Countdown: Finding support for Obama’s SCOTUS nomination

Workout notes
Slept in again; I still lifted weights and walked for 1:04: The walking came later.
Walk
3 miles on the indoor track: 13:29, 12:29, 12:12 (easy 200, quicker 200). Then 2 miles of hills on the treadmill (varied from 0 to 3 incline) in 25:50

Weights
warm up: 2 minutes arm bike
Superset:
pull-ups (3 sets of 10)
rows: 10 x 115, 10 x 135, 8 x 135 Smith Machine
military dumbbell: 10 x 45, 10 x 50, 8 x 50
Superset:
incline bench press: 10 x 135, 8 x 145
pull downs 3 sets of 10 x 140
chin ups (palms in) 2 sets of 10
Rotator cuff exercises
Abs:
yoga leg lifts (2 sets of 30)
raises (2 sets of 20)
twists (10 x 135, 10 x 135)
crunches (10 x 135, 10 x 135)
vertical crunches (2 sets of 20)
head stand: 5:00 (had trouble with balance at fist)

Injury notes: no leg pain last night (no fins with swimming either), no shoulder pain at night (no bench presses).

I am making progress!

Science and “militant atheism” fun: Get your cards now!

Yeah, I’ve read books by these men; I hope that Susan Jacoby gets a card as well.

Politics
From Hulu: Split: A Divided America This takes about 80 minutes to watch and is fairly even handed. One point this video makes is that the bases for each party tends to drive the politicians toward the extremes.

Frankly, I think that the liberal base has failed to drive the Democrats to the left as the Democrats tend to run AGAINST their base whereas the Republicans run toward their base.

Here you see that Bob Bennett was not conservative enough!

Of course, there are posts that decry President Obama for not being liberal enough but there is Democratic blowback against such sentiments.

SCOTUS Here is a good two video series (about 10 minutes each) on the liberal concerns on the Kagan nomination. Note: though this is Keith Olbermann, this is NOT a “Republicans suck” kind of post; this is more about what liberals are talking about with each other.

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SCOTUS…

Personal commentary On some websites, I’ve seen some people lampoon Kagan’s appearance (e. g., unattractive). Often those doing the lampooning are themselves, well, rather unattractive unless you find belly buttons pointing at the ground attractive.

Hey, if you have an issue with her and don’t like her due to one issue or another: fine. Make the criticism. But what is the deal with appearance? She wasn’t nominated to be a Hooters server.

About the issues:

Democratic Convention Watch has a nice “point/counter point”.

There is some trepidation from the left: (see the discussion here); some feel that she is too soft on First Amendment issues; rather than taking “here is a line on what is protected speech” she seems ok with asking “why is the government seeking to regulate this speech” which man First Amendment advocates see as a “slippery slope”.

Others see here as being “too accommodating”; this would tend to give validity to right wing arguments.

Of course, much of the right wing attacks are nonsense; Media Matters has a collection of these here.

Some have pounced on a remark that she made about agreeing with Justice Marshall about the original Constitution being flawed (he was talking about slavery).

One wonders if the GOP would have attempted some sort of filibuster no matter who the President nominated; Senator Leahy lampoons this.

One interesting point: it seems as if Republican nominees become “foam at the mouth rightwing radicals” when they are nominated but the more liberal nominees tend to run away from their ideology. We liberals are still timid rabbits.