John McCain prepares to feast on the blood of an innocent.

Religious fundamentalists will be the end of this country.

“I can’t imagine having a president of the United States named president OBAMA. I really have a problem with that, and I am not the only one”

“Because…that means what to you…”

“(pauses and stares into the distance, thinking. Nigger raghead-cameljockey) His background…”

Recently, a Mormon man who attended Brigham Young University had his diploma revoked, after being excommunicated from the church. The grounds for his excommunication were supposedly his failure to tithe and “lapse[s] in other religious obligations,” but there is reasonable suspicion that the revocation was a response to a calendar of shirtless Mormon missionaries he published.

Regardless of whether it was for not tithing, or publishing a tasteless calendar depicting sacred Mormon flesh, it is apparent that earning a degree at BYU is not strictly dependent on academic performance, as it is in other Universities. On the contrary, the decision to deny him the diploma hinged crucially on his excommunication from the church.

I think this evidence requires us to abandon the pretense that BYU is an academic institution at all, and that their diplomas are proof of scholastic aptitude, as long as a prerequisite for earning one is religious devotion and conformity.

Not to say that Barack Obama’s life is anything like mine, or that leading the life of an ascetic should be required of presidential candidates, but can we at least stop pretending that the republican ticket is anything but elitist this time around?