Free Republic

December 25, 2009 Avatar the movie: the religion of the left By Phill Kline The visuals are stunning, the story borrowed and the message shallow and false. John Cameron's new epic Avatar features a jump in animation technology and a throwback of over 1,000 years to pantheism. Set in 2154, the movie features a U.S. mega-corporation mining the distant planet of Pandora for a rare mineral that suspiciously looks like a carbon spewing lump of coal. The mining is conducted with smoke belching machinery that rape the planet while the human workers are protected by Marine mercenaries from the...

Taliban sympathizer Jodie Evans and President Barack Obama, Oct. 15, 2009 In a wide-ranging interview released this week by MIPtalk, Obama funder, terrorist sympathizer and Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans spoke about her meetings with the Taliban and President Barack Obama. She lauded the Taliban for bringing peace and justice to Afghanistan while saying that the U.S. has failed to deliver either. In a separate interview with Lauren Steiner, Jodie Evans went further in her criticism of the United States saying that we had created “hell on earth” in Afghanistan. Jodie Evans also spoke about being called on by Obama’s...

People often mistake being named Time’s “Person of the Year” as an honor, but that men as sinister as Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin and Rudy Giuliani have all been given the title suggests otherwise. According to Time, the award is primarily a recognition of influence and by that measure the 2009 selection of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke makes sense. Explains Time, the Fed is “an independent government agency that conducts monetary policy, which means it sets short-term interest rates - which means it has immense influence over inflation, unemployment, the strength of the dollar and the strength of your...

What about duty, honor, country? What about comradeship? What about loyalty unto death? That about Semper Fi? What about it, Hollywood? Even liberal President Obama used his Nobel Peace Prize address to praise the role of the U.S. military in overcoming tyranny. Why can’t you find a good word to say about those who are risking their lives for us all? Now that would be news.

Those tingles up his leg that MSNBC talker Chris Matthews gets from President Barack Obama (D) have apparently zapped Matthews' brain. Analyzing Obama's speech at West Point last night with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, Matthews observed "It seems like in this case, there isn't a lot of excitement. I watched the cadets, they were young kids - men and women who were committed to serving their country professionally it must be said, as officers. And, I didn't see much excitement. But among the older people there, I saw, if not resentment, skepticism. I didn't see a lot of warmth...

Yesterday, 13 of our own troops were killed and 30 others were injured in Fort Hood, Texas at a secure U.S. Army base and the president is nowhere to be seen. This doesn't even surprise us, but for the people who still support Obama, you now further understand why we call you 'idiots.' Signs of Trinity church, Black Liberation Theology, Bill Ayers and Marxist professors? Hmmm.... After all, President Obama seemed to make it to Manhattan last month when Goldman Sachs, his number one Wall Street campaign contributor along with several other shadow banking firms attended an expensive DNC fundraiser...

This video linked here contains 13 sniper shots upon coalition forces.   Specifically at:   :24 1:21 1:50 2:45 3:23 3:47 4:26 5:03 5:28 6:44 7:20 7:45 8:05 There are several other instances where it appears that there may have been a sniper shot, but it's not so clear as the 13 listed above.   Some will say that we can't tell what this video is really saying because we can't translate from Arabic, etc.  The terrorist symbol in the upper left, coupled with the superimposed image of former President Bush over flag draped coffins leaves little to translate.  This...

CBS announcer: Any U.S. soldier would shoot Pelosi, strangle Reid @ 5:16 pm by Michael O'Brien CBS Sports commentator David Feherty drew criticism Friday for suggesting any U.S. soldier would murder House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) if given the chance. "From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid,...

AFTER a mere 100 days, the "Obama Doctrine" for our foreign and security poli cies has emerged. And it's terrifying. The combination of dizzying naivete, dislike of our allies, disdain for our military, distrust of our intelligence services and distaste for our own country promises the worst foreign policy of our lifetimes. That includes President Jimmy Carter's abysmal record of failure. The core tenets of the Obama Doctrine to date would make a charter member of the Weather Underground cheer: We're to blame. If there are problems anywhere, they're America's fault. This central conviction of leftist ideology appears to have...

Two deputies were murdered over the weekend by a member of the Florida National Guard who was “severely disturbed” by the election of Barack Obama, and believed the US government was conspiring against him.

WASHINGTON – While Barack Obama is basking in praise for his "decisive" handling of the Somali pirate attack on a merchant ship in the India Ocean, reliable military sources close to the scene are painting a much different picture of the incident – accusing the president of employing restrictive rules of engagement that actually hampered the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips and extended the drama at sea for days. Multiple opportunities to free the captain of the Maersk Alabama from three young pirates were missed, these sources say – all because a Navy SEAL team was not immediately ordered to...

Reporting from Carlisle Barracks, Pa. -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday that the Obama administration would move cautiously in shifting policies on gays serving openly in the military, but he signaled that service members should prepare for possible changes. In his most extensive remarks to date about the ongoing ban on gays who serve openly, Gates said he and other military leaders had "begun a dialogue" with President Obama about the issue. Obama promised during last year's presidential campaign to end the ban on gays in the military, and the White House said recently that it was reviewing...

WASHINGTON -- The former head of the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush warned Friday that the release of documents detailing harsh interrogation methods holds major risks for U.S. security. Bush's former CIA chief added that the release will have a chilling effect on officers assigned to conduct interrogations. "Whenever you release material that secretly relates the way we conduct operations against terrorists you run two risks. One is that you're giving terrorists insights into things they need to prepare for, and they do prepare. And the second thing is you're sending a message to our allies...

Forty years ago today, Harvard University caved to pressure from violent student radicals and banned the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) from campus. The ban continues because Harvard finds the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy too offensive to be countenanced. In those same 40 years, Harvard has hosted at least one terrorist - Yassir Arafat - and the former president of Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime. The latter, Mohammad Khatami, was asked to speak on the eve of 9/11. Current Harvard policy is to accommodate Muslim fundamentalists who demanded single-sex gym time in the name of Sharia law. They even...

SAN DIEGO — Hope is the political message of the moment, courtesy of President Barack Obama. Tell that to Lincoln High School students Jennifer Astudillo, Sakeenah Shabazz and Alex Velarde, a trio of increasingly polished political activists. Sakeenah, 16, said hope isn't part of her political equation. “Always go in prepared for the worst, not with your hopes up,” she said. What they've displayed instead is persistence, as they've led a group of high school students in persuading the San Diego Unified School District board to shelve campus air-rifle marksmanship programs. The board confirmed the decision Tuesday, although members eased...

Barack Obama, concerned about offending Britain and Germany, rebuffed strenuous attempts by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to persuade the new American president to make a trip to Normandy this week. White House officials travelled to France at the start of March to discuss a visit by Mr Obama to Omaha Beach, the site of the American Cemetery, established in 1944 just after D-Day and where 9,387 American personnel are buried. Among them is Theodore Roosevelt Jr the eldest son of the 26th US President. French officials and senior American military officers walked with White House staff through the cemetery...

<p>Most students at Columbia do not have firsthand knowledge war. Military violence has been a vicarious experience, channeled into our minds to television, film, and print.</p> <p>The more sensitive among the struggle to extrapolate experiences of war from our everyday experience, discussing the latest mortality statistics from Guatemala, sensitizing ourselves where parents were time memories, or incorporating into our framework of reality as depicted by a mailer or a Coppola. But the taste of war-the sounds and chill, the dead bodies-are remote and far removed. We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such experienced down and tour hearts, and taking continual, tangible steps to prevent war, becomes a difficult task. Two groups on campus, Arms Race Alternatives (ARA) and Students Against Militarism (SAM) work within these mental limits to foster awareness and practical action necessary to counter the growing threat of war. Through the emphasis of the two groups differ, they share an aversion to current government policy. These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead-end track.</p>

There has been some confusing reporting in the past few days regarding President Barack Obama's plans for the Defense Department budget. Officially, the Office of Management and Budget is claiming that it will increase the budget by 8 percent. But because most of the Iraq and Afghanistan war costs have been funded through supplemental appropriations rather than the regular department budget, total military funding remains a mystery. Mark me down as suspicious. I have been told by sources at the Pentagon that they have been told not to expect full funding of all existing programs. And there is evidence that...

The Obama administration has asked the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff to cut the Pentagon's budget request for the fiscal year 2010 by more than 10 percent -- about $55 billion -- a senior U.S. defense official tells FOX News.

Obama: "But it’s also important that a president speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but of many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the South, every town has tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s not always the case in other parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I think it’s important for the president to say, this is an important obligation. If we are going into war,...

Even as the U.S. confronts two long wars, neither Sen. John McCain nor Sen. Barack Obama believes the country should take the politically perilous step of reviving the military draft. But the two presidential candidates disagree on a key foundation of any future draft: Mr. Obama supports a requirement for both men and women to register with the Selective Service, while Mr. McCain doesn't think women should have to register. Also, Mr. Obama would consider officially opening combat positions to women. Mr. McCain would not. "Women are already serving in combat [in Iraq and Afghanistan] and the current policy should...

When I heard Barack Hussein Obama mention last night that the government invented computers, I immediately thought it was invented by kids (not Al Gore) working in a garage. Guess I was wrong as today I discovered the following on another blog: Was this a McCain moment by obama? Quick takeaway from the 2nd presidential debate - Obama claimed specifically that U.S. government invented the computer, and Obama was very wrong. The computer was developed over a long period of time, and by most historical accounts trace back to Europe with British and German inventors in the late 19th and...

Should public schools open their doors to military recruitment, of any type, on campus? That was the question San Francisco voters took up in 2005, when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition I, which urged the city's schools to reject military recruitment in favor of college scholarship programs. The San Francisco Unified School District responded in 2006 by beginning to phase out of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, a long-standing and well-funded recruitment instrument of the Department of Defense, which targets San Francisco students of color, often from poor families, who attend seven public high schools, while steering clear of the...

Supporting our troops By Steve Almond September 18, 2008 PERHAPS the most insidious byproduct of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been a reflexive sanctification of the military. To put this in bumper stickerese: Support the Troops. Well, I have an ugly confession to make: I don't support the troops - at least not unconditionally. When somebody tells me they serve in the military, my first impulse isn't to say, "Thank you for your service!" like those insufferable chickenhawks on talk radio. My first impulse is to say, "I'm sorry to hear that." Because I am. I'm sorry to...

The anointed one's pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action - and a blessing to all his faithful followers. And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness. On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair...

(06-26) 19:20 PDT San Francisco -- San Francisco public high schools will no longer award physical education credit to students enrolled in the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, the Board of Education voted today in a hastily scheduled meeting. The 4-to-1 vote will likely cripple the 90-year-old military education program that serves 1,200 students because most use it to satisfy their p.e. requirement. "If students really love the program, they'll take it anyway," said board president Mark Sanchez, who has led opposition to JROTC because of its ties to the military. Gregory Wing, who will be a sophomore at Lowell...

WORKING out last Monday, I heard a campaign flunky on TV insist that progress in Iraq is an illusion. "The war isn't over until all of the troops come home!" she grumped. Guess we're still at war with Germany. And Japan. Even Italy. Oh, and let's not forget all of our military bases occupying the Confederacy. The poor woman knew nothing about warfare, history - or Iraq. She just wanted to see her candidate win in November and wasn't going to let reality get in the way. And one look told you she didn't even know any "troops." But after...

The mainstream media and Republican operatives are finally starting to notice the connections between presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (IL) and the terrorist supporting group, Code Pink.The Politico reporter Jonathan Martin has an article this evening on the scandal:A co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink, which has made a name for itself by interrupting hearings on Capitol Hill, is a fundraising bundler for Barack Obama. Jodie Evans has pledged to raise at least $50,000 for Obama, according the Democrat's campaign site. According to research being circulated by GOP sources, Evans has a record of inflammatory statements such...

"Finally, a member of Congress has announced a laudable plan to do something about the abusive behavior of demonstrators of the anti-war left. Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, has introduced legislation to deal with what he has described as “a growing number of our fellow citizens [who] are abusing their right of free expression through vandalism and violent protest aimed at military recruiters and those who wish to serve.”" Finally someone talking serious about Code Pink's anarchical activities. There are a lot more examples of Code Pink's crimes then noted in the article....

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill, English economist & philosopher (1806-1873) The War, a documentary directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novich is the...

"In World War Two we didn't have the concept of post traumatic stress syndrome. People had to basically handle it on their own," he said. Referring to an uncle who had been one of the first U.S. troops into Auschwitz, the concentration camp, Obama said: "The story in the family is he came home and just went up in the attic."

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- An anti-war Democratic congressman is demanding to know why there were uniformed Defense Department personnel watching House proceedings from a public gallery Thursday, who they were and what they were doing. "If they were here on official duty, this was an abhorrent misallocation of our military resources at a time of war," Northern California Rep. Pete Stark asserted Friday in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Stark, an 18-term incumbent known for his liberal positions and outbursts of temper, said he observed the contingent of 20 or so officers, apparently Army generals, in the gallery for...

FBI Monitoring 'Incident' At Ridley Township Plant RIDLEY TOWNSHIP, Pa. (CBS3/AP) ― Boeing Rotorcraft Systems temporarily shut down a production line for several hours Tuesday at its suburban Philadelphia plant because of possible irregularities discovered in two military helicopters. The company disclosed few specifics about why the shutdown of the H-47 Chinook helicopter line at the plant in Ridley Township, Pa., occurred. It said an investigation was under way and it was working with the Defense Contract Management Agency, which oversees military suppliers. Boeing officials said they discovered "irregularities" in two of the aircrafts that were being assembled at the...

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting Berkeley's controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center. The women's anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for "Witches, clowns and sirens day," the last of the group's weeklong homage to Mother's Day. "Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we're going to end war," Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com. The group's week of themed protests, which included days to galvanize grannies and bring-your-daughter-to-protest,...

<p>BANGOR, Maine â€” Stephen King has fired back at conservative critics who attacked him over a remark he made a month ago at a writers symposium for high school students.</p> <p>A blogger jumped on King’s statement at the Library of Congress about the importance of reading in which he suggested poor readers have limited prospects, including service in the Army.</p>

The saga of horror novelist Stephen King's disgraceful comments about America's military took an interesting turn Monday when shortly after instructing visitors to his website to send me a message stating "Hi, Noel—Stephen King says to shut up and I agree," his own message boards were shut down.This followed the creation of a number of threads by members that wanted to comment about King's remarks.The cover-story for shutting down the boards came from the Moderator in a thread entitled "Stephen King Insults Soldiers":

Remember shortly before Election Day 2006 when Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) suggested that if you don't get a good education, "you get stuck in Iraq" (video available here)? Well, last month, famed horror author Stephen King was speaking in front of a group of high school students at the Library of Congress, and he virtually made the exact same statement. For those that can bear it, what follows is another in a long line of liberal media members bashing the military (embedded right, h/t Terry Ann): I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV,...

Writer Stephen King: If You Can't Read, You'll End Up in the Army or Iraq Photo of Noel Sheppard. By Noel Sheppard | May 5, 2008 - 09:54 ET Remember shortly before Election Day 2006 when Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) suggested that if you don't get a good education, "you get stuck in Iraq" (video available here)? Well, last month, famed horror auther Stephen King was speaking in front of a group of high school students at the Library of Congress, and he virtually made the exact same statement. For those that can bear it, what follows is another in...

The Democratic Party is heading for a massive train wreck during its summer convention, and this is to the partyÂ’s long term benefit. Although there is no way the Democrats can win the 2008 Presidential contest at this point, they will also have a chance to rid themselves of the cancer that has infested their party for the past decade. We mean the extreme Left that is totally outside the mainstream of American values and ideals, and Barack Obama personifies the disease. The DemocratsÂ’ problem is that Obama developed a significant but not decisive lead in pledged delegates before his...

A reader who witnessed yesterday's anti-war protest sent us several photos of the incident so we thought we'd share a couple of them with you. Milwaukee police arrested four people during the late afternoon march, according to Officer Bobby Lindsey, a department spokesman. At least two of the arrests were for disorderly conduct, Lindsey said. The photos show that a number of paper boxes and trash cans were dumped in the street during the afternoon rush hour at N. Water St. and E. Wisconsin Ave. The march later moved south toward the Historic Third Ward. It was unclear whether the...

Code Pink Strikes at Pro-Troops Event -- Again by Catherine Moy Posted: 03/18/2008 Move America Forward, the nation’s largest pro-troop organization, unveiled a chilling report on escalating attacks on military recruiters on Friday as anti-war forces planned disorderly conduct on Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.Move America Forward on Friday released the “Sedition Report” after an exhaustive months-long investigation into the radical attacks on military recruiting centers, including gunshots pumped into a Denver, Colo., recruiting center, bombs in Times Square and St. Louis, Mo., and firebombing of recruiters’ cars in Alabama and Maryland.As MAF...

Recently I received a note from a fellow member of a discussion board that I belong to who always commented after their name that : "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." I responded that : “. . . a Liberal would want laws passed so that the lamb could not defend himself and to rely on the government to then defend him. Conversely, a Conservative would have already skinned the two wolves, and be selling their hides on Ebay.” Another member of this board...

YORBA LINDA – The first Amendment was alive and well today, Presidents' Day, as demonstrators for and against the war in Iraq displayed signs along Yorba Linda Boulevard, in front of the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum. The larger group, a dozen strong, set up on a corner waiving signs criticizing the war and handing out slices of "Bring Them Home-made Pie" to passersby. A man driving a yellow Hummer honked at the group and gave it a thumbs up. They responded in kind. One of the demonstrators, Pat Alviso, waved a sign with a picture of her son. "He...

I ran across the Phelps clan a few years ago when they were protesting a church I was attending in Wichita Kansas. I had never heard of the group before and I suddenly found myself within swinging distance without any context of who I was dealing with. I assumed from their colorful “GOD HATES FAGS” signs that they were a pro-homosexual advocacy group possibly angry about a bible lesson on Sodom and Gomorrah that they might have heard at the church that did not fit their lifestyle. I later found that the Westboro Baptist Church was a small, crazy, dysfunctional...

Fury Builds in Berkeley Over City's Anti-Military Resolutions By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor February 12, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - It will be another noisy day in Berkeley, Calif., as pro-military and anti-war protesters gather outside the city council chamber to weigh in on three anti-military resolutions the council passed last month. Move America Forward, a pro-troop group, is leading a contingent of pro-military and veterans' groups in what it describes as a "giant, all-day, protest." The controversy involves a Marine Corps recruiting station that moved to the liberal bastion of Berkeley in December 2006. At its Jan. 29, 2008 meeting,...

Berkeley peace activists are gearing up to circulate a petition to place a measure on the November ballot restricting where public and private military recruiters can locate within the city. “Most towns regulate adult-oriented businesses—the initiative is modeled on that,” said Sharon Adams, the attorney who wrote the initiative, which is signed by former Councilmembers Carole (Davis) Kennerly and Ying Lee (Kelley) and Code Pink activist PhoeBe Anne Sorgen. While Adams said she believes the government has to follow local zoning ordinances, Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan told the Planet that “in general, the city can’t regulate the state, its...

From a review by someone who claims to have seen a screening: " had an opportunity to attend an advanced screening of this film yesterday in Boulder CO. I am not in any way affiliated with film industry or the critique. I was just a lucky walk in. I've seen a preview of this movie a few days before and was not impressed by the trailer. It looked like another belated anti-war movie (better late then never), with youthful actors looking ruggedly pretty for the camera."

This ought to make your blood boil. And this Marine should receive a commendation for not kicking the living crap out of the guy...seriously. Marine Sgt Mike McNulty is on activation orders to Iraq (second tour). On December 1st, 2007, Mike went to visit a friend in Chicago before deploying to say goodbye. In order to get to his friend's residence, and keep in mind that Chicago is a myriad of diagonal and one-way streets, the front entrance (right way) to the one-way street was blocked. Mike, being a Marine, overcame and adapted by driving around the block to the...

Santa Ana, Calif. (AP) -- Two men accused of plotting attacks on military sites and other targets in Southern California in 2005 were expected to plead guilty to terrorism conspiracy charges Friday, prosecutors said. Kevin James and Levar Haley Washington were set to enter the pleas in federal court in Santa Ana, the U.S. attorney's office said in a statement. Both were indicted two years ago on federal charges, including conspiring to wage war against the U.S. government through terrorism. Authorities claim James, Washington and two others were a cell of a California prison gang of radical Muslims that was...