Dare you to see 'American Carol'

No, it's not a dream. Hollywood really has released a feature film -- no mere documentary, an in-joke you'll appreciate after seeing this piece of work -- that hoses down with merciless ridicule such richly deserving targets as... Hollywood itself, the ACLU, leftist universities and their perpetually juvenile faculties, radical Islam, the anti-war movement, Obama's negotiation fetish, the demonizing of Christians, gun control, gay rights, Katrina guilt, Cuban health care, wimpy Democrats claiming to revere the macho JFK, slavery, handicapped kids (okay, maybe not all the targets are deserving, but this is a David Zucker movie after all), Michael Moore in love with himself, Rosie O'Donnell confronting Bill O'Reilly, and Leslie Nielsen as a dirty old man.

It's all jammed into, and spilling out around the edges of (like our favorite radical documentarian overflowing a theater seat), "An American Carol," now in theaters.

Watching the slovenly, America-hating Moore, or "Michael Malone" as the Kevin Farley character is called, get figuratively and literally slapped around for 110 minutes in this campy tribute to Dickens' "Christmas Carol" will do your heart good, especially amidst the headlines about Obama's soaring polls and Oliver Stone's propaganda slam against McCain's predecessor, "W."

There was no doubt Zucker has delivered slapstick as I lost count of the stinging red handprints on Farley's pudgy, stubbled cheek.

Granted, "American Carol" is not in the league with "Airplane!" as a truly zany and outrageous comedy trip from Nielsen and Zucker. This is no cinema jetliner -- it's more of a rubber-band-powered balsa wood job with more chuckles than belly laughs.

But to have Tinseltown heap mockery on liberalism, for once, is so amazing as to qualify with Dr. Johnson's comment about a dog walking on its hind legs: Never mind if it's really done well, you just marvel that it's done at all.

If you're on the right, see the movie and salve your soul. Ten bucks (including maybe a small popcorn, maybe not) were never better spent.

If you're on the left and man enough, take my dare and endure two hours in the George Patton (Kelsey Grammer) and George Washington (Jon Voight) reeducation camp for woolly-headed utopians.

If you're in the center, give "Carol" a try just for the fun of it. I promise you'll never waste time or money on another Michael Moore celluloid abomination.

Disgustingly cheerful, still

Time for another few thoughts of glee. It has been a beautiful morning. I want to sing along with the cast of Oklahoma! My permasmile turned on full blast, I will never turn it off. (Unless the batteries run out) 1. McCain proceeds unto his doom, doom. Two more weeks of impending doom.

2. Likewise the GOP. It now abides in rigor mortis while preparing for actual decomposition.

3. What shall it fertilize?

4. McCain's loss must not be blamed on Palin. Keep an eye out for those who will attempt such.

5. Does anyone now know what "Conservatism" means? Well... How'd things slip away? Perhaps Neoconservatism has proved fatal to Conservatism.

6. Christopher Buckley has just been purged from National Review. Thus enhancing NR's irrelevance.

7. Not that Christopher didn't deserve it, after endorsing Obama and all.

8. Buckley Junior recently wrote: "Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance."

9. Ouch. WFB couldn't have said it better himself. And he surely would have tried.

10. Interesting question: If WFB had supported Buchanan in 92 and 96, where would the conservative movement be today? And the nation?

11. Colin Powell endorses Obama at a key juncture. Why? Powell will forever seethe over his February 2003 UN speech which started the Iraq War. A bold betrayal written for him by key Neocons: Scooter Libby, Douglas Feith, John Hannah, William Luti. Powell had deep misgivings beforehand, but ultimately decided to "trust" and do his "duty." Turned out the whole heap of "evidence" was false. Whoops on all counts.

12. As for the markets... There are no guides for the road ahead. No signs, no taillights. Maybe even no pavement. Hence Norman's permasmile!

Well chaps, so much for today's inspiration. Remember, the thoughts make the man -- Let us keep on the sunny side!

Respectfully Yours, Norman Vincent Peale

==================================

But Dave Crater begs to differ...

Norman, Norman. Sigh. Your basic instincts have always been good, but you continue to disappoint in some aspects of your conscious judgment. When you are slightly to the left of Colin Powell on national security, perhaps second thoughts are in order. And when glee is your reaction at the demise of the world's strongest conservative party, perhaps third and fourth thoughts are in order.

4. Agreed. Many will dish blame everywhere but where it belongs, including Palin and other Christian social conservatives. One can hear it now: "the GOP needs to abandon these social cavemen that are holding it back and focus on issues that Americans really care about" blah blah blah.

5. Perhaps the failure to observe and follow conservatism, particularly by "conservative" intellectuals like Peale or Christopher Buckley, and by actual policy makers like GWB and John McCain, has been fatal to conservatism.

6-9. Quoting as authority on conservatism someone who has endorsed Obama -as I say, poor judgment, Amigo.

Reach him at crater@wilberforcecenter.org

Intimidation by ObamaNation

Barack Obama says Republicans "are going to try to make you afraid of me." Well, it's hard to imagine how the GOP could conjure up a more fearsome specter of an Obama presidency than the one created by the tactics of his own campaign. Responding to those who dare commit blasphemy against The One, Obama's campaign has unleashed lawsuits and urged prosecution by no less than the Justice Department, enlisted elected officials to threaten and intimidate his foes, and deployed its vast internet e-mail list to silence bloggers and radio talk shows.

In Missouri, Obama allies, from a U.S. Senator to a local sheriff, threatened criminal proceedings against television stations that air anti-Obama commercials. Such "police state tactics" prompted Gov. Matt Blunt to charge Obama's campaign with "abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism."

ObamaNation used the same strategy against the National Rifle Association when its political fund released ads to educate gun owners about Obama's hostile record. Bob Bauer, attorney for the Obama campaign, urged cable and television stations in Pennsylvania to "immediately cease" airing the NRA's ads, because the campaign determined they were "false, misleading and deceptive."

Well.

Similarly, Bauer pressured the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute the non-profit American Issues Project and one of its donors over an advertising campaign that exposed Obama's alliances with domestic terrorist-turned-university professor William Ayers who has reflected, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough."

The Obama campaign also dispatched its thought police to silence the free speech rights of opponents on radio and internet.

First aimed at internet blogs supporting Hillary Clinton, Obama supporters swamp certain unfriendly blogs with "spam" complaints. When those complaints reach a threshold, Google's Blogger platform renders the blog inoperable. Bloggers must then wait for Google to make an individual determination whether or not each accused blog is legitimate.

A more sinister intimidation befell journalists probing Obama's background in Chicago politics, as well as radio stations that provided a platform for those reports. The Chicago Tribune reported that Obama's campaign used its database "listing contact information for millions of people" not only for raising money but "to beat back media messages it does not like."

Milt Rosenberg, a longtime talk show host on Chicago's WGN radio interviewed two prominent Obama critics, author David Freddoso and professor Stanley Kurtz. Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama is a best-seller that unflatteringly examines Obama's career, while Kurtz fought the University of Illinois to gain access to files documenting activities involving Obama and Ayers.

In both cases, Rosenberg specifically invited Obama's campaign to participate. Obama's camp not only refused, but it dispatched an e-mail alert instructing compliant Obamabots to bombard the radio switchboard and e-mail in order to fill the lines with scripted callers and block out other voices.

Even liberal commentator Andrew Sullivan called the Obama tactics "a disgraceful attempt to intimidate journalists trying to get at the facts."

If other slimy strategies fail, Obama critics are subjected to the nuclear option - the race card - often by a reliably hypersensitive, sycophantic media.

Associated Press "analyst" Douglass Daniel tied himself in knots explaining how Sarah Palin's comment about Obama "palling around" with terrorists - again referring to Ayers and his wife, both of whom are white - "carried a racially tinged subtext."

Remember, too, the supposed racial overtones ascribed to McCain's ad comparing the accomplishment-free Obama to similarly-credentialed starlets Paris Hilton and Britney Spears - again, both white.

Mentioning Obama's accounts of his own use of marijuana or cocaine is off limits because that's racist, too. And, of course, to vote for someone other than Obama is the telltale sign of racism.

If this is the treatment Obama's critics receive now - when he's merely a freshman senator from Illinois - there's plenty to fear from an Obama presidency.

Bunyan replies to Peale

Editor: Answering Dose 1 below, Crater signed this one John Bunyan, identifying with the author of "Pilgrim's Progress." Dave Crater writes:

Interesting you should take Dr. Peale as your namesake - there is the "power of positive thinking" irony in your note of course, but more substantively there is the hollowing out of Christian faith in the 20th century in which Dr. Peale was at the center.

It is that hollowing out which has been bearing bitter fruits like our current ones for about a century now - where faith in God becomes merely "positive thinking," belief in free markets and property rights becomes merely welfare state "capitalism;" where a government that tries to play God then plays the savior from the economic disasters it causes; where economic and financial understanding becomes merely "monetarism" or "Keynesianism" or, as Larry Kudlow wrote this morning, "we need government to act in order to fix the free market"; where genuine compassion and private generosity become merely taxation and wealth redistribution; where personal responsibility and moral hazard get pushed off to a later date when we've solved the latest crisis caused by the dearth of those very values; when political statesmanship becomes merely Barney Frank; and where republicanism and Republicanism become merely John McCain.

We'll never get the politics right until we get right who God is - hint: He's not in Washington - but from a political standpoint, "neoconservatism," a modern incarnation of the classical principles of conservative thought, has been more observed by the Bush administration in passing and in the breach than in the observance. It is the answer, not the problem.

Responses to your notes:

1. Agreed. The race is over.

2. Ditto. Perhaps now we can stop the empty cheerleading among the GOP political classes? McCain is pathetic - there is no other word for it.

3. GWB as right as ever on Iraq and history will remember him so. GWB as wrong as Hoover on financial crisis, what causes it, what fixes it, and what economic leadership is, and history will remember his $700 billion bailout as simply another weak capitulation to 20th-century statism.

4. GWB indeed a shell - the kind of shell that has taken a steady beating for doing what is right (Iraq), then instead of permanently choosing the right side of the street and building on this foreign policy conservatism a coherent and courageous set of socially and economically conservative initiatives, a la Reagan building himself and the nation a genuine legacy in exchange for the unavoidable public relations beating in the media, he routinely sells out to welfare state expansion and economic statism, trying like McCain to drive in the middle of the street and getting himself hit by traffic going in both directions. He, the nation, and the GOP have suffered inordinately as a result.

5. Agreed, though few will understand where they actually went wrong. See aforementioned dearth of economic understanding rooted in dearth of spiritual understanding.

6. Those who maintain traditional Christian faith sleep peacefully amidst the confusion, for the Almighty is still in His temple. Psalm 2 comes to mind: "Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing?"

7. We should align with traditional (i.e., true) faith and classical (i.e., true) political conservatism. That means no more John McCains, Bob Doles, or Gerald Fords - how much mediocrity do we have to endure before we recognize what it looks like?

8. "A bit more deflation"? Deflation ended 5 years ago. Commodities are at twice their historic levels - we are well into a period of inflation.

Political cold shower

Editor: New contributer N. V. Peale writes from Denver. His dark humor is typified by the use of "slightly sub-optimistic" to mean "gloomy as hell." His icy realism would probably horrify the late positive-thinking clergyman from whom our man borrows a pen name. Random thoughts on a Friday lunch hour

Just seeking to stir the pot a little. Apologies if slightly sub-optimistic.

1. I don't see how McCain pulls it out, at this point.

2. The last debate a sad spectacle. To the point of my deep personal embarrassment. For America.

3. GWBush has given two small TV addresses lately, aimed at reassuring markets. Both have made things worse. Credibility zero.

4. GWBush has become a "shell." Fresh out of hemoglobin and neurotransmitters. Probably wishes he didn't run for reelection in 2004. Down to the last penny, we observe the blooming fruits of Neoconservatism.

5. The word "Greenspan" will soon become a grandiose pejorative. "Bernanke" and "Paulson" likewise.

6. None of the talking heads (elected or otherwise) knows what they're doing. Americans beginning to sense it. Bad advice everywhere. We're all on our own. Caveat emptor.

7. Expecting major forthcoming realignment in GOP and conservative movement. Which way should we align? Where will each of us land in the new land?

8. My economic hypothesis continues to be -- A bit more deflation, then significant inflation. But not sure when we hit the other end of the wishbone.