I listen to a wide variety of music (music is one of my passions), and lately I have come across an album by a band called A Perfect Circle.
APC is fronted by Maynard James Keenan, who is also the lead singer of Tool. How this trading back and forth of band members like baseball players switching teams works, I don't know. But Tool is an awesome band.
Anyway, the album I have is called Mer de Noms. Musically, it's good. Odd transitions, wierd time signatures, just my kind of stuff. But there's a song on the album called "Judith" which I have to comment on.
"Judith" is apparently the story of some woman who is crippled by an accident, but who still has faith in God. Maynard apparently can't stomach this, so he wrote a song about how stupid she is.
Some of the charming lyrics include:
"Oh so many ways for me to show you How the savior has abandoned you Fuck your God Your Lord and your Christ He did this Took all you had and Left you this way Still you pray, you never stray Never taste of the fruit You never thought to question why
It's not like you killed someone It's not like you drove a hateful spear into his side Praise the one who left you Broken down and paralyzed He did it all for you"
Now, songs arguing from a sickness level this depraved are not unheard of, but I think this is the most hateful song I have ever heard.
The various "tolerance" groups aren't going to rush to condemn this putrescent, hateful bile, despite that it encourages hate and intolerance that are at least as equal as anything the KKK ever said, so I guess it's up to a little voice like mine to do it.
Keenan, musically, you're a talented fellow. But I condemn you for this vitriolic hate you have against Christ and people of faith.
The US war in Iraq cannot be justified as a humanitarian intervention, according to self-appointed human rights dignitaries at Human Rights Watch. Why? Because most of the killing Saddam did happened a long time ago.
I guess we'll have to stop pursuing Khmer Rouge leaders too - their genocide happened so long ago. And Slobodan Milosevic should be freed. His genocide was so long ago...
It amuses me to no end to see the bizarre and contorted logic that liberals retreat to, rather than admit that they could be wrong.
This piece brings up a recurring theme that I think has to be uncomfortable to true liberals; "Is it wrong to speak the truth?"
The Anti-Defamation League, a group of "tolerant" Jewish leaders, has opposed this film publicly as one that might incite violence against Jews. I, of course, do not support such violence, as should be evident from what I have written here and elsewhere, but I do have to take note of what is evident here; the Anti-Defamation League is not opposing this project on the basis that it is incorrect. It opposes it because the film promotes a viewpoint that they find politically unpalateable, to wit: Jesus Christ's crucifiction was at least partly the responsibility of corrupt Jews.
What they find disturbing, in other words, is the truth as we know it from history and from the Bible. And that is what they oppose; the truth.
So I ask you, faithful (and unfaithful) readers; is it wrong to speak the truth? Is political expediency more important?
I'm reading a nice piece on recycling in =http://www.taemag.com/issues/...the American Enterprise . Something occurs to me, as it has often in the past: The left has the advantage over the right. This advantage stems from a simple truth: The left changes the world because it [i]tries[/i] to. Here's the quote: "The modern era of the recycling craze can be traced to 1987, when the garbage barge Mobro 4000 had to spend two months touring the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico before it found a home for its load. The Environmental Defense Fund, the National Solid Waste Management Association (whose members were anxious to line up new customers for their expanding landfill capacity), the press, and finally the Environmental Protection Agency, spun the story of a garbage crisis out of control. By 1995, the majority of Americans thought trash was our number one environmental problem--with 77 percent reporting that increased recycling of household rubbish was the solution. Yet these claims and fears were based on errors and misinformation, which I have compiled into the Eight Great Myths of Recycling." Two left-leaning activist groups, whose motives and positions are easily surmised, managed to convince the majority of Americans, in a few short years, that garbage was a crisis in America. Think about that for a minute. Two groups who did not use deception or trickery about their position, who did not attempt to hide their position, changed the way a nation of 270,000,000 people thought. How? Well, they [i]tried[/i] to. They made an effort. They attempted it. It sounds trivial, but this is an evident fact. And this is the advantage of the left. It is much more activist than the right is. Perhaps it is a symptom of the conservative mindset that we want things to stay the way they are. Indeed, that's what the word conservative means. However, if the right is to make any significant advances (as opposed to slowing the advance of the left), we must become activists. I am fond of telling my friends that you cannot win a defensive war. That's what we're trying to do. The observation about defensive wars stems from a ludicrous debate in the 1980's about whether our military should be producing offensive weapons. The left argued that since we had essentially stated that we would not be aggressors in a war with the Soviet Union, then it followed that we should not be equipped with "offensive weapons." If we were committed to purely defensive military action, then we didn't need offensive weapons. It's not a totally idiotic position, but it does reveal a deep lack of understanding about warfare. The United States cannot, and could never, be a purely defensive military, because it is impossible to win wars by defending. Let's say your city (which is, say, Rancho Cordova, California) goes to war with my city, Folsom, California. Let's say Rancho invades Folsom. Folsom decides to enact a highly moralistic military strategy - that we will not ever "go on the offensive". We will only defend our city. We are doomed from the moment we enact such a strategy. the Rancho Hordes attack and take some land. We defend. How can we get our land back? We can't. We are prohibited from offensive actions, and incapable of doing them. So the war goes on for a while longer, and the Rancho's take some more of Folsom. I think you see the point here. We can never win. Eventually, even if it takes a hundred years, the Rancho Cordova Fascists (I hate them already!) will take more and more, as long as they continue to fight. Every battlefield defeat is a step further toward our doom, while every victory of the righteous Folsomites is [i]not a step away from doom[/i]. It is merely delaying the final defeat. This reminds me of a particularly idiotic statement made at the time by Robin Williams in a comedy routine he was doing. He stated, with the confidence of utter rightness that comedy engenders, that an anti-tank missile was not a defensive weapon. In his mind, if it is capable of great destruction, it's not a defensive weapon. This position has no basis in reality. In fact, an anti-tank weapon [i]is[/i] a defensive weapon. It is designed to defeat an offensive weapon, a tank. It is not capable of advancing or of meaningful use against a defending enemy. In short, offensive weapons are mobile at some level, because immobility is not an offensive characteristic. But I digress. The left in this country is on the offensive, and that is why it has managed to enact the change, for good or ill, that it has. This is why it is winning. And it will continue to win until we get out of the fox holes and go on the offensive.
For those who are interested, the apples were rendered in Maya 5.0. And yes, I do own a license. A real one.
Bleh, nothing is happening in politics that I really care about. Dean is faltering, which makes me sad, because I think he'll be easy to beat. Of course his most potent challenger, Clark, should be pretty easy too, what with his inability to remember what he said only a few months ago, and constant contradictions.
Not that I'm in love with Bush, although I think I could give him like an 80% or so. I think I like the immigration reform plan, and I've been saying for years that reform of the immigration system is desperately needed. As it is now, our system is pretty flawed.
We can't keep immigrants, which we need, out of the country, even though the law says they can't be here or they might steal jobs from Americans who don't want them.
I listen to Mike Savage once in a while, but I can only stomach so much before I need to take a Maalox and turn it off. He's very right-wing, and although I find it difficult to believe, he may be the only person of import in this country who is more right-wing than I am.
His ideas about immigration suck. His impression seems to be that millions of uneducated Mexicans flood across the border and immediately sign up for welfare benefits. My own experience with such people has been exactly the opposite. I see them come here, work on farms for long hours for little pay. And do they complain? Do they mass in the streets and demand entitlements? I don't see it if they do. If I were prone to make racial observations, I'd have to say that Hispanics are way harder working than white people, and frankly, way harder working than I am.
So immigration reform is just what we need. We have to accept that a lot of people in this country illegally are working very hard and being very good (un)citizens in the process. We need them. To go on pretending that our laws are effective, or that we even want them to be effective, or could even STAND it if they were effective, is folly.
Welcome to my new blog. I am the proprietor of the "Leftwatcher" blog (=http://Leftwatcher.tblog.comLeftwatcher.tblog.com ), and have decided to start this new one. I did this because quite frankly, the title of the old one was boring and dry.
In this blog I think I will focus on matters of international import, with a specialization in military matters, which I have some experience in (or at least a lot of studying of). Occassionally, I will also delve into politics, culture, and my favorite subject of all, Socialism.
So please keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times. If you come back to the station missing a limb, it will be your own damn fault.
