Sunday afternoon

Workout notes 3.5 more miles at the Forest Park Nature Center; this time an easy hike with Olivia.
The hike was interesting; we saw a huge family of wild turkeys, deer (mom with fawn), among the usual other animals.

Then, while watching movies (Bowling for Columbine, Fast Foot Nation) I attempted to work on one of my yoga weaknesses: vajrasana:

I can get into this position IF I place a pillow between my butt and my legs; otherwise I either lean forward or topple backward.

Social/Politics

Oddly enough, I’ve found that some Jonah Goldberg’s columns are worth reading (yes, he is a National Review conservative); this is one of them.

At a candidate forum for trial lawyers in Chicago on Sunday, Hillary Clinton proclaimed that the Bush administration is “the most radical presidency we have ever had.”

This is, quite simply, absurd. But such boob-bait for the Bush bashers is common today in Democratic circles, just as similar right-wing rhetoric about Bill Clinton was par for the course a decade ago. The culture war, it seems, has distorted how we view politics more than we realized. Trust in government is at historic lows, but faith in one’s own “team” remains remarkably durable. (President Bush’s job-approval rating among Republicans is 80 percent, according to the polling company Rasmussen.)

Only someone suffering partisan amnesia could believe Bush has been a more “radical” president than, say, Woodrow Wilson, under whom antiwar dissidents were thrown in jail and beaten in the streets. Wilson was the first president to openly deride the Constitution, mocking the “Fourth of July sentiments” of those who cared too much about its meaning. Where Bush reaches out to American Muslims and illegal immigrants, Wilson demonized immigrants and “hyphenated Americans” with a venom unimaginable today. “I cannot say too often – any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this republic,” Wilson said in 1919.

For much of the 20th century, American conservatives saw themselves as opponents of the imperial presidency, as embodied by Wilson and, later, FDR. In 1964, for instance, Barry Goldwater cast himself as the candidate against strongman government (and, revealingly, lost badly). But conservatives began to change their tune when the New Deal/Great Society consensus started to unravel and they discovered that the presidency could be theirs if they made peace with it.

In fact, some conservatives viewed Richard Nixon’s downfall as the product of an unfair double standard because Democratic presidents had gotten away with metaphorical murder for years. Liberals who traditionally had seen nothing wrong with strongman presidencies (liberal-hero journalist Walter Lippmann urged FDR to assume “dictatorial powers”) changed their tune under Nixon as well.

“Those who tried to warn us back at the beginning of the New Deal of the dangers of one-man rule that lay ahead on the path we were taking toward strong, centralized government may not have been so wrong,” then-California Sen. Alan Cranston conceded at the height of Watergate in 1973.

Stephen F. Hayes’ riveting new biography, “Cheney,” recounts a discussion in 1980 at the American Enterprise Institute between two new congressmen, Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich.

“Congress has been a big part of the problem,” declared Cheney, a veteran of the Ford administration. “A fundamental problem has been the extent to which we have restrained presidential authority over the last several years. … We have been concerned with the so-called myth of the imperial presidency.

“We must restore some balance” between Congress and the White House, Cheney insisted.

Gingrich vehemently disagreed. “What we need is a stronger Congress, not a weaker Congress,” he shot back. “The greatest danger of the Reagan administration is that conservatives will decide they can trust imperial presidents as long as they are right-wing when they are imperial.”[...]

Cartoons:

Frazz: makes an interesting social observation

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Get Fuzzy

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Harder than I thought

Workout notes 14+ miles of walking in 3:16; Bordem section was 2:47 (I called such a pace “slow” three years ago!) I did some 2-1 from mile 6 (on the Boredom course) on; I was plenty tired and my right leg ached a bit when I finished. This was harder than I thought.

Videos: here are a couple of good ones.

Good as it gives: lies (or errors) caught on tape.

Redstate update on Harry Potter! (very funny)

Are atheist “appeasers” part of the problem? Professor Moran thinks so. Some of his commenters don’t. He is commenting on this blog post which in and of itself, is worth reading.

Here is part of what she says:

This whole appeaser/non-appeaser skirmish (or more appropriately, the latest of what seems to be a series of never-ending flame wars) has become stale, tedious and tiresome. Even after a whole lot of arm-wrangling, the appeasers have nothing more to say than the usual whine: “Militant atheists (atheists who are not cowardly appeasers) are doing more harm than good!! They need to shut up and let the appeasers do (and frame) whatever they want to! Be good pussies in front of the oh-so-holy religious believers! Do anything to keep them happy, do anything — except tell the truth!!”

**For those who think that the framing spin proposed by some appeasers is just THE best and most groundbreaking thing ever, click here for my response to the spin doctors framers. Is science really that offensive that we have to frame and lie about it so that it doesn’t ruffle any religious feathers? Jeez.**

Whatever did we do to deserve the title militant? We are not burning down churches, murdering the religious or blowing ourselves up. All we’re doing is exercising our human right to free speech and pointing out that there is no logical basis for the unusual respect accorded to religion in society. By dismissing atheists who call a spade a spade as ‘militant’ or ‘fundamentalist’, the appeasers are behaving as dogmatically as their religious bedfellows.

And by this, I do mean bedfellows. By shutting up and pandering to superstition, the appeasers are making it outrageously easy for the religious to walk all over them in the path of pushing their beliefs on everyone else. The cowardly appeasers and their commitment to keeping religion immune to criticism would surely be welcomed by none other than the religious themselves, even if the appeasers are currently too deluded to realize that they are being used. After all, what else do you expect from a bunch of spineless pushovers?

The cowardly appeasers further claim that atheists have to respect religious beliefs and not question the validity of superstition. In other words, the appeasers are encouraging the so-called politically correct notion that religion deserves a higher level of respect compared to any other institution in society. In fact, the appeasers are not doing anything to defend reason in the face of superstition. They are merely reinforcing the fallacy that religion has to be respected no matter what. How can the appeasers claim that they are on the side of reason when they are not doing anything about the fact that superstition is often readily shielded from criticism by the unwritten rules of society? Not only are they doing nothing, they are actually actively contributing to the furtherance of this rot.

Basically, I have friends who believe some weird things. Of course, I don’t pretend that I believe them, and if they ask me, I’ll tell them that “I don’t believe that.”

But I do try to choose my words carefully, depending on whom I am talking to, and I am harsher on those who should know better.

But, well, let’s just say that there are those who simply CAN’T think rationally, no more than I can racewalk like a national caliber walker. No use poking them in the eye with a stick.