One of the biggest mistakes people make as they age is buying into the dangerous myth that aging means you have to become sedentary and immobile. In reality, exercise is the fountain of youth. I'm 44 and I work out 6 days a week. It's gotten me in the best shape of my life and I intend to keep at it for the next 50 years.

I interviewed fitness guru Jack LaLanne for a book I wrote a few years back. At the time he was 92, still had a 32 waist, and worked out 2 hours a day. He was awesome. He said to me, "You think I like to get up at 5 a.m., leave a hot bed and a hot woman, and go to a cold gym? I hate it, but I do it because I like the results." That's the attitude. Exercise improves mood, preserves muscle, helps the brain, strengthens the heart, controls weight, you name it. If more people over 70 worked out 5 days a week at a gym--and I mean worked out hard, not this "walk 30 minutes a day" crap--we'd see a lot more 85-year-olds hiking and sailing and not rotting in assisted living centers.

Look at elders in rural Italy and other regions where staying active is the rule, not the exception. Hell, there's a super-fit 69-year-old chap at my gym who can do 25 chin-ups; I can do about 6. He's my hero. I want to be him when I grow up.

a. I haven't seen this many right-wing dick-swingers trolling around a Salon comment forum in a while. All waving the same poster, too: "You lefties are fools, wait until bin Laden is raping your mom and you'll realize how wise and great Bush was!" Sure we will, delusionals. Sell that shit somewhere else, guys. You also believe that owning 18 firearms is somehow keeping you safe from the meth addicts around the corner who will never, ever come to your door.

b. Gary, props for the Biggus Dickus reference. There just aren't enough "Life of Brian" shout-outs in pop culture anymore.

c. The most disturbing part of this entire story is the "with a stroke of the pen" line. Yes, Obama has, in theory, ended our torture policy with a penstroke, though it remains to be made clear if that is truly the total outcome of that executive order. But what's scary is that some other president could reinstate said torture with another stroke from another pen. It shouldn't come down to a penstroke from any POTUS! The reason it can is because so many millions of Americans were so gutless and terrified that they didn't raise their voices when America began mock-drowning 19-year-olds. WE let America be degraded into a nation no better than Syria. We. Did. This. The only way it doesn't come down to another exec order from a future conservative president is if we make it clear as a people that we will NEVER tolerate it in the future, not even if (or when) we are attacked again.

Finally, the fact is that Bush did not keep us safe from terrorism. First of all, the obvious fact that we were attacked when he was in office seems to escape many of the more foam-flecked trolls, who really should scuttle back to Free Republic where they can rave about Obama's birth certificate. But more's the point, no president or security regime can prevent every attack. We're an open country with laughably open borders and ports. If a terrorist group wants to get us, they will, just like if a burglar wants to break into your house, despite your fancy alarm system, he will. What do you do? You prepare. That's what we can do: prepare to respond and hunt down any attackers in a smart, high-tech, swift way.

The other thing we can do is respond properly. Make no mistake about this: if we had responded to the attacks of 9/11 with courage and honor and by pulling the rest of the world, which was behind us, together around us and forming the strongest anti-terrorism coalition in history, we would have wiped out bin Laden, the Taliban and every other major terrorist organization on earth in two years. But we didn't do that. We reacted with fear and political manipulation, and Bush used our fear to try to establish a permanent, war-fueled Republican hegemony. That's what fear got us, neocon trolls.

That was the choice we had: Courage = global support and a worldwide offensive to wipe out extremists, or Fear = empty rhetoric, an illegal war based on lies, alienating the rest of the world, selling out our Constitution and breeding new nests of America-hating terrorists all over the globe. That's what your fear has bought us. No more. The time for this country to behave like a 16-year-old high school football player after six PBRs is over. We're finally growing up.

This guy's arrogance knows no bounds. Incredible. I think he may actually believe some of the crap he's spewing, comparing himself to MLK and Gandhi. That's positively...well, I was going to say "Orwellian," but I think it's time for a neologism that reflects the times:

Dubyaistic.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is...oh hell, just go out and shop, willya?

...is where you're finding Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno, David Letterman and the like right now. Because Caribou Barbie just gave them at least another year's worth of easy material.

Sarah, how can we miss you if you won't go away?

...you owe me a new Mac monitor. I just spit Diet Coke all over my current one at the "Mooselini" line. Hysterical.