The Razor

I’m not sure what it is about the Brits, but they know how to make good television. I grew up watching Benny Hill on the local independent TV station, then graduated to Monty Python, Doctor Who, and what I believe is the funniest TV show ever produced, Fawlty Towers. Thanks to technology I haven’t watched an American network show in years, and with Amazon Prime and Netflix Streaming I have seriously cut back my American cable reality TV viewing to just a few shows. Instead of watching yet another navel-gazing reality show at night, thanks to Amazon Prime we watch Ballykissangel, a comedy/drama set in a fictitious town near the Wicklow mountains in Ireland. It also allowed us to catch up with Downton Abbey. Over the summer we burned through Doc Martin, one of the quirkiest and addictive shows we’ve seen in years about a GP living in a small town on the Cornish coast (I’m saving the last 4 episodes of the last season like a treat to be savored only on special occasions).

We discovered the show Wild At Heart somewhat by accident during a Netflix streaming test drive. The show stars Ballykissangel’s Stephen Tompkinson as Danny Travanian, a vet from Bristol whose wife, played by Amanda Holden, decides to take their blended family on a trip to South Africa to release a vervet monkey brought into her husband’s surgery. While there they are convinced by the owner of a small game reserve to invest their life savings into the park and stay.

Tomkinson and co-star Bovril

The show is a delight for animal lovers and for Africa lovers. It is almost entirely filmed in South Africa as is evident by the light. Anyone who has lived in Africa knows the lighting there is different, likely due to the continent’s elevation and dust in the air, and the warmth the light provides the scenes makes Africa as much a character in the show as the animals or the actors. The stories are well written and the characters grow over time. For example in the early episodes Danny’s daughter Rosie is an annoying suburban girl, and his stepson Ethan is an emo kid you want to slap and send to military school, but by the third season each has evolved into a well-rounded and interesting character to the point when Ethan leaves Leopard’s Den, the fictitious game park, you really are sad to see the kid go. But as anyone who grew up watching British TV knows like Blake’s 7 or Red Dwarf knows, the Brits are much less averse to knocking off characters than Americans, and Wild at Heart is no different, so if you are interested in the show do yourself a favor and avoid reading anything containing spoilers.

Don’t let the “family show” moniker I’ve seen used to describe Wild at Heart put you off. One of the main characters, Anders Du Plessis (played by Deon Stewardson) the owner of Leopard’s Den, is a South African wild man who drinks to excess and won’t be appearing at an AA meeting anytime soon. Wildlife conservation in Africa is not easy, and the show pulls no punches about that. Money is always a problem. Corruption is rampant, and Nature is not pretty. Things die, often in brutal ways, and the show doesn’t sugarcoat this reality. Yes there is no sex shown (at least between humans) but it does get bloody at times, especially during an unforgettable lion attack that was filmed so expertly that it’s one of the more savage things I’ve seen. I don’t think the kids will sleep well after seeing it; at least I didn’t.

Wild at Heart was canceled last year after a 7 season run, supposedly because ITV, the network behind the show ran into financial difficulties producing a Titanic remake. Worse, Netflix Streaming will be dropping the show when a licensing arrangement ends on October 15, 2013, although the first season is available on Amazon Prime and on DVD. All other seasons are available only on Region 2 DVD, meaning they will not play on North American market DVD players.

But I doubt this will be the last we’ve seen of the show. What pet owner has never dreamed of shooing a cheetah off their bed, or having a family of elephants playing in their front yard? The world is a very desolate and at times hopeless place, but for 46 minutes you can lock it in a cage and release your inner hominid to roam freely across the African savannah once more.

 

Although There Isn’t Much To Celebrate

When this site was started America had just suffered the worst attack on its native soil ever. Although terrified for the future, the tone of the early posts reveals a sense of optimism. There was a sense that America would survive and emerge even stronger than before the attacks because it along with the civilized world would confront and defeat the Evil that lay behind the attack. I had faith in the premise and idea of America, and that having abandoned my faith in a divine being, it would prove to be a decent albeit human-based substitute.

I was wrong.

I was wrong about nearly everything that I wrote in those early days. I was wrong that America and the world would confront radical Islam. It hasn’t and the streets of Zanzibar and Nairobi that I had once wondered freely without fear of anything more than having my pocket picked cannot be walked by an American without fearing an acid attack or al Shaabab version of Jeopardy.

I was wrong that the moral relativism that underpinned leftist thinking would be shaken by the attacks, forcing them to see the enemy was religious in nature as they believe albeit not Christian-based. They haven’t and their enemy still remains their neighbors and colleagues who choose not to think like them. I used to believe that such leftists were misguided, but now I think they are evil and as blameless as the Islamic terrorists they provide comfort to. After all, it’s just returning the favor since most conservatives think liberals are misguided while most liberals think conservatives are evil.

I was wrong that by liberating Iraq we would drain the swamp of extremism. Instead Iraq has become a client state of Iran and a battle ground between Sunni and Shi’a, breeding extremists who will one day take their skills to Tel Aviv, Frankfurt and New York.

I was wrong that America would not choose one of its most inexperienced politicians to lead them, and that once they had, they would avoid electing him to a second term. I was wrong that this president once elected would recognize he governed a center-right nation and would keep the steering wheel centered. Instead he took the wheel, hit the gas and flung the car to the left off a cliff. A blend of two races, instead of uniting them he has divided them and the country in ways not seen in generations.

I was wrong that a country who economy was crashed into the ground by bankers would jail them if not tar and feather them. Instead the president, the man who inspired Occupy Wall Street, invites them to lunch.

I have been told that because of my political views my children should die, and that I should be killed, my body dragged behind a truck. Another man takes to network TV saying he wishes I was dead. Yet when I defend myself against these attacks I’m called an extremist.

My country, the land of my birth which my father risked his life defending in the Philippine jungles in 1944-45, has developed a government that flouts its own rules, viewing its own citizens as threats to its existence. Instead of the government being of the people and serving their needs, the American people are viewed as existing for the benefit of the State. The concept of citizen loses it’s meaning in such a situation, so the State opens the borders to allow anyone to arrive and feed it. Foreign spying programs are turned inward, and everyone becomes a potential terrorist. Those whose political beliefs are antagonistic to the State then become subject to the monopoly of coercion and violence the State enjoys. Openly criticize the President at a prayer breakfast, expect a visit by IRS auditors.

Over the past twelve years I have gone from a Democrat to Independent to Republican and now a self-identifying (small “l”) libertarian. I have gone from the parent of a toddler to a parent of a teen. I went from living in one of the largest metropolitan areas on the world to one of the country’s most rural and empty, and I like it. I went from wanting to be liked and popular to wanting to be left alone. This journal mirrors those transformations. I don’t write anymore hoping to be discovered like Michelle Malkin or Andrew Breitbart, I write because if I don’t I’m afraid I’ll die inside even more than I already have.

 

Council Winners

• *First place with 4 2/3 votes! Joshuapundit –Peace In Our Time
• 
  
• Second place t with 2  votes – The Right Planet -  ANNA — Syria from the Russian Perspective  
• 
  
• Second place t with 2 votes – Liberty’s Spirit – Who Elected these Egomaniacs as Jewish-American “Leaders”?
• 
  
• Third place  with 1 vote – The Razor – Republican Rebels
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote – Nice Deb – Why Was An Al Qaeda Commander Photographed Inside a USAID Tent? (Video)
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews – Christiane Amanpour and Hassan Rouhani: almost there, only to get a slap on the face  
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room – Envisioning a Cruz Coalition >
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey  – Hey, when will ABC do a hidden camera show on something like this?
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote – Bookworm Room -  Thoughts on a mouse’s death
• 
  
• Fifth place t with 1/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Remapped
• 
  
• Fifth place t with 1/3 vote – VA Right! – Government Sends 800,000 Unnecessary (Nonessential) Workers Home. Obama Goes to Maximize Pain
• 
  
• Fifth place t with 1/3 vote – The Political Comentator – Malpractice Analogies: If Barack Obama was a..
• 
  

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Victor Davis Hanson  -Obama: Transforming America   submitted by Joshuapundit
• 
  
• Second place with 2  votes – Michelle Malkin- Obama Lied, My Health Plan Died   submitted by The Watcher
• 
  
• Third place t with 1 1/3 votes – Mark Steyn  -Worse is the New Normal  submitted by Liberty’s Spirit
• 
  
• Third place t with 1 1/3 votes – The Kernal – What I learned watching North Korean TV submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• 
  
• Third place t with 1 1/3 votes -The Commentator -Christianity gone haywire, and going down  submitted by The Political Commentator
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote Sultan Knish  -Bill de Blasio and the Jews of New York   submitted by The Noisy Room
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 votes - Michael Walsh/NRO -What We Just Saw  submitted by Nice Deb
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote - Yourish  -The new lying liar who leads Iran   submitted by Simply Jews
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote -Reason-Obamacare vs. Samaritan Health-Care Ministry: A Case Study     submitted by Bookworm Room
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote Discriminations“Simple” Partisan Bias At The Washington Post     submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• 
  
• Fourth  place t with 2/3 vote -Brendan O’Neill/Telegraph – I’m sorry, but we have to talk about the barbarism of modern Islamist terrorism  submitted by The Right Planet
• 
  
• Fourth place t with 2/3 vote -Sean Trende/Real Clear Politics – The Politics of the Government Shutdown –   submitted by The Glittering Eye
• 
  
• Fifth place t with 1/3 vote -Megan McArdle -11 Pieces of Obamacare Conventional Wisdom That Shouldn’t Be So Conventional submitted by The Razor
• 
  
• Fifth place t with 1/3 vote -Tea Party News Network – Chris Matthews: ‘Ted Cruz Is Brilliant…The President’s Met His Match’  submitted by VA Right!
• 
  
• Fifth place t with 1/3 vote -Bill Whittle -Umbrella Men   submitted by The Watcher
• 
  

In the days after the Sarin gas attack in the Damascus Suburbs in August 2013, a news story began making the rounds of the Internet that the chemical weapons attack had been an accidental release of chemical weapons by the rebels. This story was picked up by ZeroHedge, a website frequented by economically-minded  paleo-conservatives, isolationist libertarians, and anarchists.

The story was sourced from Mint Press and written by Dale Gavlak, an Associated Press stringer and NPR correspondent. It claimed the chemical weapons were provided by the Saudis and that the release of the chemical weapons was accidental:

 

“Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack. “My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.
...
“We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions,” ‘J’ said.

 

The story was widely quoted, and passed quickly through the anti-war groups naturally suspicious of false flag operations that could lead to western involvement in Syria. The problem for these groups is that the facts in the story were not corroborated by other news organizations, are likely fictions spread by the Iranian sympathizing owners of Mint Press. BuzzFeed covers the scandal here in its piece “The Inside Story of One Website’s Defense of Assad”.

It’s relatively easy to take down an outfit like Mint Press.  It’s much more difficult to prove propaganda charges spread by the likes of the Washington Post, New York Times and NBC News. Nevertheless these organizations are just as slanted in their reporting in support of Democrat administrations and antagonistic to Republican ones. The only real difference between them and Mint Press is their size.

Hat-tip: SimplyJews

They stormed the beaches of Normandy and Okinawa, fought for every square inch of Belgium and Luzon. The might of Hitler’s Wehrmach and the Japanese Imperial Army could not stop these guys. And yet a candy-assed Kenyan* thinks he can?

Once again the White House shows its disdain for the American people. For such a supposedly intelligent crew they sure act like a bunch of morons.

* Note: I do not mean this as an insult to Kenyans. Having visited at length in Kenya I have nothing but the utmost respect for the average Kenyan, especially these guys.

I doubt this guy has a candy-ass. In fact I’m 100% percent sure.

And no I don’t subscribe to the theory that Obama is not a natural born citizen, although there’s less evidence than the crazy Trig conspiracy beloved by Andy Sullivan, and we know more about President George W. Bush’s National Guard stint than we do Obama’s Ivy League years, even excluding the work of fiction that brought down Dan “Kenneth” Rather’s career.

 

 

 

Council Submissions

• Liberty’s Spirit – Who Elected these Egomaniacs as Jewish-American “Leaders”?
• 
  
• The Noisy Room – Envisioning a Cruz Coalition
• 
  
• Simply Jews – Christiane Amanpour and Hassan Rouhani: almost there, only to get a slap on the face
• 
  
• The Political Commentator – Malpractice Analogies: If Barack Obama was a…
• 
  
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Remapped
• 
  
• The Colossus of Rhodey – Hey, when will ABC do a hidden camera show on something like this?
• 
  
• The Razor – Republican Rebels
• 
  
• Bookworm Room – Thoughts on a mouse’s death
• 
  
• The Glittering Eye -What’s Wrong With a Shutdown?
• 
  
• VA Right! - Government Sends 800,000 Unnecessary (Nonessential) Workers Home. Obama Goes to Maximize Pain
• 
  
• The Right Planet – ANNA — Syria from the Russian Perspective
• 
  
• Joshuapundit-Peace In Our Time
• 
  
• Nice Deb – Why Was An Al Qaeda Commander Photographed Inside a USAID Tent? (Video)
• 
  
• The Mellow Jihadi – Walking Bloody Around the Navy Base
• 
  
• Rhymes With Right – A Headline That Got My Hopes Up
• 
  

Honorable Mentions

• Ask Marion – The Battle Between Good and Evil
• 
  
• Right Reason – Why we should care about CAIR
• 
  
• Aewl’s Abode – Thoughts On Ted Cruz
• 
  
• The Pirate’s Cove – NC Gov. McCrory Cites Obama Showing ID To Vote
• 
  

Non-Council Submissions

• Mark Steyn – Worse is the New Normal submitted by Liberty’s Spirit
• 
  
• Sultan Knish –Bill de Blasio and the Jews of New York submitted by The Noisy Room
• 
  
• Yourish – The new lying liar who leads Iran submitted by Simply Jews
• 
  
• The Commentator -Christianity gone haywire, and going down submitted by The Political Commentator
• 
  
• The Kernal – What I learned watching North Korean TV submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• 
  
• Discriminations – “Simple” Partisan Bias At The Washington Post submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• 
  
• Megan McArdle –11 Pieces of Obamacare Conventional Wisdom That Shouldn’t Be So Conventional submitted by The Razor
• 
  
• Reason-Obamacare vs. Samaritan Health-Care Ministry: A Case Study submitted by Bookworm Room
• 
  
• Sean Trende/Real Clear Politics – The Politics of the Government Shutdown submitted by The Glittering Eye
• 
  
• Tea Party News Network – Chris Matthews: ‘Ted Cruz Is Brilliant…The President’s Met His Match’
  submitted by VA Right!
• 
  
• Brendan O’Neill/Telegraph – I’m sorry, but we have to talk about the barbarism of modern Islamist terrorism submitted by The Right Planet
• 
  
• Victor Davis Hanson – Obama: Transforming America submitted by Joshuapundit
• 
  
• Michael Walsh/NRO -What We Just Saw submitted by Nice Deb
• 
  
• Michelle Malkin – Obama Lied, My Health Plan Died submitted by The Watcher
• 
  
• Bill Whittle – Umbrella Men submitted by Watcher
• 
  

Just kidding… That’s actually a picture of riots in France.

Anyone notice anything different? Me neither.