Raised on the mother's milk of the Saturday Afternoon Matinee

When I was a kid, my mom and dad would take me and my brother to the drive-in to see movies like "Jailhouse Rock" with Elvis. I also remember my parents taking us to the Fox Theater in Redondo Beach, CA. to see the monster film, "The Monster That Challenged the World" where giant mollusk monsters attack coming up out of the sea. Since the Fox Redondo was situated next to the Pacific Ocean, I'll never forget my dread that we might see one of those monsters rising up out of the water on our way back to our car. 

On another occasion, my mom chaperoned me and my friend on a Friday night to see The Spirit of St. Louis" with Jimmy Stewart. What a great film. I felt like I was there in the cockpit with Charles Lindbergh as he was battling fatigue and an annoying fly buzzing around the cockpit.

If Hollywood films were my movie cradle, then Saturday afternoon matinees were my mother's milk, once my mom decided to let me venture out with my friends to the Park Theater on Crenshaw Blvd. in Gardena. She had to overcome the thought of me being run over by a car or beat-up by some neighborhood thugs. Those were the days when no one ever thought about their kid being abducted.

Our first stop was Sav-On Drugs where we could buy 3 candy bars for 10-cents, or 8 candy bars for 25-cents. Even then this was an amazing price and it was several decades before they downsized the candy bars. Even if you decided to buy candy from the theater snack bar, the price was more like 15-cents for a Butterfinger candy bar, and 25-cents for popcorn.

Today, you have to take out a loan to buy popcorn and soda at your local cinema. The matinees seemed to go on forever with movie trailers, Roadrunner, Bugs Bunny & Disney cartoons, shorts like The Three Stooges, and then a double-feature. This was before movie ratings, so you might see a Bob Hope movie paired with Paul Newman's "Long Hot Summer" which was definitely an adult film. But more often than not,  the films would be suited for kids with features like Francis, the Talking Mule, and the Absent-Minded Professor, or Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein paired with Michael Landon in "I Was a Teenage Werewolf."

My tastes were varied and I could just as easily enjoy "The Pit and the  Pendulum" starring Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, South Pacific, "Lawrence of Arabia" with Peter O'Toole, or Ben-Hur with Charlton Heston.

It was the Saturday matinees that started my love affair with motion pictures. In college, I traveled in my VW bug to see the student films at USC and UCLA. I saw the student films of George Lucas (before Star Wars' fame), as well as Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard (after his stint as Opie on Andy Griffith). I also remember an assignment in a college design course which required all of us to go to UCLA on a Thursday night to see Lawrence Olivier's Wuthering Heights, made in 1939 in beautiful b&w. It was BORING and I think I slept through most of it. But the accompanying feature awakened me from my slumber and made my entire trip to Westwood worthwhile: "To Kill a Mockingbird" with Gregory Peck. It too was in b&w but I could not have cared less. I was drawn in to the story of Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the South during the depression who decided to defend a black man. 

This film was so atmospheric. You felt the summer heat wave as Atticus walks in loosening his tie and wiping the perspiration off his forehead. For two hours, this film, told through the eyes of his daughter, Scout, made me feel like I was in the South during the depression and it gave me a glimpse into racism, fear, ignorance and hatred. This film was also the acting debut of Robert Duvall as Boo Radley.

I still have a love for movies and over the years have developed a taste for foreign films. I don't have any problems with subtitles. In fact, I prefer subtitles any day to a dubbed film. (Check out my Pinterest board of favorite documentary films.)

Finally, living here in Western Kentucky, I meet Christians all the time who never go to the movies, and never went to movies as a kid--unless it was a Billy Graham film, or something really gripping like "Thief in the Night." No offense cause I was "saved" at a Billy Graham Crusade and felt that some of the Billy Graham films were pretty decent and entertaining as well as presenting the gospel. I wish I could say the same for "Thief in the Night." But, if all you were able to watch were "Christian films" while growing up, I feel sorry for you. You missed some really great movies, some cinematic masterpieces, which for me personally, opened up the world and brought me face to face with some unforgettable actors in roles I'll never forget.

I am thankful that my mom and dad placed a quarter in my hand every Saturday so I could go to the matinee. It was money and time well-spent. 

Obama declares: "all wars must end...." but doesn't say when? Duh??

Here I am on vacation at Ft. Morgan Beach (a narrow peninsula) on the Gulf, and even though I’ve scanned the Wall Street Journal daily, I've tried to abstain from posting this week. This was supposed to be a get away from the daily grind. 

The view from our front deck. Ft. Morgan beach, Gulf Shores, Alabama

For the most part, I’ve succeed with time in the water, sitting on the beach reading my Nook, eating loads of shrimp while enjoying my own personal air show courtesy of the Navy’s Blue Angels. On their daily flyovers from Pensacola, FL., they engage in incredible maneuvers, heading straight up into the clouds then descending like a bullet to within a few hundred feet from the ocean, followed up by flying upside down with an afterburner trail of smoke. These guys are amazing! Even the Navy for all its political-correctness has not yet succeeded in emasculating the Blue Angels and our Top Gun pilots.

F-18 flyover upside down

Unfortunately, my vacation was interrupted last night by news that President Obama was “resetting the war on terror.” Duh?? What’s that mean??

What grabbed my attention was his babbling statement: 'This War, Like All Wars, Must End'." What tripe! This is RICH, coming from the very man who has been so busy demonizing fat cat bankers, millionaires and billionaires when he should have been targeting Islamic terrorists. Instead for the past five years, Obama’s target has been successful Americans.

"all wars must end..." Well bozo, this one isn't over, as illustrated by the killings of military, more than 10, the same day of his babbling. The idea that Obama will cozy up to the Muslims by closing Guantanamo and sending a hundred or so back to Yemen (so they can fight again) is crazy because at no time in history has a nation released its prisoners until a war came to an end and a treaty was signed.

From my knowledge of history, a war NEVER truly comes to an end until one side (your enemy) is defeated. In other words, WWII did NOT come to an end until Germany and Japan were defeated.

Where would we be today if Germany and Japan had not been conquered and brought to their knees? This is why it’s so foolish to expect a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians to really work. It's not worth the paper it's written on. No peace treaty will succeed until one of them is defeated and humbly brought to the table to sign a treaty as a defeated foe (and that would be the Palestinians). On a similar note, Jesus does not come back to earth to reign and rule until the great Battle of Armageddon where all the nations that attempt to destroy Israel are defeated. He also does not create a new heaven and a new earth until Satan is defeated and sent packing to the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20). 

I have a news flash for Pres. Obama—Al Qaeda is growing and expanding its outreach worldwide, including Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Sudan, Kenya as well as Boko Haram and Ansaru in northern Nigeria who have received training from Al Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is making inroads in Latin America in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. We also have the fast-growing Jemaah Islamiyah terror group in Indonesia.  

According to Obama and the Left,
 Rush is America's greatest threat

The war on radical Islam (and re-read my past posts—most of Islam IS RADICAL) will not be won until it is defeated. Unfortunately, we currently have a president who won’t even use the term “Islamic terrorist.” He is still fighting a battle against America’s greatest enemy: Rich, successful, white, conservative Christians. Oh and the other big enemy (worse than any Islam terrorist) is one that Obama would target with a drone strike if he thought he could get away with it. That enemy? Rush Limbaugh.

The President fires the acting IRS commissioner--I know I'm going to sleep better tonight!

We can all rest easier now that Obama has demanded the resignation of acting IRS commissioner, Steven Miller, who by the way, was going to leave his post in another 4 weeks. What Obama did was fire a guy less than a month before he planned to leave anyway. Miller took one for the team, and he will be rewarded with another high-level job.

All Obama did was toss a bone to conservatives and the Media (Obama's stenographers) with his stellar acting performance, portraying an outraged president. 

This will satisfy low-information voters who get their news from Jon Stewart, USAToday, NBC, MTV, or People Magazine. But for the other 50% who really know what's going on, it's a joke and Obama is laughing at all of us behind closed doors. 

Lois Lerner, director of IRS exempt organizations division

What about firing Lois Lerner who is at the center of all this? She is the director of the IRS exempt organizations division. The National Review Online has an excellent headline article today: The Nine Lies of Lois Lerner by Kevin D. Williamson (follow the link).

What about Doug Shulman, former director of the IRS who in March 2012 lied before Congress, under oath, saying that there was NO targeting of any political groups. 

Here's a novel idea: Start by issuing subpoenas to the low level "rogues" in Cincinnati. They'll spill their guts in a New York minute and lead investigators up the food chain to the source.

Is it any comfort to you that Obama has hired 17,000 new IRS agents to run Obamacare? Do you see where this is going? If you are a left-wing liberal, or progressive organization, you'll probably be given exemptions to Obamacare.

If Obama or his minions don't like you or your politics, they can effectively stop you from getting the healthcare you need or they can make you pay through the nose to get any kind of health coverage. We are becoming more and more like Nazi Germany in the 1930s--only instead of the Gestapo, we have the IRS. Instead of Hitler, we have.....fill in the blank.

Corruption in the IRS? Say it isn't so.

Corruption in the IRS? Say it isn't so. Who would've thought that people who work for the government would show an intolerance toward those who want to eradicate their careers. The IRS has always been a blood=sucking leech on society. What would we do without big government programs to redistribute our money to their friends? This is the same IRS that is hiring 13000 new agents to ENFORCE Obamacare (with emphasis on "enforce").

The IRS denies having conducted a partisan witch-hunt against tea-party groups in the run-up to the 2012 election, arguing that its improper targeting of conservative groups was the result of a series of procedural errors rather than a political attack with malice forethought.

But the IRS is keeping the relevant evidence secret, so you will just have to take the agency’s word for it. Lois Lerner, the IRS official in charge of handling tax-exempt organizations, made what appeared to be an impromptu confession Friday during a tax conference hosted by the American Bar Association, saying that groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their names were improperly targeted for additional levels of tax-status review by the agency. Those actions, she said, were “wrong” and “inappropriate,” but she denied that they were the result of political bias against tea-party groups.

When asked how the IRS determined that the actions were not the result of political bias, Ms. Lerner could only say, “That is not how we do things.

Does Ms. Lerner really expect us to believe that these low-level grunts at the Cincinnati IRS decided on their own with no orders from above to target conservative groups? 

" The IRS also stresses that our employees—all career civil servants—will continue to be guided by tax law and not partisan issues."

The funny thing is that the IRS thinks this is a comforting statement. Methinks the "career civil servants" need to be fired. While we're at it, fire the person they reported to. It's high time to name names. 

Apologies? Sorry, but we need more than weak, half-hearted apologies. Please provide the list of those fired from the IRS and confirm that their pensions have been forfeited. Every IRS employee knows what is permitted and what is not. These are serious crimes. Who in the Cincinnati office targeted these groups. Give us the names and stop your efforts to paper over the IRS' criminal behavior.

The Wall Street Journal concludes their editorial on Saturday with this sober reminder: 

Other than the power to prosecute, the taxing authority is the most awesome power the government has. It can ruin people and companies. When wielded for political purposes, it is a violation of the basic contract the American people have with their government. The abuse admitted by Ms. Lerner can't be dismissed in a casual apology on a casual Friday as no big deal. It's a very big and bad deal.

Blessed Be the Ties that Bind the Left to Islam

The LEFT here in America loves Islam

(By the LEFT, I mean folks like President Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, the entire Democrat Party, your mainstream media including: NBC (Comcast), ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, USA Today, etc. The LEFT even includes most of our State Department along with increasing representation from the Pentegon, U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. Fortunately, for the time being, the Marines have not succumbed to Leftist politics.)   

The ties that bind the Left to Islam are many and include the LEFT's disdain for individual liberty, freedom, self-reliance and private property. One of the Left's great writers who had profound influence on Karl Marx is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He has been an inspiration to many totalitarian regimes. Rousseau equated "freedom" with total submission to authority. Can you see why Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, FDR and Obama would love this guy? Rousseau believed in "democratic centralism." In other words, centralized control in the hands of the government which has the final word. This is nearly indistinguishable from Islam's "free choice" to surrender oneself totally to Allah.

From Obama's writings and many speeches, we learn that he is virulently anti-capitalist, anti-western, and anti-American. For Obama and his Islamist allies, capitalist democracy is an abject failure, full of racism and materialism. Obama as well as Islam deride the very thing that makes American society exceptional: Individual liberty and freedom.

Obama and the LEFT subscribe to "Alinsky's Rules." He was a committed Leftist revolutionary who wrote
the "Rules for Radicals." Obama was trained in this ideology, which influenced Malcolm X's clarion call: "By any means necessary." You can see that Islamic radicals also believe in the clarion call, "by any means necessary" including strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up buses with passengers, airplanes, even runners at the Boston Marathon.

On Jan. 26, 2009, Obama gave his first interview as America's new president to the Muslims on Arabic television where he pronounced: "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy." Presidents of the United States do not have a "job to the Muslim world." Their job, actually, is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution against all enemies, including Muslims if they happen to want to destroy our society.

On the heels of this interview to the Muslim world, Obama ordered the detention center at Guantanamo Bay closed within one year. His reasoning is that this would prohibit torture and make the world think nice happy thoughts about America. This is the same President who has no problem with killing unknown individuals, including civilians with drone attacks, but let the record show that he's opposed to any kind of torture. I guess being vaporized by a drone attack does not constitute torture since it happens so fast--where's the pain???

President Obama also charged NASA with a new mandate, not to go to Mars or to make another trip to the Moon--no this new charge was to reach out to the Muslim world to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science. Can you tell me how any Muslim contributions to science have helped us in our space endeavors? When this outrageous, idiotic pronouncement was made, not a peep was heard from the LEFT. Why? Because they hate NASA and anything that smacks of the military. That money could be better spent on government schools, or public housing, or green energy like Solyndra.

In Leftist ideology, there can only be equal protection under the law only if those laws produce equal outcomes. We can only have laws protecting us from terror provided that those who terrorize us (radical Muslims) are also protected. That's why Maj. Nidal Hassan, who while serving in the U.S. Army verbalized

Lt. Colonel, Nidal Hassan, U.S. Army terrorist

his support for radical Islam and jihad again and again, and this only served to get him promoted through theranks in the U.S. Army. On Nov. 5, 2009, he shot and killed 13 people and injured over 30. While doing this, he shouted out, "All praise to Allah!!" This terrorist act has been classified by our President and the Dept. of (in)Justice not as an act of terrorism but as "workplace violence."

It has been almost 4 years and Hassan has not been tried for his act of terrorism. But here is something worth noting. While he has been incarcerated at Leavenworth, awaiting trial, Army officials have promoted him to Lt. Colonel. Isn't it good to know that in today's Army, you can kill 13 of your fellow soldiers in the name of Allah, as an act of Jihad, and you can still receive a promotion. In our politically-correct, leftist Army, not even terrorism can keep you from moving up through the ranks!

Islam's Trojan Horse--the "All-American Muslim" .

Before you read today's post, do me a favor and go halfway down the column on the right and sign-up to become a member. Right now, there are ONLY 22 members to this blog--that's pitiful. As Obama said, "I might as well just pack it in and go home." Ok....maybe I won't, but it would help boost my self-esteem if a many of you who are reading this post would sign-up as members, get your little face icon on there, and then you get my post delivered to your email in-box a couple times a week, or less. As Nike used to say, "Just do it!!!"

Now on to more important matters...

Islam and Sharia law are making inroads here in the United States. You might wonder how this is happening? It's sometimes referred to as "stealth jihad" or the "Trojan Horse" effect.

Most Muslims believe that they are obliged to confront and subdue non-Muslims (insert your name here) until every nation adopts sharia. Radical Islamists want to impose Sharia law by the edge of the sword or through terrorist acts, while non-violent Islamists want to patiently follow a sophisticated strategy of imposing sharia law through a society's institutions.

For the past several decades, there has been an effort underway to infiltrate and dominate American institutions. Many of our most prestigious schools like Cornell, Harvard, Georgetown, etc. are recipients of Arab money to set up special programs and chairs and to fund new professors. This money also serves to silence the university on matters of the Middle East. You will find very little criticism of Islam or Arab states coming from these schools that receive Arab dollars. However, it's very fashionable to criticize Israel and of course, your Arab sponsors encourage it and may even write you a bonus contribution check. Muslims have pledged to conquer America. They have launched a stealth jihad right under our nose.

4  Christian missionaries arrested at Dearborn's Arab Festival

Islamists have a knack for finding the weak links in our society and exploiting them to their advantage. The city of Dearborn, Michigan is the heaviest concentration of Muslim immigrants in the U.S. I've been there and  it looks like a Middle Eastern city with 32 mosques in Dearborn alone! I visited one of them during prayers on a Friday afternoon.

Last June, four Christian missionaries were arrested by uniformed police outside an Arab Festival. They were accused of disturbing the peace. Their crime? They were handing out copies of St. John's Gospel on a public street. One of the missionaries managed to videotape the goings-on, at least, until his camera was seized. Plainly, they were not engaged in a form of incitement or public commotion--not in the United States. What these four missionaries were violating was sharia law--specifically, its prohibition against preaching other religions, other than Islam. And the Dearborn police, paid for by taxes of all the people, were the willing accomplices who helped enforce Shariah law rather than the constitutional right to free assembly and freedom of religion.

One of Dearborn's 32 mosques

Islam is using our own democracy to destroy us. That's where the Trojan Horse analogy comes into play. When I visited the Arab-American Festival in Dearborn, Michigan along with several Christian friends, I saw several booths set-up to register Muslims in the Democrat Party. Republicans need not bother--they are NOT welcome in Dearborn. The Democrat Party is the home of Islam and stealth jihad. They know that by becoming politically active here in the U.S., they can affect public policy and institute Sharia law into our courts, schools, public institutions including our local police departments, as is the case in Dearborn.

Recently, a judge was petitioned by Muslim prison inmates for the right to congregate as a group to pray 5 times a day to Allah. Even though this poses a great security risk and all kinds of logistical problems for the prison, the judge, wanting to be tolerant of Islam, granted their request. But, here's the rub-there is NOTHING in Islam that says you have to pray together as a group. You can pray to Allah 5 times a day in your cell by yourself.


Here in the West, our experts and elitists are so desperate to believe that there is no such thing as an Islamic threat, they won't even use the word, "Islamic terrorist." You can't say that term if you are in the Obama administration, or the Associated Press, or NBC (politically-correct Comcast), USA Today, etc.

One of the goals of Islam's Trojan Horse strategy is to establish autonomous Muslim enclaves, parallel societies that are adherent to sharia law. This is exactly what has happened in Dearborn, Michigan. This enclave strategy has been implemented to great effect in Europe. Muslims are now capitalizing on their growth and strength in Europe to push for the adoption of shariah law. In England, any criticism of Islam can be deemed "hate speech." Britons are now being banned from swimming at a popular sports club in London during "Muslim men only" sessions.

Canada has voted to repeal its traditional embrace of Judeo-Christian religious tribunals for the voluntary settling of family law matters. This was done to appease the Muslims in their country. It counted for nothing that Judaism and Christianity, the dominant religious traditions of North America, promote harmony and tolerance within the Canadian society. It counts for nothing when the enclave strategy is fueling an agressive promotion of sharia law.

Terrorist-killer, Maj. Nidal Hassan, Ft. Hood massacre, Nov. 5, 2009

By the end of 1992, after a contentious meeting of over 40 Muslim Brotherhood leaders at a Days Inn on the Georgia-Tennessee border, and decision was made to create a new entity that would not call itself the Muslim Brotherhood, but would instead call itself the "Muslim American Society."

MAS members would be instructed to dodge all questions about their Brotherhood ties by saying that they were "independent" and that of course, they were "opposed to terrorism" while at the same time pointing out that "jihad" was one of each Muslim's "divine legal rights" to be used both in self-defense and for the spread of Islam. They were told to obscure their tenets from outsiders, so that Americans could not know that they believed that America, religion and politics could not be separated and that all three had to come under the umbrella of sharia law.

They would remain guarded about their ultimate goal, the transformation of the United States into an Islamic country under Islamic law. They would keep their plan for achieving that goal under wraps. The goal: to use the democratic process to elect likeminded Muslims to political office and to seed likeminded Muslims through the U.S. government bureaucracies, while ever more Americans were being converted to Islam, and more and more American muslims were being born.

So far, they're accomplishing all their goals under the radar, while most Americans are asleep and our watchful media and press give Islam a free pass every time? Why? Next time: Islam and the Revolutionary Left---Strange Bedfellows!