TOBY PETZOLD

An old friend of mine died tonight.

We had not been close in many, many years and maybe saw each other once or twice a year. Some years.

But when we were younger, we were sometimes the very best of friends.

And I can truthfully say —in all my own sweet, short life— that she is the only woman I have ever been in love with. The only one whose affections ever really mattered. The only one who ever gave me the hope of a man.

May God’s love be with her husband and baby boy tonight. And may all our friends together forgive me my cold heart and look upon the abandonment I made of our bonds as an act of mercy.

I’ve seen this Peter Bart Variety piece linked to in a few of my usual haunts, so have at it (emphases mine):

The aggressively photogenic John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes last week until, during question time, he invoked the “I” word — Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. As a chill descended on the gathering, the Edwards event was brought to a polite close.

I normally reserve the expression ”a satanic inversion” for another context —in which I attempt to characterize the effects of terminal celibacy on my very fucking soul— but this seems as good an occasion as any to widen its applicability to the likes of John Edwards, and to ask of the Hair-do himself that if you cannot get this answer right —if you cannot discern between our allies and our enemies— then what business have you to be running for the White House? Seriously.

Long before Iran even tests a nuclear device, it will have already, through its proxies in Hizballah and its apparati elsewhere in the region, helped defeat the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, attacked Israel, and assisted in —if not perpetrated— the murder of American soldiers and innocent civilians throughout the Iraqi theater by means of IEDs, money, and intelligence.

And you believe that Israel’s right to self-defense is the threat?

Get thee behind me, John Edwards. You are dismissed.

Sorry about the ugly appearance of my blog. There are some problems with it that I am too ignorant just now to fix.

Thanks to those who have graciously offered their ideas.

I will try to address the issue at some point soon. For now, though, life is calling.

Is anybody listening to the Democrats and their schizoid horseshit in opposing the War for Iraq? What the hell are they talking about? They “support the troops” but want to cut funding for the war. Gibberish.

The Dhimmicrats don’t want to win this war. They want to lose. They want to give into al-Qaeda and the insurgency in Iraq. They’re holding debates intended to undermine our troops while General Petraeus is taking those very same troops deeper into the heart of the extremism which they intend to destroy.

Hopefully before the fucking liberal Left in our Congress actually pulls some stunt worse than their pathetic and cowardly non-binding resolutions.

Here’s Jim Lehrer and Nancy Pelosi on Valentine’s Day (emphases mine):

JIM LEHRER: What would your position be, if, in fact, the Petraeus plan, as commanded by Gen. Petraeus, actually worked, the Baghdad security plan?

REP. NANCY PELOSI: I pray that it does. Our young people are in harm’s way there. We hope that it does work. But the fact is, we know we would increase the odds of it working if there were some sincere efforts to engage the other countries in the region in the diplomatic solutions that are necessary to stabilize the region, and do the political work, do the political work — that is to say, amend the constitution, include the Sunnis and others into the civic life of Iraq.

That is sophomoric horseshit. Kerry-quality campaign rhetoric from three years ago.

May History smile on Joe Lieberman.

From a Stratfor report on the issue of Muqtada al-Sadr’s whereabouts:

U.S. statements regarding the Shiite leader’s alleged flight to Iran likely are part of psyops designed to weaken him by convincing those within his political movement and its armed wing that he has abandoned them ahead of the impending U.S.-Iraqi crackdown. There already are some indications that al-Sadr does not have complete control over his militia. By playing up the idea that al-Sadr has fled to Tehran, the United States can sow doubts among members of the Mehdi Army before U.S. and Iraqi forces pounce. And confusion about al-Sadr’s whereabouts will prove especially damaging to the Sadrite bloc, given its heavy focus on its leader and his family.

Stratfor mentioned in its annual forecast that the coming U.S. surge will focus on containing al-Sadr. For now, Iraq’s political and military situation has rendered the Shiite leader quite vulnerable. Whether al-Sadr makes an appearance in order to counter U.S. attempts to paint him as a cowardly captain abandoning his ship remains to be seen.

al-Sadr is a murderer of American soldiers.

The guy needs to be exterminated like the rat bastard he is.

The one thing I can’t understand about this whole thing with John Edwards’ former bloggers —Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan— is why they would have consented to take those jobs in the first place.

Their judgement must be pretty suspect if they actually believed that their extreme and vulgar posts wouldn’t come to reflect poorly on their employer. That is, I assume that these dames must be somewhat intelligent if they have developed a following in the blogosphere —so it must be something else.

I think it was their desire for a little fame and fortune that blunted their judgement and gave them some nerve. After all, the campaign of the 2004 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee wanted them on board to speak for Silkiness himself. And they were going to turn that down? No way! They grabbed for it and never permitted themselves to recognize the truth of their reputations and how that would affect the public’s opinion of Edwards —that great protector of extreme anti-Catholic feminoids.

I think I read earlier that McEwan is apologizing to her readers for quitting the field. Okay. But is she sorry for her self or is she sorry that she was exposed before her friends as a sell-out who caved into pressure from the very people they hate most in this world? I mean, that’s gotta hurt, right? To demonstrate through your own failures the truth that your view of the world is so ugly that it cannot find acceptance in society at large?

That’s why these things congregate at the edges.

I do, too, but if I were ever offered a job as a political commentator in such a high-profile venue as what Marcotte and McEwan once had, I would have to think twice about the intelligence of the people who would make such an offer.

But, you know, Groucho said it better than me.

I suggest that those who discount the dangers presented to us and our allies by Iran just because George W. Bush doesn’t discount them better pull their heads out of their asses and come to Jesus.

These Democratic politicians and analysts who think that criticizing Bush and opposing him to the point of mere contradiction are a substitute for a thoughtful approach to the Iranian issue are guaranteeing that Bush and his successor in the Republican Party will put the threat of Iran front and center in the 2008 campaign. And all these casual and cheaply opportunistic remarks by shallow and unserious phonies about how Bush is only hyping the evidence for an invasion of Iran will see a second life when it comes time to expose the dhimmicratic view of America’s future.

On this day in 1809 were born the two most consequential men of the Nineteenth Century, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

Ever since I noticed that fact, I have regarded it as much as any atheist can regard such a coincidence as a manifestation of Providence. Which is to say that it is.

Happy birthday, gentlemen. Thank you for the world in which I live.

I dunno. Does Anna Nicole Smith qualify as a grande dame of Texas?

I’m sorry for her friends and loved ones, I suppose, but I only knew the woman as a sex object. It never occurred to me to want to know about her personally. I’m sorry if that sounds cold.

Smith isn’t to be likened to Marilyn Monroe, either. She seems to me, at least physically, to be more like Jayne Mansfield, whom I think was a vastly more principled person. The documentaries and interviews I’ve seen of Mansfield made me much more interested in her as a person than I ever was in Smith.

My favorite memories of Anna Nicole Smith, if I can say such a thing, were of coming across her Guess? jeans magazine ads. Man! She really was a beautiful young woman. Positively bonerific.

And then, of course, Playboy. She was never a particular favorite of mine, but she was pretty amazing as far as silicone goes.

Oh, well. What a weird, short life.

One of my favorite crime show clichés is when the narrator or detective claims that the financial motivation for a murder, say, has as many reasons as the number of dollars the perpetrator stands to gain from his crime.

“Yeah, he shot her —and he had fifty thousand reasons to do it.”

Logically, of course, it’s a silly thing to say: either the murderer’s rationale for taking someone’s life is such that any one reason is implicitly worth a single dollar —or the rationale is so incredibly complex that its individual criteria aggegrate in the thousands, making the murderer Col. Kurtz.

In which case, the narrator is beneath the ken of judgement and should learn his place.