Brains, Reluctantly

[elfs]

Hillary Forth speaks Truth!

"We gave up on ever finding an audience a long time ago. Boy, did that free us up creatively!"

A sweet tale of man-on-man love among Catholic priests

Andrew Sullivan brings us a tale of Cardinal Newman's beatification, a man who insisted on being buried with his true (and apparently celibate) love, Ambrose St. John. Along with his beatification, the church sought to separate Newman from his beloved, but Newman, it seems, has had one final laugh.

"What if I'm running on corrupt hardware?"

Eliezer Yudkowsky brings me another mind-blowing essay in which he asks us to contemplate that our own moral values are questionable because we are running on corrupting hardware. Power corrupts because we're evolutionarily inclined to see power as a justifying reward.

A Buckley at National Review no more.

Christopher Buckley, apparently taking heat for his endorsement of Obama, has noisily been pushed out of The Corner. Given just how crazed The Corner has become, it's good to see a decent and thinking Conservative take himself elsewhere.

John McCain brags about accepting money from people who fund a terrorist!

Take a look at this list. Look at the second entry on this list. See that? That's Leonore Annenberg, who also funded William Ayers' education reform project in Chicago.

Hey, it's no less tenuous an assertion than the ones McCain's surrogates are saying about Obama.

NY Times "Checkpoint" covers Obama and ACORN

It's a pretty solid article on what Obama did for ACORN, and what it means for this campaign. What's not covered is John McCain's fulsome praise for ACORN just two years ago.

Frank Gaffney says goodby to polite society with an attack on Obama

Gaffney, normally not a whackjob, goes over the top in a Washington Times column entitled "The Jihadist Vote" in which he asserts that Obama is a Muslim, and is not an American citizen, has been illegally taking money from unnamed "middle east" sources, and ultimately looks forward to "global theocratic rule under Sharia law." Talk about your Manchurian candidate.

David Weigel takes his claims to the woodshed.

David Horsey lampoons the conspiracy theorists.

Oh, just click on it. It's a political cartoon. A good'un.

The Hitch endorses Obama!

Christopher Hitchens: "The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: 'What does he take me for?' Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin."

Sarah Palin says she's got nothing to lose.

While talking to Rush Limbaugh, Palin said she's got nothing to lose by going as negative as she has, and the mainstream media has tried to shut her up. Actually, the whole of the media, myself included, would like to get her to actually face the press. Gotta wonder if she went to Rush because even Hannity, as empty a suit as ever there was one, has lost his patience with her.

McCain: "If I bring up Ayers at the debate, it'll be Obama's fault!"

McCain claimed that he didn't bring it up in the last debate because "it just never came up." Uh-huh. Let's see if he brings it up tonight. If he doesn't, he's a coward. If he does, I guarantee you that the Obama team has a ready rejoinder.

Comments

[solarbird]

OMG Gaffney's involved (and linking to) Family Security Matters! Remember them? I'm sure you remember them. They're the ones who published (and then "disappeared") an article calling for President Bush to perform a coup d'etat and disband Congress. Good times!

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Grief, I hadn't noticed that. I had read Gaffney's article all the way through, but didn't follow any of his "links" (notice they're not really links; he's making it hard to follow them). I do remember Atkinson's letter; in fact, it actually came across my desk recently, in a laugh-out-loud article about Bush's current ratings and the dreams of "president for life," but I can't find it now.

Wow, wingnuttery²!

I'm not sure whether you're talking about Atkinson's original article or the new one referencing it

[solarbird]

I linked in that post to a couple of archives of Atkinson's column, one of which I host as a jpg on my own server. Just in case anybody wants to read it.

Re: I'm not sure whether you're talking about Atkinson's original article or the new one referencing

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Mr. Atkinson has a website (http://ourcivilisation.com/). The website is a true "off the deep end" rant about how civilization is coming to an end, and if only we were truly and deeply moral, we'd somehow live in social harmony and all be fabulously wealthy!

Re: I'm not sure whether you're talking about Atkinson's original article or the new one referencing

[solarbird]

Well, "truly and deeply moral," meaning authoritarian, oppressing women in all fields as natural inferiours, and, oh, by the way, HIV doesn't cause AIDS, and in fact doesn't even exist.

This guy's monkeysphere is truly disturbing.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Nitpick: The Gaffney article was in the Washington Times, not the WP. The Post's editorial section isn't that crazy.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Fixed, thanks. Typing too fast this morning.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

your comment on Buckley reminds me of a point where i lived and worked in Burlington, Vermont, and just up the street from me, Jim Jeffords made his announcement that he was leaving the GOP and declaring himself independent, thus preventing a full GOP majority for another two years.

He was an Old School moderate conservative, and had watched the GOP go careening down the path the Neocons had charted, and didn't want any part of it.

Good for Buckley. Patriotism isn't blind obedience, it's standing up and saying what you think is best for your country, even if it's not popular. ESPECIALLY when it's not popular.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

Oh, we had one ULTRA-HARD-CORE REPUBLICAN in the lab i worked at back then. When i asked what he thought of this, he said Jeffords "Was a traitor."

[radarrider.livejournal.com]

John McCain brags about accepting money from people who fund a terrorist!

The list is of former ambassadors who have endorsed McCain. It says nothing about accepting money from them.

Hey, it's no less tenuous an assertion than the ones McCain's surrogates are saying about Obama.

Quite correct. It is far more tenuous.