Sarah Palin Movie…

Sarah Palin: Balloon Juice has a thread which is calling for readers to suggest titles for the upcoming Sarah Palin film. Some of the suggestions are hilarious.

Mine: “Amadoofus”.

25 May 2011(noon)

Workout notes
Over lunch: swim, 2 mile run, 2 mile walk, sit ups and PT (rotator cuff, hip hikes)

Swim: 10 x (25 front, 25 side, 25 side, 25 free), 2 x (25 3g, 25 free), 2 x (25 fist, 25 free).
My shoulder started slightly sore then got better and felt pretty good by the end of the 1000 yard “75 kick, 25 swim” set.

Run: 2 miles on the treadmill (10:35, 9:37), 2 mile walk on the track (13:35, 12:22). Idea: quit before it became a workout; I am still recovering from this weekend’s festivities. I talked to other runners who told me the same thing.

The knee felt fine.

Posts
Remember the “junk science” article about black women being less attractive than other women? Yes, the statistics were shoddy all the way through; no doubt about that. But now we are seeing calls for this guy to be fired…

The row has prompted the University of London Union Senate, the union’s legislative body, which represents more than 120,000 students, to vote unanimously for the dismissal of Kanazawa, and to condemn his research.

Sherelle Davids, anti-racism officer-elect of the LSE students’ union, said: “Kanazawa deliberately manipulates findings that justify racist ideology. As a black woman I feel his conclusions are a direct attack on black women everywhere who are not included in social ideas of beauty.”

Amena Amer, incoming LSE students’ union education officer, added: “We support free speech and academic freedom, but Kanazawa’s research fuels hate against ethnic and religious minorities promoted by neo-Nazi groups. Not only does he use the LSE’s credentials to legitimise his ‘research’ but this jeopardises the academic credibility of the LSE.”

(emphasis mine). In other words, “free speech is fine so long as we don’t hate it too much”.

Ok, I have no problem with firing someone for incompetence. For example, were I to go around claiming that, say, then yeah, I ought to be fired as I would be incompetent. But note that incompetence is NOT the complaint being highlighted here.

My guess: the right wing will rally around this guy, call him “courageous” and say that these calls are an example of European PC-ness run amok and that we need the Republicans to protect the United States from that. They’ll talk about how THEY favor free speech…until the next Ward Churchill says something that they don’t like….

Economy Paul Krugman thinks that we are going to have another downturn…

Last year I warned that we seemed to be heading into the “Third Depression” — by which I meant a prolonged period of economic weakness:

Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

Brad DeLong points us to Macro Advisers, which has now downgraded its estimates for second-quarter growth. As Brad says, these estimates now suggest that we have now gone through a year and a half of “recovery” that has failed to make any progress toward closing the gap between what the economy should be producing and what it’s actually producing.

Oh boy; I sure hope that he is wrong….

But I’ll tell you who was wrong: the Republicans (via Robert Reich):

Republican House Budget chief Paul Ryan still doesn’t get it. He blames Tuesday’s upset victory of Democrat Kathy Hochul over Republican Jane Corwin to represent New York’s 26th congressional district on Democratic scare tactics.

Hochul had focused like a laser on the Republican plan to turn Medicare into vouchers that would funnel the money to private health insurers. Republicans didn’t exactly take it lying down. The National Republican Congressional Committee poured over $400,000 into the race, and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads provided Corwin an additional $700,000 of support. But the money didn’t work. Even in this traditionally Republican district – represented in the past by such GOP notables as Jack Kemp and William Miller, both of whom would become vice presidential candidates – Hochul’s message hit home.

Ryan calls it “demagoguery,” accusing Hochul and her fellow Democrats of trying to “scare seniors into thinking that their current benefits are being affected.”

Scare tactics? Seniors have every right to be scared. His plan would eviscerate Medicare by privatizing it with vouchers that would fall further and further behind the rising cost of health insurance. And Ryan and the Republicans offer no means of slowing rising health-care costs. To the contrary, they want to repeal every cost-containment measure enacted in last year’s health-reform legislation. The inevitable result: More and more seniors would be priced out of the market for health care.

Yes, I know, the Ryan plan to end Medicare (keeps the name, but ends the current program and replaces it with inadequate vouchers) really doesn’t affect the CURRENT senior citizens….but…well, these are the same folks who voted for Republicans who wanted to “keep the government hands off of their Medicare”. It cuts both ways…and these amoral a-hole Republicans benefited from their confusion and fear in 2010. Now it is coming back to haunt them.

Caveat: I admit to being ignorant to the “facts on the ground” in this particular New York district; this result could have well been affected by some local party breakdown just as the Scott Brown Senate upset was (in Massachusetts).

Paul Krugman could be right here:

The obvious point is that Republicans, having run in 2010 largely by scaring seniors with tales of death panels, are now horsed on their own pet aardvark, or something.

The difference is that whereas Democrats were not, in fact, trying to impose death panels, Republicans really do want to dismantle Medicare – and that’s the truth no matter how many times Very Serious People reach for their smelling salts when Democrats say that. And you would think that would make Medicare an even more potent weapon for the Dems than it was for the Rs (unless they go out of their way to ignore what the electorate is really concerned about.)

It’s now starting to look like a real possibility that we will have had three electoral waves in a row – a Democratic sweep in 2006-2008, a Republican countersweep in 2010, and a countercountersweep in 2012 as voters realize that the GOP is the same as it always was, only more so.

But we shall see. 2012 is a long way off…in terms of politics.

25 May 2011 (am)

We’ve had some strong thunderstorms in the area; fortunately nothing like Joplin had.

Workout notes Nothing yet, though I’ll probably swim and jog during lunch. The right shoulder: oh so sore so I’ll have to take it very easy in the pool (mostly kick-swim; no 50′s or 100′s)

Posts
Tornadoes present a huge challenge for engineers; more so than earthquakes:

This afternoon, All Things Considered host Robert Siegel put the question to John W. van de Lindt, a civil engineering professor at the University of Alabama (in Tuscaloosa), who has extensively studied the effects of tornadoes on structures.

Looking at the damage in Tuscaloosa, van de Lindt said it was apparent that buildings constructed with a “continuous load path” (in which structures are bolted to their foundation and metal hardware goes all the way up and connects to the roof) fared better. But the most powerful tornadoes, with winds up to 200 mph, will rip off almost any wooden home’s roof, he said. Once that happens, “the building is no longer stable and it blows the walls down.” [...]

As for the forces that tornadoes can bring to bear on a building, van de Lindt said “it’s definitely easier to engineer for an earthquake.”

“A tornado works from the top down,” he said. And it’s especially difficult to keep a roof attached to a typical house if a major tornado hits it. An earthquake works from the bottom up, and a foundation can be built to withstand great force.

There is more at the link, including audio.

Education
Teachers can make a difference, but they can’t make up for all of the effects of poverty. Here is one teacher’s take.
Here a video interview at the site (UT professor)

Politics
Tim Pawlenty is fact-checked by AP. His “honest” claims aren’t so accurate:

PAWLENTY: “The truth is, people getting paid by the taxpayers shouldn’t get a better deal than the taxpayers themselves. That means freezing federal salaries, transitioning federal employee benefits, and downsizing the federal work force as it retires.” — Campaign announcement.

THE FACTS: A federal pay freeze is already in effect. Obama proposed and Congress approved a two-year freeze on the pay of federal employees, exempting the armed forces, Congress and federal courts.

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PAWLENTY: “ObamaCare is unconstitutional.” — USA Today column.

THE FACTS: Obama’s health care overhaul might be unconstitutional in Pawlenty’s opinion, but it is not in fact unless the Supreme Court says so. Lower court rulings have been split.

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PAWLENTY: “Barack Obama has consistently stood for higher taxes.” — Campaign announcement.

THE FACTS: Obama’s record shows more tax cutting than tax raising. The stimulus plan early in his presidency cut taxes broadly for the middle class and business, and more recently he won a substantial cut in Social Security taxes for a year. He also campaigned in support of extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all except the wealthy, whose taxes he wanted to raise. In office, he accepted a deal from Republicans extending the tax cuts for all. As for tax increases, Obama won congressional approval to raise them on tobacco and tanning salons. The penalty for those who don’t buy health insurance, once coverage is mandatory, is a form of taxation.

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PAWLENTY: “For decades before I was elected, governors tried and failed to get Minnesota out of the top 10 highest-taxed states in the country. I actually did it.” — Campaign announcement.

THE FACTS: Minnesota remains among the 10 worst states in its overall tax climate, according to the Tax Foundation. In its 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index, the anti-tax organization ranks Minnesota 43rd, making it the eighth worst state. The ranking slipped from 41st two years earlier. The index considers corporate, individual, sales, unemployment insurance and property taxes.

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Honest Mr. Pawlenty…gets basic facts wrong.