Hollywood Stars Go to War

At the Los Angeles Times, "Movie stars at war."

Also, "A trio of actresses who entertained troops in WWII."

Below: "Carole Landis: A pinup favorite, Landis spent more time visiting with U.S. servicemen than any other actress."

Photo Credit: Wikimedia.

Memorial Day

A fabulous photograph via Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers:

And for some linkage, in no particular order:

* Black Five, "MEMORIAL DAY."

* Fox News, "Americans gather to honor fallen service members on Memorial Day."

* Leif Babin, at WSJ, "A Tradition of Sacrifice, From Yorktown to Ramadi."

* The Los Angeles Times, "CALIFORNIA'S WAR DEAD."

* Walter Russell Mead, "A Day of Dedication."

* Ralph Kinney Bennett, at the American, "Fallen Heroes, Never Forgotten."

* "Sebastian Junger, at the Washington Post, "Sharing the Moral Burden of War."

* Wall Street Journal, "Memorial Day."

Britain's Head in the Sand on Islamic Terrorism — And Ours

From the inimitable Melanie Phillips, at London's Daily Mail, "Until our leaders admit the true nature of Islamic extremism, we will never defeat it."

Ever since the spectre of Islamic terrorism in the West first manifested itself, Britain has had its head stuck firmly in the sand.

After both 9/11 and the 7/7 London transport bombings, the Labour government promised to take measures to defend the country against further such attacks.

It defined the problem, however, merely as terrorism, failing to understand that the real issue was the extremist ideas which led to such violence.

Accordingly, it poured money into Muslim community groups, many of which turned out to be dangerously extreme.

When David Cameron came to power, his Government raised hopes of a more realistic approach when it pledged to counter extremist ideas rather than just violence.
This approach, too, has failed. The Government still has no coherent strategy for countering Islamist radicalisation.

Following last week’s barbaric slaughter of Drummer Rigby on the streets of Woolwich by two Islamic fanatics, the Prime Minister has announced that he will head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force.

And the Home Secretary has said she will look at widening the banning of radical groups preaching hate.

But at the heart of these promises remains a crucial gap. That is the need to define just what kind of extremism we are up against.

The Government has been extraordinarily reluctant to do this — because it refuses to face the blindingly obvious fact that this extremism is religious in nature.

It arises from an interpretation of Islam which takes the words of the Koran literally as a command to kill unbelievers in a jihad, or holy war, in order to impose strict Islamic tenets on the rest of the world.

Of course, millions of Muslims in Britain and elsewhere totally reject this interpretation of their religion.

Most British Muslims want to live peacefully and enjoy the benefits of Western culture. They undoubtedly utterly deplore the notion that the kind of carnage that occurred in Woolwich should take place in Britain.

And let’s not forget that, worldwide, most victims of the jihad are themselves Muslims whom the extremists judge to be polluted by Western ideas.

Nevertheless, this fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran is what is being spouted by hate preachers in Britain and on the internet, and is steadily radicalising thousands of young British Muslims.

Now the Prime Minister says he will crack down on such extremism. Yet after the Woolwich atrocity, he claimed it was ‘a betrayal of Islam’ and that ‘there is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act’.

The London Mayor Boris Johnson went even further, claiming: ‘It is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam’ and that the cause was simply the killers’ ‘warped and deluded mindset’.

Yet the video footage of the killers — who had shouted ‘Allahu Akhbar’ when butchering Drummer Rigby — records one of them citing verses in the Koran exhorting the faithful to fight and kill unbelievers, and declaring: ‘We swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.’

Frankly, these comments by the Prime Minister and London Mayor were as absurd as saying the medieval Inquisition, for example, had nothing to do with the Catholic Church, but was just the product of a few warped and deluded individuals.

Well, speaking the truth about Islamic jihad takes courage. And so far British leaders haven't demonstrated they have it. And it's not just Britain. President Obama dismissed the London barbarity as "senseless violence" --- because, you know, if it's "senseless," it's random and not worthy of the outright condemnation that such leftist extremism requires.

More from Ms. Phillips at the link.

Meanwhile, never give into the terror apologists and appeasers, wherever they may be.

British Supermarkets Could Face Sexual Harassment Complaints Over Lads' Mags

Here's the latest in the ayatollah feminists' campaign to ban men's magazines in Britain, at the Guardian UK, "Lose the lads' mags or risk legal action, say lawyers" (via Memeorandum).

As I always say, the more progressives harass and intimidate over babe blogging (and Page 3 girls) the harder I'll be hitting the Rule 5.

From Toby Young, "First they came for the lads' mags… then they came for me" (via Memeorandum):

Today's Guardian contains more proof, if proof were needed, that Harriet Harman's Equality Act poses a direct threat to free speech. It has published a letter from 11 lawyers, including a QC, threatening supermarkets with legal action unless lads' mags are immediately withdrawn from sale. "Displaying these publications in workplaces, and/or requiring staff to handle them in the course of their jobs, may amount to sex discrimination and sexual harassment contrary to the Equality Act 2010," it says. "Similarly, exposing customers to these publications in the process of displaying them is capable of giving rise to breaches of the Equality Act."

The letter is written in support of Lose the Lads' Mags, a campaign that's been launched by UK Feminista and Object, two Left-wing lobby groups with a history of opposing free speech. Indeed, Object was one of four "women's groups" to submit evidence to the Leveson Inquiry and was instrumental in persuading Lord Leveson to recommend that the new press regulator be empowered to investigate third party complaints "from representative women's groups", i.e. groups like UK Feminista and Object. (The basis on which a handful of Left-wing feminists claim to be "representing" half the human race remains unclear, though Leveson appears to have taken that claim at face value.) I blogged about the danger this posed to free speech here.

UK Feminista and Object assert that lads' mags "harm" women – a claim also made by those who want to ban Page 3 like Harriet Harman. In an article in today's Guardian pegged to the lawyers' letter, the founder of UK Femnista describes lads' mags as "deeply harmful" to women. Sophie Bennett, the Campaigns' Officer of Object, spells out in detail what form this "harm" takes:

Lads' mags dehumanise and objectify women, promoting harmful attitudes that underpin discrimination and violence against women and girls. Reducing women to sex objects sends out an incredibly dangerous message that women are constantly sexually available and displaying these publications in everyday spaces normalises this sexism.

Continue reading.

Violence against women in Britain has actually declined at the same time that access to lads' mags has increased. Protecting women isn't why the radical feminists are pushing this. The left wants to suppress speech it disagrees with, and giving people agency over what shops they frequent and what they read goes against the left's program to criminalize thought that deviates from the so-called progressive agenda.

More at Guardian UK, "Supermarkets could face harassment complaints over lads' mags, say lawyers."

IMAGE CREDIT: Laura'Jane Hollyman on Twitter.

Tea Party Gets Bump After Being Targeted by IRS

At Fox News:

The Tea Party movement is showing signs of a resurgence following the revelation that the IRS targeted groups and other politically conservative organizations for the past several years.

A recent poll shows Americans have a more favorable opinion of the less-government, anti-tax groups. And one of the biggest groups in the grassroots movement told FoxNews.com this weekend that fundraising and donations have increased since news of the IRS targeting broke earlier this month.

The Tomb of the Unknowns Will Always Be Guarded

Via AoSHQ:

21 steps. Hurricanes. Snowstorms. Or the brutal summer heat in Virginia.

This tomb will always have a guard.

Homosexual Activists and Their Lefty Supporters Have Been Going All Out to Defend Pedophilia

See Culture Watch, "Kate, Sex, Lies and the Truth":

Here is another story you likely did not hear about in the lamestream media. And if you did, you would have gotten a terribly one-sided slant on all this. So how many of you know about Kaitlyn Hunt? Nope, didn’t think you would. However, a few of you may have heard something about a “Free Kate” movement.

So what is all this about, and why should Kate be freed? Well, the story is quite straight forward – except to the homosexual activists and a pro-homosexual MSM who are trying to pretend it isn’t. Kate is an 18-year-old lesbian who was caught out having a sexual affair with a child – a 14-year-old girl.

Now that is illegal in the state of Florida, where this sordid event occurred. So we have here a clear case of paedophilia: adults having sex with children. That should be the end of the story, except that the homosexual activists have turned Kate into a poster girl – and even a victim – for their cause.

They can find absolutely nothing wrong with this, and are bending over backwards to justify it to the world. Just imagine if a man was found to have had sexual relations with a 14-year-old girl: he would be in jail by now and the whole world would think justice had been served.

But because this is a lesbian affair, the media as a whole and a homosexuality-drenched West is having trouble finding anything wrong with this. Thus we have yet another clear indication that the granting of special rights to homosexuals simply opens the door to every other sort of sexual perversion – in this case paedophilia.

Well, yeah. It's been pretty clear for awhile.

Continue reading (via Jeanette Victoria).

More at Support Honesty, "A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on."

Also, at the Pink Flamingo, "Unpopular Morality."

And the latest at the Other McCain, "In Search of Liberal ‘Principle,’ and Also: Does #FreeKate Have a Larger Agenda?"

Expect updates...

CNN Paints Kaitlyn Hunt, 18-Year-Old Lesbian Pedophile, as Sympathetic Victim Who Just 'Made a Mistake...'

Following up on my earlier entry, "The Left's Push to Normalize Pedophilia Finds Its Poster Girl."

Here's this shamelessly sympathetic CNN report, at the clip below.

Hey, an 18-year-old girl fingering the vagina of a 14-year old girl in the high school restroom?

No problem! Progressives for the normalization of pedophilia unite!

The Left's Push to Normalize Pedophilia Finds Its Poster Girl

That's Robert Stacy McCain's reporting at the American Spectator, "#FreeKate? Movement to Normalize Pedophilia Finds Its Poster Girl":

In January, Rush Limbaugh warned that there was “an effort under way to normalize pedophilia,” and was ridiculed by liberals (including CNN’s Soledad O’Brien) for saying so. But now liberals have joined a crusade that, if successful, would effectively legalize sex with 14-year-olds in Florida.

The case involves Kaitlyn Ashley Hunt, an 18-year-old in Sebastian, Florida, who was arrested in February after admitting that she had a lesbian affair with a 14-year high-school freshman. (Click here to read the affidavit in Hunt’s arrest.) It is a felony in Florida to have sex with 14-year-olds. Hunt was expelled from Sebastian High School — where she and the younger girl had sex in a restroom stall — and charged with two counts of “felony lewd and lascivious battery on a child.” The charges could put Hunt in prison for up to 15 years. Prosecutors have offered Hunt a plea bargain that would spare her jail time, but her supporters have organized an online crusade to have her let off scot-free — in effect, nullifying Florida’s law, which sets the age of consent at 16.

Using the slogan “Stop the Hate, Free Kate” (the Twitter hashtag is #FreeKate) this social-media campaign has attracted the support of liberals including Chris Hayes of MSNBC, Daily Kos, Think Progress and the gay-rights group Equality Florida. Undoubtedly, part of the appeal of the case is that Hunt is a petite attractive green-eyed blonde. One critic wondered on Twitter how long activists have “been waiting for a properly photogenic poster child of the correct gender to come along?”

Portraying Hunt as the victim of prejudice, her supporters claim she was only prosecuted because she is homosexual and because the parents of the unnamed 14-year-old are “bigoted religious zealots,” as Hunt’s mother said in a poorly written Facebook post. The apparent public-relations strategy was described by Matthew Philbin of Newsbusters: “If you can play the gay card, you immediately trigger knee-jerk support from the liberal media and homosexual activists anxious to topple any and all rules regarding sex.”

RTWT at the link.

And here's more at the Spectator, "The #FreeKate Narrative Melts Down: Lies Exposed in Florida Teen Sex Case."

And Robert's been blogging this case like a wild man. Check the search item for "Kaitlyn Hunt."

And speaking of leftist efforts to normalize pedophilia, disguised in faux-conservative sheep's clothing, recall: "Alex Knepper, FrumForum Blogger, Fired by Daily Caller Over Pedophile Controversy." (Knepper used to argue that it was perfectly natural for a 20-year old to be attracted to a 16-year old, while also arguing that it was legal.)

Sweden's Dream of Statist Utopia Goes in Smoke With Immigrant Riots

Here are two clips at Russia Today, "Paradise Lost? Immigrants fuel violent scuffles in Sweden," and "Swiss riot video: Police clash with protesters at techno rally."

And at Telegraph UK, "Stockholm riots leave Sweden's dreams of perfect society up in smoke":

A week of disturbances in Sweden's capital has tested the Scandinavian nation's reputation for tolerance, reports Colin Freeman.

Like the millions of other ordinary Swedes whom he now sees himself as one of, Mohammed Abbas fears his dream society is now under threat. When he first arrived in Stockholm as refugee from Iran in 1994, the vast Husby council estate where he settled was a mixture of locals and foreigners, a melting pot for what was supposed to be a harmonious, multi-racial paradise.

Two decades on, though, "white flight" has left only one in five of Husby's flats occupied by ethnic Swedes, and many of their immigrant replacements do not seem to share his view that a new life in Sweden is a dream come true. Last week, the neighbourhood erupted into rioting, sparking some of the fiercest urban unrest that Sweden has seen in decades, and a new debate about the success of racial integration.

"In the old days, the neighbourhood was more Swedish and life felt like a dream, but now there are just too many foreigners, and a new generation that has grown up here with just their own culture," he said, gesturing towards the hooded youths milling around in Husby's pedestrianised shopping precinct...

And as the "Paradise Lost" clip points out above, this is taking place in a country with perhaps the most generous social welfare system on Earth. Cradle to grave government services, health care, and universal education. But no. It's all going up in smoke like a tinder brush fire. Damned ingrate immigrants. And it's coming to a Western democracy near you. Cheers!

More from Telegraph at the link.

And at WND, "'Youth rioting' in Sweden? It's the Muslims, stupid."

The Know-Nothing Administrative State

From Jonathan Turley, at WaPo, "The rise of the fourth branch of government":

There were times this past week when it seemed like the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party had returned to Washington. President Obama insisted he knew nothing about major decisions in the State Department, or the Justice Department, or the Internal Revenue Service. The heads of those agencies, in turn, insisted they knew nothing about major decisions by their subordinates. It was as if the government functioned by some hidden hand.

Clearly, there was a degree of willful blindness in these claims. However, the suggestion that someone, even the president, is in control of today’s government may be an illusion.

The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.

This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.

The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.

This rulemaking comes with little accountability. It’s often impossible to know, absent a major scandal, whom to blame for rules that are abusive or nonsensical. Of course, agencies owe their creation and underlying legal authority to Congress, and Congress holds the purse strings. But Capitol Hill’s relatively small staff is incapable of exerting oversight on more than a small percentage of agency actions. And the threat of cutting funds is a blunt instrument to control a massive administrative state — like running a locomotive with an on/off switch.

A good piece. But the argument's not new. Political scientists have long warned of the rise of an unaccountable administrative state. Still, despite the decline of accountability inherent in mass bureaucratization, the culture of corruption starts at the top. And this White House is among the most corrupt in American history.

IMAGE CREDIT: Reaganite.

Rule 5 Memorial Day Weekend

These patriotic bikini babes via Theo Spark, "Pic Dump..."

More from Bob Belvedere, "Rule 5 Saturday: Hannah Claydon."

And at Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See……is a wonderful field (far from your home) that would be perfect for solar receptors, you might just be a Warmist."

Emma Green Rule 5

For the "lads," via Twitter:

And check out Emma Green on Twitter.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

Also at Randy's Roundtable, "Friday Nite Funnies," and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES."

More a Theo Spark's, "Cartoon Round Up..."

Cartoon Credit: A.F. Branco.

British Army Wives' Terror Fears

At the Sunday Express UK, "Army wives' terror fear: military families plea for more guards after Rigby murder":

The day after 25-year-old Drummer Lee Rigby was murdered outside Woolwich barracks, anxious mothers met Army chiefs to call for more protection.

The women asked for their views to be heard at the very top “because they are feeling so exposed to ­danger”. Highly trained MoD police would have been at the scene of the murder in minutes had they still been conducting patrols.

They are trained to deal with lifethreatening incidents on the perimeter of the barracks and have authority to shoot to kill, the Sunday Express can reveal.

One source claimed that had such officers been in place, they would have been able to deal with the situation last Wednesday quicker than the Met Police firearms officers who arrived at the scene within 14 minutes.

During the wait the two suspects spouted extremist propaganda to bystanders.

The source said: "MoD police radios were linked into the Met's so they would have been right on top of this within minutes and would have known exactly what to do...

Continue reading.

Facebook Rape Pages

Via Louise Mensch on Twitter yesterday, who linked to Jane Merrick:

Here's a response to a flag report on Facebook.

I have a visceral dislike of radical left-wing feminism. That said, if anyone posted any sh*t like this at my blog or at my Facebook page, etc., I'd be reviled beyond comprehension. It's just not my reality. Ever. Never. I have two sisters and the rule was always, always that boys never hit girls and, hence, men never hit women.

Pricey Beef Puts Heat On U.S. Grilling Season

At the Wall Street Journal:

As Americans prepare for Memorial Day—the official kickoff to a summer grilling season of burgers and T-bones—rising beef prices have some consumers balking in the grocery aisles.

Retail beef prices are widely expected to set new records in coming weeks after wholesale prices, or the amount meatpackers charge sellers for beef, hit an all-time peak this past week.

After achieving new highs for three weeks, choice-grade beef, the most common variety in the U.S., jumped to $2.1137 a pound Thursday, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That level broke a decade-old record for wholesale prices set in 2003, when a case of mad-cow disease in Canada led to a spike in export demand for U.S. beef.

Wholesale prices retreated slightly Friday afternoon, falling to $2.0887 a pound, confirming some market-watchers' suspicions that retailers may be unwilling to swallow the record-high beef costs.

The fat beef prices are the result of years of drought in major cattle-producing states, a trend that has shrunk the nation's cattle herd to its smallest level in six decades.

Higher beef prices are pinching food budgets for consumers already wrestling with a rise in gasoline prices, the expiration of the federal payroll-tax holiday and stubbornly high unemployment. They're also expected to drive consumers to other meats after the holiday weekend, one of the biggest beef-sales periods of the year. That could threaten high beef profit margins for meatpackers like Tyson Foods Inc. TSN -0.20% and Cargill Inc. and also pose a challenge for restaurants and grocery stores.

"Consumers may favor beef more, but they've got to feed their families," said Gary Morrison, an analyst with Urner Barry's Yellow Sheet, a meat-industry newsletter in Bayville, N.J.

Well, my wife's working on Monday, otherwise we'd be having a huge tri-tip roast, damn the prices!

Obama's Transparency Sham Unravels

Well, duh.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Transparency isn't coming easily to Obama White House":

Caught in a public relations crisis, the administration has released internal emails and details of closed-door discussions. But the sharing has still been selective.

WASHINGTON — The White House decided to release internal emails about the deadly attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya — but only after summaries of the exchanges had leaked.

The president's spokesman disclosed details of closed-door discussions about a report that found the IRS targeted conservative groups — but did so in a drip-drip-drip fashion that only raised more questions.

And in a speech meant to expose the top-secret drone program to public examination, President Obama shrouded key details, such as whether the CIA would still use drones.

Caught up in a public relations crisis, White House officials have drawn open a few curtains, revealing once-secret documents and answering queries that they would ordinarily have dismissed with an eye roll.

But the sharing has been selective and done under duress. It has come in fits and starts to an administration that promised to be the most open in American history.

Many allies of the president think that with this burst of sunshine he has arrested the run of bad news and taken charge of the "narrative." Even in some Obama-friendly quarters, though, the sharing is seen as too little and too late, and all the more disappointing for the high hopes Obama had set for transparency at the outset of his presidency.

Civil liberties advocates are disappointed that Obama's drone speech glossed over some of the more difficult legal and moral aspects of targeted killings. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a Democrat, questioned the candor of former officials at the Internal Revenue Service.

Lanny Davis, who handled scandals for the Clinton White House, has been critical of the Obama administration.

"The nontransparency instinct of the Obama White House is more about not understanding effective, proactive crisis management," said Davis, who remains an Obama supporter. "The idea is to inoculate by being transparent."

Obama's a hypocritical asshole. A Muslin socialist interloper asshole loser. 2016 can't come soon enough.

IMAGE CREDIT: The Looking Spoon, "So This Must Be A Liberal Democrat's Greatest 'Virtue'."

David Cameron Pledges Crackdown on 'Hate Clerics'

I'll believe it when I see it.

At London's Daily Mail, "I'll gag the hate clerics: Cameron to launch new terror task force to stamp out religious extremism":

David Cameron is planning new powers to muzzle Islamic hate preachers accused of provoking terrorist outrages such as the killing of soldier Lee Rigby.

The Prime Minister wants to stop extremist clerics using schools, colleges, prisons and mosques to spread their ‘poison’ and is to head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force (TERFOR) made up of senior Ministers, MI5, police and moderate religious leaders.

The high-powered group will study a number of measures, including banning extremist clerics from being given public platforms to incite students, prisoners and other followers – and forcing mosque leaders to answer for ‘hate preachers’.

More at the link.

At the photo is prominent Muslim hate preacher Anjem Choudary at a demonstration with jihad killer Michael Adebojalo in 2007.

More at Pat Dollard, "Feel-Good Story of the Day: Anti-Muslim Actions Rise In Britain After Public Beheading."

Vin Scully and Jack Buck

I was tweeting about Vin Scully while watching the Dodgers game yesterday. The guys at Vin Scully Tweets picked up on 'em, and I saw this at their feed:

Vin Scully and Jack Buck via@dodgers @jonsoohoo #StlCards #GreatnessRecognizingGreatness twitter.com/VinScullyTweet…
— Vin Scully Tweets (@VinScullyTweet) May 25, 2013

I don't ever recall hearing Jack Buck (1924–2002) call a game, but Joe Buck, his son and prominent Fox Sports announcer, is calling today's game at St. Louis right now.

Here's LAT's report on yesterday's game, "Cardinals, Lance Lynn too tough for Dodgers in 7-0 loss."