Monday, December 15, 2008

Update on Deaf "Extreme Makeover" Family

Many of us, DeafRead readers and viewers keep abreast of the news about the Deaf "Extreme Makeover" family whose face the house foreclosure situation.

Somewhat the good news occured for this family. We could*sigh* for relief to see many good-hearted people pour in finanical donations for this deaf family except hearing son.

Here is the link via news report -

http://tv.yahoo.com/show/36736/news/urn:newsml:tv.ap.org:20081215:extreme_makeover_foreclosure__ER:50545

ASLize yours,
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
RLMDEAF blog

Rebuttal to Gary Brooks' Lurdcious "Red Dawn" Scenarios

In rebuttal to Gary Brooks' luridcious "Red Dawn" scenarios on his latest vlog about expressing such concerns about the latest Russian strategic and tactic developments down in South America region.

First of all, Gary Brooks, deaf vlogger and Gallaudet graduate, made numerous significant errors in refer to the Reaganesque 80's film, "Red Dawn". The fictional invaders were the part of Soviet Union empire, NOT Russia. Comprendo? Gary Brooks had to understand the real difference between the Soviet Union and Russia being specifically portrayed in the "Red Dawn" film.


Gary Brooks had to realize that the "Flamingo Kid" 1984 film with Matt Dillon, was really the FIRST Hollywood film to be stamped and labeled as the PG-13 film, but shelved and released later.


Yes, "Red Dawn" film was the first Hollywood film to be released with the PG-13 rating. Gary Brooks' favorite Hollywood filmmaker, Steven Spielberg was directly responsible for the call of creating the PG-13 rating in response to many outraged parents about overly violent materials in "Gremlins" and "Indian Jones : Temple of the Doom" films. Spielberg was pretty defensive and reactive and greedy to save his films from being labeled as "inappropriate" for many young kids. Nothing new about Hollywood!


"Red Dawn" film was purely known as the product of "Cold War" mentality or subtle propaganda of the Reagan/Bush administration to manipulate the American public opinion about the nuclear freeze movement and other dovish activists which pushed the unrealistic and illogical proposal for the Strategic Defense Intitatives (SDI) often popularly labeled as "Star Wars".


Many goofs and technical errors and laughable plot found in the "Red Dawn". Not many people realized that the Pentagon and Reagan's first Chief of Staff, General Alexander Haig, were heavily involved in the storyline development to create the panic fears about the likely "Soviet Union" invasion of the United States. President Reagan also gave the birth of pop culture trend of describing the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" borrowed the phrase from the first Star War film. General Haig, the first chief of staff under President Reagan, was pressured to resign for his dictatorial remark - "I am in charge now" and kept the Vice President George H.W. Bush in dark about Reagan's failed assassination.


There will be the remake of "Red Dawn" film for the post 9/11 scenario in the near future. It is in the pre-development phase right now.


ABC's "Amerika" television mini-series back in 1987, also was seen as part of the "right-wing paranoia". This mini-series consisted of very boring and dreary 14 hours which were blasted by every directions from the left and right. The Soviet Union also threatened to shut down the ABC-TV's Moscow news bureau, but the ABC-TV network had to prove themselves tough and not back down. Many people were concerned about the possible damaging aspect of "Amerika" and "Red Dawn" film on the U.S.-Soviet Union relations.


Gary Brooks had to ask himself "whom is to blame" for the real obesity epidemic among the American youths. He had to realize whose ran the White House for past 40 years - Republicans. President John F. Kennedy established the President's Commission on Fitness
which the Republicans made many mispriorities like the "War on Drug". Republicans never did use the common sense about the importance of physical fitness. We could get our natural adherline from execrising and eating appropriately.


The Reagan administration was fully responsible for relaxing and weakening the quality and standard for food regulation, ex. , creation of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as most economical and profitable for the mega food industry like the Protcer and Gamble and the Kraft Foods, Inc at that time. President Reagan claimed that "ketchup" as real vegetable with a lot of HFCS in it. The U.S. Senator, John Heinz, vigorously protested that the Reagan administration labeled ketchup to qualify as a vegetable for the administration's so-called justifiable calls for deep cuts on school lunch programs across the United States. The Reagan administration assaulted on the expanding school lunch program for providing real nutritional foods, instead of junk foods.

During the Reagan years, the administration loosened the definition of nutritional quality of school lunches. My former school, WV School for the Deaf got chocolate milks and pizzas and other junk foods for very first time in its school history, because of the Reagan and other national administration being permissible with the weakening of our school lunches' nutritional quality in name of real capitalism.

The presence of HFCS in our processed foods were unquestionably responsible for many symptoms among our American youth - diabetes and obese at very young age. The Reagan era highly encouraged the excessive materialism within the American people - home video games.


Pros and cons of the video game uses have to be stated. Many military experts found real benefits with the regular application of video games among the youth to maximize the spatial orientation and time-response. The present American soldiers of the Gen X found themselves that the video games often doesn't reflected the reality of war battlegrounds.


Is the present Russia under the sleath leadership of Vladmir Putin and Medevev's hidden agenda of occupying or invading the economically vulnerable United States are possibly real?


We probably will not know for sure. The neo-conservatives and pro-military fascists like Gary Brooks, often overstate or make the molehill out of many things to protect their own "military-industrial complex" interests, ex. the Blackwater or RPK contractors.


Yes, President George W. Bush was very idiotic for re-assuring the American people back in 2001 - "I looked into Putin's eyes and seen his soul. I trust him". Bush was totally wrong about Putin, the ex-KGB agent. Gary Brooks' 2000 presidential candidate - GWB? Bush in 2004?

Most important of all is to strengthen our economic foundation and military preparedness than outlying such right wing paranoia about Russia's geopolitics activities in Venezuela, Panama Canal and Iran.

The United States of America must invest substantial time and pay real attention to the South America region, not intimidate and bully and dictate any South America countries much further. Just work along with, not ostratched any hidden agenda to solely serve the commerical interests for the United States. We ought to re-visit our official policy toward Cuba and help to democratize the Cuban society than remaining the economic and political sanction.

Gary Brooks is wrong again about the size of Iraq as a country. Yes, Iran is much bigger than Iraq in geographical destiny.

Gary Brooks usually confuse the reality of geopolitics thru the lens of Hollywood fiction movies. Many battle scenes in "Red Dawn" are absurdly illogical and unpractical anyway.

Russia have its own military problem - serious morale problems among their enlisted soldiers, explosive rate of HIVs and diminishing "petro-dollars" and shrinking population. Russia would not stomach any physical invasion of the United States. It would resort to the use of electromagnetic pulses (EMP) to disrupt and disable the electronic system from television broadcast waves to the AMT machines as most "cost-effective" and "practical" to paralyze the daily economic and military operations.

That would be possible for the return of the Cold War between the United States and Russia. Who knows? How interesting for Russia making the odd alliances with Venezuela, the firebrand critic of the Bush II administration, Iran and the post-Fidel Cuba. Russia want to send the direct message to another imperialistic country like the United States about its meddlesome foreign policy.

Gary Brooks really do not understand the realities and pragmatism of foreign policy and alliance to defend the democratic country from falling in down like Georgia. Gary Brooks seems give the contradictory postiton about watching out for Russia's likely invasion, then criticized the United States' postiton toward Georgia.

The critics of Russia's unjustifiable invasion of Georgia are realists since they are very familiar with the history of humankind like the Imperial Japan's invasion of Manchuria and Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland and other Eastern Europe.

Our country will be really okay under the Obama-Biden leadership with the strong defense mechanism. President-elect Barack Obama is a superbu poker player himself. The Obama-Biden administration could outsmart and outbid Premier Vladmir Putin and Russian President Medevev.

Most important of all is to restore the real strength of our military response and defense perimeter which the Republicans overspend the military budget on many countless stuff like $1,000 toilet seat and other non-workable military equipments from the Reagan era.

Our country needs to treat our war veterans much better than we have. The endless arguments about whether deaf people ought to be allowed to enlist into the U.S. military. I strongly that we ought to open up the idea to Israel and other countries' example of enlisting every citizens for two years service including deaf American citizens to appreciate the strong national defense. Pros and cons about enlisting every citizens for two-years military service and look at Israel's irrational endless dealings with terrorist acts. Israel ought to re-examine its own policy toward Palestine.

The recommended reading material like the 80s Film and Its Social History by William J. Palmer which sh0w many parallels to the relationship between films and pop culture and the given society. "Red Dawn" is purely the money-maker film like the 1950s' paranoia about the UFO intergalaxy invasion of Earth from many Hollywood classic sci-fic films, ex. "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and "The Invasion of Saucer-Men" and "The Blob".

Just have a faith in our national defense. "Red Dawn" film is also a propaganda for the National Rifle Association (NRA) on the issue of gun rights.

One hilarous scene in the "Red Dawn" film left me smile about some ASL interpreters twisted what the deaf client said. The assigned Russian interpreter falsely told the Russian soliders what the plaque with the written English on it . How true about some audistic ASL interpreters do to us, deaf people.

ASLize yours,
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
RLMDEAF blog