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From the August 2009 issue of Runner's World When did you start running? I grew up in a running family. My parents caught the running craze in the mid '70s and we grew up doing family runs. I've been running now easy for 35 years. Do you remember your first race? My dad was a track coach and he'd get all the neighborhood kids together and take us to Anchorage for track meets when we were very young. Anchorage is 50 miles from Wasilla. And ever since we were little we'd do 10-K races as family fun runs. So you...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- A reading on U.S. consumer confidence relapsed in June, falling to 49.3 from a slightly downwardly revised 54.8 in May, as worries grew about jobs and the economy, the Conference Board reported Tuesday. Following a large confidence jump in May, consumers grew more pessimistic in June about their present and future. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected the June result to hit 55.5, continuing recent confidence gains. "On balance, this was a disappointing report as it has clearly bucked the trend of improving consumer sentiments in the past few months," wrote Millan L. B. Mulraine, economics strategist...

US President Barack Obama has the confidence of many publics around the world - inspiring far more confidence than any other world political leader according to a new poll of 20 nations by WorldPublicOpinion.org. A year ago, President Bush was one of the least trusted leaders in the world. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin now have the most negative confidence ratings around the world. On average across all nations about half have little or no confidence that they will "do the right thing regarding world affairs" while just a third or less do have confidence.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK- The New York Mets may be looking at another injury; this one, however, is not baseball related. According to Jonathan Ellis, a representative for David Wright, the New York slugger could be headed to the DL because of a promise he made to a child. Ellis explains that Wright had been visiting a children's hospital in New York, which Ellis refused to name, as part of the Baseball Outreach program. While there, Wright visited an eight year old child with kidney failure. "Doctors told us that they had been having difficulties finding a donor," Ellis stated....

Our country, Our jobs, any freedoms and liberties gone Cap and Trade is about money and power for the US’ now-ruling elite; a power elite class that has Dictator Obama-the-Usurper at the helm of a fast-sinking US ship. If passed by the Senate, Cap and Trade will remove our rights as US citizens to even have the ability to set our own thermostats. Obama appointee Rosa Brooks (who also worked for George Soros) wants each and every home in the US to have mandatory “smart meters” which can and will have the federal government regulating energy usage. Brooks is daughter...

As credit card companies continue to tighten their lending standards on card users, some are using purchasing data -- gleaned from millions of card transactions processed daily -- to weed out who may or may not be good credit risks. Have you used your credit card at merchants specializing in secondhand clothing, retread tires, bail bond services, massages, casino gambling or betting? Your credit card issuer may be taking note -- and making decisions about your creditworthiness based on your purchasing behavior. The reason: Buying used clothing or retread tires may be an indication of financial distress and a preamble...

So how much will the GM bailout end up costing American tax payers? Well, probably a lot. From the Washington Post: For the United States to fully recover its investment, the value of General Motors stock will have to reach levels it has never before attained...."I don't know how much we're going to recover," a senior Obama administration official said as the company headed into bankruptcy last month.This uncertainty stems from the difficulty in valuing the 60 percent GM stake that the United States will receive in exchange for the public investment. The government also gets preferred shares and other...

Just thought I would share this! It is the month of August, a resort town sits next to the shores of a lake. It is raining and the little town looks totally deserted. Times are tough; everybody is in debt and everybody lives on credit.. Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town. He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 dollar bill on the reception counter and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one. The hotel proprietor takes the 100 dollar bill and runs to pay his debt to the butcher. The Butcher takes the 100...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/06/kristol_liberal_media_and_gop.asp Lefty journalist Todd Purdum has a hit piece in the new Vanity Fair on Sarah Palin. You don’t have to be a big Palin fan to recognize the article is full of dubious claims, and is dependent on self-serving stories provided on background by some of the people who ran the McCain campaign into the ground. Here’s a highlight of Purdum’s reporting: “More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in...

President Obama is taking your questions this Wednesday in a special online health care town hall event. With health care at the top of the President's agenda, he is opening up the White House to questions via YouTube. Create a 20- or 30-second video question and submit it as a reply video to the video below (go here to get started). He'll answer some of the most popular questions during the event, which we'll stream live from the White House YouTube channel. This is your chance to speak directly to the President, so don't miss this opportunity to upload your...

Nineteen pro-life House Democrats signed a letter last week to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) expressing their opposition to any health care reform that includes abortion funding. “We cannot support any health-care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan,” the letter read. The congressmen did not take a position for or against the so-called “public option” feature of the health care reform bill, which involves the creation of a government-sponsored health insurance poll, but the congressmen were blunt about what they do not want. “Plans to mandate coverage for...

Following up on Jennifer Rubin’s exclusive Pajamas Media article — concerning the efforts of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division to recruit employees to man their booth at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) annual conference in Washington, D.C., — it bears examining exactly who the Obama administration and the DOJ are partnering up with. The Investigative Project on Terrorism notes that ISNA appears to be the new lead partner for the administration’s Islamic outreach after a top FBI official met with an ISNA vice president last week. In response to Rubin’s report, Thomas Jocelyn of the...

At the Canadian Science Writers’ Association convention in Sudbury, Ontario, our Sunday dinner speaker was American theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University, who presented sample clips from famous sci-fi films. And a whole lot more. Would you be astonished to learn that the films portray implausible or impossible physics? No? Filmmakers value audience numbers more than atomic numbers. His clips entertained, but did not surprise:. However, his talk frequently targeted religion and politics: although he professed to respect theists, he offered snarky asides suggesting that fear of science is growing in Canada (because it might damage religion), adding,...

During the third and final presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama said, “Earmarks account for 0.5 percent of the total federal budget.” Earmark reform alone would not result in a significant decrease in federal spending, he noted. The President may be right, but using this statistic to refrain from seriously addressing the issue of pork barrel spending is simply dishonest. Pork barrel spending is nothing more than institutionalized corruption and the fact that the practice still exists is a serious blight on our democratic system. Earmarks funnel money into Members’ districts, helping them win reelection bids by ostensibly...

Governor Sarah Palin announced today she does not support a controversial piece of federal climate change legislation that is making its way through Congress. The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 is authored by U.S. Representatives Henry Waxman and Ed Markey.

Al Jazeera Coming Attractions by: Brittany Fortier and Anthony Kang, June 30, 2009 Al Jazeera English is preparing for its July 2010 major-market American debut. The channel has previously experienced static in trying to penetrate the North American market, but plans are currently under way to prime this new audience. Recently, Washington D.C. correspondent Shahnaz Pakravan stated that October 7th, 2001 was the beginning of an “unfortunate era” of Al Jazeera when they were the first network to broadcast Osama bin Laden's initial message after the 9/11 attacks. Most Americans are not familiar with Al Jazeera’s brand of news coverage,...

In the mating world of yellow dung flies, large, brawny males almost always get the girl. However, a new study suggests that smaller males rule if presented with an opportunity to woo females when they are not hanging out on cow dung. It is the first time alternative male reproductive strategies have been observed in this species.

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - Some gun owners proudly wore their weapons into a Louisville, Ky., church Saturday. The "Bring Your Gun to Church Day" was an idea to celebrate guns and God. Brian Thomas, like others at the church was in compliance with Kentucky law as he wore his 1911 Springfield Operator on his belt -- openly. He brought his family to join about 125 other gun owners to celebrate their second amendment rights inside New Bethel Assembly of God Church. "They go together ... you need to protect yourself and God would want you to protect yourself," said Thomas. "Unfortunately...

Paul Krugman may have won a nobel prize for economics but when it comes to politics, his writings aren't even worthy of a booby prize. Yesterday, The New York Times columnist had this to say about opponents of the climate change bill: "So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement. But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as...

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, launched a campaign Monday criticizing the four lenders for not doing more to help with refinancing and modification of distressed mortgages. The Phoenix housing market has been one of the hardest hit by the real estate slide and has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the U.S. ACORN will hold rallies in Tuesday in cities including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. None have been set yet for Phoenix. ACORN is one of the nonprofit agencies approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help...