Decision ‘08

A Most Unwelcome Return…And A Very Welcome Departure

Moqtada al-Sadr is back. After months away from the public eye, the young firebrand participated in Friday prayers at a mosque in Kufa, Iraq.

“No, no to the unjust! No, no to America! No, no to colonialism! No, no to Israel! No, no to Satan,” he said, according to AFP.

Sadr renewed his demand that the United States withdraw from the country and called for an end to sectarian divisions.

“I say to our Sunni brothers in Iraq that we are brothers and the occupier shall not divide us. They are welcome and we are ready to cooperate with them in all fields. This is my hand I stretch towards them,” he said, according to the wire service.

He described America, Britain and Israel as the “evil trio,” Reuters reports.

Yes, very nice…well, on a much more frivolous level, it’s goodbye to Rosie:

Rosie O’Donnell has fought her last fight at “The View.” ABC said Friday she asked for, and received, an early exit from her contract at the daytime chatfest following her angry confrontation with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Wednesday. She was due to leave in mid-June.

It ended a colorful eight-month tenure for O’Donnell that lifted the show’s ratings but no doubt caused heartburn for show creator Barbara Walters. O’Donnell feuded with Donald Trump and frequently had snippy exchanges with the more conservative Hasselbeck.

O’Donnell said last month she would be leaving because she could not agree to a new contract with ABC executives.

“Rosie contributed to one of our most exciting and successful years at `The View,’” Walters said. “I am most appreciative. Our close and affectionate relationship will not change.”

In a statement, O’Donnell said that “it’s been an amazing year and I love all three women.”

No one was feeling the love on Wednesday, when the argument with Hasselbeck began over O’Donnell’s statement last week about the war: “655,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Who are the terrorists?”

Oh, that’s just wonderful, Rosie - and we see, as I predicted on the very night it was published, how the Lancet casualty figures have become the gospel for the left. Hey, don’t let the door hit your ample butt on the way out!

Finally, get ready for the Scooter Libby pardon:

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby could face up to three years in prison, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald on Friday.

Fitzgerald wrote in the memorandum, “Mr. Libby maintains that despite his conviction, he is totally innocent. He has expressed no remorse, no acceptance of responsibility, and no recognition that there is anything he should have done differently.”

Scooter in prison for three years while Rosie roams free? Unh-unh, ain’t gonna happen…

19 Responses to “A Most Unwelcome Return…And A Very Welcome Departure”

1 Scott Says:
May 25th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
So Rosie should go to prison for her statements or ample butt?
2 Ryan Bonneville Says:
May 25th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
And Libby should go free for committing crimes? The real tragedy here is that Cheney won’t end up in prison right alongside “Scooter.”
3 Mark Says:
May 25th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Hey, any of my readers around that still have a sense of humor? Just wondering…

JHC…
4 Gwedd Says:
May 26th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Ryan,

Sadly, Scooter may end up doing the time that Bill Clinton ought to be doing. Lying under oath is still a crime, and Bubba ought to have been jailed as well, if I follow your reasoning here…..

Of course, Bill is probably getting the same sort of treatment that his pal Sandy Berger got. You know, theft of documents from a Federal Depository, lying under oath, etc. FOB probably working overtime to give him cover.

Then of course, there’s still unanswered questions about where Hillary kept the Rose Law Firm billing records for two years… didging a subpoena for that long usually results in jail time. But then, like Bill, she’s got the “get out of jail free card” because she’s a Democrat, and we all KNOW that Dems are fighting that whole “culture of corruption thing”.. knock knock, wink wink….

That whole Vince Foster alledged suicide thing…. can’t forget that.

Ryan, for you to pile on Libby, when Fitz kept slurping at the public trough for more than two years, KNOWING that no crime had been comitted, KNOWING that Armitage was the leaker, well, man… you need to get some fresh air.

I’ll support Libby being jailed when Pelosi goes to prison for violating the Logan act. There’s a priori evidence of that all over the ‘net. Libby’s guilt? Not so much…

Respects,
5 Gwedd Says:
May 26th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Mark,

Yup…. I think Rosie just needs to get laid… have a few drinks, get some therapy to help her deal with that whole left-wing twoother thing.. you know, typical intervention work to help liberals return to reality

heh…

Happy Memorial Day, my friend.
6 JB Says:
May 26th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Mark; honestly, how many lefties do you know that even have a sense of humor? Perpetual anger and gloom persist on that side. Don’t let it get *you* down.
7 Ryan Bonneville Says:
May 27th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Gwedd, you’re hilarious.
8 Gwedd Says:
May 27th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Ryan,

Thanks… just trying to do my part with that “moral relativism” thing that seems to be all the rage these days with liberals… heh.

Respects,
9 Ryan Bonneville Says:
May 27th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
And there it is! Moral relativism, the most infuriatingly anti-intellectual slogan of the blockheads who have hijacked the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general. There’s nothing quite like good old fashioned hatred of thought and human reason.
10 Mark Says:
May 27th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
I can’t share your contempt of the contempt I and others hold for moral relativism; it is a quite real phenomenon, particularly in the academy, that, to give one prominent example, excused the unprecedented crimes of Stalin because, after all, if you’re going to make an omelet, you’ll have to break a few eggs.

I never cease to be amazed (without picking on you, Ryan) on how easily people grab hold of morality (for example, in their opposition to torture) when it suits them, then discard it when it doesn’t (for example, in deriding Bush as simplistic for believing in the concept of evil)…
11 Fargus Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 12:18 am
I’m glad that Gwedd seems to hold the opinion that wrongdoing by one person mitigates wrongdoing by another. Maybe if we all get together and, like, kill some small animals, but in large enough collective numbers, Hitler won’t have been so bad a guy.
12 Ryan Bonneville Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
My contempt is for the asinine and uneducated way that commentators treat so-called “moral relativism”. That moral rules vary situationally is so uncontroversial as to be unremarkable, but you’d never know it listening to the crazies on the right wing. There’s a big gulf between “moral relativism” and excusing the crimes of Stalin. And there’s nothing quite like smearing the entire field of academia as Stalin-sympathizers to convince me that Republicans aren’t anti-intellectual.

Pure, unadulterated hatred of science and the human mind are usually the province of places like Redstate. Granted, I still find your rationality regarding climate change and evolution a breath of fresh air, but come on.
13 Mark Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Ryan, maybe you should do a little research on the reaction of the academic and literary left to Stalin’s Russia before you get on your high horse. Obviously, I’m making a generalization in support of a larger point - it’s called ‘using an example’…and it’s quite relevant. Here’s a starting point, by Martin Amis (no conservative himself) if you really care to learn, or you can just continue to take pot shots at me if it makes you feel better…
14 Mark Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Let me try another way (anti-intellectual that I am, I am appealing to your intellect). When you condemn torture, you’re appealing to a moral absolute, are you not? After all, we’re not Stalinists or Nazis - we will only use torture to prevent to the death of innocents.

But no - wait - that’s no good. It’s a slippery slope, etc. If torture is wrong, it’s wrong - absolutely. Now when I say torture is wrong most of the time, but it’s relative to the situation, well, I don’t think you’d find that acceptable.

Hence, moral relativism in the sense that I use it - and it’s always a slippery slope that leads in a very direct and predictable way to excusing such things as, yes, Stalinism.

Now you may say, well, stealing bread is wrong, but stealing bread to feed your starving family is not. I don’t think that goes very far - stealing bread is wrong, always, starving family or not - but letting your family starve to death is a greater wrong. Is this moral relativism? No, it’s an acknowledgment that sometimes we must choose the lesser of two evils…
15 mikebdot Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 6:40 am
Mark: Torture is against the Geneva conventions. How hard is it to fathom that moral relativists insist that if you make a promise you keep it? Moral relativists can have honor too.
16 mikebdot Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Furthermore, there is nothing inconsistent with a moral relativist having a moral code. They simply recognize that it isn’t THE moral code. In other words, they are usually open-minded.

As for your smear of academeia, the book your link to says this:

In his first and final pages, he deals with three generations of dupes who supported Soviet rule: that of H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw; that of novelist Kingsley Amis, the writer’s father and member of the Communist Party in the 1940s; and that of leftist contemporaries of Martin Amis himself, notably the writer Christopher Hitchens.

Bertrand Russell could be included in the list of those WHO WERE DUPED. What part of “dupe” means “excused the crimes of Stalin”? They argued that there were no crimes because they were fooled into believing that, not that the crimes were acceptable.

Explanation for a crime is not excusing a crime.
17 Mark Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
No, Mike, the book doesn’t say that, but rather the review quoted by Amazon.

What the book is about, I can assure you, is the strange way that EVEN TODAY, with everything we know about the 20 million plus victims of Stalin (in his country alone!), many people of the left or formerly of the left see their former support of Communism (including Hitchens) as a laughing matter. Hence, the subtitle “Laughter and the 20 Million”…
18 Mark Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
As to the Geneva Convention, surely we are not opposed to torture because it is in the Geneva Convention? You’ve got it backwards - rather, we are signatories to the Geneva Convention because we are opposed to torture…
19 mikebdot Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 8:25 am
No, I do not have it backwards. You said “When you condemn torture, you’re appealing to a moral absolute, are you not?”. To a moral relativist, no, the country agreed to a framework in which to fight wars and you should stick by it, it has nothing to do with moral absolutes. You shouldn’t stick by the Geneva Conventions because it’s morally correct, you should do it because of the consequences. Basically, it’s more of a game theory argument, not a moral argument.

We as a nation are signatories because our former statesman knew how to come together with other nations to solve problems. We could very easily, after 9/11, signed another sweeping agreement with every nation on earth which condemns terrorism (which, to a moral relativist, would be beneficial not because it’s the moral choice, but because it’s in everyone’s best interest). Of course, to some (*cough* Noam Chomsky *cough*), that would be a ridiculous position as they would claim we routinely engage in acts of “terrorism”.

A moral relativist can use all sorts of rationales to support that which moral absolutists support because they are “good” or “right”. Not everything is about “right”/”wrong”. Logic and game theory can take a moral relativist a long way.

Also, to you, an apologist for any atrocity is automatically a moral relativist. I think perhaps your definition is a bit narrow. Even if said people are moral relativists, it does not mean their being apologists have anything to do with that fact. They could use bad logic or bad game theory or just plain old bad data. It’s not the philosophical stance that is in error, it’s the facts upon which their conclusions lie.

Communism did not kill 20 million people. No ‘ism’ kills people. People kill people.