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Liberal Stupidity

The stupidity of some liberals never fails to amaze me. This morning, as I drove into work, I was amazed by someone trying to live out the Don Henley lyric, "I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac", from his song "The Boys of Summer". 

Orange County, California is not generally known as a haven for wild-eyed liberals. It is one of the few areas, in Southern California, that can be characterized as Center-Right and where Republicans are regularly sent to Sacramento & Washington, D.C. The city of Laguna Beach resides within OC and is a stark exception to this (so, naturally, when Hollywood creates a series about Orange County, titled "The Real OC", its setting is Laguna Beach). So when I see a Liberal flaunting their silliness on a bumper sticker in the Reddest parts of Orange County I'm taken aback.

Today it was the sight of a Che Guevara sticker on a BMW 5 Series luxury station wagon that sent me reeling. What goes on in the mind of an adit who would slap one of the most obvious faces of Totalitarian Communism on the backside of a blatant symbol of Western Capitalism? I am confident that, if asked, the irony of this combination would be completely lost on the driver, who was clearly a now graying product of the 1960s.

Furthermore, do these fools who slap Che Guevara's face on t-shirts and car window stickers have any idea what this monster did on behalf of the "People's Revolution" that created Communist Cuba? I could point to this or this or this or this article for information on Guevara, Castro and the Communist Hell they made out of Cuba. However, some folks might just complain that the website where those articles are published is just a mouthpiece for rabid anti-Communist, Right Wingers. Fine. Don't read those articles. Read Paul Berman at Slate. Here is Mr. Berman's opening paragraph:

"The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims."

Berman goes on to quote some of Che's writings that Hollywood or other capitalists who try to get rich from Che's image don't want you to know about:

""Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"

No doubt the dummy driving the BMW with Che's picture on the rear window does not know the first thing about Che. His information probably comes entirely what Hollywood fed him in the beautifully photographed, well acted bit of Left-wing propaganda "The Motorcycle Diaries".

I should start carrying a camera around with me so I can photograph this stuff. Nothing will make you laugh more then the backside of most Liberal's mode of transportation.
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The Old Diner on Highway 23

If you don't listen to James Lileks' The Diner, boy oh boy, you don't know what you're missing. A mixture of Lileks offbeat humor and his eclectic music taste. I'm thinking the word eccentric works for both his humor and music.

Allow me to let Mr. Lileks describe "The Diner"

"Join your host James Lileks at the boomerang-patterned Formica counter, and enjoy some pop-cultural oddities from long ago. Note: fans of the old Diner radio show will not be entirely disappointed."

If you happen to be one of the thousands who snarled traffic because you brought your car to a screeching halt in the middle of rush hour traffic, since it was either that or slam into the center divider while you laughed yourself silly (that would be tough one to explain to the boys down at Farmers' Insurance) listening Lileks parody of Andrew Sullivan on Hugh Hewitt's show then you must spend some time down at The Diner.

This past Friday, October 27th, was the Halloween show held out at the old Haunted Diner. Ooooohhhh... Scary...
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2006 Liberty Film Fesitval

The 2006 Liberty Film Festival is just 2 weeks away. If you love the movies, as I do, then you should definitely know about this festival.

Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty are the dynamic duo behind this amazing weekend of conservative and libertarian film. They started this with little more than a passion for film and love for what Hollywood was and could be again. It takes place smack dab in the middle of West Hollywood, and as they said about festivals of the past few years, "there's nothing the Liberals can do about it."

I urge you to come for all 3 days, if you can, or perhaps just for an afternoon of feature length and short films. These are the films that Hollywood does not want you see, which is why these will never appear at Sundance or Tribeca. For example, on Sunday, November 12th there is the premiere of Pierre Rehov's From the River to the Sea.

"From the River to the Sea is an eye-opening documentary about how the UN and Arab nations surrounding Israel have conspired to keep Palestinians in refugee camps without jobs, citizenship, or opportunity, thereby encouraging them to turn to terrorism against Israel. The film features shocking footage of Palestinian terrorists escaping in UN vans, and explores the controversial issue of “right of return.” It also documents the shocking corruption of UNRWA and the PLO in robbing hundreds of millions from Palestinian refugees, and reveals the anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish propaganda that is taught to schoolchildren in UN-funded schools in Palestinian camps. It’s a must-see for all who wish to understand the current conflict in the Middle East, and features extraordinary first-hand footage shot by Rehov in Israel, Palestinian areas, and the refugee camps."

I attended the first festival, which inspired me to try my hand at screenwriting. Last year I had the honor to volunteer. It is a great time for conservatives and libertarians who are fed up with the Liberal propaganda Hollywood continues to produce. If you can make the time, I strongly encourage you come on out to West Hollywood and spend a weekend with at the Liberty Film Festival.
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Something Scary besides Nancy Pelosi as Speaker

OK, so I'm not the most frequent blogger in the world. So sue me. ... Wait, If any Liberals are reading this ignore those three words. Ya'll have a tendency to take colloquialisms like that seriously.

Just wanted to let anyone who might happen by this page who lives in LA know where to go to find a good selection of pulp detective fiction, horror, mystery, science fiction and fantasy. That place is Mystery & Imagination Bookstore. Even if you don't live in L.A. you can visit them online.

This is the only bookstore where I was able to find copies of Russell Kirk's collection of ghost stories and a couple of used copies of his novels. The last time I stopped by, tripping all the way up to there from my domicile behind the Orange Curtain, they still had a used copy of Kirk's Creature of the Twilight, as well as a couple of Ash Tree Press editions of his ghost stories. If you only know Kirk from The Conservative Mind you really need to get to know his fiction side as well.

If you can't afford to shell out for an Ash Tree's Off the Sand Road or What Shadows We Pursue, then I would suggest Eerdman's Ancestral Shadows, which collects some stories found in the both the Ash Tree books.

National Review published a couple of articles discussing Kirk's belief in ghosts and the stories these beliefs birthed. John J. Miller writes takes it up in an article published online back in 2003, titled "The Ghosts of Kirk". R. Andrew Newman gives his perspective in "Russell Kirk's Ghosts".

Another author who took up the ghost story challenge and succeeded quite well is Andrew Klavan. Andrew is a regular at Libertas (see my blog role to your right). As regular, that is, as his internal editor, which has very high standards and is quite often rewarded, allows him to be. He wrote the novel True Crime, which Hollywood's Liberal group-think warped to the point where a crucial plot point was made absurd. He also wrote, back in 1998, a great ghost story titled The Uncanny. Some folks who love Andrew's crime fiction were disappointed with this work. But for those who can think outside the box this is a great read. I strongly recommend it.

If Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House gives you the heebeejeebies, this Halloween try some good ghost stories by some solid conservatives.
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Flags of Our Fathers

There has been a great deal of heat on the blogs about this movie. Fire has been thrown from both the Right and, in response, from the Left. Is this movie as bad as some have made it out to be? I, honestly, do not know. I've not seen it. Neither have a great many folks who have been attacking it.

I do know that Michael Medved, a man I greatly respect when it comes to film, gave it a generally positive review during the last hour of his show on Friday, Oct. 20th.

Emmet of the Unblinking Eye, has described it as "pretty darn close" to an American masterpiece.

Over at Libertas, the general view has been one of skepticism to say the least.

All I've seen of this is the trailers and I came away from those thinking if you want to see a movie that celebrates the brave sacrifice of those who gave their last full measure on Iwo Jima then that is what you will see. If, on the other hand, you want to see a film that reinforces your opinion that the American government is chock full of cynical propagandists, then that is what you will see.

At this point I'm not all that hot to take it in. It took me hours to decompress following the harrowing battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan, and that was on the small screen in a well lit family room. The Flags of Our Fathers battle sequences, I've read, are just as explicit and riveting. Call me wimpy, but right now I'm not all that up to watching brave marines be blown to bits on the big screen.

The film I'm looking forward to, based on what I've seen in the trailers, is The Prestige. I am one of the few who actually enjoyed The Illusionist (though I saw the ending coming from about half a mile away), and am thinking that The Prestige may be along the same lines, or at least with two magicians having a go at each other. At Rottentomatoes.com, The Prestige is hitting 74% positive, giving it an overall "Fresh" rating from the critics. Medved gave the Prestige, if I recall correctly, only 2.5 stars. He thought it was good except for the last 10 minutes. That's good enough for me, given I'm inclined to see it anyway.
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What is a fallen Icarus about?

This blog will not be limited in it's content. I hope to post on just about anything that crosses my mind, when I have the time to write. One thing I want to do here is something that I don't think any other conservative blog is attempting to do. I want to establish a regular review of comic books.

Comic Books?!? You Say? Could there be anything more trivial and time wasting than comic books?

Yes, actually, there is. Have you sat through 30 minutes of your local news or been forced to watch CNN while waiting to board a plane?

Comic books are genre that is feeding our young all kinds of the most radical Left Wing nonsense one might imagine.

A major comic publisher is producing a massive series, spanning seemingly dozens of titles, that depicts America as a fascist, racist state. It does this while America is at war with a very real fascist, racist, misogynistic, theocratic enemy.

I hope to make conservatives aware of what their kids might be reading. If you are concerned that you children might be forced to read Howard Zinn's anti-American People's History, then you should certainly be worried about what they read in the latest issue of Spiderman. There is more correspondence between those two works then you think.

I also hope to point out some very interesting works of fiction that might otherwise be ignored because "it's just a comic book, after all." Do you happen to know that a popular novelist wrote a comic book that included a character based on G. K. Chesterton? Or that a comic book, that was made into a relatively successful film, took a positive view toward an American governmental security agency (OK, so what if it was a fictional agency? In this genre you take what you can get).

So here's to setting off on what may be a strange blogging journey. I hope some readers find me, and together we can commiserate about the incredible infusion of Left Wing politics in the comic book industry.

If comic books are not your thing, don't worry. There will be bits and bobs of politics, the War against Islamo-Nazism, Liberal Lunacy in Washington D.C. and Hollywood, and perhaps a film or book review here and there.
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