[subscribe2]

Over at National Surrender, Jim Geraghty has a post up about the next phase of ObumblesCare. The math never worked and now that reality is about to become manifest. He writes:

Is it possible that most Congressional Democrats don’t know about the death spiral? Or that they don’t really understand the death spiral? Or that they somehow don’t believe in it? Are they convinced you can add a lot of sick, elderly people requiring expensive care to existing insurance plans, and the insurance companies won’t suddenly need a lot more money?  The insurance companies will raise premiums on their healthy customers, who will in some cases drop coverage, which will exacerbate the financial pressure… and the cycle continues until way too few healthy people are paying for the care of way too many sick people, and the insurance company goes under.

Not only is it possible, it is likely they do think insurance is a magic fountain of money. All of my moonbat friends have said something along the lines that “everyone deserves health insurance.” You see it the comments in the new stories. Every moonbat talks about insurance like it is a natural resource to be shared amongst the people. They don’t have the first clue as to how insurance works. What we are about to see in this narrow area will replay itself throughout the economy. The gimme guys and gimme gals will find out that you can sheer a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once.

What we are seeing in the West is what we saw in an accelerated pace in post-colonial Africa. The white colonists had established a degree of civilization, but it could not be maintained by the indigenous population alone. When the colonial governments fell and were replaced by indigenous rulers, they first tried to keep things the same, fearing the economic consequences if the whites fled.The blacks simply lacked the ability to run courts, administrative offices and the economy. But, pressure to “redistribute” the wealth lead to the whites fleeing and the economies collapsing. The wealth of a nation, it turns out, is its people. The Brits tried to remedy this by bringing the best Africans from their colonies to train in Britain. They built roads, schools, utilities and setup governments. The post-colonial collapse went slower, but it happened nonetheless. Rhodesia, for example, went from highly productive agricultural country to the second poorest on the planet.

Obama is turning out to be the Robert Mugabe of American politics. He came on the scene pitched as the ideal liberal candidate. He was foreign, exotic, black and highly educated. In his rise to power, the white’s in Rhodesia were told he was not a threat, despite the rhetoric. Once in power, he slowly chipped away at the agreements he made with Ian Smith. Eventually it was open warfare on the white minority, who eventually fled the country. Like Mugabe, Obama has always bought into the black liberation stuff and the socialist economics that go along with it. Also like Mugabe, Obama is a megalomaniac incapable of allowing others to share the stage. The result is the same brand of incompetent leadership. The difference is Obama does not have an army of drugged up teenagers with AK-47’s willing to kill his enemies. The economic results, however, are following the same path.

This post has already been linked to 769 times!

[subscribe2]

The Saudis are an odious bunch, but they are the main power broker in the Middle East. As is often the case in foreign affairs, you have to team up with dickheads to thwart even bigger dickheads. Saving the French from the Nazis was unpleasant, but they were less odious than the Nazis. That’s the way it is with the Saudis. They will cause trouble for us, but nothing like what we get from the other players. The Bush family took this too far and acted like sock puppets for the Saudi Royal Family, but what Obama is doing is damned near criminal. This guy is such a fuck up, no one wants to be around him. That’s the issue here. It is the stunning incompetence of Obama that has the Saudis walking away from us.

In unusually blunt public remarks, Prince Turki al-Faisal called Obama’s policies in Syria ‘lamentable’ and ridiculed a U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Assad’s chemical weapons. He suggested it was a ruse to let Obama avoid military action in Syria.

‘The current charade of international control over Bashar’s chemical arsenal would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious. And designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down (from military strikes), but also to help Assad to butcher his people,’ said Prince Turki, a member of the Saudi royal family and former director of Saudi intelligence.

Diplomats are not going to say Obama is a moron and they want nothing to do with him, but that’s what they are telling people. It is one thing to have a bad policy. It is one thing to poorly execute a policy. Shit happens and we get stuff wrong all the time. The clown show in the White House has no clue and staggers around like a drunk ten year old with a loaded gun. The one thing diplomats fear most is unpredictability. Nations with erratic leaders find themselves alone. That’s where we find ourselves now. The NSA spying, the numerous blunders in the Middle East and a hostility to longtime allies has the world talking about life after America.

It will take a generation to fix what President Fuckup has broken.

This post has already been linked to 1411 times!

[subscribe2]

The true believer is never dissuaded. Dedicated and loyal Catholics, for example, are convinced that each new Pope will revive their dying church. The pages of National Review, for example, are filled with glowing stories about the new Pope, despite the fact he is probably a communist and wants to take the Catholic Church down the same road as the Protestant faiths. The true believer is always sure that just around the corner, their dreams will come true. In modern America, the most active religion is Liberalism and they are at the end of a fanatical phase. For close to two decades they have been out in the streets, banging pots and pans, promising to bring heaven on earth to America. Even after two decades of tub thumping, they are still believing.

A great example is the hilariously incompetent ObumblesCare exchanges. Simple math said all along they could never work as promised. Perhaps some people will benefit, but the majority will be fucked. As the evidence pours in showing just how bad this disaster will be, the Left keeps insisting it is a dream come true. Never mind that Sally Kohn is probably a liar. Her claims cannot be confirmed and the available evidence contradicts her claims. She is probably not an evil person, just a true believer. She wants it to be true so bad, she deludes herself into believing it is true. No amount of evidence will change her mind.

This post has already been linked to 762 times!

In John Derbyshire’s last radio transmission, he mentioned the great Sam Francis. Francis was a brilliant observer of America, even if he was a bit too iconoclastic. There should always bee a wide space between what the culture rules out of bounds and that which the elites would like to silence. Elites will always try to silence their critics. In a free society, they can shout and bellow, but ultimately must win the argument. Even if that is not the case as we see in modern America, that does not change the fact some speech is rude, offensive and unnecessary.  You’re not getting very far by offending the people. Offending the rulers is one thing, but when you piss off the crowd, it give the rulers a free hand to dispatch you. That’s what happened when Francis indulged in pointless race mongering. Derbyshire arguably did the same thing with his infamous Taki column.

The point of bringing it up is that Francis was mostly right about things. It turns out, Pat Buchanan was mostly right about immigration, trade and the economy. Joe Sobran was mostly right about the culture and capitalism. John Derbyshire has been right about the things he considers important, namely immigration, culture and science. Robert Weissberg was right about the schools, in his book Bad Students, Not Bad Schools. I could go on, but the trend is rather clear. All of these men were once mainstream conservatives writing for popular conservative journals and city broadsheets. Today, those who are not dead have been pushed off to the fringe. Many were fired in ceremonious fashion from places like National Review and the Washington Times. What was once merely contrarian has now become heretical and damnable. The fact that time has proven most of them right (Sobran, Buchanan) and is vindicating others, says something about the drift of the nation.

Mark Steyn coined the term I’m using as a title. The elites of America are feverishly insulating themselves from reality. It is one thing to live behind a wall. It is another to think behind one. The hive mind is dangerous not because of ignorance. It is dangerous because it is aggressive. Our increasingly delusional elites are not sending dissenters off to the lithium mines just yet, but they are on that road. The conventional wisdom on the establishment right is that the tide goes out, but always returns. The rejoinder from guys like Derbyshire is it always returns until it doesn’t. Both of course can be right for a long time.

This post has already been linked to 832 times!

At various times in the 19^th and early 20 century, drought would threaten to wipe out whole towns, even states. The Dust Bowl is the most famous to modern Americans, as it drove tens of thousands from the land and to the west coast, looking for a new life. Of course, people often look for reasons beyond the natural, so many of the people who stayed, hoping for a miracle, looked for all sorts of ways to make it rain. That, in turn, made them easy prey for con men and charlatans promising to bring relief from the drought.

It seems rather primitive, looking back from this vantage point. Droughts still happen, but a big complicated technological country like America can work around it. The idea of some guy showing up promising to make it rains sounds nutty. It was not that long ago. In fact, there are plenty of people living today who knew Okies. Many old folks in California were the children of Okies, maybe even having made the trip as small children. The point is that it was not so long ago that appealing to nature or the gods was no considered crazy.

Anyway, that came to mind when reading this strange story from the UK. The Europeans have a primitive fear of nature these days. The Brits are leading the charge on ”climate change” which is just a modern form of nature worship. Watch BBC America and the shows always have some mention of green this or earth friendly that. The car shows are most humorous because they always stop at some point and provide a lecture to the viewers about recycling your oil or coolant at the “council dump.”

The fact that they are spending money to ward off a cataclysm that will never come is a reminder that we have not advanced as far as we think. The rituals and magic of 100 years ago just have new names today. There is a veneer of science to this stuff now, but at its core, it is the old fear of the super natural. Modern people worry that they are somehow at odds with nature and at some point, nature will get mad about it. The fact that the science is beyond anyone’s comprehension makes it more scary.

The religious angle to climate change is easy to see for those who have read the Hebrew Bible or had some religious training. We stopped teaching religion in public schools and church attendance has been dropping for years, so most modern people are ignorant to the religious aspects to climate change. Al Gore, for example, had some sort of nervous breakdown in the 2000 campaign. After a trip into the wilderness, he recovered and returned as the Prophet Al to warn the public about God’s pending wrath.

If you had read the Old Testament, you saw it right away. No one in our ruling elites attends mass or has religious training so it was lost on them. Gore went to divinity school, so  he may have done this on purpose, but it is entirely possible he does not know he is playing the role of Old Testament prophet. The fact that he made a few hundred million from this crusade suggests it is an act, but Gore never showed himself to be a grifter in the past. He’s always been a fanatic and he happened to hit it big this time.

What the Europeans are doing is a bit different. They abandoned Christianity a long time ago. Instead they threw their lot in with secular religions that promised earthly salvation, without the sacrifice demanded by the supernatural. Communism, fascism and socialism are nothing more than attempts to immanentize the eschaton. That is, arrange things in such a way to bring about plenty and relieve suffering. They still believed. It’s just a question of what they believe. Now it is a modern form of nature worship.

Of course, people who think the planet is plotting against them are not optimistic about the future. That’s why fertility rates have plummeted all over Europe. Many countries are actively recruiting Muslims to settle in their lands and wipe out their culture. of course, there is the endless quest to make materialism fill the void where Christianity once existed in the hearts of Europeans. The result is a vicious cycle, where the more they embrace neo-pagan religions, the more they dread the future and hate their past.

These new gods will not be appeased.

The seemingly endless reshuffling of the college football conferences is usually explained as a function of money. Football is the big revenue sport, with men’s basketball a distant second in college athletics. Everything else is way down the list and therefore not all that important to the decision makers. Therefore, whatever promises to increase football revenue is done, even if it harms the other sports. As a result, the major football schools have been consolidating their hold on TV money by creating super-conferences.

Steve Sailer suggests there may be a different issue at play, one no one is allowed to discuss, even though everyone knows it exists. Colleges are reorganizing to corner the market on smart black athletes, which helps them boost their diversity. Put another way, the demand for smart black guys, who can play a revenue sport is expanding due to the quest for diversity. This is the driving up the price for black athletes, so the schools are consolidating their hold on the market by realigning.

That increase in price is reflected in the cost of maintaining high level sports programs, so while the pie gets bigger, the number of slices get smaller, as the big schools take bigger slices of the pie. It is certainly true that the pool of qualified applicants keeps growing, but the pool of the preferred applicants is not growing, at least not organically. It’s why elite colleges love African students. Barak Obama was highly sought after by elite schools, despite being mediocre, because he ticked a lot of important boxes.

It is an interesting observation and not entirely false, but if the best athletes were Chinese, the conferences would still be consolidating. The main reason is the cable monopolies are state sanctioned tax farmers. They get to tax people though their cable bill. Those revenues get directed to approved things and the big state colleges have figured out to get a taste of the skim. Federal grant money also plays a role as these colleges get billions in federal grants. By pooling together they increase their grasping power.

That said, the demand for competent black athletes is an example of how diversity has changed the college business. The historically black colleges used to field competitive sports teams and attract the talented ten percent of black youth. Once sports integrated, the best black players went to the big state programs. High IQ black athletes would end up at programs like Notre Dame, Boston College and Northwestern. As a result, the great black programs like Grambling and Southern have fallen on hard times.

That still left room for a Spellman and Morehouse to be the Black Ivies, but now the Ivies and “new Ivies” are desperate for black students. A smart black kid whose parents and grandparents went to Howard, for example, is getting offers from all of the elite colleges, so he has no reason to attend an historically black college. Just as American is skimming the best and brightest from the undeveloped world via immigration, the top colleges are skimming the best out of the historically black colleges and prep schools.

Inevitably, this will be reflected in the administration. As the quality of student declines, the quality of administrator will decline. Condoleezza Rice is not teaching at one of these colleges when she can work at Stanford. Talented black administrators follow the talented students, often working in the same schools from which they graduated. Ironically, the celebration of non-whites, as a vehicle to expand diversity, is killing off one of the better parts of black culture in America. The historically black college is dying.

Way back in the olden thymes, my liberal friends would occasionally claim to be libertarian or “mostly libertarian.” They would usually bust that out whenever I was making sport of their hive mentality. When Bill Clinton was raping interns, it was great fun to mock the feminists who somehow managed to get past the rape business to support Clinton against those prudish inquisitors. That’s when they would suddenly discover their inner libertarian and say that what adults did on the floor of the oval office was no one’s business.

It was the Clinton years when I began to look at liberalism as a cult. Cult leaders always end up indulging in deviant behavior that their followers manage to overlook. It’s as if the charismatic leader crosses some threshold, where his strength of personality becomes more of a factor than his ideas. The proof of that is how his followers rationalize their leader doing things he allegedly opposes. Those who can do this become more committed, while those who can’t are boiled off and join some other cult.

Of course, one reason liberals think they may be “slightly libertarian” is they are in favor of legalizing weed. Liberals are the modern Roundheads so to them, this feels like a huge concession toward personal liberty. Their movement has been stamping out smoking, eating, sex, sloth and everything else that seems like fun for so long, they think it is radical to oppose the drug war. Those Puritan instincts tell them that even the most private of behavior must come under public scrutiny, so being OK with weed feels radical.

That and they obsess over their crotch. For whatever reason, the Left has an obsession with lady parts to the point of distraction. It’s an odd obsession that is in part a need to be vulgar. They associate probity with middle-class white culture, which they oppose, so being vulgar feels like rebellion to them. Therefore, indulging in sexual degeneracy, which would seem at odds with other aspects of their secular religion, is acceptable because it offends an enemy of their movement. It’s an exception that supports the cause.

I was thinking about this the other day when looking at the Lion of the Blogosphere’s latest pro-abortion rant. He has an obsession with cultural conservatives and therefore he dwells on abortion, thinking it is the opposite of decency. He is a guy who will occasionally try to pass himself off as libertarian which is a bit ridiculous. The HBD guys like him and they tend not to be liberal, but there’s no reason to think one excludes the other. In fact, an oblique form of race realism has always been at the heart of American radicalism.

Still, I wonder why it is some on the Left feel the need to play the libertarian card. It could simply be a part of their natural tendency to deflect. People are attracted to secular religions out of self-loathing. They seek to swap their hated self, for the identity of the group. Therefore they are always trying to avoid discussion of themselves, because that requires facing up to their nature. Playing the libertarian card is a lure to draw attention away from them onto something else, anything else.

Alternatively, we see conservatives in Progressive enclaves using the libertarian ruse to avoid conflict. Anyone who has lived in Massachusetts knows that child molesters get better treatment than conservatives. If you are at a social event and say something that violates one of their many taboos, you can be sure the screech owls from the local feminist coven will be trying to rip your flesh from your bones. For reasons I’ll get into another day, the Left does not view libertarians as a threat.

Of course, this suggests that libertarianism is not a real ideology or a real social movement, but rather a way station of sorts. Left-libertarians can code-switch between liberalism and libertarianism, depending upon their situation. Right-libertarians can do something similar, in order to avoid the wrath of lefty. That means as the divide grows, libertarianism will collapse, as it will be impossible to exist in both camps. That’s a topic for another day, but it means libertarianism is not a real thing.

The boys and girls over at the flagship of Conservative Inc. have their panties in a bunch over the increasingly hostile relationship between them and the rank and file of the conservative movement. Well, what’s left of the conservative movement. Decades of broken promises and outright lying from public figures claiming to be conservative leaders has the hoi polloi looking for other options. Normal conservatives, which means middle-class white people, for the most part, are feeling betrayed.

Part of it is due to the awakening of the base to certain realities of party politics. One of those realities is that most of the people in charge are just in it for the money. These are career men who have wives and kids and mortgages. They are risk adverse. It is why they are quick to plead for a deal to end the bickering over policy. It is why they are willing to trade everything for stability. Great change means great tumult and tumultuous times are bad times for the mediocrities that are party functionaries.

Normal people look at this and think they are being taken for a ride. After all, what’s the point of voting for conservative candidates and supporting conservative causes, if the people running these things are willing to sellout for personal gain? These people are always ready to tell you about the need to compromise, but they never lecture the other side this way. That’s what is driving the general discontent with conservatives. David French has a post on it here and Goldberg has his say here.

Jonah Goldberg is the king of straw man arguments. His preferred method of dismissing criticism is to call the critics “populists” and then claim that populism is crypto-leftism or the precursor to fascism. Once he has anathematized the messengers he then moves on to explain why it is dangerous to listen to these bomb throwers. What he is doing is something the Left likes and that is creating an immoral straw man and then associating it with the arguments or facts they want to dismiss. It’s a form of scapegoating.

Of course, it is a ploy to avoid the elephant in the room. The Right lose every fight. They lose the PR wars. They lose the negotiations. They lose elections against weak candidates. They conceded ground to the Left before the debate gets going. Just on practical terms, the Right has been a near total failure for almost two decades. Whatever the defects of the critics, the people in charge of conservatism have failed at every turn, but have suffered no consequences.  In fact, they have grown quite rich.

The David French piece deserves special recognition for its mendacity. Every loser who wants to avoid the consequences of being a loser tries to play the victim card. They always claim to have received death threats. French claims to have received threatening calls at home. If he does not have a police report, then he is a liar. It is a serious crime to call someone and threaten them. Calls are easily traceable and the police take these things seriously. If true, he should file the report and post it.

In many ways, David French is emblematic of what is wrong with the so-called conservative movement. They think politics is a buffet line where all they need to do is put a few things on the tray and proclaim their fidelity to those with similar tastes. Put another way, they have reduced conservatism down to a handful of policy positions that just happen to be popular with their corporate and wealthy donors. Instead of maintaining an intellectual tradition, they are a public relations firm for the highest bidder.

Today it is hard to lie in public. Liberal politicians from normal states have been learning this the hard way. They used to get away with lying at home as no one called them on it in the press as long as they voted liberal. Now they get exposed quickly. The so-called conservatives are struggling with the problem now. Years of watching the so-called Right promise and fail, only to lecture their base about making unreasonable demands has most conservatives wonder if it as not always a scam.

What comes next, as conservatives wake up to the reality of demographic change and the emerging identity politics, is a big civil war on the Right. On one side will be the kept men of Conservative Inc., defending their perks and positions. On the other side will be a new Right, one more in tune with today’s realities and much less concerned with upsetting the feelings of the Left. It will be more populist and probably more racially aware. Most likely, the old Buckley crowd ends up on the Left, if the Left will have them.

The ancient Greeks would on occasion pass a law forbidding any further debate on some issue that had been decided. The reason for this was to prevent critics from undermining the policy, by endlessly debating the issue after a course of action has been agreed upon by the people. For example, a decision to go to war with another polos would be decided and no further debate permitted. If someone tried to revive the debate, they would be killed or expelled from the city. It was not a matter taken lightly.

It was a clever way to prevent second guessing and indecision, but it is also a way to lock in bad policy. The rule becomes a suicide pact. An example is how Massachusetts recently passed a gas tax that is pegged to the CPI. That means the tax goes up every year without any action by the legislature. Another example is how the US Congress has their pay automatically increase along with all federal salaries. The whole point is they don’t have to answer for their votes every election.

In theory, no legislature can bind a future legislature. The reason people say this is whatever is passed this year by the legislature, can be reversed by subsequent legislatures. For example, if the Congress passes a law promising to pay you a fixed amount of money every year, this can be reversed in the next Congress. That said, as with the Greek example, a legislature can make it really hard for future legislatures to undo their work. The American welfare state is the most obvious example.

Congress is poised to do soemthing that will be close to impossible to unwind. They are seeking to have the debt limit increase automatically every year, unless Congress passes a bill forbidding it. Further, if a future Congress tried to halt the debt ceiling hike, the president could veto the bill. This, in effect, give the executive power of the purse, as the government can always borrow, even if Congress refuses to tax. It turns on its head the political  relationship between Congress and the executive.

The reason for this change, of course, is to prevent the minority in Congress from putting the brakes on the excesses of the majority. The handful of spending hawks left in Congress made life unpleasant for the establishment every time they have to raise the det ceiling, so the establishment is taking that lever away from them. Leadership will not have to be embarrassed when they are out lying to the public about how much they care about the deficit and the spending. Borrowing is now on autopilot.

In popular government, the power of the purse is in the hands of the parliament. Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, is known as the Taxing and Spending Clause. It explicitly gives the power to tax to Congress. “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

The power to borrow, as we see, also lies with Congress. They authorize all debt. After all, government borrowing in popular government is a form of taxation. The legislature is making a promise to pay on behalf of the people, a promise to pay with interest. This is an indirect tax. Similarly, government borrowing raises the cost of private borrowing. That’s also a tax on the people. For Congress to have the debt limit automatically rise, without Congressional oversight, is handing tax power to the executive.

This is one of those small things historians will look back on as evidence of the decay in the American political class. The House is the most democratic body and it is the most populist body. In theory, at least. As the House slowly abandons its authority to the executive, the people slowly lose influence over government. The executive requires an ever expanding army of bureaucrats to administer the state. The people become subjects, ruled over by that permanent bureaucracy of overseers tasked with keeping control.

History is full of examples of this. There’s something natural about the how democracy slowly gives way to some form of authoritarianism.  It suggests people, over time, prefer to be subjects rather than citizens. America will be just one more example. The question is whether it is first a bureaucratic authoritarianism or some collection of interests, like a combination of the security state and Big tech, just seizes power. Maybe we end up with a strong man put in power by global corporate interests.

Either way, it will not end well.

Pretty much the only major sport I watch and enjoy is baseball. Post-season baseball is a lot like post-season hockey. You have the best teams, and usually the best pitchers, competing under pressure. There’s plenty of dramatic moments, which is not always the case with regular season games. In July, an elite pitcher on his game will have the other guys swinging freely late in games as they just want to get over with quickly. No one says it, but it happens. The umps will expand the strike zone late in games too.

The problem is the games take too long. Game one of the ALCS took four hours. Game three took almost four hours and it was a 1-0 game. After every pitch the batter wanders off to scratch himself and adjust his gloves. Pitchers stare in for the sign like they are cracking the zodiac code. If a runner gets on we see ten throws to first, a few visits to the mound and, of course, more scratching and adjusting. It get ridiculous. When a half-inning lasts over 20 minutes, the games are taking too long.

There’s no way TV held an audience for the great Sox comeback in game two. I bet ten percent of the starting audience was up to see it. What’s the point of watching a game if you know you will not be up to see the end? If fans like me find it too taxing to watch these games, the causal fans are not watching. At best, they are tuning in and out while watching other shows. That seems like a sure way to lose your audience. Those people tuning in and out eventually just tune out and stop being fans.

The most obvious way to speed up the games is to expand the strike zone. That way you have have pitchers throwing strikes, which means the hitters have to swing. It also makes it more difficult for hitters to bad defensively. the narrow strike zone allows hitters to lay off a lot of pitches and just train to handle the narrow strike zone. Good hitters can work a count and sit on the pitches they can hit. Giving the high strike back to the pitcher would force hitters to swing at tough pitches. That should speed up the game a bit.

That would probably reduce offense initially, but good hitters would adjust in time so it would not result in the death of offense. In fact, it would probably bring back the contact hitter as a weapon. In the old days of huge ball parks, slap hitters would just put the ball in play to get on base. The small parks of today reward the sluggers, so the contact guys has faded from the game. The the most likely result is soemthing like the 1970’s where a lineup has a mix of sluggers and contact hitters.

People can tolerate a 2-0 game if it lasts two hours. Making fans sit and watch for three and half hours, you better have some offense. The trade-off for lower scoring would be shorter games. The other way to do it and something that would fix the playoffs is to keep the hitter in the box. Give the hitter one time out. Otherwise, the ump calls the batter in and the pitcher can throw until the ump calls time out. If the hitter needs to scratch himself, he has to do it in the box in-between pitches.