Columnist.
(Thomas Sowell, David Clarke, Hamas, John Boehner, Daniel Webster, Rudy Giuliani)
A friend, knowing how strongly I object to politically correct speech, which I regard as self-censorship, sent me ammo in an email. He reminded me that the same Obama-Holder federal government that has deprived the Washington Redskins of its constitutionally-guaranteed trademark protection has Tomahawk cruise missiles, along with Apache, Blackhawk, Kiowa and Lakota, helicopters. For good measure, the same holier-than-thou hypocrites saw nothing wrong with employing "Geronimo" as the code name for the Navy Seal attack that killed Osama bin Laden. Until my friend and blog manager Steve Maikoski called my attention to the group, I had been unaware of Anonymous, an international affiliation of cyber-hackers. Steve was alerting me to the fact that in the wake of the massacre of the French journalists, the Belgian branch of Anonymous has tossed down the gauntlet, announcing to the Islamic terrorists, via a video: "You will not impose your sharia law in our democracies, we will not let your stupidity kill our liberties and our freedom of expression. We have warned you; expect your destruction. We will track you everywhere on the planet, nowhere will you be safe. We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forget. We do not forgive. Be afraid of us, Islamic State and al Qaeda – you will experience our vengeance."
In 1940, when Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote their Oscar-winning ode to Paris, she had recently been invaded by the Nazis. Had the song been written 75 years later, the lyric would have to mention that her streets ran red with blood, and Hammerstein would have to find a rhyme for Islamic butchery. It wasn't that long ago that the media expressed its universal contempt for Sony Pictures when the company initially decided not to release "The Interview." The charge was that Sony was letting Kim Jong-un get the idea he could unilaterally abolish the First Amendment. Even Obama, in spite of his fondness for Hollywood liberals, belatedly piled on, insisting that Sony had made a mistake.
I know that even six years into his presidency there are people who still see Obama in the exact same way he was presented to us in 2008 -- as the great uniter of blacks and whites. But, then, there are those who also approve of his foreign policy in the Middle East. Sometimes you merely have to accept innate stupidity as a part of the human condition and move on. Among the legion of disasters one can lay at Obama's feet, the racial antagonisms he has fostered might well stand out as his greatest failing. That's because it's the one he could have most easily avoided. On other issues, one could, to a greater or lesser degree, blame his partisan politics. But because he was black, when it came to the racial divide, he was in the unique position of being able to bridge it in ways that no other president could. But instead of using the bridge, he blew it to smithereens by appointing one unrepentant racist, Eric Holder, to head up the Justice Department and he made another, Al Sharpton, his consigliore on racial matters.
Liberals are contemptuous of those who believe that associating with bad apples might be an indicator that you yourself are rotten to the core. In fact, if you dared point out that Robert Byrd, who wound up serving 51 years in the U.S. Senate and not only became the Senate majority leader, but the President pro tempore -- placing him third in line of presidential succession -- had jump-started his political career by forming a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Sophia, West Virginia, they'd accuse you of McCarthyism. Joe McCarthy, for the youngsters in the audience, was a junior senator from Wisconsin. He was a drunk and a boor, but that's not why his name has come to be equated by liberals with the very worst elements in American politics. After all, Lyndon Johnson was a bigger drunk and a bigger bully, and if you look up "boor" in the dictionary, you'll find his picture. In spite of that, LBJ is hailed as a shining star and a champion of civil rights by Democrats.
(Fox News, Boko Haram, Obama, Justin Bieber, “Unbroken, “Peanuts,” Alan Jay Lerner)
I'm not big on making New Year's resolutions, but I do pledge to continue holding the feet of liberals to the flames until they pull this computer keyboard out of my cold, dead hands. Although I know it's too much to ask that left-wingers stop providing me with so much grist for my mill, I would appreciate it if they would at least slow down the rate at which they commit their mischief. I'm not getting any younger, after all, and I would appreciate a chance to occasionally catch my breath.
What Barack Obama has done to America is so vile that one can only hope that he will receive his just comeuppance in the hereafter. After all, we know that as an ex-president, he will, like Bill Clinton, make tens of millions of dollars in book deals and speaking fees. He and Michelle will live in a mansion, fly between Chicago and Hawaii on a private jet, protected by the Secret Service, and hobnobbing with the show biz glitterati who adore him and see him as super cool and the fount of all wisdom. Ultimately, only God will have the ability to punish him for trashing our Constitution, along with our traditions and values. It's of small comfort to those of us who think he has single-handedly undermined American power and influence in the world by coddling our enemies, betraying our allies and turning a blind eye to the existential threat posed by Islam. Even on those rare instances when he has been forced to acknowledge the evil done in its name, he has referred to it as workplace violence or dismissed it as a generic form of terrorism.
I began going to movies when I was about four years old. I still recall that two of the first ones I ever saw back in Chicago were an Abbott & Costello comedy and a pirate movie involving galley slaves. That was 70 years ago, and although my love affair with the movies didn't have a particularly auspicious beginning, it even managed to survive a 13 year period during which I reviewed them, first for the UCLA Daily Bruin and then for Los Angeles magazine. To suggest, in the words of Cole Porter's "It Was Just One of Those Things," that the love affair was too hot not to cool down is putting it mildly. Over the past 25 years, I have rarely liked more than one or two movies a year. By this time, I would probably stop seeing new ones altogether except that, because of my membership and voting privileges in the Writers Guild, the studios continue to send me a batch of DVDs at year's end.
If the cops are as racist as the idiots in the streets keep claiming, why is it we never see Asians or black immigrants from the Caribbean rioting and complaining about police brutality? With all the people of color residing in America, why is it always and only native-born blacks who take to the streets complaining of mistreatment? Could it possibly have anything to do with the violent crime rate and the lack of parental discipline found in their community that leads to so many unpleasant interactions between the police and young black thugs? Furthermore, if things are as oppressive as they claim, why do we never see a mass migration to Canada or Mexico? The only blacks we ever see leaving the U.S. are those like convicted cop killer Joanne Chesimard, who leave, seeking asylum in Cuba.
I think it's high time the media stopped referring to Barack Obama as a constitutional scholar. Judging by the contempt he has displayed towards our most sacred document, he is better described as a constitutional scowler. I am probably being overly generous, but I think a case can be made that over the past six years, Obama has ignored or acted in violation of at least eight Amendments, the first, second, fourth, sixth, seventh, tenth, fourteenth and fifteenth. The reason I spend so much time denigrating liberals isn't simply because it's so much fun, but because I sincerely believe they are working overtime to destroy America. To maintain a polite silence in the face of it is my idea of moral cowardice.
I'm wondering if I should become a professional pollster. For one thing, it must pay quite well, otherwise there wouldn't be so many people doing it. For another, whereas I trust my results, I'm not so sure about those other guys because they tend to be paid by people with a vested interest in the results, whereas I'm just a chap cursed with the curiosity of a cat. I mean, am I really expected to believe Gallup when he insists that 47% of Americans still think Obama is doing a bang-up job? Really? Is that why his party has lost 14 seats in the Senate and another 70 or so in the House over the past four years, along with several governorships and a slew of state legislatures? It's certainly not because the voters have been mesmerized by those two dullards, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.
I have never understood why people ever feel compelled to say they hate the sin, but not the sinner. I believe it was Jesus who first said those words, so I suppose Christians want to present themselves in the best possible light in hopes of getting a place with a pool in Heaven. Even though I'm not a Christian, I'm certainly willing to grant that Jesus was a much nicer guy than I am. Still, it seems fairly obvious that without sinners, those pesky sins would quickly disappear. To my way of thinking, Barack Obama is the single biggest sinner in America. I don't believe that anything he says or does is in the best interests of our nation. Instead, everything comes down to partisan politics with this schmuck, whether it's attacking the police, refusing to green-light the Keystone pipeline or trashing the Constitution. On top of everything else, he sets a bad example for young people by being a hypocrite and a serial liar.
(Jeb Bush, the Clintons, Hamas, Bill De Blasio, LeBron James, the ACLU)
I've had some bad months in my life, but none has been quite as gruesome as the one that Sony just endured. First, there was the leak of those embarrassing emails in which uber-producer Scott Rudin trashed Angelina Jolie, and Sony head Amy Pascal made racist comments about Obama's taste in movies. Ms. Pascal made it even worse by then going to Al Sharpton, begging him for dispensation. Frankly, I'd fire her for that alone. If Rudin and Pascal have one reason to envy me, it's that I can never be embarrassed by leaked emails. You see, whenever I have a politically incorrect thought to share, I don't waste it in an email; I work it into an article. Anyway, as bad as the leaks were, the studio made things worse when it backed down in the face of North Korean threats. I guess Sony was afraid that Kim Jong-un was going to have his pal Dennis Rodman set off stink bombs if "The Interview" was released. Frankly, judging by earlier Seth Rogen comedies, I'm sure this one didn't need any help when it came to stinking up movie houses.
When I saw all those people marching in large cities across America, tying up streets, bridges and even clogging up entrances to department stores, making Christmas gift shopping an even bigger headache than usual, it occurred to me how far racial relations have declined over the past six years. And it's all because race hustlers like Obama, Holder, Sharpton and New York City's Mayor Bill De Blasio, have tried to cash in on the unfortunate deaths of a couple of 300-pound thugs named Brown and Garner, who would still be alive if they hadn't tried to resist arrest for their crimes. A lot of people are at a loss when trying to figure out why blacks continue to elect those who kept slaves; who formed the KKK; who enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws; who maintained separate schools and lunch counters; who turned cities like Detroit into American versions of Hiroshima; who turned the dogs and fire hoses on them; but who nevertheless continue to vote for the party of George Wallace, Robert Byrd, Orville Faubus and Bull Connor.
Recently, someone called in to my weekly webcast (K4HD.com, Wednesday at noon, PST) and, knowing of my high regard for motion picture scores asked me about my favorites. One thing led to another and I began relating anecdotes about some of America's great composers and lyricists, some of which had been told to me by the men themselves and some of which I had merely read about. They struck me as worth sharing. There is a reason I have always wished I had had a musical education and could have been a composer. For one thing, nobody needs to translate your work to be appreciated in foreign countries... For another, if you're lucky enough or talented enough, the music just seems to flow out like spring water.
The only reason that Ronald Reagan signed the first amnesty bill back in 1986 wasn't really because the Democratic Congress promised to build a fence at the border. After all, he'd been around when the Democrats reneged on the promise made to Nixon that if he agreed to pull the troops out of Vietnam, they would continue to arm and fund the South Vietnamese. He did, and naturally they didn't. The real reason Reagan signed the amnesty bill is because American business always wants the cheapest labor it can get its hands on. In the short term, it probably looks like a good deal all around. After all, the price of labor is always passed along to the consumer. However, in the long run it's a bad deal because most of those people are low wage earners, and the American citizen is eventually going to be stuck with the tab for their housing, health care, food stamps, schooling and, far too often, incarceration. In the end, we're all a lot better off paying an extra few cents for a head of lettuce or a few extra bucks for a meal.
According to polls, even Hispanics oppose Obama's latest power grab. In the meantime, Hispanic members of Congress, not to be confused with people who actually believe in the Constitution, try to provide cover for his criminal actions. They do this by pretending that Reagan and Bush did the exact same thing, ignoring the fact that both of those men were merely fine tuning congressional legislation, not ruling by edict simply because the House wasn't prepared to do their bidding. By now, every Hispanic in the U.S. is aware that for his first two years in office, Obama had a most compliant Congress and could have passed any immigration bill he wanted, and could probably have ceded California back to Mexico with nary an objection by Boxer or Feinstein. Instead, he devoted all his time to pushing the Affordable Care Act and working on his putting.
As I sit here, it's the 8th of December and I have no idea if the government will be shut down before the end of the month. For my purposes, it hardly matters because the threat of a shutdown is always lurking in Washington. That is especially true now that the two parties are hunkered down in their respective trenches as if reenacting the bloodiest days of World War I. For a long time, as my wife just reminded me, I opposed such shutdowns. But I only opposed them because the media is always quick to blame it on the Republicans and because in one case, the 2013 shutdown did lead to the Clintons' bagman, Terry McAuliffe, defeating Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia's gubernatorial race. That was because northern Virginia is home to so many federal bureaucrats that they took the work stoppage personally.
