Hilzoy on Haynes' Briefs
Here. You can't make this shit up. (Well, you could, but why would you?)
Here. You can't make this shit up. (Well, you could, but why would you?)
David Frum, from Comeback Conservatism, "[W]hat is inequality but another form of 'diversity'? And what is 'equality' but another word for homogeneity?"
Indeed, what are words but noises that mean whatever hacks want them to?
Mickey Kaus writes in his Slate column about a scandal fomented by the National Enquirer, wonders why such a rumor goes unreported in the MSM ("undernews," he calls it), but contends he actually would prefer that it remain unreported.
The scandal involves allegations by a "close confidante" of one Rielle Hunter that Hunter is pregnant with John Edwards' baby. Edwards denies the allegations. Hunter denies the allegations. (She even names someone else as the father.) But "others" -- namely, the lone "close confidante" -- "are skeptical."
So, yeah, it's a real head-scratcher that reputable media outlets would ignore a story with those bona fides.
Anyway, why does Kaus want a story about Edwards' allegedly cheating on his terminally cancer-stricken wife to remain undernews? Because, he says, he wants Edwards to lose. (Kaus is just so counterintuitive, isn't he?) Naturally, then, Kaus is doing his part to preserve the story's much-deserved obscurity, namely, by not conspicuously vouching for its legitimacy in his column for Slate. Oh, wait...
And the moral retardation continues:
In a November 5 National Review Online column -- "Waterboarding Has Its Benefits" -- contributing editor Deroy Murdock wrote that "[w]aterboarding is something of which every American should be proud...."
Yes -- he said "proud." Proud, because
[t]hough [it's] clearly uncomfortable, waterboarding loosens lips without causing permanent physical injuries (and unlikely even temporary ones)."
At last: Wife-beaters who prefer phone books over brass knuckles can now go about their business with pride.
Declares Theodore Dalrymple: "[T]he attempt [to find a way of life based entirely on reason] leads at best to Gradgrind and at worst to Stalin."
And there I was all along thinking Stalin's approach actually sort of ran counter to reason. I guess I stand corrected.
(Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
The menu of writings penned by critics of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion offers a diet unusually high in saturated fatuity. But this fawning review of John Cornwell's Darwin's Angel (a book that attempts to rebut Dawkins' The God Delusion), by one Salley Vickers, might just take the cake.
Since Vickers' dish contains far too much pudding to digest in a single sitting, I'll simply quote her final sentence:
Those who think that not knowing is safer and more attractive than its opposite should treat themselves to this elegant little book.
Yes, I suppose that's so.
(Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
Shorter Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy: I agree with everything he said. But he should've kept it quiet.
Credit where credit is due: "I mean, [Obama's] gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week." Misleading and deeply dishonest? Yes. But funny.
UPDATE: This wound up being shorter Clinton, Dodd and Biden as well.
This article in the Independent writes of Peter Hitchens that he "question[s] whether [his brother] Christopher truly believe[s] his own assertion that there isn't a God," and quotes Peter's reasoning as follows:
There is always, in the atheistical struggle with God, the fight against temptation. If it didn't matter to you, why write a book about how wrong it is? The first person you have to convince with any book you write, is yourself. If you didn't need convincing... why go to all those lengths?
Shorter, logically formalized Peter Hitchens, then:
For any proposition p, and for any agent A: If A argues that p, then A believes that not-p.
Such a universal disproof will undoubtedly prove useful. No it won't. Yes it will. No it won't.
Christian wingnuts: Evolution false unless life formed in Jif.
"Aggrieved" Christians like Tobias Jones will just never get over the fact that however "militant" a secularist Richard Dawkins is, Dawkins would never be so indecent as to put up with (much less worship and defend) a god that would consign Jones to eternal torment in Hell. (Is this personal window unto Christianity's inherent moral depravity not the source of almost all contemporary Christian ressentiment?)
But you really should read Jones' bizarre article--both as a spectacle in itself, and as a prerequisite to understanding some of the wry commentary that intermittently follows it.
This post is the first in which I will mention the vulgar term 'fucktard.'*
I take it the linked-to post should be construed as a Beware to Senators John McCain, Jeff Sessions and David Vitter, among others. (And just think of the religious implications.)
Then again, it's a rather self-defeating game for a guy named Ed Roberts to be playing, isn't it?
* Note that I didn't use the term in question. This shields me from the dreaded charge of incivility. On the other hand, anyone actually retarded enough to think use in this instance would be uncivil can go screw themselves.
From his WaPo editorial:
It is clear that one of the reasons we have gone an astonishing five years without a second attack on the American homeland is that the most dedicated and virulent jihadists have gone to Iraq to fight us, as was said during World War I, "over there." [Emphasis mine.]
Okay, what the f---? Does Krauthammer really think that if al Qaeda had viable cells in the U.S. they would divert them to the "front line in the war on terror" in Iraq? (Man, that would be some kind of flypaper.)
And, for Heaven's sake, how many years was it after the proto-Qaeda attack on the WTC in '93 that Islamic terrorists mounted a successful attack on the American homeland? Eight-plus (nine, if you round up). Is that an "astonishing" duration to which Krauthammer has ever adverted his readers?
My God, he really is an idiot. Or just thinks you are.
Shorter Carson Holloway:
Take I: Scientific facts should not be stated publicly if doing so would disturb the delicate sensibilities of ignorant rubes.
Take II: Doesn't Richard Dawkins know that reality is, like, a total downer?
(Via Butterflies & Wheels.)
Wow. Among other things, Glenn Reynolds declares:
[P]eople assume that there’s no point in behaving morally when they’re going to be called monsters anyway. This seems rather uncontroversially obvious to me.
So, e.g., calling someone a Nazi will only make him behave like Nazi.
Yikes. Better not call Glenn Reynolds a Nazi.
(Via Eschaton.)
[Treoblogging] Anyone who thinks that being "like" an organism (which probably even the careless reader will notice is a simile rather than an identity) is the same thing as literally being an organism would have to be an idiot.
Just watched Pat Robertson on CNN say the following, in response to reports of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's medical condition:
[Sharon] was dividing God's land. And I would so "Wo!" unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations or the United States of America. God says: "This land belongs to me; you'd better leave it alone."
Whereafter Wolf Blitzer noted to correspondent Jack Cafferty, "Reverend Robertson never ceases to amaze a lot of people...."
That's putting it...obliquely.
Before we went in, analysts and opponents forecasted burning oil wells, millions of refugees streaming into Jordan and the Gulf kingdoms, with thousands of Americans killed just taking Baghdad alone. Middle Eastern potentates warned us of chemical rockets that would shower our troops in Kuwait. On the eve of the war, had anyone predicted that Saddam would be toppled in three weeks, and two-and-a-half-years later, 11 million Iraqis would turn out to vote in their third election at a cost of some 2100 war dead he would have been dismissed as unhinged.
Hmmmm. Maybe that's because everyone was expecting the onslaught of, oh, that vast cache of weapons of mass destruction.
(Via Obsidian Wings.)
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