The Hypocrite in Chief

Back on October 13, 2014, Donald Trump tweeted the following: 

"Can you believe that,with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.Worse than Carter" (link to tweet)

Now the New York Times is reporting the following:

After years of criticizing former President Barack Obama for playing golf and going on private getaways, President Trump has already done more of both in his first 87 days than Mr. Obama, as well as former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Their scorecard shows the four aforementioned presidents spent the following number of days at golf courses during their first 87 days in office:

Bill Clinton - 3

George W. Bush - 0

Barrack Obama - 0

Donald Trump - 19

That is 21.8% of those 87 days.  He bitched and bitched about Barrack Obama playing golf and he's spending 1/5th of his time at the links. 

At the same time his administration continues to do everything it can to avoid being transparent in its decisions and actions.  The White House visitor logs will no longer be made public.  The waivers of his ethics policies in allowing people who have been lobbyists in the past are not being disclosed.

What is he hiding, in his taxes and everything else?

* * *

It is Monday, April 17th as I write this.  Today is the 121st running of this storied race.  The word is it will be the last time that the famed Meb Keflezighi will run the race.  I wonder if he might change his mind at some point in the future.  He might if we are to learn anything from the example of Kathrine Switzer.

In 1967 she entered the race as "K. V. Switzer" and became the first woman to enter and run the race with an official bib number. 

That is a photo of Ms Switzer, wearing bib number 261 as race official Jock Semple attempted to force her off of the course and confiscate that bib.

She is 70 years old and will run the race today after acting as the honorary starter of the elite women's field.  Five decades after running it for the first time, she's doing it again.  Awesome!

What is not awesome is that among the 30,000 or so who will run the race as official entrants will be some who do not deserve to be at the start line.  They are cheaters.  That is because the Boston Marathon is a race where you must run a qualifying time in order to officially enter the race.  Without a qualifying time you must get a spot in the field through those given out to charities and race sponsors.

The qualifying times are daunting for some.  Back in the mid 1990s when I toyed with the idea of running a marathon, I dreamt of running a Boston qualifying time.  That meant running another marathon maintaining a pace of under 8 minutes per mile.  Considering that I couldn't maintain that pace for a 10 kilometer (6.2 mile) race, I'd have had to make a major commitment of time I didn't have to speed training. 

So when I read a story from Runner's World yesterday about people being banned from this year's race for falsifying their qualifying times, I was disgusted.  Seven of the 15 people banned from this year's race had faster runners wear their bib numbers to obtain those qualifying times. 

The late Eddie Guerrero, WWE superstar once said "if you're not cheating, you're not trying."  It is a common sentiment among professional sports athletes and their fans.  What do you think of that sentiment?