19 June 2010 posts

Wingnut Representatives: they just don’t get it.

Rep. Grayson’s ad:

DNC BP ad

Economics: Paul Krugman makes a very interesting point about conservatives:

There are many things to say about Alan Greenspan’s op-ed yesterday, none of them complimentary. But what struck me is the passage highlighted by Tim Fernholz:

Despite the surge in federal debt to the public during the past 18 months—to $8.6 trillion from $5.5 trillion—inflation and long-term interest rates, the typical symptoms of fiscal excess, have remained remarkably subdued. This is regrettable, because it is fostering a sense of complacency that can have dire consequences.

You know, some people might take the fact that what’s actually happening is exactly what people like me were saying would happen — namely, that deficits in the face of a liquidity trap don’t drive up interest rates and don’t cause inflation — lends credence to the Keynesian view. But no: Greenspan KNOWS that deficits do these terrible things, and finds it “regrettable” that they aren’t actually happening.

The triumph of prejudices over the evidence is a wondrous thing to behold. Unfortunately, millions of workers will pay the price for that triumph.

(emphasis mine)

Fox News: Watch Jon Stewart from at least 4 minutes onward. First, Fox News gets upset that the President invoked the standard deity toward the end of his BP speech (yes, I saw it as lame but necessary pandering to a superstitious public). But then, watch what they said the day before…they wanted him to PRAY FOR DIVINE INTERVENTION.

Bizarre: I agree with Sarah Palin on something policy related! Really!

Rep. Aaron Schock, IL-18. His attire in this photo is making waves; the photo has “gone viral”.

Education: to be blunt, when I assign grades, I pull out a spread sheet, look at the numbers, and I make it a point to hide the student names. I don’t see the names until I’ve assigned the grades. That isn’t true for every professor.

News of the bizarre:
A woman sues an airline because her silicone enhanced breasts didn’t have enough room on an airliner; during turbulence they crashed into the seat in front of her. Yes, there is a photo with the article. Hat tip: Randazza.

Bizarre: some educator evidently can’t count to six.

Crappy Neighbor: ok, merely an “annoying at times” neighbor. He saws, grinds and pounds nails all day long, almost every day. Yep, he is a retired blue collar guy. I’d love to have a neighborhood of retired librarians or book lovers; I doubt that this guy reads much.

Why do some hate President Obama?

A few days ago, I was in a discussion with a Republican on facebook about national issues; of course this guy doesn’t approve of the President’s job performance. That in and of itself isn’t the topic for this post; I understand that a conservative won’t like his policies. But another conservative jumped into the conversation and said this:

Obama is a disgrace. He is unqualified to be president as he and his clowns in the white house have shown for nearly 1 1/2 years. absolute embarrasment to the democratic part (or what is left of it anymore!)

I responded:

do you care to explain why you think that? This is an honest question; I am not going to argue with you, call you names, etc. If you’d like, you can send me a private message explaining why you think that.

I really wanted to know what this individual thought; exactly what was the President doing that he hated so much.
It turns out: not much. Read his response:

he is a community organizer (ala ACORN). he has shown through his track record the most liberal senetor while in chicago. he has quadrupled the debt in only one year. he has went against his campaign promise to be open book and non-partisan. within each of these there are 100 examples. i guess those who drink the obama, pelosi. reid cool aid never will get it. The rest of the nation does!

So let’s see. The first thing that he mentions is that he “is a community organizer” and mentions “ACORN”. Sure, ACORN had some internal corruption problems (mismanagement of funds, embezzlement by some members) though some stuff was overblown, exaggerated or just made up. But what I find baffling is that this person seemed to think that if ACORN had problems then “community organizing” is somehow bad.
That’s a bit like saying “charity X had corruption problems therefore all charities are bad”.

I swear; I thought that the fact that Barack Obama turned down the prospect of a well paying job to help people out was laudable. But not in the mind of this individual.

Next comment:

“he has shown through his track record the most liberal senetor while in chicago”

I am not sure if this person is referring to his State Senate record or his US Senate record, and I am not sure where the “most liberal” ranking came from. But I noticed that “Chicago” came up; that must be bad too. Sure, Illinois politics has had the reputation of being corrupt (well deserved) but again, there was no evidence of anything involving Barack Obama. But as you can see, some of what the President is hated for is more about what he is (community organizer from Chicago who is LIBERAL) than anything he has done).

“he has went against his campaign promise to be open book and non-partisan.”

Well, much of the negotiations for the major bills WERE on CPSAN as promised. He never said that he would be non-partisan but that he would reach out, and by any objective measure, he DID. Unfortunately, Republicans had the singular goal of breaking him. As far as other promises, here is a non-partisan look at how he is doing.

“he has quadrupled the debt in only one year.”

Of course, this is completely false. The National Debt is about 13 trillion dollars now and it was about 10.7 trillion dollars when he took office.

Of course, this individual may have been referring to some of the talk about the PROJECTIONS of what the national debt would be. But understand it isn’t that simple:

You remember Judd Gregg, the Republican senator from New Hampshire tapped by President Obama to be commerce secretary. He was one of Obama’s celebrated bipartisan Cabinet picks, but then withdrew his nomination in February, citing “irresolvable conflicts” with the Obama agenda.

Conflicts indeed.

This week, Gregg has appeared on several news programs lambasting Obama’s proposed 2010 budget, saying it runs up so much debt “it basically will bankrupt our children and our children’s children.”

In what has become a familiar talking point from Republican opponents, Gregg told Fox News on March 25 that Obama’s budget “doubles the (national) debt in five years, triples it in 10 years.”

To check the claim, we relied on an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, released on March 20. The CBO, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, projects that the national debt will go from $5.8 trillion in 2008 to $11.8 trillion by the end of 2013; and to $17.3 trillion in 2019. By that count, Gregg’s claim of doubling the debt in five years, tripling it in 10 years, is correct. But we think that’s a little unfair.

In January, the CBO projected the one-year 2009 deficit at $1.2 trillion. Remember, that’s the 2009 fiscal year, which began in October 2008. That deficit was worse because of the recession, and grew because of a financial bailout plan in the fall. To be fair, we don’t think Obama’s record ought to be saddled with something that passed under President Bush.

In short, much of the growth to the national debt was due to things that happened before President Obama took office!

Note how this guy talks about “the rest of the country”. Here is the actual “poll of polls“. As I noted: his job approval numbers are in line with those of President Reagan and President Clinton at this stage of their administration.

But this person is hardly alone in having bizarre beliefs. This Daily Kos poll (Research 2000 did the polling) actually ASKED Republicans what they thought. The results were incredible:

Markos Moulitsas and Research 2000 have attempted to take it, and the results are up now. Among them:

- Only 24 percent of Republicans say that ACORN definitely did not “steal the 2008 election.” Twenty-one percent say the community group did; 55 percent are unsure.

- Thirty-one percent of Republicans say President Obama is “a racist who hates white people.” Thirty-six percent disagree; the rest aren’t sure.

- Twenty-three percent of Republicans want their states to secede from the union. In the South, it’s 33 percent.

- Only eight percent of Republicans say that “openly gay men and women [should] be allowed to teach in public schools.”

In every case, the more anti-Obama, conservative results come from Republicans in the South.

There were howls of outrage from the right wing media...but then similar results showed up in another poll:

Obama Derangement Syndrome—pathological hatred of the president posing as patriotism—has infected the Republican Party. Here’s new data to prove it:
* 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
* 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
* 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”
* 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did”
* Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama “may be the Antichrist.”

These numbers all come from a brand-new Harris poll, inspired in part by my new book Wingnuts. It demonstrates the cost of the campaign of fear and hate that has been pumped up in the service of hyper-partisanship over the past 15 months. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing the United States in the process. What might be good for ratings is bad for the country.

Evidently the “hate Obama” campaign by outlets such as Fox News is effective. And frankly, much of the Republican base consists of seriously deluded people.

2010 Steamboat race (4 miles for me)

Just the facts: I powerwalked (bent knee walk; would be illegal in a race walking event), 39:33 chip time, 40:37 gun time, overall place: 1736 out of 3056, 50-54 male: 86/126.

Going in, I was not in a position to run it nor was I in a position to race walk the Steamboat 4 mile legally (right knee) so I figured if I was going to walk illegally anyway, I ought to walk it as fast as possible.

So I did a 2-2.5 mile walk to the start line and got there in time to make one final bathroom stop. I chatted with several people at the start (Tracy, Dave, Herb) and then lined up at about the 10 minute per mile pace sign.

The crowd was off; it took me roughly one minute to reach the start line.
I fell into pace ok; the first bit was a bit slow and I was having posture troubles. I have a hard time staying straight up and down; my feet were ok and my knees didn’t hurt.

I was mostly trying to not run into people. The first mile came at 10:21. I started to pass people and got to the turn around point ok; at this time I passed the firefighter formation. 9:51 was my second mile; I was maintaining contact but my knees were soft. We were now at the highest point of the course; the rest would be downhill.

I pushed on the third mile (9:36); the sun was at our back and the glare off of some of the spandex ladies provided an interesting light show…I love glistening female backsides!

But I probably pushed a bit too hard; my knees were bent here…very bent.

Then at around 5k (just about 31 minutes) I had to slow walk for a couple of segments; but I got right back into it with .5 miles to go.
I pushed down Hamilton and heard Barbara yell “posture” at me; I pushed my shoulders back and she yelled “better”.
I came down and saw the clock right at 40 and knew that I had a shot at a sub 40 chip time. The last mile was 9:43 (down hill) and I got 39:32.

After that I slow walked up…to find Barbara and walk with her. We saw Tracy finish.

Stats for the races:

Barbara then started the non-competitive 4km Junior Steamboat and I walked with her; the first mile was right about 19 minutes and it took her just under 51 minutes to finish.

She is here early…

On the out leg

Right about 1 mile

On the return leg; the 15K runners in the distance are on their final mile too.

Finish line in sight.

Past Steamboat entries:

2005 (15K as a runner)
2006 (4 mile as a walker)
2007 (4 mile with Barbara)
2008 (4 mile with Barbara)
2009 (15K as a runner)

My personal Steamboat History (so I can compare past years)
1998: 15K 1:08:22, warm, sticky, 22:50/23:05/22:27, 183/844, 29/71 in the age group. Disappointed in my time but not place.
1999: 15K 1:07:53, better weather, 22:38/23:01/22:13, lower AG placing, blistered my foot.
2000: 4 mile: 27:51, 6:44/6:49/7:12/7:06 (split up 15K/4 mile the next few years)
2001: 4 mile: 29:13, 6:45/6:47/7:38/8:03 (knee was hurt; very hot)
2001 (fall) 15K: 1:11:16: 23:20/24:04/23:51, week after Big Shoulders)
2002: 4 mile walk: 43:15: 10:57/10:53/10:55/10:35 (shins hurt)
2002 (fall) 15K: 1:14:33 24:10/25:07/25:16
2003: off
2004: 4 mile: 33:10 (7:53/7:57/8:45/8:34); I did two hard 24 hour walks in May.
2005: 15K, 1:23:13 (26:40/27:49/28:43); very hot; McNaughton 100 in April, OKC marathon over Memorial day.
2006: 4 mile walk, 42:10 (10:32/10:25/10:43/10:28); very hot; piriformis trouble; 83 miler two weeks earlier.
2007: 4 miles easy with Barbara (1:10:04)
2008: 4 miles easy with Barbara (1:13:00)
2009: 15K: 1:27:23, 29:21/29:49/28:14 (66 miler two weeks before; torn meniscus (though I didn’t know it at the time)

19 June 2010: Pre Steamboat

Workout notes Yesterday, an easy 4 miles with Ms. Vickie (who roller bladed her own workout at Jubilee State Park). This morning: waiting for Steamboat; the plan is to warm up 2.5 miles or so (easily; it is a downhill walk from our house), walk the 4 miles as fast as possible, then stroll the “Junior Steamboat 4 km (2.5 miles)” with Barbara (my wife). That will add up to 9 miles; I’ll report back.

I’ve been preoccupied with mathematics; I am oh-so-close to being at the proofing stage of one article and am at the proofing stage of another.