Post of the day at "The Corner" and it is only 7:30

Hilarious [Jonah Goldberg]

Michael Graham forwarded me this.

From CBS MarketWatch:

How Obama Can Win Over The Media

Next in the series: "How Obama Can Win Over Blacks, Upscale White Liberals and Chicago Activists."

11/08 07:35 AM

Not Happy, Not Happy At All...

So, Mamma gave me a bath today. Now I have to wear this humiliating get-up to go for a walk, just because the ground is still wet?

A dog's life: One assault on my dignity after another...

HOPE?

From a little distance Hope and the initials for High Density Polyethelyne look a lot alike. Up close you can tell the difference.

Looking on the bright side...

1. It is great for our nation that we finally got a black president. It is a shame it had to be one who (on paper at least) seems to have little relevant experience and is far to the left of most Americans.

2. All of the traditional marriage issues around the country passed. I don't have a huge interest in the issue, but it is surely a sign that we are still a center/right land.

3. If McCain had won, then it would be 12 years of Republican rule in the White House. There is no way a Republican could have won in 2012, now it will mostly depend on how well Obama does.

4. Obama may be an inexperienced lefty, but he is a quick study. He is very bright and should be able to get up to speed quickly. Either way, January 20th the training wheels come off.

Very Funny

Obama supporters of two types

To those on the left-hand side of the Democratic party, a vote for Senator Obama is totally rational. He is as liberal a candidate as his party has run in recent history. This article is not for you, if you fit into the above category. This is for a class of Obama supporter which can be represented by Christopher Buckley:

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

I think these people are mistaken when they think Obama will be pragmatic: Here are two reasons why.

1. In the April 16th Democratic debate, Charles Gibson pointed-out that when cap gains tax rates are lowered, the government takes in more revenue. Obama responded (to the effect) that it was a matter of "fairness". This is not the mind of a pragmatic person.

2. History: Back when Bill Clinton was first elected President, he too had a Democratic Congress. He tried to finesse a progressive agenda. It didn't work. The things he got done were not all that radical, but they were radical enough to loose him both houses of Congress. The only significant legislative accomplishments from then on were moderate/conservative in nature (Nafta and Welfare Reform). He never got another chance to push-forward anything remotely progressive.

Obama is smart enough to realize that if he does what Clinton did, he will have no legacy. If he rams-through big stuff in the first two years it won't matter if Congress goes Republican. The Republicans will not get veto-proof majorities and will thus not be able to reverse any of what he does in the first two years.

The pragmatic camp will regret their hope that Obama doesn't mean to do what he has promised to do.

ADDED: Yes, I know that Obama's 180 on taking public financing argue that he is indeed pragmatic. Yes, if pragmatic=dishonest. This only benefited him personally, as I have argued above; he will not gain anything from being pragmatic once in office.

new longish run

I hate to run out and back; I much prefer loops, so I had to look at a number of options when running down toward Concord. As it was, I wish I had gone a little further South since I had plenty of energy left at the end of this run.

This is the eternal problem with long runs: You need to develop long range endurance and so it is the last 6 miles of a 20 mile run that are doing you good. So, it is a total pain to do the first 14 since they are basically just prep-work. They don't feel like prep work, just work! I could feel at the end of this run that I was just getting to glycogen depletion and switching over to fatty-acid metabolism. It is not an on-off switch, "the wall" notwithstanding.

Practical matters intervened in that my wife needed to be out of the house by 11:45 and I didn't want the kids left unattended any longer than necessary, but still, an extra 40 minutes would have put me into the 20 mile range and would have done me a lot of good.

Better asthetics--More honest

On a jog through Bedford last week I saw signs for Obama that looked like this.

There are two reasons to like this design more than the more common one with the swooshie thing in the O.

1. The red star is better looking.

2. The red star traditionally represents Communism, so it might well turn out to be a more honest sign. Which is good. Can't say we weren't warned and all.

This is Halloween

Yes, She barked each and every time the door bell rang.

The girl holding her own head is too cute to be scary.

Meant to be a devil holding his own head. I am more artistic in my head than my hands...

Meant to look like Stewie Griffin.

More Math...Sort of...

Before I had decided to run in the Bay State Marathon, I was considering running in the Cape Cod Marathon. The CCM is one week after the BSM, so they are both at the perfect time of the year here in New England for marathon running.

I ended up choosing the BSM entirely because it is very close and convenient to where we live, in fact part of the race is in our town.

Partly as a result of almost running the CCM and that it was only a week after my run, so I still had marathon running on my mind, I was interested in seeing the results.

2008 Cape Cod Marathon--899 finishers, 20th percentile time 3:41

2007 Cape Cod Marathon--1006 finishers, 20th percentile time 3:33

2008 Bay State Marathon--1195 finishers 20th percentile time 3:19

2007 Bay State Marathon--717 finishers 20th percentile time 3:24

Observations:

1. The CCM is smaller this year than last, while the BSM got bigger this year.

2. The BSM is faster than the CCM.

3. In both cases, the larger field had faster times.

Here is my all-purpose hypothesis. This year, the BSM was selected as a New England championship race. This would account for the larger field this year as well as the faster times. It may be that we can divide runners into elite runners and local runners (there is lots of overlap between the groups). So when a field is larger or smaller than normal it is due to the presence or absence of the elites. The elites are by definition faster and so a large field gives a faster times.

Update: I am tempted to run the Cape Cod next year since it would be fun to place in the top 10% (as I would have this year with my time in the BSM), instead of the top 25% in the BSM. On the other hand, the CCM course might just be a lot harder; if I placed at the 25th percentile in it this year, I would have missed qualifying for Boston by 15 minutes.

Too good to not repost

This is from National Review's The Corner

Keeping Brothers & Sisters [Jonah Goldberg]

From a reader:

For crying out loud: there IS no "Biblical injunction" to be one's brother's keeper. The phrase only occurs once, in the Old Testament, and was a one-line attempt by Cain to deflect God's rhetorical query as to the whereabouts of his (murdered) brother. God neither spoke it Himself nor replied to Cain's asking of it. He instead immediately turned to punishing Cain for the murder of his brother.

We as individuals are enjoined to have charity toward the poor and misfortunate, which in Biblical times were almost always the physically and mentally handicapped. Also, both the Old Testament and the New Testament address responsibility as to family members or church officers looking after widows and their minor children. However, even those calls to charity are never extended to able-bodied adult "brothers" (or sisters, for that matter).

Paul in 2 Thess 3:10-12 says, "10For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat. 11We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat." (KJV)

Jesus in Mark 14:7 - "The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me." (NIV) (italics mine)

Update: From a reader:

Jonah,

Re: "Again, I’ll start by noting an incidental incoherence. If individualism is the way to go, where is the self-evident rightness in the biblical injunction to be our brother’s keeper?"

As a Christian myself, I find no incoherence between individualism and the injunction to be my brother's keeper. The key to the puzzle that Holbo finds so insoluble is simple: free will. WE are commanded to help our neighbor. We are NOT commanded to force some of our neighbors to help other neighbors.

The Charity commanded in the Bible (not compelled, you'll notice - God invented free will) blesses all sides of the transaction. The giver is blessed by God, and by the joy that comes from choosing to help someone. The receiver is blessed by, not just the gift, but the knowledge that it was freely given by someone who cared about them and their situation.

Forced "charity" destroys all parts of that equation, creating feelings of resentment on one side, and entitlement on the other. And there in the middle? A massive and overly intrusive government that gets to pick and choose the "Haves" and the "Should Haves" . That's not giving. That's just taking . And that has a Commandment all to itself.

Update II: The first emailer adds:

Just saw this up on the Corner site - wow, never expected that! One thing, though, and it's my bad - both quotes are NIV (I have KJV on the first one).Best wishes and thanks for all the great writing!

I especially like what the second writer has said. In essence what the government does by taking over the charitable function is turn the gold of charity into the lead of faceless bureaucracy. Not to mention the loss of efficiency in replacing a free-market system with centrally-planned one-size-fits-all solutions.

Press Bias, Example # 2,718,281...

Bias is not just in how a story gets told, it is also in what stories get told and in what stories don't get told.

Google search for "palin wardrobe cost" gives 608 news stories.

Google search for "obama hawaii trip cost" gives 87 hits, only one of which was about the expense for these trips to Hawaii. The rest were just stories which had the word "cost" in them and mentioned that he went to Hawaii. A perusal of the first couple of pages of palin hits showed that almost all of the stories were about the excessive ($150,000) cost of her wardrobe. This, inspite of the fact that each trip Obama took to Hawaii cost several times as much (about $400K each time).

Here is the one story I could find on The One's Hawaii junkets...Newsmax.

From the Chicago public radio interview...

I just want to do a little deconstruction on the below bolded part of the quote.

In normal usage "I'm not optimisic about.." would imply that the thing I want is not likely to happen. For example, say I had gotten a blood test for cholesterol. I hope my level is low, but worry that it might be high. Would I say:

"I am not optimistic that my levels will be low".

or

"I am not optimistic that my levels will be high".

..... Karen (Caller): The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn't terribly radical with economic changes. My question is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically, and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place? Host: You mean the courts? Karen: The courts, or would it be legislation at this point? Obama: Maybe I'm showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. Y'know, the institution just isn't structured that way. You look at very rare examples where during the desegregation era where the court, for example, was willing to, for example, order changes that cost money to local school districts, and the court was very uncomfortable with it. It was hard to manage, it was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, y'know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. The court's just not very good at it, and politically it's very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So, I mean, I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally, y'know I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts. .....

He gets on track later in the quote (my italics) as far as courts not being a suitable place for redistributive change. But his clear intent is that the legislature is better suited to this kind of work, and it is the kind of thing he is for.

As an added note: Let me just point out that steep income taxes are not true wealth redistribution. Income is a measure of current productivity: Someone thinks that your work is worth what you are payed. Wealth as an accumulation of savings or inheritance is not touched by changes in income tax. So those who already have a pile of cash will be okay, but those of us trying to get there will find ourselves thwarted.

Yard Signs in deep blue MA

Four years ago I don't think I saw a single Bush '04 yard sign. Not a big surprise given that the Bay State was never (seriously) considered in play. It probably isn't in play this year either, yet I have seen tons of McCain-Palin signs. Noticeably more than Obama-Biden signs.

Maybe 04 wasn't all that typical: After all, Mass Senator Kerry was at the top of the ballot and local pride goes a long way. Other things could be in play as well. Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary here by a lot, as did Mitt Romney on the R side.

Everything seems pretty civil so far. All the signs I have made note of are still standing--none defaced. This is how it should be.

A Mystery...

So, my wife is taking me out tonight, but she won't say where we are going or what we will be doing.

Hopefully it is not one of those things where I end up encased in concrete at the bottom of a lake.

Update: I am safe and sound. She just took me to a place in Groton we have been wanting to try. I had the 24oz porterhouse.

Some thumbnails from the race...

My wife and two of my daughters are in the background of this finish line shot.

the guy with the gold shirt beat me by 4 minutes and so this picture should be from somewhere around mile 20-24.

At about the 1/2 way point on the Rourke Bridge.

Plus 6 and Minus 6

My time in the latest run was 6 minutes slower than I did 28 years ago in the Seattle Marathon and 6 minutes faster than it had to be to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

And now more numbers, because I like numbers and their possible meanings...

In the latest race, I came in 10th among the 32 "Davids" entered, 289th out of 1193 overall, and 4th among the 20 Chelmsfordians. If you look at the ratios, I did best v. my fellow townspeople, then among all entrants and worst against Davids. Here is my hypothesis: Chelmsford is one of the three towns the race went through and so this race is very convenient for us. Maybe this caused people who are not as serious about running to give it a try.

As for the fact I did worse among Davids than overall: Davids are all men and men are faster (on average) than women. Only 42 of the 289 who beat me were women, although if they were a small percentage of the total entrants, this wouldn't suggest anything. If only 22% of the entrants were women and 22% beat me, then it would show that they are as fast as the men on average.

I don't want to go through the whole 1193 and count the number of women, but if they are slower, maybe they will be a higher percentage of the last 289 finishers...(A pause while I look at the results)...152 of the last 289 were women.

Solidarity for our times..

Source

A Mark Steyn classic

Joe the Plumber vs. Joe the Hair-Plugger Put that in your pipe and solder it.

By Mark Steyn

Supposedly, under the Obama tax plan, 95 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut. You’d think that at this point the natural skepticism of any sentient being other than six-week-old puppies might kick in, but apparently not. If you’re wondering why Obama didn’t simply announce that under his plan 112 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut, well, they ran it past the focus groups who said that that was all very generous but they’d really like it if he could find a way to stick it to Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and whatnot. So 95 per cent it is.

Should you read it all? Yes.

The Bay State Marathon

289 89/250 M4049 3:24:49* 7:49 3:25:26 David Pecchia 46 M 1551 Chelmsford MA

The key to all these numbers: 289 was my overall place out of 1189 who finished, 89/250 was my place among the guys in the 40-49 age bracket.

The 3:24 is the net time and the 3:25 is the start time: The chip system deducts the time it takes you to cross the start line from the total time.

The asterisk means that I qualified for the Boston Marathon. (Ask me later how I feel about that.) It was my formal goal for this race, but the idea of running a marathon is not really attractive right now.

The race went pretty much according to my plans. I have noticed from training runs that I really fade after 13-16 miles. So what I wanted to do was to run fast for the first 13 miles and get myself ahead of my 8 min/mile schedule. I was around 3 minutes ahead at 6, then 5 minutes ahead at 10 and about 10 minutes ahead by 16 miles. At this point I figured I had it in the bag: I had 10 miles to go and could do it at a 9 minute pace and still make 3:30. At 18 miles, nature showed she still had some trump cards. My left calf started to cramp. If you have ever had a leg cramp, you know that all talk of maintaining 9 minute miles is out, along with running at all, or even walking. The cramp never did develop but my legs felt like one mass of pulled and sore muscle. My pace deteriorated from there. I lost 5 minutes in the last 8 miles and would bet that half of that loss was in the last 2 miles.