Day137 Thursday 01/13/11

ran 2.7 miles

• Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Index rating shows that 25% of American voters strongly approve of Barack Obama’s performance as president while 36% strongly disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –11, compared to –16 on this day last week. This is the lowest level of strong disapproval recorded in the last fifteen months.

• Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of Obama’s performance and 50% disapprove.

• Only 26% of voters believe that the country is generally heading in the right direction.

• Just 29% of voters believe that repeal of the health care law will increase the federal budget deficit, and 75% believe implementing the new health care law will cost more than projected.

Tonight I attended the first Acadiana Patriots meeting of 2011 in Lafayette, Louisiana. It was very exciting and the members were extremely welcoming. I did not expect to gain so much knowledge in only an hour and a half concerning politics on the local, state, and federal level. It was an interactive experience with guest speakers and plenty of questions and explanations. An enlisted and long-term member of the United States military who has been serving in Iraq described his experience and his thoughts on a number of issues, a representative of the Pelican Institute described some incredible things they are doing with charter schools and offered some eye opening facts about school systems across the state that demand some attention and change, and the final guest speaker was a State Senator, Elbert Guillory of district 24, who highlighted some critical points about district rezoning in Louisiana, which will be determined in April of 2011. He had a fair and logical proposal, which would correct how lopsided the current spread of Senator distribution among the state of Louisiana is, and it has been submitted to Governor Jindal, awaiting people like you and me to encourage him to pursue it. Here is the website that details Senator Elbert Guillory’s district plan.

The meeting far surpassed my expectations, which were already pretty high, and I encourage anyone who wants to become more informed or to make a difference to attend one of the Acadiana Patriots monthly meetings.

1,729.7 miles to go.

Day136 Wednesday 01/12/11

ran 3.4 miles
In yesterday’s post I reflected on Ronal Reagan’s farewell address to America at the end of his presidency. He had highlighted a legacy of fighting Communism and warned those in 1989, as well as, future generations of how threatening Communism is to the strengths of a free nation.

Today, through mere coincidence, I came across an interesting and clear analogy for the relationship between Communism and Free Enterprise in a book I was reading, which falls along the same lines of what Ronald Reagan was expressing in his farewell address. It was the last thing I would have expected to find in Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Panda’s Thumb”, a comparative analysis on the theory of evolution, which is very well-written in words anyone can understand---but, here it is, all of a sudden Gould began pointing out how important it was for men and women of varying industries and sciences to have the ability to “Construct fruitful analogies between varying fields”.

Gould posited that Darwin’s theory of natural selection (survival of the fittest) could easily be compared to Adam Smith’s laissez faire economics, which theorizes that, “If you want an ordered economy providing maximal benefits to all, then let individuals compete and struggle for their own advantages. The result, after appropriate sorting and elimination of the inefficient, will be a stable and harmonious polity.” Just like the theory of natural selection, order surfaces naturally from the struggle among individuals, not from predetermined principles or unrealistic economic planning.

Scottish philosopher Dugald Stewart encapsulated this idea when he said, “The most effective plan for advancing a people…is by allowing every man, as long as he observes the rules of justice, to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and his capital into the freest competition with those of his fellow citizens. Every system of policy which endeavors…to draw towards a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the society than would naturally go to it…is, in reality, subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote.”

Regardless of where you stand on the theory of evolution, I find it hard to believe anyone can deny the God-given process of natural selection or the concept of the survival of the fittest. In the Animal Kingdom the price of not surviving is far more severe, but in America the price of failure is only to stand back up on your feet and to try again, making individuals stronger. This comparison between two completely different fields of study is very impressive. I’d venture to say that through Free Enterprise America’s fundamental policies and beliefs were designed to mimic the nature of the world we live in and that anything with the slightest undertone of Communism is definitively unnatural (Obamacare).

1,732.4 miles to go.

Day135 Tuesday 01/11/11

ran 3.8 miles
On this day in 1989, Ronald Reagan delivered his farewell address to America. After eight years as president of the United States, he spoke with proud enthusiasm about the foreign policy achievements of his administration.

Reagan declared that America rediscovered its commitment to world freedom during his presidency. He proclaimed the United States was “Respected again in the world and looked to for leadership.” Through a return to “Common sense”, which “Told us that to preserve the peace, we’d have to become strong again after years of weakness.”

Reagan forced Soviets to begin withdrawal from Afghanistan, pulled the Vietnamese out of Cambodia, and ordered Cuban forces out of Angola. All of these endeavors were acts against Communism, an ideology that Reagan firmly believed was the single most threat to freedom.

“Nothing,” Reagan stated, “Is less free than pure Communism.”

Ronald Reagan emerged as an American hero having defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election. Jimmy Carter is the most similar liberal president with radical and devastating agendas comparable to Barack Obama’s ideas to surface in Washington over the past thirty-five years. Ideally, perhaps history will repeat itself, the way it tends to do, and bestow upon Americans a new hero that Obama’s administration will force to rise up as a product of unrealistic legislating and sheer voter discontentment.

It is quite possible that Barack Obama’s genuine beliefs and motives in the political arena, the ideologies he bases all of his decisions on, which effect so many, might just lead to the biggest awakening and positive change America has experienced in a long, long time. Reagan emerged as a hero after Carter and Someone Else now has an opportunity in their grasps in 2012 to remind us all of what America is, once more.

1,735.8 miles to go.

Day134 Monday 01/10/11

ran 3.3 miles
Today begins the twentieth week of running against Obama. I’d like to reiterate on why exactly I am running all of these miles and typing all of these words. And as I work my way to the end of my fourth month I’d also like to tell a little bit about myself.

I am 32-years-old. I have been married to an amazing woman, who I cannot imagine life without, for four years. My favorite sport is soccer and my favorite color is green. I am an avid reader and I love writing. And I do not enjoy running nearly as much as you might expect, especially when it is freezing and raining outside. Aside from these few details, there is not much more worth mentioning.

One other thing I would like to point out is that I have never voted for anything or anybody one single time until Barack Obama ran for president. I had never been registered to vote and had hoped I never would be for the rest of my life because I had always found politics to be an unscrupulous affair of nonsense that had no place in what I believed was once a noble arena, which now seems more and more to no longer exist the way it was intended to be. Then I realized one day how naïve of a judgment that was to make and I registered to vote. I also came to realize that thousands upon thousands of Americans have died fighting for our freedom and all of the rights we currently have, one of which is obviously voting.

This brings me to why I am pursuing this two year-plus peaceful protest of our current president, Barack Obama. The last thing I want to be deemed as by readers is an obnoxious rebel with no cause who is incapable of substantiating his arguments with warranted reason.

Health care reform. This is an extremely important matter on so many different levels. For me, aside from the outrageous cost and how it will damage our economy as a whole, it is the Communism that fills the thousand-plus page bill that really disappoints me. We have been fighting Communism for as long as we can remember. Europe has even employed its methods and they are now rioting and protesting the results of it. Communism is great, even utopian, at face value but it is just simply too good to be true and what is happening in Europe right now is the ugly tail end of what Communism does to a country. As Communistic ideas pertain to America, if this health care reform bill bares its poisonous fruits across the American landscape, this act will stand as a source of precedent to nationalize other private sector industries and businesses. This is what Communism does; when one thing fails, governments go on to some other facet of industry and drain it dry until eventually there is nothing left. And it happens so fast that by the time everyone starts saying it was a bad idea to begin with, it is far too late to correct.

Steady unemployment numbers and stimulus packages. Obama has pumped incomprehensible amounts of monopoly money into our economy and little change has been made in proportion to the endless zeroes to the right of the dollar sign. We cannot continue to pump nonexistent money into our economy when so much money is wasted elsewhere and could be used so much more resourcefully. The November 2 election figuratively picked Barack Obama up into the air, sat him down on a chair in a timeout corner, and told him the way things needed to be. And he listened to the voice of the people. Otherwise, he would not have continued the Bush tax cuts across the board. The people were heard and he had to obey. That’s a beautiful thing that few other countries have the ability to embrace. The media spun this story as more debt piled onto our deficit but, the fact is, allowing Americans to keep their own money and to spend it as they see fit is the surest way to keep an economy afloat. It is not monopoly money, and if it had gone to the government it more than likely would have been spent in ways that would have reached unknown depths of waste, achieving little if nothing. Extending the tax cuts was not more weight on our debt, it was a good decision Barack Obama had to be demanded to do by millions of Americans.

Immigration. I think the best way to analyze this issue is to take a reverse approach. Rather than argue why we should not grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and not leave our borders open as a book with no plot or any idea of a good ending, let’s look at it from a different approach. Here we go. Let everybody in. Let’s legalize everyone. Whatever ineffective approach we’ve been taking pertaining to immigration, let’s make it even more ineffective. This is a very touchy issue and I don’t want to come across one way or another, but do the math, literally. These are the options. Grant amnesty, continue to do nothing, or create some legislation that simply ensures citizens speak English, arrive in this nation with documented intentions, and know who George Washington was.

These are my three hot topics that inspired me to run, write, and to register to vote. As I said before, I’m just a regular guy and I’ll be the first to tell you there is much about this world, this country, and the politics that define this country, which I do not know or understand. But, it is a valuable testament any time another one of us, among millions of others who feel the same, wakes up and says, “This is enough.”

1,739.6 miles to go.

Day133 Sunday 01/09/11

ran 2.6 miles
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords survived the night and remains in critical condition this morning. She was reported to be responsive to commands at 10 a.m. today and Dr. Michael Lemole, chief of neurosurgery, says he is “Cautiously optimistic” regarding her recovery.

All together, thirteen people were wounded and six were killed. Among the wounded Giffords is the only victim who still remains in critical condition. Those killed included a nine-year-old girl, an aide for the Democratic lawmaker, Arizona’s chief federal judge, and three others.

Today ends an eerie and tragic week nineteen of running against Obama. I ran 23.9 miles this week. Total miles run in the past 133 days are 337.1. My daily average is 2.54 miles per day.

1,742.9 miles to go.

Day132 Saturday 01/08/11

ran 2.6 miles
United States Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head outside a grocery store in Tuscon today while holding a public event. The scene was filled with hundreds of bystanders attending an event called “Congress on Your Corner.” A man ran into the crowd of people and fired his gun, reportedly fifteen or more times. The man was tackled and subdued by people at the scene and was apprehended and is said to be in custody.

As I type these words, it is unconfirmed, but the news is saying there were fifteen or more shots and multiple fatalities. So tragic! This isn’t supposed to happen in America!

I set out this morning to look at some articles and post about some current events and this story is what I stumbled across. There is not much to say after coming across such a tragic event. Facts and numbers are still unconfirmed and the last thing I can say about this tragedy is that thoughts and prayers are with the Giffords family and others who’s loved ones may have been injured or killed.

1,745.5 miles to go.

Day131 Friday 01/07/11

ran 3.3 miles

• Kansas was the thirty-fourth state to join the union on January 29, 1861, two years before West Virginia and two years after Oregon.

• Population, as of 2010, is 2,818,747.

• Senators are Jerry Moran (R) and Pat Roberts (R).

• Representatives are Tim Huelskamp (R), Lynn Jenkins (R), Kevin Yoder (R), and Mike Pompeo (R).

• Kansas has six electoral votes. Historically, the state has voted Republican for the majority of its statehood. It has not voted for a Democrat since 1964, when Kansas voted for Lyndon Johnson. In 2008, John McCain won 57% of Kansas’ popular vote.

Moving away from Kansas’ interesting facts, Michael Moore uttered yet another absurd opinion today that was probably meant to escape through his anus but somehow crept up to his vocal cords.

“White America does not like having a black president.”

Moore said this during an interview with Bill Maher. Maher adamantly agreed by saying, “That is the truth…the statistics don’t lie…I'm not talking about polls. I'm talking about that the young people in '08 was the only – do you know this? – it's the only demographic – white demographic – that Obama won, 18- to 29-year-olds. Every other demographic, over 29, Obama lost the white vote. Every single one.”

Larry Elder, an incredible journalist who should be a household name, wrote a notable article pointing out how offensive, ignorant and utterly diarrheic Michael Moore’s mouth was. For one thing, Elders points out that no Democratic presidential candidate has won the “White vote” since 1964. He goes on to deliver his point by noting that Obama received more of the “White vote” than John Kerry did in 2004. Barack Obama surpassed Kerry’s “White vote” in every age demographic.

This is the article and it is overflowing with wisdom and indisputable facts.

I find it very hard to understand or to figuratively live a day in the life of people who passionately support Barack Obama’s ideas, those who are fans of Michael Moore, or those who have a desire to watch “Real Time with Bill Maher”. What is the end game?

It seems like some of the really important issues in America, such as the ugly face of racism, are only augmented when radical liberals open their mouths.

1,748.1 miles to go.

Day130 Thursday 01/06/11

ran 2.9 miles

• Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval rating shows that 24% of American voters strongly approve of Barack Obama’s performance as president while 40% strongly disapprove, giving Barack Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –16, compared to –13 on this day last week.

• Overall, 46% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of Obama’s performance and 53% disapprove.

• Only 27% of voters believe that the country is generally heading in the right direction.

So what is going on with all of the odd events in the past week? Birds falling from the sky, fish floating belly-up, crabs washing ashore lifeless, and a neon green river? If you have any theories, by all means please comment. It is very eerie.

On a lighter note, I was extremely excited to see that Bill O’Reilly will be interviewing Barack Obama on February 6, preceding the Super Bowl. That ought to be very interesting and well worth viewing. You can bet your right to vote that that interview would not have been scheduled were it not for the voter turnout and results of the November 2 election. Obama is squirming and to accept an interview with his biggest critic is an extremely desperate measure for his dwindling and extremely desperate time.

1,751.4 miles to go.

Day129 Wednesday 01/05/11

ran 3.7 miles
The 112th Congress was sworn in today. This ceremony was a historic victory for not only millions of conservative minds but, also, a staggering number of Independents and Liberals who Barack Obama let down with his change and direction over the last two years. Leading up to the Mid-term Election the Tea Party established a name for itself as a prevailing threat to Obama and his administration. Newly sworn in Congressman like Tea Party-backed Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, among many others, have some serious expectations to meet from a vehement and eager nation of citizens who elected them.

The Lame Duck Zombie Congress is finally over and the House of Representatives has acquired a healthy majority of Republicans while the Democratic numbers shrunk in the Senate. What the American people achieved on November 2 is a sign of how unbelievably amazing this country truly is. We, the people, vocalized our passion for America and the way we want freedom and our lives to be defined and our president and our government were forced to adapt and change course. There is no other country on Earth whose people possess more power and whose government is forced to such an extent to obey the will of its people. You can thank our founding fathers and the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who have fought and died for this country for nearly 250 years since the beginning of our Revolutionary War for that.

Here are some quotes from today’s Conservative victory:

“The American people have humbled us…they have reminded us that everything here is on loan from them…they seek a government that is honest, accountable and responsible to their needs.”

John Boehner

“The big changes today are of course happening across the dome…and I’d like to welcome the many new Republican members of Congress who’ve come to Washington to change the way things are done around here.”

Mitch McConnell

“The message from November’s election is that the American people have had enough and they want Congress to focus on creating jobs and cutting spending, and I look forward to working with Speaker Boehner and my colleagues in the House to address these and other important issues facing our country ... Representing Western New Yorkers in Congress is a job I do not take lightly, and I look forward to continuing to serve the needs of Western New Yorkers in the 112th Congress.”

Chris Lee

The road to November 6, 2012 has officially begun.

1,754.3 miles to go.

Day128 Tuesday 01/04/11

ran 2.6 miles
Today was a bizarre day of news. Birds are falling out of the sky and fish or floating to the surface of bodies of water, en masse, in Arkansas and Louisiana, mysteriously dead, Harold Camping of Family Radio, broadcasting out of Oakland, is declaring the end of the world to be May 21, 2011, the Mayan Calendar ends on December 21, 2012, and Barack Obama is once again letting go of key members of his administration. Those he lets go of will more than likely simply go under the radar of Washington to head his reelection campaign and the new faces he brings in will no doubt appease the masses who have disagreed with the majority of the decisions he has made up to this point.

Of all these odd goings-on, which have occurred very recently, I hesitate to admit that the birds and the fish suddenly dying in immense flocks and schools intrigue me the most.

Someone somewhere, no doubt, is going to proclaim any given day the last one and Barack Obama’s posturing and strategy is extremely unexciting and completely predictable. Politics are politics and they always will be. But birds falling out of the sky and fish floating on the surface of bodies of water---that is a very odd occurrence I can hardly wait to have explained!

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid and do not, for one second, think that Barack Obama regrets one single decision he has made regardless of how he politically postures himself otherwise over the next two years. Don’t mean to tell you how to think…just saying. America is two roads diverging and 2012 is where the fork in the road lies.

And definitely don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

1,758.0 miles to go.

Day127 Monday 01/03/11

ran 6.2 miles
A Congressman from California, Darrell Issa, soon to commandeer the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives, intends to investigate, with the new Congress that convenes this week, numerous cases of fraud and government waste among the Obama administration. Among other hot topics, Darrell Issa and fellow Republicans vow to repeal health care reform, at least to some degree, considering their House majority is up against a dwindling Democratic Senate majority and a president who will likely veto any such idea, even if the legislation did somehow mange to wrangle the consent of the Senate.

This is old news, March of 2010, but Virginia Congressman, Tom Perriello, was quoted as saying, “If you don’t tie our hands we will keep stealing.” Addressing a faction of Tea Party supporters, this was his full comment, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned up here (in Washington) and I didn’t really need to come up here to learn it, is the only way to get Congress to balance the budget is to give them no choice, and the only way to keep them out of the cookie jar is to give them no choice, which is why – whether it’s balanced budget acts or pay as you go legislation or any of that – is the only thing. If you don’t tie our hands, we will keep stealing” Aside from a lethal dose of political suicide, Perriello has demonstrated an honesty, or a level of stupidity, that is not fit for the current state of our disappointment in Washington. (He was not reelected on November 2, 2010, but his quote, whether it was a weak moment that he allowed the truth to be told or if he was actually trying to pander to Tea Party backers that he should be their Representative, it goes to show how much of a circus Washington has become and how thick the wall is, which exists between our lawmakers and the people.

On an entirely different note, moving away from Washington, something that received a lot of publicity today was a prediction that the world is going to end on May 21, 2011. So, preceding the Mayan calendar prediction of the world ending on December 21, 2012, now we have another Doomsday theory. There is actually a billboard on Interstate 10 in Vidor, Texas, among many other locations, warning of the impending doom. I don’t mean to step on any fanatical toes but, according to Harold Camping, 88-year-old founder of Oakland-based Family Radio, which reaches millions of viewers all over the world, May 21, 2011 will begin the end of the world. He asserts that 7,000 years from the date of the great Biblical flood and May 21, 2010 both fall on the seventeenth day of the second month of the Biblical calendar, of course 7,000 years apart. It should be noted that Harold Camping has previously predicted the end of the world to occur in September of 1994, as well. He and a congregation awaited rapture with bibles pointed up and opened toward heaven. But nothing happened. Concerning the Mayan calendar, in a nutshell, on December 21, 2012, the Milky Way, the sun, and Earth are going to align in an extremely rare position, which many speculate would possibly alter the magnetic and gravitational nature that has kept this planet spinning on an axis tilted at 23.5 degrees for a very, very long time. If this tilt were suddenly changed, it could set off a catastrophic succession of natural disasters the likes of which have never been documented in the history of human civilization.

That being said, people have been predicting the end of this world for thousands of years and yet we are still here. I am not judging, mocking or supporting any one particular religious or nonreligious faction of belief or disbelief, in case any reader may get that impression. My doubtful assessment of these predictions are as much my right to express as it is incumbent upon others to believe in them. All we can do is wait and see.

May 21, 2011 will certainly be an interesting day, as will December 21, 2012, when one and/or the other finally arrive.

Sorry to jump aboard such a tangent in midcourse, which has nothing to do with running against Barack Obama, but I felt this story was very interesting and I am curious to see how other people feel about the audacity some mortal, fallible men possess to proclaim that they have figured out God’s big plan and that we should be so lucky to have them as prophets so we can prepare for rapture.

Anyhow, just a few bits of random news filling the air waves and inking the papers recently.

1,760.6 miles to go.

Day126 Sunday 01/02/11

ran 2.6 miles
I hate to admit it but each year, as the holidays pass and a new year begins, a huge sigh of relief sweeps over every fiber of my being. I certainly enjoy the holidays, but on a level I cannot even fully understand I seem to hold a real appreciation for new beginnings as opposed to the outcomes of any given endings. A new year is free and full of potential, whereas the end of a year is spent, known, and no longer holds any allure or mystery. So, as soon as Thanksgiving begins and rolls into December’s Christmas theme, culminating with New Year’s Eve, I have little patience left to not just simply move on and start anew. Especially when so much is at stake in the governing of this great nation leading up to the presidential election of 2012.

2010 was a year in which Barack Obama implemented his agenda and enacted his ideas, leading to a mid-term election with an outcome that rejected his previous decisions and his ideas in general. Barack Obama went on to sign more critical legislation during the Lame Duck session of Zombie Congress than he had in the remainder of the two years he was in office. Cramming in as many of his legislative priorities as he could before the new Congress is sworn in, which will happen this week, his agenda has already began to yield to the voice of the people and their November votes. But it’s too little and too late. Had American voters not shown up in defying numbers on November 2, 2010, this country’s immediate future would have been pointed in a much more radically different direction during the Lame Duck session we just endured. That being said, the new Senators and Representatives who eagerly await swearing in have a tremendously lofty bar of expectation to reach and it will be a challenge to make a notable difference between now and 2012.

Today ends week eighteen of running against Barack Obama and I wish everyone a prosperous and healthy 2011. Thank you for reading this blog and hopefully we can all make a difference leading up to the outcome of the presidential election on November 6, 2012. I ran 20.4 miles this week. Total miles run in the past 126 days are 313.2. My daily average is 2.49 miles per day.

1,766.8 miles to go.

Day125 Saturday 01/01/11

ran 2.6 miles
Welcome to 2011. It’s a clean slate full of potential. Those who find mediocrity as an ultimate goal and seek sustenance from the teat of the government, file to the left. For those of you who believe in opportunity with no ceiling for the price of working hard, form a line on the right.

If being proud to be a pebble of the American landscape is elitism then label me a pebble-sized elitist. I think America is the greatest country this planet has ever lifted above the surface of its oceans. And the citizens, not the government, that color its varying elevations red, white and blue have always been the spine of everything that makes this nation great.

Politics have always been politics and, by that, I mean to say just because yellow and blue make green does not mean that blue and green make yellow. There is a huge void in translation that exists between Americans and their lawmakers. There is no instant solution to breaking down the walls of understanding, which separate our nation’s leaders from our nation’s people, but the first step to the solution of keeping America the country we grew up in and love starts with electing Someone Else in 2012.

1,769.4 miles to go.

Day124 Friday 12/31/10

ran 3.3 miles

• Iowa was the twenty-ninth state to join the union on December 28, 1846, two years before Wisconsin and one year after Texas.

• Population, as of 2009, is 3,007,856.

• Senators are Chuck Grassley (R) and Tom Harkin (D).

• Representatives are Leonard Boswell (D), Bruce Braley (D), Steve King (R), Tom Latham (R), and David Loebsack (D).

• Iowa has six electoral votes. It lost one of its votes in the 2010 Census Reapportionment, leaving six total electoral votes through the 2020 presidential election. Historically, the state has voted red from the Civil War through 1988, barring five Democratic exceptions. Currently, Iowa leans blue. Barack Obama beat John McCain by a popular vote of 54% to 44% in 2008.

The year 2010 hangs by a final thread shadowed by the opportunities, chances and risks of the impending year 2011. Mere hours are left to take inventory of the past year and to gain perspective on the details that defined the year. It will not be long before baby-kissing, mudslinging, and scandalous campaigning for the 2012 presidential election will fill the ears and eyes of Americans everywhere, sensationalizing political fodder through every available media source. It’s all highly entertaining to watch these politicians posturing and making promises they cannot keep, feeding their insurmountable egos with camera time and interviews, until someone like Barack Obama actually somehow gets elected. It’s like when your mom used to say it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. America is hurting. Our president and our Congress are standing over America poking and prodding her bruises and wounds with the genuine belief that this will comfort her pain.

Be careful tonight while celebrating New Year’s Eve and have a great night. And when you wake up in the morning, recovering from your hangover, buckle your political seatbelt because these next two years are going to be the most defining in American politics in a very long time. The new Congress will be sworn in, presidential campaigning will begin, and November 6, 2012, though far away, will be the last opportunity to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

1,772.0 miles to go.