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Update on Obama’s Marjah

21 February 2010

The Associated Press reports an update from the front:

“The Marjah operation is a major test of a new NATO strategy that stresses protecting civilians over [defeating enemy combatants]…Troops cannot call in airstrikes to clear snipers from buildings if they believe civilians are inside. Troops cannot fire on suspected insurgents unless they are seen carrying a weapon or discarding one.”

And now, with 12 troops reportedly killed in action since the heavily advertised “offensive” began, the Obama administration is refusing to identify casualties by nationality. The degree of self-sacrifice is not nearly enough for the thoroughly corrupt Afghan ruler, who insists on zero civilian deaths. Since Islamic terrorists attacked America on September 11, 2001, it has been our nation’s military policy to put the lives of Others (civilians and enemy combatants, who are often the same) above the lives of Americans; now self-sacrifice is explicit and official policy. This idea, imposed by Barack Obama in Marjah, the first major ground operation since he ordered 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, is an evil policy of national suicide; it dishonors every American, soldier and civilian, and it must not be tolerated by the American public.

While the press fawns over the latest scandal, Democrats scheme to resurrect socialized medicine and sneak to enslave the medical profession, and conservatives whoop themselves into a frenzy over a Christian libertarian who would not lift a weapon against an enemy until after the United States is attacked, the men and women in our Armed Forces at Marjah are being slowly blown to bits, one by one, solider by soldier. Our soliders are dying in Afghanistan so that Others including our enemies may live. With Iran on the verge of being able to wage atomic warfare, we have every reason to believe that we, the people, are next.

Massacre Looms at Marjah

13 February 2010

President Obama is taking the Bush administration’s foreign policy to the logical next step in Afghanistan. America has issued an explicit announcement of an impending strike, including the exact location of where our troops will be deployed, in an outrageous yet unsurprising act of self-sacrifice. According to Voice of America, and this is being widely reported, the U.S. will attack the Taliban at Marjah in the southern region of Afghanistan, following a public campaign to notify the enemy and civilians of our planned troop positions. The purpose of the announcement, according to commanding General Stanley McChrystal, (acting under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Afghanistan), is to prevent the loss of civilian life. The general apparently thinks the advance notification will lead to the Taliban abandoning Marjah without resistance. Unless there has been a secret war and the general knows more than he’s saying, this policy is an explicit statement that the lives of our soldiers are of lesser value than the lives of others. Whatever happens at Marjah, the largest combat operation since President Obama ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan in December, the offensive is based on pure altruism, the idea that everyone else whether civilians or enemy combatants, matters but you don’t, and Marjah is pre-set as an elaborate deathtrap for American soldiers. Those of us (including me), who considered supporting candidate Obama because he promised to pull troops out of Iraq and act in America’s self-interest, take note: he is advancing the Bush policy of sacrifice as our national military defense purpose, only without the pretense of actually fighting the enemy.

Not everyone in the military accepts self-sacrifice as his moral purpose. One young soldier, Carl Bjork, who is being persecuted by the Obama administration (he is facing a court-martial for doing his job), is fighting back: visit his family’s Web site, Support Captain Carl Bjork, to learn more about his cause and how to help (hat tip: Dr. John David Lewis). In the meantime, his fellow soldiers are marching into a deathtrap at Marjah…

Republicans Shedding Anti-Gay Positions

21 January 2010

First, Vice President Dick Cheney said same-sex marriage should be left to the states.

Then, Massachusetts’ new Sen. Scott Brown said the same.

Now, the McCain women refuse to be anti-gay, with Sen. John McCain’s wife, Cindy, and his daughter, Meghan, actively opposing California’s Catholic, fundamentalist Christian, and Mormon backed anti-gay ballot proposition, which singled out homosexuals and prohibited them from marriage. Cindy and Meghan McCain are supporting the campaign to overturn that terrible law. In my 1999 interview with the Arizona senator during his 2000 presidential campaign, Sen. McCain steadfastly opposed applying certain rights to gays.

With Obama and the Democrats now the party of the status quo, stubbornly opposing gays in the military, which even former chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell, a Republican, now supports, and pointedly sanctioning anti-gay Christian crusader Rev. Rick Warren, one wonders whether the GOP is becoming the party of separating religion and state while the Dems continue to preach putting religion in government. I warned that the Obama administration was opposed to the rights of gays last year in this blog post, and pointed out in my movie review of the excellent motion picture, Milk, that it was an elected orthodox Catholic Democrat, not a so-called ‘wingnut’ Republican, that assassinated the San Francisco gay activist.

And it was the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, a Republican not a Democrat, who passionately endorsed individual rights for gays, including allowing gays to serve in the military, before he died. Sen. Goldwater, the party’s 1964 presidential nominee, was also pro-choice on abortion and he opposed mixing religion and state. Apparently, the wife and daughter of the man who holds Goldwater’s seat in the Senate do, too.

From Brooke to Brown

20 January 2010

Yesterday’s historic election in Massachusetts is a repudiation of the entire first year of the Obama administration; its bailouts, its bank tax, its so-called ’stimulus’ package and, above all, its plan for a total government takeover of the health insurance and medical professions. State Senator Scott Brown soundly defeated Attorney General Martha Coakley in what liberal, pro-Obama TV pundit Chris Matthews described as “the biggest political upset of our time.” Matthews added that voters went with the 50-year-old Brown to, in his words, “kill health care reform.”

He’s right and he’s not the only one to notice. Responding to rumors that the Democratic Party plans to delay seating the senator-elect in order to manipulate the legislative process and pass the President’s highly unpopular socialized medicine, Sen. Jim Webb, (D, VA) promptly issued a statement urging the Senate to cease consideration of the controversial bill until the nation’s newest U.S. senator takes his place in Congress. Sen. Webb was joined by liberal House Democrats Barney Frank and Anthony Weiner among others who warned Democrats and the increasingly Manchurian Barack Obama to either postpone such obstructionism or halt ‘health care reform.’

In Massachusetts, according to the Associated Press (AP), more voters showed up at polls than in any non-presidential Massachusetts general election in 20 years. Citing his opposition to Obama’s ‘health care reform’, one 38-year-old registered independent Brown voter told the AP: “I voted for Obama [in 2008] because I wanted change. … I thought he’d bring it to us, but I just don’t like the direction that he’s heading.” The Senate seat had been held by John Quincy Adams, who was also an American president, Henry Cabot Lodge, who ran for vice-president on the Republican ticket with presidential contender Richard M. Nixon in 1960, and the late longtime advocate of socialized medicine and 1980 presidential candidate Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy. To her credit, defeated Democrat Coakley, whom Obamautons like Rachel Maddow are already eagerly throwing under the bus, delivered a classy concession speech.

Brown, supported by independents, unhappy Democrats, and Tea Party activists, ran on one central idea and campaign promise: to kill Obama’s “health care reform”. The crowd during his victory speech roared with the cry: “Forty-one! Forty-one! Forty-one!” It means he had better deliver on his promise and lead the charge to stop socialized medicine. But there he stood with former Massachusetts Governor and 2008 presidental candidate Mitt Romney, a moralizing Mormon who forced his conservative Heritage Foundation plan, a carbon copy of Obama’s plan, on the state (Brown supported RomneyCare). Brown also supports Obama’s plan to send more troops to be sacrificed in Afghanistan, seeks a ban on late term abortions, and is thoroughly mixed on favoring individual rights and capitalism. During his victory speech, he did not once mention fighting for man’s rights, free market capitalism, or liberty, and his opposition to ObamaCare is entirely based on practical objections, i.e., that it costs too much, not that it is a violation of rights. Sen.-elect Brown also joked at his daughters’ expense and showed that he has the capacity to be terribly unserious.

In today’s Republican Party, filled with religious conservative presidential wannabes who have all favored government intervention in the economy, FoxNews opportunist Palin, FoxNews Face in the Crowd type Huckabee, Pawlenty, Jindal, Santorum, Romney, and the worst of them, former Speaker Newt Gingrich who single-handedly squandered the 1994 GOP landslide, Brown should fit right in. As long as he votes No on ObamaCare, his election buys the equivalent of a few minutes on the clock before we leap toward dictatorship … and there’s plenty one can do to stop that from happening, as I wrote here. Moreover, Brown’s victory is an undeniably positive sign that President Obama’s agenda is rejected by America’s most liberal voters.

In the meantime, congratulations to the people of Massachusetts, and to their duly elected proxy against the administration’s fascist “health care reform”, Senator-elect Scott Brown. He happens to be the first Republican senator from Massachusetts since the nation’s only black senator not from the corrupt, bankrupt state of Illinois in a hundred years: Edward Brooke. Welcome to Washington, Scott Brown. Stick to opposing government-controlled medicine, stay away from the Heritage Foundation, and get the job done to Kill Obama’s “health care reform” dead.

Make it fast.

Massachusetts Showdown

15 January 2010

The Senate contest between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown has turned into a referendum on the administration’s fascist “health care reform”. Should challenger Brown, a state senator who voted for former Republican Governor Mitt Romney’s fascist “health care reform” for the state, who has declared that he will vote against the President’s health care bill, actually score an upset and defeat Coakley, the state’s Democratic secretary of state has already vowed to defy the election results and take his legally alotted time to delay certifying the election results. This will backfire and further undermine the legitimacy of what is arguably the nation’s worst law (though it isn’t law yet) since slavery. As with the monstrous bill, which is incidentally hugely unpopular, it is independents not the Republican Party driving resistance to Big Government. Stay tuned.

Here Comes (More) Socialized Medicine …

10 November 2009

Amid contentious debate, a divided nation, and widespread opposition, the House of Representatives narrowly approved legislation enacting total government control of the medical profession. The close vote, in which 39 Democrats joined near-unanimous opposition among Republicans (a New Orleans congressman was the only Republican to vote in favor of socialized medicine), was called in the darkness of Saturday night. The historic bill, which I compared to slavery and forecast earlier this year, represents the culmination of the President’s long, never-ending seige against what remains of free market medicine. If this bill is approved by Congress, Americans will be forced to buy what the government defines as “health insurance” at gunpoint, and private medical care as we know it will be forbidden and/or cease to exist. The bill now goes to the United States Senate.

I’ve been writing about health care policy and warning my fellow Americans that we already have government-controlled “health care” and that the idea must be actively opposed and stopped for decades but it is nearly impossible to get people interested in the topic, especially conservatives who accept the moral premise that health care is a right and some Objectivists, who refuse to engage in any form of activism and think politics is utterly beneath them and therefore not worth the expense of effort. If this bill becomes law, which is entirely up to the American public, it will take us irrevocably toward totalitarianism.

In the meantime, every American should speak out immediately, repeatedly, and often, and seek to stop this monstrous legislation. If it passes, it will become necessary to coordinate intellectual, economic, and political counterstrikes, such as organized boycotts (of any business or group that supports it), strikes, legal challenges, efforts to repeal, state-by-state opt-out legislation, marches, protests, and other measures, including a demand that any local, state, or federal political candidate take an oath to work to repeal the law as the highest priority. Silence implies consent and now is the time to speak up. The fact that the nation’s Speaker of the House, who happens to be America’s first female Speaker, and the nation’s supposedly pro-choice president, who favors anti-gay conservative Christians, adopted an anti-abortion provision in their socialized medicine is a sneak preview of what’s to come under government-run “health care”: medical care delivered, financed, and controlled by the state, which means dictatorship…which, in today’s context, means religious dictatorship.

Election 2009

4 November 2009

Tuesday’s election offered a bit of good news for advocates of individual rights.

Independents voted overwhelmingly for Republican gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey in yesterday’s election, according to the Associated Press. The decisive Republican victories, Bob McDonnell in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey, are likely to be perceived as a rejection of the unprecedented expansion of government intervention in the economy sponsored by President Barack Obama, who campaigned hard for both losing Democratic Party candidates. Obama, who carried both states in last year’s presidential election, has spent most of the year pushing for socialized medicine and, with serious losses in states where the supposedly charismatic leader campaigned, his supposedly inevitable plan for government control of the medical profession is reportedly off track, with the Senate’s chief Democrat suggesting that it may not pass this year.

While both new Republican governors-elect are apparently anti-abortion, and, therefore, anti-individual rights and consequently not credible advocates of capitalism, neither McDonnell nor Christie apparently campaigned as conservatives that would mix religion and state, as previous Republicans and, recently, Democrats have done. In fact, the only major, high-profile candidate to run on a conservative platform, anti-gay, anti-abortion Doug Hoffman in upstate New York, who was widely expected to win, lost in a stunning upset by the Democrat after a pro-welfare state Republican had been driven out of the race. Hoffman had been endorsed by nearly every conservative advocate of mixing religion and government, including Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich.

To the extent one can take any reading from the election, it is possibly a rejection of both today’s economic fascism by President Obama and the Democrats and the religious government proposed by conservatives and the Republicans … which could be a warning to all politicians that anyone who supports increased government intervention in business (such as Obama’s “health care reform”) and personal affairs, such as banning abortion, risks being fired by the people.

Army Archerd, 1922-2009

10 September 2009

Hollywood reporter Army Archerd has died, according to his wife, Selma. He will be missed. I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing the longtime Variety columnist last year before a film festival screening of Howard Hawks’ Red River starring John Wayne. We talked about the Duke, the Western and the Golden Age (which he mentioned in his column). In person, the Navy veteran was an outspoken, spright, and dapper man who enjoyed remembering movie stars and the way they were. I always liked that Army Archerd was neither salacious nor malicious; his work was generally oriented toward facts. When I decided to write a column for Box Office Mojo in 2005, I knew that he had done it first, longest, and with lasting results. He wrote about Hollywood like its movies mattered. Army Archerd was 87.

Obama to Address Congress on “Health Care Reform”

2 September 2009

President Barack Obama will pitch his plan for government-controlled medicine in an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, September 9, during prime time, according to various news reports. Look for outright lies and deception from this president on this catastrophic legislation. Like Bush pushing Medicare drug subsidies through Congress, by one vote after time on the clock had expired, President Obama will do anything to force this morally bankrupt idea into law.

Is Marvel Comics Deal the End of Walt’s Disney?

1 September 2009

Disney Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Robert Iger, briefly profiled in Newsweek in this gushing piece, announced yesterday that the Walt Disney Studios is acquiring the lucrative new Hollywood mini-studio Marvel Comics (Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men) for $ 4 billion. Marvel’s a solid player with potential and Disney is one of the best studios and both have their own relatively consistent brands.

What does one add to the other in creative terms? Disney’s driving philosophy had been, until recently, an American, which is to say benign, sense of life expressed with positive characters in story-driven material, whether in a theme park (Disneyland or Disney’s California Adventure) or in a movie. Marvel’s brand of comic book characters is rooted in marginally heroic, or at least not completely anti-heroic, cartoon figures (The Incredible Hulk) with broad appeal. Both derive success from plots that seem to attract general audiences.

Unlike Pixar Animation Studios, which Disney also acquired under Mr. Iger, Marvel’s catalog does not possess a quality that can easily or identifiably be assimilated into Disney’s wholesome, family entertainment. Sure, the Marvel pictures are noticeably less cynical than the competition, but that’s not saying much. This move further dilutes the Disney brand and may make the studio more relevant in the short term at the expense of being markedly less original in the long term. It has been 15 years since The Lion King, 20 years since The Little Mermaid, and 65 years since Disney released the classic Dumbo in movie theaters. I doubt that the un-Disneylike Enchanted, Pixar’s middling Up, or anything with Hannah Montana will be remembered with as much affection. While Marvel makes good popcorn movies, their stories hardly express childlike wonder, adventure, and innocence, something Disney used to imagine and reimagine in timeless tales. Besides, with politically correct Disney’s ban on smoking in movies, it’s hard to imagine Iron Man’s alter ego, Tony Stark, lighting up the occasional cigar, which raises the question of whether this hyped deal may end up as a lose-lose proposition that signals the end of the legendary Walt’s creative influence in an age of dying Americanism.