Start Running

And that goes for me as well. I've been doing a weight training regimen that emphasizes squats and dead lifts, thus my running has fallen to the wayside.

Forget about the aesthetic benefits of running and concentrate on trying to find the spiritual side of running, almost like Zen running or something. It's kind of a hard thing to envision until you've actually experienced it and you won't know you've experienced it until you find yourself being drawn to it. This attraction is what will become your motivation. You have to trust that it is there, because you're certainly not going to feel it for awhile, when you're dragging yourself out for a run and your shins feel like they'll explode and you think your quads could double as banjo strings. It's more about freeing yourself from your surroundings and being able to focus on where your mind's going. Running not only is capable of clearing your mind at the end of a day, but I think it assists is problem solving, goal attainment (as far as where you want to be and what direction to take to get there), and a variety of benefits only obtained by reaching into the depths of your mind where only running can take you.

You don't have to believe all that but once you've been there, running (and exercise in general) will become as much a part of your life as waking up in the morning.

Here is what the run schedule for spring is looking like;

April 21, 2007 - 9:00 am - Run For Hospice 10k/5K - Leonardtown, Md
www.runforhospice.org


Great local race, I like it because: 1) its on a Saturday and 2) starts at 9:00.

May 6, 2007 - 8:00 am - Bay Bridge Run 10k - Sandy Point Park
www.annapolisstriders.org

One must register early for this one as it is usually closed by the end of March/beginning of April.

I like all the Annapolis Striders Races as they always serve beer after the race. If you've never run 6 miles or 10 miles and then downed a couple of beers all before 10 am, you're really missing out.

June 3, 2007 - 8:30 am - ANS 10k & 5k Run\Walk - La Plata Md
Registration details and link to website to follow.

I expect everyone within a 100 mile radius of La Plata to register for this one as Sheri and I are the Co-Chairs for the event. Proceeds from the race go to the building of new athletic fields as we currently have none.

Last year's event brought out 100 participants to run the 5k course and corporate contributions netted $13,000 to the school. We hope that with the success of last year's event and the addition of the 10k that we can beat those numbers.

Sandy "Burglar" (name is almost cliche at this point)

So you're former President Clinton's National Security Advisor and you're called before the 9/11 Commission to testify. What do you do?

Do you go the National Archives to refresh your memory and maybe get rid of some of those embarrassing non-job related emails you were sending around to your colleagues? I seriously doubt it. It wasn't like his title was assistant to the regional Security Advisor or Secretary of the Security to the national advisor, it was NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR.

So just what was Sandy Berger removing from the Archives? If you're up on the story, you'd know that several Archive employees were suspicious of Berger removing documents and it was only after witnessing him stealing did they initiate an investigation; an investigation that caught him hiding documents under a construction trailer. My question is what was it and how much did he actually remove before they even started the investigation? What was his motivation? Common sense would indicate to me he was removing items that may have been damaging to himself and the Clinton Administration. Am I too partisan to see that Berger's actions were inconsequential to the 9/11 Commission? Does anyone actually believe the pilfered documents were no big deal? Didn't his actions compromise national security?

This is the kind of stuff movies are made of. Someone from the archives should have called Bob Woodward at the Post. I'm sure he would have exposed this for the egregious abuse of power it was.

Yeah right.

Never Admit Defeat

Your president is lying to you
This war is illegal
You cannot win this war

What's the first thing that comes to mind? Sound familiar? Probably does, but I wonder if it's because you recognized the mantra that was spouted at American GIs by the infamous broadcaster Tokyo Rose during WWII. Perhaps, but more likely it is familiar because it's what we see and hear in the news media everyday. Isn’t this the message delivered by the mouthpieces of the Democratic Party? Granted they preface their message with a "we support our troops" but then belie that statement by saying;

Our president is lying to us
This war is illegal
We cannot win this war.

I'm always left wondering how people continue to say we are "losing the War in Iraq. From a militaristic standpoint, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, are our cities be taken over by the enemy, are our bases being taken over and occupied, are we losing more men than they? No, not even close.

General Patton once said "You're never beaten until you admit it." No war is ever won by killing every member of the enemy. Wars are won by destroying your enemy's will to fight. How can we do this when almost every major news outlet and most democrats are out "Tokyo Rosing" the war in Iraq wanting us to admit defeat?

I thought the main objectives of going into Iraq were;

1. Impose our will in the region to find out once and for all if Iraq had WMDs. Mission accomplished.

2. Depose an evil egomaniac who wanted to control the entire region and threatened our way of life. Mission accomplished (if you don’t believe Saddam threatened our way of life, maybe you’d enjoy driving some overpriced hybrid to the grocery store to get $10 loaf of bread or $15 gallon of milk while our economy would slip into the worst recession we probably ever would see.)

3. Instill a western style democracy much like we did in post WWII Europe, a modern day Marshall Plan if you will. The idea was\is; that western style freedom, once rooted, would be the cure-all for 30 years of Middle East Mayhem. Mission Accomplished? Not even close.

No one ever said number 3 would be easy or occur in a short period of time. Somehow Americans forgot, even know that it was said repeatedly, that the liberation of Iraq would be a long arduous journey (how liberals can be against liberation is beyond logic but that is for another blog). Think about all the places we have intervened militarily, last I checked we were still in Japan, South Korea, Germany, all over the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Cuba, for crying out loud.

To leave Iraq now means the modern day Tokyo Roses have won, American and Iraqi lives lost were in vain, and anyone who would seek to do harm to the United States would have a free pass to inflict mayhem upon us.