Last July Saturday 2008

Local: Peoria Every now and then I have a “oh my, I wish I had written a better thesis and had not gotten stuck in this hick town”. Today, there were THREE front page articles in the Journal Star over The Decider’s visit as well as an article in the local section. Yes, 1400 morons showed up for the event itself and many of the locals (I am itching to use the “y-word” that rhymes with “local”) showed up for a glimpse.

‘Truly an honor’
President stresses freedom during Peoria fundraiser

Freedom not only in America but throughout the world was the theme of the day for President Bush.

Speaking to a packed crowd of roughly 1,400 people Friday at a fundraiser for congressional candidate and state Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Peoria, the president received great applause when he talked about the war on terror and standing on principle, even if it meant not being popular.

Bush shared a story of one of his best moments as president when he met with the premier of Japan, according to some people who attended. Sixty years ago, Bush’s father flew planes in World War II against the Japanese. Now, the United States and Japan sit together as allies, the president said.

Sixty years from now, Bush said, he hopes people will thank God the nation had the courage to promote freedom [...]

Gag me with a spoon. Yes, this was nothing compared to the 15,000 that showed up in 7 F weather to hear Obama announce (in Springfield), but for this small town hick newspaper it was a big deal.

Let this be a lesson for you PhD students out there: write a good thesis so you’ll have your pick of universities!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, ok, this isn’t a complete backwater; on our campus we’ve had Barack Obama, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Leakey, George McGovern and many others. So it isn’t all bad.

But anyone or anything that gets excited over The Decider makes me want to wretch.

On the good side, wegerje at Prairie State Blue points out that 500 dollars a plate is bargain basement for a sitting President. But dang, it is still humiliating to live in a place that he visited twice as few other locations want him. Note: he lost the city of Peoria to Kerry by 52-48, though the county as a whole was a statistical tie (60 votes out of 80,000).

The 2008 General Election.

William Bradley at the Huffington Post talks about McCain having the good luck to not be able to visit that Louisiana oil rig; there was a oil spill in the water (which emphasizes the dangers of offshore drilling) and there would be reminders that oil from offshore drilling would only arrive years down the road; it affect on current oil prices is all but negligible (perhaps a tiny bit by lowering oil futures?)

Of course this malarkey about “no drilling means high prices now therefore Obama is to blame for current high prices” is being used by the McCain campaign. Yes, you heard right: Obama is to blame for high gas prices:

Unbelievable. If this is what is campaign is going to do, well, I feel pretty good about his election! Listen to what Fact Check says about it:

McCain ad says Obama’s the guy to thank for emptying our wallets at the filling station. We say that’s ridiculous.
Summary
McCain’s new ad accuses Obama of keeping gas prices high, all by himself. That’s absurd, and McCain knows it – he has said repeatedly that our current problems were “30 years in the making.”

The ad also tells us that gas prices are high because “some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.” Not true. The federal government’s estimate is that if the moratorium on offshore drilling were lifted today, it would be 2030 before we’d see a noticeable effect on supply and prices.

For the same reason, it’s simply not true that drilling more now will “rescue our family budgets.”

For those wondering why Obama hasn’t put McCain away yet: voter perception hasn’t quite caught up to reality; in the minds of many, McCain is still that 2000 maverick and is a national security expert.

We need to remind folks of McCain’s lack of knowledge of the basics.

Interestingly enough, when it comes to what McCain or Obama will actually do when it comes to Iraq, their positions are actually converging a bit.

BLITZER: Why do you think [Maliki] said that 16 months is basically a pretty good timetable?

MCCAIN: He said it’s a pretty good timetable based on conditions on the ground. I think it’s a pretty good timetable, as we should — or horizons for withdrawal. But they have to be based on conditions on the ground.

Political Humor
Redstate update has something to say about Obama’s trip:

General social stuff Max Blumenthal is focusing his attention to a so-called holocaust denier who recently gave a talk. What is of interest to me is that he is playing the “this nutjob likes Christopher Hitchens” game:

While Irving heaped scorn on Jews and other minority groups, he volunteered warm words of praise for his most high-profile defender in the media, the writer Christopher Hitchens. “I can’t speak for Christopher Hitchens,” Irving told me, “but he’s a good friend and a great man… We’ve been good friends since and we’ve been good friends after.”

In an article for Vanity Fair in 1996, Hitchens called Irving a “great historian,” and argued that Irving’s book,, “Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich,” deserved to be published by a mainstream publisher. St. Martin’s Press had initially agreed to publish it, but backed out when it became a target of protests because of Irving’s Holocaust denial and historical distortions. “He wrote a very, very fair account of the controversy [over "Goebbels"] in his magazine and he impressed me by his fairness,” Irving said.

Blumenthal and Hitches have had something like a feud. Note that Hitchens doesn’t agree with most of Irving’s ideas but rather argues that his work sometimes contains some new truths and deserve airing:

Now may I mince a word or two? I have been writing in defense of Mr. Irving for several years. When St. Martin’s Press canceled its contract to print his edition of the Goebbels diaries, which it did out of fear of reprisal, I complained loudly and was rewarded by an honest statement from the relevant editor — Thomas Mallon — that his decision had been a “profile in prudence.” I will not take refuge in the claim that I was only defending Mr. Irving’s right to free speech. I was also defending his right to free inquiry. You may have to spend time on some grim and Gothic Web sites to find this out, but he is in fact not a “denier,” but a revisionist, and much-hated by the full-dress “denial” faction. The pages on Goebbels, as in his books on Dresden, Churchill and Hitler, contain some highly important and damning findings from his work in the archives of the Third Reich. (The Goebbels book contains final proof that the Nazis financed Sir Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts in England: a claim that Mosley’s many sympathizers have long denied.)

Compared to this useful evidence, the fact that Mr. Irving was once a Mosley supporter is unimportant to me. I believe myself to be grown-up enough to read a historian, however tendentious, and winnow the wheat from the chaff all by myself. I happen to teach part time at the New School for Social Research in New York, which was a proud haven for antifascist scholars in the 1930s. In those awful days, the school even produced an unexpurgated and footnoted translation of “Mein Kampf,” replete with all its racist incitement, in order (too late) to enlighten American readers. I keep a copy on my shelf, partly because if I needed to refer to it in a hurry I would now have a very hard time obtaining it from any of today’s nerve-racked American booksellers.

This brings me to my point: when it comes to politics, I have more in common with Blumenthal (who is against the Iraq war) than with Hitchens (who thinks that we ought to be fighting it as part of a war on Muslim extremism). When it comes to freedom of speech and views on religion in general, I side with Hitchens.

Yes, both used to write for The Nation; Hitchens eventually left when the magazine wrote some wacko stuff(e. g. Bush was equivalent to Hitler.) Like Hitchens, I, as a magazine reader, can separate wheat from chaff.

Osama or Obama | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Comedy Central

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Fox News? Republican shills; period. So much for the media being biased for Obama.

Rocket Run 2008

Workout notes I ate some pizza (2 slices) after the walk, so I will wait a couple of hours to do my run.

Update: I went out at 10:40 am to “run” 4 miles. It was 81 F with 65 percent humidity when I finished. I jogged the first two miles in 20:10 and the last two (out and back course) in 18:58.

Fitness wise:

1. I am working my way out of an aerobic valley; I am not completely out of shape but I had bottomed out a couple of weeks ago.

2. My legs are still weak; weights and cycling are helping.

3. My body is still adapting to the running motion; the last two miles almost felt like a training run.

4. I don’t know how to parcel out my energy during a run.

Back to the Rocket Run
But today I walked with Olivia in the Rocket Run (or walk) in Bartonville. We warmed up with one slow walking mile on the nearby track.

In the race itself we were predictably slow (48:48; 15:36, 15:51, 17:22 (1.1, or about 15:50 for the mile)) but enjoyed ourselves; we were in the “no person’s land” of being ahead of all of the other slow walkers but being well behind the slow runners.

Olivia went just hard enough to sweat but not so hard that it was unpleasant for her; I went along at her pace. You can tell that the cycling has helped her endurance; our pace was roughly the pace that Ms. Vickie and I go at when we walk together.

And as I said, the post race breakfast spread was excellent; it featured bottle water, sports drinks, bagels, pizza, bananas, orange slices, watermelon and more stuff that I can’t remember.

Some features: this is a fund raiser for the Limestone High School Alumni association and several groups (band, volleyball team, soccer team, cheerleaders) had aid/support stations along the course and were having a contest; those who placed higher (based on votes from race finishers) got a higher amount.

The (female) volleyball team was dressed in black tops and camouflage spandex shorts; some had painted some of their faces. They sprayed us with water guns. (camouflage spandex, paint, water guns; that was part of the “army” theme)

The soccer team was cheering; one yelled “Obama loves soccer!” (I was wearing my Obama shirt).

As far as the race: the course was an out about 1 mile, a mini-loop (to mile 2) and then back. Hence, we could see the runners who had hit mile 2 in 15 minutes or faster.

There was one guy who was well over a minute ahead of everyone else; he finished in the 14:50’s (college XC runner for Iowa), with second about 16:30 and third in the low 17’s. The women had a tight race with the winner finishing in 20:3X and second being 20:4x.

As Olivia and I finished, Terry Whitehead (runner and ag-lab scientist) joked that he could see buzzards circling over our heads.

I’ve always enjoyed this race; unfortunately it is on the same day as the Whitney walk at Jubilee (also a good event).

It was good to see many of the local runners; one of the reasons I do these things is to see everyone.