blue girl

Still More Die

The Last Laugh

'O Jesus Christ!' I'm hit,' he said; and died.
Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed,
The Bullets chirped - In vain! vain! vain!
Machine-guns chuckled, - Tut-tut! Tut-tut!
And the Big Gun guffawed.

Another sighed, - 'O Mother, mother! Dad!'
Then smiled, at nothing, childlike, being dead.
    And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
    Leisurely gestured, - Fool!
    And the falling splinters tittered.

'My Love!' one moaned, Love-languid seemed his mood,
Till, slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.
    And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned;
    Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;
    And the Gas hissed.

                        - Wilfred Owen, 1893 - 1918

The Definition of Insanity

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
                                         - Dwight D Eisenhower

All This Madness

HEADS OF STATE
Kings and princes, presidents and politicians

And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country's pride.
                                                                -Bertrand Russell

Picking at the Scab

Stephen Elliott writes:

Imagine this: It's the second week in March, 2000, just days after the election. A fifteen-year-old boy named Alonza Thomas walks into a convenience store wearing a bandanna over his mouth and nose. He's carrying a gun. He places the gun against the clerk's chest and demands money. Another clerk tackles the boy and a struggle ensues in which the gun is fired leaving a tidy hole in the store rooftop. Plaster and dust sprinkles on the combatants while the boy is subdued.

Here are the facts:  It is the boy's first crime.  His record is as clean as an upscale restaurant.  He is alone.  No one was hurt.

Well, here are “my facts” based on this information:  He chose to walk into a store wearing a bandanna to hide his identity.  He also chose to carry a gun, a deadly weapon.  (He is only 15 years old and decides he’s going to use a gun to intimidate or hurt another human being.)  He sticks or jabs the gun in the clerk’s chest and demands money.  As another clerk tackles him, a struggle ensues and the gun goes off.  And everyone involved is damned lucky that no one was killed or maimed.

Stephen Elliott continues:

Alonza pleads guilty to second degree robbery, admits to a personal firearm use violation, petitions for a remand to juvenile court. But there is a problem. The laws have been changed. March 2000 is an off-election. The voters of California have just passed the Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act of 1998, AKA - Proposition 21.

Quick education. Proposition 21 has two primary extensions. The first takes crimes where the presumption was that a child would be tried as an adult and removes the discretion of the prosecutor and the court, mandating the youth enter into the adult correctional system. The second, and here is where Alonza Thomas comes in, takes crimes committed by juveniles where the child could be tried as an adult but the presumption is that they would be tried as children, because they are children, because as a society we know what a child is, we know the difference between a child and an adult and the potential of youth, it takes these cases and allows the prosecutor to file the case in adult court, if the prosecutor so desires. And this is what happens to Alonza Thomas.

It's really not so complicated. A fifteen-year-old boy sets off to commit his first crime. He's a bumbling criminal, his chances of success were never good. Where are his friends? There is evidence of psychological trauma, but isn't there always? Who is this young Jesse James and where did he get his gun? Who cares? The boy is sentenced to thirteen years in adult prison. There will be no school, no rehabilitation.......(He is ) not even eligible for education courses offered to adults because the child populations has to be kept separate from the adult population until they turn eighteen, at which point they are mainlined into the system. There is no doubt Alonza will come out worse then he went in.

Well, I was robbed at gunpoint last year by, what I described at the time, as a 15 - 20 year old Hispanic male.  I was late to work that morning.  As I turned onto our street where our office was located, the would-be assailant was walking in the middle of my driving lane.  I sized him up right away.  A young guy like that at 9:30 a.m. on a Friday should be at work or at school.  As I passed him, I knew I had passed him too closely and I felt mean, vicious anger directed at me.  I knew I had to get into my office up the block before he met me at the door out of sheer timing.  As I pulled up to park I was gathering everything I needed to take into work and the thought of the kid on the street left my mind.  Poof!  This was my unconscious decision that would change my life.

I made the mistake of getting out of my car.  And as I came around the front of my car there he was, casually walking down the sidewalk.  Hands in his pockets, faded jeans too big, puddled down on his tennis shoes, a winter coat two sizes too big with the hood up over his head.  And in one split second -- 1/4 of a second, his head turned and his eyes from underneath that hood met mine.  I saw his body language change -- he turned on his heels and came at me.  And in that moment I knew I was about to experience something that I’ve always thought about.  That a lot of women think about.  A violent person, his only intention, to do me harm.

We were completely alone on the street.  He was screaming.  He was profane.  His spit flying in my face.  His face was so close to my face that his pretty brown eyes and his white teeth are burned into my memory.  He was violent.  He was raging.  At that moment in my life I was facing down violence personified.

He pulled a black gun from his pocket as he continued to scream and swear at me.  He pointed the gun at my head.  “Looking down the barrel of a gun” is a cliche, but when it happens to you, it is an original, terrifying truth.

I cannot write sentences well enough to truly make you feel what it is like to have a gun pointed at your head.  To know that all they have to do is pull a trigger and you could die.  It is utterly terrifying.  This is my “flashback” moment that can make me cry a year later -- sometimes out of the blue -- as it’s so easy for me to imagine -- and to hear that violent gun going off.

My entire life did not flash before my eyes, but the face of my son did.  And I threw my purse at him as hard as I could, hitting him in the chest.  This shocked him.  But as he was gathering everything up that had fallen out on the sidewalk, he continued to scream at me and point the gun.

Every cell in my body was leaning to the right, trying to get away from him.  He was irrational, still screaming, but there was no where for me to run.

He had the gun.  He was in control.  And as I begged him to leave me alone, he all of a sudden decided to do just that.  He ran away.  Not quickly though.  The memory of his confidence as he ran away still disturbs me.

Within the next 24 hours after this robbery, I considered all of the possibilities for this kid.  In my state, there is a mandatory 7 or 8 year jail term if you are convicted of a gun crime.  I knew immediately that if he were arrested and convicted, he would come out of jail a worse threat to society than he is right now. 

I figured he had to be from bad circumstances -- why else would he have chosen this sort of lifestyle?  I wondered about his mother.  This boy with such beautiful eyes?  How could she not care more for him than to let him end up this way? 

For the next three months, every time there was a murder in the city, they would call me to come and look at mug shots.  That experience in and of itself was enough to make me lose my mind. 

I quickly lost confidence in the detective assigned to my case.  I believe to this day that I could have found this kid, given all of the circumstances surrounding the investigation that I won’t get into in this post.  In my short experience with the criminal justice system, I observed a million and one problems. 

I agree with you that a 15 year old, first time offender should not be tried as an adult.  It is beyond belief that we do not even attempt rehabilitation.  I agree with your statement, “There is no doubt Alonza will come out worse then he went in.”  And I appreciate that you are an advocate for kids like this.  God knows they need someone on their side.

But you have to consider the victims of crime.  Your arguments would be stronger if you did.

Your simple facts:  His record is as clean as an upscale restaurant.  No one was hurt. 

These statements are very misleading and arrogant.  The “upscale restaurant” crack is flippant and degrading to the victims.  Because when there’s a person -- no matter their age -- using a gun, making a threat -- it’s not only hurtful, it is destructive.  And remains destructive for years after the incident.

The kid who robbed me not only stole my purse that held irreplaceable pictures of my child, he stole my confidence, my freedom of movement, my trust and my sense of safety. 

Victims of crime deserve that recognition.

Oh, and by the way -- I don't sleep that well at night anymore.

 

Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?

I've had eight La Blue Girl search-hits on my site this fine Sunday morning.

Searching for porn on a Sunday morning?

Blasphemous!

Let's Talk Dirty

I’ve been a non-blogger this week because I’ve had to earn my paycheck.  Which means I’ve actually been writing a lot, but nothing you would care to read.  Unless you just can’t seem to get enough of, “75% Off!  One Day Only!  Hurry In Today!”

Although I’ve been ignoring my site, interestingly, others haven’t.  I’ve still had lots of hits and last night, while analyzing my stats page I decided to click on some of the referring addresses.  Many, many google searches from England, Japan and other dot somethings I couldn’t quite place. 

Again and again, as the google search pages came up, the person searching had entered the phrase, La Blue Girl.   My heart sank a little as I realized that quite a few people coming to my site were not in search of a little intellectual stimulation, but stimulation of a whole different sort.

You see, La Blue Girl is a series of anime porn.  The main character, Miko Mido, is a ninja-in-training, entrusted with the family business of making sure the sex-starved Shikima stay out of humanity's way.  She is a master at fighting off her enemies with sex.  She fights back with every bit of sexual sorcery she can muster! 

She studies SexCraft and says things like, "Did I forget to wear my panties again?"

Because I’ve been proud of the number of visitors to my blog, my 13 year old son started rolling on the floor in laughter.  As I threatened to take his computer away and remove anything remotely anime-ish from his life, I began to wonder how popular could cartoon porn actually be? 

According to FamilySafeMedia.com, where they sell “weemotes” (baby versions of remotes) that will shield your wee-little ones from seeing unsolicited wee-wees, (sorry, a wee-bit of humor there) worldwide, pornography is a $57 billion industry and growing because of the Internet.  That’s larger than the combined revenues of all professional football, basketball and baseball franchises.  At $6.2 billion, the U.S. porn revenue alone exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC.

I guess when you’ve got computer generated cartoon characters going at it, the liberal media just can’t compete.

Does Jerry Falwell know about this?  Does James Dobson?

My husband said it’s probably teenage boys mostly interested in Miko Mido’s pantie-less escapades.  But an on-line reviewer of the series wrote, “Contains graphic sex, violence and occult themes.  Absolutely for adults only!” 

He continued, “Amidst all the sexual encounters every five minutes or so, La Blue Girl has a definite plot. The majority of screen time is devoted to the sex duels, and there's a lot of kinky and hardcore things going on.  This is definitely not for the faint of heart.....Everything is also shown in explicit detail.”

Well, if that’s the case, I’m sure the audience most certainly is made up of teenage boys, and probably full grown men.  Like this one and this one.

All the poor shleps searching for La Blue Girl have been looking for love in all the wrong places. 

You see, when I feel the need to look at something that combines cartoons and sex, I prefer artwork that’s a little more primitive. 

And when and if I ever write about Deep Throat activities, it will be more a discussion about who Deep Throat actually is. 

Much to my husband’s dismay, this is the kind of thing that gets me hot, hot, hot.

We know who Woodward said it wasn’t:  Alexander Haig, Earl Silbert, John Sears, Diane Sawyer, Cord Meyer Jr., and William Colby.

There are the celebrity candidates:  Kissinger, Melvin R. Laird, who served as Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Ben Stein, Pat Buchanan and George H. W. Bush.

But the three leading candidates are:   W. Mark Felt, the third highest official in the FBI at the time of Watergate.  Fred Fielding, who was assistant to John Dean and had access to the files relating to Watergate.  And William H. Rehnquist.

I don’t know.  I’m thinking Rehnquist.  Deep Throat, rumors about Deep Throat being sick, Rehnquist has thyroid cancer, thyroid's by the throat.  You get the picture.  But, if he cared that much about our country, he definitely would have weighed in on the filibuster debate by now.  (Unless he’s in some parking garage waiting for Bernstein to show up.)

It’s also entertaining to think of Deep Throat being George H. W. Bush, considering Newsweek, owned by The Washington Post, got whacked this week as payback for Watergate.  With the lynching being led by Bush, Jr., who wouldn’t know doing what’s right if it jumped up and bit him, because doing what’s wrong has been crammed down his throat by the neo-cons for so long now.

But I undress...I mean digress.

I sort of feel bad for all those people out there in the world, credit card at the ready, looking for La Blue Girl. Because they just get me. 

A blue girl no doubt, but one who is a lot less popular than imagined.  To paraphrase Woody Allen, seemingly doing nothing much more than engaging in a little mental masturbation.

 

Hey! Looks Aren't Everything!

For some reason, I am psyched about the Newsweek story.  Maybe it's just the hope that one of these days, this administration's antics are going to be their downfall.  One can dream.  Everyone from here to Afghanistan -- including this from Shakespear's Sister -- has written about it and I don't have much to add, except this little tidbit from Ron Reagan today.  He asked the question: " If Michael Isikoff was set up, can he -- should he reveal his source?  And if so, what would be the implications?"

I say YES!  Do it.  Call them on their bluff.  Make a scene!  Be like a dog with a bone and don't let go of it.  Hook up with Bill Moyers and tour the country together!  Make a lot of noise -- make a movie with Michael Moore!  Have Bruce Springsteen write a song about it!  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO SOMETHING!

Ok.  Anyway.  On to more important things.  Have some harmless fun and take this Star Wars personality test.

Oh, for crying out loud.  I can't figure out how to add the link to the test.  Go here, visit Ratboy and click on his image!   (If someone can help me figure it out, I'd appreciate the help.)

I'm Yoda.  I don't mind the description -- it's pretty accurate.  But, it's not quite the "look" that I'm after.  Oh, well.  At least the force is with me.  (Right?  I'm not a Star Wars expert, I just assumed.)

Let Them Know We Need To Keep What Integrity Is Left, In the Senate

Thanks to Linkmeister for rousing me from my Monday stupor. 

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist plans a vote on Texas judge Priscilla Owens and California judge Janice Rogers Brown this week.

Why should this matter to you?

Because, if Democrats try to block Brown and Owen through a filibuster and Republicans can’t break it, Frist will call for the Senate to vote on whether to BAN the use of filibusters against all judicial nominees, changing the way the Senate has done business for 200 years.

This (below) from pfaw.org:

The Supreme Court:  the Far-Right’s Ultimate Prize

Pat Robertson, Host, “The 700 Club”
“We ask for miracles in regard to the Supreme Court,” he said as he launched a special 21-day “prayer offensive” aimed at removing one or more justices. In a letter he wrote, “One justice is 83 years old, another has cancer, and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire.” Robertson later said ‘I don’t care which three, I mean as long as the three conservatives stay on. There’s six liberals, so it’s up to the Lord.”

Gary Bauer, President, American Values
"…we cannot afford one more mistake in a Supreme Court appointment. The President, if there is a vacancy, must appoint a Scalia or a Thomas type of candidate, not another wimp ready to surrender to the social radicals.”

Jerry Falwell Jr.
"That's why this election is so important," he said. "Three or four justices are going to be appointed in the next four years."

The stacked Supreme Court is what they are after.  If they succeed, our lives will be very different.

If the filibuster is eliminated, then Bush has no real constraint on appointing a Supreme Court Justice:  it would take only fifty senators, plus Vice-President Cheney, to confirm any nominee, no matter how extreme or unqualified, such as John Ashcroft or Pat Robertson.

The Supreme Court is the ultimate prize for radical right leaders who have been talking about its significance for the past decade. These leaders worked hard to help Bush get re-elected because they believed their payback would be the Supreme Court of their dreams – a constitutional nightmare of the rest of us.

It’s no accident that all of this maneuvering around lower-court nominees, the filibuster, and the “nuclear option” is going on right before an expected Supreme Court vacancy.

The Recent History of the Supreme Court

In recent years the court has ruled that affirmative action, if properly administered, is legal, and also overturned a previous decision which allowed states to jail people for private sexual conduct. In the past the Court has ordered the end of legal segregation of schools, invalidated restrictions on reproductive freedom, required police to inform people they arrest of their rights, ruled in favor of civil rights laws which ensured the political rights of minorities, and defined and defended freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Many of the important recent decisions were decided by narrow 5-4 majorities. If the Right Wing had one additional vote on the Court, they would be able to severely limit or reverse many of these historic decisions.

Democrats need six of these Republican Senators to vote their way.  If you live in one of these states, please contact them and let them know you DO NOT agree with eliminating the filibuster. 

Let them know that you want them to preserve the integrity of the US Senate and that you believe the voice of the minority party needs to be heard.

Susan Collins of Maine

Chuck Hagel of Nebraska

Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania

John Warner of Virginia

Mike DeWine of Ohio - C'mon Ohio people -- let's come through this time.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska

John Sununu of New Hampshire

Gordon Smith of Oregon

Hey! We’re The One’s Throwing Pies!

My boss came into my office in November 1994 with an “I Voted” sticker on his sweater and a shit-eating grin on his face.  He rocked back and forth on his heels like a proud first-time father and I was curious.  So, he pulled up a chair and lit a cigar.

He went on to explain how the country was going to be saved by the Republican Revolution.  He said they had a “Contract with America.”  They were going to balance the budget, shrink the federal government and dismantle 40 years of entitlement programs initiated and rubber stamped into law by the bleeding heart liberals -- truly the scourge of the 20th century.

He lowered his voice and growled the name “Bill Clinton” several times.

“But why would you trust corporations more than our government?”  I asked.

“Because government does not have incentives to work efficiently.”  He answered.

Seemed reasonable.  But, I work in this country (for him, no less) and nothing ever worked efficiently.

“But why don’t you want regulations in place to control pollution?”

“Because liberals love communism and hate America.  So, they put all kinds of stupid rules in place and that makes everything cost more.  We need less regulation, we need government out of our lives.”

I didn’t know I loved communism, but I could see how government regulations would make things cost more.  Ok.

“If liberals are really the downfall of this country, and they’ve been in charge so long, why are we now the world’s only super power?  How then did we get where we are?” I asked.

“Because of Ronald Reagan.  He inspired our nation and ended the Cold War.”

I then reminded him:  “Ketchup is a vegetable.”

He ignored me, then continued:

“You see liberals like to raise your taxes and spend your money every chance they get.  There’s no accountability, no responsibility.  They like to ‘let it all hang out,’ ‘if it feels good, do it.’  They hate the military.  Liberals want gays to serve in the miliary!  They love welfare.  They hate our country.  They want to control everything we do and say.  Politically correct crowd.  White men are losing ground.  The liberals have to be stopped.  Look at Clinton.  (Growl)   Chasing women.  Dodging the draft.  Raising your taxes.  (Growl)  Smoking pot.  Control freak wife. They are ruining the traditional family.”

Never mind that my boss was divorced and loved to party like it’s 1999.  He continued.

“We need government out of our lives.  And we need more integrity in the White House.  The Republican party has principles.  They don’t blow with the wind, taking polls.  They love America and will leave people alone.” 

It was obvious he believed every word he was saying and no amount of backtalk from me was going to change his mind.  He was in a really good mood so I just smiled at him.  He was having fun, in a very angry sort of way, because this so-called “Republican Revolution.”  He smiled back with that big cigar between his teeth, rubbed his hands together and left my office.

The exchange reminded me of conversations I’ve had with my stepfather.  Although people said he looked like Phil Donahue, he acted more like Dick Cheney, channeling Patton.  When he came into a room, your spine would stiffen and you’d make darn sure your Coke was sitting on a coaster.  Being a proud ex-Marine, he believed, and so would you, whether you liked it or not, that everything had its place. 

My stepfather thought politicians were crooks.  Often saying it’s the only profession you go into making $80,000.00 a year, but come out a millionaire.  But, if push came to shove, as it did many times in our house over topics like the Kent State shootings or Patty Hearst, he would immediately side with the Republicans. 

Whether he liked to admit it or not, he had Republican blood running through his veins, which was all too apparent after his second martini at the country club when we were out celebrating his birthday just after major military operations had ended in Iraq.  He pulled out an editorial from the Wall Street Journal and read it to me.  The point of the article was that liberals had it all wrong . . . again.  My stepfather relished reading this to me.  The moment reminded me of the conversation I had had with my boss in 1994.  The same smugness.  He didn’t say it, but his attitude did:  “We’re right.  And we’re winning!” 

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since I read Michael Wolff’s article in the newest Vanity Fair.  Wolff asks, “How come right-wing pundits are funny, while their left-wing counterparts are stuck in plodding solemnity?”

I thought the article was joke.  Not only because it seems hard for Wolff to stay on point.  (He seems to have some sort of grudge against the online publication Slate and all those who work there.)  But, also he also believes everything and everyone on the right is really funny,  “. . . from FOX to talk radio to Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard to the Wall Street Journal editorial page . . . to Ann Coulter.”

Is he joking?  They’re not funny.  They are having fun because they are winning.  And they are winning in the same way Mark McGuire was “winning” a couple of years ago.  The Republican party is jacked up on steroids right now.  They’re like a bull in a china shop.  Michael Wolff may be roaring with laughter just because a bull can get into a china shop, (hey, now that’s a funny sight!) but, you can’t blame the liberals’ lack of humor because all of grandma’s best china is getting smashed to pieces!

Wolff writes that Ann Coulter, “(that improbable creature) is often facile, funny, irreverent, eccentric, jaunty, pithy . . .”

Can you imagine a right-wing journalist ever describing Abbie Hoffman that way?  Can you imagine the conservatives analyzing themselves the way Michael Wolff did the liberals in that article? 

“From CBS, to the college campuses, to the Weather Underground to the New York Times editorial page . . . to Jane Fonda, they one and all are really funny, while we conservatives are too earnest, self-serious, too buttoned-up and way too uptight.”

Yeah, the thought of that is absolutely hysterical.  Because it would never happen.

So as I humorlessly sit here, thinking of my old boss and my stepfather, I worry about everything that’s going on right now.  The war in Iraq, the Nuclear option, the religious right, social security, the flattening of the world that Tom Friedman keeps reminding me of, the culture wars, I keep wondering, angrily, where are the Democrats? 

And then I remember a little grass roots effort that’s been taking place over the last year that maybe I’ve dismissed too quickly!

If all we can do right now is start food fights with those on the right, so be it. Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, and David Horowitz have all gotten pies in the face and Pat Buchanan was doused with salad dressing. 

Sure, a pie in the face is lowbrow humor, but at least it’s a start.

 

Gotta Love No. 41

No! I’m not talking about George Herbert Walker Bush! After all, he’s 80. And I’m no where near that age. Although today I’m one step closer. And I’m not jumping out of anything from a high altitude. I plan to do that when I’m his age. Mark that down and hold me to it.

By the time 41 had turned 41, he was already a decorated war hero and an oil tycoon. He had co-founded the Zapata Petroleum Corporation.

I have a beautifully decorated home where we watch the war his son started on TV and I also co-founded a corporation. With my husband. Although we are full-fledged members of the ownership society, we are still working on the “tycoon” part.

When 41 was 40, he ran for a Senate seat in Texas and lost.

When I was 40, I seemed to have lost more and more of my short term memory.

Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah.

But there’s still hope for me.

When 41 was 41, his best years were ahead of him. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966. Then was named U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Then he became Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Then he became Director of the CIA.

Then he became Vice-President of the United States.

Then he became President of the United States.

Okay. Re-reading that and gazing into my future, I may not jump out of an airplane today. I may jump out a window.

But then I remembered that 41 lost to Slick Willy in ‘92 and raised No. 43.

See? Nobody’s life is perfect.

I’m pretty sure my son will never cut taxes only for the rich nor marry a girl with such a potty mouth. I’ve taught him never to start a war based on hype and to never use God to gain power. Yes, I’ve also taught him about karma.

Tonight’s celebration will be an intimate affair. Just my husband, son and me. And hopefully a birthday cake that’s not low-carb. And before I blow out the candles, I’m going to think of No. 41 and make a little wish for a kinder, gentler nation.