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Wednesday, November 29, 2006
By mlah. Which is cool cause I've never been tagged before and now I feel all important like, Wow, someone wants me to tell everyone the weird things about myself! In list form! I'm sure all of you reading this who know me in real life (my little sister, especially) know how weird I am. Have been. Can be. So, where, oh where, do I begin? How about the rules? And without further adieu, six weird things about me: Hm...who should I tag? How about Lian, Grace, Jon (who is cool because he just moved to my hometown and he put me in his book! I'm in a book!), Dan, Tony and Todd. I wonder how long it'll be before I actually get around to leaving comments for all of them as I am not very good with the whole comments thing. In the meantime, sometimes pictures from the holiday weekend... Paul and me with the sun in our eyes. Look Ma, no smog! SF > LA. And now for some catblogging... Now where can I find a good petstore around here? Not a cat.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
I wanted to write about how I don't have any time anymore but I don't have time. And I need to freak out about the wedding a little bit before I head off to class. Last night I was looking at TheKnot Wedding Checklist and there are "25 items overdue." Which apparently means: "THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE YESTERDAY." Apparently once you hit the "6-8 months" category there are suddenly a zillion things that need to be done, things about which you tell yourself, "Oh I won't need to think about that for months," suddenly become "overdue items." Who knew I was supposed to have booked the music, thought about flowers and how I want to wear my hair?? I can't think about hair 6-8 months out, I generally don't think about my hair at all, but at most maybe 24 hours before? I'm just not cut out for this. This is for the girls who are good at being girls, not girls like me who would prefer to wear sweatpants, hates blowing drying and hates being in pictures. I see now why they make you put down deposits when you book. If we didn't already have those deposits in, I'd seriously consider canceling everything and going way lowkey.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Phew, posted before midnight! My cousin's cousin brought his son who was just a squishy, helpless, little two-month old when I saw him last Thanksgiving but is now a full on toddler at 14-months. It's funny how the term "toddler" makes perfect sense when you're watching one of them toddle about. What is it about babies this age that they are always the life of the party? Hmm...what can I grab off the table? My dad trying to distract Liam with some music...it worked for awhile but in the end the fax machine proved to be too much of a temptation to resist. This baby boy seriously loves his electronics - and he hates dolls. But he does have a thing for purses apparently. True to form my sister fell asleep amidst the (loud) festivities. Hm... So does anyone else think my parents are totally itchin' to be Grandma and Grandpa?
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Normally, I do the return leg of my trips to Los Angeles on Monday morning. However, on Sunday I took my car to CarMax to see how much they'd buy it off me for and they drew my attention to the fact that my two front tires suffer from "extensive wear and tear" as they put it. You see, I've had my car for four years and almost 35,000 miles but I've never rotated my tires or had them changed. Ever. And it wasn't even until my mom pointed it out later that night that I realized, HEY, wait a minute, maybe it's not safe to continue driving on these tires, particularly on long trips up and down the west coast. So when I woke up Monday morning, after spending all night imagining my tire exploding on the 99 freeway, I decided maybe I should go get some new tires before embarking on my 300 mile journey north. Of course, it turns out that my tires are ridiculously expensive (still can't figure out why) and then Paul took another look at the tires and said, "Just don't go over 80 and don't drive in the rain." I can handle the first part, but I'm not selling the car until the beginning of January and I'm afraid it may rain in the interim. Anyway, because of all this I ended up leaving Los Angeles this morning, all freaked out about my tire and saw this as I came out of the Grapevine: And as I was marveling over how cool the fog looked I suddenly found myself in this: And then I started imagining my tire blowing out, leaving me stranded in a field out in the fog somewhere where no one would find me until afternoon when the fog burned off. Speaking of which, it wasn't until I was 17 that I found out that fog can last all day in some places. Most places. I was doing camping in the backcountry as part of SCA in Washington's Mt. Rainier and was in a group with four people from various parts of the country and one French guy. One morning a few days after we arrived we woke up to find it was really foggy and I said brightly to everyone, "Oh well, it'll probably burn off by the afternoon." They all looked at me as though I was from another planet and told me that that doesn't really happen anywhere but California. My mind was boggled. Boggled. It had never even occurred to me that fog could be an all day phenomenon. I found out that day that indeed it can. As a kid who was born and raised in California and then went to college in California and who has really never, ever left California for more than a month (three weeks?) I'm pretty sure that I have no clue what weather in the real world can be like. To me "cold" is when it gets down into the 60s. I'm aware that this is actually "warm" to a lot of people, but dangit, it's "cold" to me. And "bitter freezing cold" is when it falls into the 50's. I know that I have no clue what real bitter freezing cold is like, in fact, I don't think I can really imagine it properly because, well, I can't say I've ever experienced it. Not for very long anyway. Did I ever tell you about the time I went to New York in March and I only brought sweatshirts thinking they would keep me warm? Unfortunately the wind there was much colder than LA wind and blew straight through my sweatshirts. Two layers of them. Plus a windbreaker. I am determined not to make the same mistake with Paris but I will probably just end up totally overpacking and still be missing something. So far I've got three coats from Helen (wool and down), gloves, and a hat. I'm planning on buying some long underwear, earmuffs, more scarves and some of those tall Ugg boots (which I've never bought before because I think it's just wrong to wear furry boots when it's 70 degrees outside). Any suggestions? Can you tell that I had absolutely no point when I started this post? But I knitted together a bunch of unconnected stories and voila, a post!
Monday, November 20, 2006
Paul and I tried out Barn Burner in Pasadena for lunch on Saturday. Between the entrance and the giant ceramic chicken (not pictured), I wasn't too sure what we were getting ourselves into. Best chips ever. This was the "Lil Miss" portion of ribs. I'd hate to see what the full portion looks like. Five minutes later...stuffed. Maybe this has something to do with Paul gaining sixty pounds since we got together... After lunch we headed out towards West LA to meet up with my French pals. Yup, definitely in LA. Beverly Hills, that's where I wanna be! Not really, but I did want some Al Gelato and we had an hour to kill so to Beverly Hills we went. My french buddies loved the Getty. I kid you not, they all kept saying "Ooh la la." However, they were less impressed with the pollution, or as a fellow tram-rider put it, "the smog, smog sounds better than pollution." (I don't know, does it really? They both sound cancer-causing to me.) At one point the guys got some refreshments and Rudy used up all the milk and got yelled at by some old lady. Being the nice French boy that he is he immediately brought some milk to the woman once the Getty staff refilled it. She forgave him and even started speaking to him in French. Rudy returns triumphant, transgressions atoned for.
On Saturday night I saw a good friend who I haven't talked to in awhile. We were on our way home but due to massive traffic and my small bladder had to exit to find a gas station. Our exit just so happened to be my friend's exit so I gave him a call and it turned out that he was just on his way home after dinner. Catching up with him made me realize what a crappy, MIA friend I've been lately, not just to him but to a lot of people. I haven't been picking up my phone and I haven't been returning my messages. If you're someone I've done this to recently, trust me, it's me and not you. I just don't totally feel like I have my head on straight at the moment what with the nonstop midterms, trying to prepare for France, trying to sell my car and all the wedding stuff I need to get done before I take off for four and a half months. It's not an excuse for being such a flake, but it's all I've got. I promise I'll start calling people back soon.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
 Since the moment he was born, we all knew this day was coming. wingless was still breathing at 12:29 PM - 2 comments
* The French may be ultra-liberal but I actually prefer arguing politics with them, as opposed to liberal Americans. Why? Because they're able to separate the personal from the political. So far none of them have resorted to "Well you're a stupid jerk!" no matter how heated the conversation has gotten. They have a certain something that liberal Americans don't have...something called maturity. For example, you can have a difference of opinion on immigration policy without one of you automatically being accused of being a "racist." One of you can be a capitalist and the other a socialist and yet no one is accused of "hating the poor." If liberals at UCLA had been this reasonable I don't know that I would have ever realized I was a conservative Republican at all. After all I was raised in one of the bluest counties in the nation and sent to public school all my life. Many of my highschool teachers attended woodstock. I was taught Republicans were evil, Reagan was a failure and the Cold War? What Cold War? When I scored "moderately conservative" on my political spectrum test in my senior year government class I was horrified and confused. Me? Conservative? But being conservative's not cool! But at UCLA they were so completely unreasonable, irrational, and just plain mean that I stopped really being able to see and understand their point of view. I rarely got any reasonable, thoughtful arguments, but rather was lambasted with ad hominem attacks merely for expressing a different point of view. During the Iraq War, when my boyfriend-at-the-time was a grunt in Iraq, I had one fellow student tell me that the war would be a quagmire and the only way my boyfriend would be coming home anytime soon would be if he was in a body bag. Nice. Another guy (who admitted he knew no one in the military) spent several hours trying to convince me that the military doesn't care when soldiers and marines die in friendly-fire incidents and would NOT listen to any of my explanations as to why his arguments didn't make sense at a basic level (Wouldn't the military care even if it's only because we don't have a huge military to begin with and the country has a hefty chunk of money invested in each of our troops? And that's setting aside the fact that they are personally responsible as leaders for those troops and therefore just might actually feel something when troops die since military commanders are not heartless beasts of war no matter what liberals think of them). Between that and the whole butterfly ballot, hanging chad crap that happened during my freshman year, by my senior year in college I was ready to declare myself a Republican. And after I did that I became even more convinced that I did the right thing when the Bruin Republican chairman was spit on and robbed after a meeting one day. Or how about being called a "race-traitor" by a random person walking by our fight affirmative-action table? Or how about that same day when a guy called one of the Jewish BR's (he was wearing a yarmulke) a "Nazi." Um...oookay. So yeah, I never thought I would think something from France is better than something from America, but it's true, French hippies are way more fun to talk to than American hippies.
In my life I've lived in two places: Northern California. Southern California. This means that the a "harsh winter" in my mind constitutes temperatures in the 50's and a week straight of rain. When LA was experiencing those freakish rains a year or two ago (I forget exactly when it was, all the years are running together) I actually remember people being interviewed about the rain going, "Oh my GOD it rained for a week straight, we totally deserve some nice weather now!" I'm in LA this weekend and it's supposed to get into the 80's down here in SoCal this weekend. It's the middle of November. It's probably about one degree (Celsius) above freezing in Paris right now. How do I feel about all of this? Scared out of my mind. You see, I've never spent more than maybe say, a week, in seriously cold weather. I've never had to walk around catching trains and buses in bitter cold weather. I've never had to go about my daily life when the temperature has dropped below freezing. And with the semester drawing to a close (four weeks left, yikes!) Paris is getting closer and closer. We officially found a place to live and are in the process of signing a lease and sending over the deposit. I bought my plane tickets already too (and Paul's for his visit in March). Don't get me wrong, I think it'll be a great experience. Maybe it'll toughen me up a bit as I have to admit I'm pretty "soft." I don't really know how to cook. I can't carry large items very far. I get claustrophobic and nauseated if I'm stuck in a crowded place for any period of time. And before Paul and I started living together I didn't separate my whites from my colors. Shhh, don't tell Paul.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Looks like Michelle Malkin has been covering the incident. One of her readers who identifies himself as a police officer and trainer suggests that the problem with the UCPD's actions is that they were trying to be too PC. Interesting. John Hawkins has some helpful hints from Chris Rock.
I get to play tour guide tomorrow. Some of the French guys are coming down and I just happen to be around visiting Paul so I get to show them all my favorite places in LA. Brunch at Joe's in Venice, the 3rd Street Promenade, a tour of UCLA, the Getty Center, possibly Korean bbq for dinner then Sunset Blvd. for some good ol' fashion LA barhopping. Paul is making me watch Dragonball with him now. So far he's spent over $200 on these DVDs and he says he's only got 1/8 of the whole set. Sigh.
EDIT: Wow the UCPD taser incident sure is attracting a lot of angry, angry people to my blog. Who tell me what I should or shouldn't be writing about on my blog. Which I pay for. And they don't. Whatever, it's what I expect out of people like that (people who think just because they think one way everyone who doesn't must be a fascist pig. Or stupid. People who can't make an argument without resorting to name-calling or telling you to get a life. If the guy was asian I'd say...he got what he deserved. It makes no difference to me whatsoever. ANYONE who behaves in such a manner deserves to get tased. Anyway, I also wanted to clarify that although I did point out the fact the student is a "Persian-American" (as the press has called him) I do not think this incident came about as racial profiling. I think what happened is that the CSO's went around performing a routine check where they ask a wide variety of people studying in the library late at night for their student ID's. There is a policy of a students only environment after 11pm because the university has recognized the danger of predators waiting in the library to see who's leaving alone. Anyway, this guy probably didn't have his ID on him but also didn't want to leave and so decided he would just ignore the CSO's who were just doing their job. THe CSO's, following procedure probably called their supervisor who would have then also asked the guy to leave. When he continued to ignore all of them they called UCPD. As UCPD is arriving this guy finally decides okay, maybe it's time to leave. The police officer puts his hand on the guy's arm (which is totally okay in my book, but I'm sure there's those of you out there who will say even this shouldn't be allowed) to lead him out and the guy flipped out. At a police officer. He had ample time to leave. When the police officers got there he could have said, "Look sorry officers I'm just a little stressed out, I should have listened to the CSO's but don't worry I'll leave now." Instead he chose to act like a lunatic in a world that has gotten much more dangerous and incomprehensible. And at that point maybe the fact that he's of Middle-Eastern descent came into play. Not as a central reason for the incident, but just one more factor. The guy probably had fifteen minutes to leave between when the CSO's started asking him for his ID and when the police showed up. He didn't leave. Instead he chose to act like a jackass, ignoring a legitimate authority figure making a completely legitimate request. I'm willing to conceded that maybe the police did go to far in tasering (tasing?) the guy five (I've also heard four) times but I think they had a legitimate reason to feel threatened and the need for force. It was the "drive stun" mode which is used: Okay, I'm going to stop talking about this now because it's one of those things where we're never going to agree. Our judgmentss in this case are much too highly affected by our disparate worldviews. We're all looking at the same video and seeing two different things. So how can the two sides possibly agree? Despite the fact that I've been blogging for close to seven years now (holy crap, I'm getting old) I've never had many trolls. Maybe because I'm a girl (so trolls are less likely to start crap? I don't know, maybe hippies don't distinguish between men and women since we are all equals and everything) and I really have never established a large enough readership to have trolls. I have had a few troll-y comments left or emailed to me before and I'll admit I have been offended or hurt by some of them because that's just how I am. Thin skin, you know. But when a troll leaves me a message calling me "the stupidest..." and then saying he will not "stoop" to my level before proceeding to call me a "stupid chink" well...all I can do is laugh at that. I guess the reason this particular trolls panties got so twisted in a bunch over my previous post is because I *gasped* pointed out the obvious. We live in a world where I'm willing to bet virtually every American (including the Pakistani with his panties in a bunch) look at people of apparent Middle-Eastern descent, who also happen to be causing a ruckus in public, with an extra weary eye. If choosing to be honest rather than politically correct makes me a "stupid chink" in the eyes of "rage against the MAN" hippies then so be it. By the way I'm not talking about the commenter that left some thoughtful points to argue (and his signature), but rather the two anons whose comments don't entirely make sense and clearly just wanted to insult me. By the way, I've mentioned it before but I stick to it, people who leave anonymous comments are pussies. Hear that? Pussies. What I've noticed about the comments on the YouTube site regarding the video is that while everyone is watching the same video the responses fall in two separate categories - and only two categories. On the one hand you've got those who clearly have a pre-existing bias towards police officer, calling them pigs, etc. who all agree that there was a clear abuse of power because the police used the taser too many times, the guy was in handcuffs (although it is rather difficult to see in the video exactly when the suspect was put into handcuffs) and then there are still others in this group who claim that the officers should have just put him in handcuffs immediately and walked the suspect out (which probably would have still prompted shouts of "abuse of power" because since at the point when they arrived the cops were there only to escort the guy out and not to arrest him...and let's not even talk about the fact that it is standard procedure for cops to take people by the arm when they are escorting them out...ever seen Cops?). Where was I before all of those parantheses? Oh yes...the second group. The second group of comments generally goes something like this: "Guy got what he deserved, if you scream like a lunatic in cops faces maybe you will get tased. And guess what? I won't feel bad for you." I just find it so interesting that we all watched the same video. Every last one of us. And yet there are two completely different reactions to the same video, based not on the video itself but based on pre-existing attitudes towards "the man." As for anon commenter #1: I don't live in a police state. If I did, people like you would have been carted away long ago and you're still here posting on the internet so...why don't you try moving to North Korea? Or go to China and try to publish a paper criticizing Chairman Mao. Then you'll know what a police state feels like. America? Is the greatest country in the world NOT a police state and if you had a deeper understanding of history you would know that. Maybe more on this later...I'm late for an appointment.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
UPDATE: Good lord people, get a grip. Go read the clarification above, I'm not saying "beat the crap out of him because he's Middle-Eastern" I'm saying he deserved to be taser (as ANYONE would) for disobeying legitimate orders, for creating a threatning situation and for generally not being a good citizen. Can we all agree that any reasonable person would have left long before the police officers even got there? I mentioned his ethnicity as an ADDED factor and not a justification. The justification comes from the fact that HE was causing the problem and in my opinion (you know, people who disagree with you are allowed to have those too) the officers were justified in their use of force. Yeesh people, take some anger management classes or something because y'all are scary. Hi Jesse ;) I'm about to head to bed but I just wanted to write a quick post about this video of a UCLA student named Mostafa Tabatabainejad being tased by a UCLA police officer. If you watch the video, it's pretty clear that the guy was acting in a pretty belligerent manner. Thus, the cops were acting in a way consistent with their duty to protect the public. For all they knew this guy could be a sexual predator, thief or - I'm going to go ahead and say it - a terrorist. Face it, his name is Mostafa Tabatabainejad (knowing UCLA, I'm guessing he's probably Persian? but that's just an educated guess) and we live in a post 9/11 world where, whether we like to admit it or not, we all give extra scrutiny to people who are behaving oddly and appear to be of Middle-Eastern descent. All I know is that my little sister is a student at UCLA right now and am I glad that the cops forcefully confronted a young man of apparent Middle-East descent who was refusing to produce ID, shouting at the cops and resisting being escorted out of the library? Yes, very. Thank you, UCLAPD for doing your job. And I'm sorry about all the stupid college kids you'll probably be taking crap from until they find the next Great Outrage to fixate on. Damn hippies. Edit: Can't sleep, got into a discussion with my little cousin about this incident and we're on different but not completely opposite sides. He thinks that UCPD should have considered the media ramifications for LAPD and police officers in general. He also says that they used too much force, because 5 times is overkill. First of all, the guy clearly wanted to cause a scene. The whole ugly situation could have been avoided if he had left when the CSO's first asked him to. When the cops showed up, instead of screaming in their faces about how he was going to leave and getting belligerent when they tried to physically speed up his exit from the library, he could have just went along peacefully since he was the jackass who created the situation in the first place. Second, at the beginning of the video, you hear the guy screaming belligerently at the cops that he's leaving, you can hear one of the cops go, "It's okay," in an obvious attempt to calm the guy down, while the guy continues to scream his head off. After the student is tased the first time he goes limp, but continues to yell out angrily about "abuse of power" and that he's leaving...except he won't get up when the cops tell him to (and I don't buy the whole, he probably couldn't because he got tased, it was in drive-stun mode which is not supposed to incapacitate but rather cause pain). As far as the students who was threatened when he asked one of the cops for his badge number, he may have a case. But I can't say I blame the cops, particularly when a crowd of self-righteous, angry students is forming around them. In an interesting coincidence, while I was at UCLA a couple of my friends were pulled over by two of the cops involved in the incident. They were smoking pot and had paraphernalia in the trunk. They said the officers gave them some crap but ultimately let them go without filing a police report. (They did take the pot and pieces, though, hm...)
Monday, November 13, 2006
I'm not sure if what I'm about to do is, shall we say, kosher, but I'm going to do it anyway. Because if I don't say something about it I will implode. As I've mentioned several hundred times, I'm currently in a master's program which involves a lot of French people. I like these French people, they're fun to be around, polite, nice and quite interesting to talk to. But. Their politics sometimes make me want to bang my head against the cement. In one of my classes, in an effort to promote dialogue between the French and American students, we have a group-blog where we're supposed to discuss political, economic and cultural issues. Recently, one of my French comrades posted a diatribe about media bias, specifically FoxNews (as you might imagine, his complaint is not the common complaint voiced by Americans - that the media is too liberal - but in fact, that the media is much too biased towards America). That's fine. I can tolerate bashing FoxNews for being too American, I expect it even, after all, he's French. And then, there was this: Oh. Hell. No. Um. I'm sorry, but did that boy just say what I think he said? Random shootouts in Iraqi villages? Accusing our soldiers of "daily acts" of torture? The reason I am not responding directly to him on the group blog is because our professor asked us to keep the discussion civilized. And while I can be civilized while people bash America, bash FoxNews, bash Bush, bash Republicans, etc. I find it extremely difficult to remain level-headed when someone begins accusing our military of random acts of "daily" torture. Oh and don't forget random shootouts in Iraqi villages, because you know our troops just love a good shootout with no objective in mind whatsoever. That's totally what they were trained to do. I have a feeling I may be blogging a lot from Paris.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
My in-laws are coming up to my parents place this Thanksgiving. Including my soon to be brother-in-law. Which mean brother-in-law gets to sleep in my childhood bedroom while Paul and I sleep in the bottom half of my sister's bedroom (yes, my little sister's bedroom has two stories). (Because I was the first one who wanted my own room and so the theory went that I should then get the smaller room). Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, brother-in-law, sleeping in my childhood bedroom. So my mom has me cleaning my room, including drawers that haven't been touched since the last time my mom made me clean the room before I left for college. Six and a half years ago. It's weird how objects can truly contain memories. The sight of an old white purse instantly made me think of the day my mom bought it for me. We were at the flea market visiting my dad, who's hobby at the time was selling *random items* (imported from China, of course) on the weekends. Apparently being an aerospace engineer just wasn't enough. I remember we spent quite a long time going to different stands comparing prices and in the end my mom bargained with the guy, because she wasn't just buying one purse, she was buying two (a gold one for my sister). When I was little I used to get embarrassed by my mom's bargaining tactics, but now that I'm older I just wish I had her skills. Anyway, seeing the purse made me think back on this day, at least fifteen years ago, as though it were yesterday. And how about items that represent repressed memories? I threw out a bunch of SAT study aids tonight. SAT study aids. I also found the results to a diagnostic I had forgotten that I took. The funny thing about trying to clean my room with my mom is that since she counsels little kids now, and they're mostly kids on Medi-Cal (which means they've had some pretty harsh lives) she wants to save every little cute trinket or stuffed animal that looks brand new (because my sister and I had way too many of them). I think it's because she uses a lot of play therapy with her kids and quite often the kids ask her if they can have the toys and who can say no to a kid who's never had enough of anything in his/her life? So she's always looking for new toys to bring into the office. Tonight I pulled a stuffed bat out of a drawer. It was as though a stuffed bat was exactly the toy she had in mind for a particular activity or something.
What did people do before there was free wireless at the carwash? Don't tell me, I don't want to know. I read somewhere the other day that Bill Maher "outed" Ken Mehlman and that Mehlman had stepped down as RNC chairman. It appears that some on the left are trying to tie the two events together, but I feel fairly certain the timing is more of a coincidence, than anything else. I remember meeting Ken Mehlman when my old boss was in charge of his tour of California, meeting big donors all over the state. My coworkers and I speculated then, but no one really cared. Heck, the guy who recruited me into fundraising for the Republicans was openly gay. And Republican. Other than black Republicans, nothing pisses a liberal off more than a gay Republican. In their narrow little world, a gay Republican must be self-hating. Because how could a gay man possibly hold a traditional view of marriage right? How can a gay man have traditional values? Or believe in smaller government and less taxes. In their world, all gay men and black people must have the exact same worldview and opinions. Or else they're self-hating. I think the fact that there are more and more gay Republicans in leadership positions shows how big the tent really is, and how at the end of the day Republicans are not angry mobs with pitchforks trying to destroy anyone who is different from them. If anything, liberals who go around "outing" people with malicious intent, just because that person does not parrot their worldview, look more like that angry mob.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
What is Project Valour IT?
I liked Rumsfeld, I really did. I was sorry to see him go. I used to watch his press briefings and I loved how he was so direct and no nonsense with the press corps. He's old school. And I like that. I've kept my muth shout on the whole resignation thing though, because I'm not in the military and I'm not a military strategist, so my feelings about him are based purely on a personal affinity for the man and not whether or not he actually used the right strategy in Iraq. Based on that, I don't really feel like I have an opinion on whether or not rummy is the right guy to be Secretary of Defense and so up until now I have had no opinion. Up until I read this article (via Tammy Bruce, via Hot Air). Herein lies my ojection to the cut-and-run liberals pretending to support the troops: If the troops believe in the mission and we believe in the troops then shouldn't we, by extension, also believe in the mission? As the article points out, the troops are the ones on the ground. If they believe in Rumsfeld, should we really be happy about him being thrown out? If the 2006 elections really were a referendum on Iraq it would be interesting to see who the winners would be if we only counted the votes of the troops. You know, just to see.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
UPDATE: Welcome Villainous Company readers! Thank you all for the kind words and an especially big thank you to Cassandra =) I can actually pinpoint several, specific experiences in my life that made me feel the way I do about the military today. The first is when I was in elementary school during Operation Desert Storm. My parents would watch the news coverage at night after dinner and I was just getting to an age where I was interested in watching things other than cartoons. That was probably the first time I had an inkling of war and what it was. In school, the third grade teachers taught us to sing "The Wind Beneath My Wings" and made a videotape of us singing it to send to the troops. They told us about the sacrifice of the men and women fighting overseas to protect our freedom and those of the Kuwaitis. They had us write letters to the troops because the soldiers and marines were far from home, away from their families and it was important for us to show them that we supported them. As a conservative I tend to bash public school teachers a lot for being hippy liberals, but I loved all of my elementary school teachers (junior high and high school, not so much) and thinking back on this makes me appreciate those third-grade teachers ten times more. Because I think they instilled in me the seeds of a deep respect for our military men and women. A respect that they certainly deserve. (I have to admit here that I did go through a period of "America sucks and our military perpetrates evil acts" but I place the blame for that squarely on my 8th grade social studies teacher who fed my innocent young mind some total bullsh*t about our military using experimental weapons on innocent people in Panama - yes he actually told us that. Once I realized my teacher was a biased hippy I moved out of that phase pretty quickly.) The next "moment" was when I took an ethics course at the local community college during the summer before my junior year in high school. I had an awesome professor who covered everything from abortion, to the death penalty, to foreign policy in an extremely even-handed way. To this day I still have no idea where he stood on any of those issues. In one of our discussions about war he posed this question to us: Do we owe something to the men and women who have fought and died for the freedoms we enjoy every day? Do we, in fact, owe them our lives? The question stuck with me and coincidentally Saving Private Ryan came out a few days after this lecture and I went to go see it. I kid you not, I started bawling about five minutes into the movie as they panned across those rows and rows of graves because it just hit me so hard...the realization that all those brave men had died unimaginable deaths, thousands of miles away from home, for me. For my right to be free. For my right to live in the greatest country in the world. And yes, like Private Ryan, I too owed them my life. Needless to say I spent the rest of the (very long) movie sobbing. When I was a sophomore in college I met my ex-boyfriend E, the marine, who is still a good friend. On one of our first kinda-sorta-dates we saw Black Hawk Down and I think that was another big moment for me. Watching that incredible bond of brotherhood. The loyalty. The amazing courage. Amidst all that carnage. It left me in total awe. It left me with no doubt in my mind that our military? Is the best America has to offer. And America has a whole heckuva lot to offer so that is saying something. It goes without saying that the experience of loving someone in the military, who was sent overseas to fight in a war, also gave me a whole new dimension in my respect for the military...I learned enough about the difficulty of just being in the military (even during peacetime) and how much of a sacrifice even that can be. It also gave me a new level of respect for their families - wives in particular - because they sacrifice so much too. Anyway, why did I write all of that? Because I was reading MaxedOutMama's latest post and it made me really think about the fact that as much as this election may effect our lives here in the States (Supreme Court, immigration, etc.), the repercussions will be nothing like what they will be for our brave servicemen and women fighting overseas. Their very lives are at stake. And that worries me to no end. Because they deserve better than to be hung out to dry by a bunch of politicians pretending to "fight" for the American way while living their comfortable little lives in DC. And as much as I hate the idea of pulling out of Iraq, I agree completely with M-o-M and the sentiments of the military bloggers which she posted on her page: If the politicians decide to pull out (and this is looking like a definite possibility - Colonel Hunt was on O'Reilly tonight saying Rumsfeld's resignation and Gates' appointment indicates that withdrawal is very much so on the table) then they have to do it right. They cannot leave some troops behind to be sitting ducks just to make themselves (the politicians) feel better and to make the whole thing easier to justify to the American people. Our pullout from Somalia was an "Aha!" moment for Osama bin Laden and any hint of weakness in Iraq will certainly give al-Qaeada the motivation to redouble their efforts to kill our troops. The paper tiger is crumbling, they will say to themselves. One of the posts M-o-M quotes from is written by Oak Leaf, a serviceman currently serving in Afghanistan. His post at Polipundit brings up a whole new dimension to a pullout from Iraq, one that hadn't occurred to me at all - the consequences for Afghanistan: This is just beyond depressing to me, but it makes perfect sense. If we pullout of Iraq the whole world will be watching. And the whole world will understand that Osama was right and we don't have the stomach for war. The whole world will know how to beat America. And why should the people of Afghanistan believe in us when it will appear as though we have lost faith in ourselves? I hope Nancy Pelosi means it when she says she supports the troops. I hope she means it when she says she wants to send more troops there, not bring them home. For their sake, I pray to God she means it. But I just don't know. I guess we will have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you pray, please pray for our troops and for wisdom for the politicians who hold their lives in their hands. In the meantime, go read all of Maxed-Out-Mama's post, as well as Oak Leaf's. They're both full of good stuff that needs to be said and heard, written, read, whatever. What is Project Valour IT? Labels: Support the troops wingless was still breathing at 1:14 AM - 4 comments
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
So after my last post I headed to class and promptly stepped in a giant mud puddle (while wearing slippers, of course!). When I got to class my American classmates informed me that we didn't get the apartment we had planned on living in because someone made the owner a better offer (more money, longer stay). Fabulous. The midterm actually was the highlight of the day just because my paper didn't spontaneously combust or anything like that. After my midterm I got to watch a film about the evils of Corporate America. It was done better than the WalMart one (it wasn't obviously propaganda) but it tried its damndest to convince us that we have no control over ourselves or our children. Corporate America owns you and you WILL do what Corporate America says. Not like you actually have a brain or anything like that. Pffft. And now I have exactly five minutes to get to my last class of the day. Maybe a seagull will poop on my head or I'll sprain my ankle or get run over by those little golf carts that people drive around campus. Who knows! Stay tuned.
Tossed and turned until about 4:30 a.m. Had a nightmare about someone breaking into my house (ooh symbolism). Woke up again before I wanted to because of the giant leafblower going outside my window for five minutes straight. Internet was working fine until I decided to email myself my formula sheet for my midterm. Ran to computer lab just in case email was sent before internet crapped out. No such luck. HA! Ran back to room to try and send again. Hurrah it worked! Run back to computer lab to print formula sheet. Step in gum. Inside the freaking computer lab (who the hell spits their gum on carpet??). Idiot using the printer doesn't know how to fix jam. Walks away without fixing it. I fix paper jam. Get ink all over hands. Whee! Print formula sheet, dash back to room to drop off before running to cafeteria. Guy in the wrap line in front of me gets pantsed by some girl. See his naked rear end. Lose appetite. And now I have 3 minutes to get to my midterm. Hopefully it will be the highlight of my day. How sad.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
1:24 a.m. Okay, I'm just about done for the night. Too burnt out to sum up my thoughts but Ace makes some excellent points in what I assume is his goodnight post. It's also worth pointing out that when Republicans lose we don't resort to calling the voters stupid, ignorant hicks. Just sayin'. Oh and except for Arnold and Poizner it looks like all our statewide candidates lost too. Poor Tony =( 12:18 a.m. Michelle Malkin is hitting the sack, but she has some positive observations for conservatives regarding the results of this election. Anyway, now it's time for the Democrats to put up or shut up. Should be interesting to see the party of whine-and-complain actually come up with some solutions for a change. 12:01 a.m. My internet connection keeps crashing every three seconds. As if this night could be any more frustrating. Maybe I should just go to sleep and let this day end...except all I have to look forward to tomorrow is lots of Democratic gloating and a midterm. My French buddies have actually been consoling me about the loss, that's kind of neat =) 11:35 p.m. Well, I'm officially depressed. Tony is down exactly 7% (approximately 250,000 votes) with 50% of precincts reporting. Not looking good. Arnold won in a landslide, but honestly? Eh. Okay, okay, I'm a little happy about Arnold winning (he is better than Angelides) but it doesn't outweigh everything else. Not by a long-shot. McClintock's lead is gone, he is currently down by 0.6% (approximately 22,000 votes). It can still go either way but it just doesn't seem to be happening for the R's tonight so I'm not holding my breath. McPherson is still holding onto a small lead of 0.6% so that could go either way as well. The only bright spot is Poizner who has a sizeable lead over Bustamante. But who the hell knows what insurance commissioner does anyway? (Man I'm in a negative mood tonight...note to self, it's not the end of the world!) Talent has conceded so looks like the Dems will likely take control of the Senate. Whee... And back here in California it looks like the taxpayers have decided to take on $85 billion dollars worth of debt (but don't worry, they're *just* issuing bonds, not raising our taxes...the money will come from the magic money fairy who gives the government money...oh wait...I forgot, the government gets its money from the taxpayers right?). We clearly don't like new taxes though, as all of those propositions raising any sort of tax seem to have failed. And don't you dare tell us when our 12yo daughters are getting abortions. But feel free to take our property and turn it into a strip mall if you so wish because we love eminent domain here in California. Who needs property rights? Not us! At least Jessica's Law passed, wish we knew who the 30% of kiddie-rapist sympathizers are though...so we can keep them them the hell away from kids. 9:15 p.m. Now that the Dems have control of the House we should probably go ahead and put up a sign on the border: Come on in, free citizenship for all! Back to state elections for a minute...I can't believe Prop 85 (Parental Notification) is losing, albeit by a slight margin with a lot of votes left to count. But still! Who are all these people who want their 12yo having an abortion without their knowledge? 8:50 p.m.I'm just going to update this post for the rest of the night instead of doing a whole bunch of little posts. I have a midterm tomorrow y'all. And I am sitting here glued to the TV. I'm not even sure why since we LOST. But here I am, don't question me. I just heard a FoxNews reporter say that President Bush is saying maybe now he'll try to push through his immigration reform (that was being held up by House Republicans). I don't like to swear on this blog but I'll make an exception: SHIT. SHIT! SHIT. I knew this was going to happen and this is why all along I believed that keeping the House was much more important than keeping the Senate. Sigh. On a happier note, it looks like the Republicans running for state office in California may do fairly well. Hard to say for sure though since it's still early, but so far McClintock is even winning in LA county, so keep your fingers crossed! Tony (Strickland) has a very slight lead, but it's way too early to say anything about that...
 Well ladies and gentlemen, according to FoxNews, here is your new Speaker of the House. The fact that it was expected doesn't make it any easier to swallow (or look at). wingless was still breathing at 8:26 PM - 1 comments
I took this picture of Paul when we were in New York earlier this year. Been wanting to post it for awhile but never got around to it. One of our professors (a conservative one) showed us Farenhype 9/11 in class today and it made me think of it. I heard a bit of scoffing from my classmates but I thought the film laid out the truth about that fat bastard's (aka Michael Moore) movie quite well. Towards the end of the film there were quite a few interviews with military servicemembers and the families of some of our fallen heros (who's funerals were exploited in Moore's film - without the consent of their families) and over and over again I heard them saying how America is the absolute, greatest country that there is. I wondered what my French classmates thought about that? Because I certainly agree that America is without a doubt the greatest country in history, but I guess the French probably think they are? Or maybe not, I don't know. Just a thought I had. So, here we are, it's election night again. I'm feeling kind of down so I don't know what else to say about that. All along I've felt that it's so much more important for the Republicans to maintain control of the House as opposed to the Senate (because of the immigration issue) but it doesn't look like that'll happen. The thought of a Speaker of the House Pelosi is seriously depressing me. Sigh. Guess we'll see how it goes. EDIT: I may be taking all of this particularly hard because this is the first really depressing election night I've ever experienced (since I didn't become a Republican until after the 2000 debacle...).
Monday, November 06, 2006
The French don't really celebrate Halloween in France. But here? They certainly do. Or at least the French guys did. And I was lucky enough to have a new camera for the occassion. The best part? They were dressed as...wait for it...women! Bear in mind these guys are my buds so I don't want to make the obvious jokes, I just can't help thinking them in my head. Anyway, enjoy! I got there early and Cedric was the first one to walk in the door. Love the happy-trail baring shirt. Love it.  Meet Younnes our pink-haired cheerleader. He actually asked me if I had any skirts he could borrow. I was offended until I realized he'd probably fit into them. Except they'd probably show off his crotch bits since I'm about 2-feet shorter than him.  This is my boy...er...girl...Kim. We swap dinner for advice on how to get girls (just to clarify, I give the advice, he provides dinner). Kim with one of my American classmates, Joe. You can tell Joe is an American because he would never ask to borrow a skirt from me. At least, he better not. Note Kim's pink nailpolish. And also how happy Joe looks. Here are the ladies with our Securities & Portfolio Analysis professor. She kept saying "I'm scared" all throughout the lecture period and then she let us out early because she said she couldn't possibly teach the whole time. Notice that sexy, come-hither look Cedric is sporting. I couldn't resist taking a picture with them. I was a tired college student for Halloween in case you couldn't tell. Here we go, from left to right: Florian, Cedric, Younnes, Rudy, Erowin and Kimmy. It's wrong how nice some of those boys' legs are. So wrong. And unfair. There's actually one real French girl in the picture, can you pick her out? And because I don't want you to leave this website with that as the last image in your mind...here's something cute to look at.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Proposition 1A: Yes. Gas taxes should be spent on roads and roads only. If you live in California you know how badly our roads suck. Proposition 1B-1E: No. Because I'm cynical and am pretty sure that giving the CA state government any extra funds would be like using money as cat litter. Proposition 83 (Jessica's Law): Yes, YES, yes! The only people who could possibly be against this proposition are the Democratic members of the California state legislature and/or people who love rapists and child molestors. Harsh thing to say, I know, but 'tis true. See for yourself if you don't believe me. Proposition 84: No. See explanation for Prop 1B-1E. Proposition 85: Another emphatic yes. I'm sure the kiddie rapists would love it if they could send their victims off to the clinic to get rid of the evidence without their parents knowing. Anyway, the parents of a young girl going through that kind of physically and emotionally taxing procedure should be informed of it. There are exceptions provided for in the proposition, such as medical emergencies and waiver provided by the courts. Proposition 86: No. I might be for it if the bulk of the funds actually went to smoking cessation programs but this bill is full of problems and seems to be by hospital corporations for hospital corporations. Proposition 87: No. Exactly how they would tax oil companies without the cost being passed onto consumers is a mystery to me. Oil prices are determined by so many factors, even with tons of oversight (which would still cost us taxpayers lots of dough) how would they determine whether or not oil companies are passing the costs onto us? And also, we don't need another bureaucracy controlling lots of money that doesn't belong to them with no pressure whatsoever to produce any results whatsoever. Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for success. Not. Proposition 88: No. Throwing more money at the education problem in California will not solve the problem. I am absolutely sure of this because I went to a top-notch public high school in California and I can tell you that we had the crappiest equipment/buildings/everything (including a mildly retarded sophomore honors biology teacher) compared to other schools in our district (some stupid rule about the school with the highest test scores not needing any extra funding). It didn't matter. What mattered was the fact that our parents whooped our butts if we didn't crank out those A's. In the end that's what it all comes back to, how much do the parents care and how involved are they willing to be in their child's education? My parents came from Taiwan where their class sizes were much larger than ours (40-50+ students) and yet students were well-behaved and well-educated. Why? Respect for teachers and the education system, which is instilled in them (by their parents) from an early age. Proposition 89: As someone who has worked behind the scenes in fundraising I am absolutely against this proposition. I can tell you from first-hand experience that more regulations on political fundraising does nothing more than make the whole system more and more confusing and opaque. Prior to all the new federal regulations (thanks to John McCain) money flowed through campaigns and pretty much only campaigns and thus, candidates were unquestionably responsible for the advertising, etc. that was put out through their campaigns. Now we have all these 527's raising the big money and they are NOT technically tied to any campaign (because legally they can't be) except they totally are tied to campaigns unofficially...but now when they put out outrageous attack ads the candidate can shrug and say "it has nothing to do with me." Because this is a free speech society big money will always be involved in campaigns. I would much rather have it tied directly to campaigns rather than through these unaccountable 527's. The ironic thing is that Democrats are the ones constantly clamoring for campaign finance reform and yet THEY were the ones that rushed out to form 527's so they could still accept the big money that they depend on. We Republicans were actually behind on this because we kept expecting the Supreme Court to rule them unconstitutional, and when they didn't we had to play catch-up. Luckily the Swiftie's were far more effective than the nutjobs at MoveOn.Org. Proposition 90: Yes. Eminent domain = bad. As far as the candidates for state office go, my old company is actually working on pretty much every single campaign (except, I believe McClintock's) and I strongly support each and every one of those candidates. Especially Tony Strickland who is running for Controller and has some really good ideas on how to reign in the tax and spend liberals in our legislature. He's running against John Chiang who will do nothing more than rubber stamp everything his Democratic comrades want. Tony was in our office all the time during the summer because he's an incredibly dedicated and hard-working guy. Just an overall great guy that I can't say enough good things about. Steve Poizner is running for Insurance Commissioner against Cruz Bustamante. Since I worked on Poizner's campaign briefly over the summer I can tell you that it is indeed true, Poizner is not taking any insurance money while his opponent has. I think Cruz offered to return the money but still ended up keeping a lot of it. Not surprising. I don't know a whole lot about Chuck Poochigian but I do know that he will be much tougher on criminals than the criminal-coddler Jerry Brown. Also Jerry Brown has "improving schools" on his agenda, since when is this the job of the State Attorney General? This is the problem with liberals, learn to focus people! Bruce McPherson is the current Secretary of State, appointed by Arnold and confirmed unanimously by the legislature (which, as you know, is mostly made up of Democrats) after Kevin Shelley (D) stepped down due to a number of scandals. Bruce has done an excellent job of restoring public trust to an office that was left tarnished by his Democratic predecessor. And that leaves Tom McClintock, who as I remember from the last gubernatorial race, is a good guy and a real, non-Rino, Republican.
I'm pretty sure the iron hand of justice will move much more swiftly in Iraq than it does here in California.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Paul is taking the CFA Level I in December and for months I've been trying to prod him into studying when he gets home from work. I was telling him just now that I'm thinking about using his books to study for the CFA so that maybe I can take the Level I next December. I tend to be a better test taker than him so he was alarmed by this. He told me he was getting off the phone to study. If I'd known all along all he needed was a little healthy competition I would have threatened to take the test ages ago.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Okay. Seriously. This is not cool. This is how the last few weeks have gone: Tuesday/Wednesday midterm, Tuesday midterm, Tuesday midterm, no midterms for one blissful week...bringing me to the midterm I took on Monday and the one I'm taking tomorrow. Sigh. The good news is that so far? I am pwning all my midterms. Except possibly my CSR midterm, which, you have no idea how much that totally friggin' pisses me off. But, we'll see, hopefully I still pulled off an A- (which still really pisses me off because that class? is total bs. and if it screws with my GPA I will be at a whole new level of pissed). I just wasted ten minutes of precious sleep/study time on blogging and I don't know why. Then again if it keeps me sane, it's not really wasted is it? P.S. I put down the deposit on my wedding dress today, so it's official! I have a dress!
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