Now me, I’m not a big TV or movie fanatic, I’m completely disgusted with what the Big 3 are broadcasting these days and have little use for Hollywood’s incumbent output. I must admit that I’m not the type to sit through something like Wuthering Heights, if I’m going to suspend my personal productivity, I’d rather watch action flicks or films whose plots possess the hint of danger or violence as they go, or are really funny comedies, the mindless sort of stuff that requires no deep thought, are just pure entertainment.

So here I am, watching a movie called Murder At 1600

I’m a Wesley Snipes fan, which sucks where this film’s concerned because it’s another lefty propaganda effort.

Ronny Cox is the President.

U.S. airmen are prisoners of North Korea, and are being beaten and otherwise abused by the commies therein on international television. While all his advisers believe we should rescue our military personnel from the bad guys, the President is a peace-at-any-cost kind of guy with a Carteresque attitude towards the situation.

Definitely a Democrat with strong liberal leanings.

A twenty five year old woman is found murdered in the White House, and all the evidence points to the First Son. DC homicide detectives Wesley Snipes, Dennis Miller and Secret Service Agent Diane Lane investigate, despite aggressive pursuit by Lane’s own agency, and in the end discover that there is a plot by SecDef and associates to destroy the President via blackmail based on the concept of POTUS’ son, a spoiled, lecherous brat, being responsible for the murder in question(a frame-up).

So of course, SecDef and his ilk(read that as the GOP and its minions) are the evil murderers, blackmailers and general scoundrels who mastermind the plot.

Coincidentally, however, the cast includes an assassin named John Kerry and, though the film was made in the 1990s, the First Lady is more reminiscent of Theresa Heinz-Kerry than anyone else.

Heh heh.

Bottom line: The bad guys are war-mongering Republicans whose plan is to blackmail the President into sending troops into North Korea snd rescuing the U.S. military people from the clutches of the commies, then resign.

And this movie came out in the late 1990s, prime Clinton years during which the Presidential attitude was “let our citizens and military personnel be butchered, wherever on the earth they happen to be, we’ll take no positive action. We are Democrats, we could care less.” Remember Mogadishu?

Clinton’s policies as President were not unlike those of Jimmuh Cahtuh, the other recent-decades-Democrat President who allowed U.S. citizens to be held as hostages for months without addressing the situation.

Murder At 1600 was, in short, while being an action film, also another pitiful political jab at conservatives by the amoral, anti-patriotic Hollywood crowd.

The saboteurs of freedom attempting to demean those who protect the United States.

Hmmmmmm.

Sounds like today’s liberals…

Judge Sam Alito was sworn in today as the justice replacing retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

I bet a whole lot of liberals are whining about this development.

Whine, liberals, whine!

Leonard Pitts, Jr. has a column running at Jewish World Review this weekend that’s kind of an amusing look at the stupidity of the average racist, such as the kind belonging to the Ku Klux Klan, that hate organization created by southern Democrats.

Check it out.

I had meant to link to this great Op-Ed column by author and City Journal Senior Editor Brian C. Anderson a few days ago when it was first published in WSJ’s Opinion Journal, but for the last several days I’ve been swamped with issues involving my new house and a few other things I seem to be getting out of the way –finally!

Mr. Anderson discusses campaign finance reform and how it targets free speech, particularly that of conservatives.

The rise of alternative media–political talk radio in the 1980s, cable news in the ’90s, and the blogosphere in the new millennium–has broken the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets. The left understands acutely the implications of this revolution, blaming much of the Democratic Party’s current electoral trouble on the influence of the new media’s vigorous conservative voices. Instead of fighting back with ideas, however, today’s liberals quietly, relentlessly and illiberally are working to smother this flourishing universe of political discourse under a tangle of campaign-finance and media regulations. Their campaign represents the most sustained attack on free political speech in the United States since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. Though Republicans have the most to lose in the short run, all Americans who care about our most fundamental rights and the civic health of our democracy need to understand what’s going on–and resist it.

It came as no surprise when Senator John McCain was behind one of the most offensive “campaign finance” acts in modern history. That aisle straddling, self seeking, in-name-only Republican distinguished gentleman is… No, this time I will avoid my usual flair for digression…

The most imminent danger comes from campaign-finance rules, especially those spawned by the 2002 McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act. Republican maverick John McCain’s co-sponsorship aside, the bill passed only because of overwhelming Democratic support. It’s easy to see why liberals have spearheaded the nation’s three-decade experiment with campaign-finance regulation. Seeking to rid politics of “big-money corruption,” election-law reforms obstruct the kinds of political speech–political ads and perhaps now the feisty editorializing of the new media–that escape the filter of the mainstream press and the academy, left-wing fiefdoms still regulation-free. Campaign-finance reform, notes columnist George Will, by steadily expanding “government’s control of the political campaigns that decide who controls government,” advances “liberalism’s program of extending government supervision of life.”

Ah, yes, there is that, indeed. George Will hit the nail right on the head with the last, “liberalism’s program of extending government supervision of life.” It beats me how a bunch of folks whose political handle stems from the word “liberty” can be so set on taking away our liberty, that concept-cum-reality earned for us by patriots who fought, died, sacrificed nearly two hundred thirty years ago so that theirs and future generations might live free.

Liberty to go about our lives without the very government control the liberals are attempting to force feed us through Congress and the courts, and are largely succeeding.

McCain-Feingold, the latest and scariest step down that slope, makes it a felony for corporations, nonprofit advocacy groups and labor unions to run ads that criticize–or even name or show–members of Congress within 60 days of a federal election, when such quintessentially political speech might actually persuade voters. It forbids political parties from soliciting or spending “soft money” contributions to publicize the principles and ideas they stand for. Amending the already baffling campaign-finance rules from the 1970s, McCain-Feingold’s dizzying do’s and don’ts, its detailed and onerous reporting requirements of funding sources–which require a dense 300-page book to lay out–have made running for office, contributing to a candidate or cause, or advocating without an attorney at hand unwise and potentially ruinous.

Not for nothing has Justice Clarence Thomas denounced McCain-Feingold’s “unprecedented restrictions” as an “assault on the free exchange of ideas.”

Because political blogs are mostly conservative, reporting and commenting on important news issues that the liberal mainstream media either downplays, spins or ignores and have become a formidable “new media” power all their own, these “reformers” have now cast their jaundiced eye on the blogosphere.

Campaign-finance reform now has the blogosphere in its crosshairs. When the Federal Election Commission wrote specific rules in 2002 to implement McCain-Feingold, it voted 4-2 to exempt the Web. After all, observed the majority of three Republicans and one Democrat (the agency divides its seats evenly between the two parties), Congress didn’t list the Internet among the “public communications”–everything from television to roadside billboards–that the FEC should regulate. Further, “the Internet is virtually a limitless resource, where the speech of one person does not interfere with the speech of anyone else,” reasoned Republican commissioner Michael Toner. “Whereas campaign finance regulation is meant to ensure that money in politics does not corrupt candidates or officeholders, or create the appearance thereof, such rationales cannot plausibly be applied to the Internet, where on-line activists can communicate about politics with millions of people at little or no cost.”

You can’t blame the left for seeing the right thinking bloggers on the Internet as a threat to their previously enjoyed media monopoly…

The FEC thus has plunged into what Smith calls a “bizarre” rule-making process that could shackle the political blogosphere. This would be a particular disaster for the right, which has maintained its early advantage over the left in the blogosphere, despite the emergence of big liberal sites like Daily Kos. Some 157 of the top 250 political blogs express right-leaning views, a recent liberal survey found. Reaching a growing and influential audience–hundreds of thousands of readers weekly (including most journalists) for the top conservative sites–the blogosphere has enabled the right to counter the biases of the liberal media mainstream. Without the blogosphere, Howell Raines would still be the New York Times’ editor, Dan Rather would only now be retiring, garlanded with praise–and John Kerry might be president of the U.S., assuming that CBS News had gotten away with its falsehood about President Bush’s military service that the diligent bloggers at PowerLine, LittleGreenFootballs and other sites swiftly debunked.

…but they can be blamed for trying to replace our American right to freedom of speech with intrusive government regulation.

Read Brian Anderson’e entire commentary here.

Here is a very well laid out analysis of the significance of the Hamas victory over Fatah in Wednesday’s elections, and where this result of terrorist organization over long established, corrupt governance might lead.

The sweeping victory of the Islamist Hamas party in Wednesday’s Palestinian legislative elections can hardly be considered good news. But neither is it surprising, and it may even have the long-run benefit of educating Palestinians about the terrible cost of their political choices.

Absolutely, but that long-run benefit will come the hard way. The Hamas charter’s still all about murdering as many Jews(not considering the collateral deaths of fellow Palestinians to be of consequence)as it takes to make instant history of Israel. Having been voted into power makes them no less terrorists than they were prior to the elections.

The ruling Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas governed corruptly, ineffectually and, until the death in 2004 of founder Yasser Arafat, dictatorially. So it is understandable that Palestinians wanted an alternative. That they went for the only other major choice on offer is not necessarily an indication that they share Hamas’s goal of destroying Israel and all its citizens. The vote might even turn out to be clarifying–in the sense of showing the world that no Israeli-Palestinian peace is possible until the Palestinians have leaders who really want to live in peace with Israel.

Right, sometime soon. No doubt.

Rabin was right that Arafat would have scant regard for the rights of Palestinians. But he was wrong that Arafat would crack down on Hamas. Like every other strongman, Arafat didn’t crack down on extremists but used them to his advantage where he could. Palestinians could see that the U.S. was coddling a man who oppressed them, breeding cynicism about U.S. motives and making it hard for democratic movements to flourish. The Bush Administration is working hard to change those perceptions and build a Palestinian civil society, but this will take years.

Just one of many cases of the Bush Administration’s having to sidetrack assets from ongoing proactive projects to clean up a mess generated by the Clinton Administration years before, but I’ll digress no further.

The White House will have to resist the temptation, no doubt encouraged by Europe, to pressure Israel to deal with Hamas as it once was pressed to deal with Arafat. But given Hamas’s history and declared goals, the onus is on its leaders to show that they have an agenda beyond terror. If Hamas begins to use Gaza as a base to import weapons and attack Israel, the Jewish state will have every right to strike back in self-defense. And the U.S. should support it in doing so.

Future terrorism by Hamas, which is a certainty, will bring misery to the Palestinians via Israel’s completely justified retaliatory and self defense measures, and the Palestinian leadership will blame Israel for any collateral damage, somehow managing to make the part about the original terrorist attack go away and accusing Israel of violating territorial agreements it had made with the Palestinians.

True story: When I lived in San Francisco, I found that there are a lot of small, family run retail stores owned by Palestinians, and got to know the owners of a few in my neighborhood.

“Arafat no good.” Was a consensus among these people. “He steal. He make violence. Arafat gone, violence stop, I go home.”

About two and a half years ago, there was a Palestinian terrorist attack of particular severity that drew a smash for smite response from the Israelis more than twelve hours later.

Two of the Palestinian merchants told me that according to Al Jazeera and a couple of other Arabic news agencies, the Arab terrorist attack had been retaliation for the Israelis’ action. According to the time-line involved, this would have meant that the terrorists had been retaliating in advance.

That being the nature of Hamas and the rest of the terrorist groups purporting to speak for the Palestinians, in my own unhumble opinion I see nothing changing for the better for a long time to come, unless my own long-standing prediction comes true:

Israel exercises an extreme military option in which a lot of Palestinians die, good(collaterally, or simply too moderate for Hamas’ use and therefore executed) and evil alike, the terrorists are hammered into oblivion, destroyed root and branch, and any support among the Palestinians for any kind of militancy suffers a broken back.

Today, I am updating my blogroll and media links, a lot of work as you’ll see when I’m done.

Between that and the stuff I need to do where my new house is concerned, I’ll be pretty well tied up.

For the meantime, I’ll leave you with still another email from Aunt Brenda…

Is it the NFL or is it the NBA?

36 have been accused of spousal abuse

7 have been arrested for fraud

19 have been accused of writing bad checks

117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3 have done time for assault

71, repeat 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

14 have been arrested on drug-related charges

8 have been arrested for shoplifting

21 currently are defendants in lawsuits. and

84 have been arrested for drunk driving

in the last year.

Can you guess which organization this is?

Give up yet? . . . Scroll down, citizen!

****************

It’s the 535 members of the United States Congress.

The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.

Hmmmmm……….

My Illustrious Aunt Brenda, who is definitely on a roll, has sent me this one, which I personally think is really funny.

You are what you read . . .

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los AngelesTimes is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country — if they could find the time — and if they didn’t have to leave Southern Californiato do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country … or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided, of course, that they are not Republicans.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

A few days ago, I posted on the impotency of those diplomatically responsible for addressing the threat, very possibly in its Eleventh Hour status, of Iran’s producing nuclear weapons and using them forthwith.

Well, columnist Jeff Jacoby is apparently thinking along the same lines as I am,

”It is not on the table. It is not on the agenda. I happen to think it is inconceivable.”

That was British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in September, telling the BBC what he thinks about the use of military force to prevent Iran’s homicidal theocrats from acquiring nuclear weapons. Last week Straw went further, declaring that even economic sanctions would be an overreaction. ”I don’t think we should rush our fences here,” he told a conference in London. Much better to turn the whole thing over to the UN Security Council, so long as any action it might take ”is followed without sanction.” What he recommends, in other words, is a Security Council resolution with no teeth. That’ll fix the mullahs’ wagon.

To be sure, not every British politician has been so weak-kneed. Tory MP Michael Ancram has called for Iran to be — brace yourself — expelled from the World Cup tournament in June. Barring the planet’s foremost sponsor of terrorism from soccer matches — now there’s Churchillian grit. Ancram says it will send ”a very, very clear signal to Iran that the international community will not accept what they are doing.” Sure it will. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s rabid president, must break into a sweat thinking about it.

Not to be outdone by Great Britain in the going-wobbly department, Germany’s foreign minister assured a television audience Sunday that Berlin ”will refrain from anything that brings us a step closer” to military action against Iran. Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned against ”a militarization of thinking” on how to keep one of the world’s worst regimes from acquiring the bomb. ”Rather, we should see that we use and exhaust to the best of our powers the diplomatic solutions that remain available.”

In short, we’re placing the prevention of a profoundly premature Armageddon in the hands of a bunch of people who would rather not offend the protagonists than take any assertive steps to prevent what we are dependent upon them to prevent.

Fortunately, not everyone is off in Cloud Cuckoo Land when it comes to dealing with Tehran. The acting prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, put his government’s position bluntly: ”Under no circumstances, and at no point,” he said on Jan. 17, ”can Israel allow anyone with these kinds of malicious designs against us [to] have control of weapons of destruction that can threaten our existence.” As the Jewish state has good reason to know, dictators who publicly vow to commit mass murder generally mean what they say — and are generally not deterred by threats of ”diplomatic solutions.”

What comes next is anybody’s guess, but my own would be that, absenting a preemptive move by the Israelis, the U.S.A. will deal conclusively with the problem.

Jeff Jacoby’s column pretty well spells out the situation, and can be read in its entirety here.

Another goody from my beloved Aunt Brenda, conservative Democrat at large.

Students were assigned to read 2 books, “Titanic” & “My Life” by Bill Clinton.

One smart ass student turned in the following book report, with the proposition that
they were nearly identical stories!

His cool professor gave him an A+ for this report:

Titanic: $29.99
Clinton: $29.99

Titanic: Over 3 hours to read
Clinton: Over 3 hours to read

Titanic: The story of Jack and Rose, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.
Clinton: The story of Bill and Monica, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.

Titanic: Jack is a starving artist.
Clinton: Bill is a bullshit artist.

Titanic: In one scene, Jack enjoys a good cigar.
Clinton: Ditto for Bill.

Titanic: During ordeal, Rose’s dress gets ruined.
Clinton: Ditto for Monica.

Titanic: Jack teaches Rose to spit.
Clinton: Let’s not go there.

Titanic: Rose gets to keep her jewelry.
Clinton: Monica’s forced to return her gifts.

Titanic: Rose remembers Jack for the rest of her life.
Clinton: Clinton doesn’t remember Jack.

Titanic: Rose goes down on a vessel full of seamen.
Clinton: Monica…ooh, let’s not go there, either.

Titanic: Jack surrenders to an icy death.
Clinton: Bill goes home to Hilary…basically the same thing.

Something’s shaking here.

Corruption at the United Nations?

Shocking!

Not!