Week 1

Last Saturday was the first Big Spin for me this season.  Two hours on the bike on a trainer with a bunch of great folks and half an hour on the treadmill.  After some time off, it felt great.  I got all those same feelings again.  Like impatience after 30-45 min on the bike.  Like euphoria in the last 30 minutes riding and the first 20 minutes running.  Like an unfathomably deep hunger an hour later.

4000 continuous yards in the pool today, about the length of the IM swim.  Not at any kind of exciting pace, but it's an entirely doable distance.  Enough to make me tired, but no problem.

Big Spin 2 is tomorrow, and I have to get up early when I'd rather sleep in.  I can't wait.

Rick Warren

For the last couple of days, one of the big news items was Obama's invitation of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the presidential swearing-in. 

A reasonable question that doesn't seem to be noted much is whether there ought to be a religious invocation at this event at all, but I digress....

In what I will call, for lack of better terms, the "pro-gay" literature on the Bible, it is often argued that one of Jesus's traits was his radical inclusiveness.  Even many supposedly anti-gay stories (e.g., Soddom and Gammorah) are interpreted with this theme.  So, on the one hand, this invitation strikes me as an example of a similar radical inclusiveness, with Warren himself and symbolic of others who are most definitely not sympathetic to the LGBT (or for that matter, Democratic) cause.

On the other, Warren, in his otherwise non-flame-throwing persona, has been staunch in his opposition to equal rights for same-sex marriage, comparing it to incest, polygamy, etc.  His statements, while often calm and articulate, have been damning and hurtful.  So, on this other hand, inviting him to open the ceremony for Obama seems like a massive kick in the teeth to the LGBTA community.

I hope this was not a cynical calculation, that it was a genuine attempt at post partisanship, or at least inclusiveness.  It doesn't feel that way now.  At minimum it feels like a miscalculation.  At worst, it feels like a major tarnish on our otherwise still-shiny new president (-elect).  I hope it was worth it.

Gay marriage case in Iowa

The case in the Iowa Supreme Court is summarized well by the Des Moines Register.  The quick and dirty version is that in 2007, an Iowa district court judge held that Iowa's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and (temporarily) made same sex weddings legal.  However, within hours, he stayed his own order, and only one (I think) couple actually got married during the short window.

Here's how we know that history is going to be on our side:

"One could easily argue, and we do, that fostering same-sex marriage will harm the institution of marriage as we know it," Kuhle said. "It's not going to happen tomorrow. We're not going to see any changes tomorrow, next week, next year, in our generation. But you've got to look to the future."

Kuhle said state support for same-sex marriage would teach future generations that marriage is no longer about procreation despite thousands of years of history.

Are we kidding here?  This is the lawyer defending the ban on same-sex marriage.  Some vague, undescribed harm well into the future?  Seriously?  How about no-fault divorce if we want to talk about a harm to marriage!  And can this guy be serious about procreation being the purpose of marriage?  Undoubtely, there is a correlation, but we're not really going to have fertility tests associated with marriage licenses, or ban the weddings of 60 year old women are we?

The battle is over.  It's just a matter of how long it will take for everyone to figure that out.

Do-Overs

(I apologize for the delay here.  Got completely swamped at work for a while.)

The Bush "Exit Interviews" have started.  The one with Charlie Gibson had a section that just rang like nails on a blackboard:

GIBSON: You've always said there's no do-overs as President. If you had one?

BUSH: I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn't.

BUSH: Oh, I see what you're saying. You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.

Reading between the lines here in the last few sentences: he was going to go to war anyway.  Any reasonable person who was serious about the WMD justification for going to war in Iraq could easily answer Gibson's question.  "If we had known Iraq had no WMD, we would not have started a war."  This shows once again that the WMD explanation was just a pretense.