Austerity: No Pain, No Gain or No Brain?

After a little bit of discussion about whether or not Greece will abandon the Euro, CNBC commentator Rick Santelli comes on with Harry Dent (The Great Crash Ahead) to talk about Austerity.

First, Harry Dent observes that the EU countries should anticipate a future of slow growth for demographic reasons (a reasonable observation). But then Santelli goes on to "make it easy for his listeners to understand" by claiming that Austerity cannot be pursued without some pain (Dent agrees). This would be a vacuous observation except that it is pretty clear Santelli means "pain for somebody else." Since increases in taxation would reduce the Government Debt -> Austerity link and since Santelli is rabidly opposed to any increases in taxation (especially if that pain falls on the upper classes), he hopes to administer pain on the lower classes who are more dependent on the social programs he would like to see cut. CNBC has provided a great platform for Santelli's no-pain-in-my-backyard platform. This is also the Tea Party platform, for whom Santelli presumes to speak.

To cap things off, Harry Dent argues that what we need is a return of the Iron Lady (Margagret Thatcher) to help us impose Austerity on the lower classes. The last I checked, British Austerity as a response to the Financial Crisis was not going very well. Mr. Dent might reconsider using British economic history as a positive example of what happens under a right-wing Austerity regime.

WI Recall Candidate Lori Compas Wins Bimbo Bakery Award

HORSHAM, PA. Lori Compas, running against WI Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, has won the prestigious Bimbo Bakery award in the category "Best Campaign Ad, Wisconsin Recall Election." The Compas video (above) ran in rebuttal to a Wisconsin State Journal article (here) in which Fitzgerald commented that Ms. Compas' husband, Whitewater Professor Eric Compas, union bosses and protest groups were behind the campaign. In the video, Ms. Compas finds Fitzgerald's comment about women "bizarre and a little bit offensive" but typical of the right-wing mentality.

Traditionally, the Bimbo Bakery does not give out awards for actual achievement, but Ms. Compas' ad was so directly on the mark and used humor so effectively that it received the award. In a field of ads showing blow-dryed gassbags making vacuous promises and "pants-on-fire" claims, Ms. Compas' ad was truly refreshing, especially since sarcasm is lost on children, the Tea Party and certainly Scott Fitzgerald, R-WI.

The Hogan-Missing-Piece Swing vs. S&T Swing

Over the last few years, working with Stack & Tilt (S&T) I've had periods of inconsistent results and I've never really been sure what was going on. After playing a lot of golf this last week, I think I have some new insight.   When S&T hasn't been working, I have sometimes switched to V.J. Trolio's   "Hogan's Missing Piece" swing (http://www.thefinalmissingpiece.com/) with mixed results.

The background for the "missing-piece" swing was that Trolio found that video images of Hogan's swing after the car accident that damaged his pelvis and his legs, showed that Hogan had altered his golf swing to compensate for the injuries. And, he went on to play some of his best tournament golf despite the career-threatening injuries. The critical key to Hogan's altered swing action was the straightening of his right leg on the backswing (see the video of V.J. above).

The straightening of the right leg is also a component of the S&T swing but it doesn't have the status of a "missing piece". However, for me it turned out to be the missing piece. Conventional golf instruction forbids straightening the right leg. I have had real trouble breaking this ingrained prohibition and it has negatively impacted my S&T swing.

What I essentially did this week, after much practice-round struggle, was to use the standard S&T action (stack-tilt-standup), but concentrated exclusively on straightening my right leg on the backswing. I got here by first realizing that I wasn't getting a very good hip turn. Concentration on the hip turn, however,  produced uneven shot quality, particularly some bad pushes and over-hooks. As V. J. points out in the "missing-piece" book, straightening the right leg gets your hips into a very stable position that allows to you to swing pretty aggressively at the ball with much higher consistency (something, of course, Hogan was able to do quite well).

If you're having trouble with S&T consistency, check your right leg on the backswing--especially if you've had many years trying to master conventional golf instruction prescriptions!

Climate Feedbacks and Climate Change Denial

The NY Times recently ran an article titled Clouds' Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters. What was interesting to me about the article was not only the right wing's reasoning behind climate denial but also the rather sophisticated appeal to climate change feedbacks as a reason not to worry about CO2 emissions. We've come a long way from arguing that GHG emissions don't cause global warming to the "last bastion" of climate change denial, the Iris Effect proposed by Richard Lindzen.

As the directed graph above shows, the right wing has now conceded that CO2 emissions increase global temperature. However, Lindzen argues that warming will increase rain at the equator, depriving cirrus clouds of the moisture necessary for their formation. Since cirrus clouds have the effect of warming the Earth by preventing heat from escaping to space, fewer cirrus clouds could mean a cooler Earth as the Iris opens.

Unfortunately, there is no data to support Lindzen's arguments. Although the feedback effect might exist, it is either (1) too weak to deal with the massive amount of CO2 that is being pumped into the atmosphere as a result of fossil fuel burning or (2) actually a positive loop.

The good news is that, supposedly, this is the right wing's last best argument. The bad news is that we're probably going back to one of the old irrational arguments.