It's a Beautiful Day, and Mi Hermana-in-Lawla Is a Beautiful Driver

I had a lot of work to do this morning on Scutabaga, even though he needs more surgery before wireless will work again. It's OK when I'm sitting at the kitchen table drinking strong coffee in the morning sun.

First, the Future First Man and I were completely lame patriots on the 4th of July. After messing around at coffee for several hours, having a beer with the Judge, and dropping in at the first local farmers market of the season- all of which sounds like Normal American Behavior, right?- we went home and skipped all BBQs and parties we'd been invited to for the evening, and lay in bed and read and napped and almost missed the fireworks, crawling out to the corner barefoot- Very American!- to watch the last half or so of the show through the trees, leaning against a telephone pole (something still not found in some parts of Other Countries, right?)

When we got back home, we were wide awake, so lay on the floor and watched three episodes in a row of season 3 of Lost on DVD. Hugely American. Patriotic? That is for you to decide. FFM's favorite character is Sawyer the sassy redneck, so he probably passes. Mine, however, is Mikhail Bakunin, The Other who never seems to die- or at least is afforded more lives than a person, or even a cat, could shake a stick at.

Bakunin is so badass he escapes knife impalements to the chest in order to moments later pull pins from live grenades and throw them while underwater. I am assuming, though I know I should not, that he survives the blast. I am not allowed to read ahead to see what's happening these days on the show, lest it ruin my experience when I actually view episodes. (Recently, however, I stumbled inadvertently across an article in Popular Science about wormholes and how Ben may have moved the island. Of course, I read this. Voters, patience is not one of my top 3 virtues, or even top 5, probably, except when it comes to enduring crappy relationships with members of the opposite sex- not the FFM, just to be clear. There will be no shouting and throwing of lamps, dinnerware or other precious household items at each other in Aubergine House.)

Back to Mikhail Bakunin: he is so tough and cunning and mysterious- and is blessed with the bonus of being named after a Fine Anarchist- that I wish I'd been cast in his role on that show. So, this morning I got up to look for a "Which Character on Lost Am I?" quiz to take to see if I could actually pass muster.

You know what I found, don't you? Every dang quiz out there makes you into a Jack or a Sawyer or a Charlie, or in my case, happily enough, my second favorite character, a Locke. That's just crap, I say. But patriotic crap, isn't it? Good v. Evil, and you can only get to be a "good" character? Although whether Locke is evil was questioned in the quiz I took. Maybe more like "Us v. Them," and we know there are some of Them lurking among the Us that need to be called out and culled out.

I also took a little break to play some anime vampire quiz game that, despite it was devised for the enjoyment of teenage girls, I enjoyed. You want your President to be able to relate to a widely varied constituency, right? I heard a guy on Talk of the Nation yesterday say he's a Gen-Xer and believes that McCain doesn't represent him or really any of his generation because those older folks just don't relate to the younger set, and it's the younger generation that is going to inherit this country. The guy made sense to me.

So, on to politics, as it must be. Last night an Exciting Discussion arose about Obama and his Faith-Based Initiative Talk and why is he doing it, and what about the separation of church and state? I will not go into that here; it's for the man himself to explain now. I got the ball rolling here earlier.

What I heard that surprised me was that a poll had found that most Americans would not vote for an atheist for President. I could not believe this, though my gut reaction is, sure, a lot of people out there probably would not be comfortable putting their future in the form of government in the hands of someone who had a dim view, at best, of a future. That's how people look at existentialism, as fatalistic, despite the excellent way mi hermana approached the subject in a recent comment on this blog; and people connect existentialism with atheism.

Here is what I found when I went online to learn more about people's views regarding an atheist as President:

from http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistbigotryprejudice/a/AtheistSurveys.htm:
A 1999 Gallup poll conducted to determine Americans' willingness to tolerate a Jewish president (Joseph Lieberman was the Democratic candidate for Vice President at the time). Here are the percentages of people saying they would refuse to vote for "a generally well-qualified person for president" on the basis of some characteristic; in parenthesis are the figures for earlier years:
Catholic: 4% (1937: 30%), Black: 5% (1958: 63%, 1987: 21%), Jewish: 6% (1937: 47%), Baptist: 6%, Woman: 8%, Mormon: 17%, Muslim: 38%, Gay: 37% (1978: 74%), Atheist: 48%.

from http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/spreadsheet/2076653:
Would You Vote for an Atheist President?
August 1958- 18%; September 1958- 18%; December 1959- 22%; July 1978- 40%; May 1983- 42%; August 1987- 44%; February 1999- 49%; February 2007- 45%. (Note that the percentage of people willing to vote atheist in this poll decreased between 1999 and last year.)

from http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism9.htm:
Web Posted: August 12, 2000
A poll from the Gallup organization shows that Sen. Joseph Lieberman has made history in becoming the first Jewish American to run on a presidential ticket for either of the two major political parties, and that an overwhelming majority of those questioned say that his Orthodox faith is not an issue. The August 8 survey results show that 92% of respondents said they would vote for a "generally well qualified person for president" who happened to be Jewish, with only 6% saying they would oppose such a candidate. Similar percentages are reported when asked how they feel about a Roman Catholic or Baptist candidate as well.
A Mormon candidate generates a 79% approval rating, with 17% saying they would not vote for an LDS member.
Atheists do not fare as well, though, according to the Gallup survey, which finds "close to half of Americans, 48%, unwilling to support an atheist for president while 49% say they would."

I'll leave the rest to you. It's time to go around the corner and see Mats and Cynthia about their cats before they leave for Sweden. Don't think about finding their address and messing with their house while they are away; I have my jacknife and imagine myself to be capable of being almost as skilled as Bakunin and at least as badass as Locke (who, oh crap, I just learned is the guy in the coffin.)