When Did Rules Get so Sexy?

Tomorrow is an important day for a lot of ardent Hillary-supporters (I'll decline coming up with a tacky nickname for them like they've done for Obama supporters which is really demeaning). Tomorrow is the day the Democractic National Convention Rules committee meets. On the agenda is the Florida/Michigan situation.

Some Hillary supporters from around the country are planning on holding a protest outside the meeting. It's the most attention a rules committee has received in the history of rules committees. Robert's Rules of Order doesn't consider a situation like this.

So it got me thinking: what is it that they hope to achieve? Do they really think there's a shot in hell?

Apparently they do. And so many of them are wrapped up in feeling salty about the sexism that has faced Hillary's campaign that they've neglected anything else--including the fact that Hillary herself supported stripping Michigan and Florida of its delegates when she was the frontrunner. Now that she's the self-proclaimed underdog (and more accurately the bad penny that just won't go away) she's favoring the seating of those delegations. I can only ask those Hillary supporters planning to march--if Obama or Edwards or any other Democractic candidate were in this position, would you be marching on the Rules committee? And if the answer is anything but a vehement "of course not!" then you're lying to yourselves.

The fact is that it doesn't matter if Saturday's meeting ends with them deciding to seat Michigan and Florida in favor of Hillary. It's almost a moot point. The fact is that for months now, Hillary's campaign staffers and insiders have known that she has no chance. This has been an exercise in futility the purpose of which I'm still searching for.

There are two realities that need to be faced in this situation:
1. Hillary's support for the seating of these two states' delegates rings hollow seeing as she strongly supported their initial disenfranchisement and agreed not to campaign in those states, only leaving her name on the ballots for reasons unknown (symbolic maybe, financial also probably).
2. Hillary's "victories" in Michigan and in Florida are flawed...they aren't true victories. When you tell people that if you cast a Democractic primary vote it won't count, there are many Democrats (present company included) who would rather bite the bullet and vote Republican to screw with them. So even though Hillary won those states, they weren't true wins because many of the potential voters were effectively disenfranchised (and disillusioned) from the start.

What's fair? I support some sort of compromise. What's probably the ultimate mark of fairness is holding everything as it is and not allowing those delegations to be seated. I mean, those were the rules and it wasn't a miscalculation or ambiguity that led to this situation--it was a calculated decision, knowing the consequences full-well, in order to gain greater ground in the 2012 primaries. BUT, I realize that there is a desire to seat these delegates one way or another. So I think a 50/50 split amongst the remaining candidates is the only fair thing to do--it makes it even without disenfranchising two entire states (important ones at that) from the process. (For the record, I'd support the slightly skewed compromise as well, though I don't think it's as fair.)

But why are these Hillary people so rabidly anti-compromise? I have yet to hear a good argument to support her desire to have all of the Michigan and Florida delegates seated in her behalf. Fairness certainly isn't one since she knew the rules and supported them until she happened to be on the wrong side of them. So what is the real support for this argument? That the popular vote should count? Not only is this an argument that falls into the category of "how convenient" but it only is true if you give Clinton complete victories in Florida and Michigan and take away Obama's caucus victories...something which makes absolutely no sense.

Please, enlighten me. Because right now, I just see rules that should be applied when the rule breakers knew the consequences. Can I admit that I'd probably be pissed if the candidates' roles were reversed? Sure. But at this point, it's time to move on and heal the party and work towards beating McCain. Those people who don't care about that goal and only care about getting some light shone on the sexism in this campaign, though a laudable goal, are really only shortchanging themselves in the end.

Sadly, some of them are still too salty to get it.

Profit Prophets

Apparently Exxon Mobil is a bit disappointed. Why, you ask? Because they only made a profit of a paltry $10.9 billion this past quarter. This is notwithstanding an economic downturn (which is really a recession) and rising crude oil prices.

This is like winning the lottery and complaining about having to pay taxes on it. Shut up already. No one sympathizes.

Flawed Flawed Flawed

This piece was on NPR's Marketplace Report yesterday. Some professor did a study of health during economic downturns and found that on a macro level, the health of the area in economic turmoil was better than average. I couldn't help but think of the many huge (and I mean enormous) flaws in this research while listening to the piece.

My comments are in bold/italic.

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Kai Ryssdal: $3.60 a gallon's gonna be the magic number this summer. The Department of Energy said today that's where gas prices should top out.

Which, if you really think about it, might turn out to be good news, because chances are paying that much will make most of us think twice before we take to the open road. Which'll mean less traffic, less stress, and probably less pollution, too.

In fact, economist Chris Ruhm at the University of North Carolina Greensboro's been studying exactly that phenomenon.

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Ryssdal: Thanks for being with us.

Chris Ruhm: Thanks. My pleasure

Ryssdal: You know, you'd think that bad economic times would do bad things to your health and to society's general well-being. You're telling me that's not true?

Ruhm: Well, what I'm telling you is that bad economic times are actually good for your health. Now, I'm not saying they're good for society, but they do turn out to be good for your physical health?

Ryssdal: How so?

Ruhm: What we find is mortality rates of all kinds fall when the economy weakens, so total mortality, vehicle mortality, deaths from heart attacks, various health conditions like back problems become less prevalent and then people behave in a healthier manner, that is they smoke less, they drink less, they're less likely to be obese.

First of all--mortality is not the only part to health. There is this little thing called "life" that people must go through and if they're unfortunate enough not to be 100% healthy, that's not really fun.

Second of all--just because "various conditions...become less prevalent" in the statistics doesn't mean they don't exist. Perhaps (and this is a pretty good and solid assumption), people don't report these problems as much in poor economic times because they don't have health insurance. Just a thought.

Third--you all know how I feel about the word "obese".

Ryssdal: Now is that generally just less stress because you don't have to deal with all the craziness at work?

Yeah, Kai--because worrying about finding a job and paying your bills and feeding your kids ain't stressful.

Ruhm: That may be part what's going on. There's also environmental risks like reductions in pollution levels and people have more time, so they might have more time to exercise. Part of it might be an income story too. If you don't have as much money, you don't go out to eat as much. When you go out to eat, you tend to eat fatty meals, maybe you drink and smoke, so it could be a combination of factors

Ryssdal: What about everyday things like traffic loads? I mean, if it takes me 15 minutes to get in because people have been laid off, generally a good thing, right?

Ruhm: That's right, and people drive less. Driving is a risky activity

Ryssdal: Do you have any data on mental health as opposed to physical issues?

Ruhm: A little bit. Mental health is harder to measure and the evidence is much less clear and in fact, it's quite possible that in bad times, people's mental health actually worsens. So, for example, we find that suicides increase when times are bad.

Oh, and mental health isn't at all related to physical health, is it? Oh wait...

Ryssdal: Probably ought to take a step back here and make sure everybody understands we're not talking about individual episodes of good or bad health. It's more on a macro scale.

Well, that may be true, but you've been talking about it like it was individual results and then you try and tell me it's on a macro scale. Make up your mind.

Ruhm: That's right. This is looking at population-wide averages. Essentially what I was doing is using each state as an experiment, so I was comparing what was happening in one state, say in Massachusetts or Texas, relative to what was going on in other states, so if the Texas economy was weakening at a time when other states' economies were strengthening, how were, say, mortality rates in Texas changing relative to other states and the result was just very robust, the result that health got better during bad economic times.

Ryssdal: It's kind of counterintuitive though.

And kind of wrong.

Ruhm: It is to most people and certainly it was not what I initially expected, but there are a number of plausible mechanisms. I might also add there was research over a half a century ago where people looked at mortality rates and found results that were consistent with this and actually couldn't figure out what was going on and after a number of years just sort of ignored their own results, but actually, there's been evidence on this for a long time.

Ryssdal: Chris Ruhm is professor of economics at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Professor, thanks a lot.

Ruhm: Thank you.

SG: No thank you.

When you wonder where I came from...

...remember that the kid in this video being hit with a stick is my brother. And that's a good start for an explanation.

Come on already

This article dares to say that fat women die more during childbirth than non-fats.

Here's my problem with the article. The article claims than "more than half" of all women who die during childbirth are "obese." "Obese" is a horribly derrogatory and medical term which is often overused improperly. I have problems with that term in and of itself.

Second of all, I'm going to assume that because they say "more than half" but not "two thirds" or "three-quarters", that it's damn near a half. That means if half the women who die during childbirth are "obese," half are not. So tell me, Dr. Spock, isn't that just as great of a risk factor if you take that statement for what it's worth.

I get what the point of the study was and I get the dangers, but I think we need to be more cautious when running our mouths about the "dangers" of being "obese" so that we're telling the absolute truth and not exaggerating.

sidenote: My other problem is that they had a picture of some random fat person sitting on a chair in an airport as their big photo for the article. I hate those generic fat people photos.

This changing back and forth blows

Why do we have to "fall back"? I guess up until this year I've never had a problem with it, but either it's the timing in the year or the timing in my life, but either way, it's a mess. I hate having it dark outside my office window at 4:30. It's discouraging.

Here's a good plug for having "continuous" daylight savings time.

Sign me up. Let's start some sort of petition on this or something.

Um....

How does this douchebag know that he was the first once to use a smiley face in an electronic message. And who knew we had such messages 25 years ago?

I smell a lie somewhere in all of this.