By Debbie Schlussel

Barack Obama’s U.S. Embassy in Israel has a new mission: protecting Palestinian weeds.

When you think of the U.S. Embassy in Israel (or any other country, for that matter), you don’t think its function is to seek out and protect olive tree saplings allegedly planted by Islamic terrorism supporters on disputed land they’ve usurped. But you would be wrong. Barack Obama’s U.S. Embassy in Israel thinks its mission is to protect olive tree saplings planted by Palestinian Muslims on land that isn’t theirs.

Over the weekend, a bunch of headlines once again condemned “Jewish settlers” on the “West Bank.” Yaaawn. The Wall Street Journal’s print edition headline was, “West Bank Attack Targets Americans” (the online version has a softer headline). Their crime this time? Well, they are alleged to have pelted a U.S. Consulate security vehicle with stones near a Jewish settlement on the so-called West Bank. In reality, only two stones were thrown, by the way. But the question is, what was the U.S. Consulate convoy doing there? Well, it was there to “investigate” and “protect” saplings planted by Palestinians on and near the Jewish settlement from being uprooted.

HUH?! How the heck is this a function of the U.S. Embassy in Israel? Do we see the U.S. Embassy in Brazil trekking to the Amazon to protect the Yanomami Tribes’ illicit drug crops and plantains? Does the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda drive a convoy to help protect the Tutsis’ plants from the Hutus? This is absurd and not the business of a diplomatic embassy on foreign land. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

Took some time off to catch up on rest, other work, and just needed a break. But I didn’t want to let any more time go by before I brought you my list of top movies of 2014. This was a bad year for movies, so I liked very few. All things are relative, and many of these would not make my list in previous years. That said, it was hard to narrow it down to just ten movies. So I picked my top choices and everything that I liked, which numbered 18 movies. You can read my full review of each movie by clicking on the name of the movie.

You will note that some of the movies I chose for this list didn’t get FOUR or even THREE REAGANS when I reviewed them. But in comparing the movies to the whole lot from this year, they’ve moved up in quality in my opinion (or I initially underrated them–“Land Ho!” is one of those). Others have declined in my view. I had a hard time putting the list in order (and kept switching the list around) because I liked most of these equally, so any of them will do. Also, some smaller movies debuted in other markets in 2013, but I reviewed them in 2014, when they came out here in the Detroit area. Below my Top 15 are also a few bests in particular categories. These also could have made my top movies list and are equally as good.

Here’s the list: Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

Over the weekend, yet another of the endless “Bleep the Police” rallies was held, this one in Philadelphia. It was hosted by Muslims, began with a Muslim prayer, and then included Muslim prayer by virtually all of the participants. As I’ve noted before, Muslims–including the Islamic terrorist group, CAIR–have organized, led, and claimed credit for these often violent rallies that urge violence against the police and have resulted in the murders of several police officers in New York and Florida. And Muslims have tried to use these rallies to proselytize and convert others to Islam, as well as to propagandize participants against Jews and Israel.

A group of about a hundred Muslims exercised their first amendment rights Saturday afternoon in Center City with a demonstration against police brutality. The event started with prayer outside the Municipal Services Building. There were speakers, then the group, with a police escort, marched around City Hall, chanting “hands up don’t shoot.” . . . Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

Reader I Am Me warned me it was bad. “It’s AWFUL. It may be the worst movie I have ever seen,” he wrote me. He paid to watch the controversial “The Interview” online, “out of some probably misplaced sense of patriotism.” I went to a theater to see it, last night.

It’s not a great movie. In fact, I agree with him that it’s somewhat crappy, although I’ve seen many far worse movies just this year, and I didn’t hate it as much as he did. It’s a low-rent movie with a lot of silliness and juvenile, crass, gross humor–the kind that appeals to teens and 20-somethings raised on a steady diet of MTV’s “Teen Moms” and assorted Kardashian Kartrashian. I’m surprised it actually cost $40 million to make because it looks more like a $4 million (or less) budget movie.

But I thought it was very funny. I will be the first to admit that I went to the movie ready to laugh, and that makes a huge difference. I laughed a lot, especially during the first third or half of the movie, probably more than anyone else in the theater where I saw it.

But the movie isn’t just a crude, low-humor vehicle for Seth Rogen and James Franco. It made a lot of good points about the low taste of America, these days. Rogen plays a serious journalist stuck producing Franco’s celebrity-culture interview show. Rogen longs to do serious stuff and be taken seriously by his colleagues at other journalism outlets. But Franco argues with him that Americans want this kind of low-brow celebrity culture. He says that the American TV-viewing public is constantly saying, “Gimme s–t, gimme s–t!” To me, that’s spot on. If it weren’t, TMZ wouldn’t have soared to become THE influential “news” source in America in just a few years. And if it weren’t true, the Kardashians would be working minimum wage jobs sweeping up hair at a salon, instead of multi-million dollar annual earners, famous for being famous. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

And the end of a bad year in new movies goes out with a whimper. The only one of the movies, new in theaters yesterday, that I liked was the gay WWII hero movie. And even that was all relative in a year of really shabby movies. Oh, and by the way, those who claim “patriotism” got snubbed because neither “Unbroken” nor “American Sniper” got nominated for any awards–well, they are dead wrong. I myself did not vote for either of these in any category, as a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, and–at least with regard to “Unbroken”–here’s why:

* “Unbroken“: You would think that a movie about an American World War II hero and patriot would be right up my alley (you would be right about that) and that I would love this movie, but you would be wrong. It would be very difficult for any director to screw up a movie about the inspiring, incredible life story of Louis Zamperini. But Angelina Jolie managed to bleep it up. Gone is the amazing, uplifting story depicted in the book of the same name. In its place, Jolie produces a long, boring, formulaic, stilted, distracting mess. I received the DVD screener for this movie a month ago. I was excited to watch it, but it was so slow and herky-jerky that I had to watch it in 15 minute installments, since it didn’t keep my attention. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

Merry Christmas to all of my Christian readers and friends. I wish you a very joyous and merry Christmas with family, friends, and everything that you wish for. I hope you are enjoying the holiday.

Even though I believe very strongly in my own religion and I am not Christian (nor do I believe in Christ), I am thankful that, for now, America’s strong Christian tradition remains. With G-d’s* help and prerogative, it is the only thing that keeps us from becoming a Muslim nation. Like you, I want to continue to practice my religion freely and for that to be the case for my fellow co-religionists and yours. As I’ve said so many times before on this site, even though I do not espouse Christianity and am a proud, observant Jew, I do believe that America has resisted becoming a Muslim nation thus far because of its strong Christian heritage and the fact that the majority of Americans still identify as Christians. That is and has always been the backbone and at the forefront of America’s traditional values. People like Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and the supporters of Hezbollah (and HAMAS) in Dearbornistan, Minneapolistan, and elsewhere on our soil have one thing in common: they do not go to church and they do not believe in our common Judeo-Christian values, traditions, and heritage. And those of them who do “celebrate” Christmas do so in commercialism and going-through-the-motions only. Not in faith.

Most of my Christian friends–even if they do not attend Church regularly but do believe in certain tenets of faith and morality–are supporters of Israel and see jihad all over the world for what it is: Islamic evil (redundant phrase) torturing, raping, mass-murdering, and wiping out Christians and Jews (and others) all over the world. It doesn’t matter if it is Shi’ite Islam via Iran and Hezbollah or Sunni Islam via ISIS or Al-Shabaab or Boko Haram. It is all Islam. Not radical Islam. Just Islam (which is inherently radical by definition). And Islam and Muslims have destroyed and wiped out Christianity and more Christians around the world than they have Jews and Judaism. A lot more. Lebanon, for example, is on this particular Christmas day, filled with thousands of sad Christians who fled there to escape ISIS in Iraq.

The St. Raphael Cathedral near the Lebanese capital has added more than 1,400 Iraqi refugee families from Mosul alone to its aid rosters since July, all of them having fled the city now occupied by Islamic State fighters. On Tuesday, several of the uprooted families stood in line at the cathedral in Baabda southeast of Beirut—the seat of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Lebanon—waiting for a food handout. As Rev. Youssef Denha —himself a refugee from Iraq—flipped through the pages of the ledger where he tracked each handout, he set aside any pretense of seasonal optimism. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

No tears from me for Lidia Herrera, a former Cuban, who married a Bosnian Muslim. She’s whining that her young boy is now an ISIS terrorist, courtesy of her husband who joined the jihad. You would think a woman who escaped Cuban subjugation and tyranny would decline to choose yet more subjugation and tyranny that is inherent in Islam. But you would be wrong.

Marry a Muslim & This Could Be Your Kid’s Future (& Present) . . .

The last time Lidia Herrera saw her son was in November last year when she gave him to his father before leaving home in Italy and going to visit relatives in Cuba. But instead of babysitting the boy, her estranged husband Ismar Mesinovic instead took his son to Syria where he signed up to fight for ISIS. And now, a year after the pair went missing, Miss Herrera has seen her son again for the first time as part of an online propaganda campaign for the terror group. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

You can blame Al Sharpton and New York Marxist Mayor Warren Wilhelm, Jr. a/k/a “Bill de Blasio,” for the executions of two NYPD police officers, yesterday. They threw the cops under the bus and incited the violence against them. You can also blame Islam and its jihadist bent. The cops were executed by Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, an avowed Muslim who bragged that he speaks Arabic and showed pages of the koran on his now-deleted Facebook profile.

Brimsley on his MySpace Page . . .

A number of people asked me what his being a Muslim had to do with his anti-police jihad. It has everything to do with it because, as I’ve told you repeatedly on this site, HAMAS CAIR and other Muslim groups are proudly announcing they are stoking the violent protests (and they are working overtime to superimpose their anti-police BS against Israel and Jews). This is what Muslims do in every other country. Now, they are doing it here, in the hopes of converting more Blacks and White liberal nutjobs.

Also ask yourself why Rand Paul broke bread with Sharpton and posed for pics with him. Ask yourself why this pompous schmuck from Kentucky blasted police, including in Fergustan. He’s as bad as Sharpton, regardless of the “R” after his name. There’s a reason NYPD cops turned their backs to Wilhelm/de Blasio when he appeared for a press conference on the assassinations, and they should turn their backs (as should the entire GOP) on Paul, too. Sadly, many so-called “conservatives” are Paulistinians and refuse to wake up to the fact that their empty hero is a whack job like Sharpton who speaks slightly better English. If you are on cop-hater Rand Paul’s side, you are on racist Al Sharpton’s side. Got that? Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

Two okay new movies in theaters, this weekend, but nothin’ to write home about.

* “Foxcatcher“: I’m not surprised that mainstream (liberal) movie critics are in love with this anti-gun, anti-American movie and Steve Carell’s one-dimensional portrayal of the late billionaire John du Pont. The movie mocks American patriots, American patriotism, conservatism, support for America’s military and police, and gun ownership and superimposes all of those concepts onto craziness, nuttery, and murder. On top of that, the movie is weird, creepy, pointless, and very slow.

“Based on true events,” the film is supposed to portray the relationships and events that led up to du Pont’s real-life murder of Olympic wrestling coach David Schultz. But it’s hard to tell what is accurate and what isn’t, regardless of the participation of brother Mark Schultz in the making of the movie. There is a clear agenda to attack conservatives, patriots, and gun owners, so blatant that it’s over the top. There is also more than a sub rosa indication that du Pont was gay, with several very homoerotic scenes. You know the typical narrative: “patriotic, rich conservatives are really closet flaming gays.” And the filmmakers also want you to know that patriots are hypocrites in other ways, too, as du Pont is shown as a regular coke snorter, including on his private plane on the way to a conservative banquet event. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

Last week, Obama told military veterans not to be open about their military service online. And now a movie studio is afraid to show a movie because of threats. Welcome to the United Wimpy States of Obamerica. A nation of sheep told to be cowards instead of the proud Americans we once were and still should be. This is supposed to be America. But tell it to Sony and Barack, since they seem not to know.

Tonight at 8:00 p.m. was supposed to be the Detroit film critics screening of “The Interview.” (I’ve been largely off-line because I’ve been working hard on a number of cases, but I’m back now.) I was really looking forward to it because it’s been a long year, I’m a little burnt out, and I wanted to laugh at what would have been the last critics’ screening of the year. But, as you know, Sony gave in to terrorists. Sony caved. It sickened me that Sony would do this, but Hollywood has done this many times before without any hoopla, outrage, or commotion.

And that’s because Hollywood studios caved to Muslims and Islamic terrorists, and when the studios give in to Muslims, nobody cares (and everybody in the entertainment biz and the media approves of it). As I’ve noted on this site many, many times before, various studios have canceled movies and TV shows because of Muslim whining, threats, and other grievances, usually coming from HAMAS terrorist group CAIR. Publishers have canceled books because of it. And none of those morally outraged today get equally exercised when that happens. Read the rest of this entry »