When Spock Gives Neck Massages

Republican Debate
Normally, I don’t care for the “x things we learned from the debate” but this one at CNN is ok.

Paul Krugman and other liberals are delighted at Rick Perry’s implosion (couldn’t remember WHICH agencies that he would cut). Nate Silver says that while he isn’t completely finished, he is probably a second tier candidate now.

Statistics
Who believes Herman Cain? Well, here are two different polls, focus on the Republican men vs. Republican women:

In the Pew poll, Republican women are more skeptical of the charges. In the Gallup, the Republican women are LESS skeptical of the charges! What gives? Note: “n” is higher in the Gallup but “n” is still respectable in the Pew poll.

Can you guess the real difference? Surf to the article to find out.

Intrade: Perry has dropped to 4 percent, and Gingrich has “soared” to almost 10 percent.

Oh yes, Obama is over 50 percent again, at least as of this morning:

I need cheering up…

So maybe she will be subbing for my yoga teacher tomorrow:

Yes: this is from Girls in Yoga Pants.

cnbc Republican debate: Cliche Fest…and Perry can’t remember which agencies he’ll eliminate!!!

Topic One: Italy financial crisis.

Cain: doesn’t answer the question
Romney: let ‘em fail and those banks that have Italian bonds..
Paul: Let ‘em fail
Huntsman: banks are too big… (sounds like government regulation)

Auto Industry
Romeny: called out on his flip-flop on auto bailout.
Answer: waffles Claims that he doesn’t flip flop. Claims that the Obama is behind the flip-flop charge, never apologize for the USA. ????

Perry: asked if leaders need some flexibility. Says America will be America “again”???? Too big??

Gingrich: asked about Bernake’s statement. Asked about tax reform.
Gingrich responds: fire Bernake. Lower taxes, less regulation, no class warfare????
(*cuking idiot)

Bachmann: “taxes lead to jobs leaving the country”…speaks gibberish….why is this idiot here? “legalize American energy?”

Santorum: asked about his zero tax for manufacturing…..blames government in making us uncompetitive.

Cain: asked about the claims of sexual harassment (gets booed):
Response: shouldn’t be tried in the court of public opinion, gets cheered. Still didn’t say 9-9-9.

Romney: are you persuaded (boos). Says: Mr. Cain can respond, acknowledged cheers.

Huntsman: says he wants to be the President of the 99 percent AND of the 1 percent. Talks about the banks being too big to fail. No more bailouts, he says.

Romney: do companies have a responsibility to make money only. Lies about profit not enriching the executives: they get capital gains. What a liar.

Perry: his 20 percent flat tax….

Gingrich: takes a shot at the Occupy Wall street, academics and pundits. Yeah, he brings out a couple of exceptions and the idiots cheer. Gingrich is asked “what inaccurate reporting”; he can’t answer.

Blah blah….

My goodness; I think Bachmann is an idiot. I think that she and Santorum are there as props to make Romney look sane.

Paul is talking about interest rates being too low.

Seriously, the debate should be limited to Romney, Paul, Cain and Perry.

Now Romney is blaming the government for the bad loans….what a liar (or an idiot). Again, it wasn’t the government making banks loan to poor people that caused the mortgage crisis.

Huntsman is the only one making any sense at all; pity that he has no chance.

Repeal Obamacare question
Let’s see how anyone answers the preexisting condition
Huntsman: cost containment, states
Paul: medical savings accounts
Cain: HR 3000…”princess Nancy”
Romney: return to the states the uninsured…”more like a market”, “malpractice”
Gingrich: no 30 second answer he says.
Bachmann: Own insurance policies drive the prices down???
Santorum: claims that he lead on government out of the health care business…

Do these people do anything other than mouth stale cliches?

Highlights: Romney accuses Obama of putting his reelection ahead of problem solving (hypocrite). Perry: brags about poaching Caterpillar.

Vows to eliminate Commerce, Education and an agency that he can’t remember….he can’t name it!!!!!! FAIL…..

Gingrich will keep the payroll tax cut.

Romney whines about public service employees….

Some say that they disagree with the payroll tax cuts.

Bachmann: gibberish. cut her off…thank goodness.

Gingrich: blames student loans for cost……talks about administrator cost.

Mentions College of the Ozarks. This is the first “new” thing I took away.

Oh yes, Perry wants to do away with the Department of Energy (which controls nuclear weapons and nuclear power…)

Great: Perry of all people is telling us how to fix higher education.

Romney: calls out the Chinese for cheating….this was over a decision to buy parts from China to build parts for a California bridge.

How would you crack down on China?
Answer: call them currency manipulator. Tariffs to the Chinese.

Gingrich: blames American labor and regulations.

Huntsman: no easy answers. Talks about “applause lines”. Calls Romney’s policy pandering. Warns of trade wars.

Perry: can’t talk; breaks down into gibberish.

Shut up you fat bimbo!!! Ok, Cain’s PAC did NOT say that…

Workout notes Walked 4 miles on the university track: 13:15 warm up mile, 11:21, 11:01, 9:42 for 45:20. As usual the first mile was to warm up, next was 2-1-2-1-2, next was 1-3-1-3 and then the last was 1-7. In the last mile I wanted to pass as many slow runners as possible; the knee was probably not legal though I did NOT lift.

Then swimming: 2200 yards: 500 fist/free, 500 back/free, 500 side/free, 500 pull, 200 free. Routine.

Aches/Pains: somewhat sore back at times; I was a bit heavy legged from yesterdays runs/squats.

Politics

From Herman Cain’s PAC website:

Click for the larger photo.

This is NOT an official Herman Cain site but rather, well, you can see the details of who actually owns the site here:

A WHOIS lookup of that domain gives:

Registrant:
ibc
15408 n 39th street
Phoenix, Arizona 85032
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: UNITEDCONSERVATIVEAMERICANETWORK.COM
Created on: 03-Dec-10
Expires on: 03-Dec-12
Last Updated on: 02-Jan-11

Administrative Contact:
hoelz, clifford cliffhoelz@hotmail.com
ibc
15408 n 39th street
Phoenix, Arizona 85032
United States
+1.6027173345 Fax — +1.6027887660

Technical Contact:
hoelz, clifford cliffhoelz@hotmail.com
ibc
15408 n 39th street
Phoenix, Arizona 85032
United States
+1.6027173345 Fax — +1.6027887660

Hmmm…sounds like Mr. Clifford Hoelz of “IBC” (whatever that is) has some ‘splainin to do…

by Brainwrap on Wed Nov 09, 2011 at 09:43:35 AM PST

Hat tip: Dr. Andy.

Before Dr. Andy gets too smug though: were I like some of the GOP field, I’d just say that the claims that this site was not authentic were made up by the “lamestream media” or something.

BONUS

Watch Joe “I don’t pay no stinking child support) Walsh (R-IL14) get OWNED by his constituents…and lose his temper:

Moral: when you don’t have the facts, TALK LOUDER. That is the Republican way!

ps: this is not a hoax and the far more important of the two items.

Mike Huckabee is a moron

Hmmm, having your boss grope you and threatening to fire you if you complain is the same as being called “sweetie” at a restaurant.

Popcorn Post II

These are intrade odds; note that “Paterno will resign” was over 80 percent earlier today.

But the Cain campaign “scandal” has been the most entertaining news for me today.

Some Cain supporter reaction:

Now Druge is breaking the “story” that the accuser was once fired for filing false sexual harassment charges:

One might be asking themselves why Ms. Bialek was fired from the National Restaurant Association. After all, being fired, quite unlike simply being laid off, is a serious issue with serious ramifications; since leaving the Restuarant Association, Ms. Bialek has been unable to maintain regular employment. So why was this woman let go? Why has it seemingly affected her ability to remain employed for so long? Perhaps it might have something to do with the reason she was fired from the National Restaurant Association in the first place… FILING FALSE CLAIMS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT “She was fired from her job, and her boyfriend suggested she contact Cain in hopes he could help her find employment.”.

Now I trust Druge about as far as I could throw a 300 pound barbell.

Who knows? Rick Perry must be laughing his @ss off right now.

What is interesting is how some of my liberal acquaintances have acted: the guys have been mostly “wait and see” whereas the more vocal feminists were all into the “off with his head”; evidently in their mind, accusation is the same as guilt.

I’ll say it again: there has to be at least some evidence to substantiate a charge, else anyone can charge anyone. The most damning evidence against Mr. Cain is his history of accusers being paid quite a bit of money.

So, though this latest accuser doesn’t strike me as credible, there are the other charges where there are actual settlements.

Booms, Bombs and Jobs…

Click for the larger view. I know what this is supposed to be about, but this is also a good reason why we should periodically review procedures.

Economy
Paul Krugman attempts to kill the “regulation is bad for the economy” zombie:

Let me start with a puzzle: why did faith in the wonders of financial deregulation persist so long?

After all, if you step back from the record, deregulation began producing disasters from early on. Early deregulatory moves helped bring on the Latin American debt crisis of the early 1980s; Garn-St. Germain produced the savings and loan debacle; freed-up capital flows produced the Asian crisis and LTCM; and now we have the great bust. So why were Very Serious People so convinced that it was a good thing?[...]

And the answer, once you think about it, is obvious: growth for whom? There’s only one way in which the post-deregulation boom was exceptional, and that’s in terms of the growth in incomes at the top of the scale.

Here’s a comparison of the postwar boom with the deregulation alleged boom, using real average family income from the Census and real average income for the top 1 percent from Piketty and Saez:

Surprised? That is the typical Republican view: if it helps the top 1 percent, it must be good.

2012 Mitt Romney is yapping about President Obama’s economic record:

Only one President has seen unemployment above 8% for each full month of his presidency. Only one president has overseen the highest levels of long-term unemployment on record. Only one president has grown the national debt to nearly $15 trillion: http://mi.tt/uCWeLG

Uh, Mr. Romney:

See that time when we were LOSING jobs? That is when we followed the policies that you espouse. Yes, I know: the job growth is still too small to make a serious dent in unemployment; I get that. The economy still sucks, but it sucks less than it did.

President Obama wants some infrastructure repair in a jobs bill. Here is what happens when a country neglects such things:

Bonddad blog quotes the Financial Times:

Rows of cargo containers clutter the tarmac outside an overflowing warehouse at Jakarta’s airport where there are not enough landing slots for all the planes. The chaotic scene offers the most graphic illustration of how strong economic expansion is straining Indonesia’s worn out infrastructure just as it emerges, once again, as a regional power.

The young democracy of 240m may be booming, but the situation at the capital’s airport epitomises one of the biggest problems holding back south-east Asia’s largest economy: its roads, ports, power plants and bridges have fallen far behind its needs because of years of government underspending.

No, we are NOT in that extreme of a situation; but crumbling infrastructure does harm the economy. It is not something that we can neglect, and infrastructure repair can’t be outsourced.

World Events
Yes, Iran is working toward a nuclear weapon.

There will be cries (from conservatives and the blindly pro-Israel lobby) for military action. I oppose that. Even if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, they are no threat to us…and Israel has them. It is unrealistic to think that we can keep the nuclear genie bottled up forever; we have to work on deterrence.

I will not laugh…

Getting it done…

Workout notes
It was pouring rain outside so I decided to skip yoga (downtown) and instead run in the university gym and follow it with some leg weights and yoga on my own.

Running on the 8 laps to the mile track:
10:24, 9:40 (alternate faster and slower laps)
Then 5K in 28:10 (two laps on, one off with the 25′th one “on”): 8:42, 9:07, 9:17, 1:03
This was 47:12 for 5 miles, and 48:15 for 5.125
Then 1 lap walk/jog, then 1 mile on the treadmill in 10:03 to cool down. 1:01:30 was the total.

Weights: 2 sets of 20 with the leg press, 1 set of 10 squats (45 lb), 1 set of 10 squats (135 lb), 2 sets of step ups, 2 sets of toe raises, 2 sets of hip hikes.

Then 30 minutes of yoga; included leg lifts, head stand, arm pressure, crow, and a lot of “down dog”.

I felt ok afterward.

Photos Here are a few shots from the Screaming Pumpkin: