Billy Jack and Celiac, Atheists in Illinois and other stuff

Workout notes 4 mile plus walk in Bradley Park (2.5 loops) in the morning; 2 miles in the evening with the Building Steam group.

Speaking of walking: My sister Rose has become quite the walker, and has posted some cool photos on her blog. Austin is a pretty city.

Atheists in Illinois: I talked about a state Representative making a stupid remark about atheism being too dangerous of a philosophy to be expressed in public:

llinois State Rep. Monique Davis recently said to atheist Rob Sherman: “It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy (atheism) exists!”

The audio of the exchange was picked up and circulated, and the story (which was brought to the public’s eye by Chicago Tribune reporter Eric Zorn) has made its way through the blogosphere.

This incident has made news in many places, including the Daily Kos, Richard Dawkins, Science Avenger, as well as the Chicago Tribune. Of course, two of these sources link to Keith Olberman’s Worst Person in the World, which Representative Davis made!

Politics

The Huffington Post points to a Politico article which makes a point that I’ve been trying to make for quite some time:

Hillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to decide the nomination based on who can coolly and competently run the country. She had better hope they don’t study her recent campaign too closely for the answer.

Clinton has overseen two major staff shake-ups in two months. She has left a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy vendors and had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it afloat in January. Her campaign badly underestimated her main adversary, Barack Obama, miscalculated the importance of organizing caucus states and was caught flat-footed after failing to lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday.

It would be easy to dismiss all of this as fairly conventional political stumbling — if she hadn’t made her supreme readiness and managerial competence the central issue of her presidential campaign.

But since she has, a growing number of Democrats are comparing the Clinton and Obama campaigns — their first real exercise in executive leadership — and rendering harsh assessments of her stewardship.

In twin columns in Tuesday’s Washington Post, left-of-center columnists Peter Beinart and E.J. Dionne Jr. condemned Clinton’s overall management of the campaign and inability to build a durable message and infrastructure. It’s a common theme in Democratic circles these days. [...]

By any measure, Obama has done better so far.

But, if Clinton were to somehow pull it out, well, she would be better for the country as at least she knows the difference between Shiites and Sunnis. McCain evidently doesn’t, nor does the “national security candidate” know many other important facts. Evidently he has a bit of a temper too.

Billy Jack and Celiac

Billy Jack in 2001 being interviewed on TV:

A classic scene from Billy Jack

Trailer for Born Losers

Note: this BJ isn’t related to the BJ blog guy, as far as I know. The BJ from the movie is very, very liberal (as am I).