By Will Meyerhofer, on Thu Jul 3, 2014 at 1:30 PM ET “I never thought I’d end up working as a contract attorney doing doc review in a windowless basement,” my client bemoaned. “But then I read that piece about the lawyer who’s working as a clerk at WalMart. At least I’ve still got it over him in terms of job prestige.”
 Well, you know how obsessed lawyers are with job prestige.
There’s a phrase, “The Downward Drift,” that crops up in discussions of serious mental health diagnoses like schizophrenia, and/or chronic substance abuse. The idea is that you are afflicted with serious mental illness, or become addicted to a harmful substance, which in turn leads to a slow, inevitable slide downward in terms of social class. Before long, the wealthy, Upper East Side business executive suffering from schizophrenia and/or severe alcoholism finds himself jobless, friendless and eventually even homeless, sleeping in shelters and begging for change.
Weirdly, the same phenomenon – the Downward Drift – affects people who acquire Juris Doctor degrees. It sort of makes sense, since – at least nowadays, with people like me bellowing jeremiads on every street corner, it would be evidence of utter madness – textbook psychosis, perhaps – for anyone to head in the direction of law school, at least unless that law school is one of the top three in the country and someone else is footing the bill. But try to persuade a kid with a high LSAT score not to apply to law school – it’s nearly as tough as persuading a kid who’s gotten into a “top-500” (or whatever) law school into not attending (especially if he’s “won” one of those risible $20,000 so-called “scholarships” they hand out like pushers showering crack vials on newbie users.) If that task sounds Herculean (or Sisyphean), try talking a kid who’s blown $80,000 on his first year of law school out of “finishing up” the other two (useless) years – even if he’s hated every moment of the experience so far. This is where the parallel with addiction comes in because I guarantee you it’s no easier than convincing a chronic alcoholic that ten martinis is really enough. Even my own much-vaunted powers of persuasion come up short at that juncture. Because it’s impossible. An addict will keep drinking and drugging until he passes out face down in a puddle on the sidewalk. And a law student will blow that additional $160,000 to finish those two more pointless years. It’s a sure thing – just like zombies like eating flesh, the sun likes rising in the morning and Pat Robertson likes blaming bad weather on the homosexual agenda.
So how does the “Downward Drift” work, at least for lawyers?
Read the rest of…
Will Meyerhofer: The Downward Drift
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jul 3, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET My ingenious solution to compromise when two strong-willed individuals are trying to fairly resolve a disagreement:
By Josh Bowen, on Thu Jul 3, 2014 at 10:00 AM ET Globally-recognized personal trainer Josh Bowen will this week be providing intensive physical workout routines for The RP as he prepares to compete in the World Series of Poker.
This morning’s workout is below.
Visit Josh’s web site here and sign up for his newsletter here.
By Josh Bowen, on Thu Jul 3, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET 
Do me a favor and Google “ab workout” and see what the response will be. 59,000,000 results for “ab workout!” That is astounding and also very scary. The general consensus of anyone with a great stomach (both male and female) is they must do thousands of crunches and/or sit-ups. When in all reality the best stomach physiques have less to do with how often they exercises their “core” and more to do with what they fueled their body with i.e. what they ate.
Shocking huh? You were under the impression that a six pack came from doing tons of crunches? Wrong. In fact, let me show you how ineffective doing sit-ups and crunches can be, per the American Council on Exercise burning 3,500 calories through situps alone requires you to perform an impossible number of reps. If a 145-pound person performs situps at a moderate pace of 20 per minute, she burns about 4 calories per minute. To burn 3,500 calories, this person would need to perform situps for 875 minutes — and perform an unattainable total of 17,500 sit-ups.
I don’t know about you but the rate of return is not in your favor. So you may now be asking yourself how do I achieve a great abdominal physique? Simple answer; eat better.
However, the article today has nothing to do with how to make your abs pop and everything to do with alternatives to work your midsection and strengthen the muscles involved to reduce lower back pain and combined with a great strength training program and proper nutrition can give you the body you have always wanted.
Below is a select group of my favorite “core” exercises. Each one involves multiple muscle groups and can be added to most every program. I have included videos of each of these exercises with a brief (very brief) description.
*Since my audience is the general population, I did not feel the need to go over everyone’s head with complicated anatomy, physics and biomechanics. Most people’s attention span is very short, the videos are straight to the point but if you need more explanation on any of the below, please feel free to email me at jbtrainer21@gmail.com.
Anti-Crunch Exercises
The Plank
Variation: Reaching Plank
With proper alignment, straighten your body to 180 degrees with hips facing down and no excessive curve in the back. Slowly extend one arm out and then place it back on the table or ground.
Variation: Plank Rotation
Same as above, however this time rotate at the shoulders and hips from left to right touching the ground or table slowly. Rotate through the shoulders not the lower back.
Read the rest of…
Josh Bowen: The Anti-Crunch — 10 Better Exercises than Crunches or Sit-ups
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Jul 2, 2014 at 2:16 PM ET  Yesterday’s $1500 no limit hold ’em tournament was a wild ride. For hours, I was grinding and grinding effectively, doubling, then tripling my stack.
Then, I was dealt the worst hand of all: Two Kings. Of course, two kings is the second best opening hand in all of hold ’em. But when one of your table mates is dealt the best hand — two Aces — you are in a whole mess of trouble.
When you are dealt two kings, you feel like the world is in your hands — and a whole mess of your opponents’ chips. You are in clearly a dominant position against any other hand, and when no ace appears on the flop, you are almost guaranteed to be in a heavily dominant position. You know, after all, your opponents only have a .45% chance of drawing aces. A mathematical game, you can’t operate so cautiously as to fear that slim a probability.
So when it happens, two kings are a killer. You have less than an 18% chance of prevailing.
And in my case, the odds held. And I was knocked out of the tournament.
Good news is that there’s another tournament that begins today, and it is one of my favorites: The Little One for One Drop. I wrote about last year’s event and the incredible “One Drop” global water charity it supports here. And I’m back for another try today.
I’ve also tried to change my luck with a new fashion strategy. Take a look at my outfit, and the first person who guesses my shirt fabric wins a prize.
Wish me luck. And hope that I don’t get two kings again.
By Brooke Masters, on Wed Jul 2, 2014 at 1:30 PM ET  The US financial regulatory system can be described as a bowl of spaghetti. Multiple watchdogs with overlapping jurisdictions routinely tangle with each other over how best to keep markets safe and honest.
Financial groups routinely moan about the contradictory requests and soaring compliance costs that result.
This week, Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney-general, reminded investors why the US system of competitive regulation can sometimes work in their best interests. Mr Schneiderman fired a warning shot on Wednesday into the murky world of dark pools – trading venues where investors buy and sell large blocks of shares anonymously, with prices posted publicly only after deals are done.
He alleged that Barclays’ pool, Barclays LX, favoured high-speed traders while misleading institutional investors.
Click here to read the rest of the piece in Financial Times.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jul 2, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  Today I learned that if you wake up from a dream in which you drank down 3 full glasses of water and 3 bottles of water and were looking for another cup of water to guzzle when you awoke, chances are high that when you wake up you will discover that you feel thirsty.
And it is likely you will get out of bed and stumble sleepily into the kitchen and quickly drink one and a half glasses of water and half a glass of lemonade. And then go back to bed and turn off the light.
Turn on the light again after 2 minutes. Stumble back into the kitchen and drink down another half a cup of really cold ice water. Then post about the experience on Facebook. And calculate that in the past 20 minutes you have drank a total of 8 and a half glasses of liquids, real and imaginary. You then make a mental note to yourself that it isn’t as difficult as you had thought to drink 8 glasses of water a day, as everyone seems to recommend — although admittedly 6 of your glasses of water were drunk during a dream and shouldn’t really count.
You will then get back in bed and turn out the light.
And still feel thirsty.
By RP Nation, on Wed Jul 2, 2014 at 10:00 AM ET  Fifty years ago, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I was in elementary school and had no clue about the law that would drastically change daily life for African-Americans. I surely had no idea how it would improve life for white Americans like me.
This historic legislation outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin at “places of public accommodation.” The movie theater I frequented had to discard its “coloreds only” entrance and the segregated balcony. Restaurants where we ate had to let African-Americans out of the kitchens and into the dining areas. My future friends, like state Sen. Reggie Tate of Memphis, were no longer excluded from admission to the Mid-South Fair six days a week.
The new law gave the U.S. attorney general authority to seek redress when school boards deprived students “of the equal protection of the laws.” Two years later, my school in Weakley County, Tennessee, was desegregated. And for the first time, I began to spend time daily with African-American children. I had new friends in the classrooms, and the lessons went beyond reading and writing.
After signing the Civil Rights Act, President Johnson said to an aide, “We (Democrats) have lost the South for a generation.” The president underestimated the political impact, which continues now two generations later.
In 1966, just two years later, the people of Tennessee for the first time popularly elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate.
In 1968, in Memphis, the sanitation workers went on strike and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was struck down. In Nashville the Republicans took control of the state House of Representatives for the first time since Reconstruction. Then in 1970, Tennessee elected a second Republican to the U.S. Senate, throwing out Democratic Sen. Albert Gore Sr.
Despite the backlash, the Civil Rights Act changed customs and changed society. With those changes, what could not have been imagined in 1964 became reality in 2008: An African-American was elected president.
Yet some Republicans responded to this historic progress with crude jokes and racist appeals to fellow bigots. In just one of many examples, a Tennessee Republican state legislative aide sent e-mails caricaturing President Barack Obama’s official portrait as two cartoon eyes peering from a black background.
When in 2010 I ran for Congress, racism was too easy to find. I can still see the angry face of the man at the duck supper who responded to my handshake with “Lemme talk with you about your (N-word) president.” And the scowling man at the rodeo who snarled, “I don’t shake hands with darkies or Democrats — and they’re often the same.”
Thankfully, most Republicans are not racists. But while most Republicans would never discriminate, degrade or demean, their leaders’ legislative actions still repress voters and reverse progress.
All over the country, Republicans are pushing new impediments to discourage and decrease voting by minorities and low-income citizens. While Republicans say they oppose big and oppressive government, they rammed through Tennessee’s government ID law, now notorious as one of the nation’s most burdensome. Only certain government cards now are acceptable at the polls, after Republicans outlawed using a Social Security card or even photo ID cards from the Memphis public library or the University of Memphis. Those without a driver’s license – nationally, 25% of African-Americans – now must go to a driver’s license station, but fewer than half of our counties even have such a station.
Republicans claim these laws fight voter fraud, but instances of persons trying to vote while using someone else’s identity are almost nonexistent. And researchers at the University of Southern California showed strong evidence that “discriminatory intent underlies legislative support for (these new) voter identification laws.”
The first book of the Bible teaches, “So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them.” God’s image does not have a color, but it does have a creed. The Apostle Paul put it this way in Galatians 3: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Our American ideals long have taught that we are one. The Great Seal of the United States proclaims “E pluribus unum” — from many, one.
But it was just 50 years ago today that statesmen and idealists and people of a deep faith in Almighty God and in America together created the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Let us celebrate their good work for justice and freedom. And let us carry on their good work, so all God’s children can live in peace and love in truth.
Roy Herron is chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party. Communications director Rick Herron and interns Garrett Jennings and Hannah Oakley of the state Democratic Party assisted in researching and writing this column. This piece was cross-posted, with the permission of the author, in the Commercial Appeal.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Jul 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET Lawyer jokes are low-hanging-fruit – everyone knows at least a few, and it’s far too easy to make fun of ambulance-chasing caricatures or frivolous lawsuits against fast food outlets when people spill things on themselves. (Although I do have one favorite: A priest, a rabbi, a nun and a lawyer walk into a bar, and the bartender says, “What is this, some kind of a joke?” But I digress . . . )
Some of my best friends really are lawyers, and they do everything from defending homeowners against wrongful evictions to the mind-numbingly-dull paperwork on which most small businesses depend. (Admission: My father was a small business contract lawyer, and when I was trying to decide whether to go into law or show business, he informed me that while law was a noble profession, “what separates humans from animals is our ability to appreciate art.” He then added “plus you don’t get applause in court.”)
Suffice to say, while I didn’t end up going to law school, I firmly believe in the power of law to protect people, and I understand the vital role played by lawsuits. However, John Boehner’s threat to sue President Obama for some yet-to-be-specified-disregard-of-something-he-hasn’t-figured-out-yet bears no resemblance to a valid lawsuit – instead, it sounds like when a 10-year-old threatens to run away from home because his parents are so mean, they won’t let him do, uh, whatever it was he wanted to do but forgot.
So this week’s song combines my general understanding of law with the show business career toward which my lawyer father pointed me . . .
Note: Show Lauren we need more entertainers and fewer lawyers by supporting her new CD, a compilation of greatest hits from these videos. You can hear clips and learn more here.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jul 1, 2014 at 5:18 PM ET After two hours, I’ve built up my stack from 4500 to 5950. No special hands, just grinding out small victories. My best move was folding an ace queen when I was convinced my opponent had an ace king. I was right!
Biggest news: I met Trishelle from Real World Las Vegas
Most embarrassing news: I recognized Trishelle from Real World Las Vegas and introduced myself to her.
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The Recovering Politician Bookstore
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Well, you know how obsessed lawyers are with job prestige.
