In Poor Taste – Mark Shriver

ColbertNation.com video – If Mark Shriver says, ‘help the poor or they will rise up against us,’ Stephen will invite him to the March to Keep Fear Alive.

In Poor Taste – Mark Shriver, posted with vodpod

17 September 2010 posts

Coolness Check out this really cool cloud at Peoria Pundit. It really is cool.

President Obama: announced a program to bolster science and math education.

Of course, in the eyes of some, he can’t do anything right. Some liberals were actually offended when the President mentioned that we’ve had some liberal successes, even if they weren’t everything that liberals (myself included) wanted. There is no pleasing some people.

Islam: yes, Muslims should be able to practice their religion freely and shouldn’t be picked on. Nevertheless this remains a problem: they seem to have very violent, outspoken leaders and followers who do things like issue death threats over speech that they don’t like.

Science Jerry Coyne talks about the role of hybridization in evolution. No matter how important it is, it is fun to talk about! Check out these photos of hybrid geese.

Science, religion and accommodationism
The “science and religion are compatible” types have thin skins, don’t they? Now you have them whining about the scientists “not understanding science”! As Larry Moran says, grab a bag of popcorn and enjoy the show.

The politics of the morons

Republican US Senate candidate: thinks that scientists are making mice with human brains.
There are people who find this amusing, but many people believe dumber stuff than this, especially your rank and file Republican. So, will this help the Democrats? Maybe, maybe not. Whether it does or not, this really isn’t good for the country. As Robert Reich writes:

In Delaware, Palin-endorsed tea partier Christine O’Donnell is so far right she’s called “delusional” by Delaware’s GOP leader. In Kentucky, Palin-favored Rand Paul says the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shouldn’t apply to businesses. In Colorado, tea partier Ken Buck talks of getting rid of the 17th amendment, which provides for the direct election of senators. In Arizona, Palin-favored Sharon Angle has called for “2nd Amendment remedies” if Congress doesn’t change hands.

Many Americans these days don’t like Congress and are cynical about government. The lousy economy has made almost all incumbents targets of the public’s anger and anxiety.

But if there’s one thing Americans like even less it’s people pretending to be legitimate politicians whose views are so far removed from those of ordinary Americans that they pose a danger to our system of governance. [...]

Some Democrats think all this is wonderful because it boosts the odds of Democratic wins, not only in the midterms but also in 2012 when the Republicans put up Palin, Gingrich, or someone equally bizarre. Even voters who are are unenthusiastic about Democrats will be motivated to turn out if they fear that crackpots will otherwise take over our government.

I’m not as sanguine about what’s happening. Political discourse in America is important. What candidates say can legitimize hateful or divisive views that would otherwise never see the light of day.

We’re in the midst of an ongoing economic emergency that requires clear thinking, intense work, and practical ideas. It also requires that we join together rather than be pushed apart. The loonies who are taking over the GOP pose a real and present danger.

I do know that some Republicans are not happy about this trend:

Few Republican lawmakers were as stung by Rep. Mike Castle’s surprising loss to his conservative GOP opponent as Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe.

In a hallway just off the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, she sounded off about her place as a moderate in the GOP, and voter anger she says she understands.

Visibly sad, Snowe called Castle “an outstanding public servant who was committed to the common good of his state and country.”

The longer Snowe talked about the state of the GOP and the Tea Party movement, the more riled up she got.

“Understand, there are a lot of issues that, for example, in the Tea Party that they raise that are legitimate issues. Did we abandon our basic principles of fiscal responsibility? Absolutely. I was arguing those points during the Bush administration,” Snowe said emphatically, “I made those very arguments.”

“Congress isn’t working right and it’s not working well, and I share that frustration and anger. They’re angry? So am I,” Snowe said as her voice got louder, “I’m angry, because I work here ever day and I want things to be different. I’m here to solve problems to make people happy, not to make them sad and angry,” Snowe insisted.

And what does Castle’s loss tell Snowe about whether there’s a place for moderates like her in the GOP?

“Well there are fewer of us so that goes without saying,” Snowe said, but then immediately argued that “we can’t be endangered if you want to be a majority party.”

“It doesn’t stand to reason that the Republican Party would want to exclude moderate Republicans if they want to be a majority party. Those are mutually exclusive propositions,” Snowe said.

At times, as the Maine Republican talked about this issue, she became exasperated.

More politics
Paul Krugman: current Republicans are holding the middle classes and lower economic classes hostage because they really want tax breaks for the wealthy. No one should be surprised; unfortunately there are some Democrats in this fold too.

Mike Huckabee: inadvertently makes the case of why the government should be involved in healthcare: it makes no sense for private companies to cover pre-existing conditions!

17 September 2010 Rehabilitation

Last night: shoulder did well; the knee didn’t like it when I laid on my front. The knee was slightly “hot”.

Workout: I took something off:
Squats (Smith), 3 sets of 10 with 135 going a bit deeper.
Leg press 15, 15, 10 with 180, 270, 360 (felt twinges in both knees on the last set)
Abs: 100 reps (lifts, twist crunches, scissors, regular crunches)
3 circuits of: extensions (10), leg curls (10), toe raises (30), back extensions (10)
Arm bike (8 minutes, over 2 miles)
Treadmill: 2 mile run (9:40, 18:25),
AMT: 1 mile
rotator cuff with the stretch bands
ice

Pretty much all was good, though even this slow level of running was enough to get me mildly out of breath (HR to 155)

To Democrats

Now THIS is the kind of ad that will get you a donation from me.

Daily Kos FAIL

Or “Kirk Campaign FAIL”

For those unfamiliar: Kirk is a Republican running for Obama’s old seat; the person I am backing is Democrat Alexi Giannoulias.

16 September 2010 Rehabilitation

Last night: another good sleeping night. No Tylenol at all; just the two Naproxen at about 8 pm.

My knee was a tiny bit hot from yesterday.

Workout: untimed 6 mile plus walk through the hills of Bradley Park, followed by 4 x 25 sit ups (incline) and 8 minutes (2 miles) on the arm bike.
Then rotator cuff, ice.

It finally feels as if I am healing up in the shoulder; I need to remember the pressure massage.

Christine O’Donnell, Republican candidate for Senate, Delaware

This is her anti-masturbation video:

Yes, it is consistent with the Bible…which is one reason it is foolish to use the Bible as a yardstick for morality.

Other countries are less prudish than we are; check out these indoor volleyball uniforms from abroad:

(from here)

More humor
Mano Singham posted this funny cartoon:

His criticism of Obama is a bit off base here:

If Obama were a different kind of person he could combat this paranoia and douse these irrational fears. He could reprise Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s call, in his inaugural address after his first election in 1932 in the wake of the Great Depression, that ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’. The new carpet in the Oval Office actually has this quote as one of many stitched into it. But Obama cannot do that because he too needs the country to be in fear since it is the only way that he can obtain public and judicial acquiescence for his assault on civil liberties and for his military adventures that cover his and the Democratic Party’s collusion with the oligarchic interests.

The very fear that Obama exploits for his own benefit is the same fear that is returning to bite him. He has been hoist with his own petard.

Where I wish Obama were stronger on civil liberties, I wish that Singham remembered this:

Obama caught a ton of flack for not being afraid enough of Iran!

Strange but fun stuff

Dolphins with torodial bubbles:

This is a bit overlong, but the first couple of minutes of the dolphin footage are fun.

This is weird, but on my computer at least, the sound appears to be coming from somewhere else:

15 September 2010 (pm posts)

They Don’t Get It
Cal Thomas: I’ll let the stupidity speak for itself:

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote a column headlined “Purging Evil,” in which he says we should stop Muslim immigration, prevent the building of mosques, and disallow prisoners from converting to Islam.

…

if we continue to allow Muslim immigrants, especially from Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, into America. We won’t win this war if we permit the uncontrolled construction of mosques, as well as Islamic schools, some of which already have sown the seeds from which future terrorists will be cultivated. We won’t win this war if we continue to permit the large-scale conversion to Islam of prison inmates, many of whom become radicalized and upon release enlist in al-Qaida’s army

He went even further on my radio show, advocating for the government to monitor what is said in mosques.

Thomas said many of the Muslims living here are sleeper cells

What this idiot doesn’t realize is just how much he has in common with those in, say, the Taliban. Think about it: attitudes toward homosexuals, science and the outright militancy.

They Don’t Get it Part II

This letter is being circulated:

Dear Mr. President:
During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.

While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as “Medicaid”! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one pack of cigarettes every day, eats only at fast-food take-outs, and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer. And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman’s health care? I contend that our nation’s “health care crisis” is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a “crisis of culture” a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that “I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me”. Once you fix this “culture crisis” that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you’ll be amazed at how quickly our nation’s health care difficulties will disappear.

Respectfully,
ROGER STARNER JONES, MD
If you agree…pass it on.

Yes, this letter is authentic. And yes, this doctor is an asshole badly misguided.

What is even worse is who I got this from: this was from someone who has a child on Medicaid and was lauded by someone else who is on Medicaid!!! See that??? Oh yes, one of those touting the letter is obese.

Bottom line: no matter how carefully one structures a program, there will always be some who get on the program due to personal irresponsibility. And the more you try to protect the program from such abuses, the more painful the application process becomes and, yes, expense is added.

So while I know that there are slackers and ne’re-do-wells who infest every program, most on it, need it and use it only as much as necessary. Decisions about such programs need to consider statistical evidence and not cut back on the basis of anecdotes.

Economics

Extending tax cuts for the wealthy: it doesn’t make economic sense. Why? The wealthy won’t spend as large a percentage of it as the middle class and poorer people will. Hence it will be far less stimulative.

But still, far too many so-called Democrats are balking; we really do run scared.

Science and Religion
Richard Dawkins on the lecture circuit: in the US, he mostly talks to people who are receptive to his ideas. But a few incidents and exchanges are funny:

Professor Dawkins recently visited an Islamic school in Leicester – “a lovely school, beautifully appointed, a lot of money spent on it, a lovely headmaster” – where no one among the staff and pupils, not even the science teacher, believes in evolution.

There he was informed that the Prophet had said that salt and fresh water do not mix, and therefore it must be true. He wished afterwards that he had had the presence of mind to send for some salt water and fresh water and mix them in front of their unbelieving eyes.

The audience that the Professor faced last night presented less of a challenge. He was giving the opening lecture of this year’s Woodstock Festival, in Oxfordshire, where it was a safe bet that the crowd who filled the Orangery in Blenheim Palace to capacity included a negligible proportion of creationists.

He admitted, when questioned about the reception he gets travelling in the US Bible Belt, that, “nobody who disagrees ever comes to my lectures – or if they do, they keep very quiet afterwards”.

In places like Alabama and Oklahoma, he pulls in crowds of people who take pleasure in finding that, for one evening, they are not in a minority. In Woodstock, he pulled in an audience who were there to enjoy the wit and erudition with which he attacked the creationist myth. [...]

When asked by the chairman, David Freeman, how he kept his cool when talking to people who refused to open their minds to scientific argument, the Professor said that actually he does not always. He quoted in his defence of his own sharp tongue a sentence written by The Independent’s Johann Hari: “I respect you as a person too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs.”

There was one question from the audience which provoked a brief flash of the anger and rudeness which has given this generally mild man his notoriety.

A lady wanted to know how evolution could explain phenomena like the clotting of blood, which – she claimed – required a number of agents all to be present at the same time, and if one were taken away, the blood would not clot.

That, he retorted, was “a creationist lie”. And even if it were true, it would not prove the existence of an intelligent designer. “You have got to look at the detail,” he added. “You have got to stop being lazy and saying, ‘Oh, I can’t explain that so God did it.’”

He was challenged on whether it had ever crossed his mind that he could be wrong. Scientists are always getting things wrong, he replied. Two centuries hence, scientific knowledge will tell us that much of what we think is right has been disproved.

But in the contest between evolution and creationism, he said, he thought it “highly unlikely” that the particular direction scientific progress will take “will just happen to be the beliefs of a tribe of Bronze Age goat herds”.

More on Religion
Jerry Coyne wonders why “God” is always so hidden; why is “he” so hard to find?

Well, it is because it doesn’t really exist which means that it does exist?

But God does exist and performs miracles…but never in downtown Tokyo or New York City or Chicago…it is always in some place that most have never heard of and done in front of…well, uneducated people. And God appears…but in the face of a cheese sandwich…it is never a quality painting on, say, a side of the Washington Monument.

Fall Racing Plans

Ok, this should be “participation” plans as I am in no shape to race.

September 26: Quad Cities Half Marathon (course is open for 6 hours)

(link)

October 9: Farmdale 10 mile trail “run” (I’ll walk; course is open for 9 hours)

(link)

October 31: Mc-Not-Again 30 miler (11 hour cut-off)

(link)

Plan: 19 September: walk 10 miles (McNaughton loop?)
3 October: walk 15 miles (McNaughton 10 plus a mini-loop, or 4 FPNC loops)
10 October: 10-15 day after race
16 or 17 October: 2 loops of McNaughton

Yes, I won’t be ready for a great effort on the 31′st, but I should be able to make the first 2 loops in under 6 hours.

This means I’ll need to get in long walks next week, on the 3′rd of October, 10 October, and 17 October.

15 September 2010 Rehabilitation

Last night: I had a good night of sleep; minimal pain that came on just before waking up. But:
1. I iced just prior to bed.
2. I didn’t lay down to read; I stayed upright until the last minute.
3. Naproxen at 7 pm, then 2 extra strength Tylenol at bedtime (9:30). I used the PM and will probably quit doing that as it makes me feel drugged when I wake up.

Knee: not a factor unless I lay on my belly; my knee still doesn’t like direct pressure.

Workout:
one legged squats: 15 x 45, 10 x 95 (smith)
two legged: 10 x 175 (smith)
leg presses: 20 x 180, 15 x 270, 15 x 360
sit ups (4 x 25 on various inclines)
extensions, curls (3 sets of 10)
toe (3 sets of 30)
twist crunches (30)
leg lifts (30)
back machine (2 sets of 10)
arm bike: 6 minutes
treadmill: run 2 miles (9:48, 8:45)
AMT: 1 mile (12 minutes)
rotator cuff, ice, stretch etc.

Dings; piriformis (slight), back (slightly sore)