Finished goal of running the distance of 2,080 miles from Lafayette, LA to Washington D.C and back!!!...plus 339.1 miles


0.0 miles run this week.
Daily running average for the week is 0.00 miles per day.
Total amount run in the past 800 days is 2,419.1 miles.
Daily running average overall is 3.02 miles per day.

Day173 Friday 02/18/11

image from eshop.mainevent-tickets.co.uk
ran 2.9 miles
  • Massachusetts was the sixth state to join the union on February 6, 1788, two months before Maryland and one month after Connecticut.
  • Population, as of 2009, is 6,593,587.
  • Senators are Scott Brown (R) and John Kerry (D).
  • Representatives are John Olver (D), Richard Neal (D), James McGovern (D), Barney Frank (D), Niki Tsongas (D), John Tierney (D), Edward Markey (D), Michael Capuano (D), Stephen Lynch (D) and William Keating (D).
  • Massachusetts, having lost one electoral vote as reapportioned by the 2010 Census, now has eleven electoral votes. The state has lost one-third of its electoral votes since the 1920s, falling from eighteen to eleven. Historically, the state has been reliably blue since 1928, only voting red four times since then (twice each for Eisenhower and Reagan). Obama beat McCain 62% to 36% in 2008.
In current news, the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, is being bullied by union protesters and democratic lawmakers. One of the most childish and ridiculous tactics I’ve been alive to witness was the fleeing of Democratic state senators in Wisconsin across the border to Illinois to hide and postpone the vote, which would force public-sector workers to pay into their own pensions (as most others do in 401k plans) and health benefits (as most others do) and the removal of collective bargaining rights for some. When you were in elementary or middle school, if you ran from a fight, or went to the extreme of not only running from a fight but crossing a state border to avoid it, even at that young age you were laughed at and your pubescent dignity was not spared. These are grown men and women, senators of a state in the United States of America, running for the hills. They fled to Illinois to avoid being brought back to Madison by Wisconsin state law enforcement.

Steps like these are what is necessary for America to rebound and more tough choices like this need to happen on local, state and federal levels. Governor Walker fired back at Barack Obama’s criticism of his actions by saying, “We are focused on balancing our budget. It would be wise for the government and others in Washington to focus on balancing their budgets, which they are a long way off from doing.”

Looking at the larger American picture, Wisconsin is taking a preemptive measure by attempting to correct their budget now before it becomes too volatile and dangerous shortly down the road, Arizona is fighting the federal government on immigration issues that are getting worse and worse as the federal government does as little as possible to correct the problem, and a large majority of the states in our union are taking all the steps they legally can to defund Obamacare so it never becomes a reality. What is the common denominator here? Obama claims Governor Walker’s actions are an “Assault” on the middle class, the federal government Obama is the leader of is in the courts with Arizona over actions the state has taken to quell their illegal alien issues, and a substantial majority of people and states are doing everything in their power to stop what Barack Obama would define as his legacy legislation, health care reform. The common denominator, which becomes more and more clear, week after week, is Barack Obama and his inability to do anything that more than half the people or states in this union don't vehemently want to overturn or pursue with an opposite approach.

Barack Obama is achieving something America has not seen in decades. He is uniting men and women from state to state to state to such a degree that “The people” or actually putting the federal government back in the place it belongs, inspired merely by passion for this great nation that Obama is trying to turn into an unrecognizable and unremarkable state of socialistic equality. Dare I say it, that states are once again wanting to distance themselves from the American government, the way it was intended to be. During the Civil War, numerous states actually seceded from the United States union, rejoining later. I am not alluding to state secession as a possibility in the near future, but what is happening is that many states are sending a universal message to the federal government and that message is “Leave us alone. If you would just leave us alone and allow each state to handle its own affairs depending on that state's own circumstances, this country would be a much better place. Leave us alone. You are only messing things up.”

For example, Arizona obviously has some serious border issues given their geographic location. In what world does it make sense for the federal government to legislate border control across the American landscape when certain states, like Arizona, are special cases that need special legislation. And in Wisconsin, Governor Walker was elected by the people of that state and he is doing the best and most effective thing he can for the long-term prosperity of his state. Barack Obama’s response, and liberal lawmakers’ reactions in general to what he is trying to do are absurd. Washington D.C. has no business interfering with American progress and that message is becoming louder and louder as each day passes.

Our federal government was never intended to have even half the power it now possesses and individual states are working to take their rightful power back. If nothing else, Barack Obama walked up to a sleeping giant, which is the American people, and he woke that giant up by slapping him in the face.

1,608.4 miles to go.