The Anti-Obama Flea Circus:

I got the idea to use the term “flea circus” from the Dawkins website: they use that term to describe the deluge of books attacking the recent “atheist” books by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkings and Daniel Dennett.

Well, these books are written in an attempt to “swift-boat” Barack Obama. So my questions are these:

1. How much attention and credibility will the media give to these works of fiction?

2. Will these books be filed under “fiction” or “fantasy”?

3. Does anyone want to take bets on how long before these books end up on the “one dollar or less” section in the sale racks in the bookstores? Sure, they might sell well on Faux News or on the Newsmax web site.

Note that these books just make stuff up (e. g., publish baseless conjectures)

One such attack: the “authors” of the book says that Obama admits to using drugs in his youth. But they go on to say that he never says “when he stopped”.

That is a bit like my saying: “oh, you stole candy as a kid…but you never said when you stopped being a thief.”

These people are pathetic.

Humor:

End of July Part II

Workout notes: 4 mile run (39 minutes for about 4.2 miles; this course took me 42 minutes this Monday), yoga-lattes, then 4 mile walk. I had cool weather; the run actually felt good though I broke no speed records.

This has been a weird July for me: 52 miles running (remember that I started from scratch), 149 miles walking, 21.25 miles swimming, and so far (I might ride this afternoon), 86 miles cycling (mostly social cycling with my daughter)

I’ve also added leg weights and these seem to be going well.

Political Humor Democratic Convention Watch asks: Do you Remember Katherine Harris? They go on to post an interesting story about the race for her old Congressional seat:

The 2006 Jennings-Buchanan election actually had input to the 2008 primary season. You may recall that Florida decided to hold their primary a little before the proposed DNC date. The legislation passed the Florida Legislature with support from Florida Democrats. One of the major reasons was that the full bill also included provisions to ensure that all elections have paper trails, to preclude another wholesale theft of 18,000 votes. So here it is, July 2008, and Jennings and Buchanan are having a rematch. I could talk about money, polling and demographics, but why not go straight to the crime?

Vern Buchanan owns car dealerships. According to the Sarasota Herald Tribune:

Two former executives for U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan’s auto dealerships said they were pressured to donate to Buchanan’s 2006 congressional campaign and were offered cash and gifts as inducements, which would violate federal campaign laws.

They actually filed/are filing civil suits, but the upshot here is that if the allegations are true, we’re talking felony.

Hmmm, more family values from the Republican party.
But the humor isn’t there. The humor was in the headline that asked about Katherine Harris. Actually, she had nothing to do with the above story other than having previously held this seat (prior to running for the Senate, against her party’s wishes).

But when I saw the name, I was hoping for more photos like this one:

I just love tight, white skirts! So what if that butt has a bit of help from strategic undergarments…it is cute all the same.

Leave Barack Alone!!!

To see what this is a take-off on:

Note that the person in the video is actually a guy. Hat tip to the Huffington Post.

Religion: note that there are more religions in warm climates than in cold ones. Why? Here is a possible answer.

according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences. Dr Corey Fincher and Prof Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, come to this conclusion after studying why religions are far more numerous in the tropics compared with the temperate areas. “Why does Cote d’Ivoire have 76 religions while Norway has 13, and why does Brazil have 159 religions while Canada has 15 even though in both comparisons the countries are similar in size?” they ask.

The reason is that religion helps to divide people and reduce the spread of diseases, which are more common the hotter the country, the research suggests. Any society that increased its coherence by adopting a religion, and dealt less with local groups with other beliefs as a result of cultural isolation, gained an advantage in being less likely to pick up diseases from its neighbours, and in the longer term to have a slightly different genetic makeup that may offer protective effects, for instance by making them less susceptible to a virus. Equally, societies where infectious diseases are more common are less likely to migrate and disperse, not because of the effects of disease itself but as a behaviour that has evolved over time.

This explains why there may be more religions in warm climates, but it doesn’t explain why religion exists at all.

Last Day of July 2008

Workout notes: I’ll run, lead the yoga class, then walk some. I’d like to total 7 miles to get 200 for the month, but that isn’t all that important.

John McCain: details? I don’t need no stinkin details! Sure, every candidate makes a slip of the tongue (Obama’s “57 states”, or “Israel is a friend of Israel” remark), but in McCain’s case: often, he just doesn’t know. How you can tell that? He was given time to correct himself but couldn’t.

This is a lack of knowledge and not a slip of the tongue.

Attack on Obama. A minister compares Obama to Hitler because Obama….draws large crowds? There is a video here. Clearly, this minister is an idiot.

Note: this is not from the McCain campaign; I want to make that clear.

Science Avenger: rips apart a statement from Catholic clergy. They were upset that someone desecrated a communion wafer and showed this desecration on their blog.

Ok, freedom of speech cuts both way. Say someone desecrated a copy of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and posted photos. I could say that I didn’t like it.

So far, so good. But were I to go and say that the actions of those who did the desecration was unconstitutional?

We find the actions of University of Minnesota (Morris) Professor Paul Myers reprehensible, inexcusable, and unconstitutional. His flagrant display of irreverence by profaning a consecrated Host from a Catholic church goes beyond the limit of academic freedom and free speech.”

OK, from their point of view, reprehensible and inexcusable make sense. But unconstitutional? Since when does the constitution say “the right of wafers to not be tossed in the garbage impaled by a nail will not be infringed”. Truly, this statement is daft, and calls into serious question the credibility of this group.

“The same Bill of Rights which protect freedom of speech also protect freedom of religion. The Founding Fathers did not envision a freedom FROM religion, rather a freedom OF religion.”

This is nonsense. In order for me to have freedom of religion, I must be free from your religion, and all others, just like everyone else’s freedom of religion means they must be free from mine. And of course, the atheist needs to be free of all religions. One cannot have freedom OF religion without freedom FROM religion.

There is more there.