McCain really annoyed me last night, and there are a few things I have to mention now.

First of all, his gripe about the $3 million “overhead projector” simply marks him as an idiot — and not just an ignorant idiot, but the kind of idiot who ignores readily available evidence. What he is dismissing is a tool for science education. Take a look at what the sky projector looks like — your teacher didn’t have one of those babies to flash her transparencies up in the classroom. And while you’re there, you can always donate to the Adler Planetarium. The other thing McCain leaves out of his complaint is that the projector was not funded, and they’re still hurting for a replacement.

The other trumped-up lie and pseudo-scandal that irritates me is the ACORN mess. ACORN is an organization that works to help the poor, which of course makes it about as anti-Republican as you can get. They have had some incidents of attempted fraud, but the fraud was against ACORN itself, with workers attempting to cheat to get paid for submitting falsified registrations. Furthermore, it was ACORN itself that caught these fake registrations and notified government agencies.

What the ACORN nonsense is all about is a preemptive attempt by the Republican party to cast doubt on the election. I predict we’ll hear much more about this if Obama wins…while the Diebold bias will be ignored, and the unfair policy of using the most unreliable voting machines in the poorest districts will continue.

OK, this is the kind of thing that just pisses me off: the tendency for some liberals to go off all loopy and credulous. The perfect example is on Salon right now—an article that goes on at ridiculous length about the judgments of a physiognomist, a ditz who derives McCain’s economic policy from the shape of his nostrils, and Obama’s idealism from the breadth of his forehead. This is insane, and irritating, and stupid.

The one thing I dread with a Democratic victory is the ascendancy of navel-gazing crystal-healing New Age loons, without a shred of critical thinking.

Seed and Scientists and Engineers for America are teaming up to promote a youtube challenge — they are collecting videos of scientists stating who they are voting for in the coming election. The first one up is Marty Chalfie, winner of the Nobel in Chemistry this year. Guess who he thinks should be president?

I suspect that the scientific establishment will be showing a profound liberal bias this year, largely because the scientific establishment tends to be pro-reality.

You don’t have to be a Nobelist — if you’re a scientist, record a youtube video of yourself, tag it with “aVoteForScience”, and you too can contribute.

On politics, Hitchens and I rarely agree…but this time he and I are singing in harmony. Obama is not a perfect candidate by any means, but McCain/Palin are a national disgrace, and there’s only one way rational people can vote.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

Throw all the rascals out, but be prepared to have to work hard to prod the Democrats into doing anything constructive with a majority.

I’m hanging out in the airport in Springfield, Missouri, and of course CNN is blaring on all the televisions. As is typical, it’s just one news story repeated and rehashed and gnawed over endlessly, but what is surprising is what the story is: John McCain is running a filthy, dirty, racist, hate-mongering campaign. Revere has a fine post pointing out the McCain Doctrine: all’s fair if it gets him elected.

Heck, you ought to read all of Revere’s posts in the Annals of McCain-Palin. And once you’ve felt enough disgust at this man, lighten it up with the latest Freethinker Sunday Sermonette, which this time around is an excellent example of satire.