5 September 09: Football!

Oh my goodness; what a game! Ohio State was up 20-7 when Navy made a 99 yard drive to cut it 20-14. OSU got a field goal to go up to 23-14 and another touchdown off of a turn over (fumble at the 30) to go up 29-14.

But with 4′th a 2 at the Navy 15, OSU went for it and didn’t make it; next play Navy hits an 85 yard touchdown pass.

So it is 29-21.

Navy gets the ball back…scores again! But on the 2 point conversion; OSU intercepts and runs it back to go up 31-27 with 2 minutes to go.

Onside doesn’t work; OSU runs out the clock.

Analysis: Navy was more excited about the game; OSU was looking toward USC next week. Navy had better not overlook Louisiana Tech next week; they are looking for a scalp.

In a show down on Thursday: Boise State whipped Oregon 19-8; so much for the Ducks.

Iowa blocked a last second field goal to hold off I-AA Iowa (ok, “play-off division”) 17-16 and Minnesota is choking against Syracuse; can they pull it out? They are at the Orange 15.

Nevada-Notre Dame next. This ought to be competitive.

Update: it looks that I was very wrong here. Sure, the game is not over yet but ND is up 28-0 at the half and is dominating.

Final was 35-0.

Big Ten: Illinois was favored; that was a joke. Missouri ran away with it 37-9; no realistic follower of Illinois football would be shocked.

And in the game in which I wanted both teams to lose (ok, I pulled for BYU oh-so-slightly):

Yes, BYU knocked out Sam Bradford and scored with 3 minutes to go to win 14-13.

(photos from yahoo)

5 September 09 (am)

Here is a heart felt post at Daily Kos about someone who has changed racial attitudes; the post is very honest and blunt.

I like this type of post for the following reason: all too often if someone admits that they don’t like blacks because so many of those that they grew up around were ill behaved and, say, beat them up are shouted down by others. Sometimes, one can grow up bitter because of the behavior of others around them; humans tend to reason inductively.

Race the Fest

5K Race the Fest: 7:38, 7:40, 8:56 (1.1). I didn’t slow that much; I caught two little boys in the last mile but they got me back. However the last mile had a small uphill so perhaps mile 2 was elevation aided? Place: 4′th over 50 finisher, and 16/61 among the runners.

This was a small town course with lots of turns; still it was very pleasant. I started out conservatively (so I thought) and stayed that way and got just a tad bit heavy legged in mile 3; I just couldn’t drop the hammer.

But last night I was up with lots of nasal drainage; but then it was 60 F and a perfect day to run.

Oh…so close. Last three 5K races: 24:09, 24:07, 24:14. I can’t break out of this rut.

Socially: Barbara did the 2 mile and Tracy also ran it.

5 September 09

Workout notes Last night I kept walking up with a mouth full of saliva. I am draining and I don’t know if it is allergies or a cold. So I’ll run the local 5K anyway; physically I don’t feel that bad.

Politics: Emotionally, this sums it up rather well. Of course, this isn’t ALL of the opposition and the wingnuts went after Bill Clinton too.

I wonder; Paul Krugman talks about his hate mail going up and becoming completely irrational.

Conservatives: Conservatives are ok with spending, so long as it is military related. I kind of thought that spending on health care would keep more Americans safe:

The absence of health insurance creates a range of consequences, including lower quality of life, increased morbidity and mortality, and higher financial burdens. This paper focuses on just one aspect of this harm—namely, greater risk of death—and seeks to illustrate its general order of magnitude.

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimated that 18,000 Americans died in 2000 because they were uninsured. Since then, the number of uninsured has grown. Based on the IOM’s methodology and subsequent Census Bureau estimates of insurance coverage, 137,000 people died from 2000 through 2006 because they lacked health insurance, including 22,000 people in 2006.

4 September 09 (pm)

Frogs: Just read the post; this is about frog moms feeding its young on unfertilized eggs.

Reply to Paul Krugman’s article: Paul Krugman wrote an article about the spectacular failure of conservative (“fresh water”) economists to predict the economic meltdown. Krugman seemed to imply that some economists got intoxicated by the beauty of their mathematical models.

A cosmologist talks about this:

One part of the essay worth commenting on, or at least musing about, is the punchline. Krugman thinks that a major factor leading to the failures of economics to understand the mess we’re currently in was the temptation to think that beautiful models must be right.

As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets, this time gussied up with fancy equations. The renewed romance with the idealized market was, to be sure, partly a response to shifting political winds, partly a response to financial incentives. But while sabbaticals at the Hoover Institution and job opportunities on Wall Street are nothing to sneeze at, the central cause of the profession’s failure was the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess.

Without knowing much of anything about the relevant issues, I nevertheless suspect that this moral might be a bit too pat. Sure, people can fall in love with beautiful theories, to the extent that they overestimate their relationship to reality. But it seems likely to me that the correct way of understanding all this, once it’s properly understood, will look pretty beautiful as well. General relativity is widely held up as an example of a beautiful theory — and it is, when understood in its own language. But if you put the prediction of GR in the Solar System into the language of pre-existing Newtonian physics (which you could certainly do), it would look ugly and ad hoc.

In other words, it isn’t the beauty that was the problem; it was, as Sean says, complacency.

4 September 09 (non-football edition)

Workout notes Swam at Bradley; 500 in 9:05, 10 x (25 drill/25 swim), 10 x (25 fly, 25 swim) on 1, 10 x (25 fist/25 free) on 1, one was 50; the rest were 48-49.

I am getting my “feel” back.

But my nose is burning….allergies? Or do I have a cold coming on?

Posts for the day

President Obama: will open the White House Visitor’s Logs:

President Barack Obama said Friday his administration will start releasing the names of people who visit the White House, reversing a long-standing policy transcending both Democratic and Republican presidents.

The move could shed light on the people who influence White House decision-making. It comes following a White House review of its disclosure policy and legal pressure from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Until now, the Obama had sided with the Bush administration’s stand of refusing to release records, in contrast with Obama’s pledge of transparency.

But Obama said Friday: “We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history, not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside.”

Paul Krugman: shows conservative economists no mercy:.

Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy. During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable — indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year. Meanwhile, macroeconomists were divided in their views. But the main division was between those who insisted that free-market economies never go astray and those who believed that economies may stray now and then but that any major deviations from the path of prosperity could and would be corrected by the all-powerful Fed. Neither side was prepared to cope with an economy that went off the rails despite the Fed’s best efforts. [...]

As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets, this time gussied up with fancy equations. The renewed romance with the idealized market was, to be sure, partly a response to shifting political winds, partly a response to financial incentives. But while sabbaticals at the Hoover Institution and job opportunities on Wall Street are nothing to sneeze at, the central cause of the profession’s failure was the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess.

Unfortunately, this romanticized and sanitized vision of the economy led most economists to ignore all the things that can go wrong. They turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the problems of institutions that run amok; to the imperfections of markets — especially financial markets — that can cause the economy’s operating system to undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers created when regulators don’t believe in regulation.

The paper is 8 pages long but is entertaining and informative.

Health Reform Horserace: will backing “the public option” in health care reform hurt or help the bluedogs? Nate Silver: “both”.

Senator Franken: talks to conservatives.

Note: no one would call these conservatives inappropriate. This is how dialogue should go (both sides). True, what the woman said was moronic but even people who say moronic things should be able to talk to their elected officials.

President Obama’s talk to students

Well said!

I agree: I don’t like the lesson plans, but Obama’s speech was going to be about studying and staying in school.

Cherry Picking Polls; Obama’s Numbers, Health Care, etc.

Some are saying that we are down…

The odds of any health care bill at all passing are at this point are pretty tenuous: still probably more likely than not, but it may not be a very good bill, and it may not make the Democrats any more popular once it gets signed (although failing to pass health care reform would almost certainly be even worse). To stretch this into a baseball analogy, this is not really a moment where Obama is being the “closer” and protecting a lead. It’s more like the Democrats are down 5-4 in the bottom of the ninth, but with ample opportunity to turn the game around because they have the bases loaded and their cleanup hitter, Obama, at the plate. If he strikes out, he strikes out — and it’s probably finito for substantive health care reform. But at long last he’ll be swinging for the fences, and this is a moment that should play to nearly all of Obama’s strengths.

The White House may as well go ahead and raise expectations as much as possible: they’ll want ratings points, and they’ll want buzz: they’ll want for this to be the defining moment of the health care debate, and not the dog days of July and August where Obama’s approval rating was chipped away at one lost news cycle at a time.

Some say that we are way down….

Some say we are going to win and win big:

Forget about the talking heads’ narrative about the “sagging prospects” of President Obama’s health insurance reform proposal. Much of the same gang was completely convinced that Obama could never win the nomination — and once nominated would have a hard time winning the election.

You have to wonder sometimes if there shouldn’t be a penalty for pundits who make self-assured predictions that are regularly wrong, and yet continue to be treated as if they know what they’re talking about.

The fact is that the odds are very good that President Obama will succeed in passing landmark health insurance reform legislation this fall – with a robust public health insurance option. The reason is simple: it’s the high political ground.

Health insurance reform represents the high political ground for four major reasons:

1. Americans hate the insurance industry,
2. Obama is going all out
3. Some wavering Ds can see that if this fails it hurts them and
4. Obama’s base is energized and making noise.

I hope so.

Some say that Obama ought to go ahead and divide the country and get what he said that he was going to get. After all, Franklin Roosevelt did just that:

With the exception of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 (which gave the president authority to close the nation’s banks and which passed the House of Representatives unanimously), the principal legislative innovations of the 1930s were enacted over the vigorous opposition of a deeply entrenched minority. Majority rule, as Roosevelt saw it, did not require his opponents’ permission.

When Roosevelt asked Congress to establish the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide cheap electric power for the impoverished South, he did not consult with utility giants like Commonwealth and Southern. When he asked for the creation of a Securities and Exchange Commission to curb the excesses of Wall Street, he did not request the cooperation of those about to be regulated. When Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act divesting investment houses of their commercial banking functions, the Democrats did not need the approval of J. P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers.

Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard and Congress enacted legislation nullifying clauses in private contracts stipulating payment in gold over the heated opposition of many of the nation’s wealthy. The Agricultural Adjustment Act setting production quotas and establishing price supports was adopted over the fierce opposition of the nation’s food processors. Establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps was fought tooth and nail by organized labor because of the corps’ modest wages. Social Security became law over the ideological objections of those who believed that government was best which governed least and that individuals should fend for themselves or rely on charity. And the authority of the government to set maximum hours and minimum wages, as well as the right of labor to bargain collectively, was established despite the vociferous opposition of American business.

Of course, President Obama has a difficult task. The liberals (people like me) want one thing; some moderate Democrats want another. Dick Morris is having some fun with it (which is ok) but then he cherry picks some poll numbers:

This week’s polls are a disaster for President Obama. The Rasmussen poll has his approval dropping to 45 percent, after several weeks at 49 percent. The Zogby poll has it even lower — at 42 percent.

Surf to the link to read the rest. No, we don’t need 60 votes for a bill; we need 8 Democrats plus Lieberman to vote for cloture (to end debate); it is ok if they vote “no” on the bill. Only 50 are needed to pass.

As far as the poll numbers, here is a more complete picture:

My take: passing health care reform has been difficult for President Obama because….well, it IS difficult. Had it been easy, Bill Clinton, Harry Truman or Richard Nixon would have succeeded.

Oh Noes! President Obama wants school kids to study!

The absurdity of the Republicans is reaching new heights daily. Will Bunch talks about Republican reaction to President Obama addressing school kids (President Bush addressed them as did President Reagan):

I seem to recall that for many years it was American conservatives out there yearning for a message of personal responsibility to the nation’s school children. Next Tuesday, President Obama says he wants to deliver exactly that, a televised address in classrooms that will “challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.” But now that the president is Obama, apparently conservatives don’t want that message anymore. In fact, the chairman of the GOP in the 4th most populous state in America is calling Obama’s address to the kids “socialist indoctrination.”

Bunch goes on to print the full letter which includes:

As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.
“While I support educating our children to respect both the office of the American President and the value of community service, I do not support using our children as tools to spread liberal propaganda. The address scheduled for September 8, 2009, does not allow for healthy debate on the President’s agenda, but rather obligates the youngest children in our public school system to agree with our President’s initiatives or be ostracized by their teachers and classmates.

Hmmm, I thought that President Obama was going to talk about the importance of studying and learning in school. Sure, that might make them less likely to become creationists…oh wait….in Republican eyes that is a bad thing!

Oh yes, there is this too:

Look at those postgraduate numbers. Sure there is a spread in the first category, but it is so small of a slice (4 percent).

3 September 09 (am)

Workout notes No yoga; so I ran 6 miles (1 hour) on the river trail (bike path); the first 50 minutes went fine but I had some “behind the knee pain/upper calf/lower hamstring” pain in the last 10 minutes.

I stretched afterward.

Some posts

A blue dog is about to bite the dust in Arkansas. Yeah, there is talk about Republicans picking up seats. So what? Many of the seats that they might pick up are blue dog ones.

Republicans New Majority notes that there is a generational perception gap, even in the south. David Frumm notes that the Rs can’t win a general election with just their base.

Republicans: Pat Buchanan: Hitler really wasn’t such a bad guy. Really. Edge of the American West responds:

Enough. This is the kind of horrendous drivel that would embarrass a crazy uncle spouting off at a family reunion as everyone stands by awkwardly and shuffles their feet. It is the historical equivalent of speaking in tongues: the syllables, accents, rhythms, and pauses of actual speech that, when actually heard, dissolve to gibberish. Buchanan strings together his events from the past in a coherent narrative; coherent but absolutely disconnected from reality. Somewhere in this world, a rabbit in a waistcoat is looking at his watch, muttering about lateness. Buchanan has no worries on that score; he is well down the hole already.

A Thousand Words…

What Rep. Stark said then applies now!