Spring Break, Day Two

Workout notes 2100 yards swimming; 5 x 100 fist, 20 x 50 on the :50 (48 for the first 10, then 46-47), 100 back, 250 pull, 5 x 25 free/25 back on the 1.

That 20 x 50 on the 0:50 was the first time I had done that and made all of the intervals since the year 2000.

Afterwards, yoga with Ms. Vickie followed by a 2.1 mile run on the treadmill, .4 mile cooldown walk, and then 1 mile on the bike path. The leg is holding up well, but I have to be patient.

I get some tingles when I hold balance poses on my left leg; for some reason balancing on my left leg is still more of a chore than balancing on my right one.

Last night, I held peacock feather for a couple of counts; it is just a matter or putting in the practice, I think.

Returning to swimming: if some people wonder why I see myself as a bad swimmer, check out the latest open water swim results:

Germany’s Thomas Lurz and Larissa Ilchenko of Russia successfully defended their 5km open water titles at the World Championships yesterday. Lurz extended his World Champs domination in winning the men’s event for the third time in a row and Ilchenko made it four successive victories in the women’s race after competitors were forced to battle waves and a swarm of jellyfish at St Kilda Beach.

According to reports, four competitors failed to finish the men’s race, complaining of hypothermia and exhaustion, while the women’s event was marred by accusations of rough tactics. Ilchenko told Reuters, that she completed half the race without her goggles after being kicked in the face by a rival and other competitors complained of being pulled under water and elbowed.

Ilchenko completed the race in one hour 41.3 seconds, finishing just ahead of her Russian team mate, the European champion Ekaterina Seliverstova, with Australia’s Kate Brookes-Peterson was third.

Lurz won the men’s race in 56 minutes 49.6 seconds, just over a second in front of Russia’s Evgeny Drattsev. Spyridon Gianniotis of Greece was third.

To see more of what an open water swimmer has to endure, read the article about the 10K swim:

Chloe Sutton emerged from the water a trembling, teary mess, wondering what happened to her goggles. Angela Maurer buried her head in a coach’s chest, knowing what it must have felt like to go 12 rounds with Mike Tyson in his prime. And everyone was covered in ugly, red welts, the work of jellyfish lurking off St. Kilda Beach.

Oh well, just another day of open water swimming.

Russia’s Larisa Ilchenko claimed her second gold medal of the world championships Tuesday, winning a sprint to the finish with British up-and-comer Cassandra Patten in the 10-kilometer race.

Then again, no one really looked like a winner when it was over. They staggered onto dry land, just glad to have survived 6.2 miles of cool waters, rough tactics and all those nasty creatures lurking beneath the surface of Port Phillip Bay.

“I could hear girls screaming on the first lap when they got stung,” said Ilchenko, who defended her 10k world championship after winning a fourth consecutive 5k title Sunday.

The pain was worth it if a medal was waiting at the finish line. But Maurer missed out on the bronze by just 1.2 seconds after a race that covered 6.2 miles and lasted more than two hours.

“My whole body is just burning,” the German said after seeking solace from her coach. [...]

Ilchenko and Patten were swimming stroke-for-stroke as they rounded the last buoy, but the Russian nudged ahead in the final 100 meters. She finished with a time of 2 hours, 3 minutes, 57.9 seconds.

Patten was about a body length behind, crossing in 2:03:58.9. Australia’s Kate Brookes-Peterson took the bronze in 2:03:59.5.

“I didn’t have any strategy,” Ilchenko said through a translator. “I was so tired. I was just thinking about finishing the race.”

Every swimmer felt the wrath of the jellyfish, which showed up during training but were really out in force for the race.

“It sounds weird, but it actually broke up the swimming a little bit,” Patten said, managing a grin as she looked at the marks all over her body. “You’re going, ‘Ohhh, I’ve been stung. Ohhh, I’ve been stung again.”‘ [...]

But Maurer was bitter about the aggressive tactics of some swimmers. This sport can resemble a wet version of roller derby when they’re battling for position in the great, big ocean.

“Everyone was just beating each other up,” Maurer said. “I have never experienced such a race before. It was horrible.”

This makes my Big Shoulders 2006 experience seem tame by comparison.

And please ignore that my 2006 Big Shoulders 5K time was the same as the women’s 10K time!

Politics
Why I consider Fox News to be a non credible source (at least for politics):

Fox News selectively edits transcripts
Beachmom at Daily Kos reports of a selectively edited transcript of an interview with Senator John Kerry:

Now here is the Fox News transcript:

WALLACE: Senator, as you just pointed out, the Senate voted this week and rejected a plan, in part authored by you, by a vote of 48-50 to call to begin the pullout of troops and eventually to set of goal of pulling them out in a year. When you are still…

KERRY: No, Chris, that’s wrong. Can I interrupt you there? I’m going to interrupt you there.

WALLACE: Well, let me just ask the question and then you can set me straight on what I…

KERRY: Well, fine.

WALLACE: But in any case, you needed — you were 12 votes short. You weren’t 3 votes short. You were 12 votes short of the 60 you would have needed to actually pass this.

When Democrats are still so short, so far away from passing something that will actually force the president’s hand, limit his policy, what do you do now?

KERRY: Well, actually, Chris, we’re 19 votes short because you need 67 to overcome the veto. And there would be a veto. We all understand that.

But last summer when I brought that resolution to the floor, I got 13 votes, 48-13. That is an enormous change in a very short time.

And what we’ve learned in the great fights of the Senate and historically in this country is you have to keep fighting. You keep trying.

The Civil Rights Act didn’t pass immediately. Important pieces of legislation take time. We will change this policy over time.

But the reason I wanted to interrupt you there is because you and others in the media, and particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, continually characterize the plan we put forward as a complete withdrawal of all the troops and as a precipitous withdrawal.

It is not a complete withdrawal. It specifically allows the president the discretion to leave troops there, to complete the task of training the Iraqis, and that is fundamentally all we ought to be there for.

It allows the president to leave troops there to chase Al Qaeda and prosecute the War on Terror, and it allows him to leave troops to protect American facilities and forces.

So what’s the problem? Here is what Wallace actually said:

WALLACE: Senator, as you just pointed out, the Senate voted this week and rejected a plan, in part authored by you, by a vote of 48-50 to call to begin the pullout of troops and eventually to set of goal of pulling them *all* out in a year. When you are still…

See? They selectively deleted the word “all”, which makes a big difference.

Video here (note: they are still trying to put forth the lie that Clinton’s firing 93 hold over attorneys from the previous administration to Bush firing 8 attorneys in the middle of a term)

Iraq war: unnecessary, and here is why:
Cenk Uygur points out that only 35% of the public is confident that we are going to “win” in Iraq (whatever that means). So why is there not a huge panic about it? The reason is that our being in Iraq isn’t going to change our day to day lives very much, “our” meaning those who aren’t in Iraq or who have loved ones there.

I mean if we’re not going to win the war, then we must be getting ready for the enemy to take over. Our whole way of life is going to change, right?

Or perhaps everything will go on exactly as it was before. How do you know you were in an unnecessary war? When you can’t tell it’s over.

If we pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, would anyone in the middle of America be able to tell the difference between the two days? Would anyone’s life be different (other than the troops and their families)?

In the case of the Iraq War, the answer is clearly no. That’s why the same poll found that the number of people “afraid of the war” hasn’t changed at all in the last four years. It’s still only 33% of the population.

Why are so few people afraid of this war? Because they don’t believe the Bush administration that the Iraqis are going to follow us here if we don’t fight them over there. No one in their right mind believes that the Badr Brigade is going to take over downtown Cleveland if we don’t fight them in Basra.

Do you think the Mahdi Army will target San Antonio or Omaha first? How about the peshmarga – will they attack Miami or Sacramento?

If some of you are now saying, wait a minute, the Kurdish peshmarga are on our side, we’re not currently fighting the Bard Brigade and we’re not sure the Mahdi Army has an interest in fighting us. I say, exactly! The Iraqis are a diverse group and they are more worried about keeping control in their part of their country to be worried about the US.

The terrorists who hit us here at home aren’t in Iraq. They’re in Pakistan. How many times do we have to say this before the media starts covering this story accurately? At least the American people get it. They are not worried because they know in their hearts that this Iraq War has nothing to do with our safety. And that the situation in America isn’t going to change one iota whether we win or lose in Iraq.

Has there ever been a more unnecessary war?

Way to protect us!
I sure feel safe when law enforcement protects us from things like: elderly peace activists in a parade (which they had a permit to be in)

7 year old scooter riders

Thank you! I feel safer already.

Blueollie “Moran” Award

Hat tip to the Peoria Pundit for alerting us to this article.

David Ehrenstein writes that Obama is the “Magic Negro“

But it’s clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the “Magic Negro.”

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. “He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist,” reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.-wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

He’s there to assuage white “guilt” (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that’s not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is “Magic.”

Poitier really poured on the “magic” in “Lilies of the Field” (for which he won a best actor Oscar) and “To Sir, With Love” (which, along with “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” made him a No. 1 box-office attraction). In these films, Poitier triumphs through yeoman service to his white benefactors. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” is particularly striking in this regard, as it posits miscegenation without evoking sex. (Talk about magic!)

This shows the dangers of taking your critical analysis writing classes too seriously.

If anything, the Black character reminds me of is the United States President in the film Deep Impact (played by Morgan Freeman). Deep Impact was one of those “the earth is going to get destroyed by an asteroid” films). You didn’t even remember that the President character was black, didn’t you?

Yes, in the film, he was the President, pure and simple. But if one doubts that Obama is Black, or if one doubts that he is comfortable with that, ask yourself: what did he do when he first graduated from Columbia University?

Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.

The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.

If you doubt for even a second that he isn’t fully Black:

If anything, Senator Obama is someone who can make non-black folks comfortable with black folks who are just being themselves.

And, if one wants to claim that the Times article is more about white people having trouble accepting an “authentic” black, then one might wonder why Obama draws much of his support from African Americans and from the younger set? The so-called “magic negro” is more of a 1960’s-1970’s relic.

“Moran” Award, part II
Faux News, so called “fair and balanced”. The “moran” award goes to both Faux and to their followers.