[Fitness] Coworker Challenge 2011

Here's the list of events (weather permitting):

• Pullups
• Pushups
• Situps
• Medicine Ball Toss
• Standing Long Jump
• 50 Yard Dash
• 1 Mile Run

Note: We will not be doing thumb-extension presses as part of the new regime.

As you can see, we're taking things up a notch for 2011, so we should all be freshly challenged in new and exicing (and, yes, probably unpleasant) ways. :-)

Links on the Giffords thing

First off, I agree with everything this fellow has laid out, calmly and dispassionately: http://bart-calendar.livejournal.com/1996246.html [h/t nex0s]

Slate's analysis, which was quite well-handled: http://www.slate.com/id/2280616/ [h/t anarcha_crisis]

Right wing ducking blame and making itse look guilty: http://my.firedoglake.com/phoenix/2011/01/09/protesting-too-much-right-wing-attacks-on-sheriff-dupnik-are-tacit-confession-on-their-part/ [h/t friend-without-an-LJ]

Salon's take on TP rhetoric: http://www.salon.com/news/gabrielle_giffords/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/01/10/revolutionary_rhetoric

I'll just quote kambriel, who quotes the Pima County Sheriff, who says probably the smartest stuff about this whole clusterfuck:

Regarding the murderous tragedy in Tucson, Arizona today, I think Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has thus far had one of the most coherent and thoughtful responses:

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government; the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous."

"It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. And that's the sad thing of what's going on in America. Pretty soon, we're not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office."

"Let me just say one thing, because people tend to poo-poo this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech. But it's not without consequences."

Indeed. Patriotism and idealism have nothing to do with bullying, bigotry, racism, or inciting violence.

A bit more nuance.

[from a reply to a locked post I made else-LJ]

I caught a bit of NPR's discussion of the question of whether or not he had seen a mental health professional, and if so, whether there had been any kind of diagnosis or whatever, but it was being framed in the context of firearms-purchase background checks (the NIX system, etc).

Michio Kaku put it this way on his Twitter feed:
"It's tragic that it is easier for the severely mentally ill to get a gun than adequate mental care."

People are complex, situations are complex; sound-bite reactions to them are not, and that's where the media that covers and surrounds politics and related issues makes its hay right now.

Sex sells; so does anger.
Passion = dollar signs.

"Us vs. Them" has been amped up to become "You're with us, or you're with the terrorists." The screeching disconnect caused by calling what happened this weekend an act of domestic terrorism (leaving aside whether that's an apt label for it, at least for the moment), and the recasting of folks of a certain political stripe in the role of Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 (as the Rude Pundit did this morning)... it causes an uncomfortable moment of self-evaluation that people who are invested in being solidly and stolidly "right" in their thinking are not necessarily willing to engage in.

Politics has become dodgeball, when it should be more like othello.

Do I blame the media? Indirectly.
Do I blame one political side more than the other? Yes.

Do I blame the shooter? Absolutely. Nobody else pulled the trigger, even though they may have wanted (and, heck, may still want) to.

An event like this presses so many hot-button issues that it's easy to get riled up (and, hey, at my place? there was quite a spirited discussion yesterday). I'm not sure that it's even possible to talk about a lot of the particulars without taking into context the inflammatory environment on both sides; there's Keith Olbermann's mea culpa from yesterday, though there has not been anything similar from the other side of the commentary spectrum...

... and that last sentence illustrates just how quickly that even calm discourse is almost impossible to divorce partisanship from a full conversation, because we ARE in a highly politicized society now (and a discursion and discussion on the roots of that would make for a wall o' text all their own).

It's donkeys, and elephants, and turtles, all the way down.