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Dial It Back

Monday, Aug. 10, 2009 3:52 AM

Blogger Shannyn Moore continues to write about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and has some insights on Palin's bizarre 'death panel' rant regarding healthcare reform.


White House spokesman Robert Gibbs suggested that Rush Limbaugh and others on the right might want to dial back their rhetoric - Limbaugh most recently compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler - and is facing the not-entirely unexpected complaint from the right that Obama is stomping on their 1st Amendment rights.

Oh, but of course, the left was just a bunch of sissy-pants whiners when Ari Fleischer made his infamous, "I submit it is unpatriotic to criticize the President," remark. The left was just imagining 'free speech zones' that were blocks away from events or nowhere near the route taken by Bush. Or the remark attributed to Bush that the Constitution was, 'just a goddamned piece of paper.'

Conveniently forgotten are the changes to posse comitatus, the theory that the Constitution didn't really grant the right of habeas corpus, or that illegal surveillance programs were based on the less-stringent standard of 'reasonable suspicion' as opposed to probable cause as stated in the 4th Amendment.

But there was apparently no assault on our Constitutional protections and freedoms until this Obama fellow arrived on scene.

Maybe Gibbs needs to follow through with some bar soap puns ...


But wait, there's more. It seems some conservative types aren't happy with this weekend's blockbuster movie, "G.I. Joe," because it isn't American enough.

The film features a multinational special operations force, and G.I. Joe isn't the original 'general-issue' abbreviation, but something like 'global intelligence joint operations executive.'

Nonetheless, the unit is led by an American commander (Dennis Quaid), no other national leader is shown (or consulted) other than the American president, and the heroes of the piece are two American soldiers (Channing Tatum and Marlon Wayans).

But this isn't some bizarre liberal plot to unman a classic American hero - G.I. Joe went multinational in the middle of the Reagan Era. It has nothing to do with bashing Bush-era military adventurism/nationalism.


If you read science-fiction, I highly recommend the work of Karen Traviss. While Karen has written a number of books set in the Star Wars universe, she's also penned an original five-part series that begins with the novel City of Pearl. She's also doing tie-in books for the Gears of War videogame, and has another original series on deck.

I mention Karen's work because she's apparently come to a parting of the ways with Lucasfilm, and will not be doing any further work beyond the two Imperial Commando novels she is already working on. (The first, Imperial Commando: 501st is due out in October.)



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