31 July 09 (am)

Workout notes Nothing, maybe some yoga on my own. I have a bit of a back ache (mattress?); I’ll try sleeping on a hard surface tonight.

I’ll probably swim on Monday prior to getting on the road to return to Peoria. This weekend I have something interesting planned. We’ll see how well it goes.

Posts

Faux News Fail

From here.

Fox News Fail Part II
Glenn Beck is outraged that government money is being spent to protect turtles, and that much of the money will be spent out of the country (hint: the turtles migrate; there are no turtles that are citizens of the United States )

(hat tip: Conservation Report)

Unfortunately, such “arguments” will be popular with the Beck audience. It sort of reminds me of this:

One of the big problems is that stuff that sounds stupid to the average person (sometimes to me too) actually has value; that is why we have a representative democracy rather than a direct one. We elect people to get their staffs to study such matters and then to make good decisions; the average person working 8-10-12-14 hour days simply doesn’t have the time nor the resources (nor, in many cases, the ability) to make a good decision on every single matter.

If the last statement sounds harsh, too bad; I mean it for myself as well. After all, I am not qualified to determine which physics projects should get NSF funding, and there is no shame in my admitting that.

Of course, people often DO make selfish decisions and sometimes “raid the public treasury” for personal gain, and, to be blunt, I really have zero confidence in some of the morons that we have in office (e. g. Senator Jim Inhofe, or, yes, even some of the Democrats who support creationism (Senator Pryor), support nonsense “alternative medicine” (Senator Harkin) or are worried about human-animal hybrids (Senator Landrieu, with many of her Republican buddies).

But there is a larger problem; many of us simply don’t share the same values; that is what makes modern bipartisan support for anything all but impossible at times:

Talking Points has a story about how Max Baucus is trying to craft a health deal with Mike Enzi at the table. Aside from the fact that Enzi, like Baucus, represents a mountainous state with very few people, it’s hard to see what possible common ground Baucus thinks he’ll find.

The central fact of the health care debate is that there is essentially no agreement on anything — values, philosophy, vision of how the world works — between the two sides. Progressives want universal coverage, and see an expanded government role as essential to getting there. Conservatives believe, in the face of all evidence, that free markets are the answer.

So, sometimes the answer is to roll over the other side if you have the numbers and have won the last election.