Before Tommy1733 (who seems to be a very nice guy, for what that's worth) becomes the only voice of religion in this exchange, I would like to point out that faith is only one element of religion, and not necessarily the most important one. For my money, faith is fine so long as you (a) don't try to impose yours on others, (b) don't start killing people over it, (c) don't use your own faith as a "reason" for ignoring what's going on in the world (cf the evil coal company exec who is currently using his version of God to justify his globally warming ways), and (d) don't use your own faith (or aversion to faith) as an excuse for hiring, firing, liking, disliking, judging, or discriminating for or against other people. "Live and let live" is the only article of faith that I find worth defending.

As for religion not being the same thing as faith: there is also practice, which can be (often/usually is) both social and meditative, either in addition to or quite aside from any component of faith. I doubt that anyone has made any effort to estimate how many religious practitioners actually believe any or all tenets of their religion's dogmas. The number of atheists in the pews is, I suspect, one of the dirty little secrets of American religion--or at least, so it would be taken here, especially by Christians. There are, in fact, many religions that do not place any particular emphasis on faith. This might be a hard concept to process for people who have grown up in the US, with its Protestant-inspired "faith-based" definition of religion, but perhaps people from other countries -- or from other, non-Protestant/non-Christian religions within the US -- will understand what I mean.

I know what I'm talking about here, both as an anthropologist who has studied for the past 25 years or so how other people practice religion, and as someone who lives what I am talking about. In terms of belief, I am as much an atheist as anyone else who is participating in this exchange. The idea that an individual personality could have created every atom and eddy in the vast expanse of the universe, from the billions upon billions of galaxies at one end of the telescope, to the trillions of cells in every human at the other end, is simply ridiculous. Contrary to faith-based religious people, I find the randomness of actual existence comforting, far more so than the idea of a dictatorial, impossibly all-power deity. Yet I go to services and, yes, pray and sing to the nonexistent god every seven days, and I find comfort and solace in my practice of religion. As ol' Walt sang a century and a half ago: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.) Can God-Man say the same?

(BTW, back to Rubin Bolling: thanks for another great comic treat!)

On the one hand, Glenn's argument is quite persuasive, especially to those of us who remember the rabid snarling of the anti-Clinton Republicans with the active participation the "liberal" media. (The NYT and Washington Post still haven't forgiven Clinton for not following their editorial opinions and resigning in disgrace for being such a yucky, un-yuppie person.)

On the other hand, it is pretty hard to ignore the all-white hordes of Beckers and Baggers who wandered the Washington Mall with their barely disguised anti-black, anti-Obama posters yesterday.

On the other hand, Maureen Dowd's opinion piece today, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13dowd.html, argues that opposition to Obama is different in both kind and intensity from the anti-Clintonism of our recent past, and that the difference is race. Even though she has "been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer... had much to do with race," and has "tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids," she now sees that the right-wing crazy hatred is all really about race, and that it is much, much worse than it has ever been in the history of the Republic.

On the other hand, Dowd is unusually logical and persuasive in this particular essay.

On the other hand -- Maureen Dowd. Maureen Dowd.

Maybe Dowd's right about this, but based on her record, what are the odds?

A little too simple, if you ask me.

Do a little research (which I hear is easy to do on teh internets) and you will uncover the real plot:

1) freeze brain,

2) wait 16 years,

3) plant false "birth" notices in Hawaiian newspapers,

4) spirit an unwitting 18-year-old newlywed mother-to-be out of Hawaii so that she can give birth 12,000 miles away in Mombassa, Tanzania (several months before it becomes Mombassa, Kenya, but don't tell that to the people who discover genuine birth certificates there),

5) transplant brain into infant,

6) fly mother and child to Honolulu on a non-existent Kenya-Hawaii jet,

and 7) wait for results! Brilliant!

(Footnote: steps 3, 4, and 6 are essential to the total plot, because otherwise, it just wouldn't be quite diabolical enough.)