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Published 06/22/2012, The Daily Republic

Mike and Kristina Starr wanted a cheap wedding. & & Then they paid for a dress, tuxes, a reception hall, a disc jockey, a cake, decorations, flowers and food — and several other items — and the expenses kept growing.

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As the WTC Ironman Triathlon season continues on into July 2012 without Lance Armstrong many observers wonder if we have seen the last of Lance the Ironman Triathlete.

There are many, many people inside and outside of the sport of triathlon who want to see Armstrong back at the swim start of an Ironman.

There were many disappointed fans when Lance Armstrong was not allowed to take part in the recent Ironman France that took place Sunday June 24, 2012.

You can bet there will be even more disappointment if Armstrong is not part of the Ironman Triathlon World Championships scheduled to take place in Kona, Hawaii on October 13, 2012.

This is especially true after his amazing performance in Ironman 70.3 Hawaii on June 2, 2012 that turned out to be his last WTC Ironman competition before being banned from racing by the WTC because he in once again facing drug-use allegations that stem back to his career as a pro cyclist.

In reality, there are several sound reasons why Lance Armstrong is such an incredible Ironman athlete that have nothing to do with performance-enhancing drugs.

Sports in childhood- If you look back to the childhood years of most of today's most successful athletes, the majority of them were introduced to sports at a young age. Such is the case with Lance Armstrong and it's also true of Ironman super-star Chrissie Wellington. These early years of exposure to athletics in the crucial developmental years seem to somehow set the tone for athletic prowess in adulthood.

Deep endurance base- Building a proper endurance base is not something that can be done quickly. It is done over months and years. It's sort of like making a deposit into a savings account and collecting interest years down the road. Lance Armstrong was a competitive swimmer and triathlete long before he became a pro cyclist. Then he had all those amazing results in the Tour de France. He has an amazingly deep endurance base earned over years of training and racing at a top level.

Work Ethic- The people who seem so anxious to find Lance Armstrong guilty of drug use seldom mention the years of training he put in to be able to perform at such a high level. They don't talk about those training days when he would climb some of the steepest sections of a Tour de France course three or four times in the rain in order to prepare for the race.

A student of the game- Lance Armstrong figured out early on in his competitive career that there is much more to performing at a top level than just hard physical training. He has a way of adapting and figuring out what happened when things go wrong. Ironman 70.3 Texas was a perfect example. Lance had big problems in the race and finished far back of the winner. Yet you just knew that he would figure it out and come back stronger than ever. He did just that as he demolished the pro field in spectacular fashion in Ironman 70.3 Hawaii 2012.

Perhaps Lance Armstrong explains it best in his answer to a question on training put to him in an interview by Christopher McDougall for the magazine Men's Health.

"Back in the day," Lance says, "people trained on just their feelings." They cranked hard when they felt good and backed off when they didn't, without ever really understanding what made one day better than another.

"Now you have heart rate, altitude, lactic acid, all measured on one unit," Lance says. Those hard numbers not only tell him when he's maxing out in training, but also when he's fit enough to do his best in a race. "That's how I knew I was ready to win the Tour. If I stepped on the scale in the morning and it said a certain weight and the power output was where it was supposed to be when I tested at the end of the day, it was over. Nobody close."

& & Charleston — ROCK HILL, S.C. - A South Carolina woman whose drunken driving seriously injured two people has been sentenced to eight years in prison, substance abuse counseling, and to read the Bible.The Herald of Rock Hill reports reports Cassandra Tolley's attorney said she was thankful for the task and has started...&

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"The Real Housewives of Orange County" star Tamra Barney is no stranger to drama on her own reality program, but now she's taking aim at the franchises that followed the original "Orange County" show.

"Fakes, knockoffs," is what Barney calls all the other "Real Housewives" franchises. "Would you carry a fake Louis Vuitton? Just saying."

And although she goes on to say that the casts of the many other cities bring something different to the table, she makes it clear that she thinks "Orange County" is the best at bringing the drama.

"We are very concerned [about cast mate Vicki Gunvalson] this season and that's the bottom line," Tamra tells me. "My fight was never with her, but I don't really trust this guy she's seeing. She's kind of isolated herself with him, from her family, from her friends and daughter because, I don't know, he's got something going on down there! That's all I can think of ... she doesn't want to hear anything negative about him and I just think good friends don't let friends date losers."

Another cast member that Tamra has not been getting along with is Alexis Bellino, who has accused the ladies of bullying her.

"Oh yes, Victim Barbie is her new name now," Tamra says. "Hello, if you haven't watched the show, we all talk about each other. That's kind of the nature of the show. She did the same things to others, but yet when it's done to her, suddenly she's the victim. And I'm not buying the bullying thing. I think that's a horrible thing, for her to go out there and throw that around. It's not fair, nobody is forcing her; she signed up for this reality show."

The "Real Housewives of Orange Country" reunion airs July 10 and 17 on Bravo.

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Unfortunately, I fail to see that we are getting anywhere except deeper and deeper into your entrenched position–a stance that refuses to deal with new information.

How very sneaky of you– trying to shift the dialogue away from the actual question, which is the reporting that the gas industry has known of its contamination for decades and cannot prevent it.  You would like to embroil us in the wrong question, by comparing gas to coal and you suggest that I am advocating using coal instead of gas.  Of course, this is not my position.  Good job!  It's gonna work,  I will jump down your "he said, she said" coal rabbit hole a few paragraphs down.

But this first:  You continue to ignore the last four years of science and reporting on this issue.  I don't know why you choose to do so, but it is clear that you are.  If the last several years of reporting both here in The Times and at Pro-Publica and many other verifiable sources are not going to open your position, it is clear that I am not either.

But, suffice it to say, ignoring new information and upholding beliefs that have been demonstrated by emerging evidence to be false is a disservice to the idea of "news" and "newspapers."  And to your readers.  There have been many such people on the planet throughout history who clung to beliefs far beyond the point they were proven to be incorrect.  Just ask Galileo. I suggest renaming your blog dot.flatearth.

Your unreferenced statement that there is no evidence of widespread water contamination is unfounded, irresponsible and ignores the thousands of cases across the nation that have been reported.  Such a statement is as journalistically dishonest as it is intellectually lazy. Been to Bradford County, Pa.?  Or Butler County, Pa? Or Susquehanna County?  Or the Gulf of Mexico?  Or the coast of Louisiana?  Or to the gas fields of Wyoming?  Or West Virginia?  Or the Barnett Shale in Texas?  Cement failure causes gas and chemical migration.  The gas industry acknowledges it.  The EPA verified it. You should too.  Instead, you continue to refuse to address the reporting featured in either the film GASLAND, or THE SKY IS PINK or in your own paper with respect to the very high rates of well leakage, contamination, social costs, greenhouse gas emissions and a host of other issues.

Your qualifiers — gas extracted responsibly and with transparency — is simply not possible.  To be responsible to what and to whom?  Do drillers expect to be fixing leaking and crumbling casing cement for 100 years?  200 years?  300 years?  A gas well only has to produce gas for 20 to 30 years, but the cement has to last forever if it is to protect groundwater.  If you watch the film and read the documents, you will see that the industry itself says that 6 per cent of cement casings fail immediately upon installation and 50 to 60 percent fail after 30 years.

There is no drilling company on earth that could keep up with that maintenance schedule especially not over the eternity we will need to have clean water.

I have written on this subject here:

http://telecomadvisors.biz/www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Fracking-is-hardly-leakproof-3646458.php

And the film, once again, is here:

https://vimeo.com/44367635

If I am to understand your position correctly, you are advocating switching from coal to gas for electricity generation.   You are jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

As has been shown by both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the insightful peer-reviewed work of Bob Howarth at Cornell, there is no appreciable benefit in terms of greenhouse gas emissions by switching from coal to gas.  In fact, gas is worse in the short term (20 yrs).  Methane is many times more potent than CO2 in the atmosphere, and since the fracking process emits huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere, gas is not preferable to coal in the short term or long term.

http://telecomadvisors.biz/www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April11/GasDrillingDirtier.html

http://telecomadvisors.biz/researchmatters.noaa.gov/news/Pages/COoilgas.aspx

http://telecomadvisors.biz/thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/08/421588/high-methane-emissions-measured-over-gas-field-offset-climate-benefits-of-natural-gasquot/

As to the public health implications, we go into that in THE SKY IS PINK as well.  The Colorado School of Public health found "moderate to high" risk of health problems related to gas drilling pollution in their initial study.  Yes, more study is desperately needed now.  In fact, last week the Democratically controlled New York State Assembly passed a bill calling for a Health Impact Assessment before any permits were issued.  The bill was based on two public hearings and letters from hundreds of doctors and environmental and public health advocates. It was blocked by Senate Republicans on the last day of session.  Are citizens now supposed to sit back and just sign off on the DEC's plan because one of our political parties has decided to side with the gas industry over public health?

[Here's the link to the study Fox cites above; I encourage you to read the findings to put that phrase above in context.]

Adding to the call for study, last week, the American Nurses Association passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on all new fracking permits nationwide.  Perhaps you should report on that?

Mr. Revkin, the news is that renewables are here now.

Another myth propagated by gas-hawkers is that renewable energy is far off, some kind of future fantasy.  That is also not the case. Renewables are here now and they work extremely well.  Germany, a country with less sun than New York,  just produced half of its electricity from Solar: [article link]

We should not be building new power plants that burn fossil fuels, period.  We need to make the transition now.  Here's how we can do it, from Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson's front page article in Scientific American: [article link]

You admire Walter Hang, so do I.  Just last week in Albany there was an unprecedented gathering of groups representing hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers united against the DEC's drilling plan. Walter gave a booming, outraged speech in adamant opposition to the drilling plan.  Perhaps, if you admire him so much, you should have a public dialogue with him on the subject in these pages?  Walter suspects, as I do, that this drilling plan opens up the rest of the state to development and there is nothing that says it won't.

Home rule?  Home rule would be a disaster in this case.  Drawing out this battle into hundreds of skirmishes across the state, driving people into costly legal battles against an industry that can outspend them.

His legacy will still be as the governor who opened the door.  I respect him and I don't want to see him make this mistake.

Again, if you and the DEC are so confident in this process, put the first wells in the NYC watershed.  If you are so set in ignoring the science on well leakage, then advocate for that.

DEC would rather risk the Southern tier, where the poorer folks live instead, calling it a compromise.  That is disingenuous, morally corrupt.  The DEC is deciding that people in those areas are expendable.  Like the folks in West Virginia's coal mining areas were expendable.  Like the folks of the Gulf Coast were expendable, because they don't have political clout and they don't have the money to play the game.  In agreeing with DEC you are saying that they don't have equal protection under the law because of the economic, political and geographic circumstances.  These cruel political calculations are not based on science or fact or truth, but on cash and influence.

Unequal protection works both ways.  This plan may not even be legal for any part of the state.  Even Chesapeake's lobbyist, Tom West, was recently casting public doubt, "I still do have some concerns about the legality of making any part of the state off limits to development, given that the state policy is to promote the development of the resource."

Mr. Revkin, you are in danger of going down a dangerous road, that of the worst kind of apologists for fossil fuels–masquerading as environmentalists while throwing the public health concerns of the New Yorkers who are least politically and economically positioned to defend themselves to the wayside.

Please understand that as a representative of a frontline community that stands to lose everything I have, my home, my relationship to the region, my faith in government and democracy, I implore you to recognize the rack and ruin you are promoting and take a step back.  If you would like, honestly, I would be happy to tour you to some drilling areas at the next possible opportunity so you can see for yourself.

Or continue to say that The Sky is Pink.  The minute those wells start leaking, it is your legacy.   And the Governor's.

Sen. John Kerry will play the role of Mitt Romney as President Obama prepares for the upcoming debates. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz speaks with a few recent stand-ins: Sen. Fred Thompson, who played Bill Clinton in 1996, and Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who played Sarah Palin in 2008.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

GUY RAZ, HOST:

And if you're just joining us, this is WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

This past week, we found out that the Obama campaign has picked Senator John Kerry as the stand-in for Mitt Romney when the president will practice for debates. Now, being a debate stand-in is actually serious business. So we turned to a couple of people with experience who could give John Kerry some advice. Here's how former Senator Fred Thompson might play Mitt Romney.

FRED THOMPSON: You know, the president, after spending almost a billion dollars in a stimulus package, has unemployment still over 8 percent and not getting any better, and half a million people fewer are working than when Obama took office, and he's added $5 trillion to the debt, more than all the other presidents put together. So bingo.

(LAUGHTER)

THOMPSON: You know? What are you going to do with that?

RAZ: Back in 1996, Fred Thompson played Bill Clinton in mock debates against Senator Bob Dole who was the Republican nominee.

THOMPSON: I went back and reviewed, you know, Clinton's positions on the various issues, things he had used in attack mode against his opponents.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVAL RECORDING)

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: And that's why we got a country with 10 and a half million more jobs and record numbers of new businesses and rising incomes and falling crime rates and...

BOB DOLE: You know, the president reminds me sometimes of my brother Kenny, who's no longer alive, but Kenny was a great talker, and he used to tell me things that I knew were not quite accurate, so we always had a rule. We'd divide it by six. Well, maybe in your case, maybe just two.

THOMPSON: It was a serious business, and I put a lot of effort into it, and I tried to beat him. I tried to beat him down. I think that if you can generate a little bit of hostility in the atmosphere and get your candidate's blood flowing a little bit faster, that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing to have an audience. It's going to make them a little sharper. It's going to make them want to - even in that circumstance, want to do well.

RAZ: A lot of people, of course, know you as an actor. Did you approach the role of Bill Clinton in an improvisational way, or did you approach it as a politician?

THOMPSON: No. Totally as a politician. I don't think of trying to adopt mannerisms or look like or sound like the person that you're representing. I guess there is a similarity to acting that I hadn't thought about much. They put you in this makeup, they set you in a chair before an audience, and then everybody in America practically is watching you for a slip-up. And your goal is to act naturally. Well, nobody can feel very natural under all those circumstances, but it's the difference between regular season and the playoffs.

RAZ: Obviously, you prepared Senator Dole as best you could. That being said, Senator Thompson, at the time, all the pundits, they, you know, they overwhelmingly said Bill Clinton won those debates.

THOMPSON: Yeah.

RAZ: Did you feel like, oh, man, I didn't do as good of a job as I should have done?

THOMPSON: I don't recall feeling that way.

(LAUGHTER)

THOMPSON: You can't put too much responsibility on the debate coach. You can't get past the basics. Bill Clinton is just a, you know, a good debater.

RAZ: Before we let you go, we have to hear a little bit of your Bill Clinton impression.

THOMPSON: Well, I don't know if I can do that or not, but I'll try a little bit.

(LAUGHTER)

RAZ: Well, Senator Fred Thompson, thank you so very much.

THOMPSON: Thank you.

RAZ: We also called up former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm. She stood in as Sarah Palin four years ago to help Joe Biden prepare for the vice presidential debate.

JENNIFER GRANHOLM: I went back and looked at the debates that she had when she ran for governor of Alaska. I studied what she was saying up to that point, to the extent that I could. I became sort of a Palinotologist.

RAZ: That's interesting. Did you channel Sarah Palin? Did you become her?

GRANHOLM: No. I totally became her, at least I tried to be. I'm no Tina Fey, but I wore glasses and a red suit and tried to anticipate how she would answer the questions - tried to get under his skin so that you could provoke him, get him used to being able to respond to difficult questions. And we anticipated almost everything, except for perhaps the wink in that debate.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVAL RECORDING)

SARAH PALIN: What do you expect, a team of mavericks. Of course, we're not going to agree 100 percent on everything and...

RAZ: What specifically do you remember? I mean, was there something that you said during the mock debates that you actually saw happen during the real debates?

GRANHOLM: Yeah. Clearly, she was trying to channel John McCain.

PALIN: I think that's why we need to send the maverick from the Senate and put him in the White House. And I'm happy to join him there.

GRANHOLM: The whole maverick thing, the ability to be a team of mavericks.

PALIN: And I've joined this team that is a team of mavericks.

GRANHOLM: All of those things were things that we had anticipated. It was a tough debate. He had to come across, even though he's a Washington guy and he knows all that stuff, it's a challenging thing for a man debating a woman because you don't want to come across as, you know, beating her up in some way.

RAZ: Let's listen to a clip. Biden had just said twice - he was talking about the commanding general in Afghanistan. He said that he didn't think a surge in Iraq would work in Afghanistan. Biden did not name the general. It was, at the time, was General David McKiernan. Here is Palin's response, and she is going to get his name wrong.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVAL RECORDING)

PALIN: Well, first, McClellan did not say definitively that the surge...

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Well, our commanding general did say that...

RAZ: He lets it go, Governor Granholm. He passes it up. Is that something that he was kind of prepped to do?

GRANHOLM: Yes, absolutely. He was not going to - I mean, obviously, that was not intentional on her part - but he was not going to try to appear to condescend in any way. And we tried 20 million different ways to get him to take the bait.

RAZ: That's former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. She's now the host of "The War Room with Jennifer Granholm" on Current at 9 p.m. Eastern. Jennifer Granholm, thank you so much.

GRANHOLM: You betcha.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

PALIN: Thank you so much. Thank you.

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