We all see the blatantly, often ridiculously politically correct scripting of today’s Hollywood output, much of this going so far beyond the boundaries of reality(at least for most of those of us who don’t write for, direct, produce or act in the film industry) that one has to wonder how far afield from the rest of America and the world these denizens of the lower left coast have actually migrated.

But the above only scratches the surface of goings-on in an industry that seems to have lost its soul — today’s movies, even those meant for thirteen year olds, are filled with material that was once rated a firm “R”. It seems Hollywood feels the kids need some generous helpings of world class sexual demonstration and profoundly graphic violence in order to develop into proper modern adults.

And there is an increasing anti-American, leftist element being worked into scripts as the almost entirely anti-war, Bush hating liberal contingent that rules the roost in Hollywood uses its “art” as a vehicle for pushing political agendas that not too many decades ago would have seen them lynched by vast crowds of patriotic Americans.

Victor Davis Hanson is spot-on in a column titled Hollywood’s Misunderstood Terrorists.

When terrorism goes to the movies in the post-Sept. 11 world, we might expect the plots, characters and themes to reflect some sort of believable reality. But in Hollywood, the politically correct impulse now overrides all else. Even the spectacular pyrotechnics, beautiful people and accomplished acting cannot hide it.

Instead, moviegoers can anticipate before the opening credits that those characters who work for the American government or are at war with terrorists will likely be portrayed as criminals, incompetents or people existing on the same moral plane as killers.

Too true.

Take this fall’s “Flightplan,” in which the U.S. air marshal on board and a flight attendant turn out to be the true terrorists. Meanwhile, four Middle Eastern males are unfairly put under suspicion in the lynch-mob atmosphere on the plane.

The film warns us that the real threat after Sept. 11 is certainly not young Middle Eastern males on planes who might hijack or crash them into iconic American buildings. No, more dangerous in Hollywood’s alternate universe are the flight officials themselves — who in reality on Sept. 11 battled terrorists only to have their throats cut before being blown up with all the passengers.

Read it all.

Max Boot has more to say on the subject.

…for 60 years, Hollywood has had no problem making movies that depict World War II as a struggle of good versus evil. Rightly so. Because for all the Allies’ faults, they were the good guys.

For some reason, Hollywood can’t take an equally clear-eyed view of the war on terrorism. The current conflict, pitting the forces of freedom against those of Islamo-fascism, is every bit as clear cut as World War II. Yet fashionable filmmakers insist on painting both sides in shades of gray, as if Israeli secret agents or American soldiers were comparable to Al Qaeda killers. Two of the most serious holiday flicks — “Syriana” and “Munich” — are case studies in mindless moral relativism and pathetic pseudo-sophistication.

Keep reading.

What gets me is that even though film revenues are off because Americans have grown tired of seeing our way of life and those who defend it being perpetually demeaned at the movies and out of the mouths of Hollywood celebrities in their endless barrage of Bush bashing, these clueless, anti-American morons continue to sabotage their own collective source of income.

…and we won’t be until everybody in America knows what a lying, treasonous, shameless, bogus, idiotarian, leftist propaganda generating, thoroughly liberal-biased source of disinformation you have become, abusing the reputation you earned back in the days when you were a respectable newspaper.

Columnist and blogger extraordinaire Michelle Malkin puts in her two cents, as succinct and on-point as always.

Back in June, as a brand new blogger, I posted on Eliot Spitzer and conveyed my own disapproval of the self-seeking, ethically-challenged New York State Attorney General rather bluntly.

Columnist John Podhoretz’ opinion of the man is apparently not all that different from my own, and he adds some good background, to boot.

Here’s what the Times editorial endorsing him said in 1998: “Spitzer has misled the public about how his father’s wealth was used to support about $9 million in loans that financed his campaigns in 1994 and 1998. His conduct may not be illegal, but it was clearly designed to circumvent laws that would have limited his father’s direct contributions to the campaign. In normal circumstances, Mr. Spitzer’s evasions would have made it impossible to endorse him for the state’s top legal position.”

Pretty extraordinary, don’t you think, in light of Spitzer’s shameless pose as a heroic Mr. Clean, throwing the moneychangers out of the Wall Street temple?

Read on.

My friend Raven, at And Rightly So, posts excellently on Tom Tancredo, one of the few members of Congress today who has shown the courage to stand up to the PC forces that protect illegal immigrants and promote ignorance of all the damage they do to our country, to address the problem point blank and to get real results from his perserverance and the force of sheer, powerful, unrelenting drive to succeed.

My friend GM, of Gm’s Corner, cross-posted this one from Winds of Change, a great site I’ve had blogrolled since I first began blogging, and being an American born Jew who grew up in a time when Yiddish and Jewish humour, courtesy of our immigrant parents and grandparents who were alive and well in the family I simply could not resist cross-posting it in turn.

It is simply brilliant!

‘Twas the night before Hanukkah and all over the place There was noise, there was kvetching Soch ah disgrace!
The Kinderlach, sleeping,
uneasily felt
The chocolate rush
from the Hanukkah gelt

And me in the easyboy,
so stuffed with latkes,
I stretched the elastic
which held up my gatchkes

When up on the roof
(and it has a steep pitch)
A fat alte kakker
was making a kvitsch.
I jumped up real quick
and I ran to the door,
Was it a bandeet,
or only a schnorrer?

He wasn’t alone;
he had eight ferdelach,
And called them by name
as he gave a gebrach:

“On Moishe, on Yankel, on Itzik, on Sam,
On Mendel, on Shmendrik, on Feivush, on Ham;
My kidneys are kvelling;
do you give a damn?”

He had a white beard
and payyes to boot,
And to keep out the cold,
he had such a nice suit!

A second from Peerless,
I could tell at a glance,
But the cut was okay,
and so were the pants.

He was triple XL,
a real groisser goof,
So I yelled out,
“Meshuggener! Get off from Mein roof!”
He jumped down and said
as he shook hands with me,
“Max Klaus is the name.
You have maybe some tea?”

So I gave him a gleisel,
while he shook his white mop,
Mutt’ring, “Always the same thing,
They’re dreying my kopp!”

From Vancouver to Glace Bay,
Outremont to Reginek,
Every shmo in the world
hakks meir a cheinik!

They’re screaming for presents,
and challah with schmaltz,
And from Brooklyn alone,
the back pain, gevaltz!”

So we sat and yentehed,
and we spun the old dreydels,
(He took all of my money,
and one of my kanidels)

He said, “Business is not bad,
a living I make,
But I’m getting too old
for this Hanukkah fake;

And the cell phones, you see
how my pacemaker dings?
For two cents I’d quit,
and move to Palm Springs!”

And he gave a geshrei
as he fled mit a lacht,
“Gut Yontiff to All,
Vey is Mir, Such a Nacht!”

(Author Unknown)

Dartmouth Professor of English emeritus Jeffrey Hart has written a thought provoking essay defining the conservative movement in the United States and its roots as a response, in part, to the Utopian thought and doctrine of the liberal movement.

Both hard and soft utopianism ignore flawed human nature. Soft utopianism believes in benevolent illusions, most abstractly stated in the proposition that all goals are reconcilable, as in such dreams as the Family of Man, World Peace, multiculturalism, pacifism and Wilsonian global democracy. To all of these the Conservative Mind objects. Men do not all desire the same things: Domination is a powerful desire. The phrase about the lion lying down with the lamb is commonly quoted; but Isaiah knew his vision of peace would take divine intervention, not at all to be counted on. Without such intervention, the lion dines well.

The entire highly recommended read is here.

This editorial in yesterday’s New York Post is spot on, and points out transgressions on the part of the “newspaper of record” that could only be called treason, the right to freedom of the press notwithstanding.

Certain freedoms do, after all, carry with them a degree of responsibility and the NYT seems to have opted to disregard these responsibilities.

Has The New York Times declared itself to be on the front line in the war against the War on Terror?
The self-styled paper of record seems to be trying to reclaim the loyalty of those radical lefties who ludicrously accused it of uncritically reporting on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Yet the paper has done more than merely try to embarrass the Bush administration these last few months.

It has published classified information — and thereby knowingly blown the covers of secret programs and agencies engaged in combating the terrorist threat.

The most notorious example was the paper’s disclosure some 10 days ago that, since 9/11, the Bush administration has “secretly” engaged in warrantless eavesdropping on U.S.-based international phone calls and e-mails.

Further,

The Times says it held the story for more than a year, provoking a predictable uproar on the left. So why did it finally go ahead?

According to a Los Angeles Times report, New York Times editors knew that a book by the article’s author was to be published in just a few weeks — and they feared losing their “exclusive” to their own reporter’s outside work.

But the exact timing is highly suspect. The article appeared on the very day that the Senate was to vote on a Democratic filibuster against renewal of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act — a vote the Bush administration then lost. At least two previously undecided senators said they voted against the act precisely because of the Times piece.

And that’s not the half of it:

Last May, the Times similarly “exposed” — in painstaking detail — the fact that the CIA uses its own airline service, posing as a private charter company, as “the discreet bus drivers of the battle against terrorism.”

In fact, as the Times itself reported, “the civilian planes can go places American military craft would not be welcome.” In an unconventional war, like the one against terrorism, the ability to move personnel around quickly and inconspicuously — or to deliver captured terrorists to a third country — is indispensable.

Thanks to the Times, that ability has been irrevocably compromised — costing Washington yet another vital tool in the War on Terror.

More?

Then, not content to merely sabotage the federal government, the Times last week blew the whistle on the fact that the New York Police Department has been using plainclothes officers during protest demonstrations.

In particular, the cops have been exercising their vigilance on the group called Critical Mass, which the Times refers to benignly as “a monthly bicycle ride.”

Not quite. Yes, it began as peaceful, law-abiding rides — orderly protests. But it deteriorated last year into mass disruptions of traffic.

A federal judge unwisely refused the city’s demand that the riders obtain a police permit in advance — but still admitted that the monthly protests were “spawning potential dangers.”

All along, the NYPD has not been trying to shut the Critical Mass protests down or abridge anyone’s First Amendment rights. It has only insisted on safeguards — like permits — to guarantee that no laws are broken and traffic disruptions are held to a minimum.

Unable to get the courts to agree, the cops instead used plainclothes cops “to prevent and respond to acts of violence and other unlawful activity.”

In other words, to protect the people of New York.

Now, the Times has “exposed” this police work — and not just in words, but by splashing the pictures of these undercover officers across the pages of the newspaper, without making even the slightest effort to protect their identities.

And make no mistake: The result will be to compromise the ability of the NYPD to work undercover at a time of increasing danger to the city from back-pack-toting terrorists — a la Madrid and London.

Does The New York Times consider it self a law unto itself — free to subversively undercut basic efforts by any government to protect and defend its citizens?

The Times, it appears, is less concerned with promoting its dubious views on civil liberties than with undercutting the Bush administration. The end result of the paper’s flagrant irresponsibility: Lives have been put in danger on the international, national and local levels.

Al-Qaeda couldn’t ask for better saboteurs in the U.S., people they presumeably don’t even have to compensate, than the bunch of bald faced traitors over at the New York Times.

It would seem that some Democrat politicians and think tanks are finally waking up to the fact that their party’s practice of playing politics over homeland security is damaging them in the eyes of the voting public, who perceive the fanatical leftist rantings of Harry Reid and his ilk as a sure sign that the Republicans are much more suited to defend the United States against the threat of terrorism than are the Democrats.

Some centrist Democrats say attacks by their party leaders on the Bush administration’s eavesdropping on suspected terrorist conversations will further weaken the party’s credibility on national security.
That concern arises from recent moves by liberal Democrats to block the extension of parts of the USA Patriot Act in the Senate and denunciations of President Bush amid concerns that these initiatives could violate the civil liberties of innocent Americans.
“I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you’ve gone too far if you leave that impression. I don’t believe that’s true,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues.

As a conservative Republican myself, I am both angered at the obstructive policies of those on the left who place our nation and its citizens in grave danger in the name of their hatred for President Bush and their partisan political agendas, and amused at the way they sabotage their own chances of political success in the process.

Their endeavors at running a far-fetched civil liberties scenario(the government eavesdrops on international telephone calls by al-Qaeda connections in the U.S., the liberals try and make out that they’re spying on every citizen, like the agencies of “Big Brother” do in Orwell’s 1984) in an effort to discredit Bush and compromise vital national defense programs are as sick as they are suicidal. It is quite obvious that their intention is to dismantle our protective operations to the point that one or more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are able to be successfully executed, Americans die and then they can accuse Bush of failing to secure the country against terrorism.

In my opinion, the very fact that such people hold office is a sad reflection on the intelligence of the Democrats who voted them in.

“I get nervous when I see the Democrats playing this [civil liberties] issue out too far. They had better be careful about the politics of it,” said Mr. O’Hanlon, who says the Patriot Act is “good legislation.”
These Democrats say attacks on anti-terrorist intelligence programs will deepen mistrust of their ability to protect the nation’s security, a weakness that led in part to the defeat of Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, last year.
“The Republicans still hold the advantage on every national-security issue we tested,” said Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster and former adviser to President Clinton, who co-authored a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) memo on the party’s national-security weaknesses.
Nervousness among Democrats intensified earlier this month after Democrats led a filibuster against the Patriot Act that threatened to block the measure, followed by a victory cry from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, who declared at a party rally, “We killed the Patriot Act.”

Right, Harry, you’re also killing your party’s chances of regaining their former majority status on Capital Hill for another few years. On behalf of Republicans everywhere, I thank you. Keep running your mouth.

As for those Democrats who are wising up, you would do well to start acting like Americans again and rally ’round your President in time of war. To say “he’s not my President” is to renounce or otherwise deny your American citizenship, because, whether you like it or not, he is the President of the United States.

Lastly,

White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy yesterday discounted the scope of the eavesdropping operation.
“This is a limited program,” he told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where Mr. Bush is vacationing at his ranch.
“This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches.”

The Times of London’s James Bone comments on an incident in which U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan went off on him for asking a perfectly straightforward question whose honest answer might have implicated both Kofi and his Oil For Food profiteering, general purpose sleazeball son, Kojo, in a simple act of fraud by means of misuse of the elder Annan’s diplomatic U.N. status.

It was with some amusement that I found myself the target of a decidedly undiplomatic tirade by the U.N. chief at a news conference last week. The usually mild Mr. Annan erupted in an ad hominem attack, calling me “cheeky” and belittling me as an “overgrown schoolboy.” Although I have covered the U.N. in minute detail for The Times of London since 1988, and have known Mr. Annan for almost all that time, he suggested I was not a “serious journalist.”

The cause of Mr. Annan’s ire was a question I put to him about a Mercedes car that his son Kojo had imported into Ghana (and which cannot, now, be traced). The facts indicate that Kojo had bought the car in his father’s name, thereby obtaining a diplomatic discount and a tax exemption totaling more than $20,000. The question about the car — to which Mr. Annan again refused to give a satisfactory answer — is part of the wider probe into his role in the U.N.’s Oil for Food scandal. Despite months of investigation, important questions about the integrity of public officials remain unanswered. If we are serious about U.N. reform — as Mr. Annan claims to be — they must be resolved.

It is a time-honored tradition at the U.N. to bury a scandal by conducting an inadequate inquiry and then declaring the matter closed. Mr. Annan did precisely that when news first broke in January 1999 of his son’s involvement with a Swiss firm that won a U.N. contract in Iraq.

Read Bone’s entire article here.

Mark Steyn with another great column, this one on the tsunami vs the bullshit rhetorical hypocritical useless windbag response by bullshit rhetorical useless windbag United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland and his colleagues at the U.N.

It’s one thing to invent humanitarian disasters to disparage President Bush’s unilateralist warmongering. But after the tsunami the U.N. was reduced to inventing a humanitarian disaster to distract attention from the existing humanitarian disaster it wasn’t doing anything about.

LOL! Eloquently put!