via youtube.com
Looks like an interesting film.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Open Letter To Glenn Beck By Alex Jones
via prisonplanet.com
The king of conspiracy calls out fraud Glenn Beck.
On The View Glenn Beck Admits that He Doesn’t Check Facts
via politicususa.com
Gee what a surprise! so he pulls his "facts" from his ass.
Koch Brothers’ Money Fuels Wisconsin Fight
The visitor, Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, told a large group of counterprotesters who had gathered Saturday at one edge of what otherwise was a mostly union crowd that the cuts were not only necessary, but they also represented the start of a much-needed nationwide move to slash public-sector union benefits.
“We are going to bring fiscal sanity back to this great nation,” he said.
What Mr. Phillips did not mention was that his Virginia-based nonprofit group, whose budget surged to $40 million in 2010 from $7 million three years ago, was created and financed in part by the secretive billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch.
State records also show that Koch Industries, their energy and consumer products conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., was one of the biggest contributors to the election campaign of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican who has championed the proposed cuts.
Even before the new governor was sworn in last month, executives from the Koch-backed group had worked behind the scenes to try to encourage a union showdown, Mr. Phillips said in an interview on Monday.
State governments have gone into the red, he said, in part because of the excessively generous pay and benefits that unions have been able to negotiate for teachers, police, firefighters and other state and local employees.
“We thought it was important to do,” Mr. Phillips said, adding that his group is already working with activists and state officials in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania to urge them to take similar steps to curtail union benefits or give public employees the power to opt out of unions entirely.
To union leaders and liberal activists in Washington, this intervention in Wisconsin is proof of the expanding role played by nonprofit groups with murky ties to wealthy corporate executives as they push a decidedly conservative agenda.
“The Koch brothers are the poster children of the effort by multinational corporate America to try to redefine the rights and values of American citizens,” said Representative Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin, who joined with others in the union protests.
A spokesman for Koch Industries, as well as Mr. Phillips, scoffed at that accusation. The companies owned by Koch (pronounced Coke) — which include the Georgia-Pacific Corporation and the Koch Pipeline Company — have no direct stake in the union debate, they said. The company has about 3,000 employees in Wisconsin, including workers at a toilet paper factory and gasoline supply terminals. The pending legislation would not directly affect its bottom line.
“A balanced budget will benefit Koch Industries and its thousands of employees in Wisconsin no more and no less than the rest of the state’s private-sector workers and employers,” said Jeff Schoepke, a Koch Industries lobbyist in Wisconsin. “This is a dispute between public-sector unions and democratically elected officials over how best to serve the public interest.”
Certainly, the Koch brothers have long used their wallets to promote fiscal conservatism and combat regulation, another Koch Industries spokesman said Monday.
But the push to curtail union benefits in Wisconsin has been backed by many conservative groups that have no Koch connection, Mr. Phillips noted.
Americans for Prosperity came to Wisconsin more than five years ago and has thousands of members, he said. The state chapter organized buses on Saturday for hundreds of Wisconsin residents to go to the Capitol to support the governor’s proposals.
“This is a Wisconsin movement,” said Fred Luber, chief executive of the Supersteel Products Corporation in Milwaukee, who serves on Americans for Prosperity’s Wisconsin state advisory board. “Obviously, Washington is interested in this. But it is up to us to do.”
Political activism is high on the list of priorities for Charles Koch, who in a letter last September to other business leaders and conservatives explained that he saw no other choice.
“If not us, who? If not now, when?” said the letter, which invited other conservatives to a retreat in January in Rancho Mirage, Calif. “It is up to us to combat what is now the greatest assault on American freedom and prosperity in our lifetimes.”
Campaign finance records in Washington show that donations by Koch Industries and its employees climbed to a total of $2 million in the last election cycle, twice as much as a decade ago, with 92 percent of that money going to Republicans. Donations in state government races — like in Wisconsin — have also surged in recent years, records show.
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Steven Greenhouse contributed reporting from Madison, Wis.
via nytimes.com
Quote For The Day III - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
"This is what I mean by my constant insistence on 'moderation' in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid," - president Eisenhower, as a counterpoint to FDR.
A true Republican!
Monday, February 21, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Walker Concocts 'Scoop and Toss' Borrowing Scheme to Pay for $140 Million in Special Interest Spending - One Wisconsin Now
Wall Street Bond Holders Win; Wisconsin's Long-Term Debt Rises
Madison-- Republican Gov. Scott Walker plans to pay for $140 million in new special interest spending signed into law in January by extending the state's long term debt in a "scoop and toss" refinancing scheme that will cost untold tens of millions of dollars in additional debt for Wisconsin.
"Scott Walker railed non-stop against budget gimmicks as a candidate and now as governor he's put together a scheme that would make a pay-day lender blush," said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. "Gov. Walker created this problem by handing out $140 million in special interest spending to his corporate pals and he's going to make our children pay for it by taking loans the state was ready to pay off and borrow more money on them."
Walker is refusing to provide full accounting of how much in additional costs his "scoop and toss" scheme would cost taxpayers down the road. Since his inauguration in early January, Walker has approved $140 million in new special interest spending that includes:
- $25 million for an economic development fund for job creation that still has $73 million due to a lack of job creation. Walker is creating a $25 million hole which will not create or retain jobs. [Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, 1/7/11]
- $48 million for private health savings accounts, which primarily benefit the wealthy. A study from the federal Governmental Accountability Office showed the average adjusted gross income of HSA participants was $139,000 and nearly half of HSA participants reported withdrawing nothing from their HSA, evidence that it is serving as a tax shelter for wealthy participants. [Government Accountability Office, 4/1/08; Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, 1/11/11]
- $67 million for a tax shift plan, so ill-conceived that at-best the benefit provided to job creators would be less than a dollar a day per new job, and may be as little as 30 cents a day. [Associated Press, 1/28/01]
Walker made numerous statements before and after his election as governor criticizing borrowing schemes as a means of balancing the state's budget, a sample of which includes:
Soon, we will lay out our plans for the next state budget and we will successfully tackle the three billion dollar deficit. We will do it without raids on segregated funds, or excessive borrowing. [Walker Inaugural Address, 1/3/11]
I throw out a couple examples of things we pointed out there to get this next budget intact to make sure we don't do what the governor has done the last couple of times, which is kick the can down into the future and create even bigger budget deficits we got to get our legacy costs under control. [Walker-Neumann Debate, 8/25/10]
Our budget repair bill will lay the foundation for a structurally sound budget that doesn't rely on short-term fixes and other gap measures that only delay the pain and create perilous uncertainty. [Walker State of the State Address, 2/3/11]
In addition to not disclosing how much more this will cost the taxpayers in the long-run, Walker has not released how much the Wall Street firms and bond lawyers will profit off this deal.
"Gov. Walker's unprecedented power grab is turning his office into the state's largest lobbyist waiting room," said Ross. "Wisconsin deserves to know immediately the long-term cost of this borrowing scheme and what Wall Street firms and bond lawyers stand to make from our tax dollars."
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One Wisconsin Now is a statewide communications network specializing in effective earned media and online organizing to advance progressive leadership and values.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
In Praise of Space Muppets
I Got Your Warp Drive Here, Pal
| In praise of Space Muppets. |
The latest version of the venerable starship Enterprise, on the show that bears its name, maxes out at Warp 5. That's a fraction of the speed of its predecessors, and it's no surprise. Enterprise has to lug around the entire crushing weight of the Star Trek franchise.
After five TV series and nine, soon to be ten movies (four, if you only count the good ones), Star Trek has history. It has tradition. The good guys all get along, make the right choices in the end, and always walk away from their adventures none the worse for wear.
It's dependable. Even comforting. But when's the last time Star Trek made you laugh out loud, or stand up and cheer like a maniac?
Rockne S. O'Bannon and David Kemper, the creator and executive producer of Sci-Fi's Farscape, don't have a franchise to protect. Sure, Kemper used to write for Star Trek, and O'Bannon's trying to live down a little toxic accident called seaQuest DSV. But they're not bound by thirty-five years of ironclad fandom-- they're just out to have fun. Farscape is what Trek could be if it loosened its collar, let its hair down, and knocked back a couple of tequila shots. In the sterile, stately world of TV science fiction, it's gloriously messy.
There is no captain on Farscape's ship -- Moya is a living creature with a mind of its own, and a symbiotic pilot creature to relay its opinions to its crew. The heroes aren't a close-knit military team; they're a mishmash of rogues and fugitives who would probably end up killing each other if they didn't need to cooperate to survive. We see them engaged in the unglamorous realities of space travel: cleaning their teeth (with a living toothbrush), cooking, even doing laundry. Their sex lives, neither ignored nor turned into sweeps fodder, are passionate, messy and fraught with consequences. Status quo for Moya and her crew is to be damaged, hungry, and on the run.
The Jim Henson Company produces Farscape, and the legacy of The Muppet Show is happily apparent in the show's loony, anything-goes spirit. Each episode is breathlessly paced, crammed with rapid-fire dialogue and subtle details that reward multiple viewings. At least once every act, the plot or the characters take a hard left turn into the unexpected. Trying to guess how any given episode will end-- even at the end of the third act-- is an easy way to lose a bet. And every now and then, the producers will take their nicely working formula and give it a good hard shake, peppering an episode with hallucinatory jump cuts and flash-forwards, or illustrating the main character's inner turmoil as a fully animated Roadrunner-style cartoon.
The cast is clearly having fun, and after three seasons they wear each of their characters like a comfortable pair of jeans. Each of the main characters has poked and prodded the dimensions of their standard-issue role into delightfully odd territory. So the fierce guy with the big sword turns out to be kind of a goofball who loves the ladies, the sexy thief is scared and vulnerable and a little messed up, and the snotty drama queen proves to be smarter and more compassionate than she'd like to let on.
All the show's stars are gifted, none more so than leads Ben Browder and Claudia Black. As lost astronaut John Crichton, Browder is the antidote to every starched-collar all-American space hero from Kirk onward. Marooned amidst unimaginable weirdness, he's making everything up as he goes along, and half the time he just doesn't give a damn. Since the show began, he's grown darker and more aggressive, moving ever further from his initially peaceful values. His rapid-fire pop culture references come across as the attempts of a desperately lonely man to hang on to his sanity.
If Browder is all manic energy, Black's ex-soldier Aeryn Sun is cool reserve, a little bit sad even when she's smiling. Hard as nails on the outside, an open emotional wound on the inside, Aeryn is one of the most marvelously complex female characters on TV. If Crichton has gotten meaner to survive, his influence has helped Aeryn discover compassion for the first time in her highly regimented life, and it frightens and confuses her. Black's marvelously expressive face, like the great Emma Thompson's, allows her to say more with one longing glance than she could with a whole monologue.
I'd be remiss not to mention the Muppets. Two of the show's regular characters, six-armed Pilot and Rygel, the tiny slug emperor, are made of foam rubber and animatronics. It's to the writers' great credit that the show's Henson contingent isn't thrown any softballs, character-wise. They have backstories, regrets, and character flaws, all performed with a skill and subtlety most human actors would kill for. Rygel in particular behaves like the unholy anti-Kermit: he steals, he bites, he boasts about his sexual prowess, and he's not above selling out his crewmates to get what he wants. Despite that, he's a brilliant diplomat and negotiator who earns what little respect he deserves. His selfish advice usually turns out to be the wisest course of action.
The villains are the icing on the cake. We're not talking your bland, faceless, identical Star Trek villains here. These guys are meaty, lip-smacking nasties with genuine personality and menace. First came Crais (Lani Tupu), a bloodthirsty military captain who blamed Crichton for the accidental death of his brother. After a season of relentless pursuit, he lost his command, regained a measure of his sanity, and began a crawl toward genuine heroism and redemption-- but not before "appropriating" Moya's newborn child as his personal battleship.
The series' Biggest Bad to date is Scorpius (Wayne Pygram), the most deliciously wicked TV villain in years. He wants the interstellar secrets that friendly aliens lodged in Crichton's brain, and he'll stop at nothing-- torture, madness, mind control-- to get them. He has Mr. Spock's implacable logic, the Terminator's refusal to die, Pinhead's tailor, and Ernst Blofeld's sinister charm. Scorpius's doesn't rant or bluster like most sci-fi heavies. He's polite, soft-spoken, always smiling with those little needle teeth-- and scary as hell. And just when you think you hate him, the producers reveal some noble twist to his personality that almost makes him sympathetic. Almost.
By breaking all the rules, the producers and cast of Farscape have given television a new kind of space opera. It's more honest, more emotional, and a lot more exciting. The sort of risks Farscape takes are exactly what Star Trek needs to produce a great series again-- and exactly what Trek's carefully guarded cash-cow status will never permit. Which makes John Crichton and company the only TV space crew boldly going where no one has gone before.
Farscape returns for its fourth season on Sci Fi June 7. New episodes (in letterbox format) will run every Friday night at 10 all summer long.
Watch Me: No Whammies, No Whammies... Stop!
No Whammies! Big Money! And, hey, is that random pattern really random? Apparently not, since Michael Larson cracked the Press Your Luck code in 1984 and won $110,237 by hitting the button at the exact right time. Learn the entire sordid history (possibly including the part where Larson withdrew most of his winnings in one-dollar bills to win a radio contest and had them all stolen from his house) on Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal.
Monday, Game Show Network, 9pm ET
â€"Monty Ashley
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