More on uber-Mormon robot Mitt Romney and his bid for the White House. From Maureen Dowd’s column yesterday:
The problem with Mitt is not his religion; it is his overeager policy shape-shifting. He did not give a brave speech, but a pandering one. Disguised as a courageous, Kennedyesque statement of principle, the talk was really just an attempt to compete with the evolution-disdaining, religion-baiting Huckabee and get Baptists to concede that Mormons are Christians.”
Dowd called up Under the Banner of Heaven author Jon Krakauer, who (quite correctly) had this to say:
J.F.K.’s speech was to reassure Americans that he wasn’t a religious fanatic,” Mr. Krakauer agreed. “Mitt’s was to tell evangelical Christians, ‘I’m a religious fanatic just like you.”
Yes, indeed. Like I’ve said, politics and religion are a silly thing to mix. However, here’s a little article about the other side of the fanatical coin on the recent “turn to atheism fad” led by purveyor of lame arguments and general mediocrity Sam Harris (you know, of The End of Faith “fame”) and the Atlantic Monthly’s own curmudgeon Christopher “big-Hitch” Hitchens (yes, the name Dawkins is mentioned too) over at Jewcy:
I’ve started to wonder whether this “New Atheism” isn’t more a fad than an authentic movement, one generating light without heat and sound without fury. Christopher Hitchens remarked that “high on the list of idiotic commonplace expressions is the old maxim that ‘it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.’” I’ll concede that it’s about as compelling a needlepoint pattern as “Footprints in the Sand,” but what does Hitchens mean by this? He goes on to explain, “You would only be bitching about the darkness if you didn’t have a candle to begin with. Talk about a false antithesis.”
In a rather unrelated (or not) note, Infinite Thought has a new blog whose sole focus is pictures of pigs. Very nice.
Perverse Egalitarianism 
this series of posts about mitt reminds me of our Utah adventure and our indecisiveness and lack of enthusiasm vis-a-vis violation of the sacred mormon temple [i.e. “open door” incident]
So close, but so far away! What happened to us, we had our opening, but blew it. We could have made it inside, but would we have made it out? One thing I thought was funny was when we were touring the grounds and that woman asked us if we knew who that statue of Joseph Smith was and we played dumb. Even better, her response: “look, right here is MORMON.”
Another nice exchange:
Shahar: “Are you an elder?”
Well-meaning Mormon: “Yes, that’s my title”
Asshole Shahar: “You must be very old”
Well meaning Mormon: no response
Our adventures, always fun.