Bank President Stops Robbery With Gun

In yet another story hoplophobic, gun-grabbing, anti-Second-Amendment "Liberals" hate and refuse to admit exists, a bank president in Troy, MO used his gun to thwart the robbery of his bank.

After all, it says right on the door that concealed weapons are allowed in the bank. They’re practically encouraged by the sign: “Management recognizes the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as an unalienable right of all citizens.”

Contrast that with all the "no weapons allowed" (i.e., "unarmed victims inside") signs most businesses post.

So when the robber walked out of the bank a short time later with a red bank bag full of cash, maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised that bank president David W. Thompson followed him out to the parking lot. Thompson watched the masked robber get in a Ford pickup parked in a handicapped spot up front, then pulled his Colt .380 handgun and pointed it at the man.

“Sir, get out of the truck,” Thompson, 58, recalled demanding. “You’re not going anywhere.”
And when the man put his hand in his jacket pocket, as if he had a weapon, Thompson scolded him again.
“You don’t want to go there,” Thompson said. “This will end badly.”

Fortunately the robber listened. It turned out the man had no weapon of his own. Thompson and another bank official who also carries his own weapon pulled the man from the truck and held him at gunpoint until police arrived.

Every human being has the right to defend him/herself and others.  Those who are able, have a moral (though not legal) obligation to do so.  Guns are the most effective means by which an ordinary person can defend him/herself and/or others.

Those who want to ban guns, desire to disarm ordinary people and leave them defenseless, thereby violating their God-given right to self defence.

CrossFit For Athletes

Earlier I wrote about how CrossFit can benefit "broken down runners" (like me).  The reason is that runners typically have glaring weaknesses in strength, power, flexibility, agility, balance and accuracy.  CrossFit exposes these weaknesses, then fixes them. 

But runners aren't the only athletes with weaknesses.  In fact, all sports that demand great amounts of some components of fitness, and neglect others, result in serious imbalances, and all people benefit from improving all 10 components of fitness.  Doing so results in a fitter, healthier person.  An increasing number of coaches and athletes realize this, and therefore, an increasing number of coaches and athletes are turning to CrossFit.

Arguably, the most successful of these is Olympic rower, Erin Cafaro.

In 2007, Erin Cafaro had been rowing for three years and had been on the U.S. national team for a year and a half.

The next year was an Olympic one, and Cafaro needed to get stronger. Through her brother, she discovered CrossFit. Not only did Cafaro make the team, but her team won gold in Beijing.

The team won gold again in 2012.  That's two gold medals for Ms Cafaro training with CrossFit.  Of course, it helps when you have Kelly Starrett and Brian MacKensie training you. 

Olympic sailor, Anna Tunnicliffe also incorporates CrossFit in her training.

My workout schedule varies every day, but we sail three to five hours a day and I do CrossFit five to six days a week. CrossFit can include absolutely anything. Today, I did 150 wall balls, taking a 16-pound medicine ball and throwing to a target 150 times, as fast as you can. Tomorrow, three rounds of 800-meter runs, 30 pull-ups and 30 clean lifts.

Every day is something completely different than the last time. Overhead squats, rowing … I enjoy it because you never know what you're going to get. I did a regular weight [lifting] program for years, but it got boring and I didn't get anywhere. 

Kiwi boxer Shane “Mountain Warrior” Cameron (29-2 — 22 by knock out) is using CrossFit to prepare for a world title bout against Australian Danny Green.

Cameron is outside of his comfort zone when it comes to CrossFit, he freely admits. Years of boxing have left him with a hand injury that makes gripping barbells and other CrossFit movements difficult.

  

“The beauty of CrossFit is its scalability,” Milne says. “You can take someone as flexible as a steel bar and build a program to fit their specific needs. If the athlete puts in 100 percent, (he’ll) get results every time.”

“Shane doesn’t know what I’ve got planned for him before he comes into a training session. One day he might be pulling his truck around the parking lot, on another day we might concentrate on Olympic lifting or a pure burst of bodyweight exercises,” Milne says. ”Keeping Shane on his toes is super important in preparing him for a big fight.”

Speaking of Kiwis, Ben and Owen Franks of New Zealand's national rugby team, the World Cup Champion All Blacks, not only incorporate CrossFit into their training; they train others in CrossFit.

In addition to their sports-specific training, both brothers are dedicated CrossFitters and run their own affiliate: Reebok CrossFit Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. For them, both rugby and CrossFitting are a family affair; their father Ken is the director of coaching for Reebok CrossFit Canterbury.

How about motor sports?  They don't require much athleticism, right?  The machine does all the work, doesn't it?  Not if that machine is a motocross bike...

Now, after seven months of CrossFit, [Lance] Coury says the training methodology complements freestyle motocross.

“When you throw a weight up and you’re moving it around, you need to have control with the weight, and you need to have control with the bike,” he explains. “They seriously work hand in hand.”

Or even a road racing bike.

Kendal says he was drawn to two-wheeled racing because it involves the entire body. “The way that you hold and position yourself determines the way that the bike turns, how much lean angle you have to use and how fast you can take a corner,” he says.

Pacing himself is also important in sport-bike racing, he says. “A lot of people don't realize how physically demanding road racing is,” he explains. “Being in good shape can be the difference between making up positions in the last few laps, or losing places because you don't have the stamina to keep riding at the same pace.”

But what about the pit crew?

She was also coming close to the times of the pro pit-guys. A seasoned pit-crew pro member can remove five lug nuts in 1.2 seconds, while an average person would take up to five seconds. On Abbott’s fourth attempt she removed them in 1.7 seconds.

Abbott is working with a pit-coach four days a week, once or twice a day in addition to CrossFit workouts. She knew nothing about NASCAR and is getting a crash course in the sport. “The pit is parallel to CrossFit: mechanics, consistency, intensity. All of the 10 physical skills come directly into it," she says.

OK, that last one was cheating.  Rather than an athlete using CrossFit to improve in his/her sport, Ms Abbott is a CrossFitter applying the fitness she achieved through CrossFit in a sport that was completely unfamiliar to her.  But that is even greater evidence that competency across all 10 components of fitness is useful for all athletes, regardless of their sport.

The most encouraging development is that an increasing number of high schools are incorporating CrossFit.

“This was a whole new type of conditioning,” Moline High School head football coach, Crick Sant Amour, says. “Usually we run back and forth and do sprints. Lorentzen and his trainers came in and had the kids lunging across the field while holding 45-pound plates overhead, stopping and doing burpees every 10 yards.”

“We got into our first game (two seasons ago) and I had never seen our team in as good a shape as they were,” Sant Amour says. “So I said to Josiah, ‘For next season, let’s put all the conditioning and weightlifting with you guys.’”

“They’d never been involved in a strength or conditioning program that pushed them as much as this,” Sant Amour says. "They were dying. They'd say that was the toughest one yet, but at the same time, they liked the challenge."

“I loved that it was a different workout each time we went in,” 17-year-old outside linebacker, Devin Earnest, says. “That way we were not used to any of the workouts and we were pushed to a different level each time. I feel like CrossFit taught me and my teammates that when things get tough, you have to become tougher.”

Those kids probably don't know how fortunate they are.  I wish I'd discovered CrossFit at that age!  Building a solid foundation of broad, functional fitness at that age will benefit them for life, whether they continue in football or not.

Sometime soon I'll write about how to incorporate CrossFit into training for different sports, even those that require a high degree of specialization.

Who Disobeyed the President?

President Obama recently claimed in an interview that...

“The minute I found out what was happening [in Benghazi] . . . I gave the directive,” he said, “to make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to do. I guarantee you everybody in the CIA and military knew the number-one priority was making sure our people are safe.”

Did we do "whatever we need[ed] to do" to "[make] sure our people [were] safe"?  According to Adm. James A. Lyons (USN, Ret.), the answer is "no".

The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI, State Department and the Pentagon, watched and listened to the assault but did nothing to answer repeated calls for assistance.
.....
At our military base in Sigonella, Sicily, which is slightly over 400 miles from Benghazi, we had a fully equipped Special Forces unit with both transport and jet strike aircraft prepositioned. Certainly this was a force much more capable than the 22-man force from our embassy in Tripoli [Tripoli is also about 400 miles from Benghazi ~ OS].

I know those Special Forces personnel were ready to leap at the opportunity. There is no doubt in my mind they would have wiped out the terrorists attackers. Also I have no doubt that Admiral William McRaven, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, would have had his local commander at Sigonella ready to launch; however, apparently he was countermanded—by whom? We need to know.

Our fighter jets could have been at our Benghazi mission within an hour. Our Special Forces out of Sigonella could have been there within a few hours. There is not any doubt that action on our part could have saved the lives of our two former Navy SEALs and possibly the ambassador.

 In other words, we did not do "whatever we need[ed] to do" to "[make] sure our people [were] safe".  Which means that, if in fact President Obama gave the order to do everything possible to secure our people on the ground, somebody disobeyed his order.

Somebody high up in the administration made the decision that no assistance (outside our Tripoli embassy) would be provided, and let our people be killed. The person who made that callous decision needs to be brought to light and held accountable. According to a CIA spokesperson, “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need.”

All right; so the CIA denies making the call, and no one in the Administration has contradicted them, so who did?  Why hasn't the Administration said who made the call?  Is it possible that the president doesn't know who disobeyed his order and denied our people in Benghazi the assistance they requested?  Adm. Lyons's conclusion:

Having been in a number of similar situations, I know you have to have the courage to do what’s right and take immediate action. Obviously, that courage was lacking for Benghazi. The safety of your personnel always remains paramount. With all the technology and military capability we had in theater, for our leadership to have deliberately ignored the pleas for assistance is not only in incomprehensible, it is un-American.

Whoever made the call deserves prison.

The Modern Persecuted Church

The Church was born in persecution.  Its founder, Christ, was its first martyr (though he didn't stay that way).  He was soon followed by Stephen, all the Apostles (except for John, who died on the prison island of Patmos), and unknown thousands of others.  And that was just the first century. 

Most people tend to think of Christianity as a Western religion because it survived in Europe, while the expansion of the Muslim empire all but eradicated Christianity from the Middle East and North Africa.  Today, however, the vast majority of Christians live in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

The rise of non-Western Christianity has come as a huge surprise [to those who don't read and/or believe the Bible ~ OS]. Christianity outside of the West was thought to be a product of European imperialism, and it was expected to wither and die in the post-colonial era. Just the opposite happened. Consider the huge change in Africa. There were only about 9 million Christians in all of Africa in 1900. Today, there are an estimated 397 million African Christians. Says historian Philip Jenkins, the Christianization of sub-Saharan Africa is probably “the largest religious change in human history.”

The spread of Christianity in Asia, Africa and Latin America began with Western missionaries, but it's long been driven by local missionaries and pastors.  Most of our Christian brothers and sisters in these lands live much like their neighbors - desperately poor, never knowing if there'll be enough to eat the next day, much less how they'll send their kids to school.

And many of them live with constant persecution.

Imagine the unspeakable fury that would erupt across the Islamic world if a Christian-led government in Khartoum had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese Muslims over the past 30 years. Or if Christian gunmen were firebombing mosques in Iraq during Friday prayers. Or if Muslim girls in Indonesia had been abducted and beheaded on their way to school, because of their faith.

Such horrors are barely thinkable, of course. But they have all occurred in reverse, with Christians falling victim to Islamist aggression. Only two days ago, a suicide bomber crashed a jeep laden with explosives into a packed Catholic church in Kaduna, northern Nigeria, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 100. The tragedy bore the imprint of numerous similar attacks by Boko Haram (which roughly translates as “Western education is sinful”), an exceptionally bloodthirsty militant group.

Other notable trouble spots include Egypt, where 600,000 Copts – more than the entire population of Manchester – have emigrated since the 1980s in the face of harassment or outright oppression.

So, why do we in the West hear so little of this?

One result of this oversight is that the often inflated sense of victimhood felt by many Muslims has festered unchallenged. Take the fallout of last month’s protests around the world against the American film about the Prophet Mohammed. While most of the debate centred on the rule of law and the limits of free speech, almost nothing was said about how much more routinely Islamists insult Christians, almost always getting away with their provocations scot-free.

That's a good start, but doesn't quite cut it.

One reason why Western audiences hear so little about faith-based victimisation in the Muslim world is straightforward: young Christians in Europe and America do not become “radicalised”, and persecuted Christians tend not to respond with terrorist violence.

Bingo!  Christians don't blow things up and chop people's heads off when insulted or persecuted, therefore they deserve only mockery and scorn.  When Muslims feel offended, they riot, burn embassies, kill nuns, etc.  Therefore, they deserve respect.

Think about that for a minute.

Still, I think there's one more reason.  Here's a description of the average modern Christian.

The average Christian in the world today, historian Dana Robert reminds us, is a woman from Africa or Latin America. Her family has little money. Her husband farms, and he scrounges up short-term cash jobs when he can. She tries to sell a few things at the market. The children haven’t had their shots, and they get sick. She struggles to keep them in school, where there are no textbooks. The political situation is fragile, and the national government doesn’t get much done, while local officials demand bribes. Our sister reads her Bible, and its accounts of famine, plagues, poverty, displacement and exile, tyranny, cronyism, and corruption — which seem distant to most of us in the global North and West — are immediately relevant to her. The Bible is her book.

How, exactly, does this fit with the "Health Wealth and Prosperity Gospel" most popular in the modern American Church?

It doesn't.

I contend that most American Christians don't want to hear about their persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ because those facts expose the "Health Wealth and Prosperity Gospel" they hold dear as a sham.

I used to wonder where are the modern giants of the faith; the modern Paul, Peter, John, Silas, Stephen, etc.

Having traveled to the Middle East, central Asia and East Africa, I don't wonder anymore.

The modern giants of the faith are not on any "Christian" network in the US.  They live obscure lives, poor, persecuted, imprisoned and sometimes murdered for their faith, just like the Apostles.  And just like the Apostles, they "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds", and continue to spread the Gospel because they know that "it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him".

So, here's my challenge to Western believers in the "Health Wealth and Prosperity Gospel".  Use some of your wealth to buy a plane ticket to Pakistan, South Sudan, Northern Nigeria, Iraq, etc. find one of these impoverished, persecuted Christians (if you can... they may be in hiding) and explain to them that the reason they're not healthy, wealthy and prosperous is that they don't have enough faith.

Go ahead.

I dare you.

If, on the other hand, you want to help your persecuted and impoverished siblings in Christ, I recommend the following organizations.

Samaritan's Purse
Gospel for Asia
Voice of the Martyrs
The Barnabas Fund

There are probably more, but those are the ones with which I'm familiar.

Picking Losers...

...And lying about it.

Abound Solar is a "green energy" company that, like Solyndra (backed by Obama bundler, Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser), received millions in tax payers' money, then promptly went bankrupt.  Unlike Solyndra, Abound Solar is is now under criminal investigation for misleading investors.  That's private investors, not tax payers.  But that's old news.  Onto the current story.

Recent remarks by President Obama to a Denver-based TV anchor stand in stark contrast to new emails obtained by CompleteColorado.com.

This past Friday, President Obama told KUSA's Kyle Clark, in response to a question on the federally-backed but failed Colorado company Abound Solar, "And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy (DOE), they have nothing to do with politics."

Of course they have nothing to do with politics.  Specifically, they have nothing to do with the fact that...

Abound Solar... counts major Obama bundler Pat Stryker among its early backers

But never mind that.  Let's go to the emails.  Here's the key sentence.

You better let him know the WH wants to move Abound forward.

What?  I thought that "these... decisions... are made by the Department of Energy", not the White House!  Say it ain't so!

Next time a politician rails against those eeeeeevil venture capitalists, then touts the need for government to "invest" some corporation or industry, keep three things in mind.

1. Venture capitalists use their own money, or investors' money, to invest in companies they believe will turn a profit.  Either way, the investors provide the money voluntarily. 
2. Governments that "invest" in companies force tax payers to give their money to those companies, whether the tax payers think it's a good investment or not.
3. Politicians always make decisions based on political considerations.
4. Politicians don't pick winners and losers.  They pick losers.  Because the winners don't need government to force people to give them money.

People at the Range

After a couple somber posts, I needed levity.  Thanks,  Kit Up.



EDIT: I just had to add this... because it's awesome!  Via The Firearm Blog.

Welfare, Work & the Future

It never fails.  Every election year - presidential, general, mid-term or special; doesn't matter - Democrats accuse Republicans of being big, bad meanies who want to take money away from poor people (welfare) and give it to rich people. 

Here's the reality: federal welfare spending (entitlement spending, the social safety net; whatever you want to call it) has increased almost exponentially since the 1950s.  Look at the chart to the right.  Every small decrease in welfare spending subsequently gets dwarfed by an enormous increase.

In fact, today about 70% of Federal spending goes toward some project that keeps people dependent on the Federal government.

Worse, it hasn't done much good.  While welfare spending has skyrocketed, the poverty rate remains essentially constant.  Is the purpose of welfare spending to pull people out of poverty?  If so, it clearly isn't working.  If not, then what is its purpose?

Clearly, we're not getting our money's worth.  We keep spending more, but the poor stay poor.  In fact, right now the poverty rate is rising.

So, if all this spending is not pulling people out of poverty, what effect is it having?  George Will has a great column on that subject, which highlights the book, A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic.  Author Nicholas Eberstadt points out multiple detrimental effects of federal welfare spending. 

As evidence of the moral costs, Eberstadt cites the fact that means-tested entitlement recipience has not merely been destigmatized, it has been celebrated as a basic civil right.

.....

Since 1948, male labor force participation has plummeted from 89 percent to 73 percent. Today, 27 percent of adult men do not consider themselves part of the workforce: “A large part of the jobs problem for American men today is not wanting one.” Which is why “labor force participation ratios for men in the prime of life are lower in America than in Europe.”

Is that what we want?  Does anyone think it's a good thing that an increasing number of adult men feel no need to work?

“In 1960,” Eberstadt says, “roughly 134 Americans were engaged in gainful employment for every officially disabled worker; by December 2010 there were just over 16.” This, in spite of the fact that public health had improved much, and automation and the growth of the service/information economy had made work less physically demanding.

Think about that for a minute.  The percentage of people working is shrinking, while the percentage of people not working is growing.  Therefore, a shrinking number of workers is supporting a growing number of non-workers.  The following cartoon depicts this problem perfectly.

In case you think this is a Democrat vs Republican problem...

“The growth of entitlement spending over the past half-century has been distinctly greater under Republican administrations than Democratic ones. Between 1960 and 2010, the growth of entitlement spending was exponential — but in any given year, it was on the whole over 8 percent higher if the president happened to be a Republican rather than a Democrat. . . . The Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush administrations presided over especially lavish expansions of the entitlement state.”

...which is borne out by the first chart above. 

Worst of all, the spending listed above adds enormously to the federal debt, which stands at over $16 Trillion.  Our children and grand children will either pay that debt, or worse, default on it.  We're robbing them tomorrow to pay people not to work today.

Economist Herbert Stein (father of Ben Stein) said, "If something cannot go on for ever, it will stop".  America's welfare state can't go on for ever.  It will stop.  That is certain.  There are only two questions:

When?

How?

Watching Our People Die...

...And then lying about it.

From CBS News:

CBS News has been told that, hours after the attack began, an unmanned Predator drone was sent over the U.S. mission in Benghazi, and that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft apparently observed the final hours of the protracted battle.

So, our leadership watched as Islamic terrorists murdered our people in our consulate... and did nothing!  To make matters worse, they continue to lie about it.

[The] basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta told Pentagon reporters. “And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.

So says SECDEF Leon Panetta.  But as I stated earlier that is...

BULLS__T!  That's called a "movement to contact".  It's a standard offensive operation.  In fact, in a real movement to contact, you don't even know the enemy's location.  In Banghazi, the enemy's location was obvious!

Apparently, Sec Panetta has never picked up a copy of FM 7-8.  But it's even worse than I thought, because, as Jonah Goldberg asks...

First, Panetta says they didn’t have real-time information. Uh, if having a live video feed and real-time reports from assets on the ground for hours doesn’t count as real-time information, what does?
.....
If the circumstances in Libya didn’t meet the “enough information” threshold for a rescue attempt or some other form of intervention, then what does?

Good questions.  Too bad the dinosaur media is largely avoiding asking them.  Of the five major Sunday news shows, only one mentioned anything about Benghazi.  Take a wild guess as to which network broke with the flock.

Keep in mind that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, the two former Navy SEALs who heroically fought and died to defend the consulate, killed around 60 terrorists.  If they'd received any air support at all the enemy would've probably scattered.

Back to the CBS article:

Retired CIA officer Gary Berntsen [hey, I know that guy!  I worked with him in Afghanistan! ~ OS] believes help could have come much sooner. He commanded CIA counter-terrorism missions targeting Osama bin Laden and led the team that responded after bombings of the U.S. Embassy in East Africa.

"You find a way to make this happen," Berntsen says. "There isn't a plan for every single engagement. Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments. They made zero adjustments in this. They stood and they watched and our people died."

Somebody watched for hours as terrorists attacked our people, and made the call to let them succeed and murder Americans.  That "somebody" deserves prison.

Free Markets Make Life Better

From the American Enterprise Institute:

1. The percentage of low-income households with a computer rose to 47.7% in 2009 from 19.8% in 2001.

2. Appliances? The percentage of low-income homes with air-conditioning equipment rose to 83.5% from 65.8%, with dishwashers to 30.8% from 17.6%, with a washing machine to 62.4% from 57.2%, and with a clothes dryer to 56.5% from 44.9%.

3. The percentage of low-income households with microwave ovens grew to 92.4% from 74.9% between 2001 and 2009. Fully 75.5% of low-income Americans now have a cell phone, and over a quarter of those have access to the Internet through their phones.

Clearly, the average percentage of their income that people spend on necessities has decreased steadily over the last 50 years.  Why does this matter?  Because people who spend less on necessities have more left over to spend on things they actually want.

What makes this possible?  Free markets do.  Free markets force manufacturers to innovate or die, thereby making their products more affordable.

Does it matter that an increasing percentages of Americans can afford refrigerators, microwave ovens, dish washers, clothes washers and dryers?

Of course it does.  If you don't believe me, try living without them.



CrossFit & Broken Runners

Most endurance athletes typically see strength training as a detriment.  They think that it'll make them "bulky", thereby slowing them down and impairing their aerobic performance.  Besides, every hour spent doing bicep curls at the gym is an hour not spent running, so strength training is also a waste of valuable training time, right?

Then CrossFit came along, combining elements of Olympic weightlifting, power lifting, gymnastics, plyometrics, old-fashioned calisthenics and, yes, running.  Like most endurance runners, the first time I saw a CrossFit workout (a video of a workout called "Nasty Girls"), I immediately thought, "that looks stupid".  That is, until I saw the women on the video doing muscle-ups; a movement I knew I couldn't perform.

OC CrossFit - San Clemente, CA

That got my attention.  At the time I had stress fractures in both shins from running and ruck marching.  I needed a workout that would provide a good endurance workout without running, so I gave it a try.  I've been hooked ever since.

That brings me to this article from "Inside the Box" called "Crossfit for Women Runners".  The blog is by TJ Murphy, who describes himself as...

...a veteran journalist, endurance athlete, CrossFitter, and former editorial director of Triathlete, Inside Triathlon, and Competitor magazines.

He is author of Triathlete Magazine’s Guide to Finishing Your First Triathlon and contributor to Start to Finish: 24 Weeks to an Endurance Triathlon.

His writing has also appeared in Outside magazine and Runner’s World. He is a five-time Ironman® finisher and a 2:38 marathoner.

Murphy describes in an article in Competitor how injury prompted him to try CrossFit.  Of course, he got to work with Brian MacKensie, founder of CrossFit Endurance, and Kelly Starrett, founder of the Mobility WOD.

Back to the article.  Though it focuses on women runners, Murphy's article pertains to all broken-down runners, like me. 

...anecdotal reports flowing from CrossFit gyms around the country are suggesting a counter-narrative: that CrossFit is helping women runners prevent injury and increase their overall health, often with personal record road races to boot.

This shouldn't surprise anyone.  An abundance of data indicates that strength training helps reduce injury.  Endurance athletes avoid it because of the reasons I listed at the beginning of this entry.

With almost all of the movements being used in the workouts being compound in nature–meaning that the exercises tapped a variety of different muscle groups in different ways—one of the chief benefits CrossFitters received was exceptional core strength development, in particular the muscles of the hips, lower back, hamstrings, abdominals and quads.

Which is what leads back to running and health of runners. With sports scientists, physical therapists and coaches recommending that runners add core strength work to bolster their running programs, CrossFit, with it’s heavy emphasis on proper mechanics, posture and core strength, has become a place where runners can rework their physical infrastructure.

Most distance runners suffer serious weaknesses, muscle imbalances and inflexibility.  CrossFit will make those weaknesses obvious and fix them more quickly than any other program I've tried.

“I think her injury problems had a lot to do with her midline stability,” Sakamoto [yes, that Sakamoto. ~ OS] says. “She wasn’t really hunched over or anything, but she didn’t quite hold her shoulders back, and there was a lack of awareness in terms of proper body position in the hips and core.”

Contrary to popular belief, Crossfit places strong emphasis on form, posture and body position, thereby reducing fatigue over long distances.  But you can't maintain that posture and form for very long without the strength to support it.

“They ask me, ‘Why would you go there if you’re a runner? Aren’t you getting beat up?’  I say, ‘No, it’s the total opposite.’”

That mirrors my experience.  I've suffered stress-fractured shins, planar fasciitis, patellar tendonitis, a dislocated ankle and two torn menisci... all from running.  My injuries from CrossFit?  I once tweaked my lower back due to bad form on a clean-and-jerk, I scraped my shin on a box, and I once dropped a bar on my foot.  My running injuries sidelined me for months.  The torn menisci are permanent.  My CrossFit injuries didn't sideline me at all.  I was back in the gym training the following day.  Only with the back injury did I have to scale the workouts.

In Austin, Hunt incorporates CrossFit in her work with both runners and triathletes. “I’m used to getting broken people,” she says. “They’ll walk in and are so frustrated they’ll say, ‘I’m ready to try anything.’”

My advice: don't wait.  Everyone, regardless of their sport, can benefit from the increased overall fitness that CrossFit provides.  Try it.  You won't regret it.

Where's the Paper Trail?

Via The Blaze:

“A chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn’t take an order from the president when he says ‘do everything’ and not put that in writing and send it out to the chain of command,” West said. “If that actually happened the way President Obama today said it happened, there’s a paper trail and I think people reasonably enough can say, ‘well can we see the order?’ because hundreds of others supposedly saw this order.”

“But if there is no order then people have to ask some very basic questions, ‘what the heck happened?’” he said.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a group of professionals who got paid to ask these important questions?

"Zero Dark Thirty" Trailer

From Katherine Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker:



I'm glad Hollywood is finally making movies that portray the US military in a good light again, as opposed to anti-military garbage like "Redacted" and "Stop Loss", but if this is as unrealisticly bad as "The Hurt Locker", I'm going to puke.

Benghazi - More Excuses & Lies

The Christian Science Monitor reports on claims that calls for military assistance in Benghazi were denied.

“For our top leadership, with all the technological and military tools at their disposal, to have done nothing for seven hours was a joint civilian and military failure of initiative and nerve,” writes West, a Vietnam combat veteran who has reported extensively on US combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Secretary of State Clinton has said the responsibility was hers. But there has been no assertion that the State Department overruled the Pentagon out of concern about the sovereignty of Libyan air space. Instead, it appears passive groupthink prevailed, with the assumption being that a spontaneous mob would quickly run out of steam.”

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At a press conference this week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the US military did not quickly intervene during the attack because military leaders did not have adequate intelligence information and felt they should not put American forces at risk, reports the Associated Press.

"The basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place," Mr. Panetta told Pentagon reporters. "And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation."

BULLS__T!  That's called a "movement to contact".  It's a standard offensive operation.  In fact, in a real movement to contact, you don't even know the enemy's location.  In Banghazi, the enemy's location was obvious!

I don't know who made the call to deny assistance, but somebody did, and that somebody deserves prison.

Lions Led By Jackasses

Scott on Cape Cod has a piece of the Benghazi story I hadn't read yet.

A short distance from the American compound, two Americans were sleeping. They were in Libya as independent contractors working an assignment totally unrelated to our embassy. They also happened to be former Navy SEALs. When they heard the noise coming from the attack on our embassy, as you would expect from highly trained warriors, they ran to the fight. Apparently, they had no weapons, but seeing the Libyan guards dropping their guns in their haste in fleeing the scene, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty snatched up several of these discarded weapons and prepared to defend the American compound.

Not knowing exactly what was taking place, the two SEALs set up a defensive perimeter. Unfortunately Ambassador Stevens was already gravely injured, and Foreign Service officer, Sean Smith, was dead. However, due to their quick action and suppressive fire, twenty administrative personnel in the embassy were able to escape to safety. Eventually, these two courageous men were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers brought against them, an enemy force numbering between 100 to 200 attackers which came in two waves. But the stunning part of the story is that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty killed 60 of the attacking force. Once the compound was overrun, the attackers were incensed to discover that just two men had inflicted so much death and destruction.

Please read the whole thing,

Contrast the courage, quick thinking and decisive action of these former SEALs with the cowardice, indecision, blame-shifting and back-stabbing in DC.  "Lions led by jackasses".

Why We Home School (Continued)

Educating Ourselves has some great information on the "education" bureaucracy's priorities.

Between 1950 and 2009, the number of K-12 public school students increased by 96 percent. During that same period, the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school employees grew by 386 percent. Of those personnel, the number of teachers increased by 252 percent, while the ranks of administrators and other staff grew by 702 percent—more than 7 times the increase in students.

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...if student growth had matched that of non-teaching personnel from 1992 to 2009 and if the teaching force had only grown 1.5 times faster than the pupil enrollment, American public schools would have an additional $37.2 billion to spend per year—the equivalent of an $11,700 a year increase in salary for every American public school teacher.

The "education" bureaucracy's priorities have nothing to do with educating children.  They have everything to do with providing high-paying, high-benefit jobs with cushy retirements to government bureaucrats.  It's a self-perpetuating waste machine.

The worst part is that the government stiff forces people like Aimee and me, who choose to opt out of it, to pay into it.

But here's the biggest question.  Teachers whine incessantly that they don't get paid enough.  Why don't they do something about this?

Chimps, War and Morality

How most people see chimps.

Most people think of chimps as cute, cuddly, near-humans, because they don't know much about chimp behavior.  For example, Jane Goodall, most famous of all chimp researchers, witnessed the following event in 1974.

A gang of male chimpanzees invaded their neighbors’ territory and attacked a male chimp sitting by himself in a tree. The intruders dragged the chimpanzee to the ground, pinned him down, and bit and hit him all over his body. The attack ended when one member of the gang threw a rock at the bleeding victim. The battered chimp was never seen again and presumably died from his injuries.

That lead to a 4-year-long "war" between the two tribes in which the aggressors killed all the other tribe's males, annexed their territory and took all their females. 

Since then, researchers have recorded territorial wars between chimp tribes in multiple locations, like Ngogo, Uganda.

Young male jumping on a recently-killed rival.

Enemy males will be held down, then bitten and battered to death. Females are usually let go, but their babies will be eaten.

Last year, the Ngogo chimps stopped patrolling the region and annexed it outright, increasing their home territory by 22 percent

The objective of the 10-year campaign was clearly to capture territory, the researchers concluded.

So, is this moral, or immoral behavior?  What if a group of men attacked another, killed all the men, ate the babies, took the women for sex and took their land?  Would that be moral, or immoral behavior?  What's the difference?

Sesame Street

They brought this on themselves.

Heh.

Why Get Married?

Dave Swindle posits an excellent question.

If a transcendent God doesn’t exist and death is the absolute end then what difference does it make if a man spends his money on a wife and kids or on toys and escorts?

Anybody out there have an answer?  I don't, but of course, I agree with him. 

As a Christian, I believe fathering my seven children is the most eternally significant thing I could possibly do, and I can't do it anywhere near as effectively without my wife, Aimee, as I can with her.  The eternal significance of raising children gives our marriage purpose, which motivates us to try harder to fix the inevitable problems that arise in married life.

But even if we had no children, our marriage would still have eternal significance, because the Bible describes marriage as an earthly picture of Christ's love for the Church.  Our attempt - even if fallen, imperfect and ultimately inadequate - to model that love makes our marriage eternally significant. 

If there is no eternity, then there is no eternal significance.  And without eternal significance, there is no temporal significance either. 

So, why get married?

12-Year-Old Girl Shoots Home Invader

Another story "Liberal" gun grabbers hate and refuse to admit exists.

A 12-year-old girl said she never had fired a gun before she took aim at an intruder while home alone this week.



Degenerate Dirt Bag, Stacey Adam Jones

 Kendra, a sixth-grader at Calera Elementary, called her mother about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to say a man was ringing the doorbell and banging on the door, St. Clair said.
“She said he was continuously ringing the doorbell and when no one answered he opened the screen door and started banging on the door,” St. Clair said. “She told me she didn't know where he had gone after that.”
St. Clair told her daughter to get her .40-caliber Glock pistol and go into the bathroom closet, which has reinforced locks on the door.

Among the many excuses "Liberals" use to violate Americans' 2nd Amendment rights is that only a well-trained person - a Soldier or police officer - can effectively handle a firearm in defense of self or others.  It's an obvious lie, but many Americans fall for it.

Obviously, more training is better, but as this story illustrates, with a gun, even a completely untrained 12-year-old girl can defend herself from an evil, full grown male. 

So, "Liberals", explain what other device makes that possible.