Miles traveled: 4,880.

Miles traveled pulling Pearl, the 5×8 utility trailer: ~4500.

States visited: 7 – ID, MT, WY, ND, SD, MN*, WI.
National parks visited: 5 – Glacier, Theodore Roosevelt, Badlands, Grand Teton, Yellowstone.
National park-caliber state parks visited: One – Custer State Park, South Dakota.

Number of obnoxious National Park Rangers who insisted I “move along” despite the fact that the road in front of me was full of bison: One.

Number of complaints filed against obnoxious park rangers: One.

Number of mama grizzlies with two cubs that I got way too close to: One.

Emergency Rooms visited: Two. Dickinson, ND, and Sioux Falls, SD.

Regional beers retrieved: Great Northern Brewing’s Wild Huckleberry Wheat, Black Star, Wheatfish, , Madison River Brewing Company’s Irresistible Amber Ale and Salmon Fly Honey Rye, Grand Teton Brewing Company’s Big Hole Mythical White, Teton Ale, and of course many cases of Spotted Cow. I bought a New Glarus Brewing sampler pack, but I think I drank them all before I left Wisconsin.

Number of bottles broken in the trailer: Zero.

Number of  children of friends met for the first time: Ten. I think. There were so many of them.

Number of weddings attended: One.

Number of trips each to Parthenon Gyros and Mickey’s Dairy Bar: One.

Number of MacKenzie River Pizza Company pizzas consumed: Four.

Number of Wall Drug donuts consumed: 12.

Number of pounds gained: Negative 3. I don’t know how.

Number of “World’s Biggest” prairie animals visited: Two – buffalo and prairie dog.

Number of water slides slid down: Uhh… alot at Noah’s Ark in Wisconsin Dells.

Number of audio books listened to: Four: A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Associate, and Collapse.

Pile of crap on my desk following vacation: Huge.

Halfway through, I didn’t think I had much of a shot of hitting 2:20, because it took me 69 minutes to hit half way. I figured with my pace falling off like it always did, there was no way I’d do it. However, I kept my pace up. In fact, when I hit mile 12, I saw that I could do it if I knocked the last mile out in about 10.5 minutes. Through the magic of being 65 pounds lighter, I was actually able to bust out the last mile in about 9.5 minutes. In my previous four half marathons, my focus had been on staying alive and dragging my ass across the finish line at a pace of 12 or 13 minutes per mile.

So, yeah, it felt good.

I had been thinking about giving the Seattle Half Marathon the year off, but now I don’t want to give up the momentum.

Here is a neat little feature of my Garmin Forerunner that I haven’t used before, maps and stats:

It’s a very surreal route, especially in the fog. Start at an airport, running right next to planes, then over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which was kind of spooky on Saturday because of the fog, through a minor league baseball stadium, and then to the “nice” area of Tacoma. Throw in an aid station where the volunteers were all dressed as the Blues Brothers and it took on a very dream-like quality.

By the way, if you switch to satellite view and zoom in on the baseball stadium, you can see the error of the GPS plus the error of Google maps. We ran on the warning track, the route has me about 5 feet or so on the grass. Not too bad for a little Forerunner GPS.

(Cross-posted at The Band Blog.)

UPDATE:
A few pictures illustrating my point about the course:
The start line:

The Narrows Bridge looking spooky and ominous in the fog:

Runners hanging out in the hanger away from the rain prior to the start:

UPDATE 2: I did get my traditional half marathon side ache at about mile 6.5, but this time pushing my liver up with my hand and deep breathing solved the problem without having to slow down.

However, anyone who thinks that the US was anything other than totally right to use the bomb to try to end the war simply is too ignorant of history.  Today we think of Japan as Hello Kitty, Nintendo, and Priuses.  Even when World War II-era Imperial Japan is thought of we think about Pearl Harbor or Kamikazes (which are so cute we named a drink after them).  No one really talks about The Rape of Nanking. Everyone knows about the racism of the Nazis and even the American internment of people of Japanese decent in the west, but one rarely hears of the world class racism of the Imperial Japanese.

And I suppose I shouldn’t forget the fact that Japanese society at the time was militaristic from cradle to grave.  What does it say about Imperial Japan that it didn’t surrender after the first bomb? They knew how horrible it was. They knew they couldn’t counter it. But it was the citizen’s duty to make the US prove they had another one.  (For the record, I’ve always thought they should have given Japan more than three days before dropping the second bomb, but I can’t really blame them for not wanting to wait around, either.)

And, honestly, leaving all of that aside, put yourself in the shoes of Truman and his generals: You are at the end of a war where over 60 million people have been killed. You’ve defeated two of the three principle belligerents. The last one has been mostly pushed back to their home island. After seeing how poorly ending in a stalemate worked less than a generation earlier, the commitment is to total defeat of the enemy.  The enemy has proved very good at inflicting casualties upon invading forces on small islands, and now you face invading the home island.  Should you marshal the resources and the blood, let another half million Americans be killed or wounded and extend the war by another year or two, or do you drop the bomb that was developed with considerable resources in hopes of avoiding all of that? Any other decision by Truman would have been criminally irresponsible. (It’s also worth noting that the term “nuclear” had not yet become politically incorrect.)

So, have all the hand wringing, navel gazing ceremonies and remembrances you want, just don’t expect me to join in any regret whatsoever that Hiroshima was nuked. Imperial Japan made its bed over the decade prior to the bombing, Little Boy just made them lay in it.

My girlfriend, “Donna,” and I have shared a wonderful relationship for nearly three years. During her college days she had a sexual encounter with her best female friend. (They had been friends since high school.)Although they graduated from college five years ago, they continue to see each other. Donna tells me that nothing sexual goes on between them. Personally, I don’t trust her friend. Please help me get over this. — TONY IN WHITTIER

Abby gives some blather about trust. Here is the correct advice:

Dear Tony,

You are sitting on a freaking sexual goldmine. If you can’t figure out what to do with this situation, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to surrender your testicles. (HINT: It involves Everclear. The booze, not the band.)

Bull Moose

Now Steinbrenner isn’t exactly a sympathetic figure. In fact, I’ve been joking that the Steinbrenner estate is one of the few that I wouldn’t mind see being hit with the estate tax. But of course, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and I think the estate tax – and the gift tax – should be permanently abolished.

The death tax has its roots, like many of our laws, in English law.  Because in England everything in the domain ultimately belonged to the King or Queen, it was only right that when someone died his property was split up between the King and the heirs. In fact, it was an act of generosity that the King left the heirs anything at all.

However, that’s exactly the kind of thinking that irritated people like George Washington and the Adams cousins in the first place. And indeed for most of America’s history, the estate tax did not exist except for in times of national crisis – a “will tax” to finance a new Navy in 1797,  a 5-6% tax for the Civil War, and a 15% tax for the Spanish-American War, all repealed after the crisis.  When World War I broke out, a 10% tax on estates over $5 million (about $100 million in 2009 dollars) and a 25% tax on the portion of estates worth over $10 million (about $200 million in 2009 dollars) was enacted. The top rate was lowered to 20% after the war.

Then FDR came along and decided that the rate of 20% – something that might be able to be argued as reasonable – was too low and jacked the rate up to 70%.  From then until G. W. Bush the rates bumped up and down, but was always around half.  Insidious things like generation skipping tax were introduced.  (More or less, a generation skipping tax means that if you leave money to your grandson in your will, it will be taxed as if it was left to your son and then he left it to your grandson.)

So back to Steinbrenner. Here’s a guy that turned a $10 million investment into the Yankees into a billion dollar net worth over the course of 35 years.  And while he was making that money he was paying taxes on it much of it, and he was certainly paying taxes on his income. (I understand that much of his wealth is in the form of unrealized capital gains, which have never been taxed. However, if there is no step up in basis upon generational transfer, the government will not ultimately lose that money once there is realization of the investment.) He was employing ball players and front office staff who paid plenty in taxes.  He built an empire while paying his share of taxes on the way.  I fail to see a justification for the government taking half of what he had built, likely meaning that the Yankees would have had to have been sold by his family, if he had died six months later.  The crowning achievement of Steinbrenner’s work would have been ripped away from his family because he was successful. That’s sick.

The estate tax is politically expedient because it only targets the rich. But it is un-American, contrary to the very principles that the country was founded on.  The estate tax rears its ugly head again on January 1, with a 55% rate on estates over $1 million. Long live the King.

Of course gay marriage supporters see this as a victory. And it is something of a victory, I guess.  However, gay marriage supporter Jack Balkin recognizes the “danger” of federal judges dusting off and reading the Tenth Amendment:

As much as liberals might applaud the result, they should be aware that the logic of his arguments, taken seriously, would undermine the constitutionality of wide swaths of federal regulatory programs and seriously constrict federal regulatory power.

….

To be sure, there is something delightfully playful and perverse about the two opinions when you read them. Judge Tauro uses the Tenth Amendment– much beloved by conservatives– to strike down another law much beloved by conservatives–DOMA.

This particular conservative doesn’t think much of the substance of DOMA one way or another, and agrees that it likely runs afoul of the Tenth Amendment. So I’m all for this ruling being affirmed in the SCOTUS. Then we can get started on the work of cutting off all of the other obscene growths that have been festering on our federalist body using the Tenth as a scalpel.

However, I’m not holding my breath that this new found respect for the Tenth Amendment will last long.

First, an aside about the Sienea poll and why it is silly.  First, it ranks Barack Obama as the 15th best president ever. Any poll or study that tries to rank a sitting president historically should automatically be disqualified from being taken seriously.  Frankly, we can’t even rank G.W. Bush yet because his decisions are still playing out. Second, any poll that consistently has FDR as the #1 president is clearly a poll of political hacks. And this year Teddy Roosevelt is ranked #2. You all know my affection for TR, but who can make a serious argument that either Roosevelt was a better president than Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, or even John Adams? (OK, I’m sure there are some Confederate sympathizers that rank Lincoln low.)

Back to Althouse’s poll. Curiously she doesn’t include anyone before Carter. That works for me, since I was born under Ford.

Right away I would disqualify Ford and Carter for obvious reasons. I won’t consider Obama since he’s only 18 months in. I’d also get rid of George H.W. Bush for mishandling the end of the first Iraq War and for mishandling domestic priorities. So that leaves the two-termers: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan.

W. had some great moments, oversaw the response to an appalling attack on America, started to address the problems with the rouge states in the middle east, and cut taxes nicely. He also didn’t veto enough spending bills, didn’t lead Congress well enough when he had the majority,  didn’t change strategies in Iraq quickly enough, and presided over the disgusting bailout at the end of his term.  So I’ll put him aside.

Clinton presided over the nice, comforting lull we had between the Cold War and 9-11.  He ran a surplus and presided over a nice economy, but he had help from the ‘94 Contract with America congress and the economy on the surplus  and didn’t really have much to with the economy booming.  People forget that Clinton handed Bush a deflating bubble much like Bush handed Obama a deflating bubble.

Reagan took on the commies, changed fiscal policy which helped turn around an economy with a high misery index, took on the commies, bombed Gaddafi, and took on the commies.  His downsides were increased spending and an increased deficit a result of having to deal with the devils of Tip O’Neil and Ted Kennedy to get what he needed for his priorities. (And the deficit wasn’t that historically out of line).  People tend to poo-poo his change of policy regarding the Soviets, (or give the credit to Gorbachev) but that is usually due to either a misunderstanding or underestimation of the evil that was the Soviet empire.  Even the Reagan administration’s scandals were about fighting communism.

Frankly, it’s hard for me to understand how there can even be a discussion about which president from Ford through current was the best. Even if it becomes a partisan discussion the choices are Clinton or Reagan, and Clinton just didn’t have the foreign policy accomplishments of Reagan.

It is amusing to look at the difference between the results of the Althouse poll and the results of the New York Daily News poll with the same question.

But this quote didn’t escape my attention:

…suck it up; otherwise, the world’s going to be destroyed from global warming.

That’s advice that Gore’s alleged victim received from her fellow lefties.  I can’t decide if I hope that that quote is real or fear that it is real.

The answer to the first question was supplied almost exactly two years ago in Heller: The SCOTUS held that the rights were indeed individual, the capstone of a long slow turn about of lower court jurisprudence (and left-wing echo chamber intellectual work) over the last half century.

Today, the court ruled in McDonald v. The City of Chicago (PDF) that the Fourteenth Amendment does indeed incorporate the Second Amendment rights to the states.

Which makes sense. Say what you will about the doctrine of Fourteenth Amendment incorporation, but either all of the constitution’s protections should apply to the states or none of them should (and the individual state’s constitutions should rule).  And since the doctrine of incorporation was pretty much settled on battlefields between 1861 and 1865, it seems like the Second Amendment is being incorporated rather late.

Note that this was a 5-4 decision which would have almost certainly been 6-3 the other way had George Bush not been reelected in 2004.  Presidential elections matter long beyond the term of the Presidents elected. The timing of this decision really emphasizes that since today we are seeing part two of a line change of the four left wing justices.

But I’ll hold out hope that he’ll surprise me on this. I guess he did let the SEALS kill those pirates.

UPDATE: I guess I should go on record that a half-assed firing of McChrystal without some kind of worthy successor lined up – James Mattis? – would be a disaster.  If Obama can’t find anyone, the best thing to do is accept McChrystal’s apology, admonish him, and send him back to Afghanistan to redeem himself.

This is bad news:  “Protocol dictates the next commander of the International Security Assistance Force  should be a general from another country.” If a non-American is put in charge in Afghanistan, everyone might as well all go home and save the time and treasure.

UPDATE 2: I am extremely pleased to be wrong. Obama did exactly the right thing.