16 August 2011 am

Well, the school year is only 8 days away; we have our University Conference in a few hours. I can’t believe that I am saying this, but I am actually looking forward to getting back in front of the classroom!

Workout notes I did yoga with Kimberly this morning (went to class with Lynn). She isn’t the hardest teacher I’ve had, but she is easy on the eyes. Then I ran 4 miles on my own (4.2 actually in 41:42; 10:18 for the first 1.05 and 9:36 for the last 1.05). I didn’t set the world on fire, but it was actually slightly easier than last time. Slightly. The knee hurt just a bit less.

I then did step ups, toe raises and lowering, lunges and rotator cuff stuff with dumbbells.

Posts

This made me shake my head. (hat tip: Jerry Coyne)

Republicans and Town Halls: what do you do with angry constituents? Well, if the “friendly” ones are the wealthier ones, you do away with town halls and hold “meet the candidate fundraisers”. That is what some (not all) Republicans do.

I have to give Aaron Schock (R, IL-18) credit. He holds fundraisers, but he holds regular meetings too. I don’t agree with his political positions but he works with his constituents well; come to think of it so did Ray LaHood and Bob Michael.

Speaking of what (some) Republicans do, Paul Krumgan has some words about Rick Perry and his “threatening” of the Federal Reserve Chair:

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who entered the presidential campaign on Saturday, appeared to suggest a violent response would be warranted should Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “print more money” between now and the election. Speaking just now in Iowa, Perry said, “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion.” Treason is a capital offense.

Dr. Krugman points out that Republicans have done this before (to Bill Clinton) and that Mr. Bernake was…well, appointed by President Bush. Dr. Krugman goes on:

(Incidentally, threats of that kind are a long-standing feature of modern GOP rhetoric; as early as 1993, Republican Senators would joke about what might happen to Bill Clinton if he visited their states, and the Broders of the world pretended not to notice).

But somehow everyone I’ve read seems to miss the bit about Bernanke playing politics — implying that anything he does would be in the interests of helping Obama get reelected.

That’s a hell of an accusation to make — especially when you bear in mind that Bernanke was a Bush appointee. But this is apparently how people like Perry think.

After this, I suspect that Perry is a shoo-in for the nomination.

15 August PM

Workout notes Swim; 250 of fist/free, 250 of kick/free, 250 of fist/free, 250 of kick/free (kick sets with fins) Then 10 x 100 on the 2: disappointing. Then I did 200 cool down (back with a pull buoy).

1:42, 39, 39, 40, 39, 39, 38, 39, 39, 39. Well, I was consistent but slow; my guess is that my upper body was fatigued from yesterday’s weights and I was slowed by the choppy pool.

I then walked just over 4 miles outside (hodgepodge). It was a pretty day.

Posts
This is a fascinating post about the search for life’s origins; evidently scientists have found that molecules that are simpler than RNA can self replicate…and such replication might have taken place in ice instead of in hot water.

Politics
Rick Perry’s Texas record is way overstated; his joblessness rate is roughly that of New York and Massachusetts (and follows roughly the same trajectory) and, as is often the case with states, one can sometimes lure jobs from another state.

Warren Buffett: says that we are too easy, tax wise, on millionaires:

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

Now before conservatives cluck “well, let him give more money to the government”, ask yourself: well, gee, if you want a speed limit, why don’t you drive slower?” We, as a people, sometimes have to ask people to do what they might not want to do.

Jobs agenda: come on people!

In what can only be described as a triumph of bad policy and craven politics, Congress and the Obama administration have spent the year focused on budget cuts, as the economy has faltered and unemployment has worsened. Official unemployment is 9.1 percent, but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work. For the past two and a half years, there have been more than four unemployed workers for every job opening, a record high, by far. In a healthy market, the ratio would be about one to one.

By a large margin, Americans have told pollsters that job creation is more important than budget cuts. Yet Republican leaders are wedded to austerity and appear to think that high unemployment will hurt President Obama politically more than it will hurt them, so they will likely resist efforts to create jobs, no matter how great the need.

Without more jobs, both the economy and the budget will deteriorate further. It is past time for Mr. Obama to send a jobs plan to Congress that has popular appeal, one that he can use to try to shame Republicans. He will need cooperation from the Senate, which should bring one jobs-related bill after another to the floor, forcing its members to approve jobs initiatives or go on the record to show that they just don’t care. [...]

But it is possible that those of us who are pushing President Obama from the left might be misreading him:

The predominately white progressive intelligentsia don’t see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spot. We don’t see the role of race in how he seems to understand himself and how other perceive him.

First of all, we think that he understands himself as one of us. A progressive activist, heir to the radical and New Left movements most of us were raised in. He is not; I think that he understands himself (and certainly his real base understands him) as the first African American President. We’re thinking Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. We should be thinking about Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago. Washington was elected and immediately faced a solid wall of opposition from most white aldermen in the city. Washington understood his role as breaking down that wall of opposition and assembling a governing majority, which he finally did after his re-election. Unfortunately, he died shortly thereafter. By the way, one of Washington’s political strategists was David Axelrod.[...]

White progressives often think that African American elected officials are politically naive. We will far more credit to Cornel West, who has never been elected to anything, than to an elected state senator, or even the President of the United States. We think that Obama does not understand the nature of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell or Eric Cantor, as though he has not sat across the table from them. He doesn’t understand how mean they are, we think.

Obama acts entirely within the tradition of mainstream African American political strategy and tactics. The epitome of that tradition was the non-violence of the Civil Rights Movement, but goes back much further in time. It recognizes the inequality of power between whites and blacks. Number one: maintain your dignity. Number two: call your adversaries to the highest principles they hold. Number three: Seize the moral high ground and Number four: Win by winning over your adversaries, by revealing the contradiction between their own ideals and their actions. It is one way that a oppressed people struggle.

Obama has taken a seat at the negotiating table and said “There is no reason why we cannot work out solutions to our problems by acting like responsible adults. That is what people expect us to do and that is why we have entered into public service.” That is the moral high ground.

Read the rest; it is interesting perspective. I am reminded of one of the State of the Union Addresses where the (mostly white) Republicans were standing, smirking, and waving pieces of paper. What assholes.

Partisanship
This New York Times editorial gets the statistics right, but I think draws the wrong conclusion. It is true that many (most?) of us live in partisan districts (e. g., live in neighborhoods that vote the same way; mine went for President O by 70 percent or so). Many of us shop at places were like minded meet (Whole Foods and Indian restaurants vs. Cracker Barrels and Sam’s Clubs). But what the author misses is that an inherent part of liberalism involves pragmatism and compromise; it is the conservatives that get all dewy eyed over the “courage of one’s convictions”: