July 2011 archive

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

What did I say about the wicked?  Oh… yeah.

Yesterday was hit and run day as a chase car plowed into 2 riders but neither one of them were forced to retire.  Yet.  It might have been bigger, new GC leader Voeckler was close enough to get whacked in the leg by Flecha as Flecha spun into a barbed wire fence.

The actual big crash happened earlier on a rain slick descent and took out Vinokourov who was a legitimate contender for Yellow in Paris.  In all 8 riders retired, nearly doubling the list to 18.

On the Stage Sanchez (Louis-Leon) had the victory with Voeckler and Casar close behind.  Almost 4 minutes back was a group including Gilbert, Evans, the 2 Schlecks, Sanchez (Samuel), and Contador.  Hushovd finished tied for 79th on the day, 6:47 behind.

In the General Classification the 2 Medium Mountain days have bubbled up some of the usual suspects-

We have raced 989 miles of 2132 or 46%.

BruceMcF’s assessment–

When the front of the peleton crashes overcooking a corner going 50mph+ downhill, that defines “a mess”. The yellow and green jersey wearers made the decision to neutralize the race until those involved still riding rejoined the peleton ~ despite the fact that it assured the yellow jersey wearer that he would surrender the maillot jeune, though the fact that he had not expected to still be wearing it today may have made the decision easier.

In the race for the Yellow, Voeckler is not considered to be a serious GC threat, so it serves the interests of the main GC contenders for him to be in yellow into the Pyrenees. The three fancied race winners all finished same time, but several podium threats crashed out, while Lulu Sanchez vaulted into second place, so he will have to be taken seriously as long as he holds the time.

In the race for Green, Phillipe Gilbert gained “best of the rest” sprint points at the only part of today’s stage close enough to flat to put a sprint point, and “best of the rest” points at the finish, to add 30 points to his Green Jersey talley ~ one more than the difference between winning a flat stage and finishing 8th. Cadel Evans finished “third best of the rest” to add 15 points to his 5th place in the Green Jersey, and Thor Hushovd picked up 7 points at the intermediate sprint just being near the front of the peleton as his team was still driving in an ultimately futile effort to hold the yellow. Thor goes into the rest day without having to worry about defending yellow, so can start thinking about staging an attack to move up in the Green Jersey competition.

Vs. Rest Day coverage starts at 8 am.

• Jada Yuan Previews the Hell Out of the Tour de France in the New Yorker, 7/1/11 at 2:00 PM
• Le Tour 2011 official site
• Your The Stars Hollow Gazette Le Tour coverage tags-
• Le Tour
• Le Tour 2010
• Le Tour 2011

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

July 11 is the 192nd day of the year (193rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 173 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1789, Jacques Necker is dismissed as France’s Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille.

Necker was seen as the savior of France while the country stood on the brink of ruin, but his actions could not stop the French Revolution. Necker put a stop to the rebellion in the Dauphiné by legalizing its assembly, and then set to work to arrange for the summons of the Estates-General of 1789. He advocated doubling the representation of the Third Estate to satisfy the people. But he failed to address the matter of voting – rather than voting by head count, which is what the people wanted, voting remained as one vote for each estate. Also, his address at the Estates-General was terribly miscalculated: it lasted for hours, and while those present expected a reforming policy to save the nation, he gave them financial data. This approach had serious repercussions on Necker’s reputation; he appeared to consider the Estates-General to be a facility designed to help the administration rather than to reform government.

Necker’s dismissal on 11 July 1789 made the people of France incredibly angry and provoked the storming of the Bastille on July 14. The king recalled him on 19 July. He was received with joy in every city he traversed, but in Paris he again proved to be no statesman. Believing that he could save France alone, he refused to act with the Comte de Mirabeau or Marquis de Lafayette. He caused the king’s acceptance of the suspensive veto, by which he sacrificed his chief prerogative in September, and destroyed all chance of a strong executive by contriving the decree of 7 November by which the ministry might not be chosen from the assembly. Financially he proved equally incapable for a time of crisis, and could not understand the need of such extreme measures as the establishment of assignats in order to keep the country quiet. Necker stayed in office until 1790, but his efforts to keep the financial situation afloat were ineffective. His popularity had vanished, and he resigned with a broken reputation.

Before we get started, let me be clear that any information contained here, although to be best of my knowledge accurate, in in no way intended to be a substitute for advice and care from licensed medical professionals.  OK, disclaimer stated.

Aspirin is one of the first synthetic drugs, and is still in wide use after over 100 years.  It was first marketed by Bayer in 1899, and sales are still strong despite competition from drugs like acetaminophen,  ibuprofen, and naproxin sodium.  Bayer has in the past week or two come out with a new advert about its new “quick acting” aspirin.

This material is “quick acting” because the particle size is much smaller than that of regular aspirin.  Since aspirin is only slowly soluble in water, the greater surface area for the same mass does speed up absorption.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Progressive Populism

Chairman Mica says:

this proposal maximizes the value of our available infrastructure funding through better leveraging, streamlining the project approval process, attracting private sector investment, and cutting the federal bureaucracy, … Most importantly, this six-year proposal provides the stability states need to plan major transportation improvements and create long-term jobs.

Decoding that, Chairman Mica is saying: “Screw You, Cities”.

And of course, a bit of “screw you countryside” too, since those votes can be taken for granted.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Australia sets carbon tax to fight climate change

By Madeleine Coorey, AFP

11 hrs ago

The Republicans “crazies” are flooding the primary field with felons, the head of the KKK and the religious fanatics that make the Westborough Baptist Church members sound sane.

GOP candidates court crackpot constituency

Rachel reviews the role of the social conservative fringe in 2012 Republican politics.

I think the GOP is smelling success in their goal of making President Obama a one term president. Even bloggers like the Rude Pundit doubt Obama:

At some point, Obama has to squash McConnell and Boehner like bugs (although he probably won’t)

Now that Boehner has once again walked away from the negotiating table, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear on Fox News Sunday that his top priority is stopping Obama’s re-election:

Even with the country on the brink of default, the Senate’s highest ranking Republican says his “single most important” goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told National Journal’s Major Garrett in October.

Fox News’ Bret Baier asked McConnell Sunday if that was still his major objective.

“Well, that is true,” McConnell replied. “That’s my single most important political goal, along with every active Republican in the country.”

“But that is in 2012,” he added. “Our biggest goal for this year is get this country straightened out and we can’t get this country straightened out if we don’t do something about spending, about deficit, about debt and get the economy moving again. So our goal is to have a robust vibrant economy to benefit all Americans.”

McConnell told Baier that a “Grand Bargain,” where Republicans agree to tax hikes in exchange for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, was likely off the table.

“I think it is. Everything they told me and the Speaker is to get a big package would require big tax increases in the middle of the economic situation that is extraordinarily difficult with 9.2% unemployment. We think it’s a terrible idea. It’s a job-killer.”

Priorities aside, what all these politicians don’t seem to understand is that austerity is the “job killer”, especially with the the job market and wages sinking like a rock. President Obama’s grand plan of $4 trillion in deficit reductions with cuts to vital social safety nets as the carrot and minuscule revenue increases, is even worse. This is all about maintaining the status quo for the wealthiest who have proven since the Bush tax cuts that they will just keep the money and screw the masses.

John Aravosis sums up this debacle quite succinctly:

Someone’s being played.  First the Republicans walked out of the Biden talks.  Now Boehner is refusing the President’s more than generous offer to cut Social Security and Medicare as part of a larger deal absurdly skewed towards GOP goals.  It’s those pesky tax increases, you see.  It’s just not enough that the President caved on a clean debt ceiling, caved on having an additional stimulus instead of spending cuts, caved on postponing spending cuts until the economy is well again, caved on at least making spending cuts equal to tax increases, and caved on keeping cuts to Social Security and Medicare out of this.

Mind you, it’s not entirely clear what the Republicans have even agreed to here in terms of any tax increases.

So the GOP walks, and Obama will just have to sweeten the deal to “save the hostages.”  Did anyone else see this coming?

Someone is being played alright, the American people.

I have no hope for any rational solution that is going to improve the economy and the job situation for Americans. It makes no difference who is in the White House at this point, or in 2012.  Obama will never stand up to McConnell and Boehner simply because he agrees with them. They are playing Russian Roulette with a loaded gun at the American people’s head.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

July 10 is the 191st day of the year (192nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 174 days remaining until the end of the year.

1925, Scopes Monkey Trial begins,

In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called “Monkey Trial” begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.

The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” With local businessman George Rappalyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. Hearing of this coordinated attack on Christian fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero, volunteered to assist the prosecution. Soon after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in the defense, and the stage was set for one of the most famous trials in U.S. history.

On July 10, the Monkey Trial got underway, and within a few days hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton as preachers set up revival tents along the city’s main street to keep the faithful stirred up. Inside the Rhea County Courthouse, the defense suffered early setbacks when Judge John Raulston ruled against their attempt to prove the law unconstitutional and then refused to end his practice of opening each day’s proceeding with prayer.

Trial

The ACLU had originally intended to oppose the Butler Act on the grounds that it violated the teacher’s individual rights and academic freedom, and was therefore unconstitutional. Mainly because of Clarence Darrow, this strategy changed as the trial progressed, and the earliest argument proposed by the defense once the trial had begun was that there was actually no conflict between evolution and the creation account in the Bible (a viewpoint later called theistic evolution). In support of this claim, they brought in eight experts on evolution. Other than Dr. Maynard Metcalf, a zoologist from Johns Hopkins University, the judge would not allow these experts to testify in person. Instead, they were allowed to submit written statements so that their evidence could be used at the appeal. In response to this decision, Darrow made a sarcastic comment to Judge Raulston (as he often did throughout the trial) on how he had been agreeable only on the prosecution’s suggestions, for which he apologized the next day, keeping himself from being found in contempt of court.

The presiding judge John T. Raulston was accused of being biased towards the prosecution and frequently clashed with Darrow. At the outset of the trial Raulston quoted Genesis and the Butler Act. He also warned the jury not to judge the merit of the law (which would become the focus of the trial) but on the violation of the act, which he called a ‘high misdemeanor’. The jury foreman himself wasn’t convinced of the merit of the Act but acted, as did most of the jury, on the instructions of the judge.

By the later stages of the trial, Clarence Darrow had largely abandoned the ACLU’s original strategy and attacked the literal interpretation of the Bible as well as Bryan’s limited knowledge of other religions and science.

Only when the case went to appeal did the defense return to the original claim that the prosecution was invalid because the law was essentially designed to benefit a particular religious group, which would be unconstitutional.

Scuderia Marlboro UPC has a hissy fit

You know it’s nothing unusual for the boys from Maranello to fail to engineer a competitive car and use their influence with the FIA to change the rules in their favor, but their days of influence may be over.  There’s no doubt at this point that they’re behind the mid season Off Throttle Blown Diffuser rule change and they’re looking pretty sad and pathetic when only Sauber (who uses their engines) supports them.

Things are not happy in the Formula One Teams Association, there’s also the fact the Concorde Agreement has expired and is extended only through a letter, not a contract, through 2012 following a heated dispute that led many teams to threaten to go CART.  While nominally guided by Martin Whitmarsh of McLaren and Ross Brawn of Mercedes the FOTA is widely viewed as a tool of Bernie Ecclestone who has a distinct conflict of interest and a hazy history of influence on the FIA itself with his cozy relationship to Max Mosley the fifth columnist Nazi’s son who got the boot for his sexcapades.

Interestingly enough this was the scoop of the recently deceased and unlamented News of the World who published sick Nazi Sex Orgy by Neville Thurlbeck so who knows what to think?

It’s a small world after all, it’s a small, small world.

Sometimes it helps if you sing.

There will be another meeting before Nürburgring (did I mention I like irony?) which probably won’t help much since the FIA is insisting on unanimous consent.

Oh, car racing.  Haven’t the foggiest.  No spoilers you know.

• F1: Silverstone Qualifying
• Formula One Official Site
• Speed Racecast

Eventually I’ll have pretty tables, stay tuned.

Issoire to Saint-Flour 130 miles

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Well first of all Saint Flour is not for baking.  Yes I need more sleep, coffee or both.

Teams were pretty cautious the first day in the Medium Mountains (only one more to go after today) but given Friday’s crash fest that’s not so surprising.  However time is running out for the ‘punchers’, the not quite climbers, not quite sprinters like Hushovd and Gilbert to make their mark otherwise you’ll have to start rooting on the Schleck brothers and Evans if you’re not a Contador fan.

He’ll be starting his same old 1:42 back from Hushovd who expressed his surprise at being able to hold on as long as he has to the maillot jaune.  It’s a measure of how the field has thinned though that Contador has moved from 82nd to 20th in rank with no change at all in that margin.  On the other hand nobody has been able to put a move on him since Stage 3.

This Stage has 2 category 4 bumps at the end and 3 category 3s and 2s so there are a fair number of ‘King of the Mountain’ climber points available.  The sprint checkpoint is only 19 miles from the end so your guess is as good as mine if the Green Jersey competitors will have caught up by then or been left in the dust.

Whatever happens it will surely be more enlightening than the Sunday Stupid Factory.

Tomorrow is a Rest Day but Vs. will be filling all the regular time slots (8 am, 11:30 am, 3 pm, and 8 pm) with a summary of the action so far.  I’ll be covering today’s results.

Today’s coverage starts at 8 am.

• Jada Yuan Previews the Hell Out of the Tour de France in the New Yorker, 7/1/11 at 2:00 PM
• Le Tour 2011 official site
• Your The Stars Hollow Gazette Le Tour coverage tags-
• Le Tour
• Le Tour 2010
• Le Tour 2011