Links: Intermarriage, Atheism, Ron Paul

1. Orthodox Rabbi turned secular humanist defends interfaith marriages.
2. Ask Metafilter: "Religion fulfills certain psychological needs. How do non-believers manage without it?"
3. Ron Paul: "It's a theory, the theory of evolution, and I don't accept it as a theory."

Update: Troops donate more to Obama than to any other candidate, Democratic or Republican

In the previous post, I pointed out that people "affiliated with the military" donated most to the two leading anti-war candidates, Paul and Obama. As it turns out, when you narrow the people "affiliated with the military" to actual "uniformed service members," Obama is the clear winner, with $27,000! A distant second is Paul, with $19,250, followed closely by McCain, with $18,600.

These must be Rush Limbaugh's "phony soldiers." Why do the troops hate our troops so much??

What do our troops know that Bush's 30% does not?

The few people who continue to support the Iraq war and claim that we're finally turning things around ("this time we mean it!") point frequently to anecdotes from soldiers over there who are privy to more information than we are. Blog-neighbor Mark has pointed to troop reenlistment rates as a proxy for troop morale as a proxy for evidence that things are going well, presumably because less indirect evidence is difficult to find.

I wonder what they'll make of this?

From January through September, donors affiliated with the military gave more contributions to Republican antiwar candidate Ron Paul than to anyone else. Coming in second place? Democratic antiwar candidate Barack Obama. Coming in third is John McCain, defender of the status quo.

When I said "I wonder..." above, I was just kidding, of course. This isn't going to change anybody's mind. All the Bush 30% have left is ad hoc reasoning. I'm sure that they'll find evidence that the war is going well in the number of bottles of water shipped to Iraq every week or something.*



* I recognize that violence has declined somewhat, at least by certain metrics. It's whether the surge is working politically that I'm referring to, i.e. whether we are getting any closer to leaving behind a successful state.