A Pleasant “Schock”

Workout notes Yoga with Ms. Vickie, then a bad 6.4 mile (48 laps of lane 3) track run (59:42; first 4 was 40:04); I just never felt “right” and my right leg (lower hamstring and hip) didn’t feel “right” (that is the inner leg today).

Then a 2 mile walk (27 minutes) on a treadmill (elevation change every .25 miles: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) felt MUCH better.

Credit where Credit is Due
Aaron Schock (Republican, IL-18)made a good vote on the TARP oversight bill. Hat tip: Prairie State Blue.

Ray LaHood Confirmation (Secretary of Transportation). I admit that I was upset when I first heard this. But LaHood seems to be on the same page: he has pledged to ensure that infrastructure money is well spent and he wants to work on rail transportation. He has also said that he wants to cooperate with labor.

Barack Obama: is serious about closing GITMO and otherwise reforming our practices:

President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.
The orders, which would be the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President George W. Bush, would rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects. They would require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to determine if they should be transferred, released or prosecuted.

And the orders would bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.

Middle East: here is an article (or a link to one) about the sanitized war coverage that we get in the US.

In short, you simply don’t see photos like this one in the US media (by the way, if I am not mistaken, this photo shows the result of violence between Iraqi factions)