I have been waiting for this for a long time and the timing of such a film, for release in 2011, could not be better timed as Battlestar Galactica came out in 1978 and Star Wars came out in 1977.
Glen Larson to produce
The legendary Glen Larson who brought us the original Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider, the Six Million Dollar Man and who was also a consulting producer in the popular 2004-2009 “re-imagined” BSG television series on the sci-fi network is in charge and is producing the new film.
Battlestar Galactica 1978 won many awards and enjoys a large cult following to this day. It was the first television series to break the cost of $1 million per episode. The problem is that the stories being told were too ambitious for the technology at the time and the cost overruns and shortcuts they took to save money plagued the series. Larson began working on the story in 1968.
The thing that made the original Battlestar series work were compelling characters and truly great stories that showed some philosophical depth much like Star Trek The Original Series. Some episodes of the 1978 series were a tad campy, but so was everything else made at the time. Larson has shown in his affiliation with the “re-imagined” BSG series that he can be as edgy and intense as anyone so worries about a campy new movie in my view are unfounded.
With that said, the “re-imagined” had some flaws and was targeted to a very specific demographic. It is likely that Larson is very much aware of it seeing that he refused (according to some press reports) to let the people in charge of the “re-imagined BSG” have his movie rights.
The problem with the re-imagined BSG series
The re-imagined series lost its nobility and the people (especially the male characters) were so over the top flawed, emasculated, and indecisive that I often lost suspension of disbelief while watching.
To be blunt, the characters in “re-imagined” are so west coast university pop culture overly feminized and flawed that, in spite of good acting performances by the actors, after a while I just stopped liking them and certainly did not admire them. The “culture” of “re-imagined” was all wrong.
Perhaps “re-imagined” was meant to be a reflection of today’s flawed “emo” pop culture rather than an example of the best of our own. While the eye candy “re-imagined” was inspiring the story sub plots were less and less so and at times smacked of a bad soap opera. I was pushing myself to watch it and as the second season went onto the third I just couldn’t watch it any more.
I hope that Glen Larson does his legacy justice with this new film and creates something that is more philosophically deep rather than psychologically in need of a good therapist.
Bryan Singer to Direct
Bryan Singer has had some real hits including the super popular House series, X-Men and X-Men II. Singer also had some royal flops like the abysmal Superman Returns. Singer’s big mistake in Superman Returns is that he didn’t understand the culture of the franchise. This is where Singer has to make certain that he does not get a BSG movie wrong.
Singer is quoted as saying that he “likes working on science fiction films because they teach the audience about mankind” which is certainly a step in the right direction. Perhaps Singer can find some excellent writers that can accomplish what Ira Behr did in the Star Trek franchise with Deep Space Nine which provided more depth to the Star Trek Universe.
In the previous installment of just how ignorant are people, Steven Crowder went to the number one public university in the country, Berkeley California, to ask a few simple questions and was able to find almost no one who could answer them.
Crowder got complaints saying that going to Berkeley wasn’t fair because California people are spacey. So Crowder went to New York to do the same experiment. The following are the results…
I was very sick while this went on, but it is worth noting that the same people that fact checked a Saturday Night Live skit teasing President Obama, put vile and totally invented quotes on the air to smear Limbaugh to prevent his consortium from buying the St. Louis Rams.
MSNBC says that Limbaugh would love to say that he owns a plantation full of black men – LINK.
MSNBC Admits: ‘Unable to Verify’ False Limbaugh Quote; No Retraction or Apology- LINK.
Since the fictional Limbaugh quotes were exposed, the networks spent only 47 seconds discussing it – LINK.
Huffington Post Pulls Bogus Limbaugh Quotes after not being able to substantiate them – LINK.
CNN Reads Limbaugh’s Denial of Alleged Slavery Quote, Doesn’t Retract Use. Says there are “Other Quotes” and couldn’t substantiate those either – LINK.
So Called ‘Journalists’ Claiming Limbaugh Praised MLK’s Assassin Offer No Proof – LINK.
ANC Claims “Limbaugh has a history of making racially offensive comments” but offers no quotes and no proof – LINK.
Video: MSNBC’s Matthews muses on killing Rush Limbaugh – LINK.
Roger Goodell from the NFL, a known Obama supporter, made disparaging comments about Limbaugh and got chewed out for it during a Congressioanl hearing by Represetative Steve King. You can watch Goodell squirm. He very much deserved this public humiliation.
My critics would have you believe no conservative meets NFL ’standards.’
David Checketts, an investor and owner of sports teams, approached me in late May about investing in the St. Louis Rams football franchise. As a football fan, I was intrigued. I invited him to my home where we discussed it further. Even after informing him that some people might try to make an issue of my participation, Mr. Checketts said he didn’t much care. I accepted his offer.
It didn’t take long before my name was selectively leaked to the media as part of the Checketts investment group. Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.
Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse. I was accused of once supporting slavery and having praised Martin Luther King Jr.’s murderer, James Earl Ray.
Next came writers in the sports world, like the Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon. He wrote this gem earlier this week: “I’m not going to try and give specific examples of things Limbaugh has said over the years because I screwed up already doing that, repeating a quote attributed to Limbaugh (about slavery) which he has told me he simply did not say and does not reflect his feelings. I take him at his word. . . . “
Mr. Wilbon wasn’t alone. Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.
I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.
The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?
The NFL players union boss, DeMaurice Smith, jumped in. A Washington criminal defense lawyer, Democratic Party supporter and Barack Obama donor, he sent a much publicized email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that it was important for the league to reject discrimination and hatred.
When Mr. Goodell was asked about me, he suggested that my 2003 comment criticizing the media’s coverage of Donovan McNabb—in which I said the media was cheerleading Mr. McNabb because they wanted a successful black quarterback—fell short of the NFL’s “high standard.” High standard? Half a decade later, the media would behave the same way about the presidential candidacy of Mr. Obama.
Having brought me into his group, Mr. Checketts now wanted a way out. He asked me to resign. I told him no way. I had done nothing wrong. I had not uttered the words these people were putting in my mouth. And I would not bow to their libels and pressure. He would have to drop me from the group. A few days later, he did.
As I explained on my radio show, this spectacle is bigger than I am on several levels. There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. “Racism” is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.
These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.
BRZEZINSKI: — but we’re all liberals and Democrats.
SCARBOROUGH: You know that everyone you worked for, they were all liberals, they were all pro-choice, they were all pro-gun control, they were all, I mean, let me ask you this question: when did you work at CBS?
BRZEZINSKI: Collectively, over a course of 10 years.
SCARBOROUGH: Give me years.
BRZEZINSKI: ‘90, 2001 to 2007.
SCARBOROUGH: OK, how many people that you worked for at CBS do you think voted for George W. Bush? Of all the thousands you worked for, how many people at CBS do you think voted for George W. Bush?
BRZEZINSKI: A very small percentage.
SCARBOROUGH: Maybe 1%?
BRZEZINSKI: I don’t know.
SCARBOROUGH: Can you think–seriously–you don’t have, just use your insight, your inside head voice here, can you think seriously of one correspondent, of one producer, of one anchor, that was a George W. Bush fan?
The rub so far, in spite of the fact that Hasan screamed the often heard ”Alluha Akbar” while shooting, had a bumper sticker on his car saying “Allah is love”, had made blog postings praising the bravery of homicide bombers, and had voiced his views about how muslims should rise up against Americans to fellow doctors, as the links above are reporting, MSNBC and the L.A. Times and other news outlets are scrubbing the islamic domestic terror connection from their coverage. Two abortionists have been shot in US history and the elite media often equates Christians with the Taliban (2). But after a long, long , long list of just these kinds of terrorist attacks around the world… nope it is just another individual.
The FBI says that there is no domestic terror connection. How many times do you have to scream “Alluha Akbar” before if becomes a domestic terror incident?
RWN Reports:
And when Jake Tapper just asked Robert Gibbs when an attack becomes a terrorist attack, the response, according to David Almacy also reporting on Twitter was this:
In an answer to @jaketapper, Robert Gibbs just said that he doesn’t have the theoretical background to define “terrorist attack.” Wow.
I am not surprised to find out that the Army knew about Hasan and did nothing. Having served in the military I can tell you that, especially under Democrat administrations, the fear for everyone because of political correctness is very real. Getting reported to “social actions” can be a career ending experience.
In my experience and opinion if Hasan were not a muslim and had similar problems he would have been gone. There are double standards.
If the government or the chain of command went in to do something about Hasan he likely would have screamed “profiling” and “muslim racial discrimination” (in spite of the fact that islam is a set of ideas, not a race). The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a well connected radical islamic apologist group who are experts at exploiting political correctness, would have been all over the elite media news outlets screaming about it.
As history has shown us on too many occasions, political correctness kills.
NPR Reports: Hasan said that if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.
NPR: Co-workers at Walter Reed Medical Medical Center pondered if he would become a terrorist. Co-workers at Walter Reed told not to talk to the FBI in fear that they could be accused of missing the obvious.
He gave a Grand Rounds presentation. . . You take turns giving a lecture on, you know, the correct treatment of schizophrenia, the right drugs to prescribe for personality disorder, you know, that sort of thing. But instead of giving an academic paper, he gave a lecture on the Koran, and they said it didn’t seem to be just an informational lecture, but it seemed to be his own beliefs. That’s what a lot of people thought.
He talked about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire. And I said well couldn’t this just be his educating you? And the psychiatrist said yes, but one of the Muslims in the audience, another psychiatrist, raised his hand and was quite disturbed and he said you know, a lot of us don’t believe these things you’re saying, and that there was no place where Hasan couched it as this is what the Koran teaches but you know I don’t believe it. And people actually talked in the hallway afterwards about ‘is he one of these people that’s going to freak out and shoot people someday?’
UPDATE II – A common question being asked is how a man could go on a shooting ramnpage on an Army based filled with armed people. The Answer: Like schools, military bases are easy targets.
Military posts are like gun free school zones. Unless you have to use a gun in your official duties all guns must be stored in the armory or locked in your apartment (with permission) if you have the rank to get base housing instead of being stuck in the dorm.
Like gun free school zones the rules are easy to subvert if you have criminal intent, but if you are otherwise a law abiding good citizen getting caught with a firearm in the gun free school zone means trouble and it is exactly the same way on most military bases. The simple truth is that the rules they have on base make them soft, easy targets.
Another thing that is not well known, is that there are many young officers and enlisted men in the military who have no business being around a firearm and their role in the military doesn’t require it. Many young people join the military to run away from home and other problems. This is the main reason why the rules for guns on base are as strict as they are. One way to get around this problem is to allow military personnel of the rank of E6 and O5 and higher the option of always having a personal side arm.
Hasan knew it would be a while before Post Police could respond to him and likely believed that he would be the only armed man in the immediate area. Hasan was right, as he was able to inflict 51 casualties before he was engaged by an armed opponent.
UPDATE III – Hasan went to same mosque as 911 hijackers. UK Daily Telegraph:
Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.
The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday’s horrific shooting spree.
UPDATE IV – ABC News – Intelligence Agenciues Knew Hasan Saught to Contact Al-Qaeda:
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
I received an email from Stephen Cannell this morning with some stills of the new A-team Movie. Cannell’s hits include The Rockford Files, Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Hunter, Riptide, Hardcastle & McCormick, 21 Jump Street, Wiseguy, The Commish, Profit, and the hit syndicated shows, Renegade and Silk Stalkings.
Cannell has an incredible story of how he was neglected by the education system as a whole which I hope to get him to tell his story for my upcoming book.
Back to The A-Team. It will be interesting to see if Liam Neeson call pull off Hannibal. The expectations are high. It will be interesting to see if Bradley Cooper can pull off a convincing ‘Face’. Faceman is more than just a smooth character. Dirk Benedict played Faceman with a great deal of nuance that will not be easy to live up to. There are some roles that an actor was born to play and no one else can quite live up to. Of course no where is that more obvious than in the character of H.M. Murdoch. Dwight Schultz, who played Murdoch in the original series, is widely recognized as one of the most gifted actors to ever grace the screen and most actors who are familiar with Schultz will tell you that.
The pressure on Sharlto Copley to come close to living up to this role is enormous and that concerns me, both for the A-Team legacy and for Copley’s career. While no one expects Copley to be able to match Schultz’s performance the trick will be to at least to play the role well enough to get in the same zip code as Schultz.
Most IUSB students are too young to have experienced the genius of Dwight Schultz so I included a few samples.
The following is a music video from the series Touched by an Angel featuring Dwight Schultz.
Sharlto Copley has big shoes to fill and we wish him well.
Stephen Cannell:
Check out these behind-the-scenes pics of Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley, Quinton Jackson and Liam Neeson on the set of “The A-Team” movie.
Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate [who has been actively involved with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - IUSB Vision Editor] calls his new book “Three Felonies a Day,” referring to the number of crimes he estimates the average American now unwittingly commits because of vague laws. New technology adds its own complexity, making innocent activity potentially criminal.
Mr. Silverglate describes several cases in which prosecutors didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand technology. This problem is compounded by a trend that has accelerated since the 1980s for prosecutors to abandon the principle that there can’t be a crime without criminal intent.
Some say that ignorance of the law is no excuse and if thats your view I suggest that you go turn yourself in immediately because you ARE guilty of something. Our government is so large and so foolish that it has creates so many laws and regulations that no one could possibly follow them all and will inadvertently violate some of them every single day.
Do you have any idea how many laws you violate when you have a garage sale?
Idiot Indiana prosecutor goes after old woman for buying two cold medicines:
Wabash Valley woman didn’t realize second cold medicine purchase violated drug laws
CLINTON — When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.
Now, Harpold is trying to clear her name of criminal charges, and she is speaking out in hopes that a law will change so others won’t endure the same embarrassment she still is facing.
“This is a very traumatic experience,” Harpold said.
Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.
Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.
When the police came knocking at the door of Harpold’s Parke County residence on July 30, she was arrested on a Vermillion County warrant for a class-C misdemeanor, which carries a sentence of up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine. But through a deferral program offered by Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander, the charge could be wiped from Harpold’s record by mid-September.
Harpold’s story is one that concerns some law-abiding citizens who fear that innocent people will get mistakenly caught in the net of meth abuse roundups.
But the flip side of the story comes from the law enforcement arena, which is battling a resurgence in methamphetamine production in the Wabash Valley.
As the 12th-smallest county in the state, Vermillion County ranked as the state’s fifth-largest producer of methamphetamine just a few years ago.
“I don’t want to go there again,” Alexander told the Tribune-Star, recalling how the manufacture and abuse of methamphetamine ravaged the tiny county and its families.
While the law was written with the intent of stopping people from purchasing large quantities of drugs to make methamphetamine, the law does not say the purchase must be made with the intent to make meth.
“The law does not make this distinction,” Alexander said.
Anyone who has taken a law class knows that intent or criminal neglect/recklessness is one of the three conditions for determining if a crime has been committed. The charges should be dropped all together without paying court costs. She should have been interviewed but never arrested in the first place. Alexander is a lawyer who is supposed to be educated and enlightened and yet has no ability to use some common sense or to exercise her power with reasonable restraint.
Examine the comments under the story from the Tribune-Star. At the time of publishing of this post not one commenter supported the arrest of Miss Harpold proving once again that the average Joe is wiser than the enlightened elite.
From the College Politico with absolute video proof. It proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Obama as Hitler signs are at tea parties are clearly from LaRouche Democrats and not traditionalists, libertarians or conservatives. The elite media such as NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC have been showing these signs and presenting them as if they are typical of people at the protests when they are not.
Since any close-up of the sign or interview of people carrying them makes it clear they they are from LaRouche it is next to imnpossible to believe that the elite media did not know who these signs were really from. They made a choice to slander you.
UPDATE: Rachel Maddow at MSNBC uses the LaRouche Democrats Obama=Hitler sign to smear tea party protesters.
This is a screen shot of Maddow’s show that appeared on Newsbusters.
Paul Williams has a video showing the glaring hypocrisy of the left on this matter. This is a must see if there ever was one.
Polls and voting data don’t support Carter’s remarks
There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”
That comment comes from former President Jimmy Carter, which is fascinating considering Carter once ran for governor of Georgia proclaiming himself to be a “Lester Maddox Democrat.” (Maddox, a former Georgia governor, was an avowed segregationist who opposed integration under the Civil Rights Act.)
In fairness to President Carter, I do believe in redemption, and that people can change. But more and more people are inclined to say anyone who disagrees with Barack Obama must be racist.
J.C. Watts
It hurts me when the left and the right use race for political gain, and it depresses me further that it’s so awkward for us to talk about honestly and objectively about race. However, the implication that disagreeing with the president is racist also saddens and perplexes me.
Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000 and now a CNN analyst, nailed it when she said, “No one wins in touching race in such a shallow way. It raises defenses and creates backlash.”
The race issue blew up two weeks ago when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called Obama a liar on the floor of the House during the president’s address to a joint session of Congress. Although Democrats booed President Bush in that same chamber during a State of the Union a few years ago, it was still wrong for Wilson to do this.
He called the president’s chief of staff and apologized. I would have preferred he do it on the floor of the House, which is where the incident occurred.
There has always been a certain decorum in the people’s House. Boos and yelling “You lie!” are not part of that decorum.
Some try to defend one yelling “You lie!” because others boo, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Of course, we see this logic in politics from Democrats and Republicans both.
Be that as it may, was Wilson’s outburst racist? The congressman said it was not, so I take him at his word, and the opposition we’ve seen to the president’s agenda would not equate to racism based on the data released in the last year.
– President Obama did not get the majority of the white vote in 2008. Is that evidence of racism? No. This has been the case with Democrat candidates for years, including President Carter.
– President Obama did slightly better with the white vote in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004.
– Before President Obama proposed a government takeover of the health care system, his approval rating with white voters was 57 percent.
– Between Election Day and the launch of Democrats’ health insurance reform efforts, President Obama did well with independent voters. But he has lost about 18 points with this demographic in the past two months. Most of these independent voters are white.
The data simply do not support President Carter’s claim.
Are there some people who didn’t vote for Obama because he’s black? Certainly. Just as there were some who opposed John McCain because he is white.
There are people of all colors who believe it is wrong for the government to take over our health care system.
There are people of all colors who believe we will have no choice but to ration health care when we put between 35 million and 40 million more people in the system but yet have the same number of doctors.
There are people of all colors who believe we already ration care through Medicare and Medicaid.
There are people of every color who believe it is bad economic policy to raise taxes, especially in a weak economy.
I would remind you that in the last two years of the Bush administration, conservatives were taking shots at President Bush for all his profligate spending, and it was never framed in terms other than “Republicans are mad at Bush for all the spending.”
How inconsistent that the media loved disgruntled conservatives being disenchanted with Bush, but abhor criticism of President Obama.
There are people of all colors who believe we are literally mortgaging our children’s futures with this spending spree. These people would have felt the same with if it were President Hillary Clinton, Kerry, Bill Richardson or any other president proposing the nationalization of 16 percent of our economy and spending like there’s no tomorrow.
Ironically, I wonder how President Carter would view things if it were President Clarence Thomas proposing tax relief, protection for the unborn, raising the troop levels in Afghanistan or exploring for oil right here in the United States.
As Arsenio Hall used to say, “It’s something that makes you say ‘Hmmm.’ “
J.C. Watts (JCWatts01@jcwatts.com) is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. He writes for the Review-Journal twice monthly.
Mark Levin, author of ‘Men in Black’, ‘Rescuing Sprite’, and the super million plus best seller ‘Liberty & Tyranny’ says that this speech has launched Netanyahu to be the leader of the free world. Levin could be right.
This is a MUST see. After you are done watching this please see Ambassador Bolton’s reaction to Obama’s statements on Israel (LINK). Here is Ambassador Bolton’s reaction to Netanyahu’s address.
This is a documentary about how sing alongs, peer pressure, the want of recognition, feeling of importance, and fear of humiliation was used to indoctrinate children into the Hitler Youth.
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.” – B. Obama
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
Yes, so I imagined. While Glenn Greenwald, for example, was accusing those on the right of being “chickenhawks” for not serving in Iraq, he was never quite able to explain why he wasn’t accumulating Congressional Medals of Honor and Taliban tooth-necklaces in the war he supposedly supported, Afghanistan.
And no, this isn’t just about some seedy, nasty liberal bloggers.
It’s about our lying POS POTUS, too.
Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy. There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments [sic] it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”
But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.
You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?
You… um… voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?
We won’t forget, champ. And we won’t let you forget, either.
Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it’s safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.
I’m an adjunct English professor. When the subject of adjunct faculty comes up, the predictable calls for unionization and “social justice” are often voiced by my tenured colleagues enjoying light teaching loads and by administrators enjoying comfortable salaries overseeing “multicultural” programs. But I know that I would not be among their intended beneficiaries were they made aware of my political views.
It’s not that I sought to be political when I returned to school in the 1990s to earn my Ph.D. I soon discovered, however, that political neutrality—even in literary studies—is suspect. In the academic world, the belief that great literature conveys universal, timeless themes is generally taken as evidence of an imperialistic outlook. The same holds for history, where the reliance on factual evidence and focus on major events are deemed offensive to women and those from non-Western cultures.
My fellow graduate students tailored their programs for the job market: studying African-American and gay writers, and applying the trendy postmodern, deconstructivist literary theories. Since 2002, when I earned my Ph.D. in English, the field has gotten even stranger, with such additions to the ideological postcolonial, African-American, and critical theory courses as “fat studies” and “trauma studies.” An upperclassman can enroll in “Introduction to Visual Rhetoric”—and then presumably in “Advanced Visual Rhetoric.” But how does my study of Plato and Cicero prepare me to teach these classes?
I am considered qualified to teach freshman composition, though. My experience of being called at 4:50 p.m. on a Friday and asked to be on campus at 8:30 a.m. on Monday to fill out the application and teach two classes that morning is not that unusual. At least it’s one way to avoid the scrutiny of mycurriculum vitae.
Some of my teaching is done at a community college. Even there, however, one must accept the prevailing ideology, as I discovered during a job interview.
After my teaching demonstration on a nuts-and-bolts aspect of freshman composition (semicolons), the committee chair (a black female who chaired a committee that was all-female, except for one openly gay man), asked how I addressed the multicultural needs of the student body. I mentioned Zora Neale Hurston, the black and decidedly non-political author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, as someone I like to have students read. Apparently, it wasn’t a good enough response.
Although I did not get the position, I was encouraged to apply again. To put my cv over the edge, I suppose I should attend the recommended online and Saturday teacher development workshops and publish papers on multicultural pedagogy.
I certainly could not, however, tout my writing in publications like the Weekly Standard, Pajamas Media, and Townhall, even though they might inspire student writers. Some of my colleagues openly brag about being published in the leftist magazine The Nation or having worked on Al Gore’s presidential campaign. That’s perfectly safe, but I no longer list my academic affiliations under my byline. Once I was told that I was no longer “needed” at a school after readers of my columns wrote laudatory letters to the department chair.
Here’s another illustrative case. A colleague who started at a small college as an adjunct was eventually hired on a one-year basis and told he’d be the first in line when a full-time position opened. Then he was asked to submit his application, but was later told that the position now required a “gender historian.” He was not even interviewed, despite having published a book and having received glowing student evaluations. History major “groupies” circulated petitions when they learned that his contract was not being renewed—to no avail. He just didn’t have the right political orientation. Excellent teaching and research didn’t matter.
The sad fact is that history majors, after taking the mandatory gender history class, will be taught from that same radical perspective in their other history classes. These kinds of students probably will seek other majors. I doubt I would have continued my graduate studies had I not been able to select the traditional classes of older professors, who have since retired or died.
And even at the community college level where we have to explain the difference between a noun and a verb, we have no choice in textbooks. One I currently use includes a story by Richard Wright from his communist period (which Zora Neale Hurston called “communist propaganda,” I tell my students). The introduction does not mention Wright’s repudiation of communism later. The grammar handbook uses Alice Walker’s prose as examples of elegant sentences, and the words of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld as logical fallacies. At another low-tier state university we were ordered to put on our syllabi that the course had the objective of gaining “an understanding of race, class, and gender.”
I think what happened a generation ago was that conservative humanities professors failed in challenging the ideology of the radicals—especially the females—who demanded entrance. During my one-year stint as a full-time faculty member I watched a tenured Shakespeare professor voice no objection to the suggestion that a course include Tupac Shakur’s lyrics as poetry.
Or, more generously, the conservative gatekeepers assumed that the radicals demanding entrance would apply the same rules of open-mindedness, objective inquiry, and fair play they did. We now know otherwise.
The colonization of American higher education by the left is remarkably thorough. From the elite universities to the lowest-ranked schools, the deck is stacked in favor of those who want to turn everything from semicolons to Shakespeare into an ideological exercise. On occasion, dissidents like myself can sneak in the back door, but we are in a precarious position.
UPDATE – The B-Cast intervied the Professor Thomas Thibeault HERE.
A professor points out that a policy has a critical flaw and he finds himself charged under that policy, fired, given no due process or any chance to answer any charges. In fact the charges themselves were kept secret from him.
This kind aof behavior and violation of due process is not uncommon at all on todays colleges including IUSB and other universities in the IU system. The Alliance Defsnee Fund and the Foundation for Indivisual Rights in Education (FIRE) have documented more of these cases than I can count with more and more piling on every week.
ATLANTA, September 15, 2009—The abuse of campus sexual harassment policies to punish dissenting professors has hit a new low at East Georgia College (EGC) in Swainsboro. Professor Thomas Thibeault made the mistake of pointing out—at a sexual harassment training seminar—that the school’s sexual harassment policy contained no protection for the falsely accused. Two days later, in a Kafkaesque irony, Thibeault was fired by the college president for sexual harassment without notice, without knowing his accuser or the charges against him, and without a hearing. Thibeault turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.
“If you were to write a novel about the abuse of sexual harassment regulations to get rid of a dissenter, you couldn’t do better than the real-life story of Thomas Thibeault,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “Anyone with a modicum of respect for freedom of speech or simple fairness should be aghast at this blatant abuse of power by East Georgia College.”
Thibeault’s ordeal started shortly after August 5, 2009 when, during a faculty training session regarding the college’s sexual harassment policy, he presented a scenario regarding a different professor and asked, “what provision is there in the Sexual Harassment policy to protect the accused against complaints which are malicious or, in this case, ridiculous?” Vice President for Legal Affairs Mary Smith, who was conducting the session, replied that there was no such provision to protect the accused, so Thibeault responded that “the policy itself is flawed.”
Two days later, Thibeault was summoned to EGC President John Bryant Black’s office. According to Thibeault’s written account of the meeting, which was sent to Black and which Black has not disputed, Thibeault met with Black and Smith. Black told Thibeault that he “was a divisive force in the college at a time when the college needed unity” and that Thibeault must resign by 11:30 a.m. or be fired and have his “long history of sexual harassment … made public.” This unsubstantiated allegation took Thibeault by surprise. Black added that Thibeault would be escorted off campus by Police Chief Drew Durden and that Black had notified the local police that he was prepared to have Thibeault arrested for trespassing if he returned to campus. At no point was Thibeault presented with the charges against him or given any chance to present a defense. Refusing to resign, Thibeault understood that he was fired.
Most likely realizing that he had fired Thibeault without any of the due process mandated by Georgia’s Board of Regents, Black then began attempting to justify Thibeault’s firing after the fact. On August 11,Black wrote Thibeaultto say that since Thibeault had failed to resign by the deadline, “EGC has begun dismissal proceedings. … [A] faculty committee has been appointed to conduct an informal inquiry.” He then paradoxically wrote, “Their charge is to advise me whether or not dismissal proceedings shall be undertaken.” Meanwhile, Thibeault still had not been provided with any charges, he was still banned from campus, and he still appeared to be fired-with the “dismissal proceedings” occurring after the fact.
Then, on August 25, Black wrote Thibeault again, claiming for the first time that Thibeault had actually been suspended, not fired: “the committee’s finding was that there is sufficient evidence to support your suspension.” Black added that Thibeault was about to be terminated for sexual harassment, that the charges finally would be sent upon request, and that Thibeault finally could request a hearing. Thibeault requested the charges on August 28 but has received no response. His lawyer also has inquired for weeks with no response.
“How can a public college professor in the United States be fired and kicked off campus by the president and police but, more than a month later, still have no idea why?” asked Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program. “Do Georgia’s taxpayers know this is how their colleges are treating their professors?”
FIRE outlined many of these shocking violations of due process and freedom of speech in a letter to University System of Georgia Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr. on August 27, with copies to Black and Smith. None of them has responded. Neither Black nor Smith has even bothered to comment on the discrepancies between Thibeault’s account and Black’s erratic letters.
“It is hard to imagine a worse failure of due process in this case,” Kissel said. “Nobody knows what the actual allegations are because they are being kept secret, even from Thibeault himself. In the stunning absence of any charges, evidence, or hearings, it is clear that EGC has punished Professor Thibeault for speaking out against a flawed harassment policy.”
FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty on campuses across America are described atthefire.org.
Tell EGC to restore the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Georgia Board of Regents. Write a letter to EGC and the Board of Regentshere.
CONTACT: Adam Kissel, Director, Individual Rights Defense Program, FIRE: 215-717-3473, adam@thefire.org
John Bryant Black, President, East Georgia College: 478-289-2027, jblack@ega.edu
Erroll B. Davis Jr., Chancellor, University System of Georgia: 404-656-2202, chancellor@usg.edu
OKLAHOMA CITY — Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
The Oklahoma City-based group enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students’ basic civic knowledge.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the organization wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know.
“They’re questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen,” Dutcher said.
A thousand students were surveyed by telephone and given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens.
About 92 percent of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first try, according to immigration service data. However, Oklahoma students did not fare as well. Only about 3 percent of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.
Dutcher said this is not just a problem in Oklahoma. He said Arizona had similar results, which left him concerned for the entire country.
“Jefferson later said that a nation can’t expect to be ignorant and free,” Dutcher said. “It points to a real serious problem. We’re not going to remain ignorant and free.”
Question
% of Students
Who Answered Correctly
What is the supreme law of the land?
28
What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
26
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
27
How many justices are there on the Supreme Court?
10
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
14
What ocean is on the east coast of the United States?
61
What are the two major political parities in the United States?
[Editor's Note - So what the Democrats are saying is that if Joe Biden were president the Tea Parties would not be protesting the wasteful spending, the corrupt pork earmarks for corporate lobbying clients, the porkulus bills, the government take over of health care and the banks etc? So I ask, was it racist when they opposed HillaryCare in 1994?
Is anyone who criticizes Michael Steele (a black American), the head of the Republican Party a racist? By this standard the entire DNC is racist. Yup thats it, anyone who criticizes any Republican is a racist because they just can't take it that the leader of the Republican Party is a black man.]
The Media Research Center provides this segment from ABC News. This is one of the most irresponsible pieces I have ever seen. ABC takes short clips and runs them together with a false narrative and cry racism. This just isn’t propaganda its bad propaganda because most people see right through this.
This whole idea that pointing out socialist and/or corporatist (corporatism is the economics of fascism in the strict academic sense) policies and corruption is racist is rather silly, especially from a political science perspective.
Charles Krauthammer responds to this nonsense from the NYT, Maureen Dowd and ABC quite correctly:
Indeed, the entire point at hurling the racism charge when substantive arguments are against you is to put the mark of the beast on someone and try to either shut them up, or make others afraid to listen to you in fear that they may be called a racist too. ABC and the rest of the elite media culture have gone from the watchdogs for the people to the watchdogs of the Democrat Party. With Obama as president, the elite media has abandoned the whole idea that it is to have a somewhat adversarial and skeptical view of government.
Every bloggers friend Gateway Pundit has this picture that he posts on his web site from time to time and in this case it is warranted.
For contrast, here is some RESPONSIBLE media coverage of the first Tea Party events back in March:
UPDATE – GOP Chairman Michael Steele responds rather brilliantly in the face of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell who was trying desperately to best him:
UPDATE II – Glenn Beck responds. Beck points out that NBC’s Brian Williams said that the 9.12 Tea Party was a “violent crowd”. There were no arrests at the event…not one.
Beck continues and shows how NBC is even doctoring and misrepresenting video to make a racist charge against protesters.
While NBC doctored the video and told you that the man with the gun was a racist white man. The raw video clearly shows the man is black. Come to find out he is part of a public awareness group that wears guns openly at events to educate people on the states open carry law.
UPDATE III- Gary Bauer speaks on the issue (Via The Anchoress):
Bauer noted that when Obama was inaugurated, he had an approval rating of 75 percent. Yet, today, his approval rating is in the neighborhood of 50 percent. If racism is the explanation, Bauer wondered aloud, are we to believe that the quarter of the electorate that seems to have abandoned President Obama just discovered that he is black?
As Bauer made his argument, it was obvious that he was speaking directly to the reporters present. He went further by asking the crowd the question (and this is from memory so it may not be exact), “If a party were to run a candidate who was black, Asian, or hispanic and who was pro-life, in favor of free markets, traditional morality, and strong national defense, would you support that candidate?” The crowd erupted in massive, enthusiastic applause. Bauer joked with the crowd and the reporters present, “I can’t wait to run home and see that positive reaction from the crowd toward racial diversity played on CBS, NBC, and ABC!” Of course, the enthusiastic reaction in favor of a candidate of color who is also a conservative doesn’t fit the press narrative and the audience reaction would never be played on the news. Bauer knew that. The crowd knew that. And so did the press.
UPDATE IV - The B-Cast news program did a special on how the elite media is dishonestly portraying the protests as “racist” LINK.
UPDATE II – ACORN office number five! San Diego ACORN offered to help smuggle the teen sex workers through Mexico! This video was released on the Sean Hannity Show moments ago September 16th 2009.
UPDATE – John Stewart to elite media , “WHERE THE HELL WHERE YOU WHEN TWO KIDS WERE BREAKING THIS STORY?” Hotair.com has the video HERE.
This time it was the San Bernardino office. The previous video’s are HERE and HERE.
It is the same as last time but worse. Prostitution, tax fraud, bank fraud, child sex trafficking….and now death threats and possible admission of pre-meditated murder all on tape.
Gateway Pundit has this picture with a short history of Obama’s involvement with ACORN.
Our article on Obama working as a lawyer for ACORN to sue banks to make them make high risk loans went viral on the net.
To see the full length unabridged San Bernardino video Hotair.com has it HERE.
How can the White House bring together such a cadre of wild extremists? Not only are your organs the property of the state, he says that animals should be able to sue YOU in court.
Sunstien’s upcoming book shows his rejection of the concept of free speech and the “marketplace of ideas” and argues that government should intervene to revoke free speech and censor the internet.
Another question, why are SO many academics in our universities obvious nuts like this man? What attracts such clearly judgment impaired people to academia and why does academia embrace them, at times with the zeal of a defense attorney?
…recent history has demonstrated that for FAR too many college administrators and professors the reasoning and purpose of the First Amendment completely escapes them. How is it that one can leave high school having a basic understanding of freedom of speech and then leave graduate school having no ability to grasp the concept whatsoever?
Beck on Sunstien and Lloyd and their stated desire to censor:
UPDATE II – ACORN office number five! San Diego ACORN offered to help smuggle the teen sex workers through Mexico! This video was released on the Sean Hannity Show moments ago September 16th 2009.
UPDATE – San Bernardino ACORN office sting. Worst yet so far – LINK.
As you all know the Baltimore and Washington DC office of ACORN was caught on hidden camera aiding and conspiring to help others commit prostitution, tax fraud, bank fraud, and child sex trafficking. We covered this story and showed you the video HERE.
Now on Andrew Brietbart’s web site the third video of the New York office sting has been posted and odds are this is just the beginning. The NY Post has a story on the sting HERE.
By the way, ACORN released a statement saying that this sting was tried and FAILED in New York. It looks like they lied.
This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen.
-Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, ACORN
UPDATE II – National Park Service: Largest DC event EVER – LINK and LINK.
UPDATE – More video of the crowds and University of Illinois has a method of using area to judge a crowd and estimated 1.7 million.
[Editor's Note - The fact that the UK papers cover American politics and some other domestic news better than our own elite media really is indicative of just how far ethical and professional standards have fallen in the United States.]
UK Daily Mail:
Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama’s spending in ‘tea-party’ demonstration
Up to two million people marched to the U.S. Capitol today, carrying signs with slogans such as “Obamacare makes me sick” as they protested the president’s health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending.
The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the Washington Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.
People were chanting “enough, enough” and “We the People.” Others yelled “You lie, you lie!” and “Pelosi has to go,” referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.
Again, this video does go a little bit too far but makes an excellent point. The left likes to pick and choose the parts of Darwinism that it likes and the other parts just vanish….
