Shootings in Tucson, But All’s Quiet in Hollywood

Now that you mention it, have you noticed how most of the leftist Hollywood glitterati have been AWOL in blaming right wing extremists for the recent shootings in Tucson?  Seems a little out of character for people who usually would kill, er die, no um, push their way to the front of a line to get in front of a camera and blame conservative Americans for anything wrong in our society.  

Wonder why they have been so quiet this past week?  Could it be they don’t want anyone paying attention to the product they inflict on us on a regular basis?

Dennis Keohane makes some relevent points in his article at American Thinker, and gives two movies as examples. 

Shooter (2007)

Ned Beatty plays evil Senator Charles Meachum, a character who resembles Dick Cheney.  The senator is linked to the massacre of Ethiopian villagers in the interests of his “big oil” consortium.  The hero, a former military sniper played by Mark Wahlberg, kills the senator.

Try to imagine the reaction to a movie with an elected official shown as corrupt but who is also presented as being liberal on various positions (e.g., supports unions, subsidizing clean energy companies, auto industry bailouts) and is made to resemble Senator John Kerry or Vice President Biden.  Imagine the reaction if this character were killed by the movie’s hero.

Thomas de Zengotita, contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, wrote this at the Huffington Post:  A really smart bit of left wing (I’m for it!) propaganda aimed at the Bush administration, the Iraq War and, especially, Dick Cheney…see the movie and tell me that Ned Beatty, as Montana Senator Charles F. Meachum, isn’t doing an SNL version of Dick Cheney. Then reflect on what happens to him in the movie…We are all entitled to fantasies of vengeance…

David Edelstein, film critic for NPR’s Fresh Air and CBS Sunday Morning, wrote in New York Magazine:

Lefty peaceniks who object to the red-meat vigilante action genre on moral and political grounds but down deep wonder if they’d enjoy watching evil right-wing war criminals get their heads blown off should check out Shooter.

Writing of the film’s sniper hero who kills the Cheney lookalike Senator, Edelstein says he “doesn’t need subpoena power to do a little government housecleaning.”

 

Machete (2010)

 

In Machete, directed by Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez, Robert De Niro plays the evil right-wing Senator McLaughlin, who campaigns on securing the southern border while warning of an impending invasion of Mexican illegals.  In what is intended to be a humorous scene, the senator is killed during a battle on the border when his murderous anti-immigrant vigilante allies mistake him for a border-crossing Mexican.

 

Marshall Fine has written and reviewed films for USA Today, the LA Times, the New York Daily News, and the Huffington Post.  His review finds the movie entertaining, and note how he describes the murderous vigilante “types” that get their violent comeuppance at the end:

( … [Rodriguez] does point out the hypocrisy, hyperbole and fear-mongering of the right wing.) It’s mostly a backdrop and plot device to build to a massive final battle between Mexican-Americans and Tea Party types … Yes, there will be those who dismiss “Machete” … But that would be to deny both the wit and imagination that Rodriguez brings to this extravagantly entertaining movie.

 

While the NY Times has been at the forefront in blame-gaming the Tucson shootings, its review found nothing objectionable in this movie that had a senator killed…  [T]he Times has nothing but disdain and contempt for anyone who might find such objectionable:

McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), a Texas senator who campaigns on a rabid anti-immigration platform and whom Mr. De Niro plays as a crinkly-eyed, hate-spewing hybrid of Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush; one campaign commercial compares illegal immigrants to cockroaches … The only viewers it is likely to upset are the same kind of people who once claimed that the purple Tinky Winky in “Teletubbies” promoted a gay agenda.

 

At the Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas and writer after writer blamed the Tucson shootings on the right, and in particular Sarah Palin.  Oddly enough, some months ago, a Kos diarist named Dartagnan wrote about his concerns that Machete could possibly lead to violence, and as a result, he was accused in the comments of thinking like a fascist.  Dartagnan then made specific his concern that the movie will “glorify the killing of a U.S. Senator to avenge the treatment of illegal aliens[.]“

 

For that, Dartagnan was accused of racism and pandering to the right…  In short, concern that a movie showing the killing of a senator could possibly lead to real violence against elected officials was in short supply at Daily Kos.

Finally, a quick promotional ad before I close.  Make sure you don’t miss the exciting new film premiering at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.  Titled Hobo With A Shotgun and starring Rutger Hauer, it’s the story of a homeless man with a shotgun who becomes a vigilante hero. 

Yeah, and I’m pretty sure there are no subpoenas, police officers, juries, or judges involved before the Hobo shoots all the bad guys while becoming the movie’s hero.

Any more questions on what is driving our country toward violence?  Just make sure you watch what YOU say and don’t put any offensive symbols on YOUR maps.

 

Get Out and Vote!

Dennis Prager, a syndicated conservative radio talk show host, columnist, author, and public speaker was part of a panel discussion at the University of Colorago in Denver in May 2010. Here are some of his thoughts.

Polls out tonight show an unprecedented 15 point lead for Republicans in the generic ballot, and Democrat pollsters are admitting they expect at least a 60 seat loss in the House.

Vote as if our country depends on it. It does.

Here’s to You, Mr Jefferson

I don’t know anything about the sponsoring organization, but love the video!

http://www.youtube.com/v/CLAg8a0vCZQ?fs=1&hl=en_US

Never Forget

Its name has been changed from Cordoba House to “Park 51″.

Its purpose has morphed from a place for Muslims to worship to a “community center” “Like a YMCA” where people of all faiths would supposedly meet.

And though the planners chose the site because of its proximity to Ground Zero, now they and their supporters say it is “blocks away.”

Watch this video.

Do you see the building in the background? It’s the Burlington Coat Factory. Does that look “blocks away” to you? It is covered in dust and ashes, a rescue worker is standing in front of it.

Now look at this map:

348 FEET. That’s how close the nearest remains were found. It is possible there are more remains even closer that may be disturbed when/if construction begins around the Burlington Coat Factory site.

Today we remember what happened nine years ago. We remembered all those who were lost. We remember all who have died in the years since fighting for our freedom and security. And remember who it is we are fighting. They are terrorists. They accomplish their purposes by pretending to be what they are not; by lying to everyone around them. They hate us simply because we are Americans.

On CNN last week, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf told Americans:

If we do move [the community center to another location],” Rauf continued, “it will strengthen the argument of the radicals to recruit, their ability to recruit, and their increasing aggression and violence against our country.”

“If this is not handled correctly, this crisis could become much bigger than the Danish cartoon crisis, which resulted in attacks on Danish embassies in various parts of the Muslim world,” Rauf said later. “…. If we don’t handle this crisis correctly it could become something which could really become very, very, very dangerous indeed.”

Definiton of a Terrorist: Somebody using violence for political purposes: somebody who uses violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination, to intimidate others, often for political purposes

Tell me again how “moderate” Mr. Rauf is. How his purpose in building this supposed community center is “peaceful” and meant to “unite” us. Seeing is believing. All I see are lies, obfuscations, threats and intimidations. Never Forget – what happened nine years ago today, and who was behind it.

Will You Stand With Arizona?

The outcry has begun. Marches that look more like riots and swastikas smeared in refried beans (I kid you not) on the capitol building in Phoenix; Al Sharpton’s calling for “freedom walkers” while some want Major League Baseball to move its scheduled 2011 All-Star Game from Chase Field in Arizona and others call for a boycott of Arizona itself.

You’d never know that a full 70% of Arizona voters actually favor the new law.

You’d also never know from most of the media coverage that all the new law does is codify the current US laws. In fact, it goes farther to protect minorities from racial profiling than does the federal statute. The difference? Arizona actually plans to enforce their law.

We can’t let the 23% speak for us. If you agree that Arizona has a right and a responsibility to protect their citizens, you need to make your voice heard. How?

-> Sign this petition: We Stand With Arizona, and Against Illegal Immigration. And then if you’re very brave (or just feel like messing with your liberal FB friends),  join the facebook group too.

-> Plan an Arizona vacation. It’s a beautiful state, and now, thanks to the new law, a safer place to visit.

-> Look for food grown in Arizona. “Arizona ranks 2nd nationally in it’s production of cantaloupe & honeydew melons, head & leaf lettuce, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower and lemons.”

-> Tell Major League Baseball to stay out of politics and keep the All Star Game in Arizona.

The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball
Allan H. (Bud) Selig, Commissioner
245 Park Avenue, 31st Floor
New York, NY 10167
Phone: (212) 931-7800

It’s time that our laws meant something and that Americans stood up for what is right. Don’t let Mexico and the fringe left win this debate. Speak up. Be heard. Make a difference.

Differing Opinions

Arizona’s governor just signed a new law toughening up that state’s immigration regulations, including the requirement that non-citizens carry proof that they legally entered our country.  Portions of the law directly mirror current federal laws that are simply not being enforced.

As a border state, Arizona is on the front lines of a war being fought against drug lords and mexican mafia which is escalating by the day while our federal government sits on its hands. The most recent casualty in this war hit the national headlines last month, when an Arizona rancher was gunned down on his own land.

Things have gotten so bad in Arizona that even MSNBC had to report on it last year.

Arizona is an attractive target for drug smugglers, because it sits atop a geographic funnel in northwestern Mexico. With the Gulf of California to the west, the Sierra Madre Mountains to the east and a vast illicit drug production area to the south, the Mexican plains lying just south of Arizona are a natural staging area for traffickers bound for the United States.

“The cartels have found this is the most lucrative place to come in the United States,” said Coulson. “We’re fighting a corporation, an entity that has resources of $10 billion at their disposal.” The DEA estimates that the drug cartels generate about $10 billion annually from the sale of drugs whcih pass through Arizona alone. …

American authorities have seen smugglers use a variety of methods to sneak drugs into the U.S. Often the cartels employ a virtual army of hikers, each of whom carries at least a 40-pound load of marijuana across the desert floor in a homemade burlap knapsack. They stash their loads on the U.S. side, where the drugs are then picked up by transporters.

Ranchers living in fear. Drugs smuggled in through a “virtual army of hikers”. And the federal government does nothing, because it’s politically incorrect to point out that these people are coming from Mexico. So the state of Arizona does what it has to do to protect it’s own citizens – the most basic responsibility of any government – and is immediately accused of racial profiling.

I understand that concern. Racial profiling has been used against blacks, latinos and probably every other race (including the Irish and other Europeans, if we look back in our history far enough) and is a serious type of harrassment that should never be tolerated.

The Governor of Arizona agrees.

Let me be clear, though: My signature today represents my steadfast support for enforcing the law — both AGAINST illegal immigration AND against racial profiling.

This legislation mirrors federal laws regarding immigration enforcement.

Despite erroneous and misleading statements suggesting otherwise, the new state misdemeanor crime of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document is adopted, verbatim, from the same offense found in federal statute.

I will NOT tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling in Arizona.

Because I feel so strongly on this subject, I worked for weeks with legislators to amend SB 1070, to
strengthen its civil rights protections.
That effort led to new language in the bill, language prohibiting law enforcement officers from “solely considering race, color, or national origin in implementing the requirements of this section…”

The bill already required that it “shall be implemented in a manner consistent with federal laws regulating immigration, protecting the civil rights of all persons and respecting the privileges and
immunities of United States citizens.”

While the general protection was already included, I believe the issue is so important, we needed to make it CRYSTAL clear.

And I believe that we need to more than simply inscribe it in statute.

Words in a law book are of no use if our police officers are not properly trained on the provisions of SB 1070, including its civil rights provisions.

Today I am issuing an executive order directing the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board – AZPOST — to develop training to appropriately implement SB 1070.

Importantly, this training will include what DOES – and DOES NOT – constitute “reasonable suspicion” that a person is not legally present in the United States.

This law will not be put into effect until later this summer. It remains to be seen how effective it will be at fighting crime and whether it will result in any inappropriate profiling. Some people are very happy about this law, believing something has to be done. Others are angry, believing the “rights” of immigrants (illegal or legal) outweigh all else. Interestingly, it is this latter group who also believes that only their side has the right to express their opinion.

Isn’t it interesting, that the very same people who fight so hard for the “rights” of people who are in our country illegally don’t believe their fellow Americans have the right to express a differring opinion? Worse, this attitude has been expressed in regards to nearly every issue where Conservatives take a stand. Those who opposed Obamacare were painted as racist instead of recognizing our very real concerns about government overreach. Those who stood up against the so-called Stimulous because of concerns about the massive increase in the federal budget and lack of any actual job-creation were unfeeling louts who didn’t want to help their fellow man. I could go on and on. Why is it that the very same people who for the last forty years have rallied and demonstrated at the drop of a hat, always espousing the importance of free speech and dissent suddenly believe we should all fall in line and bow to Obama and the democratic party? Consider the words of leftist icon, Noam Chomsky: “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” Is that still true, Liberals? Or have the rules of the game changed now that the “radicals” are in charge?

A Long Post: The Complete List of Obama Statement Expiration Dates – Jim Geraghty

This read will take awhile, but is definitely worth it! 

A Long Post: The Complete List of Obama Statement Expiration Dates – Jim Geraghty.

Ethics? What’s that?

How many ethics violations will it take.  We know that Timothy Geithner was so essential to the nation’s economy that his crime (tax evasion) had to be whitewashed then overlooked.  There are other examples, and now we have a new one. 

John Brennan is the president’s special assistant for counter terrorism.

The White House official leading the interagency review into the U.S. terrorist watch list system that contributed to a near-catastrophe on Christmas Day used to head a company that provides critical analysis to those who create the watch list.

But the White House has reviewed the situation and they must be right; they’re lawyers!

White House attorneys reviewed whether Mr. Brennan would be violating ethics rules by conducting the review of watch lists in light of his previous position and determined that the benefit to the public interest of having Mr. Brennan conduct the review far outweighed any potential conflict of interest.

How many times did we hear Haliburton screamed from the rafters by the Dems?  How many times did they claim a culture of corruption in the Bush White House?

Hypocrites is the mildest term I can use!  Read the full story here.

Keeping Us Safe From – Republicans, of Course

The Obama administration, ever vigilant about homeland security and our safety, is in “full defensive spin mode” after near catastrophe by the Underwear Bomber.

And what are they defending us from?  Why, Republican electoral wins, of course.  Read the whole article here.

On December 26…senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns — if any — from the Bush Administration.

“The idea was that we’d show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could,” says a staffer in the counsel’s office. “We were told that classified material involving anything related to al Qaeda operating in Yemen or Nigeria was fair game and that we’d declassify it if necessary.”

They’re trying to find a flaw to – what?  Claim two wrongs make a right?  That will undoubtedly impress al-Qaeda and keep them from trying to blow us up in the future.  And don’t you just love the idea of rooting through classified material for the sole purpose of political gain – at the expense of homeland security?  

Other administration sources also say a flurry of memos were generated on December 26th, 27th, and 28th, which developed talking points about how Obama’s decision to effectively shut down the Homeland Security Council… had nothing to do with what Obama called a “catastrophic” failure on Christmas Day.

Are you feeling safer now?  Why, Obama’s actions have no consequences!  But it keeps getting worse, and really scary, as their incompetence becomes ever more obvious.

“This White House doesn’t view the Northwest [Airlines] failure as one of national security, it’s a political issue,” says the White House source. “That’s why Axelrod and Emanuel are driving the issue.”

Axelrod, who has no foreign policy or national security experience beyond occasionally consulting with liberal or progressive candidates running for political office in foreign countries, has been actively participating in national security briefings from the beginning of the administration. He has also sat in on Obama’s “war council” meetings, providing Obama with suggestions in both venues based on what he knows about polling and public opinion data, say several White House sources.

Say it isn’t so.  Decisions on international politics and our safety are made based on public opinion data instead of information from defense experts?  I don’t know about you, but I am shocked, shocked! to learn this.

Emperor Obama’s Racist Clothes

It’s about time we put vitiation for white guilt behind us and worry about the safety of our country.  Shelby Steele has an opinion column in today’s Wall Street Journal that illuminates the matter precisely:

America still has a race problem, though not the one that conventional wisdom would suggest: the racism of whites toward blacks. Old fashioned white racism has lost its legitimacy in the world and become an almost universal disgrace.

The essence of our new “post-modern” race problem can be seen in the parable of the emperor’s new clothes. The emperor was told by his swindling tailors that people who could not see his new clothes were stupid and incompetent. So when his new clothes arrived and he could not see them, he put them on anyway so that no one would think him stupid and incompetent. And when he appeared before his people in these new clothes, they too—not wanting to appear stupid and incompetent—exclaimed the beauty of his wardrobe. It was finally a mere child who said, “The emperor has no clothes.”

Our President has no clothes.

Barack Obama, elegant and professorially articulate, was an invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down. If “hope and change” was an empty political slogan, it was also beautiful clothing that people could passionately describe without ever having seen.  [snip]

Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him.

It is not only the Emperor’s New Clothes that cannot be seen, though.  According to Steele, Obama has no clothes at all.

I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness—not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world.  [snip]

But then Mr. Obama always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol. He always wore the bargainer’s mask—winning the loyalty and gratitude of whites by flattering them with his racial trust: I will presume that you are not a racist if you will not hold my race against me.

A leader is developed by years of testing the world and personal convictions.  A leader finds out through trial and error what he or she truly believes in, then is an advocate of that belief to others.  A person cannot be a leader if they have emptied themselves of convictions and refused to take principled stands – as witnessed by Obama’s voting “Present” 130 times while serving in the Illinois state senate.

[W]e have a president whose benign—and therefore desirable—blackness exempted him from the political individuation process that makes for strong, clear-headed leaders. He has not had to gamble his popularity on his principles, and it is impossible to know one’s true beliefs without this. In the future he may stumble now and then into a right action, but there is no hard-earned center to the man out of which he might truly lead.

It is a well developed article and deserves reading in its entirety.

With no segue, on an entirely different subject, am I the only one who finds it interesting that Obama is vacationing on Oahu while Nancy Pelosi is on the island of Hawaii?  And the media has with no suspicion that they are working on Obamacare?  Really???

If  I’m wrong it certainly won’t be the first time, but that might explain why he doesn’t seem much interested in the Eunuch Bomber and isn’t returning to the White House to tend to national security.