Truth?

So this week the main concerns of politically oriented social media appear to be:

• How a woman sat on a couch (left wing outrage).
• Who sat when during a speech (right wing outrage).

To which I must inquire: seriously?

Let’s see what’s going on that’s kind of important:

• Multiple aggressive nations, with crazy leaders who wish us harm and the ones without nuclear weapons working hard to get them.
• We are a nation without a real immigration policy.
• We don’t know how to pay for health care nationwide.
• We don’t know how to put our working population to work.

What becomes clear is these outrages aren’t about what’s good for the country, but some sort of political counting coup, good — for now — for stirring up people who agree with you but not changing the hearts and minds of anyone else.

There was a time when the system that allowed a minority party to push the majority to the center was called checks and balances. Now it’s “obstructionism” which is the political equivalent of “Waah, I can’t get my own way!”

Every group of people has wacko outliers that are going to say or do stupid stuff. They don’t actually represent the group. So maybe we could stop supporting the latest outrage and encourage our politicians to govern the old fashioned way — respect, discussion, compromise. You know, the boring stuff that has little entertainment value but is actually good for the country.

A while back I posted on social media that I had lost 45 pounds this year. A friend asked “how” and I said I’d get back to him, so here goes.

The brief answer is a combination of motivation, diet, really good luck, and exercise.

Motivation

Out of respect for the privacy of others, I’m not going go into complete detail of all the factors motivating me, but a key one was the birth of a granddaughter this year.  My focus shifted from a vague “oh, I should get in shape someday” to “I really want to be around decades from now.” My own daughter never really knew her paternal grandfather, and I don’t want that for me granddaughter. I know there are no guarantees, but I wanted to tilt the odds.

Exercise, the beginning

A few years ago, with an obese Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30.7 and arthritis in the right hip, getting up was a 20 minute evolution which consisted of groaning my way out of bed, urinating, grabbing coffee, and sitting while the pain subsided to bearable. I knew I had to do something, had heard positive things about yoga from the daughter, and saw a group on for a place near work. First class March 4, 2013: I liked it, and I liked the “beginner / gentle / slow” instructors. Flexibility increased, pain diminished, and I was able to lose about ten pounds without thinking about it too much.

Diet, part I

On a warm beach last January the wife and I had time to relax from the life / work hamster wheel and admit to each other we weren’t really happy with the shape we were in. I had a good idea, exploiting our own personal proclivities — we’re competitive. We made a bet with each about losing weight. In order to keep it safe and reasonable and challenging, we settled on losing twenty pounds in six weeks. She won. I “lost” — only making it down eighteen. But it got the ball rolling. The diet was basic nutrition stuff — more veggies, less sugar and sweets, more awareness.

Good fortune

A new routine

Due to the unfortunate closing of my first yoga studio, one of my fav instructors started teaching at a hybrid Pilates / Strength Training / Yoga studio, Total Body Pilates and Yoga. The owner and primary coach attended the first several yoga sessions, and, although she seemed inhumanly flexible in yoga class and the online workout descriptions kind of scary, she convinced me to give it a try.  A combo of yoga-ish stretching, weight training, and Pilates apparatus strength, flexibility and balance, a continual variety of exercises –not the same thing every day — and a small core of fellow members who turned out to be fun people to workout with made going relaxing and fun.

I had had a decades old misperception I should only work out every other day — a chance conversation with a friend to be on a Saturday morning in the parking lot clued me in that the studio programming allows daily workouts, so I started going roughly six days a week.

Healthy choices

A shift in work brought me to working in the main building complex at UConn Health; the main cafeteria includes both all the decadent stuff a soul could want (pizza, fries, burgers) and protein rich main dishes (if you leave the sauce off), nicely done veggies and salads. Carb loaded breakfast sandwiches from coffee shops were replaced with freshly made omelets or oatmeal with fruit.

Between the workouts, and better breakfasts and lunches, after a couple months, the change started to become noticeable.

Diet, Part II

September brought a studio challenge to try something called “The Whole Life Challenge,” a combination of sound and fad diet choices, a tracking / game playing / social media site and lifestyle choices. The lifestyle stuff was mostly covered by existing workout habits. The main things I ended up taking away from it were:

• drink lots of water. A full stomach displaces perceived hunger and thirst for coffee and the like. I guess there’s some calorie consumption heating it, too.
• you don’t need that many carbs.
• sparkling water (mainly Pellegrino) adds a little taste and makes a nice substitute for my previous glass a drink moderate drinking which may, or may not be healthy, depending on which survey you believe; regardless not drinking is definitely less calories.
• cheese should be an occasional flavor treat (like zero to one servings a day), rather than a staple.

Summary

Have a grand child. Workout, including strength training, almost daily (whatever works for you). Eat healthy — sort of paleo without being whacky about it. Drink lots water, avoid stress, get enough sleep.

So the latest buzz, is, of course, the cast of the broadway show Hamilton addressing Vice-President elect Pence after a recent performance, Governor’s Pence tolerating the nonsense with dignity — and President elect Trump calling the cast out for being rude.

First of all — it was rude; meaning depends on context. Had the cast wished to respectfully address Governor Pence, they could have invited him backstage. If you watch the video, the actor takes the time to encourage the New York audience to record and tweet the message; this was a self-indulgent, self-righteous publicity stunt. But the progressive left has succumbed to the fantasy that any behavior is righteous when the cause is just. It doesn’t actually work that way.

Secondly, The Donald did exactly the right thing by firing back. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma game theory scenario, players can either cooperate or be nasty. A famous simulation showed the best performing strategy is neither attack always, or be a patsy, but “Tit for Tat with forgiveness.” Which means if the other player attacks, you attack back, most of the time. “With forgiveness” means you let it go every once in awhile.

So some progressive actors takes a rude potshot at the new VP, and The Donald’s going to fight back. And the social media left is saying, “That’s perfectly fine, and Trump is wrong for retaliating,” and the social media right is saying “That was rude, good job pushing back!” and the country gets or stays acrimoniously divided.

 

I learned a long time around from my father and writer Robert Heinlein, TANSTAAFL (there ain’t not such thing as a free lunch). Or, in the paraphrased words of Margaret Thatcher, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

All in all, we are a centrist country. We want to provide support to those with unfortunate circumstances while valuing virtues like hard work, honesty, and self-reliance. We respect people who play by the rules.

For the past eight years the country has turned leftward. The result has been of mistruths based on economic and social fantasies.

“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

Obama promised a “reset” with Russia, and Russia has invaded parts of Georgia and the Ukraine. He promised a withdraw from the mideast, yet Americans are stilling fighting and dying over there, and Guantanamo Bay remains open.

He, and the Democratic legislature, have treated the Constitution as a an “inconvenient document,” implementing a long string of actions without legislation and bipartisan support in Congress; these include a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that is not funded by Congress, [1] the infamous IRS political prosecution of conservative groups, deciding carbon is an Clean Air Act pollutant, using the power of the law to coerce private business into “settlements,” with the fines going to support pet causes rather than the US Treasury, and so on. Our government turns Western rivers yellow and Michigan drinking water brown — the point here that Government is not inherently better at doing things than private industry. They’ve funded economically unsound business, such as solar and electric, so a few rich people can drive Teslas.

The justification for this is a general “Well, the Republicans are an obstructionist and won’t do the right thing!” the ends justify the means gestalt. The opposition party is supposed to be, well, in opposition. It’s called checks and balances, and it’s supposed to protect the country from the worst impulses of both the right and left — but the Democrats have dishonored the long term by changing the “inconvenient” 60 vote Senate rule [2] and were arrogantly plotting to do so again after the Democrats won the presidency and Senate [3].

He and his party have shown contempt for both the Constitution and many Americans with they’re “they cling to guns or religion” attitude, and Clinton’s cohorts have both disparaged Catholics and plotted to use use Bernie Sander’s faith against him. [4]

She told the American people one thing and her daughter something different about the “At this point, what difference does it make” Benghazi attacks. [5]

She blatantly sought to evade public government transparency laws, and put national security at risk, with the private email server.

She used the Clinton Foundation “charity” to bankroll her cronies and sell access to the Secretary of State.

And so on.

Although socialism and Sanders would have been a disaster for the country, her craven machine use and public lurch leftward (while telling her Wall Street backers something else) showed what little character she has.

I knew Clinton was in trouble when I overhead librarians saying “I don’t trust her.” As a group, librarians are hardly right wing. And I knew she was in real trouble when someone posted a graphic with a recent “I’m a lifelong Cubs fan,” and a late 90s “I’m a lifelong Yankees fan.”

To those of who believe character counts, it became apparent this was woman who only believed that she should be president, and would do and say almost anything to reach that goal. Who may (or may not) have stayed on the side of “legal” in her myriad scandals, but clearly didn’t believe the  spirit of the rules should apply to her.

You reap what you sow.

The nation has elected a crude, scary individual President. And all those imperial presidency, non bipartisan executive orders actions implemented over the last eight years can be undone with the stroke of a pen.

One of the many snide graphics going around the last month referenced “setting the country back 50 years.” Well, if that means going back to when deals were hammered out in Congress — represented bipartisan consensus –, the constitution was respected a bit more, the Supreme Court was less of a super-legislature, and the press was less eager to dish on every human foible of our politicians, I don’t know that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Here I discuss whether “connected” means folks who are online … or the ones who are not.