Well, bleep! Somebody brought up exercise.

As to my beating 3-4 miles of running per day, I can't say that I have. I ran seven again Saturday, be darned if I remember whether I ran or not Sunday, did three Monday in 27 minutes, two yesterday and five today. I feel great today, so I'll probably run another slow two tomorrow and we'll see what I'm up to Friday morning. The program calls for seven Saturday. Sounds easy, but we'll see. (It called for six last week, but I look my seven mile route better than what I could come up with for six.)

I've been feeling the need to write all that down before I forget what I'm up to. "You" asked for it.

As to my politics, I've had to give up a couple things in order to be a whole-hearted supporter of Ron Paul. Temperamentally, I'm an open-borders guy. I've liked all the Mexicans I've met, whether they were here legally or illegally, but I see the Constitutionally consistent position in shutting the borders down. Particularly in time of danger.

I was rather astounded at the controversy that has arisen over it. I've been more astonished that it hasn't happened. Nationalizing airline security, and the attendant politicization of the screening process, has been quite a silly step as a replacement for that. (I'd rather like to take a plane on my trips south to see my mother, but I'm boycotting the airlines until they stop this foolishness.)

We've supposedly got 12 million illegals in this country, and, near as I can tell, about 14 of them cause problems. I don't consider the existence of a black market a problem by itself. I consider murder, robbery, rape and destruction of property to be problems, but they only go hand-in-hand with illegal immigration and markets because those laws are silly and having silly laws breeds contempt for all laws, wise or silly.

The other thing I'm willing to give up in order to support Ron Paul is a strong, active military presence outside our borders. As long as we continue to strengthen our intelligence gathering capabilities. We were caught with our pants down on 9-11. We need, to expand on that homely simile, to have the outhouse well-armored and armed, and we need to be able to see who's sneaking up on it.

I've always been perfectly willing to give up a bullying diplomatic stance. Trade should be free, but Free Trade is too often confused with coerced trade. All the trades between the US and other nations is between our individuals and companies and their counterparts in those nations, not between our government and their government.

Of course, if one of our companies wanted to trade with a government, I wouldn't stop them. Unless they wanted to trade a secret weapon to a foreign government. But, then that would be contractual matter with our military. "If you want our protection here, you don't give our enemies equal or better weapons than you provide your protectors." I wish that could go without saying, but you can still read arguments against Free Trade that seem to consider that thought a major trump card against it. To my mind, it's the only thing that comes close to an exception, and, at that, it's only a small part of foreign trade.

Here I thought I was just going to post a couple sentences about each of these items. I went and summarized the major points of my political views. As a believer in medium-short blog posts, I have to cut myself off now.