From RR

• The madmen did well. Madmen being ad-men. In advertising terms, Bush was a ‘brand collapse’ whereas Obama, with his toothpaste-advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. And: In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. Glad I stayed home.
• A statist not a socialist.
• Goodbye and good riddance, American century. Hooray for Andrew Bacevich, last year an Obamacon with honour. (I gave that a go two years before the Obamenon and found it wanting — voted a Dem ticket and got... nothing.)
• Spanish judge opens Guantánamo investigation.
• Legalise it. NH Senate passes medical-marijuana bill.
• Tancredo’s Know-Nothing rantfest.
• Of course the racist right blame the Mexicans for swine flu. BTW the killer Spanish influenza in 1918 was nothing really to do with España; the Spanish press ignored a news blackout and gave it a lot of coverage. BTW here’s a saint to pray for you during this scare. You can see a re-enactment of a New York street procession for him in The Godfather, Part II (more). Take that, ‘Mass and office’ and the cadence, and its orthodoxy in spite of itself, if nothing else of the BCP, throw them in a blender and you get more or less my religion. (Which works in more than one rite or language.)
• DNA studies tie genetic variations to autism. One step up from knowing it’s genetic. BTW to see how some people on the spectrum thrive check out TV’s ‘Bones’. She’s sexy and successful and if she doesn’t have AS I’ll eat my hat. (She doesn’t officially but the actress says she and the writers know about the spectrum and incorporate that into the character.)
• Experts: Internet running out of bandwidth.
• On Facebook. Warning: language. Much of what he’s describing is not bad. I like the interaction but prefer home pages and blogs (also interactive thanks to comments) where you can show off HTML skills and artistic talent to cookie-cutter social-networking pages that don’t necessarily work (at home I get a blank page for FB most of the time). Newsgroups and message boards seem to be going the way of the dodo and the BBS.
• The fight for the survival of free speech.
• Why the Second Amendment should matter to those who dislike guns. Because if one constitutional right can be taken away by majority rule, they all can be.
• What if instead of the Nuremberg trials there was only a truth commission?
• The Specter diversion. Old Arlen, who has been obediently toting Establishment water since he devised the “single bullet theory” for the Warren Commission (one of the first great instances of “magical realism” in modern fiction).
• Why conservatives ought to be against torture.

Labels: film, history, libertarianism, neurodiversity, politics, television, the Catholic faith, the Internet