Screen capture of DrudgeReport, 2:10pm MST:
The final damage? DJIA down 19.34 points, Nasdaq down 30.74 points, S&P500 down 6.10 points.
My guess is that the gains for Bush’s popularity jump will be about as fleeting.
Oh yeah, the dollar fell to new lows today against the Euro, and oil prices rose. Money talks, and bullshit walks.
NRO, for the ignorant, is National Review Online, a right-wing movement rag started by William F. Buckley, someone I have some respect for (even if I don’t agree with many of his ideas), but has, for the last few years, basically become a Republican National Committee fax-rewriting service. At any rate, they have a blog called “The Corner“, which I read a few times a week, mostly just to marvel at what passes for “serious” conservative thought these days.
What have I been marveling at? Well, there’s Jonah Goldberg, demon-offspring of Lucianne Goldberg, Linda Tripp’s adviser. Goldberg seems to have launched into the conservative-opinionatin’ bidness solely on this connection; he has no long-term involvement with the conservative press, but is more pleasant on the eyes than his hideous mother, which is most likely why he gets face time on CNN. Anyway, Goldberg recently spent a few weeks researching and writing about why he hates Vermont so much. I’m not kidding. Another columnist there, John Derbyshire, once called for Chelsea Clinton to be sterilized to keep the Clintons from perpetuating their genes. Again, I’m not kidding.
Why do I read NRO? Well, I find them amusing for one. I’m also one of those “know thine enemy” types. In order to effectively debate these numbskulls, you need to know what makes them tick. Reading NRO and the Corner is sorta like when J-Lo enters the killers head in “The Cell”, except instead of being populated with nightmarishly beautiful sets, everyone is wearing dockers, drinking bud light and going to bed at 11pm.
I was quite tickled today then to see a few parodies of NRO. Even if you haven’t ever subjected yourself to the pleasures of the Corner, you’d still find these funny.
First off Ted Barlow was leaked today’s agenda for the NRO Cruise. Favorite agenda item:
11:00 (Deck 1): Moonlight buffet
Moonlight toppling of butter statue of Saddam Hussein
Fun stuff.
Secondly, we have a brilliant parody of the Corner from Andrew Northrup, entitled “The Cornier“. Names have been changed to protect the guily (and prevent a lawsuit from the notoriously thin-skinned right).
This morning I was listening to an NPR story about Gene Robinson being confirmed as the New Hampshire Bishop of the Episcopalian Church. During his confirmation rite, they asked if anyone had any reservations. Four people out of 3000 stepped forward to speak for about 10 minutes. The first man apparently started his tirade with a graphic description of gay sex.
This is really their beef (no pun intended) isn’t it? It’s not the fact that same-sex couples are capable of feeling just as much love for one another as heterosexual couples. It’s not the fact that, biologically, same-sex couples can’t reproduce (a big concern for any organized religion it seems). It’s not the fact that gay folks might hold hands in public. It’s the fact that, whenever somebody says “homosexual”, these prudes immediately think of men fucking. If they tell you it’s because of the bible’s so-called prohibitions against homosexuality, they’re lying. Plain and simple. It’s the thought of men having sex with other men that gets their goat. While googling the subject of homosexuality and the bible, I ran across an interesting statement:
Persons committing homosexual acts are to be executed. This is the unambiguous command of scripture. Whatever the rationale for their formulation, however, the texts leave no room for maneuvering. Persons committing homosexual acts are to be executed. This is the unambiguous command of scripture. The meaning is clear: anyone who wishes to base his or her beliefs on the witness of the Old Testament must be completely consistent and demand the death penalty for everyone who performs homosexual acts. (That may seem extreme, but there are actually some “Christians” urging this very thing today.) It is unlikely that any American court will ever again condemn a homosexual to death, even though Scripture clearly commands it.
Yet despite this rather explicit call to arms to execute homosexuals, you see so-called Christians “tolerating” homosexuals by trying to “cure” them (remember that “recovering gay fellow” who got caught cruising the gay bars after supposedly reforming and “being healed”?).
Say what you will about the morality of homosexuality, using the bible to justify one’s homophobia is selective reading, plain and simple. I guess I identify more with this assertion:
Liberal Christian theologians tend to interpret the Bible as having been written by authors who were intent on promoting their own religious and spiritual beliefs. The writers lived in a pre-scientific age, which treated slavery, genocide, mass murder, and the oppression of women as acceptable.
In other words, the prohibition against homosexuality is as antiquated as the moral justifications for slavery. They are products of a by-gone era. To the prudes of the world I say: evolve or die.