Has America Gone Crazy the Last Two Weeks?

On a trip that included a leg in a Blackhawk helicopter, I stepped off a KLM jet at LAX Monday after nearly a day in the air and found that apparently, during a short 9-day absence, my country had gone insane. 

I was in Kosovo and largely out of touch with things happening back here in the States.  I had no Internet, limited phone connectivity, and access only to CNN.  This means that while I was gone I received nothing in the way of useful information.  So imagine my surprise at all the news when I returned home.

Maybe you were not aware of it, but apparently the United States government now pretty much owns General Motors. I’m going to say that again, because it’s nuts – especially to those of us a certain age (44) who always saw GM as pretty much the Cadillac of American capitalism. The government owns General Motors.  Let that notion roll around in your think-gourd for a few seconds. 

I’m not really clear on the technical political science term for this phenomenon, since at UC San Diego my major was Coors Light with a minor in failed relationships, but that sounds an awful lot like socialism.  (more…)

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Tags: Abdulhakim Muhammad, David Carradine, David Letterman, James von Brunn, kosovo
Posted Jun 15th 2009 at 10:32 am in News, Politics | 157594No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/06/15/has-america-gone-completely-nuts-in-the-last-two-weeks/Has+America+Gone+Crazy+the+Last+Two+Weeks%3F2009-06-15+17%3A32%3A18Kurt+Schlichter

Examining Leftist Thinking

The question that’s been preying on my mind is who is best suited to study those strange beings known as liberals.  It strikes me that they’d be fit subjects for psychiatrists, who might be in a position to figure out why they revere the people they do — people such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Al Gore and Ted Kennedy — men who haven’t a single notable accomplishment to their name, aside from either winning elections or eliminating them altogether.  Or perhaps it would be more appropriate for biologists to delve into the left-wing organism, and determine how it is possible that creatures without brains could have survived so long in an often hostile environment.

If you don’t believe that liberalism is a serious malady, consider that Paul Krugman of the New York Times, when addressing Sonia Sotomayor’s remark about an Hispanic woman being better qualified than a white man to be a judge, said that she was merely being entertaining.  Even if Mr. Krugman is, as his comment suggests, more easily entertained than a backward three-year-old, I have a feeling that he wasn’t nearly as forgiving when Trent Lott, on the occasion of Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday in 2002, said it was a shame that the old Dixiecrat hadn’t been elected president in 1948. (more…)

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Tags: 57 states, Afghanistan, Al Gore, Barack Hussein Obama, Barney Frank
Posted Jun 11th 2009 at 5:03 am in Politics | 15668213 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bprelutsky/2009/06/11/notes-from-the-liberal-front/Examining+Leftist+Thinking2009-06-11+12%3A03%3A57Burt+Prelutsky

A Hero’s More Than a Sandwich

One of the good things that came out of the tragic events of 9/11 is that heroism has reacquired some of its original luster.  I’m not certain when it lost it, not at all certain when bravery above and beyond the call of duty gave way to meaning nothing more or less than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Looking back, I have an idea it happened during the Jimmy Carter administration when hostages were taken in Tehran.  People who had been abducted by the minions of Ayatolah Khomeni, and held captive by Iranian thugs, were being widely hailed as heroes by the American media. 

I’m not suggesting that a hostage can’t also be a hero.  Apparently Sen. John McCain behaved like one when he was a POW, volunteering to be beaten by the Vietnamese in order to spare the men in his charge.  But I’m afraid that your run-of-the-mill hostage is no more a hero than were any of the unfortunate passengers in the planes that were crashed into the World Trade Center. 

It is appropriate to grieve for innocent victims, but we should stop short of lionizing them.  Otherwise, how do we distinguish between those who simply die and those who perish trying to save others?  For instance, the U.S. Air Force pilot who was shot down behind enemy lines, surviving on bugs and swamp water in Kosovo, was not a hero; the pilots who risked their own necks flying in to save his, were.  (more…)

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Tags: 9/11, athletes, heroes, kosovo, Marines
Posted May 25th 2009 at 8:44 am in Featured Story, Military, Politics | 142918No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bprelutsky/2009/05/25/a-heros-more-than-a-sandwich/A+Hero%27s+More+Than+a+Sandwich2009-05-25+15%3A44%3A55Burt+Prelutsky

Sergeants Rock

I just cannot get behind this Star Trek rebirth.  The whole thing is just so unrealistic.  Not the warp speed or phasers or beaming about the universe – those are at least remotely plausible.  I am talking about the fact that the starship Enterprise is composed entirely of officers and yet it still seems to function.  Where are the non-commissioned officers (NCO), the petty officers and sergeants who actually make any military organization run?  No, I can suspend disbelief over Klingons and tribbles, and I actively support the notion of green alien hotties.  But the idea of a functioning military unit without sergeants is just a wormhole too far.

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Hollywood movies often focus on the commanders, the captains and colonels, but they have also managed to highlight some great sergeants as well.  When you are picking out DVDs for next weekend, remember that May 16th is Armed Forces Day and consider a few selections that show the sergeant in all his gruff and grumbling glory. 

If you have never experienced the joy of going through basic training and do not plan to, your first stop should be Full Metal Jacket, with R. Lee Ermey’s legendary portrayal of a Marine drill instructor who must have missed out on the block of instruction on sensitivity.  I saw this in the theater about a week before I reported to Basic.  That was a poor idea. (more…)

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Tags: A Bridge Too Far, Afghanistan, Al Matthews, Aliens, An Officer and a Gentleman
Posted May 11th 2009 at 4:47 pm in Entertainment, Military | 1310103 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/05/11/sergeants-rock/Sergeants+Rock2009-05-11+23%3A47%3A39Kurt+Schlichter

The Real Hollywood Supports Our Troops

As a veteran, I want to say “Thanks” to Hollywood.

Too often, the only thing we hear about the Industry is that a new movie is coming out that portrays our soldiers as near mindless half-wits turned into raving murderers by America’s unjust wars. But that kind of nonsense is not the whole story.

Recently, J.J. Abrams, the director of the new “Star Trek” re-boot packed up cast members like Chris Pine, Eric Bana, and the lovely Zoe Saldana and flew off to premiere their film. This premiere was not for a bunch of overpaid, over-pampered movie stars in some gaudy theater. Instead, it was in a dusty hangar in the Middle East, and the audience was made up of our troops. And that is not the exception. (more…)

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Tags: "Extreme Makeover", Chris Pine, Eric Bana, Jeff Ross, JJ Abrams
Posted Apr 13th 2009 at 5:58 am in Celebrity News, Entertainment, Featured Story, Military | 1044384 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/04/13/the-real-hollywood-supports-our-troops/The+Real+Hollywood+Supports+Our+Troops2009-04-13+12%3A58%3A28Kurt+Schlichter

Hillary Presses the Red Button–Again

The perpetually bumbling Obama administration wrote the wrong word on a gift for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. It was a plastic red button on a black base with the Russian word “peregruzka” printed above it, as Politico.com reported: (more…)

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Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, cold war, georgia, Hillary Clinton
Posted Mar 7th 2009 at 1:08 pm in Political Humor, Politics | 7496689 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jgorin/2009/03/07/hillary-presses-the-red-button-again/Hillary+Presses+the+Red+Button--Again2009-03-07+21%3A08%3A53Julia+Gorin