New RNC Chair: Michael Steele practiced underhanded politics!

Michael Steele got elected RNC chair. He has a history of underhanded election tactics.

Back in 2006 he ran for the Maryland US Senate seat. He lost by 10 points. But check out the stunt that he pulled:

Exhibit 2 is from the 2006 general election for U.S. Senate in Maryland. Our distinguished witnesses on Panel II, the Attorney General of Maryland and the Prince George’s County Executive, will discuss this exhibit in more detail. Let me just say that former Congressman Kweisi Mfume, who is a friend with whom I represented Baltimore City in the U.S. House of Representatives, ran against me for the Democratic nomination and lost. He subsequently endorsed me as the U.S. Senate nominee for the general election, as did Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson. They both are prominent African-Americans leaders in Maryland and appeared at several campaign events on my behalf as I prepared to face off against Lt. Governor Steele in the November general election.

Imagine my surprise then to discover on Election Day that the Republican campaigns for Governor and Senator in Maryland had distributed this literature.

The title of the piece is “Ehrlich-Steele Democrats” and “Official Voter Guide.” The cover page prominently displays three African-American politicians: former Prince George’s County Executive Wayne Curry, former Congressman Mfume, and current Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson. Under their names is the statement “These are OUR choices,” implying that all 3 gentlemen had endorsed Mr. Ehrlich for governor and Mr. Steele for senator. That is false. Mr. Mfume and Mr. Johnson endorsed my candidacy over Mr. Steele for the Senate. The flyer concludes with a citation to the general election, on Tuesday, November 7, 2006, and legal authority lines (required under Maryland election law) noting that the literature was “paid and authorized” by both the Ehrlich and Steele campaigns.

This type of deceptive literature is despicable and outrageous. It is clearly designed to mislead African-American voters about prominent endorsements by well-respected politicians. Maryland voters have a legal right to vote and pick the candidate of their choice. I was also upset to read in the Washington Post that a Maryland Republican election worker guide for poll workers stated that their “most important duty as a poll worker is to challenge people” trying to vote. This election guide was rightfully denounced by civil rights groups as a voter suppression and intimidation effort.

It looks as if Mr. Steele will fit in perfectly with those cheats the Republicans.

Quickly: Clair McCaskill, Super Bowl Cheetos Commercial

I need to get back to lesson preparation: we are discussing tank problems in differential equations, matrix multiplication (easy) in linear algebra, and the simplicity of the group A5 (alternating group) in abstract algebra.

But I’ll post a couple of videos:

This is a Superbowl commercial for Cheetos:

Here is my best cell phone story: I was eating at Souper Salads (Austin, TX; the spelling is correct; the name is a pun) with my wife and some clown was all but yelling on his cell phone. He didn’t just stay at his table; he actually wandered around the restaurant, passing the tables, waving his free arm widely all the while oblivious to everyone else.

I felt like dumping a pitcher of liquid on the clown.

Now for a more useful rant:

This is the fireball speech that Senator McCaskill made:

A Bit of Gloom and Doom (at 3 F in Peoria)

Workout notes I’ll update; I am planning on yoga plus a run then a walk (about 8 miles on foot).
It is 3 F with a new thin layer of snow, so I’ll be inside, once again.

Update: I had to teach Ms. Vickie’s yoga class; I then ran myself into the ground for 2.5 miles on the treadmill and had to get off. I got back on and did 3.5 miles worth of hills; I had to bag the last hill repeat as my right leg (calf/behind the knee) was starting to tighten/stiffen etc. Then I walked two 13.5 minute miles on the track (those went easy).

Analysis: this weekend’s workout was tough on me and I haven’t recovered as yet. 9 minute training miles are NOT easy miles for me at this stage; I have to accept that.

Today: it seems as if I am finding nothing but gloomy articles to read.

Economic Forecast: as cold and dark as the current Illinois conditions. Hat tip to bobswern at the Daily Kos. The source article:

Perhaps the Obama administration will be able to bring a surprisingly early end to the ongoing U.S. financial crisis. We hope so, but it is not going to be easy. Until now, the U.S. economy has been driving straight down the tracks of past severe financial crises, at least according to a variety of standard macroeconomic indicators we evaluated in a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) last December.

In particular, when one compares the U.S. crisis to serious financial crises in developed countries (e.g., Spain 1977, Norway 1987, Finland 1991, Sweden 1991, and Japan 1992), or even to banking crises in major emerging-market economies, the parallels are nothing short of stunning. [...]

Let’s start with the good news. Financial crises, even very deep ones, do not last forever. Really. In fact, negative growth episodes typically subside in just under two years. If one accepts the NBER’s judgment that the recession began in December 2007, then the U.S. economy should stop contracting toward the end of 2009. Of course, if one dates the start of the real recession from September 2008, as many on Wall Street do, the case for an end in 2009 is less compelling. [...]

Turning to unemployment, where the new administration is concentrating its focus, pain seems likely to worsen for a minimum of two more years. Over past crises, the duration of the period of rising unemployment averaged nearly five years, with a mean increase in the unemployment rate of seven percentage points, which would bring the U.S. to double digits.

Interestingly, unemployment is a category where rich countries, with their high levels of wage insurance and stronger worker protections, tend to experience larger problems after financial crises than do emerging markets. Emerging market economies do have deeper output falls after their banking crises, but the parallels in other areas such as housing prices are quite strong.

Note: if the Daily Kos diary headline seems confusing (unemployment at 22 percent):

Their mean historical increase in unemployment–and it’s important to note that we’re talking about Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “U3″ unemployment levels here–is projected to be roughly seven percent from the start of the downturn. If one approximates unemployment to have been at 4.5% at the start of the current downturn (and I believe that’s fairly generous), this indicates an expected unemployment rate of 11.5% at the height of the current downturn would be expected based upon the duo’s historical projections now.

However, “U3″ unemployment rates are running at levels that are approximately half of current “U6″ employment rates. December’s “U3″ rate was 7.2%. December’s “U6″ rate was 13.5%.

Social Breakdown I don’t know if I agree with this, but I read the article anyway (hat tip to NWTerriD)

The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.

At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed.

How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up out of the slime in moments of crisis to offer fantastic visions? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won’t have to wait long to find out. [...]

Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but I am beginning to understand that our “leadership” (corporate) really don’t have community interests at heart; at least many of them don’t. Interestingly enough, we hear those who whine about the “entitlement” mentality, but mostly against those who don’t have very much and almost never against those who are ripping off society by the million, often with taxpayer money.

Rise of a new, more vicious right wing?

Listen to John McCain; note what he says about the economic times and employment rates:

The New York Times takes Bill O’Reilly to task for his racist/nativist views.

Last week at the National Press Club in Washington, a group seeking to speak for the future of the Republican Party declared that its November defeats in Congressional races stemmed not from having been too hard on foreigners, but too soft.

The group, the American Cause, released a report arguing that anti-immigration absolutism was still the solution for the party’s deep electoral woes, actual voting results notwithstanding. Rather than “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” as President Bush and Karl Rove once tried to do, the report’s author, Marcus Epstein, urged Republicans to double down on their efforts to run on schemes to seal the border and drive immigrants out. [...]

But even more telling was the presence of Peter Brimelow, a former Forbes editor and founder of Vdare.com, an extremist anti-immigration Web site. It is named for Virginia Dare, the first white baby born in the English colonies, which tells you most of what you need to know. The site is worth a visit. There you can read Mr. Brimelow’s and Mr. Buchanan’s musings about racial dilution and the perils facing white people, and gems like this from Mr. Epstein:

“Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”

It is easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out. The country has, of course, made considerable progress since the days of Know-Nothings and the Klan. But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.

It is all around us. Much was made of the Republican mailing of the parody song “Barack the Magic Negro,” but the same notorious CD included “The Star Spanglish Banner,” a puerile bit of Latino-baiting. It is easily found on YouTube. Google the words “Bill O’Reilly” and “white, Christian male power structure” for another YouTube taste of the Fox News host assailing the immigration views of “the far left” (including The Times) as racially traitorous.

Hat tip to proseandpromise at the Daily Kos.

2 February 2009 Part II

Our break in the weather is all but over; we should get some snow and single digit temperatures tonight.

So to warm you up, I’ll post links to some articles that I found interesting.

A Bit of Academic Humor Professors should watch what the post on public forums.

Venting to her friends on Facebook one night, a religion professor at Dartmouth College updated her profile to say that she had just consulted an online encyclopedia entry on “modernity” to prepare for her class the next day.

“I feel like such a fraud,” she wrote on her profile. “Do you think dartmouth parents would be upset about paying $40,000 a year for their children to go here if they knew that certain professors were looking up stuff on Wikipedia and asking for advice from their Facebook friends on the night before the lecture?”

Her profile featured other comments as well, including a dig at her colleagues: “Some day, when i am chair, we’re all going to JOG IN PLACE throughout the meeting. this should knock out at least half of the faculty within 10 minutes (especially the blowhards) & then the meeting can be ended in a timely manner.”

The problem is, she didn’t realize her settings were set such that anyone could read what she wrote! Ooops!

Racist Right Wing No, I am not talking about mainstream Republicans; in fact I think that it is great that they elected an African American as RNC chair (though he is still a conservative nutjob).

But some conservatives are less than pleased:

So far, we haven’t seen any press releases or commentary from other Religious Right groups and leaders, which makes us suspect that they are none-too-pleased with the RNC’s choice … but at least they are not losing their minds, like David Duke:

I am glad these traitorous leaders of the Republican Party appointed this Black racist, affirmative action advocate to the head of the Republican party because this will lead to a huge revolt among the Republican base. As a former Republican official, I can tell you that millions of rank-and-file Republicans are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore! We will either take the Republican Party back over the next four years or we will say, “To Hell With the Republican Party!” And we will take 90 percent of Republicans with us into a New Party that will take its current place!

No, mainstream Republicans, I don’t think that David Duke represents you or anyone else who should be allowed to walk around unsupervised. I am not talking about you here.

But I will have some fun at the expense of the religious right wing fundies.

What do professors at Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) do with their research time?

That’s right, they search for Noah’s ark!

What do Liberty University professors do when they are not teaching? Search for Noah’s Ark, of course. Archaeologist Randall Price is set to travel to Mt. Ararat in Turkey to search for it based on claims by a Kurdish shepherd who says he has seen the ark, and even climbed on top of it, when he was a boy: “They found the spot, Price said, but it now is covered by an estimated 60-foot-deep pile of boulders. Price believes the landslide may have resulted from attacks against Kurdish rebels on the mountain, or perhaps from explosives that were set off to cover up the ark.”

All I can say is:

Of course, climate change skeptics aren’t above lying when it suits them.

The climate change denialists have been whooping it up in my email lately, crowing in triumph over the fact that James Hansen’s former “supervisor” has disavowed his work and claims there were no political efforts to suppress the scientific facts. I haven’t really cared — it’s an argument from imaginary authority, nothing more — but I was very amused to learn that this “fact” is in the same category as other denialist “facts”: it isn’t. This fellow, John Theron, is a cranky old gomer who retired 15 years ago, and was thus not even present in the oppressive Bush administration, and never had supervisory authority over Hansen at all.

Why anyone listens to these clowns is beyond me.

Mainstream Republicans In general, mainstream Republican political leaders are rather shameless as far as having one set of ethics for themselves and a much higher set for others. Here is a recent example.

When Bush was President:

Back when it launched in 2005, the Judicial Confirmation Network burst onto the scene when it unveiled a study that claimed to show that “the American people are tired of the partisan, political maneuvering and the unwarranted character assassinations against qualified candidates for the federal bench.”

The JCN explained that voters wanted “Senators to do their jobs and hold a straight, up or down vote on nominees based on their qualifications” and thought that those who opposed President Bush’s judicial nominees were “just playing partisan politics”:

Judicial nomination battles are winning issues for Republicans. Voters overwhelmingly endorse the Republicans’ fundamental argument that qualified nominees deserve an up or down vote on the floor of the Senate. Because they reject so strongly recent examples of judicial activism, voters want judges who apply rather than make new law, and they want decisions about controversial issues made by their elected representatives rather than unelected judges. They want politics out of the courts and the confirmation process; therefore they reject the suggestion that pro-life views should disqualify a judicial nominee. Republicans and Independents overwhelmingly reject the arguments of the left that a conservative nominee will roll back the clock on constitutional rights, and even Democrats barely endorse that assertion. Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all believe that opponents of judicial nominees are just playing partisan politics.

But that was then; what about now?

Now that the White House and Senate have changed hands, the JCN is back and this time touting a new Rasmussen Report survey, which we debunked last week, that they claim demonstrates that what voters really want is for President Obama’s judicial nominees to receive an “unprecedented level of Senate scrutiny”:

The U.S. Senate will have the responsibility of evaluating and voting on President Obama’s judicial nominees. President Obama has advanced the most radical judicial activist philosophy of any president in American history. He said that judges should decide cases based on their own “deepest values,” “core concerns,” and “the depth and breadth of [their] empathy.” According to President Obama, “the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart” — not what is in the text, principles, and history of our Constitution and other laws.

President Obama’s unprecedented call for judicial activism must be met with an unprecedented level of Senate scrutiny. For every nominee, there should be a presumption that he would — as President Obama has told us he prefers — decide cases based on his personal views. It should be up to each individual nominee to rebut the presumption and to prove that he would rule on the basis of what the law actually provides, as two-thirds of Americans believe judges should.

In other words, they are blatant hypocrites. Remember the rule IIOKIYAAR (it is ok if you are a Republican).

Economics/Stimulus

Our Executive Branch; this takes just under 20 minutes total.

Articles:

Glen Beck is either incompetent or a liar (or both). On his show, he mocks the name of a proposed program. Ok, there is nothing wrong with that except….well, the proposed program doesn’t have the name that he is mocking.

Summary: On his Fox News program, Glenn Beck reported as true the idea floated on Forbes.com that a program the Obama administration is reportedly considering should be called the “Bad Asset Repository Fund.” Without noting that the reported program has not in fact been named, Beck then ridiculed the creators of the nonexistent name for failing to recognize that the acronym is “BARF.” [...]

But the January 29 Forbes.com article that referenced the acronym BARF did not attribute it to the Obama administration, as Beck suggested. In fact, in the article — titled “Here Comes the BARF” — reporter Liz Moyer specifically noted that “[t]hey haven’t named it yet” before going on to write that it “would be truth in advertising” to call “a federal ‘bad bank’ to soak up toxic assets the Bad Asset Repository Fund.”

Of course, Beck’s normal audience probably couldn’t follow all of that.

Ok, who is suffering under this economic downturn? Mano Singham talks about keeping things in perspective:

Change is difficult to deal with, especially if it is a change for the worse in one’s financial status. Losing one’s job and being forced to accept a lower paying one or having to lower one’s lifestyle is not easy to accept, irrespective of what one’s initial and final level of living was.

In the wake of the Bernie Madoff fraud, we hear of many people saying that they are ‘financially ruined’, that they have ‘lost everything’. When looked at closely, though, some of those descriptions seem to be based on a relative rather than an absolute scale.

For example, take this article by someone named Alexandra Penney who was a Madoff victim and was so traumatized by the prospect of her loss that she did not leave her apartment for days. But when you read her piece, you realize that she lives in a nice New York apartment, has another studio for her work, a cottage in Florida, and employs a maid who comes in three times a week to, among other things, iron her 40 ‘classic white shirts’ because she likes to wear a clean new one every day. Every year Penney travels to many exotic countries.

Penney will now have to give up some of these things, and she is so traumatized that she thinks of suicide.

I’ve lived a great and interesting life. I love beautiful things: high thread count sheets, old china, watches, jewelry, Hermes purses, and Louboutin shoes. I like expensive French milled soap, good wines, and white truffles. I have given extravagant gifts like diamond earrings. I traveled a lot. In this last year, I’ve been Laos, Cambodia, India, Russia, and Berlin for my first solo art show. Will I ever be able to explore exotic places again?

The article reeks with self-pity and in doing so betrays a certain lack of awareness and sensitivity of how it might be perceived by people for whom the words ‘lost everything’ or ‘financial ruin’ may mean becoming homeless or going hungry, and not the loss of a maid or a beach vacation home or trips to exotic locales.

And I suppose for some, “losing everything” might mean not getting that extra million dollar bonus.

Of course, there are those wealthy who say “tough beans”; we’re doing great (with taxpayer money helping us out too) and you aren’t doing so hot. So what?

Bink at the Daily Kos has a few things to say.. Note that during the “primary wars” between Clinton and Obama, I called bink a troll.

I’m getting pretty damn sick and tired of it.

Sick and tired of being lectured by rich people that the Good Times are over and it’s time for Americans to accept a lower standard of living. We need to get used to the idea that we all won’t be wearing furs and jewels going forward. We need to get back to work and work hard, says Tom Friedman!

The champagne has stopped flowing.

The party has ended.

The bubble has burst.

The balloon has popped!

Sure.

But what good times is Tom Friedman talking about?

During the last eight years, incomes for working people have stagnated or declined. Poverty rose. We had eight years with no net job creation. The nutrition problem in our country grew worse, culminating with ten percent of the population on food stamps — and this was before the financial collapse! We experienced skyrocketing costs for housing, higher education and medical care at the same time government was threatening to yank away safety net programs like Social Security.

The last eight years weren’t a party for most Americans.

They were a time of constantly working harder for smaller rewards, a time of ever-increasing financial and social anxiety, a time of disruption and precarity.

Now …

Now, rich people like Tom Friedman are calling for austerity?

Americans have to be punished for the Sybaritic orgy of the last eight years?

I have news for Tom Friedman:

We didn’t participate in it. [...]

Robert Creamer at the Huffington Post has a few thoughts to share as well.

Senator Claire McCaskill took to the Senate floor last week and put into words what most Americans know, but much of the economic and media elite systematically ignore: there is no economic or social justification for the massive incomes earned by the barons of Wall Street – especially when their companies continue to exist solely because of massive infusions of taxpayer dollars.

Last week it was announced that Wall Street gave out $18.4 billion in bonuses – presumably to reward executives for their performance in 2008 when the markets lost 30% of their value – and when their irresponsible risk-taking threw the world economy into a nose dive.

This comes on the heels of the spectacle of Wall Street firms coming with tin cups to Congress while it rewarded itself with million-dollar CEO bathroom make-overs, swank executive get-aways, $35,000 office couches and new $50 million corporate jets.

What are they thinking? The answer is that they live on anther planet — one where they tell each other that they actually “deserve” their massively disproportionate share of the society’s good and services. The decades-long explosion of executive compensation – especially on Wall Street – has convinced many of them that the gravy train can – and should – go on forever. It’s about time that someone like Senator McCaskill made it clear that the executive compensation “emperor” has no clothes. [...]

Many of these Wall Street insiders, CEO’s, commentators and “experts” think of themselves as being more “sophisticated” and “cosmopolitan” than ordinary Americans. In fact, they spend their time in the isolated cocoon of corporate jet travel, luxury condos, private schools, exclusive resorts, private clubs, and fancy cocktail parties. They talk to other people like themselves who are perfectly happy to validate their view that they “deserve” multimillion dollar compensation – that they deserve to be driven around in limousines and live in estates that are valued in eight figures.

They convince themselves that if the benighted masses just knew all that they know about credit default swaps or mark-to–market accounting practices, they would understand why it is somehow in America’s interest that they should continue to be given a massively disproportionate share of the wealth created by our economy.

It would probably do them some good to become “cosmopolitan” enough to get out and talk to ordinary Americans. Ordinary Americans who work hard every day have a hard time justifying why the very people who caused the economic disaster–that may have cost them their job or their home– deserve to be paid millions and millions of dollars.

They might also take time to study some history. Marie Antoinette would be a good place to start. She and her husband, King Louis XVI of France, shared their “cosmopolitan” attitudes. It didn’t work out so well for them.

I am wondering what it will take for these arrogant assholes more clueless financial elites to listen up?

I know one thing: this economy really has the potential to pit citizens against each other, as brotherpeacemaker points out.

I was listening to National Public Radio Super Bowl Sunday morning. The topic of discussion was how economics actually destroy community. The speaker, I forgot his name, gave the analogy of the Quaker family who lost their barn. The Quaker community would get together and have a barn raising where everyone in the community would come together for the aid of the neighbor. No muss and no fuss. Everyone has the common goal of helping a neighbor raise a barn. There is a socially common goal.

Now, compare that to the modern farmer family who loses their barn. They call their insurance company. The insurance company sends out an adjuster who makes sure to minimize the insurance company’s financial exposure in a mutually fair deal. The farmer family then takes the check and finds a contractor. The contractor and the farmer family have to negotiate price to assure a fair deal. The contractor then hires subcontractors or employees and negotiates fair deals for all. Everyone is negotiating a fair deal in an attempt to make sure they maximize their profits at the expense of their neighbor. There is no real socially common goal. The welfare of the community is lost to the welfare of the individual.

Indeed, so much of the community’s welfare simply doesn’t measure up to the welfare of individuals. Even when there is a clear individual benefit to complement the community benefit, we have been programmed to think social consciousness is some nefarious plan to undermine our capitalistic system. The moment someone mentions something like universal healthcare or a education financing system that is truly equitable and suddenly the fabric of America’s social system is under threat of unraveling. But the only thing that is really unraveling is somebody’s opportunity to make profit and capitalize on economics.

Corporate America is notorious for putting the welfare of their profits ahead of the welfare of the community. Bank of America gets part of the stimulus payout to help put America’s economy back on its feet and what does management do? Management decides to make accelerated bonus payments to their executive officers to the tune of four billion dollars in order to keep talent. Spending good money to retain the talent that drove the company into the ground seems awfully self defeating. I know if I cost my company billions of dollars in value I would expect to be fired. But these people will actually use money intended for the benefit of the community to enrich the personal economics of a relatively few. [...]

Speaking of the stimulus package, go here if you want to see the official estimates of the cost of the various provisions.

An Honest College Ad!

2 February 2009

Workout notes: 4000 yard swim; 550 warm up (whoops!), 10 x 50 (drill/swim) fins, 10 x 100 (25 fly, 75 free) on the 2 (1:41-44), 400 IM in 8:13, 100 IM in 1:57, 10 x 50 fist on 1 (52-56!), 5 x (25 catch-up, 75 free) on the 2 (1:46-50), 5 x 100 (alternate paddle, free).

I had the lane to myself again!

I didn’t walk as my left piriformis was just a bit sore after this weekend’s workout. I did some light yoga stretches after swimming though. I am planning on going to yoga class tonight.

Workout wise, I am shifting my after swimming walk from Monday-Wednesday to Wednesday-Friday in order to give my body just a bit more time to recover from my weekend’s festivities; my plan is to start increasing weekend mileage.

Personal: I found this question to be a bit strange:

I live on my own in an apartment.

One of my work colleagues just bought his own place over the summer. He’s also a single guy. He knows I’m an atheist.

He threw out a random question last week:

“Hemant, if you don’t believe in God, do you ever get lonely?”

My guess is this: everyone gets lonely from time to time, right? I know that I am far less lonely now than when I was a believer, but that has more to do with my getting married than anything else. Besides, there are periods when I get lonely even when I am around people that I love; that is normal, no?

These periods seldom last long and I don’t find them especially troubling. I see it as part of being human and having complex emotions. Am I unusual in this regard? (I know that I am strange, but that isn’t what I am talking about! )

Science Scientists attempted to clone an extinct species. The animal died very early in its life. Nevertheless, we learned some things.

Memory: short term versus long term. Here is a snippet of a biosingularity article:

A new brain imaging study illustrates what happens to memories as time goes by. The study, in the January 28 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, shows that distinct brain structures are involved in recalling recent and older events.

The findings support earlier studies of memory-impaired patients with damage limited to the hippocampus. These patients show deficits in learning new information and in recalling events that occurred just prior to their injuries. However, they are able to recall older events, which are thought to involve other regions of the brain, particularly the cortex. [...]

To address this debate, Christine Smith, PhD, and Larry Squire, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego and the San Diego VA Medical Center, imaged study participants as they answered 160 questions about news events that occurred over the past 30 years. The hippocampus and related brain structures were most active when recalling recent events. Hippocampal activity gradually declined as participants recalled events that were 1-12 years old and remained low when they recalled events that were 13-30 years old.

In contrast, Smith and Squire found the opposite pattern of activity in frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices. In these brain regions — which are located at the surface of the brain — activity increased with the age of the news event recalled. “

2 Minutes to Go, Cardinals Lead Steelers 23-20 but…

The Cardinals got a quick touchdown drive to cut the lead to 20-14, got a stop, got stopped themselves after a short drive, but punted to pin the Steelers at their own 1.

They got a saftey to cut it to 20-16 and then Warner hit Fitzgerald for a long TD to go up 23-20.

(photos from yahoo)

Now the Steelers have it 3′rd and 6.

If the Cardinals win, I credit their defensive line; they have made life miserable for the Steelers all night long.

But the Steelers have it at midfield with 1 minute to go.

Oh my, they hit a long pass and now have it at the 7 yard line with 49 seconds left….but the Steelers have no time outs left.

Pass in the corner of the endzone…too tall.

Pass to the right corner of the end zone….touchdown! But a review is coming; it sure looks like a touchdown to me, but there are still 35 seconds to go and the Cardinals still have two time outs.

Touchdown Steelers!!!

What a game!

It is 27-23 with 35 seconds left, but given the way that this game has gone…

The Cardinals are now 77 yards away with 29 seconds to go.

They are now at the Steeler 45 with 15 seconds to go, but they now have no time outs.

End zone shots or sideline passes.

Sack or an incomplete pass? Fumble; Pittsburgh gets the ball and wins 27-23, in one of the most exciting games I have ever seen.

20-7 Steelers after Three

The last Steeler drive was aided by three 15 yard penalties against the Cardinals; the face mask and the running into the holder penalties were obvious; the late hit on the quarterback call was iffy, at best.

Nevertheless the Cardinal defense held on first and goal from the five and forced a field goal attempt (which was made).

So in all, the defense has held Pittsburgh to 13 points; the huge difference was the 14 point swing on the interception return (above photo).

Photo from yahoo.

Super Bowl at the Half: 17-7 Steelers

(photos from yahoo)

This has been quite a game up to now. On the first drive the Steelers pushed the Cardinals around and got a first and goal on the 2 yard line.

But penetration on a running play put the Steelers at second and goal at the 5; that was a big play.

On third down the Steeler quarterback tried to run it in and the referees called it a touchdown; replay overturned the call (correctly) and so Pittsburgh had to settle for a 3-0 lead.

The Steelers got the ball back and drove it in this time to go up 10-0 very early in the second quarter.

But the Cardinals found some offense of their own and cut the lead to 10-7.

Then an exchange of punts had the Steelers with the ball in their own territory when the Cardinal defensive line tipped a pass which was intercepted; so with about 2 minutes to go momentum appeared to have shifted.

The Cardinals drove the ball to the Steeler 2 yard line with 18 seconds left; they used their final time out but still had it first and goal at the 2.

Then….an errant pass was intercepted by Harrison (Steeler defensive MVP linebacker) at the goal line…and he ran it back 100 yards for a touchdown on the last play of the half!

This is one exciting game, even though I “don’t have a dog in this hunt”, so to speak.

Yes, I am aware of Kurt Warner’s wooish behavior and campaign against stem cell research. But he does do a good deal of excellent charity work too; like all humans he is a mixed bag. It is just that he is famous and most of us are not.

Super Bowl Sunday Part I

My Prediction: Pittsburgh 28, Arizona 14. Then again, I thought that the Patriots would beat the Giants last year.

My prediction is based on the fact that the Steelers have a better record against tougher opposition; the Cardinals were lucky to make it to the play-offs at all, IMHO.

Other topics

Ok, this is photo shop. Still, I like it.

Economy: Robert Reich reports that, while different kinds of economists agree that the Stimulus Bill is needed, they disagree with the direction to take after the bill is passed.

There are some who believe that we are in a “down” part of a business cycle and that the overall structure is ok. There are others (e. g., Reich) who feel that the structure of the economy is a big part of the problem and therefore needs to be changed. Here is a snippet from the article:

Those who support the stimulus as a desperate measure to arrest the downward plunge in the business cycle might be called cyclists. Others, including me, see the stimulus as the first step toward addressing deep structural flaws in the economy. We are the structuralists. These two camps are united behind the current stimulus, but may not be for long. Cyclists blame the current crisis on a speculative bubble that threw the economy’s self-regulating mechanisms out of whack. They say that we can avoid future downturns if the Fed pops bubbles earlier by raising interest rates when speculation heats up.

But structuralists see it very differently. The bursting of the housing bubble caused the current crisis, but the underlying problem began much earlier — in the late 1970s, when median U.S. incomes began to stall. Because wages got hit then by the double-whammy of global competition and new technologies, the typical American family was able to maintain its living standard only if women went into the workforce in larger numbers, and later, only if everyone worked longer hours.

When even these coping mechanisms were exhausted, families went into debt — a strategy that was viable as long as home values continued to rise. But when the housing bubble burst, families were no longer able to easily refinance and take out home-equity loans. The result: Americans no longer have the money to keep consuming. When you consider that consumers make up 70 percent of the economy, the magnitude of the problem becomes apparent. [...]

But I don’t think that our new president should wade into this debate right away. He has his hands full. He needs to implement the stimulus package and reverse the downturn. Bill Clinton had to choose sides almost right away — and had little choice but to cave in to the cyclists and forfeit most of his long-term economic agenda. The severity of the current crisis gives Obama more time.

But he will need to open the larger debate sooner rather than later. This downturn is revealing the U.S. economy’s underlying flaws. Once the business cycle turns up, the public and its representatives may be less inclined to tackle the things that truly drag us down. Clinton was, after all, reelected in 1996 on the wave of a cyclical upturn in the economy. But the structural problems that he failed to address — widening inequality, sagging median incomes, a broken health-care system, crumbling infrastructure and global warming — are that much larger now, making the current crisis all the worse.

I recommend reading the whole article.

Wing nuts are idiots I am not making this up: many wingnuts believe that President Obama had the military retake the oath and to swear allegiance to him, instead of the nation.

The “rumor” started as a “spoof” post and many of the idiotic wingnuts bought right into it.