Just Satire but….

More at the Borowitz Report…

24 July 2011 Posts; rare events, bikinis, etc.

Politics

Political Humor

Click on the image to see the non-cropped image at the site; there are four panels. (hat tip: Millard Fillmore’s bathtub)

Click on the figure to see the full 4-panel cartoon at the site.

Hat tip: Millard Fillmore’s bathtub.

President Obama: Pushover?

Paul Krugman is a frequent critic of President Obama; he pressures him from the left on economic issues. Recently he wrote a piece called “President-Pushover”:

The redoubtable Elizabeth Drew has a forthcoming article in the New York Review of Books — not yet online — that confirms all our worst fears. She tells us that past concessions have

established in both Democrats’ and Republicans’ minds the thought that Obama was a weak negotiator—a “pushover.” He was more widely seen among Democrats and other close observers as having a strategy of starting near where he thinks the Republicans are—at the fifty-yard line—and then moving closer to their position.

Even more alarming, however, is her window on what the White House is thinking:

It all goes back to the “shellacking” Obama took in the 2010 elections. The President’s political advisers studied the numbers and concluded that the voters wanted the government to spend less. This was an arguable interpretation. Nevertheless, the political advisers believed that elections are decided by middle-of-the-road independent voters, and this group became the target for determining the policies of the next two years.

Ok, the above is fair; it appears to me that the President, at times, is too concerned with compromise and not concerned enough with effective policy.

Ms. Drew’s article is worth reading and includes this important observation:

In the end, the President had made the Republicans look bad, but what did he get for it? He ended up agreeing to new restrictions that will hamstring his policies for as long as he serves in office. His own actions will have led to new laws that forbid him to borrow money for any government policy—unless, at some time, he goes out and campaigns hard for raising taxes in any form. His actions so far shed light on how likely that is.

This country’s economy is beset with a number of new difficulties, among them that recovery from the last recession remains more elusive than was generally expected, while the US is confronting a variety of international economic instabilities, especially the large debts and possible default of several countries in the eurozone, bringing on unpopular austerity measures. Recent experience with what should have been a simple matter of raising the debt ceiling, normally done with no difficulty, is reason for deep unease about our political system’s ability to deal with such challenges.

Agreed: the President, in an effort to look “more centrist”, basically adopted the discredited right wing model.

But back to Paul Krugman’s article: even the great ones slip up from time to time, and Dr. Krugman slips here:

OK, I’ve never won a tough election. But neither has Obama! The 2008 race was looking close until Sarah Palin and Lehman came along. And as far as I can tell, this assessment both of what 2010 was about and what matters for 2012 is just ludicrous.

Emphasis mine. The first sentence is true, and the last one makes sense. But Dr. Krugman is just plain wrong about the middle two sentences.

1. I forgive Krugman for not remembering that then State Senator Obama came from nowhere (in 4′th place) to win the Democratic nomination for the U. S. Senate race in 2004. I do NOT forgive Krugman for forgetting that Obama won a bruising primary election in 2008 against Hillary Clinton, who was heavily favored (and yes, backed by Krugman).

2. The second sentence was half right: yes, the economic collapse helped Obama. But as far as Sarah Palin goes, remember that Palin being put on the ticked BOOSTED John McCain’s campaign!

The Republican National Convention has given John McCain and his party a significant boost, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken over the weekend shows, as running mate Sarah Palin helps close an “enthusiasm gap” that has dogged the GOP all year.

McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by 50%-46% among registered voters, the Republican’s biggest advantage since January and a turnaround from the USA TODAY poll taken just before the convention opened in St. Paul. Then, he lagged by 7 percentage points.

The convention bounce has helped not only McCain but also attitudes toward Republican congressional candidates and the GOP in general.

“The Republicans had a very successful convention and, at least initially, the selection of Sarah Palin has made a big difference,” says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. “He’s in a far better position than his people imagined he would be in at this point.”

I admit that this surprised me at the time.

More Krugman: but I respect Krugman enough to let him change my mind; here he talks about what is wrong with means testing Medicare:

The usual argument against means-testing — which is entirely valid — is that it (a) doesn’t save much money and (b) messes up a relatively simple program. The reason it can’t save much money is that there are relatively few people rich enough to be able to afford major cost-sharing. Meanwhile, the good thing about Medicare, as with Social Security, is precisely that it doesn’t depend on your personal financial status — you just get it. Means-testing would turn it into something much more intrusive, like Medicaid.

But there’s a further point I haven’t seen emphasized: if you want the well-off to pay more, it’s just better to raise their taxes.[...]

So what’s the difference between means-testing and just collecting a bit more taxes? The answer is, class warfare — not between the rich and poor, but between the filthy rich and the merely affluent. For a tax rise would get a significant amount of revenue from the very, very rich (because they have so much money), while means-testing would end up imposing the same burden on $400,000 a year working Wall Street stiffs that it imposes on billion-a-year hedge fund managers.

What we need is actual control of health costs. Means-testing of Medicare is just a badly designed, unfair form of taxation.

My friend Lynn tried to explain to me why means testing wasn’t a good idea, but I didn’t understand her arguments at that time.

Science
Dolphins use sponges
Believe it or not, dolphins use sponges on their noses for certain types of hunting:

(click on the image to see an image at the site that can be enlarged)

In 1984, researchers spotted dolphins doing something unusual in Shark Bay, Western Australia. When the animals got hungry, they ripped a marine basket sponge from the sea floor and fitted it over their beaks like a person would fit a glove over a hand. The scientists suspected that as the dolphins foraged for fish, the sponges protected their beaks, or rostra, from the rocks and broken chunks of coral that litter the sea floor, making this behavior the first example of tool use in this species.

But why do dolphins go to all of this trouble when they could simply snag a fish from the open sea?

The answer, researchers hypothesize and report online today in PLoS ONE, is that the bottom-dwelling fish are a lot more nutritious. Some species also don’t have swim bladders, gas chambers that help other fish control their buoyancy as they travel up and down the water column. In the Bahamas, where dolphins are also known to forage for bottom-dwelling fish, dolphins hunt partly by echolocating these bladders, which give off a strong acoustic signal. That helps the cetaceans find prey even when it’s buried in sea sand.

But bottom-dwelling fish, such as barred sandperch, which are favored by some Shark Bay dolphins, don’t have swim bladders and so are harder to find with echolocation. The sea floor is not nearly as soft here as it is in the Bahamas, so if dolphins want to probe for these fish, they risk injuring their rostra. [...]

Read more at the site; note that some experiments were done on this.

Asymmetric quarks: evidence that the standard model needs refinement

From Nature.com

Newly released observations of the top quark — the heaviest of all known fundamental particles — could topple the standard model of particle physics. Data from collisions at the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, hint that some of the top quark’s interactions are governed by an as-yet unknown force, communicated by a hypothetical particle called the top gluon. The standard model does not allow for such a force or particle.

The results, presented1 today at the Europhysics Conference on High-Energy Physics in Grenoble, France, could help researchers to understand the origins of mass. According to one theoretical interpretation, a top quark bound by to its anti-matter partner, the antitop, would act as a version of the elusive Higgs boson, conferring mass on other particles.

Regina Demina, a physicist at the University of Rochester in New York, and her colleagues sifted through eight years’ worth of particle-collision data recorded by one of the Tevatron’s two detectors, known as DZero. Top quarks produced during collisions can fly off in the direction of the accelerator’s proton beam or its antiproton beam; Demina and her team discovered that more travel towards the proton beam than is predicted in the standard model of physics. A different model would seem to be needed to explain the discrepancy.

There is much more at the site.

Bikinis

Billy Dennis detected unfairness. Click on the thumbnail to see the full version at his site, as well as a front shot.

24 July 2011 Chicago Trip Photos (selected)

Workout notes: flat 4 miles on the treadmill; quads were tight at first.
10:35, 20:38, 29:45, 38:48. Things went ok, though my shoulder was achy afterward. I was sweating all over the place.

Chicago Trip
Here are some selected photos from our Chicago Trip. Note: all of the photos may be found here; most are either shots from the Willis Building (old Sears Tower) and from Chinatown.

You can see the Hancock Building (where we went last year) and Lake Michigan; this is from the Willis Tower (1350 feet up; 412 meters)

Olivia standing on the plexiglass ledge.

Yes, it is a long way down!

We listened to a blues band (and yes, put money in the hat) This is on the Chicago riverwalk near Wacker Drive. Note: the water taxi is a great way to get around downtown.

Olivia enjoying the blues music.

Olivia and Barbara deciding on dinner in Chinatown

Some Chinatown restaurants show you what is available.

There was a small fair in Chinatown while we were there.

The had the Chinese Zodiac up in statues like this. I HAD to get the rabbit.

While walking around, we encountered a protest near the Federal Building. They were protesting potential cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

There were people lined up to stand on the plexiglass ledge.

It is white pants season!

23 July 2011 play in Chicago

Workout notes
Mini-workout: rows (dumbbell; 10 x 40..then 2 sets of 10 x 50 lbs.)
curls: 3 sets of 12 x 25 lbs.
military presses: 3 sets of 10 x 40 lbs. with dumbbells
sit ups and crunches: 100
rotator cuff and 3 sets of lunges.
Then 2 mile run: 19:38 (10:35 first mile) treadmill

Afterward, we drove into Chicago from Schaumburg and went to the Museum of Science and Industry; the Body World’s exhibit was spectacular. But there was much more; the weather stuff, the evolution/DNA/genetics, Apollo mission stuff, the internet exhibit, etc.

We finished with dinner in Chinatown; I’ll post photos when I get back.

One note on the Museum: in the exhibit about life (genes, DNA, chromosomes, etc.) they showed a genetically engineered frog with very bright eyes:

(African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, which has huge rear webs).

And they talked about some of what we learned about chromosomes from fruit fly research. So with that in mind:

22 July 2011 Chicago IL

Of course I started the day with a run; walked to the Lake Shore Path, ran 5 miles (53 minutes) on it, walked back for 6 miles total. It was somewhat humid; basically I ran from the marina near Navy Pier to the beach just beyond the planetarium and back.

What was amusing is that I saw this somewhat tall lady with long brown hair up ahead of me. I finally caught up to her and was going to pass (giving her a respectable amount of distance). She wouldn’t let me…for at least a mile or so. I’d catch up, she’d speed up. It was kind of funny…and fun.

Later, Olivia (my daughter) and I spent all day at the Field Museum. The only downside: the check in was very slow; their computer system is awful.

We saw the Whale exhibit and the Horse exhibit; both are outstanding. I also went upstairs to the Evolution of the Earth permanent exhibit.

WIN: there was a very tall young woman with a Northwestern shirt on and tight shiny spandex yoga pants.
FAIL: in the whale exhibit, there were some creationists next to us (doubted the “sea-land-back to sea” evolution of whales). Olivia smiled at me and said “it is ok, Daddy.”. I just grinned.

WIN: yesterday, there was a woman in a thin white dress wearing white panties with a bright red outline. I didn’t get a photo though.

Science Are you African? If not, you have Neanderthal genes!

Religion: may have been an evolutionary adaptation to help humans work together.

Among the economically developed countries, religion tends to be strongest when there are great economic disparities in society; strangely enough, in such societies, it is the rich that are more religious!

Politics/Economics
President Obama takes his case to the people (USA Today editorial), John Boehner walks out of the negotiations and liberals cheer the fact that the President didn’t cave.

In all honesty, I think that the President has too much faith in the “better angels” of some of the new Republicans; the old school ones who would have been delighted with an 80 percent deal are long gone, at least as a majority of the GOP.

Daily Kos: Stephen Colbert highlights GOP voter suppression efforts around the country

Workout notes 2200 yard swim: 5 x (25 3g, 25 swim), 5 x (25 fist, 25 swim)
10 x (25 kick, 25 swim) fins
5 x 200 on the 4: 3:26, 3:22, 3:21, 3:18, 3:18 (3:21 average)
200 back cool-down.

Daily Kos: Stephen Colbert highlights GOP voter…, posted with vodpod

Couldn’t Help Myself

On a more serious note: there is some research on primates that suggests that certain types of sexual sexism is, well, genetic. That doesn’t mean that we should settle for leaving society that way though; again primate research leaves us some clues as to what works. From the Scientific American article:

There are three forms of sexual coercion that researchers have documented in both human and nonhuman primates: harassment, intimidation, and forced copulation. Harassment is the most common and results when males make repeated attempts to mate that imposes costs on females, intimidation is the use of physical violence inflicted on females who refuse to mate with a given male, and forced copulation (or “rape” in the human literature) is the least common form that involves violent restraint for immediate mating. The researchers found convincing evidence that the first two forms of sexual coercion (but not the third) increased the long-term reproductive success among males in Japanese macaques, baboons, and our closest evolutionary relative the chimpanzees. This suggests that, at least for these three species, sexual coercion has been selected as an adaptive strategy in male sexual behavior.

But what about humans? This is a difficult question to answer since, for reasons of privacy, researchers can’t very well study human sexuality by stationing a field researcher in our bedrooms. However, reported statistics on extreme forms of intimidation can perhaps give an indication of how common sexual coercion is in modern societies. Therefore, in the same edited volume, Evolutionary Psychologist Martin Daly republished the findings that he and his late wife, Margo Wilson, reported in their 1996 paper in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science (pdf here). To address this question they analyzed statistics for uxoricide (killings of wives) in England, Canada, and the United States between the years 1965 and 1990. Just like those researchers who studied nonhuman primates, Wilson and Daly operated under the assumption that the use of sexual coercion would be highest against those women with the highest “reproductive value.” In other words, men would be most likely to use threats or even violence against younger women who had the majority of their childbearing years ahead of them.

Yes, that counters some of the nonsense you hear from feminists lectures, but it means that the feminists ARE right about some things.

20 July 2011 posts

Workout notes It was 89 F with 60 percent humidity when I was out. So it took 42:13 for me to run my hilly 4.2 mile course; last 1.03 miles was 9:48 (as opposed to 10:15 on the way out).

Then I swam 2200 yards; 500 of alternating fist/free, 5g/free, then 500 of kick/free (fins, front, side, side..), 5 x 100 IM (free instead of fly) on 2:30 (missed the last one), 500 pull in 9:20 (why so slow?), 200 cool down of mostly 25 counting strokes (last 50: 38 strokes, 49 seconds for 87). I admit that mostly I enjoyed the coolness of the water.

Posts
Books: why did Borders fail while Barns and Nobel survive?

At one time, size was its advantage. Borders built a reputation on offering a huge variety of books — tens of thousands of titles in a single store — at a time when most bookstores could afford to stock a fraction of that.

Borders also had an early technical advantage: a superior inventory system that could optimize, and even predict, what consumers across the nation would buy.

But in the mid-1990s, Borders lost its edge.

“It made a pretty big bet in merchandising. [Borders] went heavy into CD music sales and DVD, just as the industry was going digital. And at that same time, Barnes & Noble was pulling back,” says Peter Wahlstrom, who tracks Barnes & Noble for the investment research firm Morningstar.

He says Barnes & Noble also invested in beefing up its online sales. Eventually, it also developed its own e-reader, the Nook.

Borders did not. Instead, it expanded its physical plant, refurbished its stores and outsourced its online sales operation to Amazon.

“In our view, that was more like handing the keys over to a direct competitor,” Wahlstrom says.

Indeed, outside a Borders bookstore in Arlington, Va., shoppers say they rarely buy books the old-fashioned way.

“I’ll go to Borders to find a book, and then I’ll to go to Amazon to buy it, generally,” customer Jennifer Geier says.

Science
Evidently there are a pair of white dwarf stars locked in a death spiral orbit. What is interesting is that these stars are NOT exchanging mass; hence this is a good opportunity to study ripples in space-time.

Republicans
Mr. Rick Perry is selling snake oil:

So the Rick Perry story is that by creating a business-friendly environment in Texas, he’s created lots of hiring in the state; so that’s the claim that it’s a rightward shift in the demand curve.

But in that case, where are the surging wages? Wage data by state is hard to compile, but I haven’t heard anyone claiming that Texas is drawing workers in by offering great wages; on the contrary, the state has a reputation for cheap labor.

So let’s suppose it’s a rise in supply instead. What could be causing that? Well, as I said, there are two, not mutually exclusive stories: immigration and high birth rates among immigrants, leading to rapid population growth; and workers moving to Texas despite low wages because of cheap housing and a generally low cost of living.

Neither of these stories is necessarily a bad thing. In particular, I’m all in favor of affordable housing; affordable housing is a friend of mine. But it’s not at all the Perry story.

And one more thing: yes, Texas has created more jobs over the past few years than other states; but that mainly reflects the ongoing trend produced by the stories I’ve just described. You only have the right to claim that Texas is somehow recession-proof if the pace of job creation had been maintained through the slump, at a rate sufficient to avoid a large rise in unemployment. And that hasn’t happened; as I said, Texas unemployment is comparable to New York.

Of interest to me is that Krugman uses the old, simple “supply and demand curve” and we cover these in business calculus:

Fun with Sarah Palin
Fox News bellows “packed theaters”. Reality is a bit different. Ok, that was only one screening and some art places are saying that the movie isn’t “a flop”:

Despite reports to the contrary, the Sarah Palin movie The Undefeated did not play to empty houses on its first weekend out in North America. According to Box Office Mojo, The Undefeated brought in $65,132 at 10 locations over the weekend of July 15-17; the Stephen K. Bannon-directed film’s per-theater average was a so-so $6,513. So, “so-so” may not mean “packed houses” or “boffo” (in icky Variety slang), but non-existent patrons bring in no revenue.

But:

Now, some heartless bleeding-heart Liberals have ridiculed the title of Palin’s movie even though it may actually turn out to be prophetic. After all, The Undefeated will almost certainly be up for at least one major honor during movie awards season: With a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes — 11 critics; 11 pans — The Undefeated is already a Razzie 2012 front-runner.

“She’s the political equivalent of what the Razzies are all about,” Razzie president and founder John Wilson told the Los Angeles Times. “And she’s hysterically funny if you don’t stop and think, ‘Oh, my God, she could’ve been vice president!’ Sarah Palin exhibits ineptitude and an indefensible grasping after other people’s ideas, calling them her own. Just like Hollywood filmmakers who can’t make an original movie. She wants you to put on rose-colored glasses instead of 3-D glasses, but there is still a surcharge you should not pay.”

Surf to the link to see the comparison with other similar movies. Realistically, we are talking about 60 people per performance.

Hat tip: Mano Singham.

Of course I don’t like Sarah Palin’s politics and political tactics. I have some contempt for her followers. But this guy, Allen West, well, he doesn’t belong in politics.

For one, he takes open shots at President Obama’s supporters:

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) is no stranger to controversy and seems to relish in making outrageous statements just to provoke a reaction. But the freshman congressman may have outdone himself with a rambling, far-ranging post on the site “Red Country” in which he calls supporters of President Obama “a threat to the gene pool”:

I believe we are headed towards the ultimate ideological clash in America. There is a widening chasm which has developed between those who believe in principled fiscal policies and those desiring the socialist bureaucratic nanny-state. [...]

And all we hear from the President is talk about “shared sacrifice,” “tax the rich,” and “increase revenues by tax hikes.” It was just December 2010 that President Obama and the Democrats extended the Bush era tax rates for two years…now less than a year later they are FLIP-FLOPPING! [...]

I must confess, when I see anyone with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool.<

I’ll leave alone the ridiculous “flip-flopping” charge; yes, there was a one-time negotiated extension that the President admitted that he did not like. But as far as the “threat to the gene pool” remark:

As of last Friday, the number of Nobel Laureates endorsing Barack Obama for president has risen to 76, saying Obama will end Bush-era trashing of scientific research, integrity, and competitiveness.

In an open letter (pdf), the Laureates cite the politicization of science under the Bush administration, particularly in the fields of heath and climate, saying that “vital parts of our country’s scientific enterprise have been damaged by stagnant or declining federal support,” adding that through an advisory process “distorted by political considerations” America’s “once dominant position in the scientific world has been shaken and our prosperity has been placed at risk.”

Source: Red Green & Blue (http://s.tt/12A9V)

Back when it was “only” 61, you could read about it here.

Threats to the gene pool? If there were any justice at all, people like Mr. West would be barred from receiving any benefits from modern science, such as medicine.

But Mr. West’s nastiness doesn’t stop there: he was criticized (on policy grounds) by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. He went ballistic:

he AP relays background on the email West sent to numerous lawmakers as well as Wasserman Schultz herself:

A Republican congressman from Florida turned to email on Tuesday to call a Democratic colleague from the state “vile, despicable and cowardly” after she called into question his stance on Medicare during the debate over a spending cap and balanced budget bill before the House.
…
The subject line of the email: “Unprofessional and Inappropriate Sophomoric Behavior from Wasserman Schultz.”

The e-mail said: “Look, Debbie, I understand that after I departed the House floor you directed your floor speech comments directly towards me. Let me make myself perfectly clear, you want a personal fight, I am happy to oblige. You are the most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up.”
…
In his email, West said Wasserman Schultz has proven “that you are not a Lady” and “shall not be afforded due respect from me!” He said he was alerting House leaders to her “heinous characterless behavior.”

After the email from West landed in the headlines, Wasserman Schultz spokesman Jonathan Beeton wrote in an email, “I don’t think that Congressman West is upset at the congresswoman, but rather with the fact that she highlighted that he and other Republicans are once again trying to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, children and the middle class.” He added, “The truth hurts.”

Ms. Wasserman Schultz responded very professionally.

More Republican nastiness
Evidently Michelle Bachmann is a threat to the top Republican candidates; she is being drug through the mud:

Trying to knock her out, Michele Bachmann insiders say she is “incapacitated” often.

The image of a pill-popping, incapacitated Michele Bachmann is being painted today by “former aides”, “three people who have worked closely with Bachmann”, unnamed witnesses, an unnamed adviser, and “some around her”. I doubt it’s any coincidence that the Daily Caller is reporting this on the heels of the news that Michele Bachmann is the “Grand Old Party’s” new front runner, as they are all quite aware of her limitations against President Obama.

According to these sources, due to “stress”, Bachmann is shuttled in and out of emergency and urgent care, put to bed in CEO’s homes, and propped up by at least three different kinds of pills. Repeated use of the word “incapacitated” to describe Bachman’s “migraine headaches” is taken so far as to say the word is being used deliberately, as the adviser is “terrified about the impact the condition could have on Bachmann’s performance if she actually became president.”

The DC (Tucker Carlson’s joint) justifies offering the sources anonymity because their breaches of confidence could impact further job prospects. No doubt that’s a valid concern, but one does have to wonder why the Daily Caller is taking out the Republican front runner with rumor and innuendo:

The Daily Caller reports:

Sources who spoke to The Daily Caller said they did so because they are terrified about the impact the condition could have on Bachmann’s performance if she actually became president. They also worry that the issue could blow up in the general election campaign, giving President Obama an easy path to re-election.

“It’s a careful choice of words I used: ‘incapacitated,’” the adviser says.

“As president, when she’s in crisis management mode, is she going to have the physical ability to withstand the most difficult challenges facing America?” the former aide asks.

TheDC agreed to provide the sources anonymity because they were providing information only a select group of people could know, at great professional risk.

Two sources independently provided detailed accounts of Bachmann’s condition. A third source confirmed that Bachmann frequently suffers from debilitating headache episodes.

My guess: probably Mr. Romney’s people, though I have no way of knowing that; it is just a guess. Sure, a candidates health status is a valid thing to discuss, but someone had to be digging this up, and my guess is that Democrats would be delighted to see Ms. Bachmann as the nominee.

But there is more here:

Whether or not the Daily Caller story on Michele Bachmann’s migraines and pill use is sexist, a matter Jess and others are mulling, another problem for Bachmann is being revealed by this latest round of reporting. The story, titled “Stress-related condition ‘incapacitates’ Bachmann; heavy pill use alleged,” is sourced to three people who have worked with the presidential candidate, including an adviser and a former aide, and they are said to have stepped forward in part because “they are terrified about the impact the condition could have on Bachmann’s performance if she actually became president.” This is not the first time we have heard about Bachmann’s many disaffected aides.

Bachmann’s offices have long been known for their high turnover rate. Since she was elected to the House in 2006, Bachmann’s legislative offices and her political operations combined have lost at least five chiefs of staff, a legislative director, two district directors, two press secretaries, two communications directors, a finance director, and a fundraiser. A “conservative Republican House member” told Politico in 2009 of the many departures, “When your captain’s crazy, it’s time to find a new ship.”

Not all of the departed employees have spoken ill of Bachmann, but those who have tend to make it count. At least two former staffers have come out supporting one of Bachmann’s GOP rivals, Tim Pawlenty. One of them, former chief of staff Ron Carey, has said Bachmann lacks “any leadership experience or real results from her years in office,” and has characterized her “campaign and congressional offices as “wildly out of control.”

President Obama
President Obama’s approval numbers are still higher than the economic numbers would suggest. Why?

“Looking at history, particularly Clinton and Reagan, it is somewhat surprising that [Obama] has never yet fallen into the 30 percent range in our approval rating,” Newport said. “And yet both Reagan and Clinton, in their first terms when the economy was perceived as bad … both fell into the 30s.”

Newport noted, “Satisfaction with the way things are going is … correlated with economic perceptions fairly strongly.” At the same time, Obama “is overperforming. Based on where every president has been, his approval rating now is higher than we would predict it to be based on” how satisfied American adults say they are.

Pollsters are not sure why Obama has fared better than expected in the polls. Newport offered two possibilities. “One theory has to do with personal characteristics of the man,” the Gallup executive said. “The other has to do with the nature of politics today.” Under that theory, Obama has “kind of a rock-hard coalition that are never going to abandon him in approval ratings, and therefore that is why his approval ratings will be propped up no matter what happens.”

There are perhaps other reasons. One is that President Obama said that things would be difficult and might not improve in one term; more importantly he said this while on the campaign trail and when he won:

Barack Obama told supporters that “change has come to America” as he claimed victory in a historic presidential election.

“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you — we as a people will get there,” Obama said in Chicago, Illinois, before an estimated crowd of up to 240,000 people.

Secondly, people seem to understand just who caused the mess to begin with (hint: it wasn’t him):

Also of interest, by a two-to-one margin, Americans blame George W. Bush for the state of the economy, not President Obama. This is consistent with three other recent national polls, all of which show the American mainstream not inclined to blame the president for the weak economy.

And while no one in Washington is popular, Obama fares far better than members of Congress: the president has a 47% approval rating, congressional Democrats are at 28%, and congressional Republicans’ approval rating stands at 26%.

The third is that the opposition party is crazy and the current debt-limit fiasco is making that clear:

There was a Democratic president eager to move to the center. He floated certain ideas that would be normally unheard of from a Democrat. According to widespread reports, White House officials talked about raising the Medicare eligibility age, cutting Social Security by changing the inflation index, freezing domestic discretionary spending and offering to pre-empt the end of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a broad tax-reform process.

The Democratic offers were slippery, and President Obama didn’t put them in writing. But John Boehner, the House speaker, thought they were serious. The liberal activists thought they were alarmingly serious. I can tell you from my reporting that White House officials took them seriously.

The combined effect would have been to reduce the size of government by $3 trillion over a decade. That’s a number roughly three times larger than the cost of the Obama health care law. It also would have brutally fractured the Democratic Party.

But the Republican Party decided not to pursue this deal, or even seriously consider it. Instead what happened was this: Conservatives told themselves how steadfast they were being for a few weeks. Then morale crumbled.

This week, Republicans will probably pass a balanced budget Constitutional amendment that has zero chance of becoming law. Then they may end up clinging to a no más Senate compromise. This proposal would pocket cuts that have already been agreed on, and it would eliminate leverage for future cuts and make them less likely.

It could be that this has been a glorious moment in Republican history. It could be that having persuaded independents that they are a prudent party, Republicans will sweep the next election. Controlling the White House and Congress, perhaps they will have the guts to cut Medicare unilaterally, reform the welfare state and herald in an era of conservative greatness.

The “no compromise at any cost” mentality is out of touch with the country.

So, why am I in President Obama’s camp? If that seems like an odd question, note that I strongly disagree with the President on economic policy; I favor a Keynesian approach (like Paul Krugman’s or Robert Reich’s). I feel that the President is badly misguided with this “balanced” approach stuff; this is a bit like taking a balanced approach between conventional medicine and homeopathy; that is, give the patient a “half dose” of real medicine and a “half does” of homeopathic remedy (placebo).

But, I might be wrong (and the President is smarter and better informed than I am). And I support him for these reasons: he helped us avert financial disaster and he has fostered more competence in government (made the government agencies work better)

How will the President play this out? Some possible strategies are offered here. My guess, given how unpopular the Republicans in Congress are, he’ll run against them.

19 July 2011: Swim progress

I managed to swim 2200 yards and lift afterward.

Swim: 5 x (25 3g, 25 swim), 5 x (25 fist, 25 swim)
10 x 100 on the 1: 1:41, 1:38, 1:38, 1:38, 1:38, 1:37, 1:38, 1:36, 1:38, 1:36.
That is 1:37.8 average per 100; a bit of an improvement.
Here is a summary of my 10 x 100 on the 1 averages:

19 July 1:37.8 (.85 seconds/week)
5 July 1:39.5 (.9 seconds/week)
21 June: 1:41.3 (1.1 seconds/week)
15 June: 1:42.4 (1.1 seconds/week)
1 June: 1:44.6 (5.1 seconds/.5 week = 10.2 seconds per week)
29 May: 1:49.7

So over a 51 day period, I’ve dropped about 11.9 seconds per 100 or about .233 seconds per day. But you can see the decrease in the rate of improvement, which is, of course, expected.

Then weights:
Hammer row: 3 x 12 with 200
pull down: 3 x 12 with 140
dumbbell curl: 3 x 12 with 25
incline bench: 10 x 115, 7 x 135, 5 x 135
hip hikes
4 sets of lunges
4 x 25 sit ups
hip adductors: 3 x 10 with 170
hip abductors: 3 x 10 with 170
push backs 3 x 10 with 110
rotator cuff

Personal:

So, what am I doing, blogging wise? Mostly writing about mathematical topics: here, here, here and here.

19 July 2011 snap crackle pop

Workout notes Nothing yet. The right shoulder is a bit sore and stiff; it gets that way when I drive a lot and when I make a mistake and sleep on it. I have to remember to take my stretch bands with me.

Yes, I missed yoga again. Today: perhaps swimming (moderate) and weights over lunch.

Posts

True enough.

By the way, if you can read this (or have a second hand 20 dollar TV or a small second hand coffee pot), you aren’t poor.

But if you “only” make 250 K per year, you aren’t rich.