http://www.indecision2008.com/sitewide/video_player/view/default/swf.jhtml
Leave it to Jon Stewart to sum up the presidency of George W. Bush.
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Runner’s diary, Monday (in recovery)
Yes, I pulled it off. I finished the 35th annual LBI Commemorative 18-mile Run on Sunday, sprinting home (yes, I did) with a 3:33:25 (that’s three hours, 33 minutes and 25 seconds — or an 11:51 pace per mile), finishing 509 and making it back with about 15 minutes to spare before they closed the finish line.
I have to admit that there was much walking — way too much, to be honest — especially after the 10-mile mark. It was brutally hot and humid and I was dehydrated pretty early. I walked a little bit between mile eight and 10 and then a lot afterward. Paul Vaccarro, a 24-year-old trainer at the gym I go to, ran the race in 3:01:27 , while Mike Kokoszka, a 33-year-old friend (pictured with me above as we passed North 2nd Street in Surf City just shy of the marker for mile 10 — my wife, Annie, took the shot) who helped me get through the training, finished at 3:33:42. He actually ran a better race than I did for most of it and didn’t feel the need at the end to lay it on the line.
I think I was trying to atone for the miserable mood I had been in during the middle of the race. For a few miles — probably, 11 through 13 or so, when I let Mike take off ahead of me — I felt a bit sorry for myself and disappointed until I decided there was no shame in walking some. That’s when I caught Mike again and we set small goals and targets, which helped a lot. My legs were on fire by the end from the lactic acid build up and the muscles had tightened from walking too much. But we soldiered on.
Basically, we walked and ran on and off and somehow I found a little (very little) in the tank to finish with a sprint.
So, we did it. I can’t say I’d ever do it again — but then I won’t rule it out. I will just have to stay noncommittal on it and see what happens down the road.
I am sore today — mostly the lower back and my quads are barking with tightness — but I am hopeful I can get back on the road by the end of the week and begin looking ahead to the Viking 5K in South Brunswick in November.
And thanks to all the people who lined the street, cheering on the runners. It really helped during those moments when I felt pretty lousy.
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Runner’s diary, Friday — countdown to Sunday
No running the last two days, and none planned for tomorrow. Let me legs rest and see what happens.
I did 10 minutes each yesterday on the rowing machine, the elliptical trainer and treadmill walking briskly, but no strain and I did about a half hour of stretching.
Today, nothing. Tonight, I’ll start with some carbs for dinner, maybe fruit and yogurt for breakfast tomorrow and then orzos, maybe some linguine for the other meals. I’ll also do a couple of long sets of stretches and get to bed early.
Two days and counting. Almost here.
As my friend Mike said today, “Let’s knock this thing out.”
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Breakdown, go ahead and give it to me
When Rush Limbaugh uttered those fateful words earlier this week comparing an organization of Iraq War veterans who are critical of the war and the Bush administration to suicide bombers — and despite his pleas and the assertions of his apologists, there is just no other way to read his comments — he may have sounded the death bell for conservative talk radio’s influence on political discourse.
Considered within the context of Bill O’Reilly’s increasingly bizarre behavior (his use of a body-language reader, his regular reference to stray comments on liberal and progressive sites, his conflation of fringe groups with what I’ll call the mainstream left), the oddball rants of people like Glenn Beck (I support free speech, but not the speech with which I disagree) and Limbaugh’s own off-the-charts nuttiness, the Limbaugh comments are just another sign of the sputtering of a movement spinning in upon itself, unable to deal with its own growing irrelevancy.
It’s not just the war that is at issue here, but the high-partisanism (Republicans good as apple pie, all Democrats evil Nazi wimps) and the meanness. I think people are starting to get wise to the whole thing — I won’t pretend that the conservative hosts aren’t the big men on the cable campus, but their ratings shares have been shrinking despite having an advantage in sheer number of hosts and a headstart in terms of access to the airwaves.
Give the liberals some time and a shot and they will level the playing field.
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It’s not torture if I say it’s not torture
The New York Times yesterday revealed the existence of two memos that contradicted Bush administration claims that it was not engaging in torture.
From the story:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.
But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.
Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.
The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.
Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.
The revelation has Congress — well, actually, Democratic lawmakers — calling for copies of the memo as a prelude to a potential investigation.
That would be a start. But given that the memos appear to condone behavior that violates the Geneva Convention — and, therefore, United States law — it is imperative that we go beyond simple investigations and put the I-word (you know: impeachment) on the table.
If we are to value the governmental structure we’ve created, one that shares powers among equal branches and that values the rule of law, then we cannot allow this kind of imperial attitude to stand.
Neal Katyal, who represented several Guantanamo detainees before the U.S. Supreme Court, told Keith Olbermann last night that the memos are more evidence of a White House that views itself as above the law.
He shouldn’t be. And we shouldn’t allow him to be.
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