Howie Carr sums up my feelings on the passing of the Venezuelan Dear Leader:
Moonbats mourn another Red thug
Say it ain’t so, Joe, or should I say Jose?
Poor Joe Kennedy, mourning the loss of his grand amigo, “El Comandante,” the tinpot Latin American thug who put the “profit” back in “non-profit” for the Kennedy kleptocracy.
How can Hugo be dead, Joe? He went to Cuba for medical treatment. They took him straight to the hospital from the airport in a DeSoto ambulance.
Let’s go right to the Joe K press release:
“President Chavez cared deeply about the poor … while some of the wealthiest people on our planet have more money than they can ever reasonably expect to spend.”
Damn right, comrade! Es verdad. For the record, according to 2011 tax filings, Comrade Joe made $901,236 from Citizens Energy and related corporations. His lovely bride, Beth, grabbed another $346,764.
Total: $1,248,000.
Now the jockeying begins. Who will lead the Massachusetts delegation to the funeral in Caracas? Who will get top billing, the congressional delegation or the Kennedys, or do I repeat myself?
For some reason the sleazy Democrat pols around here have always had the hots for these Latin American Reds. Like his late boss Joe Moakley, Jim McGovern’s always had a crush on Fidel Castro. Maybe he’s jealous of all the hair. Joe K was always Chavez’s kept Kennedy, although Bill Delahunt gushed over him like a teenage girl infatuated with a mutant, pineapple-faced Justin Bieber.
The local solons are all going to have to find some new rear ends to kiss.
It was a sad day for the moonbat community. The People’s Republics of Cambridge and Amherst rushed to lower their flags to half staff first. A spontaneous candlelight vigil erupted in Muddy River. Funeral dirges played endlessly on the NPR stations, like Radio Moscow when Uncle Joe passed. Someone dimmed the lights at the Globe, causing an immediate panic in the newsroom, where the fops assumed the newspaper was finally being shut down.
Yes, the media fell all over itself lionizing the Mussolini of South America. The AP hagiography was slightly longer than “War and Peace.” Talk about gushing:
“Fiery populist ... socialist ideals … outsmarted his rivals … electrified … folksy … larger-than-life … master communicator and savvy political strategist … championing his country’s poor.”
The only thing the AP forgot to say about El Comandante was that he kept the drugs out of Southie.
Hey Joe Kennedy, when’s the next plane out to Tehran? I hear the mullahs are looking for a new shill.
What Chavez did to Venezuela is what the Left wants to do to us. They want power, and will step on anyone they have to to get it.
One of their hero thugs bit the dust, and they mourn.
Gangsters.
Howie Carr is my favorite!
ReplyDeleteThe Left will forgive you for being an oil tycoon as long as you also hate America. They will also forgive rampant military spending under the same condition.
TRISH
People like Chavez will tell you that they want to help you, but in order for them to help you, you have to give them an ever increasing amount of power. Lots of people fall for it. Empowering the government to "help" you, or to "protect" you, is usually a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteBen
Explain, please.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why you waste your time reading the insane ramblings of someone who is out of his mind. That seems kind of insane too. And then you waste even more of your time debating with a lunatic who belongs in a straight jacket.
Dr. Egnor is not out of his mind. He's a little excitable, but not out of his mind.
Ben
It's like watching a train wreck, Ben. Can't avert your gaze.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, as you said, maybe he is in his mind. Maybe he does think that all Democrats are mourning the death of Hugo Chavez and want to follow in Hugo's political steps. If he does, he is a deluded fool who deserves to be laughed at.
Hoo
Egnor projects. He remembers how sad he felt when the dictator General Franco died, ruler of Catholic paradise on earth:
ReplyDeletethe Catholic Church was upheld as the established church of the Spanish State, and regained many of the traditional privileges it had lost under the Republic. Civil servants had to be Catholic, and some official jobs even required a "good behavior" statement by a priest. Civil marriages which had taken place under Republican Spain were declared null and void unless confirmed by the Catholic Church. Divorce was forbidden, and also contraceptives and abortion.
Franco was a complex man. He did prevent a communist take-over of Spain, which was a magnificent accomplishment, and he protected the Church, which had been the victim of violent repression under the Republic.
DeleteHe had his faults, none of which were anywhere near as evil as those of the bastards he defeated.
The worst thing he did was sign that co-operation pact with Hitler, when he invaded the Baltics and carved up Poland with his Nazi allies.
Oh-- no--- wait! That was the communist Left who did that, not Franco.
I get so confused.
The Red Terror in Spain is the name given by historians to various acts committed "by sections of nearly all the leftist groups" such as the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy, the vast majority in the summer of 1936 in the wake of the military rising), as well as attacks on landowners, industrialists, and politicians, and the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches..."
Delete-- Wikipedia [emphasis added]
In Spain, White Terror (also known as Represión Franquista) refers to acts of politically motivated violence, rape, and other crimes committed by the Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War and during Francisco Franco's dictatorship.[1] The mass executions started at the beginning of the civil war on July 1936 and continued after the war until 1945.[2][3]
DeleteMost historians agree that the death toll of the White Terror was much higher than that of the Red Terror, as the White Terror occurred over a much longer period, continuing after the war. While most estimates of the Red Terror range from 38,000[4] to 72,344 lives[5] (the collective work: Victimas de la guerra civil: 50,000,[6] Hugh Thomas: 55,000,[7] and Julián Casanova: fewer than 60,000[8]) most of the estimates of the White Terror, such as Paul Preston's 200,000[9] range from 150,000[10] to 400,000.[11]
It is common that the winning side in a war kills more of the enemy than losing side does. That is usually what "winning" means.
DeleteFurthermore, the Reds in Spain, just like the Reds in Venezuela, have huge international fan clubs, and propaganda is ubiquitous. I don't trust the Lefty numbers.
Franco did Spain and the world a huge favor by defeating the commies. Imagine what a better world it would be if the original commies had been defeated in Russia, and China, and Cambodia, and North Korea, and Vietnam, and Laos, and East Germany...
We need more Francos.
Egnor: I don't trust the Lefty numbers.
DeleteYeah, I recall that you trust the Righty numbers. Those election predictions sure worked out spectacularly well.
Keep up the good work doctor.
Hoo
Looking at Paul Preston's numbers (both for consistency and because he is generally regarded as the foremost authority), and using the dates for the Red and White Terrors provided in Wikipedia, the numbers come out like this...
DeleteWhite Terror: 108 mos (1936 - 1945), 200,000 dead, 1851/mo.
Red Terror: 3 mos (Summer 1936), 50,000 dead, 16,666/mo.
Red/White ratio: 9.0
Thank God the Reds lost. Else we might have seen a much, much worse bloodletting proportional to Stalin's reign of terror (Stalin, by the way, backed the Reds with materiel and advisers).
href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/102134/spanish-holocaust-francisco-franco">Here is a review of Preston's book on the Spanish Holocaust. Read it and weep. Still think Franco was one of the good guys?
DeleteA sample:
Since there were precious few Jews, Masons, or Bolsheviks in Spain, the notion of their conspiracy was an infinitely flexible one, applied simply to everyone who had supported the legal political order of the Republic. They were to be eliminated according to a “prior plan of systematic mass murder.” Preston calls this an “investment in terror”: mass killing was not only a way to win a civil war, but also to prepare for the dictatorship to follow. Franco’s idea of a “redemption” of the population through blood had a particular application to women, as Preston carefully chronicles. In the natural order of things, women were subordinate. Young peasant women were supposed to be content with prostituting themselves, quite literally, to inheritors of landed wealth. Women who were free to decide for themselves about their sexual life became, as the Right saw matters, politically perverted supporters of the Republic. Thus “redemption” for them meant rape before murder, a double assertion of power.
The historical challenge that this book presents for the Roman Catholic Church is considerable. Although some priests sought to prevent violence or shelter those who were under threat, more seemed to have supported the rebellion, and even joined its fighting columns. Some adopted fascist salutes and took direct part in the killing. One priest shot a man who was seeking shelter in a confessional.
Hitler and Mussolini, by the way, backed Franco's fascists with material and advisers.
Fighting commie scum is a bloody business, and there are few angels in the mix.
DeleteFranco is to be lauded for his stalwart opposition to communism, which saved Spain from a real holocaust, and for his protection of the Church and his accomplishment in the Spanish Miracle of economic growth in the 1960's and 1970's, when commie economics was decimating nations and killing people by the tens of millions in China and elsewhere. After Franco's death in 1975, there was a peaceful transition to democratic rule.
If you want to discuss Franco, you need to discuss the scum he fought against. I don't defend his violations of human rights. But there is much more to the story than "big bad Franco", and I have no interest in an analysis provided by a Chavez fellator.
Dr. Egnor, we don't need more Francos. Neither side of that war is worth emulating. Really vicious people killed really vicious people. Hitler funded one side and Stalin the other. Maybe one side was worse than the other (big maybe) but there were no good guys.
DeleteJQ
>>After Franco's death in 1975, there was a peaceful transition to democratic rule.<<
DeleteThat's because the Spanish royal family refused to install another Franco. The peaceful transition occurred despite Franco, not because of him. Sheesh.
I know that he fought bad people, and unfortunately the bad people he fought are frequently hailed as heroes for fighting him. But the ends don't always justify the means. Doing evil in order to do good rarely works out well.
JQ
We need more Francos.
DeleteYou're jumping the shark here. I defended you when Hoo said you were nuts and now you're making me look like a monkey's uncle. I might have agreed with Hoo if I had known that you have a man-crush on Frankie Franco.
Ben
So, what do you think, Ben? Is Egnor out of his mind or is he in? Doesn't look good either way.
DeleteHoo
I'll have to mull that over.
DeleteBen
Egnor's fascist ideology rears its ugly head very clearly in this thread. Thanks for playing, Egnor!
Delete@JQ:
Delete[That's because the Spanish royal family refused to install another Franco. The peaceful transition occurred despite Franco, not because of him. Sheesh.]
No. Franco has very much to do with the peaceful transition. He defeated the Left, and preserved the basic institutions and culture necessary for a successful democracy, which emerged readily following his death.
[I know that he fought bad people, and unfortunately the bad people he fought are frequently hailed as heroes for fighting him. But the ends don't always justify the means. Doing evil in order to do good rarely works out well.]
Ends certainly don't justify means, and I do not defend his evil acts. But I insist that his record must be judged in its totality, not merely in light of the Leftist-twisted hate-fest that surrounds this man (similar to the hate-fest that surrounds Pinocet's legacy and McCarthy's legacy the legacy of everyone who is successful in defeating the Left.)
He did many good things and many bad things. Succinctly, he saved Spain from communism, and under his military dictatorship preserved Spanish culture and politics so that democracy and civil society could return after his death.
His methods were wrong, in many cases (I oppose the death penalty under all circumstances), but the people he was fighting were ruthless monsters, and most deserved worse than they got.
Imagine if a Franco-type had defeated the Bolsheviks, and placed Russia under a military dictatorship for a few decades, before it became a democracy/monarchy. The usual suspects would be vilifying the Russian dictator, depicting him as absolute evil, and we wouldn't realize just what he saved Russia from.
The world is a complex place. Franco was a complex guy. A military guy. He suffered no fools.
In this complex world, there is one rule that is clear: never, never, never let communists take over your country.
Franco, in that respect, did his job.
Something amazing has been taking place in Latin America in recent years that deserves wider attention than the continent has been accustomed to attract. The chrysalis of the Venezuelan revolution led by Chávez, often attacked and derided as the incoherent vision of an authoritarian leader, has finally emerged as a resplendent butterfly whose image and example will radiate for decades to come...
ReplyDelete--Richard Gott, The Guardian
Linked approvingly by Democratic Underground. The comments are a delight.
So, when Joe Kennedy, a retired congressman, makes some money off of a popular socialist’s desire to get some good PR by providing cheap heating oil for Americans, that’s sleazy.
ReplyDeleteWhen Clarence Thomas’s wife makes millions lobbying for opponents of healthcare reform, the Tea Party, and the Heritage foundation, while Thomas refuses to recues himself, votes 100% to support the positions his wife has been paid to advocate, and even conveniently “forgets” to report the income, that’s OK.
Conservative morals aren’t based on objective right and wrong as much as they are political opportunism.
-KW
@KW:
Delete"popular socialist"?
'Sniff'.
I know these are tough days for you, KW.
Why do the good die so young?
“Popular socialist” based on the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have poured into the streets in all the major cities to mourn and show support for Chaves. I suppose conservative news outlets “forgot” to mention that part of the story.
DeleteI’m absolutely not surprised by your lack of response to my allegation of hypocrisy, you don’t have, nor do you ever have, any defence.
-KW
KW:
Delete[“Popular socialist” based on the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have poured into the streets in all the major cities to mourn and show support for Chaves.]
My goodness. I didn't realize that an opportunistic kleptomaniacal anti-Semitic delusional commie thug might have supporters.
Why did he have to leave us?
'Sniff'
@Ben:
Delete[I'll have to mull that over.]
Decide for yourself if I'm crazy.
This is for sure: I hate political correctness, and I despise Leftist efforts to limit the acceptable bounds of expressible opinion.
Franco was a military dictator. Military dictators are not the best of leaders, and not the worst. Military dictators are worse than stable democratic governments, worse than benign monarchies, but much much better than communist dictatorships.
Spain faced a crisis of existence in the late 1930's, and communists remained an existential threat to Spain for several decades. Franco demolished that threat, which is eternally to his credit. His methods we often morally wrong, but not always. It's a fair bet that most of the Leftists Franco "repressed" earned every bit of that repression, and worse.
Franco saved Spain from the worst evil mankind has spawned. He got the job done. In the real world, defeating communists is a messy business, and it's not for the faint of heart.
But winning against communists really matters. Ask Alexander Kerensky.
That’s some first class name calling there Doctor. It must feel good getting back at the world for the treatment you received on the playground.
Delete-KW
Spain faced a crisis of existence in the late 1930's, and communists remained an existential threat to Spain for several decades. Franco demolished that threat, which is eternally to his credit. His methods we often morally wrong, but not always. It's a fair bet that most of the Leftists Franco "repressed" earned every bit of that repression, and worse.
DeleteJust like Hitler, Mussolini and Latin American dictators and death squads demolished millions of threats.
It's always the same story with the fascist regimes that Egnor supports. Big land owners in cahoots with the army and the Church to prevent the serfs removing the jackboots from their backs. The little people, especially women, need to know their place, and the clergy is there to tell them that in the next life everything will be much fairer - just put up with it a little longer and you'll have a great time with Jeebus in the afterlife.
Michael,
DeleteKerensky lost because he wanted to stay in the war and continue fighting Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, fulfilling Russia's agreement with the Western Allies.
Christian Germany arranged for Lenin and his band of revolutionaries to cross Germany in a sealed train and to reach Petrograd via Finnland. You can view the locomotive today in the Finnland Station in St Petersburg.
The Germans also provided funds for the Bolsheviks. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks negatiated an humiliating peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk which allowed Germany to throw its eastern armies against the Western Allies. And possibly might have won were it not for America.
After the armistice, the Western Allies tried to intervene in the Russian Civil War; and that included America and Japan.
The lesson is; it's a very bad idea to try to intervene in a civil war (America's experience in Vietnam showed that). And if you are going to intervene, just make sure the side that you're supporting wins. But make certain that the side you are supporting is worth supporting and has a chance of winning, otherwise you're setting up problems for yourself when the other side wins.
America made a lot of missteps in Vietnam. Including allowing France to return in 1946 and supporting France in the subsequent war until it was defeated at Dien Bien Phu.
Communists don't become nice guys just because bad guys kill them.
DeleteGangsters fight among themselves, and often kill each other. Commies killed Nazis, Nazis killed commies. What a shame.
Franco was an authoritarian military dictator. He did bad things and good things. He was not on a par with Hitler or any of your beloved commie dictators.
You hate him because he was so effective in stopping your idols from enslaving Spain, like they enslaved Russia and dozens of other hapless countries who didn't have a leader like Franco.
Welcome, Diogenes. You used the same bizarre 'conservative Christians supported Hitler' argument on Sandwalk. Try cutting and pasting-- it's faster.
DeleteMy observation that Franco did Spain a great good by defeating the communists, and that his subsequent military dictatorship was a mixed bag, is beyond debate.
And didn't Stalin do the West a favor by defeating Hitler?
DeleteHoo
Michael,
DeleteNot so fast. The Spanish Republic which Franco rebelled against wasn't Communist. If Franco had lost, it very well might have become Communist (in fact, almost certainly it would have) because the Soviet Union was the only power to support the republican side, and the communists gained a lot of influence because of it.
The western powers adopted a policy of non-interference in the Spanish Civil War, expecting Germany and Italy to do the same. Which they didn't, practicing their tactics for WWII.
Civil wars often have unforeseen and unintended consequences. The comment from 'Gone with the Wind' that if you want things to stay the same, you should try to avoid wars applies.
@Hoo:
DeleteOf course Stalin did the West a favor by helping to defeat Hitler. But Stalin was responsible for Hitler's early success: Hitler's easy conquest of much of Western Europe and of Poland was possible only because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The pact with Stalin in 1939 gave Hitler the opportunity to concentrate his forces against the rest of Europe without worry about the Red Army. Stalin was by far Hitler's most valuable ally, providing him with trade and with military flexibility.
It was only when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union two years later that Stalin-- his indispensable ally-- turned against him.
And despite some revisionists' opinion that we should have stayed out of it and let Hitler and Stalin bleed each other, I think that our alliance with Stalin was the right thing to do, no matter how distasteful. Hitler was very deep evil, and I believe that he posed more of a danger to humanity at the time than Stalin did. Hitler was much smarter, and Nazism was not beset with communism's economic imbecility, and Nazism would not have self-destructed like communism ultimately did.
Nazism had to be destroyed militarily, at all costs and as fast as possible, even with Soviet help.
Once we destroyed Hitler, we needed to contain Stalin, which we did. Reagan finished communism off, by driving it to bankruptcy.
Kennan's strategy was prescient and effective.
@bach:
Delete[The Spanish Republic which Franco rebelled against wasn't Communist. If Franco had lost, it very well might have become Communist (in fact, almost certainly it would have)]
That's true-- the Spanish Republic was an amalgam of Leftists. Communists were one faction, but they were well-supported by their Soviet masters, and utterly ruthless, and would almost certainly have gained control if the Republicans had won.
That said, the Republican forces were violently anti-clerical and leading Spain to a communist dictatorship.
Franco, for all of his own violence and authoritarianism, saved Spain.
Max Hastings has an updated history of the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Republic was anti-clerical because the Catholic Church controlled Spain's education system. The priests preferred their sheep or rather flock to be illiterate and egnorant (sorry ignorant) and to be only able to parrot the catechism.
DeleteIf you approve of ignorance and illiteracy then naturally you'd hate the Spanish Republic.
Stalin had great reason for fearing Hitler and his aims. He was negotiating an alliance with Britain and France before signing the pact with Hitler. But Britain and France didn't take it seriously. The negotiators they sent didn't have any authority to do anything beyond 'discussions'. Poland made negotiations difficult by not being prepared to allow Soviet troops to cross Polish territory in case of an invasion by Germany.
You could argue that Stalin couldn't be trusted. But you'd be wrong. Japan invaded the Soviet Union in 1939 over a disputed border. Stalin deliberately made sure that the conflict didn't escalate, and when his general, Zhukov, eventually convincingly defeated the Japanese, his troops didn't invade territory which was definitely Japanese (Japanese to the extent that they'd taken it from the Chinese). And the ceasefire was meticulously followed with Japanese being allowed to remove their dead from Soviet territory.
Stalin was meticulous in following agreements. He supported Chiang Kai Shek over Mao against the Japanese. He agreed with Churchill that Greece wouldn't become Communist and did nothing to support the Greek Communists in their uprising.
Hitler's Germany lost WWII not despite their competency, but because they were a very inefficient authoritarian state. For much of the early war years they didn't put their full efforts into war production, fortunately. The Soviets were much more efficient, producing the better tanks, planes and artillery. Whenever the Germans produced a tank capable of taking on the Soviets (such as the Tiger), they couldn't produce it in sufficient quantities.
Agreed. Stalin was evil, possibly a borderline psychopath. But Hitler was just batshit crazy. I'm surprised you don't approve of Hitler too as well as Franco.
And the Catholic Church could have stopped Hitler in 1933 if they'd made certain that the Catholic Central Party had agreed to the Enabling Act in exchange for the Concordate, which wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
[I'm surprised you don't approve of Hitler too as well as Franco.]
DeleteWhat a stupid thing to say. My hatred of Nazism is emphatic and obvious. I am intensely philo-Semitic and pro-life. The anthesis of Nazism.
Franco was a smart very tough anti-communist, so he scores points in my book. Lefties hate his guts-- more points in my book. He was a military dictator and had a dalliance with Hitler-- loses points there.
There is no comparison between Franco and Hitler. Franco in fact saved many Jews by intentionally leaving the Spanish border open to Jews fleeing France after the Nazi invasion.
Franco was one of the European leaders most helpful to Jews in WWII.
As I said, he was a complicated man. Not pure evil, not pure good. But a better man than the Left portrays him.
[And the Catholic Church could have stopped Hitler in 1933 if they'd made certain that the Catholic Central Party had agreed to the Enabling Act in exchange for the Concordate, which wasn't worth the paper it was written on.]
DeleteThe Church certainly did not oppose Hitler with sufficient vigor and unanimity. They made mistakes.
But the Church was the most vigorous institutional enemy Hitler had in occupied Europe. Everyone else-- academia, unions, corporations, rolled over. Catholics were his least supportive major voter block-- he consistently did worse in Catholic Bavaria than elsewhere in Germany in plebiscites.
The Church did fight-- consistently, and often with great courage (Bishop Von Galen). It didn't fight enough. But it must be remembered that the position of the Church was not that of an opposing army, but that of a hostage negotiator.
Tact was a matter of life and death for millions of people, as the Dutch bishops found out when they published a condemnation of the Nazi deportation of Jews.
(http://catholicunderthehood.com/2010/07/26/today-in-catholic-history-the-dutch-bishops-condemn-the-nazi-deportation-of-the-jews/)
Michael,
DeleteFranco was anti-communist. So was Hitler, even more so. Where did I ever state that I hate Franco? I made the point that if Franco had lost, then the Communists would certainly have taken power in Spain. Often not going to war is the sensible option. Spain was a young democracy when Franco started his rebellion. Conservative voters could easily have voted out the government if they didn't like it. That's what happens in democracies.
You condemn Hitler because you were born after the war and have the luxury of knowing what actually happened in retrospect. Hitler got a lot of support in Germany and abroad, including in America, because he was so anti-communist. America in the '30s wasn't exactly a friendly place for refugee Jews with nasty quotas applied. Henry Ford was a notorious antisemite (and also Hitler supporter). And he wasn't alone amongst American conservatives.
The Dutch bishops and their condemnation of the Nazis does illustrate one thing; the Nazis didn't take any consideration of protests in countries they'd occupied. They certainly gave more than a little respect to those protests occurring in Germany. Jewish spouses of Christians weren't deported to the death camps following public protests by the Christian spouses (it's one of the reasons why Viktor Klemperer survived the war). The T4 so-called euthanasia program was stopped because of public protests in Germany.
And what would have happened if the German Catholic Church united and protested in a mass action in Germany? Could Hitler have been toppled? Dictators generally rule with the consent of their people. Who could have predicted that the East European communist dictators fell so quickly when they'd lost support, even though they still controlled the army and police forces?
So, the barking moonbats are weeping today?
ReplyDelete"I don't know why you waste your time reading the insane ramblings of someone who is out of his mind."
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to believe that he does actually *read* these posts. I think he just has a couple of macros set up that automatically spew out "yer stoopid" said in various ways.
Michael Egnor: "... I oppose the death penalty under all circumstances..."
ReplyDeleteI pray you *think* about what you have said
Ilion,
DeleteIt's one of the rare occasions I agree with Egnor. Capital punishment is never justified. I looked at your blogs, in one of which a commentator noted that juries and judges are more likely to convict an innocent person, knowing that capital punishment wasn't on the table and that the person could be released 10 years down the track if exonerating evidence appears. And you sort of agreed 'I see your point'.
My answer is Todd Cameron Willingham, who was executed in Texas for the arson murder of his three children. He was probably innocent. The forensic incendiary evidence used in the trial was deeply flawed, and was the only evidence against him, and on the basis that the state has to prove guilt, he should have been acquitted.
The documentary 'Incendiary' (available on iTunes) discusses the case. After watching it, I'm not certain whether he was guilty or not (although I lean strongly towards not guilty, though I still have doubts).
Governor Perry refused to stay the execution for 30 days to allow reexamination of the evidence, so capital punishment doesn't make people strive to ensure that they're not making a mistake.
It's actually more expensive to execute a person than to incarcerate a person for life once you add in the cost of the decade long series of mandatory court appeals and reviews.