22 August 2011 pm

Workout notes We had a teaching seminar at the University so I was up early; I lifted then did 10 minutes on the stationary bike (knees)

rotator cuff, lunges
Bench press: 10 x 45, 10 x 135, 8 x 150
Incline press: 10 x 115, 8 x 130
Dumbbell military: seated 2 sets of 12 x 40 lb. dumbbells, standing 12 x 40 lb.
Pull downs: 3 sets of 10 x 137.5
rows: 3 sets of 12 x 110 (Riverplex machine)
Curls: 3 sets of 10: one with dumbbells, one with curl bar, one machine pulley.
Sit ups: 4 sets of 25
adductors: 3 sets of 10 (70)
abductors: 3 sets of 10 (70)

Note: though I don’t rest much between sets, the routine takes about an hour.

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Humor: this is a forklift training video from Germany; they have quite the sense of humor!

2012 Elections: Dick Morris thinks that there is room for more candidates:

Three new candidates are slowly circling above the GOP presidential race. Will they land or fly on by? New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former VP candidate Sarah Palin, and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan are in various stages of contemplating possible candidacies.

Start with Palin. A good Iowa source tells me that she is preparing a massive event in his state on September 3rd, very possibly to announce her presidential candidacy. It would be a huge mistake…but it would help the Republicans defeat Obama!

A mistake because she’d get slaughtered. Michele Bachmann – more credentialed, accomplished, and informed – has breathed all the oxygen she’d need for her candidacy. Before she could compete in the primaries, she would need to defeat Bachmann in the “woman’s primary.” But the Congressman is vastly better equipped to discuss budget, deficit, foreign affairs, and virtually any other issue. She has stirred the same kind of enthusiasm as the former Alaska Governor, but with much more substance behind it. If she ran, it would end up trivializing her and showing feet of clay.

…But it wouldn’t be bad for the Party. Sarah Palin is the same kind of lightening rod in the Republican Party that Hillary Clinton is in the Democratic. (Doesn’t that reflect the sexism of our politics?). If she entered the race, the entire political establishment would descend on her in a chorus of criticism and undeserved mockery. She would deflect attention – and therefore negative attacks – from the likely front runners.

He is also high on Gov. Christ Christie and not so much on Paul Ryan. But he is good for some comedy:

In the meantime, we have a field of very good candidates. Romney, Perry, or Bachmann could all beat Obama and, as noted before, don’t count out Cain, Santorum, or even Newt.

So how does President Obama match against the individual candidates?

The race with Mr. Romney is competitive. I’ll give him that.

Nate Silver has a more thoughtful analysis which concludes that, well, there is a possible “niche” for someone new.

Legend: the size of the disk represents how well they poll. The center of the disk is plotted on an “establishment/conservatism” axis, with the left being “moderately conservative”. The color represents the regions where the candidates poll well:

The third dimension is reflected by the colors in the chart, which represent the region of each candidate — red for candidates from the South, blue for candidates from the Northeast, green for candidates from the Midwest and yellow for candidates from the West. Remember when there was a conspicuous absence of southern candidates for the Republican nomination? Not any more. There’s now quite a bit of red on the chart, with Mr. Perry, Ron Paul, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich collectively holding about 35 percent of the vote in the polls.

This is the Intrade number today:

50-50, more or less. The odds of the Democratic party winning the presidency is just over 50 percent.

What I find troubling
In the race for Anthony Weiner’s seat, some “Democrats” have bought into the austerity arguments:

But it was there that Dale Weiss, a 64-year-old Democrat, approached the Republican running for Congress in a special election and, without provocation, blasted the president for failing to tame runaway federal spending. “We need to cut Medicaid,” she declared, “but he won’t do that.” She shook her head in disgust. “He is a moron.”

After nodding approvingly for a time, the Republican candidate, Bob Turner, signaled for an assistant to cut off Ms. Weiss. Frustration with Mr. Obama is so widespread, he explained later, that he tries to limit such rants to about 30 seconds, or else they will consume most of his day.

“It’s endemic in the district,” Mr. Turner said. “You can’t stop them once they get started.”

The Sept. 13 election was expected to be a sleepy sideshow — a mere formality that would put David I. Weprin, a Democratic state assemblyman and heir to a Queens political dynasty, into a Congressional seat that became vacant this summer when Mr. Weiner quit over an online sex scandal.

Instead, the race has become something far more unsettling to Democrats: a referendum on the president and his party that is highlighting the surprisingly raw emotions of the electorate.

National Democrats, alarmed by a poll that showed the contest far closer than anticipated, are privately fretting that even a close outcome in a working-class swath of Brooklyn and Queens may foreshadow broader troubles for the party in 2012.

You see, in liberal circles, you hear that President Obama is cutting too much. Here you hear concerns about the debt. He may well end up in a Hoover like box: damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

Here is the only reason I am not depressed: we are running against the Republicans and they may well nominate a whack job like Mr. Perry or Ms. Bachmann; they might Christine O’Donnell themselves once again.