Looking back over the days posts, I have been spending a fair amount of time on Obama. So lets switch to one of my other favorite subjects:

It seems that supporting our troops, our country, and our freedom has become so blah in hollywood. It would be much better to just support the Terrorists.

This from the Washington Post:

On Sunday night, the goody with el primo placement — right near the collars of Best Actress nominee Julie Christie and two-time winner Paul Haggis — was an orange ribbon. A cheap, ugly, dear God we thought the age of lapel-activism (AIDS, peace, veterans, breasts) was over ribbon. Or an orange bracelet, a cheap, ugly, when will this rubber fetish quit livingstrong — bracelet. Inscribed with Torture + Silence = Complicity.

These represent the orange jumpsuits worn by Guantanamo prisoners, and call for the closing of the prison, and the cessation of a range of controversial U.S. behaviors.

Along with the truism of “Power Corrupts” it seems we need to add “Fame Dements”. Hollywood is so far out of touch with reality, it is amazing the even live in the same world we do. They hide beneath the very freedom American servicemen die to protect. In what alternate reality is that sane? It could only be that their lives are so hallow and meaningless that they are looking for something, anything to latch onto. The more bizarre and extreme the better.

Get out Hollywood - take your money and your delusions to Iran or Syria. I am sure you will find them more tolerant of your insanity.

Also Reporting:
Wizbang

Lets say you had this movie which accuses the US military of all sorts of atrocities. Lets say that said movie, as any movie with such content is bound to do, wins an Oscar. Who would you have introduce the movie as part of the Academy Awards?

Well it happened.

The Movie? Taxi To the Dark Side
The group asked to introduce the category? Why some of those same US soliders, fight in Iraq of course.

Surprised? Shame on you. Hollywood holds our troops with contempt, we can expect nothing more. Shame on the military for taking the bait.

Also Reporting:
Wizbang
Hot Air
Michelle Malkin

In case you have been living in a bubble and have not yet heard about yesterdays shootings at Norther Illinois University, here are details from CNN:

Steven P. Kazmierczak, identified as the gunman in Thursday’s shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University, was “an outstanding student” who reportedly stopped taking medication recently and became “somewhat erratic,” the university’s police chief said Friday.

Kazmierczak of Champaign, Illinois, opened fire on a geology class Thursday, shooting 21 people before killing himself. Five people were killed in addition to the shooter.

All the victims were from Illinois. The DeKalb County coroner’s office identified four of them: Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Julianna Gehant, 32, of Meriden.

The fifth victim, Gayle Dubowski, 20, of Carol Stream, died at a hospital in Rockford and was identified by Winnebago County authorities.

University Police Chief Donald Grady said people close to Kazmierczak have told authorities he was taking medication but had stopped and had become “somewhat erratic” in the last couple of weeks.

My heart and prays go out to the families of these kids who where struck down at the peek of their potential. Life is precious, and I cannot imagine the grief of the families right now.

The paramount question on everyones mind has got to be “Why?”. Why did this happen? Why did he do this? What should we have done to prevent this?

The Brady Bunch already has their anti-gun response on there website, along with a petition you can sign. CNN has taken a more reasonable approach (shocking!) and actually asked for thoughts from there viewers and collected some of them on their website (note none of the ones I read actually said the guns where the problem).

Illinois was listed as the Brady Bunch as the state with the 9th most “complete” gun laws in the country. Yet this happened there, even where Guns are more restricted. Even School grounds where guns are strictly prohibited, even by those who have passed the screening process to carry a gun.

I will not go into the standard rhetoric about the irony of “gun free zones”, nor the fact that more and tighter guns laws just provide more unarmed victems. I have already done that here.

I will, however, point out again that it is not illegal to be crazy. Unless we want to pre-emptively lock off those who may be capable of such a thing, then the first real notice we get is when a violent crime is commited. Perhaps if we focused on minimizing the impact of these events our time would be better spent.

There are no deadly weapons or dealy martial arts, there are only deadly people. Those who fix the intent to do violence unto their fellow man into there minds will find a way to do so. We need to find a way to stop them.

Also reporting:
Stop The ACLU
Jammie Wearing Fool
Gun Toting Liberal

While surfing around this morning I stumbled upon some very interesting numbers. A list of deaths in the US Military from every year for 1980 to 2006. I also compiled stats on 2007 to compare. The results are somewhat surprising.

The annual fatalities of military members while actively serving in the armed forces from 1980 through 2007:

1980 ……… 2,392 (Carter Year)
1981 ……… 2,380 (Reagan Year)
1984 ………. 1,999 (Reagan Year)
1988 ………. 1,819 (Reagan Year)
1989 ……… 1,636 (George HW Year)
1990 ……… 1,508 (George HW Year)
1991 ………. 1,787 (George HW Year)
1992 ………. 1,293 (George HW Year)
1993 ……… 1,213 (Clinton Year)
1994 ………. 1,075 (Clinton Year)
1995 ………. 2,465 (Clinton Year)
1996 ………. 2,318 (Clinton Year)
1997 …………. 817 (Clinton Year)
1998 ………. 2,252 (Clinton Year)
1999 ………. 1,984 (Clinton Year)
2000 ………. 1,983 (Clinton Year)
2001 ………… 890 (George W Year)
2002 ………. 1,007 (George W Year)
2003 ………. 1,410 (George W Year)
2004 ………. 1,887 (George W Year)
2005 …………. 919 (George W Year)
2006………….. 920 (George W Year)
2007………….. 901 (George W Year)

You can check some of these numbers here.

The deaths for the entire war in the Middle East comes to 7,934 as of December 2007. That is about 1/2 of the 14,000 deaths which occurred during the Clinton Presidency.

While every death is tragic, it actually looks like it is considerably safer to be in the military now that when Clinton was president. Further, the trend is improving considerably. I wonder why the media is not showing us this comparison?

Looks like I am not the first to find this.

The following from Associate Press:

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and MoveOn.org Voter Fund, two outside groups that played key roles in the 2004 presidential election, have reached an agreement with the Federal Election Commission to pay nearly $450,000 for various violations.

The groups, along with the League of Conservation Voters, settled charges that they failed “to register and file disclosure reports as federal political committees and accepted contributions in violation of federal limits and source prohibitions,” the FEC said in a Dec. 13 statement.

The commission approved the three settlements on a vote of 6-0.

Typically, Move On got off the easiest with only $150k fine. The League of Conservative Voters had to pay up $180k and Swift Boat Veterns and POWs for Truth will have to pay $299,500.

This just goes to show you that we Conservatives should leave dirty politics, illegal financing, and questionable ethics to the professionals on the other side of the isle.

I stumbled on this over at the Conservative Voice, and found it more critical of the MSM than anything else.

“During 2006, we were treated to the bizarre need for Democrats to refer to Senator George Allen as “George Felix Allen” to highlight his Jewish heritage. Apparently, the left can’t abide jewish heritage in Republican Senate candidates and they felt the need to run huge profiles in the Washington Post about George Allen the Jew a/k/a Senator Allen.

But, while the left had this fascination with Senator Allen’s middle initial, don’t you dare discuss what the “H” is in Barack H. Obama. It will send Maureen Dowd into fits of apoplexy. CAIR will call for martyrdom operations against you. Braless Berkeley grads will accuse you of being a Zionist plant. Because to mention that the “H” stands for “Hussein” is fear mongering.

So his middle name is Hussein. Who cares? But the fact that efforts where taken to hide the fact is a bit interesting. Which is worse: That the media was concerned that the the name “Hussein” (as in Saddam Hussein) would cause a negative public perception, or the fact that they are probably right?

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary, Sunday, 12/18/05. A friend sent it around and it struck me as just as applicable today and it was last year. Funny, I wonder why Ben didn’t get criticized like Brian Rohrbough did for expressing a very similar sentiment on the same channel just two months ago.

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don’t know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise’s wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.

If this is what it means to be no longer young. It’s not so bad.

Next confession:
I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.

I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution, and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to. In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke, it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her “How could God let something like this Happen?” (regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?

In light of recent events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said OK.

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.”

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.
Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?

It happened yet again. This is the forth time, in recent memory, that the NY Times has leaked a confidential report. Lets review:

About a year ago, in December of 2005, The New York Times leaked classified information with regards to the NSA Domestic Surveillance program.

At the end of September, the New York Times leaked portions of the classified National Intelligence Estimate — but only portions damaging to the President and Republican party.

Last Week the New York Times leaked information from a classified report detailing the funding of the insurgency in Iraq.

Now, they have done it again, this time in a private memo to Bush from one of his advisers.

The full article can be found here.

A classified memorandum by President Bush’s national security adviser expressed serious doubts about whether Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had the capacity to control the sectarian violence in Iraq and recommended that the United States take new steps to strengthen the Iraqi leader’s position.

The Nov. 8 memo was prepared for Mr. Bush and his top deputies by Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, and senior aides on the staff of the National Security Council after a trip by Mr. Hadley to Baghdad.

[…]

he five-page document, classified secret, is based in part on a one-on-one meeting between Mr. Hadley and Mr. Maliki on Oct. 30.

The Times cannot say say they didn’t know it was classified, they published that it was. It is in total disregard to US Law, and in a helping hand with the terrorists that this is published. I am sure such a sentiment will go a long way to embolden our enimies, and weaken the resolve of the Iraqi government.

This has got to stop. The Justice Department needs to take swift and firm action, as the NY Times is becoming more and more bold with its flagrant disregard for national security concerns. Freedom of the press most certainly dose not extend to abuses of this nature - the Times is bound by the law just like the rest of us are.

How can the Times justify this? Perhaps they have just come far to close to the terrorists they report on and, like the AP, have crossed the line from reporter to participant in this war on terror.

I would love to see those who supply the information tried as well, but only after the Times is hit very hard. We must first make sure the times thinks twice about publishing confidential intelligence data.

Americas most prominent Newspaper is publishing for the enemy.

Also Reporting:
Wake Up America

Thanks to Cox and Forkum for the first out-loud laugh of the day. :)

CBS, if you would remember, was hit hard by the FCC a few years ago for Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction. I thought they would pay the fine and walk away, but it seems CBS now things it has a First Amendment right to broadcast indecent content.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

CBS told a federal court Monday that the government’s new “zero tolerance” policy for indecent broadcasts is threatening to choke off free speech.

In its opening brief with the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, CBS contends that the commission’s policy “is flatly inconsistent with the bedrock principle that First Amendment freedoms require breathing space to survive.”

The case is one of two legal battles this month that will go a long way to deciding whether the government can slap broadcasters with a big fine and threaten their licenses to operate because of a slip of the tongue. The other case is in the New York circuit and involves Nicole Richie’s use of the word “shit” during the 2003 Billboard Music Awards, which aired on Fox.

On Sept. 22, 2004, the FCC said that CBS and Viacom, its parent company at the time, knew or should have known that Janet Jackson’s breast would be exposed during a halftime show at the 2004 Super Bowl. CBS, MTV — which produced the show — Jackson and fellow performer Justin Timberlake have all said that the moment was unplanned, though Jackson and her choreographer added a “wardrobe reveal” just before the show aired, according to commission and court documents. The FCC proposed fining all 20 of CBS’ owned-and-operated stations the maximum $27,500 for the indecent broadcasts.

“The orders at issue in this case cannot be reconciled with either the prior three decades of FCC precedent or, more importantly, the decisions of federal courts articulating the First Amendment limitations” of the FCC’s power over indecent speech, CBS said.

Now that, my friends, is a load of crap. First off, in both the Fox/Richie and CBS/Jackson incidents the networks claimed the incidents where accidents, and not intentional. Claiming First Amendment coverage on something you never intended to do is a bit of a stretch. Secondly, the FCC decency laws are well published and documented, so retroactive relief from judgements should not even be on the table.

The core issue that CBS is trying to capitalize on is the line between obscenity, which is not protected by the first amendment, and obscenity which is.

The Family Research Council weighed in on the topic yesterday:

As they see it, CBS has a “right” to air primetime smut. In its 76-page suit, the network states that the “blink and you miss it” nature of the episode was “largely unrecognized for most of the broadcast audience.” Tell that to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who spent weeks sorting through thousands of complaints from families–all demanding that CBS be held accountable. Stung by the $550,000 fine, CBS now claims the agency is choking its First Amendment Rights. Meanwhile, families are the ones in a stranglehold, trying desperately to hold the line on network pollution with little help from broadcasters. Fortunately, the FCC is backed by a law that reminds the networks that their definition of “free speech” is going to cost them.

Corporate (or non-individual) free speech is always a touch subject, and one not to be dismissed or taken lightly. It appears to me that CBS is only try to wiggle its way free of 1/2Million FCC fine, and set the stage for future push back against the FCCs stated policies. It is sad but true that “Sex Sells” and CBS and related networks see the opportunity to cash in any weakening of the FCC indecency laws.