Another set of random thoughts

[aadler]

 
I went out for a run today (though ‘run’ applies only in that I wasn’t walking). My Army Reserve company is having a diagnostic APFT in our next drill, and I want to see if I can manage to qualify with the 2-mile run instead of the 2.5-mile walk I’m allowed on an age waiver. It took a while for me to realize that the dark spots dancing in front of my eyes were, in fact, gnats and not imminent blackout. My time? target plus 11:43. As in, I have to cut 11 minutes and 43 seconds before I have any hope of passing. But, hey, do it every day and I’ll start closing the gap. My goal today was simply to finish without ever stopping. (And, let me tell you: if it was my left arm — and wrist, and shoulder, and shoulder blade for awhile there — that kept having that throbbing pain, instead of the right, I’d worry a lot more.)

***

When speaking of Law & Order: SVU, my wife habitually calls it ‘SUV’.

***

Though we were both raised Methodist, I entered the Catholic Church in my adult life, and my younger brother became a Mormon. So now we’re both represented on the national ticket, and — with luck — in the next administration.

***

I love beer.

***

From the Weekly Standard article, “Obama Lies While Accusing the Romney Campaign of Lying” —

Quote from Obama: “… somebody was challenging one of their ads — they made it up — about work and welfare. And every outlet said this is just not true. And they were asked about it and they said — one of their campaign people said, ‘We won’t have the fact-checkers dictate our campaign. We will not let the truth get in the way.’”

What was actually said (by Neil Newhouse, a Romney campaign pollster): “These fact-checkers come to those ads with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs. We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

What Newhouse NEVER said: “We will not let the truth get in the way.”

Okay, maybe the President was just being careless with facts, rather than deliberately lying. But, damn, he’s careless with facts a lot.

***

I love women, too. But, alas, far more than they love me.

***

I thought this month would be my last with the Army Reserve. For a long time, documents have been quoting my ETS (expiration, term of service) as September 2012. Turns out? wrong. I did early re-enlistment in 2006, after returning from Afghanistan, adding six years to my obligation. Add six years to 2006, get 2012, makes sense. But no; because it was early re-enlistment, the six years was added to my term of service at the time, which ran through 2007, so another six years meant I get another year. Till September 2013.

(Yes, I meant that the way I said it: I get another year. I’m hanging in there every minute it’s legal to do so. The odds are still against me, but with the way the Middle East is falling apart, I might get another opportunity to serve my country overseas before I’m shown the door. Mind you, I’m not wishing for a crisis here; I see multiple crises on the horizon, and I’m just hoping that I have the opportunity to contribute to meeting ONE of them while I’m still eligible to serve at all.)

The thing is, the way things have worked out, I’ll essentially be eligible for a military pension the moment the Army turns me loose. But I don’t plan to retire at that point (though retiring from the Army? pretty much unavoidable by then). In fact, I’m in the process of starting an entirely new career, and I’m actually somewhat excited about it. I won’t be talking about it, though, till I’ve nailed it down.

I know I’m getting older. But I’m not old, not yet, and I’ll keep resisting it for as long as my body allows.

***

Used to be, I couldn’t stand to watch Psych, because Shawn was such a total jerk when it came to the way he treated his friend. In the last several seasons, though, as it comes on late-night TV when there’s nothing else available, I’ve come to recognize that Dulé Hill is the real star. His Gus is an unending comedy delight, and becoming an authentically weird character in his own right.

***

I’m currently reading lostboy_lj’s “Clocks of the Long Now”, unhurriedly, one chapter at a time. I have to wonder: how does such a fantastic story — and, apparently, a multiple award winner — have so few comments on it?

***

And, I guess, that’s enough for now.

Comments

[aadler]

No, I’m not “annoyed that the leaders of [my] party are lying to [me] all the time” because, no, they’re not. These things are discussed at length in the news circles I follow, so I’m familiar with the examples you named, and any lies are coming from elsewhere.

• “You didn’t build that” was a debacle, all right, and one that may be the single pivot-point around which Obama’s lost re-election revolves. He did say it, the rest of his comments provide context that makes it clear that he did mean it, and it resonates with the public because it dovetails with many other such statements and expressed attitudes in his past.
   
• The accusation as to “trying to restrict military voting in Ohio” could perhaps be called mischaracterized, but it’s not completely false. It’s happening, and strong arguments can be made either way as to whether it’s wrong, but it isn’t completely false.
   
• My most emphatic retort, however, must come to the statement of “even a Fox News writer” labeling Ryan’s speech dishonest. (Thank you for providing a link, so I could assess the article directly instead of offering my opinion of what-somebody-else-said-somebody-else-said; way too much of that already.) Sally Kohn is a contributor to Fox News precisely because they brought her in to offer an alternative perspective; she is representative of their position only in that their position includes providing space for someone to offer a differing opinion. The “facts” she cites to support her accusations of deception by Ryan are either not true (“Fact-Checking Sally Kohn”) or are opinion presented as fact. Irresponsibly careless, at best … and, when something is part of a chorus of misrepresentation, I’m less inclined to offer the benefit of the doubt; in this case, it looks like another example of “lying while accusing someone else of lying”.

I marvel constantly that different sets of people can look at the same sets of facts and see entirely different realities. I worry constantly that I might be doing that, in ways of which I’m not aware, and try regularly to re-check and re-assess my opinions and assumptions. I’m reassured whenever I recognize a flawed argument from someone on my own side (i.e., the argument doesn’t hold up even when I more or less agree with the conclusion); that tells me my general objectivity has not been fatally compromised. Your challenge — and such it was, however mildly presented — offered me another opportunity to examine my perspectives, and I find them unshaken.

[aadler]

Crap! I just had something happen that was utterly unintentional, and it’s embarrassing. mymatedave’s comment — the one to which this was a reply — showed up twice in my inbox, because one was the original and one was an edited version. I attempted to delete one of them, purely out of compulsive neatness, and that somehow deleted everything.

My apologies to mymatedave, and his original comment is reproduced below. He said:

Good luck on getting your time down, I'm more of a walker than a runner myself and thanks for the fic link. But I've been seeing the Romney campaign and they have been more than a little dishonest themselves.

The whole "you didn't build that" debacle.

Paul Ryan's convention speech being so dishonest even a fox news writer came out and said it.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/#ixzz2523QbmAu

And something that may affect you, early last month Romney claimed that Obama was trying to restrict military voting in Ohio when that was completely false.

I know you're a conservative guy and a regular republican voter but aren't you annoyed that the leaders of your party are lying to you all the time?

This isn't meant as an attack on you or your political views, I truly am interested in what someone who I disagree with politically but can have a rational discussion believes. I understand that political discussions in the US have a way of devolving into ranting from both sides.

[mymatedave.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, I see what you mean about Sally Kohn, and I'm sorry to keep carping on about this but the whole "you didn't build that" is still getting on my nerves and Stephen Gutowski didn't explain it.


Going with the "You didn't build that" issue, just so where both on the same page, the snippet of "You didn't build that" that Romney used the "that" was a reference to the infrastructure of America, the bridges and roads that people get work on.

The popculture website about memes even has a page because of all the macros that were going around.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/you-didnt-build-that

And when it comes to Romney and Ryan's budget, I'm actually going to refer to shock! horror! a liberal called Paul Krugman who no matter his politics is still a nobel prize winner in economics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/opinion/06krugman.html

I would honestly like your opinions on the two articles linked. Sorry for not getting back to you earlier.

[aadler]

While meaning no insult whatsoever to you, because you’ve always maintained an even tone and careful courtesy:

I heard Obama’s speech, I read the transcript of Obama’s speech, and I don’t really care whether the “that” referred to roads/bridges/infrastructure (he’s already shown himself to be sufficiently incompetent when it comes to subject-verb agreement that I can fully believe he said something that wasn’t even close to what he actually intended), because the overall message was the same: Individual success, individual achievement, individual effort, are all meaningless, because the all-providing State is actually responsible for everything good that happens. In other words, regardless of which “that” he meant, the result is deliberate denigration of personal achievement, especially of anyone who’s actually achieved anything significant. And, yes, all in the further pursuit of class warfare, which been an ongoing characteristic of the perpetual campaign he started half a dozen years ago.

And Paul Krugman, Nobel prize or not, is a liberal flack who hates everyone to the right of Debbie Wasserman Shultz. Yes, he was writing an opinion column … but he presents his opinions as if they were facts, and nobody has that much authority.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Re lostboy's wonderful story - it might depend on where you're reading it. He wrote it (or most of it) quite a while ago and I don't know that he posted many places. And then he did some rewriting and I think he took it down to work on it, which probably made the comments go away too? I'm not sure, but I know there was a lot of fuss over it when it first came out, so that's my best guess for why you aren't seeing a lot of comments.

[aadler]

Could be, could be. I actually ran across the story elsewhere after posting that, and saw then that the relative dearth of commentary might be a result of LJ being a secondary site.

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rec, aadler.

Yeah, what sms says above is basically true, I think. I didn't quite know where to post the story after I started writing it back in 2007, so on the advice of others I began posting it on multiple fanfic archive sites (almost all of them Spike-themed, even though the story isn't really a "Spike Story" - I was told I'd get more readers there, though).

Since I'm an edit-fiend (and maybe a bit of a control freak) it became a pain to update all of them every time I made a tweak. That coupled with the IMO inappropriate category led me to yank it from all but a handful of sites, and then post what I felt was the best version on LJ. Some sites preserved the reader comments and others didn't, as I recall.