My friend Thea over at”I'm a Drama Mama” (she and her husband PhD Dave just had birthdays btw) does a reguar feature called Fitness Friday. I need to steal that. Was thinking about going with Running Rednesdays but that doesn't make any sense so I'll just go full appropriation and start posting a fitness post on fridays.

I've mumbled a bit around here about weight loss (down a dozen pouds so far this year), lifting and running again. Now that my wind's coming back and the leg injuries are fewer and further between I'll try to make ita regular w/e feature. Today? Elements: Part I.

I started running (in an “organized, non-play” sense)in the early 70's. Back then I was a young Central Ohio farmboy and therefore indestructable. Until that August day in 1975. My goal that summer was 1,000 from the end of track season through the end of cross country. I did it. Somewhere in my travels I've lost the log I kept of that summer. Keep thinking it'll turn up in a dust covered box somewhere. Back then I had no limits. Ran every day come hell or high water. Until that day. It was one of those end of summer days – temps in the 90's and high humidity. HH index was way over 100. And I did a 14 mile run. Not sure why. On the schedule? Who knows. We lived in the country so the trip around my block was a serious run. Had a 9 mile loop one way and an 11 mile loop the other. With no chance of cutting it short. Opted for the 11 mile loop with a 3 mile off-loop to make it 14. Had completed most of the 11, launched into the off-loop (out past the HS.) and had stated for hom – just over a mle to go. Then the chills hit. Felt like I'd been encased in an icecube. I was TERRIFIED. I sat in Steve Robinette's yard, next to the big ol' tree that no longer exists, for about 5 minutes. Then started walking home on wobbly legs. Made it. Figured I'd suffered heat stroke. And from thereafter I've had a 100 cut off for theHH index. When it hit's triple digits I lift or stay home. Back in the day that meant running early or late – or both. Today it means taking a day off. But better safe than sorry

Lookin' like POTUS may be rolling over to the Tea Party.  Be that as it may ... we've been hearing alot from the left lately that it "might be unconstitutional for Congress to fail to raise the debt ceiling, thereby calling the government’s debts in doubt".  If that IS the case (and IMHO it isn't) isn't The LEft also saying the the a POTUS veto of legislation increasing the debt ceiling also be unconstitutional?

More here.

President Obama vs Senator Obama

No one understands “what” is going to be cut.  Saying discretionary spending is going to be cut over ten years sounds like a Nigerian email scam.

So please Boehner, for the love of god, listen to your buddy Morgan…. Just cut federal employee pay.

Give Obama three choices:

1. Cut Federal Employee Pay in every department except Military by $30B per year (off baseline) starting 2012:  Ten year savings $300B

2. Cut Federal Employee Pay in every department except Military by $60B per year (off baseline) starting in 2012: Ten year savings $600B+

3. Cut Federal Employee Pay in every department except Military by $90B per year (off baseline) starting in 2012: Ten year savings $1T+.

Make Obama choose.  He can’t win.

Tell him that if he chooses low, when the credit card is maxed out again, he is getting the same deal next time.   Suddenly, ALL  Federal public employees are with our program.

Overnight, the entire Federal workforce will be desperate to help Republicans make real cuts.   Overnight, our “servants” will be finally pushing out the deadwood, over the howls of their union bosses.   Let’s get public employee interests aligned with the public.

To give you an idea of how easy these cuts would be, if we cut the full $90B off baseline, Federal Employees would be earning what they last received in 2008.   A $30B cut is just paying them what they received this year.

Mr. Speaker, put Federal Employee pay on the chopping block, Americans will be grateful to know where it is coming from… and that is not coming from them.   And the Tea Party Freshman will see you know which hostage to take.

liberal heads would've exploded across the fruited plain:

From the Post’s write-up of Obama’s speech to La Raza yesterday:

With a nod toward the deadlocked debt talks, he added: “Some want me to bypass Congress and change laws on my own.”

Keep reading this post . . .

 

Confederate Yankee has a handy reminder

People who were paying attention during the 2008 campaign must have been aware of:

(1) Mr. Obama's ranking as the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate, to the left even of Bernie Sanders, the only self-identified Socialist in the Congress. In a Congress controlled by Democrats, leaning further left than any in recent memory that was quite an accomplishment.

(2) Mr. Obama's inadvertent bit of honesty in telling Joe The Plumber that he thought "spreading the wealth around" was a good thing.

(3) Mr. Obama's fervent desire to ensure that energy prices should "necessarily skyrocket."

(4) Mr. Obama's threat to bankrupt the coal industry.

(5) This charming off-the-teleprompter rant: "We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. That’s not leadership."

(6) Mr. Obama's close association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, proponent of Black Liberation Theology the foundation of which is militant Marxism.

(7) The fact that Mr. Obama had no business or real world experience at all.

(8) A wide variety of comments and indicators revealing Mr. Obama's compulsion to tax, particularly "the wealthy."

(9) The use, by Mr. Obama and his surrogates, of Socialist terms like "social justice," and "redistributive change."

(10) Mr. Obama's often stated promise to "fundamentally change America."

I could extend the list virtually to infinity, but the question remains: how could these people have been surprised by anything Barack Obama has done?

 . . . . . .

It never occurred to these people that Mr. Obama would not be business-friendly? They were unaware that Marxism and Socialism are all about class warfare and inherently hostile to democracy, capitalism and America? Did they think that when Mr. Obama repeatedly and fervently promised to fundamentally change America that he was talking about changing the color of blue jeans?

“I’M JUST QUITTING.” “I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I don’t know. I mean, I see these guys — I see them with tears in their eyes — looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So as I stood against the wall here today, basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.”

Has it really come to this?

Call it credential inflation. Once derided as the consolation prize for failing to finish a Ph.D. or just a way to kill time waiting out economic downturns, the master’s is now the fastest-growing degree. The number awarded, about 657,000 in 2009, has more than doubled since the 1980s, and the rate of increase has quickened substantially in the last couple of years, says Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. Nearly 2 in 25 people age 25 and over have a master’s, about the same proportion that had a bachelor’s or higher in 1960.

“Several years ago it became very clear to us that master’s education was moving very rapidly to become the entry degree in many professions,” Dr. Stewart says. The sheen has come, in part, because the degrees are newly specific and utilitarian. These are not your general master’s in policy or administration. Even the M.B.A., observed one business school dean, “is kind of too broad in the current environment.” Now, you have the M.S. in supply chain management, and in managing mission-driven organizations. There’s an M.S. in skeletal and dental bioarchaeology, and an M.A. in learning and thinking.

I’ve always said his instincts were more inclined toward ruling than leading. This is not the first time he’s suggested that a dictatorship might be preferable to a presidency.

But for a guy who campaigned for the job, he sure does complain a lot:

“I’m sympathetic to your view that this would be easier if I could do this entirely on my own. It would mean all these conversations I’ve had over the last three weeks, I could have been spending time with Malia and Sasha instead,” President Obama said at a town hall.

If he’s so damned unhappy, and so resentful of time taken away from his family (golfing, apparently doesn’t count) then I think we should free up his time in 2012 and let him get on with the Post-Presidential Life o’ Perks and Privilege he’s obviously craving.

from Elizabeth Scalia