Ender's Game = Sympathy for Hitler?

Oh. My. Gosh.

I just happened upon a website which makes some extremely strong critiques of Orson Scott Card, over at Kuro5hin. It's even linked to in the Wikipedia article on Card, for all that the article has only been out there for less than a month).

How can people come to conclusions like this: Ender's Game / Speaker for the Dead are a big apology for Hitler? Hitler redeemed. Well, read the article and see what you think.

Blog Might Get Moved

I'm considering moving my blog to a different hoster. Don't get me wrong, Blogger is excellent, but I'm less in total control than if I start hosting it on my own personal web page. On top of whatever other advantage that might accrue from hosting it in my own domain, the blogging software I'm thinking of using, dasBlog, is open-source, and I could possibly make my own enhancements to it (I'm a programmer, after all).

There are dangers to moving to my own domain, of course. For one thing, Blogger is backed up to secure media more often than my domain is. So, I could lose everything without possibility of recovery in my own domain. Eh. Not sure how much it matters right now.

Well, I'm just thinking out loud so far.

How To Get Noticed

I actually got a comment on my blog entry for the 9th of June! What an honor!

Turns out it was from Evan Bayh's people -- the Indiana State Democrats Blog. They had a problem with the Washington Times thing about Bayh's remarks criticising President Bush on the 9/11 thing, how he's handled it. Actually, I don't think the Times was being critical of Bayh, but maybe they were after all, just making it low key by misreporting what Bayh was saying.

But, I guess that's the key to getting comments: make some political point that someone is likely to pick up on and complain about.

Well, nuts to that. I don't think I want to do that. At least on purpose. Maybe it's OK if I do it inadvertantly.

Evan Bayh: Statesman.

Over at The Washington Times they talked about how "presidential" Indiana Democratic Senator Evan Bayh was sounding. This is part of the report on Bayh's speech:

       Mr. Bayh said President Bush should have responded to the September 11 terrorist attacks by raising the price of oil, the Indianapolis Star reports.

       Mr. Bayh, accusing Republicans of dividing the country, said Mr. Bush failed to summon Americans to "something more" after the terror attacks. The president, he said, should have urged people to accept potentially costly moves to lessen the country's dependence on foreign oil.

Excuse me? Respond to the 9/11 attacks by raising the price of oil? And that is the "something more" that Bush should have done in addition to invading Afghanistan and Iraq? If that's all the Times can say about Bayh that is "presidential", I sincerely hope that he never gets anywhere near the Presidency.

How on earth does raising the price of oil (by imposing an import surcharge, I imagine) help the country? All it does is increase oil company profits on domestic product, because they can then legitimately raise domestic crude prices to just below or equal to the surcharged oil. And then what? Pump more oil out of the ground domestically? The only way that would work would be to increase production out of the Alaskan North Slope, which would make the environmentalists (the Dems bosom buddies) freak out.

No, Bayh is an idiot. That's he's a partisan idiot is only a minor distinction.

The Times article apparently misquoted Bayh or took his remark out of context, so I take back the "idiot call". It was unworthy of me anyway to call him an idiot. But it sure seems funny that the Times would praise him for what is clearly an idiotic position.