end of April…

Workout notes 4000 yard swim; 500 alternating free/back, 500 alternating fly, free, back, free, 10 x (100 free, pull, fins) 53:58; kind of slow. My legs are a bit sore from yesterday.

Politics

Obama and Clinton draw crowds in California; Obama gets a more enthusiastic welcome.

Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois wowed California Democrats at their annual convention on Saturday, drawing a more passionate welcome than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton received hours earlier in this state that carries new clout in the presidential primaries.

More than 2,000 party activists frequently rose to their feet in cheers as Obama, who has served just two years in the U.S. Senate, talked about his desire to end the war in Iraq and usher in a new political era in Washington.

“It is time to put an end to this war,” Obama, of Illinois, said at the convention center in San Diego shortly before many started chanting his surname.

Even Clinton supporters recognized Obama’s speech — full of generalities such as the need to “turn the page” — had tapped into the crowd’s emotions.

“It was the same thing in 2003 for Howard Dean,” said Andrea Dew Steele, 38, referring to the former Vermont governor who made a strong showing early in the last presidential race largely because of his opposition to the war.

“We have a very progressive left-wing constituency here in California. Obama’s extremely talented, but this is Hillary’s time,” said Steele, who wore a Clinton sticker on her lapel.

Democrats were making their pitch to a state that has become key in the primaries since California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month signed a law moving up its primary to February 2008 from June to give the state a greater role in the presidential selection.

Note: Obama is not exactly sucking up to the entire liberal community, as one Kos blogger points out.

He is doing very well in the polls, at the moment.

Disclaimer: I am an Obama supporter, for what it’s worth.

For the first time in the Election 2008 season, somebody other than New York Senator Hillary Clinton is on top in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Oy, I wouldn’t want to be in Clinton headquarters this morning…

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows Illinois Senator Barack Obama with a statistically insignificant two point advantage over the former First Lady. It’s Obama 32% Clinton 30%. Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards remains in third with support holding steady at 17%. No other candidate tops 3%. The survey was conducted April 23-26, 2007 meaning that the overwhelming majority of the interviews were completed before last Thursday’s debate in South Carolina. The impact of the debate will be measured in polling conducted this week.

A few more thoughts.

1. It is SO early. Polls mean very little, as we learned in 2004 (Kerry was at 3% in Iowa three weeks out…)

2. That said, this poll says far more about Hillary’s weaknesses than it says about either Obama or Edwards’ strengths.

3. I would still hate to be working in Hillary’s headquarters this morning…

And for all you Edwards junkies…he still does best in a general election match-up. So moral of the story: be happy if you like Obama or Edwards.

Odds and Ends

Bill Moyers: had a good PBS special. In case you missed it, a Kos blogger has it in parts on youtube.

If you are rich and have to go to jail, there are places where you can pay for a jail cell upgrade!

A couple of news articles recently pointed to some of the awful class differences we’re facing. The most egregious was the front page piece in the New York Times. In California, if you’re crime is not too serious, you can pay around $100 a day to stay in a considerably nicer jail cell, separate from the general population. The unfairness of this should be obvious- rich people are doing easier time. Two people, convicted of the same crime, given the same sentence, and the one with more money in a nicer, safer cell. Separate, unequal.

Administrators for the prisons say they need the money. In California we lock up too many people, the prison system is stretched to capacity. In fact, well beyond capacity. So what should we do?

I suppose that this is good news for Bush administration officials and other members of the Republic party leadership.

Religion

This is interesting:

Television personality Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” says Christians and others who are religious suffer from a neurological disorder that “stops people from thinking.”

“We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it’s something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child. It certainly was drilled into mine at that age. And you really can’t be responsible when you are a kid for what adults put into your head.”

The former host of “Politically Incorrect” said the lack of enlightenment of so many Americans means the nation actually has more in common with its enemies than one might think.

Said Maher: “When you look at beliefs in such things as, do you go to heaven, is there a devil, we have more in common with Turkey and Iran and Syria than we do with European nations and Canada and nations that, yes, I would consider more enlightened than us.”
[...]

Later in the interview, Maher returned to the childhood-religion theme, comparing fairy tales to Bible stories:

“When you were a kid and they were telling you whatever you believe in religion, do you think if they had switched the fairy tales that they read to you in bed with the Bible, you would know the difference?

“Do you think if it was the fairy tale about a man who lived inside of a whale and it was religion that Jack built a beanstalk today, you would know the difference? Why do you believe in one fairy tale and not the other? Just because adults told you it was true and they scared you into believing it, at pain of death, at pain of burning in hell.”

Hat tip to Mel Seesholtz who tipped us to this article. Seesholtz goes on to say:

[...]The “root of evil” theme was echoed by the president of Creation Worldview Ministries, Grady McMirty – “a full-time creation evangelist who travels the world teaching Christian and secular audiences about the scientific evidence supporting the biblical view of creationism” – when he claimed that teaching the reality-based theory of evolution was largely responsible for the massacre at Virginia Tech. McMirty’s nonsensical rant was the focus of a story carried by One News Now, the reincarnation of Don Wildmon’s American Family Association’s Agape Press propaganda organ, which is notorious for its own pathologies.

Let’s be honest. Only someone with a neurological disorder or a pathological need to promote stupidity and ignorance in the name of a bible-based, fairy tale worldview would argue for “scientific” answers in Genesis or that “belief in evolution is the root of most of modern society’s evils.” When one considers the realities unveiled by quantum mechanics, Einstein’s relativity and, more recently membrane theory, the pathology called “the biblical worldview” and the mental disorder – or more likely the ulterior motives – of those advocating it become clearer and even more sinister.