It's a drizzly, dreary day here in DC. I tried to go running, but turned back when I realized it was much windier and wetter than it looked from inside. Instead, I did calisthenics in my apartment. Doing a few pushups and jumping jacks in a 3' x 3' square isn't really an adequate subsitute for a full on run, but it's better than nothing, and I did it while watching The Ultimate Fighter, so I was especially pumped up. I love it on that show when they do the pre-fight monologues with the fighters and some 23-year old dude is like, "I'm doing this for my little baby girl, Kaley. She's my inspiration, man. I fight for her, and I can tell you this, I will die before I lose this fight." And then the guy gets his ass kicked and taps out in the first round. It goes to show that people can say whatever they want about anything they want. Just saying something doesn't make it even remotely true.
This sounds obvious, but sometimes I wonder if people really get this. Look at our presidential candidates for 2012. In one party, we have the incumbent who many former supporters are down on, in no small part because they chose to believe his hope-and-change-yes-we-can rhetoric instead of actually looking at his record, and now they feel a bit duped. In the other party, we have a top primary contender saying the science is "not settled" on global warming, even though, according to a study referenced in the LA Times, 97%-98% of climate researchers think humans are causing climate change. (If 97 of 100 doctors told you you have cancer, are you getting treatment, or are you holding out until the "debate" is settled?)
[This isn't my prediction for the 2012 race, by the way. I think it'll be Obama-Romney, which will give us the least difference between any two candidates in my lifetime. Seriously, the only major distinction is that Obama has to pander (slightly) to the left and Romney has to pander to the right. If these two guys woke up one morning and some sort of "Freaky Friday" thing happened, and Obama was now the republican and Romney was now the democrat, I think they would both just shrug their shoulders and go on with their days like nothing had ever happened.]
And you have pols in both parties telling you that balancing the budget and cutting spending is the best path to economic recovery, when empirical evidence suggests this just isn't the case, and in fact cutting spending right now is probably one of the worst things we can do. (Read Paul Krugman for more details on this front.) Although, in defense of Barack Obama, he has started shifting his tone away from balancing the budget and toward combating unemployment. I actually came up with an analogy that I think Obama should use -- a heart attack. In 2008, our economy had a heart attack, and we're still in the midst of it. Republicans are insisting we combat our heart attack by eating better and exercising more (i.e., balancing the budget). Seemingly sound advice, except it's completely unhelpful and counterproductive, considering we're in a hospital bed right now holding on for dear life. We need somebody to rub those paddles together and shock us back to stability (i.e., stimulate the economy, create jobs, reduce unemployment). Once we return to a state somewhat resembling normalcy, then we can start the discussion on broccoli and jogging.
Speaking of broccoli and jogging, I've been trying to eat better and exercise more (which explains my attempt to run in this awful weather). I've noticed over the past few months a paunch slowly starting to form, and it's now protruding a little too far for my liking. It's weird because you can still see the outline of my ab muscles (back in my wrestling days I had a pretty nice washboard, unfortunately that was over 15 years ago!), but then they morph into a bit of a potbelly. I've got two cans of a six pack on top of a mini-keg. I'm like Robert Mitchum in "Out of Shape in Shape Guy from the 50's".
And on that note. Let's wrap this son of a gun up.
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