9 May 2011 posts

Workout notes
Swimming: 1000 yd, PT (hip hikes, rotator cuff, stretching), walking (3 miles, flat)

The walk: from the Riverplex .75 to the end of the trail near Hooters, then .75 out (near the Marina). Foggy but pleasant weather; painless…but it came after swimming.

Swim: 10 x (25 right side, 25 left side, 25 free), 5 x (25 front, 25 free)

This isn’t fair
Daily Kos: there is a post lampooning Aaron Schock (Representative, Republican, IL-18; he has Ray LaHood’s old seat).
The skinny: he is young and has had quite a bit of success. For now, he mostly goes in lock-step with the money Republicans.
Here is what isn’t fair:

(relax ladies…he isn’t into you. )

A couple of years ago, I ran in a 4 mile race and Mr. Schock ran in it too:
48 AARON SCHOCK 29.26 M 27
77 OLLIE NANYES 32.06 M 49

Yeah, he beat me pretty badly. He also ran the Steamboat 15K in 2007:
20 148 169 Aaron Schock M 26 - 1:12:14 07:44

But…..in my lifetime, I’ve run much faster (1:07 for Steamboat at 39 years of age, 25:xx for 4 miles at 38 years or age).
But I’ve never, never, looked this good. Not even close.

Humor/Mathematics

I LOVE the Rat character.

But yeah, the lottery is basically a tax on the poor and ignorant….for the most part.

Political/Social
This is one reason I don’t trust “alternative media”. Check out this article:

7 Deceptions About Bin Laden’s Killing Pushed by the Obama Administration
As the week wore on, many of the details of the historic raid were “revised.”[...]

The Obama administration deftly shaped the media coverage of its prized kill by detailing a picture-perfect, morally unambiguous special forces operation, which culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden. Most of the details of that narrative have now unravelled, but the conventional wisdom that the tale established remains.

What is true in this article is that the seven points that the article remains are indeed inaccuracies from the original raid report. I have no quarrel there. But the rest is worthless. The “details of the narrative” that have “unraveled” were, in fact, corrected by government officials.
Raids such as these are messy affairs and the correct narrative must be pieced together from a mosaic of often contradictory reports. It isn’t a matter of the administration trying to hide anything; remember that they reported right away and issued corrections very quickly.
My guess is that we’ll know more in a month or two.

Religion
Notice the difference in these two photos?

Yes, this Orthodox (right wing) Jewish paper can’t stomach a woman being in the mix of high officials. (hat tip: Paul Krugman)

Update: Here is their excuse:

In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status. Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board. Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive.

That is pathetic. Simply pathetic. How can anyone take these clowns seriously?

I agree with Paul Krugman frequently; for example he lampoons the media for taking the Ryan plan “seriously”:

What the Post fact-checker seems to want, nonetheless, is for Democrats to talk about what Republicans are proposing only in big words and complicated sentences, so that the public doesn’t understand what they’re saying.

And the editorial page is still trying to claim that there’s something honest and important about the Ryan plan — even though it is completely clear to anyone paying attention that this plan offers nothing constructive in the way of solutions to the problem of rising health costs.

Here’s an analogy: think of Medicare as a footbridge that is deteriorating and will eventually become unsafe. You could propose structural repairs to fix its faults; Ryan doesn’t do that. Instead, he proposes knocking the bridge down and replacing it with trampolines, in the hope that pedestrians can bounce across the stream. And the Post declares that he deserves credit for pointing out that the bridge is falling down, and proposing a solution. Um, we knew that the bridge was in bad shape — and his solution is a fraud.

What’s going on here? Chait points out that denunciations of “scare tactics” only seem to happen when someone is trying to protect the social safety net, suggesting that what’s happening here is a reflection of the Beltway’s fundamental hostility to social insurance. I’d also add that VSPs invested heavily in the Ryan bubble, and are still not willing to face up to the extent to which they were flim-flammed.

In other words, it is fair to say that the Republicans are trying to destroy Medicare, even though they are proposeing a program that has the same name.

But I disagree with Krugman here…sort of:

Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

Here is where I agree with Dr. Krugman: yes, the public didn’t specifically want financial products like credit default swaps or tax cuts for the wealthy. But they did elect these @ssholes and they did it because they appealed to the fears lesser angles of the public…and the public bought it. Anyone who speaks honestly (“yes, taxes will have to go up, and no, MOST of our problems aren’t caused by poor “n-word”s on welfare) risks losing an election.
So yes, I do blame the public.

Frank Factor puts it rather bluntly here, in the first 30 seconds:

Energy
This is a long article, but it speaks about the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission; the upshot is that the regulators are too closely aligned with the industry that they are regulating.
But I see the real problem: nuclear power is highly technical; hence the regulators have to be nuclear experts. But how does one become an expert?
Yes, the Navy makes it work and the Navy safeguards are merciless. But that is a small, tight culture and….there is no profit motive. I wonder if this industry would work better if it were socialized?