By Debbie Schlussel
When you hear news of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael “Serpenthead” Chertoff’s announcement, today, that he’s getting tough on those for whom he got limp–millions of wannabe travelers to the U.S., including Islamic terrorists from all over–don’t believe him. It’s more BS from the Department that’s made you less safe, not more so.
For a few years now, on this site and elsewhere, I’ve repeatedly decried the absurd Visa Waiver program, which allows residents of allied countries–27 of them, so far–to avoid obtaining a visa to get into the U.S.

Muslim Thanks America For Visa Waiver Program’s “Toughness”
As I’ve frequently noted, the Visa Waiver program allows, for instance, extremist British Muslims–because they are residents of our “Western” ally, Great Britain–to travel into the U.S. without undergoing the usual strict background check and in-person questioning process with a U.S. official, required to get a visa. This makes it very easy for terrorists to get into our country from any of the 27 nations thus far admitted into the Visa Waiver program. Even as he repeatedly claims he’s concerned about European Muslims, rife with terrorists, Michael “Serpenthead” Chertoff continues to expand the Visa Waiver program.
And several members of Congress have also complained about this, too.
So, to “address” our concerns about Chertoff’s ridiculous program, the Department of Homeland Security announces, today, that it’s about to “get tough” and “clamp down” on visa-free visitors from foreign nations.
DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE. In fact, not only is DHS NOT clamping down, it has introduced a new, expensive bureaucracy, which won’t make you any safer.
DHS’ new “strict” program is the mere requirement that visitors from Visa Waiver countries “register” online with the Department of Homeland Security at least three days before their arrival.
We already know how backlogged all sub-agencies within DHS are. Do you think that within three days, anyone from Homeland Security will actually do a rigorous or even basic background check? The thousands of aliens–many with terrorist ties–whose applications for citizenship are quickly rubberstamped every day, after an average combined background check and application scrutiny of less than six minutes. Do you think DHS will be more efficient with a three-day deadline and hundreds of thousands of requests in queu? Dream on.
That was the reason we had the visa process in the first place. Those requesting to visit this country went through the more strict State Department background check–which has access to far more terrorist databases and is far more thorough than the checks currently done at DHS’ Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. And visa applicants had to go to a U.S. Embassy and have a personal interview with a U.S. official.
Thanks to Chertoff, for 27 nations–from which you can be sure terrorists will choose to travel to the U.S.–that’s no longer the case. No interview, no strict, timely background check.
Now, that will be replaced by an online “registration” three days before Mohammed comes from London to Dearbornistan to plot with his Hezbo buddies, or Ahmed comes from Birmingham to New York to meet up with his Al-Muhajiroun co-conspirators.
Oh, and here’s what this “registration” includes: name, date of birth, passport number. As you can see, it’s hardly “getting tough.” It’s the same info now required from passengers on a form upon their arrival in the country. So, how, exactly, is this “stricter” than what is already in place with these Visa Waiver “visitors”? Filling out a few basic pieces of info three days before is “tightening” the Visa Waiver program?
Not exactly.
Then, there is the scary part of this new measure that not only doesn’t “tighten” the Visa Waiver program, but makes it even MORE LENIENT.
The online “registration” will be valid for two years. That means that if Mustapha registers to come to the U.S. on June 3, 2008, but gets involved with an Al-Qaeda offshoot in leeds the following month, and then decides to come to the U.S. in January 2009, he won’t have to re-register or be subject to any new scrutiny for the entire two years. And he can come and go to and from America multiple times during that two-year period, without a second look from American authorities. Absurd. Why are we giving aliens from Islamic terror-hotbeds a two-year window to come to our country, with virtually no scrutiny?
And finally, even the three-day advance registration requirement is a sham. If necessary, a Visa Waiver country resident who needs to come to America at the last minute can also register at the last minute, according to DHS officials. Think they’ll be doing a background check at the last minute when Hamida says she must come to Tampa for her cousin’s funeral? Think again.
All of this is rife for exploitation from people like Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber, who came here from Britain, a Visa Waiver country, and who had no criminal record. He’d have escaped scrutiny under this new phony “tightening,” which is actually a loosening.
Get this straight: The Visa Waiver program is not being tightened. It’s being loosened. We are not getting tough on who is coming into our country.
And that’s why they are here. And their ranks continue to grow unchecked. George Bush had 6.5 years after 9/11 to get tough, and Michael Chertoff had a lot of those years, too.
And they failed. Our borders are more wide open than they’ve ever been.
Thanks, guys. Heckuva job.

By Debbie Schlussel
With the tragic success of the “Sex and the City” movie, this weekend, studio execs are, unfortunately, planning a sequel. Who knew my prophecy of “Sex and the Cat Ladies” would actually come to fruition?
Now, The Village Voice–the influence of which now makes it the Village Whisper, er . . . Murmur–is on guard against the great offenses in America, including my review of “Sex and the City,” the national IQ test for women that so many of America’s fairer sex failed over the weekend. Oh, and the aging hippies at the Whisper claim I sound like a “Women’s Studies Prof.”
To quote Cher Horowitz, “As if” . . . .

Writers normally devoted to other agenda, . . . put aside their hobbyhorses for a moment to divert readers with the harmless subject.

Well, most of them did. A SATC review featuring a photo of “Cynthia Nixon (right) w/Lesbian Partner” alerted us that we’d stumbled into the land of the rightbloggers, where blockbuster movies are not mere entertainments, but fronts in the culture war.

“Sex and the City’s” Cynthia Nixon (Right) w/Lesbian Partner

In her epic “Hags And The City” tirade, TV commentator Debbie Schlussel told readers that the “sleazy and low-class” central characters “look like female impersonators in drag,” are “pigs in skirts” and, worst of all, serve as “Delphic oracles to far too many American women.”
While the Oracle at Delphi spoke for Apollo, apparently Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte speak for “America’s feminists and the phony mainstream media” who, Schlussel said, give their message “the kosher seal of approval,” thereby covering an extra theological base.
But what is their message? Schlussel didn’t focus long enough to inform us, but some clues could be gleaned from her ravings. “Because they dined in glamorous places, wore trapezoid shaped clothes and $1,000 fancy high heels,” wrote Schlussel, “this somehow made their low-brow, savage behavior, ‘classy.'” So perhaps the message is that the rich can get away with things that the rest of us can’t. Schlussel also said that the inclusion of Jennifer Hudson in the film was meant to “answer the complaints over the years by Black America, that there were no Black women in this fashionable pay cable TV gang of hos.” Add tokenism to the film’s sins. Finally, “If you’ve ever called men pigs or chauvinists or decried their alleged collective behavior toward women, but yet you like this movie, you’re a hypocrite.” SATC is an affront to feminism! Schlussel’s argument seems based on race, gender, and class issues normally addressed by Women’s Studies professors. We hope this doesn’t get around or Schlussel may never appear on Fox News again.

Again, As If . . . .
But the photo that bothers them so is emblematic of this movie and what it’s really about. And because it bothered the Village Murmur so much, I’ve posted it again. I mean, should I really pretend this woman is straight like she pretends in this movie? C’mon, let’s be intellectually honest.
Hey, at least I didn’t do this.

By Debbie Schlussel
Well, here’s an argument against gun control if I ever saw one:

The grandson of prominent anti-gun campaigner Pat Regan has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing her to death.
Mrs Regan, 53, was discovered at the property on Marlborough Grange in the Hyde Park area of Leeds on Sunday.
The mother-of-six started campaigning against gun crime when her son Danny was shot dead in 2002.

The 20-year-old man was being held on suspicion of murder, police said. It is thought he had been arrested earlier in the day over another stabbing.
A 45-year-old railway worker was treated in hospital for a stab wound to his arm after challenging a man for trespassing at Leeds station on Sunday morning, British Transport Police said. . . .
Mrs Regan set up a Leeds branch of Mothers Against Guns after her son Danny, 25, was shot at his home in Haydock, near St Helens, Merseyside in December 2002.

Maybe, if she’d had a gun, she could have prevented this.
Tragic evidence of what the NRA is always saying:

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

By Debbie Schlussel
Today is the 41st anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem. It marks the day Israeli soldiers rescued the holiest of Jewish sites, the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple, from disrepair and abandonment under Jordanian occupation.
It’s not as happy an occasion as it once was, with the pressure on from America for Israel to give up the part of Jerusalem that was liberated and return it back to the Muslims who soiled it. The Temple and the nearby mosque were never as free as they have been under Israel.
While we’re often told that Muslims have equal claim to Jerusalem, in fact that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Jerusalem has always been a Jewish city and its status as a city holy to Islam is a political creation, not founded in Islamic history (and never mentioned even once in the Koran). Read my article, “Whose Jerusalem?” for the complete picture.

Israeli Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren Sounds the Shofar (Ram’s Horn) upon the Recapture of the Western Wall (the holiest site in Judaism)

By Debbie Schlussel
I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised that one “conservative” fraud is endorsing and enabling another “conservative” fraud.
And that’s why it’s sort of not a surprise that Sean Hannity is endorsing the comeback effort–a novel–by disgraced former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed.
Reed accepted millions of dollars of Indian tribe gambling money from jailed and convicted gambling lobbyist Jack Abramoff, while pretending he was against gambling. Reed was paid off to start phony anti-gambling protests against rival Indian casinos, so that Jack Abramoff’s Indian casinos wouldn’t have any competition.

Hannity, Reed: The Joy Luck Club
A good deal of the money was laundered through pan-Islamist Grover Norquist‘s Americans for Tax Reform, so the Indians could get a tax deduction and Abramoff’s and his co-conspirator’s expenditures would be shielded from lobbying disclosure laws and from the Indian tribes. (Norquist took his cut for providing the laundry service, and American taxpayers took a bath for giving the tax deduction.)
Reed was disgraced and lost a primary race for the Republican nomination for Georgia Lt. Governor. But he wasn’t disgraced enough.
And now Vannity is helping this rip-off artist and phony. Birds of a feather flock together. Yup, despite all that Reed did, Vannity calls him

Ralph Reed, a top-flight political player

and goes on to gush over this apparently silly book.
Then, there’s Karl Rove, who’s also lent his name and endorsement to the Ralph Reed book. The story goes that the Justice Department was set to indict Norquist and probably Reed, but Rove–then the most powerful aide to President Bush–nixed that. He took care of his old buddies.
And now he and Vannity are helping this con artist, once again:

Now Mr. Reed is dipping his toe into the Washington waters once again. The Web site publicizing the release of his book includes a list of “endorsements” from high-profile politicos. They include Karl Rove, President Bush’s former deputy chief of staff, and Fox News personality Sean Hannity. Notably absent are leaders of the religious right.

Well, at least, some people have principles. But not Vannity or Rove (not that that’s news).
You know what they say about “the company you keep.”
Oh, and by the way, can you be more cheesy than this?:

Throughout the book, Mr. Reed offers up a different side to his choirboy portrait. In describing a woman heading into court, he writes, “She wore a smart red Versace dress, sheer hose, Bruno Magli stiletto-heeled boots and Chanel sunglasses.” And he’s no prude. He writes that a speech given by the independent candidate who had a Christian conversion had “touched every evangelical erogenous zone.”

Brainless stuff only a guy like Vannity could love. He calls it “spellbinding” and “a must-read.” Hilarious. Apparently, it “touched every Hannitized plagiarism and fabrication zone.”
National Review Editor Rich Lowry–who removed my work, which he admitted was 100% accurate, from NRO at the request of Norquist, Islamist Suhail Khan (whose father raised money for Al-Qaeda), and CAIR–also embraces crooked Reed and gushes over his cheesy tome:

Ralph Reed is one of the country’s most brilliant political practitioners and commentators. When he lets his imagination loose in Dark Horse, it’s an exhilarating ride.

This is coming from the editor of National Review? William F. Buckley is turning over in his grave.
Yes, it’s easy to be “brilliant” when you’re getting millions under the table to scam everyone. Usually, though, it’s called “a con.” We’ve already seen “his imagination,” and it’s hardly exhilarating. Just despicable.
On this one, I’m with the liberals:

“Ralph Reed betrayed those who trusted him the most,” says Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning watchdog group. “He was supposed to be this person of deep principle and conviction.” . . .
In January, Mr. Reed appeared as a commentator during CNN’s New Hampshire primary coverage, but he disappeared after a newspaper blog raised questions about it, and Ms. Sloan’s group complained.
Mr. Reed hopes to get involved in electoral politics, saying: “I expect to be involved in helping to put people with solid conservative convictions in public office for the foreseeable future.”

Um, how would he know anything about “solid conservative convictions”?

By Debbie Schlussel
It’s a good thing self-appointed food police chief Morgan Spurlock isn’t ruling American gastronomy, especially in this time of economic downturn.
As we know, fast food restaurants are a very economical way to eat and present a number of choices to Americans who want animal protein and also can’t afford the exorbitant, “healthy” tofu, argula, and edamame Whole Foods diet of Spurlock and his vegan chef girlfriend.
In what I call the Burger Economic Index, more and more Americans are eating at McDonald’s than ever because, with sky-high and rising gas prices and more and more lay-offs, it’s the only thing they can afford. In Spurlock’s world, they’d be hungry:

Leading Economic Indicator of Downturn

Slightly over half of Americans eat fast food at least once a week, according to a national online survey of 1,000 people in March by Research International USA. One in five eat the on-the-go grub every other day.
McDonald’s (MCD) is far and away the most popular. Nearly six in 10 Americans have been to a McDonald’s in the past month, the survey says. By comparison, just more than three in 10 have been to a Wendy’s.
Most regulars say they’re eating fast food more often due to “economic pressures,” says Research International. Hmmm. So the economy is prompting the “average” American to spend $500 per year on fast food.
Meanwhile, market researcher The NPD Group reports that the red, white and blue entree of choice is burgers.
Some 7% of restaurants of all types – from quick service to fine dining – are selling more burgers than two years ago, it reports. That’s 15% of all restaurant orders last year, or about 8.5 million burgers.

We’re lucky that we have these economical choices in today’s hard times. If we were in the third world, we wouldn’t have any choices. And we’d still be starving.
And Morgan Spurlock and his girlfriend would still be out of touch and spending gazillions on imported produce normal people simply can’t afford.
For the record, I’ve never had a McDonald’s Burger (or Burger King or Wendy’s). They’re not kosher. But I celebrate that most Americans–who do not keep kosher–have this economical choice and the freedom to choose it.
***
In another sign of the times in food products, Lucky Charms cereal adds the first new charm in a decade: an hourglass. USA Today’s Ad Team says it symbolizes how pressed for time kids feel these days.

Huh?: New Lucky Charm is an Hourglass
Well, they have plenty of time to surf the Net and talk on cellphones . . . .

By Debbie Schlussel
On this site, I’ve detailed the many “Alien v. Predator” feuds I wish would go on forever: Donald v. Rosie, Star Jones v. Baba Wawa, HAMAS v. Fatah, Iran v. Iraq (which sadly we ended by handing Iraq to extremist Shi’ites), and my fave: Sunnis v. Shi’ites.
The latest salvo in the Sunni v. Shi’ite divide is not surprising to me, but should be very telling to the millions of liberal/PC idiots who are constantly telling us that Islam is about peace and how most are moderates, only a few extremists.
Not exactly.
Sunnis v. Shi’ites . . .

Yesterday, in newspapers and websites throughout the Sunni world, 22 top Sunni clerics–among the most prominent in the Islamic world–put out a statement against Shi’ites–specifically, Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah, which enjoys the support of almost all Shi’ites worldwide–in advance of a phony “interfaith” conference in Saudi Arabia. The Sunnis’ (halal) beef with the Shi’ites? That Hezbollah isn’t really as anti-Jewish and anti-American as they claim, as in they don’t hate Jews and Americans as much as the Sunnis do and would like them to:

Sunni clerics accused Shiites Sunday of destabilizing Muslim countries and humiliating Sunnis, just days before a Muslim interfaith conference called by Saudi Arabia’s king.
The attacks on Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah – though contrary to official policy – highlight the sharp, growing distrust between Islam’s two arms, and its potential to cause more unrest.
In a strongly worded statement, the 22 clerics savaged Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants, saying the Lebanese Shiite group has tricked other Muslims into believing it is against Jews and Americans.
The statement appeared on several Web sites Sunday, including http://www.almoslim.com, which is run by Sheik Nasser al-Omar, one of the signers.

So much for the phony claims over the years that Muslims are not really committed to the Jews’ and America’s elimination, that they’re really a peaceful, loving bunch. Not that you or I didn’t know that, but it’s nice to hear the Sunnis again confirm it.
Then, there’s the Sunnis’ claim that Hezbollah isn’t sufficiently anti-Semitic and anti-American.
If you’re keeping score, there’s the Hezbollah bombing murder of over 300 U.S. Marines and civilians in Lebanon, the blowing up (with Al-Qaeda) of the Khobar towers, the training of Iraqi terrorists to murder American soldiers, the building of IEDs for those Iraqi terrorists, the giant Shi’ite cell of terrorist criminals throughout Dearborn (some of whom have been convicted of defrauding America and Americans to fund and arm Hezbollah), and–according to the 9/11 Commission Report–the meeting of Hezbollah officials with Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 hijackers.
I’d say Hezbollah is pretty anti-American.
Then, there’s Hezbollah’s anti-Jewish score: daily shelling of Iraqi rockets on Israeli villages since the mid-’90s, the kidnapping and holding hostage of several Israeli soldiers, including Ron Arad and the two soldiers kidnapped in 2006, the Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006, the bombing of the Jewish Community Center and Israeli Embassy of Buenos Aires in the mid-’90s, countless murders of Israeli civilians and Israeli soldiers, and the reported Hezbollah-training and control of Palestinian terrorist group, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
I’d say Shi’ites and Hezbollah are “sufficiently” against the Jews, despite what many blind liberal ignoramuses (and Shi’ites’ Sunni enemies) would like to claim.
But, like I said, my favorite feud, Sunnis versus Shi’ites, is apparently back in full force.
May it continue forever. And may both sides lose.
Other Feuds I Wish Would Never End:
Baba Wawa v. Star Jones . . .

Dr. Death, Baba Wawa & Star Jones Swimsuit Edition

Star Jones Reading Her Own Book (For the 1st Time)
HAMAS v. Fatah . . .

Donald v. Rosie . . .

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
Now that it’s June, it’s officially summer reading time. Those who have the luxury curl up by the beach engrossed in the latest faddish novel.
This summer, publisher W.W. Norton is pushing “The Garden of Last Days,” by Andre Dubus III, an Oprah Book Club fave. The book sympathizes with the 9/11 terrorists.
As I’ve written before, Dubus’ “House of Sand and Fog“–an Oprah selection–was a hideously anti-American tale, where the Americans are losers and evil-doers, and Iranian Muslim immigrants are the good, hard-working people, done wrong and caused to lose everything including their lives, thanks to these loser and evil Americans.
Do We Really Need to Sympathize with Those Who Did This?!

Palestinian Woman on Ramallah Street Cheers 9/11 Attacks.
Well, with “The Garden of Last Days” is even more hideous. It tells the story of the 9/11 attacks and the Islamic hijackers last days from the point of view of the terrorists and the strippers some of them, um, patronized.
And it’s very sympathetic. The Wall Street Journal, which, sadly, is recommending this book for its summer reading list, calls it

a fact-based novel in which a terrorist behind the Setp. 11 attacks goes to Florida strip clubs, grappling with his mission and American temptations.

Being a hypocrite doesn’t make you anymore sympathetic or indicate any form of “grappling” or struggle with the mass murder of 3,000 Americans.
How many people truly think any of these 19 cold-hearted Muslims “grappled” with anything relating to the murder of thousands of Americans? You saw the video last will and testament of several of them, including Mohammed Atta. They were smiling and laughing. This was something they were focused on for well over a year and something they were quite proud of. They shouted Allahu Akbar [Allah is the Greatest, ie., greater than that of the Christians and Jews and all others]. They slit the throats of crew members on the flights.
And get this, Oprah author Dubus says he feels sympathy for the 9/11 hijackers:

The author’s sympathy for all of his characters draws in the reader. “I don’t know if I believe in villains,” Mr. Dubus says. “I believe in villainous behavior.”

Wow, this is the worst perversion of the Christian “hate the sin, love the sinner” tenet, I’ve heard yet. Trust me, if his kids or wife were on one of those planes on 9/11, he’d believe in villains.
Even more disgusting is the reaction of some booksellers pimping this piece of garbage:

“You’ll care about these people even as you’re horrified” by what they’re doing, says Mike Barnard, owner of Rakestraw Books, Danville Calif.

“Care” about the 9/11 Islamic mass murderers of innocent Americans?! Hmmm . . . did he care about Hitler and Himmler and Goebbels and Mengele? Good thing he and writer Dubus weren’t around in the late ’30s and early ’40s, so they could care about the people who turned up the Zyklon-B nozzle and cooked and otherwise exterminated 11 million, because looking at naked women somehow makes them sympathetic.

Dubus spent five years on the book, including “research” on the terrorists, Islam, and Saudi Arabia, according to the Journal.
“Research” . . . or indoctrination?
How many innocent trees gave their lives for this trash?
Nauseating to the nth.

Absurd: Andre Dubus Says They (9/11 Hijackers Ziad Jarrah, Mohammed Atta in Martyrdom Video) Grappled with Attacks
**** UPDATE: Bill Warner writes that it appears much of the background material for this book was “lifted” from the work of investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker, whom Bill helped in his investigation. Bill provides interesting stuff I wasn’t aware of, like that Atta killed his girlfriend’s cats, and that others were identified from that sleazy life, who Bill believes knew in advance of the 9/11 attacks:

Mohammed Atta’s Stripper Girlfriend, Amanda Keller

HEY, this book is about Sarasota/Venice Fl and stolen from all the work of investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker! Mohamed Atta was back in the Sarasot/Venice area just prior to 9/11 as per Daniel Hopsicker’s work. Amanda Keller was identified as Atta’s one-time live-in American girlfriend in a story on September 27,2002 headlined “Atta, American Girlfriend in Wild Drug & Booze party in Key West.”
[From the summary of] The Garden of Last Days: A Novel [DS: With Bill’s comments in parentheses]:

Set the weekend before 9/11, the stories of several disreputable characters converge at a Florida strip club (SARASOTA). There’s April, (AMANDA) exotic dancer and single mom; Bassam, a fanatical Muslim in town (VENICE) for flying lessons (sound familiar?);
The following hours are filled with a heart-stopping chain of events portending disaster, the incessant beat of the DJ’s selections as each stripper takes to the stage, the drunken shouts of customers paying for a show, the exchange of money for services, all under the guise of a good time. April is watched: by Louis, her lascivious boss; by Lonnie, a bouncer who views “Spring” as different from the others; by Bassam, a chain-smoking, intense young man from Saudi Arabia ( Egypt–Atta) who walks straight into the embrace of evil, unable to resist the seduction of this foreign country’s blatant disregard for modesty. As the hours pass, a diverse cast divulges their secrets, the individual histories that have led to this fateful night on the Gulf Coast” (Sarasota/Venice)

I helped the original investigative reporter, Daniel Hopsicker dig up some of the background info on Amanda Keller, stipper and girl firend of Mohamed Atta while he lived in the Venice/Sarasota Fl area. The book story is stolen from Daniel Hopsicker’s invesitigative work on stripper Amanda Keller in Sarasota/Venice Fl and Mohamed Atta.

From Hopsicker’s article:

In Venice Florida (JUST SOUTH OF SARASOTA), Mohamed Atta lived for two months with an American stripper/lingerie model named Amanda Keller (both photos are her). Atta loved to party. He was out with Keller nearly every night they were together. He was a heavy drinker, snorted coke, was a stylish dresser and wore expensive jewelry. Keller dumped him after he embarrassed her at a night club by dancing, poorly, atop a speaker. Atta revenged himself later on Keller by returning to the apartment they’d shared and killing her cat and kittens, disemboweling and dismembering them in her apartment for her to find.

By Debbie Schlussel
I’m introducing a new ratings system, invented by Mike Church for my movie reviews on his Sirius Patriot Channel 144 show (every Friday Morning between 10:30 and 11:30 a.m.). I will be using Reagans and Marxes. Four Reagans means it’s great. Four Marxes, it stinks to high heaven (or low Communist hell, actually).
All three new releases, this week, are terrible and earn four Marxes apiece.

* “Sex And The City“: Read my complete review. Four slutty, middle-aged hags turn their annoying, anti-male HBO show into a movie. It’s even worse than the show. Completely disgusting, vile, and juvenile. Again, read my complete review.
FOUR MARXES

* “The Strangers“: This movie was 1.5 hours of torture porn–a violent, disgusting snuff film that has no purpose. It’s not interesting, not scary, just stupid. No point to it, other than to further define deviancy down in America and contribute to the gratuitous violence and desensitizing that is all too common.
Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman star as boyfriend and girlfriend who are vacationing at his father’s house in the country. They’ve just returned to the house, after she rejected his marriage proposal, and they’re not exactly happy. Suddenly, they are terrorized by three people with masks who torture and try to kill them. Horrid and a waste of time.
FOUR MARXES


* “Before the Rains“: The evil, capitalist Western White man destroys the dark man native’s life and all that is around him, causing death, destruction, and pain.
That’s the message of this movie that takes place in the 1930s in India, under British rule. While some Indians are protesting the English and trying to drive them out through strikes and road blockages, the main character here is still in the throes of his evil, capitalist fantasy of building roads on which to better transport the spices he sells.
A married man, he’s having an affair with his married Indian servant. Her husband finds out, she kills herself, and death and destruction ensues for the local Indian villagers, including his other Indian servant. But he–the Englishman–gets away with murder. The end.
FOUR MARXES

By Debbie Schlussel
Of all the things you could protest in America, this wouldn’t even be number gazillion on my list . . . or that of most Americans.
But, tonight, while ABC airs the final two hours of the National Spelling Bee live in prime-time, “Spelling Reformers” will be protesting our spelling, outside the Washington, DC National Spelling Bee venue. I call them “Spelling Truthers.” They don’t like that we spell things according to romance language root word and origin. They want us to spell phonetically.
Oddly enough, one of the Spelling Truthers is the mother of supermodel/actress Rebecca Romijn, Elizabeth Kuizenga (no “spelling reform” in either of their surnames). She supports Spelling Trutherism for the silly reason that she was laughed at when she mispronounced something as a kid.

The spelling reformers are trying to capitalize on the moment. Every year, a group travels to the Bee site, the Grand Hyatt in Washington, to hold a protest on the sidewalk outside. They hand out pamphlets and pins that say “I’m Thru with Through.” Some dress as bumblebees. Last year, the protesters spent much of the $1,500 budget allotted to them by the American Literacy Council, to hire a Benjamin Franklin impersonator to articulate for children, television cameras and other passersby the Founding Father’s advocacy of spelling reform. They stress that they are protesting the words themselves, not the children who are competing.
The Bee protest was the brainchild of Alan Mole, president of the ALC and a rocket scientist — an aerospace stress analyst — in Colorado. It is organized every year by Elizabeth Kuizenga, a California teacher of English-as-a-second-language and the mother of the actress Rebecca Romijn (pronounced romaine). Ms. Kuizenga says she became interested in spelling reform as a child, when she mispronounced the word “ignorance” and her parents laughed at her.

Although some great Americans, like Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt, advocated “Spelling Trutherism,” I think it’s a terrible idea. When I read a new word with which I’m not familiar, I can usually figure it out or have some idea what it means because the root words are spelled correctly. With “Spelling Reform,” it will be next to impossible to dissect and deduct the meanings of words that way. And it will also affect grammar in a negative way.
Aside from that, we already have “Spelling Reform.” It’s called Publick Skool Edyookayshun.
And how would Spelling Reform work in places with different accents? It simply wouldn’t be compatible, with different spellings from Bostonians who pass through “Hah-vuhd Yahd” and those from, say, California, who drive a “Kahr.”
The whole idea is absurd and just an excuse for the further dumbing down of America. Of all the problems facing America right now, this ain’t one of ’em.
We can’t get many Americans to even learn to speak, read, or write English at all, let alone learn how to spell correctly . . . or in the phonetic “spelling reform” manner.
Perhaps, they should start a “Spelling Reform” protest of our (likely) new national language: Spanish (or Arabic).