Monthly Archives: May 2011

Witness the benevolence of Baby Assad, the man Obama believes will usher in the democratic reforms Syrians are asking for. Hamza was 13. Thirteen. One of the pictures is disturbing, so be warned.

Devotedly washed and sprinkled with rose petals, Hamza Ali al-Khateeb lies prepared for burial.

But the rituals of death cannot wipe away the horrific injuries that have mutilated his body almost beyond recognition.

Nor do they blot out that Hamza – riddled with bullets, kneecapped and with neck broken and penis hacked off – has the rounded cheeks and gentle face of a child.

At 13, he is one of the youngest known victims of Syria’s ruthless crackdown on protesters who have tried to overthrow the government of  President Bashar al-Assad.

The teenager’s family were told not to speak of his terrible fate. But in a pitiful act of defiance, they posted the footage of his corpse online.

The action led to his father being arrested last week. His whereabouts are unknown.

Expecting sanity from a despot who authorizes the brutal torture and murder of children is either abject stupidity or complete callous disregard for the lives of the Syrian masses who are clamouring, crying out for freedom. We saw Obama’s muted reaction to the first round of Iranian protests. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. (He thinks you’re stupid, and that you believe every word he says. When his lips move, he’s lying.)

This is so sad and so infuriating. This poor girl.

Her battered body was buried in a forest and was found a week after she disappeared. Police have opened a murder investigation and are looking into claims that three Muslim youths killed her, claiming her death was justified under Islam.

One of the three – named as 16-year-old Bihal Gaziev – is under arrest and told police that Katya had ‘violated the laws of Sharia’. Gaziev has said he has no regrets about her death.

Of course he doesn’t have regrets about her death. Why would he? His version of Islam — most likely the Islam that was taught to him — appeals to and excuses the darkest impulses of man’s nature. This little shit and his co-bastards have been told that God is totally cool with their murderous appetites. Mix this with adolescence, and you’ve got, well, Palestine and most of the Muslim world.

This girl did nothing but want to enjoy being a girl, which is strictly verboten in Islam. Her crime was being beautiful and being unashamed of it.

This is just hilarious. They deserve each other.

Two cross posts in one week! Cuh-razy.

I’ve got a Memorial Day workout in the morning. It will be brutal and it will last entirely too long and I will probably go eat a carne asada burrito afterward. But I’m free to muck about the gym and eat carne asada burritos because someone’s husband, father, brother, lover did not come home. Men I will never meet throughout the noble history of this country have thrown themselves on grenades to save their comrades, (Michael Monsoor), sacrificed themselves to ensure the survival of others, (Michael Murphy), acted selflessly and forfeited their lives for this country. This country produces heroes. We come from heroic stock, though it might not seem so when one lives in SoCal. Taking on the mightiest empire of the age is not the destiny the soft, self-absorbed metrosexual, but there are still heroes among us who follow the example of Washington and our Founders.

This country is worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for.

I went to an “Ethnic Food Fair” this afternoon at Balboa Park, and while I managed to avoid the “Palestinian” food and score some delicious shawarma from Israel House, I was not able to keep from smiling when I stepped into the House of the United States of America. It wasn’t fancy; it was full of older veterans serving up hot dogs and apple pie. But it was home. Going through all of the other international houses, I’d think to myself how fun it would be to join the Denmark House, or the Italian House — but when I stepped through the door of the United States House, I felt proud. These veterans greeted everyone with a smile and a handshake, they were giving out the hot dogs and Coke for free — you could donate if you’d like. The sweetest older man in a wheelchair fished a Diet Coke out of a tub of icy water just for me, though he’d have done it for anyone.

We’re a great country, full of great people, and I walked away from that ethnic food fair thinking, This is my house. I’m proud of this house.

It’s very common for me to search the faces of foreigners for some sort of resemblance — where am I from? What’s my ethnicity? Am I Ukrainian? Czech? Italian? French? Being adopted makes this sort of thing a mystery. I feel fraudulent claiming my father’s Italian-English-Scottish-Jewish heritage because it isn’t mine. But lately I’ve been thinking that the absence of history makes me quintessentially American. My ancestors obviously came from somewhere, and I’d be proud of my heritage if I knew what it was, but I’m simply American. I’m from this badass country where we really believe we can do anything we set our minds to, (except succeed in California — who wants the tax hassle?). We are a nation of heroes, and though we’re getting a little soft, we’re still capable of wonderful things.

Thank you, all of you brave, selfless, actual men for making it possible for the rest of us to go all soft and myopic. I’ll try to honor you better with each passing year, for it is only with age that I understand the truth depth of your sacrifice.

This is downright creepy. It reminds me of the news story from a year or so ago of grandchild-less Japanese women buying expensive dolls that give the owner the experience of spending time with the child or grandchild they will never have. Which reminded me at the time of PD James’ haunting book, The Children of Men.

As for buying a doll that is a lifelike replica of one’s dead child — I think some therapy may be in order. I’ve lost a child; I am intimately acquainted with the pain and difficulty of letting go, but this is not healthy.

Grieve your loss; face your darkness. You will come out the other side transformed, which is neither bad nor good. It is what it is.

This may be the only post I crosspost over at inveterate scars. It is an horrific story that is very personal. Killing this monster cannot bring Jennifer back, but it needs to be done. This guy has lived the years that Jennifer should have lived, and it is infuriating.

Jennifer was my sister’s close friend. She had that smile that lit up the room, you know? She was funny and sweet and the perfect counterpoint to my sister’s natural reticence. I remember her smile most of all, and I remember the day my mother came into the backyard and told my sister that her playmate had gone missing. I cannot forget the edge of panic in my mom’s voice, as she tried to sound calm for my sister.

And I remember when my mother sat my sister down and told her that Jennifer had been found. No one deserves to be left alone, discarded like that. That monster is the one who deserved to be executed in the desert, left to rot in the sun like so much carrion. I am not being disingenuous when I say that there is not a month that goes by that I don’t think about Jennifer. It’s usually not anything in particular; I just think of her smile, and I think of her family — a nice, wonderful family — and my heart aches for them.

When Chelsea went missing, I thought of Jennifer. When Amber disappeared, I thought of Jennifer. I thought of the wholesale destruction visited upon completely undeserving families — families who loved their kids and had so many, many dreams for their future. I thought of all the wonderful, amazing things Jennifer would be doing, and how the anger I feel toward the monster who stole that from her was a deep, still, scary kind of anger. The kind of anger that makes the idea of taking someone apart with my very fingers seem palatable, even fun.

I want to be respectful to Jennifer’s family — my sister was Jennifer’s friend, not I — and so I don’t want to seem to be appropriating their tragedy for my own twisted melancholia. I remember her, and I am angry for her, and I am filled with sorrow and rage that her family has had to endure this kind of pain. It’s not fair. They were good people and Jennifer was sweet.

I wish that the execution of this monster, (who should have been disposed of long ago), would be painful. I wish there could be a way to instill the same measure of fear and pain that he inflicted upon a helpless victim. I wish his death were slow and filled with the sense of powerlessness I’m sure he got off on. I wish we could kill him slowly and then bring him back to do it all over again.

But it wouldn’t bring her back. There would still be this hole in the fabric of the world, less laughter, less sweetness. There would still be a family that will always have this raw wound to learn to live around.

But it would be fun to make him suffer.

I’ve been staring at the computer screen for hours. I’ve downloaded some ebooks, (Affinity Bridge by George Mann and Whitechapel Gods by someone — I love me some steampunk), I’ve checked Drudge, Fox, SteynOnline, the Corner, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, Sephora, the Gap, the HTC home page… But I’ve found nothing inspirational.

Oh, I’ve found things I want to write about, but actually writing about them seems pointless. Everyone’s been writing/talking about the ban on circumcision in the People’s Republic of California. An assault on religious freedom? You betcha, as Sarah Barracuda would say. Am I upset that anti-circumcision activists are comparing it to female genital mutilation? F*** yeah, I am. That’s a disgusting comparison, denigrating all of the women in this world that have been subjected to such horrors. Ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali if it’s the same, you myopic bastards, you provincial turds. There is more in heaven and earth that is dreamt of in your philosophy, you small-minded, perpetually hysterical, fascist freaks.

And what about this gem of a story from the UK? Why go to Afghanistan when Afghanistan will come to you? At least no one’s tossing acid in the faces of school girls… yet. You do realize that when we observe the plight of the Brits, we are peering a decade or less into our own future, do you not? We’re hellbent on repeating the mistakes of Europe, even as we watch it all disintegrate before our very eyes. The Left and this president (and some on the Right, to be fair) are determined to sink this once-vibrant nation into the sludge of mediocrity.

Yay.

[Well, that may be a record. I went from inspired to grumpy and pessimistic in about two weeks. It took me years last time. I guess it's like riding a bike.]

And finally, I was listening to Rush this morning, and something he said really hit home. When asked by a woman why American conservatives didn’t have a Bibi, Rush gave her a one word answer: Passion. Bibi is well-spoken, has a commanding voice, is a silver fox, and is a principled politician, but he also has passion. The Republican party lacks this sort of passion, as does most of American politics in general. Even the great Orator himself, the majestic Reader of Teleprompters, doesn’t have the passion that really moves people. Yeah, we were told he did, but his was a manufactured passion, his persona was created out of whole cloth by a cloying, agenda-driven media establishment.

When I hear Bibi speak, I want to fight for him. I want to follow him into battle. I want to, if need be, die for his vision of a free, peaceful, strong Israel. With GWB, it wasn’t his speeches that made me want to follow him, it was the look of sorrow and cold, precise, absolute anger in his eyes when the Towers fell. Passion when coupled with principle and resolve, can move the world.

I want some of that in my party. I want some bona fide passion, some real conservative principles, some steely resolve and a certain lack of concern about the establishment popularity contests. I want a George Washington for our age — my expectations are not too high or anything. I wonder why everyone falls short?

Obviously, there must be substance behind the well-spoken rhetoric. That’s why Bibi is so compelling — he’s a man of substance. Israel is a substantive nation, a society where open discourse and free expression is valued; even as the nation fights for its survival, it never considers anything beyond scrutiny or debate.

We need a man of substance who has the passion behind his principle to lead us. No more McCains, no more Doles. No more “electable moderates” — there’s no passion in moderation! Screw moderation. Let’s inject some life into this party and stop ceding ground to the other side before we even start the battle. (And don’t even get me started on Ron Paul. He positions himself as an outsider, but he’s been in politics long enough to be anything but. We need citizen politicians, not professional ones.)

Passion. Let’s get some.

Ouch.

Oprah herself seems to be her own one-woman group booking, a vast conglomeration of all the nation’s favorite victim groups: She’s a woman, she’s black, she’s fat or thin — or a dieting victim, ballooning up to 237 pounds in 1992, which is positively svelte by the standards of most of her viewers but makes her without doubt the largest female TV star of all time (traditionally, her ratings have been higher when she’s heavier). . .

I take it Steyn didn’t think much of Oprah’s audience then, did he? I’ll be honest, I use Oprah’s Book of the Month endorsement as an indicator of which books to avoid. I have since she launched that particular annoyance. I’ve watched maybe three episodes of Oprah in my entire life, and I’ve actually decided to cease acquaintanceships with women because they watch Oprah on a regular basis.

Steyn’s problems with Oprah in 1998 are, surprisingly enough, my problems with Oprah. The rise and subsequent dominance of “therapy culture” stems directly from the me-centered blather Oprah’s been peddling. I hate it. I hate the terminology, I hate the shallowness, I hate the lack of self-awareness and deliberate avoidance of self-knowledge that comes with this brand of pop introspection. It’s disgusting, and I won’t miss her.

She isn’t your friend, ladies. How about you go out and make some real friends?

How ’bout you fire him? Hmmm?

So, I’m not exactly a fan of Laura Ingraham since she decided to call Meghan McCain — who is a colossal idiot, if you ask me — fat. Baby McCain is completely ridiculous, and she’s obviously deluded enough to seek a life as a pundit, but regardless of all her many, many failings, mocking her appearance because you don’t agree with her is something serious, respectable adults should not do. And Ingraham portrays herself as a serious, intelligent adult. Making fun of a twentysomething bubble-head just kind of lowers Laura’s worth. Not that she cares what I think, of course.

Despite my distaste for Ingraham, I am appalled by the jackass, Ed Schulz, who decided to call her a slut. Look, she doesn’t deserve that. This is one of the reasons I was so annoyed with her back then — we don’t resort to ad hominem attacks just because we disagree with someone’s politics. The Left does.

Ingraham could be a crazy slut, but that’s not why this jerk has a problem with her. (I kinda doubt she is, though.) I’m standing with my conservative sister on this, kids. NBC, fire that asshole and issue an apology. It’s the least you could do.

[Thanks, KJ, for helping me with my senior moment.]

Oddly enough, I was thisclose to watching Fritz Lang’s Metropolis this afternoon. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I’d have to sit through a silent film. I’m a sucker for classic film but not that classic. Instead, I downloaded Edith Piaf and Serge Gainsbourg.

I have no idea what came over me.

This evening, I tried to explain my Je T’aime Moi Non Plus obsession to my friend Anna over tacos and Diet Coke. She let loose a mighty belly laugh for someone so small and said, “Who does that? Who suddenly has to listen to 60′s French pop?”

And the answer is: Me, that’s who.

Um, this is crazy talk.

Also, check out the ego on this guy.

I came here many years ago with a biker movie and we stopped a war. Now, it’s about starting the world.

What the hell is he going on about? So Easy Rider stopped Vietnam — nevermind all of the complicated political and military machinations involved in the end of the war — and now Peter Fonda is going to “start the world?” What the hell does that even mean? Not to mention that the jackass is talking about the assassination of a sitting US president. Man, I don’t like Obama, but I certainly don’t want anything bad to happen to him, and I do not like fellow Americans calling for his demise. There’s something so disgusting, so filthy and gauche and disrespectful about discussing the assassination of a president, even in jest. It makes my skin crawl.

I know, I know — the Left freely and openly talked about assassinating GWB, and Peter Fonda is obviously a part of that same debauched group, but I’m not ever going to wish bodily harm upon any president of my country. My disagreements with this president are political, and politics is not all that personal for me. Yes, I think that Lefties should get their heads checked, but I’m not going to hate them for it. “Hate” is a term I do not like to use because I believe it poisons the soul. I’ve hated, actually hated, maybe two people in my lifetime and that was for things they had done to me or to others.

Peter Fonda either doesn’t have a grip on reality (my vote) or he’s a disgusting, bitter sociopath. Politicians are people, people with families (sometimes two or three families — I’m not judging) who love them. Or at least like them. Whatever personal deficiencies led them to seek a life in politics do not render them worthy of assassination. I doubt that said deficiencies hold a candle to the ones present in a person who has devoted their lives to a career in movies.

The funny thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever found David Beckham more attractive than I do when I see this picture of him in full “geek-chic” mode. And Brad has never looked as good as he did at Cannes.