suck it up, Eric

I love this post from fivethirtyeight.com because it hits the nail on the head. Liberals (like myself), as Psimet points out, need to stop worrying about the behavior of the other side. Spending too much time trying to figure out why the attacks are so personal waste time. Barak Obama seems to get it too -- his focus the past few days has been all on content.

The better summation:

A simple difference

Barack Obama:

These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism.The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook.

So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

And from last night (Giuliani):

They would have acted in their self-interest, and they would have changed
their position in order to win an election. How many times have we seen Barack
Obama do this? [shortly after suggesting McCain would do no such thing]

Of course, we have seen multiple changes in McCain's position this year (on torture, campaign finance reform, immigration reform, tax cuts, Roe v. Wade, etc). We also see that the speeches at the Republican convention cannot rise above making it about mockery -- why? Why does it have to be about insult?

We'll see what the mocking does in the polls in the next few days and weeks.

bike-run

Nice relaxing bike ride today, followed by a light 20 minute run, though my heart rate monitor strap is dying. Either that or I have no heart rate. Some do say I am heartless, so that is a possibility.