4 December 2010 (AM)

Whine: it is snowing; the first real snow of the year. Yuck.

I slept reasonably late due to being up at the Bill Maher event followed by watching the last 3 quarters of the Illinois-Fresno State football game. Illinois lost 25-23; basically they fell behind 16-0 at the end of the first and couldn’t quite catch up even though they ran the ball well.

Currently I am watching the second half of Oregon-Oregon State
The silver and white scheme looks reasonably sharp, but it has nothing to do with yellow and green. Oregon State’s uniforms look bit like Halloween costumes.
The Ducks just broke a huge fake punt right up the middle for 68 yards even if they are only up 16-7.
(photo from here)

Workout notes
Rotator cuff routine (bands then home dumbbells) then 1:05 on the treadmill (6 miles)
10 minutes of walking, 40 minutes of run 1 minute, walk one minute, then 2-1, 2-1, 1-1-1-1, then 1 walk, 1 run, 1 walk, 1 run.

Then snow shoveling. Yuck.

Shoulder: I am almost at relapse stage; the night pain isn’t what it once was but it has gotten worse though I’ve done no lifting since Monday. My guess is that I got off of the anti inflammatory pills a bit too soon, did too much overhead lifting and used too much weight (5 pounds) for the rotator cuff exercises.

Posts

Economy
The job situation is grim:

(total jobs)

(private sector jobs)

Yes, this is way better than it was under President Bush, but not good enough to make up with those looking for work (people entering the work force and currently unemployed looking for work).

I think that Robert Reich has it right:

Let’s be clear about this. The problem is lack of sufficient demand for workers.

There are only four sources of demand. The biggest source is American consumers, who comprise about 70 percent of economic activity.

But the vast American middle and working class can’t and won’t buy enough to get people back to work. They’re still under a huge debt load.

Even if and when they pay it off, their buying days are gone. The Great Recession took away their last means of coping with years of stagnant wages — going deeper into debt by using their homes as collateral. The housing bubble burst, and home prices continue to drop.

The second source of domestic demand is business. But businesses won’t hire more workers without more customers.

(Republican supply-siders say businesses are not hiring because they’re uncertain about the effects of the new health care law and don’t know how much taxes they’ll have to pay. This is political claptrap. Supply-siders also say businesses would start hiring if their taxes were lower. But businesses are sitting on almost a trillion dollars of cash. They don’t need lower taxes in order to hire more Americans. They need more American customers.)

The third source of domestic demand is net exports. But they’re going nowhere. Although China, India, and Brazil are buying goods and services from American companies — and thereby boosting US profits — those US companies are making most of what they sell there in those countries. GM is selling more cars in China than in the US now, and manufacturing them in China.

That leaves the fourth source of domestic demand — government. But it’s not nearly filling the gap. To the contrary, state and local governments are broke, and are cutting spending and raising taxes to the tune of over $110 billion this year. The federal government’s much-maligned stimulus is about gone (almost all economists believe it saved over 3 million jobs).

The Fed is pumping $600 billion into the economy, but without an expansive fiscal policy this is only fueling speculation.

Instead, austerity and deficit reduction are the new buzz-words in Washington, as well as in Europe — which is absurd given what’s happening to the economy.

Republicans won’t even vote to extend unemployment benefits for the record number of Americans — almost half the unemployed — who have been out of work for six months or more. Starting today, 800,000 of the long-term unemployed lose their benefits. Unless Congress moves quickly, by the end of December, 2 million more will lose them.

Reich goes on to recommend a WPA like agency and to create a organization to rebuild infrastructure. He recommends no payroll tax on the first 20,000 dollars of income and tax breaks for those making up to 80,000. He helps pay for this with increased taxes on the very wealthy (1 million dollars and up) and a financial transaction tax.

Good luck with that given that the Republicans (with a few Democrats) managed to filibuster the “extend tax cuts only for the first 250,000 dollars of income for all Americans” and the “extend tax cuts for only the first 1,000,000 dollars of income for all Americans”.

Our Republicans have managed to turn selfishness and greed into virtues. And as Senator Harkin said: our side is really looking weak.

Outgoing Alan Grayson (D-Florida) got it right:

Sure, he got blistered in his reelection bid; his district (FL-8) barely went for Obama in 2008 and went for Bush in 2000 and 2004. In such a district, things that make people like me cheer will not be well received by most.

Here, Vice President Biden fills in for the President:

Jerry Coyne and I share a similar fear.

Religion
Oh noes! Atheists are advertising!

This benign sign has some fundies up in arms and talking about a boycott.

This sign really got under their skin:

Look: Churches and religions advertise year ’round. There is nothing wrong with that. But freedom of expression to us too and there is nothing wrong with saying “gee, believing that a human was born from a non-sexual process, died, but was resurrected and your swallowing this tale somehow imputes some virtue is ridiculous.” Note: I am NOT saying that it is bad to get some meaning and comfort from a religious story nor is it bad to extract good moral teaching from religious texts or to extract techniques to calm the mind (e. g., prayer, meditation, yoga); what I find absurd is viewing it as literal history.

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