aww, da poor POOR widdle Baby war-vetwan, and Barebac-- I mean, brokebac-- I mean saddleback.

All potential respect for John McCain: Gone.

Valid assertion: John McCain wasn't actually in a "cone of silence" during the first thirty minutes of the saddleback forum. Therefor, it's probable that he had prior access to the questions.

McCain's fallacious response: That's impossible, he was in his motorcade on the way to the event! The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous!
Red Herring, appeal to pity, appeal to emotions,

Valid assertion: John McCain is uncertain as to how many housing properties he actually owns. Very interesting. Very few Americans have this problem.

McCain's fallacious response: "This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War. "Obama lives in a frickin' mansion!"
Appeal to pity, appeal to emotions, ad hominem tu quoque.

Do you see how this works? Somehow McCain, a war veteran, is now incapable of lying and it excuses him from having ridiculous brain-farts over something that should be common knowledge, like 1+3 = 4! Did I mention that he was not only a veteran, but a POW... so it's even LESS likely that his campaign is lying. These arguments are fundamentally flawed.

Using inductive reasoning, the probability is there: It IS pretty probable that someone from McCain's campaign notified the candidate of the questions he'd be hearing beforehand. This is NOT flawed reporting from NBC. So that's the first fallacy: just because McCain was in his motorcade does not make it any less likely that he received the questions on the way. And his campaign has avoided that question quite a bit. And then there's this POW bullshit. alright grandpa, we know you were in the w-- yes, you were in the war, and it SUCKED! Yeah, we've heard it already. You've told that story alr-- GRANDPA PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP, THIS IS GETTING OLD.

Of course, I never told my grandpa that, because he actually had interesting things to talk about.

This whole Saddleback forum was a complete mistake anyway. After viewing it myself, the entire thing was just a circus set up by the evangelicals. Obama never had a chance there. His responses were intellectual musings. McCain's were one-sentence responses, preaching to the choir. They were a black and white interpretation as to how the world is supposed to work. You know, simple things that the evangelicals could digest straight from the pages from the bible. I, for one, am not surprised that the polls show Obama slipping. Whether or not I give them credence is another thing altogether.

So yeah, McCain is a fuckoff who will not be getting my vote, and I now vehemently oppose him and his campaign, for his blatant dishonesty, misdirection, and the disgraceful misuse of his POW status during vietnam.

In the words of Keith Olbermann: Mr. McCain-- GROW UP!

Faith Healing is SICK

Someone once told me that it doesn't matter what people believe in their own personal lives, as long as they're happy. I thought it was a powerful statement, and I know that, to a considerable degree, what other people hold as faith does not directly effect my life. I accept others' beliefs, though I usually groan to see varying degrees of delusion eating the life out of many people in this world. To me, it's like watching someone being cheated out of money right before my eyes, without that someone realizing it. Except in this situation, it's not money, it is the time we have left on this earth. But hey, they're happy, and who am I to interfere. They'll only fall asleep one day and never wake up from that again. I'm not affected.

That doesn't mean that I don't get REALLY fucking pissed off when I see a large mass of people being duped of life and money when they follow some creepy fuck with a bad accent around the globe so that they can help him make money in exchange for "miracle "

Seriously, I thought this fucker was dead.

http://www.peterpopoff.org/

But no, he's back up, still cheating people out of their time and money, and still living a lavish life through selling "miracles." Seriously, miracle water, miracle bread, miracle mana, divine transaction, or however the hell he puts it. This guy thrives off of the testimonials of the few people who mysteriously received checks in the mail for some outrageous amount. Considering this guy's popularity, there ought to be windfalls all throughout the U.S. where people mysteriously receive sums of $100,000 in their mailboxes. This is not the case however. I think that God is the last person we have to blame for inflation, unless we take George Bush's statement that God guided him to the whitehouse seriously.

This all angers me so much because I cannot stand to see others suffering. So it's even worse when I see someone else profiting off of others' sometimes life-threatening ailments and suffering. Worse still when the profiteer is lying to make money. And even worse when he's using 'faith' as a base for his profitable lies. These are very low individuals. This guy is saying that if you eat this miracle mana bread shit that he personally prepared, that you will start to get checks in the mail worth several tens of thousands of dollars. He is saying that he 'divinely' stopped cholera, typhoid, and other water-borne diseases by giving these African children 'miracle straws.' which are really just simplified water filters, and probably wouldn't last more than a few weeks at best.

Sorry, but faith healing is a moral abhorrition. It wouldn't be so bad if all of these guys were just writing checks and sending them off, but that is simply not the case. These people are making personal profit off of it. This Popoff guy drives a $100,000 car, lives in a multi-million dollar house, and probably bought his multi-million dollar family. It's ludicrous, and these are the types of people worthy of being locked up in a capsule and subsequently launched in the general direction of the sun. Wouldn't that be morally abhorrent? Maybe, but it's one less asshole on this planet who bathes luxuriously amidst other people's suffering.

Anybody, be they Theists, Agnostics or Atheists should be skeptical of a claim such as this "with a pledge of $1000 I will prey on -- err, excuse me, pray for you and you will come across mountains of success! Oh yeah, and your cancer will be gone. You have cancer right?" I've come across too many of these people in my research, and it really has got to end. I don't know how, but it just has to.

Someone needs to line Benny Hinn, Peter Popoff, Pat Robertson, and Uri Gellar for good maesure and release 10,000 sex-starved monkeys on them infected with that virus from "I Am Legend" Then nuke the general area. Maybe God will be omnipresent enough to cure all of those monkeys, and have them sing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" as a perfect baritone choir while the fucktard televangelists quietly get away. Hey, if it happened that way, that would be MORE than enough to make me believe in god.

Until then, the only thing Peter Jackoff would expect from me is a box of leftover "Santorum" remnants from FC after all has been said and (proverbially) done.

Anyway, just thought I'd post that rant.