Device Drops ‘Vilify’

Mar 8, 13 2:55 AM

Disturbed has long been my favorite band. David Draiman and I don’t politically agree on everything, but he’s far more open to opposing ideas than liberals are (he considers himself a libertarian) – and he’s defiantly Jewish. His pulse-pounding “Never Again” calls out Holocaust deniers and the music written by Dan Donegan, Mike Wengren and John Moyer brings that message to a stage that no metal band has ever explored before.

I like all different kinds of music (with the distinct and strong exception of rap), but Disturbed is definitely my favorite. With Disturbed on hiatus, Draiman moved to Austin, TX (soon to be my home, so I’m excited) and started up a side project with former Filter guitarist Geno Leonardo. The project is called Device, and the first single dropped on February 19. I’ve been so busy with work that I didn’t even notice until last week.

Leonardo’s opening riff is definitely reminiscent of Filter, but the rest of the song seems to be a mesh of Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle – with Draiman’s signature vocals making it an industrial rock sound that is actually melodic. If you like hard rock, you’ll like Device. Lyrically, I love it; my favorite line comes from the first verse: “go find another lapdog, f—er!”

It should come as no surprise that I’m now claiming this song as my official response to gay leftists who publicly call me a self-loathing closet case and a traitor, while in private wishing for me to commit suicide or sending me a death threat.

WARNING: the video is not safe for work and definitely not safe for the kids. Click here for the video on the official YouTube channel.

Comments (3)

Poor Jodi

Mar 4, 13 3:29 AM

I tend not to comment on a case while it’s still in the trial phase. Often I believe we don’t know enough about the case from what the media has said because the media will report on every little twitch, giggle and fart – truth be damned. They will report on rumors as though they are fact. This time, however, I don’t need a trial to tell me what I can tell from professional intuition. I tend to be very protective of women who have been abused. I deal with them professionally and have, more times than I can remember, watched them go back to their abusers because they don’t feel they have a way out. I know when I’m talking to a victim. I also know when I’m being strung along; not all women who claim to be victims are, and they frustrate me the most because they are the reason the true victims have such a difficult time getting help. The drama currently playing out in Phoenix is easy to figure out.

Jodi Arias is a complete sociopath.

We know what the facts are, and when you put them together they’re chilling on a level that most people don’t want to believe is possible. Jodi Arias met Travis Alexander during a conference for the company he worked for, Prepaid Legal Services, in Las Vegas in November 2006. Arias moved to Mesa (a suburb on the East edge of Phoenix proper, just East of Tempe) to maintain a relationship with Alexander. She lived with a roommate because Alexander was Mormon and living together before marriage is forbidden. By June of 2007, Arias began telling friends that she and Alexander had broken up. By April 2008, Arias moved back to Yreka, California, where she lived with her grandparents. At this point Alexander had already told his friends that Arias had been stalking him – hacking his Facebook page and slashing his tires. On June 9, after he’d missed several important appointments, co-workers and friends went to his home to check up on him. His two roommates, thinking he’d gone to Cancun, said he was out of town. Among those who had showed up to find him was one of the women he was supposed to have gone with, so they forced their way into his bedroom. Pools and trails of blood led to the master bathroom, where he was found dead (and practically mutilated) in his shower. His throat had been slashed, he had been stabbed 29 times, and he’d been shot in the face with a .25 caliber gun. He had been dead for five days. A bloody handprint was discovered on a wall and his brand-new digital camera was found in the washing machine with heavy damage.

Suspicion was immediately turned on Arias. All of Alexander’s friends agreed to give DNA samples – Arias complied as well, though she strangely began calling the lead detective on the case repeatedly to ask how the investigation was going and promising to help in any way she could. That detective discovered that Arias had also been accessing Alexander’s voicemail over the past several days and calling repeatedly, leaving multiple messages, beginning on June 4 (shortly after he would have been killed). She told the lead detective that she didn’t know anything about the crime, even said that she had last seen Alexander as she was leaving town back in April. The investigation turned up quite a trail of curious incidents.

On May 28, Arias’ grandparents called police to report a burglary. It was peculiar because the bandit took exactly one item from each room in the house, including a single .25 caliber handgun in a safe containing four guns, and cash and jewelry were left untouched. Somewhere around May 30-31, Arias asked a friend, Darryl Brewer, if she could borrow two five-gallon gas cans for a trip; on June 2, she rented a white Ford Focus from Budget Rent-A-Car and claimed the rental would be for local use only. Her credit card was used to buy several items at a Wal-Mart in Salinas, CA (including a third five-gallon gas can) and just over 20 gallons of gasoline (a Ford Focus typical to rentals only has a 12-gallon tank) on June 3. Salinas is just less than halfway between Yreka and Phoenix, a trip that would total 1013 miles according to Google Maps.

After the stop in Salinas (still 675 miles from Phoenix), her credit card wasn’t used again until June 6 – she used it in Sparks, NV, fully 737 miles from Phoenix. By then, however, she had gone to Utah to visit her new love interest – a man named Ryan Burns. He said that she was a day later than they had planned to meet and that, despite the heat, she wore long sleeves and had a bandage on one hand. She excused it by claiming she’d injured herself at work. After meeting with Burns, she drove back to Yreka. The Ford Focus was returned with more than 2800 miles on it (how’s THAT for local use?), the floor mats were missing, and the return report stated there were “kool-aid stains” on both the front and back seats.

Here’s where it gets really creepy. Mesa police were able to recover deleted images from the digital camera found in the washing machine. Whoever had run it through a wash cycle had first deleted several pictures; they wanted to be doubly certain that the images would be forever lost. Those pictures were of a sexual romp between Alexander and Arias on June 4. Both of them looked like they were having fun. Arias was even wearing pigtails during the encounter. The very last image, taken at 5:30 p.m., was of Alexander lying on the floor, bleeding profusely.

A DNA match was also made – it was Arias’ blood mixed with Alexander’s in the bloody handprint on the wall. By the time this evidence was discovered, Arias had lied to police multiple times, lied to Alexander’s family (even going so far as to send his grandmother flowers), and had gone to great lengths to throw off any evidence that she could have possibly committed the crime.

Is anyone else shivering yet?

Not even 24 hours after murdering Travis Alexander, Jodi Arias was cuddling and making out with another man in Utah. She gave no hint that anything had gone wrong. After her arrest for the murder, Arias appeared on 48 Hours to make her case to the public. Again, she lied. She admitted to being there, but that two intruders broke in and killed him – yet she had no explanation as to how she knew this and didn’t report the incident to police. Once cornered on that story, she changed the story yet again: she arrived at the new excuse she’s been using in court, that Alexander was abusive and forced her to engage in “uncomfortable” sex acts.

In my experience, a woman who has been abused to the point that she kills her abuser in a fit of blind terror isn’t arriving at that moment without there first being some kind of evidence. There are usually police reports of neighbors calling to report violence (and Alexander had two roommates), friends and relatives noticing bruises or other injuries (such as broken bones or burns), even hospital records. There was nothing on Jodi Arias. I’ve also never seen an abuse victim who didn’t live with their abuser continue to engage in a relationship with them over a period of over a year – or come back two months after moving away to have sex with them and brutally murder them.

Victims who kill their abusers don’t usually realize they’ve done it until the act is done, and it doesn’t include the extreme method that Jodi Arias used. It’s usually a single stab wound, one or two gunshot wounds, something simple and quick. It doesn’t involve heavy planning, renting a car, finding methods for purchasing gas and food well out of the way to make sure your credit card isn’t being used within hundreds of miles of the city where the crime was committed and going to play tonsil hockey with a man you’ve never met…all while claiming that you deeply loved the man you’ve killed.

Jodi Arias is a classic sociopath. She has no conscience. She feels no real emotion; emotion is a second language to her, one she has likely learned over her three decades of life to mimic. She’s proven that she is very good at turning it on and off at will to get what she wants. She is capable of telling a multitude of lies, and every time she’s caught in one lie she concocts anther set of them to cover her tracks. Now that she’s cornered yet again, she is putting on a grand show of weeping in court. I was there the day prosecutor Juan Martinez began his intense questions, yelling at her to look at the picture of Alexander’s dead body. It was an act that deserved an Oscar. It’s an act I’ve seen before and was just as unsettling in court as it is to witness in real life.

I only hope the jury is able to see through poor little Jodi’s stage act. Travis Alexander deserves justice, and victims everywhere deserve better.

Comments (11)

What Right Did They Have?

Feb 28, 13 6:26 PM

(Author’s Note: my good friend Meredith wrote an excellent piece on the recent emerging stories of journalists being intimidated by members of the Obama administration. Click here, read, and give her some love!)

Someone whose opinion I have long valued just dropped a bomb on me. He no longer believes that the Jews had a right to found the Nation of Israel.

His question to me? “What right did the Jews have to displace the people living in the Palestinian Mandate?”

I’m going to answer that here, because apparently The Economist ignores the fact that Israel has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and believes that Israel had no right to be founded. The common argument has become one of turning the spotlight on us (deflecting is a poor way of winning an argument, by the way) – how would we, as Americans, feel if the Mexicans decided that they wanted to finally carry out Reconquista and take back the Southwestern United States by force? Well, first of all, Mexico wasn’t originally Mexico – it was taken over by the Spaniards, and if you really wanna get technical, there are indigenous people who were murdered and displaced by the ancestors of today’s Mexicans, so really, they don’t have a claim to their own land if you look at it that way.

But I digress.

Nations and cultures the world over have hated the Jews for centuries. If you go back far enough, it really started with Roman Christians a few generations after the crucifixion of Jesus blaming the Jews for “murdering” Him. (Side note: my take on that is that it’s ridiculous to blame the Jews. Jesus Himself didn’t have to die – He could have killed everyone who came for Him with a snap of His fingers, but He made the choice to go to His death willingly because all of mankind needed a way to get to God, and His sacrifice was that way.) This attitude carried over until the mid-1400′s, when Jews were restricted to very, very few professions – one of them being the middle-age version of banking. For centuries, it was one of the only real professions Jews were ever allowed to hold anywhere. They became adept at saving, lending, and larger economic principles because they had to.

Jews scattered to the four corners of the world never lost their longing to return to the Israel that had been founded by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In 1881, the First Aliyah began due to severe persecution of Jews worldwide – pogroms in Europe and Russia. In Russia, the assassination of Alexander II ended up being blamed on the Jews and they had to flee en masse. The overwhelming majority of the 3 million or so Jews came to the United States, but about 25,000 went to the area that once was Israel – which, at the time, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

At the time, there were already sizable Jewish enclaves in major cities in the area, particularly Jerusalem. The financial industry wasn’t established at all in the region, and most of the new settlers had absolutely no farming experience, so a British lord (whose name escapes me at the moment) gave them some help.

In 1904, the Second Aliyah began – and more than 40,000 Jews immigrated to the region, all expelled from Russia and Yemen. The Kishinev Pogrom kicked it off. In April 1903, an article in an anti-Semitic Russian publication claimed that a boy found dead and a young girl who committed suicide and was declared dead at a Jewish hospital were actually murdered by Jews who wished to use their blood in the preparation of matzah for Passover. The pogrom was led by Russian Orthodox priests and calls to kill the Jews were made as entire Jewish neighborhoods were leveled. By the time it was over, 49 Jews were dead, nearly 600 wounded and thousands were homeless. The very next year, Aliyah began – and in 1905, a second pogrom born of anti-Czar protests left 19 Jews dead, more than 50 wounded and hundreds more homeless.

It should be no surprise that Theodor Herzl would give birth to the World Zionist Organization. Jews were hated everywhere, to the point of mass murder. They needed a home – more than they knew. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire during WWI, the area known as Palestine (so named by the Romans, “Palestina”) became a tribal area with no government. Arabs quarreled with Jews in the area, sometimes had all-out battles with them, but that was nothing new – Jews weren’t wanted anywhere they went. The Russian Revolution led to the murder of 100,000 Jews and another 500,000 being turned out of their homes.

Then came the Nazis and Shoah. The pogroms escalated until Jews were forced out of their businesses, then their homes, then their ghettos – then their lives. between six and eight million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis (along with three million other “undesirables”, including homosexuals and gypsies). By the time Shoah had begun, there were around 200,000 Jews living in the British Mandate of Palestine. Muslims in the area rioted in 1920, protesting continuing Aliyah. Also, America had enacted severe limitations on immigration and the British were tired of trying to quell Muslim riots against Jewish immigration so they banned Jews from immigrating to the area – the Jews literally had nowhere to go. They had to immigrate in secret.

The area known as Palestine has never been an actual nation. It was originally a tribal region populated by farmers and shepherds until the Muslims came in and slaughtered them all – by 1938, the Palestinians were made up of the descendents of the Muslims who invaded and took the area by force (which led to the Crusades, but that’s a different argument). Jews made up nearly 35% of the population in the region by the end of WWII. Muslims in Palestine were so opposed to the Jews living there that Britain finally had to give up and leave. While the entire area from the Mediterranean all the way to the Eastern border of modern-day Jordan was originally supposed to be Israel, The United Nations had to come up with a compromise. The Jews needed a home, and the Muslims in the Palestinian Mandate hated the Jews just as much as the Russians and Europeans did. Their compromise? Two states: one for the Jews, one for the Muslims. 20% of the land originally promised as Israel became Eretz Israel. The rest became Transjordan.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion declared Israeli independence. On May 15, every surrounding nation – Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria – declared war and attacked Israel. Some 700,000 Palestinians left – many will try to tell you that they were kicked out, but in reality, the majority of them left of their own volition. Only about 100,000 had been expelled from their homes and Israel later offered to allow them to come back, even offered citizenship and full rights as Israeli citizens; they all refused. It was Muslim Palestinians who began the violence against Jews settling in the area, and the Jews had to fight back; eventually they started hitting back afterwards to make it clear that they weren’t going to be pushovers. It still hasn’t ended.

Israel today is more accepting than any other Mideast nation. Whereas gays and lesbians are tortured and killed by Muslims in neighboring countries, they are welcomed in Israel. The Israelis have also contributed more to science, agriculture and economic issues than all of the Islamic republics combined. Yet we have gay groups in America standing against Israel and supporting groups that would murder them if they visited.

Golda Meir, one of my heroes, said quite succinctly, “there will only be peace when the Palestinians decide they love their children more than they hate us.”

What right did they have? I think it’s pretty clear.

Comments (3)

It Just Can’t Happen Again

Jan 27, 13 1:57 AM

Somewhere between 400,000 and 600,000 marched for life in Washington, DC on Friday, January 25. There wasn’t much said in the media – in fact, the last time one of the MSM shills interviewed someone about the abortion problem in America, Andrea Mitchell slapped down Juleanna Glover – after Glover had called herself “deeply pro-life” Mitchell insisted that she call herself “anti-abortion” in order to “use the term that I think is more value-neutral.”

Half a million people marched. That’s pretty impressive. Guess how many marched in support of gun control in Washington, DC the next day?

The best guess anyone is willing to offer is “thousands.” That’s it. Nobody is willing to say for sure because the left-wing media knows full well that it won’t come close to the volume of people that showed up for the March for Life.

I, personally, am thoroughly disgusted by how biased the media is being right now.

They have made clear that they don’t give a damn about the facts. They aren’t interested in actually protecting children; they see Sandy Hook and other mass shootings as a stepping stool to complete gun control, eventually even an outright UK-style ban. They have always wanted guns to be banned. Guns are only used for killing, you see. For that reason we have no right to own them. If you ask Sylvester Stallone, he’ll tell you that “it’s not 200 years ago, we don’t need this [the Second Amendment] anymore!” Yes, he actually said that. In fact, he said it in 2008 when he endorsed John McCain for president.

I hate to tell you this, Sly, but we do need it now. We need it more than ever.

The most disgusting thing about the march for gun control yesterday were the signs that said, “We Are Sandy Hook, We Choose Love.” Really? You think that because you are against guns, you are somehow more loving than I am? Let me explain something…I love every child in my family. Every single one of my nieces and nephews is a gift from God. I love them so much that if anyone ever tried to harm them, I would kill that person with my bare hands. I would rather they see me kill a person who is trying to be violent than have to bury them. What would I say to them in the aftermath? That there are bad people in the world, and you should never choose violence, but you should always be ready to defend yourself if the need arises. Yes, I believe those children are worth far more than the animals trying to murder them. Yes, I would be willing to kill to protect them. Yes, it is because I love them. The fact that anyone would accuse me of not loving those kids is an insult that I refuse to abide.

March organizer Molly Smith said she was “horrified by it [Sandy Hook].” Do you think we weren’t? Does anyone really believe that those of us who believe in and actively exercise our Second Amendment rights weren’t absolutely tortured at the thought of what those families were going through, what those children experienced in their last moments of life? There is a word for those who do believe such nonsense: narcissists.

My little brother has picked up a gun and gone to war twice because he loved his country and his family. He didn’t want us to have to survive another 9/11. He didn’t want his wife and children to live in fear. A good friend of mine died in that war because he believed in freedom and taking the fight to the bad guy rather than cowering and begging for mercy. Other friends came home in pieces because they believed in the cause of freedom. Now you want to tell them that they can’t defend their families on their own soil, in their own homes? You want to tell them – tell ME – that we cannot be trusted with the same tool that won our freedom in the first place and has won peace many times since?

Perhaps the absolute silliest parallel drawn during the gun control march came from 78-year-old James Agenbroad. He carried a sign that read, “Repeal the 2nd Amendment.” He said, “you can repeal it. We repealed prohibition.”

I don’t think Mr. Agenbroad really understands what he’s saying here. Prohibition was an outright ban on the manufacturing, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages. It lasted from 1920-1933. You could drink, you just couldn’t brew or distill or transport the stuff (making it a little hard to drink). Prohibition was a spectacular failure. It did absolutely nothing to stop alcohol from being produced, sold and transported – in fact, it made the trade a more lucrative business. It was Al Capone’s business.

You cannot make a point about gun control – repealing the Second Amendment and banning and confiscating all civilian-owned firearms – by invoking the repeal of a law that banned alcohol. If you don’t understand the ludicrosity of his statement, you are beyond my help.

What do you do when someone like Adam Lanza shows up with guns that the law prevented him from buying to shoot innocent people? Well, first you hide. Then you call 911 to beg for rough men and women to bring their guns to shoot him and stop his killing spree. There is nothing wrong with being afraid and wanting to hide. The problems come when you expect me to do what you’re doing. It will never happen. The fact that I see how evil people can be and am willing to stand up to them does not make me dangerous, nor does it make me different.

I’m not sure how much more I can take of these blithering nitwits declaring that “it just can’t happen again.” You keep saying that, and yet you’re setting us all up to be walking targets.

Comments (8)

Please, Make It Stop!

Jan 10, 13 8:45 PM

Many of my friends have been posting a video clip of Alex Jones on Piers Morgan telling the British liberal elitist that “1776 will commence again” if the government tries to take our guns. They all think it’s great, but they forget who he is.

Jones is a 9/11 truther, a bona fide member of the tin-foil hat brigade who was interviewed along with several other truthers for a History Channel special on 9/11 conspiracy theories – toward the end of the special, he compared himself to Galileo, saying, “I’m saying the world is round, I’m saying that 9/11 is an inside job, I’m showing the official story is a fraud, a flat Earth theory, and I know I’m going to be vindicated.” Later, outside the Denver Mint (near the 2008 Democratic Convention was taking place), Jones went on a screaming rant during which he chased Michelle Malkin around the crowd, calling her “evil” and “a monster”. In an interview after that incident he claimed that he was set up, that his voice was normal, he was being polite and just asking a question – but that Malkin’s “people” created the video as disinformation.

In short, Alex Jones is a couple of french fries short of a Happy Meal.

I can’t stand the guy. He’s an embarrassment to the conservative cause. Completely aside from fudging the fact that 1776 actually wasn’t the start of the American Revolution (it had been cooking for years prior to the outbreak of the actual war, with the Tea Party occurring in 1773 – yes, I really am that cheeky), Jones did exactly what Piers invited him on the show to do: have a complete meltdown.

Jones fudges a few points in his long-winded growling and howling session. He states that out of 11,000 supposed gun deaths in America in 2012 (a figure that can’t be backed up since statistics won’t be available until next year), 74% were gang-related – that is false, and he never says where he gets his ridiculous statistics. The most recent statistics available from the FBI show that in 2011, 12,664 homicides occurred. Of that number, right around 68% were committed with firearms – 8,583 exactly. About 53% of all homicides occurred during the commission of another crime (burglary, robbery, auto theft, rape, etc.). According to the statistics, only about 673 homicides in 2011 were inter-gang in nature – that’s about .5% of all homicides. Oops.

Rather than calmly countering Piers’ questions about gun murders in the US as opposed to the UK (something that’s easy to do if you simply compare violent crime rates as a whole), Jones just calls him “a Hatchet Man of the New World Order” and then tells him to set up a boxing ring. Jones is a one-man wrecking crew; Piers knew what he was doing when he invited him, and Jones played right into it. He beautifully made the Limey’s point that those of us who support the Second Amendment are all drooling mouth-breathers who don’t know how to have an intelligent conversation.

He is the pathetic caricature that President Obama paints all conservatives as. Sadly, the media is only to happy to give him airtime because of it.

Not quite two years ago, however, Ted Nugent went on Piers Morgan’s show and very articulately took him out to the woodshed on gun control. It’s so beautiful it almost brought a tear to my eye. You aren’t going to see Nuge or John Lott on Piers right now…he’s too busy building the aforementioned narrative.

Comments (9)

Shame

Dec 15, 12 12:39 AM

This morning as I was getting ready for work, a horror was beginning to play out in the small town of Newtown, Connecticut. 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his mother and then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School where she taught and murdered 26 innocent people – including 20 children.

I have seen no shortage of hurt, sick and dying children in my profession. The one thing I have thankfully never had to see is a child dying of a gunshot wound. Contrary to what gun control advocates would tell you, small children don’t die of GSW’s very often. I run on child drownings several times a year, but in six years I have yet to run on a single child killed by a gun.

Unfortunately the statistics mattered none today. It almost seems as if Lanza was bent on killing mostly children. Unsurprisingly we don’t know the motive. In less than 24 hours, though, what innocence we had left has been shattered by a terrifying monstrosity that we never would have imagined in our worst nightmares. Tonight, the parents of 20 young children are sitting in shock. They know their children aren’t coming home, but they have not yet been officially told. The investigation has barely begun.

I had resolved this morning that I would not write about this so soon, but it cannot be helped. News was still fresh when some in the media began going after those who have been affected by mass shootings in the past. Some urged caution in how we react, but the media was really after statements from those who now advocate gun control. Several have angrily said that it’s the availability of guns in America that makes these tragedies possible.

Has anyone ever wondered why all of the mass shootings that happen here in the US always take place in so-called “gun-free” zones, places like schools that have strict zero-tolerance policies? Shooters go to those areas because they can inflict maximum casualties and nobody will fight back – because they can’t. Paducah. Jonesboro. Littleton. Aurora. The Oregon mall shooting just a couple of days ago – and now, Newtown. Malls and movie theaters in states where open carry is allowed almost always post signs telling patrons not to bring their legally-owned weapons inside, which is their right; the only problem is that the bad guys do not care about the rules any more than they care about the law. Murder is illegal, but they still commit it. We’ve made heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines illegal (among many drugs) but people still abuse those substances at rates that are unbelievable. I fail to understand how anyone believes that making guns illegal is going to solve the problem.

I’m not a parent, but I am an aunt. When I see things like this my mind goes into overdrive. I can’t even comprehend what my reaction would be if I were this powerless. I’ll tell you this, if some thug threatened any child (especially one in my family) in my presence, he would not survive the experience. If I’m watching those kids and someone breaks into the house, there will be no question nor any hesitation – I will make sure that person can never harm them again. We should be absolutely furious with anyone who dares to try to do harm to our kids. We should not be begging or pleading. We should be ready to do fatal damage to anyone who tries to harm or kill a child in our care.

Instead, we have gun-free zones. We want everyone to FEEL safe. I almost never go to the movies and avoid malls like the zombie apocalypse because I would be a sitting duck in those places. While I can understand some victims wanting to have a “discussion” about guns in America, I would rather they look hard at how we treat criminals and those who would become criminals. We’re so willing to become violent over politics, but we’re not willing to defend ourselves? How did we become a nation of people who would rather leave the most defenseless among us completely helpless in the face of evil?

Stop trying to make sense of this. There is no sanity involved. There is nothing even remotely normal about a 20-year-old gunning down a room full of kindergarteners, and trying to normalize it is just as insane as the act itself. One or two armed teachers could have stopped this before it happened. A gun could have saved lives today. Instead, the bright lights of 26 pure souls were extinguished.

It’s a sin and a shame that we weren’t willing to do more.

Comments (8)

By Thine Own Hand

Dec 13, 12 12:56 AM

Friends who helped in NYC in the wake of 9/11 began wearing their shrouds today.

NYPD officer Stephanie Moses, who had literally become “the face of NYPD” after last year’s wreath-laying ceremony at Ground Zero following the death of Osama bin Laden, committed suicide in her home yesterday. The 17-year veteran of the force was 40 years old. She shared her home with her lesbian partner, Melissa McCoy, a retired NYPD detective.

While there has been some speculation about her reasons I will not post them here. Speculation is meaningless to me. Being in public safety myself, three of those I have worked with, trained with and deeply respected have committed suicide. Having seen many suicide scenes while on duty myself I often ask not to be told how they chose to leave this life; I don’t want to picture what they probably looked like. In every case I’ve heard the speculation on why they did it – financial hardship, relationship woes, things on the job just got to them. I have watched more police officers, firefighters and medics kill themselves than anyone else in any other profession I’ve been involved in.

Every single time I’ve been taken completely by surprise. All three of them had young children. Four others that I knew professionally but didn’t know personally well have also committed suicide. Every time it happens I wonder what is being done. In our world, there is never any warning – we all know what will happen if we do tell someone. There will be reports involved. People we know may end up coming to our home and seeing us in that dark place that we never want to admit we’re in. We may be required to check in to a hospital and begin taking medications that will drastically alter our lives. There’s often a deeper stigma involved where people you’ve worked with and trusted with your life suddenly keep their distance if they know. On the few occasions when one of us has sought help, it has ended up hurting more in the end.

And still those in command wonder why we don’t reach out.

I wish more than anything that it weren’t like this. My heart breaks for Officer Moses’ partner, family and fellow officers. I know that feeling all too well – how did this happen? How did things get so bad that this was the only way out for her? What could I have done?

You will never stop asking those questions. I wish I could say that you may someday have the answers you seek, but you won’t. I will pray that God gives you peace even though you never understand they whys or wherefores.

To those I know – and those I don’t – who are in public safety, I offer an admonition: please, even if you don’t reach out to another officer or firefighter, reach out to someone. Take care of yourselves. Don’t let the darkness win.

To Officer Moses…rest in peace. You will be missed.

stephanie.moses

Comments (1)

The Criminal Revolving Door Keeps Turning

Dec 9, 12 9:41 PM

The original post on this issue is over two years old – and it’s still getting attention and comments. Here’s the latest comment from someone who wished to remain anonymous (although I do have the IP):

“excuse me but isnt the deceased man just the same like the so called murders you r talking about.hes been in prison to.i read he is a user to.so dont judge nobody.i dont think your family is so called perfect.thank you.”

Oh, I’m so glad you commented, honey. I’m about to light into you, but before I do, allow me to regale everyone with the short-version story.

Rene Enrique Durgin and his girlfriend, Patricia Denise Mayhorn, committed an armed robbery at a car wash in Glendale, Arizona – then led police on a chase through town. They ended up crossing over into Phoenix. After Glendale police called off the chase and let them go, the pair invaded a home near 35th Ave and Dunlap where they happened upon a couple in their mid-50′s. Durgin (it is believed to have been Durgin) shot both of the residents, killing the male. The female survived, albeit barely. Police arrived to find the 9mm handgun in pieces scattered throughout the home and Durgin admitting to having fired a weapon quite recently, though not willing to admit to the killing.

I quickly wrote a piece about it. Normally the first person to stand up for the police – particularly Glendale, as a close trusted friend was the first Glendale officer to be shot to death in the line of duty – I asked why they called the chase off during a time when few were on the road and they had suspects in a violent crime who would likely go on to commit another crime.

I also asked why these two had been allowed to move in and out of the justice system so many times. Both Durgin and Mayhorn had done time before and their crimes had continued to escalate, yet judges with soft spines kept giving them slaps on the wrist and admonishments to clean up their acts. Then we ended up with this mess. Now we have a friend of Durgin and/or Mayhorn posting to this blog some of the most ridiculous tripe I have ever read in my life.

You see, hon, regulars on this blog know that I’ve been a corrections officer. I know that argument by heart. If I had a dime for every inmate who tried to put the blame for something on me because MY family isn’t perfect and his victim somehow deserved what he’d done, I wouldn’t be working in EMS today. I’d be independently wealthy. I am going to tell you all of the things I used to tell them.

Don’t give me that “I don’t think your family is perfect, either” bullshit. We’re not talking about me and mine, we are talking about YOU. What YOU did. The choices YOU made. I’m not the one in prison – YOU ARE. That’s not because I was better at hiding anything; I have obeyed the law my whole life and respected other people and their rights regardless of what wrongs they have committed. I had very little as a kid, but my family never took anything that wasn’t ours nor did we expect anyone else to pay our way. We always made the best with what we had and that ethic has paid off. You’re right, we’re not perfect – but we have done right by everyone around us. That is the only thing anyone has ever asked of YOU, and YOU have failed that task. Because YOU have stolen, robbed, assaulted, used illegal drugs, and killed people, YOU are paying the penalty and YOU are the one we’re talking about.

I do not care what the victims’ crimes may have been. It’s interesting that you mention them, because the victims’ names have not been released publicly and I haven’t even been able to get their full names from the prosecutors. Whatever their past crimes may have been, they did not deserve to be taken prisoner in their own home and murdered. You do not get to excuse yourself by pointing out that the victim may have wronged someone else. What the hell do you think the judge is going to say if you stand up in court and say, “but, Your Honor, he was a dealer! We got our meth from him! What I did wasn’t so wrong!” If I were that judge (or if the judge were Roland Steinle, and I desperately wish he were the one trying this case), I would ask, “who are we trying today? Oh, that’s right – YOU!” You know as well as I do that no judge or jury would accept such an asinine response from a defendant. Why in the hell would you dare try to use that line on me?

Do you think I’m that stupid? That childish? Do you really think that I’m going to hang my head now and go, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think of it that way…”? Should I slink away and act like my feelings are hurt? Every single time an inmate would attack another inmate or an inmate’s visitor they would always later say, “but they did…” I would always cut them off with, “I’m sorry, but how are you better than they are? Let’s recount the reasons YOU are here, shall we?” At that point, without fail, every one of them would say, “oh, and you’re miss perfect? How many relatives you got in here?”

With pride, I would say, “not a single one. They’re all out defending this country and your right to due process. You might wanna invoke your right to shut the hell up before that mouth gets you into more trouble than you’re already in.”

Take the hint.

Comments (3)

Tragedy, Made Easy

Dec 5, 12 2:07 AM

It’s hard to think about what Jovan Belcher may have been thinking early Saturday morning when he shot his girlfriend at his home (in front of his mother, no less). In the past two days he’s been described as laid-back, jovial, hard-working and dedicated. It has even been reported that while he played for the University of Maine he joined the Male Athletes Against Violence Initiative. After shooting Kasandra Perkins, though, he drove to Arrowhead Stadium for Chiefs practice – only to thank his coach and general manager for what they’d done for him and later turn the gun on himself.

As tragic as this is, people can’t simply take in the gravity and mourn what’s happened. It wasn’t even 48 hours before leftists in the media were calling for an end to the “gun culture” in America. Bob Costas spoke of the issue during halftime on the broadcast of the Cowboys/Eagles game, agreeing with a Kansas City writer that “If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.” Mike Lupica of the NY Daily News declared that “Murdering this young woman, 22, and then killing himself in front of his coach and his general manager was made easy by a gun, because a gun always makes it easier.” It hasn’t even been two days and too many people have pinned this on guns.

Costas quoted KC writer Jason Whitlock, who also wrote, “Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.” While I agree with his remarks that Roger Goodell should have cancelled Sunday’s game in KC, I could not disagree more with one of his final statements: “Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.”

Here again, we see the phenomenon of those in a position of high visibility using a senseless tragedy to try to push an agenda. Rather than take a deeper look at society’s problems, they are quick to blame the gun. It’s easier that way because we don’t have to look at ourselves or ask what really does need to be changed – and how we got here in the first place. Blaming the gun absolves us of having to do or say anything that really might make a few heavy-hitters remarkably uncomfortable.

Sorry, Mr. Whitlock. It’s not the “gun culture” that drives young men to pull out the gats and start spraying rival gang members with bullets. “That gun was just irresistable, it made me feel like a man!” said no murderer, ever. I’ve been a corrections officer, and I know exactly what the problem with our culture is – but you don’t want to hear it. That’s why you’re so quick to blame a culture that really doesn’t exist in your quest for an answer.

When I was a kid, rap was just coming into the mainstream. Back in the 80′s, rap wasn’t nearly as violent as it is now. It wasn’t exactly peacenik music, but rap took an extremely dark turn in the 90′s when Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls (among others) came onto the scene. Suddenly, we had a new brand of “music” (if you could call it that) that glorified gang membership, selling drugs to get rich, flaunting illegally-gotten gain and being extremely violent. It carried the objectification of women to an entirely new level, even glorifying rape. Shakur was killed in 1996, but as of last year has sold 75 million albums. The man had the words “thug life” tattooed across his abdomen. Snoop Doggy Dog has sold more than 30 million albums to date. He’s a declared member of the Crips, was in and out of prison before making it big. As a convicted felon, he’s barred by federal law from owning a handgun but has been very proud in flaunting the fact that he has guns and has been arrested on multiple weapons violations. Dr. Dre founded Death Row Records, has sold tens of millions of albums and has launched the careers of some of the biggest names in rap, including Snoop, 50 Cent, Eminem and The Game. I won’t even bother trying to quote rap lyrics because most of it would be blurred out and the editors would still need me to apologize.

Video games are also vastly different than when I was a kid. I had Pong and Frogger when I was little, followed by Super Mario Bros. and Kid Icarus as a teenager. Nowadays? We have the Grand Theft Auto series, a wildly popular game that has the player building a criminal empire from knee-breaker to high-roller – usually while getting revenge on another double-crossing bad guy. That series alone has sold 114 million copies across five versions.

Does anyone really still labor under the delusion that guns, and not pop culture itself, are to blame for the rise in violent tendencies? I started off in juvenile corrections. If they hadn’t taught us the statistics of youth involved in crime in the academy, we certainly would have learned the common denominators while walking the beat – the overwhelming majority of kids who have been adjudicated as delinquent and sentenced to real time come from single-parent homes, and those that knew both of their parents had one (usually their father) who was a convicted felon. Most of them were woefully undereducated; in fact, I lost track of how many were completely illiterate. They couldn’t have told you the difference between a noun and a verb, but they could have excused their glorification of the thug life so eloquently that they could almost make a believer out of you.

We were once a society that frowned upon having a child out of wedlock. Now we’re seeing astronomical rates of illegitimacy coupled with rapidly dwindling interest in education (and when someone tries to say, “hey, I made a mistake, don’t do what I did,” they’re derided by the press – Bristol Palin comes to mind). Whereas education was once important to America, we’re now at the bottom of the global pile and we’re trying to defend the educational system that has been an abysmal failure since my childhood. We have so-called experts telling teachers not to grade with red ink and teachers who don’t believe in homework or giving a student a failing grade because it’s too negative – then we expect these ill-prepared children who have no idea how to grow up to go out into the world and make something of themselves. All of this while they listen to violent music, play violent games, and glorify the lives of hardened criminals who get featured on VH1 for writing music while in prison. Discipline has all but gone the way of the dinosaur as liberals have managed to blur the lines between discipline and abuse. All of this in the name of self-expression – a purely emotional concept that teaches extremes that children should be learning to control, not vent.

I don’t believe for an instant that Jovan Belcher was violent. I think he may have had head injuries common to NFL players that contributed to his tragic end. Let’s not kid ourselves, though – all of these people now claiming that the ease with which he obtained his gun and the supposed gun-loving culture we live in made this happen are deluding themselves. Rather than look inward to see what we could change, they’d rather find another culprit so they don’t have to question all of their other beliefs about life and society. It’s unfair to the families of Belcher and Perkins to shift that blame. It’s tragic for future generations that we’re not willing to be honest.

Comments (2)

The Mystery of “Tolerant” Gay Liberals

Nov 28, 12 3:14 AM

A friend who reads the blog was recently quoted in a New York Times article about lesbian conservatives. I was surprised – it was very tasteful, something I hadn’t expected from the Times. My hope that we might be looking toward actually being respected for once was immediately dashed when Bruce over at GayPatriot linked an op-ed from Advocate.com about “The Mystery of Gay Republicans.”

If I wasn’t angry before, I certainly am now. In fact, I’m downright pissed off.

Broadway diva John Carroll is the author, and considering the fact that I’ve been openly hated (and even threatened) in the comments section of multiple articles on that website – to the point that I no longer post comments there – I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I am appalled at his open hatred and intolerance. I have to ask, where is all of this tolerance the gay left keeps preaching?

Carroll sings the worship of Obama and describes his elation at the President’s re-election, then goes on to detail everything the President has done for the LGBT community. True enough, he ended DADT – it didn’t happen in a vacuum, though. There were Republicans who wanted to see the policy end. I have friends and family in the military who never saw a point to banning gay and lesbian troops from serving, all of them conservative in nature. What else does Carroll claim the messiah has done?

Well, he signed the Mathew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Act into law. So what? How many times have I asked why we need a law to make our lives more valuable than the lives of straight people? Why do we need a hate crimes law in cases where the murderers were already sentenced to death? What are you going to do – resuscitate them then execute them a second time? If you’re like most liberals who are against the death penalty, what more can you give Matt Shepard’s killers than life in prison without the possibility of parole? Do you really think that sentencing them to 400 years is going to send a message that people should stop and ask, “hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t beat this guy to death…after all, I might be kept in prison until my corpse has rotted!” It’s one step closer to hate speech legislation. Sorry, but that’s no great leap forward in gay rights.

What about his executive order to all facilities that accept Medicare/Medicaid patients to immediately allow patients to be cared for by their same-sex partners? That wasn’t just for us, kids. It was a blanket order forcing hospitals to allow patients to decide who they wish to see and who will make decisions for them. What that order doesn’t have power over are situations where the patient is incapacitated and there’s no living will in place (I learned in EMT school to have one, and my significant other is listed on it along with my father). If you get into a wreck and you are brought to the hospital in a state of unconsciousness, the hospital still has every right to restrict your visitors to immediately verifiable relatives. We’re still not onto anything major here.

He announced that the Dept of Justice would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. I’m sorry, but how is this supposed to make me happy? He didn’t say he was going to work to repeal it, he just said he wouldn’t defend it anymore. That is what we riding the fence, and it’s a tactic commonly employed by politicians looking to seal the gay vote in their bag. By not openly supporting DOMA the way he did during the 2008 elections, he gets on your good side. It’s his way of making you happy without having to anger the rest of the liberal base. Believe what you will but there are many Democrats who still believe that homosexuality is wrong and gay marriage is an abomination. Ask Bill Clinton, who signed it into law. Ask Democrats Robert Byrd, Dick Gephardt, James Clyburn, Gary Condit, Dick Durbin, John Edwards, Steny Hoyer, Jack Murtha, Chuck Schumer, and Bart Stupak – every single one of them supported DOMA when it was passed, and not a single one has come out to say it should be repealed although most of them are still in Congress (two of them died while in Congress, having never admitted they were wrong to vote for it). Republican Bob Barr, on the other hand, helped write the bill and he has vocally come out in saying he was wrong and DOMA should be repealed.

I’m sorry…that last bit didn’t fit the narrative very well, did it?

He expanded benefits for federal employees to unmarried, same-sex partners. Fantastic. My life is already better. Not much to sing about, since the VERY Republican state I live in, along with the very Republican state that Sarah Palin hails from, allow the same kind of thing for the same-sex partners of State employees as well.

He directed all federal agencies engaged abroad to “promote and protect” the human rights of LGBT people in foreign countries. That’s rich…you mean the rights of 12 men currently awaiting execution in Libya for being accused of being gay? How about the rights of gays in Uganda who face stiff jail sentences or even death for engaging in homosexual sex acts? Oh, I know – they’re talking about protecting the rights of gay people in Egypt, Iran and Gaza! (Meanwhile, back on the farm…) Barack Obama has favored Sharia-led nations and their rights for his entire administration, and we have heard him pay lip service to protecting the interests of gay people abroad, but action is scarce. I sincerely doubt that Carroll (or any other gay liberal) could name a single instance in which any member of Obama’s cabinet has made even a half-hearted attempt to intervene on behalf of any gay person in a foreign country.

Oh, but he came out in support of gay marriage! WOOHOO! Hold on there, Sparky. All he did (yet again) was pay lip service to the issue. He may claim to support our rights to marry, but he currently calls it a “state’s rights issue” (the same thing the gay left got mad at McCain for saying back in 2008, as I recall) and told MTV flat-out that gay marriage was not going to be an issue he is willing to take up in his second term. Here’s the telling part, though: he blathered about his supposedly personal beliefs about gay marriage for a couple of minutes before getting to the part where he said he wasn’t willing to approach the issue. Not one of you have called him out for merely claiming to support it and not being willing to do anything. He was playing every one of the gay liberals who voted for him like a fiddle and they let him get away with it.

Gay liberals talk about how we, as conservatives, are willing to merely take scraps from the Republicans’ table. What on Earth do they think they’re doing? They’re supporting a party that lies to their faces. At least I know exactly where I stand with Republicans. Plus, they’ll sit down and talk to me while they won’t give the likes of Carroll the time of day. Why? Because they know that I care about their rights, too, and I’m not being so brazenly insulting that they can’t stand to be in the same room with me.

Instead of wondering how their bastion state, California, could possibly pass Prop 8, now they’re breathlessly asking what Obama can do during this term to further the rights of gays in America. Sorry, folks. This term won’t be one for the record books. He’s not actively trying to repeal DOMA, he’s not interested in fighting for gay marriage, and he’s not even broaching the subject of adoptions for gay couples.

The comment that really roasts me is where Carroll says, “So basically a vote is cast for their bank account while they remain spiritually bankrupt.” Wait just one damned minute. Is that not the exact same kind of line that the gay community has so despised American Christians for? Super-religious Christians are famous for calling gay people spiritually bankrupt. I listened to it all throughout my childhood. He’s willing to make a moral case out of his arguments, but he dismisses the moralizing of the other side as being…what, irrelevant? Who decides who is right? Whose morality is the right one? How do you know that your brand of moralizing is somehow better than the ones you’re so mad at in the first place? Somehow, in an article written about the desire for tolerance, you manage to come off as a self-righteous, arrogant cretin, especially when you congratulate yourself for turning your back on a gay Republican at a party.

Maybe I should tell myself that it gets better.

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