"It's NOT The Economy, Stupid!"

For those of you who labour under the delusion that the US Presidential election might be about national security, or “The Economy, stupid”, or budget deficits, or Social Security, or stuff like that, let John McCain’s main man put you straight.

Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain’s presidential bid, insisted that the presidential race will be decided more over personalities than issues during an interview with Post editors this morning.

“This election is not about issues,” said Davis. “This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”

Got that?
(From the Washington Post.)

Isn't it too soon for an October surprise?

The kind of headline I’d rather not see:

Dutch withdraw spy from Iran because of “impending US attack”

The Dutch intelligence service has pulled an agent out of an "ultra-secret operation" spying on Iran's military industry because spymasters in Netherlands believe a United States air attack was imminent.

Quote of the day, from McCain

From a comment by Ripper McCord at TPM:

Appearing on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in July, John McCain was reminded that [he] often tells his audiences the vice president has only two duties: Breaking tie votes in the Senate and inquiring daily about the health of the president.
“That job will be very, very important in my case,” replied McCain, who turned 72 today.

And this was the most qualified candidate he could come up with…?
UPDATE: Tom at The Inverse Square Blog runs the numbers…

Off to Boston, using all the Frequent Flier miles I can

I’m off to Boston first thing Tuesday, flying SEA-DEN-BOS and returning BOS-SFO-SEA on Sunday. From those routings, you can tell it’s United, can’t you? I’ve applied to upgrade both trips; in each case I’m confirmed on one leg, waitlisted on the other. 15K miles for each upgrade; I’m drawing down my MP balance as fast as I can…
UPDATE (onboard at SEA): the upgrade went through, so it’s 1st class for both SEA-DEN and DEN-BOS. This is good, because this flight is 100% full.

Dermatology and Galileo

This beautiful piece appeared today in 3quarksdaily, and I just had to quote from it:

Dermatology & Galileo

A creationist student of mine with a wart the size of a gumball on the end of his nose recently told me science is overrated and is anathema to God.  In the same breath he said he was seeing a dermatologist about the wart.

I asked, “Have you prayed about this?”

He said, “All the time.”

I asked, “Has it helped with the wart?”

He said, “I don’t pray about the wart.  I pray for forgiveness for consulting a dermatologist.”

As his guru, I told him it would be smart to meditate not only on the wart, but upon his inclination to view God as an idiot.  He looked at me as if I’d told him the earth revolves around the sun and excused himself to call his dermatologist on his iphone.

–Roshi Bob

"American Prayer"

Here’s the new “American Prayer” video by Dave Stewart and a crowd of celebrities endorsing Obama. It’s pretty good, and I make no apologies for being part of the viral network….

Read more about the project here:

As an Englishman, I’m not an expert in all the intricate details of American politics. But as an artist, I understand how rare it is to inspire a connection to a bigger idea or purpose. This video isn’t so much an endorsement of Barack Obama as much as it is a celebration of all those who have picked up a sign, who have registered to vote and are working to make the world a better place.

Demonic woo

Stephen Law is bemused, because in Nigeria…

Muslims are attacking Christians because they think that Christians prayed for the death of their leader, and their prayers worked.
Why would their prayers work, though, if, as Muslim’s think, Christianity is a false religion?

I assume that this is a rhetorical question, because the answer is pretty clear. Once you embrace supernatural woo, all kinds of magical thinking starts to crowd out logic and reason. And since the religious seem to have a need to feel persecuted and threatened, they are prone to conjure up all manner of demons and diabolic forces. The impulse to Manichaean thinking lies just below the surface of even the most impeccably monotheistic belief systems – even the respectable version of Roman Catholicism practised in Westminster:

WESTMINSTER, UK, August 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A priest of Westminster, the leading diocese of the Catholic Church of England and Wales, has written that promiscuity, whether homosexual or heterosexual, can lead to dire spiritual consequences, in addition to the dangers to physical health.
Promiscuity, as well as homosexuality and pornography, says 73 year-old Fr. Jeremy Davies, is a form of sexual perversion and can lead to demonic possession. Offering what may be an explanation for the explosion of homosexuality in recent years, Fr. Davies said, “Among the causes of homosexuality is a contagious demonic factor.” […]
He also said that Satan is responsible for having blinded most secular humanists to the “dehumanising effects of contraception and abortion and IVF, of homosexual ‘marriages’, of human cloning and the vivisection of human embryos in scientific research.”

WTF? And this idiot is also a (medical) doctor? Better not let any schizophrenics get too close, or he’ll try to exorcise their demons.
And I particularly like this bit of woo from Davies:

Extreme secular humanism, “atheist scientism”, is comparable to “rational satanism” and these are leading Europe into a dangerous state of apostasy.

Let’s see:

apostasy |əˈpästəsē|
n. the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief.
Orig.ME: from ecclesiastical Latin apostasia, from a late Greek alteration of Greek apostasis ‘defection.’

I do hope that Fr. Davies is right!
UPDATE: More on the Nigerian mess from Compass Direct, via Thin Guy.