My arrogant opinions about politics, culture, science fiction, and whatever else I feel like talking about.

Disappointed

        I'm disappointed in Hillary Clinton.

        I had some real hopes for her.  I thought she might have some character, besides the naked ambition.

        Wrong.

Posted by: saintonge at 17:12 | link | comments

Wishy-Washy Time

        In my last post, Moron Time, I pointed out the stupidity of the Edwards campaign in hiring a pair of foul-mouthed bigot bloggers without reading what they'd previously posted.  Today, one of them "resigned" from the Edwards campaign.

        Of course, it's all the fault of the evil right wingers, who called attention to what she said.  She will now retaliate, by posting more hate speech, and being mostly ignored.  To the extent she isn't ignored, she'll be an embarrassment to Democrats in general, and Edwards in particular.

        I do love it when a plan comes together.

Posted by: saintonge at 22:23 | link | comments (1)
politics, internet, democrats, elections, stupidity springs eternal

Moron Time

        As you probably know, the Edwards campaign hired a couple of Lefty bigot bloggers for his campaign.  This led some Catholics to call for the two to be fired.  Edwards has decided he won't fire them.

        What's hilarious, though, is how this mess came about:

        Edwards spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said the campaign was aware that Marcotte and McEwan, like many bloggers, had written provocative postings on their personal sites.  But the campaign had not read them all and had not seen the postings criticizing the church until Donohue put out a statement Tuesday, Palmieri said.

        So, the Edwards campaign hires people to be their public face without knowing anything important about them.  Can you say "Not ready for primetime, kiddies?

        What a bunch of maroons.

        Note also that Edwards has also said such language "won't be tolerated," but that he believes the bloggers when they said they didn't intend to offend anyone.  Who's dumb enough to believe that?  And he won't tolerate them doing it again, which means he's censoring them.  I can't wait to see how this works out.

        Definitely morons at the Edwards for President Campaign.

Posted by: saintonge at 14:30 | link | comments

A Look at the Dishonest Mind and Rancid Heart of a Totalitarian

        For a look at something truly bone-chilling and utterly disgusting, I can think of nothing "better" than this piece from the Los Angeles Dog Trainer.  (Hat tip: James Taranto).  It is by Richard Dawkins, noted liar about evolution, and preacher of the religion of atheism (by the way, did it ever occur to you that people who make a religion of atheism have missed the point?).  It's worth reading and contemplating.

        Dawkins begins with the usual leftist bromides that substitute for thought among such cattle:

        His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces.

        And Dawkins knows this how?

        This was an opportunity to set a good example of civilized behavior in dealing with a barbarically uncivilized man.

        The death penalty is "uncivilized."  Hold that thought, we'll come back to it.

        In any case, revenge is an ignoble motive.  If President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.

        By implication, he'd like to see Bush and Blair punished for their "crimes," but not out of revenge for what was done to him.  What is his motive for wanting them punished?  Hold that thought too. We now get to Dawkins's real point:

        But I want to add another and less obvious objection: Hussein's mind would have been a unique resource for historical, political and psychological research, a resource that is now forever unavailable to scholars.

        Imagine that some science-fiction equivalent of Simon Wiesenthal built a time machine, traveled back to 1945 and returned to the present with a manacled Adolf Hitler. What should we do with him? Execute him? No, a thousand times no. Historians squabbling over exactly what happened in the Third Reich and World War II would never forgive us for destroying the central witness to all the inside stories, and one of the pivotal influences on 20th century history. Psychologists, struggling to understand how an individual human being could be so evil and so devastatingly effective at persuading others to join him, would give their eyeteeth for such a rich research subject.

        Kill Hitler? You would have to be mad to do so. Yet that is undoubtedly what we would have done if he hadn't killed himself in 1945. Hussein is not in the same league as Hitler, but, nevertheless, in a small way his execution represents a wanton and vandalistic destruction of important research data.

        He should have been locked up, by all means.  Kept him in jail for the rest of his life, to be sure.  But to execute him was irresponsible.  Hussein could have provided irreplaceable help to future historians of the Iran-Iraq war, of the invasion of Kuwait and of the subsequent era of sanctions culminating in the invasion.  Uniquely privileged evidence on the American government's enthusiastic arming of Hussein in the 1980s is now snuffed out at the tug of a rope (no doubt to the relief of Donald Rumsfeld and other guilty parties; it is surely no accident that the trial of Hussein neglected those of his crimes that might — no, would — have implicated them).

        Let's note in passing, but otherwise leave aside, the fear of most Iraqis that Saddam left alive would mean he'd one day take power again, while Saddam executed for murder will help the causes of peace, democracy, and rule of law in the Muslim world.  Ditto the objections that Saddam would have lied about his motives for his acts, and that the researchers wouldn't have been able to come to any useful conclusions (especially dishonest snake-oil peddlers like Dawkins, who come to their conclusions without bothering with evidence.  The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that from 1973 till 1990, prior to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, 57% of all arms sold to him were sold by the now defunct USSR [OOH!  I love to type "now defunct USSR!"  OOH!]; that 80% of Saddam's arms came from the four Communist regimes of the USSR, Red China, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; that the great bastion of international morality, France, sold Saddam 13% of his armaments; that the U.S.A. sold Saddam less than 1.5% percent of his weaponry.  And SIPRI published this information four years ago at least.  This isn't the first time Dawkins has just made shit up.)

        No, let us ignore all that, and just look at the proposal.  Notice that while Dawkins does mention "evil" from time to time, he doesn't give you any guidelines as to what he considers evil.  This might not be important in other contexts, but Dawkins's lumping of Saddam with Hitler, and his implication that arming Saddam was also a crime, combined with his sneer at Bush and Blair as war criminals is rather intriguing.  Was it a crime to either help or hinder Saddam's ambitions in any way?  Should he have been allowed to conquer Kuwait?  I can't figure out what behavior Dawkins finds morally objectionable, let alone why he considers it wrong.

        Then there's a couple of words that aren't in Dawkins's op-ed: "justice," and "desert."  Saddam should be "studied," like a rat in a cage, says Dawkins.  Apparently it isn't "barbaric," "uncivilized," or "ignoble" to strip Saddam of his humanity, to make him a means to an end, to reduce him to the status of lab rat.  Dr. Mengele would presumably have agreed.  For Iraqis to gratify their thirst for vengeance against someone who terrorized and murdered them so long is bad, for Dawkins and other alleged scientists to gratify their curiosity about Saddam is just fine.  I wonder what Saddam would have said about that?  And what tools would have been acceptable for "studying" Saddam?  If thumbscrews made him more liable to talk, would they have been allowed?  What about a lobotomy?  How about the other high members of Saddam's regime, should they have been put in laboratories as well?

        This is what's truly sickening and scary about Dawkins and those like him.  It never occurs to Dawkins that their might be moral objections to using other human beings as means to his desired ends.  And with his rather loose sense of "morality," there's nothing to stand in the way of starting with a mass murderer like Saddam, and ending with any ordinary person — or millions of ordinary persons.  In that, Dawkins is exactly like Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler.

Posted by: saintonge at 03:49 | link | comments

Go Aussies!

        Showing the flag Down Under.

        A great people who make great allies.

Posted by: saintonge at 10:45 | link | comments

Photo of Another Horrible Thing

        You may need to bleach your visual cortex after viewing this.

Posted by: saintonge at 09:50 | link | comments

Photo of a Horrible Thing

        It can be found here.

Posted by: saintonge at 09:40 | link | comments

Serious News

        Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows will be published July 21st.  Brendan Loy and others will be taking the bar exam on July 24 & 25th.  Obviously, J. K. Rowling is trying to sabotage the U.S. bar exams.

        And yet, the MSM ignores important stories like this, and reports on people like Biden.  What's wrong with these people?!

Posted by: saintonge at 08:42 | link | comments
books, msm, and now for somthng compltly dif

John Birmingham's FINAL IMPACT

        If you're interested, I have a book review up at my other blog.

Posted by: saintonge at 11:57 | link | comments
books, and now for somthng compltly dif

Trivia and Stupidity

        We're living in uninteresting times, at least in the short run.

        What are the two big stories of the last few days?  #1, Joe Biden said something stupid.  #2 Boston panicked over a light board.

        Joe Biden has been saying stupid things for a long time.  They shot down his presidential prospects in 1988.  Biden has a big reputation in the MSM because he's a liberal, but as a President he'd rank down there with Warren Gamaliel Harding and Millard Fillmore.

        As for the terror-scare, I can hardly believe what I'm reading.  If I were going to plant bombs, I certainly wouldn't plant them next to a light board that displayed an animated figure giving people the finger!  After checking out one, and finding nothing potentially deadly, that should have been the end of it.

        C'mon, people, you can do better than this.

Posted by: saintonge at 11:54 | link | comments
idiots, not satire, i just dont understand it

The Libby Trial is On

        So far, not much of substance, but it's amusing that Matt Cooper's testimony and notes seem to show he just made shit up in his famous "story" A War on Wilson?.  At least one quote seems to have been invented out of whole cloth, since it isn't anywhere in Cooper's notes.

        It's also amusing to see Judy Miller bobbing and weaving.  She went to jail, she claims, to avoid being questioned by Fitzgerals about any source other than Libby.  She spent 85 days there before she got a satisfactory deal.  And who were these other sources she was determined to protect?  She can't remember!

        I believe her.  In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I'm engaged in a real estate deal with Ms. Miller.  She's selling me the Brooklyn Bridge AND Buckingham Palace, both for one low price.

Posted by: saintonge at 07:05 | link | comments
msm, dishonesty, plamegate

Same Ol' Same Ol'

        One of the reasons I haven't posted much lately is that there's been political news to speak of.

        Of course, that hasn't stopped people from speaking about politics, but it has kept them from saying anything of substance.

        Among the Democrats, Obama and Edwards are empty suits.  Hillary is widely disliked, and felt to be unelectable.  Among the Republicans, there's no one the base will support so far.

        Was any of that news to you?  Not to me, either.

Posted by: saintonge at 06:37 | link | comments
politics, democrats, republicans, hillary clinton, our new messiah™