The Nazi flag proudly flies over the Arab Muslim village of Beit Omar, which lies between Gush Etzion and Kiryat Arba, in Israel. H/T Israelycool.

Well, at least the so-called Palestinians, are openly declaring their ideology and genocidal intentions.

Leftists, along with their Islamist buddies, rely on a well-rehearsed fiction—AKA lie—in order to excuse the Jew-hatred that is endemic in the Muslim world. They tell us that it’s not really Jew-hatred at work, rather, political opposition to “rascist, colonial Zionism.”

(Which, if you think about it, is a perfect description of Islamism which is functionally rascist and proudly, openly, imperialistic.)

Of course, Martin Luther King understood this tactic when he noted that: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.”

Which brings us to Ike and FDR.

General Eisenhower in North Africa.

Did you know that they were Jewish?

Of course not.

Because, well, they weren’t.

But back in 1942, when the American and British troops invaded North Africa—fighting Nazis and the reliably collaborationist French—Eisenhower set up his command post in Algiers.

And as Rick Atkinson writes in his Pulitzer Prize winning, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy, “A rumor in Arab neighborhoods that Eisenhower was a Jew sent by the Jew Roosevelt to establish a Jewish state in North Africa required a leaflet campaign stressing the General’s German Protestant ancestry.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same—at least in the Muslim world.

In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.

We’ve heard this clever aphorism countless times, and nodded our heads in bleak recognition. And yet, have we ever really pondered the ghoulishness that equates taxes with mortality?

Anyone who has ever been audited by the IRS—Seraphic Secret has been twice audited, each time emerging battered but owing the government zero dollars—knows the helpless feeling of being forced to submit to an absolute power, where the normal rules of law and civil society are suspended by an all-powerful government with unlimited resources.

The IRS is a temporal tyranny. Death is the ultimate tyranny. One was created by man, the other by G-d.

Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrat party are now playing G-d, by joining death and taxes into one sinister package.

Obamacare is administered by the IRS.

The same lawless agency that has been targeting and oppressing citizens who disagree with the current administration’s policies, is the very agency now tasked with the health—which is to say every breath—of every American.

Indeed, the Obama administration is now setting in motion a system whereby a central government data base will connect Health and Human Services with the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, Homeland Security, and who knows how many other government agencies.

This makes Big Brother look like a benevolent midget.

The dream of the left, articulated by Marx and Lenin, is to create a rigidly ordered society where messy individualism—AKA liberty—is suppressed in favor of  a utopian common good. Of course, the common good, as defined by the ruling leftists, is forever being downgraded to new normals.

For Obama, this is the new normal of massive unemployment and unsustainable national debt. In a few years, the new normal will be further redefined and downgraded. Before you know it, you live in a society where the common good has been so degraded that the very act of remembering what life used to be like under the banner of liberty and free enterprise is but a distant memory, if not a subversive thought as defined by those supermen who regulate our intake of salt, the size of our soda cups, what light bulbs we can use, and how we flush our toilets.

Welcome to Obamaland, where death and taxes is no longer an ironic statement, but a grim reality.

Ariel Avrech, Z”TL, May His Memory Be A Blessing

You are all invited to The tenth annual Ariel Avrech ZT’L Memorial Lecture that will take place Sunday, June 9, 2013, at 10 AM at the Young Israel of Century City, followed by brunch.

Young Israel of Century City
9317 West Pico Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90035

RSVP to Rebekah at the synagogue office: (310) 273-6954

For those unable to attend in person, the lecture will be posted here at Seraphic Secret.

We are excited to announce that David Horowitz will deliver this year’s lecture: “The War Against Judaism on the University Campus.”

David Horowitz

In his memoir, Radical Son (1996), David Horowitz traces his odyssey from “red-diaper baby” to conservative advocate. Horowitz has devoted the past several years to combating the radicalization of the American university. In 2003, he launched an academic freedom campaign to return the American university to its traditional principle of open inquiry, and stemming the anti-Israel/anti-Semitic indoctrination prevalent on elite American campuses.

David Horowitz is the founder and director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He has spoken at over 300 colleges and universities and continues to visit more than 30 campuses a year. He has appeared on Nightline, Crossfire, Today, Hannity, the O’Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, C-SPAN, CNBC, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.

Had he lived, Ariel would be in the prime of his life, turning thirty-two years-old.

We imagine him, married to a lovely and modest young woman, perhaps with several of the six daughters he wished for, all named for the Jewish expressions of joy: Gilah, Rena, Ditzah, Chedvah, Reah, Shalom, and Reut.

Always sensitive to the needs of others, but immersed in learning Torah, Ariel was pursuing a degree in Special Education at Johns Hopkins University while simultaneously studying Torah at Ner Israel Rabbinical Academy. But he aspired for more and tormented himself at the age of twenty pondering a choice of career, even when in the throes of critical illness.

Ariel never doubted that he would survive. He sincerely believed that his biggest challenge was finding his life’s path. The physical challenges were incidental compared to the task of learning, and spiritual growth.

Ariel raised our family to a higher level of holiness. He inspired his sisters with his sweet humility and kindness which guided them in choosing their husbands, men he would embrace as brothers.

We feel diminished by his loss, for he was a beacon illuminating our family with a special light. From the time Ariel was born, we always said, “Ariel is special.” We will continue to declare it every day, and especially on the day of his memorial lecture.

Contrary to all logic, as time passes, our memories of Ariel have become more vivid. The images of every stage of his life are easier to evoke in all nuance and detail.

This is a mixed blessing since it intensifies our longing for his smile, his steadfastness, his intelligence and kindness. Yet the enrichment of memory strengthens his role in our family as a luminous spirit, guiding us in the corporeal world.

His goodness, his Torah scholarship and modest piety are a constant reminder of what we should all strive for in our lives.

Indeed, Ariel’s absence has been transformed into a deeply felt presence.

Karen hugs Ariel on his first day as a student at Ner Israel Rabbinical Academy, Baltimore, 1998.

We wish all our friends and relatives a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.

Here’s Barack Hussein Obama reacting to the three scandals that are poised to engulf the balance of his second term:

1. Benghazi is a “sideshow.”

2. Political repression of Conservatives by the IRS  was committed by “low-level staffers.”

3. Regarding government wiretaps on the AP: “I’m shocked.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seraphic Secret is shocked, shocked, that Obama didn’t blame President Bush for the lawlessness that characterizes the Obama administration.

The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial today, remembers that “President Obama famously joked in a college commencement address in 2000 that he could use the IRS to target political enemies but of course he never would.”

Pathological liars frequently reveal their lies—in short, they tell the truth about their lies—through off-handed remarks.

As Seraphic Secret has said of Obama: “Half of what he says is lies, and the other half isn’t true.”

But here’s the thing: Obama is telling us that he has no idea what’s going on in his administration. He’s not in control. It’s the other guys who are at fault.

Except for Navy SEALs.

Remember when SEAL snipers brilliantly took out the Somali pirates with two head-shots fired simultaneously from the deck of a ship?

Well, Obama was on the phone with those guys every single minute. Why, if it wasn’t for Barack, the SEALs would not have known what to do.

And of course, the killing of Osama bin Laden. You bet your boots that Barack directed that entire operation from beginning to end. Without the wisdom of the Dear Leader the whole operation would have gone to hell.

Yes, indeed, Barack is always on the job—except when he’s not.

Meanwhile, this cheery news on Obamacare from the Washington Examiner:

Internal cost estimates from 17 of the nation’s largest insurance companies indicate that health insurance premiums will grow an average of 100 percent under Obamacare, and that some will soar more than 400 percent, crushing the administration’s goal of affordability.

New regulations, policies, taxes, fees and mandates are the reason for the unexpected “rate shock,” according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released a report Monday based on internal documents provided by the insurance companies. The 17 companies include Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kaiser Foundation.

The report found that individuals will face “premium increases of nearly 100 percent on average, with potential highs eclipsing 400 percent. Meanwhile, small businesses can expect average premium increases in the small group market of up to 50 percent, with potential highs over 100 percent.”

Obviously, the fault of the Republicans.

Like a five-year old child who, after spilling milk on the new rug, says: “The milk spilled“, instead of, “I spilled the milk,” Obama reveals the moral black hole that is his core.

Seraphic Secret remembers Richard Nixon’s presidency. We remember Watergate, the denials, the lies, the cover-ups. We remember the press pursuing the threads of the story relentlessly. We remember one of the articles of impeachment was that Nixon wanted to use—it’s not clear if he ever did—the IRS to target his political enemies.

We also vividly remember—we lived in Israel in 1973—how Nixon, G-d bless him, rescued the state of Israel during the Yom Kippur War via Operation Nickel Grass.

We wait to see if the mainstream press will react to this out-of-control administration with even a fraction of the outrage they would summon if this were a Republican administration.

But we will not hold our breath.

Seraphic Secret will be off-line until Friday morning in order to celebrate the holiday of Shavuot.

You shall count for yourselves — from the day after the Shabbat, from the day when you bring the Omer of the waving — seven Shabbats, they shall be complete. Until the day after the seventh sabbath you shall count, fifty days… You shall convoke on this very day — there shall be a holy convocation for yourselves — you shall do no laborious work; it is an eternal decree in your dwelling places for your generations.

—Leviticus 21:15-16, 21

We wish all our friends and relatives a chag sameach, a happy holiday.

Seraphic Secret has a close friend who was born and lived in Communist Hungary until he and his family managed to escape to America in 1969.

His tales of life under the iron fist of Communism are chilling: the intrusion of the party bureaucrats into every aspect of private life, the intimidation to conform to party ideology, the constant fear of informers, the grim food shortages, the shoes with cardboard soles, the terrible isolation from truth because all media outlets were arms of the government.

And the endemic corruption of a system that claimed to be fair and just, but was simply a brutal thugogracy.

Of course, because my friend’s family were Jewish, their plight was intensified ten-fold.

A few days ago, my friend, a mild-mannered accountant who never comments on politics, told me that he fears for America. The Benghazi lies peddled by Obama, Hillary Clinton, the State Department, and (until a few days ago) covered up by a pliant press corps, remind him, he said, of the Communist regime he fled.

“America is not that bad,” he allowed, “but the model, the structure of state power supported by a state press, is how people lose their freedom.”

“It can’t happen here,” I quoted with no little irony.

My friend nodded: “That’s what they all say.”

It’s obvious that classic American liberalism is dead. It has morphed into a radical leftism which has found its standard bearer in Barack Hussein Obama, a rigid, cold-blooded leftist whose end-game is the complete dominance of American politics by a single political party. This is to be achieved using classic Socialist* tactics: making a majority of citizens dependent upon the state, either through jobs (shuffling paper, torturing fellow citizens with endless rules and regulations) or through welfare (redefined as a human right).

The revelations of political repression by the IRS against Conservatives should send chills up the spines of every American. For this is how tyrannies gain traction.

And under Obamacare, the IRS will have even more power.

An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting “Tea Party” and “patriot” groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas.

The additional guidelines created by the agency were part of a timeline, obtained by Fox News, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which is looking into the controversial IRS practice. IRS officials apologized Friday for the scrutiny, but new information suggests senior leaders were apprised of the effort as early as 2011 despite public denials from the top.

Read more at Drudge.

*Socialist: noun \ˈsō-sh(ə-)list\— a Communist who has not yet picked up an AK47.

Gary Cooper with his mother Alice.

Greta Garbo hugs her mother, Anna Lovisa, 1928.

Mickey Rooney with his mother, Nellie, 1930s.

Gloria Swanson spends some quality time with daughter Michelle Farmer, 1946.

Marilyn Monroe in her Cadillac, 1954.

America has long had a love affair with the automobile. Cars are the ultimate expression of form, function, fashion — and speed.

But most of all the car represents freedom.

Try and remember when you were a teenager yearning for your driver’s license so you could hop into daddy’s car and go, go, go. It didn’t matter where, you just wanted to burn rubber and escape into the far horizon.

The exhilarating and touching American Graffiti (’73) is the ultimate expression of American car culture. Every scene takes place in a car, or beside a car.

Los Angeles was the first America city built to accommodate the automobile. And the movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, most born dirt-poor, expressed delight in their sudden prosperity and fame by purchasing and posing with their dream machines.

Richard Dix in his Pierce Arrow, 1920s.

Nancy Carroll and her Packard, 1920s.

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire look ready to dance along side her 1929 Duesenberg Model J.

Here’s Ginger’s 1929 Duesenberg fully restored.

Janet Gaynor and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., admire the 1938 Phantom Corsair Cord 810, which looks a bit like a submarine. This was a prototype, never a production model. The auto was featured as “The Flying Wombat” in the David O. Selznick film, The Young in Heart (’38) starring Gaynor and Fairbanks. Hence, the promotional photo. The prototype, the only one that was built, is on display at the Harrah Collection in Reno Nevada.

Here’s the Phantom Corsair in all its glory.

Frank Sinatra with his T-Bird, 1955.

Kim Novak in her Corvette, 1960s.

Steve McQueen races along Sunset Strip in his Jaguar XKSS, 1960s.

The American Mengele: Kermit Gosnell.

Jason Collins, a bench warmer, comes out as gay, and the media feast on what is basically, a non-story.

But abortionist Kermit Gosnell, an American Mengele, a man who practiced infanticide, is virtually ignored.

The American media do not report news, they are left wing commissars who promote news items that support their ideological agenda.

And of course, the mainstream  media are doing their very best to bury Benghazigate, a scandal far greater than Watergate.

Over at Breitbart, my friend John Nolte reports:

Using a Nexis “all news” search, Michael Chapman at CNS News crunched the numbers and reports that over the last eight days the media have covered the story of Jason Collins, the NBA player who announced he was gay, a total of 2,381 times. In contrast, during the first eight days of the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortion doctor accused of capital murder, there were only 115 stories.

The media are still on the culture rampage that dragged Obama over the 2012 finish line. Since Gosnell’s house of abortion horrors, and the lack of government oversight that allowed them to continue for nearly two decades, hurts the left culturally, a legitimate story about infanticide and the horrific reality of legalized abortion is ignored.

On the flip-side, anything involving homosexuality is a big win for the left, mainly because it is a way to push a divisive issue like gay marriage and keep everyone’s eye off of the economy.

Syria’s civil war is a standard Arab Muslim blood feud, pitting various clans and tribes against each other in ever-shifting, ever-widening, and ever-confusing configurations. Arab Muslim blood feuds are like Rube Goldberg devices, only drenched in blood, with a single audio loop of “Allahu Akbar.”

Sunni, Shia and Alawite commit atrocities on a daily basis—so far there have been over 70,000 fatalities in Syria, overwhelmingly civilian—and at least a million refugees trudging around. Of course, this should qualify as Islamophobia, but you’ll never hear CAIR or the New York Times come to such an obvious conclusion because that term is reserved for hate-filled Danish cartoonists who draw pictures of Mohammed, or the nasty citizens of Massachusetts who didn’t give the Tsarnaev brothers enough hugs or enough welfare, thus forcing those two nice boys to become IslamoNazi terrorists.

Of course, the Syrian civil war is also part and parcel of the continuing war by the genocidal-yearning Iranians against Israel. Iran wants to wipe the Jewish state off the face of the earth, and Israel—talk about chutzpah—would prefer to keep breathing.

Hizbullah is Iran’s proxy army that now controls Lebanon. They would like to control Syria too. That’s why Iran is using the Syrian civil war to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime. At the same time, the mullahs are shipping game-changing weapons into Syria to be used against the opposition and, of course, against the hated Jews.

But unlike Barack Hussein Obama, Israel actually has red lines. It is pounding weapons facilities in Syria and interdicting the flow of weapons from Iran into Syria and Lebanon.

There has been some speculation that Syria will strike back at Israel.

Seraphic Secret believes the chances of this happening are close to zero. Assad’s air force is the only thing that’s keeping him in power. If he were to challenge the IAF, he would lose his entire air force in maybe twenty minutes. It’s more likely that Hizbullah will unleash its arsenal of missiles against Israel and attempt to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

The Optimistic Conservative is a retired US naval intelligence officer with a vast knowledge of weapons platforms who served around the world from 1983 to 2004.  Her last operations in the Navy were Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom in 2003. Her analysis of the Syrian civil war, Israel, and America’s no-show in the conflict are sober and trustworthy.

New reporting indicates another attack in Damascus, which demonstrates a profile more consistent with an attack on a facility.  The Tower recounts several explosions on Mt. Qassioun, which dominates the northwest quarter of Damascus and houses major weapons facilities.  A Russia Today news item stated that the IAF launched 12 missiles into Syria from Lebanese air space; if valid, that report indicates the IAF used Israeli Popeye air-to-surface missiles to conduct the attack.  The Popeye has a range of about 50 statute miles (78km), allowing standoff attacks.  An ordnance package of this size, and a pattern of multiple, sequential strikes, fit the profile of an attack intended to badly cripple one or more facilities of industrial character, including weapons storage sites.

The explosive weight capacity of the Popeye is also consistent with the character of the explosions seen in the videos at the Tower piece (link above).  I do note that the explosions in the videos appear to indicate strikes on above-ground, non-hardened targets.  These are only a few of the explosions; there were presumably more.

As with the reported strike near Damascus at the end of January, rumors are circulating almost immediately that the IAF used “bunker busters” in the strike on 5 May.

Read more here.

Deanna Durbin was Anne Frank’s favorite movie star.

There was a time when Hollywood and Hollywood stars represented hope and liberty.

Such a star was the radiant Deanna Durbin, who passed away a few days ago at the age of 91.

Durbin (b. Edna Mae Durbin) was a Canadian child singer turned actress who starred in a series of hugely popular and successful light musical comedies from 1936 to 1948. Durbin, at the peak of her career, was the highest paid actress in Hollywood, getting $400,000 per film. Her movies saved Universal, her financially strapped studio, from a looming bankruptcy.

She was, like Judy Garland, a Hollywood creation and a world-wide phenomenon, a fresh and natural presence on-screen. However, unlike Garland, you never got the sense that Durbin needed her audiences’ approval and love. More than anything, Durbin loved to sing, and when she hit the high C’s, her eyes sparkled with joy.

Deeply unhappy in the rigid studio system, and locked into an image—the cheerful girl next door—that increasingly felt alien as she matured, Durbin married her producer/director, Charles David, and retired in 1949 after just twenty-one films and thirteen years in Hollywood.

Durbin and her husband moved to France. They lived in a rustic farm house in the village of Neauphle-le-Chateau, just outside Paris, where Durbin fiercely guarded her privacy and happily lived “the life of a nobody.”

In 1980, Deanna Durbin sent a current photo of herself to Life Magazine with a note explaining that she was upset at the stories of being overweight.

Since her retirement, Durbin granted only a single interview, to film historian David Shipman, in 1983. The transcript reveals a bright, articulate woman, unpretentious and sensible, blessedly at peace with her Hollywood past.

Deanna Durbin with the troops in the Hollywood Canteen during World War II.

It is important to note that during World War II, Durbin entertained the troops. In particular she remembers one evening, writes Shipman, “when she was lifted on the back of a truck and sang without accompaniment to soldiers about to embark for overseas.”

Durbin’s particular image of clean-cut American decency is all but unknown today. After the Japanese surrender, and America’s occupation, the military authorities chose Durbin pictures as the first American  movies to be viewed by the Japanese people. The theory was that her wholesome films, free of political content, would encourage the civil, democratic society America hoped to build upon the ruins of imperial barbarism.

Unlike Garbo, who famously strolled the streets of New York, militantly avoiding her fans (unkindly calling them “customers”), Deanna Durbin truly turned her back on celebrity.

More than anything, Durbin loved singing, and she enjoyed the fellowship of her co-stars. But as Shipman observed and Durbin agreed, “The system was firmly rigged against the individual in favor of the machine.”

I did not hate show business. I loved to sing. I was happy on the set. I liked the people with whom I worked and after the nervousness of the first day, I felt completely at ease in front of the camera. I also enjoyed the company of my fellow actors, the leading men who were so much older, like Herbert Marshall, Melvyn Douglas, Franchot Tone, Walter Pidgeon, Joseph Cotten, Vincent Price and Robert Cummings. I did two films with my special friend, Charles Laughton. Working with these talented men helped me so very much and I grew up much faster than the average teenager. What I did find difficult was that this acquired maturity had to be hidden under the childlike personality my films and publicity projected on me.

As her vehicles declined in quality the young actress, seeing the handwriting on the wall, walked away from Hollywood with a nice nest egg to live a comfortable retirement of sixty-four years.

This photo of Deanna Durbin was taken in Paris in 1981 by her husband, Charles David, and sent to film historian William Everson.

Deanna Durbin’s brief but shining career is a Hollywood success story. She escaped the grind of fame to live the life she wanted.

While she was active, from 1936 to 1948, Durbin’s fan club was the largest in the world. Even today, her admirers harbor an affection for Durbin that is unique, for she represents a kind of innocence that is not just lost, but cynically mocked by our postmodern culture and today’s female strut-and-grind superstars — vulgar celebrities who resemble strippers more than singers.

Durbin was and remains, at least to her fans, a symbol of American generosity and optimism.

So it should come as no surprise that Deanna Durbin was Anne Frank’s favorite Hollywood star.

The young Jewish girl pasted Durbin’s picture to her bedroom wall in the Achterhuis where the Frank family hid during World War II. The picture can still be seen there today.

When I visited the Anne Frank House, Durbin’s picture brought tears to my eyes. Of all the grim images of the Holocaust, the glamor shot of Deanna Durbin has seared itself into my memory in a unique manner. It’s American goodness set against the darkening universe of European Jew-hatred and genocide.

Perhaps I’m cynical, but I don’t believe that there is a single Hollywood star who offers the hope of freedom to anyone, much less to victims of oppression and mass murder.

No, these days, Hollywood stars cheerfully make pilgrimages to tyrants like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

The old glamor was, of course, a massive illusion. But it was an illusion that sustained the American dream and gave hope to millions.

RIP Deanna Durbin.

My friend Self-Styled Siren has written the definitive overview of Durbin’s career, a lovely tribute.

Over at Greenbriar Picture Shows, John McElwee writes in-depth about Durbin here, here, here and finally, Deanna Departs.

For an informative and revealing look at Durbin’s brief but radiant career, see Jeanine Basinger’s fine book, The Star Machine.

Deanna Durbin, I’ll Be Yours, 1947.

Deanna Durbin fan sites:

The Amazing Deanna Durbin

Deanna Durbin Devotees

The Deanna Durbin Virtual Musem

Deanna Durbin on Facebook

The Deanna Durbin Society — by subscription only

Several friends in Israel have reported an unusual number of IAF jets streaking across the skies over the past few days.

Now, we know why.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) reports that Israeli fighter jets slipped into Damascus over the weekend and bombed a chemical weapons depot outside the city.

Neither Damascus nor Jerusalem have yet confirmed the attack, according to UPI.

According to The Jewish Press (JP) ”many” reports came in over the weekend confirming the mission. Sources told the JP Israeli jets arrived over Damascus early Saturday morning and circled Assad’s presidential compound before moving on to target the weapons site.

The Israeli jets reportedly received fire but returned to base unscathed.

Read more at the Business Insider

Barack Hussein Obama’s policy of leading from behind and seeking a consensus from the Jew-hating United Nations has made it clearer than ever that Israel must go it alone against the genocide-yearning Muslims of the Middle East.

Obama’s red line, I think all rational people understand, is nothing more than the political posturing of a man with little moral courage, and zero understanding of the brutal calculus of the Middle East.

Seraphic Secret does not believe America should intervene in Syria’s bloodbath, where the only choice is between evil and evil. But America should work to eliminate Syria’s massive stockpile of chemical-biological weapons.

We can all be thankful that Israel actually has some red lines — and a government that understands that grave warnings are hollow vessels compared to military action.

Unless America moves aggressively against Islamist agents of mass destruction, America will eventually wake up to a biological-chemical attack that will make 9-11 and the Boston Massacre seem mild.

In the meantime, America, Israel has your back.

So: Barack Hussein Obama draws a red line, saying there will be trouble if the Syrian regime should use chemical weapons against its opponents.

“That would change my calculus. That would change my equation,” he announces. Chemical weapons, he assures the palace press corps, “we will not tolerate.”

Further, Obama gravely warns Assad that the “President of the United States does not bluff.”

Of course, Assad figures that anyone who says they are not bluffing is bluffing, so he goes ahead and uses chemical weapons.

A resolute Obama springs into action and —

You gotta hand it to Obama. His timing is impeccable, as are his priorities.

Announcing you are gay in America is, first of all, a crashing bore. It’s also a vulgar display of narcissism. The love that dare not speak its name has become the love that won’t shut up.

Seraphic Secret believes that sexuality should be a private affair.

Courageous?

Announcing you are gay in Iran, Gaza, Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, any happy-go-lucky Muslim paradise on earth — that would be courageous.

Suicidal, but still courageous.

Come to think of it, announcing you are Jewish or Christian in an Islamic hell-hole qualifies as courageous.

But announcing you are gay in America will probably get you product endorsements,  testimonial dinners, a reality show on Bravo hosted by Andy Cohen, and an inspirational Lifetime movie starring a D-lister who can’t even get a gig on Dancing With the Stars.

Anyhoo.

We can all rest easy. Jason Collins, who averages 2 points a game (that’s just sad) is gay, and Barack Hussein Obama calls him on the phone to chat.

And Bashar al-Assad is, no doubt, trembling in his boots.

I have a courageous announcement.

I’m a heterosexual, Torah observant Jew, and a Conservative Republican — drum roll, please — who works in Hollywood.

Waiting for Barack Hussein to call with a mazal tov.

In ancient Rome, an engineer who built a bridge had to sleep underneath it to demonstrate its safety. Naturally, this law was an incentive for engineers to build bridges that would not collapse.

No such law exists for America’s political class.

Barack Obama and his family will never have to squirm under the government leviathan of Obamacare (surprise — Obama lied; it’s a tax!) — the 20,000 pages of incomprehensible laws and regulations he foisted on the American people.

And now, of course, Congress, which is finally getting around to reading parts of the bill they passed, are coming to realize that it is a disaster.

And — what a shock! — they want to escape the calamity they have created, unwilling to live under the very laws they have passed.

When, in the history of the world, has more bureaucracy meant a better, more humane system?

Like the Politburo in the old Soviet Union, our political class are perfectly content to lecture us, the great unwashed masses, about what’s fair and how to achieve utopia. But they also make sure to exempt themselves from their own programs because they know that social engineering is a guaranteed smashup. They know that one-size-fits-all health care translates into shortages of qualified physicians and nurses, shoddy services, a rise in all medical costs, soaring premiums, and of course, as uber-Democrat Paul Krugman admitted, death panels (surprise — Sarah Palin was right!) and, higher taxes.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone.

Remember, not one Republican voted for Obamacare.

Except for Chief Justice John Roberts.

Now, favored unions and businesses are getting special exemptions — more than 1,200 waivers from Obamacare.

Even Senator Max Baucus (D–MT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a huge supporter of Obamacare, has described the implementation of Obamacare as an oncoming “train wreck.”

Henry Chao, an administration official (AKA party hack) involved with implementing Obamacare, hopes that Americans can avoid a “third-world experience.”

Seraphic Secret believes that any Republican or Democrat in Congress who is involved in such negotiations should be exposed to public scrutiny — then tarred, feathered, and run out of office on a narrow and extremely painful rail.

High-level, closed-door talks among top political hacks from both parties could lead to a deal that exempts lawmakers and their staffers from mandated coverage under President Obama’s health care law, sources told one news outlet.

The talks involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker John Boehner, other high-ranking congressional leaders and various Obama administration officials, Politico reported Thursday.

The discussions are described as sensitive, as both sides — particularly Democrats who support the health reform — are wary of the potential backlash from an outraged constituency that sees the move as hypocritical
“Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump or nothing is going to get done,” said one unnamed source that Politico says is close to the talks.

The exemption could apply to 535 legislators and the thousands of aides who work for them.

Read the entire story at The Fedaralist

Andrew C. McCarthy, who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against IslamoNazi Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven other jihadists, has posted an important piece at NRO:

He details how the Obama administration has been handing out incorrect information — AKA lying — about the Boston massacre.

McCarthy points out that it was the Obama’s Justice Dept, and not a rogue judge, who Mirandized Dzokhar Tsarnaev.

Further, he makes clear that there is no “48 hour exception to the Miranda rule.”

He explains that what we learned from Tsarnaev in 16 hours of un-lawyered-up questioning is not “intelligence.”

The so-called plot by the Tsarnaev brothers to bomb Times Square does not mean that a plot has been foiled.

Finally, and most damaging to the public, the mainstream media, Obama’s Praetorian Guard, accept this administration’s false narrative and dutifully regurgitate it to the public.

Just as Walter Duranty of the New York Times enabled Stalin’s mass murder in the Ukraine — and won the Pulitzer Prize for his stories — today’s media are covering up and enabling Obama’s endless lies from Obamacare, to national security and, of course, abortion.

When Obama speaks you can be certain that half of what he says are lies — and the other half is not true.

As the Justice Department well knows, the filing of the criminal complaint is the action that vested the federal court with jurisdiction to act. The moment the complaint was filed, everyone involved in that decision knew that the rules of criminal procedure mandated a prompt “presentment” hearing before a magistrate judge, who would be required by statute to advise Tsarnaev of his rights to counsel and to stop speaking with government agents. Indeed, it is customary that the Justice Department prosecutors on the case orchestrate these proceedings as soon as they file the complaint. They make sure a defense lawyer is assigned by the court, schedule a hearing time with the magistrate judge, and arrange for a court reporter and, if necessary, an interpreter.

The whole point of the presentment is to get the arrested person out of the government’s clutches and into the Bill of Rights’ carapace. Moreover, when an arrestee is incapacitated, as Tsarnaev was, it is unexceptional to convene the presentment at a hospital — and the magistrate judge and defense lawyer cannot get into the location where the detainee is held under heavy security unless the Justice Department arranges for that to happen.

It was not the magistrate judge who decided Tsarnaev should be Mirandized. It was President Obama and Attorney General Holder.

Full story at NRO

Audrey Hepburn as Sister Luke, The Nun’s Story, 1959.

We continue and conclude our survey of the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940s, click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1930s click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1920s click here.

20. The Nun’s Story, 1959

Think of Audrey Hepburn and chances are memory conjures the beloved actress as the chauffeur’s daughter in Sabrina, the socialite Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the restless Princess Ann in Roman Holiday, and the street urchin Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.

Peter Finch and Audrey Hepburn, The Nun’s Story, 1959.

But Audrey Hepburn’s most powerful and vivid performance is as Gabrielle van der Ma, a young nurse, who becomes Sister Luke, in The Nun’s Story, a deeply moving film based on the best selling novel of the same name by Kathryn C. Hulme.

In 1930, Belgium, Gabrielle van der Mal is the independent-minded daughter of a prominent surgeon who decides to leave her upper-class family to enter a convent, hoping to work as nun with natives afflicted with tropical diseases in the Congo.

To be a nun, a humble servant of G-d, means transcending the ego. Thus, life in a convent seems to be a supreme inner battle to embrace humility at the expense of individuality.

Mapping the inner life of the soul is not, on the face of it, movie material. Movies are best when they move, and move quickly. Which is why the chase is one of the most vital foundation blocks of the movies.

However, the fine screenplay by Robert Anderson does a remarkable job of depicting the spiritual journey of Sister Luke’s character. And Fred Zinneman’s direction is, at all times, focused on the minute details of her life. Particularly effective are the preparation to become a novice and the beautifully elaborate rituals of vows taken by those who choose to join the order and become nuns. Zinneman choreographs movements with all the grace and simplicity the subject matter demands.

When Sidney Lumet and I were working on A Stranger Among Us, studio executives worried that there were too many details of Hasidic life in the movie. It was, in short, too Jewish. They feared the film would not be “universal enough” for a general audience.

With the wisdom of a great director who understood drama — and a movie veteran skilled at handling skittish executives — Sidney responded with an explanation I have never forgotten, a simple and truthful response that saved our movie from a mindless dilution of the material.

Said Sidney Lumet to the roomful of overwrought Hollywood executives: “The more specific you dramatize a culture, the more universal it becomes.”

Every exec in the room hesitated, glanced at one another, and then smiled in exquisite comprehension.

The Nun’s Story has such jaw-dropping and hypnotic specificity, such relentless focus on the details of ritual, that I recognized my own life as a Torah-observant Jew in Sister Luke’s narrative.

Gabrielle struggles with the practice of silence and has a hard time giving up all her possessions. Of course, the audience sympathizes with Sister Luke. We want her to succeed, and yet we dread losing Audrey Hepburn.

Ultimately, Sister Luke is assigned to a hospital in Congo where she works as a nurse for Dr. Fortunati (Peter Finch), an atheist, an alcoholic, and a brilliant surgeon. Fortunati comes to rely on Sister Luke’s excellent nursing, and when she comes down with tuberculosis he treats her himself rather than send her back to Europe. Of course, there is nicely understated sexual tension between Fortunati and Sister Luke, but it’s all subtext.

Sister Luke struggles and stumbles with her decision to remain a nun. The film respects the complexity of a religious Catholic narrative. In the process, it reveals the goodness of her soul and the righteousness for which she strives.

Audrey Hepburn’s performance has all the grace and dignity we expect from such an accomplished actress. The conflict and passion her character feels is observable in the quick flash of her eyes — which she tries to suppress — and the manner in which her spine goes slightly rigid when she contends with the demands of her order. In movies, acting is reacting, and Hepburn’s subtle characterization of Sister Luke is skilled and sensitive, a properly hushed performance. This was, by far, the most demanding of all Hepburn’s roles — and her greatest triumph. It’s not surprising that this was Hepburn’s favorite of all her roles.

All great movies are, at the core, love stories. The Nun’s Story is about Sister Luke’s love for G-d. Her yearning for spiritual perfection through the Christian love of Jesus is a profound and deeply moving insight into the human heart.

The Nun’s Story is riveting and humbling.

This concludes our survey of the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s.

Seraphic Secret will soon move on to the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s. However, we need some time to screen a whole bunch of films from that era, thereby refreshing old impressions and memories, so we can choose wisely and write with proper authority.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seraphic Secret believes that it’s a strategic and moral mistake to present Awad as a guest. By giving Awad face time, O’Reilly legitimizes a Islamist supremacist. Of course, TV is all about ratings, and O’Reilly knew in advance what Awad was going to say, thus providing some fine drama as O’Reilly demolished Awad.

We believe that Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy is a more appropriate guest.

CAIR is a dangerous organization, a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. Their job is not to plant bombs, but to deny that the bombs planted by Islamists are the product of Islamist ideology.

This is Orwellian language of terror.

The Muslim Brotherhood have a strategy for North America labeled “Civilization-Jihadist Process.”

This doctrine outlines how Islamists plan to destroy North America from within, using the Democratic process as a lever to power. This is a movement that looks backward to the 7th century, in order to inspire and mold a future.

The basic outline of “the Project” is as follows:

1. Put into action a 100 year plan for establishing the caliphate in the West taking advantage of the freedoms, protections and rights inherent in the liberal democracies for purposes of subverting the system.

2. Avoid associating publicly with obvious terrorist groups so that the cultural jihadists can feign moderation.

3. Employ al-takeyya, or religiously condoned deception, to mask their true goals.

4. Strive to bring about conversion to Islam through intense programs of da’wa.

5. Establish a Muslim-centric parallel infrastructure which includes Islamic centers/mosques, hospitals, schools, NGOs and other social institutions to create self-nourishing radical Muslim enclaves which will serve as a source of friction against the larger non-Muslim society.

6. Build alliances with the left and other enemies of the West.

7. Offer support for global jihad along with the funding to support it.

8. Embark on a permanent and consistent campaign of propaganda to cause Muslims to resent the West, seeking to inflame and radicalize those most susceptible to such influence, a strategy which will also serve to marginalize and intimidate whatever true moderates there are.

Source: Militant Islam Monitor.

The following is based on a May 22, 1991 document discovered by the FBI.

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” and all the word means. The Ikhwan [Arabic for brothers] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad to eliminate and destroy the Western civilization from within, and sabotage its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated, and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

Without this level of understanding, we are not up to the challenge and have not yet prepared ourselves for Jihad. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal. [from Section Four: The Process of Settlement ]

Source: Sharia and Jihad Review

—Koran 8:60

Click here to view the embedded video.

H/T Joshua Pundit

This 11 minute video is solid and refreshingly informative.

In it, you will learn a good deal of what you need to know, and everything the mainstream media and craven politicians refuse to acknowledge, about Islamic terrorism.

It should be noted that Democrat Congressman Keith Ellison (Minnesota’s 5th congressional district) is not just a craven politician. He is also a liar.

As a Muslim, Ellison is clearly operating in a specific Islamic category called Taqiyya and Kitman. This is where Muslims are commanded to lie about Islam in order to gain the trust of infidels. Once the infidels have been softened up, the Muslims move in for the kill using politically-correct intimidation, violence, rape (the wildly popular Islamic tactic in Sweden ), plunder, and mass murder.

The Boston massacre is at one with the jihad against Jews.

When Muslim terrorists attack Israel, we are told that these acts are in response to “Jewish settlements.”

Credulous Western liberals swallow this fictional justification, piously damning the Jewish state for “stealing Arab land.”

The truth is Arab Muslim terrorism against the Jewish state has never been about national boundaries, or about so-called settlements. Unless, of course, you consider the entire state of Israel a settlement —

— which is exactly the religious ideology that animates the jihadists of the PLO, Hamas, Hizbullah, and the mother of all Islamist totalitarians, the Muslim Brotherhood.

From time immemorial, Jews have lived in the land of Israel. In spite of attempted genocide and forced exiles, Jews have maintained a presence in the land, including Judea and Samaria, AKA the West Bank. In 1948, five Arab Muslim armies declared jihad against the reborn Jewish state, and ethnically cleansed Judea and Samaria, making it a Judenrein reichlet.

Thus, when Western liberals tell Jews they have no right to live in Judea and Samaria, they are, in effect, telling Jews to live in ghettos. Once we are forbidden to dwell in Judea and Samaria, we will be barred from Paris, Stockholm, Dublin, London, New York.

Seraphic Secret has been warning for years that such a message is not only a danger to Jews, but will eventually boomerang against the very liberals who have enabled such a racist and bigoted ideology to flourish as mainstream progressive thought.

On Patriots Day, during the Boston Marathon, the ungrateful immigrant brothers were telling the people of Boston that their streets, their homes, their very lives are illegitimate.

The Islamist butchers view Boston—one of America’s oldest cities—as a settlement, a settlement of infidels who deserve death and mutilation.

The jihadist endgame is simple: Boston will eventually become part of a transnational caliphate. And spilling oceans of blood is the means by which this religious dream will be realized.

Jews are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. Once a society excuses and enables Jew-hatred—hatred of Israel is Jew-hatred—that society is doomed.

In Boston, the hijacked car with a Coexist bumper sticker.

Some in the mainstream media are scratching their heads about the motives of the Islamic terrorists who planted bombs packed with nails and steel pellets, at the Boston Marathon.

Whatever motivated two Muslims to place a lethal bomb at the feet of 8 year-old Martin Richard?

Yes, it’s a real mystery why two Islamist brothers decided to slaughter a bunch of infidels.

After all, America gave asylum to Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, made it possible for them to attend prestigious schools, and even handed cute little Dzhokhar—unfortunately still alive to stand trial with no possibility of a death penalty—an academic scholarship of $2,500.

Obviously, America did not do enough for these Islamist true believers.

We didn’t give them enough hugs. We didn’t allow them to fit in.

It’s our fault.

The pathetic Coexist bumper sticker proudly displayed on the hijacked Boston car should be seen as what it really is: a call for suicide.

Because you can bet your bottom dollar that Coexist bumper stickers do not appear in Saudi Arabia, Gaza, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia, Pakistan, Kenya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Chechnya, or any of the Muslim hell holes the mainstream media assures us are not the Islamic source from which Islamist terror is exported around the globe.

Motive?

Maybe the Muslim terrorists are, y’know, Muslim terrorists, and they see the dopey Coexist bumper sticker as an invitation to murder American infidels.

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, 1959.

We continue our survey of the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940s, click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1930s click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1920s click here.

19. Some Like It Hot, 1959.

“Look at that!” Jack Lemmon tells Tony Curtis as he watches Marilyn Monroe in awe. “Look how she moves. Like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motor. I tell you, it’s a whole different sex.”

Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s screenplay for Some Like It Hot, which some consider the greatest comedy ever produced, nails the Marilyn Monroe personae with an exactitude that is almost frightening.

Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk in Some Like It Hot.

The plot: Curtis and Lemmon are Chicago musicians who accidentally witness the St. Valentine’s day massacre. They disguise themselves as women to avoid being rubbed out by the mob, and join an all-female orchestra on its way to Florida. Marilyn Monroe is the orchestra’s featured singer who has her sights set on marrying a millionaire.

Curtis lusts for Monroe, and disguises himself as a millionaire in need of a good woman’s love to cure him of his inability to get aroused. As the heir to the Shell oil fortune, Curtis turns in a devastatingly wicked Cary Grant imitation. And the scene on the yacht where MM tries to arouse Curtis is a prime example of how to avoid low comedy by exploring real emotions. Observe how Monroe kisses Curtis: with great tenderness and mercy, as if she’s afraid that too much passion might break him into little pieces.

Meanwhile, Lemmon in drag, gets engaged to a real millionaire, the whacky, unflappable Joe E. Brown.

“You’re not a girl!” Curtis tells Lemmon. “You’re a guy! Why would a guy want to marry a guy?”

Responds Lemmon with great common sense: “Security!”

This is a screwball comedy, that wonderful, optimistic genre which thrived in the 1930s and gave way to the cynical film noir of the 1940s. Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s inspired and meticulous script hits all the right notes: men and women locked in epic romantic confusions, gender switches that defy imagination, and dialog so dazzling the viewer is left breathless. In fact, so deft and finely resolved is the movie’s script and direction that it can be safely said to be the last genuine screwball ever produced.

Production on Some Like It Hot is infamous for MMs neurotic, if not pathological behavior.

Monroe had so much trouble saying one line of dialogue, “Where’s the bourbon?” while looking in a dresser drawer that Wilder had the line pasted inside the drawer. When Wilder called for another take, Monroe opened the wrong drawer and of course, flubbed the line. Wilder finally pasted the three words of dialogue inside every drawer.

It took something like forty takes for Monroe to get the correct line reading.

This is, of course, madness, and it’s the main reason Tony Curtis notoriously told a reporter that kissing Marilyn was “like kissing Hitler.”

While MM struggled with her lines, the other actors with whom she was playing scenes were forced to adjust to her endless demands. Monroe’s insecurities dominated the set. And it’s a testament to the artistry of Tony Curtis that he never falters in his scenes with MM. His reaction shots are golden examples of comic timing. And his line readings, in spite of the multiple takes MM required, are always fresh and sparkling.

Regardless of MMs personal torment—made even worse by Lee Strassberg’s destructive Method—she steals the show.

Seraphic Secret has repeatedly emphasized that all great movies are, in one way or another, love stories. On the surface, Some Like It Hot seems to be about raw sex and animal desire. Poured into an Orry-Kelly designed black dress with a sheer panel that makes every red-blooded American squint, MM sings “I Wanna Be Loved by You.”

Marilyn coos, whispers, and smolders, putting over the lyrics like a wide-eyed child. This musical number captures the essence of MMs universal appeal. Alone in the spotlight, awash in wonder and anxiety, MM begs for love. We, the audience, experience her yawning emptiness with a vividness that has rarely been equaled in movie history.

MM, in spite of her chronic hysteria, was a great actress, an elegant comedienne whose explosive sexuality she carefully released lest its sheer power overwhelm the narrative.

Some Like It Hot is laugh out loud funny, and yet, at the same time, a deeply moving testament to the enduring power of true love.

Billy Wilder directs Tony Curtis during production of Some Like It Hot.