I’m looking forward to media coverage of the rally today. Wonder if they will infer racism from this photo as they did when Glenn Beck had a rally.
OK, so I’m not really wondering.
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Training, 10/28/10
Bench Press
2×10 @ 45
95×5
135×3
2×1 @ 185
205×1
2×1 @ 225
Nice and easyRow
45×10
3×5 @ 135Pressdown
3×10 @ 10016 minutes on Procor stepper thing, 120 bpm.
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Training, 10/26/10
Squat
45×5
135×5
185×3
2×1 @ 225
2×1 @ 275
The second single of both of those felt better.Band Good Mornings
2×12 with light bandPull Down Abs
2×15 @ 10015 minutes treadmill @ 115 bpm or so
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Starting point
Weight 233.5
Bodyfat 20%
Getting back in gear today.
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Must Win
Typically, fans and writers alike consider the AFC North Division rivalry games “must win”. Many considered both the Steelers game and the Patriots game “must win” situations for the Ravens.I disagree. The Ravens are off to a 4-2 start, having played the Jets, Bengals, Steelers, and Patriots all on the road already, and having lost only two of those four games. I think that’s respectable.
The games the Ravens must win are the home (and away) games against clearly inferior teams. They must beat the Browns, Broncos, and Panthers.
And when a team like the Bills comes to Baltimore, the Ravens must win.
When you look at the schedule, the Ravens are up against some very good teams on the road this year: Jets (5-1), Patriots (4-1), Falcons (4-2), and Texans (4-2). Of course, there are also the three divisional road games against the Steelers, Bengals, and Browns.
Any team, even good teams, are going to lose some of those tough road games.
Buffalo is last in the league in passing offense, and last in the league in running defense. The Ravens pass defense is ranked third, and while they haven’t gotten the running game going in full gear, everyone knows how dangerous their three backs are.
The two losses thus far this year were both disappointing. The Ravens simply played poorly on the offensive side of the ball against the Bengals; but every team (and every quarterback) is going to have an off day.
Yes, it would have been nice to hang on and beat the Patriots last week. That game may matter when the playoffs get here, either in the wild card or seedings. But losing that game isn’t going to cost the Ravens a shot at making the playoffs, as long as they continue to beat the teams they should beat.
And they should beat the Bills. Convincingly. If they don’t, fans and writers will legitimately question not only how good the Ravens are, but question their ability to even reach the playoffs.
This article was also posted at Bleacher Report
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This is the best they can do?
The NAACP is publishing what I’m sure is an unbiased review of the ties between the Tea Party movement and *gasp* racists.
According to the Kansas City Star, there are three key links.
The Council of Conservative Citizens, which is from what I can tell, pretty much a white separatist group. They have hosted or sponsored at least one Tea Party rally (as can pretty much anyone.) As I’m sure the report will point out, the CoCC has links to a number of prominent politicians not associated with the Tea Party, including Democrats. The Kansas City Star didn’t mention that, although it only took me about a minute to find it.
More clear proof that the Tea Party movement is racist: the leader of the Wood County, TX (population: a whopping 37,000) Tea Party used to be “involved with” the KKK. I’m sure the NAACP report will determine the entire US Congress is also racist, given there have been a number of Congresspeople who were linked to the KKK, including the venerable Democrat Strom Thurmond.
And finally, the 1776 Tea Party (teaparty.org) is lead by (if you can call anyone in the Tea Party a leader) Stephen Eichler, who is also a member of the Minuteman Project. The Star does mention they are anti-immigrant instead of calling them racist; they must have accidentally left out the word “illegal”.
I don’t know about you, but to me, those are some pretty weak links.
I’m not a member of the Tea Party. (Nor am I a fan of or do I agree with the CoCC, the KKK, or the Minutemen.) While the Tea Party folks hold many views similar to mine, the movement has morphed from ‘Taxed Enough Already’ into something else that more closely resembles Paleo-Conservatism. Which is fine, but not for me. So while I don’t really care what the NAACP thinks of a group I have no ties to, I’m really sick of people on the Left running around screaming “RACIST” at anyone who disagrees with them. It’s an indicator of weakness of argument; the NAACP can’t actually come up with any intellectual arguments against the Tea Party positions, all they can do is call them names.
I thought we were moving in to the post racial era. Apparently not.
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Good Questions
Radley Balko of the Agitator asks some good questions about the prioritization of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Gay marriage is probably the only gay rights issue that gets more attention than DADT right now. And prioritizing gay marriage makes sense. But there’s comparably little coverage, debate, or discussion, for example, about laws against gay adoption, which it seems to me affect a much larger percentage of the gay community, deal with a much more basic right, and are quite a bit more damaging, both to gay parents who want kids and to the kids who legislators have decided are better off in a group home or rotating through foster homes than in stable homes with same sex parents. (Some of these laws bar adoption by unmarried parents gay or straight, but in states that forbid gay marriage, the effect is to bar gay people from adopting).
Or how about the fact that federal law basically bars private employers from offering the same health insurance benefits to domestic partners that they do to married hetero couples? Some companies do offer such benefits, but the employed partner is taxed at such an obscenely high rate for the partner’s benefit that the benefit becomes far more expensive than it’s worth. (I’m speaking from experience—I signed on for my ex-girlfriend’s former employer’s domestic partner health insurance benefit a few years ago, and we were surprised with a monster tax bill the next year. Even the company’s HR people weren’t aware of the penalty.). I should add here that I’d ideally like to see health insurance severed from employment. But if the tax benefit is there, it strikes me as patently unfair to give huge tax breaks to committed heterosexual couples, but effectively negate any efforts of private employers to offer committed homosexual couples the same benefit (domestic partners benefits are taxed as income on both the employer and employee side).
I agree. I would think the heavy taxation penalty on live in partner insurance and the all but ban on adoption would be more meaningful fights. But then, I too am a white guy from a middle class upbringing, so what do I know? (Although I did face some discrimination because I had long hair in the early 90’s, no one ever said I couldn’t get married, adopt, or join the military.)
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Quote of the Day, on Elections Mattering
Radley Balko (the Agitator) has a great post up today on Libertarians supporting GOP candidates, as well as what he’d like to see the morning after an election.
Me, I’m cheering for elections to matter less, and for politicians to have less impact on my life. I dream of waking up to find the results of the November 2 election on page A-10 of my November 3rd newspaper—because no one cared, because very little was at stake, because we stopped pinning our hopes and dreams on the results of a perverse process dominated by generally horrible people who have made a career of accumulating power for the sake of accumulating power.
Me too! We need to get away from technocracy and instead just take the power away, regardless of who is in charge. We would all be better off.
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Greatest Analogy Ever
Rep Nick Rahall (D-WV), in answering questions posed by a newspaper, makes the most appropriate analogy on global warming I think I’ve heard. And, he did it unwittingly.
Climate change — to deny it exists, to just put your head in the sand and, ‘oh no, it doesn’t exist, what are you talking about,’ is about like standing on the floor of Macy’s during the month of December and claiming Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
Yes. It is exactly like that. Everyone knows Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist other than in the imagination of children, and of course in the spirit of the holiday season. But he’s not, you know, real.
But saying that in Macy’s at Christmastime would be very unpopular. (And, as Warren Mayer points out, would get in the way of making money off the myth.)
And being popular is more important than being right when it comes to elections.
Hat tip Coyote Blog.
Windy Recycling Day 