Day426 Saturday 10/29/11

ran 3.2 miles
Some stats and facts about the state of Utah:

• Utah was the forty-fifth state to join the union on January 4, 1896, eleven years before Oklahoma and six years after Wyoming.

• Population, as of 2010, is 2,763,885.

• Senators are Orrin Hatch (R) and Mike Lee (R).

• Representatives are Rob Bishop (R), Jim Matheson (D), and Jason Chaffetz (R).

• Utah has six electoral votes. The state claimed the third largest population swell over the past decade (nearly 24%) and gained one electoral vote for the next decade. Historically, Utah has not voted blue since 1964. In 2008, McCain defeated Obama by 28%.

This is from an ABC News article, “The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008, then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people ‘you are on your own’.”
That quote from Barack Obama is the most refreshing thing he has said in three years. “On our own” is what we want. Although the quote was uttered during a fund raising dinner in San Francisco, I don’t think Obama has any clue how successful he could be as a president if he would only phrase those words in a different context. Something to the effect of “We cannot continue spending ourselves into oblivion and we cannot continue encouraging Americans to be so reliant upon the government”.

I can’t understand the sense of entitlement so many people in this country feel is somehow owed to them. Get off your rear-end and move forward. We are all victims of the same circumstances. Things could be better and they could be worse. Some of us choose to achieve, no matter how small or large the task, during these hard times and others choose to do…less, for lack of a better and less severe term. Too many have made their government a sedative to everything America has to offer.

801.8 miles to go.
Here is what happened one year ago on Day61.