40 - 6 meals/lower body PT/2.5-3L water 41 - 4 meals/20m cardio-shadowboxing/2.5L water 42 - today/free day
Crappy workouts, but not half bad considering I've been fighting a cold since Thursday night or so. The requisite runny nose, watery eyes, sneezing, headaches, etc, etc. And the weirdest part, whenever I get sick, all my old injuries [neck, hip, knee] tighten up and hurt like hell. Wonder why that is, exactly, but they do...
But the only time I've actually felt decent during the last couple days is during my workout, as lethargic and half-assed as those sessions might have been. Thank the invisible sky gods for endorphins and adrenaline, I guess.
Day off today, with some hiking/active recovery over with the Adachi clan. Pics to follow, as per usual.
"A Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation official has told ESPN.com the government body that oversees the state's boxing commission has opened a preliminary investigation into Kimbo Slice's knockout loss to little-known Seth Petruzelli on Saturday."
'Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war, in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch, and the blood boils with hate, and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need of seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.'
"Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded. The inquiry found, however, that she was within her right to dismiss her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who was the trooper’s boss.
A 263-page report released by lawmakers in Alaska on Friday, found that Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, had herself exerted pressure to get Trooper Michael Wooten dismissed, as well as allowed her husband and subordinates to press for his firing, as a result of a divorce proceeding between him and Ms. Palin’s sister in 2005."
"ABC News reports that, 'despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary,' the NSA listens in on ordinary phone calls of US citizens overseas, and military intercept operators who work at the National Security Agency (NSA) enjoy sharing and saving recordings of US officers' pillow-talk and phone sex calls with their spouses back home.
[Intercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk] says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of 'cuts' that were available on each operator's computer.
'Hey, check this out,' Faulk says he would be told, 'there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy',' Faulk told ABC News.
Faulk said he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall's 'smoke pit,' but ended up feeling badly about his actions."
"These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,” said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA’s Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.
Kinne described the contents of the calls as “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.”
The current administration and the Republicans in congress, with partial assists from the Democrats, have, over the past eight years, embraced a doctrine of torture, advocated and acted on a doctrine of pre-emptive war, put in place a surveillance state, looted the treasury, attempted to suspend habaes corpus, and are now attempting to nationalize the banking industry.
Meanwhile, the leading lights of the conservative movement are debating whether Obama is a Maoist and calling him a radical.
My only hope is that the Republicans, after getting it handed to them in the general election, will decide that they do not want Barack Hussein Obama listening in to their bulk orders to wetsuit manufacturers, rediscover their devotion to civil liberties and their fear of governtment, and work to roll back some of the crap that has taken place. And remember, many Democrats have been complicit in this."
"For the third debate in a row, actual polling data last night (as well as uncommitted focus groups) revealed that most Americans believe that the Democratic candidate (Obama/Biden) won decisively. In stark contrast, this is what the poll of Fox News viewers found:
In the real world among Americans, Obama won the debate by 15-30 points, but in Fox News World, McCain won the debate by 86-12%. That’s what Fox News is and who their viewers are: a right-wing propaganda outlet with an almost entirely unpersuadable viewership."
"Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld is at least the sixth JAG officer prosecuting cases in Guantanamo Bay to resign or request a transfer in protest of how the Pentagon is administering the tribunals. His letter of resignation was revealed late last month during proceedings in the case against accused enemy combatant Mohammed Jawad.
Vandeveld quit because he was alarmed at what he says were gross due process violations...
Vandeveld goes on to say that past prosecutors in Gitmo cases who have expressed similar concerns about due process experienced retaliation from higher-ups at the Pentagon...
In addition to the six prosecutors, Col. Stephen Abraham—tapped by the Bush administration to run the Guantanamo hearings—also resigned last summer, citing what he said was a deeply flawed system designed more to give the veneer of justice to predetermined convictions than to administer a fair hearing of the evidence."
"As Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto completed his floor exercises in the men's team competition with one final tumbling run at the Forum in Montreal, he experienced an odd sensation in his right knee. "It felt hollow," he recalled later, "as if there were air in it." In fact, his kneecap was broken, a calamity that under ordinary circumstances would have ended his participation in the Olympic Games on the spot. But Fujimoto, 26, was no ordinary competitor. His teammates, he reasoned, needed whatever points he might accumulate to upset the favored Soviets, and they certainly could be hindered by the emotional trauma of learning that one of their number had suffered such a serious injury. Fujimoto decided he would tell no one, not even his coach, Yakuji Hayata, that he was badly hurt.
The next event was the pommel horse, and though Fujimoto was in pain throughout, his concentration was so intense that he scored a 9.5 out of a maximum 10 points. "I was completely occupied by the thought that I could not afford to make any mistakes," he said. But the following event, the rings, presented a more daunting challenge because it required a high-flying dismount. How could he possibly concentrate on his routine knowing that at its conclusion he would be exposing himself to unimaginable pain?
But Fujimoto gave the performance of his life on the rings and then, ignoring the consequences, hurled his 136 pounds into a twisting triple-somersault dismount. The pain when his feet hit the floor sliced through him "like a knife," he said, but he kept his balance, his right leg buckling only slightly. Gritting his teeth and with tears in his eyes, he raised his arms in the traditional finish. The judges awarded him a 9.7‹the highest score he had ever recorded on the rings.
It was immediately apparent, however, that something was seriously wrong as Fujimoto staggered away, collapsing in agony into the arms of Hayata. The spectacular dismount had done additional damage to his injured knee‹dislocating the broken kneecap‹and had torn ligaments in his right leg. Still, Fujimoto was determined to carry on, limping off to the infirmary for painkilling shots. There, horrified doctors ordered him to withdraw from the competition or risk being permanently disabled. "How he managed to do somersaults and twists and land without collapsing in screams," said one physician, "is beyond my comprehension."
..Oddly enough, Fujimoto has never been comfortable in the martyr's role. Asked years later if he, given the same choice, would do again what he did in Montreal, he wasted little time in answering with an emphatic, "No. I would not.""
"ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Forget the two presidential candidates: The most prominent person in this election right now is Sarah Palin. With the attention she's getting, you'd think she was running for president. JON STEWART: Everyone likes new and shiny. We're bored. What's great about that is [Democratic VP candidate Joe] Biden is an absolutely eccentric character. That's how powerful Palin's story is — it has cast the first African-American presidential nominee, the oldest [non-incumbent] presidential nominee, and a really wild cork vice presidential candidate completely out of the picture. The press is 6-year-olds playing soccer; nobody has a position, it's just ''Where's the ball? Where's the ball? Sarah Palin has the ball!'' [Mimes a mob running after her.] Because they can only cover one thing.
...If there is something quintessentially or authentically American about her, I sort of feel like, you know what? You ''good values people'' have had the country for eight years, and done an unbelievably s---ty job. Let's find some bad values people and give them a shot, maybe they'll have a better take on it.
Many people saw the conventions as little more than a series of talking points. STEWART: We're all sort of complicit in forcing them to make those narratives in the first place. COLBERT: You mean us, or the real press? STEWART: Everything. The whole mechanism of dissecting their every waking moment has created somewhat of a paralysis. We have drained them of their ability to remain human. Because any human moment will be so fiercely dissected and digested and metastasized by the media. COLBERT: People can be hung by anything they say. We've done it. STEWART: We've done it too. You can kill people all the time for things that are absolutely human frailties. COLBERT: You can even manufacture the frailty, and then hang them with it. STEWART: That's why I don't excuse what I guess you'd call the satiro-industrial complex from culpability. COLBERT: That's funny: I absolve me. I could absolve you if you want. STEWART: That's the beauty of having a demagogue on right after your show — he can actually absolve our show, which is incredibly convenient...
[On 24 hour news] STEWART: We've got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ''I don't know!'' It'd be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ''I don't know what the f--- is going on! I'm getting wet and it's windy and I don't know why and it's making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?'' By being on 24 hours a day, you begin to not be able to tell what's salient anymore.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Is this election any different from the last two you covered? JON STEWART: I was convinced an Obama/McCain campaign would be measurably different on almost all standards. And to watch it become Bush/Kerry, Bush/Gore, has been one of the most dissatisfying experiences...
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Do you think anything will change if the Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress? JON STEWART: Look at what they promised when they took over Congress. I've never heard such hardcore rhetoric. ''The era of the blank check is over! And we will send a sternly worded memorandum — nonbinding — to somebody at the White House. Not necessarily the inner executive circle, we certainly don't want to offend, but...'' And then they got in and were like, ''Really, you want to eavesdrop? Okay, we'll let this one go. But this is the last blank check! Unless you want another. But let me say this: The next one will not be blank, because we'll just write in the memo line. Can we write in memo? Would you be bothered by that?'' STEPHEN COLBERT: One of the things I love about my character is I can make vast declarations and it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I love being wrong. So my character can tell you exactly what's going to happen: The Democrats are going to change everything. We're going to have gay parents marrying their own gay babies. Obama's gonna be sworn in on a gay baby. The oath is gonna end ''So help me, gay baby.'' STEWART: Then they'll head right over to the abortion mixer. There'll be a dance, and then there'll be a little tent set up outside, just in case anybody wants an RU-486..."
"Yesterday a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered the release of 17 men, all Uighur Muslims from China, who have been held at Guantanamo Bay for six years as 'enemy combatants.' The Pentagon has given up trying to justify that classification but still does not want to let the men go. It says the detainees, who were captured in Afghanistan, cannot be returned to China because they would be persecuted there, and no other country is willing to take them. U.S. District Judge Richard Urbina says they therefore should be freed to live in the United States, where supporters have arranged lodging in Washington and Tallahassee, Florida. The Justice Department says Urbina, who was responding to a habeas corpus lawsuit, does not have the authority to issue such an order, since the executive branch is in charge of immigration matters. If the Uighurs are brought to the U.S., it warns, they could be detained again, this time by the Department of Homeland Security."
"You might wind up on a terrorist watch list and under surveillance anyway:
The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.
The department started sending letters of notification Saturday to the activists, inviting them to review their files before they are purged from the databases, Sheridan said. *** But Sen. James Brochin (D-Baltimore County) noted that undercover troopers used aliases to infiltrate organizational meetings, rallies and group e-mail lists. He called the spying a “deliberate infiltration to find out every piece of information necessary” on groups such as the Maryland Campaign to End the Death Penalty and the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance...
Once again, what I eight years (hell- three to four) ago would have derided, mocked, and sneered as little more than the delusional fantasies and paranoid conspiracy theories of the dirty fucking hippies (DFH, for short), turns out to be true. Welcome to Dick Cheney’s America..."
The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday...
"The names don't belong in there," he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. "It's as simple as that."
...Sheridan said protest groups were also entered as terrorist organizations in the databases, but his staff has not identified which ones.
Stunned senators pressed Sheridan to apologize to the activists for the spying, assailed in an independent review last week as "overreaching" by law enforcement officials who were oblivious to their violation of the activists' rights of free expression and association. The letter, obtained by The Washington Post, does not apologize but admits that the state police have "no evidence whatsoever of any involvement in violent crime" by those classified as terrorists.
That this joke could rise to the level of state police superintendent is a pretty damning indictment of the Maryland's State Police. Here's what he thinks of the First Amendment:
"I don't believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to disrupt the government," he said.
"Disrupting the government" apparently now includes no more than expressing your disagreement with it."
"A multi-year National Research Council review of data-mining as a means of discovering terrorists has concluded that this just doesn't work very well, and that it ends up harming and harassing -- and terrorizing -- innocents whose only crime is to have a profile that some database-designer thinks is hinky.
...As a Slashdot poster says, "Can't we just go back to probable cause?""
"Tubby manager: I need to lose some weight. Blunt manager: How about you quit eating like a twelve-year-old whose parents aren't home from work yet, chunk-style?
Intrigued by a convo betwixt the Mrs and her dad... done mainly to see just how difficult it would be to find positive, non-attack ads from the candidates in the 2008 elections. Stuck to the presidential, because frankly, if I had to watch a buncha local level political ads, I'd stab myself in the face.
Random observations:
- Yep, positive ads are harder to find than negatives. But not as difficult to find as I'd thought, given the current "common sense" polititical "wisdom" about the effectiveness of negative campaigning.
- What is difficult is finding a positive 30 second ad that isn't filled with banal platitudes and sweeping generalizations.
- Candidates are using the internet in vastly different ways. Predictable, I guess, but still surprising. Looking at their official YouTube channels, Obama has almost 1500 videos, McCain only 300. Nader - 140, Barr - 85, Mckinney - 50, Baldwin - 31. And Ron Paul still has 136. Obama's supporters are [probably] younger, more tech oriented, more likely to get their info online as opposed to mainstream TV and radio.
- Figuring out what constitutes a negative ad is a judgement call. Pointing out substantive policy differences between what you would do, and what your opponent would do, doesn't strike me as negative. Nor do I think, personally, that pointing out that McCain would continue the policies of GWB, pretty much intact, or even on steroids, doesn't strike me as negative. But that's probably just because I'd rather elect a retarded badger with tourettes than in any way shape or form continue on with the clusterfuck the last eight years have been. But, in the interest of focusing on "what I would do" ads, I didn't throw any of those up here.
Anyway, through the miracle of absentee balloting, I voted for my "lesser of two evils" choice already, which was Obama. His flipping on the FISA issue smashed whatever enthusiasms I might have had for his campaign, showing he's as willing as the rest of them to abandon defense of personal liberty and freedom in the name of "safety" and "security." Just like all the other schmucks since 9/11.
But on the issues I care about -
- ending the war/bringing the troops home - restoring civil liberties/habeas corpus - ending state sanctioned torture/closing Gitmo - developing renewable and alternative energy policies/ending Middle East dependence - ending the Drug War/police militarization
...of those issues the candidates bother to address, I lean more towards Obama than McCain.
Honestly, even if Obama was abysmally contrary to every thing I thought, but still wanted to end the war, that'd probably be enough. Though the fact that 8 years of GWB has made me into a single issue voter galls the hell out of me.
On to the show...
McCain - Republican Party
Interesting to note that of the top 9 most viewed/most discussed videos on his ouTube channel, 7 are attack ads focused on Obama or Hillary. Including the semi-famous hit pieces "The One" and "Celeb." Having watched a bunch, I was surprised at how well crafted and slickly done McCain's ads are. I can see how they would work.
Energy
Health Care
With his mom. Pretty funny, actually. I think I'd vote for his mom.
Obama - Democratic Party
Compared to McCain's 7 attack ads in the top 9, only one of the top nine vids on Obama's most viewed/discussed hit on McCain, tagging him for his Keating 5 scandal. The others are extended policy wonk stuff, of the "change/hope/inspiration" genre, or celeb endorsements.
So non-scientifically you could then assume that people interested in McCain actually like the attack ads he runs, and those looking for Obama vids are more into hero worship and star fucking.
Non-scientifically, of course.
Energy
Change
"Plan for Change" Ad - 2m in length, but apparently he did buy the air time recently to air this in a buncha places, so it counts as an ad, despite the length.
As we start to get into the alternatives and independents, you start to see less and less actual "ads." Generally, because they wouldn't have the money run them on TV. So the style changes and they become more crafted for an internet audience, which'll sit and evaluate a vid at 5 minutes a pop, as opposed to the 30 seconds you get in prime time.
Barr - Libertarian Party
Why the Libertarian Party?
"Time for Liberty" - not an ad, really, as it clocks in at almost 5 minutes... but I thought it was kinda awesome, in the naively optimistic "this is how government should be" way.
Baldwin - Constitution Party
I watched a buncha his vids and all I could figure out is that he's against the US in the UN, the "New World Order" and seems scared of brown people coming to America.
So odd I had to check his Wikipedia - Chuck Baldwin:
"He also wrote that he believes 'the South was right in the War Between the States', and that he does not believe the leaders of the old Confederacy were racists. In addition, he wrote an article attacking Martin Luther King Jr., claiming that King was an 'apostate' minister who renounced his Christian faith...
Baldwin has written that 'the Mexican government is deliberately and systematically working to destabilize and undermine the very fabric and framework of American society.' He has attacked the 'Happy Holidays' greeting, stated that 'America was deliberately and distinctively founded as a haven for Christians', and attacked 'avant-garde egalitarians' who disagree with this. He also attacked France as an 'atheistic, secularist country'."
Oh, I see... Chuck Baldwin is an idiot. No ads for Chuck.
Mckinney - Green Party
Not half bad. Not a chance in hell of working, getting elected or even being in the right on all these issues, but there's some good kernels of stuff here.
Nader - Independent
Nader. I alternatively want to applaud and choke the shit out of him when I hear him speak. Reigning in the war, government abuses, corporate malfeasance? Check, check and check. Nanny-stating the rest of every aspect of our lives for our own good? Choke, choke, choke. He gets bonus points for the George Carlin reference though.
First 100 Days of Nader Presidency
On Iraq
7 Things You Can't Say in '08: In Memory of George Carlin
Ron Paul - Not in the race anymore, but...
Despite the fact that I disagree profoundly with Paul on both immigration and abortion... his views on the war, foreign policy, civil liberties and reigning in government would've probably gotten him my vote if he had made it to the show.
Get rid of the IRS
War, Privacy and Liberty
Budget
Really, if you've got an internet connection and the least bit of interest in politics, I can't imagine why you wouldn't hit up the candidates websites to figure out where they stand.
Having watched a bunch of these ads, even the halfway decent ones, the 30 second ads are aimed specifically at those who don't care enough to research things or are easily swayed by sound bites.
From the brilliant V for Vendetta. The comics, not the movie. Though I enjoyed the movie a lot more than a lot of folks, despite the shift in message from anarchy versus fascism to popular revolt versus totalitarianism.
Hell, living the 21st century, I'll take what I can get.
"...In fact, let us not mince words... The Management is terrible! We've had a string of embezzelers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact. But who elected them? It was you! You who elected these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you! While I'll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate. You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders. You have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines. You could have stopped them. All you had to say was 'No'....
"...So, to recap, in the Land of the Free: if you’re an adult who produces a film using other consenting adults, for the entertainment of still other consenting adults, which merely depicts fictional acts of humiliation and degradation, the DOJ will prosecute you and send you to prison for years. The claim that no real pain was inflicted will be rejected; mere humiliation is enough to make you a criminal. But if government officials actually subject helpless detainees in their custody to extreme mental abuse, degradation, humiliation and even mock executions long considered “torture” in the entire civilized world, the DOJ will argue that they have acted with perfect legality and, just to be sure, Congress will hand them retroactive immunity for their conduct. That’s how we prioritize criminality and arrange our value system.
While I agree that this is absurd and criminal, what Glenn simply fails to understand is that Bush’s base supports torture. And with 50+1 George, the only thing that matters is what the fundie base wants. It is depressing, but that is how they think. Hell, that is the logic behind what will be the next month of attacks on Obama- they are not trying to get people to vote for McCain, they are going to try to get 50+1 to vote against Obama because he is scary, or you can not trust him, or whatever."
"Years ago, I mean years ago, when Jen and I first were married and struggling and, as I'm fond of saying, so poor we were gaining weight because we couldn't afford to eat healthy, we ended up settling in a town where my bride had, it turned out, a high school friend. I was just out of grad school and desperately trying to find 1) a job and 2) time to write. I had an agent and a novel that had been passionately rejected by just about every publisher who'd read it, I was writing what would become Keeper, we were in our early twenties, and it was, frankly, terrifying.
Then we moved everything to this new town so Jen could go to school, and that was even more terrifying. We didn't know anyone in the new locale, no one. Except for this high school friend of Jen's...
...What hurt then is that she was attacking our willingness to dream, and yes, I know that sounds cliche, but that's what it was. We were young newlyweds and we were terrified, but we each held onto this idea that, if we stuck through the hard times and we busted our humps and we put in the hours and we were smart in everything else we did, we could gamble on this other thing, this life we wanted to have for ourselves.
And to her (and more to her husband, I think), that was untenable. At best, they could only greet us with confusion and bewilderment. At worst, they viewed us with malice born of jealousy, that we were willing to chase something they either would not or could not pursue themselves, in whatever form they imagined it.
There are a lot of people like that in the world. A lot of them. They look at someone's passion, someone's dream, and they assault it. For most of them - to most of them - it's a justified assault, something they may not even be aware they're doing."
