Super early post today...
Will be making up the 800m's tomorrow.

finally got 10 double unders in a row today!

thank god

holy freaking crap early! What what? Job Opportunity? Can I work for Crossfit? (my dream job)
Dang just checked it...I don't have much of an editing experience. *sigh* One day...unless they wanna teach me :)

I think that it is amazing that the British Government has the capability to openly criticize it's PM in session and to his face. We would do well to learn a lesson from this alone. As to the content, I am none too well read on England's financial woes, but I agree with Mr. Hannan's sentiment of not being able to "squeeze the productive parts of society to feed the unproductive parts." This could be a hard learned lesson for the U.S. in the coming years...

You need to tax more to create jobs! - Gov Granholm

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of the other guy's money.

Sooner or later, there is no more passing of the check.

My Butt Sister! Love you Rachael! Your a great coach.

Predictable "news" posting. If you've never watched Prime Minister's Question Time, you'd view the posted clip as tame by comparison. The "news" here is that the media found someone from the "right" side of the fence who could articulate a message (doesn't matter if it's right or wrong). How novel.

I'm going to pass on the political discussion this go round. I get more than enough at work. Sometimes I get information overload, Too frustrated for words, we are in deep and I fear it is all being done on purpose.

Jaker and Playoff Beard,

I recall you two gentleman being big beer aficianados. I rarely drink, however my brother got a hold of something called, Founders, Kentucky Breakfast Stout. Just had one with him, it's aged five years and only released in small quantity. WOW, very good, wondering if you guys have ever tried it.

"never" s/b "ever" -- articulate? Not me, sir :)

I'll be swinging away at the KettleBell Cert this weekend.

It was my very first cert a long time ago and I can't wait to do it again. A lot has happened since then.

The U.S is on deck. Do we have leadership with enough balls or ovaries to make the same statements about our inept Congress?

There is going to be another Tea party.

Yeah good day the rest day i used yo hate it now i apreciate it very much...tabata rest for me...

Guys take care rest well you are the best

Freddy C, Herm, Cookie, Strong Lil Pony, Rookie, Eric Gohl, OneFastbird21, Fitmom, Fitmom's mom, Julie Parisien, Playoff Beard, JayBear, lisa 40, COS, fat tony, fat tony lil sister, Bingo, JPW, Alli, in8girl, Sailor Erin, KevinClark...BIG HUGS

Hey Jakers big side hugs

bro
B bro brp

Rachel Medina is posted on the front page wearing spandex and you guys are watching politics? ;)

I am waiting with bated breath for the forthcoming 5,000 word treatises from Jeff G. and Barry C. that, using this video as a starting point, explain why my commander-in-chief is an evil socialist who will destroy America.

On a more serious note... the BBC didn't report this speech in Britain at first, despite the fact that it's an especially vigorous attack on the PM even by UK standards (and it took place in European parliament in front of politicians from all over the continent to boot). In the last couple of days they've picked it up after it became a viral video, and controversy has erupted because the lack of initial coverage is a pretty damning example of the BBC's leftward bias.

Wish I was looking for a job and even had a clue what it would take to be an Editor.

Just got back from escorting Sgt. Daniel Sakai from the funeral home in Hayward, to the Oakland Coliseum, then back to the funeral home.

Be nice if we had a WOD to honor these four officers who were gunned down by the same person. They were doing their job protecting and serving, and they paid the ultimate price for our safety.

For those who had not heard; last Saturday, four Oakland police officers were KIA by a parolee/rapist/dirt-bag. He was stopped for running a red light, and during the stop, he killed two OPD motorcycle sergeants. He was later killed by OPD’s SWAT team, but not before killing two more OPD SWAT officers during the tactical response to his location.

John 15:13
"Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends."

Rest In Peace my brothers, you will not be forgotten!
Sgt. Mark Dunakin Oakland Police Department
Sgt. Ervin Romans
Sgt. Daniel Sakai
Officer John Hege

Olympic weight lifting seminar in kelowna BC tomorrow...by the canadian olympic coach
...woooooo!!

Sick Vid!

#4 John Brown, the clip isn't from Westminster, but is a clip from the European Parliament. Mr Hannan is a "Eurosceptic". He eeks out a living on the meagre MEP salary of €72,000 a year, plus €298 per day living expenses, plus full medical insurance, pension benefits, all travel expenses as well as office expenses which alone are about €170,000 per annum. Considering Mr Hannan's busy schedule, which sees him voting "no" to a wide variety of legislative proposals, it is hugely impressive that he and his Euro-funded office managed to pen such a 3-minute tour de force. I simply can't imagine how he also makes time to further supplement his income by writing for the the Daily Telegraph.

Some might say that this UK-focussed tirade launched at Brown amounted to a cynical misuse of EU Parliamentary time. To that I say, "piffle". His opening remarks denigrated ALL European politicians. Bravo, David! Good to have you on the team! I must keep my eyes out for a rare un-signed copy of your latest book.

A bag of dicks.......nice.

To my CT Crossfitters: Thank you for the emails. I am thinking about a "drop-in" maybe next Friday.
Anyone have procedurals on that? Should I call specific affiliate?

Hit me:

thanks

Jordan Gravatt is the sickest videographer ever! Jordan....did you do some video trickery to make my ass look that big!??!! WTF have I been missing the mirror lately? Dear God. (;

Pat, Chuck, and Mike G....Remember leaving me in the cold like that while you went to get coffee? LMAO.... I was a Rach-sicle!

Criticism is great but you can't save an economy with one-liners and sarcasm alone.

So before we get into the "Barak Hussein Marx Hitler Obama Guevara" BS. Let's have a debate about what should be done to fix the economy.

Please don't just say "Whatever the Democrats do. Not that." So far that's all we've got.

So let's hear it. Drill baby drill, cut down all the forests, nuclear, let AIG and the weak banks fail, more tax cuts for the rich, eliminate welfare, legalize weed, tax gasoline, make the rich pay for everything, go back to the Bush policies, buy American, quit the wars, solar everything, enslave the poor, whatever.

But if you disagree with what is being done to fix the economy, please give an alternative idea.

Edmonton is warm right now!

Cold Newcastle on a Friday evening before a rest day...sweet baby James this is nice.

Holmer and I are teaching a beginner Crossfit class in the park tomorrow morning. Should have a group of six athletes and I'm looking forward to doling out some crack.

Eric Gohl: You're right, I need rings. I got to play around with some rings at the cert in Aromas and they were fun!

I did order some medicine balls for my beginner athletes though, that should make classes more interesting. Seems like the list of needed equipment just never ends...sigh.

P.S. If I come visit the East Coast, will you and Pony make me dinner? ;-)

Happy rest day everyone, never quit!

#8 John-in-Jersey:

No, I haven't tried that particular beer, but it sounds interesting. Thanks for the recommendation bro :-)

Per my previous post, I am currently sipping on a bottle of Newcastle...one of my favorites.

Jakers: What about you? Whatcha got in the fridge right now?

s'more:

Big old fat man hugs, right back at you brother ;-)

Edmonton is NOT warm right now! Are you insane? With the wind this place gets 24/7, 365, polar bears are getting hypothermia (prairie polar bears) and my car sounds like a 3 year old trying to play a violin for the first time.

Greg/M2: Tomorrow (Saturday) Crossfit Oakland is hosting a fundraiser / OPD Fallen Hero Workout.

Details at http://www.crossfitoakland.com/archives/2009/03/saturday_workou.html

REST DAY

Saturday is a Rest Day. On our Rest Day, CrossFitters from 6 Northern California affiliates will be climbing 52 stories (the former Bank of America building in San Franciso)to raise donations for the American Lung Association. To date we have collectively raised over $13,000.

The following affiliates will be participating:

CrossFit KMSF
CrossFit One World
CrossFit Sierra
CrossFit Solano
Diablo CrossFit
M & M CrossFit

Another walk in the park for CrossFitters!

Wish us well! Pray for everyone else!

I am in love with Rachel

Adam, at least it's better than when she was here (not sure when that was, but I can imagine it was when it was -20 or -30 C. 4 degrees and sunny feels nice, at least compared to that!

If you think we need a Hannan in the States, we've got one. His name is Ron Paul.

Would love to work for CrossFit! I have a master's degree in English too, but I don't know if I can juggle the Air Force and the CFJ workload!

I enjoyed the video. It's funny that "conservative" somehow still means opposed to deficits and spending when the conservatives in the US are notorious for running huge deficits. First, Reagan who managed a deficit of 6% of GDP. Then Bush II using Reagan as his role model finally broke that record after doubling the national debt from 5 trillion to 10 trillion.

Contrary to what the speaker claimed, you can spend your way out of a recession. In fact, it's the only way to get out of a recession when interest rates are zero (as they are now).

Also, you can spend your way out of debt when spending causes inflation. You inflate your way out of debt. It's called monetizing the debt. The fed buys T-bills.

"If you think we need a Hannan in the States, we've got one. His name is Ron Paul."

Fortunately nobody listens to Ron Paul either.

nice. I dig cross fit even when its minus 30 and the economy sucks.

I'm pretty new to crossfit. Today I fell in love with rings. I never worked with them (technically i still haven't because i had to improvise with TRX straps) but ring dips are like 7000 times awesomer than bardips and now i want to learn more. I'm gonna have to buy some rings though cause trx straps have metal buckles that cut you that didn't stop me though. Does everyone else feel that crossfit is like crack. I can't get anything done at night until i know tomorrows wod. It's awesome

No rest for me today - going to give one of the Australian Games Qualifier WOD's a crack.

21-15-9
Burpee
Pullup
Row 400m

It sounds ok but I have said that before.

Happy rest day people

#38 SqtK you earn the right to say that crossfitters say..."hi i'm (your name or nickname) and i'm adicted to Crossfit" haha!! Crossfit is highly adictive...

And with the ring dips thing...yeah rings are AWESOME!! And wait for your first MUSCLE-UP!! That day you will go CRAZY

3-2-1 GO

Once again i have fallen in love. Please stop showing clips of smart, super hot trainers its hell on my marriage ;)

Happy rest day everyone... I'm cheating my balls off with ben & jerry's "american dream" ice cream. Vanilla ice cream with fudge covered waffle cone pcs & a caramel swirl! Much deserved after 30 days weighing and measuring, level one cert, and the last three days of punishment!

s'more, i expect a bit of love next time you post, my feeling get hurt when you ignore me...

SteveD,

Thanks for the invite! I may stop by. Working OT 1400-2200, so I may just sleep in tomorrow instead.

-Greg

Gene!!! I'm so sorry that's because i hate to write names i always forget one sorry bro big hugs
Bad english BEST INTENTIONS¡ beha

#23 Marshall

1) Decrease cooperate tax rates, which will lower the price of consumer goods and services.

2) Take measures to weaken the Dollar a bit not too much though. This will create an inflationary environment, and increase velocity (less motivation to hold money).

3) Create a tax break for companies that serve as pass through entities. (S-corp, LLP, some LLCs)

4) Enforce bankruptcy law as written. (Its really is a good set of laws for dealing with liquidation of a company)

5) If the government must spend money, spend it on real live infrastructure projects. eg. roads, bridges, light rail in cities, new power grid, wind farms, solar farms. Solid tangible construction, the sort that is labor intensive to build, labor provided by private corporations. Corporations who receive the contract upon putting together a winning bid, not based on who's union contributed more to which candidate. (if it wants to create some inflation this would be a good use for the newly printed cash)

I have others, I'll get to them later, back to beer and hockey.

rach,

great video. better be careful out there. there's a lot of guys after you. don't worry i will protect you, sister!!!! i gotchur back

I meant to ask this yesterday, but I was hoping someone could tell me or lead me to a video of a beginner pull up. I am in my 6th week of Crossfit and had been doing jumping pull ups until the warning about those several days back. Thank you for any assistance.

i don't care if you think what mr. hannan is saying is right or wrong. if i could hear just one u.s. politician speak with that fervor and passion, there may be hope for this country's govt. left or right, this country's politicians are a dispassionate, disassociated, disenchanting, disassembled bag of beauracrats destroying our constitution and individual's freedoms to self-serve the politician's desires.

i have my doubts that fewer than 1/2 of the politicians have even read the constitution, save for the ones old enough that had it required in their high school govt. class. yet they are in place to serve under it. if 6 of them even read the spendulous package, they may not have been irate over the aig bonuses, that they all voted into the bill(s).

to speak with such oratory prowess and grasp of the english language without a teleprompter, no less, puts mr. obama-a great speaker(with assistance) himself, to shame. nevermind that since elected, obama has become a teleprompter dependant rhetorical drone that seems to be a requirement in d.c.

all of our elected officials would do well to listen to this speech, or more its delivery, a few dozen times.

word up Anthony, seriously...

Thanks CrossFit- you helped me sandbag longer and harder in Fargo that I would have been able to otherwise.

I just realized that it was ring dips and regular pullups, I could have sworn it said ring pullups as well!

Thats funny because that means I did it backwards, throwing a chain over a regular pullup bar and clipping a handle meant for the pulley machine to each end to mimic ring pullups, but the chain wasn't long enough to do dips so I subbed regular ones instead... oh well!

Happy rest day everyone! Here's to the backwards RX!

Does anyone else get wicked bruises from scraping their shins during deadlifts?
Am I messing something up?

Mr. Hannan's passion and fervor come from a clear vision of where the UK gov't is headed. Apparently our politicians are too arrogant and self serving to notice the grave similarities of our position, thus preventing them from giving a similar speech. The current administration's policies and direction are clear, are brought with speed to prevent discussion, and they are saddling future generations with incredible debt. While I am certainly impressed by the style of Mr. Hannan's speech, I am more impressed by the content of his argument.

#53 FoxJr.

I get the same thing.. just the way i was taught to do a proper deadlift

Comment #8 - Posted by: John-In-Jersey at March 27, 2009 4:47 PM

I'm gonna be honest I've tipped a pint or two in my time or was that at a time. Either way. Sadly my daughter tries to keep me from having any because I laugh to much. I laugh a lot in everyday life. Give me a brew and I become half politician/half comedian. And from the accounts I get not the good half of either.

The Founders brew sounds absolutely delightful. I am not a fan of pale ales, pilsners or lagers (for all you people in Apache Junction those are your yellow beers) If I'm going to drink, I do not want to hear some sissy excuse about how you forgot to eat before drinking. If you drink a proper port or stout it's a meal unto itself. So I would be grateful for the Kentucky blend. It sounds right up my alley.

And now a jakers true story.

In 1995 I was working for a legal publisher in St. Louis MO, my brother came to visit from AR and we went to tour the Anheuser Busch brewery to see the commemorative plaque with our busts in the Natural Light wing honoring our Collegiate drinking achievements. While reminiscing in the brewery's self-serve bar at the end of the very touching and sentimental tour I got a call on my cell phone. The caller identified himself as the general counsel for the Appellate Court of Missouri. As I was about to say my hello's I was interrupted by a loudspeaker announcing, "LAST CALL, LAST CALL FOR ALCOHOL."
Me: I'm not in the office right now.
Him: I gathered that. How bout I call you back Monday.
Me: Sounds great.
Brother and jag off friends laughing hysterically in the background and trying to pour what is left of my beer on me.
Close scene.

And now back to your political bickering. I'm sure I'll jump in on that tomorrow.

Rookie

how'd that wod go?

S'more

thanks for the side hugs brother! Right back at you. And your daughter is beautiful! Give her a grab your own elbows hug from me.

Love it or hate it, it was a great speech. How uncomfortable must Gordon have felt!!

It's so sad the the effects of a socialized government are all around the world to see and we have idiots,soclialists and communists in this country trying to ruin it based on they,re own selfish desires and laziness. I would vote for Mr Hannan any day. I wish he'd deliver that same speech to Obama.

Merle
Crossfit USA

Respect to my fellow Cork man Sgt. Alan kenneally of the U.S Army who received the purple heart yesterday for risking his lifeto save an fellow injured soldier.

I'll hit those pull ups and ring dips this evening.

Oh boy, I love CrossFit. NIce, uh, video.

Yesterdays WOD was nice, felt great doing it and only required 9 min and 30 secs or my time! Boo ya!

Nothing like enjoy our rest day at work! HA!

Aight brothers be safe today and cant wait for tomorrow!

S'more, cookie, jakers, play offbeard, Eric, Strong Lil pony, Rookie, Jaybear, HERM!!, Allison NYC and the rest of crew.. I'll miss ya on this day of rest haha, take it easy!

Oh yea and any predictions on the winners for March madness? OU is playing some stellar ball, and the Louisville Uconn match up looks inevitable.... cant wait, you know what I'll be doing tonight!

Brown hasnt nationalised or subsidised the car industry yet. Our debt as a share of GDP is lower than that of Japan, USA, Germany and France. If the banks hadnt been bailed out, both in the USA and the UK surely socially, politically and economically would be much worse than they are?
As for blaming Barack Obama for spending, unless I am much mistaken, the Bush administration nationalised, or at least heavily subsidised both banks and GM.
The speech is entertaining, and as a politics undergraduate I like seeing people enthused by something like this. But the fact is that Harman is, as politicians tend to do, bending the truth to fit his arguement. If our governments hadnt bailed out the banks for the sake of staunchly sticking to the ideological framework of freemarket capitalism millions more people would have lost their jobs, homes and savings. Maybe to some of you that would be a worthy price to pay, but personally i think that government intervention was, and continues to be a neccessary evil at times of severe economic conditions.
Im putting my soap box away now :P
Thank you for posting that link though coach, it was interesting. I dont usually write on rest day topics, i did once and got called names for being something other than a right wing conservative, but today i was feeling brave and so have entered the fray. be nice to me today limbaugh fans

Can someone please require every politician, Ass or Elephant, to watch that video?

I'm not trying to get into the political debate, but on of my controllers (Former U.S. Marine) brought me this gift:

http://www.tngop.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/mortgagestickerwebimage.gif

I have to put that on my car just cause its too funny!

Good rest day all!

Looks like I've been missing some good workouts in the past week or two. I'd love to be in the gym pounding these out, but i'm unnecessarily restricted until the doctor gives me the okay to resume normal workloads.

Academy is going well, just finished week 5 (11 more!) Went out with a small group of the cadets last night, too many beers and too many good times.

Hope all is well, hope everyone is still enjoying crossfit. I know I'm not able to get on here much, but I love the enthusiasm you all bring daily.

Jaybear,

good luck in the academy. take it all in, lots of fun.

Any idea what brand of shoes the guy in the picture is wearing? Need some new trainers and those look good.

omg i am so freakin sore from the WOD last night -i posted but i guess it got eaten. Went to the globo and got a little side-tracked - there were some Charger players working out!! LOVE MY BOLTS!! Anyhoo, after i decided i only really know one super-human (SH!*heart* you madly!) i did the pull-up/dip WOD on the gravitron -
13:41 (110# assist on pull-ups and 80# on dips)
Hoping to find time today to row - Happy rest day to everyone else!!!

Cfsb
Front squat 205 lb for 3

10-7-4
Ring dips
Box jumps 39"
Push press 115 lb
3:17

Hiked the rim of the volcano around Carney Park.

2 hours, 10 min

Cookie- you and Herm = BARF(I am wildly jealous of course) That looked like a great workout.

My pops is good, thanks, everybody. Was reflecting last night, he is a true CrossFitter. (I just mentioned him on the board the other day. He is 76, started running 30 yrs ago) He lost his balance at the end of a run, he said he was excited about his finishing time, was cruising down his street towards his driveway, said he felt like his legs were going too fast for him, lost his balance and fell, hit his head, unconscious. His neighbor found him in the drive, called 911. When he came to in the ambulance, he was pissed that he didnt hit his stopwatch to record his PR LOL

CAT scan clear, wrist bone chipped, ego bruised. This is his 3rd running fall. He said this morning its the end of his running career. I am relieved, but sad. After a short walk to loosen up tight muscles, he said, well, I could still walk that 5K next week. :)

I told s'more I have good genes from my mama- makes me spunky and silly and youthful. My papa gave me my firebreathin' skills. :)

Ms. Medina, your ass is JUST right - promise! Nice work in the video too, of course! :)

Oh lord, now that we've cleared that up, I must admit, that speech is absolutely AWESOME, no matter what side you are on. THAT is what I call layin' it all out on the table!

Steve #35,

What evidence convinces you that spending has ever taken a nation out of recession, regardless of interest rates? That failed in the US under FDR and it failed again in the pair of Nixon recessions in the late 60s to early 70s.

Spending doesn’t cause inflation. Spending causes bankruptcy. Borrowing causes inflation. Borrowing puts new money into circulation, and that is what is necessary for inflation. And I would agree that that monetizes the debt, and that the government can inflate its way out of most of its debt. But that is what the fed is trying to prevent.

The fed does buy T-bills, providing price support for treasuries. This holds down both interest rates and the apparent inflation rate -- for awhile. But it cannot be sustained. It just dams up inflation until the fed turns it loose or just surrenders to being a banana republic. It creates a huge dislocation between inflation and interest rates, which are supposed to ride on top of the tide of inflation. Socialism doesn’t work without price, wage, and interest rate controls. Obama is going to handle the prices and wages, and the fed will try to do the interest rates.

The fed just announced that it was going to buy $300 billion worth of treasuries this year, and it started in the last two auctions. This will allow Obama to borrow that amount without immediately affecting inflation and market interest rates.

The last time the fed did this to any extent was in the late 60s and early 70s. It has to keep it up, and it soon owned 16% of the US debt while unemployment twice swung wildly. It couldn’t sustain the purchase, so it let go of its end of the rubber bank. It stopped expanding its debt holdings in 1976, and the post WWII record unemployment started to come down. Then beginning in earnest in 1977, the dam broke. The fed dumped its holdings on the market, dropping to the normal level of about 6%, while the unemployment rate fell to familiar postwar levels, also around 6%.

While the fed was soaking up debt, inflation was moving along, and real market interest rates soon turned negative. Only fools would not borrow in that environment. The nation went on a binge of borrowing, investing, and overbuilding – mortgages and maximum debt for cities in the desert, wind farms, limited partnerships for anything imaginable, apartment houses, high-rises, office space, and, I would imagine, factory capacity.

Having stopped buying down treasury rates, however, the prime rate shot up from 6% in 1977 to over 20% in 1980-1981. Interest rates soared, and with those rates every capital asset in the US fell in value. Capital investment crashed. Industrial production fell back. By 1982, unemployment had set a new postwar record at 10.8%. S&Ls went under and had to be rescued. Carter lost whatever was left of his pitiful presidency and he never knew what hit him. The banks were not far behind the S&Ls, and had to be bailed in 1989-1991.

You said that Bush II doubled the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion following the Reagan model. Aren’t you forgetting a little something? Remember the Global War on Terror, undertaken with nearly unanimous support from even the left? Obama is planning to double or triple domestic spending alone in two terms, while the fed tries to bury the inevitable inflation by buying down interest rates.

Federal debt is going to soar from a double whammy. If history is any lesson, the stimuli and spending won’t cause a recovery. And federal tax revenue is going to plummet, while unemployment rates mount. Without a recovery, the CBO estimate of $9.3 trillion additional debt in a decade will be chicken feed.

And this gets us to UK’s Daniel Hannan’s champion wire-brushing of their economic ignoramus of a leader. Obama is going to earn his before he gets to 100 days. A half dozen states have already passed through 10% unemployment, to say nothing about the naked power grab, the pointless carbon tax, and the nationalization and rationing of 17% of our economy, the health care sector. It’s too bad we have no one to deliver the message to BHO, which over here is also politically incorrect.

Andy #33 suggested Ron Paul. He’s one of the best on economics, but a head-in-the-sand, proven foreign policy ignoramus. It’s hard to lecture standing on one leg.

Daniel-san #15. Less than 700 words, too.

Bingo-

Just want to say thanks for the CFSB article in last month's journal. I've been CrossFitting for two years now (zero athletic experience before that so I came in as a real beginner) but really focusing on it only in the last 9 months. Doing this strength cycle really helped me lock in some fundamentals and see some huge gains in a short period of time.
My FGB score went up 51 points and my total went up 55lbs.
I work out on my own four days a week and usually only make it up to our local affiliate once a week and this strength bias gave my workouts a structure that had been previously lacking (CFWU, strength, met-con). I'm really excited to be back following the main page, but I will take elements of CFSB and incorporate that into my daily regime from now on. Thanks for all that you do for this community!

Johanna Lamb

CFWU x 3 lite

Murph
As Rx'd
40:35, indoor track at PAC.
Intestinal bug made this a challenge.

Whoops. Less than 800.

Saturday 28th March

"Obice Helen"

3 rounds for time of:

600m run
31 x 32kg/ 2 pood kettle bell swings
16 dead hand pull ups

Time: 22.16

Rounds were broken as:

reps 21/10/7/5/4 time: 6.36
reps 21/10/8/6/2 time:14.02
reps 22/9/6/4/3/3 time: 22.16

I tried to do this at 70% -80% and concentrate on doing the set with perfect technique and as unbroken as possible rather than doing it all out for time.

Jeff #74

"You said that Bush II doubled the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion following the Reagan model. Aren’t you forgetting a little something? Remember the Global War on Terror, undertaken with nearly unanimous support from even the left?"

I wouldn't say that the most expensive element of the Global War on Terror, the continuing war in Iraq, was given unanimous support. That war, as well as the war in Afghanistan, was funded through borrowing, during a period of federal tax cuts, against the advice of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. In part, Paul O'Neill was fired for giving that advice. Similarly, Larry Lindsey was fired for estimating that the war in Iraq could cost 2% of GDP or $200 billion--the actual cost is far higher.

But Bush's largest spending bill, Medicare Part D, was yet to come. While the war in Iraq will end, Medicare Part D will be with us for years.

All of the above led Newt Gingrich to call the spending under Bush a "disaster."

#45 Thanks Mike Morgan

Pony - #72 - dont be such a HATER!!! lol! We both luv you!! Glad your dad is better. He's a freakin pimp doin that at 76. Love it! Please confirm to your partner in crime (Eric) I am indeed old enough to be his mother!! lol!#22 Rach - chica, latina curves are a beautiful thang! I *wish* i looked like you!

Johanna #75:

My pleasure, but really I am just the scribe. Jeff Martin is the mad scientist behind the program and I just happen to know how to type!

Jeff and I, and all of the "Crash Test Dummies" are truly delighted that you and so many other folks have found Crossfit Strength Bias to be fun and useful. Remember, CFSB is a CROSSFIT program, and that's where it drives its strength.

M/49/151/1-1-06

Met-con Mash-up of "Karen" + PU/Dip WOD

10 RFT
10 PU
15 Wall ball 16#

17:20

High intensity...feel great!

A bag of d!cks in the ceiling,
LOL

Whatever, your politics I think it is important to point out that that Hannan's facts are a bit off.

The UKs debt burden at less than 50% of GDP is not high by European standards. The deficit was 2.7% of GDP going into recession, down from 3.5% in 2004.

Several Euro-zone countries are clearly going into this recession with worse forecasts than the UK, the two most obvious being Germany and Spain. And of course if you mean the wider Europe, Ireland is clearly going to be savaged beyond recognition.

Lastly, its hard to imagine that one is going to educate a child on the service from 20K GBP. The 2030 Index-Linked Guilt (Britian's inflation protected government bond) traded at a 1.26% yield Friday.

That's 252 GBP a year to educate a child. Doesn't seem realistic even if it was all online courses.

Also, one point that is widely missed in relation to the United States: The Fed is effectively sterilizing its credit injections into the US financial sector right now through its reserve interest rate policy and it is looking for a more official authority to do that long term.

That is, the Fed is pumping money into the financial sector but it is drawing money out (sterilizing). Right now it does this by paying banks on their cash holdings.

This means the Fed can print money and use it to buy securities. Yet, the banks do not release that money into the cirrculation but hold it on account. Later the Fed plans to sell its securities and retrieve its funds. This process is known as unwinding.

Take a look at increases in reserves vs. increases in currency.

http://tinyurl.com/FEDGRAPHS

Sorry forgot to add Currrency

http://tinyurl.com/FEDGRAPHS2

Greg/M2 #17

Thanks you for reminding us of the sacrifices made by our public servants. And God bless the families of the slain officers.

#53 Fox Jr. - I did a bunch of DL this morning and my prone hand shin has no more skin. I literally had to rip off the hanging skin when I finished. Guess I'm just doing what Rach says and keeping the bar close to my body!

On the other hand my wife hates it. Everyday I come home and she asks what new mark I have. Either its no skin on my shin or hand or a giant bruise from weighted pullups.

Ummm, what is it with the political rhetoric links? Do we not have enough commentary from all the sides already?

25/m/164

snatch work today

did some muscle snatches and snatch balance to warm up well. hit one reps up to 165, which is ten lbs below my pr. i wasnt going to pr today so i dropped down to 135 and did a half isabelle (15 reps) with a full squat snatch. i didnt time it, but it felt really good and my form felt pretty good too.

Comment #23 - Posted by: Marshall

Marshall - what you are asking, I think, is 'what govt intervention do you advocate which you believe will have a positive impact on 'the economy.' Am I right?

My answer is, undo the damage the govt did to the economy in the first place. What I mean by that I've written any number of times in the past.

There's so little evidence that the govt has the power to 'fix' the economy that, predictably, I advocate that the govt adopts a 'first do no harm' approach. Regrettably, our politicians only gain election by promising to do something, and that is what we get - people good at politics who keep 'doing something.' That is why the economy takes the remarkable up and down turns that it does.

That was an awesome video. Paul

John -

I don't know if you mean my links but those are charts not rhetoric. I don't know if you can post graphs in the comments.

Greg/M2, I salute your effort in escorting Officer Sakai's remains, thanks for reminding us. As Joey would say, 'Blue skies, warriors.' Paul

Comment #45 - Posted by: Mike Morgan

Nicely put, sir. Paul

Happy rest day to all!

Herm, S'more, lil pony, cookie, eric gohl, rookie, jay bear, and the rest- have a great weekend!

as rx'd 24hr rest!

Tomorrow is long run day, 9mi, at 7min pace. Cannot wait!

Trying to get better with core movements. Still lagging were I was before my lay-off, and not happy about it. Today I did 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 for time, Pull-ups (on an I-beam in my basement), sit-ups, push-ups, and squats. 12:24

My pull-ups are coming along. I've got the 1st 10 locked in (deadhang) and then after that I need to go to jumping with a negative. My abs were not happy at all. I hate sit-ups, suck at sit-ups and therefore need to do way more sit-ups.

Glad to have the forum here to see the successes others are finding and drive myself to a higher level of performance. Cheers.

I felt so good this morning I decided to get in a rest day workout. I did 2, 2k rows with 5 min rest in between. 150 calories the first time, 140 the second time. Excited/Ready for whatever tomorrow's WOD is.

#45 - not nicely put sir.

stop trying to regulate EVERYTHING. stop trying to manipulate taxes and money in just the perfect way. this is all what got us here in the first place, the regulation of banks and idiot government trying to give people homes. theres nothing wrong with the freaking economy, it runs fine if you leave it alone.

oh and if youre not an economics expert, can you all stop posting copy-and-pasted garbage? i find it hard to believe that everyone understands interest rate manipulation and arbitrage.

i watched an interesting mass-media article about some lady who had borrowed money with absolutely no way to pay it back, and had a history of bankruptcy. she owns 4 condos, and owed i think $1.2 million. they got her tax information and found that she had made an income of negative $6000(she owns an unsuccessful daycare for kids). negative. so why was she allowed to borrow? answer that question and youll start to figure out why we arent thriving. the answer to the crash is simple, not complex. we got people on here citing crap from the 70's. completely irrelevant. this is what happens when you spend irresponsibly. plain and simple.

Did an easy "Griff", because I can run now.

14:02. Happy rest day, guys!

Great Herm is good to see you are healing now we have to be carefull

Herm is back

Big hugs crossfit brother

Strong L'il Pony - how are you? I have missed a lot and after reading am concerned for your dad....give him a big hug, and one for you too!

So, I have been getting a lot of emails regarding nutrition and am so happy that you are all working on being your best selves!! Summer is coming and seasonal eating will become more exciting than ever (especially for those of us who live where nothing grows in the winter!). I train at an affiliate (crossfitgyms in Toronto, owned by Dhani - an awesome man who puts his entire self into the space and the program....I am so grateful for every effort he takes). Two of our members are going down to qualify for the games and one was zoning hardcore, but performance was tanking. This is a common theme among many of the emails and I wanted to address it, generally. The zone is a great way to get started. It teaches us portion control, how much food we need and shows you how great you feel when you cut the crap. However, the zone allows for unnatural foods, such as breads, pasta, rice, fruits, etc....basically, any food is okay so long as you only consume it within your requisite blocks. This can be a good thing because you look at your dinner and go, "Okay, so I can have 1/2 slice of bread, or 3 heads of lettuce..." and if you like food, you learn that eating produce gives you more "bang for your block." However, the pitfalls of the zone are that it was not built for athletes (so there is no mention of post-wod or recovery), it becomes neurotic (your world is in blocks...one green bean too many, and you have a heart attack!), and the biggest one, is that focuses on quantity, not quality. It is primarily the quality of our foods that give us what we need to perform, not so much the calories. You will find that you can "Zone" on anything - fast food, icecream, etc - and still loose weight however, your energy will be very low and your skin, bowels and even sexual functions will be disrupted. People eat food because it contains NUTRIENTS! For example, the world is filled with obese people however, most of them take vitamin pills. This is because they are not eating nutrient-dense foods - they are eating TOXINS (that the body must work to get rid of, or store them in your fat tissue!).

If you focus your intake on nutrients and food quality, you can be less neurotic about the weights and measures. In fact, you can pretty much eat as much as you want in terms of fat, protein and green leaves and the only gain you will see is in your power, not your body fat! The body has a very good sense of what it needs (this thing called Homeostasis) and if you listen to your body, you will be just fine! Moreover, if you give you body things it knows how to use and recognizes (like veggies, fats and meats), it will USE them....and if you eat more, it will just use them FASTER!! (i.e. your metabolism will become lightning fast due to excitement about how many good things it is getting!). Think about this: if I said, "eat this entire chicken, skin bones and meat, in one sitting," do you think you would open your fridge in 2 hours and reach for a steak? Probably not. You would probably eat a bussel of broccoli, or something high in fiber and water to help your body process and then poop out the metabolites. Notice how women crave strange things when they are pregnant? This is because the body requires different vitamins and minerals to help the fetus grow, so it craves the foods that have those in it.

Oh - I must wrap this up for now...need to get on the road. To summarize, if you have been zoning for a while and have a good gauge of how much food you need, and especially if you want to increase your power, put the scale away and focus on quality. Listen to your body. Cut the fruit (fruit is sugar - end of story) and eat green veggies. Enjoy your fats - the real ones (no bottled salad dressings....oil and lemon juice or nuts or seeds) and eat your protein. If it has "ingredients", leave it in the store (food IS ingredients).

Look outside, see the sun, feel the warmth and the earth springing forth with all of its bounty. Eat what it gives us, not what we manufacture. Once a week, enjoy the hotdog at the ball game, those beers at your friend's bachelor party, or that glass of wine with your lover...animals do not have scales, and we do not need them either. Weighing yourself, or your food, just gives you something external to obsess about. It has always been said that how your clothes fit and how you feel is the best gauage of your weight...so how you feel and perform is the best gauage of how you need to eat.

Trust yourself. Believe in yourself. Be better each day.

Take care everyone - you are all incredible!

Luv Jen

Jeff,

Wow this time I agree with most of what you said. And I think we all appreciate your economy of prose, haha.

Two little nits to pick....

1) "Remember the Global War on Terror, undertaken with nearly unanimous support from even the left?"

Undertaken with support from the left, absolutely. But that was in September 2001, before the GWOT was expanded to the extent that it has been. To say that they supported the start of the GWOT and therefore should share responsibility for all the money that has been spent in its name is a rather specious assertion.

2) "And this gets us to UK’s Daniel Hannan’s champion wire-brushing of their economic ignoramus of a leader. Obama is going to earn his before he gets to 100 days."

This is assuming that anyone in the US has that kind of public-speaking ability....I certainly hope this is the case but am doubtful.

i love Crossfit girls

Newbie #80,

The Global War on Terror was approved by the Senate in PL 107-40 by a vote of 98 - 0. It says,

>>That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

That is sufficient authority, and unanimous, for the President to use force against Iraq, or anyone else, with no further vote. That he did ask for another vote was foolish, and probably traceable to Colin Powell. The authorization to use force in Iraq, PL 107-243, was redundant, and at that, passed 77 to 23. The hate Bush campaign, delayed by 9/11, had not gotten into full swing.

And of course the War was covered by borrowing! Has there ever been an exception? Besides, everything the US government does is covered by borrowing.

You make a common error when you talk about tax cuts. Bush ’43 cut not taxes, but tax rates. He thereby increased tax revenues. This is a supercharged issue, regularly deliberately misquoted to make political hay. He showed once again where the US is on the hated Laffer Curve.

Bush took office in 2001 in a recession. Tax revenues fell in FY 2002 and 2003. He enacted several different tax rate cuts. See “Tax Policy Under President Busy” at cato.org. Tax revenue then increased every year from FY 2004 to 2008, inclusive. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2009 Statistical Abstract, #462, Internal Revenue Gross Collections by Type of Tax. For a couple of those years, the rate of growth of federal revenue (2005, 12.4% and 2006, 11.0%) was unprecedented since Reagan (1987, 13.3%).

Newt was right. Bush ’43 brought a spending disaster. He had full support to do so for the War. But his stimuli in his last year were pitiful. The only thing worse that he could have done was institute a carbon tax or nationalize health care.

m/38/190/70"

At CF Lorton this morning after catching about 150-200 pitches at my son's baseball practice this morning. Catching is easy on CF!

WU: 2 rounds Cindy, 500m row

WOD: "Almost a fight"
Three rounds, FGB style, of:
SDHP @75#
Box Jumps 24"
Push Press @75#
KB swings at 1.5 pood
rest 1 min

Score: 277

dude in the pic looks angry

as rx'd

24 hours

also, #104 Jeff Glassman - I was not aware the Bush administration had ever alleged Iraqi involvement in 9/11 - how would the invasion of Iraq have been authorized by the section of PL 107-40. I think the request for a vote by the UN was questionable, since Iraq was in violation of 17 or so previous UN resolutions, but I never saw the Senate vote as redundant.

I suuuure wish we had a Secretary of State like Colin Powell now . . . .

#98

The idiot government wasn't trying to give homes to everybody.

There were no laws that said the banks had to give loans to people with bad credit or no jobs. There was a low that said if a bank wanted to expand and grow, that they had to have loans in their communities but the decision about who to loan money to was always the bank's.

How did we get here? Those communist mortgage companies figured out that they could sell their mortgages to the Obama supporters on Wall Street. That was back when they still required you to prove you had a job and made a certain amount of money.

Then when the liberals on Wall Street said "We want to buy all the mortgages you can give us", the socialist lenders decided they didn't need to check employment or income because they can just securitize these loans into a huge bundle and sell them to Wall Street investors. And the communist do-gooder lenders gave loans to every swinging dick they could find. It wasn't because the government made them do it. It was because they could sell the bad loans with the good loans. These are called Collateralized Debt Obligations.

The rating agencies that put a stamp of approval on those bundles of loans but they only looked at the good, safe, regular loans. So you could have a bunch of bad loans in a security with some good loans on top and still get that highest AAA rating.

Then the liberals on Wall Street said, "Hey, if these things investments don't work out, AIG can insure us and we'll still make money." Those were the credit default swaps. Oh, and they also made it legal to bet that a stock would go down. It had been made illegal after the first depression but McCain's economics advisor Phil Gramm helped bring it back.

Phil Gramm was asked to stop advising McCain after he declared, there is no problem with the economy and the US is a nation of whiners. How do you think Gramm and McCain would have done with the crisis if they were in the White House? Maybe they could have put Air Force One on E-Bay like some mavericks.

AIG got big into Credit Default Swaps and that's why they are on the brink of failure. Not because the government made them do it.

So you don't have to invoke Big Government when you talk about how we got here.

Rach! Your thighs look amazing! I miss you and your Iron Fist! Hope all is well in San Clemente!

OMG!!! I am beyond ecstatic! I just got my first pullup ever in my whole life and I just wanted to share it with my crossfit family!!! I know I haven't been around much because I've been busy as hell, but I wanted to share this with you all. I'm so excited! It couldn't come at a better time because on the 4th and 5th I will be attending my first level 1 cert in Milton, Florida. I'm so excited!!! Thank you guys, and if my favorite Marine Dani is out there, thanks for believing in me!!!!!

Grab the Kool Aid and GET SOME!!!!

# 98

I am not sure if I qualify as an expert, but I am on the top side of being knowledgeable in the areas of economics. I have an undergraduate degree in international economics with significant coursework in accounting. Until February of this year I worked as a financial adviser for a large mutual insurance company.

Now, that said, I agree that we cannot regulate everything. I will defend my points in the order I made them originally.

1) The USA currently has the highest Central Government Income Tax Rate of OECD countries at 35%. If we wish to stop losing jobs oversees, then the tax rates need to come down. (www.oecd.org/ctp/taxdatabase Table II.1)

2) A) Since May the dollar has gone from 1.6 USD per Euro to 1.35 USD per Euro. In pounds the dollar has gone from roughly 2 USD per GBP to 1.44 USD per GBP at close Friday. To make the USA competitive coming out of this recession goods and services coming out of the USA are going to need to be priced in a way that makes them attractive.

2) B) To correct housing in the long run the market must find a bottom, a bit of inflation will quicken the bottoming process.

2) C) A healthy long term inflation of 3-5% yearly incents companies who have money on the sidelines to put that money to work by doing that merger that they are considering, upgrading their facilities, or starting a new product line. In a slow inflationary environment stagnant money loses value.

3) Similar logic to (1) except that pass through entities are generally small companies. If we want to motivate people to innovate then it must be rewarded.

4) When the government gets involved in propping up companies there is a tendency for cronyism. Two wonderful examples of this are the way that the auto unions are some of the largest campaign contributors to Democrat political campaigns then in the case of GM, the Union is being treated as a more senior debt holder than the secured debt holders as GM goes through it's restructuring. the 2nd is Rham Emmanuel's former involvement on the board of Freddie Mac (or was it Fannie Mae I don't remember).

5) One of the driving factors to the USA becoming the super power after WWII is that we were one of the few countries will cities still intact. Since then everyone else have recovered and rebuilt, and in many ways surpassed us in their infrastructure. We have a bit of ground to make up.

a lack of personal responsibility is in fact what got us into this trouble and personal responsibility will go a long way to get ourselves out of this trouble. There are structural problems to the US economy that need to be addressed of we want to find our way forward and not just back ourselves out of a mess.

There are two ways out of the woods, one is to go back the way you came, the other is to go through the woods and find the other side. In one of those ways the woods are still in front of you.

# 109
congrats on the pullup

the speech by Daniel Hannan was pretty tame by U.K. standards,he even stole the punchline from the late John Smith(ex Labour leader),that has caused more headlines over here.was just a typical little tory englander looking to score points.I guess that (from the comments) in the states you're starved of politicians who stand up and tell it like it is with passion.check out George Galloway who is doing a tour of speeches in the U.S. at the moment,he's already embarrassed one U.S. politician at the senate a few years ago.he tells it like it is.

#109 Sailor Erin:

Great job on getting that first pull up! Feels great doesn't it?

Now you've got the ball rolling...next you need two pull ups, then three, then five, then start working on that kip...the sky is the limit!

Never Quit!

hi do all you guys do the crossfit warmup?
im new and thinking i should cause at the moment im just rowing for 10minutes.
want to know what you experienced people do?
thanks

800m time trial today...2:02

I love crossfit!

#115 ODY
great time, i realise now how hard that is after the 800m wod on Thurs.well done.

Too long of a day to not do something, so I made up the last of the workouts I missed last week when I was doing my best death impersonation:

Deadlifts 21/15/9 @ 185lb w/800m between (from 3/21/09): 15:59

Anyone know how deads/runs affect one's ability to snowboard? Guess I'll find out tomorrow when I go enjoy the 14+ inches my mountain got this week!!

CFSB wk 5, BS 3x3, 185, 195, 205 PR

Yesterday's WOD, 10 rds, 10 pu's, 10 bar dips,

9:16

I always loved the song Funky Cold Medina, and boy that is a beautiful visual to add to the music.

If Mr Hannan is correct and every British child is born oweing 20000GBP at birth, then to pay off that debt over the course of their first 18 years...

26175.13 pounds to educate a child if 3% interest
33248.35 pounds to educate a child if 6$ interest

x*1.44 (firday's end of day USD/GBP)

37692.17 dollars @ 3%
47877.66 dollars @ 6%

If purchasing power has not adjusted from the spring 08 highs then
520000 USD @3%
660000 USD @ 6%

I'm sure there is someone in education who could provide how much it really costs to educate a child K-12?

Or someone from the UK to provide for whither or not prices have changed since may

hey does anyone know where I can get one of those Crossfit shirts that says "smoke you like cheap crack" please email or post something on here, thanks.

Pete #106,

The answer to your problem is simple. I quoted the exact, full text of the first paragraph of the law. The President was free to make any connection to 9/11 he chose. For example, he might have decided that Saddam harbored someone connected with a group or country linked somehow to the 9/11 terrorists. The law didn't require the President to prove anything to Congress or to anyone else. He just had a blank check that he didn't want to cash.

I wonder what you see in Colin Powell? He seemed to me to be all polish and no spit. I felt all along that it has Powell who put the emphasis on going through all the diplomatic hoops. It just delayed us from taking action in Iraq. I do believe that offering Saddam an opportunity to step down and out was OK. But the UN was, as always, a waste of time and money.

Besides, can anyone tell me a single significant accomplishment of any Secretary of State, ever?

Rachael Medina,
If you thought Edmonton was cold, you still haven't felt nothing yet. Anywhere north of 60 is even worse, and Nunavut has some of the most bitterly cold and inhabitted places on the planet. Places where it "warms up" to -20 in the Spring.

I believe the term best used to describe our featured female today is "brick house." Aaaaaaand you know you've been drinking too much kool-aid when you see that and wonder how much her back squat is.

Hi All,

Just wanted Folks to know that waaay up in Northern New Brunswick Canada, in a little City called Bathurst, Janine Daigle opened up CrossFit Bathurst!! Way to Go Janine...had our first class today and it was great!! Congrats!!

Check it out!.... 3-2-1 GO!!

www.crossfitbathurst.com

Pat, you're catchin hell at CFVB;-)

Jeff,

The resolution passed 98-0 because the vote occurred in the aftermath of 9/11. The president was given the authority to do what was necessary to respond. Unfortunately, instead of doing what was necessary, he and his buddies decided it was a good time to indulge their obsession with Saddam. It's absurd to argue that the Bush administration was not 100% responsible for the fiasco in Iraq, for keeping the spending off the books, and for making irresponsible tax cuts at the same time.

Joe P #127,

>> The resolution passed 98-0 because the vote occurred in the aftermath of 9/11.

Of course! The questions are: what is your threshold for pain; how quick to you get over it; what are your priorities. If you got mad on 9/11 and got over it, maybe your too soft.

>>The president was given the authority to do what was necessary to respond.

Not exactly. (a) He was given authority to do what HE ALONE FELT was necessary. (b) Not just to respond, as in tit for tat pay back, but to “prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons”. This invites the most severe punishment, a permanent deterrent.

>>Unfortunately, instead of doing what was necessary, he and his buddies decided it was a good time to indulge their obsession with Saddam.

Utter rubbish, totally unprovable, and contradicted on the record. Bush went to Congress to get its fingerprint on his decision to use force in Iraq (big mistake!) and it documented 23 reasons for approving the action. None of them was an obsession about anything.

More important than those 23 reasons was that Bush marginalized the block of 6 or 7 terrorist states, leaving only three in the business and those with no common border for training and supplying terrorism. It was more brilliant then Bush could ever articulate, or maybe even imagine.

>>It's absurd to argue that the Bush administration was not 100% responsible for the fiasco in Iraq, for keeping the spending off the books, and for making irresponsible tax cuts at the same time.

Bush made a big mistake by letting the Iraq campaign languish for about two years after the brilliant overthrow of Saddam. That probably cost two thousand American lives, and the loss of support at home from the weak willed and evil. He corrected this error when at the time of the surge, he directed taking out the leaders of terrorism. The result was not a fiasco, but victory. We’ll see if the new Iraqi government can hold on to it, especially with no support likely from Obama.

The spending was not “off the books”. It was just separate from the domestic, operational budget. As someone whined on this blog, he doubled the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. That was directly attributable to the war, and it is known because the war spending was on the books – we kept records. It is popularly quoted as a billion dollars a day, and not because it was concealed.

And to say he made “irresponsible tax cuts” is pure left wing nonsense. First, he didn’t cut taxes, he raised taxes. He cut tax rates! And that bothers the left because of its goal of income redistribution. It bothers the left for the same reason that it hates the Laffer curve. Every coolie in the utopian socialist state is supposed to get the same – “according to his needs”. To do that, we need a highly progressive tax so everyone has the same take-home pay. What Bush did was cut tax rates, which the left considers regressive – to their social theory. What Bush did was quite responsible in the sense that a responsible (i.e., non-socialist) government always wants to maximize its revenue.

Mike Morgan #110,

A couple of observations on your post.

>> If we wish to stop losing jobs oversees, then the tax rates need to come down.

We lose jobs to overseas for two reasons. One is that corporations are keeping products around far too long. Products have a birth, life, death cycle. At the end, manufacturing has been perfected so that the lowest skill labor on the planet is sufficient. This is in fact the job of the manufacturing engineer. What American corporations are not doing is introducing new products that require the highest skill labor to interpret still raw manufacturing instructions for the not new technology. Americans uniquely have just that kind of skill to build product from sketches and oral instructions.

We don’t introduce new products primarily, but no way exclusively, because the cost of the dollar is too high. The payback period for an investment is about the reciprocal of the interest rate. When GM pays 25% on its money, it has to have a breakeven point in four years. If it were 20%, it would be five years. Japan ate our lunch on steel, autos, electronics, fabrics by subsidizing the cost of yen to its manufacturers. Japanese automakers worked with a planning horizon of a dozen or two years. GM had great technologies in GM Research and in GM Engineering, but they could not transition them into the name plate divisions because each development cycle took around three years. Any MBA worth his salt would tell you what had to be done: the nameplate divisions could only hammer out cosmetic changes. So government spending pushed up interest rates and drove American corporations out of the manufacturing business.

I can't agree with this statement:

>> A healthy long term inflation of 3-5% yearly incents companies who have money on the sidelines to put that money to work by doing that merger that they are considering, upgrading their facilities, or starting a new product line. In a slow inflationary environment stagnant money loses value.

That high an inflation rate erodes capitalism. It is non-competitive.

American corporations have another debilitating disease. They are cannibals, and self-destructive. They will acquire other firms to take any accumulated seed money, to discard their products with the lowest rate of return regardless of business reputation or product line strategy, to cheapen the products they save, and to surplus the management. Our corporations no longer exist to produce new products, but to provide fortunes for the members of the board, all leading to family size fortunes for the CEOs. They move products off shore ASAP. They convert the seed money that should have gone to depreciation and introduction new products into bonuses. They leave the product lines they acquire and their own companies as fragile, empty shells, now known as zombies.

The AIG/BofA/Merrill Lynch bonus problem is much deeper than people imagine. It all started after arch-criminal Michael Milken when the CEOs figured out, “Hey, we can do that!”

In public corporations, this exsanguination is a racket every bit as reprehensible as Madoff’s. It’s a huge burden to overcome in recovery from the coming Obama depression.

Here is you WOD. Go to americancivicliteracy.org
Take the quiz first. Score yourself the post it. As RX 96.97. I would argue with question 30.

Come on all you liberals and conservatives, is the quiz to hard? Once you have taken the quiz and score yourself read the summary. You will see why the country is the shape it is in. Here is one post your Helen time also. I want to see if the average Crossfitter more than a MUSCLEHEAD. My PR for Helen is 8:56 quiz score 96.97

My head is about to explode with all the strategies to fix the economic mess. What confuses me is that the new administration is double downing on deficit spending (especially on social ideas) but our European counter parts who are Socialists are reducing taxes and refusing to bail out companies (Saab). And communist China is reducing taxes on vehicles to spur sales. Ya got me?

Oh and how is electronic health records suppose to be a stimulus as well as a cost reducer in the long run? That is just one of the ideas to stimulate the economy that I'm trying to figure out.

Forgot to include my theory of Prez Obama. In about 2 years tax revenues will be lower than "estimated" and to be patriotic the under $250K crowd will have pony up more. In addition the tax rate for the $250K plus will have to pony up a few more percentage points too. Of course that was Robin Hood's intent all the time for the top bracket.

Tracy 131

I don't want to get too much into the politics but at least one of your questions has a obviously non-partisan answer.

"Oh and how is electronic health records suppose to be a stimulus as well as a cost reducer in the long run?"

Creating the systems requires work today. This produces jobs today. However, the infrastructure that is created lowers costs tomorrow.

Another example may illustrate. Suppose that a particular highway was facing massive congestion and population in the region was expected to grow.

We could create jobs today by expanding the highway or building a by-pass. However, that highway would lower costs for travelers tomorrow.

Implicit is that in the future the economy will not be in recession and employing people through government spending will not be necessary. At that point we would like spending to be reduced not just for the government but for citizens as well.

#122 Jeff Glassman

My point is not that Bush couldn't have made the connection you are suggesting existed. I am saying that he never has, nor has anyone in his administration, alleged Iraqi involvement in 9/11.

My comment about Colin Powell was a tongue-in-cheek comparison to the current Secretary of State (and frankly, her predecessor). :)

Pete #135,

Didn’t the Bush administration say that Iraq had no direct involvement in 9/11? According to ABC News online, the Miami Herald, and others, the Washington Post ran a story on 9/12/08 titled “Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush”. ABC News and the Herald and a whole bunch of others provided a link to the article, but that wasn’t the title! By the way, Palin added that the headline wasn’t accurate with regard to what she had said.

The 9/11 Commission Report, 7/22/04 (available on line), ¶10.3, has a good analysis of the administration’s view of Iraq beginning on page 334. It looked unsuccessfully for a direct link to 9/11, meaning planning or participation, so it moved Iraq down but not off the priority list.

“Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them. … Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there … . It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” Bush. He did consider Iraq’s support for Palestinian suicide terrorists.

Regardless, the difficulty with what you imply is that no requirement ever existed for a direct link to exist in the mind of the President or in reality for him to take action anywhere in the world. His job was to use force to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the US, and not even restricted to continental US, by all necessary and appropriate means against nations whom he alone determined did no more than harbor terrorists or terrorist organizations LIKE those who were involved in 9/11.

Jeff #129

"We lose jobs to overseas for two reasons. One is that corporations are keeping products around far too long. Products have a birth, life, death cycle. At the end, manufacturing has been perfected so that the lowest skill labor on the planet is sufficient. "

- Actually, driving manufacturing to its simplest methods is done for the birth of the product. Yes, some tweaking is done after product launch because you are ramping production and might find certain ways of doing things are less efficient than once thought. However, the bulk of the work is done before the product ever gets to market to reduce costs for fixing the problem later on.

"This is in fact the job of the manufacturing engineer. "

- Actually not entirely true. In most modern companies it is not just the job of the manufacturing engineer, it is in fact the job of all the engineers on the project--it is called design for manufacture/assembly (DFMA). Unfortunately, the manufacturing engineer usually has to check their work because most mechanical and electrical engineers don't get the concept of DFMA. Additionally, MFG engineers are commonly in charge of setting up assembly lines/assembly cells for the shop floor

"What American corporations are not doing is introducing new products that require the highest skill labor to interpret still raw manufacturing instructions for the not new technology."

What do you define as "raw manufacturing instructions"? Prior to a product's launch, assembly instructions, testing procedures, etc. are created by those working on the project to ensure that products going out the door are the same one to the next (with some obvious tolerance built in).
Ideally, they try to minimize the number of assembly steps and/or the number tests that need to be done in order to increase throughput. No company that is trying to make large volumes of product could use "raw manufacturing instructions" and remain profitable or generally in business. Even if you have highly skilled labor, there may be variation in the way 1st shift tests a product compared to 2nd shift, so you need detailed instructions so all your shipped goods work to their required specifications

"Americans uniquely have just that kind of skill to build product from sketches and oral instructions."

1) This is not exclusively American and unless you have some hard facts to back it up--and by that I mean numbers--don't state it.

2) Yes, some do, as do some in other countries. However, I've worked with enough people to know that even if you give them a detailed set of drawings with sets of detailed instructions AND you show them how to do it, they can still do it wrong, or cut corners to increase their throughput or to be able to leave early.
The obvious counterpoint to this is, well they aren't highly skilled labor; my counter-counter point is that I've seen this from people with 20+ years experience working on highly complex electro-mechanical systems

22 / M / 5'9" / 135lb

I did the modified deadlift/run WOD today.

135lb deadlift x15
Run 800m
135lb deadlift x12
Run 800m
135lb deadlift x9
Run 800m

38:31

The 8:31 was mostly spent lying on a bench trying not to puke about 1.5 rounds in. I rallied and finished it, though. That was brutal.

Karl #134

Could you expand on the cost reductions in the future?

Eng4Life #137,

First, you have to know that I’m talking about manufacturing engineering as the function, not how your firm or any other is actually organized. You note that ME has other functions, but I didn’t say that reducing labor content was the sole function of ME. Some smaller firms may have only a handful of engineers, or less, and they wear multiple hats.

You say strangely the “bulk of the work is done before the product ever gets to market”. I would say ALL the work is done before the product ever gets to market.

Once upon a time, American autos were an exception. Cars were so poorly designed that one spent months in the shop after purchase fixing things that never should have needed fixing. In a healthy manufacturing organization, of course by far the largest gains toward making a profitable product are done in the earliest stages. These are the simplest choices that go into a sufficient design, e.g., don’t design a death ray when a bullet will do, don’t develop a hybrid when internal combustion is a third the price and thrice the performance. This takes nothing away from the fact that designs can be improved for producibility forever, even after they are in high volume production.

That you actually have a function called “design for manufacture/assembly” seems quite strange. Unless you’re running a research laboratory, your initial prototype should be of a manufactured item with a certain cost and rep rate. This is what engineering development is all about.

Then you note that “most mechanical and electrical engineers don’t get the concept of DFMA”. This reminds me of the firms that had a separate quality organization, which then turns out to relieve engineering of the responsibility for designing quality into the product. Could it be that most of your engineers don’t understand design for reproducibility because you have isolated the concept and created a separate staff for that responsibility? A firm with a separate DFMA organization or a separate quality organization sounds terribly bureaucratic. It just might have a structural problem.

Actually I’ve run across firms and product lines like you describe. They perpetually build what the Brits call “one offs”, one of a kind, hand built, perpetually prototyping items that never converge to a manufacturable item. You see this in university and government labs, in black (super secret) programs, and in some foreign firms. It’s great fun, but never worth capital investment as it never turns a profit. It’s research.

Reproducibility, making successive products the same, varies widely depending on the required production rate. Specifications change just like product, fluid at first, tight toward the end of life. Sometimes the user wants anything that works right now, and for that we might have no drawings or instructions at all. That’s how we got Fat Boy, aka Little Boy, delivered to Hiroshima. Sometimes products are never more than one-offs, e.g., Hubble telescope, a story all in itself. But quantity varies from ones to millions. Sometimes manufacturing is staged with short runs, medium runs, then full rate production, and the instructions change and solidify along the way. If you’re trying to provide the same level of detail and perfection in manufacturing instructions regardless of the rep rate, your firm could be much more profitable.

Americans have the highest skilled workers in the world, and the lowest skilled workers are found in the third world and developing countries where products spend their terminal days in manufacture. I don’t have any numbers to share with you, but I spent a full career in advanced and engineering development, transitioning product from research to prototype to off-shore manufacture, and in between through just about every kind of skilled facility, high, low, heavily automated, and not.

If your firm is only doing “some tweaking” after the product is in full scale manufacturing, you’re wasting a lot of money. ME can pay for itself in cost savings. In fact, if it’s not, you should cut it down to size so that it always does. You write as if your firm doesn’t track the Learning Curve to assure that it materializes. You recognize one aspect of this problem, an inevitable stage in high tech, that ME is supposed to solve when you wrote,

>>if you give them a detailed set of drawings with sets of detailed instructions AND you show them how to do it, they can still do it wrong, or cut corners to increase their throughput or to be able to leave early.

At the point you describe with a tone of bitterness, ME needs to redesign the product or the manufacturing processes to take the unfortunate kind of choice you describe out of the hands of the workers, and on a cost effective basis. This is a prime example of effecting the Learning Curve.

Have you ever worked with a shop that can make multiple copies of a complex, electro-mechanical system from oral descriptions and sketches? Have you ever worked with a third world manufacturing facility where English is not spoken and the workers have little life experience with any technology? These are the extremes of the full progression in the life cycle of a product’s manufacture. Within that structure, American corporations are shifting the distribution from the birth end to the death end by not introducing new products and extending the life of the old. It’s maximizing cash flow, not product lines and services, and certainly not the life cycle of the firm. It’s breaking even at all costs. It is what MBAs are taught to teach. It’s what they bring to American ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and capitalism.

American corporation boards are Michael Milken deal makers, acquiring weaker companies and product lines to cannibalize them and to absorb competition. They spend the seed money from sales along with their liquidated credit ratings that should have gone to new product development instead on their bonus pyramids. The boards ingest businesses into their own unviable corporate shells. Those bonuses go not for creating profit, but for deal making. Obama will redirect them from the goal of making bonuses to winning bailouts. He will deliver the coup de grace, bribing dead and dying companies of all types to produce politically correct product and services in facilities driven by triple cost electricity generated in distant wind farms or nascent volcanoes in return for relinquishing the last of their capitalist tendencies plus a pocket full of crisp new greenbacks. Come on down; the price is right.

The debates over bonuses, zombie banks and automobile manufacturers, hybrids, NAFTA, unionization, subprime mortgages, the sale of Congressional access, the rating agencies, globalization, bundled debt, socialism vs. capitalism, the Obama depression, overseas child labor, all have to be solved by those same congressmen against this backdrop of the little recognized disease infecting US public corporations.

Maybe in a Midwest manager, a baby Reagan this day was born, … .

I am in love with Rachel.

I learned two things today:
1. Coach knows his politics
2. Rachel is hot

There is only one way the US and UK are going to get to manageable levels of debt, INFLATION.

It's going to hurt everyone more than a PR on fran.

Very little time, but did want to respond to a couple of the redundant misconceptions that get trotted out every Rest Day.

First, the question "what should we do?" itself betrays socialist tendencies. Why does the Government--the State--have to do ANYTHING to insert itself into our economic life? The point of the State is to protect life, liberty, and property through the medium of law, which ultimately answers to the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. That's it.

Second, in the same sense that the most important part of the Hippocratic Oath is "Above all, do no harm", the PRIMARY role of the Government is to NOT MAKE THINGS WORSE. The assumption is that doing something--anything--is better than doing nothing, is analogous to the idea that you can improve your personal finances by spending every cent you have, then maxing out every line of credit you can obtain. This is, after all, doing "something". It satisfies the criteria. But it is stupid.

And what we are doing is stupid. We are maxing out our credit cards, which even I admit readily will--for some period of time--create prosperity. Why wouldn't it? We borrow money from China, spend it here, so businesses here benefit, and enjoy greater, temporary, prosperity.

However, it occurred to me yesterday that one of the primary systemic failings of Socialism is it eliminates the pain of failure. In private enterprise, stupidity earns bankrupcy. Ingenuity earns wealth. But if you are, say, the CEO of Fannie Mae, you have no reason not to bet the farm. Upside is you make huge amounts of money. Downside is you get formally nationalized, and fired with an enormous bonus, like those paid--uh, that WERE going to be paid--to AIG. Upside there, of course, is nobody will object to your bonus.

But you are insulated from the personal consequences of your own decisions. This breeds contempt for fundamentals, which is PRECISELY what happened at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

That's enough for now. What should we do? Let the losers fail, and begin immediately cutting our federal apparatus of state to the bone. We need to push everything we can back to the States, including all socialized medicine, and benefit.

One other thing, actually: why should Social Security not be viewed as a partial nationalization of our retirement system? It is mandatory, it is supposedly for our benefit, and none of us under 50 will ever see it. What merit can anyone see in this?

Why would we not be better off managing our own retirements? How is this not oppressive and stupid?

#122 Jeff

Just throwing it out there, but I'd say John Quincy Adams writing the Monroe Doctrine while secretary of state was pretty important. He also negotiated the Adams-Onis treaty, which Floridians appreciate (can't say I'm much of a Florida fan though). And Kissinger set predominant Vietnam policy. Those are the examples of important secretaries of state that come to mind immediately, I'm sure there are more. That being said, the secretary is frequently subserviant to the president and acts as an enabler, so any major diplomatic accomplishment a secretary may achieve will be credited to the president.

ha

Chris German #145,

Thanks for the bit of history. I felt sure there must have been a Secretary of State accomplishment from revolutionary days.

I was aware of the Adams-Onis treaty only by its net effects. Reading about it now, it may have been a strategic mistake – besides having used the wrong river as a border. It delayed the Spanish-American War, but better written it might have precluded that war altogether while Spain was weak. It seems to have laid the groundwork for a hot conflict based on the Monroe Doctrine, a contemporary diplomatic achievement written by the same man. Interesting.

For the United States to have a documented foreign policy ought to be a good idea, if its not too specific – e.g., be sure to mention human rights, but not freedom or democracy, eh? The Monroe Doctrine seems like a lot of puffery, invoked against only the weakest nations and not against anyone who really might have put up a fight. Giving it a lofty name like a United States Doctrine makes it into an Oscar for diplomacy -- collective narcissism.

Kissinger’s contribution to Vietnam was certainly important. It kept us from winning, ultimately, and unnecessarily cost us tens of thousands of American lives and a generation or two of lefties for its and his lack of understanding of the most elementary principle of warfare.

When I asked for significant accomplishments by any Secretary of State, I wasn’t thinking of negative ones. I had examples for those: from Kissinger, Korea, Colin Powell leading up to the Iraq Campaign, Mutually Assured Destruction. Wars are almost by definition scored as failures of diplomacy.

With respect to the current nuclear problems with North Korea and Iran, Secretary of Defense Gates was on my point this weekend when he sort of said “anything but diplomacy”:

>>I think, frankly, from my perspective the opportunity for success is probably more in economic sanctions in both places than it is in diplomacy.

>>Diplomacy [?] — perhaps if there is enough economic pressure placed on Iran, diplomacy can provide them an open door through which they can walk if they choose to change their policies, and so I think the two go hand in hand, but I think what gets them to the table is economic sanctions.

Or a couple of well-placed Daisy Cutters?

Even though Kim Jong Il and his pop proved themselves quite immune to economic sanctions, the tactic is still better than diplomacy.

Maybe this is just the Department of the Big Stick belittling the Department of Speak Softly.

Diplomacy is the name given to civility among the civil. For the uncivil, it delays conflict resolution to worsen it. Foreign policy tenet 1: Be Prepared.

The best book on negotiating that I can remember reading was "Getting to Yes". If my memory is correct, that is the book which developed the idea of BATNA, or Best alternative to negotiated agreement. The strength of your negotiating position is directly proportional to how badly your opponent--and make no mistake, this is in large measure an agonistic enterprise--needs to reach an agreement.

Our position in the Vietnam War, for example, at the end, was quite poor since the North Vietnamese Communists knew that the "Peace" (i.e. the people who were too stupid to know they were in fact pro-war) Movement had created a political situation through propaganda and agitation that made settlement politically necessary.

Diplomacy is always as good as our second option. If we are prepared to use military action, and the nations with whom we are negotiating know this, our position is quite good. This is how you simultaneously prepare for and prevent war. Only stupid people whose ENTIRE intellectual capacity can be reduced to bumper stickers fail to grasp this simple and historically ubiquitous fact.

Busy this week. That will have to do for now. I will say I hope Hannan keeps firing. I'm sure he will. What else can you do if you are principled and facing unprincipled corruption?