Anyway, I digress. Here’s what I think about “The Blind Side.”

The book was better. But the movie’s pretty daggum good too. I only read the book because a friend told me it would never work as a movie, anyway, and there was no point in waiting. My friend was right, the book is dense and wordy, and roughly half of it is about the evolution of the left tackle position in professional football. The Michael Oher stuff takes up the other half, and that’s what John Lee Hancock focuses on here. He gets the vast majority of it exactly right.

Sandra Bullock is well-cast as Leigh Anne Tuohy, a well-to-do Memphis interior decorator who takes in a homeless kid who is also a very hot football commodity. His name’s Michael Oher, and he’s immense. Huge. Massive. Surprisingly, he’s also quick on his feet, agile, and has a pretty sweet jump shot. The movie finds a clever way to use his hoops skills to introduce Michael to his future high school football coach, Coach Cotton.

The race and class issues are addressed, and as in the book, we get a sense of how political correctness has actually made these problems worse, not better. No one can seem to believe that the Tuohy’s take Michael in for any reason other than personal gain.

You know from the trailer and from real life that Michael is black. For some reason, this matters to a lot of people. And only some of them are openly racist.

The movie, like the book, contains textbook examples of Christian-minded conservatism in practice. Michael’s mom, it turns out, is addicted to crack cocaine. Leigh Anne meets Michael’s mom, and is remarkably non-judgmental. This is a great-ish performance from Bullock, playing an unapologetically conservative woman. Giving great support are Tim MacGraw as Leigh Anne’s husband, who was a star point guard for Ole Miss, and Ray McKinnon as the head ball coach. Newcomer Quinton Aaron excels as Michael Oher, a role that I thought would be nearly impossible to pull off. Several Southeastern Conference football coaches make cameos, to varying degrees of success. I wanted Georgia Coach Mark Richt to show up so that the actor playing Oher could lay him out and maybe knock some damn sense into him, but…

There’s bit of a scuttlebutt on BH over the swipe at George W. Bush. Some folks see it as a typically liberal slam of the former president. I didn’t know about this joke before watching the movie, and I found it rather innocuous. It was a federal government building, and W. was the head man at the time…didn’t bother me. In fact, one of Bush’s problems was that the Federal Government grew under his watch, and he wasn’t as conservative as advertised, so it didn’t bother me one little bit.

If you like football movies, this one’s better than “Remember the Titans,” not as good as “North Dallas Forty.” Good performances, some approaching great, and a lot of humor make this movie an inspirational choice for your family this Thanksgiving.

Nothing came to me but more questions.  Satisfied that no further gastric contributions could tell the tale, I rose from the bathroom floor, shrugged unconvincingly and hit the flusher.   What a perfect way to end unseemly encounters.  Flush them. 

I proceeded to weave an unsteady trail down the hallway in the general direction of a coffee pot.  My daughter had arisen before me and FOX News was already drifting in from the other room; Bill Hemmer recounting the latest on the decision to move the admitted 911 terrorists to NYC for trial. 

And then it struck me like a wet trout. 

Why – I hadn’t been drinking the night before at all!  This was no hangover!  This was Bizarro-World 2009 (or as some call it, the Barrack Obama Presidency) — in full flower!

Recovering from the jolt of reality that had knocked coffee grounds everywhere, slipping and sliding on them I staggered into the living room to stare at the TV screen.  Yes, it was coming back to me like a recurring bad rash – the Commies had taken over as America slept.  And we were all out of 2% cortisone cream. 

As the inebriative disorientation of an Obama reality continued to blur my vision, I recounted some of the more recent national realities. 

Emergency stimulus bills – $800 billion in spending, cash-for-clunkers, tax cheat cabinet, Marxist czars, quadrupling the national debt within 10 months…and as Communist China lectures us about deficit spending and fiscal responsibility…Obama pushes hard for a socialized medicine bill that will cost taxpayers at least two trillion dollars, nationalize one-fifth of the U.S. economy, and drive insurance companies, hospitals and doctors bankrupt, leading to rationed health care and a gross decline in research and overall quality of medicine.

But I don’t want to rush to judgment.  It’s only been ten months, give the guy a chance.

Huh!!????

And in the We-don’t-rush-to-judgment category… Major Hasan’s shooting spree at Ft. Hood that left 13 dead and 30 wounded seems to have the mainstream media baffled.  It seems he must’ve been a nut.  He must’ve been tormented by fellow soldiers for his religious views.  He must’ve been a victim of the system…who simply snapped.   And we don’t want to rush to judgment that he may have been a Muslim jihadist murderer terrorist, dead square in our midst, at the largest Army base in the country…that simply wanted to kill as many Americans as possible for his jihad, for his Allah.  Gee, sure didn’t send up any red flags…even with the bitter and angry Wahabbist rantings to his fellow soldiers, his communication with a noted Muslim radical cleric, and oh yeah, his phone calls, documented by the army, to Al Qaeda!

Hmmm…how could anyone possibly have seen anything bad coming….?

And now… The people that admitted to having masterminded the destruction of the Twin Towers and murdered three thousand Americans are to be put on trial a few blocks from where the towers fell in downtown Manhattan. 

As a “Star Trek” alumnus, I am bereaved that the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty!” has been so over-used…or I’d be tempted to use it now.

The ACLU will ensure that these self-admitted terrorists’ ‘rights’ will be guarded as they’re extended every legal privilege, the same as a law-abiding citizen of the U.S.  Upon discovery it will be revealed that they were not Miranda-ized and made fully aware of their ‘rights’ when they were apprehended.  Upon discovery it will be revealed that ‘proper’ search-and-seizure methods were not used when these miscreants were arrested.  Wire-tapping may have been used that the ACLU will have a problem with.  Three of these fellows were strapped to a board and had water poured over their faces, convincing them that they were in danger of drowning – all in a very successful attempt to procure valuable information that may have saved thousands of more lives of Americans.

And the CIA, the FBI, George W. Bush and the entire U.S. Military will be put on trial for the court of world opinion to evaluate – a years-long, hundred-million dollar dog-and-pony show of a trial for the America-hating Leftists to rally behind.  “You see?  You see how bad we were before?  You see what Bush/Cheney/Halliburton gave you?  Well…we’re not like that anymore.  And to show you how sorry we are…we’re gonna serve up America’s autonomy and exceptionalism on a silver platter.  Everybody come take a bite — who wants white meat?”

In Bizarro-World 2009…up is down.  The good guys get prosecuted and the bad guys walk.  So how many betting men do we have out there?  Has Vegas set the odds yet?  And what’s the line and spread on these five guys walking?

In a rush to re-establish to the world our supposed, and heretofore, absent humility and global cooperation – and in the name of a misguided allegiance to some missing ‘higher good’ for humanity, we have abruptly changed direction and now champion a new banner – ‘Peace through supplication…strength through softness’.

Future Al Jazeera news headline in Arabic:  “The Pussification of America is complete.”

I suppose some will merely deem it to be the natural countermanding of Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George Bush’s ‘cowboy’ persona, in both personal style and foreign diplomacy.  Mr. Obama, in order to counterpoint Mr. Bush’s ‘cowboy swagger’ (Bush calls it “walking”), bows low to foreign heads of state – some would say grovels – and in every tone and rhetoric, apologizes to the world for our excellence and achievement. 

And, oh by the way, we’re sorry we’ve been such horrible racists – unlike you all.

But now that we’ve proven to the international community that we’re no longer racist and are suddenly all too aware that we’re the focal point and primary cause for everything bad, destructive and unstylish in the world — Europe cheers us.  How better to validate their own insistent bend into socialism?  Socialists everywhere just love us now.  Third-world despots embrace our epiphanic rush to change.  Hamas and Hezbollah smile their congratulations at our new enlightenment and willingness to abdicate our superiority of both strength and ideals — all in the name of tolerance and ‘balance’.

Enemies of America everywhere smile warmly at us…as they sharpen their daggers.

Our allies around the globe are getting nervous.  And who could blame them?  I read of Neville Chamberlain’s assurances to his countrymen in 1938 after meeting with Hitler in Munich.  He was certain he had engineered a path to peace in Europe — through appeasement.

Ronald Reagan used to speak of America as a “…shining city on a hill.”  A place of liberty and freedom and personal responsibility; a place people all over the world looked up to and emulated, and couldn’t wait to visit, and even emigrate to legally, to start a new life, a better life for themselves and their families.  He reminded us of our strengths, of our compassion, and of our unending ingenuity, drive and resourcefulness.

Ronald Reagan made us feel good about being an American.  He held us to the high standard of honesty and fiscal responsibility and individual initiative and personal accountability for our actions.  The ultimate result of these ideals was success – success, achievement and excellence, the likes of which the world had never before seen.  And something else we had: Pride in America.  There were no ‘apology tours’… no gestures of contrition… no tacit appeasement, to anyone, anywhere for any reason.  We believed in peace through strength.  And these were not empty words – they were backed by actions.  Reagan meant the words he spoke — and you could take them to the bank.  Reagan spoke of the success that we enjoyed by sticking to our ideals, American ideals.  He said it was ‘morning in America’. 

The image was of the sun coming up in the morning…and not of its setting.

Honest and ardent students of history are not just nervous – they’re alarmed.  This country we know and love, this America, is fast becoming unrecognizable to many of us.  It’s like we’ve had this big wham-jammer of a party…and now we awaken to a monstrous hangover. 

It’s the morning-after in America…only the aspirin bottle is three years away.

You need not work in Hollywood to understand that this is the single most intolerant industry in America today — just watch their product. I wasn’t surprised to learn from Christian Toto that ”The Blind Side” filmmakers couldn’t control themselves. Unless it’s outside the mainstream Hollywood system, a film marketed to traditional American conservatives — much less, Southern Christians! — has to hit us with a leftist sucker punch one way or another. It’s an unwritten rule… 

Hollywood is high school and if you want to sit at the cool kids’ table (i.e. work) you better fit in, and if you’ve been involved in the writing, directing or producing of a film sympathetic towards the most hated demographic (yes, even more hated than terrorists — again, watch the product) in the 9-0 zip code, you had better inoculate yourself.

And that’s what the gratuitous, unnecessary, jarring, take-you-out-of-the-movie shot at Bush is: an inoculation. The filmmakers want to work again; they want to be invited to all the right parties. But if you’re remembered as the person involved in bringing to life a movie only Glenn Beck could love, no matter how big of a hit, that’s not a good thing on the ole’ resume’.

There are notable exceptions, but working in Hollywood — an industry built on social interaction — means getting along with Leftists, and Leftists are religious, regional and ideological bigots of the worst order. The smart people involved in the making of “The Blind Side” knew the Bush shot was bad storytelling — was what what John Boot described as ”a non-sequitur nonpareil” — they just felt, for whatever reason (their own bigotry or career survival), that it was worth it. 

Hollywood is not money or profit-driven. This is an industry engaged in an ideological war with traditional conservative America that doesn’t mind making a profit, but never will at the expense of the cause. Everyone involved in the making of “Blind Side” knew an unnecessary partisan shot at Bush would turn people off. They all knew they were insulting the very audience the film was marketed at for no reason other than to insult them. But there was absolutely no way in hell this thing was going to see the light of day without something for the Hollywood bigots to snicker over.

This is their sandbox, and there’s a ring to kiss if you want to play.

–

Christian Toto:

“The new drama “The Blind Side” tells the story of a homeless black teen who is taken in by a Christian family led by Sandra Bullock.

“It’s a heartwarming story based on the life of NFL lineman Michael Oher.

“So why does the film feel the need to awkwardly squeeze in a slam at former president George W. Bush?”

Get the full details here.

“Independence Day” is one of the most profitable films in history — and after the original “Poseidon Adventure,” one of the greatest bad films ever — but there was no sure-fire, money-making blockbuster sequel because President Bush — The Abraham Lincoln of the Middle East — won the presidency:

“In Independence Day, it was about a king who leads his country into a fight against an outside invader. I didn’t want to make that movie during the Bush years. It was not thought that George W. Bush would have made a great king. Now with Obama, it’s another story.”

That’s straight from the director, the ball-less Roland Emmerich.

Sure, Hollywood is packed with the worst kind of greedy people who demand higher taxes as they shelter millions — who intend to hang on to their platinum health-care plans as they push rationed care – who demand Big Business pay their “fair share” as they beg for tax incentives… Sure, Leftist Hollywood wants to make money, bucketloads if possible, but…

….not at the expense of The Leftist Cause.  

If “G.I. Joe” and “Superman Return”s can make money, great! But if Americanism is necessary for them to make money, no way in hell.

Make a gajillion off an “Independence Day” sequel? Not if it helps Bush. In other words…

No Obama. No sequel. No gajillions.

Hollywood understands this is an ideological war. And if you look at their behavior through that lens, it all makes sense.

–

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Republicans, George W. Bush, CNN, Latino Employees, John Podesta, Marijuana, Snoop Dogg, Babies, Soul Train Awards, and Natalie Portman.

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Health Care Bill, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Nancy Pelosi, Consumer Option, President Obama, George W. Bush, World Series, Gore Vidal, Justin Timberlake, and Bruce Jenner.

A blonde woman, tears running down her face, looks into the camera and pleads, “Why did the Mormons do this to us?”

In a crowd of what I presume are gay activists (and not film goers), a young man sobs so hard that he has to be comforted by a female friend.

–

A bulldyke (I’m guessing) stares out at the viewer, her despondent face sopping wet.

And one of the stars of the film, a pretty gay boy (and ex-Mormon) named Tyler Barrick – who seems have been inspired by Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born – clings to his husband and bawls, “I can’t believe that people could hate us this much!” Really?  I can.

Judging from these nuggets, 8MP signals a new tactic (and new low) in the gay crusade to redefine the traditional meaning of the word “marriage”: frantic blubbering.   The filmmakers, all of whom are gay and most of whom boast street creds from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, seem to think they’ll win hearts and minds with a showy flood of tears.  They won’t.  The LGBT M.O .may have switched from rage to rue, but it’s still missing the mark.

Also irksome about this two-minute pity party are the vexing, tiresome questions it raises for independent gay people who don’t go in for Fire Island, Atlantis Cruises, zero-percent body fat, or mass approval: What’s wrong with this picture – and Why don’t I buy it?

The vast majority of Americans – many of them minorities, and many of them gay - simply believe a child’s best shot at a good life starts with a mother and a father, two consenting people of opposite sexes who can actually reproduce in the first place.  This belief has nothing to do with denying same-sex love, or equality, or rights.  It simply has to do with the basic, biological reality of conceiving and raising children.

Don’t get me wrong:  I’m continually thrilled and inspired by my fellow gays’ ability to build amazing lives, communities, and families for themselves, especially in the face of monumental adversities like AIDS.  And there is something truly heartwarming about the sight of two committed men (or women) reaching beyond themselves to care for a child (or two, or three).  Many gay people make exemplary parents.  We are, after all, human too (for those of you who think otherwise).

But the traditional definition of family remains sacrosanct to most Americans, and has since long before the Stonewall Riots brought gay rights out of the closet.  There’s nothing wrong with trusting in the conventional notion of the nuclear family, just as there is nothing wrong with being openly gay.  These two belief systems need to learn to COEXIST, as the bumper stickers say.  And that requires a two-way street.

“But Spain allows gay marriage – and that’s a Catholic country!” So what.  Spain doesn’t have three hundred million people living in it.

8MP promises to reveal details of a secret, “orchestrated campaign” by the Mormon Church to nefariously ban same-sex marriage across the entire USA.  Okay.  So remind me again what isn’t an orchestrated campaign?  When I see a montage of young, good looking, able-bodied homosexuals wracked with sobs because a church doesn’t approve of their lifestyle – Duh! - that strikes me as a campaign of emotional blackmail on a pretty grand scale.

To lend their conspiracy theory a malevolence it otherwise wouldn’t have, the filmmakers flash images of: George W. Bush (a.k.a. Evil Incarnate) shaking hands with a Mormon honcho; a young gay man bloodied in a riot (”I’m surprised I’m not dead!”), and a lesbian (I think) being led off in handcuffs (just in case you forgot you’re living in a police state).  And no piece of regressive – excuse me, progressive - propaganda would be complete without opportunistic prophecies of “the demise of our democracy!”

It’s true that Mormons, who comprise a measly two per cent of California’s population, managed to raise nearly half of the $22.8 million collected in support of Proposition 8 without drawing a lot of attention to themselves.  That’s modesty for you.  But contrary to popular mythology (and wishful thinking), that doesn’t mean the Church of LDS is the new Nazi Party.  As with the gay community, there is more diversity (of thought) among the pasty-faced followers of John Joseph Smith than meets the eye.

Just as all Muslims are not terrorists, all Mormons are not homophobes.  At the height of Prop 8 hysteria back in October 2008, The New Statesman reported that thousands of LDS believers demanded that their names be removed from Church records so they would not be associated with an organization perceived as being anti-gay.

“It’s been a very divisive issue,” said LA-based Mormon bishop Robert Bennion, who has an openly gay brother (with whom he is very close).  “It raises a lot of questions to which there aren’t a lot of crystal clear answers, and almost everybody feels like you have to be on one side or the other….  In my mind, it’s possible to be in favor of Proposition 8 without being anti-homosexual.”  Again, this is a war over a word.

For contrast, note the choice of words in this thoughtful comment left on an anti-Prop 8 website by a pro-gay marriage activist:  “I was going through the list of [Mormon] contributors and… I noticed that two people have died since making their donations, so I suppose that puts us up by two.  Every little bit helps!”  How many hearts and minds do you suppose he won that day?

8MP appears to be more of an anti-Valentine to Mormonism than a rational case for gay marriage (i.e. payback time for the filmmakers, including Oscar-winning Milk scribe Dustin Lance Black, who narrates).  After all, Mormons are, like the stereotype of Christians, devout white devils, the scapegoats of the age, the new boogeyman of post-9/11 America.

But as Jonah Goldberg posed to his fire-and-brimstone liberal readers:

“If opposition to gay marriage is morally indistinguishable from Jim Crow racism, anti-Semitism and the like (as so many of you say), why on earth aren’t you screaming bloody murder at Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid and the other Democratic politicians who run the US government?  Surely, they matter more than a few Mormon donors.  Why aren’t they bigots even though they hold the same fundamental position as Mormons?”

Thank you.

Meanwhile, where is the liberal rage at the world’s most extreme cadre of homophobes, the Islamic supremacists, whose “orchestrated campaign” against LGBT people goes far beyond preventing them from exchanging vows?  In 8MP, gay protesters display signs decrying “Christo-Fascists” - their oh-so-narrow comfort zone.  Mohammed-Fascists?  Off-limits.  Why?  Well, for one thing, those totalitarian bigots might actually respond.  And we wouldn’t want anyone to lose his or her head – literally – would we?

Unable to imagine a world in which Sarah Jessica Parker might not receive any more GLAAD awards, these short-sighted American whiners suffer glamorously for the camera, tears running carefully down their clean shaven (mostly Caucasian) cheeks.  Because in the Oprah-cized USA, victim-hood is power, and feelings are weapons.

The LGBT community will never be satisfied with civil unions now that the “marriage” seed has been planted – which is too bad since a recent Pew Research Center poll showed that a huge majority of Americans approve of allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements that would bestow many of the same rights as married couples.  As a matter of fact, in the past year alone, support for civil unions has grown significantly among folks who oppose same-sex marriage.  Right here in the knuckle-dragging USA.

That sounds like progress to me.  But true to form, gays aren’t likely to give up the drama.

Should lesbians and gays who want to make a home and raise kids be discriminated against from the federal level down?  Of course not.  Should committed gay partners enjoy the same benefits as married heterosexual couples?  Absolutely – and as far as I can tell, in a growing number of states, they do (and if they don’t, trust me, they will).

So why am I defending the Mormons?  To crib from Flip Wilson, the 8MP trailer made me do it (which may indicate how effective the movie will be when it finally opens).  In the meantime, this is America, not Iran – create your own rules, and move on.  And if you really want to get married, nobody’s stopping you from going to Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or Vermont – or to Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, or Wisconsin for the same thing minus the “m” word.

When the day comes that Barack Obama puts down his golf clubs to repeal DOMA – and gay marriage passes by vote in all 57 states - great!  Until then, can’t we all just get along?

[This dispatch was written by me in December 2008 in southern Afghanistan. It was never published though I recently found it in the unpublished archives. The photos came from the same period.]

Published: from Nepal on 14 October 2009

On May 25, 1961, the President of the United States of America said:

“Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Since early in my term, our efforts in space have been under review. With the advice of the Vice President, who is Chairman of the National Space Council, we have examined where we are strong and where we are not, where we may succeed and where we may not. Now it is time to take longer strides—time for a great new American enterprise—time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.”

And thanks to bold and visionary leadership, the collective intelligence, courage and commitment of Americans from coast to coast, America had seemed to achieve little more than a stunning list of public failures on the way to space. Our rockets exploded on the launch pad. In the air. Burned up on reentry. Or disappeared into solar orbit. But our grandparents never allowed us to be defined by our faults or failures; only how we greeted adversity. Failure after failure after failure. We got up and launched again, into failure. Fine astronauts were lost. And yet today, in 2008, after a dozen Americans have walked on the moon, citizens from no other nation have managed to land on the lunar surface. What inspiration kept the people at NASA going, when their early years were marked seemingly only by failure? The scientists, engineers and space pilots were living the American dream, not a dream of mere perfection, but of valiant and worthwhile effort. President Theodore Roosevelt said in 1910:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

And so I write these words from Afghanistan, as a grandchild of many great men and women who built “America” and bequeathed it to us. The challenges facing us in Afghanistan, and this region in general, are monumental. We have been failing in Afghanistan. We have been losing the war. But losing does not mean lost. Failing does not mean failed. Yet if we are to succeed in this endeavor, we must be realistic that putting people on the moon was more straightforward than lifting Afghanistan from the stone ages.

“Taming” this land and its human inhabitants into a civilized country will require great investments in time, resources, imagination and intelligence. Bringing Afghanistan out of the Stone Age is not a decade-long project; we are already seven years into the war, and it’s only getting worse. Some people say it will take two generations, but more realistically, a century will be needed. Afghanistan is not Iraq. This is a very primitive, almost lunar place. Yes, cocktail party correspondents can surf their way through meetings in Jalalabad, or Kabul, or Mazar-i-Sharif, and come home with reports of success. But they are wrong. And the counterinsurgency “experts” who come here on short trips, and fly home to America or Britain with poison dripping from their lips, spitting words that we are winning, are doing Great Britain, the United States, and our allies a great disservice. Those who came to Afghanistan with open eyes and open minds, and who are not afraid to jeopardize access or careers by reporting truth, will have clearly reported by early 2006 that we were losing ground here. Who are these “experts” who didn’t see this thing for what it was, early on? And now even in 2008, some people bring home messages that this place is not as bad as it really is. Yes, it’s true that we lost but one U.S. soldier to combat in Afghanistan in November of 2008, but we should not let this number confuse us. The Af-Pak war has great potential to devolve into something far worse than what we saw in Iraq. The “experts” who did not sound the alarm by at least 2006, that Afghanistan by then clearly was slipping through our fingers, are no more useful than a fire alarm with dead batteries. A fire alarm with dead batteries is far worse than merely useless. Let the counterinsurgency “experts” step forward, and show us that they put to writing several years ago what is today obvious. We need to know who to listen to, and who to ignore.

We can succeed in Afghanistan, but we cannot pretend this will ever be the Sea of Tranquility.

Our new President will need to demonstrate wisdom and resolve in dealing with Af-Pak. The peril might not yet be obvious, but the consequences are far too grave to ignore. Enemies of humanity are trying to pull India and Pakistan into war. Ignorance is their primary weapon, and Afghanistan is merely one battlefront. Most of these kids will remain illiterate, and the children of their children likely will not be able to read. Even if they were literate, there are few books available in languages such as Dari or Pashto. This kid in Zabul Province is already lost. Afghanistan will be doing well to get his sons and daughters into a school, but more realistically it will be his grandchildren that might first be reached. We must be realistic. America did not succeed in putting people on the moon by hiring mathematicians who could not expertly use the slide rule or correctly perform the math. America succeeded in part by hiring the best mathematicians, along with the best scientists and engineers of all sorts, who possessed powerful intellects, realistic imaginations, and a volatile intolerance for anything less than pure truth. They didn’t drink anyone’s Kool-Aid.

And so President Kennedy said, “First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” And they kept pushing through a painful series of dramatic failures, until, within that same decade, in 1969, the first words spoken from a man on the moon came beamed home to earth:

“Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed.”

And soon astronaut Neil Armstrong was stepping off the ladder, and he said, “That’s one small step for a man. One giant leap for mankind.”

Hard never meant impossible.

The war is intensifying month by month while support for this mission plummets. Your help is crucial to my staying in the war. 2010 will almost certainly prove to be the bloodiest even as coverage dries up. More troops are coming in. The fighting for those who are here is already as tough as any seen in Iraq. Do you trust the Government to tell the truth? Please donate today.

Three times this century the Peace Prize has been given to someone for the simple reason they are not George W. Bush. Perhaps they should rename the Noble Peace Prize the “At Least He’s Not George W. Bush Prize.” Maybe the “Liberal Socialist of the Year Prize,” might be better.

Let’s look at some recent winners and see how they have brought peace to the planet. Al Gore (2007) and Wangari Maathai (2004) both scored the “peace” prize for environmental work. I won’t get into the science behind so-called “global warming,” (AKA: “climate change,” and here in the Midwest “the weather”). Nice and very touchy-feely, but exactly how does that help bring world peace?

Perhaps the biggest joke of all was the awarding of the 2001 prize to the U.N. and Kofi “The Embezzler” Annan. This was followed by the 2005 award to the IAEA and Mohamed ElBaradei for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

The most important reason I am happy that Mr. Obama won the Nobel is that it shows I am not out of the running for next year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. I would like to send the following announcement to the Nobel Committee: In the next four years I intend to write a unified field theory, explain the nature of all sub-atomic particles and produce endless free energy from cold fusion.

The fact that I have said I intend to do these things makes me as qualified to win the Physics prize as Obama was to win the Peace Prize. In fact, time may show that I am more qualified to win my prize because in the next three years and one half years I will do nothing to set the world of physics back. Can President Obama make the same claim in relation to world peace?

Here’s the problem with good intentions: they don’t accomplish anything. This has been, thus far, the legacy of the Obama Administration. Last week he stood before the folks gathered in Washington D.C. for the gay rights rally and pledged to end “Don’t ask don’t tell.” The only thing is you can’t ask him when he will do this because he can’t tell you!

The President said he would do many things and has done very little except to continue the irrational policy of George W.  — that if you spend enough money people will like you. History has shown us that if you throw money at people the only thing they will do is want it to continue.