Quick Election Thoughts

Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin should be interesting as history gets made either way with an African American President or first ever female Vice President. It should be an exciting sprint to the finish although I am quite surprised with the pick of a Governor from Alaska. She is younger than Barack Obama and has one year of being Governor on her belt – how are they going to attack Obama on experience and age now? Anyways, I’ll go more into this as the debates approach or maybe a little bit during the Republican National Convention.

If you want some good video footage, head over to The World According To Me by Ayaz and From My Perspective by Summaiyah, she’s got some good quotes from the speeches if you want to take a quick glance. Ayaz put up good videos from all four nights, some real good stuff over there.

If there is one speech you want to watch and want to see a relative new face… then watch the Governor of Montana Brian Schweitzer – who gave a very good speech. I had never heard of him before but he certainly brought the crowd to their feet.

Here’s a tidbit on McCain/Palin:

Year Alaska was admitted into the Union: 1959
Year John McCain was born: 1936

Hence, John McCain is about 22-23 years older than the state of Alaska.

Is Usain Bolt A Freak?

[EDIT] Also, I should have known that NY Times would do an interactive graphic on his record and here it is: Bolt’s Feat [/EDIT]

According to an article on Wired.com, they logged the world record times for the 100-meter sprint from the early 1900s and developed a trend line. Everything was going according to plans until Usain Bolt came into the picture. “This trend seems to defy simple curve fitting,” wrote Tatsuo Tabata, director of the Institute for Data Evaluation and Analysis in Japan. His times have just completely destroyed the graph and achieved a time of 9.69 that wasn’t supposed to be reached until the 2030’s.

The article also states that “though no statistician we spoke with had recalculated their numbers, the new world record is likely to rejigger the equations they use to calculate the maximum human speed.

“With this new data, [the predicted fastest 100-meter time] would probably go down a little bit,” said Reza Noubary, a mathematician at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania and author of a textbook on statistics and sports. He had previously calculated an “ultimate record” of 9.44 seconds for the 100 meter.”

“Bolt is an outlier. He’s enormous,” Weyand said. “Typically when you get someone that big, they can’t start.”

It went on to say “that’s because muscle speed in animals is generally tied to their size. For example, rodents, being much smaller than elephants, can move their muscles much faster. The same holds true for human beings. Sprinters are short and have more fast-twitch muscle fibers, allowing them to accelerate quickly, but compromising their ability to run longer distances. Four hundred-meter runners, almost always taller, have the reverse composition of muscle fibers.

“Bolt, though, combines the mechanical advantages of taller men’s bodies with the fast-twitch fibers of smaller men.”

[Source: Wired.com – Bolt Is Freaky Fast, But Nowhere Near Human Limits]

So What If He Were Muslim?

A great piece by Ellis Cose on Obama and so what if he actually were a Muslim. It is a great point that is rarely brought up in the news these days and associating someone with Islam automatically becomes a negative. Personally I would have liked to see Obama come out from the start to say that even though he isn’t a Muslim, there is nothing wrong with being called one. He separated himself from that faster than Joe Lieberman with the Democratic base which has been a little disappointing. You have also seen him avoid any campaigning in Mosques or with Muslim groups but he has had little problems making campaign stops in Churches or Synagoges.

So yea, everyone knows he is still scared to be associated with the Muslims community and he pretty much knows they are going to vote Democratic this year as opposed to in 2000 when Bush pretty much got the Muslim vote in a landslide. You know why? Because of Al Gore’s running mate’s religion. It wouldn’t surprise me if some study finds the Muslim community (although I don’t know how many of them would publicly admit voting Republican just solely on that reason) 3 out of every 4 voted for Bush/Cheney over Gore/Lieberman. It’s without a touchy subject that no one wants to invoke a race or religion card because just face the facts, those two subjects play a key role in every election. Look at the religion of every President elected since John F. Kennedy and tell me what their religion has been. Is it just by coincidence that 50% of the Presidents of America have been either Episcopalian or Presbyterian, groups that make up a combined 4.5% of the ENTIRE population of the United States of America?

One can certainly say that the following 8 years were brought on themselves given that they knew the history with George H. W. Bush and everyone that was associated within his campaign (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, etc.)… did we really expect something different from his son?

Now it’s Obama’s way of getting the best of both words – getting an entire community which probably makes up 8-10 million people in the country to vote his way with him having to do little to no campaigning because I think they/we learned from the mistake of 2000.

Here is an excerpt from the article I was referring to:

Of course, even if he were a Muslim, that should be no big deal. In a country that officially separates church and state, a man’s religious beliefs are his own affair. Still, nearly half a century after John F. Kennedy became America’s first (and, thus far, only) Roman Catholic president, we haven’t fully accepted the notion that all religions should have equal access to the Oval Office.

At the start of the political season, when Mitt Romney seemed to have a shot at the Republican nomination, pollsters sought to determine whether his Mormonism might hurt him. Nearly a third of voters, they found, were less likely to support a Mormon. But some 45 percent were wary of Muslim candidates. For Obama, that is a potential problem—particularly in a race that shows ever more signs of being extremely close.

To read the rest of the article, click the source below.

[Source: Newsweek – So What If He Were Muslim?
Wikipedia – List of US Presidents Religious Affiliations
Adherents – Religious Affiliation of U.S. Presidents]

McCain Attack Ad Too Sleazy For Even Fox News?

The McCain Dungeons & Dragons gang fails its saving throw:

Group to spend $2.8 million on anti-Obama ad

By JIM KUHNHENN – 32 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A conservative nonprofit group with a past link to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign wants to spend $2.8 million on an ad questioning Democrat Barack Obama’s relationship to a founder of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground.

The ad, which is expected to begin airing Thursday in Michigan and Friday in Ohio, focuses on William Ayers, whose Weatherman organization took credit for a series of bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

The ad was supposed to be the response to McCain getting his ass whipped over weaseling out of answering questions about his four seven eight twelve houses by pretending not to know how many he had. (A-duh. That’s so much less elitist!)

But, uh… didn’t work.

Organizers sought to air the ad on Fox News Channel, but a Fox spokesman said the network declined to run it.

Too sleazy for Fox. Hilarious!

How dare they suggest, ummm… something, something, P.O.W., blah-blah! Grr!

(image credit: tbctbc)

America, welcome to “P.O.W. Fatigue.”

[Source: Daily Kos – McCain response continues to be The Suck]