Day36 Monday 10/04/10

ran 3.8 miles
Oklahoma has recently passed a number of new and bold laws. Surmounting Arizona’s recent new immigration laws with boldness and controversy, the state has enacted six new laws, which more states will hopefully follow the model of.

• Oklahoma has declared itself a sovereign state, not subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, joining Texas, Montana and Utah in sovereign status (HJR 1003).
• On the front lawn of the Oklahoma State Capitol the Ten Commandments will be displayed (HB 1330).
• Oklahoma is now incarcerating all illegal immigrants and sending them back where they came from unless they choose to undergo the process of being a naturalized citizen (HB 1804)
• Oklahoma now has the right to collect DNA samples from illegal aliens for storage in their criminal database, for criminal investigative use (SB 1102).
• The people of Oklahoma voted for the right to bear arms, confirming citizens have every right to possess and transport weapons in their vehicles.
• The people of Oklahoma voted to print all drivers’ license exams exclusively in English, following the logic that all road signs are printed only in English.
  

This is a huge statement and it is likely that more states will follow this stream of logic, unfettering themselves from the shackles of Barack Obama and his agenda. Initiative like this at the state level is a preemptive insurance policy against administrations with ideas like Obama’s and all future governmental gears that have un-American machines to build.

1.987.6 miles to go.

Day35 Sunday 10/03/10

ran 2.0 miles
Today marks five weeks, 88.6 miles, and 16735 words. My daily running average is 2.53 miles a day and my daily posting average is 478.1 words a day. These miles and words have opened my mind and heart to avenues they have never known before now.

To establish where I am coming from and how valuable this goal is I would like to point out that I have no desire to run everyday or to post on this blog every night. But I find it to be a necessary burden for a worthwhile cause. This world may be large but that is no reason for anyone to be small. When I don’t want to run I convince myself to persevere by imagining how petty I am to consider idleness when so many soldiers have and continue to serve in our military, fighting for our freedom. They don’t get to wake up and say, “I don’t feel like doing this today.”

When I don’t have time or energy to type a post for this blog I remind myself that, by candle light and no modern technology, our forefathers drafted a brilliant path against all odds for this country to follow. And for me to not continue this goal would be an insult to every success this country has had for more than two centuries. It is a testing goal, but it is nothing compared to what so many others have done.

1,991.4 miles to go.

Day34 Saturday 10/02/10

ran 2.6 miles
Scanning over articles and current events from the past week, I found a lot of bone and not much meat. There was a lot of interesting news but it’s the same predictable material day after day. Countries in Europe are protesting and rioting, Obama is doing everything he can to save his cause, firing and hiring administrative members, blaming republicans for everything that’s wrong, the Pope and the Muslim religion can’t keep the ink off the papers across the globe, Senators and Representatives are spending millions upon millions of dollars to campaign for seats that only earn an average salary of $174,000 per year…

…Let’s take a step back. How can anyone justify spending millions of dollars on vinyl signs, billboards, advertisements and appearances when a candidate’s actual plan is the real substance of the matter at hand? And whatever this man’s or woman’s plan is should be intuitive and self-explanatory. It should not require millions of dollars to sell an election. It should take a plan, common sense, and voters who are interested in the state of their country and educated about its history and current events.

I’m going to crawl out on a thin limb and make a judgmental call. President Obama’s entire plan is to make things work out for everybody and to make things equally enjoyable in America. While I believe this effort is a tenet of communism, I am curious to know why Barack Obama, or Bush, because I know that is who he would blame it on, has not said, “Wake up, America! If you want something you have to earn it. The government is here to serve as little intervention in your life as possible. We want you to succeed by yourself and you have every ability to do it. So what are you waiting for?”

That’s my America.

1,993.4 miles to go.

Day33 Friday 10/01/10

ran 2.6 miles

• Alaska was first made into a district on October 18, 1867. The district became an organized territory on August 24, 1912, and finally became the forty-ninth state on January 3, 1959, after Arizona and before Hawaii.

• Alaska was purchased from Russia through the negotiations of William Henry Seward, secretary of state under President Lincoln. Our government paid $7.2 million dollars for the land (2 cents per acre). Many Americans at the time called the purchase “Seward’s Folly”, regarding Alaska as an icy wasteland. As it turns out Alaska thrives in mining, is rich in oil and draws much tourism.

• Population, as of 2009, is 698,473.

• Senators are Mark Begich (D) and Lisa Murkowski (R).

• Representative is Donald Young (R).

• Alaska has 3 electoral votes. It has been a red state since it joined the union excluding the presidential election of 1964, voting for democrat Barry Goldwater.

• Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas and possesses more than half the world’s active glaciers. The state is larger than England, France, Italy and Spain combined, yet if its population density were applied to New York City, only 16 people would be living in Manhattan.

The polls open up tomorrow for the election of local officials here in Lafayette, Louisiana. Many people fail to vote for even Senators or Representatives, or even for the President of the United States (I used to be one of them), but get out there and make a difference. Do some research. I know voting is the last thing on a lot of people’s minds because it may not seem important, but look at it like a cold, clear glass of refreshing water. You never fully appreciate how good water tastes or how vital it is until you are forced to drink a warm cup of murky water filled with impurities. If you ever lost your right to vote you would cringe like you had just took a sip of that rusty, parasitic water. Appreciate and utilize your right to vote. People died for it.

1.996.0 miles to go.

Day32 Thursday 09/30/10

ran 3.2 miles
Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval poll indicates that 29% of Americans strongly approve of Barack Obama’s performance as president, while 46% strongly disapprove. His Presidential Approval Index rating is –17, compared to –14 on this day last week. Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of Obama’s performance, and 55% at least somewhat disapprove.

These are the current polling results, according to Rasmussen Reports, of the Senate race in November.

Solid democratic states are:
Hawaii
Maryland
New York
Oregon
Vermont

Lean democratic states are:
California
Connecticut
Delaware

Toss-up states are:
Illinois
Nevada
West Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin

Lean GOP states are:
Colorado
Florida
Missouri
New Hampshire
Ohio
Pennsylvania

Solid GOP states are:
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
North Carolina
North Dakota
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Utah


And one last thing, I stumbled across a cool website hosted by “Citizens Against Government Waste”, www.cagw.org, and they had some interesting facts about 2010 earmarks. These are a few examples of how our government is spending our taxes.

$465 million for the Joint Strike Fighter alternate engine. This military aircraft has an engine that does not work and apparently we need to find one that does.

Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) received $7,287,000 to continue the Harkin Grant program and Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va) received $7,000,000 for the Robert C. Byrd Institute of Advanced Flexible Manufacturing Systems.

And here’s to Representative Leonard Lance (R-N.J.) for his ever-changing stance on earmarks; first signing a no-earmark pledge, then receiving $21 million in earmarks, then supporting the Republican earmark moratorium.

Today is the first day of a new month of running and blogging and I am now officially under 2,000 miles.

1,998.6 miles to go.

Day31 Wednesday 09/29/10

ran 2.6 miles
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

Thomas Paine

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

Thomas Paine

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

George Washington

“Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.”

Thomas Jefferson

Much of the media continues to harpoon blame of Obama’s low approval numbers by essentially attributing all of our current turmoil to Bush’s eight years, which does actually hold a substantial amount of truth, and an underwhelming generalization that American voters simply disapprove of Barack Obama’s actions because we are all frustrated by the economy and an overall lack of productive results.

American voters want to reconcile wrongdoings and problems from the past decade as much as Barack Obama does, but would it be possible for us to not be depicted by the media as a simple-minded herd of cattle, only capable of mooing that we want results and that we want them now? We certainly want some real change soon, but could it be possible that millions of people in this country firmly believe Obama’s direction and his ideas are shaded with dangerously dark tints of socialism? Newspapers don’t allude to this real possibility very often. Our voice stands as simple results of random polls.

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

This line from Karl Marx is possibly the most naïve and out of touch series of letters ever pushed onto a sheet of paper by a pen. It is a utopian fairy tale. Read George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, or read the “Communist Manifesto”. They are both very quick reads. The former is a step-by-step demise of applied communism and the latter is a collection of theoretical wishful thinking that simply does not work without compromising every fiber of what a country like America is.

“The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.”

“The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”

“Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.”

These quotes from Karl Marx sound like the words of an angry, bitter man who takes everything he sees in the world very personally, as though everything were an insult to him and his ego, and he wants to put the world in its place, regardless of the others around him. That is what Communism is. It is like an angry child throwing a tantrum and wanting everything his way and all of his things to be in their proper place.

2,001.8 miles to go.

Day30 Tuesday 09/28/10

ran 3.2 miles
On this day in 1781, General George Washington began the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown. Washington led a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops to Yorktown, Virginia to face off against General Lord Charles Cornwallis and 9,000 British troops for what would arguably be the most important battle of the Revolutionary War.

By mere luck or divine intervention, the French fleet, commanded by Count de Grasse, left St. Domingue (the French colony that is now Haiti) and headed toward Chesapeake Bay. At the same time, Cornwallis coincidentally had chosen Yorktown, at the mouth of the Chesapeake to station his base. Washington was dealt a good tactical hand and he reacted. He ordered Marquis de Lafayette and an American army 5,00 strong to block a British escape from Yorktown by land as the French naval fleet blocked the British by sea. By September 28, 1781, Washington had Cornwallis surrounded. Three weeks of day and night battle finally ended with Cornwallis’ surrender in Yorktown on October 17, 1781, officially ending the War for Independence.

Cornwallis, claiming to be ill, did not attend the formal surrender ceremony two days later. His second in command, General Charles O’Hara, carried Cornwallis’ sword to the American and French officers.

Though the war briefly continued to persist in certain areas of little historic consequence, the Patriot victory at Yorktown ended battle in the American colonies. Peace negotiations began in 1782, and on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, officially acknowledging the United States as an independent nation after eight years of bloodshed and toil for freedom.

Reading about history like this is one of the many reasons I feel so passionate to run and write. Running is a real bummer some days and I have very little time to post anything with substance on other days. But I try as hard as I can with what I have to work with. If I don’t do at least these two things every day, it is insulting and ungracious to the amazing men and women who have made this great country what it is. Whether they were brilliant minds, brave soldiers, unknown names that history neglected to put in its books or normal people that simply felt compelled to preserve what this country is meant to be, their efforts deserve our efforts, as small or large as they may be.

2,004.4 miles to go.

Day29 Monday 09/27/10

ran 3.2 miles
Health insurance has an interesting history in America. Somewhere along the way companies who sought quality employees began offering the incentive of paid health insurance, as well as a good salary. Innocently and in the spirit of free enterprise, ambitious and successful businesses wanted to find the best employees they could and so they offered benefits to acquire the quality employees they desired.

Health care in America has never been mandated by the government since its origin, until now.

In 2014, everyone who is not in the lowest-income bracket will be forced to pay a fine if they choose to not be insured by the government’s health care plan. What began as a simple insurance industry has become one of the priciest government investments in American history. Health care is automatically associated with government. It did not start this way and it was not intended to end this way.

Our government believes the 938 billion dollars it plans to spend over ten years on comprehensive health reform should reduce long-term growth of health care costs, protect families from bankruptcy or debt that may have been attributed to health care costs, guarantee choice of doctors, encourage prevention and wellness, improve quality of health care, assure affordability and quality care for all Americans, and continue coverage whether you are working or not.

I’m no oracle, but common sense tells me this is way too good to be true. Being too good to be true is a characteristic of utopian ideas and utopian ideas are associated with Marxism. Marxism is communism and it just does not work.

2,007.6 miles to go.

Day28 Sunday 09/26/10

ran 1.1 miles
Four weeks in. I have run 69.2 miles and typed 14,310 words in the name of what I believe to be an imminent overthrow of everything that is wrong in America. Barack Obama’s second term can only be attributed to reasonable minds that fail to vote or radical minds that don't seem to have very much appreciation for the foundations on which this country was built.

My daily running average is 2.47 miles a day. My daily posting average is 511.07 words a day. For those of you who think nothing matters and that American politics are just American politics, I implore you to realize that one day politics will be a very big deal for you, and the sooner you prioritize your political agenda, the better.

America, in the next couple of decades, will either remain American or it will no longer be America as we know it. And much of that direction starts right now with what path we choose in the midterm elections and who we don't elect on November 6, 2012.

When a government or an administration sinks, its final bubbles rising to the surface are reminders of why we made that mistake and we ought to aspire to not repeat the same mistakes in the future.

2010.8 miles to go.

Day27 Saturday 09/25/10

ran 2.6 miles
Running today was more demanding than usual. This whole week I have felt like I was pulling a tractor tire behind me. Weeks like this are bound to happen but I am highly motivated about next week because I will be completing my first month of running against Barack Obama and blogging about it.

My main interests in pursuing this campaign deal with government-run health care, government stimulus packages and bailouts, and immigration, among many other topics. These are the three that I seem to gravitate to. Health care run by the government is communism. Washington has no place in free enterprise and free enterprise has no place in communism. And, as with anything else, it doesn’t seem so bad on the surface but it establishes a sense of precedent that Congress can use to socialize other industries one after another if they see fit. In a similar light, Obama’s stimulus packages and bailouts, straight out of the Keynesian Economic Playbook (see Day20), which has been proven to be a dubious waste of time and money in other countries and in our own during various administrations, also reek of socialism. The stimulus money, which has been barely noticeable, will have to be paid back by generations of Americans, not the Congressmen and women that advocated the decision to do it. And the bailouts of automobile companies and banks enabled the American Government to waltz right into the boardrooms of the private sector. Not a big deal, right? Not right now, as it may appear, but the government has its foot in the door, and it is not going to close any time soon. This is the foundation of socialism. The government sets the rules and prices. Free enterprise, ambition, dreams, and everything that makes America such a great country diminishes to nothing one day at a time. My final disapproval on our government’s policies is immigration. Put up fences! Nothing is more aggravating or more unexplainable as when I see various immigrants, legal or not, waving their flags and singing the songs of their homeland, which they had fled for a better life in America. Ungraciously, many of these people have no desire to assimilate to the ways of this country, which are obviously good ways and successful means. Instead, many seem to have a feeble and misunderstood perception that they have a right to turn their America into whichever country they came from. And this is an odd behavior when you consider that many of our naturalized citizens and illegal aliens came from perilous, inopportune, corrupted and broken countries. And yet they have the audacity to not assimilate and to project their culture and ways upon everyone around them, as though they might have a better idea of what America ought to be even though it has proven itself to be quite successful for nearly two and one half centuries.

One last thing, I recently found a very informative website that focuses on Barack Obama’s daily actions, conferences, meetings, etc. There are more articles and videos than you can possibly read or view archived on this site.

2,011.9 miles to go.

Day26 Friday 09/24/10

ran 2.6 miles

• Alabama was the twenty-second state to join the Union on December 14, 1819, one year after Illinois and one year before Maine.

• Population, as of 2009, is 4,708,708.

• Senators are Jeff Sessions (R) and Richard C. Shelby (R).

• Representatives are Jo Robins Bonner (R), Terry Everett (R) , Mike Rogers (R), Robert Aderholt (R), Bud Cramer (D), Spencer Bachus (R), and Artur Davis (D).

• Alabama holds nine electoral votes. Historically, the state has been a GOP stronghold since 1964, voting for democrats only twice in 1968 and 1976 (George Wallace and Jimmy Carter).

• Alabama holds a historic example of how contradictory the Electoral College can be. In 1960, six of the eleven Alabama electors cast their votes for Harry F. Byrd, regardless of the fact that John Kennedy clearly won the state’s popular vote.

The Electoral College is a safeguard created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, which protects what they viewed as a potential recklessness of the purely Popular Vote. Our forefathers were faced with either letting individual American voters choose the president by themselves or allowing Congress to override them if they saw fit to do so. And they chose to let Congress override the Popular Vote, as described in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution.

Electors usually cast their votes for the candidate who received the majority of votes in that particular state. Some states have laws that require electors to vote for the popular candidate and others are bound by pledges to a specific political party. As Alabama has exemplified, there have been cases where electors vote contrarily to the people’s decision, and there is no law or Constitutional provision to stop or condition it.

2,014.5 miles to go.

Day25 Thursday 09/23/10

ran 3.2 miles

• As of today, the Rasmussen Reports indicate that Barack Obama’s approval rate has an Index rating of –14. Twenty-eight percent of America’s voters strongly approve of Obama’s role as president and forty-two percent strongly disapprove of his role as president.

• The Presidential Approval Rating is calculated by subtracting the percentage of those who Strongly Disapprove from the percentage of those who Strongly Approve. It is updated at 9:30 a.m. Eastern everyday.

• Overall, 48% of voters at least somewhat approve of Obama’s performance and 51% generally disapprove of his actions.

• Regarding government anti-poverty programs, 33% of voters say these programs are at least somewhat effective and 62% say they are not effective. According to Rasputin Reports, 43% believe government programs actually increase poverty in America.

• Likely U.S. voters who favor repeal of the new national health care law comprise 61% of those surveyed, including 50% who strongly favor its repeal.

At the time the Declaration of Independence was written and signed by 56 brave men who had put their lives on the line by putting their signatures on that document, roughly 1 in 5 of those living in America wanted to remain British subjects. This twenty percent of opposition was a substantial amount of resistance, which possibly aided or may have spied for the British. But America succeeded in being its own ruler against all foreign and domestic adversity.

It is possible that history has reached 360 degrees and that Washington, DC has become to us what eighteenth century Britain was for the majority of the American colonists. The Tea Party movement speaks for itself and they have staggering numbers of people who all feel the same way. There is a well-distributed urgency with concentrated pockets across America to dethrone every current Senator and Representative and to replace them with plumbers, mechanics, farmers, firefighters, and numerous other realistic people.

While that is probably an implausible possibility at its full scope, this is still America and everyone has a right to challenge his or her dreams to a fair game of reality. Washington needs reform as much as health care, immigration, or any of the other current hot topics. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, taking one step at a time, there is much change to make, but the most important change right now is to get Barack Obama out of office.

President Obama has to compromise his radicalism in this first term and appear to be at least somewhat rational for the opportunity to be re-elected. It will be in his second term, if he can pull off another term, when there is no third term to lose, that he will show his true colors and offer some real change that will scar this country for generations.

I am in no position to prove my theory of Obama’s potential second term but I firmly believe in its destructive aftermath. There is no way to prove or disprove any political theories, but we do have history to use as a tool to help us avoid repeating disasters and to continue ideas that work. The American spirit has worked since the day this great country was formed and we seem to be slashing our own tires on the vehicle of freedom and conservatism that keeps our constitution in tact.

2,017.1 miles to go.

Day24 Wednesday 09/22/10

ran 2.6 miles
"It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it."

Ronald Reagan

"Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberty.

Abraham Lincoln

“Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.”

John F. Kennedy

“When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.”

Abraham Lincoln

“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.”

Ronald Reagan

“Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

Calvin Coolidge

Every once in a while it stings with such certainty, the feeling that everything is flipped upside down and turned inside out in America. I find it difficult to explain and hard to prove because there is so much arguable information in our hands to debate about with no conclusive end except for what one can only speculate. But there is an indisputably general feeling in this country that something is missing or that something good has gone away. I don’t believe Barack Obama is bringing us any closer to the elusive good that we seek and I don’t know if that “good” we seek will come any time soon. But getting him out of office brings America that much closer to its optimum potential. We need to bring ourselves back to our roots and remember how this country was conceived. We are the product of a revolutionary war against a global super power of the eighteenth century, which we had absolutely no chance of winning and, yet, we did. People of many different minds united for something they believed in and died for what we have today. Now, the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights all seem to be fading away and evaporating out of our grasps.

People make this country great. Not Governments or their Administrations. Where problems surface there will always be useful solutions and where useful solutions thrive there will always be burdensome problems. Among all this turmoil is the American voice directing and redirecting the balance, not the Government.

2,020.3 miles to go.

Day23 Tuesday 09/21/10

ran 4.2 miles
On this day in 1780, during the American Revolution, American General Benedict Arnold committed treason. Arnold met with British Major John Andre to finalize details of handing over West Point to the British in return for a large sum of money and an esteemed position in the British army. His plans were discovered and the former American hero defined what an American traitor was for every generation to come.

Benedict Arnold was given command of West Point and, on September 21, he met with Major John Andre and sealed his traitorous pact. The plot was uncovered and Andre was captured and executed. Arnold safely fled to the British side and led British troops in Virginia and Connecticut. Never having served punishment for his traitorous act, he retired in London and died on June 14, 1801.

Other events on this day in history:

• Spaniards capture Baton Rouge in 1779.
• FDR urges repeal of Neutrality Act embargo provisions in 1939.
• First daily newspaper in America is printed (Pennsylvania Packet & General Advertiser) in 1784.
• “Star Spangled Banner” was published as a poem in 1814.
• United States performs nuclear test at Nevada test site in 1967.

2,022.9 miles to go.