PK's NOTE: I did wind up watching most of the Oscars. I was disgusted to hear the gasps of pleasure from the audience to see FLOTUS be a part of the announcing of the Best Picture award and beyond disgusted when she make a speech. There is no place for it in that venue.

The Academy Awards Come Out of the Closet

Should I resign from the Academy?

I won’t, of course, but asking Michelle Obama to help present the Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards this year was pretty Bush League. And it was equally Bush League for the First Lady to accept. And I’m not talking about any George Bushes here. I’m talking about the real Bush Leagues.

Shame, shame on all sides.

Hollywood has enough of a reputation for being in the pocket of the Democratic Party, but now they not only are in the pocket, they’re in the wallet, the purse, the laptop, the vestibule, the fax machine, the refrigerator, the oven, the slow cooker, shoes, socks, bell, book and candle and just about everything else.

Well, let’s hope those tax benefits keep rolling in.

Or maybe they just wanted to make sure Clint Eastwood wouldn’t be a presenter. (He wasn’t.)

In any case, it’s all out in the open now. Hollywood conservatives can go back in their foxholes. That all-clear signal they thought they might have been hearing after the 2010 election was an illusion.

American entertainment is not the province of the whole country. It’s only the province of half the country.
Or so it would seem.

Now let me be clear. I think politics has a great and important place in filmmaking. It’s at the heart of some of my favorite movies, from The Lives of Others to the decidedly Marxist Potemkin. And, despite some quibbles, Argo, this year’s winner, is a worthy political film too.

It just doesn’t have a place in the Academy Awards. It’s bad enough the event is usually riddled with obligatory two-bit pot shots at the right (like Sunday’s gratuitous comment about the “Christian right” not liking vampires that drew a ripple of confused laughter). It’s now become a venue for outright electioneering.

Perhaps 2014’s awards could feature Nancy Pelosi, cheerleading the Democrats on in a bid to retake the House.

So here we go again. What do we do? Boycott them? Maybe the right should start its own Conservative and Libertarian Academy Awards. The problem is there won’t be many decent candidates.

But that’s the point. That’s why I considered not writing this article in the first place. (Obviously, I couldn’t resist.) Much more important than bitching about the Academy Awards – they’re only prizes, after all – is making movies of your own with themes that match your values.

If you don’t do that, it’s irrelevant whether Michelle Obama or Harry Reid host the Academy Awards.

Now hold on… there’s an idea. Harry Reid hosting the Academy Awards. Talk about vampires.

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/02/25/the-academy-awards-come-out-of-the-closet/?singlepage=true

Shady? Obama campaign deputy paid to promote Oscar nominee

In the days leading up to this weekend’s annual Hollywood love-fest, Obama’s campaign reelection deputy Stephanie Cutter actively promoted Best Picture nominee “Silver Lining’s Playbook.” Twitchy highlights Cutter’s promotional tweets and comments here. And while it’s possible that Cutter may just be a big fan or have a massive girl crush on Jennifer Lawrence, it’s also possible that her professional connections to President Obama and big-time donor Harvey Weinstein also played a role.

According to Vulture, Cutter was paid to promote SLP by the film’s producer, The Weinstein Company. In case you were wondering what Glenn was talking about this morning on the radio when he wrote off the Oscars as nothing more than “politics and money,” this would be a good example (emphases mine):

With top rivals Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty both having big political angles that resonated beyond Hollywood, our sources tell us that Cutter was hired to tout SLP not just as a well-made movie, but a culturally relevant and especially politically significant film that was shaping the national conversation about mental health triggered in part by the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. Indeed, in the run-up to the Oscars, Silver Linings seemed to undertake a series of self-administered pats on the back “for making progress towards removing the stigma of mental illness,” as proclaimed by a February Center for American Progress press conference featuring Silver Linings star and Best Actor Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper, along with two Democratic pols, Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and former Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.

Then, less than a week later, Cooper and his director, David O. Russell, met with Vice-President Joe Biden in his office, again to chat about mental-health reform. …

But that’s not where the Obama-Weinstein links end. According to Deadline Hollywood, Weinstein was also responsible for first lady Michelle Obama’s surprise Oscar appearance:

Shady? Obama campaign deputy paid to promote Oscar nominee

(Image: White House)

The idea of getting the First Lady on the show first came from Lily Weinstein, who mentioned it to her big Obama contributor dad Harvey, who suggested it to the Oscar producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron and Academy president Hawk Koch. The group flew to DC a week and a half ago to put the logistics together with the White House. The Oscar producers told Deadline’s Pete Hammond earlier this week that they “were being like the CIA” about a couple of surprises on the show, keeping things top secret. In towns like Hollywood and DC where people love to talk, they pulled it off…

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/02/25/shady-obama-campaign-deputy-paid-to-promote-oscar-nominee/

Subjects, Citizens, Guns and The Sequester

OK Americans, you; and I mean you personally, have a serious ego problem. You are not grateful enough. President Obama works so hard for you, and you don’t show him adequate love. He’s had it. He won’t be putting up with any more of your shenanigans. Therefore, you are going to get both gun control and sequestration – good and hard!

You see, some people are actually bringing up the point that sequestration was a proposal put forth by The Executive Branch. The audacity of these peons! They think they are citizens when in fact they are subjects. Morale Conditioner, Chuck Todd lectures us on how to think properly harmonious social thoughts.

CHUCK TODD: Of all the dumb things Washington does, this “who started it” argument has proven to be one of the dumber ones, especially since we’re so close to the actual cuts going into place.

So why does Chuck Todd believe you are stupid? He’s been trained to as part of an elitist cadre. They are taught to reflexively believe you are stupid. They think of you as subjects. You are to be managed; not lead, appeased; not respected.

Davis F.W. Aurimi plows overworked ground in offering his response to a blog review of Batman – The Dark Knight Rises. However, he makes a useful point (at about 4:45 and going until 5:30) that lends itself to why Chuck Todd thinks you have the IQ of a toadstool. When today’s authorities call you “citizen”, they don’t mean it as a respectful salutation. They mean you are a sheep. They mean you are a moron. They truly believe Chuck Todd’s intellect dwarfs yours.

So what do you do with these idiot citizens if you are smart and brilliant like Barack Obama? For God’s sake do not let them have free will. Give these idiots a fork and they’ll steer straight for the nearest light socket. Fred Reed offers us insight as to what sort of society we can expect to live in as our leaders increasingly believe we are stupid and that we all suck.

Here Fred describes what Americans were like when we still deserved freedom in the eyes of our overlords.

A staple of American self-esteem is that we Yanks are brave, free, independent, self-reliant, ruggedly individual, and disinclined to accept abuse from anyone. This was largely true in, say, 1930. People lived, a great many of them, on farms where they planted their own crops, built their own barns, repaired their own trucks, and protected their own property. They were literate but not educated, knew little of the world beyond the local, but in their homes and fields they were supreme. If they wanted to swim buck nekkid in the creek, they swam buck nekkid. If whistle pigs were eating the corn, the family teenager would get his rifle and solve the problem. Government left them alone.

And later on he describes what life is becoming in our contemporary, degenerate Amerika.

Self-reliance went. Few any longer can fix a car or the plumbing, grow food, hunt, bait a hook or install a new roof. Or defend themselves. To overstate barely, everyone depends on someone else, often the government, for everything. Thus we became the Hive. Government came like a dust storm of fine choking powder, making its way into everything. You could no longer build a shed without a half-dozen permits and inspections. You couldn’t swim without a lifeguard, couldn’t use your canoe without Coast-Guard approved flotation devices and a card saying that you had taken an approved course in how to canoe. Cops proliferated with speed traps. The government began spying on email, requiring licenses and permits for everything, and deciding what could and could not be taught to one’s children, who one had to associate with, and what one could think about what or, more usually, whom.

So how does this relate to the guns or the sequester? It’s easy to explain the guns. You can’t let citizens handle something dangerous like guns! They’ll become self-reliant and unpredictable. How can Harry Seldon then predict which pen in which their sorry butts should be parked by the loving and benevolent state? When the people are considered to be pathetic, the state has a moral imperative to keep them away from guns, trans-fats, fast food, fast cars, fast women,…etc. And mark my words (if you are still an American not an Amerikan) Chuck Todd and his nebbish, mincing handlers think you; yes you, are a hookworm-infested moron.

OK, so President Obama and can’t trust crazy Tea Partiers with weapons. He has to save them from themselves. But how does this relate to the sequester? Isn’t that all John Boehner and only John Boehner? I mean Chuck Todd just ordered your beliefs so that you wouldn’t actually blame our Dear Leader
.
The whole sequester thing gets back to your insufficient level of gratitude. I mean you have said your prayers of thanks to the government this morning. It’s a given. You are subjects. Subjects praise the lord. Not that Lord, Tea-Partier. The thinking people who write and compile Chuck Todd’s program before every newscast are way too intelligent to buy into that superstition. It wasn’t Christendom* that gave us the Renaissance, The Enlightenment, Science, Democracy, Theology, Modern Medicine, etc. It was a primitive forerunner of Amerika and The EU.

OK, so why can’t I haz my gubbermint cheeze? You have to learn proper supine self-abnegation, subject. You can’t tell smart people like Timothy Geithner to cut their budgets.** The very effrontery of suggesting that Barack Obama and Congress are spending too much money must be punished. They are intentionally grooving these cuts to make you hurt more so that you can learn. They love you and want you to be conditioned better. It’s the proper way to treat a dog that’s cute but just wants to pee on the rug.

What if I’ve had it about up to here? What if I don’t care how jacked-up President Obama is over some guff and disrespect while he surfs off the North Shore on my tax dollars? The way out is straight, hard and narrow. You have two vital objectives to seize in order to get rid of this contemporary Amerikan Fascism and start renewing the liberty America has obviously jettisoned in return for physical and economic security.

Retaking the GOP will be the hard part. They are a shell of a legitimate opposition. They are Goldstein to the Democratic Party’s INGSOC. When they cave pathetically and grovel at Mein Obama’s feet next week over sequestration, you will know that you; yes you, have been utterly sold down the river as a conservative thinker and patriot. The current Rove-Romney-Boehner leadership of the GOP has got to be replaced with individuals more like Congressman Jordan and Senator Cruz. Identify these people, write diaries about these people, walk precincts for these people. Where it goes from there, I have no crystal ball to tell you. But we can’t keep going the way we are unless we like it right where the Chuck Todd’s of contemporary American Fascism want to throw it to us – good and hard!

* – That’s what that particular subset of pale-people called themselves back when men of the West were still men of the West.

** – You can’t even tell the really smart ones like Geithner how to effectively operate Turbo-Tax software.

http://www.redstate.com/2013/02/25/subjects-citizens-guns-and-the-sequester/

Forum: Are anti-sharia laws constitutional?

Every week on Monday morning, the Council and invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum with short takes on a major issue of the day. This week’s question: The Kansas State Legislature recently passed an anti-foreign law bill that many feel was aimed squarely at sharia. Do you feel that anti-sharia laws are constitutional? Why or why not?

The Noisy Room: Sharia is the political arm of Islam. It cannot be separated from Islam. It is religious law. It is therefore directly antithetical to the First Amendment in that it seeks not to make law concerning the establishment of religion, but to achieve that end by making religion established law.

I do believe anti-sharia laws are Constitutional if worded and applied correctly. These are, in my opinion, not anti-religious laws, but laws to prevent Islam from infringing on the First Amendment rights of Americans. Notice that the bill did not mention ‘sharia’ directly, so it would not be declared discriminatory. These laws are necessary to prevent the spread of sharia law. Freedom of religion and the way we live in America should be free, not dictated by one aggressive religion that seeks to dominate all others.

This law is modeled after the American Laws for American Courts Act, which is designed to protect American citizens’ constitutional rights against the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially, sharia.

Sharia law is directly at odds with our Constitutional principles of equal protection and due process, as well as freedom of religion, speech and assembly. These foreign laws typically enter our court system through the principle of comity (mutual respect of each country’s legal system). Most courts at the state and federal levels grant comity unless the American Laws for American Courts Act has been passed into law in the state. The followers of Islam are using our own court system against Americans to subjugate and dominate us. If you will, a soft coup meant to overthrow from within.

As my associate Robert Spencer has pointed out, “Sharia is also political and supremacist, mandating a society in which non-Muslims do not enjoy equality of rights with Muslims.” This is why anti-sharia laws are so important. They are meant to prevent this authoritarian, unconstitutional and oppressive political and social system from destroying the freedoms that Americans enjoy.

Thomas Jefferson was right… it doesn’t matter whether my neighbor believes in one god or seventeen; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. But when a neighbor or associate believes that his God commands him to pick my pocket or break my leg, his beliefs become a matter of grave concern for me and any who do not share those beliefs. To support sharia law is to support subjugation.

The Independent Sentinel: Anti-Sharia’h laws are Constitutional because Shariah is a separate system of justice which cannot work within our Constitution and justice system. They are seditious.

JoshuaPundit: I think Kansas is very much on the right track. You can’t simply single out sharia, much as it deserves it because of its inhuman, discriminatory and anti-Bill of Rights diktats. You need to broadly legislate against all foreign law being taken into consideration when ruling from the bench, which is what the Kansas statute did. Do that, and the laws are indeed constitutional.

Otherwise we are headed for the situation that exists in Britain, where sharia law is the equal of English common law, with numerous sharia courts set up at taxpayer’s expense and mandatory for Muslims in civil matters. The result has been a major loss of legal rights as a free society would determine them for Muslim women.

In U.S. jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has generally ruled in favor of religious freedom except when its practices directly contradict established U.S. law. Thus, some rites practiced in Voodoo and Santeria that amount to felony animal torture here in America are outlawed, even though they are inherently a part of those religions. Likewise, the common sharia mandated Muslim practices of stoning or whipping adulteresses, killing Muslim apostates and homosexuals, the murders of women known as honor killings (which are occurring with increasing regularity here in America), wife beating and other practices mandated by sharia, directly contradict established U.S law. The same is true of polygamy… at least thus far!

Sharia and other foreign law has no place in American courts. And while sharia especially has no place in any civilized free society, it must be lumped in with other foreign codes to be eliminated. Hopefully Kansas has shown the way.

Bookworm Room: This is a very interesting question because it can go either way when it comes to constitutionality. That’s not because our Constitution is so flexible. It’s because Sharia is both a civil and a religious institution. To the extent it’s a civil system, with rules that extend far beyond core religious doctrine, American states ought to be able to legislate with impunity. However, because Sharia law is inextricably intertwined with the religion — since everything emanated directly from the Prophet who, in turn, spoke with God — that poisonous mixture of civil and religious law constrains legislatures.

I suspect that the best way to deal with Sharia law is to attack it one rule at a time. I would go after burqas first. Mohamed made his wives wear burqas so that his enemies couldn’t accuse them of wrongdoing that would then shame the prophet. Sharia law therefore imposes the burqa, not because Mohamed mandated it as a core religious doctrine but, instead, to emulate his conduct. Because the burqa serves a social, not a religious purpose, the full-face covering burqa can be banned. There’ll be an uproar, of course, but that doesn’t mean that the Constitution can be used as a bludgeon against those states that hold that, for public safety reasons, no one can be on the streets wearing any garment that obscures their face from hairline to hairline and chin to chin. Incidentally, robbers, hoodie wearers and costume party attendees will also protest such a law.

For the most part, though, provided that Sharia law does not violate state or federal laws and provided that women are not being coerced into living under Sharia law, there isn’t much we can do legislatively. What we really should do is abandon the morally stifling cultural relativism that hides behind politically correct multiculturalism. These Marxist proscriptions on free speech prevent us from speaking out freely against Sharia’s more vile practices. This is America and we should be able to use our public squares (and public schools) to speak out against behaviors that are antithetical to American culture and values.

http://www.trevorloudon.com/2013/02/forum-are-anti-sharia-laws-constitutional/

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