North Korea

Iran: Bigger Threat than North Korean and Syria Combined

April 19, 2017 by Robert J. Avrech 2 Comments

Below is Michael Oren’s April 15 op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, in which Ambassador Oren argues that the Trump administration must act decisively now to address a threat to the United States greater than that of Syria and North Korea combined: Iran.

Oren explains that the United States has signed three agreements to keep non-conventional weapons out of the hands of rogue regimes. Two of those regimes, Syria and North Korea, have violated those agreements and are now being challenged by President Trump. The third regime—the most dangerous, Iran—doesn’t even need to its agreement in order to produce nuclear weapons. To become a nuclear power, Iran only has to honor it.

As signed, the Iran nuclear deal assures that Iran will be a nuclear armed power by the late 2020s. Now is the time, Oren argues, that President Trump must act to address the appalling flaws in the deal and to save the middle East, America and the world from a nuclear armed Jihadist Iran.

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

December 25, 2015 by Robert J. Avrech 16 Comments

“It is impossible to get anything made or accomplished without stepping on some toes; enemies are inevitable when one is a doer.” —Norma Schearer — “It is impossible to get anything made or accomplished without stepping on some toes; enemies are inevitable when one is a doer.”
—Norma Schearer

Obama Capitulates to Iran

July 14, 2015 by Robert J. Avrech 9 Comments

Barack Obama has just made a deal with these IslamoNazis.

PM Netanyahu’s Statement on the Obama-Kerry Deal With Iran

7/14/15

“I will refer later to the details of the agreement, but before that, I would like to say here and now – when you are willing to make an agreement at any cost, this is the result.

From the initial reports we can already conclude that this agreement is an historic mistake for the world.

Far-reaching concessions have been made in all areas that were supposed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capability. In addition, Iran will receive hundreds of billions of dollars with which it can fuel its terror machine and its expansion and aggression throughout the Middle East and across the globe.

Democrat ObamaCare Blame Game: It’s Big Government, Not Enough Propaganda

December 9, 2013 by Robert J. Avrech 17 Comments

Last week, on Thursday, Barack Obama told Chris Matthews that the blame for the disastrous Obamacare rollout is the fault of:

Republicans
Cynicism
Washington gridlock

And then the President of the United States dropped a bombshell:

Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s: The Manchurian Candidate

October 10, 2013 by Robert J. Avrech 31 Comments

Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, 1962. — Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey in *The Manchurian Candidate*, 1962.

We continue our survey of the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s, click here.

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.

4. The Manchurian Candidate, 1962.

Movies are time capsules.

We view a Hollywood production from, say, the 1930s and we get a series of messages—visual and verbal—that are instant snapshots of the culture from which the narrative was birthed. There are, of course, the fashions, the hairstyles, even the make up, that let us us know that we are in a particular time and place. And of course, the narratives are witnesses to how society viewed itself. The attitudes and values of American culture are on full display, in all their myriad forms, in the movies.

Some movies date better than others. The screwball comedies of the 1930s still play beautifully for contemporary audiences because the battle of the sexes is timeless. Sadly, the women’s weepies of the 40s—take a look at Now Voyager (’42), an amazing Bette Davis film—fare less well because they are seen by today’s women as regressive and misogynistic. Busby Berkeley musicals are fun, admired for their abstraction of the human form, but they are relics, kitch for the priests of high culture.

And this is one of the reasons why The Manchurian Candidate is such an astonishing movie. It is deeply contemporary, post-modernism before the term was invented.