Wooism, Religion and Politics

Workout notes The women’s 10K swim yesterday inspired me. I would have posted some yahoo photos, but all I could find among the new swimming photos were photos of a certain ultra-successful US swimmer preening.

Hey, I deeply respect what he has done, but here ARE other athletes out there, ok?

I did stumble upon this photo from the synchronized swimming though:

Oh, the workout: 500 in about 8:50 (easy), 10 x (25 drill, 25 swim) with zoomers.

Then 10 x 100 on the 2 (fist, each in 1:37-1:38), 4 x 250 on the 5 (4:02, :04, :05, :09), 300 stroke, 100 paddle, 100 free, 100 paddle, 100 free, 100 paddle (8:50), 8 x 25 fly on the 0:40.

This was my best set of 250’s since February of 2007, and I did those fresh and with flip turns. I did these while tired and used push-offs.

Maybe, just maybe, I should aim to break 16:00 in the 1000 this fall? It has been a long time.

Real swimmers: enjoy your laugh! I say this because a good master’s swimmer my age would be doing around 11-12 minutes or so for the 1000.

Politics A fellow McCain classmate and POW weighs in. He says what I feel.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush’s war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John’s views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.

I’m disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues. John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers lately. I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he hates that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander. So on these and many other instances, I don’t see that John is the “straight talk express” he markets himself to be.

But to me, even more troubling, is that McCain simply doesn’t know the basics.

Ok, the title of the post:

From Right Wing Watch:

The Right Wing: wants a de-facto theocracy.

As we have noted several times in the past, David Barton of Wallbuilders likes to pass himself off as a historian committed to uncovering “America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built.” In reality, he is a Religious Right activist committed to spreading biased “history” for the benefit for the Republican Party – that is, after all, what they regularly pay him to do.

And so it is no surprise that he is out with a new document [PDF] just before the election designed to “help [Biblical voters] evaluate the candidates”:

According to the Bible (c.f., Deuteronomy 28; 1 Chronicles 21; 1 Kings 18), a nation’s righteousness is determined by its public policies and how well those policies conform to God’s standards …In America, the only way there will be God-honoring leaders is if God-honoring citizens elect them; so the first and foremost consideration in any election is whether the candidate will advance policies that promote Biblical standards of righteousness.

Barton asserts that while the Bible contains a “comprehensive system of 613 laws delivered through Moses in the Old Testament,” God prioritized what was most important by issuing his “Top Ten” list and that, while things like poverty, environment, health care, immigration, taxation might be important, they were not important enough to crack the top ten and are thus of lesser importance.

And according to these woos, people who don’t “believe” are not qualified for office.

KING: Rick Warren is our guest. Rick, let me ask you a couple of Rick Warren questions. OK?

WARREN: OK.

KING: Does a person have to believe in god to be president?

WARREN: I would say so. I couldn’t vote for a person who was an atheist, because I would think — I think the presidency is a job too big for one person. I would think there’s a little arrogance that says, I don’t need anybody else. I could vote for someone of different religions than mine, but I don’t know that I could personally vote for somebody who denies that we need somebody greater than ourselves to help us.

Fair enough. Of course since 93 percent of our Academy of Science level scientists are either agnostic or atheist, maybe they (these scientists) should deny woos like this the benefits of the medicines and technologies that they discover?

This brings me to a larger point: it is a shame that Obama wasted his time attending this jerk’s “faith forum” and that all of the candidates declined to attend the science debate.

You’ve got to love America: the candidate’s thoughts on some invisible man in the sky are more important than their policies on science which has real life consequences.

One other Kossack voiced what I thought inside.