Blogs For Victory

HAT TIP: The American Catholic

Every now and then I like to share something non-political here. Today, I’d like to promote something that has made me do something that I once would have written off as impossible.

Today I graduated from the Couch-To-5K Program.

What is that? you ask. It is a nine-week program that starts you off running for short periods of time, gradually building your run intervals up so that you can, by the end of the program, run a 5K.

Now, I have never done recreational running or even running for exercise before. When I first started the program, the 60 and 90-second running intervals were a struggle for me. Today was my third day of a full 30-minute run, and with the help of a great iPhone app called RunKeeper, I have been able to monitor my progress. Today my average pace was 10:06 per mile. That may not be fast to most people, but for me, I still can’t believe I could do it.

Oh yeah, and I have been running virtually barefoot.

Shortly after I started the program I started wearing Vibram FiveFingers, which are a minimalist footwear designed to allow your feet to do the job they were designed to do while offering you minimal protection. Barefooting is an interesting thing, after spending your entire life believing that you need to shod your feet to enhance performance and protect yourself from injury.

Anyway, for our readers that are looking to get in shape and would like to give running a try, I recommend the following things.

• The Couch-To-5K Program with c25k App for the iPhone.
• RunKeeper (there are free and pro versions of the app available through iTunes)
• Vibram FiveFingers (barefooting is not for everyone, but I endorse it)

Anyway, I just thought I’d share. And for the record I have not been paid to use or promote these products or programs.

It’s not us – its not Republicans and conservatives. From ABC News:

…The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, the non-voting delegate who represented the District of Columbia from 1971 to 1991, called on African-Americans to organize a “new coalition of conscience” to rebut the rally scheduled for Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial featuring Fox News pundit Glenn Beck and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“We are going to take on the barbarism of war, the decadence of racism, and the scourge of poverty, that the Ku Klux — I meant to say the Tea Party,” Fauntroy told a news conference today at the National Press Club. “You all forgive me, but I — you have to use them interchangeably.”…

Interchangeably? Glenn Beck and the TEA Party are interchangeable with the KKK? If “Reverand” Fauntroy wasn’t quite so aged, the proper response from anyone in the TEA Party is to call him out. Seriously – does this old man realize the magnitude of the insult offered?

Probably not. Because he’s just another liberal – living off government, determined to maintain his place at the trough and merely playing the race card to both gin up the liberal base as well as try to scare people away from the TEA Party.

If we are to have a civil debate, then the first step will have to be taken by liberals. Stop lying about us. Stop making out that any opposition to liberalism is “racism” or “homophobia” or what have you. If you on the left won’t do that, then don’t go around blaming us for the heated level of debate. We’ll argue the merits of our ideas because we know we’re right – but if you prefer a pissing match, we’ll do that, too…there are more of us and we’ll win, either way.

Something tells me Obama would give immunity to Osama bin Laden too.

The Obama administration has shelved the planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a court filing.

The decision at least temporarily scuttles what was supposed to be the signature trial of a major al-Qaeda figure under a reformed system of military commissions. And it comes practically on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attack, which killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens when a boat packed with explosives ripped a hole in the side of the warship in the port of Aden.

In a filing this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said that “no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future.”

The statement, tucked into a motion to dismiss a petition by Nashiri’s attorneys, suggests that the prospect of further military trials for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has all but ground to a halt, much as the administration’s plan to try the accused plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in federal court has stalled.

Wow, this is just … who would have thought Obama would ever so blatantly show his lack of desire to fight terrorism.

From Bloomberg:

The U.S. economy grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate in the second quarter, less than previously calculated, as companies reined in inventories and the trade deficit widened.

The revised gain in gross domestic product was bigger than the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and compares with a 2.4 percent estimate issued last month, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Corporate profits grew last quarter at the slowest rate in a year and employee wages in the prior three months were revised lower.

Its all been a waste of time and money – TARP, stimulus, all of it. Only hard work, savings and careful investment do the trick…not Fed Funny Money and manipulation of stocks and bonds to preserve “too big to fail” banks.

Thank goodness November is coming…

Have at it boys and girls – I’ll have something later.

The stupid and the greedy are hoping that Federal Reserve Chairman and all around economic dimwit Ben Bernanke will screw the working poor and middle class one more time to keep asset prices over-inflated:

..Following a slew of downbeat economic indicators, market expectations are growing that there will be more quantitative easing from the Fed before the end of the year. Under the radical scheme, also used in the UK last year, central banks pour money into buying assets such as government bonds from banks and the commercial sector, pumping more cash into the financial system and at the same time cutting market rates…

I understand why the people calling for Quantative Easing 2.0 (ie, print more money) are doing so – because they live off our over-leveraged, usurious, fiat-money-based economy and they know that if asset prices don’t remain inflated, they’re cooked. I know why Ben Bernanke is at least willing to do it – he’s one of them. What I don’t understand is why no one in government – from Obama on down – is out there screaming and even legislating for Bernanke to stop. Sure, Obama believes in that Keynesian economic nonsense, bit it is clear that the last QE didn’t work – so why try it again?

We’re eyeball to eyeball with complete economic collapse while Obama and his Democrats are facing a crushing defeat this November. If the plan is that Obama and his Democrats are hoping to add a 2012 wipe out to their 2010 losses, then letting Bernanke get away with QE2 is the best way to do it. Sure, such a move would delight the sort of idiot investors who got us in to this mess and keep the S&P 500 high for a while – and it might even put another momentary bloom of health on the economy (though very much shorter lived than the previous one) – but the ultimate result of such a move is just more of the same – ie, more economic pain.

Its time we started to realize that we’re broke – no, scratch that. The people do realize we’re broke – its time for our leadership to admit it. We have to get back to work and thus all policies must be geared towards plowing fields, digging mines and opening up factories…if it doesn’t assist in one of those three things, it simply should not be done…and whatever we do, it can’t be done with borrowed or printed money.

Its time to get back to the real world and get back to work – Bernanke thinks its time to bail out his bankster buddies.

Seems that the radio is determined to play all my brother’s favorite songs – so, I’ll share:

The Culture of Life is seeking to end the disproportionate destruction of black life by the abortion industry:

The Life Education and Resource Network (L.E.A.R.N.), in collaboration with The Radiance Foundation, announces the launch of the “Black and Unwanted” public awareness initiative in Bryan/College Station. On the heels of massive national and international media coverage of the “Endangered Species” campaign, this nonpartisan campaign continues to reveal abortion’s destruction in the black community while highlighting the need for more adoptions. TooManyAborted.com is the campaign’s online resource that provides irrefutable federal and state abortion statistics and the largely unknown history of the racism and eugenics of Planned Parenthood. It directly challenges the false rhetoric, with actual facts, by groups like the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) and other abortion advocates…

The fact will always remain that abortion and birth control were first advanced by the eugenics movement – which sought to cleanse America and the world of “undesirable” children, especially black children. They were seen as weaker and a drag upon the “superior” people – the sickness has changed its rhetoric over the years, but the fact remains that black children are vastly over-represented in the abortion statistics, just as the founders of Planned Parenthood wished.

Death is not the answer to the problems of life. We are called upon to endure our trials and use love and mercy to comfort those in difficulty. In so doing we affirm our humanity – to do otherwise is a rejection of all that is decent. There is not and cannot be the slightest justification of any elective abortion – and even now it still astounds me that people allow themselves to be convinced that the answer to a poor girl unsure of what to do is to kill her child.

With life there is hope – and we must grasp at hope and do what is necessary to foster it. We must end this scourge of abortion and by so doing recover the moral balance which will allow us to ameliorate all other ills in our society.

The Heritage Foundation looks at the “Report of the United States of America,” which was delivered  to the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights the other day.

The U.S. report is revealing of how the current administration views the American people and America’s place in the world. The first section of the report (entitled “A more perfect union, a more perfect world”) begins by quoting the Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and Obama White House documents, includingPresident Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Though presented as coherent and harmonious thoughts, the intellectual inconsistency among these documents is striking.

Whereas the Declaration and the Constitution assert American independence and a realistic assessment of human nature, the U.S. UPR report declares that America’s international role is to help “build a world in which universal rights give strength and direction to the nations, partnerships, and institutions that can usher us toward a more perfect world, a world characterized by, as President Obama has said, ‘a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual.’” With this in mind, the White House, cannot be satisfied with imperfection at home in America. Addressed to an international audience, the report contains many statements of dissatisfaction with America’s record,

Obama, and the people he surrounds himself with, don’t seem think very highly of America do they? You’d think that these people, who at this moment in time have the power to represent our country to foreign leaders and institutions like the U.N., would have more position things to say about our country.