Saturday, November 29, 2008

Wouldn't It Be Pretty to Think So

It doesn't take much more than a look at Kentucky politicians to understand how Sen. Mitch McComical could be re-elected in that state when many other GOP incumbents were dropping like flies and some GOPS got so desperate they labeled themselves "Obamists." The Blue Grass State's Rep. Tom Riner, who happens to have launched his bid for state office from the pulpit of a Southern Baptist church, recently voiced concern over a Homeland Security mission statement and website because neither mentioned God.

I kid you not! It seems that the Rev.-Rep. Riner was joined in disapproval of the department's laxity in divine attribution by Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who according to a news wire, "regularly credited God in his annual reports." Regularly credit "God" for what? Once again, we see the rising ugly head of post hoc reasoning: "We haven't had any terrorist attacks in Kentucky [the United States] since 9/11, so obviously it is God's divine protection, right?" Wrong. No result can be attributed to a supernatural cause, No subsequent event, without more, can be made to "explain" an unknown cause.

Curbing terrorism is supposed to be the one thing George W. Bush did "right": he kept us from being bombed or shot after 9/11. Candidates ran on such claims in 2004 and 2006. By 2008, the electorate finally figured out that GOP fearmongering had hoodwinked them. The truth may be entirely different; for one thing, terrorist cells are models of patience. They await a time when optimum conditions prevail. Sure, we have tightened security. But we aren't that much safer than we were five years ago.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

An Immodest Proposal

I have come up to the perfect solution to the over-commercialization of Christmas. Why not change the date to the week following Easter? That way, you could do a birth-death-resurrection festival and Santa Claus, too. Merchants could indulge in an orgy of selling, and the religious could suffer and repent to their hearts' content.