McCain's Waterloo

Just how mentally fit is John McCain?

This week Christopher Hitchens, no-holds-barred writer and unapologetic supporter of the invasion of Iraq, endorsed Barack Obama. As his headline blares in Slate, "McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is just a disgrace."

Referring to the town hall debate, he observed that McCain seemed to be "someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses...

Hitchens continues, "McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendos and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendos and slanders for him."

In this same town hall debate, McCain called Obama "that one" and today in Waterloo, Iowa on "Meet the Press" with Tom Brokaw he was unable to remember the name of his endorser George Schultz who he finally had to refer to as "one other."

It was a jumpy, forced-jovial, even rude McCain facing Brokaw as he dismissed the endorsement of Obama on last week's "Meet the Press" by GOP Secretary of State Colin Powell.

McCain countered by listing his own five former secretaries of state who endorsed him.... "Jim Baker, Henry Kissinger, Larry Eagleburger, and Al Haig".... and then, ".....uh," and he started listing them over again. When he couldn't come up with the name of the 5th, the said "and one other."

Then, as Brokaw started to move on to another subject, McCain burst out "George Schultz!"

McCain "dismissed the sour poll numbers that show him trailing in his White House race against Democrat Barack Obama and said his campaign is 'doing fine.' " (WaPo)

He rejected the widespread consensus.... even among a host of influential conservatives.... that Sarah Palin is not qualified for the job and is hurting his campaign.... " 'I don't defend her. I praise her. She is exactly what Washington needs,' he said, and was equally dismissive of criticism about the Republican Party spending $150,000 on her wardrobe at high-end retailers.

But, as Judith Warner points out today about Palin and the status of women in politics in "No Ordinary Woman," (NYTimes) "...women will truly have arrived when the most mediocre among us will be able to do just as well as the most mediocre of men."

Based on that sad observation, it seems McCain-Palin are a matched set.

Vote! It matters!

Beatitudes Are In the Eye....

Christopher Hitchens is described by Michael Gerson as an "intellectually courageous and unfailingly kind" atheist.

In "An Atheist Responds" (WaPo), Hitchens rejects this description, and then unkindly skewers Gerson's recent column "What Atheists Can't Answer" as "insulting" with the "appalling insinuation that I would not know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided by a celestial dictatorship..."

Hitchens rejects the justifying premise of believers that even if religion is not metaphysically "true," at least it stands for morality. Hitchens points to the hypocrisy of religious teachings which have included the slaughter of other 'tribes,' the enslavement of the survivors, the mutilation of the genitals of children, the burning of witches...." you get the idea, it's a long list.

Hitchens issues a challenge to Gerson, he wants him to name "one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever."

Let me here interject that I have nothing against religion as long as it is allowed to remain in the personal spiritual realm. The spiritual can instruct and enrich our inner conversation.

The objection comes from what nonbelievers must endure from those who insist they must accept, or worship, some particular organized brand of supreme being.

The intellectually courageous holdouts will be subjected to self-satisfying judgments and mob shunning until they "believe".... at which time many purveyors of the God message abscond with worldly goods, tax dollars and personal freedoms.

It is supremely ironic that the practices of so many religious leaders and believer-pandering politicians are so.... well.... unChrist-like.

These actions speak louder than all of their words.