Well, Gentle readers, it’s the first day of September – 3 weeks to the beginning of fall. Time for a recap of results versus predictions.

Let’s begin with the Oakland A’s – the once mighty team brought low by the antics of one Billy Beane, General Manager and former advocate for sabermetrics. His zeal to reach for the golden fleece of a World Series win has resulted in disaster. I predicted the A’s would be 3 games behind the Los Angeles Angels in the American League West. So let us check the results, and where are they? Not 3, not 4 but 5 games behind the Angels. I’d also predicted in a previous post on the topic that the A’s would be competing with the Mariners for a wild card position. Where are the Mariners? 9.5 games behind the Angels, so 4.5 games separates the two. But there are two wild card slots available for the whole American League. So the A’s may be competing with their normal arch-foe, the Detroit Tigers for a wild card slot. It would appear that we’ll see Baltimore, LA and Kansas City as the division winners. Then it’s Oakland, Detroit and Cleveland in that order for the wild card. If Oakland manages to eke out wins against Houston, Seattle and the Rangers, they may have a chance at the wild card. But it’s really irrelevant. Even if they get the wild card, they’ll be out in no time. Beane has destroyed this team, and any hope of winning even a pennant. Billy needs to be worried about keeping his job. His contract runs through 2019, but it wouldn’t be the first time a team ousts a GM and negotiates a settlement. Watch your back, Billy – the press is gonna eat you alive on 10/1.

Next topic – the economics of the French and the EU. As previously mentioned, Francois Hollande, the Socialist President of Franch, shuffled his cabinet in order to deal with the failing economics of his country. The Economics Minister, Montebourg, apparently criticized the government over the policy of austerity. Apparently, Monsieur Montebourg also is stuck – in true socialist fashion – with not wanting to mess with labor policies that keep France behind the rest of the EU in reforms. So maybe he did have to go. And the new Economics Minister, one Emmanuel Macron, is young and has new ideas, quite contrary to the normal socialist ethos. So there’s gonna be lots of fireworks in the future, as France struggles to figure out who or what it is. In the meantime, Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank, finally got the memo (he must have read my previous blog post). He has finally determined that it’s time for quantitative and qualitative easing, support for employment through devaluing the Euro, and advocating the same kind of structural reforms that have put Germany and Spain in a position to recover. So who’s left? France and Italy, the last bastions of socialist notions that keep the sinking ship continuing its descent. It’s apparent that there’s only one path, painful but necessary. So when will we see these things happen? When will the EU recover and bring the western world back to economic prosperity? I suspect we’ll see something better by 2017. In the meantime, remember Vlad the Impaler? The guy that thinks he has them by the short ones? Timing is everything, Vlad, and what’s a little more pain when they’ll be enduring the pain of restructuring? The big loser with all this will be Russia and Rootie Tootie Pootie. He figured the west for wimps. Surprise! He figured Angela, that old Eastern bloc physicist, to be his ally. Surprise! He figured the U.S. to be a paper tiger that he could push around. Well, that remains to be seen. If we aren’t firing bullets at him, as card carrying members of NATO, then we’ll likely continue to work with Europe on economic sanctions. But NATO will be the big question. If Poland believes that NATO won’t intervene when a desperate Vlad goes after them, it could get to be a genuine test of wills. Look at the map: see that little red section in the north of Poland that says Kaliningrad? Then under it says “To Russia”. Kaliningrad is part of Russia, all the way over in Poland. It’s the home of the Baltic fleet. Fairly important to Russia, ya think?

This is beginning to look like a caper with significant consequences for all parties. But with any luck on his part, Barry O will be done with his second term, and Mitt Romney will have the problem to reckon with. Recall, during the 2012 race for president, Mittens said Russia would be our biggest problem in the near future. Be careful what you predict, Mittens! It’s gonna be your challenge now. You can’t put that dog in a cage on the roof.

Post Script: Here’s the last paragraph from today’s New York Times about NATO.

It is a far more crowded agenda than Mr. Obama anticipated last spring, when the summit meeting was to be focused on winding down NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan. By 2015, it is scheduled to become a training and assistance force of 8,000 to 12,000 troops, two-thirds of them American.

2/3 of 12,000 is 8,000 American troops. Do you really think 8,000 Americans and 4,000 ‘others’ from the region will stop the Russian army, currently estimated to be 766,000 active and 2.5 million reserve troops. Who are we kidding? It strikes me that this is the Fulda gap all over again. Never heard of the Fulda gap?
Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

Fulda Gap
The Fulda Gap is an area between the Hesse-Thuringian border, and Frankfurt am Main that contains two corridors of lowlands which tanks might have accessed in a surprise attack effort by the Soviets …

Here’s the map showing its location:

In 1987, 4,500 Americans in the armored division patrolled and protected this point at the border between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Today, both the Czech Republic and Slovakia are part of NATO. So obviously the location is secondary, but the ratios look about the same. And in ’87 when Erik the Younger was posted there in his first stint in the army, he was informed that his job as a scout was to find the enemy, report back and die. What a deal, huh? Let’s be sure we’re not repeating that history with this next generation of young gentlemen. Haven’t we killed or maimed enough of this generation in a futile attempt at achieving questionable ends? I say yep.