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...For "2012," Emmerich set his sites on destroying the some biggest landmarks around the world, from Rome to Rio. But there's one place that Emmerich wanted to demolish but didn't: the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure located in the center of Mecca. It's the focus of prayers and the site of the Hajj, the biggest, most important pilgrimage in Islam. "Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit," the filmmaker told scifiwire.com. "But my co-writer Harald [Kloser] said, 'I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie.' And he was right."...

When I interviewed director Roland Emmerich a few months ago about his upcoming disaster flick "2012," the first question I asked was, "Why do you like killing the world?" His response: "It makes for a good story." Over the past fifteen years, Emmerich has crafted some great tales about global doom, featuring some spectacular scenes of destruction. He had aliens zap the White House in "Independence Day," he let a massive lizard flatten New York City in "Godzilla," and he sent killer tornadoes through downtown Los Angeles in "The Day After Tomorrow." For "2012," Emmerich set his sites on destroying...

Robert Gibbs told reporters that President Obama is not watching the results tonight. Politico reported: Hours after urging reporters not to draw sweeping conclusions from Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told POLITICO President Barack Obama wasn’t even keeping an eye on the results. “He’s not watching returns,” Gibbs said.

Roland Emmerich has admitted that he feared a fatwa would be placed on him if he filmed a scrapped scene for 2012. The filmmaker is well known for decimating famed landmarks on movies including The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day. He stated that while he decided to destroy the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro because he is "against organised religion", he was fearful of the Islamic religious decree for a sequence that was planned but not shot. The 53-year-old wanted to demolish the Kaaba, which is a cube-shaped building at the heart of Mecca and is...

When Obama stated that he was going to reach out to the Islamic world, he was not kidding. The weakness of Obama has lead to the Taliban getting stronger. He has even given the Taliban the OK to participate in the future political landscape of Afghanistan. Apparently none of this was enough though, and now Obama is willing to share power in Afghanistan with the Taliban thugs. This is straight out of the Twilight Zone. US Offers Taliban 6 Provinces for 8 Bases By Aamir Latif, IOL Correspondent

(CNN) - Is Mitt Romney weighing in on the intra-Republican Party fight in race for New York's 23 Congressional District by refusing to make an endorsement? That's the special election where the GOP nominee, Dede Scozzafava, is facing a challenge not only from Bill Owens, the Democrat's candidate, but also from Doug Hoffman, who's running on the conservative party line. Because of the split among Republicans, Owens has a good chance of taking back a district the Democrats haven't won in generations. On Wednesday Romney was asked whether he'd make an endorsement in the New York 23 contest. "I have...

I have no illusions that you are interested in the opinions of a middle-aged housewife. Indeed, you don't seem interested in anyone's opinions that do not mirror your own, nevertheless as long as I have the freedom to express myself, I will. Since you've decided to allow our troops to languish in purgatory, why not just bring them home before even one more son or daughter is killed due to your dithering? Just bring them home...it's ok. If tucking tail and running was good enough for John Kerry, it's certainly good enough for you. Who cares if the world laughs...

The Washington Post reports tonight that Barack Obama and top administration officials have concluded the Taliban cannot be beaten and that they are looking for ways to cede parts of Afghanistan to the Taliban without those regions becoming safe havens for al Qaeda.The article also reports that Obama may wait until after he returns from a 10 day visit to Asia that begins November 11 to decide his policy for Afghanistan.The Post article is largely about Obama's request made this week, two months after he received Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for tens of thousands more troops to fulfill Obama's counter-insuregency...

He's not a Cabinet member or an ambassador, but Sen. John Kerry has ascended to the unofficial role of President Obama's global adviser on key issues that could reshape the nation's image around the world. Mediating Afghanistan's presidential election vaulted Mr. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, from the already prominent chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into the most exclusive circle around a new president who is juggling but has yet to resolve a variety of domestic and foreign policy matters. Beyond policy, Mr. Kerry knows how Washington works.

Only nine months ago, the Pentagon pronounced itself reassured by the early steps of a new commander in chief. President Obama was moving slowly on an American withdrawal from Iraq, had retained former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary and, in a gesture much noticed, had executed his first military salute with crisp precision. But now, after nearly a month of deliberations by Mr. Obama over whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, frustrations and anxiety are on the rise within the military. A number of active duty and retired senior officers say there is concern that the president...

The New York Times has an interesting update on the never-ending spat between the White House and The Fox News Channel (FNC). The White House communications director, Anita Dunn, said this weekend, ”We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent. As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.” Wow. Is there any wonder why Chris Wallace said, after being rebuffed during Obama’s news show extravaganzathon a few weeks ago, that Obama’s administration was ”the biggest bunch...

On Thursday, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" spin-off "Weekend Update Thursday" mocked President Obama as being willing to discuss healthcare reform on virtually any cable channel that will have him -- except, of course, Fox News. Although the opening skit did poke fun at FNC's Glenn Beck, the real joke was that the President, having just done Sunday interviews on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Univision, wanted to "get the healthcare message out to as wide an audience as possible. I don't want to shut anyone out of this debate."

<p>Just announced by Jennifer Griffith in a live interview, WH has asked Pentagon for a formal assessment of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, that the Afghan Wart is no longer in our nations interest, blamed the Afghan elections.</p>

WASHINGTON — President Obama has long suggested that he would like to move beyond race. The question now is whether the country will let him. He woke up on Wednesday to a rapidly intensifying debate about how his race factors into the broader discussion of civility in politics, a question prompted in part by former President Jimmy Carter’s assertion Tuesday that racism was behind a Republican lawmaker’s outburst against Mr. Obama last week as the president addressed a joint session of Congress. Even before that, several conservatives had accused their liberal counterparts of unfairly tainting them as racists for engaging...

ROAD BLOCK: President Obama keeps the pedal to the metal on health care by doing Sunday shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Univision’s “Al Punto,” con Jorge Ramos. That’s the most ever for a president. He’ll tape ’em Friday at the White House.

George F. Will, the elite conservative commentator, will call in his next column for U.S. ground troops to leave Afghanistan, according to publishing sources. “[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters,” Will writes in the column, scheduled for publication later this week. Obama ordered a total of 21,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan in February and March, and casualties have mounted...

'JUSTICE Secretary Kenny MacAskill freed Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al- Megrahi over fears Scotland would suffer a terrorist backlash if he died behind bars. He believed Megrahi would have been seen as a MARTYR by Islamic extremists if he had been left to die in Greenock Prison. And last night a source close to the Cabinet Secretary said: "Kenny feared the repercussions would have haunted Scotland for a generation and more. "If Megrahi had died in a Scottish jail, we'd have seen burning Saltires across the Middle East." MacAskill and SNP First Minister Alex Salmond are preparing to publish...

A New Jersey man with a lengthy rap sheet was indicted yesterday for preying on senior citizens in a months-long mugging spree through Greenwich Village and Chelsea. The oldest of Robert Stewart's victims was 91, prosecutors said. [snip] ...he accosted the 91-year-old man, whom he'd followed into a building on West 12th Street. He hit him in the head and took $400 from his wallet, investigators said.

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry. This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but...

Today's New Hampshire town hall was billed as a real one. The President was going to take questions from everyone, both pro and con. Asked about the town hall, White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said today that there will be about 1,800 people in the audience, including members of the general public and those who received tickets through members of Congress... "We expect that there will be a vigorous debate, as there have been at plenty of town halls that President Obama has had as president and as candidate, and we look forward to it," Burton told reporters...

It's official. The United States is no longer engaged in a "war on terrorism." Neither is it fighting "jihadists" nor locked in a "global war." President Obama's top homeland security and counterterrorism official on Thursday declared as unacceptable the terms crafted by the George W. Bush administration.

Congressman Brian Baird accepted an invitation to a living-room chat with a local Republican leader who volunteered Friday to be his bodyguard, and agreed to a national radio appearance with a conservative talk-show host. Baird was scolded for his choice of words in an ongoing political storm, and was both supported and criticized for holding a "telephone town hall" instead of an actual town hall meeting. And then there was the fax that the Vancouver Democrat characterized as a death threat. Friday added several new chapters to a story that started this week when Baird said he wasn't going to...

After four decades of urging students, hippies, communists, and agitators to come out en masse to protest the U.S. government, protests that commonly turned to violence, Democrats are at last finding a protest they don't like because, with the healthcare debate, this time it is a protest of them and not by them. Amazingly, Democrats have suddenly discovered that government should be meekly accepted, wholly given in to, obeyed without question and a lap dog Old Media has seemingly agreed. Any of you that heard only as little as a year ago that "protest was patriotic," or that "dissent was...

A day after holding up a square of Astroturf to denounce the orchestrated attacks on Democratic town hall meetings on health care, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office said he would be talking with his Nevada constituents this month over the phone lines. Reid’s office is scheduling a telephone town hall meeting for August, opting to avoid the shouting matches and microphone speeches that have erupted at events across the country. The senator expects to reach thousands of Nevadans, including those in the state’s rural expanse. “It’s a forum that obviously lets us reach more people, but also provides...

Harry Reid Will Only Do Town Halls By Telephone, Media Mum By Noel Sheppard Created 2009-08-09 11:14 The most powerful man in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), announced on Friday that as a result of recent protests at town hall meetings he won't hold any such political gatherings during this month's Congressional recess. Instead, he will only do what's called "telephone town halls" where he and his staff have complete control over the questions being asked and who's asking them. Should have been big news, right? Well, according to LexisNexis and Google news searches, not one major media...

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Is it democracy at work? Or mob rule? Protestors have disrupting health care town halls across the country. Now citizens in Vancouver won't get to discuss the proposed reforms publicly after Congressman Brian Baird of Vancouver received death threats and heard from constituents fearing for their safety. Town halls were scheduled to provide a forum for discussing President Obama's health care plan. But in public meetings across the country, those forums have degenerated into shouting matches. “It's not about showing up and having a real dialogue or discussing point A or B about the health care proposal,"...

U.S. Rep. Brian Baird still hasn't decided how he'll vote on a proposed health-insurance reform bill, but he has some key principles in mind, the Vancouver Democrat told about 6,000 Southwest Washington residents Friday afternoon: • If you have a health-insurance policy you like, you can keep it. • Reforms will ensure that people can't be denied coverage. • The U.S. House of Representatives bill won't add to the national deficit. • Any public option wouldn't be subsidized by other revenue. • If it's socialized medicine, Baird won't support it. Those were among Baird's responses and introductory comments during a...

(Vancouver, WA) Over 10 years in Congress, U.S. Rep. Brian Baird has stayed tethered to his district, flying back to Southwest Washington for more than 300 sometimes-bruising town hall meetings during Congressional recesses. But this year, he's literally decided to phone it in. Instead of appearing in person, where "extremists" would have "the chance to shout and make YouTube videos," Baird said Wednesday, he's holding what he calls "telephone town halls" instead. Baird said he's using the new system because he fears his political opponents may be planning "an ambush" to disrupt his meetings, using methods Baird compared to Nazism....

Facing the first real rough patch of his presidency, President Obama and his supporters are once again resorting to a tried-and-true tactic: attacking George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. In his White House press conference last week, Mr. Obama referred to the Bush era at least nine times, three times lamenting that he "inherited" a $1.3 trillion debt that has set back his administration's efforts to fix the economy. With the former president lying low in Dallas, largely focused on crafting his memoirs, Mr. Obama has increasingly attempted to exploit Mr. Bush when discussing the weak economy, the wars in...

Dear Mr. Robinson: I've given the matter quite a bit of thought and have decided it is time to ZOT you. I was tempted when I noticed posters were allowed to insult anyone who disagreed with them; even more tempted when I saw new posters banned for asking questions, or expressing an opinion outside the mainstream - (though I must confess anyone adopting the screen name "Christ was killed by conservatives" was not going to last very long ! I'm sure he was referring to the Sanhedrin, but still...) When I saw your post today about getting "millions of people"...

NOTE: At the time a hero was walking on the moon, a coward was walking away from a woman trapped underwater in an airpocket. It was only 6 feet of water. Because the anniversary falls on the weekend, if you want to acknowledge the anniversary with a call to the Chappaquiddick Lifeguard's office, you need to do it today. Doug from Upland will be doing what he usually does on this date - calling the office and gurgling water - (202) 224-4543. Be creative and have fun! =================================================== 40th anniversary of Mary Jo Kopechne’s drowning at Chappaquiddick...Kennedy's story still doubtful...

President Obama has staked his reputation on being a human rights guru to people around the world. But his remarks at Tuesday’s news conference and behavior since taking office have instead exposed a different persona–that of human rights charlatan. On June 15, three days after the phony Iranian elections and the same day that seven Iranian demonstrators were murdered, Obama’s UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, made a speech in Vienna promoting the Saint Obama vision: “The responsibility to protect is a duty that I feel deeply. … We must prepare for the likelihood that we will again face the worst impulses...

Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, tackled some tough yet timely topics on The Washington Times' American Morning News Tuesday. Turmoil among voters in Iran, who have taken to the streets at their peril and in protest of alleged election rigging, had the senator issuing strong condemnations and a recommendation for the Obama administration. Mr. McCain said he believes Iran's presidential election was rigged and that the U.S. should do "whatever is necessary" to halt their nuclear weapons. "Look these people are bad people and I know that it was unpopular to call them part of an axis of evil or...

Specter: GOP moved 'far to the right' By: Mike Allen May 3, 2009 09:55 AM EST Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) said Sunday in his first TV interview since becoming a Democrat last week he had not promised to be “a loyal Democrat” and would lead a filibuster against his new party if he felt strongly enough about an issue. Specter told David Gregory on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he had determined “with polls and a lot of personal contact” that his reelection prospects as a Republican were “bleak.” But he added: “There’s more than being reelected here. There’s the...

Rove: Obama on 'confession tour' @ 11:29 am by Jeremy P. Jacobs Karl Rove slammed President Obama on Thursday for apologies for the "sins of America and his predecessors." In his column in the Wall Street Journal, President George W. Bush's former senior advisor said Obama's remarks on his recent trips abroad portray condescension toward those who held the office before him. "There is something ungracious in Mr. Obama criticizing his predecessors, including most recently John F. Kennedy," Rove wrote. "('I'm grateful that President [Daniel] Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old,'...

Like so many politicians I have known, the man we elected president wants to be loved. He wants to be loved passionately and daily by the 69 million who voted for him and even some of the 60 million who voted for John McCain. He wants to be loved by the Democrats on the Hill and even the Republicans who have still not given him any love. He wants to be loved by the Europeans who have made a career out of badmouthing U.S. presidents and their policies. The real example of searching for love in all the wrong places...

Jeb Babbin reports that "White House lawyers are refusing to accept the findings of an inter-agency committee that the Uighur Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay are too dangerous to release inside the U.S." After President Obama promised to close Gitmo, the White House ordered an inter-agency review of the status of all the detainees. Apparently, it believed that many of those held would be quickly determined releasable. If so, this belief was perhaps naive, considering that a large percentage of the detainees, presumably the comparatively "innocuous" ones, had already been released (some of whom promptly returned to their terrorist...

Clintonista Paul Begala says all you unpatriotic, wimpy, whiney Americans out there should just shut up and pay your taxes. "Why are they out there whining with this Tea Party thing? Just a bunch of wimpy, whiney, weasels who don't love their country and don't want to support - there are guys at Walter Reed who gave their legs for my country, and they're whining because they have to write a check?" the political consultant who worked in Bill Clinton's White House told Don Imus.

Fox just interviewed off screen a former SEAL regarding why the Somali pirates are being allowed to take the kidnapped US merchant captain to Somalia. In his words, 'this is not an operational issue.' In other words, Obama is ordering that no action be taken until he can get permission from the 'international community.' The SEAL noted that they have been training for just this situation since 1981. Meanwhile, the French rescue their people.

U.S.A. Captain Richard Phillips (bless him!) is raining on Barack Obama’s Easter Parade. So, too is U.S. Central Command Chief Gen. David Petraeus (not so long ago “General Betray Us” to Code Pink, Obama and the Dems). With the escalating dramatic Indian Ocean standoff, here we have an international incident with the Obamas--two short days before Easter Sunday--still looking for a church to attend and three days before the Easter Egg roll on the White House east lawn. Cpt. Phillip’s failed breakaway swim back to his ship is bound to work against him in Washington, DC--where an appeaser (Barack-”I won”-Obama)...

WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - [snip] Obama was asked to comment on the situation several times by reporters at a White House event on refinancing for homeowners. Obama, however, stuck closely to the script and replied that he wanted to remain focused on housing.

There is a reason we call Muslim mau-mau-ers the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. They will never give up until you give in. Three years after the Mohammed Cartoon conflagration, the grievance-mongers are still trying to extract contrition out of the Danes and others who stood up for the West and for free speech. Unfortunately, the ROPO bullies squeezed conciliatory remarks from Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He didn’t say the exact words “I’m sorry,” but he might as well have tattooed it on his forehead: New NATO chief pledges conciliation with Muslims Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh...

Chuck Todd at First Read flags up some fascinating comments from Vice-President Biden on his visit to Nato: “5 percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. And roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money, because of them being -- getting paid.” Biden goes onto say that the “idea of what concessions would be made is well beyond the scope of my being able to answer, except to say that whatever is...

The Queen of England is to give President Obama a private "getting-to-know-you" audience next month. Her Majesty will meet the new president in advance of an economic summit in London. The private meeting is highly unusual because Obama will not be on a state visit. But advisers believe it is important the Queen meets him before any official trip. A source said: "There is a wish to do these things as discreetly as possible in the first instance." President Obama, famed for his 'Yes We Can' slogan, will fly with wife Michelle on Air Force One to Stansted, Essex. The...

When my wife told me that Attorney General Eric Holder said that Americans are cowards for not having a deeper discourse about race, I asked her if she had actually been reading “Mad Magazine” and had mistakenly confused Attorney General Holder with Alfred E. Neuman. She eventually convinced me that the comment was indeed attributed to Attorney General Holder and not Alfred E. Neuman. I should have known. Mr. Neuman makes a lot more sense. Before I swan dive into the whitewater (no pun intended) racial rapids, let me say up front that I am a proud, large and in...

A Green Bay soldier was supposed to catch a flight Friday morning taking him back to active duty in Iraq, but he intentionally missed it because he says the war is immoral. Specialist Kristoffer Walker and his wife Sierra enjoyed Friday night at home together -- a night they weren't supposed to be together. "Early this morning I made a decision not to go back to Iraq," he told us Friday.

I’m a Racist Coward! by Gary Graham I am appalled. I just found out that I am a racist and a coward and I did not know it. Eric Holder said yesterday, “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” How could I have been so self-deluded? Wow. I know, huh? The things you find out about yourself if you just listen to newly appointed/elected government officials. I always thought that I treated...

Cute Maalim the rescued black rhinoceros calf trots after his keeper all day, scared to let him out of his sight. Not yet one-month-old and still too weak to even climb a simple low wall, Maalim is under 24-hour care and supervision.He was named after the warden who found him abandoned in Kenya's famous Tsavo National Park in December. Maalim was brought to the country's premiere animal orphanage at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, just outside Nairobi.Found frightened and alone, at first he was confused for an infant warthog because he was so small.However, the staff at Tsavo quickly realised that...

Debra Burlingame has previously reported President Obama smiled and admitted that he had not visited Guantanamo (to 40 family members of the victims of the USS Cole and September 11 attacks during his February 6, 2009 White House meeting with them). Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced he will visit Gitmo: Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told reporters today that he would travel Monday to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of his effort to determine how to handle the 245 remaining terrorism suspects detained there. "We need to have our feet on the ground...