Planet Utah

Weight loss secrets of the stars!

I was just at my neighborhood CVS, where I saw this story on the cover of one of the celebrity journalism magazines: "How Khloe (Kardashian) lost 10 pounds."

You can see pretty much the same story every week, albeit with a different celebrity face/body attached. You know what, though? You don't have to buy the magazine to get the secret. Here it is, in three steps:

1. Every day for about a month, cut 500 calories out of your diet. 
2. Every day for about a month, add 20 or 30 minutes to your exercise regime.
3. Every day for about a month, drink as much water as you can stand.

Done.

Footnote: I should mention that no one said this would be easy, or healthy. I'm just saying there's no magic to it.

When I did the Clean program, I lost 15 pounds in two weeks, and I did that without exercising at all. When you don't eat any junk food or drink any booze, and when you only eat one solid meal a day, you are going to lose a lot of weight. You are going to feel like absolute SHITE, too. But you'll look good for your "People" magazine cover. That's the important thing.

"Begs the question" 101

I'm a political conservative, but I'm a conservative when it comes to language, too. I think words and phrases have meanings, and grammar and spelling have rules, and I don't like to see those meanings and rules worn down through ignorance and laziness. (If "between she and I" ever becomes generally accepted, I'm going to spend about a week throwing rotten eggs at 13-year-old girls.)

That brings me to the phrase, "begs the question." I don't think I've ever used this phrase in normal conversation. I've heard it used a million times, though, as a way of saying, "That raises the question..." Example: "That begs the question: Ten years from now, will anyone be willing to buy U.S. debt?"

That's becoming an acceptable usage...but not in my home. In my home, if you beg the question, you engage in circular reasoning. To be more specific, you assume a point you are trying to prove...that is, you use the point as evidence in support of the case you are making on behalf of the point itself.

Here's an example (which I stole from the Web but put into my own words as an exclusive service to Planet Utah readers):

You: "I believe in the existence of God."

Me: "Why?"

You: "Because the Bible says that God exists."

Me: "But why do you believe what the Bible says?"

You: "Because it was written by God."

Me: "Okay, but that begs the question of whether God exists in the first place."

Are we clear? Good! Now get out there and beg some questions.

Footnote: One of my grad school profs thought that begging the question meant putting the question aside. So, if someone would ask a question that risked derailing the discussion, he would say, "Let's beg that question for now; we'll come back to it later."

That begs the question of how my prof got his doctorate in the first place, don't you think? (No, you don't. At least you better not.)

That's a crappy definition of "insanity"

Every couple of weeks, I come across this rotten old chestnut: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Yeah? In whose dictionary?

A friend and loyal reader pointed out that it would probably be more accurate to say this: "The definition of persistence is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Let me give you an example. Let's say I walk up to 50 people and ask for $20. All 50 turn me down. Then I say, "Well, I guess I'll just have to keep asking." So, I ask another 49 people and get nowhere...but then, on person #100, I get lucky. A kindly older gentleman smiles at me and says, "It's your lucky day, kid. Here's $20. No questions asked."

So, in that scenario, I did the same thing over and over again, expected different results, AND GOT THEM. Who's insane now?

(This works with girls, too...it's a fine line between harassing a girl and wearing her down with persistence, but it's one I've become quite adept at walking.)

I'll give you another take on the same point: You might, in fact, be insane if you did the same thing over and over again and expected different results...but one would hardly consider that behavior the very definition of insanity. I mean, that behavior might--or might not--be a particular manifestation of insanity, but it's hardly the sine qua non of insanity.

The takeaway: It's time to give this particular definition of insanity a gold watch, wish it well, and show it the door. (As for the rest of you, back to work!)

Footnote: Mom, do you want to weigh in on this? (My mom is a psychologist.) Be warned that any disagreement will get you banned from the comment box, frozen out at family gatherings, and so on. 

Pawlenty may be missing his moment

My early endorsement of Tim Pawlenty gave the candidate a much-needed boost in name recognition, fundraising ability, and media credibility.* So it pains me to say that T-Paw may be blowing it.

The politics here are pretty simple. Pawlenty needs to establish himself as a mainstream alternative to Mitt Romney. Where is Romney vulnerable? Three areas: (1) Massachusetts health care reform; (2) his reputation for pandering; and (3) his generally stiff demeanor.

Let's take these in reverse order.

There's not much T-Paw can do with Romney's stiffness, other than this: "I may be boring, but at least it's a genuine boringness." That doesn't really inspire.

As for Romney's reputation for pandering, Pawlenty seemed to be on the right track here when he announced "truth telling" as a major theme of his campaign. But just a couple of weeks later he came out with an economic plan whose deficit projections are based on 5% annual growth. When confronted with the fact that we didn't even hit 5% in the go-go 80s and 90s, Pawlenty says, "I'm not gonna sit here while you badmouth America." Then critics say, "We're not badmouthing America, we're badmouthing you." Pawlenty says, "Well, the 5% is really just a goal." Then critics say, "Rather than building your economic plan around a fantasy--er, 'goal'--why not build it around a more realistic number? Then if it turns out we actually DO hit the goal, all the extra revenue is gravy!" T-Paw says, "I think we can hit the goal."

This is just Pawlenty telling us what he thinks we want to hear. We've already got Romney for that, so who needs T-Paw?

Finally, if Pawlenty really objects to what Romney did with health care in Massachusetts, he needs to stand up and make the case...not try to weasel out of it like Nathan Thurm.

So, T-Paw, if you want to keep my endorsement, no more unforced errors, okay?

*Not really.

The amazing thing about the Obama years

Let me share three race-related anecdotes with you.

First, just a few minutes ago, when I was at the pharmacy by my house, two black women entered the store, both of whom looked lower class. The clerk who was helping me watched their every move until they turned a corner out of sight.

Second, the other night I was watching the NBA finals at a bar. During the commercials, there was a trailer for the new "Planet of the Apes" movie. Upon seeing a few scenes of angry apes, a guy down the bar from me said, "What...are they showing highlights from the NBA season?"

Third, not long ago, one of my Dallas acquaintances unashamedly referred to a black co-worker as a "nigger."

So what? So, racial prejudice isn't that hard to find.

Now a quick quiz for you: Since Barack Obama has been president, can you name three incidents in which any public figure of note--including the president himself--has made the president's race an issue?

I can't.

The closest I can come is the birth certificate stuff, which a couple of prominent Republicans (and I'm not counting Donald Trump here) have embraced.

To me, though, the whole birth certificate thing is more about "otherness" than race. Sure, race has something to do with it. But Obama also has an Arab-sounding name. He spent a good bit of his youth abroad. His dad was African, and a Marxist, and a Muslim. At least one document from Obama's youth lists his religion as "Islam."

I think people are reacting to ALL of this, and Obama's race, when they talk about the birth certificate stuff. There's a general reaction of, "He is not the same as us."

Apart from the birth certificate, though--which, from what I can tell, is taken seriously by a tiny minority of nationally prominent Republicans--I can't think of anything any Republican has done to exploit racial fears/prejudices to the disadvantage of the president, or anything the president has done to try to leverage his race for political support (accusing opponents of racism, for example). In fact, Obama's race generally seems to have been an afterthought over the past 2.5 years, if even a thought at all. 

That's prettty good news.

Footnote: There are people who insist that Republicans and conservatives speak in "code," that they're too smart to come out and play directly on Obama's race, so they utter certain phrases with a wink, and everybody gets the idea. 

I've always found that argument to be intellectually lazy and empirically suspect, but if you want to play that card, I can play it too. Here you go: Barack Obama says he's only willing to raise taxes on people whose incomes are above $250k. The overwhelming majority of these people are white. Of course, Obama never says they're white, but he doesn't have to. His core constituencies--African-Americans in particular--know EXACTLY who the president is talking about, and know how they're supposed to feel when he talks about them. Obama nurtures racial resentment in this way because if he's going to win another term, he'll need every minority vote he can get.

Anklenote: There were some reminders of Obama's race during the campaign (as opposed to the Obama presidency), but the most noteworthy ones came from Democrats. It was Hillary's camp that started the citizenship stuff. Joe Biden was the one who referred to Obama as the first black candidate who was "bright," "articulate," and "clean." And Harry Reid dropped that gem of a line about Obama having "no Negro dialect."

In defense of the lame apology

A "non-apology apology" sounds something like this: "If anyone was offended by my words/actions, I apologize..." A slightly modified version sounds like this: "To anyone who was offended by my words/actions, I apologize..." A more specific version, directed at a particular person, goes like this: "I apologize if you were hurt by what I said/did."

When public figures and other famous people offer this sort of apology, they almost always get criticized for seeming to deflect blame from themselves, for not just saying, "I behaved badly. I'm sorry." 

But I've issued non-apology apologies before, and I consider them entirely legitimate...in certain circumstances.

Let me give you an example. One time, I made a joke about a friend to a group of people. The friend heard the joke, because he was standing right there--and yes, I knew he was standing right there--and he was PISSED. I issued a non-apology apology--"I'm sorry if that offended you, or if it was insensitive"--and we got past it.

I didn't know in advance that my friend would be hurt or offended by my joke. (And in retrospect, I'm still surprised that he was.) If I had known that in advance, and if I had gone ahead with the joke anyway, then I would have been guilty of behaving like a jackass...and he would have deserved a full-on, non-lame, "I'm sorry, period" apology from me.

BUT, I had no clue that my friend would be hurt and upset. So, what I was trying to communicate with my apology was this, more or less: "Had I known that you would be upset by what I said, I never would have said it. But I did say it, and it did upset you, and for that I am sorry."

That--and not a regular old "I behaved badly, I'm sorry" apology--is what the situation required.

Generalizing from this specific instance, when you stumble into a situation in which your words and/or deeds hurt someone, unintentionally, I think it's okay to say, essentially, "I'm sorry that my words/deeds caused you pain," rather than, "I'm sorry for my behavior."

Footnote: The VERY gray area here is whether, in any particular instance, you should have known that your words/deeds would give offense. You can definitely run the risk of becoming George Costanza: "If someone had told me that having sex with the cleaning woman on my desk was improper..."

Resignation = justice

I've found it somewhat amusing to watch pundits and other public figures try to come up with practical reasons that Anthony Weiner should resign: (1) if his judgment is this bad, he could do real damage to the country; (2) no one will take him seriously, now that he's disgraced himself; (3) no one will work with him, because he's obviously a misogynist and a sociopathic liar. 

And so on.

I think it's much simpler than all that. It's as simple as something parents teach their kids: "When you behave badly and get caught, you get punished. Once your punishment is done, you get a fresh start. But you don't get a fresh start until the punishment is done, and you don't get to behave badly and not get punished."

This is consistent with our general notions of justice and fairness: "Actions have consequences. If you behave badly, if you harm others...there should be repercussions for you, roughly proportional to the badness of your behavior and the harm you did to others. Then you get a fresh start."

At this point, Rep. Weiner hasn't had to suffer any real consequences. Oh sure, he's had to apologize, and he's felt embarrassed and ashamed, and a lot of his relationships are strained. But those things are just a by-product of the revelation of the truth...they're not an actual punishment.

At this point, in other words, Weiner is like a kid who got caught sneaking cookies, but hasn't yet been sent to his room. He feels embarrassed, he feels ashamed, he knows he did wrong, he's said he's sorry, he knows Mommy and Daddy are disappointed...but it doesn't end there, because he hasn't been sent to his room yet.

The problem with Weiner (and with members of Congress in general) is that we have no means of sending him to his room. So, the calls for his resignation are ways of saying, basically, "Punishment is appropriate in this case, but we're unable to punish you. So, punish yourself."

Footnote: An even SIMPLER justification for his resignation is this: "You're too despicable a human being to serve in a position of honor. Go do something else." And an even simpler one is this: "You're gross. We don't want to see you right now. Go away."

So, what do we learn from the Tweet-My-Wiener Affair?

First, a ground rule: No giggling while reading this post.

Second, let me say this: Weiner!

It's just fun.

So, anyway, let's talk about the Weiner scandal, and political scandals generally. Here's the conventional wisdom, which you've heard a million times: "The cover-up is worse than the crime." Turning this into a fully-formed thought, the logic seems to be, "If you just admit to wrongdoing right away, you'll get in less trouble than if you try to cover up what you did and then end up admitting it. At that point, you have to deal with the consequence of the crime AND the cover-up. That's worse."

Eh...not so sure about this.

First of all, there's a third possibility here: The scandal breaks, you successfully cover up your misdeeds, and the cover-up holds. In short, you get away with it. The people who preach that "the cover-up is worse than the crime" are assuming that the cover-up can't hold. But sometimes it can, and it does. (Think Larry Craig...who denies to this day that he propositioned a cop in a public restroom. You may not believe him, but the evidence against him was never so strong that he had to hold a teary, Weineresque press conference.)

Second, sometimes you only need the cover-up to hold for a little while. If you can stonewall for a while, eventually the story will settle down, people will move on, something else will pop up and grab headlines, and your weenie pics will get pushed to the sidelines. Even if the full truth comes out some day, it may not be as damaging to you as it would have been if you'd copped to it right away.

The Clinton White House understood this. That's why Mike McCurry, Clinton's former press secretary, described his scandal management strategy as follows: "Telling the truth...slowly."

Think about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. When that broke, Dick Morris did some polling for President Clinton. Morris determined that if Clinton came clean about everything that was likely to come out eventually--the relationship, his untruthful testimony in the Paula Jones deposition, his coaching of Bettie Currie--the American public would likely demand his resignation. So, Clinton waited, lied, cast himself as the victim, accused Ken Starr and Congressional Republicans of attempting a coup, and so on. Eventually, all of Clinton's dirty secrets came out...but by then public opinion had shifted, and he survived.

Contrast this with Chris Lee, the Congressman who sent his "check out the guns" pic to a Craigslist chick. Chris Lee came fully clean and resigned the same day, apparently feeling that the spotlight on himself and his family was too bright and too hot. If he'd managed to stonewall for another week, he might still have his job--just like Rep. Weiner.

Footnote: The archetypal "cover-up is worse than the crime" scandal is Watergate. People always say, "If Nixon had said, right away, that he didn't know anything about the break-in, but that everybody even remotely associated with CREEP would be summarily fired, everything would have worked out fine. Instead, he tried to cover up for his friends and associates. That's what cost him the presidency. He should have distanced himself from those guys and let justice run its course."

Well, here's the problem: The guys responsible for planning and executing the Watergate break-in had been committing crimes and pulling dirty tricks (e.g., hiring gays to kiss on camera at the Democratic convention) on Nixon's behalf for years. If Nixon had immediately fired them all and left them to their fate in the court system, it's safe to assume that almost all of them would have spilled everything they knew in exchange for leniency. And if that had happened, Nixon would have been gone a lot sooner than the summer of 1974.

Anklenote: Looks like Jeff Greenfield wrote pretty much the same story you just read on my blog. The main difference is that he got paid 41.2 gazillion dollars for it, and I got nothing. 

The individual mandate...and the alternative

Opposition to an individual health insurance mandate is becoming a litmus test for Republicans. Mitt Romney's in trouble because he signed one into law in Massachusetts. TPaw and Jon Huntsman may have made sympathetic comments about a mandate in the past, and are therefore being looked upon skeptically by Tea Party types. Sarah Palin wants no part of that, and so rejects an individual mandate.

I have two thoughts about all of this.

First, the government mandates stuff all the time. We're forced to attend school, pay taxes, carry auto insurance, register for the draft (if you're a man), carry a government-issued ID with us when we drive, go through a ridiculous security procedure when we fly, register our cars, maintain our property in a certain way, and on and on and on. Plus, if Republicans had their way, it would be mandatory that women carry their babies to term every time they become pregnant. 

Get it? Our world is full of government mandates. Republicans don't seem to have a problem with most of them (though they clearly have a problem with the degree of some of them). They even want to throw another really big one on the pile. 

So why is the individual insurance mandate particularly problematic for Republicans, especialy in light of their desire to mandate something as personal as childbirth?

Sincere Republicans would say, I think: "Protecting innocent human life through a mandate is a legitimate function of government. Requiring everyone to carry health insurance is not. It's just a way for do-gooder liberals to impose their will on the rest of us."

Fair enough. I mean, I don't agree with that characterization, but if you do, fine.

That, however, brings me to my second point: If I don't have to carry health insurance and I get sick, I won't be able to buy insurance... unless the government forces insurers to sell it to me, or the government itself gets into the insurance business and sells me a policy.

Republicans, though, don't support either of these options.

So, is the GOP prepared to say to the uninsured who get sick, "See what the emergency room can do for you. Otherwise, looks like you're out of luck."?

That's the implicit Republican position. Anybody have the guts to make it explicit?

Footnote: And I'm a pro-life Republican, for chrissakes.