Word comes down that Ron Paul will have his own “convention” on Sept. 2 since he is not speaking at the GOP convention. I am glad to see that he is doing his part for getting Obama elected to the presidency. As ususal, the “real conservatives” do little to help their cause, and in some cases, hurt it.
As co-creator of Airplane and The Naked Gun David Zucker was a traditional Hollywood lib until Sept. 11th finally pulled him out of his stupor. He loves America and he loves Israel, and was disgusted at how liberal Hollywood consistently bashed everything he thought was right about his country.
In 2004 he created several well-received comedic ads that were critical of John Kerry. This year, he’s risking his career to skewer all the liberal phonies out there- protesters, Michael Moore, Rosie O’Donnell, Jimmy Carter, etc. This will be the first blatantly pro-conservative/anti-lib comedy coming out of Hollywood in my recent memory. The premise is that after rotund anti-American filmmaker Michael Malone tries to do away with the 4th of July, he’s visited by 3 ghosts- The Angel of Death, George Patton (Kelsey Grammer), and George Washington (Jon Voight), who show him that America truly is a great country.
An American Carol is coming out on Oct. 3rd in over 2,000 screens across the county. Fair Warning: I will slurp this movie non-stop from now until then, and even if it sucks I’ll probably buy several tickets. Hollywood needs to be sent a message- we will not pay you to produce anti-American garbage anymore. If you want our money, stop hatin’ on our country.
BTW, I got this from Dirty Harry’s Place. Dirty Harry is a conservative film reviewer with a lively message board. I I highly recommend you add him to your reading list.
Russia has officially annexed South Ossetia into “one united Russian state” which comes as no surprise considering that was the aim of the Russians all along (as well as the toppling of Mikheil Saakashvili’s government which remains standing to date). They have also further entrenched themselves in Abkhazia, ensuring that it doesn’t return to Georgian control in the coming years.
The Kremlin moved swiftly to tighten its grip on Georgia’s breakaway regions yesterday as South Ossetia announced that it would soon become part of Russia, which will open military bases in the province under an agreement to be signed on Tuesday.
Tarzan Kokoity, the province’s Deputy Speaker of parliament, announced that South Ossetia would be absorbed into Russia soon so that its people could live in “one united Russian state” with their ethnic kin in North Ossetia.
In and of itself I see nothing wrong with nation states expanding their borders, but the United States by complacently sitting by and not preventing this blatant assault on Georgia’s sovereignty has damaged its (already fragile) reputation as a reliable ally and only encouraged Putin to be be as belligerent towards his neighbors as he wishes in the coming years. What’s next? Estonia, Latvia, Moldova (Transdnistria), Lithuania, the Ukraine, or maybe one of the central Asian states could all suffer from needing the benevolent protection of their Russian minorities.
Michael Totten has a nice writeup on the entire conflict.
Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion.
Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn’t start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.
And that is merely the opening two paragraphs, read the whole thing.
A final article in the Georgian Daily is worth a read if only to gauge the mood of the citizens of Georgia in the aftermath of their country’s defeat.
The money helped fund Saakashvili’s reforms, including wholesale reorganisation of the economy. Signs of modernisation, great and small, soon followed.
“He really did a lot,” says Sopho Bukia, Georgia editor for the UK-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
“It sounds strange, but the other night I couldn’t find a parking space near home and you know I was really happy: I realised people have stopped worrying their cars will be stolen, which really is a kind of progress.”