of the nation’s largest abortion provider Planned Parenthood: “81 percent of President Trump’s judicial nominees are men. If confirmed, they could reshape the judiciary for years to come. Courts matter.”

Richards is right. Courts matter. They matter because liberal judges long ago stopped interpreting the law and started inventing the law. They matter because activist judges ignore clear constitutional mandates while conjuring up imaginary constitutional rights. They matter because liberal judges no longer judge—they pontificate according to their political proclivities. It shouldn’t be this way in a constitutional republic. But it is.
We’d Rather Do Identity Politics Than Debate the Issues
Liberals found this framework favorable, until they didn’t, which is to say when they discovered President Trump intended to keep his campaign promise of appointing men and women in the mold of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was renowned for sticking to the law instead of making law fit his personal politics.
“Women, what women?” they scoff, finding sexism a sturdier basis of attack than judicial philosophy—or at least more easily translated into a midterm campaign theme: The War on Women II. But Richards cares nothing about the sex of the judicial nominees. It’s all about judicial philosophy. Natch. It’s all about abortion.
Just one month ago, Richards penned an op-ed for The Hill targeting Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Why target Barrett if Richard’s complaint is the lack of female nominees to the federal bench? Well, Richards finds Barrett problematic because Barrett “has been a vocal opponent of Roe v. Wade, and she has publicly said that employers should be able to deny their employees access to birth control.”

What Richards wants, then, is a double standard. Judges get props for being women only when they agree with Richards’ politics. She also wants to professionally delegitimize judges based on biology rather than qualifications when she doesn’t like how that judge tends to rule. Heads she wins, tails her opponents lose.
Abortion Pushers’ Legal and Moral Claims Have No Merit
Linda Greenhouse, whose New York Times article “Why Judges Matter” prompted Richards’ tweet, likewise played the sex card, but with more finesse. She led with her true concern—abortion: “The Trump Administration’s increasing bizarre war on abortion continues as immigration officials keep trying to block access to abortion for pregnant undocumented teenagers in their custody.” But with “no law on its side,” federal district court judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the government “to allow two immigrant teenagers to exercise their right to terminate their pregnancies.”
Greenhouse then dangled the question, “Does the fact that [Chutkan is] a woman make [her] more sensitive to the plaintiffs’ claims?” Then down dropped the sex card. “I don’t know,” Greenhouse mused, “but I do know that 81 percent of President Trump’s judicial nominees are men…”
Greenhouse’s concern over the male-female judiciary balance is a farce, just as is her claim that the government has “no law on its side” for refusing to facilitate abortions for illegal aliens who are children. Three federal appellate judges disagreed with Chutkan’s order, including woman judge Karen LeCraft Henderson. Henderson’s dissent persuasively argues that under Supreme Court precedent, an alien minor detained at the border does not have a constitutional right to an elective abortion.

The Supreme Court, however, never had the chance to resolve the issue because the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the girl, misled the government and arranged for an early-morning abortion to thwart an appeal. On Friday, the Supreme Court will discuss whether the ACLU’s conduct merits vacating the lower-court decision, and possibly even sanctions for playing dirty.
Abortion Pushers Are Waging the Real War on Women
Greenhouse does not limit her op-ed to abortion, though. Like Richards, Greenhouse expands the supposed battlefield to birth control. But just as their focus on the male-female ratio is a charade, so too is their “access to birth control” canard. There is no threat to birth control access. Yet to further the War on Women II narrative, the sisters-in-arms raise the specter of gavel-waving men ready to wrest away contraceptives.
Here’s Greenhouse: “But the administration’s war on birth control came to a grinding halt the other day. In a little-noticed ruling, a federal district judge in Philadelphia issued a temporary injunction against a new policy that lets employers refuse to cover contraception in their employees’ insurance plans if they have either religious objections to birth control or ‘sincerely held moral convictions’ against it.”
So “the war on birth control” is actually the Trump administration’s allowance of religious and moral exemptions to Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, which does absolutely nothing to prevent women from buying any kind of birth control. These gals know what they’re doing. It’s much easier to scare an electorate to the polls with tales of a bogeyman behind every bench, poised to banish birth control from the shores of America, than to broadcast the sad truth: There are no lurking monsters, just modest nuns—the Little Sisters of the Poor—who seek nothing more than to be left alone to fulfill their calling to care for the elderly poor.

Apparently, those women don’t matter to Greenhouse. They also didn’t matter to the Philadelphia federal judge whose womanhood Greenhouse also touted, Judge Wendy Beetlestone. Before barring the government from enforcing the religious and moral exemptions, Beetlestone banned the Little Sisters from the case. The Little Sisters promptly appealed, and the Third Circuit recently agreed to hear the case on an expedited basis.
People Hire Women to Deny Them Birth Control Subsidies?
Yet to Greenhouse, Obama appointee Beetlestone is the one who put politics to the side and crafted a “careful, lawyerly opinion.” Here’s a sampling of Judge Beetlestone’s lawyerly reasoning: “A simple hypothetical illustrates the insidious effect of the Moral Exemption Rule. It would allow an employer with a sincerely held moral conviction that women do not have a place in the workplace to simply stop providing contraceptive coverage. And, it may do so in an effort to impose its normative construct regarding a woman’s place in the world on its workforce, confident that it would find solid support for that decision in the Moral Exemption Rule.”
No matter the outcome, the case has served its purpose: falsely framing the fight over the judiciary as a fight for women’s rights and against sexism.
Beetlestone’s “simple” hypothetical would have us believe employers exist that are willing to violate their moral precepts by hiring women but then claiming a moral objection to providing insurance sponsorship of contraceptives because birth control allows the same women to continue in their employ, which of course the women could still do even if they became pregnant and gave birth. The only way Beetlestone could have crafted a more ridiculous caricature of those benefitting from the moral and religious exemptions would be if she named the hypothetical woman Offred!
Beetlestone’s “careful, lawyerly” opinion contained several significant errors, more of which I highlighted here. Greenhouse’s thinking is similarly facile. Greenhouse believes (or pretends to believe) “that since no one is forcing these employers to use birth control themselves, their moral objection has to be to their employees’ using it.”
This logic ignores the strength of the Little Sisters’ objection to paying for insurance that sponsors birth control and abortifacients. The good sisters’ objection is their moral complicity, not employees’ use of contraceptives or abortifacients.
Yes, the Little Sisters’ insurance creates contraceptive coverage, something easily understood by contrasting two hypothetical employees of the Little Sisters: Susie, who elects health insurance coverage, and Mary who, following the repeal of the individual mandate, decides to remain uninsured. Susie’s participation in the Little Sisters’ health insurance plan entitles her to insurance-subsidized birth control (including some abortifacients) and sterilization, while Mary does not qualify for these freebies.
It will be months, if not years, before courts conclusively rule on challenges to the religious and moral exemptions. But no matter the outcome, the case has served its purpose: framing the fight over the judiciary as a fight for women’s rights and against sexism. And accusations of sexism sell in an election year, maybe even better than the body parts from aborted babies Planned Parenthood affiliates have illegally brokered. That reminds me of another reason Richards cares about the courts—the Trump administration’s newly launched investigation into Planned Parenthood’s pay-for-baby-parts moneymaker.
Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School as well as a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct professor for the college of business at the University of Notre Dame. Email her: MargotCleveland@nd.edu.

Copyright © 2018 The Federalist, a wholly independent division of FDRLST Media, All Rights Reserved.

Please Donate

JANUARY 5, 2018
Kuttner on TAP
If a liberal strategist or screenwriter had scripted the Bannon-Trump crack-up, it would be hard to improve on events now unfolding. Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury, is only a more detailed version of what the world knows all too well. Donald Trump is an undisciplined mess, unfit to govern. His cabinet knows all too well what a total idiot he is, and says so.
As for Bannon’s comments, don’t forget that he made these remarks to Wolff several months ago, since it takes that long for a book to gestate. The comments are totally in character with Bannon’s own narcissism and recklessness. He made the same kind of casually devastating assessment of Trump in his August conversation with me, which turned out to be the last straw that led to his dismissal from the White House.
A few weeks after he was fired, Bannon took my phone call and met with me at the Breitbart townhouse. There, he told me that he and Trump continued to talk regularly. Apparently, even after Bannon was too radioactive to work at the White House, Trump still felt he needed Bannon.
This latest spate of published remarks, however, led to a final breach with Trump and a display of presidential impotent rage. Trump, preposterously, tried to get a court to block publication of the book. Presumably, Trump has never heard of the Pentagon Papers. Courts never back prior restraint of publications, and this issue becomes totally moot in the internet age, when the text could simply be posted and go viral.
Even more pathetic is Trump’s effort to go after Bannon on the premise that Bannon is bound by a non-disclosure agreement more characteristic of the entertainment industry than of politics. Trump has probably never read a political memoir either.
Bannon and his home base, Breitbart, have been uncharacteristically quiet since this latest blow-up. But it will help further fragment the Trump coalition.
Bannon, a hero to the right-wing populist base, is basically telling Trump voters that they have been played for suckers; that Trump is in bed with the billionaires, and not delivering for regular people. In this respect he helps progressives get that message out. The Tea Party diehards will be torn between their support for Trump and their affinity for Bannon.
Meanwhile, the GOP mainstream in Congress will be even more worried that Trump is not only a lunatic, but a flagrant, obvious lunatic. Financial backers of Bannon are already jumping ship.
In a petulant rage, Trump abruptly shut down the Pence-Kobach commission on voter fraud, a Bannon idea. Vice President Pence, despite his fawning loyalty to Trump, was collateral damage.
Support in Republican ranks is likely to grow for getting rid of Trump before the November elections. This will come to a head when Robert Mueller tenders his report. At that point, GOP leaders could well warn Trump that the time has come for him either to resign or to face the risk of a bipartisan impeachment inquiry.
Steve Bannon turns out to be the gift that keeps on giving. People ask what his game is. Based on my experience, his game is the greater glory of Steve Bannon, the ideology of racializing economic grievances, and total war on the establishment press and what’s left of the Republican establishment. If Donald Trump is a useful instrument to Bannon, then Bannon will use him, ridiculing him while professing loyalty. When even Trump sees through the game, Bannon jettisons Trump and moves on.
Both men are crackpots, whom history has thrust into positions of alarming influence. Let us hope they continue to do each other in. ~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Please Donate

Shalise Manza Young,

Shutdown Corner 14 hours ago

What will the New England Patriots do if they lose defensive coordinator Matt Patricia and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniel’s?

Matt Patricia is a burly guy with a bushy beard, his hat turned backward and a preference for wearing shorts instead of pants. In all temperatures.
Well, except really, really frigid ones.
The 43-year-old is currently the New England Patriots’ defensive coordinator, but this year he’s also again one of the names mentioned most frequently as a head-coaching candidate for one of the several teams looking for a new one.
The Detroit Lions, New York Giants and Arizona Cardinals have all formally requested interviews with Patricia, who is wrapping up his sixth season as the Patriots’ defensive coordinator. But he’s far less known than his offensive counterpart in New England, Josh McDaniels.
So, who is Matt Patricia?

New England Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia is a hot head coaching candidate, but who is he? (AP)
Beloved by his players, who call him “Matty P,” Patricia has one of the more unique backstories in the NFL coaching ranks: He did play college football, as an offensive lineman at Division III Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, but his degree is in aeronautical engineering. He is, literally, a rocket scientist.
And when he first graduated, Patricia followed that path: He worked as an application engineer at Hoffman Air & Filtration Systems, then in East Syracuse, New York, about 40 minutes west of where he grew up, in the tiny city of Sherrill, New York.
He even wore a shirt and tie.
But the cubicle life wasn’t for Patricia. He wanted to coach football. He wanted to be the man his players looked up to, like the coaches he’d played for. So he left his reasonably well-paying job behind and took a job coaching the defensive line at Amherst College in Massachusetts for $10,000.
After two years, he was back near his hometown, as a graduate assistant at Syracuse University. Patricia was there for three years when he applied to work for the Patriots in 2004, as the lowest-level coach on the Bill Belichick totem pole.
Belichick grilled him, as he does all of his prospective assistants, and Patricia couldn’t believe how intense the interview was. But he was offered the job.
Already used to long hours of studying as an aeronautical engineering student, he returned to that life again with the Patriots – and really, he hasn’t left it. Patricia cops to getting four hours of sleep “on a good night,” but often gets even less than that. There’s always work to be done, he reasons, more to do to make sure players are ready for the next game.
His No. 2 pencil nearly always tucked behind his right ear for easy access, Patricia is easily recognizable on the Patriots sideline by his bright red team pullover. He chose the color so his players can quickly identify him if he’s sending in signals.
It was easy at first to overlook Patricia as coordinator; Belichick made his bones as the Giants’ defensive coordinator in the 1980s, and his opponent-specific approach makes game-planning a little tougher than it might be for other teams.
But now it’s Patricia’s unit, and under his tutelage, New England has finished no lower than 10th in points allowed. This year, it was fifth, a major turnaround after some early season struggles. Last year it was first.
Patricia isn’t big on appearance, but to some NFL observers, one wardrobe choice may actually hinder his chances of getting hired, despite all of the interest teams have.
When the Patriots returned to Boston from Houston after winning Super Bowl LI last February, cameras stationed at Logan Airport caught Patricia wearing a T-shirt depicting commissioner Roger Goodell with a big red clown nose. Fans, of course, loved it; after a legal fight, Tom Brady had missed the first four games of the season, suspended for his alleged part in deflate-gate. In spite of that, however, the Patriots had endured and advanced, and after the team’s incredible comeback against the Falcons, Goodell had to hand the Super Bowl MVP trophy to Brady.
If Goodell is still angry about the shirt, could he step in and dissuade a team from hiring Patricia? It would be quite petty to do so, and by and large the Patriots’ rank-and-file downplayed their anger at Goodell for deflate-gate, which they viewed as a witch hunt. And if Goodell did say something, would a team still say, “too bad, we think he’s the best guy for us”?
Football isn’t really rocket science, despite how some portray it. But if you’re one who views it that way, Patricia is the guy for the job.