Right Wing Nut House

My latest at PJ Media needs no intro, nor any explanation. It is what it is.

A sample:

I’ve never had the pleasure of having a black person as a best friend, or anything beyond a casual acquaintance. I’ve never dated a black woman, nor have I ever asked one out. I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s in an all-white suburb of Chicago. I went to an all-white Catholic boys high school and a nearly all-white private college.

I’ve never lived in a town that is more than 10% black, nor have I ever lived in a city run by blacks. I’ve never had a black next-door neighbor, nor have I lived in a neighborhood where blacks were more than a scattered presence.  I have never had occasion to visit an all-black neighborhood or attend an event where a majority of the crowd is black. And I’ve never been approached by a black man while walking down a dark street at night, wondering if I should cross the street or not.

I suppose this makes me sheltered, naive, even ignorant of the way the world works and the how the racial divide colors our attitudes in our everyday lives. Frankly, I don’t care. I’ve never cared. Race has never been a factor in any decision I’ve made about where to live, where to work, or who my friends are. I’ve never been about to sign a lease to an apartment and stopped short, saying to myself, “Gee — maybe I should try to find a place that has more diversity.” Nor have I ever turned down a job because there weren’t enough black people working there. I’ve never avoided blacks, nor have I made a conscious effort to cultivate a friendship of a black person because I believed it would expand my horizons, or make me — somehow — a better person.

Of course, I can afford this attitude because I’m white. I doubt very much that there has ever been a black person in the history of America who has lived a life without thinking about race in some way or another almost every day. But I don’t dwell on such matters. Why should I? Because it proves I “care”? Spare me the sanctimony. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody, least of all those who feel it necessary to tell the rest of us how insensitive or racist we are because we don’t weep for the unfortunates of the world.

The RINO Hour of Power is back! Two of the most famous RINO’s on the web — Jazz Shaw and Rick Moran — are ready to rock your political world with their unique blend of humor, wit, and sharp analysis.

Jazz Shaw is on a top secret RINO mission this week so talk show host Jeff Kropf, from KUIK Portland will be sitting in the co-host chair

Joining Jeff and Rick will be J. Christian Adams, former attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, current columnist at PJ Media, and writes the Election Law Center blog.  A discussion of issues surrounding the Trayvon Martin shooting and voting rights issues will be addressed. Adams is author of the book, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department[

Listen live at 8:00 PM eastern time. A podcast will be available shortly after the end of the show.

You can join us live by clicking the icon below or by clicking here.

The RINO Hour of Power is back! Two of the most famous RINO’s on the web — Jazz Shaw and Rick Moran — are ready to rock your political world with their unique blend of humor, wit, and sharp analysis.

Joining Jazz and Rick will be Thomas Lifson, founder and publisher of the American Thinker. The president’s comments about the Supreme Court and other issues of the day will be discussed.

Listen live at 8:00 PM eastern time. A podcast will be available shortly after the end of the show.

You can join us live by clicking the icon below or by clicking here.

My latest at FPM is about the failed UN peace plan being pushed by former Sec Gen Kofi Annan and the “Friends of Syria” getting closer to calling outright for the arming of the rebels in the Free Syrian Army.

But I was a little surprised to read about the extent of Islamist influence in the councils of the opposition — including the “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood.

The SNC met earlier in the week, trying with little success to paper over its differences. The Kurdish delegation walked out in the middle of the conference, claiming their concerns were not being met, while several secular members had quit in disgust last month, saying that the organization was “undemocratic” and was being dominated by Islamists. Working feverishly, Turkish diplomats managed to save the conference from catastrophe by luring back many of those who quit, getting the SNC to agree to expand its membership and try to work more democratically. The Kurds, however, refused to return citing the SNC’s unwillingness to include a reference to Kurdish autonomy in its statement on a post-Assad Syria.

So far, the SNC and the rest of the Syrian opposition has been hopelessly fractured in almost every way - from agreeing on an immediate agenda to help the FSA to violent disagreements over the future of a post-Assad Syria. But there is one group within the SNC that is organized, dedicated to throwing Assad out, and clear about both its immediate goals and long term plans.

The Muslim Brotherhood - once banned in Syria - is on the comeback trail and its resurgence should give Western powers pause before agreeing to arm any of the opposition groups.

The Brotherhood was last seen in Syria during the 1980s when Assad’s father Hafez cracked down on its headquarters in the city of Hama, murdering up to 10,000 during a bloody insurrection. But in reality, the Brothers had never left - they simply went underground. While most of the leaders were in exile, the structure of the group remained intact through a network of cells and activists. It was the same tactic used in Egypt after Hosni Mubarak’s crackdown and has led to victory at the polls there. While Assad continued to arrest and execute Brotherhood members, he could never stamp out the movement completely.

Now, with the secular opposition in disarray, the Muslim Brotherhood is re-emerging with surprising strength and cohesiveness. Some opposition members say that the Brotherhood is using money and weapons to gain influence in the council, tapping its donor base spread throughout the Middle East. One secular dissident who broke away from the SNC last month, Kamal Labwani, claims the SNC is “a liberal front for the Muslim Brotherhood. ” Islamist members of the council deny this, saying that they want a pluralistic Syria where all factions and sects are represented in government.

What’s clear is that at the SNC meeting last week, the Muslim Brotherhood was forced to compromise and expand the SNC to include more secular groups. Of the 350 members of the SNC, it is believed that 270 are Islamists, Salafis, and other Sunni radicals who want to depose Assad both because he is a member of the Alawite sect of Shia Islam and because of his oppression.

I saw the term “moderate” applied to the Brotherhood in both the New York Times and by AP. Are they serious? What is their definition of “moderate?”

My definition does not include the destruction of the state of Israel as a part of its charter. Or the murder of Jews as many of the more radical members call for.

I am not insensate to the realities of politics in the Middle East - especially since the Brotherhood was the only organized political force in many countries where oppressive governments ruled. But before supporting the Islamists, I would think that as an absolute minimum requirement for our granting them legitimacy would be for them to foreswear their desire to destroy Israel. This is ridiculously simple minded. And for the US government to deal with outfits like the Muslim Brotherhood as if they were simply the kinds of thugs and dictators who we have dealt with in the past is just nuts.

The RINO Hour of Power is back! Two of the most famous RINO’s on the web — Jazz Shaw and Rick Moran — are ready to rock your political world with their unique blend of humor, wit, and sharp analysis.

Joining Jazz and Rick will be Roger Simon, an award winning screenwriter and CEO of PJ Media. The gang will discuss issues surrounding the Trayvon Martin tragedy.

Listen live at 8:00 PM eastern time. A podcast will be available shortly after the end of the show.

You can join us live by clicking the icon below or by clicking here.

The shooting toll: 2 dead, 8 more wounded. Most of them random. Most of them involving men under the age of 25.

Are they all African American? The Chicago Tribune does not give the race of the victims or the shooters. But you’d be hard pressed to find a white face on the South Side and West Side neighborhoods where these shootings occurred:

A 22-year-old man was fatally shot at a Far South Side liquor store Saturday evening, police said, and a 46-year-old man was killed about 45 minutes later.

At least six others were shot on the South and West sides overnight.

The younger man was shot to death at the store near 133rd Street and Indiana Avenue about 8:45 p.m., said Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Darryl Baety. Someone outside fired, hitting the man in the chest, police said.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office identified him as Timothy Scott, of the 13300 block of South Calumet Avenue. He was pronounced dead at the scene about 9 p.m., officials said.

[...]

About 9:30 p.m., the 46-year-old man was shot in the chest and right bicep and found in an alley by responding officers, according to police. Officers found Randy Streeter, 46, on the 1800 block of West 63rd Street in the West Englewood neighborhood, authorities said.

We live in a country where the race of the victim and the shooter actually matter - that the tragedy of an early death can be quantified by the color of the skin of the dead person’s assailant. If both victims are black, or the victim is white and the shooter is black, this is somehow less meaningful, less important, less a tragedy than if a “white Hispanic” kills an unarmed young black man.

What’s wrong with that picture? How did we reach a point where this kind of race madness afflicts both white and black?

Hundreds of people marched in support of “justice” for Trayvon Martin in Chicago on Sunday. Everyone wishes for this, whether it lead to Mr. Zimmerman’s punishment for violating the law or his exoneration. Who will march for justice for Timothy Scott? Or the ten victims of gun violence last weekend in Chicago? Or the dozens of other dead people killed around the country in random and not so random shootings? Each death every bit the monumental loss for that family as for the family of young Mr. Martin. Each killing wracking the neighborhood and community where the dead lay as the pain caused by Mr. Martin’s death in Sanford, FL.

Selective outrage is morally reprehensible. Those who seek to make political hay out of this tragedy - including the president of the United States - need to step back and examine the objective reality of the situation. You must reject the notion that Mr. Martin’s death was any more tragic, any less a tragedy than any other death of a young man whose life was cut short by gun violence.

Because when you strip away everything else, all you are left with is politics. And if that is truly what all of this ink being spilled, pixels being created, and tears being shed - real or crocodile - is all about, the injustice, dear friends, is being perpetrated by you and not the Sanford police, Mr. Zimmerman, or the white race.

This blog originally appears on The American Thinker

For those of us who are fans — and always will be fans — of the marvelous Edgar Rice Burroughs series John Carter of Mars, the news that the film version will lose somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million is depressing. The BBC critic Mark Kermode summed up the movie’s major problem:

The storytelling is incomprehensible, the characterization is ludicrous, the story is two and a quarter hours long and it’s a boring, boring, boring two and a quarter hours long.

The film cost a staggering $250 million to make and another $100 million to promote. A Disney spokesman confirmed to the Daily Mail the bad news, saying, “In light of the theatrical performance of John Carter, we expect the film to generate an operating loss of approximately $200 million.”

What went wrong? One of the most beloved sci-fi series of all time is set to become the biggest financial flop in Hollywood history.

Some critics point to the director and producers as being in over their heads. That’s one of those criticisms that is impossible to prove, but sounds like the critic knows something about making movies. In fact, the director, Andrew Stanton, was no stranger to blockbuster projects, and treated the source material with respect — even reverence.

But I agree with this notion from Rick Liebling, the Creative Culturalist at Y&R New York:

Indiana Jones on Mars? Sequels and theme park attractions? That’s why movies like this (or just about any other ‘blockbuster’) suck. They are viewed as franchise vehicles or cross-promotional, money-spinning opportunities. I’m not opposed to those things by the way, but when they are the raison d’etre, well all you’re going to get is a steaming turd.

Beyond the Hollywoodisms and other inside-industry explanations, there is the cultural chasm between the world in which John Carter was originally created by Burroughs and the less literate, less imaginative, more realistic world into which the film was released.

Chris Queen did an excellent job of fleshing out the history and background of the John Carter novels for PJ Media prior to the film’s release. In 1911 when the first story appeared in in the pulp magazine The All Story, the Civil War had been over less than 50 years. Almost everyone knew a veteran from that war, or saw them during parades and other patriotic events. The war was still alive for kids and young adults at that time, making the character John Carter live in ways that we can’t even imagine.

While Burroughs’ time was more literate, it was the imagination that forged a connection to the stories and characters and created such a powerful hold on our affections. In an age before film, before TV, before radio, there was only the reader, the written word, and however we imagined the world being created by the author. Burroughs prose could be turgid at times — to our ears anyway — but the compelling way in which he described his world of Barsoom far surpassed any attempts we might make today to translate the author’s imagined adventures to the screen. There are simply no cultural touchstones that connect the world of Burroughs with our world today. A young boy living in pre-World War I America imagined Barsoom far differently that I did in the 1960’s. And it is likely that most kids today hadn’t even read the books, waiting instead for the video game.

When the first trailer came out, my curiosity was intense. What was the filmaker’s vision of what the 4-armed, betusked Green Men looked like? Did they come close to the picture in my mind’s eye of a thoat? What would Dejah Thoris be wearing? Ultimately, it was a disappointment — had to be a disappointment. That’s the sticking point; even for fans of the series, everyone had their own private and intensely personal vision of what the characters should look like. For that, we can’t blame the film makers. They actually did an amazing job in bringing Tars Tarkas and the thoat to life:

Besides, everyone today knows that there is no life on Mars, could never be life on Mars, thus destroying the premise of the movie from the outset. And since most of the potential movie-going audience had no preconceived notions of the source material, and had no treasured memories of being swept up by the narrative, most of the audience ended up at sea — caught between wanting to suspend belief and their own realistic assumptions about Mars. In the end, how could you ignore what your own eyes have shown you about the Red Planet? We’ve had rovers exploring the surface of Mars for more than a decade. Those spectacular images of utter desolation were, in their own way, far more interesting than the world that Stanton tried to create on a Hollywood sound stage.

It’s a shame that John Carter was a flop. There will be no sequels. Nor will there be any lunch boxes, action figures, kids’ pajamas, battery operated thoats, and almost certainly no talking Tars Tarkas dolls.

But we’ll always have John Carter as Edgar Rice Burroughs imagined him in his wonderful series of books. For that, they can keep their $200 million and leave me dreaming about dating Dejah Thoris’ sister while saving Barsoom from the evil designs of evil men.

This article originally appeared at PJ Media Lifestyle.

The RINO Hour of Power is back! Two of the most famous RINO’s on the web — Jazz Shaw and Rick Moran — are ready to rock your political world with their unique blend of humor, wit, and sharp analysis.

Joining Jazz and Rick will be Bridget Johnson, Washington, D.C. editor for PJ Media. The gang will discuss the Illinois primary and other hot topics making news today.

Listen live at 8:00 PM eastern time. A podcast will be available shortly after the end of the show.

You can join us live by clicking the icon below or by clicking here.

My preview of the Illinois primary is up at PJ Media. And with recent polls showing Romney pulling away to a double digit lead, it may turn out to be a blowout for the Mittster:

Silver’s model for Mississippi gave Santorum only a 2% chance of winning that race. But it may be asking a lot for the candidate to overcome Romney in a state that is tailor-made for his brand of Republicanism. Illinois’ history is replete with GOP moderates winning statewide races, including recent governors Jim Thompson, Jim Edgar, and George Ryan, as well as a tradition of Senate moderates like Everett Dirksen and Charles Percy.

But the party has changed over the last 20 years and moderates have a far more difficult time in state-wide primaries. Moderate State Senator Kirk Dillard lost to social conservative Bill Brady in the GOP contest for governor in 2010. Brady narrowly lost to the politically damaged Democrat Pat Quinn, who served as impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich’s lieutenant governor. But current GOP Senator Mark Kirk (rehabbing from a serious stroke) seems to have bridged the gap between the social right and more secular-oriented conservatives with a successful 2010 campaign that stressed economic issues and his leadership qualities.

So while there is a history and tradition of moderate conservatism in Illinois, recent candidates are decidedly farther to the right, reflecting the rise of social conservatives in the party hierarchy. Romney hopes to tap the latent strain of secular conservatism that is most prevalent in the sprawling suburbs of Chicago, while tea party folk and evangelicals, who will make up around 40% of the GOP vote on Tuesday, will break hard for Santorum.

There isn’t exactly zero enthusiasm for Romney in the metro area of Chicago. His rallies have been well-attended — as one would expect from the good advance work being done by his team. But they lack the fire of the true believers who are showing up in droves at Santorum appearances. Romney spoke at the University of Chicago on Monday where the crowd was large, respectful, and, if not enthusiastic, genuinely pleased with the candidate’s message:

Since the debacle of 2006 senate race where Jack Ryan — who had a decent shot of beating Obama — was forced out of the race because of revelations about his divorce to actress Jeri Ryan, (replacing him with the nincompoop Alan Keyes), the IL GOP has barely recovered its equilibrium. They nominated a hard line social conservative for governor in 2010, Bill Brady, who failed to beat an extremely vulnerable Democrat in Pat Quinn. The more moderate alternative — Ken Dillard — would almost certainly have won going away. But he lost to Brady by a scant 119 votes in the primary and Quinn won the general despite serving as Lt. Governor to the disgraced Rod Blagojevich.

Dillard was moderate — by today’s GOP standards. But recent GOP state-wide winners like Senator Mark Kirk and Judy Baar Topinka are more conservative than just about any state office holders in the 80’s and 90’s. The IL GOP has lurched to the right in the last decade as social conservatives are now dominating the party’s leadership. The result has been a shrinking of the number of self-identified Republicans in Illinois as many moderates have either switched parties or gone indie. The Chicago suburbs — once a bastion of Republicanism — are now far less reliable as GOP voters. This has made Illinois - once a classic swing state — as deep blue as any Democratic state in the union save Massachusetts when it comes to federal elections.

Mitt Romney will not recapture most of these moderates for the Republican party. His pandering to the social right might get him the nomination, but it is doubtful that he will beat Favorite Son Obama in November. Perhaps that was never possible. But until the IL GOP rights itself and gets back to its roots, they will continue to lose state-wide races to Democrats and keep Illinois in the Democratic column for presidential elections.

The RINO Hour of Power is back! Two of the most famous RINO’s on the web — Jazz Shaw and Rick Moran — are ready to rock your political world with their unique blend of humor, wit, and sharp analysis.

Joining Jazz and Rick will be a special guest from the political blogging world. The gang will discuss the AL and MS primaries tonight as well as what’s in store for the race down the road.

Listen live at 8:00 PM eastern time. A podcast will be available shortly after the end of the show.

You can join us live by clicking the icon below or by clicking here.