Day251 Saturday 05/07/11

ran 3.9 miles
Fox News recently hosted the first Republican Presidential Debate in South Carolina. Standing behind podiums were Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Gary Johnson, and Tim Pawlenty. Absent were names like Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney.

The debate was symbolic of the gate at the starting line to this race officially opening. I am obviously biased in my approach to 2012. I want Barack Obama out and I will vote for a box of nails if that is what he is running against. I am going to follow these candidates closely over the next year and a half and form opinions about them like everybody else but, ultimately, whoever earns their way to being the final name on the Republican ticket is going to go against everything Barack Obama represents. While it is important to make informed decisions and votes to get the best man or woman to November 6, 2012, it is also an unavoidable fact that regardless of who it is they will campaign on rebuilding the deconstruction this nation has been weakened with for so long and they will go against the ideas Obama stands for. Whoever it ends up being I am voting for them, whoever that Someone Else will be.

After the campaign gate was opened and the debate took off I was particularly excited to see what Ron Paul and Herman Cain had to say. I don’t know enough about Santorum, Johnson, or Pawlenty to form anything more than a first impression but I have always been a big fan of Paul and I am extremely interested in Herman Cain, a name many have never heard of.

Ron Paul has a realistic, “matter-of-fact” approach to the problems America faces. His ideas make so much sense that they seem out of place in a setting such as Washington. Paul is a long-time Representative out of Texas.

Herman Cain, on the other hand, has never served as a politician and that is a strength worth recognizing. But, then again, Barack Obama barely had any experience either. However, Herman Cain does have a dazzling amount of experience in the corporate world having served as CEO of different corporations. He is best known for his success with Godfather’s Pizza. He became CEO at a time when this company was flailing toward bankruptcy and in a short period of time he turned the company around and had it making profit again.

At this early stage, of these five candidates I like Cain the most. He is genuine and comfortable when he speaks and he has a highly successful background, he has never been a politician, which I think is a real virtue, and he endorses the Fair Tax, which would abolish federal income taxes and the IRS. If you don’t know anything about the Fair Tax then check it out. It is gaining a lot of momentum and it would solve many of the problems America faces.

1,347.4 miles to go.

Day250 Friday 05/06/11

ran 4.2 miles

• New Mexico was the forty-seventh state to join the union on January 6, 1912, one month before Arizona and five years after Oklahoma.

• Population, as of 2010, is 2,059,179.

• Senators are Jeff Bingaman (D) and Tom Udall (D).

• Representatives are Martin Heinrich (D), Steven Pearce (R) and Ben Lujan (D).

• New Mexico has five electoral votes. Historically, the state has voted for thirteen Democrats and twelve Republicans. As split as New Mexico’s votes have been over the past ninety-nine years, they have remarkably only voted for the losing side twice (Gerald Ford in 1976 and George W. Bush in 2000). Barack Obama defeated John McCain 57% to 42% in 2008.

April jobs +244,000, yet unemployment back up to nine percent. Fannie Mae reports $8.7 billion loss for first quarter; seeks $8.5 billion more from taxpayers. Gas national average $3.99. No word of 2012 budget talks in the news.

Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden.

This good news and massive distraction from the issues that were being covered up until Sunday night could not have come at a better time for our president. The more important domestic issues we have been wrestling with have been put to the side like a steak pushed away to devour a few fries.

Osama Bin Laden.

1,351.3 miles to go.

Day249 Thursday 05/05/11

ran 3.5 miles
Some stats and polls from Rasmussen Reports:

• Barack Obama’s presidential index rating shows that 26% of American voters strongly approve of his performance while 35% strongly disapprove, giving Obama a presidential index rating of –9.

• Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of Barack Obama’s performance and 50% disapprove. Since Osama Bin Laden’s death, Obama’s numbers have improved, though only an amount nearly not worth mentioning. This nation’s interpretation of its president remains almost equally divided.

• Regarding Obama’s budget proposal, 30% of American voters favor it and 50% oppose it.

• Dropping slightly, 47% of American voters favor repeal of Health Care Law.

• Only 25% of American voters believe America is heading in the right direction.

Gas prices are through the roof, jobless claims are at an eight-month high, polarized budget battles are being waged with no end in sight, and our president has the audacity to discuss a tax on how many miles you drive each day. This is part of the administration’s Transportation Opportunities Act. Where do they come up with these names? “Opportunity”? For who? That makes as much sense as limiting conservative talk radio with a “fairness” doctrine. It’s not fair; it’s censorship.

Who discusses a tax per mile driven at a time like this? It is insult to injury! Nearly half of the people in this nation do not even make enough money to have to pay federal income taxes. While they certainly sit on the receiving end of others who do pay income taxes, I don’t think this would settle well for them, either, or anybody else.

1,355.5 miles to go.

Day248 Wednesday 05/04/11

ran 3.1 miles
Here is Chapter 6 of “I am Erica”. To read it from the beginning click on “I am Erica” in the categories to the right.

Chapter6

Jonas followed his defrosted path back to Fifth Street. Now exhaling smoke instead of steam, the sun prevailed over the cold moisture. Leaves would soon be crackling and rustling instead of sticking together like cold, wet flakes of oatmeal. Whitened rooftops would once again be faded back to black and birds would soon be foraging on a newly moistened earth.

His knock grew inpatient tapping against his denim pocket. His left toe touched street with every other step through his worn sole. The meager weight of his backpack snapped another of the final threads on his shoulder strap. His jacket was not at all sufficient to warm him in the cold evenings. Jonas’ rare feelings of neglect and compromise were usually immediately followed by an urgency of strength and a familiar will to succeed. He was empowered by the frustration of adversity. But for an instant he felt like one of the paper shamrocks that gas station clerks asked customers to donate a dollar for towards muscular dystrophy. Most people would rather not part with their dollar. They often felt that because they had donated a dollar earlier in the week that the month of March’s charitable donation quota had been reached. Jonas was admittedly one of these people, himself, and he did not mind feeling the way he did. Suffering was in his nature and part of what he believed to be the greater part of existence.

He thought about the dollar he had found earlier and suddenly perceived it to be an unexplainable form of charity that somebody or something had donated to him. Offended by the idea that mere luck or chance proximity may have taken pity on him and given him a dollar immediately devastated his pride. Jonas crumpled up the dollar and threw it back in the street as though it were an insult to the integrity of his struggles. He preferred to remain blighted and ignored like dystrophic muscles in children or a stale box of Girl Scout cookies.

The aged, frayed and weather-beaten door stood like an immense monolith that a common, run-down house just happened to be squeezing. The cuts and scratches were like hieroglyphs of a forgotten history. The undulating knots swelled with stories that would never be told. There were numbers stenciled by the sun where a two, one, and six once hung at eye level. The doorknob was porcelain fired on cast iron and it tilted downwardly as though a couple screws were hanging on by a final thread. Jonas determined the door had to be at least a century old. One hundred years of weather, openings and closings, friends and enemies, good news and bad news, all passing through various decades over a vast amount of time.

Jonas was certain he would never live to be one hundred years old. Nor did he find himself capable of standing in one spot for even one hundred minutes. He wondered about the occurrences the door may have been a part of and then reflected on the underwhelming little he had seen in his own young life.

Jonas Martin Cassidy was thirty-five years old. He was born into the Reagan administration and the first big post-hippie “Just Say No” movement against drug use. John Lennon had died the year Jonas was born and, before he had quit collecting baseball cards or had crashed into puberty, the Berlin Wall had fallen.

Compared to one hundred years there was little Jonas had seen. What he had seen had amounted to even less as half of it had been viewed through primarily adolescent and juvenile eyes. He could not possibly have had any idea of the scope of events that had occurred over the last century.

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, San Francisco and the most damaging earthquake in U.S. history, Reverend Algernon S. Crapsey found guilty of heresy, Charlie Chaplin, Nan Aspinwall, the Ludlow War, WWI, the influenza epidemic (202 deaths daily), John Scopes’ evolution debate, deep channel green and rich windsor maroon, the Great Depression followed by the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act, FDR, John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, WWII and Normandy, Bernard Baruch coins the term “Cold War”, the Korean War (165,485 American casualties), Vietnam, Bay of Pigs, Grenada, invasion of Panama, the Gulf War, intervention in Bosnia and Herzegonia, 9/11...

These people and events cannot sum up even a small fraction of the past century. They are loose reflections of an uncertain future that is begging for direction and meaning. What history distinctly earns through patience and concision the future squanders in blind repetition and excess.

1,359.0 miles to go.

Day247 Tuesday 05/03/11

ran 6.1 miles

Well, that’s that. Osama bin Laden is dead so we can all now move on to the pressing domestic issues that have been contorting the shape of our nation. After nearly two and a half years of spending like a compulsive gambler, using other peoples’ money and losing it, there is currently much at stake.

The budget battle has been absolutely exhausted to the point that a mere matter of days after 2011 was settled the 2012 fiscal year’s war began with no end in sight any time soon. The two different camps lay entrenched, one with an arsenal of monopoly boxes filled with fake money and the other fighting only with tooth and nail to engage America’s overwhelming debt.

Regarding ObamaCare, there is an incredible amount of money currently tied into getting our president’s health care legislation up and running. Whatever billions of dollars are spent to spark this massive project to life will be lost in the event that Barack Obama does not get reelected. Any man or woman who chooses to run against him is going to campaign on repealing ObamaCare, among many other issues, which are contrary to his ideas. And as a consolation prize, let’s assume Barack Obama does get a second term. If the House and Senate repeat what happened during the midterm elections on November 2 of last year and conservatives control not only the House but the Senate, too, it would be hard to believe that ObamaCare could advance very far. Yet all of these billions of dollars would have been squandered on an idea that lacked two legs to stand on.
I try to post once a week about the Health Care Compact, a possibility that does not repeal Barack Obama’s federally mandated health care, but allows states to not participate in it and to formulate their own systems based on the needs of each individual state. Here is the latest news on their progress:

• Passed the Texas House.

• Passed the Arizona House and Senate (vetoed by Governor Brewer).

• Passed the Montana House and Senate (pending Governor's signature).

• Passed the Georgia House and Senate (signed by Governor Deal).

• Passed the Oklahoma House and Senate (pending final concurrence in the Senate).

• Passed the Missouri House and Senate (pending Governor's signature).

• Passed the Colorado House Health Care Committee and the House Appropriations Committee (pending consideration in the full House).

• Passed the Tennessee House Health Subcommittee (pending in the full House Health and Senate Finance Committees).

• Health Care Compact bills have been introduced in South Carolina and Louisiana.

• Health Care Compact bills are in the drafting process in Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Washington.

And finally, need I even mention gas prices?

1,362.1 miles to go.

Day246 Monday 05/02/11

President Obama and members of his national security staff during the operation to take out Osama bin Laden. White House photo

ran 3.6 miles
The announcement of Osama bin Laden’s demise came so late and as such a surprise last night that today it is important to acknowledge how relieved and united this entire country is for the families and friends of those whose lives were lost on 9/11; for the sense of closure they must be feeling.

Barack Obama earned a worthy medal for his presidency as being the man who gave the executive order to perform the raid in Pakistan. The decision was riddled with risks. For one thing, Osama bin Laden quite possibly may not have been there. And had he not been, America would have had some difficult explaining to do to the country of Pakistan for storming in unannounced. It required a large sum of testicular fortitude to follow through with this mission, known as "Operation Geronimo", and he deserves credit.

Having said that, my opinion of his performance as our president remains unaltered. His policies and his actions have driven him into the ground with disapproval and I would venture to say that had this epic moment not have occurred, it would have been twice as hard to redeem himself in the eyes of Americans who voted for him in 2008 and are now weighing whether that was a mistake or not. Obama’s polling numbers are going to rise noticeably and he is going to have a strong wave of momentum to build off of. If he can formulate an “Operation Geronimo” on gas prices then he would emerge as a hero having obtained a sense of redemption for everything he has done up until now, which so many of us utterly disagree with.

Barack Obama has shown his spots and they are not going to change. He has more than defined himself and his agenda, and as the election nears there will more than likely be a series of actions that will predictably appease the independent voters who are undecided. This presidential election is going to come down to a very small percentage of voters. According to polls, America is nearly equally divided for and against Obama’s reelection, except for a mere ten percent, or less, of undecided voters and they will be the deciding factor.

1,368.2 miles to go.

Day245 Sunday 05/01/11

ran 2.2 miles
Today ends thirty-five weeks of running against Obama. I ran 23.3 miles for the week, averaging 3.33 miles per day.

Busy day. Just jumped on the blog when I heard that Osama Bin Laden was found and possibly killed. Under Obama’s admininstration, that is a huge feat. The president is moments away from making a late-night speech. High five, Barack. If you would conduct yourself in this manner more often by performing actions that are conducive to the American public then you could possibly go down in history as an effective president.

For one thing, all of a sudden, the media is reporting that “U”sama Bin Laden has been killed, but I remember a one “O”sama Bin Laden in the headlines from the past. Just sayin’, it is absolutely ridiculous and obvious that by reporting his name as Usama, there is something here at hand and it is worth asking “why”?

Who is Usama? Never heard of him. I remember a guy from 2001 named Osama. Bad press, I guess when your name coincidentally rhymes with Osama.

Congratulations, Barack Obama, you have done something we can all agree with, for once. Hope it gives you the poll numbers you expect.

1,371.8 miles to go.

Day244 Saturday 04/30/11

ran 1.4 miles
Today completes eight months of running against Obama.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of societies virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect them against them, but them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed.”

Ayn Rand

That was a quote from Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. If you are in a city playing this movie, watch it! It will give you a far better understanding of what is happening in America right now than the news you watch.

1,374.0 miles to go.

Day243 Friday 04/29/11

ran 3.5 miles
Some quick facts about New Jersey:

• New Jersey was the third state to join the union on December 18, 1787, fifteen days before Georgia and six days after Pennsylvania.

• Population, as of 2010, is 8,791,894.

• Senators are Frank Lautenberg (D) and Robert Menendez (D).

• Representatives are Robert Andrews (D), Frank LoBiondo (R), Jon Runyan (R), Christopher Smith (R), Scott Garrett (R), Frank Pallone (D), Leonard Lance (R), William Pascrell (D), Steven Rothman (D), Donald Payne (D), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R), Rush Holt (D) and Albio Sires (D).

• New Jersey has fourteen electoral votes. New Jersey is second only to Rhode Island in having more electoral votes per square mile than any other state. The state has voted blue for the past five presidential elections and had voted red for eight out of the ten before. Obama defeated McCain 57% to 42% in 2008.

In current news, president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, Harry Alford, has recently made public his opinion of the business positions Democrats have assumed. Today on Laura Ingraham’s radio talk show Alford was quoted saying, “Obama wanted the National Black Chamber to dance to his music and have blind allegiance to his crazy programs and agenda, which are totally anti-business. We are a pro-business organization. So we have to stand on the side of business, and the benefit of our members, which are black entrepreneurs.”

Referring to Obama and his administration as “Marxist” and “fanatical”, Alford expressed regret in having voted for Barack Obama only “because he’s black”.

“That is a lesson I will take to my grave,” he said, followed by a claim that Obama is “wrecking” the country and is “dangerous”.

1,375.4 miles to go.

Day242 Thursday 04/28/11

700 miles!!!
ran 3.5 miles
I passed the 700-mile mark today! The total amount of miles I have set as a goal is 2,080 so 700 miles is over one-third of the way. When I started this blog and began running these miles I was unsure whether I’d be able to deliver informative posts on a daily basis or whether I’d have the drive to actually run every single day. After nearly 7 months and 700 miles, I have observed that Barack Obama and his presidency are bottomless sources of debate with numerous new issues materializing every twenty-four hours and that the human body is an amazing thing.

The challenge of running one single mile on the first day was grueling. Day by day, I began to wonder if seeing this thing through was a reasonable idea. What keeps me going is the idea that if Barack Obama does find his way to a second term in 2012, I simply wanted to be able to say that I did everything within my limited power to stand up and fight that possibility. I can write and I can run. These are the two strongest things I have to bring to the table of “getting involved” and I love every day of it!

The blog is steadily growing in viewer-ship and, considering the 2012 presidential election is still quite far away, I hope to see it grow some more. Thank you for keeping up with Running Against Obama and I hope you will continue to read the blog.

If you keep up with this blog, or if you’re new to it, please check out the Running Against Obama facebook page and give it a “like”. You can also become a “follower” on the blog.

Thanks for reading!

1,378.9 miles to go.

Day241 Wednesday 04/27/11

ran 3.0 miles

Chapter5

There was a time when people believed in gods and prophets. Saints and angels watched over everyone with an eerie sense of selflessness. Churches and priests filled their holy sanctuaries with religiously biding congregations. Families gathered, children sat still, lovers prayed, and widows wept for an hour at least once a week. That is all gone now and it is easy to say that religion was not about who was right and who was wrong or that faith in one belief was stronger than conviction in another. It was not about a cross or a sword. It was not about holocausts or crusades. It was not about inquisitions, jihads, genocides or any other forms of hatred that have been documented throughout world history.

It was not about Tibetan monasteries. Religion was not about Hanukah, the belief in reincarnation, or the slight variations in man-made doctrines among different denominations of similar beliefs. It was not about a caste system. It was not about monotheism, pantheism, theocracy or democracy. It was not about Buddha or any other –ism.

Religion was about families gathering, children sitting still, lovers praying, and widows weeping beneath one roof for an hour at least once a week. It was about daily thoughts and prayers within a home or a holy sanctuary built for gathering, regardless of what those thoughts, prayers, and buildings may have been called. Everything else was ill-intended and opportunistic.

The history of religion is so vast it would take more than a lifetime to encapsulate even a significant morsel of its long, diverse origins in any one given geographic region. Yet for thousands of years leaders of men have been so pretentious and ingenuous as to control, divert, and redirect people’s beliefs and actions, generation by generation, through the power and manipulation of religion.

Now people believe in nothing. Belief and thought have been replaced by control and fear. The churches are bare and the stained glass windows are broken and boarded. Families no longer congregate, but clamor. Children are a supreme burden of overpopulation, which only the lowest and least educated classes continue to propagate with no apparent restraint for making their own and other’s lives unbearably harder. This was a time when love only complicated survival and softened one to too great a state of vulnerability. Widows wept alone and civilization as we knew it had become uncivilized for the first time in a very long time.

1,382.4 miles to go.

Day240 Tuesday 04/26/11

ran 5.2 miles

Here’s the skinny. If these rising gas prices miraculously implode and shrink back to something acceptable within the next few months, then Barack Obama is to blame for either withholding the proper actions that led to this inflation to begin with or he is to blame for mismanaging our resources or prefabricating a crisis, in which he, at the last minute, emerges as a hero. There is a lot of chatter about who is responsible and what is going on with gas by the gallon. Our president keeps deviating from soaring gas prices by instilling hope in the future with long-term alternatives and avoiding solutions in present matters. Obama likes to take case-by-case, humble scenarios of random Americans, so allow me to do the same.

“Suzie, in Ponca City, Oklahoma, she has two young children, a girl and a boy, and she…she is worried about whether…whether she will be able to afford everything she needs to give them a bright future of…of hope…and change. Suzie wants to know why gas is so expensive. Well, I would say to Suzie…you just hold on Suzie. You tell little Jeffrey and Anna that everything…everything is going to be okay. I say to you that America, by 2021, we can have solar this and wind turbine that and electric everything. Thank you. High-speed rails. God bless. Siphon the earned rewards of others' hard work until it runs out.”

…or some such rhetoric.

John Boehner, Speaker of the House, made a reasonable prediction Monday, in an interview on ABC News, that Barack Obama would not stand a chance of reelection “If gas prices are five or six dollars”.

"I think the fact that he won't allow exploration in the Gulf, doesn't allow exploration in the inter-mountain west, won't allow us to drill in Alaska, this is not helping the situation. And then when you look at what the EPA is doing in terms of the number of rules and regulations comin' down the pike, those were his responsibility."

John Boehner

As I stated above there is not a large enough window of time for Obama to go against everything he has withheld so far, the moratorium in particular, without looking like a fool for all of a sudden issuing drilling permits left and right and relaxing the absolutely irrational regulations of the EPA.

"If someone tries to dupe you into thinking we don't have enough refining capacity, that's (insert expletive)," says Tom Kloza, the co-founder and chief oil analyst of the Oil Price Information Service. "It's a good sound bite, but if anything, companies have probably added too much capacity, and if they add more they have to focus on managing margins."

Many will argue that domestic oil production, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with these gas prices we are currently enduring, and there are indeed other catalysts, but it is happening under Obama’s presidency, regardless of the cause. And as our president we have every right to demand some solutions from him.

Life is never what you expect it is going to be and we all have unforeseeable circumstances that block the road we may think we are supposed to follow. But presidents of the United States of America are, above everyone else, obligated by the merits which got them into the oval office to adapt and present solutions regardless of how far their initial impressions of their presidency may have deviated due to the uncontrollable nature of current events. In this climate that America is currently weathering there is little room for the ideas that Obama seems to hold highest.

I’ve used this quote before and I will use it again, from ex-president Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid.” We need a leader right now, not a man obsessed with a future that current circumstances have left little feasibility for.

1,385.4 miles to go.

Day239 Monday 04/25/11

ran 4.5 miles

In case you haven’t been keeping up, I’ve been sick and laying low for a few days. I’m almost back up to the top of my hill now and I ran 4.5 miles today. I wouldn’t say it was my best run but it felt good to put my “Running Against Obama” t-shirt on again and to hit the streets.

Sometimes it is good to step away from things. It allows you to reach a level of clarity that habit and routine tend to deny.

With that being said, here we go. The IMF (International Monetary Fund), for the first time, has set a tentative date for the time that America as the “World Leader” will end and the U.S. economy will be surpassed by China. 2016. In only five years, according to the IMF, China’s economy will surpass America’s.

The only reason America has the ability to charge things off to figurative credit cards without ever having to pay the monthly bills is because we are the world currency holders. This could change abruptly. We have got to stop spending! As Barack Obama has so liberally shown, we alone have the ability to print monopoly money to continue the national delusion that everything is okay. If a nation like China, or the other nations who are uniting with them (BRICS---Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as a coalition to be the new world leaders, or world currency holders, achieve that status, then our world, our country, will be entirely different. The Chinese economy is projected to expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. The U.S. economy is projected to rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion in 2016. These numbers meagerly award America with 17.7% of world output and aggrandize China with 18%, rising exponentially. Ten years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s. What this means to us, regardless of when it happens, is that China’s economy is clearly footsteps behind us and it is running at a full sprint while we are dithering in a future of alternatives that have no bridge to connect the reality of our now and the delusions of Barack Obama’s future.

What else? Gas prices. A gallon of gas is more than $2 higher than when Barack Obama took office in January of 2009. To think that this has nothing to do with Obama or his administration is sheer blindness. The Business and Media Institute found that out of the 280 stories covering current oil prices on network evening shows, which have aired since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, only three stories, a whopping 1%, have made any reference to Obama’s drilling ban or any other anti-oil actions pertaining to gasoline prices. Yet, the facts are right there. The president has said himself that he would like to see gas prices increase. He would have preferred a more gradual increase, but this is what he got---soaring gas prices.

The EPA recently pulled the plug on a Shell project in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board decided to withhold critical air permits necessary for Shell to perform. This decision has angered many in Congress and has started a wake of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion on plans to explore for oil at this site. The leases by themselves cost $2.2 billion. The EPA’s largest argument was that the Arctic drill would be hazardous for the people who live in the area. The closest village to Shell’s proposed drilling site is Kaktovic, Alaska. It is by far one of the most remote corners of the United States with a population of 245 people. The village, one square mile, sits on the shore of the Beaufort Sea seventy miles from the proposed offshore site for drilling. This is how our government and its agencies get things done.

The EPA effectively denied 27 billion barrels of oil. That number represents two and a half times more oil than has flowed through the Trans Alaska pipeline in all its 30-year history. The pipeline is currently only carrying one-third its capacity.

If that’s the direction toward empowering America and embracing our own energy resources to create jobs, to lower the price of gas and to bolster our economy then I think someone has a magnet under our compass.

1,390.6 miles to go.

Day238 Sunday 04/24/11

ran 0.3 miles
Happy Easter! Today ends week thirty-four of running against Obama. I got sick earlier in the week and have not made much progress. I only managed to run 10.7 miles for the week, averaging 1.53 miles per day. I think I will be able to start hitting the roads again tomorrow.

1,395.1 miles to go.