Vox Popoli

From the Washington Post:

Chavez and her immediate family members have used phone banks and direct-mail solicitations to raise tens of millions of dollars, founding several political action committees with bankable names: the Republican Issues Committee, the Latino Alliance, Stop Union Political Abuse and the Pro-Life Campaign Committee. Their solicitations promise direct action in the “fight to save unborn lives,” a vigorous struggle against “big labor bosses” and a crippling of “liberal politics in the country.”

That’s not where the bulk of the money wound up being spent, however. Of the $24.5 million raised by the PACs from January 2003 to December 2006, $242,000 — or 1 percent — was passed on to politicians, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal election reports. The PACs spent even less — $151,236 — on independent political activity, such as mailing pamphlets.

This is why I recommend giving to churches – although not the big showy ones where the pastor owns a Mercedes, or worse, a plane – rather than charities and political action committees.

Chavez, of course, is the charming woman who recently accused everyone who opposed immigration limits of being racist Mexican haters. I can’t imagine this is going to make her any more popular with conservatives. The problem really isn’t that she and her family were making a mint off their actions – they weren’t greedy considering the money that was passing through their hands – but that the entire operation is just one big churn, fundraising for fundraising’s sake.

It’s interesting to note that their one attempt to operate in the real world failed.

Not that the rest of the nation cares, but the Village Voice reports that the self-styled “America’s Mayor” did not, in fact, save New York City:

1. ‘I think the thing that distinguishes me on terrorism is, I have more experience dealing with it.’ This pillar of the Giuliani campaign—asserted by pundits as often as it is by the man himself—is based on the idea that Rudy uniquely understands the terror threat because of his background as a prosecutor and as New York’s mayor. In a July appearance at a Maryland synagogue, Giuliani sketched out his counterterrorism biography, a resume that happens to be rooted in falsehood.

It’s a pretty serious revelation of Giuliani’s fundamental dishonesty about who he is and what he has done. Or as is more accurately the case, not done.

When the numbers don’t add up:

One survey, recently reported by the federal government, concluded that men had a median of seven female sex partners. Women had a median of four male sex partners. Another study, by British researchers, stated that men had 12.7 heterosexual partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5.

But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women. Those survey results cannot be correct.

First, I’m skeptical about the accuracy of these numbers anyhow. All self-reporting is somewhat inaccurate, people can’t even be relied upon to correctly identify their own religion, or in many cases, political party. If you’ve just voted the straight party ticket for the fourth straight election, you’re not an independent even if you aren’t a literal, card-carrying, registered party member. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that the two studies don’t add up either.

Second, I have never once known a woman to tell the truth about the number of men she’s been involved with, except for the occasional religious woman for whom the answer is zero. Never. In my experience, men are far less inclined to exaggerate than women are inclined to minimize. Tara Parker-Tomlinson even has an amusing system for justifying this undercounting, for example, a woman cannot possibly be expected to count unconventionally attractive men whose picture would be embarrassing to her self-regard. If I recall correctly, this female tendency to minimize has already been demonstrated in another study, wherein the woman’s count increased when she thought she would be lie-detected, whereas the male count did not change.

And then there’s the famous Clintonian problem of defining “is”. Perhaps the studies accounted for this, but given how poorly most sociological studies are worded, I very much doubt it.

If you don’t like the tone, please remember who set it:

Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out.
– Richard Dawkins

I quoted it after Beslan, my moment of having had enough of being polite.
– Ken MacLeod

It was just the time for the atheists to take the gloves off.
– Lynn Garrett, Publisher’s Weekly

I say, screw the polite words and careful rhetoric. It’s time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots.
-PZ Myers

Metallica put it well:

Careful what you wish
Careful what you say
Careful what you wish you may regret it
Careful what you wish you just might get it

I find it amusing how many atheists are very quick to whine when they treated in a similarly impolite manner. They’d better toughen up quick, as the backlash hasn’t even begun yet. Can you imagine how much they’ll cry when people laugh at them for quoting Dawkins or Harris? There’s a reason Russell fell out of favor, after all, and once you’ve read Russell and Meslier, you realize that the New Atheists aren’t saying anything new at all.

Their strategy, such as it is, is arguably worse than George Bush’s; I wonder where they think they are going to find an atheist Charles Martel in the 21st century in the battle for Europe’s soul? Of course, you can’t expect much out of any group dumb enough to pick a fight with literally everyone when they are somewhere between .5 percent and 10 percent of the population. Of course, these are the same people who think that telling others how stupid they are is the best way to win them over.

I initially used it in a metaphorical sense, but the more I learn, the more I suspect my theory of social autism will turn out to be correct. I predict the end result of all this is going to be more agnostics and fewer people willing to admit their atheism. I mean, I never once wrote about atheists in two full years of column writing, now, thanks to Dawkins and company, I actually put the fiction aside long enough to write an entire book ripping them apart.

From the Washington Post:

Still, the result, with Romney easily outpacing his rivals with 32 percent of the vote, helps elevate him from relative obscurity six months ago to the top tier of the GOP field — despite his relatively low standing in national polls….

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee finished second with 18 percent of the 14,302 votes cast, and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas ran third with 15 percent. Huckabee and Brownback had waged a fierce battle for the allegiance of Iowa’s social and religious conservatives. An ebullient Huckabee said Saturday night that the outcome will give his campaign a significant boost and vowed to coalesce those conservatives in Iowa and other early-voting states.

Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, the most outspoken opponent of current U.S. immigration policy, finished fourth with 14 percent. Former Wisconsin governor Tommy G. Thompson was sixth at 7 percent.

So, who finished fifth? No one? Was it Giuliani? Fred Thompson? John McCain? Can anyone solve this mystery?

And isn’t it interesting that the “front runners” for the Republican nomination can’t win an actual vote? Actually, it makes sense, because neither of them can win in November either. It’s a fix, folks, this is all just a distraction.

The announcement of tonight’s straw poll results has been delayed due to what one informed source says was a voting machine malfunction. About 4,500 ballots had to be re-run.

They probably had to change the Ron Paul votes to something else.

Raker wants to know how she can help:

That is, how do bookstores and chains learn about a newly published book, and, what can the 5th column do about it?

The regular bookstores and chains will hear about it, in fact, most of their buyers have probably already ordered it. What you can do is let the CBA bookstores know that this is a book which might be of some interest to their customers since the publisher is secular and won’t be marketing directly to them. Taking a page from Richard Dawkins, I’ll be preparing a pair of flyers in the next few weeks which you can download and print out; one will be for Christian institutions, the other will be for secular ones and public places. If you’d like to spread a few of those around, that would be great.

Another thing you can do is to save a few dollars for the book surge which will be organized as per the OC’s direction when the book comes out. I know a lot of you have already pre-ordered the book, but I’d encourage you to consider participating in the surge anyhow and giving your extra copy away to a church leader or Christian radio station in the area. I was really surprised at how many of you participated in the RM test and bought a book that you didn’t need or intend to read. (To say nothing of the fact that it’s available in two ebook formats right here.)

I think I can safely say that TIA will make the biggest impact on the sort of individual who regards any of the New Atheist’s books as being somehow meaningful. Atheists and agnostics who think as little as I do of Dawkins and company will be unimpressed, Christians who have never heard of them will be a little bewildered and those who are looking for a theological dissertation will be disappointed. The book is a dissection of atheism – or as one reader put it, a vivisection – it is not a rewrite of the Bible or a Christian apology. It may be best suited for nominally Christian college students who are meeting the first serious test of their faith and tend to be a little too overimpressed by the novelty of old ideas that are new to them.

I cannot disagree with his take on the final Harry Potter. If anything, he’s too kind:

In this final volume there is a good deal of loose-end gathering to be done. Which side was Snape really on? Can Neville Longbottom rise above himself? Are the Malfoys as black as they have been painted? Unfortunately — and with the solid exception of Neville, whose gallantry is well evoked — these resolutions prove to possess all the excitement of an old-style Perry Mason-type summing-up, prompted by a stock character who says, “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. …” Most of all this is true of Voldemort himself, who becomes more tiresome than an Ian Fleming villain, or the vicious but verbose Nicolae Carpathia in the Left Behind series, as he offers boastful explanations that are at once grandiose and vacuous. This bad and pedantic habit persists until the final duel, which at least sees us back in the old school precincts once again. “We must not let in daylight upon magic,” as Walter Bagehot remarked in another connection, and the wish to have everything clarified is eventually self-defeating in its own terms.

I lost interest in the series after the Goblet of Fire, but I did manage to slog through the others. The only thing deathly about the final volume was the tedium.

Anonymous inadvertantly hangs himself on his own petard:

If you don’t believe in Godevolution, you must believe in something. What is that? All you do is taunt Christiansscientists and say there’s no proof. That’s kindergarten stuff.

It’s kindergarten stuff? Really? Very well, what do atheists substitute for belief in God, anyhow?

I may not have written anything about what I believe in the single post to which Anonymous refers, but given that there are literally thousands of posts here on this blog, to say nothing of the hundreds of columns in the archives and the complete text of four novels, I suggest that Anonymous has a bit of reading to do before concluding that I don’t believe anything.

The truth is that my beliefs are entirely irrelevant when it comes to the existence of inherent scientific problems faced by evolutionary theory. They exist regardless of whether I happen to believe in God, pink unicorns or ancient multi-dimensional aliens.