Diatribes by Joah

Republicans Embrace Palin Pick

She isn't experienced enough. She's only on the ballot because she's a woman. She's going to get crushed in the debates with Biden.

So says Democrats.

Only problem is, your vote isn't one John McCain is trying to get. You've already thrown your lot behind his rival. I'm sure McCain is really upset The New York Times doesn't like his VP pick.

As for Republicans...

Well, the early results remain promising:

Dr. Jim Dobson said "I would pull that lever" for McCain-Palin.

Townhall.com's Hugh Hewitt is pleased with the pick as well.

Guns and Rosaries' Matt Cunningham said he is psysched about having Palin on the ticket.

National Review says McCain has "wowed the public and enthused the Right."

CNN blogger John Avlon said "Palin fits the Republican bill perfectly."

And for the best take on it, read RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh who wrote:

"I find it more than a little amusing how the choice of Sarah Palin has given people on the other side of the partisan divide a serious case of intellectual whiplash. Up until now, anytime that Barack Obama's experience was questioned, the reply from Obama partisans would be something along the lines of "Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had tons of experience and they ran the country into the ground!"

Now, with Palin, experience is evidently important again--unless the experience argument is used to criticize the Obama candidacy.

Get it? Heads, Obama wins. Tails, McCain and Palin lose."

So why is it that Democrats are so quick to bring up experience as a reason for Palin's inadequacy? I have an idea...

Me thinks it has something to do with a certain Senator from New York.

...and I think a lot of Obama supporters are amazed that McCain unraveled a full week of Democratic momentum and buzz and history with just one name.

...and I think a lot of younger and more affluent Obama supporters are worried that Palin will get some of those rural, working class, white women votes.

...and I think they have plenty reason to worry.

...and I think Biden is going to look a bit like an old Washington hand - what Obama is trying to paint McCain as - if he goes after her inexperience too hard in the debates.

...and I think Democrats are upset because they had the patent/copyright/trademark on change.

...and I think McCain is smiling ear to (Hillary Clinton's) ear.

Most seem to agree that she's a risky pick and a bold move by McCain to fire up the Party and leave Democrats dumbfounded. She's also on the ballot to go after some of those HRC supporters. But think about this, if McCain caught up to Obama in the polls after being down by upwards to 8 points just three months ago and with more than two times less money, imagine what kind of bounce he'll get after a convention in which he'll nominate a woman for VP...

...it begs asking if any of you want a do-over to get that Obama/Hillary "dream" ticket?

About that VP pick...

When news broke that Sarah Palin was McCain's VP pick, I was bombarded by my friends (they're just about all Democrats) for information..."who is she?", "why'd he pick her?", "Biden is going to kill her in the debates!"...and "what do you think about Palin?"

Here's my first take...

For starters, let me say that I've greatly enjoyed these last two nights of the Democratic Convention. Don't get me wrong, I liked Michelle's speech and Hillary did a good job of rounding out her campaign - "No way. No More. No McCain" (she left out the last one, "No Hillary in the White House."), but I didn't really get into the convention until Bill and Biden spoke up on Wednesday. For the first time, they provided a more definitive statement on why Obama, and not McCain, needs to be the next U.S. President.

Bill said, "Clearly, the job of the next president is to rebuild the American Dream and restore America's standing in the world" and you had to believe him. He then said, Obama "will work for an America with more partners and fewer adversaries"...again, you have to believe him. Then he topped it off with, "America can do better than that (Bush Administration). And Barack Obama will. But first we have to elect him." Overall strong Bill performance.

Then, after a winning introduction by his son and Delaware AG Beau Biden, Senator Joe (I like calling him that) stood up and emphatically said McCain represents much of the same in a time where change is needed..."that's not change, that's the same" he repeated with audience support. But Biden's best line was even simpler and more frank in saying that America "needs more than a good soldier. It needs a wise leader." It remains to be seen if he was saying that the inexperienced Obama is  more wise than he is smart.

By the time Obama came out in a *surprise* visit at the end of Biden's speech, I honestly had tears building up in my eyes because the junior Senator from Illinois not only looked presidential, he looked like our next president. Regardless of which way I vote, that night looked much more like a November night than a convention night.

But back to Palin...

Truth is, I am still on that 51-49 line about who to vote for and McCain's VP pick has been keeping me up at night. If he went with Romney (a man I feel is better suited for the board room than the town hall), I probably would have flip-flopped. If he had gone with former PA Governor and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge or Independent Senator Joe Lieberman I would have been even more certain than I already am that Obama would win in November. If he went with Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, I would have been both happy and disappointed because I think she's a really good Republican Senator in a time when Democrats are about to win more seats in that chamber and she's a near-shoe-in to be the next Governor of Texas.

So now that leaves me, and us, with Sarah Palin...a two-year Governor of Alaska who has a very interesting rise to the nomination...

She was runner-up in the Miss Alaska Pageant in '84.
She was a sports reporter.
She served as a city council member and then mayor for six years.
She's a supporter of drilling in ANWR and ethics reform and less pork-barrel spending like McCain.
She has a son in the Army and another with Down Syndrome.

But beyond those facts...here's what we can gather about why McCain picked her:

She's young and attractive. Helps make McCain look younger and Biden look older.
She's from a small state. Helps with those lower-class, small-town voters.
She's a female. Helps wedge Hillary's poor supporters with Obama's wealthy ones.
She's new. Helps fight Obama's argument that we need change since he picked Biden.
She's a mother. Her oldest and youngest sons, one in the Army, one with Down Syndrome, will make for a unique and touching convention speech.
She's a gamer. Anyone who covered sports has a competitive spirit so you can't be certain she's going to completely back down to Biden in debates.

That's pretty much all I have to say until we hear more about and from her next week in Minneapolis. Until then, I recommend taking a wait-and-see approach, as am I, about her candidacy. In the meantime, read the post by RealClearPolitics' Jay Cost  for another good take on the pick.

Running for a Cause

Friends and Colleagues,

I'm lacing up my shoes and running the Baltimore Marathon on Oct. 11th to raise money for the Institute for Responsible Citizenship, a worthy organization I have had the pleasure of getting to work with over the last year-plus. Read more at their site: http://www.i4rc.org.

My goal is to run fast (under 3 hours) to help I4RC continue its efforts to foster leadership and citizenship amongst young African-American men (Obama? Bueller? Anyone?).

Please take a moment to make a donation by visiting my Firstgiving page: http://www.firstgiving.com/joah

You can donate online with a credit card via PayPal. All donations are secure and sent directly to the Institute for Responsible Citizenship [501(c)3] by Firstgiving, who will email you a printable record of your donation.

Please send my page on to anyone who might like to donate!

Joah

P.S. I'm looking for a training partner...someone who likes long walks on the beach...runs sub-40 minute 10ks (6.2 miles) and has plenty of high school track stories...

Must Read: Where the Urban Dream Life is Going Cheap

A Manhattan friend of mine shared this and I just glad to share this with you all because I think this may not even just speak for New York, it could speak for L.A. and D.C. and other places too. Here's a snippet:

"But the problem is, you can’t simply leave New York—you have to quit New York. You have to admit to yourself and the world that you’re packing it in, calling it a day, turning out the lights. You have to walk away from, as Joan Didion put it, “the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.” (It should be noted she wrote that in an essay about her decision to leave New York.)"

Read on at: New York Magazine.

In Serious Need of Direction(s)

Have you ever been in such a rush and so excited to get somewhere that you're driving down the highway and miss your exit and don't realize it until a good ways down the road then you're too stubborn and too worried about being late to turn around so you keep going and convince yourself that you know another way that there's an exit up here somewhere not far from here right around this next bend on the highway past this little town and that gas station and cow pastures that once you finally realize you are not anywhere near some fucking secret passage to your final destination and that the only way to get there is to stop turn around and go back to the missed exit take it and follow the rest of the directions from there only by then you think you'll be too late it's too late and you already missed it so why go back in the first place why even try at this point it's no use anyway might as well just give up and so you say fuck it and resign yourself to turning back not to make it to your final destination but to go back home and sulk but then along the way you decide yes I am going to try to go and see if I can still make it and maybe it hasn't started and maybe I'll get lucky and everything will be alright and I'll have a great time and forget all about getting off track and being so fucking pissed at yourself for being such a dumbass and so stubborn that you couldn't just do the only smart thing to do the very second you knew what that was which meant stopping that damn car and putting on your signal checking both ways and then reversing course making sure not to speed because cops love to give tickets this time of month and there's no reason to speed because ten miles an hour faster isn't going to make up much of the lost time anyway and it's better just to be safe and calm than rushed and perturbed but fuck it you speed back and finally get to where you were originally trying to go only to realize you had the wrong date anyway the thing isn't even happening today it's not happening tomorrow either you were just so fucking anxious so incredibly excited about going there wherever there is that you got on the road and started driving like a bat outta hell without asking yourself any of the pertinent questions along the way like how the hell did I do something so fucking stupid. Well, have you?

I almost did.

Running to Exhaustion, Not Emptiness

I'm reading a little memoir called 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running' by Haruki Murakami. I've heard of Murakami before, but have never read any of his previous buzzworthy works. Apparently he's a great writer and also a committed runner so I should pay closer attention to him since I'm about halfway to that description.

I've only read the first 30 pages or so, but I can already tell this will end up joining the lists of my favorite books on my Facebook and MySpace profiles. Murakami has a very straight way of saying things in a way that makes you think he didn't spent a lot of time planning what he was going to write before it hit the page. He writes things like this:

"Sometimes when I run, I listen to jazz, but usually it's rock, since its beat is the best accompaniment to the rhythm of running. I prefer the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gorillaz, and Beck, and oldies like Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beach Boys. Music with as simple a rhythm as possible. A lot of runners now use iPods, but I prefer the MD player I'm used to. It's a little bigger than an iPod and can't hold nearly as much data, but it works for me. At this point I don't want to mix music and computers. Just like it's not good to mix friends and work, and sex."

You see what I'm talking about? The man is brilliant.

Anyway, I've been thinking about running a lot because one of my goals this year has been to see what kind of potential I can get out of my 25-year-old body (typically around when distance runners start to peak) if I started doing some marathons. So yesterday I set out on a 23-miler at 8/8:15 minute pace.

I was encouraged to get a Camelbak and I got one for these longer runs. I even started listening to my iPod while I run again, something I only did a couple of winters ago when it was too snowy to run outside and I ran on a treadmill (boring). And I've started carrying a couple of energy gels with me for the latter stages of my training runs. Basically I try to be as prepared as possible when I start a 2 or 3-hour run.

A lot of people think running is therapeutic or something. Whenever I'm stressed and tell people I'm about to go for a run they always say something like, "oh that's good, you can clear your head" or "that's probably good to help you forget about it." These people clearly aren't distance runners.

Do you think the late American marathoner Ryan Shay's wife, Alicia, forgets about her husband's death at this year's Olympic Trials when she runs? Do you think American mile record-holder Alan Webb clears his mind of his failure to make the Olympic team this year when he goes for a run? Do you think Bill Clinton stopped thinking about being the president when he used to go on his runs? Doubtful.

Really the only good thing about running is giving yourself an opportunity to physically, instead of mentally, suffer or shift tension from the mind to the body.

That's what I was trying to do when I set off on that 23-miler. Just trying to shift some things. Unfortunately, the only things shifting were in my stomach and, for the first time in long while, I puked. Turns out I only had to run 13 miles to get to the point of suffering.

When you go on a long run, whether it's 6 miles or 23, you can't really forget or clear your mind of something. If anything, running just gives you a more concentrated time to think clearly about something. For the first half of the run, you're trying to focus on establishing a rhythm, and by the second half your focus is spent trying to hold on to that rhythm (or clear line of thinking) and fighting the pain. The whole time you're playing psychologist or counselor with yourself.

Because by the end the pain has shifted back from the physical to mental. By the end you'll need physical therapy too.