The Truffle

John McCain, newly inducted into the Protestant Denomination of the Month Club, spent some time pandering to fundies talking faith with Beliefnet. McCain on religion and state: I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, "Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?" McCain on whether Muslims can be president: I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles.... personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith. But that doesn't mean that I'm sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president. I don't say that we would rule out under any circumstances someone of a different faith. I just would--I just feel that that's an important part of our qualifications to lead. Somewhere, bin Laden is smiling. Tha...

In 1994, the American Psychiatric Association published the fourth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Good little book editor that I am, I remember when at least two psychology books I was working on had to get a big do-over because of DSM-IV. Boy, was that fun. Especially changing the index. Hopefully, when the APA gets around to the DSM-V, some new mental disorders will be added. I'd like to suggest one for consideration: McCain's Disease. Now, I admit that I have no formal training in psychology or psychiatry. Heck, I don't even have a graduate degree. Nonetheless, we live in a country where it's ridiculously easy to set up shop as a therapist. Just ask those two chicks who wrote The Courage to Heal . Besides, as Bill Frist has proven, it's very easy to make a conclusive diagnosis just by watching someone on a TV screen. Therefore, I suggest that the APA consider McCain's Disease to be a legitimate psychological di...

Among other things, the sufferer begins to see and hear things that he wants to see and hear. When actual events don't fit his fantasy, he simply pretends that they are not there and did not happen. Case in point: The disease's namesake and his latest attempt to put a positive spin on Situation FUBAR. This time he's weighing in on the Iraqi shopping experience . A bunch of Iraqis, naturally, think he's nuts. Jolly Roger sums everything up.

During the advanced stage of McCain's disease, the sufferer has completely surrendered his dignity in an attempt to please people. Instead, he (and the sufferer is usually a "he") displays a strangely childlike delusion that reality is much different than it really is. See below for evidence.

Make no mistake--30 years ago, I might've been a Republican. No, not a Republican of the Tom Delay/Rick Santorum/Bob Ney variety, but rather, a Rockefeller Republican. A Millicent Fenwick-type Republican. (For those of you who don't know about this remarkable lady, she was a Congresswoman from New Jersey who was the real-life inspiration for Doonesbury's Lacey Davenport.) I can agree with the socially liberal, fiscally conservative types. Fiscal conservaatism, at least, is not a bad thing. Fiscal conservatism, as I understand it, means that you're cautious and you don't spend money you don't have. Fiscal conservatism is all but dead in today's GOP. Bush and his cast of idiots are like a bunch of spoiled Daddy's girls running amuck in Bloomingdale's waving credit cards. They are best described as "borrow and spend conservatives." Moderate Republicans are slowly dying out. Lincoln Chafee, a decent guy who was out of place in the GO...

This is just pathetic. How do you treat late-stage McCain's Disease? Especially when the sufferer is the disease's namesake?

For example, the sufferer begins to bend over backwards to please others. Example: blue-state Republican governors and mayors trying to woo the religious right wing. Uh, guys? That one's gonna be tough: As recently as 2002, when he was running for governor against Shannon OBrien, who supports abortion rights, Republican contender Mitt Romney told Massachusetts voters, "I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose." Romney's running mate said that "there isn't a dime of difference between Mitt Romney's position on choice and Shannon O'Brien('s)." But Tuesday, in announcing that he was running for president, Romney said, "I believe in the sanctity of human life." He was for abortion rights before he was against it, in other words. Let's not get started on Rudy, 'kay? Even Giuliani has started to imply that he would support judges who might not share his views on abortion. "I would appoint judges that inter...

So notes All Headline News talking about Romney's presidential run: Romney, 59, has long been considered a moderate, cast in the mold of his father, who, in the 1960s, skillfully bridged the gap between his party's economic conservatives and Michigan's powerful labor and Democratic leadership. However, on the stump for the GOP nomination, some critics have suggested that Romney has gone out of his way to court the religious right and other conservatives who have proven critical to the success of Republican candidates. "His rhetoric and his positions on (issues) like abortion, like gay rights, like stem cell research totally changed when he decided his focus should be on conservative votes across the country," Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore Dimasi, a Democrat, told CNN. Romney has said that he personally opposes abortion and supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. As governor, he vetoed a bill that would have permitted embryonic stem ...

The headline: "'America's mayor' praises Bush in state GOP speech" . Back in 2006, all the GOP candidates were trying to keep a safe distance from Dubya (fat lot of good that did). Not Rudy Giuliani. Not only is he proudly assuming the mantle of a loyal 30 percenter, he's trying to out-Bush Bush in the God soundbyte department. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, arguing that America is in desperate need of a Ronald Reagan-style optimistic vision, told California Republicans on Saturday that he wants to be a president who will "win the world for a set of ideas ... that I believe come from God." Oh, please! Rudy, everyone remembers you as mayor here in New York. You never talked about God in the entire 8 years you ran this city. The closest you came to that old-time religion talk was when you went bonkers over a portrait of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant poop. Since when did you start mentioning the "G" word as a way o...