October 9'th; a walking weekend

In preparations for my upcoming 24 hour race (Dallas, Texas on Thanksgiving weekend) I did my first "back to back" 20 mile weekend. Yesterday, I walked a local 5K race and combined it with a 6 mile warm up and an 11 mile cool down to get 20. (time for the 5K: 31:02) Today, I felt strong the whole way! Afterwards, my yoga teacher drove me to a nearby town for a 2 hour workout, which was followed by dinner at the Packing House. Good stuff!

As a warm up race, I plan to do the Chicago 50K on the 29'th of October (4 weeks prior). I had some ideas of going after Augie Hirt (an ex elite racewalker who taught me how to walk) but seeing that he cruised a marathon at 10:05 mpm (walking); well, I might just let him go.

It was a good week for football: Navy pulled out a squeaker over Air Force, Texas crushed Oklahoma (finally!) and the Cowboys routed the eagles. In heaven, my dad must be smiling.

Of course, the Bears stunk out the joint, but hey, there has to be some sense of continunity around here!

Now back to events and politics.

At the Daily Kos, there was an excellent diary about what Democrats must do to win in places like Ohio:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/7/175956/366

Basically, the story says that Ohio is a mostly socially conservative area and that Ohio doesn't have a super huge city like Chicago to turn it blue. Hence, Democrats must really focus on "lunch bucket" issues (fair trade, jobs, economic fairness ) to be competitive there.

I really see the point.

I'll be honest: yes, I am a college professor who has facial hair (sometimes), does yoga, is a Unitarian and pretty much a bleeding heart, gay rights loving died in the wool liberal. But where I sometimes get a "pass" for being a long-hair-lib (professors are expected to be eccentric), our party isn't going to win by tailoring its message to my liking. I am not in the mainstream of America (even if I am a Naval Academy graduate and served in the Navy for 4 years). I need to be realistic in my expectations of politicians.

Next, something about our Representative in Congress: Ray LaHood.
He is a Republican and I don't like that. But he voted against the Patriot act, voted for the Freedom to Read act, voted against this huge giveaway to the oil companies (along with *all* of the Democrats, and voted to fund PBS. I found myself saying "thank you for your vote" to him quite often.

To be honest, if more Republicans were like him, I wouldn't have such an intense dislike for that party. I still wouldn't be a Republican as I see the world differently than they do. But he is one that I respect, even if I often disagree with him.

Then again, two of my favorite presidents (Lincoln and T. Roosevelt) were Republicans. But Teddy R. was a Republican back in the days when they stood for civil rights, conservation and stood up to monopolies. Yes, T. Roosevelt didn't shy away from war when it was necessary (or when he thought it was necessary). But when it came time to fight, he suited up and lead the charge! And he could make peace too; he won a Nobel Peace Prize (for mediating the end to the Russo-Japanese war).

Next, there was an interesting local event. A few days ago, I had mentioned in the Daily Kos that I had done some grunt work for local politicians in the Peoria area. Mike Kisler posted a reply and said that I should support a local reporter named Terry Bibo and that she was a "big-time Democrat". The responded to that in her local column (in the Peoria Journal Star). Mike then posted a retraction of his statement as a Daily Kos diary entry:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/9/45345/9962

I was amused. I've read much of Bibo's work and frankly found it to be shallow, hopelessly mediocre and of little value. In other words, Bibo fits right in with the Peoria Journal Star.

http://www.pjstar.com

The Peoria Journal Star is a Copley owned paper. They really try to be informative and balanced; sometimes their Sunday paper is worth reading. The carry some good columnists (Rasperry and Pitts) and some awful ones (e. g. Cal Thomas, who is an absolute embarrassment). In their religion section, they include articles written by local ministers (of various faiths) and by a religion professor. Some are quite shallow and embarrassingly bad; others (the religion professor's and Father Sweatland's) are quite good. Trivia: Father Sweatland was my Naval Academy class's only Rhodes Scholar (1981).
The PJS also carries an interesting "Roll Call" section where they discuss the major votes (Congress; both House and Senate).

But most of their locally based stuff, with the exception of Mike Bailey's stuff (which is usually quite good), ranges from mediocre to terrible. Bibo, while mediocre, is nowhere near the worst of the lot. Two of the worst are Jerry Klien (who writes a curmudgeon's opinion column on Sundays) and Doug Finke (who writes a Sunday column devoted to attacking Governor Blagojevich called the Statehouse Insider).

I'll admit that Gov. Rod needs to be attacked for many things, but Finke seems to be more interested in attacking to give the reader laughs of the "aren't these politicians morons" variety rather than doing any serious policy analysis. That kind of thing is fine for a personal blog, but kind of lame for a newspaper.

But Klien is the worst of the lot. Once in a while he writes an ok column (for example, he sometimes extols the virtues of walking or of using the public bicycle trails). But mostly, he writes at the level of a "Saturday morning at the barbershop" conversation. His opinions seem to be arrived at without any serious thought; it appears that he merely sits down at the typewriter and writes the first thing that pops into his head.

But, sad to say, he is popular; he reasons at a very "common" level. I'd say that his role is more or less to reflect the thoughts of the average Peorian rather than to stimulate people to think harder and deeper. I think of him as the "Dinnette Set" Intellectual (Julie Larson's excellent cartoon, which is set in central Illinois).

Here is one example of his "work": back in 1993, he actually wrote that it was permissible to kill a baby (and call it an abortion) so long as the umbilical cord was attached! (In Illinois, the standard is "viability of the fetus"). You would think that he would have done 10 minutes of research prior to writing such a stupid thing.