Get ready for it..

It's conservative, it's funny, and it's....HOLLYWOOD!

Zucker's latest movie, An American Carol, is unlike anything that has ever come out of Hollywood. It is a frontal attack on the excesses of the American left from several prominent members of a growing class of Hollywood conservatives. Until now, conservatives in Hollywood have always been too few and too worried about a backlash to do anything serious to challenge the left-wing status quo.

David Zucker believes we are in a "new McCarthy era." Time magazine film writer Richard Corliss recently joked that conservative films are "almost illegal in Hollywood." Tom O'Malley, president of Vivendi Entertainment, though, dismisses claims that Hollywood is hostile to conservative ideas and suggests that conservatives simply haven't been as interested in making movies. "How come there aren't more socialists on Wall Street?"

But Zucker's film, together with a spike in attendance at events put on by "The Friends of Abe" (Lincoln, not Vigoda)--a group of right-leaning Hollywood types that has been meeting regularly for the past four years--is once again reviving hope that conservatives will have a battalion in this exceedingly influential battleground of the broader culture war.

You gotta love it with scenes like this;

The set jumps to life. Two young men--both terrorists--enter the station. They are surprised to see a security checkpoint manned by two NYPD officers. "I'll need to see your bag, please," says one of the officers. The lead terrorist glances nervously at his friend and swings his backpack down from his shoulder to present it to the cops. Just as the officer pulls on the zipper, however, a small army of ACLU lawyers marches up to the policemen with a stop-search order. The cops look at each other and shrug their shoulders. "This says we can't search their bags."

The young men are relieved. They smile fiendishly as they walk toward the crowded platform. As the lead terrorist once again slips the backpack over his shoulder, he mutters his appreciation.

"Thank Allah for the ACLU."
.......

The holiday in An American Carol is not Christmas and the antagonist is not Ebenezer Scrooge. Instead, the film follows the exploits of a slovenly, anti-American filmmaker named Michael Malone, who has joined with a left-wing activist group (Moovealong.org) to ban the Fourth of July. Along the way, Malone is visited by the ghosts of three American heroes--George Washington, George S. Patton, and John F. Kennedy--who try to convince him he's got it all wrong. When terrorists from Afghanistan realize that they need to recruit more operatives to make up for the ever-diminishing supply of suicide bombers, they begin a search for just the right person to help produce a new propaganda video. "This will not be hard to find in Hollywood," says one. "They all hate America." When they settle on Malone, who is in need of work after his last film (Die You American Pigs) bombed at the box office, he unwittingly helps them with their plans to launch another attack on American soil.

The entire film is an extended rebuttal to the vacuous antiwar slogan that "War Is Not the Answer." Zucker's response, in effect: "It Depends on the Question."

Should be interesting. Can't wait.

h/t BigDog

Happy Anniversary Rush!

Now, this should send the left into a snarling, gnashing of the teeth, pulling hair out, complete breakdown.

Wrap that up with a pretty bow and you have the perfect anniversary gift for Rush!

Heh.

Are Republicans getting their MoJo back???

By God, I think so.

From NRO:

I just heard that the House G.O.P. wrapped up their protest session at 5:05 by singing "God Bless America" and left the chamber with the crowd chanting, "USA! USA!" Unbelievable.

Also, I there's this little tidbit — after the Democrats shut off the microphones, Rep. John Shaedegg ran out to turn them on. In an update to the post I linked to earlier, the Politico reports:
Apparently, the fiesty Arizona conservative started typing random codes into the chamber's public address system and accidentally typed the correct code, allowing Republicans brief access to the microphone before it was turned off again.

"I love this," Shadegg told reporters up in the press gallery afterward. "Congress can be so boring. ... This is a kick."

John Culberson of Texas has been twittering the whole thing and it has been a hoot to read. Twitters like this:

This is a huge peprally to give America a vote - just let us vote - to drill here drill now to get us through the next 10 to 15 years

House floor and gallery are full of Americans who came to the Capitol to see Congress work yet Speaker Pelosi sent us all home

And she turned off the lights on her way out apparently.

More:

Cong Mike Rogers says every day Pelosi wastes America sends 50 million to Putin 200 million to Saudi Arabia 180 million to Hugo Chavez

I just told the House chamber We the People can take back the Capitol with these new media tools by networking and shining sunlight everywhere

Go twitter and the Internet. Shine the light into the darkness that is the operation of Congress!

John Culberson is the Congressman that gets the new media. Check him out! (Follow me on twitter too!)

It gets even sweeter:

In total, 48 Republicans spoke on the floor Friday, offering remarks ranging from the impassioned to the plainly partisan. Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter declared, “This is the People’s House. This is not Pelosi’s Politburo.” He later pretended to be a Democrat, walking to their side of the floor to announce all the votes they had prevented.

Let's combine this with McCain not letting Obama get away with his snarky barely hidden remarks on race and I would almost think that Republicans are remembering where they put those thing that Jesse Jackson wanted to cut off Obama!

;-)

How about no one play the race card

It's beyond ridiculous for anyone to believe that Obama was not referring to race when he said this:

They are going to say he "doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, he’s a got a funny name.”

The obama campaign is saying:

"He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race."

Right. Give us all a frickin break. We all know what he was talking about. Flash back to June 21.

Obama: “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid."

“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

At the time I thought, "Excuse me? who mentioned that you are black?"

The truth of the matter is that Obama is the only one who brings up race. The Democrats from Hillary to Rev. Wright brings up race.

But McCain and the Republicans never bring it up. Why? Because it honestly doesn't matter to us. At all. Only his beliefs and his policy, and his vision concerns us. We don't care what color Obama is, except for the fact that he is green.

That is his biggest problem.

Honestly, I don't think Obama himself wants to play the race card. I think his campaign is pushing it. It's a mistake. Don't accuse people of looking at race, when that is not what they do. That backfires.

Nothing Really Changes

When I blogged about volunteering at two River Oaks fundraisers for McCain, I have to admit I was feeling a bit of the elitism of the rich surrounding me.

I know campaigns need money and this is how to raise it, but it's disconcerting nonetheless when homes of wealthy trial lawyers energy company chiefs are the venue.

Wait, those two I mentioned above weren't McCain fundraisers in River Oaks. they were Obama fundraisers.

I guess Obama hopes for money from the same place all politicians get it. I guess the change there isn't a change at all.

So much for the "different" kind of politician.

Polls

Polls at this point don't mean a lot, but they are fun to look at when things are looking good for your side:

30% of conservative Democrats are voting for McCain. This sides with my super scientific polling of white Democrat men. I haven't "polled"one yet that said they would vote for Obama. Many I spoke to said they had never voted Republican their whole life, but they were this time.

I have a feeling that when you mix in the new youth vote all hyped up on Obamania with the disdain many independents are feeling over the celebrity aspect of Obama, we are going to have a very very close race.

Coming Home

Good news.

President Bush announced this morning that beginning tomorrow, US troop tours in Iraq will be reduced from 15 months to 12 months.

"The progress in Iraq has allowed us to continue our policy of return on success," the President said from the Colonnade outside the Oval Office, "We have now brought home all five of the combat brigades and the three Marine units that were sent to Iraq as part of the surge. The last of these surge brigades returned home this month."

Rapper Ludacris wants to be Vice President with Obama

This is one of Obama's favorite rappers!!

"Make the White House Black."

“Hillary hated on you so that b*tch is irrelevant.”

Oh it gets even better when he disses McCain.

Classy stuff.

via HotAir

Is Obama the Paris Hilton of politics?

Like Paris, he looks good, but there isn't much underneath.

I don't know how effective this ad is. But it is true that "celebrity" is what Obama is all about now.

No more pork!

Obama received $1 million dollars a DAY in pork while in the Senate.

McCain received how much pork in his 2 decades in the Senate? That would be ZERO.

McCain promises to veto every single pork barral project bill that comes across his desk and make those responsible "famous."

This is what we need. Stop wasteful spending of our hard earned tax dollars.

via The Partisan Report

"The people of Berlin have spoken."

Can They Admit They Were Wrong?

Rumor has it that Republicans are trying to get McCain to go to ANWR to see for himself the small environmental impact drilling there would have and to see what a big impact it would have on our production of oil.

Obama went to Iraq and still couldn't admit he was wrong about the surge. I wonder if McCain will go to ANWR and admit that he was wrong about drilling there.

It would be nice. We shall see.

The Texas Democratic Convention

From The Texas Democratic Convention @ The Houston Chronicle. I will let this brief video stand without comment. I'll just give you a quote from it: "Why are you here? You're not black."

Funny stuff

Below is a cartoon Gary Varvel, who does great work at National Review. He didn't get to print this one because he held a caption contest for what Obama is saying and the whole Obama speech in Germany was off the newscycle by the time they got some some good ones like, " "I'm embarrassed to be speaking to you in English today," and "I'm not president, but I've played one on TV." Give me some of your own.

This made me laugh...

I'm glad MoveOn.org claimed responsibility at the end or I would have thought it was a spoof making fun of Obama.

You can't tell the reality from goofiness in this campaign season.

Sweet

Despite the Obamamediacrushpaloozaextravaganzacircus, McCain is leading Obama among likely voters.

All that stage work, props, and choreography and the show still isn't that good.

Obama's Wailing wall prayer was pre-approved for publication.

If this is true, then any respect that I had for Obama (and yes, I had some) and his campaign is gone:

From the Israeli Insider:

What initially seemed to be a journalistic scoop of dubious moral propriety now seems to be a case of an Israeli paper being played by the Barack Obama campaign. Maariv, the second most popular newspaper in Israel, was roundly criticized for publishing the note Obama left in the Kotel. But now a Maariv spokesperson says that publication of the note was pre-approved for international publication by the Obama campaign, leading to the conclusion that the "private" prayer was intentionally leaked for public consumption.
.......

A Ma'ariv spokesman was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying that "Barack Obama's note was approved for publication in the international media even before he put in the Kotel, a short time after he wrote it at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem." The paper added that is was "pleased" with its "journalistic accomplishment." It appears that Obama made Maariv an instrument of his will. The paper, of course, was a most willing tool.

A prayer as a campaign prop.

Color me not surprised.

Jesse Ventura

I'm reading his book. He is so clever and funny. So macho.

I just saw him on Hannity and Colmes.

He makes me want to puke.

Can we please stop electing frickin wrestlers to public office. They are worst than lawyers. And that is saying a lot.

Obama: the Ex-Colored Man?

I read a piece in National Review by Jay Nordlinger about the jazz singer Renee Marie who substituted the national anthem with what is known as "the Negro national hymn" at a ceremony in Denver where the mayor gives a 'State of the City" speech.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. No matter what Renee Marie chose to sing, it was beyond rude to switch the song that she was suppose to sing. It simply wasn't her call. But everyone seemed to make a big deal out of it in a patriotic way. At the time I looked at the words of the song she sang that day, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," and thought it a beautiful song. I was sort of bewildered at what kind point Renee Marie was trying to make because the song spoke of such a love of this country, so it wasn't some dig at America.

Reading Renee Marie's bio on her website, it seems she does have mixed feelings. In a 2007 interview with a Russian newspaper she said she almost felt compelled to tell them she wasn't American. She said she didn't feel American. She basically says that the injustice that was a part of the black experience for her growing up under the Jim Crow laws made her question the words of all the patriotic songs that she sang in church growing up. I guess she had never been proud of her country until now. That seems familiar to me, but I just can't place it...;-)

In the National Review piece, Nordlinger researches the history the song "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing." It was written 108 years ago by James Weldon Johnson (music was written by his brother) for a Lincoln birthday celebration. Whatever injustices that Renee Marie experienced growing up (and I don't want to minimize them, they were indeed harsh) one can safely say that as a black man who lived between 1871-1938, injustice was even more profound in a society that had barely left slavery behind. Johnson was a part of the Harlem Renaissance. He was a lawyer, politician, song writer, and an educator among other things. But it is obvious to me in his lyrics that he deeply loved this country. I don't think that he would have questioned whether he was American or not.

I have always been fascinated by the Harlem Renaissance in the early 1900's. Blacks asserted their independence with their own enclave of literature, drama, music, visual art, and dance. Years ago I watched a documentary of it with actual film footage of the time. It seemed to me the black community knew they weren't allowed to compete in the white world, so they made their own world. And it really was quite a wonderful world.

Now, I'm going to connect a few seemingly unrelated things here because I just find them interesting. After the brouhaha of the Renee Marie thing, Obama was asked about this Negro anthem and he said, "We have only one national anthem." Obama wouldn't even utter the words, "The Negro National Anthem." Not long after that, as you might recall, Jesse Jackson had some pretty harsh things to say about how Obama "talked down to N***gers"

Well, it just so happens that this same man who wrote the Negro anthem, James Weldon Johnson, also wrote a book called "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man." According to Wikipedia this book "is the fictional telling of the story of a young biracial man, referred to only as the “Ex-Colored Man." "The Ex-Colored Man was forced to choose between embracing his black heritage and culture by expressing himself through the African-American musical genre ragtime, or by "passing" and living obscurely as a mediocre middle-class white man."

Reading through the plot it seems the Ex-Colored man is torn between his two heritiages, white and black. He is raised in a different environment than most other blacks. After seeing a lynching, the Ex-Colored man decides that when it comes to his race he simply wishes to remain neutral. The Ex-Colored Man declares that he “would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race.”

The book is about a black man "passing" as a white man. Which is certaintly not what Obama is doing. But the part about neither disclaiming the black race nor claiming the white race struck me.

Obama never seems to embrace his black heritage to me. And he never mentions or looks at himself as being white in any way other than to reference his mother's family.

And this may be what made Jesse Jackson so angry. Does it anger a "Colored man" to look at an "Ex-Colored man" doing so well? Maybe only if one thinks of themselves like that? Because clearly black men in general don't feel that way.

Who do we trust on the WOT?

Everyone is talking about Obama's and McCain's "timetables" or "horizons" of our troops getting out of Iraq. Obama says McCain has come closer to his position of 16 months and McCain says that Obama has changed his position to deciding factors on the ground.

Obama said this: "Iraq force will be 'entirely conditions-based. It's hard to anticipate where we may be six months from now."

McCain said this when asked why McCain thought Maliki said that 16 months was pretty good timetable: "He said it's a pretty good timetable based on conditions on the ground. I think it's a pretty good timetable, as we should -- or horizons for withdrawal. But they have to be based on conditions on the ground."

So basically McCain and Obama are saying the same thing. They will get the troops out as soon as possible, but everything hinges on conditions on the ground.

Now, this has always been what McCain position. I don't think any of us think McCain will pull our troops out if commanders say they are still needed. We know this.

What we don't know about Obama is if he saying these things for political purposes only. Given that things are still not perfect in Iraq, we need someone who understands this.

But to me, it puts the Iraq situation off the table for now as far as the candidates go. They seem to agree. It may make the base of the Democratic party angry with Obama, but they aren't going anywhere and he knows it. He can afford to look all hawkish now.

So given that the two candidates are basically saying the same thing there, the only questions are who would we trust to move forward in the war on terror? Who would we trust to handle ongoing violence? Who would we trust if another terrorist attack occurred? Who was right on what to do to bring Iraq to this successful conclusion?

Who would you trust to know what to do?

There is simply no question to who that is. John McCain.

10 Things I Love About The South

1) The world can be falling down around them, death, destruction, even nuclear holocaust, and Southern women will have their hair and makeup done. Just because your miserable doesn't mean you can't look good.

2) When you ask someone in the South, "how are you?", they don't say "I'm fine." They usually answer with a wildly entertaining story.

3) You can buy boiled salty wonderful peanuts off just about any road in the South.

4) Trees. Trees. Trees.

5) Southerners love their animals. They love their horses, dogs, and cats. They also love to eat whatever animal isn't one of those.

6) While many Americans drink because they want to forget life, Southerners drink to enjoy life. And they do. Drink. Alot.

7) Blue Dog Democrats. Yes, these are Democrats I actually like because when asked about Obama over in Europe they say things like, "Well, I hope everyone in Germany votes for him."

8) Everybody knows everybody's business. The Internet still does not compare to the gossip grapevine of the South.

9) When driving through neighborhoods or slow streets in town, everyone waves at you. And then they turn to each other say, "Who is that and why is she driving Bobby's truck?" And in about 30 minutes everyone knows you're in town. Even the ones who don't know you.

10) Restaurants tend to be family owned and the food melts in your mouth. When you ask for tea, they ask, "Regular or sweet?" If you say sweet they know you are from here.

Still more of a Jewish problem with Obama

From The Jerusalem Post:

As for the campaign-financed (not official) Israel leg of Obama's trip, the visuals were fine, at first. But Jews the world over gagged on their breakfasts this morning seeing the newspaper and Drudge Report photos of multiple Obama campaign banners and posters tactlessly defiling the area of Jerusalem's Western Wall. This shameless usurpation of Judaism's holiest site for use as a cheap political prop is embarrassing, and not going to go over well. If God already endorsed Obama - which Obama may believe - I must have missed it. One can only imagine how such a stunt would have gone over at the Vatican. Or in Mecca.

Obama's Israel sound-bites were solid. When he stuck to his scripted remarks, he sounded decent. But McCain has been visiting Israel for 30 years; he knows the area and the issues without consulting his briefing book.

Obama's trip is merely a calculated campaign photo-op designed to make him appear experienced. His image-enhancement was devoid of any real substance-actually, not a bad metaphor for his entire campaign for amorphous "change." Even his visit with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, which his campaign preposterously claims "one-ups" McCain, was just a campaign-financed meeting, not an official visit.