Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

When Will Ann Coulter Finally Evolve?

Ann Coulter’s foray into science
Any sane person who starts reading Godless will soon ask, Does Coulter really believe this stuff? The answer is that it doesn’t much matter. What’s far more disturbing than Coulter herself (and she’s plenty disturbing: On the cover photo she has the scariest eyes since Rasputin) is the fact that Americans are lapping up her latest prose like a pack of starved cats. The buyers cannot be political opponents who just want to enjoy her “humor”; like me, those people wouldn’t enrich her by a dime. (I didn’t pay for my copy.) Rather, a lot of folks apparently like her ravings–suggesting that, on some level at least, they must agree with her. And this means that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who put Coulter at the top of the best-seller lists see evolution as a national menace.

You absolutely MUST take the time to read Jerry Coyne’s article on the New Republic web site.

Coulter clearly knows better. I conclude that the trash-talking blonde bit is just a shtick (admittedly, a clever one) calculated to make her rich and famous.

As I’ve been saying all along.

Whose Land Is It?

Crisis Could Undercut Bush’s Long-Term Goals
Although the United States has urged Israel to use restraint, it has also strongly defended the military assaults as a reasonable response to Hezbollah rocket attacks, a position increasingly at odds with allies that see a deadly overreaction.

The rocket attacks themselves being a response to Israel kidnapping and imprisoning Lebanese political leaders. (Which was in response to Hezbollah kidnapping Israeli soldiers.)

What a fucking mess.

There’s no pretending that kidnapping Israeli soldiers and holding them for ransom or for prisoner-exchange deals is a good thing. It’s wrong. It’s bad. And hiding your rocket launchers or whatever in amongst the civilian population? That’s wrong and bad, too.

Here’s the thing, though: If you find out your enemy has hidden his rocket launcher in the village, you don’t bomb the shit out of the village anyway, killing scores of civilians in the process.

You find another way. And, folks, despite what you may have been told, there is always another way.

It’s long past time for the United States to quit supporting Israel in these insane conflicts.

Bush and his advisers hope the conflict can destroy or at least cripple Hezbollah and in the process strike a blow against the militia’s sponsor, Iran, while forcing the region to move toward final settlement of the decades-old conflict with Israel.

Not bloody likely. You want peace in the Middle East? Move Israel out to the Rhineland where it belongs and give that land back to the people who were living there before a bunch of guilt-driven Americans decided it should become Israel.

When I was a kid, we had a recording of the soundtrack to the movie Exodus. (You know the one, based on the Leon Uris book.) It’s a wonderful soundtrack. The music is very moving. I’ve always loved it. At some point in my childhood I heard lyrics to the main theme:

This land is mine.
God gave this land to me,
This brave and ancient land to me.

While I was still young, this was a wildly romantic idea to me! I was the ultra pro-Israel kid. I even toyed with the idea of converting to Judaism just so I could be a part of the excitement. (“Toyed” because I was probably only 12 or 13 years old.) It wasn’t until I grew older that it occurred to me: Wait a minute. Why would God give the land to the Jews — when there were already other people living there? Isn’t that an awful lot like how the Europeans grabbed land from the native people in the Americas? Didn’t our ancestors also think they had some sort of God-given right to drive people out of their homes? And don’t we now know that we were very wrong to have done that? (Don’t we??)

So I gradually came to understand that God isn’t in the real estate business. God didn’t give that land to the Jews. They had no more right to it than any other invading force would have had. And I gradually came to understand that the anger and resentment the Arabs feel towards these invaders (and their backers in the United States) isn’t necessarily unfounded.

Women Playing Dress-Up

Women of the cloth | Salon Life
On Monday, a dozen women will be ordained Catholic priests in a forbidden ceremony in Pittsburgh. But can the womenpriests movement ever succeed?

Uh… NO. A dozen women won’t be ordained Catholic priests because the Catholic church doesn’t ordain women. Rather, a dozen women will dress up in pretend-vestments and go through a pretend-ordination-ceremony. You’d think women this age would be a little too old for playing dress-up, but… apparently not.

If these women feel a deep calling to priesthood, they should become Episcopalians. The Episcopal church ordains women — and it’s a perfectly fine religion. They’ve got lots of the same stuff the Catholics have — sometimes even more so! Go become Episcopalians and quit screwing around with the Catholic church.

It’s the tradition in Catholicism that only men are priests. I don’t have a problem with that. If some women have a problem with it, then they should join another church. Unless, they think Catholicism is the one true faith. And if that’s the case, I really have to wonder why they’d want to change it!

Killing People

“I came over here because I wanted to kill people.”
When he said he was inured to death and killing, it seemed to me — in that place and at that time — a reasonable thing to say.

But… that’s NOT all he said. He didn’t just say he’d become accustomed to all the death. He said he’d gone to Iraq because he wanted to kill people — and that didn’t alarm this article’s author, Andrew Tilghman? I have to wonder whether the subject of this story, Steven D. Green (who is accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and then killing her and her family), told his recruiter that he wanted to go to Iraq so he could kill people. And, if he did, I wonder why this psychopath was ever given a gun.

There are a lot of good reasons for joining the military. “I want to kill people” is not among them.

Too Much Democracy?

Don’t Blame Democracy Promotion
Finally, recent election results in Palestine and Lebanon suggest that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah enjoys the support of majorities of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s Shiite base of support constitutes approximately 35 to 40 percent of the population, and in Palestine, a defective electoral law allowed Hamas, which received roughly 44 percent of the vote in last January’s elections, to secure the most seats in the Palestinian legislature.

Yeah, I really hate defective laws that allow people to take office even if they don’t get the majority of the votes. Don’t you hate laws like that? Defective, defective, defective.

Whatever. The main point Steven A. Cook is making in this Washington Post editorial is that violence in the Middle East can’t legitimately be blamed on the Bush administration’s promotion of democracy in the area. Okay. I can agree with that. But… who ever said the violence was specifically because of “democracy promotion” to begin with? Cook’s entire editorial is a response to the “critics” who are supposedly making that claim but, honestly, not only have I never read of anyone claiming such a thing — I can’t even imagine that anyone would make such a claim. It’s all pretty obviously a lot more complicated than that.

Cook goes on to say that the Bush administration hasn’t been pushing democracy hard enough in the Middle East. I maintain a different view: We should quit pushing democracy on other cultures. Democracy isn’t the only valid or good form of government.

The Laughs Just Never End!

The Raw Story | Ann Coulter defends insinuation Bill Clinton is gay
Ann Coulter repeated on Hardball her insinuation that Bill Clinton is gay, then went on to joke that “may not be gay, but Al Gore: total fag”. She also repeated the claim that liberalism stands for “sucking the brains out of little babies.”

LOL! That Ann Coulter! I’m telling you: slap an orange fright wig on her and some big floppie shoes and you could send her out to do children’s birthday parties!

What I don’t understand is why ANYONE would take her silly act seriously.

The Indiana Harbor

When I tuned in to the Lake Superior Marine Museum Association’s web cam this morning, I noticed a boat approaching the Duluth harbor. So I hung around long enough to watch it come in — and I made this swell little animated gif for you all.

Based on the boat’s size (big!) and the time it entered the harbor, I’m guessing this is the Indiana Harbor — 1000 feet long! It’s really cool to watch these huge boats maneuver in the harbor. Unfortunately, the web cam doesn’t point that way.

On an only marginally related note: I’m going to be in Duluth for a week in August.

Smithereens

It’s Disproportionate. . .
Bush and his folks haven’t just blundered around and created this dangerous mess, they’ve done it on purpose. And they intend to make it worse.

Eugene Robinson and I must have been born under the same sign. We’re so often of like mind. He writes better than I do, though.

When this latest thing with Israel began — when they started imprisoning Lebanon’s political leaders — I thought, “What? Are they out of their fucking minds? Do they WANT to start a war??” How could there have been any other outcome? Did they really think Lebanon would just roll over? Maybe open up its borders for Israeli settlement?

And why are so many people being so cautious about condemning Israel for this latest whacked-out violence? WWII was a long time ago people and the Holocaust has NOTHING to do with modern-day Israel. It’s okay for us to criticize Israel. It doesn’t make us Nazis.

Which leads me to another rant. Doesn’t it seem like the Middle East was a much more pleasant place before Israel was created? Here’s how I see it: WWII, much guilt over Holocaust (and well-deserved guilt), Jews want homeland, ancient roots in Middle East (though most Jews were, well, Europeans by then), let ‘em have “Israel”, only Arab “wogs” living there then anyway and who gives a shit about them.

If the Jews wanted a homeland, we should have given them part of Germany after WWII. It would have made a whole lot more sense, and think of all the unnecessary violence it could have prevented.

But, no. So, here we are almost 60 years later, and the Israelis still haven’t learned to get along with their neighbors. Hey, I’m being fair. Their neighbors still haven’t learned to get along with them either.

There’s probably not much point in kicking our fathers and grandfathers for the stupid mistakes they made in the past. The only question that makes any sense is, how do we stop them from blowing each other to smithereens? It’s sure not by encouraging the Israelis in their craziness.

Fire in the Boundary Waters

Check out these pictures of fire around Seagull Lake and Cavity Lake in northern Minnesota. Truly disturbing. I know it’s nature’s way, but… it’s almost painful to see this level of destruction. And the juxtaposition of cool water and pine trees with hellacious forest fire is just…weird. And, as I said before, disturbing. Click on the photo above to be taken to the Cook County FireWise Information main page.

The Culture of Ignorance

The Injustice Bill Cosby Won’t See
Ever since he battered poor blacks two years ago in his infamous remarks on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education , Bill Cosby has been taking to the road to spread his bitter gospel to all who will listen. In rigged town-hall meetings, Cosby assembles community folk and experts who agree with his take on black poverty: that it’s the fault of the poor themselves.

That’s NOT what he said.

See, this sort of thing pisses me off — when people misrepresent what a person has said because they don’t want to address the issues the person really brought up.

What Bill Cosby said — and I’m paraphrasing here — is that poor black people aren’t doing themselves any favors by embracing ignorance as though it were a part of black culture.

Some of you might be thinking, what does Rebecca know about black culture?? Rebecca’s as white as white can be. And it’s true! I’m whiter than white. You don’t need to be black to understand this, though. I know the world and I know people and, despite how things sometimes seem, we’ve ALL got a whole lot more in common than what separates us.

Bill Cosby has never denied the reality of prejudice. Prejudice isn’t the only thing that’s keeping some black people poor, though. There’s a culture of ignorance in some communities — and you see this with a lot of poor white people, too, so don’t think I’m just picking on black people. In this culture of ignorance, education isn’t valued — it may even be denigrated — and an attitude of unearned entitlement is encouraged.

THIS is the kind of thing Bill Cosby’s been arguing against. It’s undeniably real and it’s at least as big as factor as prejudice in the ongoing problem of black poverty.

Yes, prejudice is real and let’s never quit working, as a society, to end it. TODAY, though… today an individual can choose to begin changing his life by embracing education and personal responsibility.