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.

Day22 Monday 09/20/10 ran 3.2 miles

Current news: Obama Can't Connect
Colin Powell as quoted by usatoday.com

"It's not just me picking on the president," Powell said yesterday on NBC's Meet The Press. "It's reflected in the polling."

“The White House would no doubt disagree,” Powell said, “But a number of Americans seem to believe Obama is spending too much time on health care, environmental legislation and education, and not enough on the primary issue: jobs.”

"I think he has lost some of his ability to connect during the campaign. It's not just me picking on the president, it's reflected in the polling. Some of the anxiety and anger that you see out there, I think, comes from a belief on the part of the American people -- whether it's correct or incorrect, and the White House would say it's incorrect -- that not enough attention (is being paid to jobs) ... his singular focus should be on unemployment.

Wall Street got fixed. They're getting their bonuses back. We fixed the auto industry. It's starting to function but people are still seeing a 9.6 percent unemployment rate. They're losing their homes. They're homes are under water. Mortgages can't be paid. Short sales.

They are anxious and they are expecting more out of the president. I think he has to do more with respect to reducing the deficit and also being careful about putting more and more programs, more and more rocks into that knapsack because the American people are looking for a singular focus on the economy and unemployment.

And as part of that, he needs to focus on the business community. In my travels around the country, the business community is not that satisfied with the administration right now. So, I think the president is aware of all of this. His advisers are aware of all of this and I hope we will see him moving more vigorously in this direction."

At a glance

There are many clutch issues right now and, realistically, if it weren’t unemployment then it would be immigration. If it weren’t immigration then it would be the war on terror. If it weren’t the war on terror then it would be health care. It is always going to be something.

Presidents endure a ridiculous amount of scrutiny with every decision they make and with every comment they are quoted as saying. But that is part of the job description they signed up for. And the less one has to hide the more easily their actions tend to flow.

President Obama is currently in the process of reassessing the positions of some of his chief economic advisors. That is a commendable move you have to respect on behalf of a president but it also comes with owning up to the fact that some poor decisions may have been made. Otherwise, he would not be seeking new economic minds with alternative ideas.

Something you may not know

I have always wondered what the ratio was between republicans and democrats who served as presidents since America was conceived. Here are the results:

Between 1789 and 2008, 42 presidents have been sworn into office. There have been 18 Republican presidents and 14 Democratic presidents. From a debatable point of view, the Democratic Party claims Andrew Johnson, but he was sworn in as a member of the National Union Party. This would technically make 18 Republicans and 13 Democrats. Only two presidents of the United States of America have not been members of a specific political party. These were the first and second presidents, George Washington and John Adams. There were also a few presidents elected as Whigs and Democratic Republicans. And it is obviously important to note that what a Republican or Democrat was defined as being in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries has changed in many different ways, decade by decade, leading into the twenty-first century.

On this day in history

1963-U.S. President John F. Kennedy proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet expedition to the moon in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly.

Famous quote

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.”

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781

2,027.1 miles to go.

Day21 Sunday 09/19/10

ran 2.3 miles

Today closes the first three weeks of running and blogging. I have run 49.7 miles averaging 2.37 miles a day and I have typed 11,365 words averaging 541.19 words a day. After twenty-one days I think now is as good a time as any to ask some important questions about what exactly I am doing and why I am doing it.

For so long I ignorantly believed that allowing Washington to do what they pleased would be inconsequential to my everyday routines and the limitless potential I had to thrive as an American citizen. Governments are like water. You need them to live a cup at a time but they can dehydrate or drown entire civilizations if their plumbing develops a clog or if their valve breaks. Right now, America’s valve is stripped and spinning uncontrollably, spewing water everywhere, which will take a lot of work to clean up as long as we can keep our heads above the rising flood.

It occurred to me one day, as I was considering why I and so many people in my state of Louisiana were so frustrated with Barack Obama’s ideas and actions, that I don’t dislike the man and I don’t think he is a fool for the direction he is taking our country; I simply disagree with him. However, America has come to a boil recently, after decades of sitting on a burner, in which many different people and two individual parties are held equally responsible. After Obama’s first term becomes history, republicans and democrats will have served as presidents of the United States of America for a nearly equal amount of time. Barack Obama just happens to be the president now, when America is boiling over at such a temperature that something has to be done. It seems Barack Obama thinks that the government can pick up the red handle of the boiling pot barehanded and move it over without getting burnt. I haven’t touched the hot handle of a pot since I was a child and this is not the solution.

People are power, not government. And right now we need to wield or power, otherwise, we will lose it.

I am no professional of any sort pertaining to politics, but I am an American who believes in hard work and the same values my parents had and raised me with. The government is the final authority for keeping our country and our economy going but we would not have to rely on them so much if more people would take responsibility and accountability for living their lives. People like me, stuck in the middle of lazy, unmotivated people who have no desire to succeed in any capacity whatsoever and filthy rich people who have more money than they could ever spend, yet still find ways to hunger for greed by any means possible, suffer huge moral blows to our egos as we strive to maintain what we have as others have no problem letting tax payers’ money finance their lazy existence or, on the other end of the spectrum, we have the rich trying to get richer by any means possible regardless of the fact that it eventually destroys the fabric of our country’s economy. America bails out the absolute laziest and the absolute greediest of its country while we continue to work as hard as we can with no certainty of anything.

2,030.3 miles to go.

Day20 Saturday 09/18/10

2.6 miles closer

There is a debatable economic theory and model, Keynesian economics, which has been implemented at different times in various countries across the globe. The theory was postulated by a British economist, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), during America’s Great Depression. His observation was that during the Depression peoples’ natural reaction was to hoard their money, buying as little as possible, stopping the natural circular flow of money from one hand to another, decimating the economy day by day. That is obvious enough, so he suggested the public sector should intervene to increase and encourage spending, whether increasing the money supply or buying things on the market itself.

Keynesian economics depends on people not saving too much money and relies on the idea that people spend as much as possible. And when these two factors slow their momentums the first objective is to print what I like to call Monopoly money or to redistribute wealth to the poorer members of society as they will more than likely not save it but spend it.

The big difference between the Keynesian model and others is that rival models exclude the public sector intervening or interfering with the natural ebb and flow of any given economy as markets should be able to achieve balance on their own. The subject of economics is theoretical, though, and all you can do is test theories when there are no absolutes. This theory has its merits for desperate times but involving the public sector enables governments to purchase and potentially gain control of private sector industries. While Keynes developed a theory for a quick fix what I fear is government-controlled entities, such as health care providers and banks, which no longer compete in the American game of free enterprise but instead force you to purchase their insurance or to take on their interest rates because there is no other competition to compete with.

In Washington, Keynesianism is a great solution because our government can obviously spend more than it has, whereas everyday people like you and me cannot spend more than we have. Obama’s 862 billion dollar stimulus plan was a Keynesian move right out of the playbook and, I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel any richer. I have not felt the ability to spend frivolously in a long time and I save everything I can. I am unintentionally bucking the Keynes system, not out of conscious spite of his theory or our government, but out of fear of losing my job or my home, and I think a lot of others are, too. Keynesian economics depends on people not doing exactly what I and, I can only speculate, many others are doing. I do not feel stimulated and my future children and their children have a debt to pay and they are not even born yet.

In an article written by tax reform expert Dan Mitchell, he documented Keynesian economics being used unsuccessfully by Hoover and Roosevelt, Japan throughout the 1990s, and Bush in 2008. Now Barack Obama is doing the largest Keynesian stimulation in American history.

American economist, Kevin Hassett, addressed in his article “Obituary for Keynesianism” that when Keynesianism fails it is not because the idea is insufficient but because not enough money was injected into the market. 862 billion dollars? Obama’s departing chairman on his Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, suggested the stimulus package should have been 1.2 trillion dollars, or forty percent larger.

A 2002 study by economists Richard Hemming, Selma Mahfouz and Axel Schimmelpfennig of recessions in 27 developed economies from 1971 to 1998 determined that increased spending by government was hardly noticeable in most cases and negative in some.

“…Supporters of this type of stimulus are either unfamiliar with the literature or willing to ignore it.”

“The result is policy that is harmful to our country and inconsistent with modern economic science. If the Obama economic team were medical doctors, they would be pushing the use of medicine not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.”

2,032.6 miles to go.

Day19 Friday 09/17/10

When I was in high school I felt no excitement anticipating the right to vote once I turned eighteen. When I was in college I despised conservatism, tradition, organized religion, and anything with a hint of authority. I’d venture to say that I was an anarchist bent on nihilism with my nose buried in every book that Friedrich Nietzsche had ever written. Throughout college I continued to be an unregistered voter because I did not believe that anything or anyone was worth voting for. Everything seemed to be a big, incomprehensible existence of standing in various long lines that led to nowhere. Even after college I still felt no need to vote because the whole political arena seemed like some kind of demented masquerade ball of elitists who had an insatiable thirst for being politicians for the simple sake of being politicians.

Modern American politicians remind me of the British we claimed our independence from during the Revolutionary War. Why are so many of these men and women so rich as though they belong to royalty? Why are they so pampered and taken care of more so than other American citizens? Kings, Queens, and their courts are what come to mind when I think of Washington.

It is a given that what is good for this country will be debated upon for every day of the rest of our lives, and never agreed upon. But what made me finally realize that I was a conservative and that I wanted to register to vote was when I had the opportunity to vote against Barack Obama. And by voting against him I only mean that his opponent was, in my opinion, a lesser evil. Washington, as a whole, is an eighteenth century English castle encircled by an angry mob. But we are dealing with lesser evils, or at least I am, as I can only speak for myself. America, right now, is a stray feather ever so slightly dangling on the splinter of a fence top awaiting the slightest breeze to abruptly direct it immediately left or right.

My impression of left at a glance is redistributing wealth, legalizing millions of illegal immigrants, and socializing Health Care. My impression of right in general is being proud to work hard to earn and receive what I deserve, to speak English with pride and naturalization papers, and to continue to allow insurance companies to compete for the best premiums for consumers.

Now, I vote with pride and conviction. But it is a shame that my vote is a lesser evil and not a greater good. Washington needs to be stuck in a centrifuge until all of its greed, corruption and puffery collects at the bottom to be fully concentrated, extracted and disposed of.

2,035.2 miles to go.

Day18 Thursday 09/16/10

Tonight I’m posting about a novel I read a few years ago that regained wide popularity near the time Barack Obama was elected President. The author is Ayn Rand and the novel is “Atlas Shrugged”. Rand has a deep repertoire of books including fiction and philosophy, but this one has a special value in these present times because many consider the story to be a possible foreshadowing of what this country could unfortunately become. The book was published in 1957. In 2009, fifty-two years after being published, “Atlas Shrugged” re-emerged as a best-seller making Amazon.com’s top 50 list. Two days ago, USA Today reported, “…according to a Library of Congress survey, ‘Atlas Shrugged’ may be second to the Bible as the most influential book read in America.”

The novel deals with free enterprise and the threat of a government taking over the companies and money of brilliant, leading industrial minds in a final effort to spread wealth, only to destroy the little that is left in their civilization. It is right in line with the stimulus packages, Bailouts and Health Care decisions that have been made over the past two years. The stimulus packages have not been effective in proportion to their exorbitant sums of intention, the bailouts allowed the government to wrap its tentacles around the affairs of banks and major corporations, and Health Care Reform is likely going to be a government ordered obligation, which tens of millions of Americans will be forced to possess at the likely consequence of higher premiums and worse care.

As an aside, I stumbled upon an interesting open letter today from an article, which a doctor composed concerning America’s current health care crisis:

Dear Mr. President:
During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.


While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one pack of cigarettes every day, eats only at fast-food take-outs, and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer. And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care? I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture" a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.

Respectfully,
ROGER STARNER JONES, MD

Back to the point, the novel, written over half a century ago, eerily deals with some very real issues that are happening today. The staggering numbers in which it is selling and the comparison of possibly being the most influential book in America next to the Bible should be reason enough to make this a must read, even if you read only one book this year.

I ran 2.2 miles today and it was not one of my better days. On a brighter note, this blog still has some work to be done that I am getting close to completing. Just a couple more bells and whistles to keep you better informed with its progress.

2,038.4 miles to go.

Day17 Wednesday 09/15/10

I ran 3.2 miles today. It has been a busy week and time is moving a lot faster than it did three weeks ago before I began this engagement. The honeymoon of this new marriage is coming to a close and it is time to see how committed I really am to the cause.

For the first time I am realizing potential faults and presumptions that I might have in conveying my message and the goal of this blog. What I want to avoid is simply restating the news, which you read earlier in the day. I would also like to avoid being mistaken for a journalist. I have no obligation to unbiased commentary and I will be extremely judgmental. If a diverse amount of people examine this blog then I will be labeled in many different ways, both positively and negatively, but that is a good thing because this is still America.

The point I am trying to make is that this is not a news channel. If I appear to be pandering to like-minded people it is only because there are so many of us out there and we like to stand up for what we believe in. I have neither the time nor the energy to dig up facts and research articles in an effort to persuade people to see things the way I, and so many others, do. The goal of this blog is to show that one more person among millions of others is just trying to stand up and be heard. And because our government won’t listen to the majority of its citizens’ opinions on issues they undermine and do as they please with, I am going to run 2,080 miles and blog about it every day even if there is only a one-billionth of a chance that it might make our government realize that it should listen to the people it represents. I have no intention of converting anyone’s political beliefs. My intention is to band conservatives together so we can realize our true strength and numbers as American citizens in order to make a difference.

2,040.6 miles to go.