Dennis Prager, Stuck on Stupid

Wednesday, Dennis Prager reacted to Obama's speech before Obama even gave it. In his response, Prager said that Muslims should be grateful that the United States removed Saddam Hussein, who tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of his own Muslim people and a million Muslims in the Iran-Iraq war. So Obama has no business apologizing to Muslims.

1. The rationale given for invading Iraq and removing Hussein was not to liberate Muslims from his persecution. It was his supposed threat to us.

2. Saddam Hussein persecuted certain Iraqis because they opposed his power, not because they were Muslim.

3. The United States supported Hussein's invasion of Iran, so, by Prager's peculiar logic, we contributed to Hussein's victimization of Muslims.

4. Our invasion of Iraq directly contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Muslims and drove millions more from their own country. It left the remainder of them living in a country with a devastated infrastructure that remains rife with sectarian violence.

Yes indeed, we've really helped so many Muslims who we never set out to help in the first place.

My mind vomits.

Today's Laff Riot, Brought to You by Dennis Prager

In an essay where he blames that amorphous yet monolithic and all-powerful movement, "the left," for everything bad, Dennis Prager writes:

The same holds true for the greatest character-building institution in American life: Judeo-Christian religions. Once again, the left knows how to destroy.

You mean like how Catholicism did such a good job building the character of priests who sexually molested minors, or how it built the characters of the priests, bishops and cardinals who chose to shield the abusive priests from prosecution, giving them safe havens and continued opportunities to wreck more childrens' lives?

Dennis Prager, Hyper-Partisan Loon

Bubbalog notes one of Dennis Prager's latest deluded, idiotic statements:

On Friday, 2/23/09, Dennis Prager had a caller who asked what posed a greater threat to the U.S.: Obama and his socialist agenda or Islamofascism. Prager said that it was Obama and socialism. Think about this answer and its irresponsible implications.

Prager has said repeatedly that Islamofascism is our country’s greatest threat, surpassing even the threats we faced from the Nazis and the Soviets. But now, that threat is nothing compared to the Obama administration. Prager and his ilk have told us that defeating Islamofascism is worth dying for because its threat is so dire, mortal, and imminent.

Global Warming Cranks

Yesterday, on his radio show, Dennis Prager had on some metereologist from a weather web site, one of whom Prager calls the many experts who disagree with the hoax of human-caused global warming. Toward the end of the hour, Prager casually said that the earth isn't warming, it's cooling, a disproven anti-gw canard.

Later, in the wee hours of Friday, I happened to be reading Denis Dutton's book review of some of Theodor Adorno's writings. Dutton quoted from Adorno's essay about astrology, and these quotes jumped out at me, so perfectly do they limn the mind not just of anti-gw cranks, but of contrarians in general. Dutton writes:

He refers to people who have gone just beyond the naive acceptance of the authority of science, but who don’t know enough, or who have not sufficiently developed “the power of thinking,” that they can replace such acceptance with anything better: “The semi-erudite vaguely wants to understand and is also driven by the narcissistic wish to prove superior to the plain people but he is not in a position to carry through complicated and detached intellectual operations.”

Dennis Prager's Moral Clarity

So you will now say - I hear the voice of an ACLU member - Dennis, do you think that this guy should have shot these people spray painting grafiti on his shop. To which my answer is yes. I do. No to kill. Not to kill. But if he shot them in the legs or in the arms I would have considered the man one of the great advancers of civilization in my time. And that is what divides left from right. Because anybody on the left hearing this would think that this is barbaric whereas I consider not stopping these people in any way that is necessary to be barbaric.

Dennis Prager, on his radio show (hour 3, around 8:41 in).

via Andrew Sullivan

Dennis Prager, Wrong Again

One of Dennis Prager’s tiresome mantras is that the left is far more hateful than the right. He was humping that point in the first hour of his radio show today, playing a brief clip of Arianna Huffington, who said (the following quote is from her web site, but it’s pretty much identical to what she says in the sound clip Prager played):

With each passing day -- and each bellicose, over-the-top, spittle-enhanced pronouncement -- Rudy Giuliani is revealing that he has the soul of a thug and the disposition of a tyrant. His behavior on the stump shows Jimmy Breslin nailed it when he described Giuliani as "a small man in search of a balcony."

Read the rest of Huffingfton’s article. She provides evidence for her characterization of Giuliani. If her characterization of Giuliani is true, then it isn’t hateful.

Far worse than her inflammatory rhetoric is the recent despicable campaign by Republicans, wingnut bloggers and radio trashmouths to depict Graeme Frost and his family as undeserving frauds. Prager conveniently ignores such evidence in building his case against the left. As Arianna wrote:

The latest evidence: the ugly smear campaign mounted against 12-year-old brain injury survivor Graeme Frost and his family. This new-low-in-messenger-killing wasn't just the doing of the toxic talk radio, rabble-rousing right; it was Senator Mitch McConnell's office pulling together the talking points. And then lying about its involvement when exposed.

Now, look at these statements. They’re stronger than Huffington’s.

Why is Giuliani even a faintly serious candidate? He's a megalomaniacal nutcase.

But at least Romney isn't Giuliani. He's not off his rocker.

Guess who wrote them? Conservative Andrew Sullivan, that’s who.

Dennis Prager's Palpable Stupidity

Commenting on yesterday's forum of Democratic presidential candidates discussing race, Dennis Prager uttered one of the stupidest thoughts I've ever heard emanate from him, and that's saying a lot.

Prager said that blacks live in mostly black neighborhoods because they prefer to, because most people want to live among their own kind. This is a manifestation of the typical conservative mindset, which justifies lack of concern for a social phenomena by arguing that it exists because people want it that way. In other words, it's their own fault, and if that's the way they want it, we don't have the responsibility to change it. It's the argument for complacency.

Do Quincy Jones, Eddie Murphy or just about any successfull black entertainer or businessperson or middle class blacks reside in South Central Los Angeles? Of course not. People tend to associate with others from the same economic level they belong to. The minute a person begins to make enough income, they move to a better neighborhood than the one they're in. Racially segregated neighborhoods exist because a disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics are impoverished.