The Correspondents Explain – Political Parties – The Tea Party – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – 08/22/11 – Video Clip | Comedy Central

The Tea Party is the punk rock movement for old people. Airdate – 08/22/11

The Correspondents Explain – Political Parties …, posted with vodpod

23 August 2011 noon: Obama Derangement Syndrome, Rick Perry’s stimulus and other topics

Workout notes yoga with Ms. Vickie. (easy class)
Then 5 mile run (5.3 actually) in 55 minutes; I ran 1.05 miles to the gooseloop, did 9 laps (3.24 miles) in 31:45 and then ran 1.05 back. So far so good; the knee started to “feel it” late. No biggie. Then I walked 3.2 miles, and that was 1 mile too much. The knee (behind the knee) squawked at me toward the end. Total time: 1:41.

But it rained pretty hard (stormed) and my knees ALWAYS hurt during quick weather changes.

Posts
If Obama did it, it must be wrong! No, I am not talking about Republicans this time.
Yes, Obama decided to get rid of some useless business regulations. Surely, liberals are not the group of people who are pro-useless regulations, right? Right?

Really, these days, the conversation goes something like this:
1. Obama does something.
2. Some conservative group says “I like this aspect of it, but it doesn’t go far enough.”
3. Know it all liberal activist picks up on the part in bold and claims that once again, Obama is either
a. A closet Republican in bed with the oligarchy
b. Pandering to the moderates
c. Being pushed around by those meanie Republicans

In this case, the liberal activist in question is NOT a drooling idiot, but her “self perception of knowledge and IQ” to “actual knowledge and IQ” ratio is well above unity.

The idea: “if Obama did it, it must be bad”…from the left.

Oh well…at least I am not a Republican…:

Yes, I know, Jon Huntsman took shots at President Obama too. I decided to post his correct criticisms and leave off where he is wrong.

Seriously, this was great politics by the DNC to pounce on this.

Rick Perry
I suppose that Mr. Perry isn’t against ALL types of stimulus:

Leading Republican contender and prominent Christian candidate Rick Perry has been accused of hypocrisy after it was revealed that he invested thousands of dollars in the country’s largest pornography distributor.

Just a week after he launched his presidential campaign, the Texas governor has come under fire for his investment in Movie Gallery, a company that rented pornographic movies.

In 1995, while serving as Texas’ agriculture commissioner, financial disclosures reveal that Mr Perry bought between $5,000 and $10,000 worth of the company’s stock.

Can I get an AMEN???

Richard Dawkins: weighs in on Mr. Perry’s evolution comments:

A. There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Any other organization — a big corporation, say, or a university, or a learned society – -when seeking a new leader, will go to immense trouble over the choice. The CVs of candidates and their portfolios of relevant experience are meticulously scrutinized, their publications are read by a learned committee, references are taken up and scrupulously discussed, the candidates are subjected to rigorous interviews and vetting procedures. Mistakes are still made, but not through lack of serious effort.

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities. [...]

Dr. Dawkins goes on to address evolution and to explain why current evolutionary theory is not a mere conjecture like, say, string theory.

23 August 2011: unintentinal comedy

Question Evolution: how to proudly display that you are an idiot. Why not wear a t-shirt denouncing heliocentric astronomy too?

A preacher attempts to “refudiate” Jerry Coyne’s USA Today article.

Watch how this non-scientist tries to tell scientists that they don’t understand science (eyeroll)

Note that “faith” does attempt to answer the “big questions” and often, at least in western religions, there is usually some statement of “faith” and that this “faith” is taken to be a moral virtue in and of itself.

So to the preacher: there is as much reason for accepting the existence of your god as a postulate as there are of accepting the existence of the hundreds of thousands of Hindu gods…or perhaps the existence of the gods that inhabitants of some other planet (in some other galaxy) believe in.

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.

Posts

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.

Racism isn’t a factor in Obama hate…

I saw this on facebook:

Caption: where is James Earl Ray when you need him (yes, the person who shot MLK).

No racism here.

Just the Facts…

Now for those who note that unemployment went up and remains high: we are still not creating jobs at a rate to keep up with new job seekers AND those who are currently unemployed and looking for work. The current job growth rate is simply way too low.

But this directly counters the claims that “Obama lost jobs”; note that his policies didn’t start to take effect until a few months into 2009.

Daily Kos: Bill Burton Slaps Rove HARD!!!

Karl Rove gets owned.

Daily Kos: Bill Burton Slaps Rove HARD!!!, posted with vodpod

21 August 2011 pm

Workout notes

This was about 11; just under. Basically I ran/walked the first 8.2 (90 minutes) which went ok (last 15 minutes were tough) and then walked the last 2.55 uphill miles (painful; right knee).

I am in a bit of a box: my knee limits my running distance and trashes me for continuing on after that. My piriformis limits my walking; so for the foreseeable future it will be mostly 4-8 mile workouts; pure running some days, pure walking some days, and a couple of days of run/walk. No idiot distances for a while.

I’ll have to add some indoor cycling to strengthen my knee. So on the agenda:
3 days: indoor cycling (20 minutes or so)
2 days: yoga classes
2 days: lifting
3 days: swimming (2200 yards for now)
3-4 days: running or run/walking
2-3 days: walking only

Needless to say, I’ll be doubling activities (e. g., cycling after lifting, running then swimming, etc.) which will be doable since my distances will be modest.

Goal: get the shoulder, knee and piriformis in a position to handle training next year. I’ll do quick races of the 5K-10K range just for fun.

Saturdays will feature a short run/race followed by football!

Personal: spent the afternoon doing yardwork. There is only one redeeming thing about yardwork:

Unfortunately I was alone this afternoon.

Posts
Epigenetics: this, as I understand it, is a mechanism of passing along traits that doesn’t involve mutations getting fixed in a population due to things like natural selection and genetic drift. Read Jerry Coyne’s take on it here.

This is an example of the “marketing” end of science trying to exert inappropriate influence. If one publishes an article saying “theory X is being challenged” one is likely to get more readers than if the headline was more honest: “here is an interesting story about a relatively nuanced mechanism that adds to our understanding”.

Republicans: fact free

Republican History in a Nutshell